John Huss was born and lived in Bohemia (present day Czechoslovakia). He died at the stake for his faith, condemned by the Catholic Church and burnt at Con­stance in Switzerland in 1415. He learned the truth from Wycliffe's writings. "The Book of the Persecutions of the Bohemian Church", by Comenius, says, "In the year 1400 A.D. Jerome of Prague returned from England bringing with him the writings of Wycliffe." The latter had died in 1384 at Lutterworth, in England. A chronicler of the 15^th century states that the writings of Wycliffe opened the eyes of Huss to the truth. This chronicler was Nicholaus von Pelhrimow. The struggle between Huss and the Catholic Church took place mostly in Prague and centred particularly around the Bethlehem Chapel and the University.

Huss was a boy of fourteen when Wycliffe died at Lutterworth. He was a man of thirty when the writings of the great Reformer came into his hands. In his own country there were those who looked with disfavour on the Catholic Church before his time, contemporaries of Wycliffe. The Lord was working in Bohemia as he had worked in England. Often we may wonder where the Lord's people were in these days before the Lutheran Reformation. In seeking for them it is wise to see whom the Catholic Church persecuted. This will often point us to the true seekers after truth. Bohemia was one of the countries to which a certain persecuted sect from the Alps of Northern Italy and Southern France, the Waldensians, had gone for refuge. This group sprang up at Lyons about 1170, affirming that poverty was the true Christian way of life and that the Holy Scriptures were the infallible guide in religion, which led on to the claim that every good man was competent to preach and expound Holy Writ and to the desire to translate it from Latin to the mother tongue. In the 13^th century this group came under the scourge of the Inquisition founded in 1233 and its members fled to Germany, Bohemia and Hungary and carried the truth with them. So it is not surprising to find vestiges of truth in Bohemia in the early 14^th century before Huss was born. John Milicius, Archdeacon of the Cathedral Church of Prague filled that place with his preaching and attacked the abuses of the Church. He actually went to Rome and was horrified at what he saw there. He wrote over one of the Cardinal's doorways, "Anti-Christ is come", and for that was imprisoned for some time on his return to Prague. Later released, he died in 1374 at the age of eighty. Another great preacher in Prague was Conrad Stickna, who preached in the open air outside the Cathedral to large crowds. A third was Matthew Janovius who travelled round Bohemia preaching against the abuses of the Church. This eventually resulted in persecution, imprisonment and the stake, which was introduced in 1376, for his followers. Thus persecution was in progress when Huss was born. Janovius taught that salvation was only to be found by faith in the crucified Saviour. On his deathbed in 1394 he said,

The rage of the enemies of truth now prevails against us, but it will not be for ever; there shall arise one from among the common people without sword or authority, and against him they shall not be able to prevail.

In the latter half of the 14^th century Bohemia was preparing for a great struggle for her religious and political liberties. This was to follow the death of Huss in what were known as the Hussite Wars. Thus the century from 1350 to 1450 was momentous in the history of Bohemia. At the beginning of this period Charles I King of Bohemia (later Charles IV Emperor of Germany) protected Janovius from the persecution of the Catholic Church and was influenced by him to try and reform some of the manifest abuses of the Church in Bohemia, especially its enormous wealth. He established peace and order in his country, and extended the municipal liberties of towns. He also founded the University of Prague in 1347 and brought many eminent scholars there. He patronised authors who wrote in the Bohemian tongue and tried to revive the national literature and language. So when Huss was born at Hussinetz (he took his name from his birthplace), a market place on the edge of the Bohemian Forest, much had already happened in Bohemia con­nected with the work he was to undertake. His father died when he was young and his mother, after educating him at the local school, took him to Prague to the University. He had a successful career there. He obtained his B.A. in 1393, his Bachelor of Theology in 1394 and his M.A. in 1396. In 1398 he commenced lecturing in the University. Soon he joined the Church as a priest and went to the court of King Wenceslas who had succeeded his father, Charles IV, in 1378 as King of Bohemia. His Queen, Sofia of Bavaria, selected Huss as her confessor.

