Patron Saint and Prophet

OXFORD STUDIES IN HISTORICAL THEOLOGY

Series Editor
David C. Steinmetz, Duke University

Editorial Board
Irena Backus, Université de Genève
Robert C. Gregg, Stanford University
George M. Marsden, University of Notre Dame
Wayne A. Meeks, Yale University
Gerhard Sauter, Rheinische Friedrich-​W ilhelms-​Universität Bonn
Susan E. Schreiner, University of Chicago
John Van Engen, University of Notre Dame
Geoffrey Wainwright, Duke University
Robert L. Wilken, University of Virginia

TEACHING THE REFORMATION SHAPERS OF ENGLISH CALVINISM, 1660–​1714

Ministers and Their Message in Basel, 1529–​1629 Variety, Persistence, and Transformation
Amy Nelson Burnett Dewey D. Wallace, Jr.
THE PASSIONS OF CHRIST IN HIGH-​M EDIEVAL THE BIBLICAL INTERPRETATION OF WILLIAM
THOUGHT OF ALTON
An Essay on Christological Development Timothy Bellamah, OP
Kevin Madigan
MIRACLES AND THE PROTESTANT
GOD’S IRISHMEN IMAGINATION
Theological Debates in Cromwellian Ireland The Evangelical Wonder Book in Reformation Germany
Crawford Gribben Philip M. Soergel
REFORMING SAINTS THE REFORMATION OF SUFFERING
Saint’s Lives and Their Authors in Germany, 1470–​1530 Pastoral Theology and Lay Piety in Late Medieval and Early
David J. Collins Modern Germany
Ronald K. Rittgers
GREGORY OF NAZIANZUS ON THE TRINITY
AND THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD CHRIST MEETS ME EVERYWHERE
In Your Light We Shall See Light Augustine’s Early Figurative Exegesis
Christopher A. Beeley Michael Cameron
THE JUDAIZING CALVIN MYSTERY UNVEILED
Sixteenth-​Century Debates over the Messianic Psalms The Crisis of the Trinity in Early Modern England
G. Sujin Pak Paul C. H. Lim
THE DEATH OF SCRIPTURE AND THE RISE OF GOING DUTCH IN THE MODERN AGE
BIBLICAL STUDIES Abraham Kuyper’s Struggle for a Free Church in the Netherlands
Michael C. Legaspi John Halsey Wood Jr.
THE FILIOQUE CALVIN’S COMPANY OF PASTORS
History of a Doctrinal Controversy Pastoral Care and the Emerging Reformed Church, 1536-​1609
A. Edward Siecienski Scott M. Manetsch
ARE YOU ALONE WISE? THE SOTERIOLOGY OF JAMES USSHER
Debates about Certainty in the Early Modern Church The Act and Object of Saving Faith
Susan E. Schreiner Richard Snoddy
EMPIRE OF SOULS HARTFORD PURITANISM
Robert Bellarmine and the Christian Commonwealth Thomas Hooker, Samuel Stone, and Their Terrifying God
Stefania Tutino Baird Tipson
MARTIN BUCER’S DOCTRINE OF JUSTIFICATION AUGUSTINE, THE TRINITY, AND THE CHURCH
Reformation Theology and Early Modern Irenicism A Reading of the Anti-​Donatist Sermons
Brian Lugioyo Adam Ployd
CHRISTIAN GRACE AND PAGAN VIRTUE AUGUSTINE’S EARLY THEOLOGY OF IMAGE
The Theological Foundation of Ambrose’s Ethics A Study in the Development of Pro-​Nicene Theology
J. Warren Smith Gerald Boersma
KARLSTADT AND THE ORIGINS OF THE PATRON SAINT AND PROPHET
EUCHARISTIC CONTROVERSY Jan Hus in the Bohemian and German Reformations
A Study in the Circulation of Ideas Phillip N. Haberkern
Amy Nelson Burnett
READING AUGUSTINE IN THE REFORMATION
The Flexibility of Intellectual Authority in Europe, 1500–​1620
Arnoud S. Q. Visser
Patron Saint and Prophet
Jan Hus in the Bohemian and German Reformations

PH I LLI P N. H A BER K ER N

1
 1
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Library of Congress Cataloging-╉in-╉Publication Data

Haberkern, Phillip N.
Patron saint and prophet: Jan Hus in the Bohemian and German Reformations /
Phillip N. Haberkern.
pages cm. — (Oxford studies in historical theology)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–0–19–028073–4 (hardback: alk. paper)â•… 1.╇ Hus, Jan, 1369?–1415.â•…
2.╇ Church history—Middle Ages, 600-1500.â•… I.╇ Title.
BX4917.H28 2015
284′.3—dc23
2015013967

1╇3╇5╇7╇9╇8╇6╇4╇2
Printed by Sheridan, USA
For Rachel and Roy, we miss you.
 CONTENTS

Acknowledgmentsâ•… ix
Figuresâ•… xi

Introductionâ•… 1

1. The Saintâ•… 21

2. The Founderâ•… 68

3. The Patronâ•… 104

4. The Apocalyptic Witnessâ•… 149

5. The Prophetâ•… 188

6. The Catholicâ•… 218

7. The Exemplarâ•… 248

Conclusionâ•… 292

Bibliographyâ•… 299
Indexâ•… 329

vii
 ACK NOW L EDG M EN TS

Writing these acknowledgments seems like a good way to close the circle on
this book. It is a chance to finally write its very first pages, while tracking back
from its present shape to its pre-​h istory. It is a chance to be mindful and an oppor-
tunity to offer praise to all of the teachers and colleagues who make research in
the humanities both possible and deeply rewarding. I would begin by thanking
Oxford University Press, and particularly Cynthia Read and Gina Chung, for
shepherding this book to completion. The have been patient and professional, and
I appreciate their ongoing support. I am grateful as well to David Steinmetz, the
editor of this series, for his interest in this project, and to the anonymous readers
who provided much needed critical feedback. I also owe my thanks to Christine
Axen, who served as a second pair of critical eyes on the manuscript while compil-
ing the index. All in all, everyone that I worked with on the production process
has gone out of their way to make this the best book possible.
I am also grateful for the institutional support that I have received over the last
decade that has enabled the completion of this work. The Graduate School of Arts
and Sciences and Corcoran Department of History at the University of Virginia;
the Center for the Study of Religion and Department of Religion at Princeton;
and the History Department and Center for the Humanities at Boston University-​
these institutions have provided me with both vibrant intellectual communities
and the practical support that made this research possible. I also owe a debt to the
Hussite and Evangelical Theological Faculties of Charles University, as well as
the Czech Fulbright Commission, who supported the year of research in Prague
that lies at the heart of this book. In all of these places I have been lucky enough
to work with and learn from a host of talented scholars who provided feedback
on this project and wonderful memories, including: Duane Osheim, Augustine
Thompson, OP, Jason Eldred, Bob Jackson, Rob Rakove, Anne Throckmorton,
Jessica Delgado, Annie Blazer, Manu Radhakrishnan, John Gager, Barbara
Diefendorf, Jon Roberts, James Winn, the members of the Princeton Religion
and Culture workshop, the BUCH fellows from 2013 to 2014, and my peers in the

ix
x Contents

IACS Generations in Dialogue Program. All of these people have improved this
project with their insights and ultimately enabled it to be finished, and for that
I am grateful. I also owe special thanks to Michael Van Dussen and Pavel Soukup,
fellow travelers in the realm of Bohemian history who have provided crucial help,
criticism, and friendship during the writing of this book.
I have been privileged throughout my academic life to have found mentors who
both introduced me to the people and places that are the center of my research
and taught me how to think critically and write clearly (I hope) about them. Kevin
Madigan, Beverly Kienzle, Howard Louthan, and Bernie McGinn have all been
generous with their expertise, advice, patience, and time, and I thank them. But
the two people to whom I owe the most are David Holeton and Erik Midelfort.
David was my initial guide in Prague-​as he was for many Anglophone students
interested in Bohemian history-​and he has been such a help in matters arcane
and mundane for so many years that I can only offer him my deepest thanks and
appreciation. And to Erik I owe even more, for teaching me how to be a historian.
Through his example as a teacher, his incredible intellectual range, his painfully
exacting standards as an editor, and his boundless curiosity and enthusiasm as
an interlocutor, he has made me a better scholar. Through his compassion dur-
ing times of personal loss and his support during the uncertainties of a fledgling
career, he has helped me to become a better person.
Finally, and most importantly, I want to thank my family. Although my kids,
Ellie and Brendan, certainly slowed the writing process behind this book, they
did make it much more fun. I also owe a real debt of gratitude to my mom for all
of the support that she has given us over the years, from Chapel Hill to Boston
to Baltimore to Charlottesville to Princeton and back to Boston. She has been
there every step of the way, and I am grateful. And my last words are for my wife
Danielle, who remains my better half in every way. Saying thank you seems totally
insufficient for all that you do for me, but I trust that you know that. So, I love you
and thank you nonetheless.
 FIGU R ES

1.1 Image from Corpus Christi Procession; Ulrich Richental, Chronik des
Konstanzer Konzils 1414–​1418, © National Library of the Czech Republic,
MS NKP VII A 18, f. 9r. (c. 1470).  45
1.2 Image from Corpus Christi Procession; Ulrich Richental, Chronik des
Konstanzer Konzils 1414–​1418, © National Library of the Czech Republic,
MS NKP VII A 18, f. 9v. (c. 1470).  46
1.3 Image of Jan Hus Being Degraded from Priestly Rank and Led to His
Pyre; Ulrich Richental, Chronik des Konstanzer Konzils 1414–​1418,
© National Library of the Czech Republic, MS NKP VII A  18, f.  11r.
(c. 1470).  47
1.4 Image of Jan Hus Being Burned, and the Deposition of His Remains;
Ulrich Richental, Chronik des Konstanzer Konzils 1414–​1418, © National
Library of the Czech Republic, MS NKP VII A 18, f. 11v. (c. 1470).  48
3.1 The Initial “S” with Sts. Hus, Stephen, and Lawrence; Smíškovský Gradual
(MS ONB cod. s.n. 2657), f. 285r. Copyright: ÖNB Vienna: Cod. 15.492
Mus, fol. 285r.  140
3.2 Hussites Battling Crusaders; Jena Codex (MS NM IV B 24), f.  56r.
Courtesy of the Collection of the National Museum, Prague, Czech
Republic.  143
3.3 Hus Preaching to the Laity; Jena Codex (MS NM IV B 24), f. 37v. Courtesy
of the Collection of the National Museum, Prague, Czech Republic.  144
4.1 Hus after His Condemnation; Iohannis Huss Locorum aliquot ex Osee et
Ezechiele, Unpaged front matter and A1r. ZCC.H9504.B525b, Houghton
Library, Harvard University.  179
4.2 Hus Preaching and Accused by Contemporary “Pharisees”; Processus
Consistorialis, A2v.–​
A 3r. Courtesy of the Chapin Library, Williams
College.  183

xi
xii Figures

4.3 Hus before the Secular Power; Processus Consistorialis, C3v.–​C4r.

Courtesy of the Chapin Library, Williams College.  184
4.4 The Execution of Jan Hus; Processus Consistorialis, D2r. Courtesy of
the Chapin Library, Williams College.  186
7.1 Matthias Flacius Illyricus; Historia et Monumenta, Volume 1, p.
a8v.  288
C.1 Hus Being Burned at the Stake; the Martinic Bible (MS KAVČR 1
TB 3), Fol. 11b © Library of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech
Republic.  293
C2 and C3 
Medallion of Jan Hus Produced in Nuremberg, c. 1530; By
Hieronymus Dietrich, Husitský Muzeum, Tábor, #N- Me 6362.  294
Patron Saint and Prophet
 Introduction

The Memory and History of St. Jan Hus

On July 6, 1415, the Bohemian preacher and religious reformer Jan Hus was
burned at the stake on the orders of the Hungarian king, Sigismund. Hus had
been condemned as a heretic by the ecumenical Council of Constance, accused
of promulgating false beliefs about the transubstantiation of the eucharist and
attacking the ecclesiastical hierarchy for its moral shortcomings. His execution
therefore reflected the definitive judgment of the highest secular and spiritual
authorities of the early fifteenth century, whose cooperation in this matter sought
to eliminate the growth of a deviant religious movement based in Prague. Such
coordinated actions between the Church and state had proven to be effective in
the past, and both Sigismund and the council fathers seemed certain that it would
do so again. And yet, Hus’s condemnation as a de jure heretic at the council did
not end the reform movement that he had led during the previous decade. Rather,
that movement transformed Hus into a de facto saint, interpreting his execution
as an act of diabolical injustice that legitimized, and even demanded, the estab-
lishment of an alternate church order that would oppose the persecution of God’s
people on Earth.
This book is an analysis of that process of transformation and its outcomes.
It tracks the development of Hus’s cult in the fifteenth-​century Czech lands and
within the nascent Lutheran church in the following century in order to under-
stand how the commemoration of this heretical saint helped to underwrite
the creation of churches that stood apart from, and in opposition to, the papacy in
Rome.1 Sermons, liturgical texts, popular songs, pamphlets, plays, history books, and

1
  A note on terminology: the Czech kingdom in the medieval and early modern periods com-
prised the territories of Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, and Upper and Lower Lusatia, with the elected
King of Bohemia being the highest political authority in the land. Given this political primacy,
Bohemia will be used throughout this book as a synecdoche for the entire Czech kingdom, while
the other territories will be referred to by name when they served as primary theaters of action. In
the period under consideration here, the Czech kingdom was primarily ruled by two dynasties: the

1
2 Introduction

visual art: Bohemian and German dissidents employed all of these media to celebrate
Hus’s life and death in the 150 years after his execution. The consistency with which
these commemorations were produced, as well as the sheer number of them, bears
eloquent witness to Hus’s continued importance among early modern oppositional
movements within Christendom. And while this multimedia campaign fundamen-
tally changed over time, most notably in response to the proliferation of print tech-
nology around the turn of the sixteenth century, both Hussite and Lutheran authors
maintained the centrality of Hus in their deeply subversive reinterpretation of the
past. In the emergent church history of both reformations, the story of Hus’s faith-
ful witness and patient suffering was understood as representative of the underlying
dynamics of a past that was characterized by the institutional church’s subversion
by diabolical forces and consequent persecution of true Christians. This essentially
tragic reading of the past also, however, offered hope for a radically different future
in which the reforms that emerged in the aftermath of Hus’s death foreshadowed his
successors’ purification of the church on Earth and the eschatological vindication of
those who had foretold this victory.
At the core of this book, then, is an attempt to understand how the reinterpreta-
tion of the past served as a mandate for religious revolution in the present during
the era of the European reformations. It is also a study of how the leaders of those
movements disseminated their new understanding of the past and how the shift-
ing contours of conflict—​both internal and external—​forced them to adapt both
the media and messages they employed to new political and religious realities. In
fifteenth-​century Bohemia, the sermons, songs, and liturgical texts that preserved
the memory of Hus encouraged the formation of local communities united by lan-
guage and the collective experience of worship. In periods of both war and peace,
Hussites and Utraquists turned to the memory of Hus as a touchstone of their
unique religious identity.2 Conversely, the wide dissemination of printed accounts
of Hus’s heresy trial and editions of his central writings in the sixteenth century

Luxembourgs (reigned 1310–​1437) and the Jagiellons (reigned 1471–​1526). Between the reign of
the Luxembourgs and Jagiellons, the kingdom was briefly ruled by Albert II of Austria (d. 1439),
his son Ladislas, called Posthumous (d. 1457), and Jiří of Poděbrady (d. 1471), the sole Czech
to reign. For a concise overview of the political makeup of the Czech kingdom, see:  Winfried
Eberhard, “Bohemia, Moravia, and Austria,” in The Early Reformation in Europe, ed. A. Pettegree
(New York: Cambridge UP, 1992), pp. 23–​4 8.
2
  Within the historiography on the Bohemian reformation, the distinction between the moni-
kers “Hussite” and “Utraquist” have generated considerable conflict. One camp of scholars has
rejected the term “Hussite” because it was primarily used by the Czech reformers’ enemies, while
the Czechs typically referred to themselves as either “communicants in both kinds” or simply
“faithful Czechs.” Conversely, another group of scholars has continued to use the term “Hussite,”
particularly to designate the movement for religious reform took shape and became militant in
the decades after Hus’s death, to draw attention to the centrality of Hus in the development of
the Bohemian reformation as a whole. In this book, “Hussite” will be used to refer to the move-
ment and body of religious thought that developed in the Czech lands up until the time of the
 Introduction 3

established a more diffuse, notional community of those who regarded Hus as a

forerunner and even prophet. Their primarily literary engagement with Hus served
as a foundation for the construction of a broader historical narrative that perceived
Hus as the last, crucial link in a chain of evangelical witnesses that stretched from
the time of Cain and Abel until their present day. This shift in the commemoration
of Hus was emblematic of broader transformations in the historical consciousness
of early modern thinkers, as the explosive growth of critical ecclesiastical historiog-
raphy, the revival of Roman legal scholarship, and the advent of humanist history
writing in Italy combined to alter fundamentally the ways in which people under-
stood the past.3 By focusing on the shifting commemorations of Jan Hus, this book
therefore seeks to illuminate the development of the first of these discourses and its
central role in the formation of Europe’s conflicted, confessionally diverse topogra-
phy in the sixteenth century.
The leaders of the Bohemian and German reformations did not put forth their
re-​readings of the recent Christian past unopposed. At every step of their com-
memorative campaigns, they engaged with Catholic authors who were as learned,
as familiar with the sources on Hus’s life and death, and as committed to propa-
gating their perception of his execution as were their interlocutors and opponents.
This book therefore attempts to give equal space to the Catholic intellectuals and
polemicists who not only responded to Bohemian and Lutheran claims about the
true meaning of the past, but also broke their own new ground in historical inter-
pretation in order to sever the ties that bound Hus to the groups who claimed
him as a patron. Indeed, it was the vitality and vitriol of the debate between these
camps that forced writers on Hus to elevate their standards of evidence and qual-
ity of arguments, as each side knew that its analyses would be critically dissected
by scholars of the opposite persuasion. An intensive examination of the struggle
surrounding the meaning of Hus’s death from 1415 until the mid-​sixteenth cen-
tury therefore presents an instructive view of how debates saturated with mili-
tant and even apocalyptic rhetoric could still yield highly nuanced, exhaustively

Council of Basel and the rapprochement between Prague and Rome that was effected there (from
1415 to 1436). The term “Utraquist” (which derives from the phrase “sub utraque specie” to describe
its eucharistic practice), is used to describe the institutional church that developed after this
period, at first with Catholic sanction and later in contradistinction to the universal Church. For
lively (and occasionally caustic) overviews of the naming debate in this field, see the rejection of
“Hussite” in: Zdeněk David, Finding the Middle Way: The Utraquists’ Liberal Challenge to Rome and
Luther (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2003), especially pp. xiii–​x iv and 1–​17;
contra the position most clearly articulated in: Thomas Fudge, Jan Hus: Religious Reform and Social
Revolution in Bohemia (New York: IB Tauris, 2010) especially pp. 147–​148. For an attempt to bal-
ance these views, see: Phillip Haberkern, “What’s in a Name, or What’s at Stake When We Talk
about ‘Hussites?’” History Compass 9 (2011): 791–​8 01.
3
  For an evocative account of these transformations, see: Anthony Grafton, What Was History?
The Art of History in Early Modern Europe (New York: Cambridge UP, 2007), especially ­chapter 1.
4 Introduction

researched, and eloquently argued positions on the foundations of religious

authority and its exercise within the Church.
Just as Bohemian and Lutheran commemorations of Hus emerged within spe-
cific, often agonistic intellectual contexts, so too does this book. A number of
scholars have examined both the process of saint-​making in late medieval Europe
and the development of a critical historical consciousness among early modern
thinkers in recent years, and their work has paved the way for this investigation.
By focusing on one man and his many transformations across two centuries and
two reformations, however, this book seeks to combine the insights of both fields
in order to see how the construction of a saint’s memory and its role in defining
religious communities evolved into the incorporation of that saint’s story into a
broader historical narrative. Regarding the cult of saints, scholars such as Gábor
Klaniczay, Aviad Kleinberg, Donald Prudlo, and Cecilia Gaposchkin have all
demonstrated how battles over local religious primacy, dynastic legitimacy,
and the contested definitions of heresy and orthodoxy led to varying forms of
liturgical veneration and institutional patronage for their respective saints.4
Additionally, outstanding recent work by early modern intellectual and cultural
historians has demonstrated how important, and even fundamental, historiog-
raphy was for religious groups’ self-​definition in the sixteenth century’s atmo-
sphere of contest and conflict. 5 This study, though, contextualizes the emergence
of church history as a constitutive religious discourse during “the Reformation”
itself by tracking the commemoration of one man who was central to that dis-
course back through time and situating it within the cultic practices and reli-
gious debates that had both defined and nearly destroyed central Europe during
the previous century.
Beyond these larger historiographical studies of how medieval saints’ cults
developed and how history writing evolved in early modern Europe, this book is

4
  Gábor Klaniczay, Holy Rulers and Blessed Princesses: Dynastic Cults in Medieval Central Europe,
trans. É. Pálmai (New  York:  Cambridge UP, 2002); Aviad Kleinberg, Flesh Made Word:  Saints’
Stories and the Western Imagination (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2008); Donald Prudlo, The Martyred
Inquisitor: The Life and Cult of Peter of Verona (d. 1252) (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2008); and Cecilia
Gaposchkin, The Making of Saint Louis:  Kingship, Sanctity, and Crusade in the Later Middle Ages
(Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2009).
5
 Particularly notable among this body of scholarship are:  Simon Ditchfield, Liturgy,
Sanctity, and History in Tridentine Italy:  Pietro Maria Campi and the Preservation of the Particular
(New York: Cambridge UP, 1995); Bruce Gordon, ed., Protestant History and Identity in Sixteenth-​
Century Europe (Brookfield, VT: Ashgate, 1996); Irena Backus, Historical Method and Confessional
Identity in the Era of the Reformation (1378–​1615) (Boston: Brill, 2003); Matthias Pohlig, Zwischen
Gelehrsamkeit und konfessioneller Identitätsstiftung: Lutherische Kirchen-​und Universalgeschichtsschreibung
1546–​1617 (Tübingen:  Mohr Siebeck, 2007); and the essays by Euan Cameron and Anthony
Grafton in: Simon Ditchfield et al., eds., Sacred History: Uses of the Christian Past in the Renaissance
World (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2012).
 Introduction 5

also constructed upon a number of foundational works on the commemoration

of Jan Hus. Research on the preservation of Hus’s memory within the Czech
religious context in general has remained strong throughout the last century,
while a host of more specific studies has also analyzed his role within Czech
sermons, songs, liturgical texts, and visual art. 6 The study of Hus within the
German reformation has also produced a raft of outstanding articles and book
chapters exploring the areas of both overlap and significant difference between
the Bohemian reformer and those Protestants who claimed him as a forerunner,
while also illuminating Hus’s role within the sixteenth-​century reformations’
burgeoning artistic and martyrological traditions.7 In the last generation, no
scholar has been more prolific or provocative regarding the role of Hus in the
religious landscape of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries than Thomas Fudge.
In three books dealing with the life, trial, and afterlife of Hus, as well as in his
earlier monograph on the broader cultural output of the Bohemian reformation,
Fudge has provided an expansive account of both the diverse motivations that
led people to create memorials to Hus and the wide array of media that they
employed to do so. 8
Without doubt, Fudge has uncovered and illuminated a remarkable corpus of
material by and about Hus in the course of his research, but two fundamental dif-
ferences separate his work from this book. The first is that this book is essentially
comparative, in that it ties the various commemorations of Hus very tightly to

6
  The classic account of Hus’s place within the religious landscape of the Bohemian reforma-
tion remains: František Bartoš, M. Jan Hus v Bohoslužbĕ a Úctě Církve Podobojí a v Podání Prvého Stoleti
po své Smrti (Prague: Nákladem Vlastním, 1924). More recent overviews of the scholarship on this
topic can be found in: David Holeton, “The Celebration of Jan Hus in the Life of the Churches,”
Studia Liturgica 25 (2005): 32–​59; and Pavlina Rychterová, “Jan Hus: Der Führer, Märtyrer und
Prophet,” in Das Charisma:  Funktionen und symbolische Repräsentationen, ed. P. Rychterová et  al.
(Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2008), pp. 423–​4 45. The relevant, more specific studies on the various
commemorative media employed in the cult of Hus are cited in the bodies of the chapters below.
7
  Again, the vast majority of these studies are cited in the relevant chapters below. Of particu-
lar importance concerning Hus’s centrality in sixteenth-​century religious thought and polemics
are: Scott Hendrix, “‘We Are All Hussites’? Hus and Luther Revisited,” ARG 65 (1974): 134–​161;
Robert Scribner, For the Sake of Simple Folk: Popular Propaganda for the German Reformation, 2nd ed.
(New York: Oxford UP, 1994), especially pp. 220–​224; Brad Gregory, Salvation at Stake: Christian
Martyrdom in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1999), pp. 62–​73; and Heiko Oberman,
“Hus and Luther: Prophets of a Radical Reformation,” in The Contentious Triangle: Church, State, and
University, ed. C. Pater and R. Petersen (Kirksville, MO: Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies,
1999), pp. 135–​166.
8
  These works comprise:  Thomas Fudge, The Trial of Jan Hus:  Medieval Heresy and Criminal
Procedure (New York: Oxford UP, 2013); idem, The Memory and Motivation of Jan Hus, Medieval Priest
and Martyr (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013); and idem, Jan Hus: Religious Reform and Social Revolution. See
also his first monograph: The Magnificent Ride: The First Reformation in Hussite Bohemia (Brookfield,
VT: Ashgate, 1998).
6 Introduction

the specific historical developments and debates that shaped the Bohemian and
Lutheran reformations. The second is that this book is ultimately, and a bit ironi-
cally, not really about Jan Hus at all. Rather, it is about the different people and
movements who looked to him as a symbol and adapted that symbol to suit their
specific, shifting needs. Fudge’s work, conversely, has rightly highlighted how
singular Hus’s life and trial were within the context of late medieval religion,
and how that singularity served as a call for remembrance among both Hus’s fol-
lowers and enemies. In the chapters that follow, though, that uniqueness will be
balanced and partially offset by how successful the leaders of the Bohemian and
Lutheran reformations were in embedding Hus within larger narrative frame-
works that depended on his exemplifying the underlying dynamics of Christian
history.

The Living Hus
Before analyzing these efforts to integrate Jan Hus into the larger histories of the
Bohemian and German reformations, it is first necessary to sketch out the con-
tours of his life and work as a scholar and popular preacher. This necessity derives
from two simple facts: first, that many of the characters, venues, and issues that
spurred the production of commemorative materials on Hus in the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries had direct parallels within his own biography; and second,
that Hus’s own writings (and the narration of the conflicts that had provoked
them) served as essential elements in the construction of Hus’s memory by both
his supporters and opponents.
Little is known of Jan Hus’s early life; he was born around 1370 in southern
Bohemia, began his university studies in Prague by 1390, and received his mas-
ter’s degree in 1396.9 What is more certain is that during his studies, Hus found
himself at the center of an intellectual ferment that had been brewing in Prague
for the previous three decades. The first volatile element in the intellectual and
spiritual life of the city derived from a reformist and increasingly eschatological
preaching tradition that had taken root with Emperor Charles IV’s patronage in the
1360s. This tradition, which was first embodied in the work of the Austrian court

9
  Biographies of Hus are legion, but among the most influential (especially in western lan-
guages) from the last fifty years are: Matthew Spinka, John Hus: A Biography (Princeton: Princeton
UP, 1968); Paul De Vooght, L’Hérésie de Jean Huss (Louvain: Publications universitaires de Louvain,
1975); Ernst Werner, Jan Hus:  Welt und Umwelt eines Prager Frühreformators (Weimar:  Verlag
H. Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1991); Peter Hilsch, Johannes Hus (um 1370–​1415): Prediger Gottes und Ketzer
(Regensburg: Verlag Friedrich Pustet, 1999); Fudge, Jan Hus: Religious Reform and Social Revolution;
and most recently: Pavel Soukup, Jan Hus (Stuttgart: Verlag W. Kohlhammer, 2014). See also the
collected essays in: O. Pavlicek and F. Šmahel, eds. A Companion to Jan Hus (Boston: Brill, 2015).
 Introduction 7

preacher Konrad Waldhauser (d. 1369) and later by the Czech preachers Milíč of
Kroměříž (d. 1374) and Matěj of Janov (d. 1393), was committed to battling the
corruption of the Christian Church from within.10 In his frequently copied Postilla,
Waldhauser railed at priestly false prophets who failed in their pastoral duties; Milíč
held up faithful preachers as the only hope against the Antichrist who had seduced
such priests; and Matěj held up Milíč as just the sort of preacher who was able to
speak with “the spirit and power of Elijah” and thus oppose the false Christians who
were destroying the Church.11
The reformers also offered more than words as an “antidote for apocalyptic
angst.”12 Milíč and Matěj in particular cultivated a eucharistic piety among their
audiences that demanded frequent reception of the body of Christ as a prophylac-
tic against diabolic temptation.13 Milíč also founded a quasi-​monastic community
called Jerusalem in 1372 at which reformed prostitutes, university students, and
pious laypeople could assemble to hear him preach and receive communion.14 And
while this community did not long survive its founder, two of Milíč’s supporters
founded a unique institution for vernacular preaching, the Bethlehem Chapel, in

10
  For a comprehensive and insightful analysis of the early development of the Prague reform
movement as a whole, see: Olivier Marin, L’archevêque, le maître et le dévot: Genèses du mouvement
réformateur pragois, Années 1360–​1419 (Paris:  Honoré Champion Éditeur, 2005). On the indi-
vidual reformers associated with the movement, see:  Jana Nechutová, “Konrád Waldhauser a
Myšlenkové Proudy Doby Karla IV,” SPFFBU B 26/​27 (1979–​1980): 51–​57; idem, “Raně reformní
prvky v ‘apologii’ Konráda Waldhausera,” SPFFBU E 25 (1980): 241–​2 48; Peter Morée, Preaching
in Fourteenth-​Century Bohemia: The Life and Ideas of Milicius de Chremsir (d. 1374) and His Significance
in the Historiography of Bohemia (Slavkov, CR: EMAN, 1999); Howard Kaminsky, “On the Sources
of Matthew of Janov’s Doctrine,” in Czechoslovakia Past and Present, ed. M. Rechcigl, Jr., vol. 2
(Paris: Mouton, 1968), pp. 1175–​1183; and Emil Valašek, Das Kirchenverständnis des prager Magisters
Matthias von Janow (1350/​55–​1393):  Ein Beitrag zur Geistesgeschichte Böhmens im 14. Jahrhundert
(Rome: FTPUL, 1971).
11
  This text was incorporated into Matěj’s magnum opus: Regulae Veteris et Novi Testamenti, 6
vols., ed. V. Kybal and J. Nechutová (Innsbruck: Sumptibus Librariae Universitatis Wagnerianae,
1908–​1993). His hagiography of Milíč is included in: Regulae Veteris, vol. 3, pp. 368–​381. On Matěj’s
biography of Milíč and its influence among the later Hussite movement, see: David Mengel, “A
Monk, a Preacher, and a Jesuit: Making the Life of Milíč,” BRRP 5, pt. 1 (2004): 33–​55; and Morée,
Preaching in Fourteenth-​Century Bohemia, pp. 42–​69.
12
  Thomas Fudge, “The Night of Antichrist:  Popular Culture, Judgment, and Revolution in
Fifteenth-​Century Prague,” CV 37 (1995): 33–​45, p. 34.
13
 On the centrality of frequent communion in fourteenth-​ century Prague, see:  Jana
Nechutová, “K Charakteru Eucharistie v České Reformaci,” SPFFBU B 18 (1971):  33–​4 4; and
David Holeton, La communion des tout-​petits enfants: Étude du mouvement eucharistique en Bohême vers
la fin du Moyen-​Âge (Rome: Edizioni Liturgiche, 1989), especially pp. 26–​33.
14
  On Jerusalem’s turbulent history, which was marked by conflict with the local religious
orders and parish churches, see:  David Mengel, “From Venice to Jerusalem and Beyond:  Milíč
of Kroměříž and the Topography of Prostitution in Fourteenth-​Century Prague,” Speculum
79 (2004): 407–​4 42. Cf. Marin, L’archevêque, pp. 455–​508.
8 Introduction

1391.15 This space was not a sacramental station (it served only as a space to hear
sermons and for the education of university students), but its survival and increasing
centrality within Prague’s religious landscape during the first decades of the fifteenth
century attested to the earliest Prague reformers’ legacy of linking sacramental piety
and the preached word to concrete spaces and discrete communities of people who
craved Christian communion, in the broadest sense of the word. In short, preach-
ers like Waldhauser, Milíč, and Matěj fostered a desire for religious reform that was
embodied in both the personal practices and communal life of the laity and upcom-
ing clerical leaders of Prague.
Underlying this desire was a fundamental belief that the institutional Church
and the “true” church composed of those people who were faithful to God were
not the same thing.16 In the last decade of the fourteenth century, this idea gained
greater philosophical and theological coherence when it became linked with the
doctrines of the Oxford theologian John Wyclif (d. 1384). Wyclif had espoused
a radically realist philosophy with potentially heretical eucharistic implications;
he also articulated a strictly predestinarian, Augustinian ecclesiology that under-
mined the church’s hierarchy by claiming that divine election was a prerequisite
for the legitimate exercise of religious authority.17 Prague academics had gained
access to Wyclif ’s ideas through copies of his works that were made by Czech stu-
dents traveling abroad, most notably after the marriage of the Bohemian princess
Anne to King Richard II of England.18 In the 1390s, the Czech masters and univer-
sity students in Prague enthusiastically adopted Wyclif ’s realist philosophy and
intellectual vocabulary.19 Within the context of Prague’s university, these ideas
provided Czech intellectual elites with a discourse that both distinguished them
from their German institutional rivals and translated extant ideas of reform into

15
  Otakar Odložilík, “The Bethlehem Chapel in Prague: Remarks on Its Foundation Charter,”
in Studien zur älteren Geschichte Osteuropas, ed. G. Stökl (Graz-​Cologne: Verlag Hermann Böhlaus,
1956), pp. 125–​141; and Thomas Fudge, “‘Ansellus Dei’ and the Bethlehem Chapel in Prague,” CV
35 (1993): 127–​161, p. 143.
16
  Karel Skalický, “Církev Kristova a Církev Antikristova v Teologii Matěje z Janova,” in Mistr
Matěj z Janova ve své a v naší Dobĕ, ed. J. Lášek and K. Skalický (Brno: L. Marek, 2002), pp. 47–​69.
17
 For an overview of Wyclif ’s ecclesiological thought and its impact in Bohemia, see:
R. R.  Betts, “English and Czech Influences on the Hussite Movement,” in idem, Essays in Czech
History (London: The Athlone Press, 1969), pp. 132–​159, especially pp. 156ff.; Anne Hudson, The
Premature Reformation: Wycliffite Texts and Lollard History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), espe-
cially c­ hapter 7; and Alessandro Conti, “Wyclif ’s Logic and Metaphysics,” in A Companion to John
Wyclif, ed. I. C. Levy (Boston: Brill, 2006), pp. 67–​125, especially pp. 67–​78.
18
  For an analysis of the ties between England and Bohemia at the end of the fourteenth cen-
tury, see:  Michael Van Dussen, From England to Bohemia:  Heresy and Communication in the Later
Middle Ages (New York: Cambridge UP, 2012), especially chs. 1–​3.
19
  The university in Prague, which had been founded by King Charles IV in 1348, was orga-
nized in four “nations,” three of which (the Saxon, Polish, and Bavarian) were dominated by
 Introduction 9

a rigorous academic language. It also served as an idiom of dissent that steeped a

generation of student priests in a heady brew of academic debate and the philo-
sophical critique of the institutional Church.20
Wyclif ’s assault on the Church emerged out of his understanding of the original
and fundamental nature of that institution. On the one hand, Wyclif looked back
to the primitive church as a template for its contemporary incarnation. According
to Wyclif, there was no evidence for the existence of the papacy or the curia in the
earliest centuries of Christian history, so these ranks represented an unnecessary
(or even diabolical) imposition on the apostolic community.21 On the other hand,
Wyclif ’s emphasis on predestination meant that neither church office nor partici-
pation in the sacraments could mark an individual as saved; rather, only God’s
decree could guarantee an individual’s ultimate salvation. Because of the lack
of visible signs that could differentiate the elect and those foreordained to dam-
nation, Wyclif rejected the Church’s ability to exercise authority. After all, how
could a damned individual who had been elected pope claim to possess domin-
ion over the body of Christ? Although this ecclesiological critique could easily
have been extended to worldly authorities, Wyclif theoretically maintained a high
opinion of secular powers as being capable of policing church officials, especially
regarding their sexual purity and avarice.22 This control, however, rarely worked
in reality, as secular authorities were susceptible to the influence of the Church
and seduction by the Antichrist. The people of God therefore often suffered perse-
cution and were forced to exist under the power of the Antichrist’s followers who
were entrenched in positions of secular and religious authority. 23

German-​speaking masters and students. The fourth, Bohemian, nation had little power in the
university, but the espousal of Wyclif ’s theology became the distinguishing characteristic of this
Czech-​speaking minority. On the role of Wyclifism in university politics, see: Katherine Walsh,
“Wyclif ’s Legacy in Central Europe in the Late Fourteenth and Early Fifteenth Centuries,” in
From Ockham to Wyclif, ed. A. Hudson and M. Wilks (New York: Blackwell, 1987), pp. 397–​417;
Anne Hudson, “From Oxford to Prague: The Writings of John Wyclif and His English Followers
in Bohemia,” The Slavonic and East European Review 75 (1997):  642–​657; and František Šmahel,
“Wyclif ’s Fortune in Hussite Bohemia,” in idem, Die Prager Universität im Mittelalter (Boston: Brill,
2007), pp. 467–​4 89.
20
  Marin in particular draws attention to the impact of the academic culture of disputation on
the leaders of the Prague reform. See: L’archevêque, pp. 111–​120.
21
  On the importance of apostolic models for the composition of ecclesiastical hierarchy,
see: Bernhard Töpfer, “Lex Christi, Dominium, und kirchliche Hierarchie bei Johannes Hus in
Vergleich mit John Wyklif,” in Zwischen Zeiten, pp. 157–​165, especially pp. 158–​159; and Betts,
“English and Czech Influences,” pp. 144ff.
22
  On the role of the secular power in Wyclif ’s ecclesiology, see: Howard Kaminsky, “Wyclifism
as Ideology of Revolution,” Church History 32 (1963):  57–​74, p.  62; and Hudson, Premature
Reformation, pp. 359–​367.
23
  On Wyclif ’s conception of the true church as an oppressed minority, see:  Vilém Herold,
“Wyklif als Reformer: Die philosophische Dimension,” in Zwischen Zeiten, pp. 39–​47; and Michael
10 Introduction

These ideas resonated with the notions of eschatological conflict that Milíč
and Matěj had inculcated among the clergy of Prague, and the synthesis of their
eschatological concerns with Wyclif ’s philosophical critique of the Church pre-
pared a generation of leaders for the expansion of Bohemian dissent. These early
thinkers also left behind a number of practical and institutional bequests that
their heirs took up. Frequent communion, sites for worship and preaching, and
the lionization of inspired “prophets” such as Milíč: these comprised the touch-
stones to which the Prague reform would consistently refer. Such practices and
places also allowed metaphysical categories such as “the true church” and “the
elect” to become linked with visible embodiments that existed in distinction to, if
among, the larger world of nominal, Catholic Christendom.
These disparate but complementary influences all coalesced in the first decade
of the fifteenth century in the person of Jan Hus, whose roles as a university teacher,
administrator, popular preacher, radical dissident, and martyr allowed him to
incorporate the totality of reforming ideals that had been percolating in and around
Prague into his ministry. It is certain, for instance, that Hus was exposed to Wyclif’s
philosophical writings, three of which he copied in 1398.24 These early autographs,
as well as Hus’s later dependence on Wyclif for his ecclesiological vocabulary, have
led many scholars to posit the Oxford professor’s primary (or even sole) influence
on Hus’s intellectual development. The fact that Hus often incorporated substan-
tial portions of Wyclif’s writings verbatim into his own texts without attribution,
along with Wyclif’s centrality in the university debates of Hus’s formative years,
seems to substantiate this argument.25 A  theory of sole Wyclifite dependence,
however, fails to recognize the impact of the earlier Prague reformers’ sacramental
piety and pastoral teaching on Hus, as well as the influence of Matěj of Janov’s own
realist ecclesiology.26 Indeed, Hus’s preaching and teaching consistently married

Wilks, “Wyclif and the Great Persecution,” in Wyclif: Political Ideas and Practice, Papers by Michael
Wilks, ed. A. Hudson (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2000), pp. 179–​2 03, especially pp. 198ff.
24
  Vilém Herold, “How Wyclifite Was the Bohemian Reformation?” BRRP 2 (1998): 25–​37, p. 34.
25
  Beginning with the publication of Johann Loserth’s massively influential Huss und Wiclif,
zur Genesis der hussitischen Lehre (Leipzig:  Gustav Freytag, 1884), much scholarly ink has been
spilled assessing the extent of Hus’s dependence on Wyclif. What began as a thinly veiled national-
ist argument over the originality of Bohemia’s reform between German and Czech scholars has,
since World War II, expanded into a more nuanced debate over scholarly practice and the nature
of intellectual influence in the late Middle Ages. For overviews of this lengthy debate, see: Herold,
“How Wyclifite?”; idem, “Wyclif ’s Ecclesiology and Its Prague Context,” BRRP 4 (2002): 15–​30;
and Alexander Patschovksy, “Ekklesiologie bei Johannes Hus,” in Lebenslehren und Weltenwürfe im
Übergang vom Mittelalter zur Neuzeit, ed. H. Boockman et al. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,
1989), pp. 370–​399. See also the fundamental work for the reorientation of this debate: De Vooght,
L’Hérésie de Jean Huss, pp. 85–​103.
26
 Jana Nechutová, “Matěj z Janova—​ M . Jan Hus?” Husitský Tábor, Supplementum 1
(Tábor: Sborník Husitského Muzea, 2001), pp. 71–​79.
 Introduction 11

Wyclif’s critique of the institutional Church to a pastoral orientation that focused

on the sacramental and moral lives of the laity and reflected the influence of the
reforming work of local figures like Waldhauser and Milíč.
This balance could be seen in Hus’s acceptance of the pulpit at Bethlehem
Chapel in March 1402, despite his election as the Dean of the Faculty of Arts at
Charles University in the previous year. The chapel could hold several thousand
people, and František Šmahel has estimated that Hus preached over 3,500 ser-
mons there between 1402 and 1412.27 These numbers suggest that Hus had the
ability both to reach a substantial number of Prague’s residents from his pulpit and
to maintain a nearly unmatched public visibility in the city. According to Olivier
Marin, Hus’s charismatic authority as a preacher and his popularity allowed him to
function as a tribune for the people of Prague—​a protector of the Czech plebs and
voice of political critique.28 Hus also petitioned the local parish church to allow
Bethlehem Chapel to become a sacramental station, and he incorporated the sing-
ing of vernacular hymns in worship services held there. Bethlehem Chapel con-
sequently became a place—​much as Jerusalem had been—​where the preached
word and the eucharist came together, along with the proclamation of a distinc-
tive communal identity through Czech singing.29 These innovations in the charter
of the chapel demonstrate that Hus was engaged in transforming his congrega-
tion there into a manifestation of his concept of an ideal body of true Christians.
Thus, although Hus the theologian espoused a strictly predestinarian ecclesiology
in accord with Wyclif, in which the Church was defined as the invisible body of the
elect, Hus the preacher mitigated these absolute distinctions and used ritual prac-
tices to constitute a visible embodiment of what he regarded as the true church. 30
Beyond attendance at Bethlehem and participation in communion, however,
Hus demanded more from his listeners; he expected that their participation
would be truly transformative and that his audience would adopt a new standard
of living in which good works and stringent morality were the necessary out-
comes of an individual’s membership among the elect. 31 Hus’s sermons therefore

27
  František Šmahel, “Literacy and Heresy in Hussite Bohemia,” in Heresy and Literacy, 1000–​
1530, ed. P. Biller and A. Hudson (New York: Cambridge UP, 1994), pp. 237–​254, p. 243.
28
 Marin, L’archevêque, p. 227.
29
  Ernst Werner, Welt und Umwelt, pp. 101–​104; Marin, L’archevêque, pp. 222–​223; and Enrico
Molnar, “The Liturgical Reforms of Jan Hus,” Speculum 41 (1966): 297–​303.
30
  On Hus’s adaptation of predestinatory ecclesiology due to pastoral imperatives, see: Jarold
Zeman, “Restitution and Dissent in the Late Medieval Renewal Movements:  the Waldensians,
the Hussites, and the Bohemian Brethren,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 44 (1976):
7–​27, p. 15; and Heiko Oberman, Forerunners of the Reformation: The Shape of Late Medieval Thought
(New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966), pp. 127–​129.
31
  On Hus’s emphasis on faith resulting in changed behavior and the living of a pure life,
see:  Ivana Dolejšová, “Eschatological Elements in Hus’s Understanding of Orthopraxis,” BRRP
4 (2002): 127–​141, especially p. 128.
12 Introduction

sought to encourage demonstrable changes in his audience’s behavior. In Ivana

Dolejšová’s words, out of love for the “lex Christi,” Hus’s listeners ought to adopt
the “vita Christi.”32 This terminology was significant. Although in the first decade
of the fifteenth century this invocation of imitating the life of Christ was predom-
inantly moral, it could also be employed to highlight suffering and persecution as
essential elements in the life of the individual Christian believer and community.
Hus understood that the requirements of following Christ could place believers
in opposition to cultural norms and the wishes of the higher authorities, so he
used his sermons as a vehicle for promoting perseverance and steadfastness as
primary virtues.
Throughout his preaching career, Hus combined his desire to reform the lives
of his lay listeners with an equal emphasis on the necessary melioration of the
clerical estate. Many of his sermons focused on the failings of his colleagues,
and during a particularly heated oration at a synod of the Prague clergy in 1407
Hus lambasted them for their lust, greed, hunger for power, and neglect of their
preaching office. 33 Referring to lax priests as “dumb dogs” for whom “death and
eternal damnation are prepared,” Hus ultimately compared them to Judas for
their failure to persevere in their calling and their inability to resist the Devil’s
temptation. 34 This language was especially pointed, but Hus voiced many simi-
lar critiques of the clergy during his tenure at the Bethlehem Chapel. And even
though Hus wanted to promote the reform of his clerical colleagues with these
words, his strident rhetoric and the uncompromising vision of reform alienated
many of them instead. Thus, in 1408 Hus entered into a period of nearly con-
stant conflict with the ecclesiastical authorities that would last until his death.
In June of 1408, the Archbishop of Prague, Zbyněk Zajíc of Hasenburk, and the
Prague synod passed a resolution forbidding any attacks on church authorities in
Czech sermons. 35 The archbishop also condemned Wyclif ’s sacramental theology
and forced the Bohemian nation of the university to condemn forty-​five articles
extracted from his writings. 36 Hus himself was charged with heretical Wyclifite

  Dolejšová, “Eschatological Elements,” p. 133. See also: Matthew Spinka, John Hus’ Concept of
32

the Church (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1966), pp. 43–​49.

33
  In Prague, such synodal sermons were a chance for local celebrity preachers speak to their
peers, and being chosen to deliver such a sermon was a substantial honor. Milíč, for instance,
delivered three of these sermons between 1364 and 1373. On the tradition of synodal preaching
in Prague, see:  Herold, “How Wyclifite?” pp.  27–​2 8. On Hus’s synodal preaching, see:  Anežka
Vidmanová, “Hus als Prediger,” CV 20 (1976): 65–​81. This sermon was printed in 1558 as: Jan Hus,
“Sermo Synodalis, Habitus in Die Lucae Evanglistae in Curia Archiepiscopi Pragensis,” in Historia
et Monumenta, vol. 2, pp. 32r–​36v.
34
  Hus, “Sermo Synodalis,” p. 32r.
35
 Spinka, Hus’ Concept of the Church, pp. 79ff.
36
  On the archbishop’s condemnation of these articles, which had been initially published and
condemned by the German nations of the university in 1403, see: Howard Kaminsky, A History of
 Introduction 13

beliefs before the archbishop, and the ubiquity of such charges prompted King
Wenceslas IV of Bohemia (d. 1419) to step in. 37
Wenceslas was concerned that his kingdom would be stained by a reputation
for heresy, so he exerted considerable pressure on the archbishop to declare his
subordinate clergy orthodox. In the following years, Wenceslas took a number of
additional steps to protect the reformers in Prague. For their part, a group of Czech
university masters led by Hus promoted the Wyclifite idea that the king could, and
even must, act as the protector of the church when the ecclesiastical hierarchy was
remiss in its duty. 38 The most (in)famous outcome of this alliance was the Kutná
Hora Decree of 1409. With this proclamation, King Wenceslas changed the con-
stitution of the university in Prague and raised the Czech nation to preeminence
within its hierarchy. This decision led to a mass exodus of German students and mas-
ters, which consequently established Prague’s university as a bastion of Wyclifite,
reformist thought. 39 In spite of the king’s support, though, the ecclesiastical cam-
paign against Hus and his allies continued apace. The archbishop suspended Hus
from preaching in 1409—​an order that Hus ignored—​and that led the archbishop
to bring heresy charges against him. This charge led in turn to the promulgation
of a papal bull in June of 1410 that prohibited preaching in private chapels within
the archdiocese of Prague.40 This order was clearly aimed at Bethlehem Chapel,
but Hus again ignored it. The archbishop therefore excommunicated Hus, and in
August Hus was ordered to appear before a papal commission that was investigat-
ing his heresy. But Hus disregarded this summons, largely because he could rely on
local political support that made enforcement of his excommunication impossible.
That support evaporated the following year over the issue of an indulgence. In
1411, the Pisan Pope John XXIII called a crusade against King Ladislas of Naples,
who was a supporter of the rival pope, Gregory XII. Hus, who did not oppose indul-
gences in principle, objected to both the calling of a crusade against a Christian

the Hussite Revolution (Los Angeles and Berkeley: U. of California Press, 1967), pp. 24–​25 and 61ff.
See also: Šmahel, “Wyclif ’s Fortune,” pp. 475–​477.
37
  For a concise biography of Wenceslas and an analysis of his attempt to limit this religious con-
troversy, see: František Bartoš, “Husův Král,” Jihočeský sborník historický 13 (1940): 1–​15, pp. 11–​13.
38
  Hus’s invocation of Wyclif on this matter has been analyzed in: Werner, Welt und Umwelt,
pp. 106–​107; and Töpfer, “Lex Christi.”
39
  On the Decree and its impact on the university, see: František Bartoš, “Příspevky k Dĕjinám
Karlovy University v Době Husově a Husitskě,” Sborník historický 4 (1956): 33–​70, especially pp.
33–​4 0; Ferdinand Seibt, “Johannes Hus und der Abzug der deutschen Studenten aus Prag 1409,”
in idem, Hussitenstudien: Personen, Ereignisse, Ideen einer frühen Revolution (Munich: R. Oldenbourg
Verlag, 1987), pp. 1–​15; and František Šmahel, “The Kuttenberg Decree and the Withdrawal of the
German Students from Prague in 1409: A Discussion,” in Die Prager Universität, pp. 159–​171.
40
  The text of the bull can be found in:  Documenta, pp.  374–​376. For a discussion of Hus’s
response to this papal decree, see: Hilsch, Johannes Hus, pp. 116–​120; and Fudge, The Trial of Jan
Hus, pp. 127–​134.
14 Introduction

king and the indulgence preachers’ methods. Early in 1412, he declared that the
pope had exceeded his authority and that, as a result, he had lost his authority to
command the obedience of true Christians.41 Wenceslas—​who had been granted
a substantial portion of the proceeds from the sale of indulgences—​demanded
that public opposition to the indulgence preachers stop, but Hus and other uni-
versity leaders refused. After a series of increasingly volatile university debates on
this issue, riots broke out and crowds attacked indulgence sellers in the summer of
1412. These popular demonstrations culminated on July 10, when three men named
Martin, Jan, and Stašek denounced indulgences during worship services in Prague
churches. In the wake of these disturbances, the three men were imprisoned by the
king and summarily executed. A great crowd assembled and bore their bodies to
Bethlehem Chapel, with the crowd singing “These Men Are Martyrs,” despite the
fact that they had been executed on the king’s orders.42
Although Hus maintained that he had not been in Prague on the day of
this procession, the perception that he had been its leader created an insuper-
able rift between him and the king. Wenceslas’s actions during the demonstra-
tions also alienated many of Prague’s preachers and residents, who came to see
him as a tyrannical oppressor of religious truth whose actions had created the
Prague reform’s first three martyrs. These martyrs were also indelibly linked with
Bethlehem Chapel, and this association, along with the celebration of holy death
within Bohemia, would become central elements in Hussite identity after 1415.
More proximately, the demonstrations also prompted Wenceslas to support the
promulgation of Hus’s excommunication. With the threat of interdict suddenly
looming over Prague, Hus chose to go into exile from the city in October 1412. In
his absence, new leaders arose who guided the Prague reform and would eventu-
ally assume the leadership of the nascent Hussite movement. The experience of
exile also radicalized Hus’s ecclesiological thought and sharpened his polemics
against his clerical opponents, which ultimately led him to accept that he might
become the next member of the emergent company of Czech martyrs.
Hus spent nearly two years in exile from Prague, and during his time away from
the city he wrote a number of texts that represented his primary theological legacy
to the Bohemian reformation. The most substantial of these works was undoubt-
edly On the Church, an exhaustive and densely annotated analysis of the opposition
between the true and false churches.43 This work, which comprised both a scathing

  For the texts of bulls proclaiming the crusade and indulgence, as well as Hus’s response to
41

them, see: Historia et Monumenta, vol. 1, pp. 171r–​191r.

42
  “Isti Sunt Martyres” is an introit from the common for martyrs sung as part of the liturgy for
many saints’ feast days. On the execution of these three men, see: Kaminsky, A History, p. 81; and
Vidmanová, “Hus als Prediger,” p. 67.
43
  The standard modern edition of this work is: Jan Hus, Tractatus De Ecclesia, ed. S. T. Harrison
(Prague: Komenského Evangelická Fakulta, 1958).
 Introduction 15

attack on Hus’s local opponents and a closely argued defense of Wyclifite predes-
tinarian ecclesiology, was completed in the spring of 1413 and read aloud before
eighty people in Bethlehem Chapel on June 8.44 This work did not, however, rep-
resent the totality of Hus’s output from this time. He also wrote vernacular devo-
tional treatises and a Czech postilla while in exile, along with dozens of letters back
to his colleagues and friends in Prague.45 And it was this correspondence as much
as On the Church that defined Hus’s continuing presence among the community
of his followers and successors, for his letters preserved and transmitted his living
words to later generations of Czech and German religious reformers, who found in
them a crucial resource for articulating their own calls to dissent.
Even more than his words, though, Hus’s main contribution to the develop-
ment of the Bohemian and German reformations was his death. Hus’s imprison-
ment, trial, and execution at Constance in 1415 set him apart from other medieval
heretics, as the grand stage upon which it occurred and the literary works that
memorialized it enabled his death to attain resonance beyond the Council. Hus
journeyed to Constance in the fall of 1414 at the invitation of, and with a guar-
antee of safe conduct from, King Sigismund of Hungary.46 His correspondence
from this time suggested that he was ambivalent about the trip. On the one hand,
he expected to face persecution at Constance for his unrelenting critique of the
ecclesiastical hierarchy and believed that he might die for it. On the other, he
legitimately hoped for that hierarchy’s reformation and even prepared a sermon
to deliver before the Council to effect it.47 Hus never had a chance to preach his
so-​called “Sermon on Peace,” however, as he was imprisoned almost as soon as he
arrived in Constance. Captivity did not prevent Hus from continuing to write to
his friends and followers in Prague. His prison letters quickly became and con-
sistently remained some his most influential writings, as their condemnation
of the Council of Constance’s diabolical subversion and biblical ignorance pro-
vided rhetorical ammunition for generations of Czech and German polemicists.
These letters also demonstrated that Hus had fully accepted the eventuality of his

44
  On the composition and recitation of this text, see: Marin, L’archevêque, p. 124.
45
  Hus’s work as a vernacular theologian has been the subject of a growing body of recent schol-
arship. On Hus’s Czech compositions from his period in exile, see particularly: Soukup, Jan Hus,
pp. 175–​188.
46
  That Hus received a safe conduct from Emperor Sigismund (first verbally, and then in writ-
ing) which was later revoked has been a major issue in scholarship on the legitimacy of Hus’s execu-
tion. On this issue, see: Rudolf Hoke, “Der Prozess des Jan Hus und das Geleit König Sigmund: Ein
Beitrag zur Frage nach der Kläge-​und Angeklagtenrolle im Konstanzer Prozess von 1414/​
1415,” Annuarium Historiae Conciliorum 15 (1983):  172–​193; and the text of Sigismund’s decree
in: Korespondence, pp. 209–​210.
47
  This sermon has been published in a modern Latin/​Czech edition as:  Jan Hus, Sermo de
pace—​Řeč o míru, ed. and trans. F. Dobiáš and A. Molnár, 2nd ed. (Prague:  Česká křesťanská
akademie, 1995).
16 Introduction

own martyrdom, as he came to identify with figures like Jeremiah, Daniel, the
Maccabees, St. Katherine of Alexandria, and John Chrysostom, who had suffered
for their proclamation and persistent defense of divine truth.
In many ways, the trial of Jan Hus at the Council of Constance was highly
unusual. Some of its irregularities certainly hurt Hus’s chances for exoneration, as
both anonymous witnesses and malicious antagonists were allowed to shape the
narrative of his teaching. Conversely, though, Hus was allowed to speak in his own
defense and present his theological rebuttals of accusations against him at length.
And even though sympathetic depictions of the trial suggested that Hus never
received a truly fair or canonically regular hearing, it must be said that he was
granted multiple opportunities to reconsider or even recant his positions. Given
his repeated refusals, the Council’s judgment on Hus was ultimately legitimate as
a response to his denial of the Council’s authority to determine the substance of
orthodox or heretical religious thought.48 As such, questions about whether Hus
was actually a heretic whose theological ideas merited the harsh punishment that
he received direct our gaze away from what likely mattered most: that the man
who was executed in Constance on July 6, 1415, had produced a body of texts and
cultivated a network of followers and fellow reformers who would go to any length
to see that Hus was remembered and ultimately venerated as a holy man.

The Contexts of Commemoration

This book begins with the earliest work of Hus’s circle in Prague to undertake
this process of rehabilitation, and it ends with the efforts of the second-​generation
Lutheran Matthias Flacius Illyricus to demonstrate conclusively and exhaustively
that Hus’s opposition to the papal Antichrist and consequent death had marked
him as an embodiment the true, suffering church of God. In between these points
it describes an arc that tracks the parallel but inverted narratives that Hus’s heirs
and opponents crafted in order either to construct or to contest his presentation
as a saint. Each of the following chapters centers on key moments of conflict dur-
ing which Catholics, Hussites, Utraquists, and Lutherans brought their interpreta-
tions of Hus’s history into direct confrontation with each other. They subsequently
analyze the artistic, homiletic, liturgical, and textual echoes of those events, which
demonstrate the ways in which different aspects or episodes of Hus’s life and death
were brought to bear on the intellectual debates and actual battles that were atten-
dant on the initial growth of the Bohemian and German reformations.

48
  This position largely adheres to Fudge’s and Kejř’s conclusions on this matter. See: Jiří Kejř,
Husův Proces (Prague: Historica, 2000), p. 15; and Fudge, The Trial of Jan Hus, 339–​3 40. Cf. the
conclusions in Sebastián Provvidente’s recent article: “Hus’s Trial in Constance: Disputatio aut
Inquisitio,” in A Companion to Jan Hus, pp. 254–​2 88.
 Introduction 17

The first three chapters cover the development of Hus’s cult in the 1400s and
the role that it played in the outbreak of a national revolution and formation of
a schismatic national church in the Czech lands. The first chapter assesses the
veneration of Hus immediately after his death and the ways in which Bohemian
dissenters deployed his memory to justify the formation of a national revolution-
ary movement in the late 1410s. This was a moment when the official Church
was working to eradicate Hus’s memory, even as the Bohemians were working
to transform it. This contest resulted in the production of hagiographic texts,
sermons, and popular songs about Hus (both positive and negative), and these
sources served as the raw material out of which later commemorations of Hus were
manufactured. The immediate conflict over how Hus would be remembered also
contributed to a developing political struggle between the Council of Constance,
the Czech king Wenceslas, his brother King Sigismund, and the urban elites and
nobles who supported continued religious reform in Bohemia. This conflict came
to a head in 1419, and the urban uprising in Prague during that year serves as a
first moment for exploring how Hus could be invoked to legitimize radical col-
lective action. The second chapter picks up this narrative and explores the evolu-
tion of Hus’s memory in the 1420s and 1430s, as the militant Hussite movement
that developed during the Hussite Wars (1421–​1431) transformed into a national
church that sought rapprochement with, but a distinctive religious identity from,
the Roman Church during a series of hearings at the Council of Basel. Across
this time period, Hussite and Catholic authors politicized the figure of Hus as
an exemplar of both political resistance and thoughtful negotiation. As such, the
unitary figure of the earliest Bohemian commemorations of Hus fragmented in
these decades, as different parties within the Bohemian reform sought to draw on
Hus’s authority for their distinctive visions of a reformed church.
The third chapter of this book examines the religious practices of the Czech
Utraquist church that emerged from the negotiations of the 1430s. In particular,
this chapter focuses on the celebration of Hus’s feast day on July 6 in order to see
how the liturgical texts, monumental art, preaching, and vernacular songs that
comprised Hus’s cult reaffirmed the Czechs’ unique religious identity. At many
points in time, that identity was not in direct competition or conflict with Rome.
At others, though, the Utraquists activated the latent, militant potential that
resided in their martyred patron in order to confront both their external enemies
and the Catholics who sat on the kingdom’s throne. This chapter therefore ana-
lyzes how the representation of Hus as a “knight of Christ” and the preservation
of the memory of the early Hussite movement’s survival served to justify politi-
cal resistance nearly a century later. Finally, this chapter anticipates the Lutheran
commemoration of Hus by establishing the complementarity of liturgical com-
memorative practices, which were largely oral, with printed vehicles of memory.
A key text in creating this complementarity was the first printed passion narrative
of Jan Hus, which was produced as part of a Czech edition of the Golden Legend
18 Introduction

in 1495 and intended to serve as a set of readings for the liturgical celebration of
Hus’s feast. It represented a sort of amphibious vehicle for commemoration, with
one foot in the medieval world of the cult of saints and the other in an early mod-
ern culture dominated by the widespread transmission of print.
The fourth chapter of the book leaps to the world of sixteenth-​century
reform by tracking the gradual embrace of Jan Hus by Martin Luther, an
embrace that was effectively forced on the Saxon professor by his earliest
Catholic opponents. This chapter, which covers the years 1517–​1525, explores
the ways in which Hus came to occupy a central position in the polemics of
the early German reformation as a forerunner of Luther, and how that iden-
tification could be spun as either a positive or negative. In positive terms, a
host of authors came to present Hus as an apocalyptic witness against the
papal Antichrist whose death had revealed the tyranny of the Roman church
and whose self-​sacrifice had inspired the Czech nobility to act against it. This
depiction of Hus became dominant by 1525, especially with the printing of a
three-​volume collection of Hus’s works that essentially comprised a compen-
dium of Antichristology. And while it turns out that none of the works in this
collection was actually written by Hus, that misattribution paradoxically high-
lights the assimilation of a historical or hagiographical Hus to the polemical
needs of the early Lutheran reformation.
The fifth and sixth chapters are a matched set, as each details the career of an
author—​t he Lutheran Johannes Agricola and the Catholic Johannes Cochlaeus—​
who published extensively on Hus in the 1530s. That decade witnessed an
extended debate over the viability of a church council as an arbiter of the religious
schism in the German lands, and in the context of this conflict Hus’s trial and
execution came to be seen as a key piece of evidence for either the authority of a
council in matters of doctrinal dispute or the fallibility of church councils due to
their subversion by diabolical forces. What was remarkable about this debate and
Hus’s place within it was the range of media that each side used to make their case
for or against councils. In particular, both of these chapters focus on Agricola’s
and Cochlaeus’s composition of plays concerning Hus’s trial and their artic-
ulation of more nuanced historical narratives to describe Hus’s relevance to
their present day. For Agricola, Hus became a true prophet of Luther’s reform
whose words and deeds had pointed to the essential continuity of the true,
suffering church on Earth. Cochlaeus’s Hus, by contrast, turned into a disobe-
dient, but essentially orthodox, Catholic whose teachings had nothing in com-
mon with those of Luther. The juxtaposition of these chapters therefore shows
how sixteenth-​century authors from both sides of the growing confessional
divide turned to Hus as a central figure in their reconstruction of the past and
their arguments about the present. In short, Agricola’s and Cochlaeus’s works
showed how ductile Hus’s history could be, in the sense that it could be drawn
out to describe radically different historical trajectories.
 Introduction 19

The final chapter continues to focus on Cochlaeus, but pairs him with a
new interlocutor: the Croatian Lutheran scholar and polemicist, Matthias
Flacius Illyricus. The focus here is on the years around 1550, when Lutherans
were forced to confront a series of political and military crises that occurred
just after Luther’s death in 1546. At this time, Lutherans turned to the his-
tory of the church as a way to understand their current situation and began
to publish comprehensive histories that presented their coreligionists with
both stories of inspiration and cautionary tales. The story of Hus and his fol-
lowers provided both of these for Lutherans, and the Bohemian reformation’s
history thus came to occupy a primary place within Lutheran historiography.
So too did it play a major role in Catholic history writing at mid-​c entury, with
Johannes Cochlaeus publishing a series of historical works that provided his-
torical precedents and justifications for the final eradication of the Lutheran
movement. Within these competing narratives, Hus’s history served as a
microcosm for the entire history of God’s people on Earth and a template for
the unfolding history of the German reformation. He offered a human face to
the eternal struggle between the true and false churches, even as Catholic and
Lutheran authors each claimed to champion the former against the decep-
tions of the latter.
In choosing to tell the story of Hus’s presence within the Bohemian and
German reformations in this manner, this book leaves certain players on the
sideline and eschews other possible narratives. Nearly absent, for instance, is
the Unity of Brethren, the sectarian offshoot of the Hussite movement that
formed its own church in 1457 and generated an influential body of hymnody
and sermons that preserved a distinctive memory of Hus grounded in the
abhorrence of violence and the necessity of patient suffering in the face of perse-
cution.49 Missing, too, is Thomas Müntzer, the sixteenth-​century radical who
sought a sympathetic hearing in Prague for his plans to reconstitute Christendom
based in part on his perception of the Czechs’ predisposition to radical, prophetic
reform. 50 And perhaps most glaringly, this book does not take on the interactions

49
  On the formation, early history, and theology of the Brethren, see:  Otakar Odložilík, “A
Church in a Hostile State: The Unity of Czech Brethren,” Central European History 6 (1973): 111–​
127; Erhard Peschke, Kirche und Welt in der Theologie der Böhmischen Brüder vom Mittelalter zur
Reformation (Berlin:  Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1981); David Holeton, “Church or Sect? The
Jednota Bratarská and the Growth of Dissent from Mainline Utraquism,” Communio Viatorum
38 (1996):  5–​35; and Craig Atwood, The Theology of the Czech Brethren from Hus to Comenius
(University Park: Pennsylvania State UP, 2009).
50
 On Müntzer’s time in Prague, see:  Hans-​Jürgen Goertz, Thomas Müntzer:  Apocalyptic,
Mystic, Revolutionary, ed. P. Matheson, trans. J. Jaquiery (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1993), especially
ch. 6; and Günter Vogler, “Anschlag oder Manifest? Überlegungen zu Thomas Müntzers Sendbrief
von 1521,” in Thomas Müntzer und die Gesellschaft seiner Zeit, ed. G. Vogler (Mühlhausen: Thomas-​
Müntzer-​Gesellschaft, 2003), pp. 38–​5 4.
20 Introduction

between the Utraquist and Lutheran churches in the sixteenth century, when
cross-​fertilization between the two religious groups and their perceptions of the
past were first made possible via printed texts and the steady flow of students
between the Czech and German lands. 51
All of these topics are certainly worthy of attention, and they have happily
received it from a host of other scholars; that is one reason that they are not cen-
tral to this project. More importantly, though, this book is ultimately about the
ways in which movements for radical religious reform, both in theological and
institutional terms, invented traditions for themselves and then used those tra-
ditions to sustain themselves through the periods of external conflict and inter-
nal transformation that enabled them to expand and evolve into churches. Both
the Utraquists and Lutherans went through these processes and came out on the
other side, and so their efforts to translate the image and words of Jan Hus into
theological and prophetic foundations for their ecclesiastical bodies constitute
the focus of this study. Indeed, it this book’s central contention that an analysis
of that process of translation and an understanding of the consequent efforts by
both groups’ leaders to communicate their new understanding of the past will
allow us to understand more fully the role of memory and history as mandates for
widespread religious change in fifteenth-​and sixteenth-​century Europe.

51
  For good overviews of these interactions, see Zdeněk David’s magisterial book, Finding the
Middle Way. See also: Frederick Heymann, “The Impact of Martin Luther upon Bohemia,” Central
European History 1 (1968): 107–​130; František Kavka, “Bohemia,” in The Reformation in National
Context, ed. R. Porter et  al. (New  York:  Cambridge UP, 1994), pp. 131–​154; and Atwood, The
Theology of the Czech Brethren, chs. 9–​11.
 1

The Saint

Introduction
In February of 1418, the fathers of the Council of Constance and the newly elected
pope, Martin V, issued a series of twenty-​four articles dictating how the King of
Bohemia, Wenceslas IV, should act “to eradicate the heresy of John Wyclif and
[Jan] Hus in his land.”1 The articles laid out a comprehensive plan for the elimina-
tion of this religious deviance. They demanded, for instance, that the kingdom’s
preachers publicly denounce the errors of Hus and Wyclif, and that the living
leaders of the Bohemian heresy come to Rome to face trial. Conversely, all the
priests who had remained faithful to the Roman church should be restored to their
churches and given restitution for any suffering they had endured, while any per-
son who had harmed them or seized their property would face canonical sanctions.
Additionally, the council fathers ordered that the administration of communion
in both kinds to the laity cease and that all heretics be ejected from the university
in Prague. In short, these articles demanded that the religious status quo from the
mid-​fourteenth century be re-​established, as if the intervening years of reformist
preaching and religious experimentation in Prague had never occurred.
Among this set of directives, though, there was also a tacit recognition that
those years had left a mark. Two articles acknowledged that many copies of Hus’s
and Wyclif ’s work survived in both Latin and the vernacular, and consequently
demanded that they be destroyed. Another asserted that any sort of alliance or
league formed “in favor of those condemned heretics Jan Hus and Jerome” be
disbanded, noting that the existence of such associations had been proven “by
letters sent to the sacred council.”2 Crucially, two separate articles also attacked

1
  The articles have been published as: “Decretum Sancti Constantiensis Concilii et per imme-
diatum et unicum S. ecclesiae summum Pontificem … ad Regem Wenceslaum Boemiae, qualiter
se habeat ad extirpandam haeresim Joannis Wicleff et Huss in terra sua,” in Geschichtschreiber, vol. 2
(1865), pp. 240–​2 43.
2
  Articles fourteen and fifteen ordered the destruction of these books, while article twenty-​one
demanded the dissolution of political alliances. See: “Decretum,” pp. 241–​2 42.

21
22 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

religious practices that promoted the veneration, rather than damnation, of Jan
Hus. The first stated that “all songs introduced to the detriment of the sacred
council and of catholic men … or the songs in praise of Jan Hus and Jerome, the
condemned heretics, are forbidden under the heaviest penalty.” The second baldly
proclaimed that:

Each and every cleric or layperson who would preach, teach, or defend
the heresies and errors of John Wyclif and Jan Hus, condemned by the
holy Council of Constance, or who proclaim and maintain that Jan Hus
and Jerome [of Prague] are orthodox or saints and are convicted of this,
must be punished as relapsed heretics. 3

To read these articles is to be dropped into the midst of a conflict that had
essentially begun on the day that Jan Hus was burned at the stake. Almost imme-
diately after his death, authors convinced that Hus had been a holy man killed
by Antichrist’s followers in Constance and writers certain that Hus had been an
agent of the devil squared off, deploying a wide range of genres and a potent mix-
ture of political and religious rhetoric to proclaim their diametrically opposed
points of view. On one side of this incipient divide were the university masters
and popular preachers of Prague, many of whom had been students and friends of
Hus. They were backed by both the majority of Prague’s population and a league
of nobles who had formed in September of 1415 “to defend and uphold the Law of
our lord Jesus Christ and its devoted, humble, and constant preachers to the point
of spilling blood, disregarding all our fear and human statutes to the contrary.”4
On the other side stood King Wenceslas, his brother King Sigismund of Hungary,
and the newly united hierarchy of the Catholic Church under Martin V. These
men represented the highest secular and sacred authorities in Christian Europe,
and they had at their disposal the power to declare individuals excommunicate,
cities under the interdict, and even nations the target of crusade. But before the
pope and his Luxemburg allies exercised these coercive powers in 1420, they and
their supporters engaged in a different kind of battle with the Bohemians. It was
a battle over how Jan Hus, whose execution stood at the center of the rift between
Prague and Rome, would be remembered.

