John Huss: his life, teachings and death, after five hundred years/Chapter 2

by David Schley Schaff

CHAPTER II

HUSS AND THE BETHLEHEM CHAPEL

Johannes Huss lingua potens et mundioris vitæ opinione carus.
—Æneas Sylvius, Hist. Boh., chap. 35.

Huss, forcible of speech and distinguished by the reputation of a pure life.^[1]

John Huss was born in Husinecz, a village in Southern Bohemia, near the: Bavarian frontier, about the year 1373, and died at the stake in Constance, July 6, 1415. The year 1369, which has sometimes been given as the year of Huss’s birth, seems to be too early, for it would necessitate Huss’s being thirty-two years old at the time of his ordination to the priesthood, the canonical age being twenty-five.^[2] The exact day of Huss’s birth we have no means of determining, and the sixth of July, observed by the Catholic population in parts of Bohemia, seems to have been suggested by the day on which his death occurred. Usually he signed his name John Hus. In official documents it was given as Magister or even Doctor Johannes of Husinecz. The custom of associating the place of birth with the Christian name was common, as in the cases of John Wyclif, John Gerson and John Rokyzan. The Czech word hus means goose and it was made the occasion of many a pun by Huss himself as well as by his friends. A friend writing about him from Constance said that the Goose was not yet cooked and not afraid of being cooked, and Huss wrote: “If you love your poor Goose, see to it that the king sends him guards.”^[3]

Of Huss’s boyhood and his university career our knowledge is scant. His parents were poor but not in necessitous circumstances.^[4] His father, whose name was John, died when he was a child, and, according to Flajshans, the son was called in his youth after his father, Jan Michaluv. His mother seems to have devoted much attention to her son’s care and was wont to accompany him to school. Later she went with him to Prague, when he entered upon his university career. He had brothers whom he recalled with affection in his last days, and one of these brothers had sons whom Huss, writing shortly before his death, commended for a trade, as they seemed to him not to be fitted for the spiritual office. Of his school life at Prachaticz, a neighboring town to his birthplace, we know no details with certainty. The exact date of his entrance upon his studies in the university of Prague is uncertain, though it was probably 1389. There he studied in the department of the arts and philosophy and also theology. From this time on we find his name spelled Jan of Husinecz. To use the technical language of the time, he was promoted to the degree of B.A. 1393, B.D. 1394, and M.A. 1396. Huss never reached the doctorate of theology and, until the end, called himself bachelor of sacred theology or as in his letters Magister J. Hus. He helped to support himself by singing on the streets and in churches, as Luther did a hundred years later. His piety and his poverty are alike attested by his purchase of a pardon at the sale of indulgences at the Wyssehrad in the Prague jubilee year 1393. He says that he spent his last four pennies in purchasing the certificate of forgiveness. Referring probably to the years before his matriculation at the university, he notes in his Bohemian Commentary on the Decalogue that when he was a hungry little student he made a spoon out of bread and ate the peas with it and then ate the spoon also.

It would seem that Huss was not a remarkable student, as the university lists put him midway in the groups receiving degrees. A statement in one of his letters reports that, before he entered the priesthood, he was fond of playing chess, and he thought it necessary to confess that he had frittered away time and provoked both himself and others to anger over the game. University students at Prague had to run the gauntlet. It was a common thing for loose women to frequent the houses where students roomed and even to take permanent lodgings in them.^[5] It is fair to assume that Huss’s private life was above reproach. Even down to the last moments in Constance no charge was ever brought against his character. The withering public attacks he made against vicious clerics from the earliest period of his public activity failed to call forth a single charge against his personal purity. This judgment is also borne out by the warm personal friendship of people of all classes, which he enjoyed from the mechanic to the highest nobles of the realm, men before whom his life was as an open book. Æneas Sylvius, afterward Pius II, in describing Huss’s death, spoke of him as distinguished for the reputation of a life of purity—a remarkable testimony from a man whose record was marked by illicit amours, and who was severe upon Huss’s heresy and the Hussites.

In 1401 we find Huss lecturing on the Sentences of Peter the Lombard. A proof of the respect in which he was held was his election the same year as dean of the faculty of philosophy, and a still greater proof was his election, in 1402, to the office of rector of the university, a position he at that time filled for six months. The qualities of eloquence, moral elevation and personal magnetism ascribed to him at a later period must already have had prominent exercise to explain this gift of the highest university distinction. He was a marked man in the eyes of students and faculties.

Huss was ordained to the priesthood in 1401. His own statement that in preparing for the clerical office he had had in mind the safe shelter and goodly apparel a comfortable living would bring him must not be taken to exclude higher motives. His first sermons, so far as we know, were delivered in St. Michael’s church. Bernard, its incumbent, Huss at a later date pronounced “a very great enemy of the Word of God.” At times he dined with Bernard, and a remark made on one of these occasions was made the subject of a charge against him at Constance, that he held to the remanence of the substance of the bread and wine after the words of institution at the Lord’s Supper.

