Living with Jan Hus: A Modern Journey Across a Medieval Landscape

Abstract

A discredited legend had Jan Hus affirming at the pyre, and punning on his own name (the word "hus" in Czech means goose), that the Council of Constance would indeed roast a lean goose but in a hundred years hence a swan would sing and nothing would prevent that song. The 6001h anniversary of the death of Jan Hus has generated considerable and renewed attention on those events which culminated in Hus' death in 1415. The goose was cooked and some of Hus' detractors, the Franciscan preacher and inquisitor Giovanni Capistrano (1386-1456), for example, declared "the fat goose had been fried at Constance." Early enthusiasm at the elimination of a perceived dangerous heretic soon turned to frustration. The Council inadvertently succeeded in creating a martyr whose steely resilience must have both shocked and dismayed late medieval Latin Christendom.