  These prohibitions appear in articles seventeen and twenty-​t hree. See: “Decretum,” p. 242.
3

  This league initially circulated a letter in September 1415 protesting Hus’s orthodoxy. It was
4

sent with the seals of 452 nobles to the Council of Constance early in 1416. The letter has been pub-
lished as: “Literae baronum, nobilium et militarium regni Bohemiae” (Sept. 2, 1415) in Documenta,
pp. 580–​590. This quotation: p. 584. On the letter’s circulation, see: Howard Kaminsky, A History
of the Hussite Revolution (Los Angeles and Berkeley: U. of California Press, 1967), pp. 142–​144; and
Die Hussitische Revolution, pp. 930–​937.
 T h e S a i n t 23

Even in the earliest writings on Hus after his execution, both his defenders
and detractors explicitly engaged in trying to determine the contours of Hus’s
memory. Hus’s successor as the preacher in the Bethlehem Chapel, Jakoubek
of Stříbro, provocatively included a lament taken from Ecclesiasticus 41:1 in
his early passio for Hus:  “O death of righteousness, how bitter your memory!”5
Conversely, Stephen of Dolany, a Carthusian abbot in Moravia, wrote with horror
about the pious commemoration of Hus “in the cathedral church of the Hussites
in Prague, called Bethlehem” and repeatedly referred to “Master Hus of damned
memory” as the ultimate cause of the religious turmoil in his homeland.6 But what
did these writers mean when they invoked the word “memory?” The problem is
that memory—​memoria in Latin—​was (and still is) a tricky term. Within the con-
text of the Christian Middle Ages, memory incorporated both the mental faculty
that allowed men consciously to recollect the past and the ritual act of commemo-
ration that stood at the center of the cult of saints. The cultivation of memory
in the former sense has been the subject of pathbreaking studies detailing the
development of the ars memoriae from Aristotle through Augustine and up to the
Renaissance humanists.7 The creation and maintenance of memory in the second
sense, however, has not come to occupy a similarly privileged place in the intellec-
tual historiography of the Middle Ages, despite the centrality of the saints’ cults
in medieval religious practice.8 Medieval authors recognized the importance of
this cultic memory. Saint Augustine, for example, not only considered memory to

5
 This passio was originally written by a priest who had been a correspondent of Hus’s named
Jan Barbatus. This original exists in one extant manuscript, while a second, slightly later manu-
script includes a slightly expanded version of the passion narrative. This second version has been
identified as the work of Jakoubek. On these texts, see: Jan Sedlák, “Několik textů z doby husitské,”
Hlídka 28 (1911): 321–​327; and Thomas Fudge, “Jan Hus at Calvary: The Text of an Early Fifteenth-​
Century Passio,” Journal of Moravian History 11 (2011): 45–​81. This quotation comes from a critical
edition of the text published as: Passio etc. secundum Johannem Barbatum, rusticum quadratum, in FRB
8 (1932), pp. 14–​2 4, here at p. 19.
6
  Stephen of Dolany, Liber Epistolaris ad Hussitas, in Thesaurus Anecdotorum Novissimus, ed.
B. Pez, vol. 4 (Augsburg: Veith, 1726), cols. 503–​706, here at cols. 520–​521.
7
  Exemplary among this field are the foundational work by Frances Yates, The Art of Memory
(London:  Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966); and the more recent contributions by:  Mary
Carruthers, The Book of Memory:  A  Study of Memory in Medieval Culture (New  York:  Cambridge
UP, 1990); Janet Coleman, Ancient and Medieval Memories: Studies in the Reconstruction of the Past
(New York: Cambridge UP, 1992); and Mary Carruthers and Jan Ziolkowski, eds., The Medieval
Craft of Memory: An Anthology of Texts and Pictures (Philadelphia: U. of Pennsylvania Press, 2002).
8
  Notable exceptions to this marginalization can be found in:  Patrick Geary, Phantoms of
Remembrance:  Memory and Oblivion at the End of the First Millennium (Princeton:  Princeton UP,
1994); Wolfgang Schmidt, “Stiftung—​ Liturgie—​Memorialtopographie,” Kunst und Liturgie
33 (1999–​2 000): 163–​176; and, with special reference to Bohemia: Milena Bartlová, “In Memoriam
Defunctorum: Visual Arts as Devices of Memory,” in The Making of Memory in the Middle Ages, ed.
L. Doležalová (Boston: Brill, 2010), pp. 473–​4 86.
24 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

be a member of the “psychological trinity” (along with intelligentia and voluntas)

responsible for judgment, self-​awareness, and emotional states. He also saw it as
central to the soteriological benefits inherent in observing the ritual feasts of the
saints: “The Christian people should celebrate the memorias of the martyrs with
religious observances, both for provoking imitation, and so that the people might
be … aided by their prayers.”9 By emphasizing the importance of imitation and
intercession, Augustine here recognized the saint’s memoria as the central site for
a key transaction in the Christian economy of salvation.
Memoria was thus both the mental faculty that underwrote and the liturgi-
cal means of producing what the scholars Jan and Aleida Assmann have called
“kulturelle Gedächtnis.”10 For Jan Assmann specifically, this type of corporate
recollection is the product of rituals that embody and enact a group’s identity
by choosing and reifying an object of devotion that becomes a mimetic stand-​in
and intercessor for the group at large.11 The performance of ritual also serves as a
sort of cultural “immune system” that circulates essential notions about identity
(which Assmann calls cultural “antibodies”) throughout a social body in order to
protect it from the imposition of external ideas and suppress the growth of inter-
nal incoherence.12 Paul Post argues that this circulation results in the “liturgical
inculturation” of the rituals’ participants, which results in the valorization of cer-
tain moments and people who function as the foundation of a sacred narrative
that defines group identity.13 Scholars such as Gabrielle Spiegel have applied this
general model of identity construction to medieval Jewish culture, in which the
twinned process of ritual enactment and the recital of sacred texts are intended “to

9
  This quotation comes from the tenth book of Augustine’s Contra Faustum Manichaeum, and
is cited in the article: “Memoria,” in Glossarium Mediae et Infimae Latinitatis, ed. C. Du Cange, vol.
5 (Niort: L. Favre, 1885), pp. 335–​336, 335. For an overview of Augustine’s teachings on memory
and its role in Christian faith, see:  Nello Cipriani, “Memory,” in Augustine through the Ages:  An
Encyclopedia, ed. A. Fitzgerald et al. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), pp. 553–​555; and Coleman,
Ancient and Medieval Memories, pp. 80–​111.
10
 Jan Assmann, “Der zweidimensionale Mensch:  Das Fest als Medium des kollektiven
Gedächtnisses,” in Das Fest und das Heilige:  Religiöse Kontrapunkte zur Alltagswelt, ed. idem
(Gütersloh:  Gerd Mohn, 1991), pp. 13–​30; and Aleida Assmann, Erinnerungsräume:  Formen und
Wandlungen des kulturellen Gedächtnisses (Munich: Beck, 1999).
11
  On this interpretation of ritual and its role in memory formation, see: Jan Assmann, “Der
zweidimensionale Mensch,” especially pp.  18–​25; and idem, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis:  Schrift,
Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen (Munich: Beck, 1992), pp. 143ff.
12
  Assmann, “Der zweidmensionale Mensch,” p. 23.
13
  Post uses the term “anamnesis” here to refer to the words of the eucharistic liturgy that are
explicitly intended to create and sustain the memory of Christ’s sacrifice as the foundation of the
Christian community; he then applies this term to the broader establishment of collective memory
among religious groups. See: Paul Post, “Introduction and Application: Feast as a Key Concept in
a Liturgical Studies Research Design,” in Christian Feast and Festival: The Dynamics of Western Liturgy
and Culture, ed. P. Post et al. (Leuven: Peeters, 2001), pp. 47–​77, p. 61.
 T h e S a i n t 25

revivify the past and make it live in the present, to fuse past and present, chanter
and hearer, priest and observer, into a single collective entity.”14 I would contend
that this description could be applied equally well to dissident Christian commu-
nities in the Middle Ages for whom distinctive ritual practices and texts served to
constitute a sacred body in conscious opposition to the Catholic Church that was
centered on a sacred, founding memoria.
In the context of the nascent Bohemian reformation, Jan Hus’s martyrdom
became just such a foundation, and the commemoration of his death became just
such a practice. Consequently, a wide array of textual and oral monuments to Hus
were composed in a very short period of time after his death. Sermons, vernacu-
lar songs, and a hybrid liturgy became the foundation of Hus’s cult within only a
year or two of his execution; Hus’s words and writings also circulated amongst his
former friends and followers, contributing watchwords and slogans to a reform
movement that quickly turned revolutionary. It is this evolution—​f rom a religious
reform based in Prague into a nationalist, revolutionary Hussite movement—​t hat
makes the initial construction of Hus’s memory by the Bohemians, and Roman
efforts to counter this process, so important. Many recent studies have demon-
strated that the establishment of a new saint’s cult was often, or even always, polit-
ical.15 The competition between local religious institutions, monastic orders, and
even royal dynasties made the creation of a saint and the selection of his or her
most significant “lieux de mémoire” a contested process with substantial ideologi-
cal and material stakes.16 But none of those studies deal with the de facto canon-
ization of a de jure heretic whose followers subsequently rejected the authority of
the papacy and their king in order to establish an alternative ecclesiastical order.
As such, an analysis of the initial creation of Saint Jan Hus by the Bohemians
reveals the ways in which memory could be mobilized for radical political and
social change with startling clarity.

14
  Gabrielle Spiegel, “Memory and History:  Liturgical Time and Historical Time,” History
and Theory 41 (2002):  149–​162, p.  152. Spiegel is here following the central argument of Yosef
Yerushalmi, Zakhor:  Jewish History and Jewish Memory (Seattle:  U.  of Washington Press, 1982).
On the impact of this work on the study of the intersections between history and memory more
broadly, see: Kerwin Klein, “On the Emergence of Memory in Historical Discourse,” Representations
69 (2000):  127–​150. See also the conclusion to:  Patrick Hutton, History as an Art of Memory
(Burlington, VT: U. of Vermont Press, 1993).
15
 See, e.g.:  Gábor Klaniczay, Holy Rulers and Blessed Princesses:  Dynastic Cults in Medieval
Central Europe, trans. É. Pálmai (New York: Cambridge UP, 2002); Donald Prudlo, The Martyred
Inquisitor: The Life and Cult of Peter of Verona (d. 1252) (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2008); Cecilia
Gaposchkin, The Making of Saint Louis:  Kingship, Sanctity, and Crusade in the Later Middle Ages
(Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2009); and Erin Rowe, Saint and Nation: Santiago, Teresa of Avila, and Plural
Identities in Early Modern Spain (University Park: Pennsylvania State UP, 2011).
16
 This term derives from the work of Pierre Nora. See here his:  “Between History and
Memory: Les Lieux de mémoire,” Representations 26 (1989): 7–​2 4.
26 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

Constructing the Cult of Hus: First Steps

The central imperative in the earliest commemorations of Jan Hus by the
Bohemians was to transform his execution from a canonically sanctioned pun-
ishment into an unjust exercise of illegitimate power. Certainly the Christian
tradition was rife with texts that did just this, beginning with the Gospels and
culminating in the church history of Eusebius.17 As such, Bohemian authors who
sought to depict Hus as an imitator of Christ and heir to the apostolic martyrs had
a textual and liturgical tradition from which they could draw in order to create an
image of Hus as a martyr saint. Without doubt, the urtext in the creation of this
figure was the eyewitness account of Hus’s trial and martyrdom written by Petr
of Mladoňovice.18 Petr had been a student of Hus’s at the university in Prague,
and he attended the Council of Constance as the secretary of a Czech nobleman,
Jan of Chlum, who had initially conveyed Hus to the council on the orders of
the Hungarian king, Sigismund.19 Petr’s account of Hus’s time in Constance was
characterized by a journalistic style of reportage and an exhaustive level of detail
concerning Hus’s interactions with his prosecutors. Petr himself played up the
authenticity of his account, noting that he had based it solely on “what I learned
by seeing or hearing it myself ”; he also asserted that he had preferred plain speech
to “embellished words” in his narrative so he might convey only “the heart of the
matter.”20 Further, Petr included a slew of documents and details that gave his
account a sense of striking immediacy, including:  a detailed itinerary of Hus’s
journey from Prague to Constance; complete lists of the articles drawn from
Hus’s works that had been condemned by the council fathers; Hus’s responses
to those articles; and a blow-​by-​blow account of Hus’s final public hearing and

 The early Christian martyrological literature has garnered substantial scholarly atten-
17

tion. On the centrality of martyrdom in the formation of early Christian culture, see the recent
contributions by:  Elizabeth Perkins, The Suffering Self:  Pain and Narrative Representation in Early
Christianity (New  York:  Routledge, 1994); Daniel Boyarin, Dying for God:  Martyrdom and the
Making of Christianity and Judaism (Stanford:  Stanford UP, 1999); Elizabeth Castelli, Martyrdom
and Memory: Early Christian Culture Making (New York: Columbia UP, 2004); and Nicole Kelley,
“Philosophy as Training for Death:  Reading the Ancient Christian Martyr Acts as Spiritual
Exercises,” Church History 75 (2006): 723–​747.
18
  The earliest manuscript of this text dates to 1417, and is held in the national library Prague
as MS NKP VIII F 38. Three other early witnesses are held in Vienna (mss. 4557, 4524, and 4902),
and the collation of these four texts formed the basis for the standard critical edition of this text
published by Novotný as: Petr of Mladoňovice, Relatio de magistro Johanne Hus, in FRB 8 (1932),
pp. 25–​120. On the manuscript witnesses to this text, see Novotný’s prefatory essay in:  FRB 8
(1932), pp. XLV–​LV.
19
  For an overview of Petr’s life and career, see: František Bartoš, “Osud Husova evangelisty
Petra Mladoňovice,” Křestanská Revue 30 (1963): 79–​85.
20
  Petr of Mladoňovice, Relatio, p. 120.
 T h e S a i n t 27

execution. Petr also incorporated the full texts of letters written by Hus during his
journey to, and time in, Constance in his narrative; the texts of witnesses’ state-
ments both for and against Hus that were introduced as evidence during his trial;
and ostensibly verbatim reports of Hus’s private and public interviews with the
council fathers, his Czech accusers, and even King Sigismund.
Any impression of disinterest that Petr’s richly documented account produces,
however, is ultimately illusory.21 Indeed, Petr’s rhetoric throughout the account
was deeply sympathetic to Hus, and in the final part of his account Petr made it
clear that he considered Hus to have been functionally equivalent to the apostolic
martyrs and his death to have been analogous to Christ’s own passion. There was
a tension in this presentation that was characteristic of medieval hagiography.
On the one hand, Petr sought to incorporate words and acts that would bring to
mind the story of Christ’s trial and death; on the other, he had to present Hus
as less than, or subordinate to, Christ, lest the text’s larger depiction of Hus as
a humble, patient saint be undermined by such a show of pride. Consider, then,
Petr’s description of Hus’s final condemnation and death. In his narration of these
events, Petr directly compared Hus’s ritual degradation to the treatment of Christ
before Pilate and his “crowning” with a hat featuring three demons to Christ’s
reception of the crown of thorns.22 In the text, Hus acknowledged these paral-
lels, but also minimized his suffering vis-​à-​v is Christ’s, stating that “I, a miser-
able wretch and sinner, will humbly bear this much lighter, even though vilifying
crown for his name and truth.” At his pyre, Hus also claimed that the chains bind-
ing him to the stake were lighter than Christ’s “harder and heavier chains,” thus
cementing the idea that Hus’s suffering was qualitatively similar, if quantitatively
inferior, to that of Christ.23
This connection was strengthened in a number of ways throughout the body
of Petr’s text, particularly in his description of the role of false witnesses in Hus’s
trial and his portrayal of Hus’s judges as hard-​hearted and fundamentally unwill-
ing to countenance Hus’s claims to innocence. In a more positive vein, Petr also
emphasized the impact of Hus’s conduct on those who witnessed of his martyr-
dom. To wit, Petr included a description of some laypeople who, seeing Hus’s
“glad countenance” and hearing him sing Psalms and pray on the way to his pyre,

21
  The fundamental bias in Petr’s account has been most forcefully documented in:  Hubert
Herkommer, “Die Geschichte vom Leiden und Sterben des Jan Hus als Eriegnis und Erzählung,”
in Literatur and Laienbildung im Spätmittelalter und in der Reformationszeit, ed. L. Grenzmann and
K. Stackmann (Metzler: Stuttgart, 1984), pp. 114–​146. Herkommer consequently dismisses Petr’s
reliability as a narrator of events. For a more balanced assessment of the historical value of Petr’s
account, see: Rychterová, “Jan Hus: Der Führer, Märtyrer, und Prophet”; and Fudge, The Trial of
Jan Hus, especially pp. 21–​30.
22
  Petr of Mladoňovice, Relatio, p. 117.
23
  Petr of Mladoňovice, Relatio, p. 119.
28 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

declared that “we do not know what he did or said formerly, but now we truly see
and hear that he prays and speaks with holy words.”24 These unnamed bystanders,
much like the Roman centurion in accounts of Christ’s death, recognized that
sanctity did not derive from official approbation. Rather, it was the product of
pious behavior and the willingness to die the good death on behalf of one’s faith.25
Petr’s narrative of Hus’s trial and death was a veritable treasure trove of
descriptive data and rhetorical tropes for those who would promote Hus’s
sanctity. The wealth of detail in the text, however, was also an impediment to
its utility. It was far too long to use within a liturgical context, and much of
its description of Hus’s public hearings was either mired in the technical lan-
guage of theological debate or weighed down by Petr’s nearly obsessive atten-
tion to detail. The potential development of a cult for Hus therefore required
shorter, more affective texts that crystallized the thematic presentation of Hus
as a martyr that was present in Petr’s longer narrative. To be fair, even Petr of
Mladoňovice recognized this fact. He therefore wrote a shorter, more focused
passion narrative for Hus that was intended to inspire those who read or heard
it, so they “might prove to be diligent followers of divine truth, which they had
imbibed from Hus.” 26 Mladoňovice also considered his text to be a “memorial
to future generations” concerning Hus’s sanctity, which it would promote and
preserve despite the efforts of the Council of Constance to “stop up his [Hus’s]
mouth,” both during and after his life. 27
Indeed, the issue of what constituted the proper grounds for remembrance
was central to this passion narrative, particularly in its juxtaposition of the righ-
teous Hus and the tyrannical King Sigismund, who had betrayed Hus for a false
promise of eternal glory. Throughout Petr’s account, the king’s defining trait was
his pride. Sigismund was depicted as sitting “in the highest place on his throne,
wearing a crown of gold” throughout Hus’s trial, the eye of a storm of pomp and

24
  Petr of Mladoňovice, Relatio, p. 118. Cf. Luke 23:44–​4 8.
25
  The proselytizing potential of martyrdom and its ability to destabilize ecclesiastical author-
ity became widely recognized in the sixteenth century. On the martyrs’ self-​consciousness
in this regard, see:  Gregory, Salvation at Stake, pp.  126–​138; Sarah Covington, The Trail of
Martyrdom: Persecution and Resistance in Sixteenth-​Century England (Notre Dame: U. of Notre Dame
Press, 2003), pp. 136ff.; and Nikki Shepardson, Burning Zeal:  The Rhetoric of Martyrdom and the
Protestant Community in Reformation France, 1520–​1570 (Bethlehem: Lehigh UP, 2007), pp. 17–​2 6.
26
 This text circulated in both Latin and Czech versions, with the Czech version being
slightly longer and generally stronger in its anti-​conciliar rhetoric. The text survives in seven
fifteenth-​century manuscripts, and is bound with Petr’s longer text in the two earliest manu-
scripts. A modern critical edition of the text was published by Novotný as: Petr of Mladoňovice,
Narratio historica de condemnatione et supplicio Joannis Hus in synodo Constantiensi, in FRB 8 (1932),
pp. 121–​149. On the manuscript witnesses to the text, see Novotný’s essay in: FRB 8, pp. 55–​62.
This quotation from the text can be found in: Petr of Mladoňovice, Narratio Historica, p. 122.
27
  Petr of Mladoňovice, Narratio Historica, 121–​122.
 T h e S a i n t 29

avarice. 28 Petr augmented his presentation of Sigismund’s love of splendor with

the argument that he revoked Hus’s safe conduct out of a desire for fame. As
Petr put it, Sigismund withdrew his protection for Hus when one of the bishops
at the council promised him that “with this most beautiful deed you will gain
for yourself an immortal name among those coming after you, both young and
old.”29 Petr later suggested that Sigismund felt some shame over his Faustian bar-
gain, noting that the king blushed violently when Hus called him out for reneg-
ing on his safe conduct during Hus’s last public hearing. 30 This manifestation of
conscience, however, was the exception to Petr’s general portrayal of Sigismund,
whose misplaced concern for his earthly reputation stood in stark contrast to
Hus’s ultimately fatal devotion to divine truth and justice.
By showing Sigismund as a thrall to the Council’s malicious wishes, Petr
depicted him as a new Herod; this characterization played into Petr’s construc-
tion of parallels between Hus and Christ in this text, which were more explicit
than those in his longer account of Hus’s trial. In the passio, Hus again likened his
crown and chains to those of Christ, as well as stating that he had gone to his trial
and death in plain white vestments, just as “Jesus Christ, when sent from Herod
to Pilate, was mocked in a white robe.”31 Additionally, Petr had Hus echo Christ’s
last words from the Gospel of Luke during his final hearing; forgive his jailers
and opponents before his death; and have his robe become the subject of a debate
amongst his executioners. 32 Contrary to the accounts of Jesus’ death, though,
Hus’s robe was ultimately destroyed along with his body, because “the Bohemians
might consider or regard it as a relic.” Petr then concluded his text with an explicit
attack on the council’s attempts to eliminate any material basis for a cult of Hus
by describing the treatment of Hus’s remains: “After everything had been burned
to cinders with fire and when the dust and earth had been dug up to a great depth
and set in a cart, then they scattered it in the Rhine flowing past, so that his name
might be utterly extinguished among the faithful.”33
Both Petr’s passio and his longer narrative of Hus’s execution demonstrated,
however, that the Council’s and Sigismund’s efforts to eradicate Hus’s name—​and
thus his memory—​a mong the Bohemians failed. Indeed, these texts served as a
type of relic around which the Bohemian faithful could assemble and commemo-
rate Jan Hus as a saint, stand-​ins for Hus’s actual remains.34 It was not just Petr,

  Petr of Mladoňovice, Narratio Historica, p. 127.

28

  Petr of Mladoňovice, Narratio Historica, p. 128.

29

30
  Petr of Mladoňovice, Narratio Historica, p. 135.
31
  Petr of Mladoňovice, Narratio Historica, p. 137.
32
  Petr of Mladoňovice, Narratio Historica, p. 141, 143, and 147.
33
  Petr of Mladoňovice, Narratio Historica, p. 147.
34
  The search for an alternate basis for the memorial cult of Hus had parallels in the com-
memoration of John Wyclif, among dissident communities both in England and in Prague. It also
30 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

however, who served as a vector for the transmission of Hus’s sanctified memory
to the Czechs. A second early passio for Hus also survives which contains differ-
ent points of emphasis than Petr’s account, but generally reaffirms Hus’s status
as a saint. The text was originally written by Johannes Barbatus, a rural priest in
Bohemia who also claimed to have been an eyewitness to Hus’s trial and death. 35
Like Petr’s passio, Barbatus’s account built up a typological association between
Hus’s execution and the passion of Christ. Barbatus was more deliberate, though,
in extending this comparison to other figures from the Bible and history of the
early church, with his main message being that the fundamental congruence of
Hus’s trial with those of the biblical and apostolic martyrs marked him as worthy
of veneration and imitation.
Barbatus promoted this parallelism in a variety of ways throughout his
account of Hus’s death. He referred, for example, to the site of Hus’s execution
as “Calvary,” and he also put Jesus’s final prayer from Luke 23:46—​“Into your
hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit”—​in Hus’s mouth on his pyre. 36 Barbatus
also explicitly equated Hus’s suffering and death to those of the early martyrs,
claiming that Hus’s perseverance and profession of faith meant that: “The song
of the remarkable martyr Lawrence is deservedly able to be sung: ‘you examined me
with fire, and iniquity was not found in me.’ ”37 Further, Barbatus bookended his pas-
sio with lists of biblical figures to whom Hus could be justifiably compared. Abraham,
Elijah, the Maccabees’ progenitor Mattathias, John the Baptist, and the protomartyr
Stephen: these were the men whom Hus had emulated successfully. Barbatus thus
transformed Hus’s name into an acronym that described his fundamental character,
so that “HVS” became “Hauriens Virtutes Sanctorum”: the one who drinks in the vir-
tues of the saints.38

should be noted that Wyclif ’s remains were ordered to be exhumed, burned, and thrown in the
River Swyft by the Council of Constance (this did not occur until 1428), which showed a parallel
concern about commemoration by the Church. On the memorialization of Wyclif in England and
Bohemia, see: Michael Van Dussen, From England to Bohemia: Heresy and Communication in the Later
Middle Ages (New York: Cambridge UP, 2012), especially ch. 3. On the notion of textual relics as
applied to Hus, see: Thomas Fudge, The Memory and Motivation of Jan Hus, Medieval Priest and Martyr
(Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), pp. 197–​199.
35
  All of the following quotations are taken from the critical edition of the text published
as: Johannes Barbatus, Passio M. Johannis Hus etc. secundum Johannem Barbatum, rusticum quadratum,
in FRB 8, pp. 14–​2 4. For an overview of the scholarly debates on Barbatus’s identity and relation-
ship with Hus, see: Fudge, “Jan Hus at Calvary,” pp. 48–​5 4.
36
  Hus’s prayer is slightly different; Jesus committed himself to his Father’s hands, while Hus
committed himself to Christ himself. The allusion, though, is clear, and suggests that Hus’s com-
mitment was the seal of his imitation. For this quote and the reference to Calvary, see: Barbatus,
Passio M. Johannis Hus, p. 17.
37
 Barbatus, Passio M. Johannis Hus, p. 22.
38
 Barbatus, Passio M. Johannis Hus, p. 20.
 T h e S a i n t 31

Although Barbatus depicted Hus as comparable to the greatest figures of the

Christian tradition, he also presented Hus as more than a figure of veneration.
Barbatus’s Hus was to be imitated. Not that everyone had to die for his or her faith.
Rather, Barbatus asserted that “we are able to be martyrs—​though without the
sword or flames—​if we are able to sustain our faith in adversity.”39 Barbatus offered
biblical precedents for this distinctly Bohemian vision of “white martyrdom,” cit-
ing Abraham’s faith in God’s promises and Joseph’s perseverance during his trials
in Egypt as particular models.40 Like Petr of Mladoňovice, then, Barbatus called on
his audience to remember the virtues that had been embodied by Hus so they might
consequently enact them: “For a man is better fitted to the kingdom of God and to
the narrow way by enduring when tribulations and adversity come upon him, than
by frequent communion or visiting a church and attending Mass while refusing to
endure anything, even a word of blame.”41
A second, slightly later recension of this text expanded on and intensified
Barbatus’s emphasis on suffering, persecution, and the imitation of the saints.42 This
second version was composed by Jakoubek of Stříbro, whom Dom Paul De Vooght
rightfully considered the true founder of the Hussite movement, as “the reformed and
nationalistic Christianity of Bohemia obtained through the ministry of Jakoubek a
patron saint, confessor, and martyr, ‘Master Jan Hus who was a good angel of God
sent through Jesus Christ.’ ”43 In Jakoubek’s version of Barbatus’s passio, the image
of Hus-​as-​patron was painted with a stridently militant idiom that drew a stark con-
trast between Hus and his persecutors. Here, Hus was an “unvanquished fighter,”
“armed with the shield of faith and the fear of the Lord,” who “was enflamed with
zeal for the righteousness of the Lord.”44 He was opposed by “the insane rulers and

39
 Barbatus, Passio M. Johannis Hus, p. 15.
40
  Kelley locates a similar impulse—​towards a new appreciation for suffering, but not nec-
essarily death—​a mong early Christian communities that constructed themselves around the
memory of martyrs. See her: “Philosophy as Training for Death,” pp. 727–​729. Cf. the introduc-
tion to:  Robin Darling Young, In Procession before the World:  Martyrdom as Public Liturgy in Early
Christianity (Milwaukee: Marquette UP, 2001).
41
 Barbatus, Passio M. Johannis Hus, p. 15.
42
  This version of the passio is also published in FRB 8 as a facing column to Barbatus’s original.
For the sake of clarity, it will be cited in the following as:  Jakoubek, Passio. On the manuscript
provenance of this recension and its relationship to the original text by Barbatus, see: Fudge, “Jan
Hus at Calvary.”
43
 Paul De Vooght, Jacobellus de Stříbro (d. 1429), premiere théologien de hussitisme
(Louvain:  Publications universitaires de Louvain, 1972), p.  78. These sentiments echo those of
František Bartoš, who called Jakoubek a “second founder” of Hussitism. See:  František Bartoš,
“Betlemská kázání Jakoubka ze Stříbra z let 1415–​ 6,” Theologická Příloha:  Křesťanské Revue
20 (1953):  53–​65 and 114–​122, p.  53. See also:  Blanka Zilynská, “Jakoubek ze Stříbra a dob-
ová církevní správa,” in Jakoubek ze Stříbra: Texty a jejich působení, ed. O. Halama and P. Soukup
(Prague: Filosofia, 2006), pp. 9–​4 8.
44
 Jakoubek, Passio, pp. 22, 20, and 23.
32 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

irrational doctors” at Constance, whose madness had led them “to embrace and ven-
erate thieves and robbers” while heaping “humiliation and contempt on the law of
the Lord and his faithful servants.”45
Jakoubek expanded on this binary opposition to enlist his presumptive audi-
ence in the struggle that had manifested itself at Constance between Hus and
his persecutors. He thus addressed his text to the “faithful inhabitants of the
kingdom of Bohemia” who recognized Hus as an avatar of divine truth. In fact,
Jakoubek set up his entire text by juxtaposing this “faithful assembly” (“fidelis con-
cio”) of the Czechs with the “raging council” (“concilii sevientis”) in Constance.46
By selectively writing in the first-​person plural, Jakoubek also placed himself
among this assembly and at the feet of Hus, who “taught us to die, and with what
wings we should ascend to heaven.”47 The “us” in this quotation should be under-
stood as referring to the Bohemian nation, which Jakoubek primarily identified as
a faithful people “wounded deep in the gut” by Hus’s suffering, but which had also
reared “faithless traitors” who had “stained and stolen away the purest garment
of our honor.”48 With comments such as these, Jakoubek constructed a second
binary opposition between the faithful Czechs and their enemies, both internal
and external. He also made Hus an embodiment for the former, which reified Hus
as a distinct patron for the Czech people while limiting any potential appeal he
might have for people beyond the kingdom’s borders.
At the beginning of his passio, Barbatus laid out a series of biblical citations
that situated Hus’s death within the broader Christian tradition of martyrdom.
Before one such quotation—​of Matthew 5:10: “Blessed are you when you suf-
fer persecution on account of righteousness”—​Barbatus commented that “this
could also be taken as the theme for a sermon.”49 Perhaps it is not surprising,
then, that this verse served as the pericope for a sermon that Jakoubek preached
on the first anniversary of Hus’s death in the Bethlehem Chapel. 50 Jakoubek’s
sermon almost certainly predated Barbatus’s passio, but both writings shared a
number of themes which make it possible to understand the former as a trans-
position of the latter text’s message into a more perlocutionary key. In other
words, while the passio made the typological association of Hus’s death to those

 Jakoubek, Passio, pp. 21, 20, 19, and 18.

45

 Jakoubek, Passio, p. 15.
46

47
 Jakoubek, Passio, p. 19.
48
 Jakoubek, Passio, pp. 20–​21.
49
 Barbatus, Passio, p. 15.
50
  A critical edition of this sermon has been printed by Vaclav Novotný as: Sermo Habitus in
Bethlehem a Quodam Pio in Memoriam Novorum Martyrum M. Iohannis Hus et M. Heironymi, in FRB 8,
pp. 231–​2 42. The earliest witness to this sermon is in MS NKP VIII E 3 in Prague, which also con-
tains a postilla composed by Jakoubek in the years just after Hus’s death. For more on this postilla
and its commemoration of Hus, see below.
 T h e S a i n t 33

of the Church’s most ancient martyrs clear, the sermon was more pointed in
its efforts to use that analogy as a spur to changes in its audience’s belief and
behavior.
At the heart of Jakoubek’s sermon was an idea that it shared with Barbatus’s
passio, namely, that there were multiple kinds of martyrdom. Drawing extensively
from the writings of Saints John Chrysostom and Cyprian, Jakoubek preached
that there were three types of martyr. The first suffered many adversities in life
for the sake of evangelical righteousness, but did not necessarily die for it; the
second kind of martyr was killed for his or her faith, but did not experience sub-
stantial persecution before death; and the third combined the first two by endur-
ing extended persecution and accepting death. Concerning the latter group in
particular, Jakoubek asserted that “they are therefore called blessed by God and
men, both now and forever.” Jakoubek considered Hus to have been the third
type of martyr, and he specifically compared him to John the Baptist, as both men
had been persecuted “not because of their Gentile ways or heresy,” but because
they had dared to rebuke the powerful for their sins. Jakoubek highlighted the
steadfastness of both, noting that although they had felt “fear in the presence of
men and terror before tyrants,” they had ultimately overcome it. 51 Jakoubek thus
encouraged his audience to emulate the two prophets’ behavior, because “our
faith becomes more clear through oppression and tribulation … just as our Lord
said: ‘in our sufferings we gain our souls.’ ”52
After defining the three types of martyrdom and establishing that Hus
belonged in the third camp, Jakoubek offered a short synopsis of Hus’s sufferings
and death in Constance. Bracketing this recapitulation of Hus’s passio were two
more passages that equated Hus to a biblical prophet. The first of these presented
Hus as an ideal preacher: “The Lord gave to him an erudite tongue, so that he
knew when he ought to produce a sermon; he had love and a heart of mercy for
all men, even for his enemies and persecutors; and just as a second Elijah he zeal-
ously attacked the abundant iniquity of Antichrist.”53 Jakoubek followed this first
description with a long list of Hus’s virtues that could have been drawn from any
number of medieval saints’ lives. He was chaste, dutiful, humble, and sober; nei-
ther arrogant nor hypocritical, but always dedicated to the Lord’s service. He was,
in short, “the most sonorous trumpet, an indefatigable preacher of truth, enemy
of simoniacs, and herald of the gospel and sacred speech.”54 This virtue list was
stereotypical of hagiographical literature, to be sure, but Jakoubek followed it
with the more idiosyncratic conclusion that Hus’s death had marked him as “a

51
 Jakoubek, Sermo Habitus, p. 232.
52
  Jakoubek here quoted Origen’s seventh homily on the book of Judges. See: Jakoubek, Sermo
Habitus, p. 235.
53
 Jakoubek, Sermo Habitus, p. 238.
54
 Ibid.
34 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

counterpart of Elijah, whose spirit, so we piously believe, ascended through fire

into heaven and the fellowship of the angels.”55
Comparisons to Elijah had been prominent in the literature of the Bohemian
reform since the end of the fourteenth century, when Matěj of Janov’s biography
of Milíč of Kroměříž referred to that preacher as having “the spirit and power
of Elijah.”56 Several scholars have noted the influence of this earlier text (c.
1390) on Jakoubek’s depiction of Hus, but the invocation of this prophetic iden-
tification hinted at a more significant theme that would be developed further
in Bohemian sermons and religious texts written in the years after Hus died. 57
Essentially, Jakoubek promoted the notion that Bohemia had reared a number of
true prophets and martyrs “in our present time,” a fact that affirmed the Czech
lands’ privileged position in God’s sight. 58 This identification of the Czechs as a
divinely chosen people became a common theme in early Hussite literature, and
in Jakoubek’s sermon Hus stood at the head of a growing company of Bohemian
martyrs. Among that company Jerome of Prague held pride of place alongside
Hus, but other, lesser-​k nown figures were included as well. Jakoubek referred
specifically to the three men executed in Prague for their participation in anti-​
indulgence demonstrations in 1412, as well as to two men summarily executed for
an unspecified heresy in Olomouc in July of 1415. 59 Jakoubek did not give detailed
biographies or full accounts of these five men’s deaths in his sermon, but their
relative anonymity was powerful in its own right. It suggested that any person
might become a martyr worthy of commemoration and demonstrated that the
Czech lands had produced a number of such witnesses in a few short years, thus
proving that God had awakened the spirit of the apostolic Church in Bohemia.

 Jakoubek, Sermo Habitus, p. 240.

55

  On Matěj’s biography of Milíč and its impact on the perception of preachers within the
56

Bohemian reform, see:  Peter Morée, Preaching in Fourteenth-​Century Bohemia:  The Life and Ideas
of Milicius de Chremsir (d. 1374)  and His Significance in the Historiography of Bohemia (Slavkov,
CR: EMAN, 1999), pp. 42–​69; Karel Skalický, “Církev Kristova a Církev Antikristova v Teologii
Matěje z Janova,” in Mistr Matěj z Janova ve své a v naší Dobĕ, ed. J. Lášek and K. Skalický (Brno: L.
Marek, 2002), pp. 47–​69; and David Mengel, “A Monk, A Preacher, And a Jesuit,” BRRP 5, pt. 1
(2004): 33–​55.
57
  On the influence of Matěj’s writings on Jakoubek’s sermon, and in his wider corpus of writ-
ings, see: De Vooght, Jacobellus, p. 77; and Pavel Soukup, Reformní kazatelství a Jakoubek z Stříbra
(Prague: Filosofia, 2011), pp. 80–​87.
58
 Many scholars have seen this identification of the Czech people as the recipients of
divine revelation as the basis for religious nationalism in Bohemia. On this concept, see the
foundational work by:  Rudolf Urbánek, “Český mesianismus ve své době hrdinské,” in idem, Z
Husitského Věku:  Výbor vistorických úvah a studii (Prague, 1957), pp. 7–​2 8; and František Šmahel,
“The Idea of the ‘Nation’ in Hussite Bohemia,” trans. R. Samsour, Historica 16 (1969): 143–​2 47, and
17 (1970): 93–​197.
59
 Jakoubek, Sermo Habitus, pp. 241–​2 42.
 T h e S a i n t 35

Jakoubek therefore ended his sermon with a call for his audience to emulate this
spirit, because “through the destruction of our bodies we are able to rejoice eter-
nally with Christ in the fellowship of the one triumphant church with these men
and the other blessed martyrs.”60
In its description of Hus and the other Czech martyrs, this sermon was proto-
typical. Throughout the Bohemian reformation, the commemoration of its mar-
tyrs always featured Hus in a primary position; Jerome of Prague in a well-​defined,
but secondary role; and a rotating cast of other martyrs who moved into and out
of the Czechs’ collective consciousness as time passed. That the Bohemian refor-
mation produced a steady stream of such momentary martyrs only reinforced the
Czechs’ self-​identification as a chosen nation.61 But in the years after 1415 it was
primarily Hus’s death that made this identification possible, and Czech authors
made use of many genres and the vernacular to promote the idea that the Czech
lands had been sanctified as a whole through their indigenous saints. Scholars in
the last several decades have turned to vernacular religious songs in particular
as one of the most significant vehicles for the popularization of Hus’s memory in
the Czech lands, with Marcela Perett making the most compelling arguments for
the songs’ centrality in promoting the central tenets of the Bohemian reform.62
Considered alongside the passion narratives and Jakoubek’s sermon for Hus,
these songs represented a crucial means of popularizing the identification of Hus
as a saint and expanding the venues and genres in which this identification could
be articulated.
Three particular emphases emerge from a consideration of the earliest
songs on Hus. The first was biographical, in the sense that the songs focused
on Hus’s moral life and ministry within the church. This presentation of Hus
as a moral paragon foregrounded the songs’ second major theme, which was a
critique of the Catholic Church’s hierarchy as avaricious, proud, and hostile
to any discussion of its mores. The third leitmotif built off this opposition by
presenting Hus as a mimetic representative of the entire Czech people. His
bravery and faithful witness at Constance thus became characteristic of the
Czech nation as a whole, who had inherited the responsibility to continue his

60
 Jakoubek, Sermo Habitus, p. 242.
61
  This form of self-​identification persisted into the seventeenth century, when exiles after the
Battle of White Mountain (1620) traced a genealogy of Czech martyrs back to Hus. See: Vladimir
Urbánek, “Patria Lost and Chosen People: The Case of Seventeenth-​Century Bohemian Protestant
Exiles,” in Whose Love of Which Country?, ed. B. Trencsényi and M. Záskaliczky (Leiden:  Brill,
2010), pp. 587–​6 09.
62
  Marcela Perett, “Vernacular Songs as ‘Oral Pamphlets’: The Hussites and Their Propaganda
Campaign,” Viator 42 (2011): 371–​392. Cf. Thomas Fudge, The Magnificent Ride: The First Reformation
in Hussite Bohemia (Brookfield, VT:  Ashgate, 1998), pp. 186–​226; and idem, The Memory and
Motivation, ch. 6.
36 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

campaign against the ecclesiastical hierarchy’s failings after his death. 63 Or,
as the earliest extant song for Hus, “Master Jan Hus, Trusting in God,” encap-
sulated these themes:

Master Jan Hus, trusting in God,

That holy man set out from the Czech lands
And was burned for the truth of God in Constance
By a mob of bishops in the year of the Lord 1415.
He was a preacher of the Holy Scriptures.
The Czech lands know this well.
But the mob of priests, monks, and canons
Bore false witness against Master Jan in Constance
Out of malice and without mercy. 64

This song went on to praise Hus for his castigation of sins and praise of virtue, and
it asserted that he died for the sake of “the prophecies of God” and thus ascended
to heaven. Based on his example, then, the song’s author ultimately challenged
those who sung it by stating:

If we sinners want to be there

We need to suffer for the truth, praise the truth
And live in God without hypocrisy,
For God knows what is in the hearts
Of all people, good and evil.65

This song echoed a number of the themes that characterized the earliest
Bohemian texts commemorating Hus. He was characterized here by his stereo-
typical saintly virtues, which the song placed in opposition to his opponents’
seemingly diabolical hatred for divine truth and the man who proclaimed it. This
song also juxtaposed Hus’s “truth of God” with the hypocrisy of his opponents
at Constance, while identifying the Czechs as the people who recognized this
contrast and would make sacrifices in defense of the former. These themes were
also taken up in a second, contemporaneous song entitled “O, You Council of
Constance.” This composition denounced the Council of Constance for killing
Hus because he dared to point out its “pride, fornication, debauchery, and insatia-
ble greed,” stating that the council fathers had sought only to silence the holy man

63
 On these themes, see:  Jana Fojtíková, “Hudební doklady Husova kultu z 15. a 16.
století:  Příspěvek ke studiu husitské tradice v době přebĕlohorské,” Miscellanea Musicologica 29
(1981): 51–​142, especially pp. 61–​63. Cf. Perett, “Vernacular Songs,” pp. 376–​381.
64
  “V náději Boží Mistr Hus Jan,” in MS NKP VI C 20a, fols. 98r–​98v, here fol. 98r.
65
 Ibid.
 T h e S a i n t 37

who “pointed out the sins of many by the gift of God.”66 Ironically, though, the
consequence of their action was that “through the undeserved death of the holy
man, the crimes of priests are shining in all the world and cannot be concealed.”67
The marked contrast between Hus’s authentic holiness and the council’s pre-
tended sanctity (encapsulated, perhaps, in its decree Haec Sancta) was ultimately
made plain in the song’s first stanza: “O, you Council of Constance which calls
itself holy, how could you, without any qualm or mercy, kill a holy man?”68
These earliest Czech commemorations of Jan Hus as a saint outlined the contours
of the emergent cult of Hus in the immediate wake of his execution. In many ways, this
cult resembled those of other late medieval saints. Hus was praised for the same vir-
tues; the texts venerating him were composed in familiar genres; and the authorities
cited in constructing his sanctity were impeccably orthodox. There was, however, one
glaring difference between Hus and the earlier saints whose cults his mimicked: he
had been a heretic, and his execution had been mandated and legitimized by royal and
conciliar authority. Because of his status, then, the earliest commemorations of Hus
among the Czechs were characterized by their cutting edge. Hus was always depicted
in stark contrast to the authorities who had condemned him, in terms of either his
actual versus their ostensible sanctity or his membership within the holy Czech nation
versus their hostile, foreign allegiances. And while these binary oppositions were pres-
ent in the very first songs, sermons, and texts that venerated Hus as a saint, they were
not static. Rather, in response to Catholic polemics and in keeping up with the devel-
opment of a more radical political element within the emergent Hussite movement,
these themes evolved and expanded to serve as a mandate for revolution.

Roman Reactions
Beyond the sources that actually comprised the early commemoration of Hus, a
number of outside sources described his nascent cult. Many of these were hostile
to its development, such as an anonymous author from southern Bohemia who
lamented in 1416 that local preachers “call anyone evil who does not hold with Hus
and say that whoever renounces the truth and pays the tithe sins mortally. They
add that Hus accomplished more in the Catholic Church and did more miracles
than Sts. Peter and Paul.”69 A second, nearly contemporaneous letter written by

66
  “Ó svolánie konstanské,”in Výbor z České literatury, pp. 273–​275, p. 273.
67
  “Ó svolánie konstanské,” p. 274.
68
  “Ó svolánie konstanské,” p. 273.
69
  “Anonymi relatio de delictis, quae in arce Kozí et vitate Ustie super Lužnic committuntur,”
in Documenta, pp. 636–​638, p. 637. This letter was written from the vicinity of Kozí Hradek, which
had been a hotbed of reformist preaching since Hus had found refuge there during his exile in
1412–​1414. See: Kaminsky, A History, pp. 165–​167.
38 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

the cathedral chapter of Olomouc to the Council of Constance further attested to

the Czech people’s identification of Hus as a saint, asserting that they “held a feast
for the publicly condemned heretics Jan Hus and Jerome in churches and … they
sang ‘Gaudeamus’ and other songs concerning the martyrs, comparing Hus and
Jerome to the holy martyr Lawrence with respect to their suffering and merits,
and preferring them to St. Peter and other saints.” 70 The abbot Stephen of Dolany
(also resident in Olomouc) went even further in his description of Hus’s status
among the Bohemians in a chapter of his Book of Letters to the Hussites entitled
“How the Hussites impiously honor the memory of Hus.” Here he described how
a feast for Hus had been added to the liturgical calendar and celebrated with ser-
mons, a Mass, and the public proclamation that “the suffering of Jan Hus could be
compared only to the passion of Christ, rather than to the suffering of any other
Christian martyr who had preceded him.” 71 For Stephen, this blasphemy was to
be expected from of Hussites. After all, he had learned about this celebration from
a book written to him by an anonymous woman in which she praised the preach-
ing of Hussite women and detailed a variety of eucharistic irregularities. Given
the temerity of this writer and the wide range of deviant practices espoused by
the Hussites, then, Stephen considered their canonization of Hus to be consonant
with their deeper heresy.72
Perhaps in response to such reports, the Council itself described the cult of
Hus in a letter to King Sigismund from the end of 1416 demanding that he exer-
cise his duty as “the advocate and defender of the Church to destroy the perfidy
[of the Hussites] with force”:

Indeed, those true followers of Belial and disciples of Wyclif, Jan Hus,
and Jerome . . . portray the two aforementioned men who were recently
condemned as heretics and deviants from the faith by the righteous judg-
ment of this holy synod as saints in the churches of God, hold them up as
saints in their preaching, honor them with suffrages in the divine office,
sing Masses for them as if for martyrs, and venerate and worship these
blasphemous and heretical men.73

  “Das Olmützer Domcapitel klagt dem Concil über das Wachsthum der hussitischen Partei,”
70

in “Beiträge zur Geschichte der husitischen Bewegung V.: Gleichzeitige Berichte und Actenstücke
zur Ausbreitung des Wiclifismus in Böhmen und Mähren von 1410 bis 1419,” ed. J. Loserth, Archiv
für Österreichische Geschichte 82 (1896): 327–​418, pp. 386–​387. “Gaudeamus” is the title of an introit
used in the Mass for All Saints’ Day.
71
  Stephen of Dolany, Liber Epistolaris, p. 521.
72
  On this anonymous woman and her book, see: John Klassen, Warring Maidens, Captive Wives,
and Hussite Queens: Women and Men at War and Peace in Fifteenth-​Century Bohemia (Boulder: Eastern
European Monographs, 1999), pp. 174–​176.
73
  “Concilium Constantiense Sigismundo Rom. Regi ea quae in Bohemia in detrimentum fidei
perpetrantur nota faciens” (Nov. or Dec., 1416) in Documenta, pp. 647–​651, p. 647.
 T h e S a i n t 39

Chronicle sources from the fifteenth century further fleshed out the body of
commemorative practices that were growing around the memory of Hus. One
Czech annalist described how the singing of polemical, vernacular songs divided
the city of Prague into rival camps, and the chronicle of Procopius the Notary
noted how liturgical and popular songs composed in honor of Hus and Jerome
were sung in public and private spaces throughout the kingdom and “hallowed
the memory of the deceased.” 74 Taken all together, these sources documented the
proliferation of textual, musical, and liturgical vehicles for Hus’s memory. They
also reflected the means by which his developing cult was grafted onto both tradi-
tional modes of commemoration (sermons, Masses, and songs) and specific asso-
ciations strengthened through the use of familiar compositions (for St. Lawrence
or All Saints’) or the temporal overlay of Hus’s feast day on the octave feast of
Sts. Peter and Paul.75 In sum, even hostile accounts of the expansion of Hus’s cult
attested to the breadth of materials that his followers had synthesized to create a
hybrid set of commemorative practices that would have seemed both familiar in
terms of their ritual framework and distinctive because of the divisive figure who
was their focus.
These texts also hint at the social impact of the ascription of sanctity to Hus.
That impact was more clearly spelled out in a series of letters and official pro-
nouncements from the years after 1415 that delineated the rapidly shifting politi-
cal circumstances of that time. This climate was marked by tensions: between
Sigismund and his brother, Wenceslas; between the Hungarian king, the Council
of Constance, and eventually Pope Martin V; and between the members of the
Czech nobility who supported either the Council and Sigismund or the reformist
clergy who identified with Hus’s religious agenda. All of these parties left texts
that staked out their positions in this contested terrain. And by following the
course of their multifaceted debate, it is possible to see how the development of
Hus’s cult was understood as an indicator of the rise of a potentially revolutionary
ideology among the Czech people.
We can track this political conflict from within weeks of Hus’s death, when the
Council of Constance issued a letter to the Czech nobility defending their deci-
sion to execute Hus. According to this letter, the Council had been forced to deal

74
  This chronicle, which was written in the 1470s, made specific reference to the performance
of “V náději Boží Mistr Hus Jan,” which the laity “in ecclesiis, in tabernis et scolares in recorda-
tione per domos solent cantare.” See: Chronicon Procopii notarii Pragensis, in Geschichtschreiber, vol. 1,
pp.  67–​76, p.  71. On this source and the Czech annalists, see also:  Perett, “Vernacular Songs,”
pp. 376ff.
75
  On the significance of the dating of Hus’s feast day in terms of perceived competition with
Peter and Paul, see:  David Holeton, “ ‘O Felix Bohemia—​O Felix Constantia’:  The Liturgical
Commemoration of Saint Jan Hus,” in Zwischen Zeiten, pp. 385–​4 01; and idem, “The Celebration of
Jan Hus in the Life of the Churches.”
40 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

harshly with Hus because of his obstinate defense of John Wyclif ’s “abominable
and detestable doctrines.” The letter further emphasized the danger that Hus had
posed to the Church’s authority within “the illustrious kingdom of Bohemia” and
asserted that “such a heresiarch, with the outward appearance of Catholic faith,
would corrupt the simple and uneducated people so they might turn away from
the foundations of faith.” 76 Given their judgment on Hus, the Council fathers
consequently mandated that the nobles expel any preachers who defended Hus’s
orthodoxy from their lands and assist local bishops in their efforts to eradicate any
remaining heretics from the kingdom. By working to expunge the “wicked stain”
of heresy from their lands, the letter concluded, the nobles could both restore the
honor of their “most pious and Christian kingdom” and rest assured that “we [the
Council] will commend your memory.” 77
As described above, the Czech nobility accepted neither the council’s jus-
tification of Hus’s execution nor its attempts to co-​opt them for the repression
of further religious change. Rather, the nobility circulated a letter that formally
protested the death of “the venerable master of good memory, Jan Hus,” and the
Council’s continued efforts to tarnish the honor their kingdom through its accu-
sations of heresy.78 This letter further decried the efforts of “traitors and rivals”
to the Czech lands who continued to spread false reports about the existence of
heresy therein and asserted that the Czechs had always been faithful and obedi-
ent sons of the Church. The nobles therefore swore to uphold divine law and
protect those who taught it within their lands, even if such protection required
their deaths.79 Just three days after the initial circulation of this letter, a group
of fifty-​five noble actualized its promises by signing a pact that pledged mutual
self-​defense against any who would force them to suppress the preaching of
God’s word. For these nobles, Hus’s execution had proven that the enemies of
the Czech lands and the gospel (who were here equated) would resort to violence
rather than tolerate any critique of their sinful behavior. 80 As such, these nobles
deemed it necessary to take a stand against them and protect evangelical preach-
ing throughout the Czech kingdom.

  “Concilium Constantensie literis ad Bohemos” (July 26, 1415) in Documenta, pp. 568–​572,
76

p. 569.
77
 The original Latin here reads:  “Profecto id unum memoriae vestrae commendamus.”
See: “Literis ad Bohemos,” pp. 570–​571.
78
  “Literae baronum,” p. 581. Overall, 452 nobles affixed their seals to this letter before it was
sent to Constance in the spring of 1416.
79
  “Literae baronum,” p. 584.
80
  “Pactio multorum baronum Bohemiae et Moraviae” (Sept. 5, 1415) in Documenta, pp. 590–​
595. On these decisive actions taken by the nobility, see: John Klassen, The Nobility and the Making
of the Hussite Revolution (New  York:  Columbia UP, 1978), pp. 47–​6 0; and Kaminsky, A History,
pp. 143–​144.
 T h e S a i n t 41

Predictably, the Council reacted strongly to this declaration. Its first response
was to write to the remaining “orthodox” Czech nobles, asserting that Jan Hus
had “poured out the venom of his damnation” on Bohemia and made many of
the Czech nobles so drunk “with the chalice of Babylon” that they preferred his
“madness and false vanities” to the wisdom and authority of the Church.81 The
Council then threatened to cite all the dissident nobles to Constance and called
on the orthodox nobles to “be among those zealous for the faith in military service
to Christ” in order to restore orthodoxy and obedience in the Czech lands.82 King
Sigismund also wrote at this time to the emergent Hussite party among the nobil-
ity, seeking both to exculpate himself for retracting his safe conduct to Hus and to
echo the threats made by the Council.83 According to this letter, Hus’s stubborn
defense of Wyclif ’s heresies had placed Sigismund in the untenable situation of
either extending his protection to a proven heretic or abrogating a promise he had
made to that individual prior to understanding the depth of his religious devi-
ance. With the assurances of the Council, Sigismund had chosen the latter option,
and he instructed the Czech nobles that they must do the same: “If, however, you
want to sustain and defend the cause of Jan Hus with an obstinate and pertina-
cious spirit, then it will be most difficult for you … and if you do not obey, you
will bring a holy war upon yourselves.”84
These letters delineated the emergence of conflicting parties preparing to deal
with the political and military consequences of the continuing religious schism
that had crystallized with Hus’s death. And while the letters from the Council of
Constance and Sigismund suggested they were prepared to use military force to
end that schism, such action would not be taken until 1420. In the interim, though,
Catholic authors employed diverse media to counter the Czechs’ lionization of Hus,
particularly by portraying him as either a morally corrupt coward or the champion of
Wyclif’s debased, foreign heresy. In terms of the former emphasis, no text was more
significant than Ulrich Richental’s Chronicle of the Council of Constance, which played
a comparable role in Catholic tradition to that played by Petr of Mladoňovice’s texts
among Hus’s followers and sixteenth-​century Protestants.85 Richental was a burgher

81
  “Concilium Constantiense literis ad barones Bohemiae orthodoxos” (March 27, 1416)  in
Documenta, pp. 615–​619, p. 616.
82
  “Literis ad baronos Bohemiae orthodoxos,” p. 619.
83
  “Sigismundus Rex barones Bohemos et Moravos sub utraque hortatur” (March 21, 1416) in
Documenta, pp. 609–​613.
84
  “Sigismundus Rex barones Bohemos,” p. 612.
85
  Richental’s chronicle was likely composed in its final form during the 1420s, but it clearly
depended on notes and documents that Richental had compiled during the council itself. As such,
the text’s depiction and interpretation of Hus’s trial and execution can be understood as the product
of the turbulent years immediately following those events. The following citations to the text are
taken from the recent critical edition published as: Ulrich Richental, Chronik des Konstanzer Konzils
1414–​1418 von Ulrich Richental, ed. Thomas Martin Buck (Ostfildern: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 2010).
42 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

of Constance and produced a detailed record of the Council; his chronicle contained
a wealth of data on the council’s participants and its impact on the economic and
social life of Constance, as well as a narrative of the events that took place during the
council’s sessions. And while Richental’s description of Hus’s trial comprised only a
small portion of the Chronicle overall, his account ultimately served as a counter to
the hagiographic interpretations of Hus’s trial that proliferated in the Czech lands.
Although it is unlikely that he was aware of the other text, Richental’s narra-
tive of Hus’s time in Constance and his trial was a rhetorical inversion of Petr of
Mladoňovice’s. Like Petr, Richental contrasted Sigismund with Hus. The differ-
ence, however, was that Richental’s depiction of the Hungarian king emphasized
his majesty and honorable conduct while highlighting Hus’s treachery. In gen-
eral, Richental had a sharp eye for the trappings of power. He often described the
clothes and ornaments that ecclesiastical and secular elites wore, and he provided
many details about the gift economy that developed among them. Regarding
Sigismund in particular, Richental emphasized the splendor of his clothing and
attendants, but was clear that the king deserved the riches and honors that he
received because he had been instrumental in the convocation of the Council
and in the restoration of the Church’s unity. Richental also offset any potential
indictment of Sigismund’s wealth (as a sign of pride) by consistently depicting
him as obedient and humble vis-​à-​v is the leaders of the Church. This balance was
most clearly demonstrated in Richental’s description of Pope John XXIII giv-
ing Sigismund a golden rose as a reward for his faithful service. After receiving
this ornament from the pope’s hand and parading with it throughout Constance,
Sigmismund returned to the city’s cathedral and placed the rose as an offering to
the Blessed Virgin Mary. 86 With this act, Sigismund both received due recogni-
tion for his action on the Church’s behalf and acknowledged that the Church’s
sacred power superseded his own. A later episode—​t his time with Pope Martin
V—​reinforced this impression, as Richental described how Sigismund served as
a footman to the newly elected pope and bound himself to the pope by oath when
receiving the crown of the King of the Romans from him. 87 With such descrip-
tions, Richental presented Sigismund as appropriately subordinate to ecclesiasti-
cal authority, and thus deserving of the high honors bestowed upon him as its
primary defender.
By way of contrast, Richental described two separate occurrences when
Hus tried to escape Constance by hiding in a hay wagon, thus proving his base
nature. During one escape attempt, which Richental narrated immediately after
his account of Sigismund’s golden rose, Hus was discovered by one of the Czech
noblemen who had brought him to Constance. This man asked Hus why he had
broken the terms of his own safe conduct, but Hus had no answer. This attempted

 Richental, Chronik, pp. 41–​42.

86

 Richental, Chronik, pp. 112–​117.

87
 T h e S a i n t 43

flight therefore became the justification for Hus’s imprisonment.88 Richental later
described a second, similar escape attempt by Hus (on March 3, 1415). Following
this episode, Richental noted Sigismund’s concern that Hus’s continued impris-
onment would dishonorably render his safe conduct for Hus invalid. The king
was convinced by “the learned” among the council, though, that there could be
no binding promises of protection for heretics, especially those who had proved
to be flight risks, “so he let it be.”89 Richental’s account of Hus’s hearings before
the council were, in contrast to those of Petr, quite brief. Despite its brevity,
though, Richental presented the trial as a clash between an isolated, intellectually
underwhelming figure and the unified, forceful, and persuasive authority of the
collective Church. In Richental’s narrative, the job of refuting Hus fell to many,
typically anonymous priests and scholars. By their work, though, these unnamed
men overcame Hus’s arguments, convinced him to recant (albeit temporarily),
and then successfully concluded the prosecution of his heresy, thus demonstrat-
ing how the assembled power of the Church could overcome even the gravest
threat of heresy.90
Hus’s final moments in Richental’s Chronicle confirmed the text’s larger pre-
sentation of Hus as a figure worthy of derision, rather than veneration. In place of
Petr’s or Barbatus’s brave saint, Richental depicted Hus as a singular and forlorn
figure, surrounded by over 1,000 armed men and refusing even to confess his sins
prior to his death. Richental’s Hus was also silent at his pyre, and in describing
his death, Richental noted only that “he began to cry out terribly, but was quickly
burned.”91 Richental then concluded his account of Hus with a profoundly strange,
if striking, aside. According to Richental, when Hus was burned “the worst stench
arose that one could smell, for Cardinal Pancratius had had a mule that had died
of old age and was buried there, and when the heat sunk into the earth, the stench
arose from it.”92 It is not a stretch to read these last words about Hus’s death as
Richental’s final commentary on the heretic’s character and ultimate fate, with
the odor of sanctity attributed to Hus by the Bohemians replaced by the miasma
of a condemned and rotted corpse.

88
 Richental, Chronik, p. 44.
89
 Richental, Chronik, p. 62.
90
  In his description of Hus’s temporary recantation, Richental appeared to have conflated
Hus and Jerome of Prague. Jerome figured in the narrative here as showing up in Constance dur-
ing the spring of 1415, but Richental implied that he and Hus were interrogated at the same time,
which is not supported by other accounts of the council. For a full description of this episode,
see: Richental, Chronik, pp. 62–​6 4. Such discrepancies in the narrative would suggest that mod-
ern readers adopt some caution in accepting the factual accuracy of Richental’s account, contra
the arguments in: Herkommer, “Die Geschichte.” Cf. Thomas Buck, “Fiktion und Realität: Zu den
Textinserten der Richental-​Chronik,” Zeitschrift für die Geschichte des Oberrheins 149 (2001): 61–​96.
91
 Richental, Chronik, p. 65.
92
 Richental, Chronik, p. 66.
44 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

Although no autograph of Richental’s Chronicle is extant, at least ten fifteenth-​

century manuscripts (and one incunabulum from 1483) survive.93 Many of them
are richly illustrated, and one of the Chronicle’s most lasting legacies concerning
the commemoration of Hus is how these manuscripts portrayed his execution
and contextualized it within a broader description of the council and its attend-
ees. Consider the illuminations from the St. Petersburg manuscript of Richental’s
Chronicle (c. 1470). In the beginning of the manuscript, a ten-​folio series of images
depicted a Corpus Christi procession in Constance. Five pages of monks in their
variegated habits led off the procession, followed by a page of bishops and cardi-
nals marching in front of a rich canopy shading a monstrance. Following the mon-
strance came another group of ecclesiastical dignitaries, with King Sigismund
and his queen trailing them under their own canopies and surrounded by coteries
of followers (see Figures 1.1 and 1.2). The end of the procession included burghers
from Constance and respectable ladies dressed in sober cloaks over colorful robes.
These pages, then, displayed the full panoply of sacred and secular actors whose
presence in Constance enabled and empowered the council to act. Following this
procession were two folios with illuminations portraying the degradation and
execution of Hus, along with the disposal of his remains (see Figures 1.3 and 1.4).
In these illuminations, as in Richental’s text, Hus is presented alone, surrounded
by, and contrasted with, men bearing the symbols of sacred power and the tools
of secular justice. Following immediately after the visual depiction of the Corpus
Christi procession, this series of images encapsulated the contrast that animated
Richental’s assessment of Jan Hus: over and against this miserable heretic stood
the newly united hierarchy of Christendom, which both represented and acted to
defend the body of Christ on Earth.
Richental was by no means alone in his efforts to disseminate this interpreta-
tion of Hus’s death. Even as Czech authors were crafting sermons and songs that
effectively canonized Hus, Catholic authors were composing songs and satirical
texts aimed at demonizing him. One song, “Hear this, all of you, young and old,”
explicitly mocked the Czechs for preferring Hus, who was never canonized, to
the true servants of God and the Church.94 Another early Catholic composition

93
  The earliest of these, known as the Aulendorf Manuscript (now at the New York Public Library,
Spencer Collection No. 32), dates from about 1460. Eight additional manuscripts were produced in
the following fifteen years. On the manuscripts and their relationship to each other, see: Buck, “Zur
Konzilschronik Ulrich Richentals,” in Chronik des Konstanzer Konzils 1414–​1418 von Ulrich Richental,
pp. xxiv–​liii; and Wilhelm Matthiessen, “Ulrich Richentals Chronik des Konstanzer Konzils: Studien
zur Behandlung eines universalen Grossereignisses durch die bürgerliche Chronistik,” Annuarium
Historiae Conciliorum 17 (1985): 71–​191. For a specific analysis of the illuminated manuscripts and
their depiction of Hus, see: Jan Royt, “Ikonografie Mistra Jana Husa v 15. až 18. století,” in Husitský
Tábor Supplementum 1, ed. M. Drda et al. (Tábor: Sborník Husitského Muzea, 2001), pp. 405–​451.
94
  “Slyšte všickni, staří I vy, děti,” in Výbor z České literatury, pp. 383–​388, especially pp. 385–​386.
Figure 1.1  Image from Corpus Christi Procession; Ulrich Richental, Chronik des
Konstanzer Konzils 1414–​1418, © National Library of the Czech Republic, MS NKP VII
A 18, f. 9r. (c. 1470). 
Figure 1.2  Image from Corpus Christi Procession; Ulrich Richental, Chronik des
Konstanzer Konzils 1414–​1418, © National Library of the Czech Republic, MS NKP VII
A 18, f. 9v. (c. 1470). 
Figure 1.3  Image of Jan Hus Being Degraded from Priestly Rank and Led to His Pyre;
Ulrich Richental, Chronik des Konstanzer Konzils 1414–​1418, © National Library of the
Czech Republic, MS NKP VII A 18, f. 11r. (c. 1470). 
Figure 1.4  Image of Jan Hus Being Burned, and the Deposition of His Remains; Ulrich
Richental, Chronik des Konstanzer Konzils 1414–​1418, © National Library of the Czech
Republic, MS NKP VII A 18, f. 11v. (c. 1470). 
 T h e S a i n t 49

attributed Hus’s popularity to his showing people how to evade their financial
obligations to the Church and even steal from it; while a third, known as “Rejoice
now, Holy Church,” ended every verse with the declaration “Woe to you, Hus”
and began by asserting that Hus had “disgraced Bohemia before the whole world”
and made the whole land evil because he had espoused the foreign teachings of
Wyclif.95 This song further punned on Hus’s name (the Czech word for goose is
“husa”) to charge his “goslings” with murder, robbery, and the destruction of mon-
asteries, while also equating the Bohemians with Philistines who worshipped a
false god and attempted to destroy the true Church.96 In essence, both of these
images marked the Hussites as traitors to their kingdom’s Christian tradition,
effectively depicting them as having been seduced by their leader and exchanging
their kingdom’s traditional love and protection of the Church for foreign, false
teachings that only denigrated it.
Another composition from this period, the so-​called “Wyclifite Mass,” played
up these themes in the form of a satirical Mass dedicated to “Wyclif, the lord
of Hell and patron of Bohemia,” and “Hus, his only begotten son.”97 This text
emphasized how these men had encouraged the apostasy of the Czech nation
from Christian truth, beginning with a verse declaring that “Hus is worthy of
all praise and deserves to be defended even up to the flames.”98 This text fur-
ther constructed a heretical “book of the generations” to show how leaders after
Hus had taken up his teaching and further separated Bohemia from the rest of
Christendom, and by establishing a genealogical link between Wyclif, Hus, and
the latter’s followers, these “Begats” demonstrated how the heresy of one man
could spread to infect an entire nation. In doing so, this parody encapsulated
the main themes of the first Catholic responses to the Bohemians’ attempts to
canonize Hus. In place of pious veneration, Catholic texts sought to provoke
laughter or disdain. In place of the tyrant Sigismund, they sought to present a
righteous king who acted on the Church’s behalf and with its full endorsement.
The dissemination of these views through written texts, vernacular songs, and
hybrid satires did not arrest the growth of Hussite sentiment in the years follow-
ing Hus’s death, but those texts did provide Catholic polemicists with an arsenal
of tropes for additional anti-​Hussite propaganda. They also provided evidence
of the sharpening distinctions and intensifying rhetoric that characterized the

95
  The second song referred to here was “Všichni polúchajte,” which attacked Hus and “his
damned progeny” for preaching that non-​celibate priests did not deserve monetary support.
See: Výbor z České literatury, pp. 283–​2 89, p. 286. The third was: “Již se raduj, Cierkev Svatá,” in
Výbor z České literatury, pp. 290–​293.
96
  “Již se raduj, Cierkev Svatá,” 290.
97
  A  modern, critical edition of this “Antihussitischen Messen” has been published in:  Paul
Lehmann, Die Parodie im Mittelalter, 2nd ed. (Stuttgart: A. Hiersemann, 1963), pp. 217–​223.
98
  “Anithussitische Messen,” p. 217.
50 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

rift between the Czechs and their neighbors, a fissure that only widened as the
Catholic Church and her secular allies sought to impose their will upon the
recalcitrant Bohemian heretics.

