Special Issue Editor's Introduction: Jan Hus at 600

Abstract

The career of Jan Hus ended abruptly 600 years ago. While it is impossible to argue for positioning Hus among the greatest of medieval thinkers, he must take a prominent place among the reformers of the later Middle Ages. His life was defined by his death and the particularly gruesome details of his execution made his entire life, at least in the minds of many of his Czech contemporaries, worthy of positive re-evaluation. In the wake of the Council of Constance, his acts and actions were understandably elevated to a realm of metahistorical significance. He became a national hero to the Czechs, a John Baptist forerunner to the Protestants, and a man worthy only of the fires of hell for many Catholics. These responses guaranteed Hus a permanent place in historical debate. For far too long, non- Catholic western Christianity has been dominated by figures like Luther and Calvin and western religious history (or old-fashioned Church History) has privileged the reformations of the sixteenth century to such an inordinate extent that reformers and reform movements after 1200 have been generally reduced to anachronistic glimmers of that which was still to come. A proper assessment of Hus rebuts those misguided assumptions.