Jan Hus was a late medieval Czech university master and popular preacher who was condemned at the Council of Constance and burned at the stake as a heretic in 1415. Thanks to his contemporary ...influence and his posthumous fame in the Hussite movement and beyond, Hus has become one of the best known figures of the Czech past and one of the most prominent reformers of medieval Europe as a whole. This definitive biography now available in English opposes the view of Hus that saw his importance primarily as a martyr, subsequently invoked by a variety of religious, national, and political groups eager to appropriate his legacy. Looking for Hus’s significance in his own time, this treatment tells a story of a late medieval intellectual who—through his dedicated pursuit of what he understood as his mission—generated conflict and eventually brought execution upon himself. By investigating 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 is original in structure and purpose. Each chapter takes a major event in Hus’s life as a starting point for a broader discussion of crucial problems connected to his career and the controversies he generated. How did these specific events contribute to Hus’s own convictions? By suggesting parallels to and departures from other late medieval figures and events in Europe, the book liberates Hus from a narrow and nationalist Czech historiography and places him squarely in a broader European context, showing a significance that transcended Czech borders. From a number of different vantage points, it raises a central question critical to understanding the later Middle Ages: why was a sincere ecclesiastical reformer condemned by a church council committed to reform itself?
A Companion to Jan Hus offers in eleven substantial essays authored by specialized researchers from four countries an account of the life, work, thought and commemoration of Jan Hus (+ 1415), an ...important Czech theologian, reformer and martyr.
In early fifteenth-century Prague, disagreements about religion
came to be shouted in the streets and taught to the laity in the
vernacular, giving rise to a new kind of public engagement that
would ...persist into the early modern era and beyond. The reforming
followers of Jan Hus brought theological learning to the people
through a variety of genres, including songs, poems, tractates,
letters, manifestos, and sermons. At the same time, university
masters provided the laity with an education that enabled them to
discuss contentious issues and arrive at their own conclusions,
emphasizing that they held the freedom to make up their own minds
about important theological issues. This marketplace of competing
religious ideas in the vernacular emerged in Bohemia a full hundred
years before the Reformation.
In Preachers, Partisans, and Rebellious Religion ,
Marcela K. Perett examines the early phases of the so-called
Hussite revolution, between 1412, when Jan Hus first radicalized
his followers, and 1436, the year of the agreement at the Council
of Basel granting papal permission for the ritual practice of the
Utraquist, or moderate Hussite, faction to continue. These were
years during which the leaders of competing reform movements needed
to garner the laity's support and employed the vernacular for that
purpose, translating and simplifying basic theological arguments
about the Bible, the church's ritual practice, and authority in the
church. Perett illustrates that the vernacular discourse, even if
it revolved around the same topics, was nothing like the Latin
debates on the issues, often appealing to emotion rather than
doctrinal positions. In the end, as Preachers, Partisans, and
Rebellious Religion demonstrates, the process of
vernacularization increased rather than decreased religious
factionalism and radicalism as agreement about theological issues
became impossible.
This book reconsiders Jan Hus, the late medieval Bohemian priest who was burned at the stake six hundred years ago. This revisionist examination of heresy and religious and social reform in late ...medieval Europe explores his role and legacy as a priest and reformer in Prague and challenges prevailing views about Hus and the interpretation of his life and thought.
In early fifteenth-century Prague, disagreements about religion came to be shouted in the streets and taught to the laity in the vernacular, giving rise to a new kind of public engagement that would ...persist into the early modern era and beyond. The reforming followers of Jan Hus brought theological learning to the people through a variety of genres, including songs, poems, tractates, letters, manifestos, and sermons. At the same time, university masters provided the laity with an education that enabled them to discuss contentious issues and arrive at their own conclusions, emphasizing that they held the freedom to make up their own minds about important theological issues. This marketplace of competing religious ideas in the vernacular emerged in Bohemia a full hundred years before the Reformation.In Preachers, Partisans, and Rebellious Religion, Marcela K. Perett examines the early phases of the so-called Hussite revolution, between 1412, when Jan Hus first radicalized his followers, and 1436, the year of the agreement at the Council of Basel granting papal permission for the ritual practice of the Utraquist, or moderate Hussite, faction to continue. These were years during which the leaders of competing reform movements needed to garner the laity's support and employed the vernacular for that purpose, translating and simplifying basic theological arguments about the Bible, the church's ritual practice, and authority in the church. Perett illustrates that the vernacular discourse, even if it revolved around the same topics, was nothing like the Latin debates on the issues, often appealing to emotion rather than doctrinal positions. In the end, as Preachers, Partisans, and Rebellious Religion demonstrates, the process of vernacularization increased rather than decreased religious factionalism and radicalism as agreement about theological issues became impossible.
John Hus Spinka, Matthew
2017, 2017., 20170314, 1968, 2017-03-14, Letnik:
5053
eBook
In this biography the author extends our understanding of the personality and work of the man he has characterized as "essentially a reformer whose ideal was the pure church." Since 1915, the date of ...the last similar study of Hus, a great deal of new information has become available, especially in the Czech language. Professor Spinka has based his study on these new materials and on critical works about Hus. He has also abstracted Hus' writings, in Latin and in Czech, thereby clarifying what Hus taught.
Originally published in .
ThePrinceton Legacy Libraryuses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
"The book presents Hus’s views on the last things in the way the indivisible whole of his work and life teaches us. It draws on a content, linguistic, and literary-historical analysis of Hus’s ...selected works, especially his Latin sermons and his correspondence. Moreover, it takes into account his other works as well as the production of other relevant authors, especially Milíč of Kroměříž, Matěj of Janov, and John Wycliffe. It thus presents Hus’s eschatology in a wider context of church reformation."