At this time Huss was a firm supporter of the Catholic Church. His true career as a Reformer dates from 1402 when he was appointed preacher at the Chapel of Bethlehem in Prague. The emphasis in this Church was on preaching and the sermons of Huss were epoch making. The morals in Prague were exceedingly low among all classes. Huss sounded out the truth, influenced, as we mentioned at the beginning, by the writings of Wycliffe. He acted like the conscience of the nation and it seems that during the preparation of these sermons his own conscience was awakened to the truth. A great outcry arose against him from all groups, but the Queen, and strangely, the Archbishop of Prague, who recognised the truth of his assertions, protected him. Huss founded all he said on the Scriptures and so frequently appealed to them, that he soon restored them to their rightful place in the eyes of the people. He preached to the common people in their own language. Around him there grew a community who loved his teachings; and he gradually grew in the knowledge of the truth himself, the more so as he read and came to understand the writings of Wycliffe. He placed the Bible above the authority of the Pope or any Council of the Church and thus founded a movement of which he little realized the consequences. He did not yet differ from the Catholic Church on any point except the one mentioned above, namely the supremacy of Scripture, but this one difference was enough to lead him eventually from the traps of error to the fold of truth.

Another of the factors which favoured Huss was the marriage of Richard II of England with Anne, sister of the King of Bohemia, in 1382. When she died in 1394 the ladies of her court in returning to Bohemia had brought back the writings of Wycliffe, whose disciple Anne of Bohemia had been. The University of Prague was a centre of learning and good ground for the influence of the great English Reformer, long since dead. Huss copied Wycliffe's work and translated some into Czech. He gradually came to see the truth, though he never saw it as clearly as Wycliffe had seen it himself. Mostly he understood the grosser abuses of the Church as in the case of the relic of Wilsnack, said to be the blood of Christ and able to perform cures. Huss was ordered to take part as a member of a commission appointed by the Archbishop of Prague to examine the authenticity of the cures. He found them all fraudulent. In 1409 Huss was appointed Rector of the University of Prague. So from two directions, from the Royal Court and from Jerome, Huss received Wycliffe's writings and as Rector of the University of Prague was able to spread these teachings among the students and the lecturers. Soon it became known at Rome that a man so influenced by the writings of Wycliffe was Rector of Prague University and was spreading these "erroneous" views among his students, many of whom came not only from Bohemia, but also from Germany. The Pope issued a Bull for this teaching to be stopped and the "erroneous" books to be burnt. Many of the nobility were followers of the "reformed school of thought". This was shown by the many beautiful bindings on the volumes of Wycliffe which were publicly burnt by the Church in Prague. But this bonfire merely roused Huss. He now not only attacked the abuses of the Church but also the use of indulgences. The Pope demanded that Huss appear in person to answer for his "errors". But the King, Queen, University and nobility supported him and suggested that a legal counsel appear for Huss before the Pope. To go in person was courting arrest and death.

The Pope refused to listen to this idea and put the city of Prague under an "Interdict", by which all churches were closed and the priests ceased to marry and bury. This caused considerable panic in the City as the dead lay unburied, and so to avoid such chaos as the Pope's Interdict brought, Huss left Prague and went to his native town of Hussinetz. But he did not rest there – he travelled round the surrounding villages and towns preaching the truth to the crowds that came to hear him. Gradually things quietened down in Prague and Huss went back to preach at the Bethlehem Chapel, now the centre of the new movement. In the University a strong group of doctors and priests opposed him. Many would have liked to silence him and close the Bethlehem Chapel. But Huss had also a powerful group of supporters still, including the Queen with many of the nobles, and the great body of the citizens of Prague sided with him. He also had one close friend in Jerome who had been to Oxford in England and brought back Wycliffe's teaching. Both Huss and Jerome were to die at the stake eventually and give their lives in martyrdom for their faith. Jerome was a disciple of Huss. He was a great debater and a much more impulsive man than Huss who was of a quieter disposition. But as Wylie says, "The union of these two men gave a sensible impulse to the cause." The Reformation in Bohemia was under way and we hope next month, God willing, to deal with the further sowing of the seed in the death of Huss.

