In the first half of the 15th century (1419 - 1434), central Europe was shocked by a bloody fierce civil war between the forces of the German aristocracy (Holy Roman Empire of the German nation), supported by the Catholic clergy, and the rebellious Czech popular movement. These events went down in history as the Hussite Wars.
The reason that provoked the popular uprising of the Czechs was the execution of a professor at the University of Prague, a preacher, philosopher and religious reformer, Jan Hus. These events have gone down in history forever. The name of Jan Hus and the Hussite Wars became not only a banner of the military events of those years, but also a symbol of the national liberation struggle of the Czech people. The preacher himself was recognized as one of the main national heroes of the Czech Republic. A brief biography of Jan Hus will be told to the reader in an article.
Biography
As a short biography testifies, Jan Hus was supposedly born in 1369 in the south of the Czech Republic, in the town of Gusinets (from where he got his name) in a poor peasant family. Hus's parents wanted to ensure their children a worthy existence, and in those days peasants were given the opportunity only by a career in the clergy. Little Yan was sent to school in the town of Prokhatitsy, an hour's walk from Gusinets, where he studied grammar, rhetoric, dialectics and some natural sciences. At the age of 18, Jan went with her mother to Prague and entered the University of Prague at the Faculty of Liberal Arts (the faculty of theology was much more expensive).
In 1396, Gus received a master's degree and remained in the position of teacher. The main theme of his teaching career, he selects the works of John Wycliffe - the English theologian and forefather of the Lollard movement and Protestantism, accused by the Roman Church of heresy. The teachings of Jan Hus criticize the wealth of the church and the absolute authority of the Pope. The work of Wycliffe, the discussions of which were unfolding at the seminars, had a key influence on Hus's mind, redirecting his view towards reformism and criticism of the vices of church leaders and clergy. In 1402, Hus became rector of the University of Prague and dean of the Faculty of Arts under King Wenceslas IV.
The beginning of the preaching
According to a brief biography, in 1401, Jan Hus got the opportunity to preach in the famous chapel - the Bethlehem Chapel in Prague, which seats up to three thousand people. There he began to conduct his rather harsh sermons criticizing the church, which attracted the attention of both crowds of sympathetic parishioners and church leaders who saw him as an increasingly dangerous opponent.
Jan Hus, being a man of deep faith, never renounced the bosom of the Catholic Church, considered himself a member and a devoted servant, but also considered it his duty to criticize the clergy for moving away from the true teachings of Christ - for lying, debauchery, privilege, splendor and distance from common people, calling the only source of truth only Scripture, thus establishing a separation between God and the institution of the church, which is not protected from the vices of its ministers. He denounced the adultery that occurred in the highest hierarchal circles, questioned the authenticity of the relics, which were the pillar of the influence of the church. So, he made a bold statement that "if you collect all the tibia of St. Brigitte, it turns out that she was a centipede." Following Wycliff's example, Gus criticized the idea of ​​transubstantiation - a communion rite in which the bread and wine consumed by the congregation turned into the flesh and blood of Christ.
Hus Ideas
Jan Hus was a bright and charismatic preacher who knew how to fill the whole Bethlehem chapel with listeners and penetrate the consciousness of every person to such an extent that some threw off jewelry from the shame of wealth. Indulgences - documents for the remission of sins sold by the church, he considered a vice of simony and clear evidence of the greed of clergy (although he, in his student years, acquired indulgence with his last money, which indicates a profound subsequent transformation of beliefs).
Also Jan Hus (a brief biography of this confirmation) fought against the dominance of the German language, science and theology, advocating the prevalence of Czech culture and conducting sermons in the Czech language, thereby supporting the Czech national identity and anticipating the idea of ​​independence from the German aristocracy.
The tragic outcome of Hus
Thus, Gus’s ideas about the church’s lack of the role of the sole representative of the will of God on earth, about the depravity and greed of the clergy, mired in luxury and keeping people away, including through the language and mystery of the mysteries incomprehensible to people, about viciousness and falsity a number of spiritual practices and relics and cultural oppression of the Czech people made him one of the main enemies of the Vatican in the entire history of the Roman Catholic Church and, despite loyalty to him from King Wenceslas, led to a tragic outcome.
