John Huss

Front matter

Stanhope Historical Essay, 1879.

John Huss.

BY Hastings Rashdall, Scholar of New College.

Section 1

Section I.— INTRODUCTORY.

Endeavours have been made by ingenious theorists to connect the religious revival which took place in Bohemia in the latter half of the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth centuries, with the Greek origin of the Bohemian Church and the independent position which it continued to enjoy long after it had formally submitted to the Roman Pontiff. But, as a matter of historical fact, all traces of that independence had disappeared by the fourteenth century. By the reign of the Emperor Charles IV. the Sclavonic language and the Greek ritual had everywhere fallen into disuse in the services of the Church, and the host was no longer administered to the laity dipped in the consecrated wine. The Bohemian reformers were, in fact, quite unconscious of the Greek parentage of their Church. Equally unfounded is the theory which traces the Bohemian movement to Waldensian, or (as far as the early part of the movement is concerned) to Wycliffite influence. Like all truly great religious revivals, it was of indigenous growth. It began before the rise of Wycliffism in England; and, like the movement which is connected with the name of the Oxford doctor, it was only one part of a many-sided outburst of national vitality. The latter half of the fourteenth century was characterised both in England and in Bohemia, not only by a most remarkable religious revival, but by great social and political improvement, by great scholastic activity, and by a vigorous growth of vernacular literature.

The position of the Bohemian nation this period is thus described by Dean Milman. It was “a nation which spoke an unformed language, intelligible to themselves alone, and not more akin to German than to Latin; a nation, as it were, intruded into the Teutonic Empire, thought barbarian, and from late circumstances held in hostile jealousy by the Teutonic commonwealth.” Before the reign of Charles IV., Bohemia was no doubt as much behind the rest of Germany in civilization, as Germany was behind Italy. It was to the Germans very much what Scotland was to our own ancestors. But in the course of the reign of the Bohemian Emperor, the Sclavonic kingdom became rather an envied, than a despised, intruder into the Teutonio commonwealth. His vigorous administration established order amongst its wild and warlike nobles and knights: Churches, Monasteries, and Schools were built; the Capital became, to quote the description given by Æneas Sylvius in the next century, “a town as large and as noble as Etruscan Florence.” Above all, the establishment in 1348 of the University of Prague at a time when no German University yet existed, made the Bohemian Capital in many respects the most important city in the Empire.

But while the Bohemian kingdom rose to a higher position than it had ever held before, the danger of Germanization, long the bugbear of Bohemian patriots, was proportionately increased. Thousands of German students flocked to Prague, where they far out-numbered those of Bohemian birth. The rivalry of nations put on the guise of an opposition of philosophies. The Bohemians became Realists; the Germans adopted the principles of Nominalism. At a later time this apparently irrelevant circumstance exercised an important influence upon the fortunes of the Bohemian reform-movement. For, while the liberal tendencies which soon began to develop themselves in the Bohemian “nation” at Prague were not unlike those of the anti-papal party which at the beginning of the fifteenth century succeeded in completely crushing the Franciscans and establishing its own supremacy in the University of Paris, a difference of philosophical creed prevented the smallest sympathy arising between the reform-parties in the two Universities. At Constance the nominalist Reformers of Paris were among the noisiest of those who clamoured for the condemnation of the realist Reformers of Prague.

The very period at which the danger of Germanization was at its height, at which the national language seemed in the eyes of the Bohemian nationalist to be in no small danger of actual extinction, was a most flourishing epoch in the history of Bohemian literature. The tone of the Bohemian literature of this period, like that of most of the vernacular literature of the Middle Ages, was decidedly anti-hierarchical. The Jesuits of later times assumed that everything that was Bohemian must necessarily be heretical; but enough has escaped the ravages of their Vandalism to enable those who have explored that unknown field of literature to pronounce that there were poets in Bohemia in the fourteenth century not unworthy of comparison with the father of English poetry. Satires on the Clergy must have lent some help to the Bohemian reformers; nor were there wanting writers of those vernacular hymns, the existence of which is a sure sign of the growth of religious feeling too deep to be satisfied by the mechanical repetition of Paters and Aves, or by listening to the unintelligible, if solemn and imposing, Psalmody of the Church. But incomparably the most important service which the Bohemian literature of this period rendered to religion was the translation of the whole of the Scriptures into Bohemian, which appeared towards the close of the fourteenth century; and if Mr. Wratislaw’s account of the general diffusion of education among all classes of society during this period be not exaggerated, the Bohemian people must have been at least as capable of appreciating that translation as our own countrymen were of deriving benefit from Wyclif’s Bible.

