A History of Bohemian Literature

by hrabe Francis Lützow

"I do not know what further I should write to your reverence. I am not able to instruct those who are far more learned than I; by what words can one who is weaker comfort those who are stronger soldiers of Christ? What, then, shall I say? You have taken all words of Christian instruction from my mouth. It only remains for me to beg of you help by means of prayer, and to render thanks for all the good which, through your labours and by the help of Jesus Christ, Bohemia has received from blessed (benedicta) England."

Hus's letters from exile, as already mentioned, were very numerous. During his absence the adherents of the papal party endeavoured to suppress the religious services in the Bethlehem Chapel, and some Germans had even made an attempt to destroy the chapel. In a Bohemian letter addressed to the citizens of Prague Hus refers to this matter: "God be with you, dear sirs and masters," he writes. "I beg of you firstly to consider this matter before God, to whom great wrong is done; for they wish to suppress His holy word, to destroy a chapel that is useful for [the teaching of] the word of God, and thus to frustrate the salvation of the people; secondly, consider the insult to your land, your nation, or race. In the third place, only consider the shame and wrong which undeservedly is done to yourselves. Fourthly, consider and endure cheerfully that the devil rages against you and Antichrist snarls at you, for he will not harm you if you are lovers of God's truth. Indeed he has raged against me for many years, and yet I trust to God he has not harmed a hair on my head; rather has my happiness and content increased." The letter ends with these words: "Therefore, considering these things, and placing truth and the praise of God foremost and living worthily in charity, let us resist the lie of Antichrist to the end; for we have with us as a helper our Almighty Saviour, whom no one can vanquish, and who will not desert us as long as we do not desert Him; He will then give us the eternal reward... I have written this down for you, as I cannot well come to you, so that the priests who endeavour to stop the religious services may not harm your minds."

Many letters written by Hus at Constance have been preserved; some date from the time when he was still at liberty, others from the period when he was imprisoned in the Dominican monastery, and afterwards in that of the Franciscans. During his stay at Gottlieben he was, as already mentioned, entirely prohibited from writing. In the first of the letters written from the dungeon in the Dominican monastery addressed to the citizens of Prague, and dated January 19, 1415, Hus refers to the severe illness which had befallen him in consequence of the unhealthy condition of his prison. The letter, which is written in Bohemian, begins thus: "May the Lord God be with you that you may persevere in your resistance to evil, to the devil, to the world, and to the flesh.

"Beloved brethren, I write to you while sitting in prison, but I am not ashamed, for I suffer hopefully for the sake of the Lord God who has graciously visited me with a severe illness and has again restored me to health, and who has permitted that those should become my bitter enemies to whom I have done much good and whom I have sincerely loved.[52] I beg of you to pray for me to the Lord God, that He may deign to be with me; for it is on Him and on your prayers that I rely to remain unto death in His grace. If the Lord deigns now to call me to Him, may His holy will be fulfilled; and if He deigns to return me to you, then also be His holy will fulfilled! Verily I am now much in want of help; but I know that God will submit me to no misfortune or temptation except such as are for my own and for your benefit, so that having been tried and found steadfast we may obtain a great reward... I have no one to advise me except our merciful Lord Jesus, who said to His faithful: I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which all your adversaries shall not be able to resist. Dearly beloved, remember that I have worked with you with great devotion, and that I am anxious for your salvation even now when I am in prison and suffering grievous persecution."

Want of space obliges me to quote but from one other letter of Hus, written in prison, though they all well deserve to be better known. This is the letter written on June 10th, two days after his trial before the Council had ended. Hus was then in expectation of immediate death, though, as already stated, attempts were still made to obtain his recantation, and his execution only took place on July 6th. The letter, also written in Bohemian, is addressed "To the whole Bohemian nation." Hus writes: "Faithful in God, men and women, rich and poor, I beg and entreat you to love the Lord God, praise His word, hear it gladly, and live according to it. Cling, I beg you, to the divine truth, which I have preached to you according to God's law. I also beg that if any one has heard either in my sermons or privately anything contrary to God's truth, or if I have written anything such—which, I trust to God, is not the case—he should not retain it. I further beg, then, if any one has seen levity in me in word or deed he should not retain it; but let him pray to God for me that God may forgive me. I beg you to love, praise, and honour those priests who lead a moral life, those in particular who strive for God's word. I beg you to beware of crafty people, particularly of unworthy priests, of whom our Saviour has said they are clothed like sheep, but are invariably greedy wolves. I beg the nobles to treat the poor people kindly and rule them justly. I beg the burghers to conduct their business honestly. I beg the artisans to perform their labours conscientiously. I beg the servants to serve their master and mistress faithfully. I beg the teachers to live honestly, to instruct their pupils carefully, to love God above all; for the sake of His glory and the good of the community, not from avarice and worldly ambition should they teach. I beg the students and other scholars to obey and follow their masters in everything that is good, and to study diligently for the praise of God, for their own salvation, and for that of others."

