Jan Hus (1370–1415), a Bohemian religious thinker and reformer, was burned at the stake July 6, 1415, for heresy against the Catholic Church.
This year is the 600th anniversary of his death. Although Martin Luther started the Protestant Reformation, it was Hus who influenced him.
Hus was born to peasant parents in Husinec, Bohemia, in today’s Czech Republic. To escape poverty he decided to become a priest.
He earned a bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees from the University in Prague (now Charles University in Prague). He became a teacher and then dean of the philosophy faculty in 1401. In 1402 he became a priest at Prague’s Bethlehem Chapel.
During these years Hus changed. The writings of church reformer John Wycliffe awakened his interest in the Bible.
Hus and his followers advocated the supremacy of the Bible, wanted more control for church councils and promoted the moral reform of clergy.
The University of Prague split between the ideas of Bohemian and German professors. The Germans labeled Wycliffe’s followers heretics. In 1409 with the newly elected Pope Alexander V supporting Wycliffe’s followers, the Germans fled. Alexander V, though, was then bribed to side with Bohemian authorities against Hus. They excommunicated Hus, but he continued to preach at Bethlehem Chapel.
When Alexander V’s successor, Pope John XXIII (considered by many an anti-pope during the Western Schism in the early 1400s), authorized selling indulgences to raise funds for his crusade against a rival, Hus could no longer justify the Pope’s moral authority. He argued that the Pope was exploiting the Bohemian people because their king earned a cut of the indulgence proceeds.
Hus lost the support of the king. His excommunication was revived, and an interdict was placed upon the city of Prague: no citizen could receive communion or be buried on church grounds as long as Hus continued his ministry.
To spare the city, Hus withdrew to the countryside in 1412. He spent the next two years composing a number of treatises. The most important was “De ecclesia” (The Church), which he sent to Prague to be read publicly. In it he argued that Christ alone is head of the Church.
In 1414 the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund asked Hus to attend the Council of Constance and give an account of his doctrine. Because he was promised safe conduct, Hus went. When he arrived, however, he was arrested. He remained imprisoned for months and was eventually hauled before authorities in chains and told to recant his views. He refused.
He was taken to the stake and stripped of his priestly garments one by one. He refused one last chance to recant and prayed, “Lord Jesus, it is for You that I patiently endure this cruel death. I pray You to have mercy on my enemies.”
It is said he recited the Psalms as the flames engulfed him.
His executioners threw his ashes into the nearby Rhine River so nothing would remain of the “heretic.”
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