In the year 1402 Huss’s career as a preacher began with his appointment to the pulpit of the Holy Innocents at Bethlehem. The young priest, not thirty years old, was soon one of the most noted popular preachers of his century and the chief ecclesiastical figure of his own country. The Holy Innocents became the conspicuous religious centre in the city of Prague. Huss’s voice reached men of all classes, from the king to the beggar, cleric and lay. He exalted his office and, in using the title bachelor of divinity, often coupled with it the title, “rector and preacher of the chapel of the Holy Innocents of Bethlehem in the old and large city of Prague.”^[6]

Prague—Praha in the Czech—with which Huss’s name is as closely associated as Savonarola with Florence, Calvin with Geneva, or Knox with Edinburgh, has from time immemorial been the metropolis and capital city of Bohemia. This land, with nearly seven millions of people, almost surrounded by mountain ranges, and watered by the river Moldau and other streams, is a part of the Austrian empire. The national Slavic feeling of the people is bound up with the Czech language and Bohemia’s former history as an independent kingdom. The land was the mecting-place of Slav and German. In Huss’s day a considerable and influential part of the population of Prague was German, and the conflicts between the elements were frequent. Since 1848, when a certain freedom of administration was accorded, the German clement has sensibly declined. Now scarcely a fifth of the population is German, and to a visitor the signs over the shops and the conversation in the streets seem to be almost exclusively in Czech.

The Christianization of the land dates from the baptism of the Bohemian prince Borivoj, 873, under the preaching of the Eastern missionary, Methodius, who with his fellow missionary Cyrillus, had labored in Moravia. A century later the influence of the Eastern church gave way to the authority of Rome and, 973, the bishopric of Prague was founded with Adalbert as the first bishop. It was at first a part of the archdiocese of Regensburg and then of Mainz. In 1344, Prague became an independent archbishopric. In Huss’s time it included the sees of Olmütz and Leitomysl. The old national saints are Ludmilla and Wenceslaus. Stress is laid by Russian historians on the Eastern origin of Czech Christianity, and the Hussite movement has even been portrayed as a partial return to that type as seen in the restoration of the cup to the laity. The Bohemian clergy, it seems, continued to be married until the thirteenth century, when the Roman rule of celibacy was enforced.

In 1088 the royal crown was conferred by the emperor Henry IV on the Bohemian prince Wratislav for the support he rendered Henry in the conflict with Gregory VII over investiture. The royal title became hereditary with Premysl, who was crowned in 1198, and it remained in his house until the assassination of Wenceslaus III in 1306. During the period of Huss’s activity the house of Luxemburg ruled in Bohemia. John of Luxemburg, the father of the emperor Charles IV, was elected king by the Bohemians. This dynasty became extinct in Sigismund, who occupies a place of great prominence in Huss’s last fortunes at Constance. From the date of his death, 1437, except at short intervals, the kingdom has been subject to the house of Hapsburg.

The Bohemian ruler, in whose reign Huss was born, Charles IV, 1346–1378, was the most conspicuous political figure of his age and Bohemia’s chief princely benefactor. His reign is looked back to as the golden era of his country. Never before or since has its prosperity been more generally acknowledged or its influence in Europe so appreciable. Seven years of residence at the court of his uncle, the king of France, gave the prince opportunity to become acquainted with the culture of Western Europe. As Roman emperor he issued the famous Golden Bull, 1356, which determined the rules for the election to the imperial crown. The document imposed the duty of summoning the seven electors and presiding over their deliberations upon the archbishop of Mainz, and the right to crown the emperor on the archbishop of Cologne. The elections were to take place at Frankfurt. Of the four lay electors, the king of Bohemia was made cupbearer, and the Count Palatine, the duke of Saxony, and the margrave of Brandenburg respectively seneschal, marshal, and chamberlain of the empire.^[7]

During Charles’s reign, Prague was transformed into one of the notable capitals of Europe. That sovereign encouraged literature and the arts and laid the foundations of the massive palace on the Hradcany hill—Hradschin. He built convents and churches and constructed the bridge across the Moldau, one of the architectural wonders of the age, which still remains, after the passage of five centuries, the chief medium of commerce between the two parts of the city. Early in his reign Charles was in correspondence with Petrarch, the leading literary figure of his times, and on his visit to Italy, 1354, met the poet. Petrarch, who applauded Charles as the Augustus and patron of learning, looked to him for the liberation of Italy. He paid the emperor the high compliment of saying: “We look upon you as an Italian.” As a commissioner from Milan, 1356, he visited the Bohemian capital, calling it the extreme limit of the barbarians. Charles invited the Italian man of letters to make the city his home, and Petrarch was about to accept and go North when he was stopped by wars and the bad roads.^[8]

Further evidence of the prominence of Bohemia at this time is furnished in the History of Bohemia, the volume written by Æneas Sylvius, afterward Pope Pius II. This description, written with elegant literary taste, covers the natural features and resources of the country as well as the origin and annals of the people. Æneas dwells upon the architecture of the stone bridge across the Moldau and praises Charles as a builder, the patron of letters, the founder of religious establishments, and the giver of peace. He also gives a valuable characterization of Huss and the Hussites, by whose madness, he declared, the name of Bohemia was as much tarnished as it had been illuminated by the constancy of brave men.^[9]

