2. John Huss, the Bohemian Reformer.

NEXT after these reformers, or men inspired with the spirit of reform, came the individual through whose instrumentality it was that the more general and violent movement for which the way had thus been prepared broke forth in Bohemia.

He

John Huss was born, on the 6th of July, 1369, at Hussinetz, a Bohemian village lying within the circle of Prachim and towards the borders of Bavaria. Descended from a poor family, he was early inured to labour and deprivation, and thus laid the foundation for those Christian virtues which afterwards distinguished him. studied philosophy and theology at the university of Prague. This university, it is true, was a seat of churchly orthodoxy: but at the same time the antagonistic tendencies of two different nationalities seem already to have begun there gradually to unfold themselves-the strict church tendency of the Germans, as opposed to the more liberal one of the Bohemians: the teacher of Huss, Stanislaus of Znaim, belonging to the more liberal party, as we shall hereafter see. In the year 1396, Huss received his master's degree, and began himself to lecture, at the university, in the year 1398. A man, however, of his Christian seriousness and deep-seated piety, must certainly have felt himself shocked and repelled by the worldly lives of the degenerate Bohemian clergy and monks, and driven, in this way, into a more confirmed habit of communing with himself and seeking after God. We have seen indeed how, ever since the times of John Militz, an opposition had been springing up between the great majority of worldly priests and a smaller company earnestly devoted to their holy vocation and to the cause of God among the Bohemian clergy. have seen how Militz gave birth to a tendency that connected itself more closely with the New Testament, and how, in particular, Matthias of Janow directed attention to the apostolical church, and to a reform after the pattern of that church. Huss could not have remained unaffected by such influences. Between the two parties, then already struggling with each other in Bohemia, he must soon have

We

made his choice. The influence of Matthias of Janow's writings on his direction as a theologian is not to be mistaken. A circumstance which had much to do in moulding the religious character of Huss, and in beating the path for his active labours as a reformer, was his call to discharge the spiritual office in a sphere where he could obtain a more intimate knowledge of the religious needs of the people, and was brought into more immediate and living contact with them. In the year 1391, John of Milheim, a member of the royal council of Bohemia, and Creutz, a merchant (the latter of whom gave the real estate, a house which belonged to him, for the object), associated for the purpose of founding a chapel, to be devoted particularly to the preaching of the gospel in the vulgar tongue, for the benefit of the people. We have an example, here, of that practical Christian spirit which, since the time of Militz's labours, had been awakened among the laity in Bohemia, and to the existence of which Matthias of Janow bore his testimony, as we have seen. This spirit is also evidenced, in a remarkable manner, in the original title-deed of the foundation, which runs as follows: "The merciful God, who in the seed of his word has left behind him a provision for them that fear him, so ordered it, by the institutions of the fathers, that the preaching of God's word should not be bound, it being the freest as it is the most profitable act for the church and her members ;" and then, after appealing for proof to Christ's words, the founder goes on to say: "For had he not bequeathed to us the seed of God's word and of holy preaching, we should have been like unto Sodom and Gomorrah. Christ moreover had given commission to his disciples, when he appeared to them after his resurrection, to preach the word, so as to preserve constantly in the world the living memory of himself. But since all his actions are doctrines to them that truly believe on him, he (the founder) had carefully considered that the city of Prague, though possessing many places consecrated to the worship of God and used for a variety of purposes connected with that worship, was still destitute of a place devoted especially to preaching; but preachers, particularly in the Bohemian tongue, were under the disagreeable necessity of strolling about for this purpose, to

houses and corners; therefore the founder endowed a chapel consecrated to the Innocents, and named 'Bethlehem," or the House of Bread, for the use of the common people, that they might be refreshed with the bread of holy preaching.* Over this church a preacher was to be placed as rector, whose special duty it should be, to hold forth the word of God, on every Sunday and festival day, in the Bohemian tongue. It is a proof of the high reputation in which Huss already stood, and of the expectations excited by the peculiar bent of his religious character, that in the year 1401 he should be appointed the preacher over this foundation. His sermons, glowing with all that fervour of love from which they proceeded, and backed up by a pious, exemplary life, coupled with gentle and amiable manners, made a powerful impression. A little com

munity gathered around him, of warm and devoted friends; and a new Christian life started forth, from him, among the people. He became more intimately acquainted, as a curer of souls to the lower class of the people, with the corrupting influence of a religion reduced entirely to a round of outward ceremonies, and of the superstition which gave countenance and support to immorality, and was thus led to attack the sources of so much mischief, to dwell with increasing earnestness upon the essence of a practical Christianity, bringing forth its fruits from a principle seated in the heart, and to rebuke with emphatic severity the prevailing vices. So long as he chiefly attacked the corruption among the laity, he was left unmolested. The new archbishop of Prague, Zbynek of Hasenburg, appointed to that office in the year 1403, was not himself, by any means, a man of purely spiritual bent, but one accustomed to mingle freely in

* Quam Bethlehem, quod interpretatur domus panis, censui appellandam hac consideratione, ut ibidem populus communis et Christi fideles pane prædicationis sanctæ refici debeant. See Pelzel, Account of the Life of King Wenceslaus, Prague, 1788; Document No. 81, p. 103.

t Words of the Record of foundation respecting his duties: Ut dictus capellanus ad sonum campanum diebus singulis ab ecclesia celebribus mane et facto prandio, et tempore adventus et quadragesimæ mane tantum horis solitis, et prout in aliis ecclesiis prædicari est consuetum, verbum Dei communi populo civitatis in vulgari Bohemico sit ad prædicandum astrictus. P. 105.

secular affairs, and even to take a part in warlike enterprises; yet he was opposed to ecclesiastical abuses, and to the superstition therewith connected. He was desirous of introducing a stricter discipline into his diocese, and he must have had some knowledge of Huss, and have esteemed him as a zealous reformer; for in entering upon his duties as archbishop, he invited Huss to give him direct information of all the abuses which came under his personal observation; or, if he should not happen to be in Prague, to inform him by letter. Accordingly he availed himself of the assistance and advice of Huss in an important transaction which took place soon after his entrance upon office, the object of which was to suppress a certain superstition and the abuses which had grown out of it. The matter was of this sort: at Wilsnack, in the district of Priegnitz, a church had been destroyed by a knight some time in the fourteenth century. Part of a stone altar had been left standing. In one of its cavities were found three wafers, coloured red, as if with blood; a phenomenon the like of which has often occurred from the earliest times, and which has as often, under various religions, been construed into the miraculous ; but a phenomenon satisfactorily explained by more recent investigations into natural causes, it being now well known that bread and similar substances, long exposed to moisture, are wont to be covered with an animal product, the constituent parts of which are discernible only under the microscope, but which to the naked eye bears a close resemblance to blood.† But in these times, the remarkable appearance was regarded as a symbol of the blood of

*This is evident from a letter written by Huss to this archbishop at the time when a rupture had already taken place between the two men, in which he adverts to the invitation then given to him. His words are Sæpissime reitero, qualiter in principio vestri regiminis mihi pro regula paternitas vestra instituerat, ut quotiescunque aliquem defectum erga regimen conspicerem, mox personaliter aut in absentia per literam defectum hujusmodi nuntiarem. This fragment of the letter was first published by the Bohemian historian, Palacky, in his History of Bohemia, III. 1, p. 216.

† See the extract from Ehrenberg's paper on the Monas prodigiosa in the Monthly Report of the Academy of Sciences, in Berlin, for October, 1848.