Jan Hus (1415): The Bohemian Reformer Burned at Constance

Jan Hus, a priest and university master from Prague, was burned at the stake as a heretic at the Council of Constance on 6 July 1415. His preaching against corruption in the Church and his defiance of papal authority had made him the leader of a reform movement in Bohemia. His execution, despite a royal safe-conduct, turned that movement into a revolution and made Hus a forerunner of the Protestant Reformation a century later.

Background: Bohemia and the divided Church

Around 1400 the Kingdom of Bohemia was one of the richest parts of the Holy Roman Empire, and Prague, home to the first university in central Europe, was a major intellectual centre. Yet the Church faced deep criticism. Since 1378 the Western Schism had produced rival popes in Rome and Avignon, and after 1409 a third line based in Pisa. Each competed for money and loyalty.

In Bohemia, the Church owned a large share of the land, and many clergy were accused of greed, buying offices and neglecting their duties. A line of Czech preachers, including Jan Milic of Kromeriz and Matthew of Janov, had called for moral reform and frequent communion. Their ideas fed into a growing Czech-speaking reform movement.

At the same time, the writings of the English theologian John Wycliffe reached Prague, partly through Czech students who had studied at Oxford after Anne of Bohemia married Richard II of England. Wycliffe’s attacks on church wealth and papal power, already condemned in England, found eager readers among Czech masters. The English story is told in our article on the Wycliffe Bible and the Lollards.

Hus in Prague

Jan Hus was born around 1370 in Husinec in southern Bohemia, a village from which he took his name. He studied at Prague University, became a master of arts in 1396 and was ordained a priest around 1400. In 1402 he became preacher at the Bethlehem Chapel in Prague’s Old Town, a large church founded in 1391 for sermons in Czech.

His sermons, attended by thousands, attacked the moral failings of the clergy in vivid language. Hus also defended Wycliffe’s philosophical writings against efforts to ban them, although he did not accept all of Wycliffe’s theology.

The university itself was split. Czech masters tended to support reform, while German masters, who held three of the four votes in university affairs, opposed it. In January 1409 King Wenceslaus IV issued the Decree of Kutna Hora, giving the Czech “nation” three votes. Most German masters and students left and founded the University of Leipzig. Hus, a leading supporter of the change, was elected rector of the university.

Conflict with church authority

Archbishop Zbynek Zajic of Prague moved against the reformers. In 1410 he had Wycliffe’s books burned and banned preaching in private chapels such as Bethlehem. Hus refused to obey and was excommunicated.

The crisis deepened in 1412, when the Pisan pope John XXIII sent preachers to Prague to sell indulgences, grants of remission of punishment for sins, to raise money for a war against King Ladislaus of Naples. Hus publicly denounced the sale, arguing that no pope could take up the sword in this way or sell forgiveness. Riots followed, and three young men who protested were executed.

The papal curia then placed Hus under major excommunication and laid an interdict on Prague, suspending church services while he remained there. To spare the city, Hus left in late 1412 and lived under the protection of nobles in southern Bohemia. There he preached in the open air and wrote his main Latin work, On the Church (De ecclesia), and many writings in Czech.

Trial at the Council of Constance

In 1414 a general council of the Church gathered at Constance, on Lake Constance, to end the schism, reform the Church and deal with heresy. Sigismund of Luxembourg, King of the Romans and brother of Wenceslaus IV, invited Hus to explain his views and issued him a safe-conduct.

Hus arrived on 3 November 1414, hoping to debate. On 28 November he was arrested and imprisoned, first in a Dominican monastery on an island in the lake, and later in other places of confinement, including a castle at Gottlieben. Sigismund protested at first but then accepted the council’s view that it was not bound by a promise to a man accused of heresy.

Public hearings took place on 5, 7 and 8 June 1415. Hus was charged with holding articles drawn from Wycliffe and from his own works. He replied that some were distorted or never held by him, and that he could not abjure errors he had never taught without lying. He offered to be corrected from scripture. The council required him to submit unconditionally, which he refused to do. In letters smuggled out of prison to friends in Bohemia, he wrote that he would rather die than betray what he believed to be the truth, and asked his followers to remain faithful to God’s word.