The Reach of Hussite Ideology

Catholic efforts to prevent the growth of Hus’s cult and the movement that was
associated with it were not, after late 1415, restricted to threatening letters and
religious polemics. In November of that year, the archbishop of Prague declared
the city under an interdict which forbade the administration of the sacraments
(except baptism) within its churches. The explicit cause of the ban’s imposition
was the continued presence of Jan of Jesenice in Prague. Jesenice had been Hus’s
lawyer throughout his legal struggle with the curia, and he had been excom-
municated for his efforts; as such, his being in Prague proved that heresy was
tolerated in the city.99 More broadly, the decision to prohibit religious services
in the city was intended to alienate the populace and the nobility from the reli-
gious leaders whose actions had prompted the interdict. This attempt to turn
popular opinion against the emergent Hussite party, however, completely mis-
took Prague’s temperature at this time. According to the contemporary Hussite
chronicler Lawrence of Březova, “all the priests promoting the communion of
the body and blood of the Lord in both kinds and adhering to Master Jan Hus
daily carried out the divine office and preached the word of God,” despite the
interdict.100 Indeed, in the absence of any competition Hussite ministers came to
dominate the provision of religious services in Prague, even though they never
held legal title to the churches in which they officiated. The seizure of the city’s
churches therefore allowed preachers sympathetic to further reform to dissemi-
nate their message within the full array of the city’s sacred spaces, and their sur-
viving sermons attest to the diverse ways in which they employed the figure of
Hus to legitimize their continued resistance to the institutional church and its
secular allies.
The most influential of the these preachers was undoubtedly Jakoubek of
Stříbro, who, along with his sermon for Hus’s feast day, produced a Czech pos-
tilla at this time that drew its pericopes from the so-​called “little apocalypse”

99
  Kaminsky noted that the ostensible reason for the imposition of the interdict seemed radi-
cally out of line with the severity of deviant practices within Prague. On the causes and immediate
consequences of the interdict, see: Kaminsky, A History, pp. 158–​161. Cf. Jiří Kejř, Husitský Právnik
M. Jan z Jesenice (Prague: NČAV, 1965), pp. 99ff.
100
  See: Lawrence of Březova, Kronika Husitská, in FRB 5 (1893), pp. 329–​534, p. 341. Cf. the
fundamentally congruent account in: “Kronika University Pražské,” in FRB 5 (1893), pp. 567–​588,
p. 580.
 T h e S a i n t 51

of Matthew 24 and the last chapters of Job.101 This collection was characterized
by its understanding of the religious conflict in contemporary Bohemia as the
most recent iteration of a timeless conflict between God and Satan that had
begun with Cain and Abel.102 According to Jakoubek, this eternal struggle was
careening towards its climax, as the renewed apostolic church in the Czech lands
faced off with Antichrist, who had seduced both the secular and ecclesiastical
elite with promises of wealth for his followers and threats of violence against
his opponents.103 In Jakoubek’s reckoning, Antichrist had infiltrated the insti-
tutional church at the time of Constantine and Sylvester. Prior to that moment,
the clergy had been characterized by its “bravery, fortitude, love and persever-
ance,” so that “many became martyrs.” After the endowment of the church by
the emperor, though, “the love of many cooled,” and the Christian spirit of self-​
sacrifice had gone dormant until it had been resuscitated in the Czech lands.104
This renewal was most visible in the ministry of faithful preachers like Milíč,
Matěj, and Hus, who fulfilled the role of the two witnesses in Revelation 11 to
“bravely propagate the truth of our Lord Jesus Christ and preach faithfully, thus
destroying the snares of Antichrist.” Speaking specifically of Hus, Jakoubek
asserted that his audience should emulate this martyr because “Whoever per-
severes up to the end, not assenting to evil because of fear, threats, or persecu-
tion, ‘He will be saved,’ (Mt. 10:22) just as is well known concerning Master Jan
Hus.”105
Opposition to Antichrist, the juxtaposition of virtue and vice, and the recogni-
tion that martyrdom was the defining mark of true faith: these were Jakoubek’s
primary themes in this postilla, and they were taken up in a number of other
contemporary sermon collections which were even more explicit in identifying
Antichrist with Rome. One such collection, now MS NKP VI E 24 in Prague,
referred to the Church as “that harlot who always thirsted for the blood of the
righteous” and specifically excoriated the Council of Constance for its condem-
nation of communion in both kinds. With this act, the council had “slain Christ

101
  The manuscript for this postilla is currently held in Prague as MS NKP VIII E 3. On this
collection and Jakoubek’s other postillae (nine are attributed to him, from the years 1410–​1428),
see: František Bartoš, Literární Činnost M. Jakoubka ze Stříbra (Prague: ČAVU, 1925), pp. 60–​6 6; and
Ota Halama, “Jakoubkovy české postily,” in Jakoubek ze Stříbra: Texty a jejich působení, pp. 183–​2 08.
102
  On Jakoubek’s developing apocalyptic thought, see:  Pavlína Cermanová, “Jakoubkův a
Biskupcův Výklad na Apokalypsu: Porovnání s důrazem na interpretaci antikristovského mýtu,”
in Jakoubek ze Stříbra: Texty a jejich působení, pp. 209–​228.
103
  On the prevalence of this theme in Jakoubek’s preaching, see: Bartoš, “Betlemská kázání,”
pp. 62–​65.
104
  This timeline comes from a sermon on Job 41:13 in which Jakoubek used the figure of
Behemoth as a metaphor for Antichrist. See: MS NKP VIII E 3, fols. 111v.–​114r., fol. 111v.
105
  This quotation is taken from the collection’s first sermon, on Matthew 24:1. See: MS NKP
VIII E 3, fols. 1r.–​5r., fol. 4v.
52 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

Jesus, the apostles, the other saints, and then master Jan Hus.”106 This collection’s
anonymous author further asserted that Antichrist had “placed his followers by
satanic machinations in the place of Peter,” as witnessed by the deposition and
heretication of John XXIII in 1415.107 And the secular elites were no better; King
Wenceslas and his brother Sigismund were tyrants and “traitors to the divine law”
who refused to purge the institutional church of its manifest sins. Given these
signs of the times, this preacher ultimately concluded that he was living during
the twilight of the fourth kingdom (that of iron) described in Daniel 2, when
the failings of both the sacred and secular leadership had allowed Antichrist to
become ascendant in the world.108
Other contemporary preachers also perceived that they were living in an
eschatologically fraught era. One author lamented that in such dangerous times
“preachers and lovers of the truth are persecuted and slandered … so that many
now deny the truth, especially priests.”109 Another criticized such hypocrites, not-
ing that “when there is no tribulation, they believe the truth and think themselves
willing to die for it,” but withdraw when actual danger arises.110 These sermons
reflected a deep concern for, or even obsession with, the bold proclamation of
“truth” in the face of opposition. For another contemporary preacher, that truth
was a gift granted primarily to the Czech people:

This world is restless and is much disturbed, if Bohemia has within it

a righteous man sent by God:  Saint Adalbert, Matěj, Milíč, and Jan
now in 1415 incarcerated by Antichrist in Constance. God is accus-
tomed to awaken such men so they might announce the truth and will
of God to the world and it might not have any excuse. This truth is also

  This manuscript contains both sermons by Jakoubek and others that are not directly attrib-
106

utable to any known author. They do share, however, thematic emphases with Jakoubek’s work,
and as such can be considered “Jacobelliana.” On the dating and authorship of this manuscript,
see:  František Bartoš, “Sborník husitského kazatele asi z r.  1415,” Vestník České Akademie Ved a
Umení 57 (1948): 15–​33. These quotations come from a sermon whose incipit has been damaged in
the manuscript. See: MS NKP VI E 24, fols. 31r.–​36r., fols. 32v.–​33r.
107
  This observation came in the midst of a running commentary on the genealogy of Jesus in
Matthew 1; the author was specifically commenting on King Ahaz here, who erected an altar to the
Assyrian gods in the Jerusalem Temple (cf. 2 Kings 16:18). For this quotation, see: MS NKP VI E
24, fol. 109v.
108
  This assessment comes from a sermon on Luke 19:1. See: MS NKP VI E 24, fols. 212r.–​
217v., fols. 214r.–​214v.
109
  This text is drawn from Prague Cathedral Chapter MS F 40, which František Bartoš has
dated to 1416–​1419 based on its frequent references to the interdict on Prague. See: “Dvě studie o
husitských postilách,” Rozpravy Československé Akademie Věd 65 (1955): 1–​56, p. 21.
110
  This quotation is from a sermon collection for Lent dated to c. 1415. The sermon from which
this quotation is taken is on Jonah 3, in which Jonah prophesies against Nineveh but the city is
spared because of its repentance. See: MS NKP VI E 23, fols. 110v.–​103r., fol. 101v.
 T h e S a i n t 53

miraculous, because the more the world is against it, the more glori-
ously it shines forth and the more delightfully it is made known and
increased.111

In this passage, Bohemia had been appointed to play a leading role in the apoc-
alyptic drama that was now unfolding in the world. This land, as exemplified and
inspired by its saints, was understood to bear the responsibility of disseminat-
ing true religion throughout the rest of the fallen world, thereby becoming a new
Israel and assuming a collective messianic responsibility.112 The propagation of
this particular idea in early Hussite discourse allowed an eschatological optimism
to complement and partially offset the apocalyptic pessimism that was character-
istic of Czech preaching on the Roman church in the years after Hus’s death. In
short, this hopeful rhetoric suggested that even though the powers of the world
had been subverted by Antichrist, the truth revealed by the faithful could over-
come them. The survival and growth of religious reform in Prague after Hus’s
death had certainly proven that, so in the years after his death Hus’s own words
were increasingly cited and disseminated as proof that God’s “invincible truth”
could not be suppressed.113
Truth conquers all things (“super omnia vincit veritas”): Hus had written these
words to his friend Jan Kardinál, later the rector of the university in Prague, in a
letter from 1413 describing his ​preparations for martyrdom.114 After his death,
Hus increasingly came to be seen by his followers as the embodiment of that truth
which incorporated both the “law of God” contained in the Gospels and the prac-
tices of the apostolic age into a composite blueprint for the moral and sacramental
life of the Bohemian church.115 This truth also served as a standard against which
the institutional church of the fifteenth century could be judged, and ultimately

111
  Ibid. The reference to Hus’s imprisonment, as opposed to his execution, dates this sermon
to 1415. St. Adalbert (also known as Vojtech), to whom the preacher also referred, was a bishop of
Prague; he was driven from the city after trying to reform its clergy and became a missionary to
Hungary and Prussia. He was martyred in Prussia in 997, and was a patron of Bohemia. On Hus’s
relationship to Adalbert, see: Anežka Vidmanová, “Hus a Svatý Vojtěch,” in Svatý Vojtěch: Sborník k
mileniu, ed. J. Polc (Prague: Zvon, 1997), pp. 107–​112.
112
  Philip Gorski has drawn attention to the prominence of “Israelite” nationalism in the early
modern period, but without reference to fifteenth-​century Bohemia. For his model of early modern
religious nationalism, see: Philip Gorski, “The Mosaic Moment: An Early Modernist Critique of
Modernist Theories of Nationalism,” American Journal of Sociology 105 (2000): 1428–​1468.
113
 On the prevalence of this theme in Hussite polemics, see:  Urbánek, “Český
mesianismus,” p. 20.
114
  Jan Hus, “Letter to Jan Kardinál” (June, 1413) in Korespondence, pp. 169–​171, p. 170.
115
  On the importance of the “law of God” as a structuring principle in Hussite morality and
theology, see: Fudge, The Magnificent Ride, pp. 157–​161. On the importance of the primitive church
as a model for the Hussites, see: Kaminsky, A History, especially pp. 108–​126 and 260–​2 64.
54 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

found wanting. Hus’s conquering truth made its most striking appearance two
decades later, when the Hussite delegation to the Council of Basel arrived in
January 1433, “carrying banners on their covered wagons that depicted a chalice
with the host, upon which there were also words proclaiming: ‘Truth conquers all
things.’ ”116 This phrase also featured prominently, though, in sermons from the
years immediately after Hus’s death, becoming a slogan that signified the con-
trast between the substance of religious reform in Bohemia and the appearance of
sanctity and authority in the Roman ecclesiastical hierarchy.
Hus’s truth could be deployed for multiple rhetorical purposes, as witnessed by
a passage from the same author who lauded Bohemia’s messianic role in the world:
“He who will come at the last day will free his people and destroy their adversaries
through vengeance, because truth conquers all things.” This sermon continued
with a plea “that the Lord might arouse such among you who have the spirit of
Daniel, so they might speak the truth and reveal the wickedness of priests.”117 On
the one hand, this passage tempered hope for the outcome of Bohemia’s evange-
lizing mission to the world, as its enemies would persist until the last day; on the
other, this sermon foretold Bohemia’s ultimate vindication by God. And it did
both by invoking the truth that was spoken by prophetic preachers—​most nota-
bly Jan Hus—​and backed by divine power. Other authors echoed Hus’s words to
a different effect, citing God’s truth as an antidote to the fear of persecution that
their audiences might be feeling: “A man should not grow weak when the enemies
of truth say, ‘Now we are succeeding, and those [who love truth] will not stand.’ We
ought to be confident, because the truth conquers all things.”118 Here, the knowledge
of divine truth offered solace to the believer, who both knew that God would eventu-
ally triumph over his enemies and understood that a Christian’s suffering effectively
guaranteed his salvation. Or, as Hus had put in his letter to Kardinál, “He who is
killed conquers, because no adversity harms him if no iniquity rules over him.”119
Sermon collections written in the wake of Hus’s execution at Constance bore
eloquent witness to the myriad ways in which Hus’s example and words could be
deployed in a situation where the threat of religious persecution was very real.
They also demonstrated how the initially small circle of authors who preserved
and propagated Hus’s memory among the Bohemians expanded in the years after

  This description was included in:  Johannes de Ragusio, Tractatus quomodo Bohemi reducti
116

sunt ad unitatem ecclesiae, in MCG, vol. 1 (1857), pp. 133–​2 86, p. 258.
117
  This passage comes from a sermon on the deuterocanonical Daniel 14:28ff., in which Daniel
was again placed in a lion’s den. See: MS NKP VI E 23, fols. 103r.–​105v., fol. 105r.
118
  This citation is from a sermon on Philippians 1:6, which enjoins the reader to be “confident
of this very thing, that he who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Jesus Christ.”
See: MS NKP VI E 24, fols. 25v.–​27r., fol. 26r.
119
  Hus, “Letter to Jan Kardinál,” p. 170.
 T h e S a i n t 55

1415. Granted, the authors of these sermons were literate in Latin, likely trained
at the university, and were thereby members of Prague’s intellectual elite. Still,
the proliferation of Hussite preaching and lack of a coherent, local Catholic
response under the conditions of the interdict meant that their words could reso-
nate among their audiences and spur actions unforeseen by leaders like Jakoubek
of Stříbro and his fellow university masters. In retrospect, it seems logical that
the preachers’ militant, apocalyptic idiom would inspire active resistance against
those who had executed Hus, rather than merely faithful witness before them. On
the ground, however, the translation of the preachers’ and martyrologists’ escha-
tological rhetoric into action required the wider dissemination of that rhetoric
and the establishment of what Pavlina Rychterová has tentatively called a Hussite
public sphere.120
One of the major vehicles for that dissemination was popular song, as discussed
above. Songs could be performed anywhere, and they were easily comprehensible
by the people who sung them. That said, Hussite vernacular songs also articu-
lated a remarkably nuanced set of theological and polemical messages that clearly
derived from, but expanded upon, the work of the movement’s theological lead-
ers.121 As such, popular song was a potent resource for generating popular support
and action on behalf of the Hussite movement. Other means of communication
and mobilization are, however, harder to pin down. Foremost among these were
what Blanka Zilynská has simply called “happenings”: gatherings and processions
(some planned, some spontaneous) in which sermons, songs, liturgical parodies,
and the display of images invited students and citizens to become participants
in the active diffusion of Hussite ideology.122 Events such as these had played an
essential role in the growth of religious reform in Prague since at least 1412, when
anti-​indulgence demonstrations had climaxed with the execution of three young

120
 Pavlina Rychterová, “Die Verbrennung von Johannes Hus als europäisches Ereignis
Öffentlichkeit und Öffentlichkeiten am Vorabend der hussitischen Revolution,” in Politische
Öffentlichkeit im Spätmittlealter, ed. M. Kintzinger and B. Schneidmüller (Ostfildern:  Jan
Thorbecke Verlag, 2011), pp. 361–​ 383. Cf. František Šmahel, “Reformatio und recep-
tio:  Publikum, Massenmedien and Kommunikations-​h indernisse zu Beginn der hussitischen
Remormbewegung,” in Das Publikum politischer Theorie im 14. Jahrhundert, ed. A. Bühler and
J. Miethke (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1992), pp. 255–​2 68.
121
  The authorship of these songs has been the subject of a spirited debate between Marcela
Perett and Thomas Fudge, with the former arguing that vernacular songs were written by the
religious elite with the specific intent of popularizing specifically Hussite theological tenets.
Conversely, Fudge has argued that the songs could have been written by laypeople who had inter-
nalized those tenets themselves. See: Perett, “Vernacular Songs,” pp. 390–​391; contra Fudge, The
Memory and Motivation, ch. 6. I am inclined to accept Perett’s arguments on this point.
122
  Blanka Zilynská, “From Learned Disputation to the Happening: The Propagation of Faith
through Word and Image,” in Public Communication in European Reformation:  Artistic and Other
Media in Central Europe, 1380–​1620, ed. M. Bartlová and M. Šroněk (Prague: Artefactum, 2007),
pp. 55–​67.
56 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

men by the king (as memorialized in his sermon for the first anniversary of Hus’s
death), and they continued to function as a means of popularizing Hussite theol-
ogy and rhetoric throughout the decade. And as both Rychterová and Zilynská
note, these public demonstrations allowed Hussite leaders to reach beyond elitist
networks centered on the university and enlist the wider populace in their efforts
to create a viable, alternative ecclesiastical order within the city.123
Although our specific knowledge of these happenings in the first years after
Hus’s death is limited, we do have evidence about the propaganda that helped
spark them. In his chronicle, Procopius the Notary described how the Hussites
“carried about written and painted placards against the apostolic see” during the
interdict that contrasted the poverty and humility of Christ and his apostles with
the wealth and pride of the contemporary pope and his curia. The message of this
propaganda was clear:  “Behold these dissimilar lives!”124 Procopius went on to
describe one of these diptychs, which juxtaposed a picture of Christ riding an
ass alongside his barefoot apostles with an image of the mounted pope and his
cardinals “in ornate vestments.”125 A  number of earlier sources also attested to
the Hussites’ use of “placards and pictures” with analogous antitheses to attack
the Roman hierarchy, which suggested that a program of visual propaganda was
developing among the Bohemians to complement their songs and sermons.126 At
the heart of this program was a text known as the Tables of the Old and New Colors,
a set of nine antitheses that paired contrasting images with lists of biblical and
patristic citations to support the practices of the apostolic church (the old color)
over and against those of its medieval successor (the new). This text was written
by Nicholas of Dresden, a German expatriate who had settled in Prague around
1411.127 Nicholas and several other German masters quickly allied themselves
to the Prague reformers, and although they became estranged from the Czechs
by the end of the decade, in the years 1414–​1417 Nicholas and his cohorts were
among the leading lights of the reform movement in Prague.

123
  Rychterová, “Die Verbrennung,” pp. 370–​373; and Zilynská, “From Learned Disputation to
the Happening,” pp. 60–​62.
124
  Chronicon Procopii, p. 72.
125
 Ibid.
126
  For a more detailed account of this development, see: Jan Royt, “Hussitische Bildpropaganda,”
in Kirchliche Reformimpulse des 14./​15. Jarhunderts in Ostmitteleuropa, ed. W. Eberhard and F.
Machilek (Cologne:  Böhlau, 2006), pp. 341–​354; and Petra Mutlová, “Communicating Texts
through Images: Nicholas of Dresden’s Tabule,” in Public Communication, pp. 29–​37.
127
  This text survives in fifteen manuscripts, many of which are either partial or lack a full
complement of illustrations. A critical edition of the text, along with a biography of Nicholas, has
been published by Howard Kaminsky as: “Master Nicholas of Dresden: The Old Color and the
New: Selected Works Contrasting the Primitive Church and the Roman Church,” Transactions of
the American Philosophical Society 55 (1965): 1–​93. For an updated assessment of the extant manu-
scripts, see: Mutlová, “Communicating Texts through Images.”
 T h e S a i n t 57

It was in this period that Nicholas composed the Tables, which visually repre-
sented many of the themes propagated in contemporary sermons attacking the
ecclesiastical elites as the servants of Antichrist and enemies of divine truth.128
In the first table, the poverty of Christ was juxtaposed with the wealth of the
pope, while the accompanying words identified Constantine’s endowment of
the church as the moment when avarice had first seized its leaders; in the fifth, a
rider on a black horse holding a scale evoked the apocalyptic angst that animated
Hussite preaching, while the text of this table weighed the biblical truth espoused
by the Hussites against the false teachings of “the masters of error.”129 Finally, the
last table depicted Antichrist surrounded by whores and explicitly identified that
figure as the pope, noting that he would do everything in his power to silence or
murder those who opposed him “with mildness and good works, for these are the
weapons of our faith.”130
It should be noted that the first of these antitheses, which placed the pope in his
finery alongside the lowly Christ, had featured prominently in a 1413 sermon by
Hus.131 The visual echo of Hus’s words in Nicholas of Dresden’s Tables, then, might
demonstrate yet another way in which Hus continued to exert influence among
the Bohemians after his death. It is clearly known that Jakoubek had had portions
of Hus’s text On the Six Errors inscribed on the walls of Bethlehem Chapel prior
to Hus’s death, and one early song (perhaps even from 1412) suggested that those
who wanted to learn God’s truth must “go to Bethlehem to learn it on the walls,
just as Master Jan Hus preached that it should be written.”132 I suggest that these
inscriptions, along with the invocation of Hus’s slogans within sermons, should
be understood as a second type of textual relic associated with Hus. These words
enabled him to maintain a presence among the nascent Hussite movement as an
exemplary teacher and champion of divine truth whose words were understood
as the main vehicle for its continued dissemination. When painted or paraded

128
  There has been considerable (if ultimately inconclusive) debate among art historical schol-
ars about whether the images in the Tables predated the text, or vice versa. Currently, scholars
have their attention to the question of how the text and images could work together to present a
more comprehensive and comprehensible critique of the medieval Church. For an overview of this
debate, see: František Šmahel, “Die Tabule veteris et novi coloris als audiovisuelles Medium hus-
sitischer Agitation,” Studie o rukopisech 29 (1992): 95–​105; and Mutlová, “Communicating Texts.”
129
  Kaminsky, “Master Nicholas,” p. 47.
130
  Kaminsky, “Master Nicholas,” p. 64.
131
  Petra Mutlová’s work drew my attention to this borrowing. Hus’s original sermon was part
of the Czech postilla he prepared in 1413; it was prepared for Palm Sunday and took its pericope
from Matthew 21:1. The first half of the sermon was built upon a comparison between Jesus’ humil-
ity in this choice and the ostentation of contemporary prelates, especially the pope. See: Jan Hus,
“Na Květnú Neděli,” in Česká Nedělní Postila, ed. J. Daňhelka (Prague: Academia, 1992), pp. 177–​
184, especially pp. 178–​179.
132
  “Němci jsú zúfali,” in Havránek, Výbor z České literatury, p. 272.
58 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

about, Hus’s words also played a nearly totemic role, serving as a physical center
of gravity around which those who identified with his reform could gather. We
can only conjecture about these textual relics’ ability to mobilize the people of
Prague in the first years after Hus’s death; chronicle sources are suggestive about
their role at this point of time, but not decisive. By 1419, though, as external forces
began to act more assertively to suppress the continued growth of the Hussite
movement, Hus’s words and deeds again came to the fore of Bohemian polemics.
And at that time their potential to transform religious rhetoric into popular action
became entirely clear.

The Mobilization of Hussite Ideology

The development of Hussite religious ideology did not occur in a political vacuum.
Although it was clear to contemporary observers that the interdict on Prague had
only enabled the continued existence and even spread of heresy in the Czech capital,
it was not until Cardinal Odo Colonna was elected pope on November 11, 1417 that
the Church sought to take additional measures.133 As Martin V, Colonna proved to
be a trenchant opponent of the Hussites, whom he considered the greatest threat to
the newly restored unity of the Church. He repeatedly pushed his secular allies into
imposing political sanctions upon, and taking military action against, the Bohemians,
even after the latter tactics had proven to be spectacularly unsuccessful. Martin took
his first anti-​Hussite actions within months of beginning his pontificate. He and the
council fathers issued the articles against the Hussites which began this chapter in
February of 1418, and Martin also published a bull against the Bohemians known as
Inter Cunctus at this time.134 This proclamation defined the Hussites’ heresy in more
expansive terms that the previous articles had and employed evocative, harsh rheto-
ric. The Hussites were characterized, for instance, by their “wolf-​like rage” against the
church and described as “so immersed in the abyss of their sins that they never cease
to blaspheme the Lord God.” The priests and prelates who had failed to oppose them,
conversely, had acted “like dumb dogs unable to bark,” so that the entire kingdom of
Bohemia had been “caused to rot in the filth of their lies.”135

133
 On the election of Martin V and the end of the Great Schism, see:  Karl Fink, “Die
Wahl Martins V,” in Das Konstanzer Konzil, ed. R. Bäumer (Darmstadt:  Wissentschaftliche
Buchgesellschaft, 1977), pp. 306–​ 322; Birgit Studt, Papst Martin V.  (1417–​ 1431) und die
Kirchenreform in Deutschland (Cologne: Böhlau, 2004), pp. 24–​72; and Thomas Buck, “Konklave
und Papstwahl,” in Kas Konstanzer Konzil (1414–​1418): Kirchenpolitik—​Weltgeschehen—​Alltagsleben,
ed. T. Buck and H. Kraume (Ostfildern: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 2013), pp. 168–​193.
134
  The original bull has been published in: Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, ed.
Giovanni Domenico Mansi, vol. 27 (Venice: A. Zatta, 1784), cols. 1204–​1215.
135
  Pope Martin V, Inter Cunctus, cols. 1204–​1205.
 T h e S a i n t 59

Martin was quite specific in identifying the fundamental cause of this spread-
ing infection. It was the teaching of John Wyclif, which had taken root in Bohemia
through the activity of Jan Hus “of damnable memory” and his fellow heresiarch,
Jerome. Because their writings survived in the Czech lands and many still con-
sidered them orthodox, the pope authorized a full range of sanctions against any
who continued to defend them: excommunication, confiscation of property, exile,
imprisonment, and even the application of “such a severity of punishment that they
might serve as an example for others still running riot.” As Martin explained: “If
the fear of God will not prevent them from leaving off such evil deeds, then at
least the severity of our discipline might constrain them.”136 When the Council
of Constance concluded two months later, it became clear that King Sigismund
would serve as the agent of that discipline. He headed east in the second half of
1418, accompanied by papal representatives, to deal with the Hussites and his
brother, their king. In December, Sigismund issued an ultimatum to Wenceslas
demanding his presence and an explanation for his failure to suppress the Hussite
heresy; Fernand of Lucena, who was serving as the chief papal representative in
Sigismund’s retinue, also issued a summons for Wenceslas’s queen, Zofie, who was
suspected of actively supporting the heretics.137 In response to Sigismund’s pres-
sure, Wenceslas appeared before him in February of 1419 and subsequently took
uncharacteristically decisive action on behalf of the Roman church. On February 25,
he issued a decree ordering that the administration of communion in both kinds
cease in Prague and that all Hussite priests without legal title to their parishes sur-
render them to the rightful, orthodox incumbents. The king’s proclamation left the
Hussites with access to only four churches in the Bohemian capital, and the arch-
bishop of Prague lifted the interdict on Prague the day after Wenceslas’s decree.138
Wenceslas’s actions seemed at odds with his previous attitude of benign
neglect towards religious reform in Prague, and they ran up against a movement
that had become deeply entrenched in the city by 1419. At that point in time,
the Hussites had cultivated a strong base of popular and institutional support
within Prague, as well as a large group of noble patrons who had installed Hussite
preachers in their proprietary churches and put forward candidates for ordination
who would administer communion in both kinds and defend Hus’s orthodoxy.139

136
  Pope Martin V, Inter Cunctus, col. 1205.
137
  On Sigismund and the legate’s actions, see:  Šmahel, Hussitische Revolution, pp.  988–​9 92.
The text of Sigismund’s ultimatum to Wenceslas has also been published in:  František Pelcl,
Lebensgeschichte des Römischen und Böhmischen Königs Wenceslaus, vol. 2 (Prague:  Schönfeldisch
Buchhandlung, 1790), pp. 169–​171.
138
  These events were described in an appendix to the chronicle of Lawrence of Březova that
has been edited and published as: Výtah z Kroniky Vavřince z Březové, in FRB 5, pp. 537–​5 43, p. 538.
139
 For an overview of the nobility’s support of Hussite clerics, see:  Šmahel, Hussitische
Revolution, pp. 972–​989.
60 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

The university faculty in Prague had also publicly defended both of these prac-
tices by this time, thus providing intellectual heft and moral authority to the con-
tinuing development of Hussite theology, especially regarding the sacraments.
The university masters had also, along with the priests of Prague’s churches, par-
ticipated in a Hussite synod in 1418 that authorized infant communion, which
represented the culmination of the Bohemian reform’s push to incorporate all
Christians fully into the sacramental body of Christ.140 That same synod fur-
ther delineated Hussite theology by affirming the validity of a number of tradi-
tional beliefs and practices (regarding, e.g.: the cult of saints, Purgatory, Masses
for the dead, and the liturgy of the Mass), but calling for the moral purification
of the clergy and insisting on the priority of the law of God over ecclesiastical
tradition or papal decrees. Howard Kaminsky has argued persuasively that this
synod established a “framework of formal Hussite unity” which incorporated the
people, their priests, the intellectual elite, and many members of the nobility into
a church structure that existed independently from, and increasingly in opposi-
tion to, the papacy.141
The best source for understanding the dynamics of this opposition are the
sermon outlines of the radical preacher Jan Želivský, who ascended to a posi-
tion of prominence in Prague in 1419. Želivský was a former Norbertine monk
who had been preaching in Prague since at least 1418, but he lost his position
at the parish church of St. Stephen’s in the New Town as a result of Wenceslas’s
February decree.142 Želivský then moved to the monastery church of Our Lady
of Snows (one of the four churches that the Hussites could still use), and his ser-
mons there employed a fiery, apocalyptic idiom to articulate a scathing critique
of King Wenceslas and the institutional church. Želivský’s sermons survive as
outlines, which comprise strings of biblical citations with some moral and histori-
cal commentary. Despite this limitation in the sources, though, both contempo-
rary chroniclers and the demonstrable impact of Želivský’s sermons attest to the

140
  On the university’s determination on the eucharist and its role in shaping Hussite theology,
see: Jiří Kejř, “Deklarace Pražské University z 10. Března 1417 o Přijímání Podobojí a její historické
Pozadí,” Sborník Historický 8 (1961): 133–​156. On the advent of infant communion in the Bohemian
reformation, see: David Holeton, La communion des tout-​petits enfants: Étude du mouvement eucharis-
tique en Bohême vers la fin du Moyen-​Age (Rome: C.L.V.-​Edizioni Liturgiche, 1989).
141
  For a summary of the debate and decisions made at this gathering, known as the
St. Wenceslas Synod, see: Kaminsky, A History, pp. 259–​2 64. The articles approved by the synod
have also been published as: Articuli XXIII a magistris cleroque Pragensi contra pullulantia Taboritarum
sectae dogmata publicati, in Documenta, pp. 677–​681.
142
  It has been a matter of scholarly debate whether Želivský began preaching in Prague in
1416 or 1418. Frantsšek Bartoš, who attributed several anonymous postillae to Želivský, argued
for the earlier date; conversely, Amedeo Molnár argued for the latter date, as that is when chroni-
clers first mentioned Želivský. On these arguments, see:  Bartoš, “Počatky Jana Želivského v
Praze,” Theologická Příloha: Křesťanské Revue 33 (1966): 44–​47; Molnár, “Želivský, prédicateur de la
 T h e S a i n t 61

power he derived from empowering his audience to act in defense of God’s law
and guiding their actions through his preaching.143
Želivský’s sermons from the first half of 1419 consistently rehearsed several
themes that legitimized Želivský and his audience’s resistance to Wenceslas’s
decrees.144 The first of these themes concerned the chosen status of the Bohemian
nation. For Želivský, the witness of preachers such as Milíč, Hus, and himself
was proof that Bohemia had been chosen by God to share his truth with the rest
of the world. In a similar vein with earlier Hussite preachers, Želivský’s sense of
“national messianism” required the Bohemians to actively promote God’s law and
resist any efforts to suppress it. For Želivský, the Czech lands’ elect status derived
from the fact that they had received their own apostle to reveal divine truth to
them. Indeed, just as “Peter showed God’s righteousness to Judea, which he con-
verted, Paul the gentiles, among whom were a faithful people … Andrew showed
Achaia; John, Asia; Thomas, India; and I trust the holy Jan [Hus], Bohemia.”145
Equally important here was the people’s responsiveness to this message. Želivský
thus assured his listeners that “you now know in what way the word of the Lord
has been established throughout Bohemia and Moravia” through the proper
administration of the eucharist and the proliferation of evangelical preaching.
This renaissance of piety, though, inevitably spurred envy and anger, so Želivský
acknowledged that the “princes of priests” accused the Czech lands of heresy and
“slandered them to the kings and princes.”146 Despite this opposition from the
powers of the world, though, Želivský remained confident that he and his audi-
ence would successfully defend God’s revelation to the Bohemians.
In fact, the persecution and suffering that Želivský foretold as a result of that
revelation only confirmed his belief in Bohemia’s elect status. After all, had Jesus
not warned his apostles in Luke 21:17 that “you will be hated by all men on account
of my name?” The necessity and soteriological benefit of suffering therefore func-
tioned as a second major theme in Želivský’s sermons from these months, as he
warned his audience of the cost of their continued support for religious reform.
In making this case, Želivský turned to the death of Jan Hus as exemplifying
that price, noting that the council fathers had “rejoiced at the condemnation of
the gospel in Constance and the death of St. Jan Hus, thinking that now their

révolution,” CV 2 (1959): 324–​334; and the more recent summary of available evidence in: Božena
Kopičková, Jan Želivský (Prague: Mellantrich, 1990), pp. 35ff.
143
  František Šmahel in particular had drawn attention to Želivský’s willingness to attribute
“Reformkompetenz” to the common people of Prague. See his: Hussitische Revolution, pp. 625–​635.
Cf. Thomas Fudge, “Želivský’s Head: Memory and New Martyrs among the Hussites,” BRRP 6
(2007): 111–​132.
144
  These sermons have been edited and published by Amedeo Molnár as: Dochovaná Kázání z
roku 1419, pt. 1 (Prague: Nakladatelství Československé Akademie Věd, 1953).
145
  Želivský, “Dominica Tercia post Octavam Pasche,” in Dochovaná Kázání, pp. 86–​9 9, p. 96.
146
  Želivský, “Feria Secunda post Pascha,” in Dochovaná Kázání, pp. 28–​31, p. 29.
62 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

heresies would not be preached or made public.” On the contrary, though, the
people of Bohemia commemorated Hus’s death with reverence and sadness, prov-
ing that they were the “heavenly men” to whom Christ had spoken: “your sadness,
however, will be turned into long and eternal joy, but the joy of the world is very
brief.”147
That transformation depended, though, on perseverance in faith: “Jesus Christ
is true God and true man, and whoever believes this with a faith formed by love
will conquer the world, and thus persevering will finally triumph.” Certainly Hus
had known this, as did Želivský: “This is well known concerning all the saints
who believed in Christ:  they conquered, that is persevered, as Master Hus,
Jerome, etc. did.”148 The paradoxical concept that faithful death represented the
Christian’s highest victory was intrinsic to Christianity, and Želivský made full
use of that idea to inspire his listeners: “The time is coming when anyone who
kills you will think that he excels in obedience to God. But it is he who is killed
that conquers.”149 This passage drew on two major sources of textual authority to
makes it point. The first source was John 16:2, which served as part of the pericope
for this sermon.150 The second source, however, was more recent; the phrase “he
who is killed, conquers” (here: “ille vincet, qui occiditur”) derived from the writings
of Jan Hus.
Hus had employed this phrase in two separate letters from 1413: one to the
rector of the university, Master Křišt’an of Prachatice; and the second, which also
contained Hus’s words “super omnia vincit veritas,” to Jan Kardinál.151 In his letter
to Křišt’an in particular, Hus contrasted his certainty about the Christian’s vic-
tory in death with “the opinion of the world,” which thought that death could ren-
der its critics silent.152 Earlier Hussite preachers had picked up on this theme, with
Jakoubek in particular writing in his postillae from 1415–​1416 that “the faithful
should be confident, because with the help of God all that power and great avarice
are about to be defeated. And even if the faithful will be killed with bodily death,
they will conquer, because it is written: He who is killed, conquers.”153 Such invo-
cations of Hus’s words about faithful-​death-​as-​v ictory suggest that this idea had

  Želivský, “Dominica Secunda Post Octavam Pasche,” in Dochovaná Kázání, pp. 60–​71, p. 63.

147

  Želivský, “Octave Pasche,” in Dochovaná Kázání, pp. 48–​59, pp. 55–​56.

148

149
  Želivský, “Octave Pasche,” pp. 57–​58.
150
 The Vulgate reads:  “Venit hora ut omnis qui interficit vos arbitretur obsequium se
praestare Deo.”
151
  The first letter has been published as: Jan Hus, “Letter to Křist’an of Prachatice” (March or
April, 1413) in Korespondence, pp. 162–​163.
152
  Hus, “Letter to Křist’an of Prachatice,” p. 163.
153
  This passage served as the conclusion to Jakoubek’s sermon on the description of the
Leviathan in Job 41:24, “non est potestas super terram quae comparetur ei.” See: MS NKP VIII E
3, fols. 126r.–​127r., fol. 127r.
 T h e S a i n t 63

become, along with related concept of the invincible truth, a key component in
Hussite ideas about the necessity and cost of the struggle that they would face as
a result of their singular defense of God’s law. Hus’s words to this effect seem to
have become a maxim for the Bohemians that could both encapsulate a broader
set of ideas about suffering and perseverance and prompt those people who heard
and remembered the phrase to internalize those ideals.
Želivský’s use of this slogan during the Easter season of 1419 also exemplified
his broader strategies for utilizing the figure of Hus in his sermons, first and fore-
most as an exemplary individual whose acceptance and proclamation of divine
truth, no matter the suffering these actions had entailed, was now to be expected
of the entire Czech people. Želivský also invoked Hus, though, as an authorizing
figure whose preaching mission and death had granted legitimacy to those who
had taken up his mantle. Or, as Želivský put it: “Just as Elisha had a double share
of the spirit from the merits of Elijah, so I strongly hope about contemporary
preachers from the merits of Jan Hus.”154 Here again, as in Jakoubek’s earlier ser-
mon, Hus was linked explicitly to Elijah. But Želivský took that identification one
step further by placing himself in Elisha’s place as the prophetic successor who
had been called upon to continue the battle against the forces of the godless. And
for Želivský, writing in late April 1419, that battle now required the use of force to
resist the increasing threat that King Wenceslas’s actions represented: “Whoever
has the help of Jesus the son of God, conquers the world. In fighting for his truth,
and having war permitted to them, they are able to fight with authority.”155
Želivský was not alone in this interpretation of what the present atmosphere
of conflict required. While he was preaching to crowds of the urban poor in Our
Lady of Snows, a group of Hussite priests in the countryside south of Prague
had begun to hold massive, outdoor services for audiences who came to hear
them preach and receive communion in both kinds. These gatherings began in
April 1419, and the largest of them came to center on a hilltop near the castle of
Bechyně that the preachers renamed Tábor, after the site of the Transfiguration
in the synoptic gospels. Contemporary chronicles stated that these gatherings
included tens of thousands of people, many of whom may have made the sixty-​
mile trek to Tábor from Prague, and that the preachers who led them called upon
their audiences to either withdraw from or act to cleanse the fallen Church and
political structures that supported it. This message was in line with Želivský’s
developing rhetoric concerning the potential necessity of violent resistance to the
king and his forces, and it is possible that Želivský actively coordinated his efforts
in Prague with those of the emerging Táborite leadership. Whether that actually
happened is secondary, though, to the larger fact that multiple parties had begun

  Želivský, “Octave Pasche,” p. 57.

154

  Želivský, “Octave Pasche,” p. 56.

155
64 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

to form in the first half of 1419 that espoused radical action in response to King
Wenceslas’s efforts to suppress the Hussite reform, and that those parties quickly
gathered large bodies of supporters who could be mobilized to take that action.
The incipient conflict between the Hussites and the king came to a head in July.
On July 6, the fourth anniversary of Hus’s death, Wenceslas removed the city coun-
cilmen of Prague’s New Town and replaced them with men who would be more
activist in opposing the Hussites in the city. Wenceslas’s new counselors acted
quickly, imprisoning Hussite sympathizers and threatening to bring in soldiers to
quell popular demonstrations. In response, Želivský and other Prague preachers
ratcheted up their anti-​monarchical rhetoric. On July 16, Želivský preached a ser-
mon arguing that “the kingdom can never be well ruled unless the kings and princes
are governed by the Word of God” and stating further that “to disobey an evil prince
is to obey God.”156 This sermon further invoked the Bohemian martyrs who had
been executed by monarchs allied with the ecclesiastical persecutors of God’s law:

The clergy did not kill Christ with their own hands, but shouted, agree-
ing in their hearts, “Crucify! Crucify!” . . . Thus now it has been done in
Constance, so all are murderers who consented to the death of Master Jan
Hus and Jerome, and to the death of the lay people who were beheaded in
the Old Town of Prague [in 1412] and who were burned in Olomouc.157

Here again, Želivský echoed Jakoubek’s earlier sermons, particularly in his

catalogue of Czech martyrs. Now, though, that group of the holy dead, with Hus
at its head, was enlisted as justification for active resistance to the royal powers
that had authorized its members’ executions. Želivský’s incendiary preaching
coincided with a climax in the gatherings at Tábor, where perhaps 40,000 gath-
ered in an outdoor worship service on July 22.158 Howard Kaminsky has argued

156
  The events of July 1419 have been documented and analyzed most extensively by Howard
Kaminsky. See particularly his essay:  “The Prague Insurrection of 30 July 1419,” Medievalia et
Humanistica 17 (1966): 106–​126; and A History, pp. 278–​296. Želivský’s sermons for this period
have not been edited, but are contained in the Prague manuscript MS NKP V G 3. This quotation
comes from a sermon on Luke 5:1 and is set up around the contrast between Jesus’ preaching to the
people and contemporary prelates’ trying to forbid preaching. I follow Kaminsky’s transcription
and translation of the text here. See: Kaminsky, “The Prague Insurrection,” p. 110.
157
  This quotation is from a sermon on Matthew 5:20, “Dico enim vobis, quia nisi abundaverit
justitia vestra plus quam scribarum et pharisæorum, non intrabitis in regnum coelorum.” See: MS
NKP V G 3, fols. 12r.–​21r., fol. 19v.
158
  This number derives from the account of the gathering in: Lawrence of Březova, Kronika
Husitská, pp.  344–​3 45. Cf. the hostile report of the so-​called Anonymus de origine Thaboritaturm
et de morte Wenceslai IV, in Geschichtschreiber 1, pp. 528–​536, p. 528. On the relationship between
these texts, see:  František Bartoš, “Z Husitského a Bratrského Dĕjepisectví,” Sborník Historický
2 (1954): 83–​112, especially pp. 83–​9 7.
 T h e S a i n t 65

that Želivský was present to enlist people’s aid in a plan he was formulating to
undermine (or even supplant) King Wenceslas’s authority in Prague.159 While it
is impossible to say for sure that a conspiracy was hatched at this event, it seems
very likely that the urban and provincial radicals encouraged each other at this
moment to realize their religious visions of ideal communities through concerted,
popular action both within and beyond Prague.
A week after the July 22 gathering, Želivský was back at Our Lady of Snows.
On July 30, he preached a sermon on Mt. 7:15–​21, “Beware of false prophets,
which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but are inwardly ravening wolves.”160 The
sermon continued by comparing both wicked priests and tyrannical magistrates
with these wolves, noting particularly that “the faithful community does not per-
secute the magistrates and councilors, but these persecute faithful Christians.”
This persecution had been characteristic of the entire history of God’s people
on Earth. Just as Cain had slain Abel, Esau had attacked Jacob, and the Jews had
persecuted the early Christian community, so too had “canons, common priests,
monks, and nuns(!) persecuted Jan Hus, but not Jan Hus the canons.”161 The idea
that Hus’s execution was analogous to the persecution faced by the biblical patri-
archs and the apostolic martyrs was typical of much early Hussite preaching,
and this brand of rhetoric was also to be expected in Želivský’s preaching from
this time. What was unexpected, however, was that many people in his audience
had come to church that morning with weapons, and that Želivský—​bearing a
monstrance containing a consecrated host—​would lead these people on a sort of
armed pilgrimage across the New Town to his old parish of St. Stephen’s. And that
Želivský would have his followers break down the door to the church, eject the
priest officiating at Mass, and then celebrate communion in both kinds. Further,
few would have imagined that Želivský would subsequently lead this crowd to
the New Town Hall, where they demanded the release of Hussites imprisoned
there. Or, that when this demand was not immediately met, the Hussites would
storm the building and throw several of King Wenceslas’s town councilors out a
window and onto the weapons of those gathered below. In short, very few people
could have predicted that Želivský would orchestrate Prague’s first defenestration
in order to overturn King Wenceslas’s efforts to suppress the Hussite movement.
Given these events, the content of Želivský’s sermon on July 30 seems ironic,
bordering on perverse, and his actions seem to mark an inflection point for the

159
  Kaminsky, “The Prague Insurrection,” pp. 114–​120.
160
  MS NKP V G 3, fols. 33r.–​42v. The sermon preached on this day has been the subject of
scholarly debate, but Kaminsky persuasively argues that Želivský preached on Matthew 7 (which
was to be the pericope for August 6, not July 30) in order to fire his audience up for the planned
insurrection. In this, and in the reconstruction of events from that day, I follow Kaminsky’s account
in: “The Prague Insurrection,” pp. 121–​126.
161
  MS NKP V G 3, fol. 39r.
66 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

entire Hussite movement. The militant images and idioms of death, conquest, and
victory that authors like Jan Hus and Jakoubek of Stříbro had deployed figura-
tively or soteriologically here became concrete, turned into a platform for vio-
lent, popular action. Such an interpretation overstates, however, the disjunction
between Želivský and the Hussite leaders who first conceived of God’s invincible
truth and promoted Hus as its champion. An analysis of Želivský’s sermons shows
that he shared many of his central ideas and motifs with contemporary Hussite
preachers, especially concerning the exemplarity of Hus and his execution. What
had changed were the circumstances, in terms of both the heightened threat to
the continued growth of Hussitism that Wenceslas’s actions represented and the
burgeoning pluralization of the Hussite movement as exemplified by Tábor. And
while the ensuing decade of Hussite history only exaggerated the impact of these
two pressures, in 1419 Jan Želivský and his polemics tapped into and drew upon
the images and symbols that defined the emergence of the Hussite movement as a
whole, especially the figure of Saint Jan Hus.

Conclusion
In a very short period of time after his death, Jan Hus became the center of a
hotly contested, quickly evolving struggle over how he would be remembered.
He was the subject of sermons, songs, narrative and liturgical texts, royal cor-
respondence, satires, and official ecclesiastical decrees. His words were also
preserved visually and orally, quickly becoming watchwords and maxims that
encapsulated the ideas and ideals that the movement which came to bear his
name espoused. Along with their variety, one of the most striking features of
the early commemorations of Hus was the rapidity with which they spread and
influenced each other. There were consistent echoes of certain phrases, images,
and episodes from Hus’s preaching and death that reverberated across media and
genres, amplifying each other to create a richly textured, eclectically sampled
figure of Jan Hus. Additionally, the rehearsal of certain hagiographic tropes and
reinforcement of associations with orthodox saints grafted this composite Hus
onto a model of Christian sanctity that was the creation of over a millennium
of textual and liturgical practices. In sum, by overlaying the traditional modes
and language of memorial practice on their interpretation of the recent, spec-
tacular events in Constance, Bohemian authors articulated a powerful argument
for continuing the moral and ecclesiastical reform that their now-​eponymous
founder had embraced.
Hussite authors were not alone, however, in trying to shape the memory of
Jan Hus. A considerable array of writers both within and without the Czech
lands who supported the Council of Constance and King Sigismund opposed
the construction of the sainted Hus, painting him as cowardly, motivated by
 T h e S a i n t 67

greed or animus against the Church, or under the sway of a foreign heresy.
The institutional church also joined its coercive powers to these rhetorical
efforts, seeking to offset the appeal of the holy man Hus with a potent mix-
ture of persuasion and force. The escalating application of these strategies
in the 1410s, however, only drove the Hussites further from the Church and
their king. Indeed, given the increasing tendency of the Bohemians to inter-
pret their struggle with the Church in an apocalyptic framework, any efforts
at quashing their religious innovations became self-​fulfilling prophecies of
diabolical persecution that necessitated holy opposition. And in response to
the perceived intensification of that persecution, the Hussite rhetoric of resis-
tance evolved into a reality, with the martyrdom of Jan Hus serving as a ral-
lying cry for Bohemians to take action in defense of God’s truth. After all, he
who was killed, conquered. And while Jan Želivský’s uprising in July of 1419
represented a first crescendo in the escalation of the conflict between those
who venerated Hus and those who hereticated him, this episode would prove
to be merely a prelude to the full-​scale warfare that would erupt the follow-
ing year. It was thus in the context of crusades against the Bohemians that
Saint Jan Hus would become fully realized as a national patron and holy knight
whose death became the foundational memoria upon which a distinctive Czech
church could be constructed.
 2

The Founder

Introduction
In April of 1429, the English expatriate and Hussite theologian Peter Payne
prepared an oration to be delivered before King Sigismund in Bratislava.1 The
occasion of this speech was a meeting between the emperor and the Hussite lead-
ership, who had sought a public hearing for their reform platform and hoped to
convince Sigismund of its legitimacy. The context of this colloquy was the failure
of a crusade against the Hussites called by Pope Martin V in 1427—​t he fourth
such holy war that had proven unable to reduce the heretical Bohemians to obe-
dience to the Roman see.2 In the wake of this military failure, then, Sigismund
sought another means to end nearly a decade of armed conflict in the Czech lands.
But Payne would have none of this, unless the Hungarian king acknowledged that
God himself had evidenced his support for the Hussites in their victories over
Sigismund and his allies. Payne therefore chose a contentious and pointed theme
for his oration: the familiar slogan of the Hussites’ eponymous founder, “Truth
conquers all things.”3

1
  On Payne’s career as a leading exponent of Wyclif ’s theology among the Hussites and reli-
gious leader among the Hussite military brotherhoods, see:  William Cook, “John Wyclif and
Hussite Theology, 1415–​1436,” Church History 42 (1973): 335–​3 49. For an analysis of the negotia-
tions leading up to Bratislava and the meeting itself, see: William Cook, “Negotiations between
the Hussites, the Holy Roman Emperor, and the Roman Church, 1427–​1436,” East Central Europe
5 (1978):  90–​104; and František Bartoš, The Hussite Revolution, 1424–​1437, trans. J. Klassen
(New York: Columbia UP, 1986), pp. 38–​43.
2
  For overviews of the Hussite Wars, see:  Frederick Heymann, “The Crusades Against the
Hussites,” in A History of the Crusades, vol. III: The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, ed. H. Hazard
(Madison:  U.  of Wisconsin Press, 1975), pp. 586–​6 46; Norman Housley, Religious Warfare in
Europe, 1400–​1536 (New York: Oxford UP, 2002), especially ­chapter 2; and the exhaustive review
of relevant Czech literature on the subject in: Die Hussitische Revolution, ­chapters 6 and 7.
3
  This speech has been published as: Peter Payne, Oratio ad Sigismundum Regem Bratislaviae A.D. 1429
Habita, in Peter Payne Anglici, Positio, replica, et propositio Concilio Basiliensi a 1433 atque oratio ad Sigismundum,
ed. F. Bartoš (Tábor: Taboriensis ecclesia evangelica fratrum Bohemorum, 1949), pp. 81–​90.

68
 The Founder 69

The central argument of Payne’s address was that the Hussites were simply
the latest example of God granting victory to his chosen people against over-
whelming military odds. Just as with Israel under Joshua, Gideon, Judith, and
the Maccabees, God had enabled the Hussites to overcome the forces who sought
to eradicate divine truth in the world. Given the Hussites’ repeated success on
the field of battle, Payne implored Sigismund to join with them and champion
their religious reforms. After all, Payne reminded him:  “When you were with
God, you triumphed over the pagans, but when you abandoned God, you were
conquered by peasants.”4 Payne further asserted that the continual persecution
that the Hussites faced only strengthened their resolve to defend the law of God,
because they knew that “the elect, thus harassed and seized by kings and prelates,
were clearly of Christ’s lot, handed over on account of their witness to him, and
we have seen them killed in the flames and by the sword.”5 The Bohemians knew,
in short, that their suffering would result directly in their salvation, so Payne
warned Sigismund to “be mindful of omnipotent God, who punishes all wrongs,
overcomes all violence, overwhelms all oppression, and whose truth conquers all
things.”6 With these words, Payne demonstrated that the militant spirit that had
animated the initial growth of the Hussite movement in the previous decade had
not been diminished by nearly a decade of war; his choice of words also attested to
the continued power of Jan Hus’s words within the Czech movement for religious
reform and their potential to serve as a mandate for military conflict.
Unsurprisingly, this meeting at Bratislava proved to be a false start in the
search for peace between Bohemia and her neighbors. In fact, Payne and the other
Hussite leaders’ militancy outraged Sigismund, spurring him to begin organizing
a new crusade within a week of the hearing.7 Still, the Hussites’ meeting with the
king showed that the forces arrayed against them had begun to recognize that
a military solution to the Bohemian problem might not be feasible. Bratislava
therefore represented a turning point in the era of the Hussite Wars and a fore-
shadowing of the substantive dialogue between the Czechs and the Council of
Basel that began four years later. Those discussions would eventually result in
both a religious rapprochement between Prague and Rome and the recognition
of Sigismund’s political sovereignty in the Czech lands, which were formalized

4
 Payne, Oratio ad Sigismundum, p. 88.
5
 Payne, Oratio ad Sigismundum, p. 83.
6
 Payne, Oratio ad Sigismundum, p. 85.
7
  On April 10, Sigismund issued thirteen letters calling for various German bishops, dukes,
town councils, and other nobles to assemble troops and money for a renewed campaign against the
Hussites. He issued further letters on April 16, planning a multi-​pronged attack from Austria as
well as the German lands. These letters have been published in: J. F. Böhmer, ed., Regesta Imperii, vol.
11: Die Urkunden Kaiser Sigmunds (1410–​1437) (Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlagsbuchhandlung,
1968), entries 7194ff.
70 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

in a set of treaties known as the Compactata in 1436. It is certainly true that the
limitations on the Hussite reform program enshrined in these agreements—​most
notably regarding free preaching, the role of secular authorities in policing sin,
and the civil authority of the Church—​would have been unthinkable in the revo-
lutionary years of 1419–​1420. It would be a mistake, though, to see the acceptance
of the Compactata by the Czechs as a death knell for their religious reform. Rather,
it is possible to interpret the treaties as signaling not the end of the Bohemian ref-
ormation, but its transformation from a radical Hussite movement into a national,
Utraquist church that came to bear the theological and liturgical characteristics of
a mature ecclesiastical institution.
To use the language of transformation (or even maturation) to describe the
acceptance of the Compactata is not historiographically innocent. It is a counter
to generations of scholarship that have privileged the era of the Hussite revo-
lution (roughly 1419–​1434) as the apogee of the Bohemian reformation and
either downplayed or ignored the signal achievement of the Bohemian refor-
mation as a whole: the long-​term construction of an alternative ecclesiastical
order in the Czech lands that forged Catholic tradition and distinctly Czech
practices into an alloy could withstand both decades of ideological cold war
with the papacy and bursts of renewed military conflict carried out by Rome’s
secular allies. 8 The stability of the Utraquist church that emerged out of Basel
was never a given. The Hussite movement it succeeded was characterized by
remarkable entropy, as its revolutionary energy inspired social and religious
experiments that often found themselves at odds with each other. Throughout
the 1420s, though, those centrifugal forces were superseded by centripetal fac-
tors, most notably by the threat and reality of military conflict. Every time the
Hussite movement approached the precipice of total fragmentation, external
calls to crusade forced it back from the edge and focused its constituent parties
on the conflict at hand. Additionally, there were certain religious principles and

8
  Some contemporary scholars, most notably Winfried Eberhard and Zdeněk David, have
focused on the political and ecclesiastical development of the Czech Utraquist church in the later
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. And while other historians such as František Šmahel have pub-
lished studies of particular moments or events from the era after the Council of Basel, their out-
put on this period is dwarfed by their work on the revolutionary era of the Hussite movement.
See, e.g.:  Winfried Eberhard, Konfessionsbildung und Stände in Böhmen, 1478–​1530 (München,
1981); and idem, “Zur reformatorischen Qualität und Konfessionalisierung des nachrevolution-
ären Hussitismus,” in Häresie und vorzeitige Reformation im Spätmittelalter, ed. František Šmahel
(Munich:  R. Oldenbourg, 1998), pp. 213–​238; Zdeněk David, Finding the Middle Way:  The
Utraquists’ Liberal Challenge to Rome and Luther (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press,
2003), especially the introduction; František Šmahel, “Pax externa et interna: Vom heiligen Krieg
zur Erzwungenen Toleranz im hussitischen Böhmen,” in Toleranz im Mittelalter, ed. A. Patschovsky
and H. Zimmerman (Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 1998), pp. 211–​273; and idem, Husitské
Čechy: struktury, procesy, ideje (Prague: Lidové Noviny, 2001), especially pp. 119ff.
 The Founder 71

practices that the full spectrum of the Hussite movement shared. The demand
for evangelical preaching, the pre-​eminence of the law of God, the adminis-
tration of communion in both kinds, and the veneration of Jan Hus and other
Czech martyrs:  these represented the core religious foundations of Hussite
unity and could be invoked to underwrite collective action.9
The period under consideration here did not, in sum, produce the stunning
array of commemorative media that the first years after Hus’s death did. Instead,
the years that witnessed the rise, militant defense, and negotiated transformation
of the Hussite revolution saw the deployment of Hus’s death within a number of
political contexts and religious conflicts that provoked its evolution from a casus
belli to the founding moment of a stable, national institution. Within these diver-
gent conditions, Hus’s words and the memories of his deeds maintained a con-
tinual, if not consistent, presence; they could be activated, as it were, whenever
either external enemies or internal divisions threatened the continued viability of
the Bohemian reformation. It is well worth considering, then, how the manifes-
tos, chronicles, and theological discourses that both provoked and explained the
turbulent development of the Hussite revolution and Utraquist church invoked
the figure of Jan Hus as the founding father and architect of their increasingly
conflicting programs for religious reform.

From Urban Uprising to National Revolt

In the year after the first defenestration of Prague, the conflict that had begun
as a local battle over the suppression of Hussite practices and the composition of
the city government expanded into an international holy war against the Czech
heretics. At the head of this crusade stood King Sigismund, who had become the
primary claimant to the Czech throne when his brother, King Wenceslas IV, died
of a stroke in August 1419. Contemporary sources suggested that Wenceslas’s
stroke had been induced by his rage over the uprising in Prague, but the cause of
Wenceslas’s death was ultimately less significant than its most proximate effect:
the elevation of Sigismund, who had both presided over Jan Hus’s execution
and currently stood as the Church’s leading secular ally against the Hussite her-
esy, to the throne of Bohemia.10 Although Sigismund’s role in the religious and

9
  Thomas Fudge has memorably identified the latter three of these features as the tripod upon
which a “Hussite myth” was constructed to justify and sustain the revolution in 1419–​1420. See
his: The Magnificent Ride: The First Reformation in Hussite Bohemia (Brookfield, VT: Ashgate, 1998),
pp. 125ff.
10
  The chronicler Lawrence of Březova attributed Wenceslas’s death to apoplexy, noting that
the king “expired quickly, with great bellows and roars like a lion.” See his: Kronika Husitská, in FRB
5 (1893), p. 346.
72 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

political controversy surrounding the Hussite movement rendered his ascension

deeply problematic, it did not make it entirely impossible. Rather, many of the
Czech nobles and the burghers of Prague were hesitant to engage in a sustained
rebellion against their rightful sovereign, provided that he could convince them
that he would not act to eliminate the movement for religious reform in the
Czech lands. To that effect, the citizens of Prague produced a series of articles in
September laying out the conditions under which they could accept Sigismund
as king. These articles required that Sigismund recognize the validity of commu-
nion in both kinds; order Czech bishops to ordain priests who would administer
the eucharist in this manner; and promote evangelical preaching and the use
of the vernacular in some portions of the Mass. The articles also dictated that
Sigismund appoint only Czech speakers to positions of authority within the gov-
ernment and recognize the nobility’s legal title to lands seized from the Church
since 1416, thus linking political and religious demands within this text.11
Sigismund was cagey in his response to these demands. He deferred judg-
ment on the religious issues to a future church council, and he appointed
the well-​k nown Hussite sympathizer Čeněk of Wartenberg as the regent of
Bohemia.12 This latter action in particular assuaged the Hussite nobility’s
concerns about Sigismund’s intentions, and they consequently did homage to
him as their king at a diet held in Brno on Christmas day, 1419. A delegation
from Prague arrived two days later and did the same, an action that prompted
the return of many Catholic Czechs and Germans to Prague in January.13
Sigismund apparently interpreted these acts of fealty as a license to pursue
his own agenda in the Czech lands, and by the end of January he had issued
letters to officials throughout the kingdom dictating that they suppress the
Hussite reform. One surviving letter called on the city governments of west-
ern Bohemia to eliminate the “Viclefie,” while Lawrence of Březova noted that
Sigismund ordered all royal officials “to persecute and imprison Wyclifites,
Hussites, and those practicing communion with the chalice in every way, and
exterminate them if possible.”14

  The complete list of these articles has been published in: AČ 3, pp. 206–​2 08.
11

  Sigismund’s negotiations with the Bohemians in late 1419 and early 1420 are treated at
12

length in:  Frederick Heymann, John Žižka and the Hussite Revolution (Princeton:  Princeton UP,
1955), c­ hapter 7; Wilhelm Baum, Císař Zikmund: Kostnice, Hus, a války proti Turkům (Prague: Mladá
Fronta, 1996), pp. 178ff.; and Jörg Hoensch, Kaiser Sigmund: Herrscher an der Schwelle zur Neuzeit
1368–​1437 (Munich: Verlag C. H. Beck, 1996), pp. 279–​292.
13
  On the meeting in Brno and the subsequent return of the Germans to Prague, see the
account in:  Lawrence of Březova, Kronika Husitská, pp.  353–​355. Cf. Die Hussitische Revolution,
pp. 1036–​1040.
14
  This letter has been published as:  “K. Sigmund an die böhmischen Stände des Saatzer
Kreises” (Feb. 10, 1420) in UB 1, pp. 15–​17. For Lawrence’s description of Sigismund’s efforts, see
his: Kronika Husitská, p. 357.
 The Founder 73

In March of 1420, Sigismund undertook a pair of actions that fulfilled these

threats. First, while in Breslau to adjudicate a disagreement between the Teutonic
Order and the king of Poland, Sigismund oversaw the execution of Jan Krása, a
Czech merchant in town on business. Krása had been brought before an ecclesias-
tical court for having spoken against the Council of Constance and its execution
of Hus and Jerome of Prague. He was tortured, but refused to recant, so he was
consequently “dragged through the city by horses and … consumed in a pit of
fire.” The Hussite chronicler Lawrence of Březova commemorated Krása as “a vig-
orous soldier and the strongest champion of the Lord,” and the merchant quickly
became incorporated into the company of Czech martyrs that occupied a central
place within contemporary Hussite polemics.15 Krása’s death also emphasized
again that Sigismund was more than willing to condone the murder of Hussites in
order to silence their critique of the Church.
And if this singular execution was not proof enough of the king’s hostility, only
two days later the papal legate Fernand of Lucena publicly proclaimed a crusade
bull in Breslau against the Hussites, entitled Omnium Plasmatoris Domini, which
had first been published by Martin V in Florence on March 1.16 In this bull, the
pope authorized Sigismund to wield the earthly sword against the Hussites and
save the remaining faithful in the Czech lands from physical and spiritual harm.
Initially deploying the metaphor of a flock, this decree called upon Sigismund to
shepherd his people, “lest it graze in infected pastures filled with the pitfalls of the
reprobate.”17 The bull further asserted that the Hussites’ “superstitious assump-
tions and doctrines” had maddened the Czech people, so that Sigismund and all
true “athletes and warriors of Christ” must receive the sign of the cross and fight
against the raging, bestial heretics. In exchange for such service, any sins commit-
ted while on crusade would be forgiven.18 Sigismund’s willingness to accept the
leadership of the intended crusade, along with his concurrent approval of Krása’s
death, demonstrated that he intended to deliver on the threats that he had first lev-
eled against the Hussites four years earlier.
In response to Sigismund’s actions, the noblemen and urban elites who had earlier
accepted his claim to the Czech crown retracted their support. In doing so, they (re)
joined a number of Hussite religious leaders, most notably Jakoubek of Stříbro and

15
 Lawrence of Březova, Kronika Husitská, 358–​ 359. On the commemoration of Krása,
see:  Fudge, Thomas Fudge, “Želivský’s Head:  Memory and New Martyrs among the Hussites,”
BRRP 6 (2007): 111–​132, pp. 122–​124.
16
  The full text of the bull has been published in: UB 1, 17–​2 0. On Omnium Plasmatoris Domini as
a part of Pope Martin V’s larger strategy against the Hussites, see: Šmahel, Die Hussitische Revolution,
pp.  1071ff.; and Birgit Studt, Papst Martin V.  (1417–​1431) und die Kirchenreform in Deutschland
(Cologne: Böhlau, 2004), pp. 59–​72.
17
  Martin V, Omnium Plasmatoris Domini, p. 17.
18
  Martin V, Omnium Plasmatoris Domini, p. 20.
74 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

Jan Želivský, who had never stopped decrying Sigismund as a tool of the Antichrist
and opponent of the law of God. Indeed, while the Bohemian political elites had been
negotiating with Sigismund in the months after the Prague uprising, the Hussite
movement’s religious leaders had been engaged in a wide-​ranging, polyphonic debate
about the acceptable limits of resistance to the king. This debate was carried out in
open-​air assemblies whose decrees echoed those of Tábor from the spring; university
halls where the traditional theories of Christian just war were interrogated and ulti-
mately expanded; and in the pulpits of Prague’s churches, where Želivský denounced
Sigismund as the red dragon from Revelation 12 and compared those who wanted
to negotiate with him to “Pharisees sitting in judgment and betraying the faithful.”19
A number of scholars have treated the contours of the internal Hussite dialogue about
the legitimacy of war against Sigismund at length, and one main conclusion emerges
clearly from their consideration of the debate that raged in the winter of 1419–​1420: that
while different Hussite parties espoused a wide spectrum of positions on how to respond
to Sigismund, ranging from complete withdrawal from the world to the prosecution of
total war against Antichrist’s minions, nearly all of the parties agreed that the Hungarian
king’s hostility demanded a concerted response that required the coordination of mili-
tary, political, and religious resources from across the Czech lands.20
The debate that ultimately yielded this consensus was initially conducted
in biblical terms. The central question was whether or not the Bohemians
should literally imitate the ancient Maccabees and take up the sword against
“the glorification of Antichristian, hypocritical evil” in the Czech lands, as
one manifesto from September, 1419 demanded. 21 This position was ini-
tially rebuffed by Jakoubek, who wrote against it in a pair of texts from the first

19
  These citations are all from Želivský’s sermon from November 19 on Matthew 22:15, “Then
the Pharisees went out and laid plans to trap him in his words.” This sermon is contained in MS
NKP V G 3, fols. 209r.–​220v., here fol. 209v. This sermon was typical of Želivský’s preaching from
that fall. See: Howard Kaminsky, A History of the Hussite Revolution (Los Angeles and Berkeley: U. of
California Press, 1967), pp. 301–​309.
20
  On the development of these competing ideologies, see:  Josef Macek, Tábor v Husitském
Revolučním hnutí, vol. 2 (Prague:  Československé Akademie Věd, 1955), especially c­hapter  2;
Amedeo Molnár, “Mezi revolucí a válkou,” Theologická příloha Křesťanské revue 34 (1967): 17–​2 4;
Kaminsky, A History, pp.  301–​317; Housley, Religious Warfare, pp.  36–​51; and Die Hussitische
Revolution, pp. 1032–​1070.
21
  This manifesto, dated to September 17, was issued by a congregation that had met at Bzí
Hora, just outside Pilsen, under the leadership of Václav Koranda. The full text has been published
in: AČ 3, pp. 205–​2 06. On the contested role of the Maccabees in Hussite polemics from the era
of the crusades, see:  František Holeček, “Makkabäische Inspiration des hussitischen Chorals,
‘Ktož jsú boží bojovníci,’” in In Memoriam Josefa Macka (1922–​1991), ed. M. Polívka and F. Šmahel
(Prague: Historický Ústav, 1996), pp. 111–​123; and P. Rychterová and R. Soukup, “The Reception
of the Books of the Maccabees in the Hussite Reformation,” in Dying for the Faith, Killing for the
Faith:  Old Testament Faith Warriors (1 and 2 Maccabees) in Historical Perspective, ed. in G. Signori
(Boston: Brill, 2012), pp. 195–​2 07.
 The Founder 75

months of 1420. 22 For Jakoubek, the Maccabees should serve only a metaphori-
cal example for the Hussites. Rather than engaging in actual warfare, Christ’s
followers should take up only spiritual arms and suffer their oppression patiently,
thus “following the Lord Jesus Christ, his apostles and martyrs, and other true,
holy soldiers of Christ on this royal and safe path.” And as a proof text for this
conclusion, Jakoubek offered the biblical verse that he had previously chosen for
the commemoration of Hus’s death on July 6 (Matthew 5:10): “Blessed are those
who suffer persecution for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of
heaven.”23
The seemingly clear distinctions between these positions, however, began to
break down even as they were first articulated. In light of challenges from Bohemian
chiliasts who advocated withdrawing from the world to await the imminent return
of Christ as well as the risk of Sigismund’s coopting much of the Hussite move-
ment’s secular support, Jakoubek and other university masters began to counte-
nance an expanded definition of what constituted legitimate warfare. Drawing on
the Wyclifite intellectual tradition, these masters determined that if a secular lord
was acting against the dictates of God’s law, then it was incumbent on “communities
permitted to do this work by God” to defend the evangelical law through the force
of arms.24 In making this argument, Jakoubek and his colleagues effectively allied
themselves with the provincial radicals and lower nobility who had preserved the
spirit of the first meetings at Tábor from the previous year. One of this alliance’s ini-
tial foundations was the need to respond to the chiliasts’ challenge, although that
group lost much of its credibility and appeal when the prophesied parousia failed to
materialize in February 1420.25 What remained as a spur to unity after the adventist
party’s collapse, though, was Sigismund and the threat that the impending crusade
under his leadership posed to the Hussite movement.