At about the same time,—soon after 1360,—two great preachers established themselves in Prague, the German Conrad of Waldhausen and the Moravian Milicz of Kremsia. Conrad preached in German to the German townspeople and the more educated classes among the Bohemians, and in Latin to the students: Milicz preached in their native language to the masses of the people. The preaching of these men was on the whole characterised by a sobriety which was too often wanting both in the orthodox and in the heretical religious movements of the Middle Ages. Milicz was, indeed, a more excitable man, and a more sensational preacher, than the quiet, earnest Augustinian, Conrad of Waldhausen. He had experienced the full force of that temptation, by yielding to which so much of the piety of the Middle Ages was lost to the world. He had felt a strong desire to enter a cloister: but the desire was resisted. Instead of shutting himself up in a monastery which would have made him useless to his generation, or founding a new religious order which would have been worse than useless to succeeding generations, he established a school in which he trained two or three hundred young men to become preachers, who were afterwards sent forth, like the “poor priests” of Wyclif, to become instructors of those whom the parochial clergy neglected, and the Friars made a gain of. The preaching of Conrad and Milicz changed the character of whole districts of the city. A part of the town called “Little Sodom” was so reformed as to acquire the name of “Little Jerusalem;” and it may be doubted whether any Mission was ever attended with more extraordinary success. And from the fact that the preachers were permanently stationed in one town, this success was more lasting than was often the case with those wild outbursts of enthusiasm which were awakened by the preaching of the itinerant revivalists of the Middle Ages.

The almost universal sympathy with which John Huss’ protests against Sacerdotalism were greeted in the next generation, was due in no small measure to the discontent with the prevalent religion of form and ceremonies which was the inevitable result of the influence of really spiritually-minded teachers such as Milicz and Conrad of Waidhausen. They were indeed Bevivalists rather than Reformers. But in one respect they could not help being Reformers: they were both of them enemies of the Mendicant Friars. It was hardly possible in that age for a secular priest to preach at all, without trenching on what the Friars Preachers and the Friars Minors regarded as a monopoly of their own; and it was quite impossible for any one to preach a spiritual religion without preaching a different religion from theirs. The religion which the Friars preached, at all events to the laity, was a religion of bought indulgences, bought dispensations, bought absolutions, bought sacraments. In their view religion was impossible for a layman: it was an impertinence in him to affect it; all that he could do was to compound for not being religious. Against this system Conrad of Waldhausen and Milicz spent their lives in protesting. And by their preaching the influence of the Mendicant Orders in Bohemia appears to have been well-nigh destroyed; so that in the time of Huss they do not appear to have been powerful enemies. Huss was in consequence brought less into collision with the Friars than most other Mediæval reformers.

Conrad and Milicz died before Huss was born. But there was another remarkable teacher, who was still living in Prague when Huss took his Bachelor’s degree. Matthias of Janow was not a preacher, but a theologian or devotional writer. His great merit was the clearness with which he saw the necessity for a restitution to its original dignity of the oflice of Parish Priest. It was chiefly on account of their interference with the parochial system that he objected to religious orders and monastic institutions of every kind. And it is in respect of his emphatic condemnation of that mediæval distinction between the Evangelical “counsels” and the Evangelical „precepts“ upon which the principle of Monasticism was based, that “it may be said,” as Canon Robertson remarks, “that the later reformer Huss rather fell short of him … than exceeded him.” The general character of his aims is well shown by the following passage quoted from his principal work by Neander. “I have myself come,” he says, “to a settled conclusion that it would be a salutary thing, and calculated to restore peace and union to Christendom, … to bring back the Christian Church to those sound and simple beginnings where it would be needful to retain but a few, and those only the Apostolical laws.”

