"Infoelix Hus": The Rehabilitation of a Medieval Heretic

Abstract

For more than thirty years the case of Master Jan Hus of Prague has been discussed in different venues ranging from open ecumenical ecclesiastical councils to special closed conference rooms; from the pages of obscure magazines to the headlines of major newspapers. The issue has been raised by Catholics, Protestants, theologians and thinkers on a variety of levels. The facts in the case of Jan Hus are these: Born around 1372 at Husinec in south Bohemia, proceeded 'Magister artium' at Prague in 1396 and subsequently became a professor at Charles University. Received holy orders shortly after the turn of the fifteenth century and was appointed priest in the non-parochial Bethlehem Chapel in 1402. Over the course of the next decade, Hus engaged in reform preaching along mainly moral lines, defended the condemned Oxford scholar John Wyclif to a certain degree, and ran afoul of the ecclesiastical and political climate and was forced into exile in 1412. When the Council of Constance met in the fall of 1414 in an attempt to resolve the protracted papal schism, Hus voluntarily traveled from Bohemia to south Germany to present his views. Following a curious trial he was condemned to death as an incorrigible heretic, defrocked from the priesthood, and sent to the stake on July 6, 1415.