Jan Hus

Jan Hus was a late medieval Czechuniversity master and popular preacher who was condemned at the Council ofConstance and burned at the stake as a heretic in 1415. Thanks to hiscontemporary influence and his posthumous fame in the Hussite movement andbeyond, Hus has become one of the best known figures of the Czech past and oneof the most prominent reformers of medieval Europe as a whole.

This definitive biography nowavailable in English opposes the view of Hus that saw his importance primarilyas a martyr, subsequently invoked by a variety of religious, national, andpolitical groups eager to appropriate his legacy. Looking for Hus’ssignificance in his own time, this treatment tells a story of a late medievalintellectual who—through his dedicated pursuit of what he understood as hismission—generated conflict and eventually brought execution upon himself. Byinvestigating the life and death of Jan Hus, one learns not only about the man,but about the church, state, and society in late medieval Europe.

The story told in this book isoriginal in structure and purpose. Each chapter takes a major event in Hus’slife as a starting point for a broader discussion of crucial problems connectedto his career and the controversies he generated. How did these specific eventscontribute to Hus’s own convictions? By suggesting parallels to and departures fromother late medieval figures and events in Europe, the book liberates Hus from anarrow and nationalist Czech historiography and places him squarely in abroader European context, showing a significance that transcended Czech borders.From a number of different vantage points, it raises a central questioncritical to understanding the later Middle Ages: why was a sincereecclesiastical reformer condemned by a church council committed to reformitself?