On 6 July 1415, in Constance Cathedral, the council declared Hus an obstinate heretic, stripped him of his priesthood and handed him to the secular authorities. He was led outside the city, wearing a paper crown painted with devils, and burned at the stake the same day. An eyewitness, Peter of Mladonovice, a supporter who had accompanied him, wrote a detailed account of his last days. His ashes were thrown into the Rhine.

His friend and fellow reformer Jerome of Prague was burned at Constance on 30 May 1416. The council went on to end the Western Schism by electing Pope Martin V in November 1417.

Key people

Jan Hus (c. 1370-1415) was a university master, preacher and writer whose influence came from his personal integrity as much as his ideas.

Sigismund of Luxembourg (1368-1437), King of Hungary and King of the Romans, sponsored the council. His failure to honour the safe-conduct made him hated in Bohemia.

Wenceslaus IV (1361-1419), King of Bohemia, at first protected Hus, partly for political reasons, but later abandoned him.

Jerome of Prague (c. 1379-1416), a widely travelled scholar, spread Wycliffe’s ideas and shared Hus’s fate.

Consequences: from protest to revolution

News of the execution caused outrage in Bohemia. On 2 September 1415, several hundred nobles of Bohemia and Moravia, usually counted as 452, sealed a letter of protest to the council, defending Hus and rejecting its authority. Hus’s followers adopted the practice of giving communion to lay people in both kinds, bread and wine, symbolised by the chalice.

Tensions between reformers, the king and the Catholic hierarchy grew until 1419, when a Prague crowd threw town councillors from a window of the New Town Hall. The death of Wenceslaus IV soon afterwards opened the way to the Hussite Wars, in which Bohemian armies defeated a series of crusades launched against them.

Legacy

Hus is a national hero in the Czech Republic. His name is linked with the motto “Truth prevails”, which later appeared on the Czechoslovak presidential standard. A large monument by Ladislav Saloun was unveiled in Prague’s Old Town Square on 6 July 1915, the 500th anniversary of his death, and 6 July is a public holiday.

Hus is also seen as a forerunner of the Reformation. After reading his work, Martin Luther wrote in 1520 that “we are all Hussites without knowing it”. The Moravian Church traces its origins to the Unity of the Brethren, which grew out of the Hussite tradition. In 1999 Pope John Paul II expressed deep regret for the cruel death of Hus.

Myths and facts

• Myth: Hus’s last words were “O sancta simplicitas” (“O holy simplicity”), spoken when an old woman added wood to the fire. Fact: the story appears only in much later sources and is generally regarded as a legend.
• Myth: Hus prophesied Luther with the words that a goose (hus in Czech) would be cooked but a swan would come. Fact: Hus did make puns on his name, but the swan prophecy took its familiar form in the sixteenth century, when Luther and his followers applied it to Luther.
• Myth: Hus was simply a follower of Wycliffe. Fact: he drew heavily on Wycliffe but rejected some of his key teachings, including his view of the Eucharist.

Timeline

• c. 1370: Jan Hus is born in Husinec, southern Bohemia.
• 1402: Hus becomes preacher at the Bethlehem Chapel in Prague.
• 1409, 18 January: the Decree of Kutna Hora gives Czech masters control of Prague University.
• 1410: Archbishop Zbynek burns Wycliffe’s books; Hus is excommunicated.
• 1412: Hus opposes the sale of indulgences and leaves Prague.
• 1414, 3 November: Hus arrives at the Council of Constance.
• 1414, 28 November: Hus is arrested despite his safe-conduct.
• 1415, 6 July: Hus is condemned and burned at the stake in Constance.
• 1415, 2 September: Bohemian and Moravian nobles send a protest letter to the council.
• 1419, 30 July: the First Defenestration of Prague begins the Hussite revolution.

Why it matters

The execution of Jan Hus showed the limits of the late medieval Church’s ability to silence dissent. Instead of ending the reform movement, it created a martyr, gave Czechs a powerful national symbol and opened a century of religious conflict that anticipated the Protestant Reformation of Martin Luther.