Jan Hus and the Formation of Spirituality and Religious Practice in Late Medieval Bohemia

Abstract

<p>Over the past six hundred years, the life and work of the Czech priest and martyr Jan Hus has undergone much scrutiny. As a priest and a preacher ministering at the beginning of the fifteenth century Bohemia, he exerted a profound influence on his generation and left a considerable legacy of spiritual vernacular treatises. Hus's aim for the spiritual formation of the people marked his life, but ironically this defining aspect of his ministry has been largely overlooked. Especially for the Anglophone students, the arduous Czech texts pose a discouraging challenge and insurmountable obstacle to overcome. This thesis seeks to remedy the lamentable omission by examining Hus's vernacular pastoral writings and on this basis articulating the spirituality of Jan Hus, thus offering a portrait for the formation of spirituality and religious practice in Late Medieval Bohemia. The approach of the present study utilizes the critical editions of Hus's vernacular pastoral exilic writings which are then set against the background of the spiritual movements of medieval Europe as well as Hus's own life and ministry. This methodology yields a basic framework of the spirituality which Hus lived and labored to pass onto his people. In its most basic sense, Hus's spirituality is Trinitarian, meaning that it is patterned after the Holy Trinity, where the three-fold division of the Triune God provides a pattern for fragmenting one's soul into three parts -- memory, mind, and will. All three components of the soul served a formative role in the spiritual existence of believers. The ultimate expression of a mature spiritual life, modeled by Hus, became the imitation of Christ. In the tumultuous religious context of the Medieval church in Bohemia, Hus's religious practice of imitating Christ resulted in the most literal meaning of that concept. Committed to his convictions, the Bohemian priest followed the example of Christ, albeit imperfectly, not only in his life but also in his death at the hands of the Constance Council.</p>