In the days of Huss, as Æneas says, Prague was divided into three parts. The oldest portion, known as the Wyssehrad, was built around a castle, the ancient Bohemian acropolis, on the right bank of the Moldau. It was also the site of an extensive monastery. The castle was destroyed in the Hussite wars. The old town was close down on the river’s bank and included the buildings of the university, the churches of St. Michael’s and St. Gallus, and the famous Teyn church, which was the church of the Utraquist wing of the Hussites until 1621, and is still one of the memorable monuments of the city. Here is the famous old town square, with the old town hall, built 1381, a portion of which still remains. In one of the council-chambers hang pictures representing John Huss before the council of Constance and the election of John Podiebrad as king, March, 1458. In this part of the city are situated the old Jewish cemetery and synagogue, among the very oldest on European soil, and the university buildings.^[10]

On the left bank of the Moldau, is the Hradcany containing the palace of Charles IV and buildings erected by the Hapsburg kings, as well as the historic palaces of the Wallenstein and the Schwartzenberg princes. Here, also, is the great cathedral of St. Vite, begun in 1344, and containing the relics of St. Wenceslaus and St. John Nepomuk. In the construction of the latter’s shrine three thousand seven hundred pounds of silver were used.

The Bethlehem chapel, which was in the busy and congested old town, is as closely associated with Huss as the Anastasia—the church of the Resurrection—at Constantinople was associated with Gregory Nazianzen, who preached within its walls his famous discourses on the Trinity. Both buildings have been completely destroyed, the chapel in Prague by the Jesuits in 1786. It was founded in 1391 as a place for preaching in the Czech language. The founders were two laymen, the merchant Kriz, who gave the site, and the nobleman John Mühlheim of Pardubicz, one of King Wenzel’s counsellors, who erected the building and endowed it. It was called Bethlehem—House of Bread—“because the common people and the faithful of Christ might there be refreshed through preaching.” In his letter giving his apostolic benediction to the chapel, 1408, Gregory XII repeated that it was founded for the preaching of the Word of God—pro usu predicationis Verbi Dei.^[11] Provision was made that two sermons should be delivered every Sabbath and festival day, except during the Advent and Lenten seasons, when the number was reduced to one. The chapel was not the centre of a distinct parish but was within the bounds of the parish of St. Philip and St. James, and its incumbent had no independent jurisdiction over a district, although he celebrated the mass and performed other church offices. The right of appointment inhered in the Mülheim family. Later, provision was made for an associate preacher, and a house was built for the priest adjoining the chapel. It was stipulated that the offerings should be applied to the maintenance of poor students at the university.

The first preacher at Bethlehem, John Protiva, was followed, in 1396, by Stephen of Kolin, a member also of the university faculty. With the latter was associated John of Stiekna, a noted preacher. At the time of Huss’s appointment Nicholas Zeiselmeister was the parish priest, a man whom Huss first accounted a friend and then a foe.^[12]

From the time Huss entered upon his duties, March 14, 1402, the Bethlehem pulpit was the chief centre of religious attraction in Prague. Æneas pronounced Huss “a powerful speaker.” His power of eloquence, however, could not account for the lasting impression he made on the religious conviction of his generation and his becoming the chief prophet of his people. No preacher was ever more attached to his pulpit than Huss was to his chapel. In the dark hours of his imprisonment he recalled it with warm aficction, and its service even occupied his dreams. Among his last messages were letters addressed to the congregation accustomed to worship within its walls. The dignity of the preaching function Huss asserted with much emphasis, as did Wyclif before him, insisting, as in his Treatise on the Church, upon the priest’s right to preach as being conferred on him in his ordination, and to be taken away from him by an ecclesiastical superior only when the preacher subverted his office by advocating opinions evidently injurious or heretical. Although the chapel was devoted to preaching through the medium of the Czech language, the most of Huss’s extant sermons are not in Czech, the explanation of which is that the outlines were prepared in Latin and the discourses freely delivered in the native tongue.

Popular preaching, as has been said, was no new thing in Prague. For half a century before Huss’s appearance preachers had stirred the city by sermons in German and Czech. The most notable of Huss’s forerunners in the Bohemian pulpit were Konrad of Waldhausen, Milicz of Kremsier and Matthias of Janow.^[13] Konrad of Waldhausen, an Austrian belonging to the Augustinian order, settled in Prague at the invitation of Charles IV, 1360. Here he preached until his death, in 1360, first in St. Gallus church and then in the Teyn. His sermons were a popular sensation. They soon emptied the churches of the Mendicant orders. Of the discourses of the Mendicants he used the following words: “As soon as I came to Prague the mass of the people forsook the churches of the friar preachers with their fawning discourses—blandis sermonibus—and have followed me to this day, and that in spite of the vigor with which I have rebuked and punished them.” On one occasion when he was preaching at Saaz, in 1365, Franciscans sought to drown the preacher’s voice and break up the services by ringing the bell, but Konrad dismissed the congregation from the church and preached in the open air. So great were the throngs which pressed to hear him that he was at times obliged to leave the Teyn church and set up his pulpit in front of it on the public square. He preached both in German and in Latin.

