Introduction
The Letters of Hus have long been recognised by the best judges as one of the world’s spiritual treasures. The discovery of Hus, if we may so express it, forms more than once a landmark in the spiritual development of Luther.
When I was a tyro at Erfurt, we read, ‘I found in the library of the convent a volume of The Sermons of John Hus. When I read the title I had a great euriosity to know what doctrines that heresiarch had propagated, since a volume like this in a public library had been saved from the fire. On reading I was overwhelmed with astonishment. I could not understand for what cause they had burnt so great a man, who explained the Scriptures with so much gravity and skill. But as the very name of Hus. was held in so great abomination that I imagined. the sky would fall and the sun be darkened if I made honourable mention of him, I shut the book and went away with no little indignation. This, however, was my comfort, that perhaps Hus had written these things before he fell into heresy. For as yet I knew not what was done at the Council of Constance (Mon. Hus. vol. i. Preface).
Some years later, in February 1529, after pondering the matter over with Melancthon, Luther was driven to write to Spalatin: ‘I have hitherto taught
and held all the opinions of Hus without knowing it. With a like unconsciousness has Staupitz taught them. We are all of us Hussites without knowing it. I do not know what to think for amazement.’ In this letter Luther was probably referring to his reading of the controversial works of Hus, especially his De Ecclesia. Shortly afterwards, however, he came across a copy of the Letters. At once he perceived their value, not merely in their bearing on the expected Council convoked for Mantua, which subsequently met at Trent in 1542, but for the larger outlook of spiritual life. He took immediate steps for bringing them before the German public. In 1536 and 1537 no less than three different editions in Latin and three editions in German, each of them with a preface by Luther, issued from the presses of Wittenberg and Leipzig. The most important of these editions is that entitled Epistole Qwedam Piissimee et LEruditissime, printed at Wittenberg by John Lufft in 1537, an edition which now forms the sole extant source of many of the letters of Hus. In his preface to this volume Luther is not backward in his praises of the Letters. Observe,’ he writes, how firmly Hus clung in his writings and words to the doctrines of Christ; with what courage he struggled against the agonies of death; with what patience and humility he suffered every indignity, and with what greatness of soul he at last confronted a cruel death in defence of the truth; doing all these things alone before an imposing assembly of the great ones of the earth, like a lamb in the midst of lions and wolves. If such a man is to be regarded as a heretic, no person under the sun can be looked
on as a true Christian. By what fruits then shall we recognise the truth, if it is not manifest by those with which John Hus was so richly adorned?’
Luther is not alone in his judgment. The Letters of Hus, in the verdict of Bishop Creighton, “give us à touching picture of simple, earnest piety rooted on & deep consciousness of God’s abiding presence. These letters show us neither a fanatic nor a passionate party leader, but a man of childlike spirit, whose one desire was to discharge faithfully his pastoral duties, and to do all things as in the sight of God and not of man.”! Other testimonies to the value of this series of letters could easily be adduced, but would add nothing to the decision of the great Reformer and the modern Historian.
We may safely assert that in the years to come The Letters of Hus wil form the only part of his voluminous writings that will be read even by students. For the works of Hus, as Loserth has shown, are for the most part mere copies of Wychf, oftentimes whole sections of the great Englishman’s writings transferred bodily, without alteration or acknowledgment. The very titles are not original; their parade of learning, which deceived Luther, is completely borrowed, when not from Wyclif, from Gratian and other recognised medieval handbooks. The Englishman Stokes was right when at Constance he bluntly asked: Why do you glory in these writings, falsely labelling them your own, since after all they belong not to you but Wyeclif, in whose steps you are following?’ To the same end was the taunt of his former friend, Andrew Brod:
[Creighton, Papacy, ii, 22. Creighton refers especially to the Letters]
[in Part III., which some may think the least interesting of all,]
Was Wyeclif crucified for us? were we baptised in his name?’
The case is otherwise with Hus’s Letters, eightytwo! of which have escaped the ravages of Time. For if the controversial works of Hus have contributed little to the intellectual heritage of mankind, his Letters have enriched for ever our moral outlook. The preservation of these letters we owe for the most part to the care of Peter Mladenowic, the secretary of John of Chlum. They form a priceless memorial of one of the truest hearted of the. sons of God. His later correspondence especially, his letters from exile and prison, show John Hus to be one of the chosen few who exalt humanity. Though undoubtedly the last letters are the most interesting, inasmuch as in them the personal note reaches its highest, yet in the whole series there is nothing that is unworthy, little that is tedious. Bishop Creighton is correct in his judgment: “Everything Hus writes is the result of his own souls experience, is penetrated with a deep moral earnestness, illuminated with a boldness and a selfforgetfulness that breathes the spirit of the cry, Let God be true and every man a liar” In the belief that a wider acquaintance with The Letters of Hus will lead to a general endorsement of this verdict, we have translated into English these priceless human documents.
