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Jan Hus: the Life and Death of a Preacher Purdue University Purdue e-Pubs Purdue University Press Book Previews Purdue University Press 12-2019 Jan Hus: The Life and Death of a Preacher Pavel Soukup Follow this and additional works at: https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/purduepress_previews Part of the History of Religion Commons, and the Medieval History Commons This document has been made available through Purdue e-Pubs, a service of the Purdue University Libraries. Please contact [email protected] for additional information. Central European Studies Charles W. Ingrao, founding editor Paul Hanebrink, editor Maureen Healy, editor Howard Louthan, editor Dominique Reill, editor Daniel L. Unowsky, editor Nancy M. Wingfield, editor The demise of the Communist Bloc a quarter century ago exposed the need for greater understanding of the broad stretch of Europe that lies between Germa- ny and Russia. For four decades the Purdue University Press series in Central European Studies has enriched our knowledge of the region by producing scholarly monographs, advanced surveys, and select collections of the highest quality. Since its founding, the series has been the only English-language se- ries devoted primarily to the lands and peoples of the Habsburg Empire, its successor states, and those areas lying along its immediate periphery. Among its broad range of international scholars are several authors whose engagement in public policy reflects the pressing challenges that confront the successor states. Indeed, salient issues such as democratization, censorship, competing national narratives, and the aspirations and treatment of national minorities bear evidence to the continuity between the region’s past and present. Other titles in this series: Making Peace in an Age of War: Emperor Ferdinand III (1608–1657) Mark Hengerer Universities in Imperial Austria 1848–1918: A Social History of a Multilingual Space Jan Surman A History of Yugoslavia Marie-Janine Calic The Charmed Circle: Joseph II and the “Five Princesses,” 1765–1790 Rebecca Gates-Coon Lemberg, Lwów, L’viv, 1914–1947: Violence and Ethnicity in a Contested City Christoph Mick Center Stage: Operatic Culture and Nation Building in Nineteenth-Century Central Europe Philipp Ther Purdue University Press ♦ West Lafayette, Indiana Copyright 2020 by Purdue University. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. Cataloging-in-Publication data is on file at the Library of Congress. Paperback ISBN: 978-1-55753-876-5 ePub: ISBN 978-1-61249-606-1 ePDF ISBN: 978-1-61249-607-8 Originally published in German as Jan Hus by Pavel Soukup. Copyright 2014 W. Kohlhammer GmbH, Stuttgart. This volume is based upon the updated and augmented Czech translation Jan Hus. Život a smrt kazatele. Translated from the Czech by Joan Boychuk and Ivana Horacek. Cover image courtesy of Prague, National Library of the Czech Republic, MS. XVI A 17, fol. 122v. Contents Preface to the English Edition vii Abbreviations xi CHAPTER 1 Introduction: The Defendant at Constance 1 CHAPTER 2 Jan Hus in the Hands of Historians 7 CHAPTER 3 Master Jan Hus: A Brief Biography 21 CHAPTER 4 Hus the Preacher: The Appointment as Rector of the Bethlehem Chapel, 1402 27 CHAPTER 5 Prague Wycliffism and the “Learned Heresy”: The First Condemnation of Wyclif’s Articles, 1403 39 CHAPTER 6 Jan Hus and Church Reform: The Synodal Sermons, 1405 and 1407 53 CHAPTER 7 The University Career of Master Hus: The Rector’s Speech of 1409, “Strengthen Your Hearts” 65 CHAPTER 8 The Generation of the Decree of Kutná Hora: The University of Prague as a Central European Crossroads 73 CHAPTER 9 The Hussites’ Media Campaign: Appealing the Papal Prohibition of Preaching, 1410 81 CHAPTER 10 Public Engagement and Political Support: Royal Expropriation of Church Property, 1411 93 CHAPTER 11 Leader of the Protest Movement: The Prague Indulgence Disputes, 1412 103 CHAPTER 12 The Judicial Process: The Appeal to Christ, 1412 115 CHAPTER 13 The Invisible Church and Conditional Obedience: Hus’s Book On the Church, 1413 123 CHAPTER 14 Writing in the Vernacular and Mission in the Countryside: The Czech Postil, 1413 135 CHAPTER 15 The Council of Constance: Conviction and Execution, 1414–15 145 CHAPTER 16 Epilogue: Hussitism and Reformation 159 Notes 167 Works of Jan Hus 197 Further Primary Sources 199 Bibliography 203 Index of Personal Names 219 About the Author 225 Preface to the English Edition This book, originally written in German, was first published by W. Kohlhammer Press in Stuttgart in 2014. A year later, the Nakladatelství Lidové noviny Press in Prague released an augmented and updated Czech edition. Both versions appeared just in time to participate in the extensive literary output marking the sexennial of Jan Hus’s death. Between 2013–16, several dozen book-length publications dealing with Hus—monographs, source editions, exhibition cat- alogs, and even novels and comic books—have been published, both in and outside of the Czech Republic. This busy publishing schedule