However, the intense strength of conviction with which John Huss adhered to tenets which he had once embraced, more than compensated for the smaller range of the practical measures of reform which he advocated. To show the general inferiority of Janow to his disciple it is enough to mention one fact, that he recanted; although it is true that the subject of his recantation was not distinctly a matter of faith. He had advocated the frequent, if not daily, Communion of the laity; and by implication, if not explicitly, the Communion of the laity in both kinds. His language on this subject he was compelled to retract at a Synod held at Prague in 1389, when the laity were positively forbidden to communicate more frequently than once a month.

Section 2

Section II.

THE LIFE OF HUSS IN BOHEMIA.

John Huss was the son of poor parents living at Hussinecz, a small town in the South of Bohemia. He was born on the 5th of July, 1373. He received his early education partly in the School of his native place and partly at Praschalicz, a large town three miles from Frassiaese, He afterwards proceeded to the University of Prague, where he took his B.A. degree in 1393.

But one anecdote of any interest is preserved of Huss’ early life. The story is told by M. de Bonnechose, who, however, does not mention his authority: there is certainly a remarkably apocryphal flavour about it. It is said that on a winter’s evening the future martyr was sitting over the fire, reading the story of the sufferings of S. Lawrence. Suddenly he thrust his hand into the flames; and was only prevented by the forcible interposition of his companions from “trying what part of the sufferings of that holy man he was capable of enduring.” The only vice with which he afterwards had to reproach himself was a fondness for chess-playing, over which most philosophical game he had (as he thought} before his ordination wasted his time and lost his temper. That excessive chess-playing should have been the only folly of his youth, is a sufficient testimony to the general strictness of his life: and that he gave up excessive chess-playing, if not chess-playing altogether, upon his ordination, shows that he must have entered upon his sacred calling in a spirit rare indeed at a time when the Church was the only means of worldly advancement open to the poor man, and when the average morality of the clergy was lower than the average morality of the laity.

In 1396 Huss proceeded to the degree of M.A., and, as was usual at a time when a degree was still mainly looked upon as a qualification to teach, began to give lectures, probably upon philo- sophy. He also became a Bachelor of Divinity, and in 1401 was Dean of that Faculty. Wyclif’s philosophical works were then used as text-books in the Bohemian University; and Huss’ tutor, Stanislaus of Znaim, was a prominent divine of the reforming party. He was thus brought up in an atmosphere favourable to the formation of liberal opinions. But at first he was hardly inclined to go so far as his seniors. When in 1402 Jerome Faulfisch brought with him from England the theological works of the great Oxford schoolman, Stanislaus of Znaim was more inclined than his pupil to look with favour upon the new doctrines, and especially upon the denial of Transubstantiation, which, in Wyclif’s estimation, was a necessary deduction from metaphysical principles with which the students of Prague were already familiar. It is alleged that Huss was at one time so much disgusted with the heresies of Wyclif, that he said that his books ought to be cast into the Moldau. If this statement be true, the disgust soon wore off. He afterwards had the very highest reverence for the English Reformer; and, although the clear moral insight which inspired his protests against Sacerdotalism was essentially his own, every one of his distinct doctrinal opinions may be traced either to Wyclif or to Matthias of Janow. Even if (as some have contended) his opinions never crossed the line of orthodoxy, his obligations to Wyclif were great. Matthias of Janow and the Bohemian preachers of the fourteenth century had quarrelled with various ecclesiastical authorities; but they were not pen rebels against the Church. The most advanced of them, Matthias of Janow, had retracted his heresies as soon as he was required to do so by his ecclesiastical superior. But in Wyclif’s writings Huss was brought face to face with heresy, with doctrines which had been solemnly condemned by the Church, and which had not been retracted. After the study of Wyclif’s works, although his timid and cautious intellect recoiled from some of his opinions, his moral nature no longer shrank from heresy as from a contamination. His chivalrous temper prompted him to go far greater lengths in defence of one whom he considered unjustly condemned, than was required by the strict exigences of his own theological position. The prevalent opinion was that a heretic was worse than a bad man. Huss had satisfied himself that a heretic might be a man; and that books which the Church called heretical might contain more genuinely Christian teaching than books which the Church called orthodox. In the fifteenth century this was much.

