Jan Hus, Letters (1408–1415)

Like Chaucer, Jan Hus (1372–1415) lived in the midst of the anxiety and strife caused by the Great Schism. He, too, was a vocal critic of the church, but from a very different platform. A professor at the University of Prague in Bohemia and an ordained priest, in 1402 Hus was appointed rector of the Bethlehem Chapel. The chapel had been founded in 1391 to fill a gap in the city’s divine services by providing preaching in the Czech language. Hus wholeheartedly embraced his position and used it to call for reform. Influenced by the writings of English scholar, John Wycliffe (c. 1330–1384), Hus targeted a range of issues for criticism, including immorality within the priesthood, resistance to preaching and reading the Bible in the vernacular, and opposition to all Christians receiving both the bread and wine during communion. While he garnered considerable support among nobles and commoners alike, his views outraged many high church officials, including the archbishop of Prague, ultimately leading to his excommunication and exile in 1412. When invited to the Council of Constance in 1414 to defend his views, he gladly accepted. He was immediately imprisoned upon his arrival, however, which set the stage for his trial and execution in 1415. Aside from his sermons and other works, Hus was a prolific letter writer up to the very moment of his death. The letters below illuminate Hus at each stage in his career: as preacher and pastor in Prague, in exile, and in prison in Constance.

From The Letters of John Hus, trans. Matthew Spinka (New York: Roman and Littlefield, 1972), 22–23, 79–84, 165–67.

To Archbishop Zbyněk

Prague

After 6 July 1408

I commend my humble self in the faith and truth of our Lord Jesus Christ.¹

Most reverend Father!

Very often I repeat to myself that not long ago after your enthronement Your Paternity had set up the rule that whenever I should observe some defect in the administration, that I should instantly report such defect in person, or in Your absence by writing. This rule now compels me to express myself: how is it that fornicating and otherwise criminal priests walk about freely and without rigorous correction like unbroken bulls and lusty stallions,² with outstretched necks, while humble priests, who uproot the thorns of sin, who fulfil the duties of your administration with proper devotion, are not avaricious, but offer themselves freely for God’s sake to the labour of proclaiming the gospel—these are jailed as heretics and suffer exile for the very proclamation of the gospel? O Father, what sort of devotion is it to prohibit the proclamation of the gospel—the duty which Christ commanded His disciples in the first place, saying: “Preach the gospel to every creature”?³ What kind of discretion is it to hinder the diligent and faithful worker from work? In truth I suppose that it is not Your Paternity, but other people’s heinousness which disseminates such things. What poor priests will dare to fight against criminal conduct? Who will dare to make known vices?

“The harvest is truly plentiful, but the labourers are few,” that is, the real ones. Therefore, Father, “pray the Lord of the harvest that He send faithful labourers into His harvest.”⁴ It rests with Your Paternity to reap the whole harvest of the kingdom of Bohemia, to gather it into the Lord’s barn, and in the day of your death to give account from each sheaf. How will Your Paternity be able to gather into the Lord’s barn so many sheaves, if you deprive the labourers of the scythe of the preacher’s word to please the idlers, who themselves do not reap and obstruct others in doing so, as soon as they touch with the word of the Lord upon their vices? . . .

Therefore, most reverend Father, open the inner, or the inward eye! Love the good, take note of the bad! Do not succumb to the flattery of the lovers of ostentation and avarice, but delight in the humble and the lovers of poverty! Drive the laggards to work, do not obstruct those who faithfully labour in the Lord’s harvest. For the Word is not bound, whereby the salvation of souls is accomplished.

I would write more, but the duty of preaching the gospel does not permit. . . .

To the Praguers

In exile

c. November 1412

Master John Hus, in hope a priest and servant of the Lord Jesus Christ, to all who love God truly, confess His law, and await the appearing of the Saviour, with Whom they desire to dwell forever—“grace and peace from God the Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ, Who offered Himself in death for our sins, that He might rescue us from this miserable world and from eternal damnation, in accordance with the will of God the Father, to Whom be glory for ever. Amen.”⁵

Dearly beloved, having heard of your desire for and progress in the law of God, I thank God in joy, and pray that He may grant you perfect understanding, that knowing the wiles of the Antichrist and of his messengers, you would not allow yourselves to be led astray from God’s truth. I trust in His holy grace, that He will fulfil in you the good He began,⁶ and will not permit you to fall away from His truth, which many have forsaken in fear, being in greater terror of miserable man than of the Almighty God who has the power to kill and to give life, to condemn and to save,⁷ to preserve His faithful servants in temptation and to grant him—in lieu of the minute suffering—eternal life of immense joy. . . .

Therefore stand fast in the truth which you have learned: everything you do, do as God’s sons. Trust that as Christ has conquered, you also will conquer. Remember Him who endured persecution from sinners, that you would not grow weary in your good desire. All of you, “laying aside every weight and every sin, let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the creator and perfector of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is already seated at the right hand of God.”⁸ . . .

Our gracious king, master, and father, beloved brother, the mighty creator and our merciful Redeemer indeed said: “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me first. If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but that I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you: A servant is not greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will persecute you; if they kept my word, they will keep yours also. But all this they will do to you for my name’s sake, for they do not know Him who sent me.”⁹ . . .

