CHAPTER III
THE YOUTH OF HUS
The German writers have of late years endeavoured to establish a theory regarding the problems that confront the historian when he attempts to define to what extent general conditions and to what extent the acts of individuals should be considered in history. In other words, the historian should inquire to what extent events occurred in consequence of the social condition, the geographical situation, and the political position of a country, and to what extent the personality of one great and representative man influenced the course of history. If we attempt to solve this problem in connection with Hus, we undoubtedly find that his individuality was largely the cause of the momentous events which have rendered his name famous. Before Hus’s time Milic had been a saintly enthusiast and a vigorous denouncer of the sins and corruption of the times. Matthew of Janov, one of the most learned theologians of the period, had energetically attacked the evil rule of Rome which the schism had rendered yet more scandalous, and he had spoken strongly against the idolatrous veneration of pictures and statues. Hus alone possessed the qualities of a great popular leader. His absolute self-renouncement, the indomitable courage with which he met moral and physical pain of every description for the cause which he firmly believed to be that of God, his enthusiastic devotion to the Slavic and particularly to the Bohemian race, his striking and popular eloquence—all combined to make him the idol of the Bohemian people, whose greatest representative in the world’s story he remains.
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