John Huss soon became known as a prominent member of the national party in the University. The King was angry with the Pope of the Roman obedience use his predecessor, Boniface IX., had consented to his deposition from the Imperial throne; and, consequently, any movement of an anti-hierarchical tendency was likely to meet with some favour at Court. Huss was appointed Confessor to the Queen, who afterwards became an avowed Hussite. To his position as one of the Royal Chaplains he no doubt owed not a little of the security which he enjoyed throughout the troubles of succeeding years.

In John Huss the liberal movement to which the study of Matthias of Janow and Wyclif had given rise in the University, formed a junction with the stream of popular religious life which had sprung from the teaching of Milicz and Conrad. A Bohemian knight, John of Mühlheim, and a merchant named Kreutz, had built a Chapel which was to be specially devoted to regular preaching in Bohemian on Sundays and holydays. Up to this time, in the words of the deed of foundation, “preachers, particularly preachers in the vulgar tongue, were compelled to wander about from one house or corner to another.” The new Chapel was dedicated to the Holy Innocents in Bethlehem. Its foundation was authorised by “the confirmation of the Lord Archbishop John, who laid the first stones of it with his own hands, by the King’s Charter (Libertatio), and by a grant of Privilege from Pope Gregory (Privilegiatio).” Thee Chapel was thus possessed of a perfectly regular ecclesiastical status; but it was no doubt looked upon by the parochial clergy of Prague with the same kind of suspicion which the Proprietary Chapels of the early Evangelicals excited among the “high and dry” Churchmen of the last century. Two years after he had held the office of Rector of the University, Huss became one of the “preachers and rectors” of this chapel. The mantle of Milicz and Conrad had fallen upon Huss. The Chapel was crowded Sunday after Sunday with persons of every class of society. The Queen was often among his auditors: there were nobles, priests, students, as well as burghers and artizans. The chapel is said to have held at times as many as three thousand people. Universities have been in all ages the homes of great religious movements. They supply the preacher not only with congregations com to a large extent of men of culture and education; but with congregations, a large part of which will in a few years be scattered over the length and breadth of the land. Luther at Wittemberg; Ridley, Latimer, and Simeon at Cambridge; Newman at Oxford; Huss at Prague, have thus taught the hundreds who should hereafter be the teachers of hundreds of thousands.

The popularity of Wyclif’s writings and the consequent diffusion of his doctrines among the students now began to excite the alarm of the clergy. In 1403, the Archbishop’s official and the Chapter of the Cathedral requested the University to examine forty-five propositions extracted from his books. The debate was a contest between the German and the Bohemian parties. The voting was by nations. Two of the four nations, the Bavarian and Saxon, were wholly German: while of the Polish nation more than half were Germans. The Bohemians were consequently outvoted; and the forty-five propositions were condemned. This condemnation of the great Realist raised the antagonism between German and Bohemian into a deadly feud. The clergy of Prague sided with the orthodox Germans; the King favoured the Bohemians from motives of policy, the nation at large from feelings of patriotism. The contest raged furiously for six years. Theological, national, and philosophical differences were each of them held a sufficient excuse for a free use of bow and arrows in the streets of a mediæval University. In the present contest all these motives were combined: it was a struggle between German and Bohemian, between Nominalist and Realist, between a Church party and a Reforming party. At last, in 1409, the Bohemians succeeded in persuading the King to issue an edict which gave the combined Bavarian, Saxon, and Polish nations one vote, while the Bohemians were to enjoy three. The Germans had taken a solemn oath that if they were deprived of their privileges, they would leave Prague in a body. They kept their word.

The inhabitants of the once flourishing town soon found that they had been gratifying their patriotic instincts at the expense of their commercial interests. For a time Huss, who was elected Rector a second time by the victorious minority, incurred some odium, even among his countrymen, on account of the part which he had taken in obtaining the edict; and in the Universities which were founded or largely augmented by the five thousand or more ejected Germans, hatred of Huss must have become a tradition. The national insult was wiped out at Constance.

