Letter
Tu following letter, written in Czech, is without date, but may be referred to this period. Several of the songs of Hus, in addition to the rhymes written in prison (vnfra, pp. 197, 228), have been preserved for us. The only one of any merit is a short poem, De Cana Domini, printed in the second volume of the Historia et Monumenta, (Mon. ii. 348a). The Holy Virgins” refer to St. Ursula and the Eleven Thousand. The student will notice that, though Hus more than once refers to this feast (?nfra, pp. 17, 155) he never mentions St. Ursula. St. Ursula, in fact, was a later addition to the legend, the original form of which would appear to have been the Eleven Thousand.! As the feast takes place on October 21, we may date this letter September or October 1408. But there is nothing in the letter itself that would rule out an even earlier year, though the absence of all polemical tone would shut out a later date.
To rug Nuxs of a Certain Convent (Undated: September 1408 1)
May it please your husband the Lord Jesus to grant unto you His grace, and to strengthen you in your grace and virginity! You have loved Him above all others, and that in truth most wisely. For He is a King most wise and most powerful, the wealthiest, the strongest, the altogether lovely, and therefore of all most pleasant. He doeth no violence or wrong to His brides, and bringeth no distress to them. He doth not grow old to them. He never breaketh His troth; neither indeed can He. He will be with them for ever, and they will find Him ever ready to their desire, and thus each of them shall be filled with the kingdom of heaven. In that kingdom each man and woman wil do His bidding. Each sister shall have her desire, which can never be for aught that is evil.
Bee Owens College Historical Essays, 16-56
Ponder this well dear brides of Christ the glorious ^ King. Forsake Him not for any other that is wicked, J unclean, base, and defiled, with whom you shall have d more distress than joy. For if that other is good- E looking, you will be afraid of his unfaithfulness; $ if deformed, of ennui; if drunken or bad-tempered i or of other evil habits, of a devil’s life. If offspring — be granted to you, there wil be misery during pregnancy and in the birth and in the training of = the child. If barrenness be your lot, there will T be disgrace, distress, and an imperfect. union. If i a child is born, you will have fears of its survival 2 from which the blessed unwedded life in Christ is or of its deformity. Who can recount the miseries free, and such virginity as His mother’s, which: is exalted above widowhood and matrimony? The Holy Seriptures bear witness that the angels delight d in such a life, and it is to this that Jesus invites us — when He says: He that cam take, let him take 4t? A St. Paul also useth much argument in its favour.? f Therefore, beloved virgins, brides and daughters of i Christ, keep unspotted for Him your virginity, which ~~. is the guarding of the will from carnal taint in man 2 or in woman who, like Christ and the Virgin, have — never yielded to bodily passion. Blessed shall be 1 the celibate and the virgin when by such a life and 5 the keeping of God’s other commands they shall receive the chief crown—to wit, their reward in 3 eternal bliss! Strive earnestly for this even unto E. death, dear brides of Christ. You shall win this prize i of your faithfulness if you hold in remembrance P the eternal kingdom, mark the vanity of the world, r beware of evil habits, keep your heart under by toil, 1! Matt. xxii, 30.? Matt. xix. 12. 1 Cor. vii. 7, 8:
love not fine dress, and often partake of the body of Christ. Lit
I beg you to keep all this well in mind. If God give me leisure and a letter-carrier, I will write to you at greater length. I send you a song to chant at the vespers of the holy virgins, so that, as you bethink you of the words, you may have joy in your hearts and make melody with your lips. Chant, however, in such a manner that you will not be overheard by the men; for they might cherish evil purposes, while you might fall into the sin of pride 0r of scandal.
Master Jorn Hus, a weakling priest.
