Jan Hus
(Also called John or John Huss; Husinec, Bohemia, 1369-Constance, 1415) Promoter of the Czech ecclesiastical reform.He was born into a poor peasant family in southwestern Bohemia.However, he managed to study Theology and Arts at the University of Prague and ordained himself a priest (1400).In 1402 he was appointed rector of the University, supported by the Czech particularist sentiment against Germanic domination.
Jan Hus
Under the influence of the English heretic John Wycliffe, Hus began in 1405 to preach against the excessive wealth of the Church and the immorality of the clergy, demanding a return to the purity of the evangelical message, preaching in the Czech language that the people could understand, and communion under both species.Its influence was increased by the crisis in which the Church of Rome was plunged by the "Schism of the West", as well as by the Czech nationalist reaction against the German minority (started with the struggle for control of the University of Prague).
Hus was excommunicated by the pope (1411), but he continued his campaign and published his theses in his main book, De Ecclesia .He was called to justify himself at the Council of Constance (1415), where he went with a safe-conduct from the Emperor Sigismund; once there, he refused to retract his ideas and was burned at the stake by order of the emperor.
The new pope, Martin V, condemned the Hussite doctrine in his bull Inter Cunctas (1418).But Hus's death made him a national hero to the Czechs; When Sigismund tried to proclaim himself King of Bohemia, a revolt broke out by the Hussite, who controlled most of the country between 1419 and 1478, making raids as far as Nuremberg, Saxony, Brandenburg, Danzig, and northern Austria.
The most extreme Hussite wing (the Taborists ) was finally defeated, but merged with another heretical current from France and Italy (the Waldensians) and, under the name of "Moravian Brothers", it has survived to the present day; for its part, the moderate Hussite wing (the Utraquists or Calicists ) reached an agreement with the Catholics, which allowed the recognition of the Czech or Utraquist Church with certain liturgical specificities.Together with John Wycliffe, Jan Hus is considered the main precursor of the religious movement that would mark European history in the 16th and 17th centuries: the Protestant Reformation, which began in 1517 with the disclosure of Luther's theses.
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