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Image of Jan Hus at Bethlehem Chapel in Prague.
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Czech priest who was pivotal in Protestant history is remembered

Mike Riess, Moravian Church in North America

Czech priest who was pivotal in Protestant history is remembered

Six-hundred years ago tomorrow((July 6)), at a Catholic church council in the lakeside German city of Constance, a defiant Czech priest named Jan Hus was stripped of his clerical robes and handed over to his executioners.

They tied him to a stake, piled straw up to his chin and gave him one last chance to recant his heresies. Hus refused, and by one account, kept praying as the flames arose. 

After Hus’ death, his killers tossed his remains in the water so no one could venerate them as relics. That way, Hus would be forgotten.

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If they only knew.

Instead, the fires of July 6, 1415 have branded religious, political and military history ever since. 

There has been no end to the memory of Hus, who fiercely denounced the rampant church corruption of his day, preached to the poor and appealed to Christ and the Bible against the authority of pope and bishops.

Hus’ execution ignited years of brutal religious warfare in the heart of Europe. As a symbol, he has rallied his fellow Czechs to resist outside domination for centuries, right through the 1989 peaceful revolution that ended communism, in which Hus’ maxim, “Truth prevails,” appeared on protest signs.

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Hus’ impact on religious history is even vaster.

When the 16th century German monk Martin Luther launched the Protestant Reformation, he started out by denouncing church corruption, but he soon realized two things: His real point of contention was with the authority of popes and church councils, and he was following a trail blazed a century earlier by Hus.

“We are all Hussites,” Luther wrote.

And as Protestants embraced Hus as a martyr, the descendants of Hus’ followers embraced Protestantism. Several small church groups trace their roots to Hus and have shaped the movement far out of proportion to their numbers.

Some — called Moravians after their church’s region of origin — helped ignite the modern Protestant missions movement, whose dramatic results are visible across the globe today. The founder of global Methodism, John Wesley, received life-changing inspiration from Moravians in his early years.

The Hus legacy also includes deep historic wounds between Czech Catholics and Protestants, which they have worked to heal in recent years. Pope John Paul II in 1999 voiced “deep regret for the cruel death” of Hus and lauded his character and desire for reform. Pope Francis last month hosted Czech Catholics and Protestants for a liturgy of reconciliation. Catholic leaders will join other religious leaders as Prague commemorates Hus today and tomorrow with lectures, theater, music and services.

The irony is that all this tumult centers around a man who is a popular symbol but whose actual life and teachings are little known outside of scholarly circles.

“Theologically, ... Hus is not a Protestant in any sense of the word,” said his biographer, Thomas Fudge, professor of medieval history at the University of New England in Australia. “He was a Catholic reformer,” forcused more on moral than doctrinal purity.

But Hus’ “courage of conviction, the commitment to something greater than himself, made him admirable and acceptable to the Protestants,” said Mr. Fudge, who has doctorates in theology and medieval history. 

“I would even use the word myth or legend” to describe Hus’ stature, said Mr. Fudge, author of “The Trial of Jan Hus” and related books. “This was a guy that stood up to the power of the church, to the power of foreign nations.”

Locally, the Czech-American community plans to mark the Hus anniversary with a program this September at the Czechoslovak Nationality Room — where a portrait of Hus is displayed — at the University of Pittsburgh’s Cathedral of Learning.

“It’s the right time to refresh our memories about Jan Hus,” said Cestmir Houska, a Czech native and chair of the Czechoslovak Nationality Room.

Hus’s imprint in the region includes the Moravian Church in North America, whose forebears were early arrivals in Pennsylvania. Its Northern Province is based in Bethlehem, Pa., whose historic district retains the communal homes of early Moravians, and where Moravian College and Moravian Theological Seminary remain.

There are other Moravian pockets around the country, such as Ohio and North Carolina.

While there are none in Pittsburgh today, a Czech Protestant church operated on Troy Hill in the early 20th century (and had a men’s group called the John Hus Society). Hus’ image also adorns a stained-glass window at Smithfield United Church of Christ in Downtown, alongside other Protestant pioneers.

The Rev. Craig Atwood, director of the Center for Moravian Studies at the college and seminary, said Hus has been vindicated by many of the reforms of the Catholic Church since its Second Vatican Council of the 1960s.

That council, for example, put liturgy into local languages and encouraged giving lay people both bread and wine at communion, as Hus and his followers did, rather than bread only.

And Hus’ emphasis on a church of the poor and for the poor has a familiar modern ring.

“I’m convinced the current Pope Francis would have loved Hus’ reforms,” added Rev. Atwood.

Hus, whose name is sometimes anglicized as John Huss, was born in 1372 or 1373 and gained prominence as a preacher at Bethlehem Chapel in Prague, where he reached the common people through sermons in Czech.

Hus railed against church corruption in an era when bribes bought lucrative clerical appointments and the papacy itself was torn by rival claimants to the throne of St. Peter. While Hus confessed to chasing clerical perks in his early years, even His enemies never questioned his moral character. 

Hus also denounced the church’s sale of a spiritual commodity known as indulgences — the source of Luther’s own fateful protest.

Hus galvanized a loyal following. He was also good at making enemies. Hus’ views on the sacraments and the priesthood came under condemnation. 

Excommunicated multiple times, Hus fatefully agreed to attend the Council of Constance. He was in trouble from the start, his fate decided by a council trying to reunify a fractured church in part by stamping out heresy.

Sorting out the true and false charges against him requires a doctrinal forensic exam that would make modern eyes glaze over. But Hus ultimately stood convicted for something more straightforward, Mr. Fudge said: He refused to submit to the council’s demands, appealing only to the authority of Christ.

While modern people can’t accept the execution of a man for his views, Mr. Fudge said it’s important to understand the Council of Constance in the context of its own times. 

“As someone who has spend the better part of 30 years studying Hus, I think part of his glory and his legacy and his historical stature lies in the fact that he was not a conformist,” he said. “He was a heretic. I don’t think heretics are bad people. Heresy is not something we should be afraid of. Heretics and dissenters have a great deal to instruct us on.”

Many Czechs, then and since, saw Hus’ execution as the betrayal of the emperor’s guarantee to him of safe passage. After Hus’ death, revolution immediately erupted in the Czech lands, marked by years of apocalyptic revivalism and  atrocities on all sides. The Central European land was laid waste before an uneasy truce was reached.

“The dark side was the unimaginable carnage and violence that war always leaves in its wake,” said Mr. Fudge. 

Much of the context of Hus’ time has faded with history, said Jan Lasek, dean of the Hussite Theological Faculty at Charles University in Prague.

“We live in a different world now,” he said in an online video accompanying an exhibit on Hus at the university, which Hus once led. “But ... Hus followed the voice of his conscience. He held on to what he found to be the truth. He held on to it all the way to his death. I believe this is the main legacy he left us.”

Peter Smith: petersmith@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1416; Twitter @PG_PeterSmith.

First Published: July 5, 2015, 4:00 a.m.

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Image of Jan Hus at Bethlehem Chapel in Prague.  (Mike Riess, Moravian Church in North America)
This depiction of Jan Hus being burned at the stake is at the Bethlehem Chapel in Prague. According to a story told of the burning on July 6, 1415, the priest was made to wear a hat with depictions of devils on it.  (Mike Riess, Moravian Church in North America)
Mike Riess, Moravian Church in North America
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