Waldhauser, as he was also called, was a preacher of repentance and righteousness, and attacked spiritual pride, avarice, luxury, usury, and other sins. The effect of his sermons was shown in changed lives. Women, it is reported, laid aside their jewelry and their rich garments, influenced by his warnings. The more he condemned vice and unnecessary adornment the more, he said, did the attachment to him grow. Konrad also used, as he himself informs us, the sharp thorn of the Word against the simony of the clergy, and especially of the monks, and arraigned them for commending spurious relics. “It is folly,” he exclaimed, “to run after the head of St. Barbara when it is found not in Prague but in Prussia.”^[14] To the complaints he made against the monks, the archbishop replied that they were outside his jurisdiction and had their own superiors to whom they were amenable.

Irritated by Konrad’s censures and popularity, the Dominicans formulated against him eighteen charges, to which the Augustinians added six more. Four of them ran as follows: Those who receive boys or girls into convents for money are eternally damned. No one in Prague preaches the whole truth. Monks are fat with goods and need no money. Members of orders had been commissioned to kill him.

In reply the preacher publicly declared that the friars were so little like the first members of their orders that they would not only be disowned by them but be stoned. In this also they had changed. In the early days they had been in constant rivalry and strife; now they were united in the effort to break down his usefulness and the influence of the Word of God. A contemporary, Adalbert Ranconis, eulogized Konrad “as a defender of Christ’s truth, an example of religion and sobriety, the mirror of virtue, and preacher of the Gospel.”

At Konrad’s death a preacher of equal or greater fame was made his successor in the Teyn church, Milicz, of Kremsier, a town in Moravia.^[15] For five years, until his death in 1374, he carried on Konrad’s work. In 1363 he suddenly gave up positions of honor and emolument in the imperial chancery and as canon of St. Vite and archdeacon of Prague to devote himself to poverty and preaching. After serving for a few months in the parish of Bishop Teinitz, he returned to Prague and preached successively in the churches of St. Nicholas and St. Ægidius before being transferred to the church of Teyn. Here his popularity was so great that, on occasion, he was forced to preach three times a day. Yea, we know of his preaching five sermons on a single day, once in Latin, once in German, and three times in Bohemian. The last was his vernacular and, by using it, he strengthened the national feeling of the Czechs. Milicz’s indictments against vice and corruption were directed against all classes, lay and cleric, even to the hierarchy. So effective were his appeals that the part of the city known for its houses of ill fame as Venice—Benatky, that is dedicated to Venus—underwent such a transformation that it came to be known as New Jerusalem. Scores of fallen women—Janow reported two hundred—did penance and renounced their former mode of life. New buildings were erected in the neighborhood under the patronage of Charles IV, where penitents were housed and a semi-monastic community maintained.

Milicz’s mind became fired with the prophecies of antichrist and the last days, and he dwelt frequently, as later did Huss, on “the abomination of desolation which was spoken of through Daniel the prophet standing in the holy place,” Matt. 24: 15. He announced the coming of antichrist in the period 1363–1367, wrote a special treatise on the subject, and explained as of antichrist every thought and act contrary to love and humility. Before a large assembly, as it appears, he arraigned Charles IV himself as antichrist. For this he suffered imprisonment at the hands of the archbishop of Prague. Attacked by the clergy, he appealed to the pope. In 1367 he visited Rome, where he waited in expectation of Urban V’s return from Avignon. He posted on St. Peter’s a notice of his purpose to preach on the subject of the near approach of antichrist. This brought upon him the hand of the inquisition, which seized and imprisoned him. Set at liberty, he gained the ear of the cardinal of Albano, who had accompanied Urban on his brief visit to Rome. He returned to Prague, where, stung by his attacks, the monks drew up twelve articles against him, which they forwarded to the papal court at Avignon. According to Matthias of Janow, who left a detailed eulogy of Milicz, no one not moved by the spirit of antichrist could be in his presence without breathing in love, grace, and sweetness, and no one could hear him without being edified. Among the charges brought in the articles were these: antichrist had already come, clerics had no right to hold personal property, taxes collected by priests on houses and vineyards are usury, and frequent communion should be practised. He asserted that, if a priest might celebrate three times a day, so the people might communicate three times a day.^[16] Gregory XI condemned the articles and ordered Milicz to desist from public ministrations, “provided the facts were such as we are informed they are.” The accused preacher set his face toward Avignon, where he was again befriended by the cardinal of Albano and preached before the cardinals. He died June 29, 1374. Matthias of Janow, who praised his devotion to the poor and outcast in the fervor of his preaching, calls Milicz a son and copy of the Lord Jesus Christ and almost the likeness of the Apostles in word and deed.