Huss and Jerome were aided in their work by the divisions in the Papacy, there being three Popes at this time, John XXIII in Italy, Gregory XII in France, and Benedict XIII in Spain. To the Czech Reformers the infallibility of the Papacy presented a rather laughable spectacle, and what was more awful, military conflict, as each sought to establish his claim to be the actual Pope. Pardons, dispensations, etc., were all freely sold to provide money for the wars. To Huss the situation was instructive, as he read his Bible, and compared it with what was happening. He wrote his first work, entitled, "On the Church". In this he laid it down that the Church was not the visible Church, but the assembly of the elect. His next work was "The Six Errors". He listed transubstantiation; the confession, "I believe in the Pope and the saints", instead of believing in God only; the priestly pretension of forgiving sins and remitting the punishment for sin; the implicit obedience demanded by the Church dignitaries; the lack of distinction between a valid excommunication and a non-valid one; the practice of buying and selling livings in the Church called simony. This list of errors was put on the doors of the Bethlehem Chapel in Prague, besides which it was circulated far and wide in tract form.

In the wars raging between the various Papal armies, Huss came out with a strong condemnation of the Church for using the sword and denied the Papal claim to be the guardian of the two "swords", the temporal and the spiritual. He also attacked the use of indulgences by the various Popes who were each promising immediate en­trance to heaven to men, who took up arms in their cause. He taught that it was a duty to resist the Pope if he taught anything contrary to God's divine law. Huss also pointed out that many of the Church ceremonies were foolish – abstinence, venerating relics, bowing to images, worship­ping the dead were all things he condemned. He attacked friars as much as Wycliffe had done and wrote a work entitled, "The Abomination of Monks". The Archbishop of Prague became restless and re-imposed the Papal Interdict in Prague and threatened to continue it so long as Huss remained in the city. Huss again, for the sake of peace, returned to his native town of Hussinetz. While in exile from Prague, he wrote several letters to his friends there, and in one of these he uttered language which he was to reiterate at the stake and which had a prophetic significance. He said, "If the goose (his name in Bohemian meant" a goose") which is but a timid bird and cannot fly very high has been able to burst its bonds, there will come afterwards an eagle, which will soar high into the air and draw to it the other birds … It is in the nature of truth that the more we obscure it the brighter it will become".

Here at Hussinetz he rested, before the great storm of persecution broke over him. He did not ever again preach in the Bethlehem Chapel. His work was now to leave a lasting memorial, not merely in his own country but in the whole of Europe and the world. The confusion in the Catholic Church resulted in 1413 in Sigismund the new Emperor (formerly King of Bohemia) calling for a general Council of the Catholic Church (like the one recently held at Rome) to settle the issue of the divided Papacy. John XXIII agreed to hold such a Council at Constance in Switzerland, though he lived in fear of being tried by it, since it was generally said that he had been an accomplice in the murder of his predecessor Alexander V. The Council assembled on 1^st November, 1414, and delegates came to it from every country of Europe. Numerous Cardinals, Archbishops, ets., were there. Also many rulers and princes. Representatives came from the other two Popes. John XXIII arrived himself amid regal splendour on 28^th October and was met by the burgomaster and civic representatives of Constance. And while he was coming to Constance, from the other side of the city, Huss was making his way there. He had been summoned to appear before the Council by the Emperor Sigismund. Before leaving Bohemia he had obtained a safe-conduct from Sigismund. He knew that in going to Constance he could expect little mercy and that his life was in danger. Judged as a heretic, he would be burned. But the common people did not regard him as a heretic and his journey to Constance, across Europe, was marked by many kindly gestures and much concern for his safety. At Nuremburg, and other towns through which he had to pass, the magistrates formed a guard of honour for him and escorted him through the streets and crowds of people came to catch a glimpse of the man who had stirred the Catholic Church.

He arrived at Constance on 3^rd November and stayed at the home of a poor widow. But the Council had other business before it tried Huss. First of all on 20^th March, 1415, Pope John XXIII took flight and fled from Constance. Then in his absence the Council tried him on an indictment of seventy charges and called thirty-seven witnesses. One of the charges was for complicity in the murder of his predecessor. Eventually on 29^th May he was deposed. It is said that few more wicked men ever wore the tiara.

It might be noted that the Pope who recently died and who tried to conciliate the Protestant Churches in the recent Council and open a new era in the 20^th century ecumenical movement, took the title of John XXIII – a strange situation, that he should revive the memory of such an awful predecessor, whose name would revive memories of faithful Huss and the Council of Constance which condemned him to death. One wonders whether it was not intentionally done to point to the further extermination of the Protestant "heresy" in the 20^th century by more subtle methods than the fire which so miserably failed at Constance.