The pursuit
Since 1408, a number of punitive measures have been applied against Hus from the Prague archbishop, supported by Pope Alexander V: several friends of Hus were arrested for heresy, his sermons were forbidden, books were burned (including the decree to burn the books of John Wycliffe). However, ordinary people stood up for Hus, asking again to allow his sermons, and even part of the aristocracy of Bohemia (Southern Bohemia), sending requests to the Pope to allow him to continue to be a preacher. However, these attempts were unsuccessful. For two years he had to wander around the Czech Republic, where he continued to uphold the ideas of the reformation of the church and wrote his famous work “On the Church”, in which he criticized the absolute power of the Pope and the Church’s tendency to accumulate wealth.
The trial of Jan Hus
The treatise was the last straw in the chastity of clergy, and he was summoned to a church court in the German city of Konstanz. But, even having a security certificate, he could not get to the court and was imprisoned in Gottlieben prison, from where he was only released after two and a half months. At the end of 1414, Jan Hus appeared in court, where he did not deny his words, even despite the requests of Emperor Sigismund I and the threat of the death penalty.
Hero's execution
On July 6, 1415, the sentence was carried out. Jan Hus was burned as a heretic on a bonfire on Konstanz Square with the Bible, which he translated into Czech. In front of the crowd gathered in the square, he sang “Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me,” and answered the guards trying to stop him: “I am the Goose, and after me the Swan will come” (thereby predicting the arrival of Martin Luther). The relics of John Wycliff were later burnt.
Effects
The death of the national hero caused numerous protests against the Catholic Church throughout the Czech Republic. People gathered for the sermons of the followers of Hus, and the number of their supporters grew everywhere. In 1419, a Hussite uprising broke out in Prague: they smashed monasteries and killed priests, and the city fell into their power. Rebellions broke out in all cities of the Czech Republic, which served as the beginning of the Hussite wars. The center of the rebels was the city of Tabor, laid at the mountain of the same name, where the Hussites held their sermons.
Against the Hussite heretics, the Church declared a crusade. In 1420, the first crusade to Prague was defeated by an army of taborites led by an experienced warrior and commander, a national hero of the Czech people - Jan iĹľka, and the whole Czech Republic fell into the power of the Hussites. However, among them began a split into several parties - taborites that did not recognize the church at all; orphans (followers of Zizka), who recognized the church, but denied any compromises with the Germans, and the cup-holders who fought for Orthodoxy.
In total, five crusades were sent against the Hussites, which were unsuccessful. However, countless wars against the forces of all of Europe (with the exception of England and France) and "party-to-party" clashes drained the Czech Republic, and in 1436 it adopted a peace agreement on the terms of the emperor Sigismund. Hussite wars ended.
Memory and heritage
Jan Hus remained in history as a man under whose banners the small, inconspicuous Czech Republic entered central Europe, opposing all the forces of the Catholic establishment, and Hus himself became one of the key figures preceding the church reformation.
To this day, in the Czech Republic he is revered as one of the main national heroes who contributed to the struggle for the rights and identity of the Czech people against German oppression. Museums and streets are named after him. And on July 6, 1915, on the Old Town Square in Prague, a monument was erected to him dedicated to the 500th anniversary of the execution. In addition, since 1918, the Czechoslovak Hussite Church has been operating in the Czech Republic, with about 100,000 adherents to date. The day of the burning of Jan Hus was declared a public holiday of the Czech Republic as a memorial day for the master.
In 1999, Pope John Paul II deeply regretted the execution of Hus, but refused to canonize him, because he adhered to the views of the heretic Wycliffe.
In addition to the political, religious and ideological heritage, his name is honored in philological circles for his contribution to the development of the Czech national literary language, in particular, for the authorship of the work “Czech Spelling”.