Part I.—Letters Written Before the Death of Archbishop Zbinek
(June 30, 1408—September 28, 1411)
John of Husinecz—a name which he abbreviated, except in formal documents, into the more familiar Hus—was the child of poor peasants in Husinecz, a village of Bohemia not far from the Bavarian frontier. The date of his birth is uncertain, but is usually accepted, on somewhat doubtful evidence, as 1369. Round the childhood of Hus there gathered in later years the usual tales with which fond memory strives to fill the gaps of ignorance. Some of these have a suspicious resemblance to similar tales concerning Luther; others are manifestly coined from the fact that in Czech the word hus, or husca, means “goose”—etymologically, of course, it is the same word—a play on the name which we shall meet with again and again in the Letters. Of the brothers and sisters of Hus we know nothing. In the sons of a brother he showed a touching interest in his last days (infra, p. 236).
On entering the University of Prague Hus supported himself, as Luther at Erfurt, by singing in the churches and by menial services. His piety at this time, though sincere, was of the usual type. In 1392 we find Hus, following in this matter the lead of Stiekna (infra, p. 121, n.), parting with his last four groschen to a seller of indulgences at the Wyschehrad—a suburb of Prague—‘so that there remained only dry bread for his support.’ In one of the intensely subjective epistles of his last year (infra, p. 150), Hus reproached himself with his youthful levity, especially the time he wasted in chess, and his inability to lose a game without anger. Such reproaches, as in the case of Cromwell, Bunyan, and the Puritans in general, are rather the evidence of a tender conscience than of any real depravity of heart.
In 1396 Hus took his Master’s degree in Arts, and two years later began to deliver lectures as a public teacher. In 1401 he was made dean of the faculty of philosophy, and in the following year became the rector of the University, a position he occupied for about six months to the end of April 1403. Nevertheless, his achievements at the University were in nowise remarkable. Though he read the larger part of the course necessary for the degree in Divinity, in 1394, graduating as Bachelor, and in 1401 lecturing on Peter Lombard’s Sentences, he never incepted as doctor,[1] while the wide knowledge that appears in his writings is but borrowed learning. Among his teachers at the University we may note with interest the name of Stanislas of Znaim, in later years his bitter foe.
In 1400 Hus obtained priest’s orders; his object, he tells us, was the comfortable life led by the clergy. Two years later (March 14, 1402) he was appointed preacher at the Chapel of the Holy Innocents of Bethlehem. To this church a dwelling-room was attached, from which a staircase led direct to the pulpit. This appointment gave Hus his opportunity. The Bethlehem Chapel in Prague—a vast building destroyed by the Jesuits in 1786 —had been erected and endowed (May 24, 1391) by two wealthy laymen, on the condition that its rector should be a secular, and preach every Sunday and festival exclusively in the Czech language. Thus the Chapel—‘Bethlehem, which is, being interpreted, house of bread, because there the common people should be refreshed with the bread of preaching’—was both the product and expression of the new consciousness of Czech nationalism, and of the recent religious revival. Not only the Bethlehem, but almost everything else in Prague, University included, was new. The whole town was seething with a new life, with a quickened interest in religion, and with the fierce determination of the Czechs to throw off all bondage to the Germans, and, if possible, assert their own supremacy. Of all this the movement led by Hus was but one phase and outlet. For from the first Hus flung himself with passionate earnestness into the national movement. ‘The Czechs,’ he cried in one of his sermons, ‘in this part are more wretched than dogs or snakes, for a dog defends the couch on which he lies, and if another dog tries to drive him away he fights with him. A snake does the same. But we let the Germans oppress us, and occupy all the offices, without complaint.’
In addition to the new consciousness of Czech nationalism, a new determination to resist the German pressure, and the new revival of religion brought about by the labours of Milicz of Kremsier, Conrad of Waldhausen, and Mathias of Janow, the student will discern a third factor in the life of Hus. This was his making acquaintance with the works of Wyclif. The precise year in which the writings of the great English heresiarch were introduced into Bohemia cannot now be determined, and for our present purpose is not material. Suffice that in the Fall of 1401 Jerome of Prague, who in 1398 had obtained his licentiate at the University of Prague, and permission to go abroad, came back from Oxford, bringing with him copies of Wyclif’s Dialogue and Trialogue, together with some other lesser works. All these Jerome had written out with his own hand. ‘Young men and students,’ he said in a public disputation, ‘who did not study the books of Wyclif would never find the true root of knowledge.’ With this conviction he introduced the works to John Christian of Prachaticz and John Hus. Hus was, however, already acquainted with the purely philosophical treatises of Wyclif. Of this we have evidence in the five tractates of Wyclif now in the Royal Library at Stockholm, written out by Hus ‘with his own hand in 1398,’ and carried off by the Swedes in 1648 as part of the spoils of the Bohemian War.