22
  Kaminsky has dated these texts, known as Noverint universi and Audio cum contra percussores,
respectively, to January or February 1420. They were originally contained in MS 0 13 of the Prague
Cathedral Chapter, and Kaminsky has published them with a full critical apparatus as an appendix
to: A History, pp. 517–​519 and 525–​530.
23
  Jakoubek of Stříbro, Audio cum contra percussores, pp. 528–​529.
24
  This quotation is from a rescript to a theological debate between two unknown Hussite mas-
ters composed by Jakoubek and Krisťan of Prachatice. It is also published as part of Kaminsky’s
edition of texts from MS O 13. See: Kaminsky, A History, pp. 544–​550, p. 545. On the Wyclifite
origins of this position, see: Housley, Religious Warfare, pp. 49–​50.
25
  On the theological dialogue between the chiliastic thinkers and the university masters
of Prague, see: Pavel Soukup, “The Masters and the End of the World: Exegesis in the Polemics
with Chiliasm,” BRRP 7 (2009): 91–​114; and the most recent work by Pavlína Cermanová: Čechy
na konci věků: Apokalyptické myšlení a vize husitské doby (Prague: Argo, 2013); and “Figurae ange-
lorum et bestiarum:  Die hussitischen Identitätsstrategien an der Schwelle des apokalyptischen
Zeitalters,” ins., Abendländische Apokalyptik:  Kompendium zur Genealogie der Endzeit, ed. C. Feike
et al. (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2013), pp. 391–​410.
76 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

This threat provoked a response from the Hussites that was both ideologi-
cally unified and practically oriented toward collective military action. In order
to stake out this common ground, Bohemian authors fell back upon rhetorical
themes and symbols that were acceptable to the entire spectrum of Hussite par-
ties. Much as in the visual propaganda from the previous decade, these themes
comprised a series of binary oppositions, which were deployed within a series of
manifestos written to call the entire Czech people to arms against the crusaders.
The first of these oppositions was between the true and false churches; the former
was characterized by its moral purity and correct eucharistic practice, and was
located within the Czech lands, while its opposite was headquartered in Rome.
The second opposition was between the residents of the Czech lands—​t he faithful
Bohemians—​and their enemies, the Germans who surrounded them and seemed
intent on seizing their lands. The final opposition was between Sigismund, the
false king and terrible persecutor of the Czechs, and those whom he had attacked,
the Czech martyrs whose faithful witness had inspired the nation which had
reared them.
The first of these manifestos, issued on April 3 by the Hussite leadership in
Prague, primarily drew on the first two of these binaries in order to call on all
Czechs to defend God’s law against “our natural enemies,” the Germans, who
had taken up “the horrible cross with bloody hands against all the faithful.” 26
This text laid the responsibility for this false crusade squarely at the Church’s
door, asserting that it had acted not as a true mother in this matter, but as “a
stepmother” who “had given birth to an accursed brood” that sought only to
destroy God’s elect. 27 In calling on the Czech people to act against this false
church and its army, the manifesto invoked both the example of “our brave
fathers, the old Czechs” and the protection of “the glorious saint Wenceslas,
our patron.” Under the auspices of both, the text averred, the Christian king-
dom of Bohemia would defend its honor and language against all of God’s
enemies. 28
Less than three weeks later, a second manifesto circulated both among the
Bohemians and abroad that expanded on the first text’s critique of the crusade
and the leaders who had sponsored it. This second text, which was issued in three
variants between April 18 and 20, focused on Sigismund as the Hussites’ chief
antagonist, and it highlighted ten reasons why Sigismund should be considered

  This manifesto is contained in a number of fifteenth-​century manuscripts in both Czech and

26

German. Karel Hruza has recently published an edition of this text (in both Czech and German),
along with a critical and codicological analysis of its contents, in: Karel Hruza, “Die hussitischen
Manifeste vom April 1420,” Deutsche Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters 53 (1997): 119–​178. This
quotation, p. 163.
27
 Ibid.
28
  Hruza, “Die hussitischen Manifeste,” p. 165.
 The Founder 77

an un-​Christian tyrant rather than the rightful king of Bohemia.29 These griev-
ances included Sigismund’s shaming of the Czech lands through his accusations
of heresy; his illicit condemnation of communion in both kinds; his alienation of
lands belonging to the Czech crown; and the violence he had condoned against
the Czech people. Concerning this last accusation in particular, the manifesto
placed the responsibility for Jan Krása’s death at Sigismund’s feet, while also
calling him out for reneging on his safe conduct for “Master Jan Hus of blessed
memory” and allowing him to be burned, “to the great shame and dishonor of the
Czech nation.”30
This manifesto also lamented a third episode of violence that Sigismund had
authorized against the Czech people: the execution of “hundreds” of Hussites who
had been thrown into mine shafts outside of the town of Kutná Hora. 31 This city
was home to rich silver deposits, which were worked by a predominantly German
population that had been brought to Bohemia under the aegis of Charles IV.
Hussite chronicle sources suggest that the miners were given a bounty for every
Hussite layperson or priest they captured and killed, with Lawrence of Březova
stating that 1,600 people were ultimately executed in this manner. 32 There is evi-
dence that the victims of the Kutná Hora “pogrom” were venerated by the Czechs
at the end of the fifteenth century, and Lawrence certainly treated them as true
martyrs. 33 Their inclusion in this manifesto seems to play a bridging role between
the most exemplary individuals of the emergent Czech pantheon of saints and the
nation as a whole. Their deaths were thus characterized in this text as doing great
damage to the entire Czech people on account of their consumption of, and devo-
tion to, the blood of God, thus linking the themes of national and ecclesiastical
opposition in the recollection of this act of collective martyrdom. 34
In both of the these manifestos, individuals and institutions who claimed
authority in the political and religious spheres were attacked for failing to sub-
stantiate their authority through their conduct. While both the Church and the
king were shown to lack the moral substance to authenticate their claims to power
in these texts, the manifestos lionized an alternative bearer of both religious and
political power: the Czech nation itself, understood as a linguistic and religious

29
  Hruza also published three variations of this text, issued in Czech and German under the
names of Čeněk of Wartenberg and Ulrich of Rosenberg, between April 18 and 20. See: “Die hus-
sitischen Manifeste,” pp. 166–​177.
30
  Hruza, “Die hussitischen Manifeste,” pp. 171–​172.
31
  Hruza, “Die hussitischen Manifeste,” p. 171.
32
  Lawrence of Březova, Kronika Husitská, pp. 351–​352.
33
  The earliest texts concerning the Kutná Hora martyrs and later evidence for Utraquist litur-
gical veneration of this group are analyzed in: Ota Halama, “The Martyrs of Kutná Hora, 1419–​
1420,” BRRP 5, pt. 1 (2004): 139–​146.
34
  Hruza, “Die hussitischen Manifeste,” p. 171.
78 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

community that was surrounded on all sides by hostile opponents. 35 In making

this claim, the manifestos clearly dissociated the person of Sigismund from the
Czech language, throne, crown, kingdom, or lands. This distancing of the king-​
qua-​individual from the “transpersonal” symbols of sovereignty had emerged in
political writings from late fourteenth-​century Bohemia, and in the lead-​up to
the crusade in 1420 this rhetorical strategy again came to the fore among Hussite
authors who were eager to portray Sigismund as the embodiment of “anti-​majesty”
and the antithesis of the traits—​e.g., magnificence, stewardship, military prow-
ess, and piety—​t hat were thought to be characteristic of the Czech kingdom as
a whole. 36
These texts circulated amidst preparations for war. Early in May, the leaders
of the Hussite movement in Prague issued an open call to all Czechs to aid in
the defense of the capital. Forces from throughout Bohemia streamed toward the
city, with a sizable body of troops from Tábor under the command of Jan Žižka
arriving at the city on May 20. The Táborites were joined by a group from east-
ern Bohemia known as the Orebites, who had also originated from the hilltop
gatherings in 1419. The Hussite coalition—​comprising soldiers and citizens from
Prague and other Bohemian cities, the retinues of hundreds of Czech knights and
nobles, and the troops from the centers of provincial radicalism—​t hat gathered in
Prague by the end of that month would face an army of perhaps 30,000 crusaders
that laid siege to the city in early July. 37 Stories of the crusaders’ atrocities against
Hussites during their march to Prague circulated among the city’s population at
this time, providing further evidence of Sigismund’s utter disregard for the well-
being of the kingdom and adding more names to the growing catalogue of Czech
saints. Lawrence of Březova in particular documented their stories, and while few

  In Hussite propaganda, the word for “language” or “tongue” was often used to designate
35

the Czech nation. This nation was also designated as a religious community, despite the fact that
there was always a substantial Catholic minority in the Czech lands during the Hussite era. On
these overlapping forms of communal self-​identification in the Hussite era, see: Šmahel, “The Idea
of the ‘Nation,’’ especially vol. 17, pp. 115–​118; and Vladimir Urbánek, “Patria Lost and Chosen
People: The Case of Seventeenth-​Century Bohemian Protestant Exiles,” in Whose Love of Which
Country?, ed. B. Trencsényi and M. Záskaliczky (Leiden: Brill, 2010), pp. 587–​6 09.
36
  On the fourteenth-​century roots of this discourse, see: Joachim Prochno, “Terra Bohemiae,
regnum Bohemiae, corona Bohemiae,” in Prager Festgabe für Theodor Mayer, ed. R. Schreiber
(Freilassing: O. Müller, 1953), pp. 91–​111; and Pavlina Rychterová, “‘Hör zu König, der du meinen
Rat verlangst!’ Das richtige Regiment in der alttschechischen Literatur der zweiten Hälfte des
14. Jahrhunderts,” in Thinking Politics in the Vernacular from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, ed.
G. Briguglia and T. Ricklin (Fribourg: Academic Press, 2011), pp. 129–​148. On the rhetorical trope
of Sigismund’s royal failings, see: John Klassen, “Images of Anti-​Majesty in Hussite Literature,”
Bohemia 33 (1992): 267–​2 81.
37
  On the make-​up of the Hussite forces in Prague and the crusading army, see: Die Hussitische
Revolution, pp. 1074–​1092.
 The Founder 79

of them gained any lasting commemoration among the Bohemians, their collec-
tive suffering added to the critical mass of martyrs whose suffering was under-
stood to sanctify the Czech nation as a whole. 38
Despite the dramatic build-​up to the siege of Prague, the actual military
conflict over the city was shockingly minimal. It consisted primarily of one
skirmish for a strategic point of access to the city, Vítkov Hill, in which the cru-
saders suffered perhaps 500 casualties while being held off by a mixed band of
Táborite warriors and citizens of Prague, including some women. 39 The fallen
Hussites were memorialized as saints, and after the battle the Bohemians gath-
ered for worship in sight of the surrounding army and “sang Te Deum Laudamus
with loud voices, because not by their strength, but through a miracle, did God
give the few of them victory over their enemies.”40 Sigismund’s response to this
defeat and the Hussites’ consequent claims to God’s favor was curious. Rather
than ordering the bombardment of the city or a full-​scale assault on its gates,
Sigismund held back. The German nobles in the army suspected that Sigismund
was colluding with the loyalist Czech nobility to preserve the city that he
planned on claiming as his capital; Sigismund only strengthened this impres-
sion when he had himself crowned king of Bohemia in St. Vitus Cathedral on
July 28, 1420, then retreated from Prague two days later.41 With these actions,
the military campaign against the Hussites fizzled out, having clearly failed to
eradicate heresy in Bohemia, even if it had nominally installed a Catholic king
in the Czech lands.
Hussite texts from the course and immediate aftermath of the battle for
Prague reflected a decidedly triumphalist mindset. The outcome of the siege
affirmed that the Bohemians enjoyed God’s favor, and that Sigismund was noth-
ing more than a pretender to the throne. A manifesto composed for the Republic
of Venice on July 10, for instance, contrasted the “most Christian crown and
kingdom of Bohemia, made glorious and famous by the great works and mer-
its of their forefathers, whose memory is always glorified” with Sigismund him-
self, whose actions in Constance and afterward had shown him to be entirely

38
  There were some exceptions to this general rule, notably two priests in the village of Chelčice
and an elderly priest and a group of villagers and children in Arnoštovice. On these martyrs,
see: Fudge, “Želivský’s Head,” pp. 124–​126.
39
 For a detailed account of this battle, see:  Petr Čornej, “Bitva na Vítkově a zhroucení
Zikmundovy křížové výpravy v létě 1420,” Husitský Tábor 9 (1986–​1987): 101–​152.
40
  This description is from: Lawrence of Březova, Kronika Husitská, p. 388.
41
 This interpretation of Sigismund’s actions was expressed in both the Magdeburger
Schöppenchronik and Eberhard Windecke’s account of Sigismund’s reign. See in particular: Eberhard
Windeckes Denkwürdigkeiten zur Geschichte des Zeitalters Kaiser Sigismunds, ed. Wilhelm Altmann
(Berlin: R. Gaertners Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1893), pp. 110–​112. For a discussion of both sources
and a scathing analysis of Sigismund’s conduct during the 1420 crusade, see: Heymann, Jan Žižka,
pp. 138–​146.
80 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

wicked.42 He had condemned the administration of communion in both kinds;

raised up “that impious cross of Antichrist” in his crusade; had Jan Krása and
Jan Hus, “a man of blessed and holy memory,” executed; and had allowed his
troops to kill virgins, infants, and married women in their campaign against
the Hussites.43 In justifying their defiance of Sigismund, this manifesto’s
authors also contrasted the law of God, to which they held, with the demands
of earthly authorities. Or, as the manifesto put it:  “we intend to do nothing
other than promote the law of God among ourselves, by which we are pleasing
to the most loving lord, even in contempt of our lives and the world.”44
Ten days later, the Hussites issued another manifesto in Latin which was cir-
culated among both the Bohemians and the crusading army. This manifesto pro-
vided concrete content to the concept of the law of God so frequently invoked
by the Czechs, laying out four articles which would serve as the foundation of
Hussite theology and social regulation for the ensuing decades.45 The substance
of these articles remained consistent in Hussite polemics (even though they
were frequently written in different order), and even in the moments when the
Bohemians were most fractured, the Four Articles served as a lodestone for the
full spectrum of Hussite parties. It is possible, then, to view the promulgation of
the manifesto detailing the articles on July 20, 1420 as a decisive moment in the
formation of a coalition integrating the university masters and radical preachers
of Prague, the Táborite and Orebite military brotherhoods, and other local com-
munities spread across the Czech lands into a truly national movement whose
existence was necessitated and galvanized by Sigismund’s incursion.46 As laid out
in this manifesto, the Four Articles dictated:

1) That the word of God be preached and announced freely and without official
impediment by the priests of the Lord …
2) That the sacrament of the divine eucharist be administered freely in both
kinds, that is the bread and wine, to all faithful Christians …

  Venice had been at war with Sigismund over control of the Croatian coast for several years;
42

the Hussites believed that the Venetians might be sympathetic to their cause given this conflict.
This text has been edited and published as: “Pražský manifest do Benátek,” in Manifesty Mĕsta Prahy
z Doby Husitské, ed. F. Bartoš (Prague: Nákladem Obce Hlavního Mĕsta Prahy, 1932), pp. 278–​2 82.
This quotation: p. 278.
43
  “Pražský manifest do Benátek,” pp. 279–​2 80.
44
  “Pražský manifest do Benátek,” p. 281.
45
  The manifesto from July 29 has been edited and published as:  “Vyhlášení čtyř pražských
artikulů městem Prahou s podrobným jejich odůvodněním,” in Manifesty Města Prahy, pp. 282–​2 85.
46
  On the centrality of the Four Articles, see the classic treatment by: František Bartoš, Do čtyř
pražských artikulů: Z myšlenkových a ústavních zápasů let 1415–​1420 (Prague: Nákladem Blahoslavovy
společnosti, 1940); and Luboš Lancinger, “Čtyří artikuly pražské a podíl universitních mistrů na
jejich vývoji,” Acta Universitatis Carolinae: Historia Universitatis Carolinae Pragensis 3 (1962): 3–​61.
 The Founder 81

3) That the clergy accept no worldly dominion over wealth or temporal goods,
because this is against the precept of Christ … and that the selfsame clergy
should be restored to the evangelical and apostolic life …
4) That all mortal sins, and especially public mortal sins or any other disorder
contrary to the law of God be duly prohibited and refuted reasonably by any-
one who witnesses them.47

The manifesto provided extensive biblical and patristic citations that con-
firmed the Four Articles’ orthodox bona fides, and in doing so it sought to offset
any accusation of heretical innovation. This text therefore framed the Hussites’
resistance to the king and the Roman church as an act of restoration, in the sense
that the Bohemians understood themselves to be resurrecting the moral standards
of the earliest Christian community over and against an institution that had aban-
doned its moral standards in subsequent centuries. Hussite authors had used this
line of argumentation before, particularly in reference to the administration of
communion in both kinds, but the Four Articles represented a new level of unifor-
mity among the Hussite leadership in terms of offering an “official” program for
their reform. The Czechs’ unanimity in propagating the Articles papered over the
differences among them that had become evident in late 1419 and demonstrated
the effect that war would repeatedly have on the Hussites: it would force them to
articulate core principles and elements of shared identity that enabled them to
coordinate and sustain military action throughout the course of a given conflict.
In the aftermath of Sigismund’s retreat from Prague, two remarkable witnesses
to one major component of that shared identity emerged from the Hussite camp.
These were satirical texts written in the voice of the embodied Czech kingdom,
possibly by Lawrence of Březova.48 Entitled The Grievance of the Czech Crown
against the Hungarian King and the Council of Constance and The Czech Crown’s
Rebuke of the Hungarian King, these well-​studied tracts assaulted Sigismund for his
utter failings as a prospective ruler.49 Essentially, they highlighted how Sigismund

47
  “Vyhlášení čtyř pražských artikulů městem Prahou,” pp. 282–​2 84.
48
  Both of these were edited and published (in both Czech and Latin) by Jiří Daňhelka in
his: Husitské Skladby Budyšínského Rukopisu (Prague: Orbis, 1952). The first text is entitled Žaloba
koruny České k bohu na krále Uherského a sbor Kostnický, and is printed in Czech on pp. 23–​31 and
in Latin on pp. 167–​173. The second text is entitled Porok České koruny králi Uherskému že neřádně
korunu přijal sě násilím tiskne, and is printed in Czech on pp. 33–​4 0 and in Latin on pp. 173–​178.
49
  On these texts, see: Rudolf Urbánek, “Vavřinec z Březové a jeho satirická skladby v rukopise
Budyšínském,” in idem, Z Husitského Věku: Výbor vistorických úvah a studii (Prague: Nakladatelství
Československé akademie věd, 1957), pp. 29–​35; Ferdinand Seibt, “Slyšte nebesa:  Eine hussi-
tische Propagandaschrift,” in idem, Hussitenstudien: Personen, Ereignisse, Ideen einer frühen Revolution
(Munich:  R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1987), pp. 17–​25; Karel Hruza, “‘Audite, celi!’ Ein satirischer
hussitischer Propagandatext gegen König Sigismund,” in Propaganda, Kommunikation und
Öffentlichkeit (11.–​16. Jahrhundert), ed. K. Hruza (Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der
Wissenschaften, 2002), pp. 129–​152; and Klassen, “Images of Anti-​Majesty.”
82 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

lacked every necessary attribute of a king, as witnessed by his disastrous efforts

to subdue and rule over the Czech lands. Sigismund was not, for instance, the
scion of a noble lineage. Rather, he was a “little non-​noble” and “a twig of a for-
eign noble root, diseased and covered with dung” who had imprisoned his brother
and disgraced his father’s memory. 50 He was not a valiant warrior, but had been
defeated by peasants defending rude wooden walls in the battle for Prague, and
he had otherwise failed to defeat the noble Czechs despite his use of terror tac-
tics against innocent women, children, and priests. 51 These actions also proved
that Sigismund had not protected his people. On the contrary, he had caused the
execution of countless faithful Bohemians while acting as a thrall to Fernand of
Lucena, thus proving that the king was “the most murderous offspring of a poison-
ous viper … the horrible dragon seen by your beloved apostle, red and with seven
heads and ten horns.”52
This imagery echoed Želivský’s anti-​imperial rhetoric from the previous year,
as well as many of the specific charges made against Sigismund in the April mani-
festos. In this iteration, however, the demonization of the king was potentially
intended for a broader audience, as witnessed by the composition of the texts in
both Latin and Czech and their preservation in manuscripts produced outside
the Czech lands. 53 It is also worth noting how Lawrence used the conventions of
satire in these texts to augment the message of Sigismund’s unworthiness for the
throne. Here, scatological language and vivid imagery combined to caricature the
king as the least worthy aspirant to the Bohemian crown imaginable, a depiction
that was cemented by comparing him to Manasseh, the Old Testament king of
Judah (2 Kings 21 and 2 Chronicles 32–​33) made infamous by his persecution of
the Israelite prophets and his toleration of Assyrian religious practices.54 Lawrence
strengthened this comparison by describing how Sigismund had sanctioned the
“illegal murder” of Jan Krása, Jan Hus, and Hus’s “journeyman” Jerome of Prague.55
These contemporary equivalents to the Israelite prophets had faithfully witnessed
to divine truth, and they had consequently died for their rejection of apostasy. In
doing so, they had proven themselves to be faithful sons of the Czech nation whose
deaths condemned that nation’s ostensible husband, the tyrannical Sigismund.
Such unfavorable comparisons to biblical kings also suffused a song written at
the same time as Lawrence’s satires, “Arise, Arise, Great City of Prague,” which

  Žaloba koruny České, p. 27.

50

  Porok České koruny, p. 38.

51

52
  Žaloba koruny České, p. 25.
53
  On the rhetorical strategies at work in both the Czech and Latin texts, as well an overview of
the surviving manuscripts of the texts, see: Seibt, “Slyšte nebesa,” pp. 19–​22; and Hruza, “Audite
celi,” pp. 133–​140.
54
  Porok České koruny, p. 40.
55
  Žaloba koruny České, p. 27.
 The Founder 83

incorporated many of the themes present in other Bohemian texts from 1420. 56
In this celebration of the Hussites’ victory over the crusading army at Prague,
Sigismund became Nebuchadnezzar, “who threatens the city of Jerusalem, the
community of Prague and its faithful people.” Alternately, he was compared to
Holofernes, and the Hussites became the reincarnation of Judith chosen to “strike
down the enemy of God and his false teacher, Antichrist, lest he spread more her-
esy in the holy Church.” In doing so, the Bohemians proved themselves to be
“friends of the law of God” and true Israelites, a people and land whose faith had
set them apart from other nations. This song was a remarkable distillation of what
the scholar Philip Gorski has termed “Hebraic nationalism,” a distinctive form of
early modern patriotism in which a political community grounded its corporate
identity in Old Testament narratives contrasting covenanted Israel with the god-
less peoples and their tyrannical leaders who sought to eradicate her. 57
But this song was not alone in promulgating this vision of the Czech elect.
Rather, nearly all of the manifestos and satires that proliferated during the first
crusade asserted that the Czechs were a chosen people whose defense of the law
of God and restoration of proper sacramental practice had marked them as the
new Israel. That identity had been forcibly confirmed by the opposition that the
Czechs faced from the diabolical forces in control of the Church and Empire,
which had resulted in the creation of a host of Hussite martyrs whose faithful wit-
ness recollected that of Israelite heroes from the biblical narrative. Jan Hus cer-
tainly stood at the head of this company of martyrs, as witnessed by his specific
inclusion in all of the Hussite propaganda surrounding the crusade of 1420, but
the crusade context also rendered his self-​sacrifice less singular. By the end of the
crusade, thousands of Bohemians had joined Hus in holy death, thus making his
martyrdom archetypal, but not unique, in the early history of the Bohemian ref-
ormation. And it was the increasingly universalized discourse of martyrdom—​on
both sides of the Hussite wars—​t hat created a polarized ideological landscape in
which peace between the warring parties came to be seen as impossible.

56
  The full text of the song is printed in: Zdeněk Nejedlý, Dějiny husitského zpěvu, 6 vols. (Prague,
ČSAV, 1954–​1956), vol. 6, pp. 341–​3 42. On this song’s role in Hussite propaganda, see: Urbánek,
“Vavřinec z Březové a jeho satirické skladby,” pp. 30–​31; and Fudge, Magnificent Ride, pp. 188–​192.
57
  Gorski constructs his argument on the example of the Dutch during their war with the
Habsburgs, with a comparison to English constructions of the “elect nation” as well. See: Gorski,
“The Mosaic Moment.” In defining his terms, Gorski also explicitly appeals to the work
of:  Michael Walzer, Exodus and Revolution (New  York:  Basic Books, 1985); and Conor O’Brien,
God Land: Reflections on Religion and Nationalism (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1988). On specifically
Czech ideas of their nation’s election, see:  Šmahel, “The Idea of the ‘Nation,’ ” vol. 16, pp.  201–​
205; and Joel Seltzer, “Framing Faith, Forging a Nation:  Czech Vernacular Historiography and
the Bohemian Reformation, 1430–​1530” (Unpublished Dissertation: Yale University, 2005), espe-
cially ­chapter 4.
84 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

The Rhetoric and Reality of Holy War

In November of 1420, the Hussites assaulted the royal castle of Vyšehrad, which
had remained loyal to Sigismund in the wake of the summer’s crusade. The
Hussites were ultimately successful in taking the fortress, but the death toll from
the battle was high. Afterward, the Czech poet Samson of Časlav wrote a poem
commemorating the brave soldiers who had fallen during the fight. 58 He com-
pared them to John the Baptist, St. Lawrence, St. Stephen, and St. Katherine of
Alexandria, and he affirmed that “through their suffering they were led to heav-
enly mansions.” Ultimately, Samson offered solace to his readers on account of
the fallen, who had been “marked with cross” and thus were rejoicing in heaven.
As such, “there should be no mourning” among the faithful, but rather a parallel
joy in celebration of “those who precede us and receive the crown.”59
What might be surprising about this poem was that its author was a Catholic
whose invocation of the language of martyrdom flipped Hussite rhetoric, so that
the Hussites became the vassals of Satan and the crusaders were “consecrated
martyrs.” Samson was certainly not the only Catholic author who canonized
the soldiers and religious leaders who fell victim to the Bohemians during the
period of the Hussite Wars, a roughly ten-​year period in which four additional
crusades and various Hussite campaigns into neighboring territories turned cen-
tral Europe into a battleground. And through an analysis of the texts produced
by all sides of the conflict during these years, it is possible to delineate how the
language of authentic martyrdom and its counterpart, diabolical persecution,
became ubiquitous among authors who sought to bolster their respective side’s
claim to divine purpose and patronage in the ongoing conflict.
It is important, however, to keep in mind that the unity of rhetoric employed
by each party in its efforts to promote the defense of the law of God or his univer-
sal Church, respectively, disguised considerable fragmentation in reality. On the
Hussite side, within a month of Sigismund’s retreat from Prague in the summer of
1420, the Táborites had withdrawn from Prague because of what they considered
gross immorality and an unwillingness to suppress public sin among the Prague
masters.60 Those masters and their noble allies, by contrast, were eager to recreate
the traditional social order of the Czech kingdom, and they therefore began to seek

  On this text, see: Miloš Pulec, “Z ideologické zbrojnice protihusitského spikuti,” Theologická

58

Příloha: Křesťanské Revue 30 (1963): 112–​115.

59
  Pulec, “Z ideologické zbrojnice,” p. 114.
60
 The articles included condemnations of drinking, prostitution and sexual sin, and the
rich clothing of the Prague burghers. Besides these moral concerns, the Táborites also called for
renewed oversight of the Prague clergy and the destruction of the city’s monasteries. These articles
and the Táborite withdrawal from Prague are described in: Lawrence of Březova, Kronika Husitská,
pp. 397–​4 00.
 The Founder 85

a valid candidate for the Czech throne from the dynasty ruling Poland-​Lithuania
and applied pressure to the Archbishop of Prague, Conrad of Vechta, to join the
reform.61 The archbishop did administer communion in both kinds in 1421, thus
cementing his alliance with the Prague reformers, but this act roughly coincided
with the Táborites’ election of their own bishop, Nicholas of Pelhřimov (called
Biskupec, the “little bishop”).62 Under his leadership, the Táborites asserted their
control over a number of communities in southern Bohemia independently of
Prague, thus practically subverting the intertwined political and religious hierar-
chies that the Prague Hussites were trying to re-​establish.
These two parties also had additional rivals in terms of trying to establish ideal
Christian communities within the Czech lands. On the one hand, the Táborites
were forced to deal with a splinter group known as the Pikarts, or Adamites, who
maintained a symbolic interpretation of the eucharist and sought to establish a
society based around Edenic norms. This group, which ultimately undertook raids
on surrounding communities to support itself, was violently suppressed by the
Táborites under Jan Žižka in 1421; their primitivism proved too radical even for
Tábor, and members of their community were burned outside the city’s gates in
October.63 On the opposite end of the ideological spectrum, the Hussite reform-
ers were also engaged with the separatist and pacifist critique of Petr Chelčický,
an educated layman who rejected the notion that any Christian could safely
engage in violence or political coercion for the sake of religion.64 Chelčický had

61
  The archbishop’s shift in allegiance was documented in a letter he composed to the city coun-
cils of Prague’s Old and New Town on April 21, 1421 promising to support them against King
Sigismund. The letter is preserved as: “Litera adhaerentiae Domini Archiepiscopi Pragensis,” in
UB 1, pp. 78–​81.
62
  Lawrence of Březova described Bikupec’s election in his: Kronika Husitská, 438. On the sig-
nificance of his election to the development of a more stable society in Tábor, see: Kaminsky, A
History, 386–​391; and Thomas Fudge, “Crime, Punishment, and Pacifism in the Thought of Bishop
Mikuláš of Pelhřimov, 1420–​1452,” BRRP 3 (2000): 69–​103.
63
  On the execution of these Adamites, see: Lawrence of Březova, Kronika Husitská, pp. 517–​520;
Lawrence discussed the group’s origins at:  pp.  475–​476 and p.  495. On the Adamites and their
relationship to earlier chiliast groups, see:  Macek, Tábor v Husitském Revolučním Hnutí, vol. 2,
pp. 108–​136; Howard Kaminsky, “The Free Spirit in the Hussite Revolution,” in Millennial Dreams
in Action: Essays in Comparative Study, ed. S. Thrupp (The Hague: Mouton, 1962), pp. 166–​186; and
Bernhard Töpfer, “Hoffnungen auf Erneuerung des paradiesischen Zustandes (status innocentiae)—​
ein Beitrag zur Vorgeschichte des hussitischen Adamitentums,” in Eschatologie und Hussitismus, ed.
A. Patschovsky and F. Šmahel (Prague: Historisches Institut, 1996), pp. 169–​184.
64
 For an overview of Chelčický’s critique of violence, see:  Murray Wagner, Peter
Chelčický:  A  Radical Separatist in Hussite Bohemia (Scottdale, PA:  Herald Press, 1983), especially
pp. 86–​90; Pavel Soukup, “Metaphors of the Spiritual Struggle Early in the Bohemian Reformation: the
Exegesis of Arma Spirituali in Hus, Jakoubek, and Chelčický,” BRRP 6 (2007):  87–​110; Jaroslav
Boubín, Petr Chelčický: Myslitel a Reformátor (Prague: Vyšehrad, 2005), pp. 73–​79; and idem, “Petr
Checlčický und seine Ausführungen zur Gesellschaft,” in Die Hussitische Revolution: Religiöse, politische
und regionale Aspekte, ed. F. Machilek (Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 2012), pp. 77–​92.
86 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

undertaken both literary and viva voce exchanges with the Prague and Táborite
leadership during the previous year, and although his teachings did not inspire
the creation of an actual separatist community for another generation, his ideas
spread in the vernacular and represented yet another alternative to the norms of
social and religious life that Prague and Tábor were trying to impose.65
Taken all together, these disparate voices represented a bewildering range of
options for the structuring of religious life within the Czech lands—​each trying
desperately to convince the adherents of the others that its vision was most appro-
priate. These parties disagreed over practically every matter dealing with religious
belief and practice, including eucharistic theology, the structure of the liturgy,
the utility of religious art, and even the permissibility of clerical vestments. They
also debated broader social and political issues, such as the legitimacy of violence,
the imposition of taxes, and the necessity of social hierarchy. And even though
the Prague Hussites could muster the most intellectual firepower to defend their
positions, and the Táborites could point to their military success as proof of
divine favor, neither of these centers ever established hegemony during this time.
Instead, the 1420s were marked by repeated periods of “peace” with the Hussites’
external enemies during which sharp polemical exchanges, learned disputations,
and even military conflicts between the various Czech parties broke out as each
sought to stamp their own brand of social regulation, liturgical practice, and the-
ology on the entirety of the Czech lands.66
A different story emerges from the Catholic side of the conflict, as the forces
arrayed against the Hussites were nominally united under one sacred head, Pope
Martin V, and one secular leader, King Sigismund. In reality, though, the four addi-
tional crusades called against the Hussites—​in 1421, 1422, 1427, and 1431—​were
hamstrung by unclear chains of military and political command, a chronic lack of
funding and material support, and a growing conviction that the Hussites might
be militarily invincible. Each of these four campaigns was technically led by an
ecclesiastical dignitary who was responsible for its organization: Cardinal Branda
Castiglione in 1421 and 1422, Cardinal Henry Beaufort in 1427, and Cardinal
Giuliano Cesarini in 1431. No matter which cardinal held command, though, the
crusades were all hindered by a lack of coordination that prevented the full force
of the armies from coming to bear on the Czechs’ defenses in a decisive manner.

  This group was known as the Unity of Brethren (Jednota Bratarská), and broke away from the
65

Utraquist church in 1457. On this group and their relationship to Chelčický, see: Matthew Spinka,
“Peter Chelčický: The Spiritual Father of the Unitas Fratrum,” Church History 12 (1943): 271–​291;
Odložilík, “A Church in a Hostile State”; and Atwood, The Theology of the Czech Brethren, especially
pp. 156–​188.
66
  On the difficult internal dynamics of the Hussite parties in the later 1420s, see:  Thomas
Fudge, “Václav the Anonymous and Jan Příbram:  Textual Laments on the Fate of Religion in
Bohemia (1424–​1429),” BRRP 8 (2011): 115–​132.
 The Founder 87

The collapse of the fourth crusade was exemplary of these failings. The leg-
ate in charge of the campaign, Cardinal Beaufort, spent considerable time in
England trying to recruit soldiers and raise money, and he planned to meet
with a German army raised by Frederick of Brandenburg in June 1427. When he
arrived in Nuremberg on June 13, though, Beaufort learned that he had missed
the main army’s departure. He delayed in the city to write a letter seeking the
Czechs’ surrender(!), and therefore did not catch up with the crusading force
until July 28. 67 By that time, the army had retreated from an inconclusive siege
of the town of Stříbro, believing that a large Hussite relief force was approach-
ing. Beaufort and the crusaders tried to regroup at Tachov, but a Hussite army
attacked them there on August 4. The Hussites took the city, and the crusaders
beat a hasty retreat back to German lands. The fourth crusade thus ended as
the others had (and would): a victim of indecisive leadership, ad hoc financing,
and a deep-​seated fear of Hussite military prowess that undermined military
strategy. 68
This overview of the fissures within both the Hussite and Catholic camps during
the era of the Hussite Wars leads to a somewhat ironic conclusion: that the Czechs
could only attain unity during the course of military conflicts, while the crusad-
ing forces could reach it only during their run-​up or aftermath, as they either tried
to marshal their resources or rationalize their failures. It was those moments of
unity on both sides, however, that produced the major polemical topoi that drove
the cycle of crusading violence during the Hussite Wars. If the Bohemians had
been deceived by Satan through his diabolical mouthpieces—​most notably Jan
Hus, the progenitor of the Czech heresy—​t hen of course they would perpetrate
violence against the Church which demanded a response in kind. Conversely,
if Sigismund and the papal Church were the servants of Antichrist, who sought
to eliminate God’s faithful followers, then of course the Hussites would fight to
defend the evangelical truth. When painted in these terms, no amount of hesita-
tion, mismanagement, or infighting could supersede the repeated calls to arms
that demanded opposition to the diabolical other.
Historians are only now beginning to comprehend the full range of Catholic
rhetoric marshalled during the Hussite Wars. Due to the work of scholars like
Pavel Soukup and Dušan Coufal, it is becoming clear that authors from across
Europe employed the full spectrum of medieval genres in their polemics against
the Hussites, including poetry, sermons, chronicles, crusade bulls, university

67
 On Beaufort’s efforts to rally the English for the crusade against the Hussites, see:
G. A.  Holmes, “Cardinal Beaufort and the Crusade against the Hussites,” The English Historical
Review 88 (1973):  721–​750. Beaufort’s letter to the Hussites has been edited and published
in: František Bartoš, “An English Cardinal and the Hussite Revolution,” CV 1 (1963): 47–​5 4.
68
 For an overview of the 1427 crusade, see:  Bartoš, The Hussite Revolution, 1424–​1437,
pp. 25–​4 0.
88 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

discourses, and theological tractates. 69 The known sources likely represent only
the tip of a massive textual iceberg, but they reveal the development of certain
key tropes that structured Catholic anti-​Hussite rhetoric. And while much of that
rhetoric was measured, because many Catholic texts were learned theological
tractates directed toward university-​trained audiences and interlocutors, there
were also treatises and sermons characterized by their ferocity and nearly hysteri-
cal representation of the depraved Hussites and their diabolical founder.
This heated rhetoric typically focused on the Hussites’ violence toward both
the clergy and the institutional fabric of the Church. The Czech Catholic author
Andrew of Brod, for instance, in his Tractate on the Origins of the Hussites, referred
to the Bohemians as “a nation of tyrants,” a hypocritical people who professed to
defend the law of God but “spared neither God, nor his saints, nor his monaster-
ies and churches” from their violence.70 Andrew further lamented that the Czech
lands had once been full of piety, but had been transformed by the work of the
devil, who “blinded the preachers and masters” of Bohemia so that “the bitter and
poisonous dogma of Wyclif was inculcated among the heretics.” 71 Andrew knew
that the Hussites only flourished with the permission of God as a punishment
for true Christians’ sinfulness, but such knowledge was cold comfort in the face
of the heretics’ violence. Andrew could only take heart due to the pious example
of the Church’s new martyrs who, like Abel, Samson, and Judah Maccabee, had
“bodily become one with their head at the hands of the impious.” 72
A second, similar text, the Tractate on the Ancient Schism by the Polish abbot
Ludolf von Sagan, highlighted a number of these themes as well. For Ludolf,
the Bohemians were an evil people who had betrayed their pious patron, Saint

69
  Soukup has not yet published the entirety of his findings on Catholic polemics during the
Hussite wars, but has made the fruit of substantial research available through the Repertorum
operum antihussiticorum (www.antihus.eu). The breadth of resources contained here in manu-
script and print is staggering, and the following pages represent a small sampling of available
works based on Soukup’s research. See also some of the first fruits of his research in:  “‘Pars
Machometica’ in Early Hussite Polemics: The Use and Background of an Invective,” in Religious
Controversy in Europe, 1378–​1536:  Textual Transmission and Networks of Readership, ed. M. Van
Dussen and P. Soukup (Turnhout:  Brepols, 2013), pp. 251–​2 88. Coufal has published on
Catholic polemics centered on the administration of communion in both kinds, but similarly
shows the wide range of authors engaged in this polemical campaign and the full spectrum of
genres they used to attack the Bohemians. See his:  Polemika o Kalich:  mezi teologií a politikou
1414–​1431 (Prague: Kalich, 2012).
70
  This text is extant in six manuscripts and was composed between 1420 and 1422, when
Andrew was living in exile from Prague in Leipzig. A modern edition is available as: Andrew of
Brod, Tractatus de origine Hussitarum, in Geschichtschreiber 2 (1865–​1866), pp. 327–​353, p. 333. On
the composition of this text, see: Jaroslav Kadlec, Studien und Texte zum Leben und Wirken des Pragers
Magisters Andreas von Brod (Münster: Aschendorff, 1982), pp. 52–​58 and pp. 77–​78.
71
  Andrew of Brod, Tractatus, p. 329.
72
 Ibid.
 The Founder 89

Wenceslas, for the false prophet Jan Hus.73 The Czechs, whom Ludolf portrayed
as the opposites and enemies of the pious German people, venerated Hus and his
compatriot Jerome in place of the true saints because these men had sanctioned
the people’s violence against the Church. That violence had continued, and even
intensified, after these men’s deaths, as witnessed by Ludolf ’s detailed recounting
of the destruction of churches and monasteries throughout the Czech lands. This
violence, as well as the Bohemians’ apparent disregard for true religion and prefer-
ence for “the iniquitous doctrines” propagated by “Jan Hus, the head of all evil,”
ultimately led Ludolf to compare the Hussites to the Benjaminite residents of the
town of Gibeah who were slaughtered by the other tribes of Israel in Judges 19. In
this Old Testament tale, the townsfolk had raped and murdered the concubine
of a Levite, and their tribe was nearly wiped out in recompense; this could be the
Hussites’ only fate, argued Ludolf, given their hatred for, and violation of, both
the nation’s heritage and the Church.74
Other Catholic authors went to great pains to depict the Hussites’ violence in
excruciating detail. The English author Thomas Netter, writing around the time
of the fourth crusade against the Hussites, echoed Andrew of Brod’s invocation
of the language of martyrdom to describe it. He wrote in vivid detail about the
suffering of faithful Catholics in the Czech lands, asserting that the Hussites
had dismembered them with hammers, used millstones to grind their bodies to
pieces, and even forced them to drink molten metal. Such treatment led Netter
to conclude that Catholics in the Czech lands “are afflicted a hundred times
more cruelly by ‘Christians’ who bear the name falsely than by actual Turks or
Saracens.” 75 Andreas of Regensburg, in his Dialogue on the Bohemian Heresy from
1430, additionally noted that the Bohemians had cut the fingers and hands off of
Catholic worshippers and “thirsted for nothing other than the blood of Catholics.”76

73
  Ludolf von Sagan, “Tractatus de Longevo Schismate,” ed. J. Loserth, Archiv für österreichische
Geschichte 60 (1880):  344–​561, p.  426. For an overview and detailed analysis of Ludolf ’s life
and career, see:  Franz Machilek, Ludolf von Sagan und seine Stellung in der Auseinandersetzung um
Konziliarismus und Hussitismus (Munich: Lerche, 1967).
74
  Ludolf von Sagan, “Tractatus,” pp. 488–​490.
75
  These descriptions were contained in Netter’s Doctrinale, a work that extended to six books
and was originally dedicated to Pope Martin V. This passage is from the third book, and is taken
from:  Michael Van Dussen, From England to Bohemia:  Heresy and Communication in the Later
Middle Ages (New York: Cambridge UP, 2012), p. 117. On the composition of the Doctrinale, see
also:  Kevin Alban, The Teaching and Impact of the Doctrinale of Thomas Netter of Walden (c. 1374–​
1430) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), especially pp. 238–​2 42.
76
  Andreas of Regensburg, “Dialogus de haeresi bohemica,” in Andreas von Regensburg: Sämtliche
Werke, ed. G. Leidinger (Munich: Rieger, 1903), pp. 657–​691, pp. 664–​6 65. On the composition
of this text, see:  Norman Housley, “Explaining Defeat:  Andrew of Regensburg and the Hussite
Crusades,” in Dei gesta per Francos: Crusade Studies in Honour of Jean Richard, ed. M. Balard et al.
(Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2001), pp. 87–​95.
90 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

Such conduct led Andreas to compare the Hussites to the Israelites’ Egyptian slave-
masters, the Jews who persecuted Jesus, and Arian heretics who “had done the same
to the holy doctors.” What this string of oppressors had failed to realize, though, as
had the Hussites, was that God “purified his elect like gold in the furnace, because the
crown is not merited, unless he who wears it has genuinely struggled.”77
Contemporary sermons reflected similar themes. Preaching before Martin V
in 1422 on the necessity of convening a universal church council, the Dominican
John of Ragusa invoked the Hussites as a threat so grave that it demanded the
concerted action of the Church hierarchy.78 According to John, the Hussites
were rabid dogs and raving wolves whose ferocity was worse than that of the
Turks, Saracens, and Tartars. They demonstrated their fury in their treatment of
Catholic priests and monks, “some of whom they had cut in two, others drowned
in rivers, stoned, burned with fire, or slaughtered with the sword.” 79 The sermon
laid the blame for these actions at the devil’s feet, “the sower of discord who sup-
plied kindling for the people’s hatred against the clergy.” And this kindling was
lit, as it were, by “false prophets” who inflamed the people “not with sermons and
preaching … but with slander.”80 John of Ragusa explicitly identified Jan Hus and
Jerome of Prague as such “false prophets,” and his emphasis on their culpability
was only accentuated in the preaching of Oswald Reinlein, an Augustinian prior
who conducted a preaching campaign around Vienna for an anti-​Hussite crusade
in 1426.81 According to Reinlein, Hus had been the dragon from Revelation 13:4
whom the entire Czech lands had worshipped. Hus had seduced the people with
his sermons, in which he had attacked the clergy and raised himself above them
for his supposed morality and learning. As a result of this preaching, Reinlein
asserted that Hus’s followers “raised up the heretic condemned and convicted by
the Church, along with all his disciples, as their special saint and patron.”82
One final theme that emerged clearly in anti-​Hussite rhetoric from the 1420s
did not, unlike the others described here, mirror Hussite usage, but rather fore-
shadowed the great anti-​Protestant campaigns of the following century. This
theme was genealogical, as Catholic authors established links between the
Hussites, earlier heretics, and biblical figures who had attempted to undermine
or destroy God’s true priests. Both Ludolf von Sagan and Andreas of Regensburg

  Andreas of Regensburg, “Dialogus,” p. 665.

77

  This sermon has been published as: Johannes de Ragusio, “Sermo vor Papst Martin V. Über
78

die Einberufung des Konzils von Pavia,” in Das Konzil von Pavia-​Siena 1423–​1424, ed. Walter
Brandmüller, vol. 2 (Münster: Verlag Aschendorff, 1974), pp. 89–​124.
79
  Johannes de Ragusio, “Sermo,” pp. 113–​114.
80
  Johannes de Ragusio, “Sermo,” p. 117.
81
  On this campaign, see: Pavel Soukup, “Augustinian Prior Oswald Reinlein: A Biography of
an Anti-​Hussite Preacher,” BRRP 9 (2014): 98–​110.
82
  The text of this sermon was cited at length in: Anežka Vidmanová, “Stoupenci a protivníci
mistra Jana Husi,” Husitský Tábor 4 (1981): 49–​56, pp. 50–​51.
 The Founder 91

had employed this them in their treatises, and they were joined by the Polish pro-
fessor Stanislas of Skalbimierz, who identified the Hussites with Korah, Dathan,
and Abiron, who had opposed Moses and Aaron in Numbers 16 and been swal-
lowed by the earth for their trouble. 83 Similarly, the Silesian theologian Nicholas
Magni, who had studied at Prague and was a professor at Heidelberg, considered
Wyclif and Hus to be the heirs of Arius and Sabellius. He made sure to point
out, though, that the “most recent heresiarch, Wyclif ” and his disciples, Jan Hus
and Jerome of Prague, were much more dangerous than either of those ancient
figures, which made it imperative that the Church “condemn, silence, and
even destroy them.”84 Such an identification meant that the champions of the
fifteenth-​century Church could rely on the texts and example of either patristic
figures like Sts. Augustine, Cyprian, Ambrose, and Gregory the Great, or biblical
figures like Moses and Peter, in order to ground their assault on the Bohemian
heretics in a tradition of orthodox polemics that lumped biblical, ancient, and
contemporary heretics into one category that could be combatted with tried and
true authorities. 85
If we compare these texts to the Hussite propaganda that was authored dur-
ing the period of the first crusade, it is possible to draw some conclusions about
the nature of the polemics that emerged from the Hussite Wars. First and fore-
most, it is clear that Catholic and Hussite authors presented nearly perfect mirror
images of each other’s rhetoric. Polemicists on both sides of the conflict employed
the language of cruelty and diabolical inspiration, contrasting images of extreme
violence and pious suffering, and an emphasis on Jan Hus as exemplary of the
entire Czech nation. Hussite and Catholic authors also, however, reversed the
moral valence of the associations that they created, thus depicting themselves as
the heirs of Israelite heroes and Christian martyrs, with their enemies becoming
godless oppressors and the servants of Antichrist. This thematic convergence may
be contrasted, though, with a divergence in the tone of the two sides’ texts. By the
late 1420s, Catholic authors were fighting a rearguard action to explain a decade

83
  This identification came from Stanislas’s short work, “De interpositione obstaculi interiecti,”
one of many anti-​Hussite tracts that he authored in the mid-​1420s. This text has been edited and
published by: Zofia Włodek, “Stanislas de Skalbimierz, un court traité contre les hussites sur la
vision spirituelle. Introduction et texte,” in Chemins de la pensée médiévale: Études offertes a Zénon
Kaluza, ed. P. Bakker et al. (Turnhout: Brepols, 2002), pp. 493–​512. On Stanislas’s additional anti-​
Hussite tracts, see: R. Tataryński and Z. Włodek, eds., Scripta manent: Textus ad theologiam spec-
tantes in Universitate Cracoviensi saeculo XV conscripti (Kraków: Uniwersytet Jagielloński, 2000), pp.
105–​162.
84
  This quotation is from the “Quaestio de haereticis,” which has been published in: Adolph
Franz, Der Magister Nikolaus Magni de Jawor: Ein Beitrag zur Literatur-​und Gelehrtengeschichte des 14.
und 15. Jahrhunderts (Freiburg: Herderische Verlagshandlung, 1898), pp. 217–​223, p. 222.
85
  On the development of these tropes, see:  Dušan Coufal, Polemika o Kalich:  mezi teologií a
politikou 1414–​1431 (Prague: Kalich, 2012), pp. 271–​272.
92 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

of defeats and maintain hope in a reversal of fortune.86 Hussite authors, on the

other hand, were suffused with a spirit of optimism, and even certainty, about
their cause. Their ability to unite in the face of their enemies and defeat them on
the field of battle had left them, justifiably perhaps, convinced that God was on
their side.
All of which brings us back to Peter Payne in 1429 and his bold declaration
that the Bohemians were the champions of “that greatest truth of the divine law,
which is the avenger of all wickedness and the sacred persecutor of all human
injustice.”87 Even after all of the ink and blood that was spilled during the first four
crusades against the Hussites, he and the other delegates to Bratislava remained
convinced that their suffering was a mark of their collective sanctity. As such,
Payne assured Sigismund that the Hussites would not stop fighting until he and
the pope accepted the truth of the Four Articles, “For you know, o mortal and
perishing king, that we do not wage war against you for our own sake, but that
we rise up against you for the truth of Christ.”88 Such words conveyed a hard-​
won confidence among the Hussites, a sense of certainty that was fueled by their
success in the defensive struggles against crusading armies and in their increas-
ing propensity to undertake offensive campaigns into surrounding territory. The
greatest of these forays, the so-​called “Glorious Campaign” of late 1429 and early
1430, brought the Hussites all the way to the shores of the Baltic Sea.89
This military campaign resulted in the Hussites’ gaining a promise of a second
public hearing for their religious ideas from a regional ruler, Margrave Frederick
of Brandenburg, who agreed to allow the Hussites to defend the Four Articles in
Nuremberg in April 1430. This hearing failed to take place, as Frederick could
not ultimately guarantee safe passage for a Hussite delegation, but the leaders of
the Prague party did issue two manifestos in the run-​up to the planned disputa-
tion. Both of these texts attested to the Hussites’ self-​assurance at this moment.
In the first of them, the Hussites proclaimed themselves to be the heirs of the
Maccabees, as they had suffered invasion and taken up arms in defense of the
law of God and against those who had raised “the blood red cross, the mark of
inhuman cruelty” against it.90 This manifesto further stated that the Hussites had
never wanted to wage war, but had preferred to effect the reform of the Church

  See, e.g.: Housley, “Explaining Defeat.”

86

 Payne, Oratio, p. 85.
87

88
 Payne, Oratio, p. 87.
89
  On this military expedition, see: Bartoš, The Hussite Revolution, 1424–​1437, pp. 41–​6 0; and
Die Hussitische Revolution, pp. 1452–​1496.
90
  This text has been published as: “Manifest města Prahy světu z r. 1430,” in Manifesty Města
Prahy, pp. 302–​305. On the composition of this text, see: Karel Hruza, “Schrift und Rebellion: Die
hussitischen Manifeste aus Prag vom 1415–​1431,” in Geist, Gesellschaft, Kirche im 13.–​16. Jahrhundert,
ed. F. Šmahel (Prague: Filosofia Verlag, 1999), pp. 81–​108, especially pp. 102–​104.
 The Founder 93

through “a fraternal audience” during which they could explain their doctrines.
The problem, of course, was that the Church had never countenanced such a hear-
ing, but had repeatedly opted for war.91 The second Hussite manifesto then pro-
ceeded to explicate the Four Articles, which they would finally be able to defend
at Nuremberg. This text, much as the earliest explanations of the articles, framed
them within series of biblical citations that emphasized their scriptural foun-
dations. The introductory passages to the entire manifesto also set the Hussite
articles within an apostolic context, arguing that the Hussites had done nothing
other than revive the practice of the earliest Christian community, “the teacher
and regulator of all Christians, and the truest exemplar of Christian religion.”92
Although outraged by their treatment at the hands of crusading armies,
these texts lacked the agonistic fire of earlier Hussite polemics. There was no
direct challenge to war here; rather, there was a gracious invitation to discussion
offered from a position of strength. Sigismund and the new papal legate, Cardinal
Giuliano Cesarini, were not yet ready to cede that position, though, and moved
early in 1431 to assemble a fifth crusade against the Hussites. Cesarini proclaimed
the bulls for this holy war in Nuremberg on March 20, 1431, and a large crusad-
ing army left from that city for the Czech frontier on June 29. Like its immediate
predecessor, the army moved to take the town of Tachov, but gave up on its siege
and instead moved toward the Táborite fortress of Domažlice. There, the crusad-
ers met with a large Hussite force that put the crusading army to flight. Although
casualties from this engagement were light, the Hussites captured much of the
crusaders’ supply train, including Cesarini’s regalia.93
This battle proved to be, along with Sigismund’s siege of Prague in 1420, a fit-
ting bookend to the era of the Hussite Wars. These wars were characterized by
militant polemical campaigns and ideological stances that were markedly out of
sync with the inconclusive military and minimal material investments of the cru-
saders, on the one hand, and by fractious internal debates among the Hussites
that temporarily receded during times of military crisis, on the other. Within the
rhetorical strategies of both sides, Jan Hus loomed large: as a casus belli and martyr
of the true faith whose words continued to inspire the Bohemians, or alternately
as a diabolical pseudo-​prophet who had seduced the credulous Czechs away from
the faith of their forefathers. In both of these constructs, Hus was considered

91
  “Manifest města Prahy,” p. 304.
92
  “Manifest města Prahy a pražského duchovenstva,” in Manifesty Města Prahy, pp. 305–​309,
p. 306.
93
  On Cesarini’s leadership of the crusade the defeat at Domažlice, see:  František Bartoš,
“Manifesty Nuncia Cesariniho Husitům,” in K dějinám československým v období humanism, ed.
B. Jenšovský and B. Mendl (Prague:  České akademie věd a umění, 1932), pp. 178–​191; Gerald
Christianson, Cesarini: The Conciliar Cardinal, The Basel Years 1431–​1438 (St. Ottilien: Eos Verlag
der Erzabtei, 1979), pp. 17–​2 6; and Fudge, Magnificent Ride, pp. 200–​2 02.
94 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

exemplary of the Bohemian nation as a whole; he became the embodiment of

either its piety or depravity. He was also treated as the root cause—​whether in life
or death—​of the conflict between the Hussites and the Church. The emphasis on
Hus’s exemplarity that emerged in this polemical context would remain consis-
tent in the following decades (and even century), but Hus could personify more
than the call to militant action. Indeed, both his teaching and example could also
valorize debate and legitimize church councils as the locus for that dialogue. It
should not be surprising, then, that a different Hus appeared among the Hussites
and council fathers at Basel in the ensuing years, as both the Bohemians and
their opponents shifted from a primarily militant stance vis-​à-​v is each other and
toward an attitude of rapprochement.

From Crusade to Conciliation

This change in attitude was enabled by a confluence of events. The first of these
was the death of Pope Martin V on February 20, 1431, and the subsequent elec-
tion of Cardinal Gabriele Condulmaro as Pope Eugenius IV early in March.
Martin had remained a staunch opponent of the Hussites throughout his life,
and would likely never have countenanced a hearing for the Bohemians before
the heads of the ecclesiastical hierarchy that was geared toward anything other
than their complete submission. Martin had, however, issued a bull before his
death for the convocation of a general church council at Basel under the lead-
ership of Cardinal Cesarini (as mandated by the Constance decree Frequens),
which opened on July 23, even as the cardinal was embroiled in the last crusade
against the Hussites.94 This Council presented an ideal venue for the Hussites
to present their views to the ecclesiastical hierarchy, and it also provided a pos-
sibility for Cesarini to redeem the disaster of the crusade. Pope Martin had
decreed, and Eugenius had confirmed, that the Council should propose, debate,
and carry out whatever actions were necessary for the eradication of the Hussite
heresy 95; if those actions now included a theological disputation rather than

  On the convocation of the Council of Basel and the centrality of the Hussite issue in its ini-
94

tial agenda, see the first chapter in: Joachim Stieber, Pope Eugenius IV, the Council of Basel and the
Secular and Ecclesiastical Authorities in the Empire: The Conflict over Supreme Authority and Power in the
Church (E. J. Brill: Leiden, 1978); Werner Krämer, Konsenz und Rezeption: Verfassungsprinzipien der
Kirche im Basler Konziliarismus (Münster: Aschendorff, 1980), pp. 6ff.; and Gerald Christianson,
“Church, Bible, and Reform in the Hussite Debates at the Council of Basel, 1433,” in Reassessing
Reform:  A  Historical Investigation into Church Renewal, ed. C. Bellitto (Washington, DC:  Catholic
University of America Press, 2012), pp. 124–​148.
95
  Martin’s vague directions for the handling of the Hussite heresy were contained in his bull
confirming Cesarini’s presidency of the Council from February 1, 1431. Eugenius confirmed the
bull on March 12. See: Stieber, Pope Eugenius IV, pp. 10–​11.
 The Founder 95

armed conflict, so be it. Perhaps this would prove more effective than military
intervention had.
The Hussites were also explicitly in favor of public debate. Both the Táborites
and the Praguers had issued manifestos during the fifth crusade laying out their
grievances against the Church and calling for a public forum to discuss them.
The Táborite manifesto in particular was clear that this was the only way that
the conflict between the Bohemians and the Church could be settled. As it said,
“it is the nature of faith, that the more it is prohibited, the more it is inflamed. On
account of this, the servants of God cannot be overcome by suffering, because
the more they are punished, that much more are they comforted and stirred to
action.”96 The mutual desire of both parties to debate the validity of the Hussite
program for religious reform was not enough, though, to make it actually hap-
pen. On the Catholic side of things, the Council of Basel itself nearly collapsed
in December 1431, as Pope Eugenius attempted to dissolve it in light of poor
attendance and his fear that the council would dispute his supremacy over it.97
It required the intervention of King Sigismund and a determined campaign
by Cesarini to get Eugenius to back down, and both figures used the potential
resolution of the Hussite schism as a main argument for why the council must
remain assembled.98 As in Constance, then, the issue of the Bohemians’ obedi-
ence and orthodoxy was an issue of central concern as the Council of Basel got
under way.
There was also dissension within the Bohemian ranks. In October of 1431, the
Council had sent two Dominicans, Johannes Nider and Johannes Gelnhausen, to
negotiate a safe conduct for the Bohemian delegates to the Council and the terms
of the disputation that would take place between the Hussites and the Council’s
representatives. These initial meetings slowly bore fruit; in May 1432 the Hussites
received assurances of safe conduct to and from Basel, and they also won a sur-
prising concession from the council’s ambassadors: the so-​called “Cheb Judge,”
which dictated that the Hussites’ debate with the Church would admit only the
Bible, the practice of the apostolic Church, and the patristic and medieval authors
who supported these early sources of authority as definitive. Papal decrees and

96
  This manifesto was originally issued in German, but has been preserved in Latin in: Johannes
de Ragusio, Tractatus quomodo Bohemi reducti sunt ad unitatem ecclesiae, in MCG 1, pp.  133–​2 86,
p. 156. On the composition of this manifesto, see: Jaroslav Prokeš, “Táborské manifesty z r. 1430
a 1431: Příspěvek k politice Prokopa Velikého,” Časopis Matice Moravské 52 (1928): 1–​38. On the
contemporaneous Prague manifesto, see: Hruza, “Schrift und Rebellion,” pp. 102–​106.
97
  On Eugenius’s attempts to dissolve the Council of Basel, see the work of Johannes Helmrath,
particularly: “Reform als Thema der Konzilien des Spätmittelalters,” in Christian Unity: The Council
of Ferrara/​Florence, 1438/​39–​1989, ed. G. Alberigo (Leuven: University Press, 1991), pp. 75–​152,
especially pp. 81ff.; and “Theorie und Praxis der Kirchenreform im Spätmittelalter,” Rottenburger
Jahrbuch für Kirchengeschichte 11 (1992): 41–​70.
98
  Cesarini’s campaign is detailed in: Christianson, Cesarini, pp. 46ff.
96 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

canon law would be excluded from the debates.99 That the Hussites secured this
concession was unprecedented, but this success could not mask the rifts within
the Hussite camp. The Táborites remained skeptical about Council and its inten-
tions, and the Hussites’ attempt to hammer out a universally acceptable set of
article for debate during a meeting in Prague in January 1432 was a failure. The
Prague masters and Orphans, members of the military brotherhood first led by
Žižka, were opposed here by the Táborites, whose program for theological, litur-
gical, and social reform remained more expansive and less compromising than
that of the other Hussite parties.100
Although the Hussite parties’ disagreements over what was to be debated at
Basel were ultimately resolved in favor of speaking only about the Four Articles,
the Council’s ambassadors were aware of the Czechs’ internal friction. In a letter
written in January 1432 back to the council, Johannes Nider reported that “within
Prague there are many who are faithful in their hearts” to the Church, but who
refused to surrender the communion chalice. Nider further stated that the chal-
ice was the only ground of unity among all the Hussite parties, so he suggested
that the Council offer to consider the legitimacy of administering communion
in both kinds in order to draw the Hussites into a broader debate about more
divisive topics that could splinter the Bohemians’ unity.101 Nider wrote to Basel
again two months later, emphasizing the potential utility of granting the Hussites
a public hearing at Basel; he also warned his correspondent, John of Ragusa, to
be careful about how the Council referred publicly to the Czechs: “They should
not be called Hussites, as they are in the letters to Nuremberg and Cheb, because
they are greatly aroused by this, but simply called Bohemians, lest they be pro-
voked.”102 Nider understood the power of names, he perceived that if the figure
of Jan Hus was allowed to loom over the disputation between the Hussites and the
council fathers, then the memory of what happened to him at Constance might
undermine any possible rapprochement at Basel.
Despite Nider’s best efforts, though, it proved impossible to keep Hus out of the
debates at the Council. Indeed, it was the Hussite delegation itself that consistently
maintained the Bohemian martyr’s centrality to their arguments in support of the
Four Articles and in opposition to the traditions of the Church that were marshalled

99
  On the negotiations that resulted in the “Cheb Judge,” see: E. F. Jacob, “The Bohemians
at the Council of Basel,” in Prague Essays, ed. R. W. Seton-​Watson (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1948),
pp. 81–​123, pp. 83–​8 4; and Christianson, “Church, Bible, and Reform,” pp. 134–​135. The text of
this agreement has been preserved in: Johannes de Ragusio, Tractatus, pp. 219–​221.
100
  Bartoš described the January negotiations in his: Hussite Revolution, 1424–​1437, pp. 75–​77.
The articles agreed upon by the Prague and Orphan parties were included in: Johannes de Ragusio,
Tractatus, pp. 182–​185.
101
  This letter, dated to January 5, is included in: Johannes de Ragusio, Tractatus, pp. 139–​142,
here pp. 140–​141.
102
  This letter is dated to March 10. See: Johanes de Ragusio, Tractatus, pp. 186–​190, p. 187.
 The Founder 97

against them. Even the Bohemians’ arrival at Basel signaled the continued influ-
ence of Hus. In writing of their entry into the city on January 4, 1433, Ragusa noted
that they arrived “carrying banners on their covered wagons that depicted a chalice
with the host, upon which there were also words proclaiming: ‘Truth conquers all
things.’ ”103 This combination of word and image suggested that Nider had been par-
tially wrong in his earlier assessment of the Hussites’ unity, as their banners placed the
chalice and host alongside a second ground for their common identity: the words and
memory of Jan Hus.
It is not necessary to rehearse the lengthy debates between the Hussites and
the council fathers that began on January 16 and stretched until mid-​April. Other
scholars have done so at considerable length and in exhaustive detail, and the
main speeches by both the Hussite delegates and their conciliar interlocutors
survive in modern editions.104 What seems most relevant is that the lengthy debate
over the Four Articles revealed an essential cleavage between the Council’s and the
Hussites’ definition of the Church and understanding of where authority was located
within it. The conciliar representatives tended to emphasize Christ’s foundation of
the Church in Peter and his promise that the Holy Spirit would guide it for all time.
This infusion of the spirit made it impossible for the church to err in essential matters
of faith.105 The Catholic speakers also emphasized that the Church was the mystical
body of Christ, a mixed body of believers united under one head by its common ritu-
als, traditions, and faith.106 This “organic” image of the church also emphasized the
necessity of the clerical hierarchy that directed this body in its faith.107 Conversely,
the Bohemian speakers emphasized the predestinate nature of the church and
demanded the contemporary institution’s conformity to the standards and practices

103
  Johannes de Ragusio, Tractatus, p. 258.
104
  On these, debates, see the overview by: Paul De Vooght, “La confrontation des thèses hus-
sites et romaines au concile de Bâle (Janvier-​Avril 1433),” Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale
37 (1970):  97–​137 and 254–​291; and the accounts of specific debates in:  J. Santiago Madrigal,
“Eucaristía e Iglesia en la ‘Oratio de Communione sub Utraque Specie’ de Juan de Ragusa,”
Revista Española de Teología 53 (1993): 145–​2 08 and 285–​3 40; and Thomas Prügl, Die Ekklesiologie
Heinrich Kaltheisens OP in der Auseinandersetzung mit dem Basler Konziliarismus (Munich: Ferdinand
Schöningh, 1995), pp. 56–​86. See also: Jacob, “The Bohemians at the Council”; Krämer, Konsenz
und Rezeption, pp. 69–​124; and Christianson, “Church, Bible, and Reform.”
105
  On this view of the Church’s collective inerrancy, particularly as expressed by Ragusa,
see:  Madrigal, “Eucaristía e Iglesia,” pp.  287–​295; and idem, La Eclesiología de Juan de Ragusa
O.P. (1390/​95–​1443):  Estudio e interpretación de su Tractatus de Ecclesia (UPCO:  Madrid, 1995),
pp. 178ff. See also: Amedeo Molnar, “La pensée hussite dans l’interprétation de Jean de Raguse,”
CV 26 (1983): 143–​152.
106
 Madrigal, La Ecclesiologia, p. 183; Krämer, Konsenz und Rezeption, p. 83; and Helmrath, Das
Basler Konzil, pp. 365ff.
107
  The emphasis on hierarchical control came through most clearly in the debate on free
preaching. For a close analysis of this debate, see:  Prügl, Die Ekklesiologie Heinrich Kaltheisens,
pp. 74–​76; and De Vooght, “La confrontation des thèses hussites,” pp. 271–​272.
98 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

of the apostolic age. For the Hussites, there was no promise of salvation linked to
the institutional continuity of the church. Rather, the key factor for them was God’s
election, but this emphasis was offset by their continued insistence that moral con-
duct, the preaching of the word of God, and the reception of the eucharist in both
kinds could signal one’s elect status.108 Paul De Vooght has pithily suggested that the
debates revealed a confrontation between the Hussites’ “esprit évangélique” and the
Catholics’ “mentalité canonique,” and it certainly seemed that the outlooks expressed
in both sides’ speeches were to a large degree incommensurable.109
Jan Hus embodied that fundamental difference over the construction of
authority within the Church, and the Hussite delegates routinely invoked his
example and teachings to highlight the marks of a true Christian community.
Hus did not figure prominently in the discussion of the first of the Four Articles,
which covered the permissibility, or even necessity, of communion in both kinds.
In this debate, the Prague master Jan Rokycana relied entirely on biblical cita-
tions and texts describing the practice of the early Church.110 The Hussite dossier
of such proof texts was extensive by this time, and even their opponents admitted
that the Bohemians’ mastery of their arguments was impressive.111 It was during
the debate on the public suppression of mortal sins, though, that Hus reared his
head. The Bohemian speaker on this article, Nicholas Biskupec of Tábor, based
his entire discourse on the so-​called “Sermon on Peace,” a discourse that Hus had
prepared for, but never delivered at, Constance. This incendiary sermon was cen-
tered on the ways in which man could maintain peace and love between himself,
his fellow men, and God.112 For Biskupec, as for Hus, man established a right rela-
tionship with God by following divine law; violations of that law made true peace
impossible, so it was necessary to take strong action to curb any such violation.

  This position was obviously beholden to Hus’s adaptation of Wyclif ’s ecclesiology, in which
108

absolute predestination was moderated by the practice of the church. On the Hussite position
generally, see: Krämer, Konsenz und Rezeption, p. 87; and Jacob, “The Bohemians at the Council,”
pp. 93 and 104. On the role of eucharistic practice in defining the church, see: David Holeton, “The
Communion of Infants: the Basel Years,” CV 29 (1986): 15–​4 0.
109
  De Vooght, “La confrontation des thèses hussites,” p. 282.
110
  Rokycana had emerged as a leader of the Prague party in the late 1420s, although he first
appeared on the scene of the Hussite movement in 1424, when he negotiated a truce between Jan
Žižka and the city government of Prague. He had served as the preacher at Týn Church since 1427,
and had assumed leadership of the moderate Prague clergy after Jakoubek of Stříbro’s death in
1429. The best study of Rokycana’s career remains: Frederick Heymann, “John Rokycana: Church
Reformer between Hus and Luther,” Church History 28 (1959): 240–​2 80.
111
  Christianson, “Church, Bible, and Reform,” p. 137.
112
 A  modern edition of Biskupec’s oration has been published as:  Nicholas Biskupec of
Pelhřimov, “Oratio pro Bohemorum articulo de peccatis publicis puniendis, habita in concilio
Basiliensi die 20. et 21. m. Januarii a. 1433,” in Orationes quibus Nicolaus de Pelhřimov … et Ulricus
de Znojmo … in Concilio Basiliensi anno 1433 ineunte defenderunt, ed. F. Bartoš (Tábor: Jihočeská
Spolecnost, 1935), pp. 3–​29.
 The Founder 99

In his oration, Biskupec explicitly identified Hus as an “evangelical preacher and

a good, righteous, and Catholic man” who had sought to illuminate the worst
of violations against divine law:  simony. For his trouble, Hus had been forbid-
den to preach “at the instigation of evil clerics,” but had continued to proclaim
and defend God’s law.113 Biskupec further asserted that Hus’s refusal to submit
and his defense of proper eucharistic practice led to his death at Constance, and
Biskupec finally affirmed that the Bohemians would continue to follow Hus’s lead
and defend evangelical precepts, “as it is not possible for us to bow to the customs
of men.”114
Not surprisingly, Hus also featured prominently in the speech by the Orphan
priest, Ulrich of Znojmo, in which he defended the necessity and benefits of free
preaching.115 For Ulrich, there were two kinds of priest—​t hose who bore that title
only because of their ordination, and those who truly deserved the title because of
their righteousness. Hus had, of course, been an exemplar of the latter type, “the
most laudable preacher of the kingdom of Bohemia” who had exposed the failings
of the false clergy “in his writings, words, and deeds” before paying the ultimate
price for this proclamation.116 Throughout Ulrich’s oration, then, Hus served as
a touchstone for how a true preacher ought to act, and his writings served as elo-
quent testimonies to what a true preacher had to say. Ulrich specifically cited,
for example, Hus’s treatise On the Six Errors, which he “had left in writing on the
walls of the Bethlehem Chapel for the future remembrance of posterity.”117 This
text, which Jakoubek of Stříbro had actually had painted on the chapel walls,
illuminated the clergy’s sins and warned the laity about according false priests
any authority over them. Ulrich further asserted that Hus had inspired a genera-
tion of preachers to emulate his moralism through such words, “since we who saw
and heard him were also not able to keep silent.” This degree of personal inspiration
led Ulrich to include a reading from a confession of faith that Hus had prepared for
Constance, On the Sufficiency of the Law of Christ, in his rebuttal of his opponent, Giles
of Charlier. After reading from this text, Ulrich simply stated that “if this is the pro-
testation of a heretical or sinful man, then he who illuminates the hidden shadows
and makes known the counsel of the heart will judge.”118
For both Ulrich and Biskupec, Jan Hus had personified the devotion to divine
law that characterized the Hussite movement as a whole. In both of their speeches,

113
  Biskupec, “Oratio,” p. 24.
114
  Biskupec, “Oratio,” p. 25.
115
  This text has been published as:  Ulrich of Znojmo, “Posicio fratris Ulrici de Znoyma in
materia tercii articuli de predicacione libera verbi dei,” in Orationes, pp. 86–​108.
116
  Ulrich of Znojmo, “Posicio,” p. 96.
117
 Ibid.
118
  Ulrich of Znojmo, “Replica Ulrici de Znoyma de parte Orphanorum contra doctorem
Henricum Kalteisen,” in Orationes, pp. 114–​172, p. 134.
100 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

Hus’s words served as a foundation upon which they could build a defense of the
Four Articles and a thoroughgoing critique of the institutional Church that refused
to accept their legitimacy. And while Hus did not play a prominent role in Peter
Payne’s defense of the fourth article on clerical poverty (perhaps he had exhausted
his A-​list Hus material at Bratislava in 1429), it seems clear that the Bohemians at
the Council of Basel considered the martyr’s teachings to constitute a basis for unity
among a delegation composed of a moderate Prague master, the bishop of Tábor, a
Wyclifite expatriate from England, and a priest representing the Orphan military
brotherhood.
Most historiography on the Bohemian reformation describes the dissolution of
that unity in the wake of the Hussites’ hearing at Basel in a decidedly elegiac tone.
The disputation itself is considered a triumph—​the transposition of Hussite mili-
tancy from the previous decade into a learned tone, with the Bohemian speakers
heroically facing off with the assembled hierarchy of the Catholic Church. The ensu-
ing months of negotiations between the Bohemians and the Council’s representa-
tives who traveled to Prague, however, are rendered as a tragic denouement. In this
telling, the canny conciliar delegates perceived that many Bohemians could be per-
suaded to accept peace for the price of the communion chalice, while uncharacteris-
tic military blunders weakened the Táborites and Orphans. A timely concession of
the chalice, then, at a Czech diet in November 1433, convinced many Czech nobles
and the leadership of the Prague Hussites to turn against the military brotherhoods,
a move that culminated in the defeat and liquidation of the Táborite and Orphan
armies at the Battle of Lipany in May 1434. This defeat signaled the end of the Hussite
revolution, the closing of a window of nationalist, nearly utopian opportunity dur-
ing which the Czechs reached previously (and subsequently) unscaled heights of
self-​determination.119
This narrative is appealing, and it is certainly true that the Hussites gained
considerably less, in terms of implementing the Four Articles as a mandate for
the reform of the universal church, than they had hoped from Basel. But such
a narrative also diminishes the long history of the Bohemian reformation that
unfolded after Basel, as the Hussite movement became the Utraquist church.
A second historical narrative lionizes this later period, but is unsatisfactory in its

119
  This narrative was promoted sequentially by Czech nationalist scholars in the nineteenth
century, most notably František Palacký, twentieth-​century Marxist scholars such as Josef Macek,
and more recent scholars like Howard Kaminsky. For overviews of these bodies of scholarship and
the role of the Hussite Revolution in their larger historical and political agendas, see: Ernst Werner,
Die hussitische Revolution: Revolutionsbegriff und Revolutionsergebnis im Spiegel marxistischer, insonderheit
tschechoslovakischer Forschungen (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1989); Peter Morée, “Jan Hus as a Threat
to the German Future of Central Europe: The Bohemian Reformer in the Controversy between
Contantin Höfler and František Palacký,” BRRP 2 (2002), 295–​307; and Zdeněk David, Realism,
Tolerance, and Liberalism in the Czech National Awakening:  Legacies of the Bohemian Reformation
(Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2010).
 The Founder 101

own way as well. According to this story, representatives of the Council of Basel
traveled to Prague in June of 1433 and demanded the Bohemians’ submission to
the Council. The Czechs refused, and the delegation returned to Basel to con-
sider what concessions the Council would make in order to secure peace with the
Hussites. A sharp debate ensued, but the Council ultimately decided to accept
that the administration of communion in both kinds was licit. The Council also
agreed to cease referring to the Czechs as heretics, which would eliminate the
possibility of further crusades against them. The Hussite parties splintered over
the question of whether they should accept these concessions or push for further
reforms, and this fundamental disagreement led the Hussite nobles and Prague
party to move against the military brotherhoods as an obstacle to peace. After
their victory at Lipaný, the moderate Hussites quickly moved to formalize the
gains they had made and secured further concessions from Sigismund (who was
elected Holy Roman Emperor in this year), who sought to claim the Czech throne
after nearly fifteen years of waiting. In doing so, the Hussite leadership laid the
groundwork for the creation of a national church structure largely independent
of Rome and an estates-​dominated political structure that would persist until the
outbreak of the Thirty Years War.120
Both of these narratives are factually true, but offer a skewed image of the
events that took place in the wake of the debates at Basel. The former, dominant
narrative minimizes the concessions that the Czechs won from Basel, which
served as a precedent for the sixteenth-​century reformers. The latter, though,
makes pragmatism a virtue and ignores the loss of life and diminution of reform-
ist ambition that were part and parcel of the Bohemians’ securing a lasting peace.
I would suggest, then, that we must split the difference between these two poles
in order to see the real gains and long-​term impact of the peace process at Basel,
even as we recognize that this process irrevocably restricted the scope and
altered the substance of the Hussites’ reform program. The basic terms of the
Hussites’ settlement with Basel and Sigismund included: the allowance of com-
munion in both kinds to adults in areas where it was currently practiced, with
the caveat that priests administering the sacrament in this way must affirm the
doctrine of concomitance; the proclamation that the Bohemians were faithful

120
  More positive evaluations of this negotiating process are often contained in works that
emphasize Bohemia’s development as a bi-​confessional state. In this scholarly framework, the
Compactata are seen as an essential step toward the creation of a legally tolerant kingdom with
the Peace of Kutná Hora in 1485 (which is covered in the following chapter). For this interpreta-
tion, see: Anna Skybová, “Politische Aspekte der Existenz zweier Konfessionen im Königreichen
Böhmen bis zum Anfang des 17. Jahrhunderts,” in Martin Luther:  Leben, Werk, und Wirkung, ed.
G. Vogler (Berlin:  Akademie Verlag, 1986), pp. 463–​4 80; Winfried Eberhard, “Der Weg zur
Koexistenz: Kaiser Sigmund und das Ende der Hussitischen Revolution,” Bohemia 33 (1992): 1–​43;
and Šmahel, “Pax externa et interna.”
102 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

sons of the Church; and the recognition of the right to evangelical preaching
and the punishment of mortal sins by individuals with proper authorization.121
These concessions were certainly limited, but the Hussites also received prom-
ises of considerable local autonomy. Their agreement with Sigismund, for exam-
ple, stated that no Czech would be subject to foreign ecclesiastical courts, that
Czech bishops would not hinder communion in both kinds, and that Catholic
services would be restricted to areas where a majority supported the traditional
liturgy.122 This final condition affirmed that the Czech lands would be home to a
permanent Catholic minority, but Sigismund also elevated Hussite sympathiz-
ers at his court, granted considerable judicial power to the nobility in the prov-
inces, and promised to support Jan Rokycana’s candidacy to become Archbishop
of Prague.123
These conditions to the Bohemians’ acceptance of Sigismund as the Czech
king showed the many ways in which the reformers and nobility carved out
autonomous spaces in which to further the religious reform in their land, even
as they offered many concessions of their own to secure the peace necessary
for such development. Such is the nature of negotiations that end long, incon-
clusive wars. That the war between the Hussites and their imperial and papal
opponents had been fought over matters of divine authority here took a back-
seat to the necessities of peace. Both sides in the conflict were ideologically
and militarily exhausted, and both hoped to turn the peace to their advantage.
The Catholics planned to use missionaries and diplomatic pressure to lure
moderates back to Mother Church, and to restrict the ordination of Utraquist
clergy. The Czechs, conversely, hoped to create an institutional, national
church that would foster continued reform and make permanent some of the
theological and liturgical innovations (or perhaps renovations) of the previous
two decades. And Jan Hus would remain central—​a s he had during both the
Hussite Wars and the negotiations with Basel—​in justifying and animating
this continued religious reform as the progenitor and patron saint of the Czech
lands’ Utraquist Church.