[! Of these, sixty-six—one of which, however, is spurious—are to]
[be found in the Monwmenta, and were translated by Bonnechose and]
[Mackenzie; nine were first printed by Hofler; the rest were discovered]
[and edited at different times by Pez, Erben, and Palacky.]
. Part L—Letters Written Before the Death of
Archbishop Zbinek (June 30, 1408—September 28, 1411)
Jomx or 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 3 the intensely subjective epistles of his last year (infra, T p. 150) Hus reproached himself with his youthful 3 levity, especially the time he wasted in chess, and E his inability to lose a game without anger. Such X reproaches, as in the case of Cromwell, Bunyan, and. the Puritans in general, are rather the evidence of à tender conscience than of any real depravity of heart. —
In 1396 Hus took his Masters degree in Arts and two years later began to deliver lectures as a 3 public teacher. In 1401 he was made dean of the = faculty of philosophy,andinthefollowing year became. the rector of the University, a position he occupied L3 for about six months to the end of April 1408. » Nevertheless, his achievements at the University = were in nowise remarkable. Though he read the larger part of the course necessary for the degree a in Divinity, in 1394, graduating as Bachelor, and in 1401 lecturing on Peter Lombard’s Sentences, he never incepted as doctor,! while the wide know- 1 ledge 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 E: clergy. Two years later (March 14, 1402) he was ^ appointed preacher at the Chapel of the Holy 9 Innocents of Bethlehem. To this church a dwel- E ling-room was attached, from which a staircase led ES direct to the pulpit. This appointment gave Hus = his opportunity. The Bethlehem Chapel in Prague x —a vast building destroyed by the Jesuits in 1786 — Bee infra, p. 140: note on ’ Baccalareus formatus.” 3
—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 Miliez 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 y from Oxford, bringing with him copies of Wyeclif’s 1 Dialogue and Trialogue, together with some other à lesser works. All these Jerome had written out i with his own hand. ’ Young men and students, t he said in a publie disputation, ‘ who did not study — the books of Wyclif would never find the true root of knowledge. With this conviction he introduced a the works to John Christian of Prachaticz and John E Hus. Hus was, however, already acquainted with t the purely philosophical treatises of Wyclif. Of i this we have evidence in the five tractates of Wyolif 1 now in the Royal Library at Stockholm, written Bg out by Hus with his own hand in 1398’ and Y carried off by the Swedes in 1648 as part of the 4 spoils of the Bohemian War.. Before long the strife over Wyclif had broken out 3 in Bohemia. In April 1403 Hus ceased to be the “i rector of the University, and Walter Harrasser, 3 a German, was elected in his place. On May 28, i 1403, the new rector, at the instance of the chapter of Prague—for the archbishopric at this time was E: still vacant—issued an order forbidding any discussion of the twenty-four articles from Wiyeclif’s works 1 already condemned in England at the famous Blackfriars or Earthquake Synod (May 21, 1382). To these were further added twenty-one articles i extracted by Hiibner, a Silesian master. The pro- x hibition remained a dead letter, though, as we shall
see in the Letters, these forty-five articles played mo 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 Hiibner—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 acknow-. ledges 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 e —9ne of the leaders in the Secession of 1409. In
the end Stanislas was forced to recant” With Stanislas, though less prominent and pronounced, E 1 Stephen Palecz was closely associated. In the: 3 Church, as on the stage, one man in his time E plays many parts. 3 Among these Realists or Wiyclifists we must 2 already reckon John Hus. In a Taborite document £ we read: These books of the evangelical doctor, - as is known from credible witnesses, opened the - 3 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 Wyclifs 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. P 3 Hitherto any part that Hus may have taken in the controversy over Wyclif had been political rather ~~ = than religious. But in 1408 circumstances arose E 1 which compelled Hus, in spite of himself, to place. = himself at the head of the Bohemian Lollards, = though he probably still deceived himself by imagin- = ing that they were but Czech Realists. This con- = tinued 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, Lj written in the early summer of 1408. From this point we shall leave the Letters, as far as possible, 2 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. - ees