Before long the strife over Wyclif had broken out in Bohemia. In April 1403 Hus ceased to be the rector of the University, and Walter Harrasser, a German, was elected in his place. On May 28, 1403, the new rector, at the instance of the chapter of Prague—for the archbishopric at this time was still vacant—issued an order forbidding any discussion of the twenty-four articles from Wyclif’s works already condemned in England at the famous Blackfriars or Earthquake Synod (May 21, 1382). To these were further added twenty-one articles extracted by Hübner, a Silesian master. The prohibition remained a dead letter, though, as we shall see in the Letters, these forty-five articles played no small part at Constance. The whole affair, in fact, seems to have been an attempt by the German Nominalists to score over the Czech Realists, who for their part contented themselves with protesting, somewhat unfairly, that the condemned propositions—at any rate, the additions of Hübner—were not to be found in Wyclif. The struggle as yet was chiefly one of the Schools; for at Prague the constant fight of Czech and Teuton had passed into a struggle of philosophical creeds. Whatever the one “nation” espoused, the other condemned. The Germans had embraced Nominalism—of itself a sufficient reason for the Czechs to become uncompromising Realists and to rally to the defence of so thorough-going a Realist as Wyclif.
The leader of the Czech Realists at this time would appear to have been Stanislaus of Znaim, from whose teaching in the University Hus acknowledges that he had learned much. In a squib of the times we read:—
Wyclif, the son of the Devil, begat Stanislaus of Znaim,
who begat Peter of Znaim, and Peter of Znaim begat
Stephen Palecz, and Stephen Palecz begat Hus.
In the controversy on the forty-five articles Stanislaus defended the incriminated doctrines with warmth: ‘Let him who likes rise up and attack; I am willing to defend.’ He spoke so haughtily that ‘some of the senior doctors left the congregation.’ Shortly afterwards he published a tractate, De Remanentia Panis, and ‘argued boldly in the schools’ on the side of Wyclif. Stanislaus’s tractate was pronounced heretical by the Saxon master, Ludolph Meistermann—one of the leaders in the Secession of 1409. In the end Stanislas was ‘forced to recant.’ With Stanislas, though less prominent and pronounced, Stephen Palecz was closely associated. In the Church, as on the stage, one man in his time plays many parts.
Among these Realists or Wyclifists we must already reckon John Hus. In a Taborite document we read: ‘These books of the evangelical doctor, as is known from credible witnesses, opened the eyes of Master John Hus of blessed memory, whilst reading and re-reading the same in connection with his adherents.’ At one time it would seem he had shrunk back from Wyclif’s theological teaching, though welcoming his philosophical positions. “Oh, Wyclif, Wyclif,” he had cried in a Czech sermon, making use of an untranslatable pun, “how you will make our heads to waggle (zwikles).” But this dread was fast disappearing.
Hitherto any part that Hus may have taken in the controversy over Wyclif had been political rather than religious. But in 1408 circumstances arose which compelled Hus, in spite of himself, to place himself at the head of the Bohemian Lollards, though he probably still deceived himself by imagining that they were but Czech Realists. This continued unconsciousness of whither he was drifting, together with the drift itself, is brought out very clearly in the first letter of Hus preserved for us, written in the early summer of 1408. From this point we shall leave the Letters, as far as possible, to tell their own story, adding only such connecting narratives and notes as may be needful to bind together these living fragments into an intelligible whole. LETTER I
The circumstances which provoked the letter were as follows: In spite of the condemnation of 1403, the Wyclifists, as Stephen Dolein (infra, p. 74) complained, swarmed everywhere ‘in state apartments of princes, the schools of the students, the lonely chambers of the monks, and the cells of the Carthusians.’ Large sums of money were paid for manuscripts of the English doctor, and corrected copies were constantly brought from England. So rapid was the spread of his doctrines that in 1406 Zbinek, acting on the orders of Innocent VII., threatened with punishment all those who preached the heresies of the Reformer, and ordered that the Roman dogma of the Sacrament should be proclaimed to the people on the next Feast of Corpus Christi.
As the proclamation produced little effect, Zbinek resorted to other measures. In the May and June of 1408 certain masters of Prague were brought up before the Archbishop’s deputies. Their names were Sigismund of Jistebnicz, Matthias Pater of Knin, Nicholas of Welemowicz, and another of whose name we are ignorant. One of these, Nicholas of Welemowitz, familiarly known as “Abraham,” an unlicensed preacher in the Church of the Holy Ghost at Prague, had asserted the Lollard idea that ‘laymen as well as priests should be allowed to preach,’ and at his trial refused to take any oath, “save by the living God.” Hus, who was present in court, openly defended Nicholas in the matter of the oath by a quotation from Chrysostom, for which he was indebted to Gratian’s Decretum.[2] “Ah, master,” retorted the Vicar-General, Kbel, “you came here to hear, not to talk.” Thus silenced in court, Hus appealed to Zbinek direct. The next day, July 1, 1408—a day which fixes the date of the letter—“Abraham” was released, though not, we imagine, in consequence of Hus’s interference. In reality, the trials were not pressed, though Matthias Pater of Knin was forced to abjure; for Wenzel the King was anxious to further his political projects (see infra, p. 18) by obtaining a clean bill, if we may so put it, for the character of his subjects. Accordingly Zbinek, a few days after the release of “Abraham,” declared in a Synod at Prague (July 17, 1408) ‘that after making diligent inquisition, he could find no heretic in Bohemia.’
- ↑ See infra, p. 140: note on “Baccalareus formatus.”
- ↑ Dec. Pars II. C .22, q. 1, c. 11. Really from Auctor Operis imperfecti in Matt. homily 44 on c. xxiii. (see infra, p. 65, n.). Hus may, however, have learned the passage from Wyclif, who quotes it in full in the Op. Evangel. lib. iii. p. 47 (De Antichristo, lib. i. c. 13).