  The Czechs ultimately concluded two treaties: the so-​called “Basel Compactata” that dealt
121

with the religious settlement of the schism with Rome and the Four Articles; and the “kaiserliche
Kompaktaten” with Sigismund, which provided for ending the Czech interregnum. Sigismund had
initially negotiated the terms of his accession separately from Basel, and subsequently pressured
Basel to speed up the process of reconciliation. For the text of the religious settlement, see: AČ 3,
pp. 398–​412. The agreement with Sigismund is prfeserved in: AČ 3, pp. 427–​431.
122
  AČ 3, pp. 429–​430.
123
  Sigismund initially offered these concessions in a pair of lists of “claims and settlements” to
the Bohemian estates. These lists are preserved in: AČ 3, pp. 419–​421. Sigismund officially offered
his support for Rokycana’s election as archbishop in a letter issued from Jihlava on July 13, 1436. It
is printed in: AČ 3, pp. 445–​4 46.
 The Founder 103

Conclusion
It is impossible to miss the irony of the Hussites’ final acceptance of the Compactata
with Basel and Sigismund. After all, it was on July 5 and 6, 1436—​t he twenty-​fi rst
anniversary of Hus’s execution—​t hat members of the Czech diet and the lead-
ers of the reform movement publicly read aloud the treaties and ratified them in
Jihlava, a Moravian town on the main route between Prague and Vienna. As if this
date was not enough, it was Hus’s hagiographer Petr of Mladoňovice who finally
announced the Czechs’ acceptance of the council’s and Sigismund’s proposals for
peace.124 The irony, then, is impossible to ignore, and the tragedy is quite easy to
project. How could this ceremony be understood as anything other than an act of
surrender, a conscious choice to forget the death of Jan Hus and the fifteen years
of revolt and warfare that had proceeded from it? To interpret this ceremony in
this way, though, limits the meaning of Hus’s death and restricts our understand-
ing of the development of the Bohemian reformation. As witnessed in the debates
at Basel, Hus could be invoked for more than simply declaring war; his teachings
and example could also serve as the foundation for theological stances and pasto-
ral practices that could develop during times of peace.
From 1415 to 1436, such peaceful moments were few and far between, and
even they were marked by internecine conflict among the various parties within
the Hussite movement. As such, it was only after the acceptance of the Compactata
that the claimants to Jan Hus’s legacy could begin to articulate what that legacy
might mean for the elaboration of a church order constructed on the distinctively
Czech foundations of the communion chalice, the law of God, and the memory of
Jan Hus. Throughout the era of the Hussite Wars, Jan Hus had served as a rallying
cry for both his Bohemian defenders and his Catholic detractors: the holy martyr
or diabolical pseudo-​prophet whose words had set the Czech nations against the
emperor and pope. It was after these conflicts, though, that a new figure of Jan
Hus emerged whose commemoration in liturgy, art, and sermons provided a firm
foundation for the establishment of a Czech national church.

124
  Several accounts of these ceremonies survive. One account by the Basel delegates led by
Juan Palomar has been preserved in: UB 2, pp. 457–​458; while an anonymous Latin account has
been published in UB 2, pp. 456–​457. Cf. the accounts in: AČ 3, pp. 442–​4 45; and the overview
in: Bartoš, The Hussite Revolution, 1424–​1437, pp. 133–​134.
 3

The Patron

Introduction
Sing, tongue, of the glorious battle
Of the struggle in which
The zealous servants of divine God fight
Against the treachery of the wicked
And perverse enemy.
The kingdom of Bohemia begat
A virtuous man,
Chaste, pure, and fruitful
She cherishes this courageous man in her bosom
As she sends him forth with living faith to the Council.1

With these words, an anonymous fifteenth-​century Czech author commemorated

Jan Hus and his martyrdom at Constance. The themes articulated in these verses
would have been familiar to fifteenth-​century Bohemians. The filial ties between
Jan Hus and his homeland, the condemnation by his opponents at Constance,
and the praise of Hus’s purity and strength of devotion: each of these had been
the subject of songs and sermons since the time of Hus’s death. What was novel
about this composition, however, was its form, as this poetic text represented a
distinctively Bohemian adaptation of the sixth-​century hymn, “Pangue, lingua, glo-
riosi,” by the poet Venantius Fortunatus. This song had been used for nearly a mil-
lennium as a processional hymn within the Catholic Church, with clerical choirs
and the laity joining to sing the words of the second verse as a refrain. Particularly
on Good Friday, congregations would extol the “faithful cross” in unison as their

1
  This hymn was initially published as part of: Breviarium Pragense (Nuremberg: Georg Stuchs,
1492), fol. 2r. This translation was made from a modern printed edition in: Rudolf Peiper, “Verse
aus der Hussitenzeit,” Forschungen zur deutschen Geschichte 18 (1878): 161–​168. On the publication
history of the song, see: FRB 8 (1932), pp. CXX–​C XXII.

104
 T h e Pa t r o n 105

clerical leaders would solemnly process to the altar, preparing to remember the
tragedy of Christ’s faithful self-​sacrifice and celebrate his resurrection.2
It is not hard to imagine this scene transposed to Prague on July 6 in the last
decade of the fifteenth century, with Utraquist congregations assembled to com-
memorate the death of Jan Hus and the other Czech martyrs. Following the
performance of this song, we might picture a priest reading from the passion nar-
ratives of Hus’s death prior to preaching a sermon on his virtues, perhaps even
in the shadow of a monumental depiction of Hus in his distinctive heretic’s hat.
Beyond the homily, the congregation could also engage in its own form of col-
lective remembrance, singing vernacular songs in honor of Hus and Jerome of
Prague before partaking of communion in both kinds. This ritual act, along with
the veneration of Hus, defined the Utraquist church in the fifteenth century, so
we can imagine that this particular celebration of the eucharist was imbued with
special meaning. 3 After the Mass, congregants would have emerged into a carni-
val atmosphere, as cannonades and raucous processions marked the observance
of this holiday. With both solemnity and festivity, then, July 6 functioned as a
crucial moment when the Utraquist church enacted and celebrated its ecclesiasti-
cal identity.4
Although this description of the celebration of July 6 is necessarily written in
the subjunctive—​no such fulsome account of this holiday survives—​it is certain
that all of these individual elements of the commemoration of Jan Hus took place
within Utraquist Bohemia during the late fifteenth century. This chapter will
therefore explore the complex of liturgical, artistic, and textual sources that attest
to the elaboration of Jan Hus’s cult in order to assess how his memory functioned
as a touchstone of Utraquist identity in the years after the Hussite revolution. It is
essential to understand the role that Hus’s memory played among the Utraquists
because the second half of the fifteenth century witnessed a series of challenges
to the fledgling Czech national church. Armed conflict itself was not a constant,

2
  On the composition and performance of this song in the medieval Church, see: Andreas Haug,
“Ritual and Repetition: The Ambiguities of Refrains,” in The Appearance of Medieval Rituals: The Play
of Construction and Modification, ed. M. Bruun et al (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), pp. 83–​96, espe-
cially pp. 84–​85. See also: Thomas Heffernan, “The Liturgy and the Literature of Saints’ Lives,” in
The Liturgy of the Medieval Church, ed. T. Heffernan and E. Matter, 2nd ed. (Kalamazoo: Medieval
Institute Publications, 2005), pp. 65–​94.
3
  For overviews of the liturgical and artistic development of Hus’s cult in the fifteenth century,
see: V. V. Štech, “Jan Hus ve Výtvarném Umění,” in Mistr Jan Hus v životĕ a památkách českého lidu,
ed. J. Hanuš (Prague: August Žaluda, 1915), pp. 81–​98; and the essays cited in the introduction
by Fojtiková, Holeton, and Royt. On the homiletic commemoration of Hus specifically, see: Ota
Halama, “Biblical Pericopes for the Feast of Jan Hus,” BRRP 9 (2014): 173–​182.
4
 This description of the festivities associated with July 6 is taken from the Old Czech
Annals, a series of vernacular chronicles compiled in Prague, as analyzed by Joel Seltzer in his:
“Re-​envisioning the Saint’s Life in Utraquist Historical Writing,” BRRP 5, pt. 1 (2004): 147–​166.
106 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

as it had been in previous decades, but the papal curia and its representatives did
consistently challenge the Utraquists’ legitimacy and seek to undermine their
functional independence, eventually abrogating the Basel Compactata in 1462. 5
Internally, the Utraquists also had to negotiate the existence of the Catholic
minority within the Czech kingdom while protecting themselves from the
Catholic kings who ruled Bohemia throughout the century, with the exception
of the reign of George of Poděbrady from 1458 to 1471.6 The establishment and
long-​term growth of the Utraquist church thus required the creation of political,
administrative, and legal structures that would ensure its survival and stabilize
its relations with both its indigenous Catholic minority and the Roman church at
large, structures that the Utraquist leadership sought to erect with the support of
the urban and noble estates.7
Political support was not, however, enough to sustain the Utraquist church by
itself, particularly when internal political crises or external threats seemed poised
to upset the balance of power within the Czech kingdom. As such, an analysis of
Utraquist religious responses to such moments makes it possible to comprehend
the ideological resources upon which the new church and its political patrons
could draw to galvanize its members and maintain their resistance to the pressure
they increasingly found themselves under. At the heart of such responses lay the
symbolic dyad of the communion chalice and Saint Jan Hus, which were increas-
ingly (if ahistorically) bound together in Utraquist discourse as the fifteenth century
progressed. There was certainly continuity between the first commemoration of Hus
in the 1410s and how Bohemian authors deployed Hus during the late fifteenth-​cen-
tury crises that affected the Utraquist church. Indeed, during the papal campaign
to revoke the Compactata in the 1450s; the war of the Hungarian king Matthias

  For an analysis of this campaign, which was led by Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini both before
5

and after his election as Pope Pius II, see: Howard Kaminsky, “Pius Aeneas among the Taborites,”
Church History 28 (1959): 281–​309; and Hans Rothe, “Enea Silvio de’ Piccolomini über Böhmen,” in
Studien zum Humanismus in den Böhmischen Ländern, ed. H. Harder and H. Rothe (Cologne: Böhlau,
1988), pp. 141–​156.
6
 For overviews of George of Poděbrady’s reign, see the monumental works by:  Rudolf
Urbánek, Věk Poděbradský, 4 vols. (Prague: J. Laichter, 1915–​1962); Frederick Heymann, George
of Bohemia:  King of Heretics (Princeton:  Princeton UP, 1965); and Otakar Odložilík, The Hussite
King: Bohemia in European Affairs 1440–​1471 (New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1965).
7
 For a description of the nobility’s and urban estates’ efforts to establish their political
supremacy in the Czech kingdom and their continued patronage of the Utraquist church, see:
Winfried Eberhard, Konfessionsbildung und Stände in Böhmen, 1478–​1530 (München: Oldenbourg,
1981), especially pp. 43–​4 8; idem, “Zur reformatorischen Qualität und Konfessionalisierung
des nachrevolutionären Hussitismus,” in Häresie und vorzeitige Reformation im Spätmittelalter, ed.
František Šmahel (Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 1998), pp. 213–​238; and Anna Skýbová, “Politische
Aspekte der Existenz zweier Konfessionen.” im Königreichen Böhmen bis zum Anfang des
17. Jahrhunderts,” in Martin Luther: Leben, Werk, und Wirkung, ed. G. Vogler (Berlin: Akademie
Verlag, 1986), pp. 463–​4 80.
 T h e Pa t r o n 107

Corvinus against George of Poděbrady and his successor that began a decade later;
and the period of uncertain tolerance that ensued in the wake of the 1483 Prague
uprising and the subsequent Peace of Kutná Hora, the figure of Jan Hus served as an
embodiment of the religious practices, values, and tradition that defined the Czech
Utraquists over and against the Catholics with whom they had to coexist.
What is most fascinating about these later Utraquist invocations of Hus,
though, is the way in which they laid out the dynamics of the relationship between
Hus and his Czech adherents. In a significant number of late fifteenth-​century
texts, Hus came to be seen as an intercessor who could secure the divine favor
that the Utraquists required for their survival. And in exchange for this remark-
able gift, the Czech people would offer Hus memoria: the liturgical remembrance
that guaranteed his continued presence among the Utraquists as an active, if not
living, member of the religious community that he had helped define. This was
not an equal exchange, but, as Patrick Geary has cogently argued, the relationship
between saints and those who venerated them was one of “proportional reciproc-
ity.” Certainly the departed saint’s virtues enabled him to give gifts greater than
he could possibly receive from the living, but both parties were understood to be
offering all that they could in service to the other.8
The reification of the relationship between Hus and the Utraquist church
in the second half of the fifteenth century effectively completed the process
of liturgical inculturation that had begun in the first years after Hus’s death.
What had started as the sung and preached affirmation of Hus’s sanctity in
the face of his condemnation at Constance, though, had become a more com-
plex and thematically rich source for the invention of an Utraquist tradition
that masked any hint of novelty in its practices and objects of devotion with
the traditional trappings of sanctity.9 Furthermore, the commemoration of Hus
allowed Utraquists in the late fifteenth century to connect to the moment of
their church’s heroic founding in a profoundly emotional way that was height-
ened by the liturgical and festive celebration of July 6. By participating in the
rituals that marked this day, the Utraquist laity and clergy could visibly affirm
their membership within the sacred body of true Christians that Hus’s writings
had defined theologically and that the conflicts of the Hussite revolution had
delineated in the sharpest terms imaginable. And it was this collective process
of self-​definition through the celebration of Jan Hus’s memoria that enabled the

8
  On this idea, see:  Patrick Geary, Living with the Dead in the Middle Ages (Ithaca:  Cornell
UP, 1994), p.  81. See also the introductory section in:  Otto Gerhard Oexle, “Memoria und
Memorialbild,” in Memoria: Der geschichtliche Zeugniswert des liturgischen Gedenkens im Mittelalter, ed.
K. Schmid and J. Wollasch (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1984), pp. 384–​4 40.
9
  On these concepts, see:  Paul Post, “Rituals and the Function of the Past:  Rereading Eric
Hobsbawm,” Journal of Ritual Studies 10 (1996): 85–​107; and idem, “Feast as a Key Concept,” espe-
cially pp. 61–​63.
108 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

Utraquist church to survive and even thrive throughout a century marked by

an extended cold war with Rome that regularly heated up due to both political
ambition and personal animus.

Status Quo Post Bellum: Catholics

and Utraquists after Basel
In the first decade after the ratification of the Compactata by the Utraquist Church
and the Czech nobility, it became clear that the Catholic hierarchy considered its
agreement with the Bohemians to be neither permanent nor binding. Rather,
the representatives of Rome in the Czech lands and their primary secular allies,
most notably King Sigismund, did all that they could to undermine the treaties
from the moment that they were signed. Sigismund, for his part, simply never
kept a number of the promises he had made to the Czech estates to secure their
recognition of his kingship. He appointed Catholics as mayors of the Prague
towns, gave up on the election of Jan Rokycana as Archbishop of Prague, and
generally distanced himself from the Utraquist leadership.10 Sigismund also sup-
ported the program of Bishop Philibert of Coutances, the Council of Basel’s rep-
resentative in Prague, for the re-​Catholicization of the Czech capital. Philibert
wisely pursued a strategy of gradually restoring Catholic practices to Prague and
patronizing institutions and holy orders that had disappeared during the rev-
olutionary era.11 Philibert also blocked the ordination of Utraquist clergy and
sought to win the Prague burghers to the Catholic side by emphasizing the simi-
larities between the two churches, a move he augmented by promoting a reading
of the Compactata that considered the agreement to be a temporary concession
only to Czechs who “had the use” of communion in both kinds at the time that
the treaty was agreed upon.12 With such policies, Philibert laid the groundwork
for the eventual incorporation of the Utraquists back into the Catholic Church

 On Sigismund’s actions in Prague, see: Christian-​Frederik Felskau, “Town, Faith, and
10

Power in Unquiet Times: Prague between the Hussite Pre-​R eformation and the Habsburgs’ Rule
(1436–​1526),” in Negotiating the Political in Northern European Urban Society, c.1400–​c.1600, ed.
S. Sweetinburgh (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), pp. 181–​2 07, especially pp. 183–​189. See also:
Milena Bartlová, “Sigismundus Rex Bohemiae: Royal Representation after the Revolution,” in
Kunst als Herrschaftsinstrument unter den Luxemburgen, ed. J. Fajt and A. Langer (Berlin: Deutscher
Kunstverlag, 2009), pp. 396–​4 08.
11
  On Philibert’s campaign, see:  Blanka Zilynská, “Biskup Filibert a české země,” in Jihlava
a Basilejská kompaktáta, ed. K. Křesadlo et al. (Jihlava: Museum Visočiny, 1992), pp. 56–​94; and
Kateřina Horníčková, “Memory, Politics, and Holy Relics: Catholic Tactics amidst the Bohemian
Reformation,” BRRP 8 (2011): 135–​144.
12
  These tactics are discussed in:  Heymann, George of Bohemia, pp.  9–​10; and Horničková,
“Memory, Politics, and Holy Relics,” pp. 136–​139.
 T h e Pa t r o n 109

as the revolutionary generation of the 1430s receded from prominent positions

within the Czech leadership.
For better or worse, though, Bishop Philibert’s efforts were linked to those of
King Sigismund, who quickly acted to eliminate any vestiges of Hussite radical-
ism in the wake of his accession to the Bohemian throne. Sigismund’s initial tar-
get was Jan Žižka’s former lieutenant, Jan Rohač of Dubá, who had taken refuge
in a castle near Kutná Hora and was conducting raids against neighboring lords
who had accepted Sigismund’s kingship. Rohač’s fortress, which he had named
Zion, fell to Sigismund in September 1437, and he was subsequently hanged from
a three-​story gallows (reputedly by a golden chain) along with fifty of his follow-
ers in Prague. This display of judicial ferocity backfired, though, as contempo-
rary Czech sources commemorated Rohač as a hero of the Utraquist faith and a
prophetic “vox in Rama” who had refused to become complicit with the Czechs’
persecutor, Sigismund.13 This perception of Rohač’s death was only strengthened
when Sigismund died three months later due to complications from an amputated
toe. And although Sigismund’s death seemed to be an appropriate act of divine
retribution to the Czechs, it did create a political situation in which dynastic
instability made it impossible to implement the imperial Compactata.14
This instability became more pronounced as the 1430s came to a close.
Sigismund’s successor, Albrecht of Austria, ruled for just two years, and his death
coincided with that of Bishop Philibert. The Czech throne would ultimately
remain vacant until 1453, and ecclesiastical efforts to subdue the Utraquists
would devolve to the leadership of legates and preachers who sought to win the
Czechs for the Church. Over and against these individuals stood the collective
nobility and newly empowered consistory of the Utraquist church, an adminis-
trative body of Utraquist priests that had formed in the 1430s and would exercise
authority over the Czech church throughout the fifteenth century.15 In its first

13
  This last description came from a contemporary song describing Rohač with words taken
from Matthew 2:18. On this song, see: Emil Pražák, “Otázka významu v latinské písni o Roháčovi,”
Česká Literatura 32 (1984):  193–​2 02. See also:  Rudolf Urbánek, “Jan Roháč z Dubé,” in idem,
Z Husitského Věku: Výbor vistorických úvah a studii (Prague: Nakladatelství Československé akademie
věd), pp. 178–​190; and P. Čornej and B. Zilynskyj, “Jan Roháč z Dubé a Prha Konec Jana Roháče—​
pověst a skutečnost,” Pražský Sborník Historický 20 (1987): 35–​6 0.
14
  On the Bohemians’ interpretation of Sigismund’s death, see: Thomas Fudge, “The ‘Crown’
and ‘Red Gown:’ Hussite Popular Religion,” in Popular Religion in Germany and Central Europe,
1400–​1800, ed. T. Johnson and R. Scribner (London: MacMillan, 1996), pp. 38–​57; idem, The
Magnificent Ride, pp. 120–​121; and Čornej and Zilynskyj, “Jan Roháč z Dubé,” pp. 58–​59. On the
political ramifications of Sigismund’s death, see: Heymann, George of Bohemia, pp. 12ff.
15
  On the formation and function of the consistory, see: Frederick Heymann, “The Hussite-​Utraquist
Church in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries,” ARG 52 (1961): 1–​15; and Thomas Fudge, “Reform
and the Lower Consistory in Prague, 1437–​1497,” BRRP 2 (1998): 67–​98. On the relations between the
consistory and the Utraquist nobility, see: Eberhard, Konfessionsbildung und Stände, pp. 41–​46.
110 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

decade of existence, this body functioned as a coordinating committee dedicated

to the institutional and theological development of the Bohemian reformation.
Primarily through the vehicle of synods, the consistory defined Utraquist doc-
trine vis-​à-​v is both Rome and Tábor, which had survived the battle of Lipany as
a theological alternative to Prague, even though it had lost the influence that its
military might had accrued for the city.16 Ultimately, the consistory also devel-
oped into the representative face of the Utraquist mainstream that could fill the
vacuum left in the Bohemian ecclesiastical hierarchy by the continued absence of
a duly consecrated archbishop of Prague.
The formation of the consistory and its assumption of a leading role in the
ecclesiastical development of the Utraquist church were complemented by the
emergence of George of Poděbrady as a political leader for the Bohemian nobil-
ity. George’s family had been prominent during the Hussite revolution; his father
had been Žižka’s friend, and George parlayed his Hussite bona fides and a series
of beneficial political marriages into the leadership of an Utraquist league of
nobles in 1444.17 Four years later, George and his allies undertook a coup against
the Catholic leadership of Prague. After this uprising, George began to refer to
himself in his correspondence as the “administrator” or “governor” of Bohemia.18
George would eventually assume these titles in fact, but his use of them in 1448
signaled his acceptance of a leading role in Czech political affairs and his desire to
serve as a primary political patron of the Utraquist church.
George’s dispossession of the Catholic lords in charge of Prague came at an
opportune moment, as 1448 witnessed the appearance of a new papal legate in
Prague, Cardinal Juan Carvajal. The Spanish cardinal had come to the city in order
to gauge how the population might respond to the retraction of the Compactata.
The answer, of course, was poorly, but Carvajal was nonetheless welcomed enthu-
siastically to the city. The population believed that he had come to Prague to
confirm Rokycana’s election as archbishop, an impression that was only belied
when Carvajal quit the city in possession of an original copy of the Compactata!19
It would seem that Carvajal and Pope Nicholas V, who had succeeded Eugenius

  The most significant of these synods was held at Kutná Hora in 1443 and witnessed an
16

extended debate on eucharistic theology between representatives of Prague and Tábor. On the role
of synods in Czech religious debates, see: Blanka Zilynská, Hustiské synody v čechách, 1418–​1440
(Prague: Univerzita Karlova, 1985); and idem, “Synoden im utraquistischen Böhmen 1418–​1531,”
in Partikularsynoden im späten Mittelalter, ed. N. Kruppa and L. Zygner (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck
& Ruprecht, 2006), pp. 377–​386.
17
  On George’s rise to power among the Utraquist nobility, see:  Odložilík, The Hussite King,
pp. 31–​36; and Heymann, George of Bohemia, pp. 13–​16 and 43–​49.
18
  For an overview of the coup, see: Die Hussitische Revolution, pp. 1839–​1843. George’s assump-
tion of these new titles is discussed in: Heymann, George of Bohemia, p. 45.
19
  For an overview of Carvajal’s embassy and its aftermath, see: Odložilik, The Hussite King,
pp. 47ff.
 T h e Pa t r o n 111

IV the previous year, thought that the absence of the treaty’s exemplar might
invalidate it, but this failed ploy had serious ramifications for how the Utraquists
would deal with papal representatives in the future. Prior to Carvajal’s embassy,
the Bohemians had treated papal envoys with respect, per the terms of the
Compactata. After the farce of this mission, however, the Utraquists considered
all papal envoys to be wolves in sheep’s clothing. Or, as a contemporary Czech
song about Carvajal asserted: “We should drive away this whole priestly race after
you, for there will never be unity as long as your tail (read: prick) remains here!”20
Carvajal’s embassy represented only the first salvo in a renewed papal cam-
paign against the Bohemians that would culminate in the revocation of that Basel
Compactata by Pope Pius II in 1462. In the years after 1448, a series of popes del-
egated some of the leading lights of the Catholic Church to work toward reinte-
grating the schismatic Utraquists into the universal church. The intensification
of this campaign began in December of 1450, when Nicholas V authorized his
legate to the German lands, Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, to work toward “leading
the Bohemians back to the Church and the reform of that kingdom.”21 Although
Nicholas never actually traveled to Bohemia during his legatine journey across
the Low Countries and German lands from 1450 to 1452, he did write a series
of letters to the Utraquists’ leaders trying to secure “a true and effective union”
between Prague and Rome. For Cusa, the “true peace” he sought to establish was
dependent on the restoration of the Utraquists’ obedience to Rome and their rec-
ognition that their previous leaders, “who like beasts did not see the light and did
not even recognize their mother,” had been mistaken in introducing the adminis-
tration of communion in both kinds to the Bohemians.22
For Nicholas, the first and foremost of these Czech heresiarchs had been
Jakoubek of Stříbro, who had thought himself “wiser and holier” than the true
leaders of the Church, but had actually been “in servitude to the prince of
darkness.” Cusa even referred to the Bohemians collectively as “Iacobellianos,”
a highly idiosyncratic term that subordinated the martyr Jan Hus to the sac-
ramental theologian and preacher Jakoubek. 23 This terminology was unique
among Catholic polemics against the Utraquists, but it is worth noting that

20
  The text of this song was preserved by one of the Old Czech Annalists. For an exhaustive
analysis of these texts, see:  Joel Seltzer, “Framing Faith, Forging a Nation:  Czech Vernacular
Historiography and the Bohemian Reformation, 1430–​1530” (Unpublished Dissertation:  Yale
University, 2005), pp. 111–​112.
21
  The text of the bull empowering Nicholas, dated January 4, 1451, has been published in:
C. Baronio and O. Raynaldi, Annales Ecclesiastici, vol. 28 (Paris: H. Lagny, 1864), p. 538.
22
  Six letters from Nicholas to the Bohemians were collected and published together in 1514
under the title De Amplectenda Unitate Ecclesiae ad Bohemos. This corpus was published as part of
the larger publication:  De concordiantia catholica libri tres (Paris:  n.p., 1514). This quotation:  De
Amplectenda, p. XIIIIv.
23
  Nicholas of Cusa, De Amplectenda, p. XIIIIr.
112 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

Nicholas had been at Basel during the great debates with the Hussites in
1433. He had also served on the Council’s special committee for dealing with
Bohemia, and he had written against the Hussites’ eucharistic theology. 24 This
experience would have made him aware of the role that Hus played in the
Bohemians’ collective identity, so that his marginalization of the martyr could
be read as a strategic choice to focus instead on the less emotionally provoca-
tive figure of Jakoubek. It is also possible, though, that Nicholas understood
that Jakoubek had been the main proponent of the communion chalice in
1414–​1415, so he focused on him as the progenitor of the Bohemians’ eucha-
ristic novelty when offering a last warning to his correspondents:  “You have
experienced how many bad things you suffer when you place those who intro-
duce novelties against the Roman church’s faith and observance before the
warnings of your mother.” 25
Cusa’s blending of implicit threat and enticement was characteristic of Catholic
polemics at this time. Indeed, even as Nicholas was composing his letters another
Catholic celebrity had entered the fray against the Bohemians. The Franciscan
preacher St. Giovanni da Capistrano, later hero and martyr of Belgrade, had jour-
neyed from Vienna to Brno, in Moravia, in July 1451. Capistrano had been invited
the previous year to conduct a revivalistic preaching campaign in Vienna by
Frederick III, the Holy Roman Emperor.26 He had subsequently been enlisted by
Pope Nicholas as an inquisitor for the Czech lands who was to use his prodigious
homiletic gifts to convert the Utraquists back to Catholicism. Capistrano set to
his appointed tasks with remarkable vigor, and his companion Gabriel of Verona
noted that Capistrano had already converted 700 people and healed thirteen deaf
individuals in Brno by August of 1451.27 A nearly contemporary Catholic history
of Bohemia also recorded Capistrano’s conversion of a leading Moravian noble,
Beneš of Černohorský, and 2,000 of his retainers to Catholicism; and Capistrano

24
  On Cusa’s interactions with the Hussite delegation at Basel, see:  Morimichi Watanabe,
“Authority and Consent in Church Government: Panormitanus, Aeneas Sylvius, Cusanus,” Journal
of the History of Ideas 33 (1972): 217–​236; and Peter McDermott, “Nicholas of Cusa: Continuity and
Conciliation at the Council of Basel,” Church History 67 (1998): 254–​273.
25
  Nicholas of Cusa, De Amplectenda, p. XIIIIr.
26
 The most exhaustive biography of Capistrano remains:  Johannes Hofer, Johannes
Kapistran: Ein Leben im Kampf um die Reform der Kirche, 2 vols., 2nd ed. (Heidelberg: F. H. Kerle
Verlag, 1965). On Capistrano’s mission to Vienna and the Czech lands, see: Kaspar Elm, “Johannes
Kapistrans Predigtreise diesseits der Alpen (1451–​1456),” in Lebenslehren und Weltentwürfe im
Übergang vom Mittelalter zur Neuzeit, ed. H. Boockmann et al. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,
1989), pp. 500–​519; and Petr Hlaváček, “Errores quorumdam Bernhardinorum: Franciscans and
the Bohemian Reformation,” BRRP 3 (2000): 119–​126.
27
 Hofer, Johannes Kapistran, vol. 2, pp.  73–​74. On Gabriel, who later served as the vicar of
the Observant Franciscans in Bohemia, see:  Petr Hlaváček, “Bohemian Franciscans between
Orthodoxy and Nonconformity at the Turn of the Middle Ages,” BRRP 5, pt. 1 (2004): 167–​189.
 T h e Pa t r o n 113

himself boasted that he led more than 4,000 Bohemian priests to abjure their
errors and return to the Church.28
These numbers were almost certainly exaggerated, but the targets and dynamics
of Capistrano’s mission are revealing. On the one hand, his preaching was conso-
nant with the tradition of charismatic, moralist discourse that men like Milíč, Hus,
and Želivský had popularized in the Czech lands. And while Capistrano would have
rejected any comparison between himself and these heretics, his activities largely
conformed to the models they had established. Further, Capistrano’s targeting of
prominent nobles was canny. He could promise them potential preferment within the
Church (Beneš’s son, for instance, became bishop of Olomouc while still a teenager)
and rely on their influence to prompt further conversions. It is clear that Capistrano’s
tactics both alarmed and enraged the Utraquists. A pair of letters to Capistrano from
Utraquist authors described the Franciscan as “ejaculating blasphemies” and speaking
words filled “with a serpent’s poison.”29 A letter from the Bohemian estates to Nicholas
of Cusa further asserted that Capistrano had accused the Utraquists of heresy, which
the Compactata had expressly prohibited, and was inciting religious hatred: “It is as if
he sharpens the sword against us that was, until recently, kept in its sheath.”30
Capistrano responded strongly to these accusations, asserting in his own let-
ter to Cusa that “if we excuse heretics, we condemn ourselves.” Capistrano then
called on the Church to seize the heretics’ lands and impose harsh punishments,
including torture, upon the Bohemians. Ultimately, he concluded that holy war
might again prove necessary and expedient:

It is possible on the authority of the Church to make war, according to

that which is true, against the enemies of faith and those who impugn
the Church. . . many barons, knights, and nobles have offered them-
selves, their people, and their goods for this, and, if there is need, they

28
 These details of Beneš’s conversion were originally preserved in Aeneas Sylvius
Piccolomini’s Historia de Europa, which was published as part of his 1551 opera in Basel. See: Aeneae
Sylvii Piccolominei Senensis … opera quae extant omnia … quorum elenchum versa pagella indicabit
(reprint Frankfurt am Main: Minverva GMBH, 1967), pp. 387–​471, pp. 414–​415. See also: Luke
Wadding, Annales Minorum seu trium ordinum a S. Francisco institutorum, vol. 12 (Florence: Ad Claras
Aquas, 1931), p. 104; and Zdeněk Nejedlý, “Česká missie Jana Kapistrana,” Časopis Českého Musea
74 (1900): 57–​72, 220–​2 42, 334–​352, and 447–​4 64, pp. 64ff.
29
  The first of these citations was from a letter by the Utraquist clergy of Kroměříž inviting
Capistrano to a disputation; the second quotation is from a letter written by Jan Tovačovský of
Cimburk, a Moravian nobleman whom Capistrano tried to convert. Both texts are preserved
in:  Johannes Hofer, “Die auf die Hussitenmission des hl. Johannes von Capistrano bezüglichen
Briefe in Codex 598 der innsbrucker Universitätsbibliothek,” Archivum Franciscanum Historicum
16 (1923): 113–​126.
30
  The letter, which was dated to the fourth day of Lent, 1452, has been published in: Annales
Minorum, vol. 12, p. 145.
114 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

will expose themselves to death for the defense of Catholic truth. . . This
proceeds from no other cause than the word of truth, which liars can
never resist, because the truth conquers all things. 31

It would seem impossible that Capistrano chose these last words innocently.
Rather, his unacknowledged citation of Jan Hus’s dictum could (and even should)
be understood as a goad to a fellow Catholic who understood the significance
of this phrase. Considering Cusa’s unwillingness to acknowledge Hus’s role in
spawning the Bohemian reformation, then, and Capistrano’s mocking invocation
of his most famous words, it would seem that even Catholic authors in the mid-​
fifteenth century knew that this figure wielded considerable power in the context
of the Utraquist schism from the universal Church.
It is true that the papacy never authorized the holy war that Capistrano sought,
but it did continue its efforts to eliminate the Utraquists throughout the follow-
ing decade. At the forefront of these efforts was Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, an
Italian humanist who had begun his career as an ardent conciliarist at Basel,
then shifted his primary affiliation to the Emperor in Vienna, and had finally
become a proponent of papal supremacy. 32 In 1451, Piccolomini was serving as
an envoy from Pope Nicholas V to the imperial court in Vienna, and while there
he undertook a journey to Tábor and the Moravian town of Benešov, during
which he spoke at length with the leaders of the Hussite commune, including
the aged Nicholas Biskupec, and George of Poděbrady. Piccolomini parlayed
his personal experience with the Bohemian leaders into a leading role in shap-
ing papal policy toward the Utraquists, and that policy took several sharp turns
in the course of the 1450s. At first, Piccolomini was convinced that George of
Poděbrady might be able to effect a reunion with Rome. He was, after all, “a
great and powerful man whom the majority of the kingdom would follow.”33 The

31
  Capistrano wrote this letter for the Diet of Regensburg in 1452, at which Nicholas of Cusa
received an Utraquist delegation. Capistrano was essentially demanding that Cusa not make any
concessions to the heretics. For the text of this letter, see: Annales Minorum, vol. 12, pp. 150–​155.
On the Diet of Regensburg, see: Hermann Hallauer, “Das Glaubensgespräch mit den Hussiten,”
Mitteilungen und Forschungsbeiträge der Cusanusgesellschaft 9 (1971): 53–​75.
32
  For a concise overview of Aeneas’s political and religious evolution, see the introductory
essay in: Gerald Christianson, Thomas Izbicki, and Philip Krey, eds. and trans., Reject Aeneas, Accept
Pius: Selected Letters of Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini (Pope Pius II) (Washington, DC: CUA Press, 2006).
See also:  Thomas Izbicki, “Reject Aeneas! Pius II on the Errors of his Youth,” in Pius II, ‘El Più
Expeditivo Pontifice’: Selected Studies on Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini (1405–​1464), ed. Z. von Martels
and A. Vanderjagt (Boston: E. J. Brill, 2003), pp. 187–​2 03.
33
  This was Aeneas’s judgment as recorded in a lengthy letter written to the curia describing his
interchange with the Táborites and Utraquists. This letter has been published as: Dialogus contra
Bohemos et Taboritas de sacra communione sub una specie, Epistola CXXX, in Opera, pp. 660–​678. This
quotation: p. 663. On this text and Aeneas’s journey to Tábor, see: Kaminsky, “Pius Aeneas among
 T h e Pa t r o n 115

problem, though, was that George would be resisted by the Táborites and their
radical, Waldensian-​i nspired opposition to the Church, which Piccolomini mis-
takenly considered the core of mainstream Utraquist theology. 34 Piccolomini
thus concluded that any possible rapprochement with the Bohemians would
require George of Poděbrady to break the power of Tábor, since “I did believe
that the rite of communion alone separated this people from us, but now that
I have experience with them I know this people to be heretical, unfaithful, and
rebellious before God.”35
Four years later, Piccolomini again considered the Utraquist schism, this time
in a speech before Pope Calixtus III. 36 Much had changed in the ensuing years:
George of Poděbrady had defeated Tábor and imprisoned its leaders in 1452,
Constantinople had fallen to the Turks in 1453, and the Bohemian throne had
been filled by the grandson of Emperor Sigismund, Ladislas Posthumus, who
assumed the throne in 1453 at age thirteen. Because of his young age, Ladislas
accepted George of Poděbrady as his regent in all but name, so the Utraquist
nobility remained ascendant despite Ladislas’s adherence to Catholicism. 37
In these circumstances, where the Czechs’ reputation as indomitable warriors
had become useful in terms of a potential anti-​Turkish crusade and the bastion
of “Hussite” radicalism had finally fallen, George presented himself as a pos-
sible ally and even candidate for the imperial throne, while the Utraquists as
a whole could be seen as nothing more than slightly misguided Catholics. As
such, in this speech Piccolomini retained his praise for George while temper-
ing his criticism of Utraquism. He argued that no Utraquist tenets or practices
violated “the integrity of our faith,” and he further reasoned that affirming the
validity of the Compactata would only strengthen Ladislas’s position among
the Utraquist nobles, whom he could later bring back to the Catholic Church
through preferment at court. 38 Piccolomini seemed to believe that the age of the
great heretics in Bohemia had ended, and that the kingdom could be won back

the Taborites”; and Thomas Fudge, “Seduced by the Theologians: Aeneas Sylvius and the Hussite
Heretics,” in Heresy in Transition: Transforming Ideas of Heresy in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed.
I. Hunter et al. (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2005), pp. 89–​101.
34
  On this misperception, see: Kaminsky, “Pius Aeneas,” p. 286.
35
 Piccolomini, Dialogus, p. 663.
36
  This speech has been published as: “Oratio XVII: Habita coram Callixto Papa III. de com-
pactatis Bohemorum,” in Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, Orationes politicae et ecclesiasticae, quarum
multas ex mss codd:  Nunc primum eruit, reliquas hinc inde dispersas collegit (Lucae:  P. M.  Benedini,
1755), pp. 350–​385.
37
  Prior to assuming the throne, Ladislas also had to accede to a set of articles (similar to those
agreed upon Sigismund) that would protect Utraquist interests in the kingdom. These articles have
been printed in: AČ 4, pp. 413–​419. For an overview of the negotiations that led to Ladislas’s elec-
tion as king, see: Odložilík, The Hussite King, pp. 71–​73.
38
  Piccolomini, “Oratio XVII,” pp. 369 and 379.
116 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

for the Church through the slow work of both its political elites and the Catholic
clergy. In short, Piccolomini performed a certain calculus of souls in this speech
and concluded that an alliance with George and the Utraquists would result
in the short-​term recruitment of holy warriors against the Turks and the long-​
term possibility of King Ladislas’s conquering the Utraquist nobility with his
Catholic-​i nfused kindness. 39
Three years later, Piccolomini again turned his attention to the Bohemians.
The circumstances had, however, changed once more. Ladislas had died of the
plague in 1457, and George of Poděbrady had been elected king in his place the
following March amidst rumors of foul play against the young monarch. The cru-
sade against the Turks had also failed to materialize, and Piccolomini himself was
on the verge of being elected pope to succeed Calixtus III. Piccolomini’s latest
and most extensive consideration of the Hussite heresy, then, which ultimately
comprised seventeen central chapters of his History of Bohemia, can be read as a
consideration of how he might deal with this schism in the heart of Christendom
as the earthly head of a Catholic Church that faced powerful enemies within
and without.40 This text would prove remarkably influential during the follow-
ing century as the most exhaustive and insightful history of the Bohemian refor-
mation produced during the 1400s. Both Catholics and Protestants drew heavily
on Piccolomini’s account, and his narrative provided a clear analysis of why the
Hussite movement had been able to rise and spread. At the heart of his interpre-
tation was a belief that national pride and a lack of religious discernment had
allowed intellectually deficient and morally corrupt religious leaders and secular
elites to conspire to strip authority from the Church and the Czechs’ proper kings.
The Bohemians’ inability to recognize proper authority was a leitmotif in this
text. According to Piccolomini, their veneration of the three youths killed in the
indulgence riots of 1412, Jan Hus, Jerome of Prague, Jan Želivský, and even Jan
Žižka demonstrated that the Czechs preferred heretics to saints. Jerome and Hus,
for instance, “received honor among the Bohemians, that is no less than Peter and
Paul hold among the Romans”41; while the women of Prague mourned Želivský’s
death in 1422 for many days, “wailing in the city’s churches and calling him a
blessed man and saint.”42 Worst of all, though, were the Táborites, who denied the
validity of religious art but depicted Žižka in an effigy above their city gates. They
had also taken the one-​eyed general’s skin and used it to make a war drum after
his death, thus combining their idolatry with a level of savagery that was nearly

  Piccolomini, “Oratio XVII,” p. 372.

39

  This text has been printed in multiple modern editions. The following citations are taken
40

from: Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, Historia Bohemica, ed. D. Martínková et al. (Prague: Koniasch

Latin Press, 1998).
41
 Piccolomini, Historia Bohemica, pp. 105–​106.
42
 Piccolomini, Historia Bohemica, p. 112.
 T h e Pa t r o n 117

incomprehensible.43 Such misattributed sanctity thus led Piccolomini to pithily

conclude about the Bohemians that “for a blind people, a blind man is a fitting
king.”44
This last point was particularly relevant in 1458, as the Czechs had again
chosen a (religiously) blind man who preferred the practices of the Utraquist
church for their ruler. And while Poděbrady made a number of promises to secure
support for his kingship that could be read as foreshadowing his return to the
Catholic Church, Bohemian history suggested that such promises could be fleet-
ing. As a political theorist, Piccolomini always viewed national particularism as
the main obstacle to European and Christian unity, and during his reign as Pope
Pius II (1458–​1464), he attempted to use the papacy’s power to break down this
obstacle.45 Part of that process was consolidating power within the papacy by lim-
iting the influence of future church councils and trying to abrogate a number of
concordats that previous popes had signed and which gave considerable ecclesi-
astical oversight to kings.46 A second part, however, was devoted to overcoming
the Czechs’ blindness through the coercive powers of the Church and eliminating
any claims that the Utraquist church had to legitimacy.
To those ends, Pius II abrogated the Compactata in March of 1462, during
the course of two lengthy orations that enumerated the many ways in which the
Utraquists themselves had failed to live up to the treaty’s terms.47 Most notably,
they had denied the doctrine of concomitance, administered the eucharist to
infants, and attacked the Church’s duly appointed representatives. The Utraquists

43
 Piccolomini, Historia Bohemica, p. 114. On the story of Žižka’s skin being used to fashion a
drum, see: Thomas Fudge, “Žižka’s Drum: The Political Uses of Popular Religion,” Central European
History 36 (2003): 546–​569.
44
 Piccolomini, Historia Bohemica, p. 111.
45
  On the importance of unity in Piccolomini’s political and religious thought, see: John Toews,
“The View of Empire in Aneas Sylvius Piccolomini (Pope Pius II),” Traditio 24 (1968): 471–​4 87;
Paolo Prodi, The Papal Prince, One Body and Two Souls: The Papal Monarchy in Early Modern Europe,
trans. S. Haskins (New York: Cambridge UP, 1987), pp. 71–​87; and Cary Nederman, “Humanism
and Empire:  Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, Cicero, and the Imperial Idea,” The Historical Journal
36 (1993): 499–​515.
46
  Pius took a number of direct actions to accomplish this goal, including the revocation of
the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges in 1461 and the promulgation of the bull Execrabilis in 1460,
which forbade appeals from the pope to future general councils. On these actions as part of a larger
plan for the consolidation of papal power under Pius II, see: Kaminsky, “Pius Aeneas among the
Taborites,” 282; and Gerald Christianson, “Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini and the Historiography of
the Council of Basel,” in Ecclesia Militans: Studien zur Konzilien-​und Refromationsgeschichte Remigius
Baümer zum 70. Gerburtstag gewidmet, ed. W. Brandmüller et al. (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh,
1988), pp. 157–​184, p. 158.
47
  The first of these speeches, which Pius delivered on March 22, is preserved only in a Czech
transcription that has been published in: AČ 8, pp. 336–​3 42. The second oration, which Pius gave
on March 31, has been printed in: AČ 8, pp. 360–​363.
118 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

had also failed to submit to the apostolic see in matters of religion, and they con-
tinued to prefer their own fallen leaders—​Pius mentioned Jakoubek and Peter
Payne by name in this context—​to the proper religious authorities.48 Such con-
tinued arrogance and blindness demanded that the pope retract the agreement
that his predecessors had made, as the Czechs simply could not be counted
upon to maintain their good faith. In the immediate wake of Pius’s revocation,
George of Poděbrady affirmed his own commitment to the Utraquist church by
participating in a Corpus Christi procession that culminated in his reception
of communion in both kinds and demanding that the Czech nobility (Catholic
and Utraquist) explicitly confirm its support for the crown’s prerogatives and
continue to observe the terms of the Compactata.49 And while such political mea-
sures were certainly necessary to prevent the collapse of the newly illegitimate
Utraquist church, they were not sufficient to sustain it; for that, the leaders of the
Czech national church had to turn to their own history in order to identify and
promote an alternate source of authority for their claims to representing the true
church in the Czech lands.

The Assertion of Utraquist Identity

In the face of these challenges, Utraquist preachers and liturgists wrote a num-
ber of works affirming the legitimacy of their church’s foundation and reifying
the two symbols that had come to define Utraquist religion:  the communion
chalice and Jan Hus. Their works also demonstrated how Utraquist authors had
begun to combine different elements within their tradition to create increas-
ingly diverse and self-​referential articulations of their identity. Perhaps the most
important figure in crafting these responses was Jan Rokycana, the preacher at
Our Lady of Týn in Prague and, from 1448, the head of the Utraquist consis-
tory. Rokycana had personally suffered after the ratification of the Compactata;
he had been driven from his parish in Prague in 1437 on the insistence of Bishop
Philibert, and he remained in exile in eastern Bohemia until George’s coup. Upon
his return, though, and until his death in 1471, Rokycana served as the leader
and chief spokesman of the Utraquist church. 50 One of Rokycana’s most influ-
ential works in this role was his Postilla, which he wrote in 1456 and intended as
a preaching manual for Utraquist clerics. This cycle of sermons blended biblical

  These references are from the speech of March 22. See: AČ 8, pp. 338 and 340.
48

  Two accounts of this assembly, which took place on August 12, survive; both confirm that
49

George promised to fight if necessary in defense of the communion chalice and demanded that the
nobility would do the same. These accounts have been published in: UBZG, pp. 272–​277.
50
  The best short overview of Rokycana’s career remains: Heymann, “Jan Rokycana.” See also
the exhaustive treatment of his career in: Urbánek, Věk Poděbradský, vol. 1, 768–​9 04.
 T h e Pa t r o n 119

exposition with the interpretation of more recent history in order to establish the
Utraquists’ status as the sole heirs to the theological and ecclesiological legacies
of the apostolic church. 51
Not surprisingly, Hus featured prominently in Rokycana’s preaching as the
embodiment of that status. Consider a sermon written for the Tuesday after
Easter. In this homily, Rokycana addressed the issue of why communion in both
kinds had ceased to be the norm in the Church, given that Christ himself had
established this practice. In a comment on Luke 24:45, “then he opened their
minds so they could understand the Scriptures,” Rokycana compared the dis-
ciples’ confusion over the meaning of Christ’s death with the time of incompre-
hension that had persisted in the Church until the “revelation” of the chalice in
1414. 52 In describing this revelation, Rokycana (somewhat inaccurately) empha-
sized Hus’s role in authorizing the chalice, quoting a letter from Hus to Jakoubek
in which Hus said that he would help institute the practice of communion in both
kinds. 53 Rokycana also highlighted how Hus had defended the consumption of
wine by the laity before the whole Council of Constance, and he ended this ser-
mon by reminding his audience that “you have seen this written on the walls of
Bethlehem.” The final words of the sermon then enjoined the audience to joyfully
accept the body and blood of Christ, which they would also drink with the Lord
in his kingdom, thus linking Rokycana’s audience of faithful Bohemians with the
eschatological Church triumphant. 54
In a second sermon, Rokycana focused on the steadfast suffering of persecu-
tion as characteristic of both Hus and the Bohemian nation as a whole. Here,
Rokycana explicitly compared Hus to Peter, Paul, and Saint Stephen, compari-
sons that both Catholic and Hussite preachers had made since the 1410s. Because
he had followed these saints’ holy example, Rokycana held up Hus as “a chosen
vessel” of God’s spirit whom the Utraquists should emulate. 55 Significantly, this
comparison formed part of a larger commentary on Luke 6:37, “Judge not, lest
you be judged.” In analyzing this pericope, Rokycana paraphrased the Council
of Constance’s final condemnation of Hus in order to contrast these persecutors’

51
  On the composition of the Postilla and its preservation by students who recorded the ser-
mons, see: Heymann, “John Rokycana,” p. 258. The Postilla is available in a modern edition: Jan
Rokycana, Postilla, ed. F. Šimek, 2 vols. (Prague: České Akademii Věd a Umění, 1928–​1929).
52
  For this line of argumentation, see: Jan Rokycana, “V úterý velikonoční,” in Postilla, vol. 1,
pp. 675–​694, p. 691–​692.
53
  In this letter, Hus counseled Jakoubek to “not rush” the introduction of chalice, and said
that he would help settle the question of the chalice’s validity when he returned from Constance.
Although this could be read as Hus’s offering only hesitant or ambiguous support for communion
in both kinds, Rokycana took it here as a statement of unflinching support. See: Rokycana, “V úterý
velikonoční,” 693.
54
  Rokycana, “V úterý velikonoční,” p. 694.
55
  Jan Rokycana, “Neděle čtvrtá po svaté Trojici,” in Postilla, vol. 2, pp. 208–​230, p. 216.
120 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

eventual damnation with their innocent victim’s vindication by God. 56 Both

of these sermons attested to the continued invocation of Hus in mid-​century
Utraquist preaching, and they also illuminated a larger phenomenon regard-
ing the evolution of Hus’s cult. In short, they demonstrated that Hus’s words,
whether inscribed on the walls of Bethlehem or preserved in his correspondence,
had remained a common cultural referent and theological touchstone among the
Utraquists. Rokycana’s sermons also suggested that the comparisons between
Hus and the apostolic martyrs whose feast he had displaced remained strong in
Utraquist preaching, and that the drama of his trial in Constance had maintained
a prominent place within the Utraquist religious consciousness.
Other contemporary authors confirmed these conclusions. Most notable
among them was the preacher at Bethlehem Chapel, Václav of Dráchov, who
preached a pair of sermons directly on Hus during the early 1460s that reinforced
the Bohemian martyr’s role as a founder and model for the Utraquist church.
One of these sermons, which Dráchov prepared for Hus’s feast on July 6, took
Ecclesiasticus 45:1 as its pericope: “Moses, whose memory is blessed, was beloved
by God and men.”57 Dráchov began this sermon by asserting that this verse “can
also be easily adapted and spoken with divine hope about that powerful preacher
of good memory, Master Jan Hus, whose memoria we celebrate today.”58 In the
following pages, Dráchov extolled six virtues that Hus had embodied—​humility,
faithfulness, prudence, modesty, purity, and patience—​and that had made him
so esteemed by man and God. Regarding the last, patience in suffering, Dráchov
noted that earthly tribulation tested the believer “like gold in the fire.”59 Dráchov
then used Hus’s own words from a 1414 letter to Martin of Volyn to emphasize
that perseverance led to ultimate salvation: “You know that because I cursed the
avarice and sinful lives of the clerics, I am suffering persecution by the grace of
God, which will rapidly reach its culmination in me. I do not fear being destroyed
for the sake of Christ Jesus’s name.”60
For Dráchov, Hus’s willingness to suffer made him worthy of recollection and
imitation. He therefore ended his sermon with a series of biblical injunctions
reminding his listeners to remember their righteous predecessors. Dráchov cited
Proverbs 10:7, “The memory of the righteous will be a blessing, but the name of
the wicked will rot,” and Ecclesiasticus 35:9, “The sacrifice of the righteous man
is acceptable, and the Lord will not forget his memory,” as a basis for his demand

  Rokycana, “Neděle čtvrtá po svaté Trojici,” p. 217.

56

  Václav of Dráchov, “Sermo de M. Iohanne Hus,” in FRB 8, pp. 373–​376. On Dráchov’s career

57

and his sermon collections, see: Bartoš, “Dvě studie,” especially pp. 54–​55; and Jindřich Marek,
“Husitské postily připisované M. Václavovi z Dráchova,” Miscellanea Oddělení rukopisů a starých tisků
18 (2003–​2 004): 4–​144. On this sermon particularly, see: Halama, “Biblical Pericopes,” p. 178.
58
  Dráchov, “Sermo de M. Iohanne Hus,” p. 374.
59
  Ibid. The reference here is to Philippians 1:29.
60
  For the text of this letter, written in October 1414, see: Novotný, Korespondence, pp. 204–​2 06.
The quotation occurs in: Dráchov, “Sermo de M. Iohanne Hus,” pp. 375–​376.
 T h e Pa t r o n 121

“that the good people bless and praise the life of the saints, and imitate them.”61
In Dráchov’s thinking, the commemoration that led to imitation staked the
Utraquists’ claim to an eternal inheritance as the followers of Hus. It was therefore
fitting that Dráchov ultimately employed the filial language of Tobit 2:18 in order
to assert the Utraquists’ elect status: “We are the sons of the saints and we look
forward to the life that God gives to those who never shift their faith from him.”62
Interestingly, Dráchov shared the pericope for this sermon with, and perhaps
drew it from, a liturgical song written for the feast of Hus in the first half of the
fifteenth century. This composition, known as “King of Kings,” incorporated the
words of Ecclesiasticus 45:1 in its initial description of Hus as a holy man who
belonged among, and even surpassed, the company of Christian saints:

Christ, then drinking your cup on the Saturday,

The octave day of the princes Peter and Paul,
He hastened bravely toward the eternal prize.
The excellent master, O pious, just, and holy,
A priest beloved by man and God,
He enlightened equally by his teaching and character.63

This song went further in ascribing sanctity to Hus, who “possesses a halo
with the holy martyrs.” Shifting into an eschatological mode, its author affirmed
that “when the judge comes on the last day, the eyes of the good and the wicked
will then discern that Jan called Hus bears the crown of heaven.”64 Until that
time, however, only the Utraquists could perceive this soteriological truth. Thus, in
its last verses “King of Kings” assembled the various social, professional, and even
familial estates of the Czech people in a chorus of praise for their martyred patron:

It were much to be grieved and intensely wondered

By the Bohemian faithful, if they did not arrange for
So remarkable a man to be continually mourned.
You dazzlingly white university of scholars,
Harmonious fellowship of doctors, masters
Bewail your godly, distinguished colleague.

61
  Dráchov, “Sermo de M. Iohanne Hus,” p. 376.
62
 Ibid.
63
  For a discussion of the earliest manuscript witnesses to this song and its prominent place
among the later liturgical cult of Jan Hus, see the discussion in: David Holeton and Hana Vlhová-​
Wörner, “A Remarkable Witness to the Feast of Saint Jan Hus,” BRRP 7 (2009):  156–​184. See
also: Fojtíková, “Hudební doklady Husova kultu,” pp. 88–​89. I have generally followed the transla-
tion for this song included in: Holeton and Vlhová-​Wörner, “A Remarkable Witness,” pp. 172–​177.
64
  “Rex Regum,” p. 176.
122 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

The stole of preachers and the garland of the virgins

The grief of the widows and the faith of wives
And all the holy commonwealth of craftsmen,
Of the extraordinary glory of the famous lord
The magnates, princes, steadfast soldiers
And the whole Bohemian nobility laments.65

This liturgical song was an important testament to the expanding repertoire

of Utraquist commemorative practices, as it provides our earliest evidence for the
composition of new liturgical songs for the feast of Hus.66 It also demonstrated how
themes that had emerged in sermons and early popular songs for Hus were being
imported into new forms of media, as well as suggesting how preachers could tap into
the lyrics of the liturgy in order to create a thematically unified experience of wor-
ship. This sort of multimedia, thematic amplification would continue to develop over
the course of the fifteenth century, but it first appeared at this time. As a whole, “King
of Kings” also represented the most explicit expression of how the veneration of Hus
constituted the Czech nation. Women, children, scholars, and soldiers—​“King of
Kings” depicted all these types of people collectively celebrating the memoria of their
patron saint by affirming his place among the church’s martyrs and drinking from
the chalice that his death had helped authorize. By doing these things, the Utraquists
also confirmed their status as the only people who recognized and remembered true
sanctity, which would result in Christ uniting them with “the glorious preacher, the
blessed martyr Jan” on the last day.67
The themes and generic overlap that characterized this first sermon by
Dráchov and “King of Kings” also animated the preacher’s second sermon for
Hus, which confirmed the incorporation of an additional element into the cel-
ebration of Hus’s memoria. In 1461, Dráchov appended a sermon “On the day
of the holy martyrs” to a collection of Sunday sermons that he had prepared.68
This sermon, which was clearly intended for the celebration of July 6, began

  Ibid. This translation differs slightly from that of Holeton and Vlhová-​Wörner, preferring
65

“craftsmen” to “authors” in the third stanza to emphasize that these verses sought to represent the
entirety of Bohemian society by their gender/​family roles, their economic function, and their rank.
66
  On the development of new liturgical songs and texts for the feast of Hus, see: David Holeton,
“The Office of Jan Hus: An Unrecorded Antiphonary in the Metropolitan Library of Esztergom,”
in Time and Community, ed. J. Alexander (Washington, DC: Pastoral Press, 1990), pp. 137–​152,
especially p. 139–​140; and idem, “O Felix Bohemia,” pp. 389–​393.
67
  “Rex Regum,” p. 177.
68
  This sermon collection is currently held at the Czech National Library as MS NKP III H 9;
the Sunday sermons comprise the first 350 folios of the manuscript, with the sermon “In die sanc-
torum martyrum” (fols. 352r–​357v) and a sermon for Advent (fols. 358v–​366v) following. On this
collection, see: Marek, “Husitské postily,” pp. 23–​4 8.
 T h e Pa t r o n 123

with a macaronic explicit that described (in Czech) how Hus’s ashes were dug
up after his execution, placed in a cart, and thrown into the Rhine. This depic-
tion would have been familiar to an Utraquist audience from the various pas-
sion narratives written for Hus, which even the earliest accounts of his cult noted
were read aloud. Immediately following this brief summary of events, Dráchov
then added a prayer (in Latin): “Alleluia, pray for us Saint Jan Hus. Here ends
the passio of the holy Jan called Hus, master of the University of Prague, in the
year 1461.”69 The sermon that followed this inscription took Hebrews 12:6 as its
pericope—​“Because the Lord disciplines those he loves, and he punishes every-
one he accepts as a son”—​a nd centered on a fairly straightforward injunction to
its audience. The repeated command was that true Christians ought to avoid the
vain things of the world and embrace suffering for the Lord. This would result
in their receiving a true reward in heaven. Here again, Dráchov chose a text that
emphasized the filial relationship between the Utraquists and God. This rela-
tionship was mediated by Jan Hus, who would intercede with God on behalf of
the Bohemians and receive their veneration in turn. And this message would
have come hard on the heels of a reading of Hus’s passio, a text that heightened
the perception of Hus’s sanctity via the parallels it drew between Hus and Christ.
As such, this sermon and the hagiographic vita that preceded it highlighted Hus’s
status as the idealized, suffering saint.
This complex of texts from the years surrounding the abrogation of the Basel
Compactata provided an alternative framework for the continued legitimacy of the
Utraquist church. In these texts, the Utraquists’ identity as the scions of the true
Church depended on their fidelity to, reliance on, and elaboration of the earliest ritual
foci of the Bohemian reformation. Chief among these had been the administration of
communion in both kinds and the commemoration of Jan Hus’s execution on July 6. It
is perhaps no surprise, then, that a decade in which both of these markers of Utraquist
identity came under attack also witnessed the production of new sermons and songs
that celebrated the Bohemian church’s patron and signature practice. These texts also
demonstrated, however, that Utraquist authors were engaged in more than a merely
defensive response to external challenges to their church’s independent existence.
These sermons and songs showed that Utraquist preachers and liturgists were think-
ing with their own emergent tradition and synthesizing Hus’s own words, the earliest
commemorations of his death, traditional liturgical tunes, and new lyrical composi-
tions in order to create a truly unique set of expressions of religious identity. In the fol-
lowing decades, this intertextual bricolage would only intensify among the Utraquists,
but it was at this moment of challenge that the Czech national church first deployed
the full range of its evolving ideological resources to mount a successful defense of
itself in the face of Catholic efforts to undermine its foundations.

  Dráchov, “Sermo de martyribus,” fol. 352r.

69
124 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

Renewed War, Suffering, and the Soldier-​Saint

Those efforts expanded to include renewed military conflict in the following
decade, as the papacy found allies who considered the fall of Utraquist Bohemia
to be in their interests. The first of these allies was the city of Breslau, which tech-
nically belonged to the Czech crown but had resisted the spread of Hussite and
Utraquist religion since at least 1420, when the civic authorities had burned Jan
Krása. The city had also hosted St. Giovanni da Capistrano in the early 1450s, even
conducting an anti-​Jewish pogrom under his leadership, and had refused to rec-
ognize George of Poděbrady’s sovereignty since his election as king of the Czech
lands.70 Pius II took the city under his personal protection in 1463, citing George’s
support for heresy and his desire to “freely pour out his poison and oppress the
aforementioned clergy, captains, consuls, and community of Breslau” for their
continued fidelity to the Catholic church.71 George responded strongly to this
attack on his sovereignty, decrying the pope’s efforts and affirming his continued
support for the Utraquist church in a speech before the Bohemian diet in July of
1463. When word of this speech reached Rome via an ambassador from Breslau,
Pius reacted in kind. He excommunicated George and demanded his presence
in Rome, accusing the king of staging an illegal coup in Prague in 1448, poison-
ing Ladislas Posthumus in 1457, imprisoning a papal representative in 1462, and
having “spilled the blood of an infinite number in Bohemia for their obedience to
the Apostolic See.” 72 Pius further accused George and Jan Rokycana of erecting a
golden statue of the Bohemian king holding a communion chalice in front of the
Týn Church in Prague. The chalice bore a familiar inscription, “The truth of God
will conquer,” which was heretical at best, and idolatrous at worst.73 Pius therefore
called on George to surrender his kingship and answer for his crimes in Rome.
Pope Pius II never got a chance to pursue this judicial process against George.
The pope’s summons to George coincided with his organization of a crusade
against the Turks, and Pius left Rome in July of 1464 for Ancona, where an army

  On Capistrano’s time in the city, see: Elm, “Johannes Kapistrans Predigtreise,” pp. 512–​513.

70

For an overview of the city’s role in the Bohemian reformation, see: Karl Borchardt and Václav Filip,
Schlesien, Georg von Podiebrad und die römische Kurie (Würzburg: Verein für Schlesische Geschichte,
2005), especially pp. 60–​121.
71
  Pius issued a bull taking Breslau under his protection on April 4, 1463. His proclamation has
been published in: SRS 8 (1893), pp. 183–​187. This quotation: p. 185.
72
  This condemnation was read publicly in Rome on June 16, 1464. It has been published in:
SRS 9 (1874), pp. 77–​81. This quotation: p. 80.
73
  On this statue, see: Rudolf Urbánek, “K ikonografii Jiřího krále,” Věstník české Akademie věd
a umění 61 (1952): 50–​62; Franz Machilek, “Praga caput regni: Zur Entwicklung und Bedeutung
Prags im Mittelalter,” in Stadt und Landschaft im deutschen Osten und in Mitteleuropa, ed. F. Kaiser and
B. Stasiewski (Cologne:  Böhlau, 1962), pp. 67–​126, especially pp. 98–​9 9; and Milena Bartlová,
“Původ Husitského Kalicha z ikonografického Hlediska,” Umĕní 44 (1996): 167–​183, pp. 179–​180.
 T h e Pa t r o n 125

was meant to assemble. Pius fell sick during his journey, and he died in Ancona
on August 14.74 Pius’s death did not result in a reprieve for King George, though,
as his successor Pope Paul II continued to pursue aggressive action against the
Czech ruler. Paul again took Breslau under his protection, renewed the citation
of George to Rome, and called on the Holy Roman Emperor to remove George
from power, declaring George a “putrid member of the Church” and a “prince
of the synagogue of Satan.” 75 Paul also empowered three cardinals to compile
a final dossier for George’s excommunication, and they ultimately concluded
that an interdict should be placed upon his kingdom.76 Paul’s legate in Bohemia,
Bishop Rudolf of Lavant, also recommended to the curia that “a crusade should
be preached and dedicated against him and his adherents.” 77 In the short term, the
call for opposition to George of Poděbrady was answered by a league of Catholic
Czech nobles that formed to resist what they saw as the king’s absolutist preten-
sions and prejudicial actions against Catholics. This League of Zelená Hora, as it
was known, presented a list of grievances—​largely political in nature—​against
the king at a meeting of the diet in September of 1465, and in the aftermath of
this assembly Paul II issued a bull dissolving the feudal ties between the Czech
nobles and their presumptive ruler, whom the bull referred to as “the son of perdi-
tion.” 78 Throughout the next year, Paul continued his assault on George, despite
the conclusion of a treaty between the king and recalcitrant Czech nobles. The
pope’s campaign culminated in December of 1466, when he formally declared the
throne of Bohemia vacant and subsequently anathematized George and excom-
municated any who supported or assisted him.79

74
  On the death of Pius II, see: Christianson et al., Reject Aeneas, pp. 52–​53. On the centrality
of a crusade against the Turks in Pius II’s thinking during his time as pope, see: Robert Schwoebel,
“Pius II and the Renaissance Papacy,” in Renaissance Men and Ideas, ed. R. Schwoebel (New York: St.
Martin’s Press, 1971), pp. 68–​79; and Nancy Bisaha, “Pope Pius II and the Crusades,” in Crusading
in the Fifteenth Century: Message and Impact, ed. N. Housley (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2004),
pp. 39–​52.
75
  Paul’s letter to the emperor, dated only to July 1465, has been published in: SRS 9, pp. 133–​
134; this quotation, p. 134.
76
  This commission was led by Cardinal Carvajal, the erstwhile legate to Bohemia. For the full
text of the commission’s findings, see: SRS 9, pp. 135–​139.
77
  This letter, which contained Rudolf ’s report on the state of religious and political affairs
in the Czech capital, was composed in Prague on April 17, 1465. For the full text of the letter,
see: UBZG, pp. 349–​352, p. 352.
78
  This set of articles dealt mainly with issues such as coinage, the seizure of free land as fiefs,
and the rules of succession to the Czech throne. The only overly religious article attacked the
Utraquist clergy for their rhetoric against Catholics. The nobles’ grievances have been preserved
in: AČ 4, pp. 102–​105. The subsequent papal bull has been printed in: SRS 9, pp. 147–​149.
79
  Paul first declared the throne vacant in a proclamation issued on December 23, 1466, which
has been published in: SRS 9, pp. 210–​213. He subsequently anathematized George during the ritual
cursing of the Church’s enemies on Maundy Thursday, 1467. For the text of his speech, see: SRS 9,
pp. 222–​223.
126 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

It was in the wake of this final decree that a foreign monarch emerged to cham-
pion the papal campaign against Utraquist Bohemia. In March of 1468, George’s
son-​in-​law and the king of Hungary, Matthias Corvinus, made a play for the throne
of the Czech lands. It would seem that he had been contemplating this move for
some time; in 1465 he had offered to wage war on the pope’s behalf, “especially if
it serves to fortify the Catholic faith and to destroy the perfidy of godless men,”
either Turkish or Czech. 80 Paul II happily accepted this offer in 1468, as a truce
with the Turks freed Matthias to turn his attention to Bohemia. The pope called
for a crusade against George to be preached in the German lands, and the subse-
quent influx of holy warriors allowed Matthias to march against the Bohemians
with an army of perhaps 20,000 men. Over the next three years, Matthias and
George’s conflict witnessed seemingly miraculous reversals of military fortune,
dramatic betrayals, and the constant shifting of political alliances based on the
momentary military advantages of each ruler. By 1471, though, neither side had
gained a decisive advantage, and both kings sought peace.81 A Saxon delegation
to Rome in March of 1471 therefore proposed ten articles that could serve as the
foundation for a truce. These articles called for major concessions from both sides.
On the one hand, the pope and his allies would accept the continued administra-
tion of communion in both kinds in Bohemia and recognize George’s sovereignty.
On the other, the Utraquists were to cease the practice of communicating infants
and accept the pope’s right to appoint an archbishop of Prague who would oversee
all the Czech clergy.82 Essentially, the pope would re-​establish the status quo from
the time of George’s ascension to the throne at the cost of the Czechs’ accepting a
Catholic archbishop and some restrictions on their eucharistic practices.
These articles of compromise might have paved the way for a permanent peace,
but King George of Poděbrady died unexpectedly on March 22, 1471. He was pre-
ceded in death by Jan Rokycana, who had died on February 22. With the death of
these twin pillars of Utraquist Bohemia, the Bohemian church and nation entered

80
  On Corvinus and his efforts to secure the Czech throne, see the dual articles:  Zsuzsa
Teke, “Der ungarishe König (1458–​1490),” and František Šmahel, “Der böhmische König,”
in Der Herrscher in der Doppelflicht:  Europäische Fürsten und ihre beiden Throne, ed. H. Duchhardt
(Mainz: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1998), pp. 11–​2 8 and 29–​49, respectively. This particular let-
ter has been published in: István Katona, ed., Historia Critica Regum Hungariae, vol. 8 (Pestini: I.
M. Weingard, 1792), pp. 134–​137, here p. 136.
81
  For an overview of the war, see:  Jörg Hoensch, Matthias Corvinus:  Diplomat, Feldherr, und
Mäzen (Graz:  Verlag Styria, 1998), especially c­ hapter  6; Peter Hilsch, “Die Kreuzzüge gegen
die Hussiten:  geistliche und weltliche Macht in Konkurrenz,” in Konfessionelle Pluralität als
Herausforderung:  Koexistenz und Konflikt in Spätmittelalter und früher Neuzeit, ed. J. Bahlcke et  al.
(Leipzig:  Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2006), pp. 201–​216; and Heymann, George of Bohemia,
­chapters 19–​21.
82
  The Saxon articles have been published in: Baronio and Raynaldi, Annales Ecclesiastici, vol.
29, pp. 502–​504.
 T h e Pa t r o n 127

a period of potential instability. Politically, the Bohemian diet moved quickly

to elect Vladislav Jagiellon, the son of King Casimir IV of Poland, as the Czech
king. Vladislav was Catholic, but the Polish dynasty had proven to be a consis-
tent opponent of Matthias’s push for regional hegemony and Vladislav swore to
uphold the Compactata as a condition of his election. 83 Over the course of the next
decade, Vladislav and his father continued to hold off Matthias, who never relin-
quished his claim to the Czech kingship. And even though Matthias did secure
his claim to Silesia, Lusatia, and Moravia in a treaty with Valdislav and the Czech
diet in 1479, this agreement ended Matthias’s ambitions for ruling Bohemia and
promised the return of his Czech possessions to the Jagiellon dynasty upon his
death.84 This treaty thereby cemented the Jagiellons’ rule over the Czech lands,
which would last until 1526.
Religiously, the Utraquists responded strongly to Rokycana’s death. He had
been moderate in terms of both policy and temperament, always seeking a middle
road between outright accommodation and militant opposition to the Utraquists’
opponents. 85 Such a position seemed untenable in light of Matthias’s papally spon-
sored aggression, so the Utraquist leadership elected Václav Koranda the Younger
to be the administrator of the Utraquist consistory upon Rokycana’s death. Under
Koranda’s leadership (which lasted until 1497), the Utraquists adopted a decid-
edly militant attitude toward their Catholic counterparts. 86 This attitude was
reflected both in the decrees that emerged from Utraquist synods of the 1470s
and in the songs, sermons, and artwork that appeared at this time. This militancy
was clearly seen, for instance, when the Utraquist representatives at a national
diet in 1477 reaffirmed their commitment to “defend Christ’s law with their lives”
and then “spontaneously broke out into a song calling the bishops and cardi-
nals ‘false prophets.’ ”87 A year later, at a national Utraquist synod known as the
St. Lawrence Diet, the consistory was reconfigured to comprise eight clerical
leaders and four lay “protectors” who would serve as the primary link between the
church and its political allies. Winfried Eberhard has suggested that this official
alliance between the sacred and secular authorities within Utraquism constituted
the first truly “confessional” regime in European history, and while this early

83
  The concessions that Vladislav agreed to were issued on June 16, 1471. They have been pub-
lished in: AČ 4, pp. 451–​455.
84
  This treaty was first proposed on December 7, 1478. See: AČ 5, pp. 377–​387.
85
  This is the final judgment offered by Heymann in his: “John Rokycana,” p. 273.
86
  For an overview of Koranda’s life and career, see:  Emma Urbanková, “Zbytky knihovny
M. Václava Korandy ml. v Universitní knihovně,” Ročenka Universitní knihovny v Praze 1 (1956): 135–​161;
and Noemi Rejchrtová, “Czech Utraquism at the Time of Václav Koranda the Younger and the
Visual Arts,” CV 20 (1977): 157–​170 and 233–​2 44, pp. 157–​158. See also: Fudge, “Reform and the
Lower Consistory,” pp. 91–​92.
87
  These events were recorded in the Old Czech Annals, as described in:  Seltzer, “Framing
Faith,” pp. 116–​117.
128 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

application of that term is provocative, it seems clear that this 1478 reorganization
of the Utraquist hierarchy represented the formation of a more potent and overtly
political institutional core for the Czech national church.88
Alongside the election of Koranda and the incorporation of secular lords into
the Utraquist consistory, the period after Poděbrady’s death witnessed a shift in
the tone of Utraquist religious compositions, which increasingly understood the
Czech national church and its patron, Jan Hus, as soldiers of God. Certainly this
type of imagery had been popular in the era of the Hussite Wars, but particu-
larly in commemorations of Hus from the 1470s the earlier emphases on his piety,
purity, and perseverance were joined with overtly militant images and rhetoric
that linked Hus to both the saints of the early Church and the Hussite warriors
of God whose examples could inspire late fifteenth-​century Utraquists in their
continued resistance to their external enemies.89 In recasting Hus as an exemplar
of militant faith, the language of inspiration and intercession took on a new tone,
as both the consumption of Christ’s blood and the recollection of Hus’s suffering
were meant to enable the Utraquists to undertake similar acts of self-​sacrifice.
These themes were taken up most explicitly in new liturgical texts that were
written for the celebration of Hus’s feast day in the last decades of the fifteenth
century. One such composition, entitled “Christ, King of Martyrs,” detailed how
the recognition of Hus’s sanctity and reception of communion in both kinds had
granted the Bohemian nation a privileged place in the coming kingdom of God:

Christ, king of martyrs

Reigning in glory in the kingdom of God
Whom we praise today, along with all the martyrs of Bohemia
In memory of those who, for the love of his law,
And the consumption of his holy blood and body
Were wounded by fire, cut down by iron
Thrown into mines, and drowned in the waves …
O author of faith, make us strong
From the merit of those acknowledged in your Law,
Give your chalice worthily to drink
That we might be able to pour out
Our blood for you, fearing no one.
O teacher of truth, be now the protector

  For this interpretation of the Diet, see:  Winfried Eberhard, Konfessionsbildung und Stände,
88

pp. 46–​70; and idem, “Zur reformatorischen Qualität.”

