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On the Sources of Matthew of Janov's Doctrine

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On the Sources of Matthew of Janov's Doctrine On the Sources of Matthew of Janov's Doctrine HOWARD KAMINSKY This is a remarkably vast topic for so short an essay, and perhaps it will be in order to begin by marking the limits of what I hope to ac- complish. The system of ideas developed by Matthew of Janov need not be summarized - those who read Czech can study the solid mono- graph that Vlastimil Kybal published in 1905; others can still draw profit from the older works of Palacky and Neander in German, or from the excellent summary article published by Kybal in French, or, most recently, from the fine discussion by Paul De Vooght, also in French.1 And then there are the five large volumes of Matthew's principal work in Latin, the Regulae veteris et novi testamenti, published in a good edition by Kybal and Otakar Odlozilik.2 But it must still be said that with all these resources we do not have a sound understanding of Matthew's place in the fourteenth-century context, partly because that context is itself so obscure, but also because most of those who have worked with Matthew of Janov's ideas have been interested in him primarily as a forerunner of the Hussite movement, if not indeed of the German Reformation. There is nothing wrong with this approach, and in fact it needs to be pursued even more energetically than before, but by itself it can never illuminate more than one side of the subject, nor can it be carried through successfully without the help of at least two other lines of attack. On the one hand, Matthew must be studied in the 1 Vlastimil Kybal, M. Matêj z Janova (Prague, 1905); there are full references here to the older literature, including Palacky's Die Vorläufer des Husitenthums in Böhmen (Leipzig, 1846) and A. Neander's "Ueber Matthias von Janow als Vorläufer der deutschen Reformation", Abhandlungen der königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften in Berlin (1849). See also V. Kybal, "Etude sur les origines du mouvement Hussite en Bohême, Mathias de Janov", Revue historique, CIII (1910), 1-31, and P. De Vooght, L'Hérésie de Jean Huss (Louvain, 1960), pp. 21-35. 1 The first four volumes were edited by Kybal (Innsbruck & Prague, 1908- 1909-1911-1913), the fifth by Kybal and Odlozilik (1926). The planned sixth volume, to contain Book Five of the Regulae, has not been published. 1176 Howard Kaminsky context of his personal situation, as a professional intellectual, trained in Paris and Prague, as a clerical careerist of only moderate success, and as a practical reformer, working with a religiously awakened group of laymen and women in Prague. On the other hand, and even more urgently, he must be appreciated as one of a large company of late- medieval thinkers who developed a radical critique of contemporary papalism and the papal system. In other words, whatever may be said of him as a Czech reformer, attention should also be given him as a European intellectual, drawing ideas and stimulation from the same currents of thought that nourished his contemporaries in all the lands of Europe. The comparative and synthesizing kind of study required by this aim is of course very difficult, and I make no claim to providing it here; what I shall try to do is sketch the outlines of the desired picture on the basis of already-established facts, in order to formulate at least the hypotheses that can guide the more systematic inquiries to come. One cannot, of course, study the cosmopolitan Matthew of Janov with- out first considering his Bohemian background, and here the central theme must be his relationship to the Prague reformer John Milic. As Professor Odlozilik has put it, Matthew "was so deeply influenced by Milic's asceticism and zeal for reform that he devoted his own life to the systematization and perpetuation of Milic's ideas", and Matthew's magnum opus, the Regulae, "owed its inspiration to Milic although in practical points it echoed events that happened after his death, especial- ly the Great Schism".3 But these sound formulations only mark the beginning of a needed inquiry, for if Matthew was inspired by Milic, he was also very different from the latter in several important respects. Milic has more than once been seen as the St. Francis of the Bohemian reform, a man whose conversion was so profound that it left no place for anything but utter dedication to the evangelical ideal of poverty, humility, and service to others by acts of charity and preaching of the word.4 Matthew of Janov was not such a person. Where Milic voluntarily resigned his very respectable offices and benefices, and would