If possible, a more popular exponent of the Gospel than Konrad and Milicz was Matthias of Janow. The son of a Bohemian knight, he studied six years in Paris, so that he was known in Bohemia as the Parisian master. He spent some time in Rome and on his return to Prague was appointed to a canon’s stall in St. Vite’s and to the position of confessor there. At his death, 1394, he was buried in the cathedral. Janow exercised his influence as effectively outside the pulpit as in it. In a volume entitled The Rules of the Old and New Testament—De regulis veteris et novi teslamenti—he applied the precepts of Christianity to the conditions of his age.^[17] His observations, based on the study of the Bible, were given to him, as he asserted, in answer to prayer. The Bible he emphasized as the sufficient text-book of religious conduct, and the twelve fundamental articles he drew from it concerned the imitation of Christ in daily life rather than ecclesiastical dogmas drawn from the Fathers. On every page the author shows his interest in the religious welfare of the laity.

His own religious awakening Janow compared to a religious fire which had entered his heart, and whose flames burned brighter as he lifted up his soul in prayer to God and to Jesus Christ, the crucified. The Bible had been his friend and bride from his youth up. It was to him the mother of love and knowledge. “I have used in my writings,” he says, “the Bible above all else and in less degree the sayings of the doctors, because the Scriptures occur to me quickly and copiously and because the most divine truths are there set forth most lucidly and self-evidently. . . . I have always found in and through them satisfactory explanations for every question and consolation for my soul in all my persecutions, trouble, and sadness. I always flee for refuge to the Bible, which is my dearest friend.” He chose it as his companion even on his travels, while others took with them relics. He contrasted the mandatory arrogance of papal bulls with the invitations of the Gospel. His teaching which gave the most offense was the recommendation of frequent communion for the laity. He deplored the idea that a communion once a year was sufficient for the soul. Even as the eye needs the sun constantly, so does the soul need the bread of the altar.

These views brought him into conflict with the church authorities. Synodal decrees forbade the communion to the laity oftener than once a month and enjoined laymen to address prayers to images. In 1389, Janow signed a formula of retraction, and in five articles affirmed his belief as follows: 1. That sacred images are no cause of idolatry. 2. That images should be adored. 3. That relics, including the bones of saints and the garments of Christ and the Virgin Mary, are to be worshipped, and the saints in glory profit us more than the living on earth. 4. That, by partaking of the bread of the altar, we are made mystical members of Christ. 5. That the laity is to be exhorted to take the communion daily.^[18] As a punishment for propagating these errors Janow was inhibited for half a year from preaching and performing priestly functions outside his own parish.

These three preachers and reformers prepared the minds of low and high for the messages of Huss. They preceded him in emphasizing the authority of the Scriptures, though in this respect they did not go-to the length that he went, and in publicly rebuking the worldliness of the clergy. Without doubt, Huss was influenced by their example, but for his guiding principles he did not look to them. For these he leaned not upon a Bohemian but upon John Wyclif.

Other preachers combined to give lustre to the Prague pulpit and preached in the Slavic at the time of Huss’s studies in the university and later. Among them were John of Stiekna, d. 1405, whom Huss called “the excellent preacher with a voice like a trumpet,” Peter of Stupna and Stephen of Kolin. Indeed, Prague was the metropolis of popular preaching in the latter half of the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth centuries. And in this respect we cannot help but compare and contrast Bohemia with England before the Reformation as depicted by Hugh Latimer. In his sermon preached before Edward VI, March 22, 1549, he said: “If there was ever a man that preached in England in times past, in the pope’s times, as peradventure there were two or three, straightway he was taken and nipped in the bud with the title of a heretic.”

The use of the Czech as a vehicle for religious thought and literary effort was greatly advanced by Thomas Stitny, a classical Bohemian author who died about 1400 and used the native tongue not only in devotional works but for learned discussions. His style is said to be a model to this day. The use of the Czech in the pulpit and on the written page strengthened the national spirit. With this movement Huss was in full sympathy, and these sympathies with the Czech institutions combined with his high aims and eloquence to give him the position of a leader of his people. And, to say the least, none of his predecessors in the pulpit and none of his contemporaries excelled him in these respects.

At least nine collections of Huss’s sermons in Latin are extant, in addition to his Bohemian sermons.^[19] The Scriptural element abounds. Huss’s exposition is clear and the message applied with directness and simplicity. There is nothing in them the wayfaring man cannot understand. The doctrinal element is not missing, but chief stress is laid upon moral conduct and edification. We miss in them the illustrative element which makes Luther’s sermons so real and vivid. The needs and rights of the lay-folk are always in Huss’s mind and he has no mercy on the faithless priest who offends against his vow of chastity, practises simony, or withholds spiritual benefits from those who do not pay him money. After the period of his struggle with the ecclesiastical authorities of Prague had fairly begun, the references to the stages of the struggle are frequent and elaborate. Long quotations are introduced into the sermons from Augustine, Gregory the Great, Bernard, Thomas Aquinas, and other ecclesiastical writers.

