interest that they have for Hus’s countrymen. At an early age, probably about the year 1389, young Hus proceeded to Prague to pursue his studies at the university there. That university is henceforth closely connected with the life of Hus, as it was indeed with the whole history of Bohemia at this period. The Emperor Charles, King of Bohemia, founded the University of Prague in 1348. As a contemporary chronicler writes,[1] Charles, “inflamed by love of God and impelled by his strong affection for his neighbours, wishing to benefit the commonwealth and laudably to exalt his Bohemian kingdom,” obtained from the apostolic see the permission to establish a university (studium) at Prague. Charles, always a great admirer of France, where he had been educated and where, according to an ancient tradition, he had studied at the University of Paris, largely modelled the regulations of his new university on those that were then in force in Paris. As in Paris, the new university formed an independent community which enjoyed complete autonomy both with regard to civil and ecclesiastical matters. At the head of the university was a rector chosen twice annually by the members of the university, scholars as well as masters—a point that deserves notice, as Prague herein differed from Paris. The rector exercised very extensive powers over the members of the university, whom he could sentence to fines, imprisonment, and corporal punishment.
At the foundation of the university Charles had erected no special buildings for the purposes of study. The masters generally lectured in their own dwelling-places or at the monasteries to which they belonged.[2] Gradually, however, colleges sprang up on lines not dissimilar from those of the
- ↑ Chronicon Benessii de Weilmil, edited by Emler, p. 517.
- ↑ See Tomek, Deje University Prazské (History of the University of Prague) and the same author’s Dejepis Mesta Prahy (History of the Town of Prague), vol. iii., also Dr. S. Winter, O zivote na vysokych skolach Prazskych (Life at the High Schools of Prague), and the same author’s Deje vysokych skol Prazskych (History of the High Schools of Prague).
