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Y304: The Church and Medieval Heresy c.1100–1437

Depth study: Huss and the Hussites 1400–1436 — Hus, the influence of Wycliffe and the Council of Constance

  • 1 thing to know
  • Unit group 3

Overview

Recall questions on Jan Hus, how Wycliffe’s writings took root in Bohemia, Hus’s attack on the Church, the Decree of Kutná Hora, interpretations of Hussitism, Hus’s fate at Constance and utraquism.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

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Evaluation

How far was Jan Hus simply a follower of Wycliffe?

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    Who was Jan Hus?

    Model answer

    A Czech priest and master of the university of Prague who preached in Czech at the Bethlehem Chapel from 1402 and became the leading voice of Bohemian reform before his execution in 1415.

  2. 2

    How did Wycliffe's writings reach Bohemia, and why did they take root there?

    Model answer

    Czech students at Oxford, and Jerome of Prague in particular, brought his works home through the academic contacts opened by the marriage of Anne of Bohemia to Richard II; they found a university whose Czech masters were philosophical realists like Wycliffe, and a city already used to the reform preaching of Conrad Waldhauser, Milíč of Kroměříž and Matthew of Janov.

  3. 3

    How far was Hus simply a Wycliffite?

    Model answer

    He adopted Wycliffe's doctrine of the Church and much of his attack on clerical wealth and papal authority, but he did not follow him in denying transubstantiation and he drew equally on the native Bohemian reform tradition, so historians treat him as an independent reformer working with Wycliffite tools.

  4. 4

    How did Hus attack the Church?

    Model answer

    He preached against simony and clerical wealth and denounced the sale of indulgences in Prague in 1412 to finance a papal war, for which his existing excommunication was aggravated and Prague placed under interdict; in his treatise on the Church he then argued that the Church is the body of those predestined to salvation, that Christ and not the pope is its head, and that an unworthy prelate holds office without authority and need not be obeyed.

  5. 5

    What was the Decree of Kutná Hora, and why did it matter?

    Model answer

    It was the order of Wenceslas IV in 1409 reversing the voting balance at Prague university in favour of the Czech nation, after which the German masters left in large numbers and founded a university at Leipzig; it handed the reformers the university, made Hus its rector, and fused reform with resentment of German dominance so that religion and Czech identity reinforced one another.

  6. 6

    How have historians differed over whether Hussitism was religious, national or social?

    Model answer

    Nineteenth-century Czech writers presented it as the birth of the nation, Marxist historians as a social revolution of peasants and artisans against a feudal Church, and more recent scholarship argues that the religious programme was primary but drew its mass force from national and social grievances that it also transformed.

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