During the first part of the struggle which ended in the withdrawal of the Germans, the personal orthodoxy of Huss does not appear to have been assailed. Zbynek of Hasenburg, the new Archbishop of Prague, showed as much reforming zeal as could be expected in an ecclesiastic in whose mind the interests of religion were subordinated to the interests of his order. At the beginning of his episcopate, he requested the reforming preacher to call his attention to any abuse in the diocese which fell under his notice. Shortly afterwards, Huss was one of a commission of three Masters appointed by the Archbishop to examine into the truth of one of those miracles for which the popular mind of the Middle Ages had an insatiable appetite. The church of Wilsnack had been destroyed by a robber knight in the preceding century: in a cavity of its ruined altar were found three wafers covered with a kind of red mould which often forms upon bread long exposed to the air. This redness was at once attributed to a miraculous manifestation of that blood, the “substance” of which was, according to the theo- logy of the time, already present in the consecrated host. From far and near, from the most northern countries of Europe, as well as from all parts of Bohemia, crowds of pilgrims flocked to Wilsnack to adore the blood of their Redeemer: marvellous cures were said to have been effected. The Commission reported unfavourably to the alleged miracles; and an archiepiscopal mandate forbade the pilgrimage under pain of excommunication. Huss supported his opinions in a pamphlet, in which he expresses pretty plainly his opinion that miracles had long ceased in the Church. He goes to the root of the matter by questioning the spiritual utility of such portents, even if real, and condemns the unbelief which sought after signs no less than the avarice which invented them.

Huss enjoyed other proofs of his Diocesan’s favour. Three times he preached before the Diocesan Synod assembled in the Archbishop’s palace. In these discourses he attacked in strong language the worldliness and immorality of the Clergy; but language as strong was used by his judges at the Council of Constance. From Latin invectives the clergy had little to fear: and it was not till Huss began to transfer his denunciations of his brethren to the pulpit of Bethlehem Chapel that any attempt was made to silence the daring preacher. At a later period heresies were discovered in the last of these sermons, but not until offence had been given by his Bohemian discourses.

In the year after the date of this sermon (1407), the good understanding between Huss and Zbynek came to an end. In 1405 Innocent VII. had addressed a bull to the Archbishop, directing him to suppress the heresies alleged to be rife in Bohemia. In a Synod held by him in the following year, ecclesiastical penalties were denounced against all who should presume to teach the doctrines of Wyclif. The part which Huss had taken in defending those doctrines could hardly have been regarded in a favourable light by the Archbishop. His generous interference in the trial of an heretical priest, Nicholas of Welesnowicz, before the Archbishop’s Vicar-General, must have been still less acceptable to that prelate. When required to make answer upon oath, Nicholas refused to swear upon the crucifix or any other created thing. Huss defended his refusal on the authority of S. Chrysostom. The Vicar-General’s reply was, “Ha! Master; you came here to listen, not to argue.” Huss repeated his protest. “Is it just,” he asked, “that you should condemn this priest, saying that he holds the errors of the Waldensians when he has sworn to you by God?” The priest was condemned, and after a short imprisonment, banished from the diocese. Huss sent an indignant remon- strance to the Archbishop. The letter is characteristic. He declines altogether to enter into the merits of the theological question at issue, and confines himself to complaining that a good priest should be banished for preaching the gospel, while priests guilty of every imaginable crime went unpunished.

At a Synod held in June, 1408, decrees were published against persons propagating erroneous opinions touching the Sacrament of the Altar, against preaching “tending to the confusion of the Clergy,” and against the use of all new Bohemian hymns (Cantilence) with four specified exceptions. These last prohibitions were obviously directed against the vernacular preaching and the popular services of Bethlehem Chapel, which were emptying the parish churches and destroying the influence and the profits of the parochial clergy. This proceeding was followed by a direct attack upon the preacher. The articles of charge and Huss’ answers to them are preserved. They are three in number. The first alleges that he had taught that all “who received money from their parishioners, especially from the poor, for confession, by way of offertory, and for the sacraments of the Church, were guilty of heresy, not making any distinction whether the fees were taken before or after the administration of the said sacraments.” In justification of this language Huss triumphantly quotes, among other authorities, a Papal bull in which the words “before or after” are expressly added to the prohibition of this kind of Simony. The second article alleges that after the death of a certain well-beneficed Master Peter Wzerub, Huss had said in the pulpit, “I would not for all the world die in the possession of so many and such rich benefices,” and also that he had wished that his soul might be where Wyclif’s soul was. Both these charges are substantially admitted, although the words had, of course, been separated from their context. To the third charge of “excessive” preaching against the clergy, Huss pleaded that his preaching had been by no means excessive. It will be observed that the charges really brought home to the accused only amounted to breaches of ecclesiastical discipline, with the exception, perhaps, of the expression touching Wyclif’s soul. It is characteristic of the man that as yet his only heresy is sympathy with heretics.