Letter II
[A FULL explanation ofall the circumstances which led to the]
[writing of this letter would take us far afield. There were wheels]
[within wheels in the complex politico-religious race-feuds and]
[Church struggles of the times. At Prague three distinct issues]
[had become curiously mixed up together towards the close of]
[1408, in all of which Hus was a leading actor. There was first]
[of all the issue to which this letter especially refers. Tired of the]
[delays of Gregory XII. and Benedict XIII in coming to any]
[arrangement for ending the great schism, the cardinals of both]
[Pope and anti-pope had withdrawn to Leghorn, and thence]
[on June 24, 1408, had summoned a council to meet at Pisa]
[on March 25, 1409. Under pressure from the University of]
[Paris Europe prepared to obey. What course Bohemia would]
[take was for the moment uncertain. But Wenzel found that]
[! The question of the frequency of communion had been much]
[discussed in Bohemia since the days of Mathias of Janow and Milicz]
[of Kremsier, the two forerunners of Hus. On October 18, 1389]
[Mathias of Janow was compelled by the Synod of Prague to retract]
[his teaching that the laity ought to be exhorted to daily communion]
[CDoc. 70 ). While in prison in Constance, Hus urged in his tract]
[De Cana Domini the necessity of daily communion in similar language]
[to that of Janow (see Mon. i. 415; Loserth, Wyclif and Hus, pp. 52-63).]
Gregory XII. continued to recognise his rival Rupert as king of the Romans. So he determined, at the instance of an envoy — — of France, that he would side with the cardinals at Pisa, at least to the extent that he would remain neutral (November 24, 1408). For a similar but opposite reason the Germans remained faithful to Gregory and theRhenish Kaiser, whom they had elected (May 25, 1400) in the place of the drunkard Wenzel = This in itself was sufficient to induce the Bohemian nation ” to follow Hus, when he took up the idea of Wenzel, and brought it before the University. From this arose complication number —. two. The Czechs found that in the University they were power- = less; they had but one vote. The Bavarians and Saxons controlled —— the Senate, and had the support of Zbinek and the clergycomplication number three—who discerned clearly the danger to themselves in the triumph of Wyclifist Realism, and of the = religious and national enthusiasm with which it had become identified. For the Bohemian Church, as Jerome pointed out = at Constance, was at this time almost an alien or German = institution, fast slipping back into the dependence from which = Charles IV. had endeavoured to save it. The Czechs, who = had long groaned at the ascendancy of strangers, judged the = present a suitable time, by the help of Wenzel, to establish their = supremacy, at any rate in the University. Under the lead of = Hus they induced Wenzel to decree that the Bohemians should = have three votes, the other three nations but one (January = 18th, 1409). Fd The consequences are well known. After a short struggle the = “three nations”—variously estimated by medieval writers at = all figures up to 44,000; in reality, as the recently published = Matriculation rolls of Leipzig University show us, under 1,000— = according to their oath quitted the city, some on foot, others = on horseback and waggons, and founded the University of — Leipzig. But a scanty remnant of under 500 Czechs were left = behind in Prague. The victory was ascribed to Hus; he was at = once appointed rector of the mutilated Czech University. = “Praise God,” he said, in one of his sermons, “we have excluded = the Germans.” In reality, it was one of the most fatal moves — he ever made, and was remembered against him in later years, = as the Letters show. A
This matter of the “neutrality,” mixed up as it was with —.the disruption of a University of which Zbinek was chancellor, —
produced a complete breach, as this letter shows, between the Archbishop and Hus. As a strong adherent of Gregory XIL, Zbinek entered into the struggle with the Pisan cardinals by inhibiting, as Hus tells us, in letters fixed to the doors of the churches,” from all priestly functions Hus and all masters who sided with the sacred college (vnfra, p. 55).
To this challenge Hus replied in the following remonstrance, which we date early in December 1408. It cannot have been written later, for in January 1409 Hus fell dangerously ill, while Wenzel’s decree of “neutrality “—a strong adhesion to the Pisan cardinals—evidently had not yet been issued. From the absence, further, of any reference to the imprisonment of Palecz and Stanislaus of Znaim (see nfra, p. 73), we judge that the news of their arrest had not yet reached Prague (about December 8, 1408), for Hus would otherwise have blamed Zbinek for it, or in some way have identified himself with his friends. For, as The Chronicle of the University informs us, Hus and Christian Prachaticz were the chief agents in procuring their release.!
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