Thus spoke the Saviour, warning His future disciples, teaching and comforting them, warning them to conduct themselves carefully, recognize the ravening wolves by their deeds, who wish to devour the whole world by their covetousness. He taught them to know the false prophets by the fact that they do not agree with the true prophets in word or deed; and to regard as false Christs those who assert that they are Christ’s principal disciples, while in reality they are His chief foes. They would gladly stifle His word—if they could—for it is contrary to their pride, avarice, simony, fornication, and other deeds.

At first they attacked all the chapels to prevent the Word of God from being preached there;¹⁰ but Christ did not allow it. Now I hear that they decided to pull down Bethlehem,¹¹ and prohibited preaching in the churches where their iniquity is denounced. But I trust God that they will not succeed in this. At first they spread their nets of citations and excommunications for Hus,¹² and have already caught many. But because goose is a lazy bird, domestic, not flying high, their net has begun to tear; likewise many other birds who fly high to God by their [writings] and their lives will tear their nets. They issued citations, threatened with excommunications as with a wooden snare and in the end shot an arrow from the Antichrist’s quiver when they stopped the divine service and praise. The more they wish to conceal their wickedness, the more they reveal it; and the more they desire to be free, the more work they have; and the more they endeavour to establish their traditions like nets, the more they tear them; and by seeking to have the worldly peace, they have lost it along with the spiritual. Wishing to harm others, they harm themselves even more. . . .

I write you this message, dearest brothers and beloved sisters, that you may stand firm in the truth you have learned, would not fear the citations, nor attend less than before the hearing of the Word of God on account of their cruel threats. . . .

Finally, I beseech you, dearly beloved, pray for those who proclaim God’s truth with His grace; also pray for me, that I may write and preach more against the malice of the Antichrist, and that when need is the greatest, God may place me in the battle-array to defend His truth.

For know for certain that I do not flinch from yielding my miserable life for God’s truth in danger or death. For I know that nothing is lacking to you in God’s word; but that day by day the truth of the gospel is being spread ever wider. Nevertheless, I desire to live for those who suffer violence and need the preaching of the Word of God, in order that thus the malice of Antichrist may be revealed, so that the godly can escape it. On that account I preach elsewhere and minister as priest to others, in the knowledge that the will of God is thus fulfilled in me. . . .

To His Friends in Bohemia

Constance, Franciscan monastery

10 June 1415

Master John Hus,¹³ in hope a servant of God, to all the faithful Czechs who love the Lord God and will love Him, sends his wish that the Lord may grant them to dwell and die in His grace and to live forever in the joy of heaven. Amen.

Faithful and dear to God lords and ladies,¹⁴ both rich and poor!

I beseech and admonish you that you obey the Lord God, extol His word, and gladly hear and follow it. I pray that you hold that truth of God which I have drawn from the law of God, and have preached and written from the teachings of the saints. I also beseech you that if anyone has heard at my preaching or in private anything contrary to the truth of God, or if I have written it anywhere—which, I trust God, there is none of it—that he does not hold it. I also beseech you that if anyone saw in me any levity of morals in speaking or actions, that he does not hold them, but that he pray God for me that He may be pleased to forgive me. I beseech the priests, particularly those who labour in the Word of God, that they love good morals and extol and honour them. I beseech them to beware of deceitful men, and particularly of unworthy priests. . . .

I beseech the lords that they deal mercifully with their poor and rule them justly. I beseech the burghers that they carry on their commerce justly. I beseech the craftsmen that they do their work faithfully and have their living from it. I beseech the servants that they serve their masters and mistresses faithfully. I beseech the masters that they, living worthily, teach their pupils faithfully; first of all to love God, and to study for the sake of His praise and the benefit of the community, as well as for the sake of their salvation—but not for the sake of avarice or of worldly prosperity. I beseech the students and other pupils that they obey and follow their masters in the good, and that they study diligently for the sake of God’s praise and their own and other people’s salvation.

I beseech all together that they give thanks and be grateful for the diligence of the [following] lords: Lord Wenceslas of Dubá otherwise of Leštno, Lord John of Chlum, Lord Henry of Plumlov, Lord William Zajíc, Lord Myška,¹⁵ and the other lords from Bohemia and Moravia, as well as the faithful lords of the Polish kingdom; for they, as God’s brave defenders and supporters of the truth, have many times risen up against the whole Council and have brought proofs and arguments in order to secure my liberation. Especially believe what Lord Wenceslas of Dubá and Lord John of Chlum say, for they were present at the Council when for several days I defended myself. They know which Czechs brought many unworthy accusations against me, and how the whole Council shouted at me, and how I answered to what they demanded of me. . . .

I wrote this letter to you in prison, in chains, expecting tomorrow the sentence of death, in full hope in God that I swerve not from His truth nor recant the errors that the false witnesses have witnessed against me. How the Lord God has dealt graciously with me and has remained with me in strange temptations you shall learn when with God’s help we shall meet in His joy. . . .

I also beseech, particularly you Praguers, to be kind toward Bethlehem as long as the Lord God will be pleased that the Word of God be preached there. For the devil has become enraged at that place and has incited pastors and canons against it, perceiving that his kingdom was being ruined there. I trust the Lord God that He will preserve that place according to His will and will increase its benefits through others more than He has done through my unworthy self.

Also I beseech you that you love one another, permit not the good to be oppressed by violence, and desire that everyone learns the truth.

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