The letters of John Hus/Letter 14, To the Brethren of the Monastery of Dolein, in Moravia

by Jan Hus

XIV. To the Brethren of the Monastery of Dolein, in Moravia

 

(Undated: summer 1412)

 

To the honourable and religious inmates (dominis) of the convent in Dolein, beloved brothers of Christ, Master John Hus, a worthless servant in Christ.

May the love of God and the peace of Christ abound in your hearts by the Holy Spirit given unto you!

Worshipful sirs, I have heard how fiercely Dom Stephen with much abuse is assailing not only myself, but those also who hear Christ’s sermons from my lips. If with just cause, he will receive the reward of justice; but if without cause, the reward of injustice from the Lord, Who knows the hearts of men. Therefore to you who are brothers in Christ and bound to me by ties of love, though separated by distance and unknown to me by sight, I am sending this heartfelt entreaty for the sake of your salvation and not in self-excuse (for to me it is of the slightest moment that I be judged of men): believe nothing that is preached about my holding or desiring to hold any error that is contrary to Holy Scripture or to morality: I do not say, “though Wyclif,” but “not even though an angel came down from heaven and taught otherwise than what the Scripture hath taught.”^[1] For my soul abhors the errors they ascribe to me. But in refusing to obey the ruling of superiors, while offering no resistance to the power which is of the Lord God, I had the teaching of Scripture on my side, and especially the word and deed of the apostles, who, against the will of the priests, preached Jesus Christ as Lord, saying: We ought to obey God rather than men.^[2] As to my not appearing at the Curia when summoned, there are many reasons for this.^[3] In the first instance, when summoned I desired to depart; but my own proctors as well as those of the other side wrote to me, urging me not to appear and uselessly sacrifice my life. It would also mean that I should neglect my preaching of God’s word among the people and risk my life to no purpose. For a man to be judged by one whose open sins he attacks is to hand himself over to death. Yet if I had any reasonable ground for supposing that by my appearance and by my death I could be of service to some for their salvation, I would willingly appear, Jesus Christ helping me.

But, alas! who can be of any service in these days in the midst of a people given over to greed, pride, and hardness of heart, who have turned away their hearing from the truth and are turned unto fables?^[4] May it please God Almighty to preserve His holy Church and yourselves from the wiles of Antichrist, and to commend me to your kind regard as a help to my happiness! Dom Stephen, lay aside the suspicions which I hear you bear against me, until you are fully enlightened by the facts. You have read Christ’s words: Judge not, that you may not be judged: condemn not, and you shall not be condemned.^[5] And yet you judge me, and in your book you condemn the soul of Wyclif.^[6] Where is revelation, or Scripture, or personal acquaintance, that you condemn a man who stands at the bar of God? Would it not suffice you to condemn the man’s words, and to wait for his condemnation by God’s word or Holy Scripture?

 

1. Gal. i. 8. Hus was very sensitive about his dependence on Wyclif. Cf. his answer in 1414 (Doc., 184): ‘Whatever truth Wycliff has taught I receive, not because it is the truth of Wyclif, but because it is the truth of Christ’; and cf. Mon. i. 264a. In the Medulla of Stephen the dependence of Hus on Wyclif is clearly recognised.
2. Acts v. 29.
3. Supra, pp. 39–40. Stephen Dolein dwells on this matter in his Dialogus, pp. 464–7, and claims that Hus had shown no just cause why he should not have gone to Rome.
4. 2 Tim. iv. 4.
5. Luke vi. 37.
6. In a sermon before the Synod and in the presence of Zbinek (probably in June 1408), Hus had stated: ‘I could hope that my soul should be where rests the soul of Wyclif.’ His enemies added that he had claimed that Wyclif was a ‘Catholic doctor,’ but Hus argued that ‘Catholic’ cannot be expressed in Czech, and therefore he could not have said it. This famous wish of Hus was never forgiven or forgotten. It forms part of the charge of the Englishman Stokes, to which Hus replied as follows: ‘I will not grant that Wyclif is a heretic, I will not affirm a negative, but I hope that he is not, since in doubtful matters one ought to choose the better part. Wherefore, I hope that Wyclif is among the saved.’ At Constance Hus had to deal with the matter again. The reason for the heat with which the question was debated lay in the fact that Wyclif had never been condemned or even excommunicated during his lifetime. Was it possible, then, to condemn him ‘in anima’? We have a curious illustration of the importance of this question in the Lollard Purvey’s Remonstrance, p. 133 (see my Age of Wyclif, i. 306), as also in the famous Oxford forgery of October 5, 1406 (ib. i. 241–2). Wyclif, we must remember, was not formally condemned until the Council of Constance (May 4, 1415), unless, indeed, we count the curious Lateran Council of February 2, 1413. The reference to Dolein’s ‘book’ is a general reference to the Medulla Tritici, whose other and more significant title was Antiwikliffus.