89
  On the image of Hus as a “Kristovým rytířem,” see:  Jan Royt, “Ikonografie Mistra Jana
Husa v 15. až 18. století,” in Husitský Tábor Supplementum 1, ed. M. Drda et  al. (Tábor:  Sborník
Husitského Muzea, 2001), pp. 405–​451, p. 406; and Fudge, The Memory and Motivation, p. 165. See
also: Bartlová, “Původ Husitského Kalicha,” p. 179.
 T h e Pa t r o n 129

Of the Bohemian flock
From those jealous of your law, that they might know
That your truth conquers and holds forever.90

This antiphon expressed several distinctively Utraquist themes. The first was
the connection between the desire for communion in both kinds and martyrdom.
On the one hand, the former was a clear cause of the latter; on the other hand, the
consumption of the chalice was seen as enabling self-​sacrifice. The eucharist and
martyrdom were thus linked in a mutually reinforcing cycle based around the
symbolic consumption and actual spilling of blood. This song also sought to illu-
minate the unique relationship between Christ—​“the protector of the Bohemian
flock”—​and the Czech people, which was mediated by the multitude of Utraquist
saints who had been killed for “the love of Christ’s law” and had thus sanctified
their homeland. Two additional phrases highlighted additional, central compo-
nents of Utraquist ideology. The first of these was the last line, which incorporated
the trademark Hussite slogan into the liturgical celebration of Hus’s death and
demonstrated that the Bohemians’ conquering truth had pervaded every type of
media available to them at the end of the fifteenth century. The second key phrase
here lay in the description of the martyrs’ deaths: “Wounded by fire, cut down by
iron.” These words certainly recalled Hus’s death, as did the following line with
its description of the Kutná Hora pogroms. This passage also suggested, though,
yet another way that liturgy and homily could be tied together in order to cre-
ate a multimedia experience geared toward the instruction of the laity. The sig-
nificance of this phrase was that it became the basis for a homiletic meditation
on Hus and his place among the Christian martyrs that enabled the aesthetically
gorgeous, but potentially unintelligible, Latin of the antiphon to become acces-
sible to the laity.
In 1478, the priest Václav of the St. Gall parish in Prague preached a sermon for
Jan Hus’s feast day using Matthew 5:11 as his pericope: “Blessed are you when peo-
ple insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because
of me.”91 Unsurprisingly, then, this sermon centered on the notion that “whoever
wants to be saved, he will have to suffer.”92 Indeed, Václav began his sermon with

90
  “Christum regem matyrum” is preserved in several manuscripts, notably the Ezstergom
manuscript from c.  1500, its homologue from Leipzig, and the contemporaneous manuscript
MS NKP VI C 20a, fols. 96v–​9 7r. On these manuscripts, see: Holeton, “The Office of Jan Hus,”
pp. 141–​143.
91
  This sermon, entitled “Sancti Johannes Hus,” is preserved in MS NKP XXIII F 113, fols. 50v–​
52v. On this manuscript and its provenance, see: Noemi Rejchrtová, “Sondy do Postilní Literatury
Pokompaktátního (či Předbělohorského) Utraqvismu,” Folia Historica Bohemica 15 (1991): 59–​71;
Bartoš, “Dvě studie,” pp. 55–​56; and Halama, “Biblical Pericopes,” p. 182.
92
  Priest Václav, “Sancti Johannes Hus,” fol. 51r.
130 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

the observation that “today we have the memoria of the martyrs of Christ, who did
not begrudge him their souls up to their deaths on account of the name of Christ
and his truth. For no persecution, no suffering … and not even death could sepa-
rate them from Christ.”93 In praising these martyrs, Václav was explicit in identi-
fying them as Christ’s “soldiers” whose sufferings had marked them as especially
blessed, “because few are found who suffer persecution, therefore few reach the
kingdom of heaven.”94 Throughout this sermon, then, Václav made it clear that
Hus’s death in spiritual combat with the institutional church had marked him as
one of the first of the nearly mythical Hussite “warriors of God.”
Václav ended his sermon by offering solace to his listeners, though, in case
they doubted their own ability to emulate those fighters’ bravery and ferocity lit-
erally: “Wounded by fire, and cut down by iron: St. Paul by the sword, St. Peter
by crucifixion, Jan Hus with fire. But we, if we are not able to tolerate such tor-
ment, at least we should endure being cursed on account of God [and] those call-
ing us heretics on account of the truth and law of God.”95 The passage began with
a familiar phrase that clearly echoed “Christ, King of Martyrs.” The reference to
Sts. Peter and Paul was also not coincidental, as July 6 was the observance of the
octave of their feast day in the Roman rite.96 So, much as early Catholic polemics
had affirmed, Hus was here placed on an equal footing with the founding saints
of the Catholic Church, even as the repetition of a liturgical couplet recalled the
catalogue of Bohemian saints included in “Christ, King of Martyrs.” And while
it is possible to see this overlap as coincidental, it also may have resulted from a
conscious move by the preacher to borrow from the liturgy in order to emphasize
a key point in his sermon, and to use his sermon as a means of expanding on the
sacramental and martyrological theology of “Christ, King of Martyrs.”
Despite the relatively small sample of extant texts from the celebration of Hus’s
feast day during the fifteenth century, it is clear that they evinced considerable the-
matic consistency and intertextual overlap. One primary witness to the formation
of this coherent, militant discourse was a liturgical book that currently resides
in the Metropolitan Library of Esztergom, in Hungary. This antiphonary, which
dates from the late fifteenth century, contains a nearly full set of liturgical texts for
the celebration of July 6.97 Some of these texts were drawn from other saints’ feast
days, while others depended upon traditional compositions for their musical or
textual structures, both of which suggest that the office of Jan Hus emerged from

  Priest Václav, “Sancti Johannes Hus,” fol. 50v.

93

  Priest Václav, “Sancti Johannes Hus,” fols. 51r and 52r.

94

95
  Priest Václav, “Sancti Johannnes Hus,” fol. 52r.
96
  On the supersession of Peter and Paul on this day by the feast of Hus, see the observations by
David Holeton in his: “The Celebration of Jan Hus,” particularly fn. 3.
97
  On this manuscript, see: Holeton, “The Office of Jan Hus”; and František Fišer, “Hodinkové
Oficium Svátku Mistra Jana Husa,” Časopis narodního muzea 135 (1966): 81–​98.
 T h e Pa t r o n 131

a long process of original composition, adaptation, and accretion. At the center of

the liturgical commemoration of Hus recorded in this manuscript were two texts
that exemplified the blend of tradition and innovation that David Holeton has
shown to be characteristic of Hus’s cult in the Utraquist church: “Sing, Tongue,
of the Glorious Battle” and “Christ, King of Martyrs.”98 As shown above, both of
these texts adopted a militant idiom to depict the struggle of the saints with the
world. And the tone of these compositions was only amplified in the other prayers
and songs from this office, as Jan Hus and the other Bohemian martyrs were ven-
erated as the embodiments of the entire Czech nation’s defense of God’s law.
The cluster of texts meant for the celebration of vespers on the evening of July 6
was exemplary in this regard. The first antiphon for this service called Hus a “true
supporter of the faith of Christ” and “a holy martyr” remembered for his piety by
the people of Bohemia. A second song also mentioned Jerome of Prague and “the
innumerable patrons” whom God had sent to Prague as comprising a “legion of
saints” who could intercede with God “so he might absolve us from our sins.”99
This composition further identified the Bohemian saints as “soldiers of Christ,”
while a third antiphon ironically praised a personified Germany because she had
produced these martyrs through religious persecution! In this song, Bohemia had
become enlivened and purified by its ongoing struggle, “blazing with a burst of
purity and burning with love because of the merits of its patrons shedding [their]
blood.” This song ended by affirming that the Bohemians had not been weak-
ened by the death of its martyrs in the mineshafts or flames, but had rather been
strengthened by “the most precious death of the saints, which earned the life of
the angels.”100
Other texts for this feast day developed these themes further. In the first anti-
phon for the evening service on July 5, Hus and Jerome were lauded as “two bright
lights” who had risen up from Prague and joined the “army of heaven” through
their acts of martyrdom.101 This song also praised the citizens of the Czech capital
for recognizing these men’s sanctity, while a responsory from the same service
specifically linked Hus with the entire Czech nation, praising him as the “light
of the Bohemian people” and the “doctor of truth” who had shown “the royal
road” to the Czechs.102 In their depiction of the relative importance of Hus and

98
 Holeton, “The Office of Jan Hus,” pp.  139ff.; and Holeton and Vlhová-​ Wörner, “A
Remarkable Witness,” especially pp. 160–​166.
99
  These songs are printed in: Holeton,”The Office of Jan Hus,” pp. 148–​149. The song texts are
also included in: Fišer, “Hodinkové Oficium,” pp. 83–​98.
100
  Holeton, “The Office of Jan Hus,” p. 148.
101
  This song was known as “Iubilans olim honorare.” See: Holeton, “The Office of Jan Hus,”
p. 143.
102
  This composition was entitled “Gaude felix Bohemia.” See:  Holeton, “The Office of Jan
Hus,” pp. 143–​144.
132 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

Jerome, these texts were typical of Utraquist compositions. Jerome never disap-
peared from the commemorations associated with July 6 and was remembered
particularly for his learning and eloquence, but he remained distinctly secondary
to Hus and never achieved the level of popularity that Hus did.103 And these texts
articulated the foundations of that popularity, as they depicted Hus as a hero of
the faith whose triumph over his persecutors had enabled him to join the hosts
of the heavenly Church militant and serve as a particular intercessor and protec-
tor of his countrymen. This was Geary’s proportional reciprocity in action, as the
Utraquists offered their patron veneration and remembrance, but expected the
divine protection that only Hus could secure in turn.104
Two final texts merit further discussion with regards to the liturgical venera-
tion of Hus among Utraquists during the period under discussion. These songs
came from a mysterious, no-​longer-​extant manuscript from the University Library
in Leipzig that was photographically reproduced by František Bartoš prior to his
death in 1972. In their analysis of the texts assembled in this manuscript, David
Holeton and Hana Vlhová-​Wörner suggest that this manuscript was “intended to
be used as a specimen copy of the propers for the feast [of Jan Hus] which were
later to be copied in a fair hand for liturgical use.”105 Whether this was the origi-
nal purpose of this manuscript or not, the Leipzig witness to Hus’s cult provided
the richest set of texts for his commemoration, including two long hymns that
placed Hus and his role vis-​à-​v is the Utraquists within a long line of previous
saints who had been willing to give up their lives to oppose those who oppressed
God’s people on Earth. The first of these, a hymn intended to be sung at Matins
on July 6, was called “The Chorus of the Faithful” and directly compared Hus to
John the Baptist and Elijah. Just as these biblical figures had attacked the “wicked
clergy” and were consequently persecuted by the evil kings Ahab and Herod, so
too had Hus endured Sigismund’s persecution and the flames at Constance for his
defense of God’s law. Because he had joined the “company of saints” through his
self-​sacrifice, though, the Bohemian people both praised Hus and prayed to him,
so “that with all enemies having been defeated, we may return those to heaven
who have been enabled by your blessed prayers.”106
A second hymn composed for the feast’s high Mass and known as “Priestly
Throng, Rejoice” further situated Hus among the heroes of the faith. In this
song, which borrowed its tune from a composition for the feast of St. Ursula, Hus
and the company of Bohemian martyrs were compared to both Ursula and her
11,000 handmaidens and the apocryphal Theban legion who suffered collective

  This is Holeton’s conclusion in: “The Office of Jan Hus,” p. 142.

103

 Geary, Living With the Dead, p. 81.

104

105
  Holeton and Vlhová-​Wörner, “A Remarkable Witness,” p. 160.
106
  The text of “Plaudat chorus fidelium” is included in:  Holeton and Vlhová-​Wörner, “A
Remarkable Witness,” p. 171.
 T h e Pa t r o n 133

martyrdom under Emperor Maximian.107 Like those faithful fighters who had
come through “harsh conflicts” but now “shine like stars,” the Bohemian mar-
tyrs had shown themselves to be “constant warriors, lovers of the law of Christ
which they followed up until death, condemned by the court of the reprobate in
Constance … who in the name of the suffering Christ wash their robes in blood
and have the joys of eternal life in the heavenly court.”108 This comparison was
accompanied by a description of these martyrs’ appearance at the last day, when
they would process from the heavenly city “carrying palms of justice in their
hands before the throne of God” and subsequently be joined by “the faithful in
Bohemia, the victors fighting to the finish and triumphing over the world.”109
With these lines, “Priestly Throng, Rejoice” linked the martyrs of the Christian
past with their Utraquist heirs in the present by anticipating their reunion in the
eschatological future. In doing so, it provided the most symbolically rich depic-
tion of the Utraquists’ expectations regarding their ultimate reward for the faith
they demonstrated by commemorating their native martyrs.
The Christian tradition as depicted in these texts was marked by the militant
opposition between its champions and enemies. Hus himself became a holy war-
rior and shining light, an example to be followed because he had shed his blood
for his faith. The question that these liturgical songs raise, though, is whether or
not their central message could be understood by the congregations who heard,
and occasionally sang, them. As discussed above, sermons can help answer this
question, as they served as commentaries on, and expansions of, the themes artic-
ulated in the liturgy for July 6. Happily, other extant fifteenth-​century vernacular
compositions also provide evidence that the most salient themes in the liturgical
commemoration of Hus were echoed and amplified in other genres. The vernacu-
lar song “We Commemorate the Czech Martyrs,” for example, shared many of its
key motifs with contemporary liturgical texts and sermons.110 The song began by
praising Jan Hus and Jerome of Prague for their defense of God’s law, exposition
of the Scripture, and promotion of the chalice. It then went on to offer a famil-
iar catalogue of the Czech martyrs’ deaths by flame, sword, and being thrown
down mineshafts. This song offered solace based on this history of holy death,
though, by asserting that the Czech martyrs themselves were happy because they
had borne their crosses and could stand before God without fear of judgment.

107
  St. Ursula was a British princess killed by Huns about 383 outside of Cologne, and the
Theban legion was an army of Roman soldiers reputedly martyred in 286 in Agaunum (now St.
Moritz, Switzerland) for failing to venerate the emperor.
108
  For this text, see: Holeton and Vlhová-​Wörner, “A Remarkable Witness,” pp. 177–​178.
109
 Ibid.
110
  The full text of the song has been printed as:  “Mučedlníkův českých připomínáme,” in
V. Novotný, ed., Husitský zpěvník: Nábožné písně o Mistru Janovi Husovi a Mistru Jeronymovi (Prague:
K. Reichel, 1930), pp. 45–​47. Cf. Fojtíková, “Hudební dokladý,” p. 84.
134 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

Further, the song concluded that the “Czech lands can repose with joy and delight
in the number of martyrs” whom the kingdom had produced, as they would inter-
cede for the Czech people who had preserved their legacy through communion in
both kinds and the preservation of their memory.111
This attention to the preservation of memory also animated a short, vernacular
biography of Hus that was most likely written at this time and has been attributed
to an author known as George the Hermit.112 This text, which expanded on earlier
hagiographic texts about Hus to include some description of his life before his
trial, was very different in tone from previous lives of Hus. While those texts had
highlighted the parallels between Hus’s trial and death and the passion of Christ,
this text situated Hus’s whole life in a biblical framework. According to this hagi-
ography, Hus’s mother had dedicated him to the Lord’s service as a child, like
Hannah with the prophet Samuel (1 Kings 1:10–​11); the author also compared
the opposition that Hus faced from the Prague clergy to the persecution that
Joseph faced from his brothers (Genesis 37:18).”113 This text contained the closest
thing to a miracle attributed to Hus in the hagiographic corpus pertaining to him,
as it described Hus’s picking up a burning ember and praying that such suffering
might assist him in overcoming the weakness of the flesh. According to George
the Hermit, a witness to this event saw an angel standing in the flames.114 This
episode foreshadowed Hus’s eventual death, an interpretation that was confirmed
by the text’s conclusion that Hus had been a “second Elijah” who was purified
by his pyre’s fire and the water of the Rhine. Or, as George’s quotation of Psalm
66:12 put it: “We went through fire and water, but you brought us to a place of
abundance.”115 At the conclusion of his hagiography, George the Hermit empha-
sized how this reading of Hus’s death explicitly overcame the Catholic Church’s
efforts to destroy his memory. In doing so, this text both echoed the earliest hagi-
ographic traditions for Hus as epitomized by Petr of Mladoňovice and expanded
upon them in order to create a figure of Hus that had been divinely ordained and
consecrated to become an apostle for the Czech nation and an opponent of the
Antichrist.116
In sum, the evidence from sermons, songs, and this hagiographic text shows
that the liturgical elaboration of Jan Hus’s cult in the late fifteenth century

  “Mučedlníkův českých připomínáme,” p. 47.

111

  This text has been published in a modern edition as: Život, to jest šlechetné obcování ctného sva-
112

tého kněze, Mistra Jana Husa, kazatele českého, od kněze Jiříka Heremity, in FRB 8, pp. 377–​383. Thomas
Fudge has conducted the fullest analyses of this text and its authorship in his: “Jan Hus in Medieval
Czech Hagiography,” BRRP 9 (2014): 152–​172; and The Memory and Motivation of Jan Hus, ­chapter 7.
113
  George the Hermit, Život, pp. 377–​379.
114
  George the Hermit, Život, p. 378.
115
  George the Hermit, Život, p. 382.
116
  George the Hermit, Život, p. 383.
 T h e Pa t r o n 135

occurred alongside and in conversation with a wider exploration of his role within
the tradition of the Utraquist church. That role, as it was defined in the 1470s, was
as an intercessor and holy warrior who had fought for God’s law on behalf of the
entire Czech people and had secured divine favor on its behalf. God’s protection,
of course, had come at a price. The Utraquists would have to maintain their faith as
evidenced by the reception of communion in both kinds, veneration for the Czech
martyrs, and willingness to shed their own blood on behalf of God’s law. A real
opportunity for this sacrifice had arisen during the war with Matthias Corvinus,
so it is not surprising that this era of military conflict spurred the articulation of
a militant Utraquist religious identity that supported holy war. But what would
happen when the military impetus for this distinctive, Utraquist identity faded?
The following decade would force the leaders of the Czech church to confront this
question, and Utraquist authors and artists answered it by enlisting an expanded
array of media to portray themselves as the scions of the true church.

New Modes of Utraquist Memoria

Even if Utraquist rhetoric from the period of the Jagiellon ascendancy was defiant,
or even triumphalist, the reality that the Czech national church faced was more
troubled. King Vladislav proved to be a staunch patron of the Catholic Church,
and especially of the Franciscan order, as ten communities of friars were founded
in the Czech lands under his aegis by the middle of the 1480s.117 Vladislav also
rallied the Catholic nobility in 1479 to counter the Utraquist party that had gath-
ered at the St. Lawrence Diet the previous year, convening an assembly on St.
Wenceslas’s Day that acted to limit the political power of the urban estate, which
was predominantly Utraquist.118 This move coincided with the imposition of the
ban on Prague, which created a hostile environment toward Utraquism within
the Czech capital at the same moment that the city’s preachers were articulating
their militant religious ideology.
Given the history of the Bohemian reformation, it is neither surprising that
a clash was brewing in the city nor that it erupted over a song. That song was
“Faithful Christians, Have Great Hope,” and it had been composed at least
a half-​century earlier. This was most likely the song that the Utraquists had

117
 On the king’s support of the Franciscans, see:  Hlaváĉek, “Errores quorundam
Bernhardinorum,” p. 121.
118
  Throughout the fifteenth century, St. Wenceslas served as a Catholic counter to Hus. As
such, the timing of this diet was significant. At this assembly, the assembled nobles sought to take
away the cities’ vote in the national diet, and also to restrict the ability of burghers to purchase land
in Bohemia. On the diet, see: Eberhard, Konfessionsbildung und Stände, pp. 50–​51. The decrees of the
diet have been printed in: AČ 4, pp. 496–​502.
136 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

sung at the diet of 1477, and King Vladislav had outlawed its performance in
1479 as a threat to public order.119 It is not hard to understand why, as the song
denied the validity of communion in one kind, decried the “vagabond troop”
of mendicant monks, and criticized the “arrogant priests and false prophets,
the bishops and cardinals.”120 As such, the song could easily be interpreted as
an attack on the king who supported all of these, and Vladislav ordered the
arrest of anyone who persisted in singing it. Initially, Vladislav’s efforts to sup-
press this song resulted in the arrest of prominent Utraquist burghers in Kutná
Hora and Prague. Vladislav then expanded his campaign by imprisoning four
Utraquist priests in Prague, including one named Michael Polák. As indicated
by his name, Polák came from Poland, but he had studied at the university in
Prague and served as a priest under Rokycana at Our Lady of Týn. This asso-
ciation granted Polák authority within Utraquist circles, and he quickly came
to serve as a spokesman for the imprisoned priests. Accounts of his imprison-
ment emphasized his piety, refusal of food and drink, and bodily mortification;
and whether these descriptions were merely hagiographic tropes or not, Polák
died in captivity and was immediately recognized as the newest Utraquist
saint by contemporary preachers and chroniclers.121 He became, along with
figures such as Hus and Jan Želivský, an object of devotion among Utraquists
who valorized dutiful parish priests as the exemplars of a faith that prioritized
sacramental piety, the preaching of God’s word, and the willingness to suffer
in defense of both.122
The confluence of Polák’s death, the imposition of the ban on Prague, and the
king’s attempts to limit the Utraquist cities’ political power was certainly remi-
niscent of the situation that King Wenceslas had created in 1419. That similarity
became even stronger in 1483, when Vladislav removed a number of Utraquists
from the Prague town councils and replaced them with Catholic loyalists. Again
as in 1419, this proved to be the final provocation. Utraquists gathered through-
out Prague on September 24, then undertook a series of coordinated attacks on
the Franciscan convents of St. James and St. Ambrose, both of which had been

  A  modern edition and codicological analysis of this song have been printed as:  “Věrní
119

Křesťané, silně doúfajte,” in Nejedlý, Dějiny husitského zpěvu, vol. 6, pp. 235–​237. On the impor-
tance of this song in the events of 1477–​1479, see:  František Šmahel, “Pražské Povstání 1483,”
Pražský Sborník Historický 20 (1986): 35–​102, pp. 44–​49; and Seltzer, “Re-​envisioning the Saint’s
Life,” pp. 158–​159.
120
  “Věrní Křesťané,” p. 237.
121
  On the contemporary commemoration of Polák, see: Seltzer, “Re-​envisioning the Saint’s
Life,” pp. 159–​160. See also: Bartoš, “Dvě Studie,” pp. 68–​71 and 81–​82.
122
  In prioritizing parish priests for these reasons, the Utraquists proved to be out of step
with larger trends in the late medieval creation of new saints. This point is persuasively argued
in: Seltzer, “Re-​envisioning the Saint’s Life,” pp. 160–​161.
 T h e Pa t r o n 137

founded with Vladislav’s support.123 These initial actions touched off two weeks
of riots and iconoclastic violence, which ultimately resulted in many Catholic
priests and monks fleeing the city. On October 6, the Utraquist clergy and
their political allies within the city issued a manifesto to the king. It contained
twenty-​three articles demanding that the king both recognize the traditional
rights of the Czech estates and honor the oaths he had taken upon his accep-
tance of the throne. The articles further called for the prohibition of adminis-
tering the eucharist in one kind within Prague and asserted that there was no
place for monks or priests who opposed the Utraquists in the city. In short, this
manifesto sought to establish Prague as an exclusively Utraquist city overseen
by a uniformly Utraquist power structure and to demand the king’s acceptance
of this new status quo.124
Although Vladislav could never accept these conditions, as they amounted
to a fundamental challenge to his authority within his capital, they did elicit
a response from the king that acknowledged his ultimate failure to restore
Catholicism as the primary religion within Prague. That response took shape
during a diet held in Kutná Hora from March 13 to March 20, 1485, during
which Vladislav, the Czech nobility, and the leaders of the kingdom’s urban gov-
ernments met.125 At the end of this diet, the assembled parties ratified a treaty
that would last for thirty-​one years and recognized the present Catholic and
Utraquist spheres of influence within the Czech lands as stable. In other words,
both religious parties would keep their respective parishes and territories, while
promising not to infringe on those of the other church. Remarkably, this agree-
ment also called for individuals’ freedom of conscience; nobles were forbidden
from compelling their tenants and subordinates in matters of religion, and peo-
ple were allowed to attend worship wherever they chose.126 This treaty, known as
the Peace of Kutná Hora, thereby established the Czech lands as the first legally
bi-​confessional kingdom in Europe and created the grounds for religious peace
between Czech Catholics and Utraquists for the first time in over seventy years.
What the Compactata had promised, the Peace of Kutná Hora delivered, and

123
  For an overview of the Prague uprising in 1483, see:  Šmahel, “Pražský Povstání”; and
Kamil Boldan, “Passio Pragensium—​tištená relace o pražskám povstání,” Documenta Pragensia
19 (2001):  173–​180. On the targeting of the Franciscans during the uprising, see:  Hlaváček,
“Bohemian Franciscans,” pp. 181ff.
124
  The full text of the manifesto is published in: Šmahel, “Pražský Povstání,” pp. 94–​9 9.
125
  For an overview of the negotiations leading up to the Diet and an analysis of the final agree-
ments made at Kutná Hora, see:  Eberhard, Konfessionsbildung und Stände, pp.  46–​6 0. The corre-
spondence between the king and the leading Utraquist nobles has also been published in: AČ 4,
pp.  506–​512. On the 1485 Diet, see also:  Thomas Fudge, “The Problem of Religious Liberty in
Early Modern Bohemia,” CV 38 (1996): 64–​87.
126
  The text of the treaty is printed in AČ 5, pp. 418–​427. For a series of letters written from
Kutná Hora describing the treaty negotiations, see: AČ 4, pp. 512–​516.
138 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

it would remain the basis for religious coexistence within the Czech lands for
nearly a century.127
The need for affirmations of Utraquist identity, however, did not disappear after
1485. On the contrary, the period after the Peace of Kutná Hora afforded Czech
authors and artists an increasing array of media with which to construct their reli-
gious representations, even as the declining intensity of inter-​confessional strife
between Utraquists and Catholics prompted new approaches to the question of
what constituted the essence of Utraquist identity. A  focus on certain aspects
of that identity, most notably the chalice and the Utraquist pantheon of saints,
remained constant, and it is even possible to see them being more essential after
1485. After all, periods of rapprochement had always been dangerous for the
Hussite movement and Utraquist church, so the celebration of the chalice and
Utraquist saints would have served to bolster the Czech church’s unique heritage
at a time when legal parity and a decline in open conflict could minimize the dif-
ferences between Prague and Rome. The ways in which this dyad was commemo-
rated and celebrated, however, evolved as both more elaborate and more widely
disseminated texts and artworks rendered the Utraquist past a more permanent
element of its present.
The most monumental of these representations of Utraquist religious iden-
tity was a paired portrait of Sts. Sebastian and Jan Hus, which was painted in
Prague (c. 1485) for the church of St. Wenceslas in the town of Roudnice.128 This
painting comprised one of a pair of wooden doors; the opposite panel depicted
Sts. James and Lawrence. The door itself was, according to art historian Milena
Bartlová, part of an Utraquist “altar tabernacle, which was closed by the painted
panels and in the centre of which was the symbol of the Eucharist, either presented
in an exhibited monstrance or represented by the traditional image of the Man

  It should be noted that the Peace of Kutná Hora’s enshrinement of toleration was incom-
127

plete. The treaty did not include the Unity of Brethren, a pacifist, sectarian church that had split
from the Utraquist church in 1457 and given up the principle of apostolic succession a decade
later. The Unity would be sporadically persecuted throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth cen-
turies, and would not be recognized as a legitimate party within the Czech religious landscape
until 1575. For a positive assessment of the Peace’s establishment of legal toleration, see: Jarold
Zeman, “The Rise of Religious Liberty in the Czech Reformation,” Central European History 6
(1973): 128–​147. For a more negative view of its limitations, see: Jaroslav Pánek, “The Question of
Tolerance in Bohemia and Moravia in the Age of the Reformation,” in Tolerance and Intolerance in
the European Reformation, ed. O. Grell and R. Scribner (New York: Cambridge UP, 1996), pp. 231–​
248. See also: Winfried Eberhard, “Entstehungsbedingungen für öffentlich Toleranz am Beispiel
des Kuttenberger Religionsfrieden von 1485,” CV 19 (1986): 129–​153; and Skybová, “Politische
Aspekte der Existenz zweier Konfessionen.”
128
  On the provenance and survival of this painting, see:  Milena Bartlová, “Upálení sv.
Jana Husa na malovaných křídlech utrakvistického oltáře z Roudník,” Umění 53 (2005),
427– ​4 43.
 T h e Pa t r o n 139

of Sorrows.”129 In this visual composition, as in earlier liturgical texts, Hus was

placed among the company of the martyrs of the early church, thus affirming his
“traditional” sanctity and reifying the links to St. Lawrence that had been present
in the commemoration of Hus since the passio of Johannes Barbatus. The three
martyrs depicted here alongside Hus also all died at the order of tyrannical kings,
which would have recalled Sigismund’s role in Hus’s death and perhaps served as a
subtle dig at King Vladislav.130 Hus was also symbolically and visually connected
to the eucharist, as devotion to, and the consumption of, the sacrament literally
lay behind the saints’ holy deaths in this “Utraquist ark.”131
This depiction of Hus is unique, as it is the sole surviving image of Hus on this
scale from the fifteenth century. Textual evidence suggests that other altar paintings
of Hus were made during this time, though, and a few other Utraquist wall paint-
ings from the fifteenth century have been discovered that combined the motifs of
the eucharistic Man of Sorrows, the chalice, and—​in the case of a church in Kutná
Hora—​Jan Hus’s famous dictum “The truth will conquer” to create a distinctive
Utraquist visual idiom.132 These large-​scale representations were also comple-
mented by manuscript and book illustrations from this time that emphasized Hus’s
sanctity while highlighting the role that he and other Czech martyrs had played
as a bridge between the Utraquists and the apostolic Church that they claimed as
their forebear. One such manuscript was the Smíškovský Gradual, a liturgical book
produced for a wealthy Kutná Hora family around 1490.133 This manuscript con-
tained an illuminated initial on one folio depicting Sts. Stephen and Lawrence on
either side of Jan Hus, here depicted with his signature heretic’s cap (see Figure 3.1).

129
  Milena Bartlová, “The Utraquist Church and the Visual Arts before Luther,” BRRP 4
(2002): 215–​223, p. 222.
130
  Jan Royt, “Utrakvistická ikonografie v Čechách 15. a první poloviny 16. Století,” in Pro arte.
Sborník k poctě Ivo Hlobila, ed. D. Prix (Prague: Artefactum, 2002), pp. 193–​2 02, p. 198.
131
  Bartlová, “The Utraquist Church and the Visual Arts,” 222. P. On the role of eucharistic
piety in Utraquist art, see also: Kateřina Horníčková, “Mezi tradicí a inovací: Náboženský obraz
v českém utrakvismu,” in Umění české reformace (1380–​1620), ed. in K. Horníčková and M. Šroněk
(Prague: Academia, 2010), pp. 81–​173, especially pp. 88–​92.
132
 For an overview of the development of this idiom, see:  Jan Royt, “Hussitische
Bildpropaganda,” in Kirchliche Reformimpulse des 14./​15. Jarhunderts in Ostmitteleuropa, ed. W.
Eberhard and F. Machilek (Cologne: Böhlau, 2006), pp. 341–​354. On specific developments from
the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, see: Zuzana Všetečková, “Iconography of the Mural
Paintings in St. James’s Church of KutnáHora,” BRRP 3 (2000): 127–​146; and idem, “The Man
of Sorrows and Christ Blessing the Chalice: the Pre-​R eformation and the Utraquist Viewpoints,”
BRRP 4 (2002): 193–​214. On a no-​longer-​e xtant painting of Hus from the church of St. Barbara
in Kutná Hora, see: B. Altová and H. Štroblová, eds., Kutná Hora (Prague: Nakladatelství Lidové
Noviny, 2000), p. 333.
133
 On this manuscript, see:  Milena Bartlová, “Conflict, Tolerance, Representation, and
Competition: A Confessional Profile of Bohemian Late Gothic Art,” in BRRP 5, pt. 2 (2005): 255–​265;
Jan Royt, “Utrakvistická ikonografie,” pp. 199–​200; and idem, “Ikonografie Mistra Jana Husa,” p. 443.
Figure 3.1  The Initial “S” with Sts. Hus, Stephen, and Lawrence; Smíškovský Gradual
(MS ONB cod. s.n. 2657), f. 285r. Copyright: ÖNB Vienna: Cod. 15.492 Mus, fol. 285r. 
 T h e Pa t r o n 141

This folio also featured an image of Hussites being thrown into the mineshafts of
Kutná Hora in its bottom margin, an event that had gained new currency among
Utraquists at that time because the bodily remains of some of these martyrs had
been recovered in 1492. Contemporary chroniclers identified a portion of these
remains as the body of the Hussite priest Jan Chůdek, which “gave off a beautiful
and sweet scent like myrrh” and thereby attributed a miraculous odor of sanctity to
these early Bohemian martyrs.134 Their inclusion in this manuscript did so pictori-
ally as well, by pairing them with the protomartyr Stephen, Hus, the founding saint
of the Utraquist church, and his most prominent ancient analogue, Lawrence.
Lawrence also appeared in the most famous Utraquist illuminated manu-
script from this period, the Jena Codex.135 In this manuscript, which was compiled
between 1490 and 1510 and incorporated a number of Hussite and Utraquist
texts and images, Lawrence was shown in one of a pair of antithetical images,
reclining on an iron grate and awaiting his death. Three figures manned bellows
around the martyr, while a fourth prepared to heap coals on the fire. Opposite
Lawrence was an image of contemporary Catholic priests, also reclining. They,
however, were in the bath, attended by half-​d ressed, comely maidens.136 The
moral contrast between the primitive and contemporary Church highlighted
in these images was the overarching subject of the Jena Codex’s constituent ele-
ments. The Codex centered around a series of images taken from Nicholas of
Dresden’s Tables of the Old Color and the New, while a second section expanded
on that earlier text’s biblical antitheses to include figures and practices from
both the ancient Church and Utraquism in its critique of the contemporary
Catholic clergy. In doing this, and through their incorporation of several late
fifteenth-​century Utraquist texts on the necessity of administering communion
in both kinds and the failings of the Catholic Church, the scribes and artists
who collectively composed this text asserted that the Utraquists had inherited
the mantle of the true Church from their apostolic and biblical predecessors.137
Through their eucharistic practices, moral purity, and willingness to suffer for

134
  On the discovery of these remains, see: Seltzer, “Re-​envisioning the Saint’s Life,” pp. 164–​165;
and Halama, “The Martyrs of Kutná Hora,” p. 141.
135
  This codex, which has been the subject of numerous studies, is currently held in Prague as
MS NM IV B 24. For a brief overview of the manuscript and its contents, see: Zoroslava Drobná,
The Jena Codex: Hussite Pictorial Satire from the End of the Middle Ages (Prague: Odeon, 1970). For a
more complete codicological and art historical analysis of the text and its creation, see the essays
and exhaustive bibliography in the second volume of: K. Boldan et al., eds., Jenský Kodex, 2 vols.
(Prague: Gallery, 2009). The first volume of this work is a facsimile reproduction of the manuscript.
136
  MS NM IV B 24, fols. 78v.–​79r.
137
  For an account of the compilation of the Codex in its extant form, see:  Miloslav Vlk,
“Paleografický rozbor Jenského Kodexu,” Sborník Historický 14 (1966):  49–​74; idem, “Jenský
kodex:  kodikologický rozbor,” Sborník Národního Muzea 21 (1967):  73–​106; and Karel Stejskal,
“Historické předpoklady vzniku Jenského kodexu,” in Jenský kodex, vol. 2, pp. 27–​41.
142 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

their faith, the Utraquists could stake a claim to represent the earliest Christian
community redivivus.
This claim was made through more than the language of contrast and inver-
sion. Indeed, the Jena Codex also contained a series of original illuminations that
depicted the heroes of the Utraquist tradition and even placed them among and
alongside the earliest saints of the Christian Church. One image of Jan Žižka,
for instance, showed the blind general at the head of a column of Hussite troops,
closely followed by a priest bearing a monstrance with the consecrated host.138
A second image showed mounted Hussite soldiers engaged with an army of cru-
saders, with the Bohemians fighting under a banner with an image of the chalice
and the words, “The truth conquers”139 (see Figure 3.2). Strikingly, a third illumi-
nation again showed Žižka, but in an eschatological setting; in this image, the blind
man stood at the right hand of a seated, royal Christ, again bearing a banner with
the chalice.140 Žižka here literally displaced St. Peter (as Catholics accused Hus of
doing), thus assuming a primacy that would have been shocking to most medieval
Christians. Within the religious worldview of the Jena Codex’s artists and compiler,
though, Žižka represented an ideal follower of Christ: a warrior dedicated to the
chalice and to defending the revival of the ancient Church’s mores and practices.
Žižka and his warriors of God were not, though, the only figures from
Utraquist history to feature prominently in this manuscript. Both Jerome of
Prague and Jan Hus were depicted in full-​page illuminations of their executions,
and the image of Hus on his pyre was also paired with a depiction of his preach-
ing from a large, wooden pulpit to a mixed crowd of the laity (see Figure 3.3).
These images preceded a selection of Czech texts concerning both men’s trials
that included: four letters written by Hus from Constance; Petr of Mladoňovice’s
shorter passio for Hus; his passio for Jerome of Prague; Poggio Bracciolini’s letter
describing Jerome’s death, and the letter protesting Hus’s death that was signed
and sealed by the Czech nobility in September of 1415. The inclusion of these
texts, along with the pictorial presence of Jan Žižka and the pervasive influence
of Nicholas of Dresden’s Tables throughout the Codex, demonstrated the extent
to which late fifteenth-​century Utraquist authors and artists had gone in think-
ing with their own tradition. Like contemporary liturgists and preachers, the
compilers of this manuscript had mined the earliest history of the Bohemian
reformation for models and images that they could adapt and expand upon in
order to articulate a more comprehensive understanding of what constituted the
most important elements of their religious identity, here creating an Utraquist
canon of figures and texts that symbolically represented their inheritance from
the Hussite era.

138
  MS NM IV B 24, fol. 76r.
139
  MS NM IV B 24, fol. 56r.
140
  MS NM IV B 24, fol. 5v.
 T h e Pa t r o n 143

Figure 3.2  Hussites Battling Crusaders; Jena Codex (MS NM IV B 24), f. 56r. Courtesy
of the Collection of the National Museum, Prague, Czech Republic. 

Beyond the evidence that they provided for the development of a self-​reflective
Utraquist identity at the turn of the sixteenth century, the selected texts concern-
ing Hus and Jerome’s trials also attested to the exploitation of a new medium for
their commemoration: print. This evidence emerged from the fact that this collec-
tion of texts had actually been printed in 1495 as part of a Czech edition of Jacopo
Figure 3.3  Hus Preaching to the Laity; Jena Codex (MS NM IV B 24), f. 37v. Courtesy
of the Collection of the National Museum, Prague, Czech Republic. 
 T h e Pa t r o n 145

de Voragine’s Golden Legend.141 This edition, which was published in Prague by Jan
Kamp, was distinctively Utraquist, both in its inclusion of these unique entries
on Hus and Jerome and in its exclusion of many mendicant saints whose orders
had been active in trying to suppress the Utraquist church.142 The entries on the
Utraquist saints were included at the end of the book, and the selection of mate-
rial suggests that the compiler had considered their use within a liturgical setting;
the readings were short enough to be read aloud during a worship service, and
the range of texts offered the officiant some choice of what to read. The letters
and passion narratives also emphasized a number of Christological and eschato-
logical themes that animated both the liturgical compositions and sermons about
the Bohemian martyrs that proliferated in the late fifteenth century. As such, the
Utraquist edition of the Golden Legend and its incorporation of Hus and Jerome
had a bridging function, uniting the earliest accounts of the Utraquist martyrs’
deaths with contemporary practices of commemoration, while looking ahead to
an era when printed texts would serve as the primary vehicle of memory and foun-
dation of an alternative history that was built upon the self-​sacrifice of figures like
Jan Hus.
All of these artworks and texts demonstrate the Utraquists’ employment of the
widest possible array of media to preserve the memory of Jan Hus and the other
Czech martyrs, and thus to affirm the legitimacy of their church and its unique
legacy. Their proliferation did not, though, displace more traditional forms of
commemoration, as a sermon by the Utraquist administrator Václav Koranda
attested. This sermon, which can be dated only by its mention of Michael Polák’s
death, combined the celebration of the Czechs’ martyrological tradition with
the reception of communion in both kinds to articulate an essentially canoni-
cal Utraquist theology of how Christians should observe and preserve the law of
God.143 For Koranda, the martyrs of the Utraquist tradition provided the most
certain model to follow in terms of this observance, for “they had a righteous

141
  This Czech adaptation of the Golden Legend was originally printed by Jan Kamp in Prague,
and is available in a modern facsimile edition as: Zdeněk Tobolka, ed., Pasional: Čili, Život a Umučení
všech svatých mučedlníkův (Prague: n.p., 1926). The editor also issued a brief introduction to the text,
published separately as: Kališnický Pasionál z roku 1495 (Prague: n.p., 1926).
142
  On the distinctive Utraquist mentality evidenced in the book, see: Emma Urbanková, “Český
pasionál z roku 1495 a jeho dodatky,” Ročenka Státní knihovny ČSR v Praze 1971 (Prague: Knihovna,
1971), pp. 88–​123; and Kamil Boldan, “Takzvaný Jenský dodatek k Pasionálu,” in Jenský kodex, vol.
2, pp. 69–​76.
143
  This sermon is part of a manuscript held by the Prague Cathedral Chapter as MS F 116. It
has been printed in a modern edition as: “Sermo de martyribus Bohemis,” in: FRB 8, pp. 368–​372.
The sermon’s editor, Václav Novotný, has argued for Koranda’s authorship based on a linguistic and
theological analysis of its contents. See his: “Husitská kázání z konce XV. století,” Věstnik Kralovské
České Společnosti Nauk 1 (1930): 1–​49, especially pp. 13–​17.
146 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

cause, true faith, and the evangelical truth of the precious blood of the Lord
Jesus, which he left for all faithful Christians to drink from the sacred chalice.”144
Koranda was both explicit and expansive in naming the figures who had defended
this faith, as he included the earliest Hussite martyrs from 1415; those murdered
in the mines of Kutná Hora; the “esteemed preacher of holy truth,” Michael Polák;
and even “many infants and pregnant women killed by crusading Germans” dur-
ing the war with Matthias Corvinus among his catalogue of Bohemian martyrs.145
But pride of place among this company was reserved for Jan Hus and, to a lesser
extent, Jerome of Prague, whom Koranda singled out in the opening of his ser-
mon: “Today we celebrate the memoria of our faithful and holy Bohemian martyrs
in the hope of God, namely Master Jan Hus, Master Jerome and all others, who in
these unsafe and last days suffered diverse torments and cruel death for the name
of Jesus Christ.”146 Hus’s primacy became clear as Koranda’s sermon developed.
He spent considerable space narrating Hus’s campaign against clerical sin and
describing his trial and death in Constance. In his conclusion, though, Koranda
again embedded Hus within a larger body of Utraquist martyrs by noting that
“no one canonized them, neither the pope nor the holy Church,” but that they
had been recognized by the Czech nation and “by the supreme pontiff and prince
of priests, the Lord Jesus … as he said: ‘you are blessed when men curse you and
reproach and condemn your name as evil on account of the Son of Man.”147 This
recognition thus led to Koranda’s assertion that his audience must emulate the
Bohemian martyrs, especially regarding the reception of communion in both
kinds, “about which there has been great difficulty and dissension. For in this we
ought to imitate Master Jan Hus in the faith which he had and maintained, and
for which he suffered.”148
This final assemblage of texts and images from the last years of the fifteenth
century exemplified the development of Hus’s cult in Utraquist Bohemia. At this
time, the concatenation of printed materials, sermons, manuscript illuminations,
and monumental artworks that comprised the commemoration of Hus incorpo-
rated earlier materials and themes while expanding to new media and genres to
further their reach. These vehicles of memory also showed how Utraquist preach-
ers, artists, and authors adapted to a political and religious environment that was
less overtly agonistic than during previous generations. The depiction of Hus as a
holy knight or warrior became marginal, even as he was lauded as a champion of the
communion chalice and linked to its consumption by the laity as twin markers of
the Utraquists’ unique religious identity. The widening array of commemorative

144
  Koranda, “Sermo de martyribus,” p. 369.
145
 Ibid.
146
  Koranda, “Sermo de martyribus,” p. 368.
147
  Koranda, “Sermo de martyribus,” p. 369.
148
  Koranda, “Sermo de martyribus,” pp. 371–​372.
 T h e Pa t r o n 147

media at the end of the 1400s also demonstrated just how fungible and capacious
the figure of Jan Hus had become as a foundation of the Utraquist tradition; by
mixing extracts from his writings with invocations of more traditional saints and
images of the Hussite martyrs, late fifteenth-​century Utraquists could link them-
selves to a conception of sanctity that was both intensely Bohemian and universal.
And it was this balance of the impeccably traditional and distinctively Utraquist
that ushered the Czech national church into the era of the European reformations.

Conclusion
Over the course of the fifteenth century, the figure of Jan Hus loomed large over
the development of the Bohemian reformation. In its earliest years, the immedi-
ate memory of his execution at Constance inflamed radical religious sentiments
and inspired a national revolution against king, emperor, and pope. A decade later,
the recollection of Hus’s suffering and affirmation of his ultimate vindication
sustained the movement that arose out of his death during periods of intensive
military conflict. The invocation of Hus’s words and deeds could also, however,
provide a justification for patient witness and attempts to reform the Church from
within, and this example proved crucial during the Hussites’ negotiations with
the Council of Basel and their subsequent formation of the Utraquist church. And
in the decades after the foundation of this church, Hus came to serve as one of
the primary markers—​a long with the communion chalice—​of its distinctive reli-
gious identity, a potent symbol whose latent militant potential could be activated
in times of internal and external crisis.
No matter the aspect of Hus’s sanctity that came to the fore in response to his-
torical exigencies and devotional imperatives, though, these three chapters have
argued that Hussite and Utraquist commemorative practices were focused on pre-
serving his memory through the traditional practices and genres associated with
the medieval cult of saints in order to ensure that Hus would both remain present
within the religious community of Bohemia and serve as its primary intercessor
with God. To achieve the former of these goals, the Utraquists created an elabo-
rate cult for July 6, the anniversary of Hus’s martyrdom. Czech authors composed
liturgical songs, passion narratives, and sermons, all of which leaned heavily on
associations with the cults of traditional saints in order to create an innovative,
hybrid set of commemorative practices. These formal religious practices were also
augmented by the composition of popular, vernacular songs and texts, as well as
the invocation of Hus’s words in sermons, artwork, and polemical texts. These lat-
ter texts did not contribute to Hus’s formal cult per se, but did guarantee that he
would maintain his presence in the religious consciousness of the Czech people.
The panoply of commemorative media created for Hus by Czech religious lead-
ers also served as a means of guaranteeing his active intercession on behalf of his
148 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

Bohemian heirs. Particularly in the corpus of liturgical texts composed for the
celebration of July 6, Hus was held up as the embodiment of Czech virtues, which
chiefly comprised eucharistic devotion, desire for the preached Word of God, the
purity of its clergy, and the people’s willingness to suffer in defense of divine law.
The recognition by those people of Hus’s sanctity, then, and their explicit requests
for his aid in sustaining the religious values that he had articulated, would there-
fore elicit his aid as part of the system of proportional reciprocity that was thought
to structure the late medieval economy of salvation. And while it is necessary to
recognize how shifting historical circumstances altered the rhetoric and specific
forms of the Hussites’ and Utraquists’ calls for divine assistance, it is equally
important to acknowledge the consistent relational dynamics between the people
and their patron that underwrote these demands for intercession.
But what happened when the fundamental conception of these dynamics and
the underlying belief in the intercessory relationship between people and saints
changed? What were the consequences for the commemoration of saints when
the media used to think with and about the past were irrevocably transformed
by the widespread dissemination of print? And how would Hus be remembered
by those who held no sense of national or linguistic affiliation with the Prague
martyr? These are the questions that the second half of this book deals with by
analyzing the continued evolution of the figure of Jan Hus in the context of the
Lutheran reformation, a movement that was first forced by its Catholic interlocu-
tors to acknowledge its links to the Bohemian martyr/​heretic, but subsequently
embraced him as a Lutheran saint and even prophet of its eventual success. To put
it plainly, Lutheran authors did not need to maintain Hus’s active presence within
their movement; their theology made this sort of presence impossible. Instead,
Luther and his followers shifted attention away from the preservation of Hus’s
memory and instead made him into a lynchpin of their movement’s history—​an
embodiment of their church’s past who had provided key insights into its con-
flicted present and glorious future. It is to this extended process of transformation
that we now turn.
 4

The Apocalyptic Witness

Introduction
In July of 1519, the Augustinian monk, university professor, and incipient reformer
Martin Luther was brought face to face with Jan Hus.1 During his academic dis-
putation with Johannes Eck in Leipzig, as Luther and his opponent debated the
issue of papal supremacy in the church, Eck pursued an unexpected, if seemingly
ingenious strategy. He attacked Luther’s contentions that the bishop of Rome had
not always been the head of the universal church and that a general council of the
church could err in matters of faith by equating Luther’s position to that defended
by the heresiarch Hus a century earlier at Constance. Over two days of debate,
Eck painted Luther further into this Hussite corner, deriding Luther’s position
on the primacy of the pope as a mere recapitulation of the “pestilent errors of the
Hussites.”2 Indeed, Eck even induced Luther to make the damaging concession
that some of Hus’s articles condemned at Constance were “most Christian and
evangelical.”3

1
  The literature on the relationship between Luther and Hus is substantial, although much of
it has been dedicated to determining the extent of their theological affinities. See, e.g.: Bernhard
Lohse, “Luther und Huss,” Luther 36 (1965):  108–​122; Walter Delius, “Luther und Huss,”
Lutherjahrbuch 38 (1971): 9–​25; and the revision of this approach in: Scott Hendrix, “‘We Are All
Hussites’? Hus and Luther Revisited,” ARG 65 (1974):  134–​161. More recent work has focused
on the appropriation of Hus as a forerunner or antecedent to Luther and his reform, although this
body of literature has focused less on the deployment of the figure of Hus at specific moments and
in distinctively different ways over the course of the Lutheran reformation. Particularly helpful
among this newer scholarship are: Thomas Fudge, “‘The Shouting Hus:’ Heresy Appropriated as
Propaganda in the Sixteenth Century,” CV 38 (1996): 197–​231; Gustav Adolf Benrath, “Die soge-
nannten Vorreformatoren in ihrer Bedeutung für die frühe Reformation,” in Die frühe Reformation in
Deutschland als Umbruch, ed. B. Moeller (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1998), pp. 157–​166;
and Thomas Kaufmann, “Jan Hus und die frühe Reformation,” in Biblische Theologie und historisches
Denken, ed. M. Kessler and M. Wallraff (Basel: Schwabe Verlag, 2008), pp. 62–​109.
2
  Disputatio Iohanis Eccii et Martini Lutheri Lipsiae habita (1519) [WA 2, pp. 250–​383, p. 280].
3
  Disputatio Lipsiae habita, p. 279.

149
150 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

Eck’s rhetorical strategy worked against Luther on a number of levels. On the

one hand, he parlayed Luther’s agreement with Hus on a specific point of doc-
trine into a general conflation of the Wittenberg Augustinian with one of the most
notorious heretics of the medieval church. On the other hand, Eck also depicted
Luther as a defender of the Bohemian heretics who had ravaged the Holy Roman
Empire in the 1420s; this identification not only undercut Luther’s attempts to
tap into German nationalist feelings against the foreign pope, but it also imme-
diately alienated political leaders who equated the Hussite heresy with political
rebellion.4 On a third, intellectual level, Eck also manipulated Luther into defend-
ing an author with whom he was not entirely familiar. Luther therefore had to
scramble to delimit the extent of his agreement with Hus—​a process that took
months—​even as Catholic authors continued to tar him with the brush of the
Hussite heresy. In both the immediate context of the Leipzig Debate, then, as well
as in the broader context of Luther’s early engagement with his Catholic oppo-
nents, Eck’s identification of Luther as another Hus had potentially devastating
ramifications.
From the perspective of Catholic polemicists, Eck’s discovery of Luther’s affin-
ities was unsurprising. According to their heresiology, there was certainly noth-
ing new under the sun. Of course Luther and his followers were reviving Hussite
heresies, just as the Bohemians had revived Waldensianism and Donatism in
their own right. The continuity that Luther’s earliest interlocutors, such as Eck,
Hieronymus Emser, or Bernhard von Luxemburg, found in the heretics’ doc-
trine provided Catholics with intellectual and rhetorical structures that helped
them categorize and refute Luther’s arguments. 5 It also allowed them to draw a
sharp admonitory parallel between events in fifteenth-​century Bohemia and the
sixteenth-​century Holy Roman Empire. The political turmoil and military con-
flict that had emerged in the wake of Hus’s heresy had been bad, but would pale
in comparison to the damage that Luther’s rebellion could cause (witness, for
example, the Peasants’ War). According to this logic, to allow Luther’s movement
to develop and expand was to ensure the outbreak of sedition, war, and societal
unrest.

  On this rhetorical strategy and its political impact on a broader level, see: Heiko Oberman,
4

“Hus and Luther: Prophets of a Radical Reformation,” in The Contentious Triangle: Church, State, and
University, ed. C. Pater and R. Petersen (Kirksville, MO: Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies,
1999), pp. 135–​166, especially pp.  148–​149; and Martin Brecht, Martin Luther:  Sein Weg zur
Reformation, 1483–​1521 (Stuttgart: Calwer, 1981), pp. 295–​307.
5
  On these early Catholic pamphleteers and their arguments against Luther, see:  Hubert
Jedin, “Die geschichtliche Bedeutung der katholischen Kontroversliteratur im Zeitalter der
Glaubensspaltung,” Historisches Jahrbuch 53 (1933):  70–​ 9 7; David Bagchi, Luther’s Earliest
Opponents: Catholic Controversialists, 1518–​1525 (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991); and Hellmut
Zschoch, “Luther und seine altgläubigen Gegner,” and “Streitschriften,” in Luther Handbuch,
ed. A. Beutel (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005), pp. 115–​121 and 277–​295.
 The Apocalyptic Witness 151

Catholic authors’ condemnation by equation did, however, also draw attention

to the fact that Luther was not the first to oppose the papacy. Perhaps uninten-
tionally, Catholic polemics established a notional continuity between Luther and
earlier critics of the Church, which Luther and his supporters subsequently took
up and fashioned into a historical counter-​tradition in which they represented the
coalescence of earlier, isolated voices for reform. Indeed, as Luther and his first
followers were forced to examine the history of medieval heresy in general, and
Jan Hus in particular, in order to defend themselves from Catholic accusations,
they realized that Hus’s reforming career, along with the fate of the movement
that arose from his death, illuminated two essential conclusions:  first, that the
success of the Hussite movement and establishment of the Utraquist Church pro-
vided a precedent and model for the political orchestration of religious reform
by the nobility; and second, that the highest institutions of the Church, and par-
ticularly the papacy, had become the seat of Antichrist, from which he acted to
eliminate divine truth. In the wake of Leipzig, the discovery and dissemination
of the papacy’s diabolical identity was one of the central features of Luther’s cam-
paign against the institutional Church, and Hus’s death quickly came to represent
essential prima facie evidence for demonstrating its subversion by Antichrist.6
What was epochal about Luther’s campaign against the papal Antichrist,
though, and Hus’s role within it, was not just its content. Rather, the revolution-
ary aspect of this confrontation was that it took place in print, and that Luther in
particular empowered the lay public to act as a judge in determining the outcome
of the conflict.7 It is certain that the Leipzig debate and Luther’s later self-​defense
before the emperor at Worms in 1521 were significant events in their own right,
but these interpersonal engagements became inscribed as seminal moments in
the Reformation primarily through their textual afterlives. This had certainly
happened with the circulation of commemorative materials about Hus in the
wake of his execution at the Council of Constance, but in the print culture of the
early Reformation it took place on a scale and scope that was previously unimagi-
nable. This textual Hus was also a distorted reflection of the historical or hagio-
graphic Hus who had been born in late medieval Bohemia. He had been refracted
through political and apocalyptic prisms that colored him with the fiery hues of

6
  On this identification, see: Scott Hendrix, Luther and the Papacy: Stages in a Reformation Conflict
(Philadelphia:  Fortress Press, 1981), pp. 121ff.; Hans Hillerbrand, “The Antichrist in the Early
German Reformation:  Reflections on Theology and Propaganda,” in Germania Illustrata:  Essays
on Early Modern Germany Presented to Gerald Strauss, ed. A. Fix and S. Karant-​Nunn (Kirksville,
MO:  Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, 1992), pp. 3–​18; and William Russell, “Martin
Luther’s Understanding of the Pope as the Antichrist,” ARG 85 (1994): 32–​4 4.
7
  Helmar Junghans, “Der Laie als Richter im Glaubsensstreit der Reformation,” Lutherjahrbuch
39 (1972): 31–​5 4; Leif Grane, Martinus Noster: Luther in the German Reform Movement, 1518–​1521
(Mainz: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1994), especially pp. 115–​145; and Andrew Pettegree, The Book
in the Renaissance (New Haven: Yale UP, 2010), especially pp. 93–​100.
152 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

Daniel or John the Baptist, a prophet unafraid to speak truth to power and name
“that Antichrist and abomination, who sits in the temple of God, displaying him-
self as if he were God.”8
It was the story of this Jan Hus that came to constitute one key current in the
flood of publications that both prompted and accompanied the explosive growth
of Luther’s protest against the Catholic Church. Picking up where Luther and
Eck had left off in Leipzig, a number of authors on both sides of the nascent con-
fessional divide attempted to situate the Bohemian preacher within the broader
framework of religious reform, promoting him either as a champion of the salutary
alliance between ecclesial and temporal reformers or as a diabolical opponent of
legitimate authority. In a number of texts, then, that either disseminated Hus’s
own writings or related the details of his trial and execution, Hus came to occupy
a significant position within the mental landscape of the German reading public.
Whether decried as an archenemy of the German nation, portrayed as a saintly
martyr, or made the mouthpiece for the identification of the papal Antichrist, it
is possible to say that by 1525 an individual’s or community’s perception of Hus
could serve as a cipher for their understanding of the nature of the Church and its
history. Beginning with Eck at Leipzig, Roman authors had successfully linked
Hus and Luther in the public’s eye, but they had failed to effectively determine
the moral and religious valence of that historical connection. As a result, the
Reformation’s rehabilitation of Jan Hus as an opponent of the Antichrist in Rome
laid the groundwork for a new interpretation of Christian history that would be
fully realized in the following decades.

Luther, Leipzig, and the Discovery of Hus

From the posting and publication of the Ninety-​Five Theses to his confrontation
with Eck at Leipzig, Martin Luther was engaged in a running battle with a series
of Catholic interlocutors who were intent on arresting his slide down the slip-
pery slope from critique to heresy.9 At the Heidelberg Disputation in May 1518,
the interview with Cardinal Cajetan in Augsburg that October, and the Leipzig
Debate itself, Luther faced ecclesiastical authorities who sought to refute or silence
his challenge to the papacy and its continuing promulgation of indulgences. At

  Otto Brunfels, “Letter to Martin Luther” (August, 1524) on WABr 3, pp. 332–​336, p. 333.
8

  For detailed overviews of Luther’s legal and intellectual struggle with the Catholic hierar-
9

chy in these years, see:  Wilhelm Borth, Die Luthersache (Causa Lutheri) 1517–​1524:  Die Anfänge
der Reformation als Frage von Politik und Recht (Lübeck: Matthiesen Verlag, 1970); and Kurt-​V ictor
Selge, “Der Weg zur Leipziger Disputation zwischen Luther und Eck im Jahr 1519,” in Bleibendes
im Wandel der Kirchengeschichte, ed. B. Moeller and G. Ruhbach (Tübingen: JCB Mohr, 1973), pp.
169–​210.
 The Apocalyptic Witness 153

Heidelberg and Leipzig, Luther undertook academic debates with his opponents;
these formal exchanges were governed by traditional rules and roles that gave
a distinctive shape to their proceedings.10 Accounts of these proceedings were,
however, published after the fact, so a larger public could virtually witness the
agonistic, contested articulation of reform ideology. Such texts created a “polity
of publication,” to borrow Leif Grane’s felicitous description, whose interpreta-
tion of events ultimately undercut the ability of Catholic religious leaders to act
as the sole arbiters of orthodoxy.11 Indeed, Luther’s earliest encounters with his
Catholic adversaries established a pattern of publication and popular consump-
tion that effectively enlisted the people and political leaders of the Empire as valid
judges of theological debates.
The central topic of these debates was the question of papal primacy, in terms
of both its origins and scope. As early as 1518, during Luther’s interview with
Cardinal Cajetan, it became apparent that this was the foundational issue under-
lying Luther’s critique of indulgences. Could the pope authorize a practice that
had only a dubious basis in the Bible or patristic tradition? Luther said no, argu-
ing that the pope had erred in this matter and required correction by appropriate
authorities.12 The pope’s representatives, however, vehemently disagreed. From
their perspective, questioning the validity of indulgences fundamentally chal-
lenged the sovereignty of the pope in terms of his ability to establish licit religious
practice, which would open up a potentially endless debate about all doctrine. As
such, the curia initiated a judicial process against Luther and his teachings, which
culminated in Luther’s excommunication in January 1521.13 This process also,
though, provided an ongoing impetus for the radicalization of Luther’s stance

10
  On the centrality of academic disputations within the Reformation generally, see: Marion
Hollerbach, Das Religionsgespräch als Mittel der konfessionellen und politischen Auseinandersetzung
im Deutschland des 16. Jahrhunderts (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1962); and Thomas Fuchs,
Konfession and Gespräch:  Typologie und Funktion der Religionsgespräche in der Reformationszeit
(Köln: Böhlau Verlag, 1995). Concerning Luther’s earliest academic debates and their role in the
dissemination of his ideas, see: Brecht, Martin Luther, pp. 307–​332; and Anselm Schubert, “Libertas
Disputandi: Luther und die Leipziger Disputation als akademisches Streitgespräch,” Zeitschrift für
Theologie und Kirche 105 (2008): 411–​4 42.
11
 Grane, Martinus Noster, p. 116.
12
  On the limited nature of Luther’s critique at this time, see: Hendrix, Luther and the Papacy,
pp. 68–​69; and Bagchi, Luther’s Earliest Opponents, p. 30.
13
  Pope Leo X attempted to forestall further discussion of indulgences with the bull Cum
Postquam, issued in November 1518, which threatened excommunication to anyone who ques-
tioned their validity. This bull did not silence Luther, however, which provided an impetus for the
beginnings of the judicial process against him. For the text of Cum Postquam, see: K. Aland and
C. Mirbt, ed. and trans., Quellen zur Geschichte des Papsttums und des Römischen Katholizismus, vol. 1
(Tübingen:  JCB Mohr, 1967), pp. 503–​504. On the heresy trial against Luther, see:  Remigius
Bäumer, ed., Lutherprozess und Lutherbann (Münster: Aschendorff, 1972); Borth, Die Luthersache,
pp. 45–​55; and Brecht, Martin Luther, pp. 232–​255.
154 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

vis-​à-​v is the papacy. Whereas his claims about the errancy of the papacy were
initially quite limited, the repeated assertions of the pope’s absolute theological
supremacy they engendered seemed to demonstrate a lack of accountability to,
and humility before, Christ and the Bible. It was this claim to unchecked author-
ity that ultimately spurred Luther toward the conclusion that the papacy was a
diabolical institution bent on the perversion and ultimate destruction of God’s
church on Earth.
The terms of this conflict were most clearly articulated in the debate between
Luther and Johannes Eck at Leipzig, which marked the climax of a struggle that
had begun the prior year.14 Luther and Eck had started a correspondence con-
cerning the implications of Luther’s teachings on indulgences in 1518, but their
exchange initially remained private. This debate was made public, however,
when Luther’s colleague at Wittenberg, Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt,
defended Luther in print by proposing 380 theses for debate against Eck. Eck
accepted Karlstadt’s invitation to a disputation, and Luther successfully bro-
kered an arrangement for this debate to take place in Leipzig. In preparation for
the confrontation, Eck published a series of twelve theses in December 1518. As
Eck himself would later concede, however, these proposals were not primarily
aimed at Karlstadt, but Luther.15 In particular, the last article that Eck proposed
sought to confront Luther’s teachings on papal primacy directly: “We deny that
the Roman church was not superior to all others before the time of Sylvester.”16
Luther responded to this provocation by inviting himself to Leipzig (technically
as a member of Karlstadt’s entourage) and publishing a series of counter-​t heses, in
which he explicitly denied the pope’s primacy: “That the Roman church is supe-
rior to all others is proved only by the entirely worthless decrees of the last 400
years, against which are the confirmed history of 1100 years, the text of divine
Scripture, and the decrees of Nicaea, the holiest of all councils.”17
These preliminary exchanges typified the broader dynamics of Luther’s con-
frontation with Catholic authorities in the first years of the Reformation, in

  For an overview of Eck’s life, see:  Erwin Iserloh, Johannes Eck (1486–​1543):  Scholastiker,
14

Humanist, Kontroverstheologe (Münster: Aschendorff, 1981). On his role in early Catholic polemics

against Luther and in defense of papal primacy, see: David Bagchi, “Luther’s Catholic Opponents,”
in The Reformation World, ed. A. Pettegree (New York: Routledge, 2000), pp. 97–​108.
15
  In a letter to Luther dated February 19, 1519, Eck admitted that: “Vides enim ex scheda dis-
putatoria, me non tam contra Bodenstein, quam contra tuas doctrinas propositiones posuisse.”
See: WABr 1, pp. 342–​3 43.
16
  Eck issued a second edition of his theses in March 1519, which included a thirteenth article
concerning indulgences. An edition of this later version is printed as: “Ecks dreizehn Thesen wider
Luther und Carlstadt” (March 14, 1519), in J. G. Walch, ed., Dr. Martin Luthers sämtliche Schriften,
vol. 18, 2nd ed. (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1880–​1910), pp. 713–​714, here p. 714.
17
  Martin Luther, Disputatio et excusatio F. Martini Luther adversus criminationes D. Iohannis Eccii
(1519) [WA 2, pp. 158–​161], p. 161.
 The Apocalyptic Witness 155

which viva voce confrontations were bookended by publications that placed the
matters under discussion before the public eye. Within that expansive and inclu-
sive gaze, matters of high theology became a topic of debate for people through-
out the Empire. Luther’s argument that papal supremacy was a relative novelty,
which he developed further in his published commentary on Eck’s final list of
thirteen theses for debate, was therefore aimed at a much larger audience than
just his Catholic interlocutors and judges18; it was directed toward the people of
the German lands, whom he hoped to convince that the papacy held no exclusive
prerogative for defining religious truth.
When Luther and Eck finally met at Leipzig on July 4, 1519, the starting point for
their debate was Eck’s contention that the papacy represented the “one monarchy
and supremacy established in the church of God by divine law and Christ” since
the time of Peter.19 Luther denied this claim, asserting that Rome had enjoyed no
primacy in the apostolic age and that Peter had not been acknowledged by Christ
as supreme among the apostles. Luther’s argument, however, opened him up to
an unexpected rejoinder. In response to these claims, Eck asserted that Luther
was merely repeating the false claims of John Wyclif and “the pestilent errors of
Jan Hus,” both of whom had argued that Peter had never been the head of the
universal church, that the sovereignty of the papacy had resulted from imperial
intervention, and that it was consequently not necessary for salvation to believe
in the primacy of the Roman church.20 In leveling this accusation against Luther,
Eck demonstrated considerable familiarity with Hus and Wyclif ’s writings, as
well as those of their Catholic opponents.21 His familiarity was not matched by
Luther’s, who reflexively denied that he held any positions in common with the
Bohemians, who “behave unjustly, because they separate themselves from our
unity[!]‌on their own authority.”22 This initial response showed that Eck had been
“able to broaden the field of debate in a way which obviously caught Luther unpre-
pared,” as Luther almost immediately backtracked from his flat rejection of Hus’s
teachings.23 Indeed, after a cursory examination of the decrees of the Council of

18
  Martin Luther, Resolutio Lutheriana super propositione sua decima tertia de potestate papae (1519)
[WA 2, 180–​2 40].
19
  Disputatio Lipsiae habita, pp. 255–​256. For an overview of Eck’s position on papal supremacy,
see: Remigius Bäumer, “Die Ekklesiologie bei Johannes Eck,” in Johannes Eck (1486–​1543) im Streit
der Jahrhunderte, ed. E. Iserloh (Münster: Aschendorff, 1988), pp. 129–​154, especially pp. 140–​142.
Cf. Bernhard Lohse, “Luther als Disputator,” in Evangelium in der Geschichte, ed. L. Grane et  al.
(Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1988), pp. 250–​2 64.
20
  Disputatio Lipsiae habita, p. 275.
21
  Eck cited, e.g., the official acts of the Councils of Constance and Basel, as well as the writings
of John of Ragusa, Nicholas Cusa, and St. Giovanni da Capistrano. See: Disputatio Lipsiae habita,
p. 283.
22
  Disputatio Lipsiae habita, p. 275.
23
  S. Harrison Thomson, “Luther and Bohemia,” ARG 44 (1953): 160–​181, p. 169.
156 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

Constance during a break in the debate, Luther concluded that “among the arti-
cles of Jan Hus and the Bohemians, many are clearly most Christian and evan-
gelical.”24 In clarifying his position, Luther emphasized that these articles had a
long genealogy within unimpeachable Catholic tradition. Thus, in affirming the
orthodoxy of Hus’s teaching that “the holy, universal church is one in number,
just as much as there is only one number of all the predestinate,” Luther argued
that this idea was not Hus’s, but was found repeatedly in the writings of both St.
Augustine and Peter Lombard.25
In accepting that Hus had held beliefs that were demonstrably orthodox,
Luther rejected the Council of Constance’s verdict against him, and thus called
the authority of the Council more generally into question. Luther tried to temper
these conclusions by condemning Hus’s Donatist tendencies and the Hussites’
heretical arrogance, but Eck dismissed these qualifications and concluded that
Luther had become an advocate of the Bohemians’ heresy.26 No matter how the
extent of Luther’s agreement with Hus at this moment is parsed, however, this
exchange pointed Luther toward the insight that he and Hus shared certain key
theological and ecclesiological positions, and that both of them had encountered
persecution for these beliefs. Luther’s experience at Leipzig also convinced him
that the highest institutions of the church, including the papacy and church
councils, were the vehicles of that persecution. Given this recognition, Luther
increasingly began to emphasize the Bible’s status as the sole binding authority
on Christian teaching and practice, with this early articulation of the sola scrip-
tura principle foreshadowing his imminent rejection of the institutional Church’s
authority in matters of faith. 27

Luther and Hus after Leipzig

The conclusion of the Leipzig Debate on July 14 was less an end than a begin-
ning. In the months and years following the disputation, the questions that were
raised there over the pope’s primacy, the nature of authority in the church, and the
relationship between Luther and Hus became central topics in a rapidly expand-
ing polemical exchange. In retrospect, the Leipzig Debate and its attendant
publications represented a watershed moment in the outbreak of the German
Reformation’s “pamphlet moment,” when an explosion of popular print put
Martin Luther at the front and center of the collective consciousness of the Holy

  Disputatio Lipsiae habita, p. 279.