Hus then mentions by name the Bohemian and Polish noblemen present at the Council who had afforded him aid, and expresses his thanks to them. He then refers to his sovereign, King Wenceslas, and more particularly to Queen Sophia, who had always aided the cause of Hus, as far as it had been in her power. He then continues: "I write this while in fetters, expecting my sentence of death to-morrow, full of hope in God, resolved not to recede from the divine truth nor to recant errors which false witnesses have invented and attributed to me. How God has acted towards me, how He is with me during all my troubles, that you will only know when, by the grace of God, we shall meet again in heaven." It is touching to notice that the imminent vicinity of death by no means lessened Hus's interest in his beloved Bethlehem Chapel. Towards the end of the letter from which I have already quoted he writes: "I beg all of you, particularly you men of Prague, to be careful of Bethlehem as long as the Lord God will permit that God's word be preached there. The devil has been much incensed against that spot, and he has stirred up parsons and canons against it, well knowing that that spot is hostile to his kingdom. I trust in God that he will graciously deign to preserve that spot, and that he will obtain there greater advantages by means of others than was possible through so feeble a person as I am."

From the time of Hus to the present day it has constantly been attempted to define his doctrine, and to trace the origin of the opinions that are peculiar to him. According to one theory, the teaching of Hus did not aim at a reform of the Church in the manner of the later Church reformers, but was rather an endeavour to return to the Eastern Church, from which Bohemia first received the Christian doctrine. In the seventeenth century Paul Stransky[53] wrote that even after the Latin rites had been generally accepted in Bohemia, "humble people and the populace, contented with the former religious institutions of their land, tenaciously adhered to the rites of the Greek Church." The same theory has in the present century been maintained by Eugene Novikov, Hilferding, and other Russian writers. The patient and thorough investigation of this matter by modern Bohemian historians, particularly by Palacký, Dr. Kalousek, and Dr. Goll, has, however, proved to a certainty that all reminiscences of the Eastern Church had in Bohemia died out before the time of Hus.

It would be natural to attribute Hus's peculiar views principally to the influence of the writers of his own country who immediately preceded him and who have been noticed in the last chapter. It is therefore surprising to note that Milič, Štitný, and Matthew of Janov are scarcely noticed in the works of Hus that have been preserved. It has, however, been conjectured that further references to them may have been contained in the lost works of Hus. In sharp contrast with this independence of the writings of his countrymen is the strong influence of Wycliffe on the ideas and writings of Hus, which the recent publication of many of Wycliffe's works has rendered yet more evident. It is certain that the works of Hus, specially those written in Latin, contain lengthy extracts from Wycliffe's writings, and that many of the leading ideas of Hus can be traced to the same source. This fact has been strongly brought forward by Professor Loserth, who has quoted in parallel columns passages from Hus's treatise, De Ecclesia, and passages from Wycliffe's treatise of the same name, which are identical. In a lesser degree Loserth has found this dependence on Wycliffe also in other works of Hus. The German professor, however, deals principally with the Latin works of Hus, whereas his Bohemian writings—though the influence of Wycliffe can here also be traced—are far more independent and original. It must also be remembered that in the fifteenth and even the sixteenth century the modern ideas with regard to literary property were unknown. Many writers, particularly on theology, incorporated with their works whole pages from the writings of their predecessors, and this without any acknowledgment. It would also be incorrect to imagine that Hus followed Wycliffe blindly. He indeed writes: "I hold those true doctrines which Master John Wycliffe, professor of holy theology, held, not because he said these things, but because the Holy Scripture says them." On the important question of transubstantiation Hus, differing herein from Wycliffe, upheld the teaching of the Church of Rome. It must further be considered that in many cases ideas common to Hus and to the English reformer can be traced far farther back. This matter has been fully expounded by the recent foreign and Bohemian writers on Hus. It will here be sufficient briefly to state that the disapproval of the enormous riches, of the arrogance and avarice of the higher members of the Roman clergy—so constantly expressed by Hus—can be traced back as far as to the German Emperor Frederick II. After Pope Innocent IV. had pronounced the Emperor's deposition in 1245 at the Council of Lyon, Frederick in a circular addressed to all princes declared "that it had always been his intention to reduce the ecclesiastics, particularly those of highest rank, to that state and condition in which they had been at the time of the primitive Church, that is, leading an apostolical life and imitating the humility of Christ."

In the following century Marsiglio of Padua in his celebrated work, Defensor Fidei, wrote strongly against the interference of the clergy in temporal matters. He already maintained that the Church consisted of the whole community of Christian men, be they ecclesiastics or laymen. The Pope, according to Marsiglio, can claim no right of supreme judgment in temporal matters, even over the clergy, and the "power of the keys" does not entitle him to place a man under civil disabilities by means of excommunication. Somewhat later, in his Dialogues, William of Ockham expressed similar opinions, though he did not go as far as Marsiglio.

If we endeavour briefly to define the ideas of Hus as far as they differ from the tenets of the Church of Rome—for on most points he was entirely in accord with that Church—we may state that his two leading ideas, closely connected with one another, are his theory of "Christ's law" and his conception of the "true Church." According to Hus the law of Christ, or "God's law"—an expression that afterwards became a watchword of the Hussites—is contained in the writings of the Old and New Testament, which contain all God's commands to man. The second fundamental principle of Hus is his conception of the true Church, which, according to him, consists of the totality of the elect. It is doubtful whether this theory was in direct opposition to the doctrine of the Church of Rome, in the development which it had reached in the fifteenth century. Long before his rupture with the Church, Hus, speaking before the archiepiscopal synod, had defined the "Ecclesia" as "Prædestinatorum Universitas." The head of this Church, according to Hus, is Christ, not the Pope, whose predecessors held no higher rank than other bishops.