hence- forth not even accept so much as decent food for himself, Matthew spent much time and money litigating - unsuccessfully - for just the kind of benefice that Milic gave up. Both went to Rome, Milic to warn 3 O. Odlozilik, "The Chapel of Bethlehem in Prague", Wiener Archiv fur Ge- schichte des Slawentums und Osteuropas, II (1956), 130 f. 4 The basic monograph is F. Loskot's Milic z KromeHze (Prague, 1911); for the comparison with St. Francis see p. 55. Cf. also De Vooght, op. cit., pp. 7-21. On the Sources oj Matthew of Janov's Doctrine 1177 the pope against the machinations of Antichrist, Matthew to get letters of reservation and provision. Inspired by personal contact with Milic as early as 1372, Matthew nevertheless left the holy man's society in order to study at the University of Paris, no doubt in hope of making a good career in the church, and although the impact of Milic's teaching remained with him - it was at Paris that he published his first book on the Antichrist5 - it did not prevent him from joining the hunt for bene- fices. We may agree with Kybal that all of this was ordinary enough, but Matthew himself judged his behavior more harshly; he knew that against even the virtuous life of a conventional prelate there stood a higher ideal, represented by Milic's cult of total renunciation, and as late as the last years of his life he confessed that he could never make the commitment he knew was right.6 He would get up in the morning and be filled with admiration, not only for the outward attractions of the careerists' lives, but also for their strenuous liturgical service of Christ, and he would blame himself for not having imitated them. Then soon after, he would change his mind, seeing the vanity and superficiality of the religiousness that he had previously praised, the profound world- liness that underlay the routine of prayers and services, and he would wonder whether he should not go out and bear the poverty of Jesus as Milic had done. But he never did; instead he made up for his lack of heroism by his own brand of reformist activity: by preaching, hearing confessions, and writing the Regulae.7 Thus, the line of inspiration from Milic to the systematization of his ideas by Matthew was by no means straight; a likelier hypothesis would be that the action of writing the Regulae was an effort to overcome the conflict in Matthew's mind between the example of the master and the attractions of a conventional- ly good life in the world. Thus, we would expect to find both values represented in the book, or more precisely, we would expect to find the dominant theme of the Regulae to be the problem of how to relate the two valid modes of Christian religious life, that of the evangelical convert and that of the ordinary virtuous believer. And in fact, although the work is so long 5 Kybal, M. Matej, p. 65. Matthew also wrote his panegyric of Milii in Paris; for the whole question of what Matthew did and did not write in Paris see Kybal's introduction to Regulae, III, pp. xii-xvii. • Kybal, M. Matej, p. 27; but the text in Regulae, IV, 356 ff. should also be consulted. 7 Kybal, loc. tit., with a reference to the text in Regulae, IV, 97 f., which does not, however, bear out Kybal's view, that Matthew experienced a "complete conversion" from his former doubts. 1178 Howard Kaminsky and complex that no simple generalization about it can seem obviously true, its several major topics can indeed be unified on the basis of this sort of analysis. Thus, we can distinguish parts of the Regulae that deal with the evangelical life - the imitation of the poor and suffering human Jesus; then, parts that deal with the church in general; then, parts that discuss the problem of distinguishing between the Christian and Antichristian elements in this church; and finally, parts that deal with the relationship between the perfectionists and the Christian church at large - that is, between the communion of the saints and the con- gregation of the faithful.8 The extraordinary attention given to the sub- ject of frequent communion comes under this last heading - it is in the eucharist that the two churches share common ground, and it is by frequent communion, with all that it implies in the way of spiritual preparation, that the higher ideal can work to raise the level of the whole Christian community. It would therefore be quite wrong to suppose that the Regulae merely contrasts Milic's ideal with papalist or Romanist reality, just as it would be wrong to assume, on this basis, that because Matthew did not develope his critique of abuses into a principled rejection of the system, either in church or state, he was therefore inconsistent or inconsequent.
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