24

  Disputatio Lipsiae habita, p. 287.

25

26
  Disputatio Lipsiae habita, p. 294.
27
  On the evolution of Luther’s thought concerning the centrality of scriptural authority, see
particularly: Hendrix, Luther and the Papacy, pp. 88–​89; and idem, “We Are All Hussites?” pp. 138ff.
 The Apocalyptic Witness 157

Roman Empire.28 Over 250 editions of Luther’s writings appeared in the year and
a half after the debate, giving Luther unprecedented celebrity and considerable
influence among the German reading public.29 This groundswell of literature
included a significant number of works by and about Jan Hus. Both his promi-
nence in the Leipzig Debate and Luther’s continued engagement with the impli-
cations of his teachings and death spurred the publication of Hus’s teachings, the
investigation of their evangelical bona fides, and the analysis of the significance of
Luther’s identification with them.
Luther himself did not have to seek out Hus’s writings. Rather, they landed
on his doorstep, as he explained to his friend and superior Johannes Staupitz in
a letter written on October 3, 1519. Luther reported that he had received two let-
ters from Prague, “along with a book by Jan Hus, which I have not yet read.”30
The letters, which had been sent by Jan Poduška, the pastor at the Týn Church
in Prague, and his vicar, Václav Roždalovský, were accompanied by a copy of
Hus’s On the Church. These Utraquist priests had heard of Luther’s advocacy for
Hus at Leipzig from a Czech known as Jakub the organist, who had been pres-
ent and had spoken with Luther.31 Both letters were valedictory in tone; Poduška,
for instance, addressed Luther as a “valiant hunter of pseudo-​apostles” who sought
to bring God’s word into the light, and he further assured Luther that the people
of Bohemia “are sustaining you with prayers both day and night.”32 In his letter,
Roždalovský expressed his hope that “what once Jan Hus was for Bohemia, you,
o Martin, can be for Saxony.”33 He also commended On the Church to Luther, enjoin-
ing him to read it closely “so that you might examine and judge who that man [Hus]

28
 This term comes from:  Andrew Pettegree, Reformation and the Culture of Persuasion
(New York: Cambridge UP, 2005), pp. 163–​170. On the dynamics of this explosive growth in print-
ing, see also the discussion between Bernd Moeller, Tom Brady, Steven Ozment, and Bob Scribner
in:  P. Alter et  al., eds., Stadtbürgertum und Adel in der Reformation:  Studien zur Sozialgeschichte der
Reformation in England und Deutschland (Stuttgart: Klett-​Cotta, 1979), pp. 25–​79.
29
  On the explosion of pamphlet literature in the 1520s, see the works by Hans-​Joachim Köhler
summarizing the findings of his research institute at Tübingen on German pamphlet literature
in the first third of the sixteenth century:  “The Flugschriften and Their Importance in Religious
Debate: A Quantitative Approach,” in Astrologi hallucinati: Stars and the End of the World in Luther’s
Time, ed. P. Zambelli (New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1986), pp. 153–​175; and “Fragestellungen und
Methoden zur Interpretation frühneuzeitlicher Flugschriften,” in Flugschriften als Massenmedium
der Reformationszeit, ed. H. J. Köhler (Stuttgart: Klett-​Cotta, 1981), pp. 1–​27. Cf. Mark Edwards,
Jr., Printing, Propaganda, and Martin Luther (Berkeley: U. of California Press, 1994), pp. 17–​25; and
John Flood, “The Book in Reformation Germany,” in The Reformation and the Book, ed. K. Maag
(Brookfield, VT: Ashgate, 1998), pp. 21–​103.
30
  Martin Luther, “Letter to Johannes Staupitz” (Oct. 3, 1519) in WABr 1, pp. 513–​517, p. 514.
31
  Thomson, “Luther and Bohemia,” p. 170.
32
  Jan Poduška, “Letter to Martin Luther” (July 17, 1519), in WABr 1, pp. 416–​418, p. 418.
33
  Václav Roždalovský, “Letter to Martin Luther” (July 17, 1519) in WABr 1, pp. 419–​420,
p. 420.
158 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

was, not from rumor or the wicked decrees of the Council of Constance, but from the
true likeness of his own soul, that is, from his books.”34
Luther’s evaluation of Hus’s “true likeness” was enthusiastic, to put it mildly. In
a letter to George Spalatin written in February 1520, Luther famously averred that
“without knowing it, we are all Hussites.”35 And while Luther’s self-​identification
with Hus here obscured the significant differences between the two men’s theology,
this letter did indicate that Luther had embraced the affinities to the Bohemian her-
esiarch that he had initially rejected at Leipzig.36 During 1520, two editions of On
the Church were published in Hagenau and Basel, and the appearance of these texts
enabled others to evaluate (or even emulate) Luther’s conclusion.37 Indeed, the pub-
lication of this work allowed a host of humanists, preachers, and political leaders to
assess the emergent pedigree of Luther’s religious critique and determine whether its
potential consequences—​in terms of separation from Rome and possible political
discord—​were desirable. For good or for ill, De Ecclesia allowed the broader reading
public to judge what relationship Luther had with Jan Hus, and whether Hus had
been a champion of the Gospel or its most dangerous opponent.
The 1520 editions of On the Church seemed to present the text in a disinterested
manner, thus allowing an unbiased judgment of its contents. The books were pub-
lished without polemical introductions or prologues, and their title pages, which
did not mention Hus by name, contained the simple epigraph: “I beg you, my kind
reader, to attend not to who speaks, but to what is said.”38 This appeal to neutrality
frayed almost immediately, however, in the index which followed the title page
and provided a means of entry into the following text. It was in this reader’s guide
to On the Church that the book’s publishers both embedded Hus’s book in the
polemical exchanges that emerged from Leipzig and took a decisive, if implicit,
stand on the value of its arguments. There were, of course, many seemingly neu-
tral entries in the index, asking “If Peter is the head of the Church,” or “By which
means the Roman church has primacy.” There were also, however, charged head-
ings that asserted that:  “A licentious pope is a heretic”; “It is not necessary to
obey the pope’s subordinates in all things”; and “The pope is able to err.”39 This

  Roždalovský, “Letter to Luther,” p. 419.

34

  Martin Luther, “Letter to George Spalatin” (Feb., 1520) in WABr 2, pp. 40–​42, p. 42.
35

36
  On the theological differences that this affirmation obscured, see:  Hendrix, “We are all
Hussites”; and Oberman, “Hus and Luther,” especially pp. 157–​158.
37
  Jan Hus, De Causa Bohemica (Hagenau: Thomas Anshelm, 1520); and Jan Hus, Liber Egregius
de unitate Ecclesiae, Cuius autor periit in concilio Constantiensi (Basel: Adam Petri, 1520). Luther, in
a letter to George Spalatin (March 19, 1520), noted that the Anshelm edition had been issued in
a large print run of 2,000 copies, indicating an expectation of considerable commercial appeal.
See: WABr 2, p. 72.
38
 Hus, Liber Egregius, p. A1r. The title page is not numbered in De Causa Bohemica.
39
  The index precedes the actual text of De Ecclesia in each edition. It is unpaged in De Causa
Bohemica, and numbered pp. A1v.–​A4v. in the Liber Egregius.
 The Apocalyptic Witness 159

anti-​papal rhetoric situated Hus’s book within the debates that raged across the
German lands in 1520 and enabled De Ecclesia to serve as a closely argued, exhaus-
tively researched handbook of anti-​papal arguments for Luther and likeminded
authors. This book also established Hus as an intellectual authority among those
critical of Rome, whose writings foregrounded the arguments that Luther was
developing against the Catholic Church. Despite his official status as a heretic and
his unofficial place among the great enemies of the German people, then, by the
end of 1520 Hus had also become ensconced within the nascent German reform
movement as a forerunner of Martin Luther.
Luther strengthened this association in a number of his essential writings from
1520. In particular, Luther referred to Hus’s fate as a means of bolstering the Address
to the Christian Nobility’s central argument that the secular nobility must exercise
their traditional prerogatives to oversee the reform of the Church.40 In the Address,
Luther specifically asserted that the German nobility should convene a Church
council that would act to break down the “walls” that the papacy and curia had
constructed to insulate themselves from reform.41 As a means of legitimizing this
aristocratic reform, Luther highlighted twenty-​seven abuses and injustices that the
papacy had proven unable or unwilling to address. Many of the articles rehearsed
issues that Luther had raised at Leipzig, such as the proliferation of financial instru-
ments that enriched the papacy, the pope’s demands for obedience, and his claims
to temporal power. But among these familiar complaints, Luther also included
a potentially surprising demand. In the twenty-​fourth article, he asserted: “It is
high time to take up earnestly and truthfully the cause of the Bohemians to unite
them with ourselves.” He noted that the Germans must accept that Hus had been
burned in violation of an imperial safe-​conduct, and that as a consequence “God’s
commandment was broken and the Bohemians aroused to great anger.”42 Luther
absolved Emperor Sigismund in this matter, however, and instead blamed the
Council for forcing him to become an oath breaker. The injustice here was two-​
fold. In the first place, Luther affirmed that Hus had been executed, although “my
understanding has not been able to find any error in him.” Secondly, the Council
had overstepped its jurisdiction and rendered a sovereign’s decree of safe passage
non-​binding, thus creating a dangerous precedent for allowing the Church to
determine the validity of political agreements and promises.43

40
  This book was immediately popular, and went through at least fourteen editions in the first
two years of its publication. See:  Martin Luther, An den christlichen Adel deutscher Nation von des
Christlichen Standes Besserung (Wittenberg: Melchior Lotther, 1520) [WA 6, 381–​4 69].
41
 Luther, An den christlichen Adel, pp. 406–​4 07.
42
 Luther, An den christlichen Adel, pp. 454.
43
  Luther also argued that the papacy continued to sow discord among kings as a means of
strengthening itself, citing the contemporary example of Pope Julius II’s encouraging conflict
between Emperor Maximilian and King Louis of France. See:  Luther, An den christlichen Adel,
pp. 453–​454.
160 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

This line of argumentation represented a new use of Hus in Luther’s polemics.

His trial and death here represented not only a diabolical suppression of religious
truth, but also a usurpation of secular leaders’ political prerogatives and honor.
It was therefore up to Luther’s contemporaries to take action and eliminate this
tyrannical exercise of power within the Church. Luther reiterated this point in
apocalyptic terms, so as to make the urgency of reform quite clear: “If there were
nothing else to show that the Pope is Antichrist, this would be enough. Do you
hear this, O Pope? You are not most holy, but the most sinful … Through your
mouth and pen Satan lies as he never lied before, teaching you to twist and pervert
the Scriptures according to your arbitrary will.”44 This declaration of the pope’s
identity as Antichrist was new for Luther in 1520, but this theme would pervade
his rhetoric in the coming years. And within this apocalyptic polemic, Jan Hus
remained a key reference point for Luther’s developing case against the Roman
Antichrist. Just as the ongoing persecution of Luther provided evidence that the
Catholic Church’s hierarchy had been subverted by Antichrist, so Hus’s execu-
tion could serve as a terminus a quo for the recrudescence of this “abomination of
desolation.”45
Luther’s fears regarding the subversion of the papacy seemed to have been
borne out when Pope Leo X issued Exsurge Domine in June 1520, a bull condemn-
ing forty-​one of Luther’s teachings. This bull decried Luther’s revival of the her-
esies “of the Greeks and Bohemians,” which he had embraced “at the suggestion
of the enemy of humankind, so they have been awakened anew and sown in our
time among the more credulous people in the renowned German nation.”46 More
generally, the bull condemned Luther’s willingness to place his own capacity to
assess divine truth, and to determine who articulated it, on par with those of the
Church and its highest authorities.47 Luther initially responded to Exsurge Domine
with two texts, the vernacular Against the Bull of Antichrist and the Latin Against the
Accursed Bull of Antichrist.48 As the titles suggest, in these tracts Luther hammered
home the diabolical identification of the pope: “I consider whoever was the author

 Luther, An den christlichen Adel, p. 453.

44

  On the intensification and crystallization of Luther’s Antichrist language and the papacy,
45

see: Hans Hillerbrand, “Von Polemik zur Verflachung: zur Problematik des Antichrist-​Mythos in

Reformation und Gegenreformation,” Zeitschrift für Religions und Geistesgeschichte 47 (1995): 114–​
125; and Hendrix, Luther and the Papacy, pp. 112ff.
46
  For a full text of Exsurge Domine, see: Quellen zur Geschichte des Papsttums, vol. 1, pp. 504–​513;
this quotation, p. 505.
47
  This point is made forcefully by Susan Schreiner, with specific reference to the specter of
Hus in these arguments, in her: Are You Alone Wise? The Search for Certainty in the Early Modern Era
(New York, 2011), pp. 137–​165.
48
  The Latin version, Adversus execrabilem Antichristi bullam (Melchior Lotther:  Wittenberg,
1520) [WA 6, pp. 595–​612], was also published in Augsburg and Basel. Wider die Bulle des Endchrists
(Melchior Lotther, Wittenberg, 1520) [WA 6, pp. 613–​629] also appeared in Strasbourg and Baden.
 The Apocalyptic Witness 161

of this bull [Exsurge] to be the Antichrist, and I write against that Antichrist, hav-
ing recovered the truth of Christ, which is in me, and that he is trying to destroy.”49
Luther repeated this very point in the concluding line to the German version of
this text, stating: “The pope is God’s enemy, the persecutor of Christ who disturbs
Christendom, and the true Antichrist.”50
Luther augmented these highly reactionary responses to Exsurge with a more
measured and exhaustive text in 1521, the Defense and Explanation of All the Articles.51
This treatise was a point-​by-​point justification of the forty-​one articles condemned
in Exsurge, but Luther still incorporated some sharp polemic alongside the more
substantive treatment of the papacy’s response to his teaching. Particularly relevant
was Luther’s discussion of Hus, whom Luther had described as having been killed
by “heretics, apostates, and antichristians.” Luther now expanded on this accusa-
tion against the Church by noting that he had “retracted” his partial defense of Hus
that had been condemned by the pope in Exsurge. Now, in contrast, he would defend
all of Hus’s teachings as “altogether Christian, and I confess that the pope with his
followers acted in this matter like the true Antichrist, condemning the holy gospel
along with Hus, and placing the teaching of the hellish dragon in its place.”52
Even as Luther praised Hus in this work for opposing the Roman Antichrist
and beginning “to present the gospel” in the world, he also lamented that Hus
“did not deny that the pope was the highest [religious authority] in the world.”53
This limitation on Hus’s critique of the Church, however, created a space for
Luther to work, a vacuum of unrealized reformist potential that the Wittenberg
professor and his collaborators could fill. From Luther’s perspective, that work
had begun with the indulgence controversy and the confrontation at Leipzig,
where the pope’s supporters had revealed themselves to be intransigent oppo-
nents of reform. It had progressed through the exchange of texts that took place in
Leipzig’s wake, as Luther sought to undercut the legitimacy of papal primacy and
the pope’s subsequent responses served only to confirm his identity as Antichrist.
In his Defense and Explanation, Luther commented that although he had already
“done five times more” in opposition to the papal Antichrist than Hus, “I still fear
that I do too little.”54 What Luther had undoubtedly done, however, was broad-
cast a debate about authority in the Church across the Empire and place his con-
flict with Rome at the center of public consciousness. Unintentionally, or at least

49
 Luther, Adversus execrabilem Antichristi bullam, p. 598.
50
 Luther, Wider die Bulle, p. 629.
51
  Grund und Ursach aller Artikel D.  Martin Luthers, so durch römische Bull unrechtlich verdammt
sind initially appeared in two editions, both published in 1521, printed by Melchior Lotther in
Wittenberg and in Augsburg by Jörg Nabler. See: WA 7, pp. 299–​457.
52
 Luther, Grund und Ursach, p. 431.
53
 Ibid.
54
 Luther, Grund und Ursach, p. 433.
162 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

unwillingly, Catholic authors had aided and abetted the eruption of this theologi-
cal dispute into the public square. In the texts that accompanied Leipzig, as well
as those that followed the promulgation of Exsurge Domine, the “Luther affair” had
become everyone’s affair. Even the final excommunication of Luther in the bull
Decet Romanum Pontificem on January 3, 1521 could not silence the debate that
had raged across the “polity of publication” for the previous two years. 55 Rather,
the task of defusing Luther’s critique devolved to a group of Catholic polemicists
who sought to tarnish Luther’s reputation by emphasizing his dependence on the
diabolical heretics of the past, most notably Jan Hus.

The Politics of Precedents: Luther

and Hus in Catholic Polemic
The threat of political chaos and the heretical continuity of his teachings: through-
out the earliest years of the Reformation, these were the leitmotifs of Catholic
polemics against Luther. Beginning at Leipzig, where Duke George of Saxony
responded in horror to Luther’s attempts at rehabilitating Hus, and continuing up
to the Diet of Worms in 1521, where the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V placed
Luther under the imperial ban, many political leaders reacted negatively to the
proposed reforms of Martin Luther and their apparent roots in Hussite Bohemia. 56
It was particularly at Worms, where Luther undertook his dramatic profession of
faith before Emperor Charles V and then disappeared from public view into the
safety of the Wartburg, that Hus loomed as a possible precedent for Luther. On
the one hand, the Catholic theologians and political leaders at the Diet certainly
considered Luther’s refusal to recant his heretical ideas akin to that of Hus and
evidence of a similar desire to undermine worldly authority. Indeed, the emper-
or’s final edict against Luther, dated May 8, directly accused the Saxon professor
of holding the Bohemians’ eucharistic and ecclesiological heresies, condemning
the Council of Constance as the “synagogue of Satan,” and “boasting that if Hus
was a heretic, then he was ten times the heretic.”57 On the other hand, Luther’s
supporters considered his hearing to be parallel to that of Christ before Caiaphas,
Annas, and Pilate, even penning a passion narrative for Luther that culminated in

55
  For a full text of Decet Romanum Pontificem, see: Quellen zur Geschichte des Papsttums, vol. 1,
pp. 513–​515.
56
  Luther had initially appealed to the emperor in 1520 to protest his orthodoxy. Charles agreed
to hear Luther’s appeal, and he issued an imperial safe conduct for Luther’s journey to the impe-
rial diet held at Worms in April, 1521. On the preparations for Worms, see: Borth, Die Luthersache,
pp. 99–​125; Fuchs, Konfession und Gespräch, pp. 187–​199; and Brecht, Martin Luther, pp. 413–​453.
57
  The Edict of Worms was printed many times throughout the Empire, but I refer here to an
edition that appeared as: Edictum Imperiale Caroli V. contra M Lutherum (Cologne: n.p., 1521). These
citations: pp. a4v–​b2r.
 The Apocalyptic Witness 163

the burning of his books, rather than his person. 58 Given that Luther’s appearance
before the emperor was even preceded by an extended debate about whether or
not a safe conduct could be valid if it were offered to a heretic, an explicit echo of
Hus’s trial a century earlier, it is unsurprising that Luther’s hearing at Worms was
considered a near rehearsal of Hus’s trial at Constance, with the obvious excep-
tion of the hearing’s direct outcome.
If anything, Luther’s survival at Worms only heightened imperial and Catholic
anxieties over his incipient movement. Considering that Hus, who had been
silenced relatively quickly, had spawned a movement that caused (at least indi-
rectly) the death of the Bohemian king, a decade of disastrous holy war, and the
Hussites’ rampage to the shores of the Baltic in the so-​called Glorious Campaign
of 1429–​1430, the claim that “we are all Hussites” was truly terrifying to many
leaders’ ears. Catholic authors played upon these fears, and in doing so they also
tried to cancel out the appeal of Luther’s 1520 Address to the German Nobility.
A  number of Catholic texts from the early 1520s therefore broadcast the asso-
ciation of Luther with Hus while emphasizing its potentially destructive political
ramifications.
Johannes Eck, following up on his efforts in Leipzig, was responsible for the
first of these texts. As early as July of 1519, he wrote to Luther’s patron, Elector
Frederick the Wise of Saxony, asking him to repudiate Luther and eliminate
local heresy before it could take root and do lasting damage to the German lands.59
He also published a short treatise defending the Council of Constance’s verdict on
Hus, as well as the secular powers’ role in his execution, in order to demonstrate that
Luther’s rejection of the Council’s judgment would bring “the shame of perjury” on
all faithful Germans and suborn the imperial and ecclesiastical authorities whose
participation had validated the trial.60 Eck’s polemics were complemented by voices
emerging from the university in Leipzig and Duke George of Saxony’s court, most
notably that of Hieronymus Emser, the duke’s chaplain. With financial support from

58
  This pamphlet appeared twice, as:  Doctor Mar. Luthers Passio durch Marcellum beschrieben
(Augsburg: S. Grimm, 1521); and as: Ain schöner newer Passion (Augsburg: M. Ramminger, 1521).
An English translation of the text is available in: Roland Bainton, “The Man of Sorrows in Dürer
and Luther,” in idem, Studies in the Reformation (Boston: Beacon Press, 1963), pp. 51–​61, pp. 54–​58.
Cf. Robert Scribner, “The Incombustible Luther:  The Image of the Reformer in Early Modern
Europe,” Past and Present 110 (1986): 38–​68, pp. 39–​41.
59
  The content of this letter, which Eck wrote on July 22, 1519, spurred Luther and Karlstadt
to pen a joint defense of their teachings to Frederick, which he accepted as sufficient proof of their
continued orthodoxy and defense of Saxony’s best interest. These letters are printed sequentially
(along with a brief response by Frederick to Eck) in: WABr 1, pp. 459–​4 62 and 465–​478.
60
  Johannes Eck, Des heilgen Concilii tzu Costentz der heylgen Christenheit und hochlöblichen keys-
sers Sigmunds und auch des Teutzschen Adels entschüdigung (Leipzig: Martin Landsberg, 1520). See
the modern edition in: A. Laube and U. Weiss, eds. and trans., Flugschriften gegen die Reformation,
1518–​1524 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1997), pp. 127–​141, here p. 136.
164 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

George, Emser began to publish in defense of Eck and against Luther in August 1519.
His earliest work took the form of a public letter to the Catholic minority in Prague.
This work garnered a critical response from Luther in September, which both Eck
and Emser responded to by the end of the year.61 This flurry of publication ensured
that the regional reading public was aware of the Leipzig Debate, in terms of both
its actual content and its implications for Luther’s schism with the Church. These
texts also affirmed that the history of the Bohemian reformation would be mean-
ingful in the unfolding of its German counterpart, as the possibility of Luther’s ally-
ing with Hus’s heirs and forming an early modern “axis of evil” between Wittenberg
and Prague came to occupy a central place in these polemics. Conversely, though,
Emser’s and Eck’s campaign against Luther also demonstrated how a sustained col-
laboration between Catholic rulers and polemicists could effectively counter the
influence of Luther’s incipient reform movement, as witnessed by Emser’s contin-
ued output against Luther and the inability of the evangelicals to gain traction in
George’s territory.62
Ironically, given the later history of his reign, the next ruler to engage in the war
of words with Luther was England’s King Henry VIII, who authorized his primary
representative in Rome, John Clerk, to present Henry’s Defense of the Seven Sacraments
against Martin Luther to the pope in 1521.63 Although modern scholars question how
much of this text was actually written by the English king, there is no doubt that
he endorsed its contents.64 The Defense was primarily intended to uphold the tradi-
tional sacramental theology of the Church; in light of this focus, Luther’s rhetorical

61
  The specific addressee of this letter was the administrator of the diocese of Leitomyšl, Jan
Zak. After Leipzig, Emser engaged in a correspondence with Zak to assure him of ducal Saxony’s
continued support against Luther and the Utraquists. Emser’s first letter was published (in a print
run of 1,000 copies) with George’s support as: De disputatione Lipsicensi, quantum ad Boemos obiter
deflexa est (Leipzig, Melchior Lotter, 1519). This text, along with Luther’s reply and Emser’s sub-
sequent rejoinder, has been published in: Ludwig Enders, ed., Luther und Emser: Ihre Streitschriften
aus dem Jahre 1521, 2 vols. (Halle:  Max Niemeyer, 1889). On George’s opposition to Luther,
see: Christoph Volkmar, Reform statt Reformation: Die Kirchenpolitik Herzog Georgs von Sachsen 1488–​
1525 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), especially pp. 453–​4 65.
62
  The major themes of this debate are summarized and analyzed in:  Heribert Smolinsky,
Augustin von Alveldt und Hieronymus Emser:  Eine Untersuchung zur Kontroverstheologie der frühen
Reformationszeit in Herzogtum Sachsen (Münster: Aschendorff, 1983), especially pp. 38ff. and 223ff.
Cf. Volkmar, Reform statt Reformation, p. 454.
63
  Henry’s text has been edited by: Pierre Fraenkel, ed., Heinrich VIII.: Assertio septem sacramen-
torum adversus Martinum Lutherum (Münster:  Aschendorff, 1992). This work was intended to be
a refutation of Luther’s On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church, which Henry received and read
in April 1521. On Henry’s reaction to Luther, see: Erwin Doernberg, Henry VIII and Luther: An
Account of their Personal Relations (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1961); and Richard Rex, “The English
Campaign against Luther in the 1520s,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Fifth Series
39 (1989): 85–​106.
64
  Preserved Smith, “Luther and Henry VIII,” The English Historical Review 25 (1910): 656–​6 69;
and Doernberg, Henry VIII and Luther, pp. 20–​23.
 The Apocalyptic Witness 165

association with the Bohemians and their insistence on lay communion in both
kinds came to the fore.65 Indeed, even in the dedicatory address to Pope Leo X, Clerk
asserted that Luther’s sacramental teachings were “born in the den of the Hussites’
heresy,” and that the Hussites were Luther’s “parents and wet nurse.”66 Clerk also
stated that Luther had surpassed his predecessors “in spirit and iniquity,” but had
“added more poison” to their doctrines and had made himself an even greater threat
to the Church than the Bohemian heretics.67 The body of the Defense itself contin-
ued in this vein, accusing Luther of appealing to the Bohemians, “whose perfidy he
had previously detested,” in case he was forced to flee from Saxony to Prague.68 In
King Henry’s view, Luther was simply preparing to return to the breast that had first
suckled him.
Henry’s treatise was considered to be a great success, earning him the title of
“Defender of the Faith” from the pope, and it was quickly translated and pub-
lished in two German editions by Emser and Thomas Murner.69 The Defense also
helped to establish a model for Catholic polemics that emphasized the heretical
genealogy that had spawned Luther’s confrontation with Rome, a template that
was fleshed out and articulated in a more systematic manner throughout the early
1520s. David Bagchi has argued that Catholic polemicists expounded upon this
genealogy in order to bolster the authority of the pope’s condemnation of Luther
in Exsurge Domine. According to him, the validity of that text was widely ques-
tioned by authors on both sides of the nascent confessional divide, largely because
it appeared to condemn statements supported by the Bible and patristic sources.
As such, Catholic polemicists attempted to link Luther’s doctrines to those of
earlier heretics, so that the universally recognized condemnation of their errors
would apply to Luther by a sort of transitive logic.70
In one pamphlet that was representative of this larger trend, for instance, enti-
tled The Articles and Origins of the Waldensians, the Poor of Lyons, John Wycliffe, and

65
  Luther had taken a careful stance on the issue of communion in both kinds since 1519, when
his published sermon On the Blessed Sacrament of the Holy and True Body of Christ and the Brotherhoods
[WA 2:742–​758] asserted that it would be proper for a church council to grant the cup to the laity.
Despite this qualification, Luther’s teaching on the sacrament was linked to Utraquism by his
opponents, and Luther was forced to differentiate his stance from that of the Utraquists in 1520’s
Explanation of Some Articles in his Sermon on the Holy Sacrament [WA 6:78–​83]. On Luther’s develop-
ing stance toward communion in both kinds, see: Brecht, Martin Luther, pp. 341–​3 48.
66
 Fraenkel, Assertio septem sacramentorum, pp. 107 and 109.
67
 Fraenkel, Assertio septem sacramentorum, p. 109.
68
 Fraenkel, Assertio septem sacramentorum, p. 136.
69
 Hieronymus Emser, trans., Schutz und handthabung der siben Sacrament Wider Martinum
Luther (Augsburg: Johann Schönsperger, 1522); and Thomas Murner, trans., Bekennung der sieben
Sakramente wider Martinum Lutherum (Strasbourg: Johann Grüninger, 1522). Cf. Doernberg, Henry
VIII, pp. 1–​2 6.
70
 David Bagchi, “Defining Heresies:  Catholic Heresiologies, 1520–​50,” in Discipline and
Diversity, ed. K. Cooper and J. Gregory (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2007), pp. 241–​251.
166 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

Jan Hus, Luther was enrolled in a so-​called “school of knaves” whose teachings had
alternately inspired and resuscitated each other. Just as Wyclif had been instructed
by the Waldensians, and Hus had subsequently been “trained and poisoned” by
the teachings of Wyclif, so Luther had learned to reject the authority of the Roman
Church and the validity of its sacraments from all his predecessors.71 This text was
impressive in its knowledge of the heresies that it condemned. The author was
familiar with the historical claims of the Poor of Lyon vis-​à-​v is the corruption of
the Church at the time of Constantine and with the Waldensians’ emphasis on the
apostolic life and their Donatist positions concerning the purity of the clergy. The
pamphlet rightly highlighted Wyclif’s belief in remanence, although it mirrored
the Council of Constance’s (mis)attribution of this teaching to Hus as well. The
author also correctly emphasized Hus’s and Wyclif’s insistence that “it is not nec-
essary to salvation to believe that the Roman Church is the highest among the
churches,” which echoed Eck’s first accusations of Hussitism against Luther.72
The pamphlet incorporated other tropes from the Reformation polemics of the
early 1520s as well. In particular, it drew attention to the heretical origins of the
idea that “the Roman church is a synagogue of the devil,” and that ecclesiastical
sanctions did not matter because the prelates of the church constituted “the court
of the Antichrist.”73 Essentially, polemical ideas that circulated widely during the
pamphlet war between Luther and his Catholic opponents here became the cur-
riculum of a heretical school that had existed for over 350 years. Interestingly, this
text never mentioned Luther by name as the most recent champion of these ideas.
Rather, it used the echoes of earlier accusations and the repetition of common
themes to present Luther’s guilt by association. This anonymous text was also writ-
ten in a dispassionate tone, so that the medieval heretics condemned themselves
with their own words. The Articles and Origins thus seemed entirely transparent,
and the doctrines it put on display so self-​evidently deviant, that any defense of
them could only be taken as an obdurate return to acknowledged heresies.
What this text left implicit, though, many others took pains to demonstrate
explicitly and exhaustively. Hieronymus Emser, for example, during his run-
ning polemical battle with Luther from 1521, accused Luther of both specifically
resurrecting Hus from the ashes of his pyre and trying to revive the heresies of
Wyclif, Pelagius, Arius, and the Manicheans.74 Luther’s preference for heretics

  Artikel und ursprung der waldenser, und der armen von Lugdum, auch Joannis wicleffen und Joannis
71

Hussen (Nurenberg: Jobst Gutknecht, 1524), p. B1v.

72
  Artikel und ursprung, p. B2r.
73
  Artikel und urpsrung, pp. B1v and B3r.
74
  In late 1520, Emser had first written against Luther’s Address to the German Nobility. Luther
responded with a polemical work, To the Goat in Leipzig (Emser’s crest featured a goat’s head), to
which Emser replied with: To the Bull in Wittenberg (Leipzig: n.p., 1521). A modern edition of this
text is available in: Luther und Emser, vol. 2, pp. 3–​8 .
 The Apocalyptic Witness 167

over the true teachers of the Church made him, in Emser’s eyes, the Antichrist
who desired to transform his “idol” Hus into a saint, “and thus turn many pure
men into murderers and tyrants.” 75 Emser’s treatment of Luther and his anteced-
ents was pointed, but not as systematic as the anonymous Articles and Origins.
Johannes Eck, though, in his Enchiridion of Commonplaces against the Lutherans,
organized the accusations of polemicists like Emser into a guidebook that went
through over ninety editions in the sixteenth century.76 In this work, Eck arranged
a host of biblical, patristic, and canonical sources under twenty-​seven headings
that could be used to refute Lutheran arguments against Catholic religious prac-
tices, sacramental theology, and ecclesiology. Significantly, both the first (“on the
Church and her authority”) and last (“That we ought not dispute with heretics”)
chapters of this work contain lists of heretics whose teachings were resurrected by
Luther.77 These genealogical bookends established the idea that the condemna-
tions and refutations of earlier heretics by figures like Augustine could serve the
same purpose in the sixteenth century. Indeed, Eck ended his text with a letter
to the bishop of Verona asking him to support the “heroic and most Christian
defenders” of the Church against Luther, who represented the last head of the
heretical “hydra” that had attacked the Church from its beginnings.78 With this
image, Eck evoked a fundamental contrast between the collective, unitary body
of orthodox Catholic doctrine espoused by a group of doughty polemical warriors
and the poisonous teachings of a slippery, seemingly undying lineage of heretics
which they opposed.
The Catholic campaign to identify Luther as the heir of earlier heresiarchs
was perhaps best exemplified in the work of the Cologne theology professor and
inquisitor Bernhard von Luxemburg, whose Catalogue of All Heretics was printed
no fewer than a half-​dozen times in the 1520s.79 The Catalogue comprised four
books: the first was a general description, based on biblical and patristic sources,
of the nature of heretics; the second and third books comprised the eponymous
catalogue of three hundred heretics from the history of the Church, arranged

75
  These quotations were from a third text by Emser directed at Luther:  Auff den Stieres zu
Wiettenberg weittende replica (Leipzig: Martin Landsberg, 1521), in Luther und Emser, vol. 2, pp. 27–​
44, pp. 39–​4 0.
76
 Johannes Eck, Enchiridion locorum communium adversus Lutteranos (Landshut:  Johann
Wiessenburger, 1525). The frontispiece for this edition featured an image of the Virgin Mary and
an epigraph from Ephesians 6:16, “With all this take up the shield of faith, with which you can
extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one.”
77
 Eck’s concluding list included:  Arius, Mani, Jovinian, Eutyches, the Albigensians,
Waldensians, John Wyclif, and Jan Hus. See: Eck, Enchiridion, p. K1v.
78
 Eck, Enchiridion, p. K2v.
79
  Bernhard von Luxemburg, Catalogus haereticorum omnium pene, qui a scriptoribus passim literis
proditi sunt (Köln: Eucharius Cervicornus, 1522). The book was reprinted in Cologne three times
(1523. 1525, and 1529), in Paris (1524), and Strasbourg (1527) during the decade.
168 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

alphabetically; and the Catalogue’s fourth book brought Bernhard’s history of her-
esy into the contemporary age. In thirteen chapters, he exhaustively identified
and refuted the errors of Martin Luther, and in doing so he reaffirmed Luther’s
essential continuity with the most dangerous opponents that the Church had
faced in its history.
Throughout the Catalogue, Bernhard described heretics in bestial terms. They
were “little foxes … having different faces, but bound together by their burning
tails, which represent the flames of arrogant vanity.”80 Heretics were also wolves
circling a flock, filthy pigs, cruel lions, and “ancient and twisted serpents, lying
hidden in the darkness of caverns, unable to bear the bright light” of true faith.81
All of these comparisons showed that heretics were bereft of human understand-
ing, as well as motivated by cruelty, lust, greed, and the irrational impulse to
destroy Christ’s church. Despite the threat posed by heretics, Bernhard offered
reason for hope:

In the earliest storms of the nascent church, ferocious beasts tried to

destroy the leading men of the Christian religion with the weapons of
faithlessness, but were frustrated, for wisdom conquers malice, Christ
conquers the world, and sincere truth conquers the darkness of empty
pride . . . and so the heretics died in their foolishness. 82

Bernhard characterized Luther as the heir of these heretics, who “had become
angels of darkness” and faded into oblivion. The key here for Bernhard was to
demonstrate that Catholic truth “was the conqueror of all things”—​a suggestive
echo of the Hussite slogan—​and therefore to prove that Luther would necessar-
ily join the company of condemned and forgotten heretics when God willed it.83
In speaking of Hus and his followers, who occupied a primary place in the
second and third books of the Catalogue, Bernhard developed his earlier serpen-
tine metaphor to describe their heresy. Bernhard referred to Hus himself as the
“mother” of Bohemian error and an evil serpent, “a viper begetting vipers.”84 Hus’s
brood included Jerome of Prague, Jakoubek of Stříbro, Jan Žižka, Jan Želivský,
Jan Rokycana, Nicholas Biskupec, and Peter Payne, all of whom received sepa-
rate entries in the catalogue, as did the Hussites collectively. Bernhard also
placed Luther metaphorically among Hus’s progeny, because just as Prague

  Bernhard borrowed this image from Judges 15, in which Samson destroyed the Philistines’
80

fields by tying pairs of foxes’ tails together, lighting them on fire, and setting them loose among the
fields. See: Bernhard von Luxemburg, Catalogus, p. B4r.
81
  Bernhard von Luxemburg, Catalogus, p. A3v.
82
  Bernhard von Luxemburg, Catalogus, p. A2r.
83
 Ibid.
84
  Bernhard von Luxemburg, Catalogus, p. F4r.
 The Apocalyptic Witness 169

(“Praga”) was made corrupt (“prava”) by Hus, so Luther had maliciously trans-
formed Wittenberg into “Viperberg,” perverting its university and ruler as Hus
had done.85 Bernhard further asserted that Luther was merely “an imitator of old
errors,” who “was trying to revive the old, burned stalks of the Bohemians” in
order to overthrow the Roman church. According to Bernhard, however, this
renewed attack was destined to fail, as “the Roman church has succumbed to no
heresies, and he who holds the faith that the Roman church holds need not fear.”86
All of these texts asserted that Martin Luther was the heir apparent of earlier
heretics, and their authors took for granted that this comparison would elicit “the
opprobrium and contempt traditionally felt for earlier heretics by ‘good Christian’
society.”87 This assumption of an audience’s disdain for deviance, however, proved
to be faulty, as it did not take sufficient account of the new religious realities of
the 1520s. At this moment in history, the sympathies of “good” Christians had
become alienated from the institutional Church to an almost unprecedented
extent. Indeed, the Church’s moral authority had been undermined to such a
degree that medieval heretics were retroactively lionized by virtue of the Church’s
condemnation alone. Catholic publications concerning Hus and Luther therefore
opened a Pandora’s Box of historical reinterpretation by highlighting the geneal-
ogy of Luther’s dissent. Certainly Luther had been inspired and informed by medi-
eval heretics, but their teachings could no longer be safely categorized as a serpent’s
poison. Rather, the heretics would become, in the hands of authors sympathetic
to Luther, a line of noble dissidents who had embodied the evangelical truth, and
Luther became their faithful scion who continued to embolden the faithful to resist
the Roman Church’s tyranny.

The Expanding Invocation of Hus

In writing of this historical inversion, Euan Cameron has provocatively observed
that Catholic polemics vis-​à-​vis Luther and his forerunners “backfired against the
old Church to a quite remarkable degree.” Despite the best efforts of the Catholic
polemicists, “the ‘heretics’ did not drag the Reformers down; the Reformers dragged
the heretics up.”88 This conclusion is substantiated by a number of pamphlets written
in the first half of the 1520s by a diverse set of authors who turned their attention to
the Hussite movement and interpreted it as a positive model and potential precedent
for Luther’s expanding critique of the Church. In these texts, the continuity between

85
  Bernhard von Luxemburg, Catalogus, p. L3r.
86
  Bernhard von Luxemburg, Catalogus, pp. M1v.–​M 2r.
87
  Euan Cameron, “Medieval Heretics as Protestant Martyrs,” in Martyrs and Martyrologies, ed.
D. Wood (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1993), 185–​2 07, 187.
88
 Ibid.
170 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

Luther and Hus that Catholic authors had worked so hard to illuminate was taken
for granted, but the Catholic insistence on the chaos that attended religious deviance
was neatly reversed. The Bohemian heretics, far from being seditious or anarchic,
were depicted as the allies of their kingdom’s nobles. Much as in Luther’s Address to
the German Nobility, these texts identified the Czech lords as the appropriate agents
for the reform of the Church who had legitimately patronized and protected the
Hussites. This emphasis on the political support that Hus and his followers enjoyed
presented a historical justification for Luther’s empowerment of the nobles, even as
it sought to undercut the Catholic polemicists’ most damaging charge. Religious dis-
sidence could now be seen as an act of patriotism, rather than rebellion.
These conflicting dynamics of historical interpretation, and the centrality of Hus
within them, were clearly illuminated in a polemical exchange between Conrad
Treger, the Provincial of the Augustinian order in the Rhineland, and Wolfgang
Capito, the humanist scholar and leader of the early evangelical reform in the city
of Strasbourg, in 1524. Treger, who held a doctorate in theology from Freiburg
and lived in Strasbourg, initially published a pamphlet entitled An Admonition
and Answer to a Worthy Common Confederation against the Lutheran heresy.89 The
Admonition, which was dedicated to the leadership of the Swiss cantons, sought
to demonstrate the dangers posed by Luther’s heresy and the lies he had told to
discredit the Church. In his preface, Treger began by recalling the “condemned
and noxious Bohemian heresy,” which Luther had adopted, despite the fact that
it had been diabolically inspired: “It has not been forgotten by the enemy of peace
and the human race, how much evil, fire, murder, lamentation, misery, and distress
he incited through such heresy some years before.”90 Treger also cited Matthew
10:34 (“I did not come to bring peace, but a sword”) in order to assert that the
Bohemians were worse than the Turks, because they had justified their violence by
twisting this statement by Jesus. Treger feared that Luther and his adherents were
“followers of this Bohemian gospel,” so their actions would arouse the anger of
God against the German lands.91 For Treger, Luther’s resuscitation of the Hussite
heresy amply demonstrated that he was one of the “false prophets” that Jesus spoke
of in Matthew 7, whose words would produce only the bad fruit of dissension.92

  Conrad Treger, Vermanung bruder Conradts Treger Augustiner ordens..an ein lobliche gemeyne
89

Eydgenossschaft vor der Böhemschen ketzerey unnd antwurt (n.p., 1524). For an overview of Treger’s
life and efforts against the Reformation, see: Adolar Zumkeller, “Konrad Treger OESA (c.1480–​
1542),” in Katholische Theologen der Reformationszeit, ed. E. Iserloh, vol. 5 (Münster: Aschendorff,
1984), pp. 74–​87.
90
 Treger, Vermanung, p. A2r.
91
 Treger, Vermanung, p. A3r.
92
 Treger, Vermanung, p. A3v. Treger referred here to Matthew 7:17–​2 0—​“Likewise every good
tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree
cannot bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the
fire. Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.”
 The Apocalyptic Witness 171

This pamphlet provoked an almost immediate response from Capito, who pub-
lished an exhaustive rebuttal entitled Brother Capito’s Answer to Brother Conrad’s
Admonition.93 In it, Capito dissected Treger’s argument in order to defend the foun-
dations of Luther’s theology and the outcomes of religious reform. The Answer also
set out an alternate account of the development of the Hussite movement in order
to refute Treger’s claims that Hus’s legacy was war and dissension. In Capito’s
version of events, war had resulted from the pope’s declaration of false crusades
against Christians, the illicit practice of selling indulgences to fund them, and the
Roman clergy’s unwillingness to countenance reform. Hus’s theological deviance
was not the issue. Rather, it was Rome’s recklessness in using the sword to settle
theological debates that had caused matters to deteriorate. In this interpretation,
the violence of the Hussite Wars was a result of the Bohemians’ lawful self-​defense
against foreign, papal, and imperial intervention. Hussite history therefore had an
admonitory function for the German people, as it had in Catholic publications,
but it pertained here to the potentially disastrous consequences of the illegitimate
exercise of power over the rightful authors of reform.
In good humanist fashion, Capito based his conclusions on extensive pri-
mary source research. He cited Piccolomini’s history of Bohemia, an anonymous
“Bohemian history” and “true chronicle” of the Hussite movement, and the offi-
cial acts of the Councils of Constance and Basel.94 Tellingly, Capito also referred
to the “Nobility’s Treatise to the Council” as one of his sources, a reference to
the Czech nobility’s defense of Hus’s orthodoxy from September 1415. This letter,
which provided demonstrable evidence of the alliance between reformers and sec-
ular lords, was published along with a polemical introduction in 1524.95 This text
explicitly supported Capito’s view of the lessons to be learned from Hussite his-
tory, emphasizing that the alliance between Hus’s followers and the political elites
of Bohemia had eradicated papal tyranny in the Czech lands. The introduction
further asserted that the execution of “confessors bearing the Christian name” at
Constance caused “the eyes of many to be illuminated, so that having cast off fear
they undertook to defend the truth against the repugnant Italian tyranny that is
upon us.”96 Consequently, this essay concluded by asserting that “Nothing could
be a greater consolation to us, than if our leaders became like this.”97

93
  Wolfgang Capito, Antwurt B.  Wolffgang Fab. Capitons auff Brüder Conradts Augustiner ordens
Provincials vermanung (Strasbourg: Wolfgang Köpfel, 1524). For an overview of his conflict with
Treger, see: James Kittelson, Wolfgang Capito: From Humanist to Reformer (Leiden: Brill, 1975), espe-
cially pp. 116ff.
94
 See: Capito, Antwurt, pp. C4r–​E2r.
95
  Epistola LIIII Nobilium Moraviae, pro defensione Iohannis Huss, ad concilium Constantiense
(Basel: Andreas Cratander, 1524).
96
  Epistola, p. A2r.
97
  Epistola, p. A3r.
172 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

1524 also witnessed the publication of another essential source for promot-
ing the Hussites’ alliance with the Czech nobility, a German translation of the
Hussites’ Four Articles published by the Jena preacher Martin Reinhardt under
the title, A Revelation of How Fallen Christendom Might Be Restored to Its Initial State.98
Reinhardt had discovered a Hussite manuscript from c. 1430 containing the Four
Articles in the library of Nicholas Rutze, who had translated and published several
Hussite texts in the 1480s.99 The Four Articles were, however, largely unknown to
the sixteenth-​century German reading public prior to Reinhardt’s edition, which
was intended to demonstrate the necessity of the temporal powers’ intervention
in order to restore “the spiritual estate with its disordered life” to a state of apos-
tolic purity.100 For Reinhardt, the Hussites’ teachings, especially those that man-
dated the punishment of manifest sin by the secular powers and dictated that the
church surrender all claims to civil authority, provided a model for the ameliora-
tion of the Church. The Four Articles had functioned as a brake on the Church’s
claims to dominion, and they had served as the basis for the establishment of a
church that successfully opposed “the accursed See and abomination, full of all
darkness.”101 For Reinhardt, they also gained moral weight from the fact that they
were based on the teachings of “the holy knight and martyr of Christ, Jan Hus,”
who was “cruelly killed by the synagogue of Satan, the Council of Constance.”102
Much like the edition of the Czech nobility’s letter in defense of Hus, Reinhardt’s
Revelation highlighted how the Hussites had allied with the nobility and sought to
restore their prerogatives over the Church in order to reform it. The existence of
this alliance undercut the Catholic polemicists’ equation of heresy and sedition,
and it further showed how ecclesiastical reform could directly benefit the secular
elites of the Holy Roman Empire.
These texts, and the relationships between them, can serve as a wedge to prize
apart the larger edifice of interreligious textual conflicts in the first half of the
1520s. In both Lutheran and Catholic texts, primary sources were framed in
ways that turned them into sharply pointed polemical weapons, with prologues,

  Martin Reinhart, ed. and trans., Anzaygung wie die gefallene Christenhait widerbracht müg
98

werden in iren ersten standt (Ausburg:  Heinrich Steiner, 1524). A  second edition was printed by
Michel Buchfürer in Erfurt during the same year.
99
  On Rutze’s and Reinhart’s role in publishing Hussite materials, see the series of essays
by Siegfried Hoyer:  “Nicolaus Rutze und die hussitischer Gedanken im Hanseraum,” in Neue
Hansische Studien, ed. K. Fritze et al. (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1970), 157–​170; “Martin Reinhart
und der erste Druck hussitischer Artikel in Deutschland,” Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 18
(1970): 1597–​1617; and “Jan Hus und der Hussitismus in den Flugschriften des ersten Jahrzehnts
der Reformation,” in Flugschriften als Massenmedium der Reformationszeit, pp. 291–​307, especially
p. 300.
100
 Reinhart, Anzaygung, p. A1v.
101
 Reinhart, Anzaygung, p. A3v.
102
 Reinhart, Anzaygung, p. A3r.
 The Apocalyptic Witness 173

indices, and other paratexts that sought to shape readers’ responses to the texts
they surrounded and interpreted.103 In the resulting pamphlets and books,
Hussite history became a sort of dress rehearsal for the struggle that arose in
the 1520s. Sixteenth-​century commentaries on fifteenth-​century sources, often
explicitly in dialogue with competing narratives, sought to establish an authori-
tative rendering of that history in order to forecast and prescribe how current
conflicts would be, and should be, resolved through the intervention of secular
powers. In the hands of authors sympathetic to Luther, this prescription repre-
sented a considerable expansion of ideas that Luther had first put forth in his
Address to the German Nobility, combined with a more systematic exploitation
of Hussite history as a precedent for Luther’s proposals about the leadership of
ecclesiastical reform. In short, their texts mined Hussite history in order to put
forth the nobility as a viable alternative for the administration and adjudication
of religious concerns.
This elevation of the nobility was based on the recognition that the institu-
tional Church had surrendered its status as the sole judge in religious matters.
Whether constructed as a result of the papacy’s “Italian tyranny” or the identifica-
tion of the ecclesiastical hierarchy as the “synagogue of Satan,” all of these texts
agreed that the Catholic Church could not be trusted to enact, or even imagine,
reform. The diversity of these pamphlets reflected how Luther’s initial critique of
the papacy had expanded and encompassed a number of new authors who articu-
lated their own distinctive understandings of the Bohemian reformation’s signifi-
cance as a model for the incipient German reformation. As the 1520s progressed,
however, the figure of Hus that had become so central to Reformation polemics
was increasingly tinged with apocalyptic tones. This new Hus, who featured as
the central actor in a host of publications from 1524 and 1525, assumed the man-
tle of an eschatological prophet who had first revealed the papal Antichrist. Heiko
Oberman has persuasively argued that the Bohemian priest’s death became, for
Luther and his followers, the beginning of the end; Hus was “the first martyr of the
Antichrist and, as such, a prophetic forerunner who enabled Luther to discover
‘time’—​t hat eschatological time shortly before the final judgment.”104 It was this
new emphasis, hinted at in Luther’s responses to Exsurge Domine and Reinhart’s
Revelation, that firmly embedded Hus in a developing understanding of salvation

103
  On the concept of paratexts and their role in shaping reader response, see primarily: Gérard
Genette, Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation, J. Lewin, trans. (New York: Cambridge UP, 1997).
On the role of paratexts in early modern religious polemics, see: William Slights, “The Edifying
Margins of Renaissance English Texts,” Renaissance Quarterly 42 (1989): 682–​716; Marie Maclean,
“Pretexts and Paratexts: The Art of the Peripheral,” New Literary History 22 (1991): 273–​279; and
Sarah Covington, “Paratextual Strategies in Thieleman van Braght’s Martyr’s Mirror,” Book History
9 (2006): 1–​29.
104
  Oberman, “Hus and Luther,” p. 157. Cf. Hans-​Gert Roloff, “Hus in der Reformationspolemik,”
in Studien zum Humanismus in den Böhmischen Ländern, pp. 111–​129.
174 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

history that expected Luther to bring the final eschatological conflict inaugurated
by Hus to its cataclysmic, if paradoxically victorious, conclusion.

The Apocalyptic Hus and the Papal Antichrist

In August of 1524, a former Carthusian monk and schoolmaster in Strasbourg
named Otto Brunfels wrote Martin Luther a letter.105 Brunfels was not a well-​
known intellectual at that time, and he was a marginal figure in the reform of
his own city.106 Despite this lack of notoriety, however, Brunfels’s letter caught
Luther’s attention. In it, the schoolmaster proposed to publish a number of texts
by Jan Hus that would reveal “that Antichrist and abomination, who sits in the
temple of God, displaying himself as if he were God.” For Brunfels, this expo-
sure was urgently needed because “this is the time, in which people do not accept
sound doctrine, but turn to the beast, and receive his mark on their right hand
and on their foreheads.”107 In place of the beast’s false teaching, Brunfels proposed
to publish the writings of Hus, who had been “the first in the renascent church
who dared to confess Christ in the presence of the entire synagogue of Satan.”
Brunfels was convinced that “if the things he [Hus] depicted began to be read
from these books, then he would arouse the whole world” to be cognizant of the
danger posed by the papal Antichrist.108
Brunfels’s letter went on to describe how Hus’s writings were contained in a man-
uscript that he had obtained from among the possessions that the knight and poet-​
laureate Ulrich von Hutten had left behind at his death in 1523.109 Brunfels did not

105
  Brunfels, “Letter to Luther,” in WABr 3, pp. 332–​336.
  In the sixteenth century, Brunfels was known primarily as a botanist and member of the sci-
106

entific republic of letters. He also wrote a number of works on pedagogy and biblical exegesis, as well
as a variety of apologetic and polemical texts on religious reform. Today, however, he is best known
from Carlo Ginzburg’s work on Reformation-​era Nicodemism. Ginzburg saw Brunfels as the chief
exponent of the permissibility of dissimulation, which Brunfels had supposedly promoted through
his Pandectae, an encyclopedia of Biblical extracts. Carlos Eire has soundly refuted this assertion,
but the image of Brunfels as the godfather of dissimulation remains dominant in contemporary
scholarship. See: Carlo Ginzburg, Il Nicodemismo: Simulazione e dissimulazione religiosa nell’Europa
del ‘500 (Torino: G. Einaudi, 1970); and Carlos Eire, “Calvin and Nicodemism: A Reappraisal,”
Sixteenth Century Journal 10 (1979), pp. 44–​69. Cf. F. W.E. Roth, “Otto Brunfels: Nach seinem Leben
und literarischen Werk geschildert,” Zeitschrift für die Geschichte des Oberrheins 9 (1894): 284–​320;
and Jean-​Claude Margolin, “Otto Brunfels dans le milieu evangélique Rhenan,” in Strasbourg au
coeur religieux du XVIe siècle, ed. G. Livet and F. Rapp (Strasbourg: Libraire Istra, 1977), pp. 111–​141.
107
  Brunfels, “Letter to Luther,” p. 333.
108
  Brunfels, “Letter to Luther,” p. 334.
109
  Brunfels and Hutten had been friends since the late 1510s, and Hutten offered Brunfels his
protection when the latter fled his Carthusian monastery in 1521. After Hutten’s death, Brunfels
became a champion of his reputation, engaging in an extended exchange of polemical texts with
Erasmus over Hutten’s humanist credentials and contribution to the Reformation. On Brunfels’s
 The Apocalyptic Witness 175

include details of how he obtained Hutten’s manuscript, “because the story is quite
long,” but he affirmed that “in good faith and from the oldest exemplars we are able
to bear witness, that it [the manuscript] is not spurious.”110 Brunfels did acknowl-
edge that the original text had been damaged in places, but he assured Luther that
he would mark these in his edition with an asterisk so that the reader would know
when he had stepped in to clarify an obscure passage. In a similar vein, Brunfels
admitted that he could not read many of the marginalia in the original manuscript,
which were in Czech, but he noted that he had inserted his own comments to replace
those that he had been forced to omit. Brunfels concluded his letter by affirming
that Hus’s writings had come to him by divine providence, “so this author might
be revived in these last days,” thus affirming Brunfels’s belief that these texts would
play a positive role in the eschatological struggle against the Roman Church.111
Luther replied to Brunfels in October 1524 with a brief letter. In it, Luther com-
mended Brunfels’s project and praised Hus lavishly: “I rejoice that Jan Hus, truly
a martyr of Christ, has emerged in our age to be rightfully canonized, and so the
papists might be destroyed.”112 Luther further said that he did not think his sup-
port was necessary for the project’s completion, and he reiterated that Brunfels’s
publication of Hus’s writings would result in the Bohemian priest’s being “fully
canonized.”113 That Luther employed the language of traditional hagiography
vis-​à-​v is Hus is potentially surprising, but made sense in this context. Indeed, it
is perhaps appropriate to understand Luther and his supporters’ defense of Hus
from Leipzig until this correspondence as a Protestant effort to compile and pub-
lish a “dossier” for Hus’s canonization.114 From this perspective, Hus’s opposi-
tion to the papal church’s claims to power and his willingness to suffer death on
behalf of these beliefs marked him as a true martyr from the emergent Lutheran
“counter-​h istory” of the church, whose story could serve as the foundation for
pious imitation.115 Brunfels picked up on this idiom in a second letter he wrote to

and Hutten’s relationship, see: Karl Hartfelder, “Otto Brunfels als Verteidiger Huttens,” Zeitschrift
für die Geschichte des Oberrheins 47 (1893):  565–​578; and Miriam Chrisman “Otto Brunfels,” in
Contemporaries of Erasmus: A Biographical Register of the Renaissance and Reformation, ed. P. Bietenholz
and T. Deutscher, vol. 1 (Buffalo: U. of Toronto Press, 1985), pp. 206–​2 07.
110
  Brunfels, “Letter to Luther,” 334.
111
  For a summary of Brunfels’s editing practices and his assertion of Hus’s eschatological
importance, see: Brunfels, “Letter to Luther,” p. 335.
112
  Martin Luther, “Letter to Otto Brunfels” (October, 1524) in WABr 3, p. 359.
113
 Ibid.
114
  On Luther’s use of the language of canonization, see: Robert Kolb, “‘Saint John Hus’ and
‘Jerome Savonarola, Confessor of God:’ The Lutheran ‘Canonization’ of Late Medieval Martyrs,”
Concordia Journal 17 (1991): 404–​418. Cf. Carol Piper Heming, Protestants and the Cult of Saints in
German Speaking Europe, 1517–​1531 (Kirksville, MO: Truman State UP, 2003), pp. 53–​65.
115
  For an analysis of the Lutheran construction of a “counter-​h istory” of the church, see the
work of Thomas Fuchs, particularly:  “Protestantische Heiligen-​memoria im 16. Jahrhundert,”
176 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

Luther in April 1525, referring to Hus as “that extremely holy man, who is wor-
thy above others whom are revered,” and as an example of “the righteous dead”
unjustly condemned by the papal Antichrist. Brunfels also promised to make all
the works of Hus available to the public in order to illuminate fully his insights
and show that Hus, in a striking evocation of John’s gospel, “had dared to cast the
first stone at Antichrist.”116
The manuscripts to which Brunfels referred in this correspondence eventu-
ally comprised a three-​volume edition of Hus’s works, which was published in
Strasbourg by Johann Schott in 1524 and 1525. The correspondence itself served
as the prefaces to these volumes, the first of which was entitled On the Anatomy
of Antichrist and contained eight tracts concerning the diabolic foundations and
nature of the Roman Church.117 The second volume was published as Certain
Passages from the Prophets Hosea and Ezekiel on the Horrors of the Papist Priests and
Monks, and it consisted of biblical commentaries attacking monastic and clerical
sins.118 The third volume of Brunfels’s collection, called The Sermons of Jan Hus
to the People, contained twenty-​eight sermons and a second, heavily illustrated
text, The Consistorial Process against the Martyr Jan Hus.119 This last work was
also published separately from the sermons, and it also appeared in a German
translation.120 Taken as a whole, these volumes of Hussitica depicted the Czech
priest as engaged in a full range of apostolic activities; he appeared as an exegete,
preacher, polemicist, and martyr. These volumes also articulated a comprehen-
sive critique of the Catholic Church as “Antichristeitas”: a complete inversion
of the true Christianity embodied by Hus that was replete with a duped or
duplicitous body of believers, wicked priests, false prophets, and Antichrist at its
head.121 As such, Brunfels’s collection could serve as a prescriptive guide for true

Historische Zeitschrift 267 (1998):  587–​614; and “Reformation, Tradition, und Geschichte,” in
Protestantische Identität und Erinnerung, ed. J. Eibach and M. Sandl (Göttingen:  Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht, 2003), pp. 71–​89. Cf. Cameron, “Medieval Heretics as Protestant Martyrs.”
116
  Otto Brunfels, “Letter to Martin Luther” (April, 1525) in WABr 3, pp. 476–​478, p.  477.
Brunfels here alluded to the story of Jesus and the woman caught in adultery (John 8:3–​11), thus
implying that Hus was sinless in terms of collusion with Antichrist.
117
  Otto Brunfels, ed., De anatomia Antichristi, Liber unus (Strasbourg: Johann Schott, 1524).
118
 Otto Brunfels, ed., Locorum aliquot ex Osee et Ezechiele prophetis, cap. v.  et viii.
(Strasbourg: Johann Schott, 1524).
119
  Otto Brunfels, ed., Sermonum Ioannis Huss ad populum, tomus tertius (Strasbourg:  Johann
Schott, 1525). These volumes have also been printed together in a modern facsimile edition
as: Matěj Janov, Opera (New York: Georg Olms Verlag, 1975).
120
 Both the Latin and German editions were printed by Schott in 1525 as:  Processus
Consistorialis Martyrii Io. Huss … Et de Victoria Christi; and Geistlicher Blüthandel Johannis Hussz zü
Costentz verbrannt.
121
  For a discussion of this term in its original Bohemian context, see:  Bernard McGinn,
Antichrist: Two Thousand Years of the Human Fascination with Evil (San Francisco: Harper, 1994), pp.
183–​187.
 The Apocalyptic Witness 177

Christians so they could recognize and resist the temptations and threats of the
papal Antichrist.
There was, however, a problem with this portrayal of Hus and his campaign
against “Antichristeitas.” Despite Brunfels’s assurances and protests to the con-
trary, his collection of Hussitica comprised texts that simply were not written by
Jan Hus. The longest individual piece in the collection, Concerning the Anatomy
of Antichrist, appears to have been written by an anonymous fourteenth-​century
author from the Czech lands; and the last major text in the first volume, On the
Reign, People, Life, and Manner of Antichrist, was a careful collation of passages from
the third book of the fourteenth-​century Prague master Matěj of Janov’s Principles
of the Old and New Testaments. The commentaries on Hosea and Ezekiel should
also be attributed to Matěj, and the twenty-​eight sermons in volume three came
from an anonymous Bohemian preacher who was active after Hus’s death.122 In
fact, Brunfels’s Hus did not exist, but was a composite mouthpiece for the first
half-​century of the Bohemian reformation.
This misattribution was certainly massive in scale, but it did not really
matter in 1524 and 1525. By that moment in time, Hus and the eponymous
movement that had survived his martyrdom had assumed a status and played
a role in Lutheran polemics that provided Brunfels’s presentation of Hus with
a convincing verisimilitude. Certainly this collection overemphasized escha-
tological elements in Hus’s “teachings,” but this intensification in apocalyptic
tone mirrored the sharpening of Lutheran rhetoric in the mid-​1520s. Thus,
while Brunfels’s figure of Hus was ahistorical, it still fulfilled Lutheran (and
Catholic) expectations about what Hus would and should have said against the
pope. Brunfels augmented this fulfillment of ideological expectations with his
preparation of these volumes, whose presentation heightened the impression of
historical veracity that Brunfels’s letters to Luther initially conveyed. Through
the inclusion of appendices, marginalia, prologues, and woodcuts, Brunfels
repeatedly drew the reader’s attention to the essential argument that his Hus
had espoused:  “THE KINGDOM OF THE POPE IS THE KINGDOM OF
ANTICHRIST.”123
In Brunfels’s collection, paratexts reached their full potential in shaping the
interpretation of past events and the primary sources that purported to describe

122
  Vlastimil Kybal, the editor of the modern edition of Janov’s work, has detailed the excerpt-
ing process from the Regulae Veteris et Novi Testamenti that ultimately resulted in the texts from
Brunfels’s collection. For a detailed summary of the correlations between the original text and
the 1524 edition, see: Janov, Regulae Veteris, vol. 5, pp. xxvi–​x xvii. See also the introductory essay
by Eric Beyreuther in:  Janov, Opera, pp.  1–​27; and most recently:  Lawrence Buck, “Anatomia
Antichristi: Form and Content of the Papal Antichrist,” SCJ 42 (2011): 349–​368.
123
  This quotation comes from an appendix of twenty-​five “Articuli evangelici Ioannis Huss,”
which appeared on the last page of the first volume of Brunfels’s collection. See:  De Anatomia
Antichristi, p. Dd4r, emphasis original.
178 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

them.124 While the actual works that Brunfels published under Hus’s name
certainly spoke for themselves in their attacks on clerical sinfulness and their
description of the Antichrist’s machinations, it was Brunfels’s framing materials
that repeatedly and emphatically placed “Hus’s” critique within the context of the
contemporary conflict that surrounded and included Brunfels. The texts’ con-
struction of Hus as a saint and the Church as his diabolical persecutor emerged
from the collection’s very first page, where a brief Vita of Hus described him
as: “Jan Hus, an apostle of the renascent Church of Jesus Christ, a man renowned
for outstanding wisdom, doctrine, and the teachings of his life, who built up the
Bohemian people in faith.”125 Following this hagiographic sketch came Brunfels’s
first letter to Luther and an additional “Justification for the Edition” addressed
to the Wittenberg professor that established Brunfels’s underlying reasons for
publishing Hus’s works. Here, Brunfels explicitly acknowledged the potential
impact of Bernhard von Luxemburg’s Catalogue of Heretics; rather than allowing
that work to determine the popular perception of Hus, Brunfels was determined
to rehabilitate this “heretic” so that people would not “damn what they do not
know, and condemn good books out of assigning names to them, when they do
not know what they have.”126 Brunfels continued by asserting that Hus had been
damned by “ignorant and vindictive” men who had successfully given him the
“cognomen” of a heretic. Brunfels perceived that a similar thing was currently
happening to Luther and his allies, but this was merely proof of their true alle-
giance to Christ: “It is fitting, after all, that we have tribulations in this world and
are [treated like] the refuse of the impious, until he who separates the wheat from
the chaff comes.”127
Brunfels’s fascination with, and recognition of, the power of names to shape
reality in this passage was both striking and deeply ironic. It also revealed his
central concern in this project, which was to clear Hus’s name from any charge of
heresy. Thus, the prefatory material to the second volume of the collection reaf-
firmed Hus’s sanctity by marrying image and text in order to portray Hus as the
heir and equal of the martyrs from the apostolic age (see Figure 4.1). In this vol-
ume, Luther’s letter calling for Hus’s “canonization” was followed by a woodcut
depicting Hus as he would have appeared after he had been defrocked and had

124
 On the evaluation of paratextual intensity, see:  Eric Kleinschmidt, “Gradationen der
Autorschaft: Zu einter Theorie paratextueller Intensität,” in Die Pluralisierung des Paratextes in der
Frühen Neuzeit: Theorie, Formen, Funktionen, ed. F. von Ammon and H. Vögel (Berlin: Lit, 2008),
pp. 1–​17.
125
 Brunfels, De Anatomia Antichristi, p. A1v.
126
 Brunfels, De Anatomia Antichristi, p. A5v.
127
  Ibid. Brunfels here alludes to Matthew 3:12, where John the Baptist preaches an eschato-
logical sermon in which he predicts that the one who is coming after him will separate the wheat
from the chaff, “but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”
180 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

his tonsure removed at Constance. The caption to this image read: “I desire to be
destroyed, and to be with Christ.” Below the image, passages from Revelation 14
and Daniel 11 proclaimed that: “Here is the patience of the saints, who observe
the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus Christ,” and “they perish in the
flames of fire, that they might be purified.”128 This is the only image in this volume,
and it was potentially ambiguous on its own. The scriptural passages selected to
gloss it were therefore essential both in establishing the content and valence of the
image—​Hus was a suffering saint—​and in situating the image within Brunfels’s
larger arguments about Hus’s role in inaugurating the final eschatological conflict
between the followers of Christ and Antichrist.
Just as Brunfels used prefatory material to set the tone for his treatment of
Hus and articulate his belief that Hus had been an authentic Christian martyr,
so he also employed appendices to summarize and clarify the content of his
work as a whole. In On the Anatomy of Antichrist, for example, Brunfels included
addenda that:  compared the various biblical names and titles of Christ and
Antichrist; compiled lists of biblical prophecies concerning each; constructed
metaphorical physiognomies for Christ and Antichrist; and laid out brief biog-
raphies for both of them.129 In these final summaries, Brunfels employed an
antithetical logic that had been a mainstay of anti-​papal rhetoric since 1521,
when the publication of Philip Melanchthon’s and Lucas Cranach’s Passional
of Christ and the Antichrist had visually contrasted the humility and suffering
of Christ with the pomp, greed, and earthly power of the papacy.130 Whether
by opposing Christ’s crown of thorns with the pope’s golden tiara, or assert-
ing that Christ “fled royal office and the pomp of this world,” while Antichrist
“possesses a kingdom, provinces, and the world,” this appendix recapitulated
many of the arguments included in that earlier text, as well as arguments that

 Brunfels, Locorum aliquot ex Osee et Ezechiele, unpaged front matter. The citation from Daniel
128

is actually a conflation of verses 33 and 35, which read: (v.33) “Et docti in populo docebunt plu-
rimi: et ruent in gladio, et in flamma”; and (v.35) “et de eruditis ruent, ut conflentur, et eligantur,
et dealbentur.”
129
  All told, there are sixteen pages of appendices describing the various aspects of Christ and
Antichrist, and their absolute opposition to each other. For instance, Brunfels included forty-​eight
biblical prophecies for both Christ and Antichrist, and had them on facing pages of each other. The
appendices do not have page numbers, but are marked as: pp. Cc1r–​Dd3r.
130
 The Passional, which consisted of thirteen pairs of images contrasting the life of Jesus
with the lifestyle of the pope, along with explanatory captions written by Melanchthon, was a
Reformation-​era best seller, going through eleven printings almost immediately (including one by
Johann Knoblach in Strasbourg). For the full text of the Passional and an account of its publication
history, see: WA 9, pp. 677–​715. On the impact of the text on Lutheran polemics against the papacy,
see: Hartmann Grisar and Franz Heege, Luthers Kampfbilder, vol. 1 (Freiburg: Herder, 1921); Karin
Groll, Das “Passional Christ und Antichristi: Von Lucas Cranach d. Ä. (New York: Peter Lang, 1990);
and Steven Ozment, The Serpent and the Lamb: Cranach, Luther, and the Making of the Reformation
(New Haven: Yale UP, 2011), pp. 150ff.
 The Apocalyptic Witness 181

the early Hussites had made in their visual propaganda.131 With its inclusion,
Brunfels both linked his text to larger polemical currents within the German
reformation and made his central argument—​t hat the papacy was the seat of
Antichrist—​a s clear and explicit as possible.
Brunfels incorporated a potentially surprising pair of appendices on the final
pages of On the Anatomy of Antichrist to support this conclusion and to bolster his
claims to editorial reliability. In an appendix titled “On the Errors of Jan Hus,”
Brunfels listed ten errors held by the Bohemian priest, which mostly concerned
Hus’s recognition that there were both temporal and spiritual spheres in society,
and that the Church should maintain its authority in the latter.132 Here, Brunfels
acknowledged that Hus had not gone far enough in his critique of the Roman
Church and its claims to dominion; unlike Luther, or even Hus’s own followers
as depicted by Martin Reinhart, Hus had failed to recognize fully the secular
power’s authority to purify the Church, and he therefore limited the scope of his
own reform. This error, however, and Brunfels’s acknowledgment of it, ultimately
(if paradoxically) affirmed Hus’s sanctity through the articulation of what might
be called the realist hagiography of Hus by Luther and his followers. They did
not consider Hus to have been perfect, as Luther himself repeatedly affirmed.
Rather, Hus was regarded as having recognized the signs of the times around him,
and as being willing to die for the sake of this recognition. Brunfels himself had
asserted: “I do not defend all the articles of Hus, as if he did not err, or was not
able to err; but I do hold up those that seem Christian to me … and that can be
tested against the Scriptures.”133 This biblical standard allowed Lutherans both to
valorize Hus as a Christian hero and to distinguish their regard from the slavish
devotion of the Catholics to their saints. It also allowed polemicists like Brunfels
to manipulate Hus’s history in order to demonstrate his espousal of their agenda
for religious reform.
This shaping of Hus and his doctrinal emphases was evident on the facing page
to Hus’s errors, where Brunfels listed twenty-​five “Evangelical Articles of Jan Hus.”
These included the rejection of mendicant orders and canon law, the condemnation
of simony and indulgences, and the assertion that the emperor had been deceived by
the devil in granting possessions to the Church.134 This list also included the explicit
assertion that the pope was the vicar of Antichrist, that his excommunications
were the judgments of Antichrist, and that the Roman Church was the “synagogue
of Satan.” In short, this list put a number of Luther’s charges against the institu-
tional church in the mouth of Hus, and used his status as a martyr to legitimize and

131
 Brunfels, De Anatomia, p.  Dd3r. These contrasts explicitly echoed the first and second
antitheses of the Passional. Cf. WA 9, p. 701.
132
 Brunfels, De Anatomia, p. Dd3v.
133
 Brunfels, De Anatomia, p. A3r.
134
 Brunfels, De Anatomia, p. Dd4r.
182 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

historicize the complaints that had become common cultural currency in the grow-
ing conflict between Luther and the representatives of the papal Church. These
“evangelical articles” were a fitting exclamation point to Brunfels’s declaration of
Hus’s relevance and precedence in the polemics of the German reformation.
This argument was confirmed and strengthened in the final volume of Brunfels’s
Hussite publications. More than any other text, it was The Consistorial Process and
Martyrdom of Jan Hus, which included an exegetical essay on the book of Revelation
that proved that the papacy was Antichrist, that portrayed Hus as a model and pro-
tomartyr for the German reformation. This text used a number of woodcuts and
captions to narrate the events of the actual judicial process against Hus; it com-
bined these images with biblical and patristic passages to situate the story of Hus’s
trial within a timeless body of Christian literature that equated legal persecution
with the embrace of essential Christian truth. Brunfels did not intend to present a
detailed, narrative account of Hus’s trial and death in this text. Rather, he intended
to use it to promulgate a typological interpretation of Hus’s martyrdom as an ideal-
ized confrontation between a pious Christian and Antichrist’s minions on Earth.
The images in this text depicted Hus performing the various offices that
were expected of a true priest and saint, while contrasting them visually with
figures who represented the Pharisees of the Gospels. An image of Hus preach-
ing, for example, was placed over and against a woodcut of “notaries who sit with
ill temper, writing and observing the preacher, so they might accuse him”135
(see Figure 4.2).
Similarly, the text combined a pastiche of biblical quotations with other images
in order to establish Hus’s conformity with the model of Jesus. This parallelism
was most clear in the portrayal of Hus’s trial, where a dialogue between the pope
and an anonymous secular lord (called only “Potestas” in the text) was explicitly
lifted from the Gospels in order to emphasize the links between biblical texts and
historical events (see Figure 4.3):

Secular Power: What accusation do you offer against this man? (Jn. 18)

Pope, with his prelates and bishops: If this man were not an evildoer, we
would not hand him over to you. (Jn. 18) He has provoked the people with his
preaching. (Lk. 22)
Secular Power: You take him, and judge him according to your law: I find no
guilt in him. (Jn. 19)
Pope, and his followers: It is not proper for us to execute anyone. (Jn. 18) But
if you allow this man to go, you are no friend of Caesar. (Jn. 19)136

 Brunfels, Processus Consistorialis, pp. A2r–​A 3r.