alone attests to the importance of Jan Hus in history and memory. Who was the man whose life found its tragic end at the stake on 6 July 1415? Of course, this entire book seeks to answer this question. However, it may be useful for many Anglophone readers to outline here the significance of Jan Hus in Czech history. From the sixth century on, the historical lands of Bohemia and Moravia (also called the Czech Lands and forming, along with a small portion of Silesia, the territory of today’s Czech Republic) have been inhabited by the Czechs. The temperate climate of Central Europe and relative security in a basin surrounded by medium-height mountain ridges (up to 5,250 feet) offered the Slavic settlers favorable conditions. As the westernmost Slavic nation, the Czechs like to think of themselves as sitting in the heart of Europe and bridging the East and West. At any rate, their proximity to German-speaking areas led to long-term cultural and material exchanges, processes acceler- ated in the thirteenth century by large-scale German immigration into the Czech Lands, connected with a massive urbanization. In the ninth century, despite the Slavic-Byzantine mission of 863, the Czechs accepted the western (Roman) rite of Christianity. As a result, they shared in the fate of the Latin Church, which included the schisms and reforms of the Late Middle Ages. By that time Bohemia, originally a duchy, had become a kingdom (perma- nently from 1212 on), forming a politically important part of the Holy Roman Empire. In the mid-fourteenth century, the King of Bohemia—Charles IV of House Luxembourg—ascended to the imperial dignity, and Bohemia’s capital, Prague, became the center of the Empire. Charles University, the oldest in viii Preface to the English Edition Central and Eastern Europe (1348), was just one indicator of the cultural and political rise of the Bohemian Kingdom. All these factors played greater or lesser roles in the story of Jan Hus and Hussitism. The preacher, intellectual, and Church reformer strove to find remedies for the problems of his age, with the decline of Church life among the most pressing. Hus’s influence, even after his execution, was strong enough to trigger a protest movement that developed into an open uprising (the Hussite Revolution), giving birth to a distinct ecclesiastic structure (the so-called Utraquists, often seen as part of the Bohemian Reformation). Hus’s motiva- tion was undoubtedly religious, yet the controversies that unfolded during and after his lifetime were also fed by national tensions (most Germans belonged to Hus’s opponents) and various sociopolitical interests (of nobles, burghers, and rulers). As a consequence, the figure of Jan Hus remained highly relevant for various agendas long after his death. Although this book argues that Hus was an important figure of his time, and is among the central figures for anyone who wants to understand the Late Middle Ages, his significance in subsequent centuries cannot be denied. The sixteenth-century Reformations—Lutheran, and to some extent even Calvinist—diversified the religious landscape in the “kingdom of dual-faith” (i.e., Hussite and Catholic) even more. In 1526, the Crown of Bohemia became part of the Habsburg realm. A century later, the Habsburg counterreforma- tion eliminated non-Catholics from the Czech Lands for the next 160 years. Though Enlightened Absolutism introduced a limited religious toleration, its centralizing processes caused a considerable Germanization of high culture and politics. In reaction, Czech patriots mobilized and sparked a remarkable revival of Czech language and culture around 1800. Nationalistic sentiments and Czech-German/Austrian antagonism shaped the entire nineteenth century, yet it was not until its second half that the Hussites became an important point of reference for Czech society. The Hussite revival was somewhat par- adoxical; even after full religious toleration was introduced in the 1860s, the vast majority of the Czechs (95 percent) remained Catholic. Nevertheless, the Hussites (and the Protestant concept of Czech history) enjoyed great, and almost uncontested, popularity. The Hussites were seen as champions of the national cause rather than religious enthusiasts. After the establishment of the Czechoslovak Republic in 1918, the veneration of the Hussites continued and—with an emphasis shifted to social revolution—survived well into the times of communist totalitarianism (1948–89). Contemporary Czech society is not religious. Only one-fifth of the population declared themselves to be believers in the census of 2011, and 10 percent claimed allegiance to the Roman Catholic Church. The second and third largest churches are the Evangelical Church of the Czech Brethren and Preface to the English Edition ix the Czechoslovak Hussite Church, both claiming Hus among their spiritual fathers; their combined membership amounted to 1 percent in 2011. (It should be noted that 45 percent of respondents did not answer the question about reli- gion.
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