Looking through his seventy-seven sermons on the church festivals, we find discourses on Matthew, John the Baptist, Mary Magdalene, Stephen, and other characters of the New Testament, and also on Bohemian saints such as Adalbert, St. Ludmilla, and St. Wenceslaus. There are no less than twenty-five sermons on the Virgin Mary and her festivals. These sermons, preached in 1403, are free from the atmosphere engendered by the later struggles in which Huss was engaged. There is no departure from the usual dogmatic teaching of the church. For example, the assumption of Mary is accepted as well as the annunciation and her virginity. Following the style of the mediæval theology, he refers to her passage after passage of the Canticles. She is the star that arose out of Jacob and the rod out of Israel, Num. 24: 17. As a star is not affected by foreign impressions, so she was without corruption in the conception and birth of Christ and in her contact with the world; nor was there any corporal putrefaction at her death. She is “as fair as the moon, as clear as the sun, terrible as an army with banners,” Cant. 6: 10. She trod on the serpent’s head. A passage to which Huss returns again and again in elaborating her merits is Luke 10: 38, “He entered into a certain village”—castellum. The village or fortified town was Mary, into whom Jesus entered when the Word was made flesh. Mary is full of pity and most gracious, who stands in God’s presence making intercession for us poor sinners and especially for those who seriously seek her aid. She is to be imitated in her humility as against the devil, in her poverty as against the lusts of the world, and in her chastity as against the temptations of the flesh. As for her assumption, Huss told his hearers that the angels looked on with the same wonder with which they looked on at the ascension of Christ. It is a matter of uncertainty whether Mary ascended in soul only or enveloped with her body. Upon the whole, the argument seems to be that she ascended with her body as did Moses.

At this early period Huss took the ground he afterward assumed in his Treatise on the Church, that not Peter, but Christ, is the rock on which the church is built. In favor of this interpretation, he quoted the famous passage from Augustine’s Retractations and confirmed it from I Cor. 3. “Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Christ Jesus.”^[20] He refers to the abuse of the power of the keys and claims for all the Apostles equally the right of loosing and binding. In these sermons the church is defined as the whole number of the elect—totus numerus predestinatorum.

At the meetings of the synod of Prague, before which he was appointed several times to deliver the opening sermon, as well as in the Bethlehem pulpit, Huss seemed to have been without fear in denouncing the vices of the clergy and the hierarchy and their indifference to the spiritual needs of the people. Hireling ministers called forth his scathing rebuke. Preaching from John 10: 12–16, he said: “Such a minister is known from three things. He does not concern himself for his office as a shepherd; he flees when persecution arises; he seeks after hire rather than to follow Christ’s commands. He invents all sorts of precepts and rules in order to plunder the people. Such ministers speak evil in high places, calling out that all who disobey them are heretics and that they have the power to condemn to hell. Yea, they claim power to control heaven with their tongues, preaching that they have authority to open it to whom they will and to release from pain those who pay money. They open the door of heaven to persons immediately upon their death. These hireling priests are wolves preying upon the flock and are of antichrist, the great wolf, Jer. 5: 6. They are now so many in number and so influential that they seize faithful shepherds who feed their flocks on the pastures of God’s Word, and put them to death as heretics.”

The following excerpts from his sermons will sufficiently illustrate his homiletical method. Preaching on Christ’s words, “Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?” Huss said: “This means that, first of all and chiefly, I be engaged in that which concerns my Father and not in the service of any creature whatsoever. And why did Christ give this answer? Because he came into the world for the purpose of bearing witness to the truth. And let this be an admonition to fathers and mothers that they put no stumbling-block in the way of their children serving God. If children follow their own wills, parents should at once seek after the cause of their doing so and study how they may properly admonish their children and set them in the right path. And children should take their lessons from the conduct of Jesus, not to withstand their parents and be angry against them. For Jesus spoke in humble tone when he asked his father and mother, ‘Why do ye seek me?’ So every man, and especially prelates, should take Jesus’ treatment of his parents as an example that they may first of all seek the profit of the church and have respect to God more than to any mortal man. For Jesus, setting aside the will of his earthly father and mother and doing the will of God, has taught us that every man should do the will of God, when he perceives that what God requires is something else than what our parents wish. Mary and Joseph did not want Jesus to remain in the temple but God wanted him to remain. Therefore, Jesus said to his father and mother that it behooved him to remain in the temple to instruct the doctors as the Father had commanded. Against this instruction priests very frequently offend who esteem men’s precepts more highly than God’s commands and obey man rather than God. And priests lead men to a false and sinful obedience, for many of them preach that the people should hearken to all the pope commands and obey him, inasmuch as the pope cannot err. They do not seem to know that many popes have been heretics. Other priests preach that laymen should yield obedience even when a bishop or a pope commands something that is evil, for in obeying they commit no sin and only he commits sin who issues the evil command. That is the devil’s yoke, for the devil seeks to lead men into evil and does not concern himself upon whom the guilt of sin rests. Neither the one who commands nor the one who obeys is without sin, as said the Saviour, Matt. 15: 14: ‘When a blind man leads the blind both fall into the ditch.’ Here the Saviour was speaking of those prelates who, like the scribes and Pharisees, lead the people by their precepts to transgress the commands of God.”