The Council of Constance after it had dealt with one Pope then proceeded to deal with the other two – Gregory XII resigned and Benedict XIII was deposed and the Cardinals then elected a new Pope who took the title of Martin V. It seemed extraordinary that the very Council which condemned Huss for heresy, should expose such corruption in the Papacy and so obviously vindicate Huss's charge that the Church was corrupt – a charge incidentally which has again recently been levied at the Catholic Church by Charles Davis and Herbert McCabe, two leading English Catholic Theologians, one of which has recently left the Catholic Church and the other been forced to resign his editorship of a Catholic periodical. To Huss it was a cause of satisfaction, as a letter to a friend at the time showed, that his condemnation of the abuses of the Church and his assertion that it was never intended by God that the preservation of the grace of God in the world should rest in the hands of one man, Christ's so-called representative on earth, should be so vindicated by the judgment of the Church itself and its teaching.

Now Huss faced the Council and the newly elected Pope with the guarantee of a safe-conduct of the Emperor Sigismund, "to sojourn, stop, and return freely and securely", to Bohemia. But Huss trusted one more powerful than the kings of the earth, who kept his promises, which Sigismund was to fail to do. He wrote, "I confide altogether in the all-powerful God, in my Saviour; he will accord me His Holy Spirit to fortify me in the truth so that I may face with courage, temptations, prison and if necessary a cruel death". So Huss seems to have realised himself that the Emperor might not keep his word. On the twenty-sixth day after his arrival in Constance, Huss was eventually arrested in violation of the Imperial safe-conduct. In prison he developed a violent fever and nearly died. In Bohemia, there was great anger at the treachery of Sigismund, and a petition was sent demanding the release of Huss. But Sigismund was told by the Pope and Council that he had had no right to grant such a safe-conduct and the supreme authority of a Church Council must over-ride his promise. And so Sigismund gave in and left Huss in prison. The Catholic Church then promulgated' a decree which was confirmed by the Council of Trent that "no faith should be kept with heretics to the prejudice of the Church". Huss's trial began on 5^th June, 1415. His books were produced and he was asked to acknowledge them as his writings. When the accusations were read, some were true but others were false, and when Huss rose to point this out, he was howled down by the members of the Council, who refused to give him a fair hearing. On the 7th June, the Council met again. On that day there was all but a total eclipse of the sun, which caused some consternation among the members of the Council, who did not assemble until it was over. The Emperor Sigismund, who had broken his promise of safe conduct to Huss, was present on this occasion. Huss was in chains. Under cross-examination he appeared to accept some form of substantiation, while rejecting the grosser form of the dogma. He admitted the Divine institution and office of the Pope, but made their efficacy dependent on their spiritual character. In these ways he still remained a Catholic. But he was condemned as a heretic by the Council, and on the following grounds; that he held the supreme rule of faith and practice to be the Bible; Christ to be the Rock on which our Lord said he would build His Church; that the "assembly of the predestinate was the. Holy Church"; that the Church needed no visible head on earth and it had none such in the days of the apostles. In these respects the Reformer was a Protestant, though he could not see the full implications of such beliefs, nor do we hear him mention such truths as "justification by faith".

In turning to the Scripture as his final authority, Huss rejected the authority of the Church, who at once realised that he was not one of them. Attempts were made to get him to recant, but as he wrote to a friend, "I write this letter in prison and with my fettered hand, expecting my sentence of death tomorrow … When with the assistance of Jesus Christ, we shall meet again in the delicious peace of the future life, you will learn how merciful God has shown himself towards me, how effectually He has supported me in the midst of my temptations and trials". On 6^th July, 1415, Huss was brought before the Council and sentence of condemnation was passed. He was then attired in the vestments of a Catholic priest which were removed one by one as a symbol of degradation from the priesthood. Then he was handed over to the magistrates of the city of Constance for burning and led in procession to the stake. A chain was put round his neck at which he commented, "Is it thus you silence the goose; but a hundred years hence there will arise a swan whose singing you shall not be able to silence" (a prophetic reference to Luther). So he died in the flames and his ashes were thrown into the Rhine. All agreed on the grace given to him to endure the fire. But as Wylie says, "When the martyr bowed his head at the stake, it was the 'infallible' Church that was vanquished".