The prosecution of 1408 appears to have been dropped, but in the year following other Articles were exhibited, to which Huss was required to make answer upon oath before the Archbishop’s Inquisitor. We find the old charges renewed and expanded. The accusation of stirring up the people is repeated in a variety of forms. One of the Articles on this head is amusingly hypothetical. It is alleged that on a certain occasion the people were so excited by Huss’ preachings against the Archbishop and his clergy, that they went straight from the chapel “with great tumult and noise before the Archbishop’s Court with seditious words, and unless the Archbishop had taken care to have them removed, he (Huss) would perchance have brought it about that some one should have been maltreated.” Another charge is that the accused had ventured some years back, in private conversation, to question the propriety of laying a whole town under interdict because the Archbishop of Prague had been ducked and his Dean “detained.” There are two Articles of a more serious character, which show that during this year the germs of those strangely expressed anti-sacerdotal doctrines which were elaborated in the books condemned at Constance, had already taken shape in their author’s mind. Huss is reported to have said, “What is the Roman Church? There it is that Anti-Christ has fixed his foot which cannot easily be moved:”—and again, “No prelate can excommunicate any one unless God excommunicate him first.” Moreover now began a long series of unfounded attacks upon the orthodoxy of his Sacramental teaching. He is charged with having maintained that “a priest in mortal sin cannot make the true body of Christ.” The important qualification “worthily” had been omitted: the fact that the unworthy priest effected the miraculous transformation was never, either now or at any later period, denied by John Huss.

From the Court of the Archbishop Huss appealed to the Pope, apparently before any trial had taken place: and before the close of the year (Dec. 1409) Zbynek was cited to Rome. Pending the appeal, proceedings were stayed. But events had now taken place which gave the Archbishop a fresh pretext for silencing the dangerous preacher.

The long Schism was gradually sapping the foundations of the Papal supremacy. For thirty years it had been uncertain which half of Christendom was ruled by the Vicar of Christ: nor was the spiritual vitality of either such as to warrant an experimental determination of the question. Under these circumstances there was no small ground for fearing that men might begin to ask themselves whether after all an earthly Head was necessary to the Church’s well-being. But in the meantime all the abuses of the Roman Court flourished in two places at once: Christendom was preyed upon by two Pontiffs instead of one. The Schism was injurious alike to the material interests of Churchmen, and to the spiritual efficiency of the Church. On all hands it began to be felt that some amendment were required in a theory of Church Unity which unchurched one half—no man could say which half—of the Western commonwealth of nations. Under such circumstances the eyes of Europe were naturally turned to the theologians of that University which had long been known as the sworn foe of the sworn champions of the Papacy, the Mendicant Friars, if not of the Papacy itself. As far back as the year 1381 the University of Paris had resolved that they would use their utmost endeavours to induce the Princes and Prelates of Europe to consent to submit the claims of the rival Popes to the arbitration of a General Council, which the theologians of Paris had, even in the most flourishing days of the Papacy, maintained to be the sovereign power of the Catholic Church. Their efforts were at last so far successful that in 1408 the Church and realm of France definitively renounced its allegiance to Benedict XIII. It was fortunate that at such a crisis the College of Cardinals numbered among its members at least one avowed Gallican. Cardinal d’Ailly of Florence served as a connecting link between the Cardinals and the University of Paris. The Cardinals on either side were aroused to make a serious effort for the termination of the Schism. But each Pope preferred the certainty of the spoils of half Christendom to the chance of unquestioned sovereignty. Disgusted with the obstinacy of their masters, the Cardinals were at length driven to act for themselves. A majority of either section of the Sacred College determined to convoke a General Council at Pisa.