In a sermon on Matt. 13: 24–30 concerning the tares which were not to be pulled up lest the wheat also be pulled up with them, the interesting line of remark is followed that the tares are also in a certain degree useful to the wheat. They protect the wheat against the wind so that it can stand upright. At first it is not possible to distinguish the two and, in pulling up the tares, the wheat is apt to be trodden under foot or its growth in a measure hindered. In like manner bad men, if they are sparsely scattered amongst the good, are helpful to the good unto their lasting salvation, for they help to confirm them in the power to resist evil and stand in the spiritual conflict. If there were no bad people there would be no temptations and, in consequence, no spiritual contest and reward. The destruction of all bad people in this world would inure to the hurt of the good. Sometimes, however, it is well that worldly princes pluck up the tares. But this they must do in accordance with the Word of God and they dare not follow human ordinances. It is fitting that they first seriously reflect upon what they propose to do and get advice from men expert in God’s Word and use grace and prudence rather than severity so as to avoid doing hurt to the wheat or perchance pluck it up, Christ commanded Peter to avoid as a publican and heathen a person offending against him, provided the offender’s sin was evident and the offender refused to hear holy church and to follow its counsel. But he did not command him to subject the offender to torture and death.

In the same sermon, defining the kingdom of God, Huss found the following meanings in the Scripture: “1. It is the communion of saints in heaven, as when we pray ‘Thy kingdom come.’ 2. Christ himself, as when it is said ‘The kingdom of heaven is within you.’ 3. The church in this world or the communion of all Christians, of which Christ speaks, Matt. 3: 41, as when he says: ‘He will send forth his angels and they shall gather out of his kingdom all that offend.’ 4. The dwelling-place of the elect in heaven, Matt. 20: 20, ‘Grant that these my two sons may sit, the one on thy right hand and the other on thy left in thy kingdom.’ 5. The Scriptures, Matt. 21: 43, ‘The kingdom of God shall be taken from you and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof,’ that is, the Scriptures will be taken from you and given to Christians who will use them to profit. Here belongs also Matt. 23: 13, where Christ said of the scribes and Pharisees, that ‘they shut up the kingdom of heaven to men.’ This they do by keeping back the Scriptures from the people so that they may not read or understand them, and know how men ought to live; that they may not know how to punish the priests for their sins, or through knowledge of the Scriptures may not insist that the priests become better instructed in them. And again the priests keep the knowledge of the Scriptures from the people because the priests fear they will not receive the same amount of honor if the people are taught to read the Bible.”

The following is a Christmas meditation Huss wrote to his congregation of Bethlehem chapel during the period of his semi-voluntary exile from Prague, December 25, 1412:

 

Dearest friends: To-day, as it were, an angel is saying to the shepherds: “I bring you good tidings of great joy that shall be to all people.” And suddenly a multitude of the angels exclaim, saying: “Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to men of good-will.” As you commemorate these things, dearest friends, rejoice that to-day God is born a man, that there may be glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to men of good-will. Rejoice that to-day the infinitely Great One is born a child, that there may be glory to God in the highest, etc. Rejoice that to-day a Reconciler is born to reconcile man to God, that there may be glory to God in the highest, etc. Rejoice that to-day He is born to cleanse sinners from their sin, to deliver them from the devil’s power, to lead them from eternal perdition, to bring them to eternal joy, that there may be glory to God in the highest, etc. Rejoice with great joy that to-day is born unto us a King, to bestow in its fulness upon us the heavenly kingdom, a Bishop to grant His eternal benediction, a Father of the ages to come, to keep us as His children by His side forever: yea, there is born a Brother beloved, a wise Master, a sure Leader, a just Judge, to the end that there may be glory to God in the highest, etc. Rejoice, ye wicked, that God is born as a Priest, who hath granted to every penitent absolution from al! sins, that there may be glory, etc. Rejoice that to-day the Bread of Angels—that is, God, is made the Bread of men, to revive the hungry with His body, that there may be peace among them, and on earth, etc. Rejoice that God immortal is born, that mortal man may live forever. Rejoice that the rich Lord of the universe lies in a manger, like a poor man, that He may make us needy ones rich. Rejoice, most dearly beloved, that what the prophets prophesied has been fulfilled, that there may be glory to God in the highest, etc. Rejoice that there is born to us a Child all powerful and that a Son is given to us full of wisdom and grace, that there may be glory to God in the highest, etc. Oh, dearest friends, ought there to be only a moderate rejoicing over these things? Nay,a mighty joy! For indeed the angel saith: “I bring you good tidings of great joy,” for that there is born a Redeemer from all misery, a Saviour from sin, a Governor of His faithful ones; there is born a Comforter for those in sorrow, and there is given to us the Son of God that we may have great joy and that there may be glory to God in the highest and on carth peace to men of good-will. May it please God born this day to grant to us His good-will, His peace, and withal, His joy.

 

It is no wonder that Bethlehem chapel was thronged. Its pulpit dealt in no theological abstractions. The sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, was in the preacher’s hand a sharp weapon, wielded dextcrously to lay open the sins and subterfuges of the conscience. It was the Word of Life offering the comforts of saving grace. Huss was a preactics to the age in which he lived, to the congregations which pressed to hear him. His messages burn with zeal for pure religion and with sympathy for men. With his whole heart he was a preacher. Christ’s chief command, as he reminded the archbishop of Prague, was to preach the Gospel to every creature, and when he was forbidden by archbishop and pope to longer occupy his pulpit he solemnly declared, in a letter to the chief civil officials of Bohemia, that he dared not obey the commands, for to do so would be to offend “against God and his own salvation.”^[21] Preaching was the priest’s primary duty. Huss followed worthily in the footsteps of his great predecessors and went beyond them in the extent of his influence and in the novelty of his message.

The following judgment is passed by the Bohemian historian Palacky upon Huss as a preacher,^[22] which is given unabridged, although we dissent from the last words, disparaging in a degree Huss’s moral purpose: “His sermons, preached through a number of years, belong to the chief events of his age. Less coarse in his addresses than Konrad of Waldhausen, less enthusiastic in his views than Milicz, he made upon his hearers not so stormy an impression as his predecessors but, on the other hand, a far more permanent impression. He addressed himself to the understanding, aroused reflection, taught and persuaded, and at the same time was not lacking in pungent utterance. The keenness and clearness of his mind, the tact with which he got at the very heart of subjects under discussion, the ease with which he presented a case before his hearers’ eyes, his wide reading, especially in the Scriptures, the decision and the logical consequences with which he pressed home a whole system of teachings secured for him great over his colleagues and contemporaries. To this were added moral earnestness of character, a pious mind, a daily life in which enemies could find no stain, glowing devotion for the moral uplift of his people and the reformation of the church, but also inconsiderate boldness, obstinacy, and unyielding conceit, noticeable ambition for popularity, and an ambition which looked upon a martyr’s crown as the highest aim of human life.”

 

1. The comparative, mundioris seems to indicate an advance upon Huss’s force of speech. A distinguished professor of Latin suggests the trsl. “a singularly pure life,” citing Cicero, Cato Major, who speaks of old age as loquacior, particularly talkative.
2. Palacky and Tomek accept 1369, but Loserth, Wiclif and Hus, p. 67, Gillett and Lützow, 1373. Flajshans, p. 12, inclines to 1373, although he says the date may have been as late as 1376. Huss was baccalaureus, 1393, the required age being sixteen, Flajshans, p. 42, giving the different old spellings of Huss's name says he is called J. Huss de Hussinecz in a court document, June 2, 1402.
3. Doc., 80, 100.
4. Palacky, Gesch., 3: 191. According to Flajshans, Husinecz had a population of 1,800. For the scanty legends of Huss’s life, see this author’s Life, p. 22.
5. Tomek, as quoted by Lützow, p. 69.
6. Doc., 387, 466, etc.
7. Bryce, Holy Roman Empire, p. 231, who quotes from Marsiglius and Schiller.
8. J. H. Robertson, Petrarch, the First Modern Scholar and Man of Letters, N. Y., 1899, devotes a chapter, pp. 329–377, to the relation between Charles and Petrarch.
9. Introd., Sicut Hussitarum insania Bohemicum nomen labefactavit ita et fortium virorum constantia illustravit.
10. Æneas, who speaks of the old town as magnificis operibus ornata, reports one of the outbreaks against the Jews in which one thousand were slain without regard to age or sex, chap. 33.
11. Doc., 340 sq., 394.Mon., 1: 115.
12. Sermones de Sanctis, p. iii.
13. For these preachers and others, see Palacky, Vorläufer des Hussitenthums in Böhmen and Gesch. Böhmens, III, 1: 158 sqq. Also Loserth, Wiclif and Hus, 38 sqq., 301 sqq., and Flajshans, Introd. to the Sermones de Sanctis.
14. St. Barbara, a martyr, is said to have been a beautiful maiden whom her heathen father gave over to the authorities and whom they punished with torture and burning. Her legend is very uncertain both as to place and the time of her death. She is the patron saint of the artillery and was invoked against the ravages of tempest and fire.
15. “Noch grösseren Namen und Ruhm als Konrad erwarb sich Milicz und hatte dafür auch noch viel grössere Anfechtungen zu ertragen als sein Vorgänger, Konrad.”—Palacky, Vorläufer, p. 18.
16. Palacky, Vorläufer, 39–46, for the twelve articles in Latin and Czech.
17. Palacky, Vorläufer, 58–80, gives excerpts. Neander, Ch. Hist., Engl. trs., 5: 191–235, gives large space to Matthias and advocates the view first presented in a paper read before the Academy of Sciences, Berlin, 1847, that Huss was strongly influenced by Matthias independently of Wyclif. This view has been made impossible by later studies.
18. The text in Doc., 699 sqq. According to Rokyzan’s statement at the council of Basel, 1433, Janow also recommended the giving of the cup to the laity, a recommendation from which he promised to desist. It is probable he never held this view. Through Jacobellus of Mies and others, Janow exerted an influence upon the Hussites.
19. See the list in Flajshans, De Sanctis, Introd., pp. iv–vi, and the sermons printed in the Mon. II, where nine sermons are designated as Synodal sermons, pp. 35–84, and twenty-eight as preached against antichrist. Flajshans calls in question the genuineness of parts of these sermons or sermons as a whole, without, however, going into particulars. His collection, De Sanctis, was discovered in 1897 in a Ms. in the library of Prague.
20. De Sanctis 80–84.
21. Doc., 4, 24.
22. Gesch., III, 1: 214.