135

 Brunfels, Processus Consistorialis, pp. C3v–​C 4r.

136
Figure 4.1  Hus after His Condemnation; Iohannis Huss Locorum aliquot ex Osee et Ezechiele, Unpaged front matter and A1r. ZCC.
H9504.B525b, Houghton Library, Harvard University. 
Figure 4.2  Hus Preaching and Accused by Contemporary “Pharisees”; Processus Consistorialis, A2v.–​A 3r. Courtesy of
the Chapin Library, Williams College. 
Figure 4.3  Hus before the Secular Power; Processus Consistorialis, C3v.–​C4r. Courtesy of the Chapin Library,
Williams College. 
 The Apocalyptic Witness 185

This mixture of biblical language and historical illustration firmly embedded

Hus in a Christian tradition that spanned from the death of Christ to the life
of Luther, but focused primarily on the sufferings of the apostolic martyrs as a
model for the true followers of Christ.137 It also denuded Hus’s trial and execution
of its distinctive marks, preferring to make it a stand-​in for any miscarriage of jus-
tice against Christians. In doing so, Brunfels both maximized Hus’s exemplarity
and minimized his singularity, a reading that becomes more pronounced when
one considers that there was no pope when Hus was condemned and executed. It
was only in 1417 that Martin V could add a definitive papal sanction to the sen-
tence against Hus. And yet, it was precisely because of this ahistorical approach
that Hus’s fate could come to represent the potential outcome of any reformer’s
attempts to confront and condemn the power of the papal Antichrist. Certainly
suffering awaited him, but so did vindication, as the final illustration of Hus’s trial
demonstrated. Here, an image of Hus’s execution showed his soul being received
by an angel above his pyre, which marked Hus as a saint (see Figure 4.4). The cap-
tions to this image also echoed those found at the beginning of Brunfels’s second
volume of Hussitica, where Daniel 11 and Revelation 14 affirmed that Hus had
conformed to the model of a biblical, suffering saint. This image thus provided a
fitting coda to two years and three volumes of publication activity that exhaus-
tively documented and illustrated how Jan Hus had been both a model for Luther’s
reform and the embodiment of an ancient, embattled Christian identity. Just as
Hus had not been willing to hide his dissent, so too would sixteenth-​century
followers of Luther broadcast their resistance to the abomination of desolation
who had occupied Rome. In doing so, they would embrace the timeless Christian
tradition that celebrated the true saints’ deaths as the most exemplary means of
resisting the powers of “Antichristeitas.”

Conclusion
From Luther’s forced acknowledgment of his affinities to Jan Hus at Leipzig,
through the earliest debates over the political ramifications of that relationship,
and ultimately to the recognition of Hus’s status as an eschatological witness,
the Bohemian priest occupied a central role in the polemics that accompanied
the outbreak of religious reformation in the Holy Roman Empire. The primary
issue in these texts was not, however, about Luther and Hus’s potential agreement
on theological issues such as justification or the nature of the Mass. Rather, the

137
 On the martyrs of the early church as models for early modern authors, see:  Fuchs,
“Reformation, Tradition, und Geschichte”; and Marcus Sandl, “Interpretationswelten der
Zeitenwende: Protestantische Selbsbeschreibungen im 16. Jahrhundert zwischen Bibelauslegung
und Reformationserinnerung,” in Protestantische Identität und Erinnerung, pp. 27–​4 6.
186 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

Figure 4.4  The Execution of Jan Hus; Processus Consistorialis, D2r. Courtesy of the
Chapin Library, Williams College. 

issue was whether the specter of the Bohemian precedent would destroy Luther’s
reform before it ever began or provide a blueprint for reform that could be emu-
lated and expanded upon. As the 1520s unfolded, this question gained a height-
ened eschatological importance; the sharpening of Luther’s rhetoric against the
 The Apocalyptic Witness 187

papacy as the seat of Antichrist retroactively imbued Hus’s struggle against the
institutional Church a century earlier with apocalyptic urgency. Catholic polem-
ics against Luther mirrored this rhetorical intensification and contributed to
the public perception that the course of the Bohemian reformation was closely
tied to the development of Luther’s movement in sixteenth-​century Germany.
The implications of those ties, though, remained hotly contested throughout the
first decade of the German reformation, as authors on both sides of the debate
appealed to and manipulated sources from the past in order to prove their point.
In the hands of these authors and editors, the figure of Jan Hus proved to be
surprisingly malleable. On the one hand, the bloodshed that followed in the wake
of his execution was incontrovertible evidence for the danger of religious dissent.
On the other hand, of course, the origin and development of the Hussite move-
ment proved that Luther’s critique of Rome was no isolated heretical outbreak,
but rather the most recent eruption of an irrepressible, divine truth. It was the
ambiguity of Hus’s history that would ultimately prove to be its most significant
aspect in the ongoing development of the German reformation. The rich sources
associated with Hus’s trial and the growth of the Hussite movement, along with
the proliferation of prophetic interpretations of his death, led to an intensification
of interest in his execution and its meaning. The analysis of this event also spurred
further consideration of the broader dynamics of church history, and the ways in
which persecution, prophecy, and bloodshed marked the history of God’s people
on Earth. Luther had hinted at these themes in 1519, and those who supported
him had made them increasingly clear over the first half of the 1520s. It would be
in the next decade, however, that Hus’s exemplarity within the broader sweep of
Christian history would become a centerpiece of Lutheran identity on page and
stage.
 5

The Prophet

Introduction
Early in 1531, Martin Luther published two responses to imperial edicts con-
demning his teachings that had emerged from the previous year’s diet at Augsburg.
Luther had always viewed this assembly, and Emperor Charles V’s motives in
calling it, with skepticism. Charles’s decision essentially to reinstate the Edict
of Worms through his decrees at Augsburg only reinforced that opinion.1 In his
responses to the imperial pronouncements, entitled A Warning to His Dear German
People and the Gloss on the Alleged Imperial Edict, Luther therefore defended the
theoretical legitimacy of political resistance to the emperor in matters of con-
science. Luther also used these texts to reaffirm his own determination to obey
the “definitive divine call” which required that he continue to oppose imperial
and papal tyranny.2 Regarding his obedience to this calling, Luther asserted that
the progress he had made against the papacy’s power during his life “will be com-
pleted after my death.”3 And Luther based his confidence in the eventual success
of his reform on its prophetic mandate, which had its foundation not only in bibli-
cal prophecies of Antichrist and Revelation’s two witnesses, but also—​perhaps

1
  On the interplay between the Lutheran and Catholic parties at Augsburg, along with
Luther’s response to their exchanges, see the essays in:  B. Lohse and O. Pesch, eds., Das
Augsburger Bekenntnis von 1530 damals und heute (München: Kaiser Verlag, 1980); Leif Grane,
Die Confessio Augustana:  Einführung in die Hauptgedanken der lutherischen Reformation, 5th ed.
(Göttingen:  Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1996); Rolf Decot, “Confessio Augustana und
Reichsverfassung die Religionsfrage in den Reichstagsverhandlungen des 16. Jahrhunderts,”
in Im Schatten der Confessio Augustana, ed. H. Immenkötter and G. Wens (Münster: Aschendorff,
1997), pp. 19–​4 9; and Christopher Spehr, Luther und das Konzil: Zur Entwicklung eines zentralen
Themas in der Reformationszeit (Tübingen: Morh Siebeck, 2010), especially ­c hapter 18.
2
  The first of these texts appeared as:  Warnunge D.  Martini Luther, An seine lieben Deudschen
(Wittenberg:  Hans Lufft, 1531) [WA 30/​I II, pp. 252–​320]. The latter was originally published
as: Auff das Vermeint keiserlich Edict … Glosa (Wittenberg: Nicholas Schirlentz, 1531) [WA 30/​I II,
pp. 321–​388].
3
 Luther, Glosa, p. 387.

188
 T he Prophet 189

surprisingly—​in the words of Jan Hus.4 Luther thus wrote the following at the
conclusion of the Gloss:

St. Jan Hus prophesied of me when he wrote from his prison in Bohemia
[sic]: “They will roast a goose now (for ‘Hus’ means ‘goose’ in Czech), but
in a hundred years they will hear a swan sing, and him they will have to
endure.” And that is the way it will be, if God wills it.5

This prophecy was, however, apocryphal. Luther’s version of it represented a con-

flation of two fifteenth-​century sources: a letter written by Hus after his exile from
Prague in 1412 which predicted that God would send “falcons and eagles” to suc-
ceed his “frail and powerless goose”6; and Jerome of Prague’s final speech from his
pyre at Constance in 1416, which warned his judges “that before a hundred years
have passed you will have to respond to me in God’s presence.”7 But much as Otto
Brunfels’s fabricated figure of the apocalyptic Hus in 1524 had satisfied the polemical
need for a model and forerunner of Luther’s reform, so too did this piece of prophetic
fantasy take hold of the Protestant imagination over the course of the 1530s. In a very
real sense, the popularization of this particular utterance, alongside the publication
of a series of other texts surrounding Hus’s final days, allowed the Bohemian priest to
graduate from the predecessor to the prophet of Luther, thus developing further the
vital connection between the Lutheran interpretation of the true church’s past and
the conflicts that dominated its present.
This link became more polemically and politically charged as the decade
progressed, particularly when Pope Paul III issued a bull of convocation for an
ecumenical council in June 1536.8 Although Luther had appealed to a council as
early as 1518 as a possible arbiter for his struggle with the papacy, by the mid-​1530s
he had no intention of submitting to an ecclesiastical gathering that he considered
to be under the thumb of his chief adversary. Within this context, Hus’s trial and

4
  On Hus’s place in the larger Reformation “company of prophets,” see:  Rodney Petersen,
Preaching in the Last Days:  The Theme of “Two Witnesses” in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
(New York: Oxford UP, 1993), pp. 149ff.
5
 Luther, Glosa, p. 387.
6
  Jan Hus, “To the Praguers” (November(?), 1412) in Korespondence, pp. 146–​151.
7
  Jerome’s last words were preserved by Petr of Mladoňovice in his: Vita Magistri Hieronymi,
pro Christi nomine Constantiae exusti, in FRB 8 (1932), pp. 351–​367. A  Czech version of this text
was also included as part of Jerome’s entry in the 1495 Czech Pasional. On the circulation of this
prophecy during the Reformation era, see: Adolf Hauffen, “Husz eine Gans—​Luther ein Schwan,”
Prager Deutschen Studien 9, pt. 2 (1908): 1–​27; and Scribner, “The Incombustible Luther,” especially
pp. 41–​42.
8
  On the impact of the pope’s bull, see: Hubert Jedin, History of the Council of Trent, 2 vols., trans.
E. Graf (London: Nelson, 1957), vol. 1, pp. 320ff. See also: Spehr, Luther und das Konzil, especially
­chapter 19.
190 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

execution at Constance assumed a new importance. For Luther and his followers,
this specific miscarriage of justice became emblematic of the more general fallibility
of church councils, and therefore justified the Lutheran princes’ and theological lead-
ers’ unwillingness to participate in the impending gathering at Mantua.9 Whereas in
the previous decade it had been Hus’s supposed teachings against the anti-​Christian
papacy that had placed him in parallel to Luther and his emergent critique of Rome,
in the conciliar debates of the 1530s it was the venue of the Czech priest’s trial and
death that formed the basis for a historical comparison that understood the impend-
ing council simply as a new theater for acting out a very old, and even fundamental,
drama pitting the true and false churches against each other.
This theatrical metaphor became more apt with the composition and perfor-
mance of the first Lutheran history play in 1537, the Tragedy of Jan Hus, which
was written by Luther’s former student Johannes Agricola.10 This play, which was
based on Petr of Mladoňovice’s account of Hus’s trial and execution, allowed a
number of themes that had emerged in Lutheran polemics concerning Hus to be
displayed before theatrical audiences. First and foremost, it did so by personify-
ing and making visible the contrast and conflict between true Christians and the
diabolically inspired ecclesiastical hierarchy. It also made a spectacle of that hier-
archy and its moral failings, as well as emphasizing the common features that Hus
shared with the martyrs of the primitive church (including Christ) that had per-
vaded earlier pamphlets and treatises. And perhaps most importantly, the Tragedy
employed a prophetic framework that embedded Hus explicitly within a long line
of God’s mouthpieces who had been persecuted for their inspired proclamations.
This genealogy, and Hus’s place within it, confirmed his prophetic credentials, a
conclusion that Agricola stated both repeatedly and in the simplest possible lan-
guage, so that no one who saw the play could possibly miss this essential point.
In short, the Tragedy allowed Hus to enact his own status as a prophet of Luther
and his reform, even as the portrayal of his death indicted those responsible for it.
In this way, the Tragedy served as a fitting cap to a decade of arguments that
had used Hus’s trial as a lens through which to view the historical subversion
of the Church through the agency of the popes and councils. This play also fit

9
  On this line of argumentation against councils, see:  Christa Tecklenburg Johns, Luthers
Konzilsidee in ihrer historischen Bedingtheit und ihrem reformatorischen Neuansatz (Berlin: Verlag Alfred
Töpelmann, 1966), pp. 143–​155; Remigius Bäumer, “Luthers Ansichten über die Irrtumsfähigkeit
des Konzils und ihre theologiegechichtlichen Grundlagen,” in Wahrheit und Verkündigung: Michael
Schmaus zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. W. Dettloff et al., vol. 2 (Paderborn: Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh,
1967), pp. 987–​1003; and Thomas Brockmann, “The Problem of the Ecumenical Council in
German Reformation Pamphlet Literature, 1520–​ 1563,” Annnuarium Historiae Conciliorum
36 (2004): 423–​4 47.
10
  Johannes Agricola, Tragedia Johannis Hus welche auff dem Unchristlichen Concilio zu Costnitz
gehalten allen Christen nuetzlich und troestlich zu lesen (Wittenberg: George Rhau, 1537).
 T he Prophet 191

within a tradition of polemics that anticipated and foretold the moment when
the corruption of the institutional church would be revealed and even puri-
fied through the prophetically ordained actions of men like Martin Luther.
Although Hus’s trial was certainly not unique in bringing the conflict between
God’s and Antichrist’s followers to the surface of historical narrative, it did
come to serve as a fulcrum for detecting the shift from the degradation to the
reclamation of the Church for those faithful to God.11 And over the course of
the 1530s, it also became a microcosm for the entire, agonistic history of the
true church that was finally, ultimately being redeemed with the outbreak and
expansion of reformation.

The Foundation of Prophetic Authority:

Narrating Hus’s Death
The figure of the prophetic Hus was already under construction in the 1520s.
Even in Otto Brunfels’s editions of Hussitica, Hus had performed a prophet’s reve-
latory function by identifying the pope and his followers as the embodiments of
Antichristeitas. Hus, as well as the movement that emerged in the wake of his death,
had also fulfilled the prophet’s admonitory role by publicly calling the people
back to the true church and attesting to the danger of negotiating with, or turning
one’s back on, the false church. The next step in Hus’s assumption of the prophetic
mantle, however, required that he demonstrate predictive capabilities that would
link him and his critique of Rome to that of his self-​proclaimed sixteenth-​century
successors.12 The existence of such a prophetic link would affirm the historical
connections that Lutheran authors had begun to highlight between themselves
and the Hussites and strengthen those ties by revealing that they were not merely
an invention of the 1500s, but the foreordained outcome of prophetic insight.
In order to take this step, though, the earlier, typological depiction of Hus as an
avatar of Christian martyrdom needed to be augmented by a more historically
grounded presentation in which the specific events and outcomes of Hus’s trial
and death were enlisted to speak directly to the circumstances surrounding
Luther and his followers’ movement for reform.

11
  On the eschatological significance of Hus’s death in Lutheran thought, see: Pohlig, Zwischen
Gelehrsamkeit, pp. 364–​370. Cf. Gustav Benrath, “Das Verständnis der Kirchengeschichte in der
Reformationszeit,” in Literatur und Laienbildung im Spätmittelalter und in der Reformationszeit, ed.
L. Grenzmann and K. Stackmann (Stuttgart: JB Metzler, 1984), pp. 97–​109.
12
  For an overview of the diverse functions of Christian prophets, see: Niels Hvidt, Christian
Prophecy:  The Post-​Biblical Tradition (New  York:  Oxford UP, 2007), especially pp.  52–​58 and
170–​184. On prophecy’s role in the German reformation, see:  Robin Barnes, Prophecy and
Gnosis:  Apocalypticism in the Wake of the Lutheran Reformation (Stanford:  Stanford UP, 1988),
pp. 53ff.; and Scribner, For the Sake of Simple Folk, especially pp. 136–​147.
192 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

To that end, a book entitled The History of Jan Hus and Jerome of Prague, Faithfully
Related appeared in Nuremberg in 1528.13 The book was a composite of texts asso-
ciated with the trials of the two men and included two brief accounts of the men’s
“martyrdoms,” the official condemnations of them promulgated by the Council
of Constance, and the famous epistolary account of Jerome’s trial written by the
Italian humanist, Poggio Bracciolini. Taken together, these five texts offered a
variety of interpretations of the two men’s executions. Poggio had been deeply
impressed by Jerome’s humanist learning and eloquence, and considered his reli-
gious deviance a tragedy; the official conciliar documents expressed no such sym-
pathy, depicting the condemnation of Hus and Jerome as a distasteful necessity;
and the two narrative texts that opened the book were overtly hagiographic, and
had even served as the narrative core of the liturgical commemoration of both
men within the fifteenth-​century Utraquist Church. That the sixteenth-​century
editor of these texts was most sympathetic to the hagiographic point of view was
made clear in a prefatory address “To the Pious Reader,” which asserted that
“nearly the whole world is speaking” of Hus and Jerome, but lamented that “the
common people” still clamored for the violent suppression of religious dissent.
In response to this impulse, the author offered texts “written by a good man, for
whom the truth was greater than papal approval,” in order to counter the negative
portrayal of Hus and Jerome in the official histories of the Council.14
The editor of these texts went further in his attempts to redress the histori-
cal imbalance in the traditional portrayal of Hus and Jerome. In particular, he
added marginal notes to his primary sources that spelled out the moral and theo-
logical meaning of the past. Hus’s final protestation of his innocence, for example,
was accompanied by the note: “O, how precious in the sight of the Lord is the
death of the saints.”15 Further, a gloss accompanying Hus’s condemnation con-
nected his persecution to that suffered by the earliest Christians:  “Thus were
the apostles once defined, and this is understood both by us and by the Holy
Spirit.”16 While comments such as these placed the Bohemian heretics in paral-
lel to the earliest martyrs of the church, the History’s editor also drew attention
to their links to sixteenth-​century reform, most notably by printing the last
line of Jerome’s contribution to the aforementioned “prophecy” of Luther in all
capital letters: “BEFORE A HUNDRED YEARS HAVE PASSED YOU WILL
ANSWER TO ME.”17 Throughout the History, then, the paratextual elements of
preface, marginalia, and even typography emphasized a positive interpretation of

  Historia Ioannis Hussi et Hieronymi Pragensis, fideliter relata (Nuremberg:  Friedrich

13

Peypus, 1528).
14
  Historia Ioannis Hussi, p. A1v.
15
  Historia Ioannis Hussi, p. B2v.
16
  Historia Ioannis Hussi, p. C5r.
17
  Historia Ioannis Hussi, p. C2v.
 T he Prophet 193

the deaths of Hus and Jerome as acts of authentic Christian martyrdom. Taken as
a whole, this work also attested to the rising significance of the actual events and
immediate interpretations of Hus’s and Jerome’s executions as a crucial juncture
when the eternal conflict between the true and false churches had recently, and
spectacularly, played out.
In the following year, the available resources for describing this conflict
dramatically expanded with the publication of a German translation of Petr of
Mladoňovice’s exhaustive account of Hus’s trial, published as The Story and True
History of How the Gospel Was Condemned along with Jan Hus by the Council of
Constance.18 This lengthy text was edited by Johannes Agricola, and it was the first
of many Hussite publications prepared by this theologian, educator, and ecclesi-
astical administrator. Indeed, what Brunfels had been for shaping a new figure
of Hus for the reading public in the previous decade, Agricola would be for the
1530s. Agricola’s background made him an ideal candidate for this task. He had
been an early student and follower of Luther’s, but he had eschewed a university
appointment in order to establish a model school in his and Luther’s hometown
of Eisleben in 1525.19 In this role, Agricola developed a wide range of pedagogi-
cal materials, and he displayed a flexible approach to them that allowed him
to adapt literary forms as diverse as classical drama, German folk sayings, and
even the scholarly dialogue for educational use.20 He also published the first of
many Lutheran catechisms aimed at students that employed a basic question and
answer format in order to articulate clearly and comprehensibly the basic tenets
of a nascent Lutheran theology.21 In each of these projects, Agricola endowed tra-
ditional forms with an explicit overlay of Lutheran theology, and he employed the
familiarity of certain genres in tandem with simplified language to ensure that his
audience could grasp the essential truths that he sought to convey.

18
  Petr of Mladoňovice, History und warhafftige geschicht wie das heilig Evangelion mit Johannes
Hussen im Concilio zu Costnitz durch den Bapst und seinen anhang offentlich verdampt ist im Jare nach
Christi unsers Herren geburt 1414, ed. J. Agricola (Hagenau: Johannes Secerius, 1529).
19
 The best biographical overview of Agricola’s life remains that written by Gustav
Kawerau in 1881, now available in a modern reprint: Johann Agricola von Eisleben: Ein Beitrag zur
Reformationsgeschichte (New  York:  Georg Olms Verlag, 1977). Cf. the negative assessment of
Agricola as a slavish, but theologically incompetent, imitator of Luther in: Joachim Rogge, Johann
Agricolas Lutherverständnis: Unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des Antinomismus (Berlin: Evangelische
Verlagsanstalt, 1960). On Agricola’s work as a schoolmaster in Eisleben, see also: Sander Gilman,
“The Hymns of Johannes Agricola of Eisleben:  A  Literary Reappraisal,” The Modern Language
Review 67 (1972): 364–​389.
20
  For analyses of Agricola’s literary adaptations, see: Gilman, “The Hymns”; idem, “Johannes
Agricola of Eisleben’s Proverb Collection (1529):  The Polemizing of a Literary Form and the
Reaction,” Sixteenth Century Journal 8 (1977): 77–​8 4; and Kawerau, Ein Beitrag, pp. 73–​8 0.
21
 On Agricola’s catechisms, see:  Timothy Wengert, Law and Gospel:  Philip Melanchthon’s
Debate with John Agricola of Eisleben over Poenitentia (Baker Books: Grand Rapids, 1997), especially
pp. 47–​76.
194 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

Throughout the 1530s, Agricola applied these basic pedagogical strategies to

an expanding repertoire of genres. It was with The Story and True History, however,
that Agricola first stepped outside the comfortable confines of the classroom in
order to expose a broader reading public to the significance of church history for
contemporary ecclesiastical debates. In this work, Agricola refrained from add-
ing explicitly Lutheran paratexts to Mladoňovice’s narrative. Rather, he let the
events of Hus’s trial and death play out without much commentary. In doing so,
Agricola echoed the style of his primary source, which he noted in a brief pref-
ace was “not composed fatuously, with highly elaborate words,” but was rather a
record of what the original author “himself heard and saw and truly experienced,
and we know that his witness is true.”22 Agricola’s basic rhetorical strategy was
to rely on the text’s style and content to establish its own authority. For him, the
heart of this content was the confrontation between Hus and “the synagogue of
the Antichrist,” in which “the pure friend of God … stood alone against the two
greatest powers on earth, the emperor and pope.”23 And in terms of style, The Story
and True History was distinguished by its seemingly journalistic rendering of how
the biblically grounded and plainspoken Hus was assailed by the sophistical and
violent (in terms of both rhetoric and behavior) ecclesiastical hierarchy assem-
bled at Constance.
Granted, the content of the text belied this tone; Mladoňovice had been com-
mitted to depicting Hus as a saint, and the details of the trial that he included
rendered it as a latter-​day parallel to that of Christ.24 It was ultimately these
details, particularly those describing the council father’s misconduct, that made
Mladoňovice’s account of Hus’s trial so useful for Lutheran polemics. Here, the
leaders of the Church were alternately envious of, enraged by, and insensible to
Hus’s insistence on the biblical foundation of his theological arguments. Crucially,
Mladoňovice emphasized the unwillingness of the council’s leaders even to enter-
tain the possibility of a serious consideration of the issues raised by Hus. Rather
than discuss the origins and extent of papal power in the Church, for example,
or the long-​term development of ecclesiological and sacramental thought by
the magisterium, the council fathers merely ridiculed Hus and demanded his
submission to their authority. The only true exchange of ideas in The Story and
True History was represented by the passing back and forth of lists of condemned
articles extracted from Hus’s works and his written refutations of them, and this
mute, autistic process of serving papers proved to be merely a prelude to Hus’s
final condemnation and execution. For Lutherans wondering what they could

  Petr of Mladoňovice, History und warhafftige geschicht, p. Aiv.

22

  Petr of Mladoňovice, History und warhafftige geschicht, p. Aiir.

23

24
  On Mladoňovice’s problematic account of Constance, see: Herkommer, “Die Geschichte
vom Leiden und Sterben des Jan Hus,” pp. 117–​118. Cf. Fudge, The Memory and Motivation, pp.
194–​199.
 T he Prophet 195

expect from a hearing before the Catholic hierarchy, this presentation evocatively
depicted the Council of Constance as an antagonistic judicial setting in which the
condemnation of dissident positions was a foregone conclusion, and the coercive
power of the united Church and Empire a frightening reality.
For the following decade, Agricola’s edition of Mladoňovice’s narrative served
as the foundation for a growing body of Lutheran polemics regarding Hus’s execu-
tion at Constance and the failings of church councils more generally. Its ostensibly
straightforward presentation of Hus’s trial created a baseline of detailed histori-
cal knowledge that enabled the construction of a multi-​tiered critique of church
councils through three related strategies:  generalization, in the sense that Hus’s
death became a microcosm for other miscarriages of justice and theological errors
initiated by church councils; elaboration, as a number of other texts from Hus’s
trial were published as complementary accounts of his opposition to, and elimina-
tion by, the false institutional church; and dramatization, as the factual narrative
of Hus’s death was transformed into a tragedy that used dramatic techniques and
visual imagery to intensify the impact of Hus’s story. These Lutheran interpreta-
tions of Hus’s trial were, however, fundamentally paradoxical. On the one hand,
they gained rhetorical power from the specific context of Hus’s execution and
the demonstrable continuities between his persecution and that which had been
experienced (and was being anticipated) by Luther and his followers. On the other
hand, though, Lutheran accounts of Hus’s trial also underscored the timeless and
essentially unchanging nature of the conflict between the true and false churches
that had become visible at Constance. Eternal and cyclical, but historically specific
and careening toward an eschatological climax: these were the underlying dynam-
ics that existed in tension within the developing Lutheran historical conscious-
ness.25 And over the course of the 1530s, as questions over the role of councils in
church governance and even larger questions about the location of authority in
the church raged, these tensions would be exposed, and only partially resolved,
through a series of publications on Constance and the trial of Jan Hus.

Martin Luther and Mantua: Toward a General

Critique of Church Councils
The first decade of the German reformation witnessed repeated demands for
the convocation of a church council to correct abuses within the church and

25
  On the development of this consciousness, see: John Headley, Luther’s View of Church History
(New Haven: Yale UP, 1963), pp. 59–​69; Johannes Schilling, “Gottes Werck, wie wunderlich er die
Menschen kinder regieret:  Zum Geschichtsverständnis der Wittenberger Reformation,” Wartburg-​
Jahrbuch 8 (2001): 77–​95; and idem, “Die Wiederentdeckung des Evangeliums: Wie die Wittenberger
Reformatoren ihre Geschichte rekonstruierten,” in Die Präsenz der Antike im Übergang vom Mittelalter
zur Frühen Neuzeit, ed. L. Grensmann et al. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004), pp. 125–​142.
196 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

address the theological issues first raised by Luther in 1517. Beyond Luther’s
individual appeals, the imperial diets of Speyer, which met in 1526 and 1529,
both called for a “recht frei Concilium” that would meet on German soil under
the leadership of the emperor to settle the growing religious turmoil in the
Empire. 26 Despite these demands, there was little chance of a council actu-
ally convening in the 1520s, largely because Popes Leo X and Clement VII (r.
1523–​1534) never seriously contemplated holding one. The papacy was sen-
sitive to any questions about its supremacy over the Church after the tumul-
tuous fifteenth-​c entury conciliar debates, and both of these popes feared
that calling a council would expose their administrative and fiscal practices
to internal and external criticism. 27 This papal hesitation was coupled with
Emperor Charles V’s inability to settle his ongoing military struggle with
France and turn his full attention to the religious conf licts that were desta-
bilizing the Empire, an issue compounded by the emperor’s frustrated desire
for an ecumenical council to aid in this settlement. 28 In short, the absence
of united papal and imperial support for a council at the end of the 1520s
suggested that the actual convocation of such an assembly would remain a
pipe dream.
The lack of a decisive push for a council from the Catholic side was mirrored by
developments within the evangelical party that militated against any such gath-
ering. The first of these, of course, was the issuing of a “Protestation” at Speyer
in 1529 by a number of princes and cities that had instituted religious reforms
within their territories and collectively rejected the enforcement of the Edict of
Worms.29 This nascent Protestant party’s religious beliefs were formalized with
the promulgation of the Augsburg Confession in 1530; the so-​called Augustana
articulated a key set of evangelical beliefs that could not be sacrificed for the sake
of rapprochement with the Catholics, most notably on the nature of the Mass and
justification by faith, and it became a touchstone of orthodoxy within the territo-
ries that took their lead from Wittenberg.

  The best account of the continued demand for a council remains Hubert Jedin’s. On the
26

political aspect of the conciliar question, see: Jedin, History of the Council of Trent, vol. 1, pp. 250ff.
27
 Jedin, History of the Council of Trent, vol. 1, p. 254. Cf. the account of Clement’s reign in: Hans-​
Jürgen Becker, Die Appellation vom Papst an ein allgemeines Konzil: Historische Entwicklung und kanonis-
tische Diskussion im späten Mittelalter und frühen Neuzeit (Köln: Böhlau, 1988), pp. 260ff.
28
  On Charles V’s desire for a council and conflicted relationship with Clement VII, see: Hubert
Jedin, “Die Päpste und das Konzil in der Politik Karls V.,” in Karl V.:  Der Kaiser und seine Zeit,
ed. P. Rassow and F. Schalk (Köln:  Böhlau, 1960), pp. 104–​117; and Gerhard Müller, “Zur
Vorgeschichte des Tridentiums: Karl V. und das Konzil während des Pontifikates Clemens VII.”
Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 74 (1963): 83–​108.
29
  On the events at Speyer and their impact on the formation of a political evangelical bloc,
see:  Thomas Brady, Protestant Politics:  Jacob Sturm (1489–​1553) and the German Reformation
(Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1995), pp. 68–​75.
 T he Prophet 197

Although the Augustana was characterized by an apologetic tone in terms of

justifying the Lutherans’ dissent from Rome, its content provided a theological
core around which an evangelical political party coalesced with the formation of
the Schmalkaldic League early in 1531.30 The League, which united the Lutheran
princes and many of the leading free cities in an alliance of mutual self-​defense and
the support of the Lutheran “causa religionis,” would serve as the main political and
military counterweight to the Habsburgs in the Empire for the next two decades.
It gained recognition—​albeit temporary—​for its religious positions as early as
1532, when it negotiated the Truce of Nuremberg with Charles V; this agreement
ended legal disputes over seized church lands within the Empire and recognized the
Empire as effectively bi-​confessional until a church council could meet and resolve
the religious schism within the German lands.31 The Truce was renewed twice, and
it ultimately remained in force throughout the 1530s. Practically speaking, its recog-
nition of the religious reality on the imperial ground established a viable alternative
to any forced reunification of the church in the German lands. The Truce’s persis-
tence also attested to the significance of the political and theological obstacles that
had arisen to block any potential progress toward the calling of a church council.
These roadblocks were partially offset by the ascension of a reform party within
the Roman hierarchy during the first half of the 1530s. The efforts of this group
to undertake curial reform culminated in 1534, when one of its leaders, Cardinal
Alessandro Farnese, was elected as Pope Paul III. This new pope quickly formed
a panel of church leaders to identify areas of church governance that were in need
of amelioration, a move that signaled a sea change in the papacy’s position on the
necessity of church reform. 32 Paul III acted further upon this shift by issuing a bull
in June 1536 that called for a general church council to convene on May 23 of the
following year in Mantua. This pronouncement demonstrated the seriousness of the
new pope’s reformist agenda, and Paul’s push for the rapid assembly of the council (he

30
  On the development of the League as a Protestant political alliance, see the definitive work
by:  Gabriele Haug-​Moritz, Der Schmalkaldische Bund 1530–​1541/​2:  eine Studie zu den genossen-
schaftlichen Strukturelementen der politischen Ordnung des Heiligen Römischen Reiches Deutscher Nation
(Leinfelden-​Echterdingen:  DRW-​Verlag, 2002). See also:  Bernd Moeller, “Das Reich und die
Kirche in der Frühen Reformationszeit,” in Das Augsburger Bekenntnis, pp. 17–​31; and Christopher
Close, The Negotiated Reformation:  Imperial Cities and the Politics of Urban Reform, 1525–​1550
(New York: Cambridge UP, 2009), pp. 69ff.
31
  For the terms of the Truce, see:  Eike Wolgast, Die Wittenberger Theologie und die Politik
der evangelische Stände (Gütersloh:  Gütersloher Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn, 1977), especially
pp. 203ff.; Brady, Protestant Politics, pp. 82ff.; and idem, “Phases and Strategies of the Schmalkaldic
League: A Perspective after 450 Years,” ARG 74 (1983): 162–​181.
32
  On the efforts of Paul III and his allies, see: John Olin, Catholic Reform from Cardinal Ximenes
to the Council of Trent, 1495–​1563: An Essay with Illustrative Documents and a Brief Study of St. Ignatius
of Loyola (New York: Fordham UP, 1990), pp. 19ff. See also the first chapter of: Ronnie Po-​Chia
Hsia, The World of Catholic Renewal 1540–​1770, 2nd ed. (New York: Cambridge UP, 2005).
198 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

gave church leaders less than a year to prepare for, and travel to, Mantua) gained the
full support of Emperor Charles V and the leading Catholic princes of the Empire.
With their backing, it finally seemed possible that an ecumenical council could con-
vene in order to consider the ramifications of the German reformation.33
For the Protestant party within the Empire, though, the bull raised as many
questions as it answered. In the first place, the proposed site of the council was
highly problematic; Mantua, while technically in the domains of the Holy Roman
Emperor, seemed too Italian for the evangelical nobility and Lutheran leaders.
Given this location, many of the German princes requested safe conducts granted
to themselves or their delegates, a demand that angered papal representatives.
Their requirement of specific safe conducts was fueled, however, by the wording
of the bull, which specifically stated that the council was being called to com-
bat heresy. The implicit equation of Lutheranism and heresy suggested that the
Lutherans could not possibly gain a fair hearing at the council, creating a situation
that clearly echoed the increasingly well-​publicized circumstances at Constance.
These concerns were exacerbated by the simple fact that the pope would be
involved at Mantua as both a party to the central religious dispute and its ultimate
judge, which seemed to ensure the condemnation of those who opposed him. 34
Lutheran authors also adduced arguments that undermined the impend-
ing council’s authority in doctrinal matters. They argued that it must employ
Scripture alone as the standard for judging doctrinal orthodoxy, rather than
papal pronouncements, conciliar decrees, or the teachings of extra-​biblical writ-
ers. Further, Protestant polemicists argued that councils had a limited scriptural
mandate, and that the Bible made no mention of the pope’s role in councils at all.
Thus, his role at the head of an ecumenical assembly would immediately invali-
date its decisions. 35 Protestant authors also put forth political arguments against
Mantua by voicing concerns over the emperor’s alienating his prerogative to
judge the issue of religious reform within the Empire. The potential interference
of foreign powers in seemingly domestic affairs particularly angered the Saxon
Elector John Frederick, who proposed the convocation of a German, rather than
universal, counter-​council dedicated to the issue of religious reform. 36 This

 Jedin, History of the Council of Trent, vol. 1, pp. 298ff.

33

  On the Protestant grievances, see:  Eike Wolgast, “Das Konzil in den Erörterungen der
34

kursächsischen Theologen und Politiker 1533–​1537,” ARG 73 (1982):  122–​152; and Thomas
Brockmann, Die Konzilsfrage in den Flug-​und Streitschriften des deutschen Sprachraumes 1518–​1563
(Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998), especially pp. 262–​2 87.
35
 Brockmann, Die Konzilsfrage, pp. 261–​2 67. See also: Spehr, Luther und das Konzil, especially
­chapter 19.
36
  On questions of imperial jurisdiction, see:  Wolgast, “Die Konzil in der Erörterungen,”
pp.  141–​146; and Konrad Repgen, “Reich und Konzil (1521–​1566),” in idem, Dreissigjähriger
Krieg und Westfälischer Friede: Studien und Quellen, ed. F. Bosbach and C. Kampmann (Paderborn:
Schöningh, 1998), pp. 260–​2 88.
 T he Prophet 199

jurisdictional argument also explicitly incorporated a rejection of the pope’s

right to preside over a dispute in which he was an active participant, thus com-
bining the legal and theological arguments that formed the core of Protestant
anti-​conciliar rhetoric.
Luther, as he so often did, set the agenda for the Protestant polemics against
the council. 37 In the main, his attacks on Mantua took the form of historical
reflections on the errors of past councils, with special attention paid to Constance
and its condemnation of Jan Hus. For Luther, these errors had resulted from the
councils’ consistently overreaching their legitimate authority; they tried to for-
mulate doctrine, rather than serving as a consistory whose primary function was
the regulation and reform of church life. Luther identified the root cause of the
councils’ false assumption of doctrinal authority as the instigation of popes who
sought to use the councils as a means of justifying their claims to ultimate power
in the Church. 38 This line of argumentation led Luther to reject the legitimacy of
all but four councils (Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus, and Chalcedon), because
these alone had avoided subversion by the papacy and fulfilled their true purpose
by decisively affirming the authority of the Bible and condemning heretical devia-
tions from acceptable belief and practice. 39
Beginning in 1534, then, when Paul’s election as pope led to a build-​up in
momentum for a council, Luther issued a steady stream of publications contrast-
ing the reformist efforts of these early, true councils with the usurpations of more
recent assemblies. Among these latter councils, none garnered more negative
attention from Luther than Constance, which he first attacked explicitly in a 1535
pamphlet published in both Latin and German and entitled A Number of Judgments
against the Council of Constance by Martin Luther.40 The emphasis throughout this
tract was on the ways in which the Council had set itself against the teachings of
Christ, and therefore deserved to be known as the “Concilium Obstantiense” (i.e.,

37
  On this, see:  Jaroslav Pelikan, “Luthers Stellung zu den Kirchenkonzilien,” in Konzil und
Evangelium, ed. K. Skydsgaard (Göttingen:  Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1962), pp. 40–​62; and
Bernt Ofestad, “Evangelium, Apostel und Konzil:  Das Apostelkonzil in der Sicht Luthers und
Melanchthons,” ARG 88 (1997): 23–​56.
38
  Luther had made this argument as early as 1520, when he argued in his Address to the German
Nobility that the papacy’s claims to exclusive control over church councils were one of three “walls”
that Rome had established to insulate itself from reform. On Luther’s early critique of the papa-
cy’s role in church councils, see: Albert Ebneter, “Luther und das Konzil,” Zeitschrift für katolische
Theologie 84 (1962): 1–​4 8. Cf. Luther, An den christlichen Adel, pp. 413ff.
39
  On Luther’s view of councils’ true functions, see: Scott Hendrix, Luther’s Last Battles: Politics
and Polemics, 1531–​1546 (Leiden: Brill, 1983), pp. 95ff.
40
  Martin Luther, Disputatio Circularis Feria Sexta contra Concilium Constantiense et suos confes-
sores (Johannes Luft: Wittenberg, 1535); the German reprinting appeared under the title: Ettliche
spruche Doc. Martini Luther, wider das Concilium Obstantiense, (wolt sagen) Constantiense (Johannes
Lufft: Wittenberg, 1535) [both appear in: WA 39, 9–​38].
200 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

“the oppositional council”) rather than the “Concilium Constantiense.”41 According

to Luther, the council had erred by arguing that the custom of the Church could be
binding on Christians, even if it was not in conformity with the example of Christ
and the practices of the apostolic age. Luther specifically cited the condemnation
of communion in both kinds by Constance as an example of this misguided eleva-
tion of tradition, and he forcefully argued that this council had condemned people
as heretics who had simply imitated the practice of Jesus himself.42 In contradict-
ing Christ, Constance had proven that it represented “the kingdom of Antichrist,
because it opposes itself to, and places itself above, God and all things divine, sit-
ting in the temple of God just as God did.”43 [2 Thessalonians 2:4]
Hus played a key role in the revelation of the council’s diabolical nature. In
Luther’s reckoning, Hus had been condemned at Constance because he had both
defended Christ’s institution of the eucharist against the Church’s innovations and
attacked the ecclesiastical hierarchy for its manifest moral failings. It was this latter
critique that proved decisive for Luther; Hus had been the victim of “pure tyranny”
and “arrogant murder” precisely because the council fathers “had been caught out,
railed at, and revealed in theft by Jan Hus, the most faithful hound of the church.”44
Hus’s persecution therefore revealed the essential interaction between the institu-
tional, Antichristian church—​here represented by the council—​and the true, suffer-
ing followers of Christ: the former would always “damn the smaller and better” body
of true Christians who would nevertheless persevere, “For Christ will aid us, as long
as we faithfully confess him who begins and perfects his work in us until the end.”45
A Number of Judgments was Luther’s most sustained blast at the history of
Constance, and it also served as a template for a more general attack on councils that
Luther articulated over a series of pamphlets from the mid-​1530s. In the published
version of a university disputation on the power of councils held in Wittenberg in
1536, for instance, Luther asserted that nothing harmed the Christian religion
more than church councils, as they had merely become a rubber stamp for certify-
ing papal ambitions to complete power within the church.46 Luther contrasted this
perversion of the institutional church, though, with the perseverance of God’s true

 Luther, Disputatio Circularis, p. 13.

41

 Luther, Disputatio Circularis, p. 16.

42

43
 Luther, Disputatio Circularis, p. 31.
44
 Luther, Disputatio Circularis, p.  34. This reference to Hus as a “canicula” was most likely
an oblique allusion to Tertullian, who referred to Diogenes of Sinope, the founder of the Cynic
school of philosophy, as “illa canicula” (alternately, “canicola”) in book one of his treatise, Adversus
Marcionem. Diogenes’s scorn for public institutions and his exposure of hypocrisy would explain
the comparison.
45
 Luther, Disputatio Circularis, pp. 34 and 36.
46
  This disputation for two doctoral promotions was held on October 10, 1536. The text of the
disputation’s thirty articles were printed, along with commentary by Luther, as: De Potestate Concilii
(Wittenberg: n.p., 1536) [WA 39, pp. 181–​197]. The text was also published in a German translation
three times in 1536 and 1537.
 T he Prophet 201

church, which was embodied by those who had set themselves against the councils
and pope. As a second account of the disputation attested, Luther considered that
the Council of Constance had tried to eradicate the true church, but had failed: “In
the Council of Constance there were truly murderers and heretics, namely, the
papists, but the church did not fail, because Jan Hus was there, and Jerome.”47 Luther
explicitly equated this situation to that of Israel under the leadership of Annas and
Caiaphas in the Gospels; those who were faithful to God were scandalized by their
leaders’ behavior, but recognized that the people of God was not coterminous
with the hierarchy that ruled over it.48 This conclusion informed a third treatise,
The Call for a Holy, Free Christian Council, in which Luther was even more explicit
about the distance between the pope, his pet councils, and the faithful people who
actually comprised the church. Luther bluntly stated that by seeking only after his
own power, the pope had revealed himself to be a “vassal of Satan, who filled up
our church with the blood of the innocent,” against whom Luther and his followers,
with the help of the angels, would continue their efforts at resistance and reform.49
Read alongside one another, Luther’s various attacks on church councils con-
stituted a cohesive critique of the way that power was exercised in the institutional
church. According to Luther, the original intent of the councils, which was to cen-
sure innovation and maintain the biblical basis for Christian practice, had been
jettisoned in the early Middle Ages. In place of the legitimate early councils, the
Church now held kangaroo courts whose twin goals were to elevate the papacy to a
status equal to God’s and to eliminate anyone who spoke against this institutionally
sanctioned form of idolatry. This specifically conciliar critique of the institutional
church was an essential component of a broader attack on the origins and extent
of papal power that Luther was formulating in the mid-​1530s. In a concomitant
succession of texts investigating the validity of the Donation of Constantine, the
lives of the individual popes, and the uses of hagiography and legendary tradition
to bolster the moral and political authority of the popes, Luther employed similar
historical arguments to undercut the foundations of the papacy’s power within the
church.50 As Luther said in his preface to Robert Barnes’ Lives of the Roman Pontiffs:

In the beginning when I had little familiarity or experience with the his-
tories, I attacked the papacy a priori (as it is said), that is, from the Holy
Scriptures. Now I  rejoice exceedingly that others are doing the same

47
  This account, written by Johannes Bugenhagen, survives in a manuscript containing notes
from four Wittenberg disputations. It has been published as Die Disputation de Potestate Concilii [WA
59, pp. 712–​716], here p. 713.
48
 Ibid.
49
  Martin Luther, Ausschreibunge eines heiligen freyen Christlichen Concilii (Wittenberg: Nicholas
Schirlentz, 1534) [WA 38, pp. 280–​2 89], here p. 285. This text went through four German editions
in 1534–​1535, and was published in Latin as part of the Jenaer Lutherausgabe of 1557.
50
  For an overview of this larger historical critique, see: Hendrix, Luther’s Last Battles, pp. 81ff.
202 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

thing a posteriori, that is, from the histories. And it seems clear to me that
I am the victor, when I understand by this dawning light that the histo-
ries agree with the Scriptures.”51

Luther’s expanding historical critique of the papacy and the church over which
it ruled originated in the conflict over the viability of the church council as an
arbiter of the Empire’s religious schism. This specific historical exigency spawned
investigations of past councils and their actions, and this line of inquiry led Luther
and his allies back to Constance and its condemnation of Christ’s institution of
the eucharist and the defender of evangelical truth, Jan Hus. Indeed, it was the
case of Hus that crystallized and humanized Protestant arguments against the
impending council by presenting a dramatic precedent for what the evangelicals
might expect at Mantua. Hus’s story also came to serve as a point of departure for
a more general critique of how councils and popes exercised power in the church,
a critique that recognized church councils as a privileged site where the conflict
between Antichrist’s minions and the prophetic champions of Christ manifested
itself.

Creating Prophetic Correspondences: Elaborations

on Hus’s Trial and Death
For delineating the ways in which this struggle played out, no sources proved to
be more important for Luther and his followers than the letters written by Jan Hus
during his imprisonment in Constance. Collections of Hus’s prison correspon-
dence were printed five times in 1536 and 1537, and these texts constituted the
affective backbone of the Lutheran assault on councils in general, and Constance
in particular, during these years. Martin Luther wrote a brief preface to the first
German edition of Hus’s correspondence in 1536, a collection of four letters that
Hus had written in the last month of his life. 52 In Luther’s hands, these letters
served as a warning to the rulers of the Empire. According to Luther, he wanted
these letters to circulate “not to bring hatred and ill will upon the Council of
Constance” (which he admitted he had already done!) but rather “to admonish
those who can be admonished, that, if by the will of God the council [of Mantua]
should perhaps go forward, they might take heed and fear for themselves at

  The preface was included in: Robert Barnes, Vitae Romanorum Pontificum, quos Papas voca-
51

mus (Wittenberg:  Joseph Klug, 1536) [WA 50, pp. 1–​5], here p.  5. On Barnes’s historical work
and his importance as a mediator between the English and Lutheran reformations, see:  Korey
Maas, The Reformation and Robert Barnes:  History, Theology and Polemic in Early Modern England
(Woodbridge: Boydell, 2010), especially ­chapter 4.
52
  These letters had first been published (in the same order) in the 1495 Utraquist Pasional as
part of its entry for Hus. On this text, see the concluding section in chapter three.
 T he Prophet 203

the example of the Council of Constance.”53 Luther based this warning on the
long-​term results of the Council of Constance’s execution of Hus. In the wake
of Hus’s death, “wars, destruction, bloodshed, and irremediable hatred” had
ensued between Germans and Czechs, due to the provocations of the “mad fury
of those monsters” at Constance, and Luther feared that a similar fate could await
the German lands if Protestant leaders faced persecution at Mantua. 54 Alongside
this practical admonition, Luther also warned that divine truth itself had been
attacked at Constance, but he asserted that this truth had ultimately proven to
be victorious over the tyranny of the council that had sought to suppress it. It
was Luther’s hope, then, that Hus’s story would convince the political leaders of
the Empire to avoid Mantua, as that gathering could not but repeat the errors of
Constance and its conciliar predecessors.
Luther’s warning was borne out through the text of the letters contained in
this collection. In the second letter, for example, dated June 24, Hus asserted that
“the shame of Antichrist has manifested itself in the pope as well as in others of
the council.” Hus attributed this shame to the council’s hypocrisy. How could it
censure him for arguing that a sinful pope was a follower of Antichrist, even as
the council fathers condemned Pope John XXIII for simony, sodomy, and her-
esy?55 In a letter dated June 26, Hus further derided the “proud and avaricious
Council,” noting the disorderly conduct of the council fathers and their inabil-
ity to refute his arguments with biblical proof texts. In light of the council’s con-
duct, Hus invoked the story of St. Catherine of Alexandria’s confrontation with
fifty pagan, imperially sponsored scholars to describe his situation: “That dear
maiden remained steadfast unto death and brought the masters to the Lord God,
whom I, a sinner, am unable to bring.”56 This comparison was simultaneously self-​
aggrandizing, as it placed Hus among the company of the recognized saints of the
church, and humble, as it juxtaposed his failings with Catherine’s success. More
importantly for Luther, though, this letter and its reference to Catherine made it
clear that the unanimous condemnation of one’s teachings by the secular authori-
ties and the ecclesiastical elite decisively proved, rather than refuted, the truth of
those teachings and the sanctity of the one who professed them.
In describing his own positions, Hus identified them as the “truth of God
which I have drawn from the law of God, and have preached and written from
the law of the saints.”57 This truth had its foundation in knowledge of the Bible,
but manifested itself in a moral probity that Hus juxtaposed with the immoral

53
  Martin Luther, ed., Tres Epistolae Sanctissimi Martyris Ioannis Hussii e carcere Constantiensi ad
Boemos scriptae (Wittenberg: Joseph Klug, 1536) [WA 50, pp. 16–​39]. These quotations, p. 23.
54
 Luther, Tres Epistolae, p. 24.
55
 Luther, Tres Epistolae, p. 28.
56
 Luther, Tres Epistolae, p. 26.
57
 Luther, Tres Epistolae, p. 29.
204 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

conduct of the council. For Hus, as with Luther, this moral contrast inevita-
bly generated persecution and suffering, which was intrinsic to a believer’s
life as both the most authentic form of the imitation of Christ and a necessary
aspect of the penitential process that affirmed one’s salvation. As Hus himself
put it: “The Lord God has granted us a long time that we may better recollect
our sins and forthrightly regret them. He has granted us time so that the long-​
drawn-​out and great testing may divest us of great sins and bring us consola-
tion.”58 Hus went on to describe the various forms of “testing” that had been
suffered by the saints of the Bible and the early church: they had been beaten,
drowned, boiled, stoned, imprisoned, burned, flayed, and crucified. The early
saints’ patient suffering of these various horrors forced Hus to conclude that “it
would be a strange thing if now one would not suffer on account of a brave stand
against wickedness, especially that of the priests, which does not allow itself to
be touched.”59
Written less than ten days before his execution, on June 27, this catalogue of
violence and valorization of suffering represented a poignant moment of foreshad-
owing. Indeed, all four of Hus’s letters were replete with Hus’s anticipation of his
own end. He signed the earliest letter from this collection, written early in June,
“expecting tomorrow the sentence of death, in full hope in God that I swerved not
from his truth”60; and on June 26, he concluded a letter by noting that he wrote “in
prison and in chains, in the expectation of death.”61 Much like Luther, though, Hus
tempered the acceptance of his own death with a certainty that the reform he had
helped to inaugurate would continue. Thus, at the close of his letter from June 24,
Hus could confidently assert:

Would that it were possible to describe the wickedness [of the Council]
so that the faithful servants of God might beware of them! I would like to
do it; but I trust God that after me he will raise up braver men, and they
exist even now, who will better declare Antichrist’s wickedness and will
risk their lives to death for the truth of the Lord Jesus Christ, who will
grant you and me eternal life. Amen.62

This passage was immediately preceded in Hus’s letter by an explicit attack on

the Council of Constance as the “abomination of desolation” described by Jesus
in Matthew 24:15. This gospel passage was itself a commentary on the book of
Daniel’s repeated references to this apocalyptic figure, and the concatenation of

58
 Luther, Tres Epistolae, p. 31.
59
 Ibid.
60
 Luther, Tres Epistolae, p. 30.
61
 Luther, Tres Epistolae, p. 27.
62
 Luther, Tres Epistolae, p. 29.
 T he Prophet 205

these prophetic texts established Hus and his prediction of continued resistance
and reform as a vital link in a chain of prophets that had extended from biblical
times until the present.63 It is not surprising, then, that this passage was accompa-
nied by a marginal comment that directed: “Note the extent of the true spirit of
prophecy in Hus.”64 Nor should it be surprising that Luther commented further
on this identification in the “Afterword” he wrote for a 1537 German edition of
these letters translated by Johannes Agricola.65 In this essay, Luther exulted that
Hus’s letters had been made public, as they clearly showed that Hus had been a
martyr and saint who had patiently and “manfully” accepted the death ordained
for him. These aspects of Hus’s character, as well as his consistent attacks on the
papacy, led Luther to conclude that:  “If he is to be considered a heretic, then
surely there has never been a true Christian on earth. For by what fruits will one
recognize a true Christian, if not by these fruits of Jan Hus?”66 Among the fruits
that Luther attributed to Hus, prophecy held a significant place. Luther thus con-
cluded his afterword by warning his opponents that the council they had planned
would fail, just as Constance had failed, to suppress divine truth. According to
Luther, “those at Constance were certain that no one would ever be able to speak
and write against them, much less to honor Jan Hus as a saint … but Hus had
prophesied otherwise, and it has come to pass through many, and in part through
myself.”67
In these letters, Hus spoke with an observant, determined, and outraged voice.
It was his thick description of the council and its immorality that leapt out as a
potential critique of Mantua, his intuition of impending death and dismay at
his treatment that served as a warning to sixteenth-​century Protestants. It was
in Luther’s framing of the letters, though, that these observations and expecta-
tions were synthesized into a larger prophetic critique of the Roman hierarchy
that depended as much on Hus’s grounding in the apostolic tradition as it did on
his foretelling of Luther’s reform and the obstacles it would have to overcome.
This presentation of Hus as deeply ensconced in the tradition of Christian sanc-
tity and prophecy animated a second text edited by Johannes Agricola in 1537,
the Disputation of Jan Hus, which added a scholarly component to Hus’s identity

63
  On the centrality of this perception in Luther’s larger understanding of history, see: Hans-​
Gert Roloff, “Die Funktion von Hus-​Texten in der Reformations-​Polemik,” in De Captu Lectoris, ed.
W. Milde and W. Schuder (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1988), pp. 219–​256, especially pp. 240–​2 42; and
Oberman, “Hus and Luther,” p. 160.
64
 Luther, Tres Epistolae, p. 29.
65
  This edition appeared as:  Etliche Brieve Johannis Huss des heiligen Merterers, au dem gefengnis
zu Constentz, An die Behemen geschrieben, Mit einer Vorrhede Doct. Mart. Luthers, trans. J. Agricola
(Wittenberg: Joseph Klug, 1537); this translation was published in parallel to the Latin original
in: WA 50, 16–​39.
66
 Luther, Etliche Brieve, p. 34.
67
 Luther, Etliche Brieve, p. 39.
206 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

as an embodiment of Christian truth.68 This publication, which comprised three

discourses that Hus had prepared to give at Constance in defense of communion
in both kinds and an annotated text of Constance’s official condemnation of that
practice, highlighted Hus’s scholarly bona fides as a biblical and patristic exegete.
Its purpose was, as Agricola phrased it in a short introduction, to show “on which
arguments this pious book-​keeper of God’s oracles depended.”69
The longest of the included texts, a quaestio assessing “Whether it is beneficial for
the faithful laity to consume the blood of Christ in the form of wine,” emphasized
Hus’s dependence on earlier Christian teachings; it was essentially a florilegium of
sources defending communion in both kinds ranging from the gospels and epistles
of Paul to the decrees of the fifth-​century pope Gelasius and writings by Jerome,
Ambrose, Cyprian, and Thomas Aquinas.70 These texts demonstrated both that
Hus’s position on the eucharist was grounded in the opinions of unimpeachable
authorities within the Catholic tradition, and that his contemporaries’ arguments
in favor of communion in one kind directly contradicted the ruling of an earlier
pope and numerous doctors of the church concerning the administration of the
eucharist.71 The subsidiary texts by Hus included a rejection of the Council’s juris-
diction over his case grounded in the biblical injunctions to Christians to refrain
from judgment (in Luke 6:37) and a second quaestio arguing that “the law of Christ,
true God and true man, is sufficient in itself for the governance of the church mili-
tant.”72 The first of these employed passages from the gospels to demonstrate that
human tribunals and laws were ultimately secondary to the law of God; the sec-
ond was a more expository refutation of the council’s judgment against Hus as an
instance of human tradition illicitly trumping scriptural teaching, as evidenced by
the inability of the council fathers at Constance to refute Hus’s eucharistic theol-
ogy on any biblical basis.73 Considered alongside the more substantial florilegium
that stood at the head of Agricola’s collection, these three pieces depicted Hus as
standing firmly within the Christian tradition of sacramental orthodoxy and the
defense of biblical teaching over and against human innovation.

 Johannes Agricola, ed., Disputatio Ioannis Hus, quam absolvit dum ageret Constantiae
68

(Wittenberg: Nicholas Schirlenz, 1537).
69
 Agricola, Disputatio Ioannis Hus, p. A2v.
70
  This text was originally written in the autumn of 1414 in response to escalating debates in
Prague over the validity of administering communion in both kinds; this treatise represented
Hus’s most definitive statement in support of the revived practice of distributing the chalice
among the laity. On the origins of this text, see: Helena Krmíčková, “Utraquism in 1414,” BRRP
4 (2002): 99–​105; and Heiromonk Patapios, “Sub Utraque Specie: the Arguments of Jan Hus and
Jacoubek of Stříbro in Defence of communion to the Laity in Both Kinds,” Journal of Theological
Studies 53 (2002): 503–​522.
71
  On this latter point, see: Agricola, Disputatio Ioannis Hus, p. A4v.
72
 Agricola, Disputatio Ioannis Hus, pp. B6v.–​B8r.
73
 Agricola, Disputatio Ioannis Hus, p. C2v.
 T he Prophet 207

This impression was only strengthened by Agricola’s inclusion of the Council

of Constance’s condemnation of communion in both kinds. The text of the decree
itself was conducive to Agricola’s purposes, as it condemned communion in both
kinds solely as being “contrary to the laudable custom of the Church,” no matter
the precedent of the Last Supper or the practice of the primitive church.74 More
telling, however, was Agricola’s marginal commentary (otherwise absent in this
publication) to the text, which explicitly noted that in this decree the Council
of Constance “excommunicates Christ with his commandment and institu-
tion.” 75 Agricola additionally asserted that the condemnation of communion in
both kinds was a blasphemy that defined Christ’s institution of the eucharist as
an “error and impediment to the salvation of the faithful,” rather than the foun-
dation of legitimate Christian practice.76 The inclusion of this decree amongst
Hus’s writings in defense of communion in both kinds highlighted a stark con-
trast between how Luther, his followers, and his forerunners perceived authority
in the church (i.e., on the basis of biblical and apostolic precedent) and how their
Catholic opponents sought to establish a basis for their teachings. This textual
juxtaposition, which contrasted ostensibly divine and human teachings, was fur-
ther emphasized by Agricola’s commentary, which clarified the moral and sote-
riological outcomes of these mutually exclusive positions. For Agricola, as for his
teacher Luther, the elevation of merely human reason and judgment over divine
law represented one of the chief errors of the Roman hierarchy.
The faulty attribution of authority to human agents was the main theme of
a final writing by Luther concerning Hus, a preface appended to a collection
of Hussitica entitled Some Very Godly and Erudite Letters of Jan Hus, Sufficient in
Themselves to Show that the Godliness of the Papists Is Satanic Madness.77 This title
is somewhat misleading, as the collection contained not only a number of letters
written by Hus during his time in Constance, but also the postmortem correspon-
dence between the Czech nobility, the university of Prague, and the Council of
Constance debating Hus’s orthodoxy and an edition of Mladoňovice’s account of
Hus’s trial, all of which were published in Latin. In his preface to this collection,
Luther’s main theme was the sanctity of Hus, which Luther promoted despite the
fact that “at the Council of Constance the pope condemned this very good and
holy man, and thrust him before the world as some kind of eternally condemned
devil, to be cursed and abhorred.” 78 Luther contrasted the true sanctity of Hus,

74
 Agricola, Disputatio Ioannis Hus, p. B7v.
75
 Ibid.
76
 Agricola, Disputatio Ioannis Hus, p. B3v.
77
  Epistolae Quaedam Piisimae et eruditissimae Iohannis Hus, quae solae satis declarant Papistarum
pietates, esse Satane furias (Wittenberg: Johannes Lufft, 1537). Luther’s preface also appears in: WA
50: 123–​125.
78
 Luther, Epistolae Quaedam, pp. A4v.–​A 5r.
208 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

which his letters and Mladoňovice’s narrative amply confirmed, with the false
saints that the pope routinely created and elevated. In Luther’s words, “the pope
has also made himself the lord of Hell itself, condemning the dead and decid-
ing who was heretical, even though he did not know their life or teaching, except
insofar as he had observed that they taught and acted in opposition to his own
abominations.” 79
Luther rhetorically framed his observations on the creation of “new gods” in
the church by equating the pope with the king described in Daniel 11:36–​38 who
“will exalt and magnify himself above every god.” Luther asserted, though, that
God had begun to send forth “angels” who spoke with “the spirit of His mouth”
(2 Thessalonians 2:8), and he further stated that they had “mostly killed the
opponent of His own Son, that new god and creator of new gods, and will soon
destroy him completely.”80 Here, Luther magnified the sense of progress against
Antichrist that had animated his preface and afterword to the earlier collection of
Hus’s prison letters. He also suggested that a sort of divine tipping point had been
reached, again citing Daniel to assert that the “time of wrath has passed,” and that
“the time of inspection and day of visitation has come.”81 And as the text of Some
Very Godly and Erudite Letters made clear, the imminent success of God’s follow-
ers over and against the papal Antichrist had been both initiated and foretold by
Jan Hus.
In this collection, the letters were generally presented with little comment,
except for brief introductions at the head of each that described their contents.
There were, however, exceptions to this rule sprinkled throughout the larger col-
lection, and the few marginal comments highlighted Hus’s centrality as a prophet
of coming reform. As in the earlier collection of Hus’s prison correspondence, for
example, the June 24 letter predicting the appearance of “braver men” included
the marginal comment: “Note how clearly the spirit of prophecy is in Hus.”82 In
another, newly published letter from June 23, 1415, Hus lamented the spread of
Antichrist’s power and prayed that “his power might be weakened and his iniq-
uity exposed more clearly to the faithful people.” A marginal gloss to this pas-
sage simply noted that it was “Prophecy,” while a second comment immediately
below remarked on the “intensity of the spirit” seen in Hus’s declaration that
“God almighty will strengthen the hearts of his faithful whom he chose before
the creation of the world, that they might accept the unfading crown of glory.”83
As opposed to Brunfels’s publications of the previous decade, which packed the
margins of their pages with exhaustive and overtly polemical commentary, it was

79
 Luther, Epistoale Quaedam, pp. A2v.–​A 3r.
80
 Luther, Epistolae Quaedam, p. A5r.
81
 Ibid.
82
  Epistolae Quaedam, p. D6v.
83
  Epistolae Quaedam, p. F6r.
 T he Prophet 209

the paucity of notes in this volume that drew the eye. It was the occasional inter-
ruption of the white space surrounding the body of the text that called the reader
to give attention to the central message that Hus had foreseen the course of the
religious reformations that would emerge in the wake of his death.
Hus’s prophetic capabilities were rendered most visible in this collection by the
inclusion of a dream that Hus narrated and interpreted in a series of letters from
March 1415. In the dream itself, Hus described a vision of Bethlehem Chapel in
which all of the images that had decorated its walls had been removed (by whom,
Hus did not say). Hus then recorded that by the next day, “many painters, who
created more and better paintings,” had redecorated the chapel’s walls, so that
“many people rejoiced in Bethlehem, and I was moved to laugh with joy alongside
them.”84 In his interpretation of the dream, Hus likened the original images to the
teachings that he had propounded at Bethlehem, which the archbishop had tried
to eradicate through a prohibition on preaching in private chapels throughout
Prague in 1410. Despite this order, though, Hus was certain that divine truth had
taken root in Prague and that it would continue to flourish, because “the life of
Christ has been better portrayed by many preachers more skilled than me, to the
joy of the people who esteem the life of Christ, and I also rejoice for this.”85 This
passage in the text was accompanied by another marginal comment which noted
that this dream was a “prophecy,” and that its reference to “better preachers” fore-
told the appearance of Luther and his cohorts. Indeed, in regards to preaching the
life of Christ, the marginalia asserted simply that “no one could deny that this has
been accomplished by Luther.”86
Given the framing of this entire collection by Luther’s invocation of Daniel,
the most famous of the Old Testament’s dream interpreters, the prominence of
these letters contributed substantially to the presentation of Hus as a prophet of
Luther’s reform. And when considered alongside the collections of letters and aca-
demic treatises published in the previous years, the Very Godly and Erudite Letters
seems to have been intended as an exhaustive dossier promoting Hus’s sanctity to
set against the efforts of the papal “lord of hell” to condemn him as a heretic. This
collection also represented Luther’s most thorough engagement with the man he
claimed as a prophet and demonstrated how a variety of primary sources from the
previous century could be harnessed as a critique of contemporary practices and
institutions. This text showed how the sympathetic narrative histories of Hus’s
trial and death represented only the ground level of a polemical structure that

84
  Epistolae Quaedam, H2r. On Hus’s dream and its impact on later Hussite iconoclasm,
see: František Bartoš, “Po Stopách Obrazů v Betlemské Kapli z Doby Husovy,” Jihočeský Sborník
Historický 20 (1959):  121–​127; and Fudge, The Magnificent Ride:  The First Reformation in Hussite
Bohemia (Brookfield, VT: Ashgate, 1998), pp. 178ff.
85
  Epistolae Quaedam, p. H3v.
86
 Ibid.
210 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

could be endlessly elaborated upon by the publication of, and commentary upon,
additional texts that revealed Hus’s inspired insight into the future course of reli-
gious reform. Hus’s letters made it clear that he had foreseen the eschatological
stakes he was playing for at Constance; they also showed an abiding optimism
that manifested itself in his expectation that successors would continue the work
he had begun. It was perhaps natural that Luther and his closest followers would
identify themselves as the “braver men” and “more skilled” preachers whom
Hus had written of. What was less expected, but historically significant, was the
Lutherans’ turn to vernacular drama to present themselves as such, a polemical
move that potentially exposed a much wider audience to the words and deeds of
Jan Hus.

Hus, Constance, and the Drama of Dissent

Why did Johannes Agricola write the Tragedy of Jan Hus in 1537? What polemical
potential did he perceive in vernacular drama that narrative histories, scholarly
florilegia, and even a martyr’s letters lacked? Agricola had exploited all of these in
making a case against the impending Council of Mantua, but clearly he believed
that the story of Hus could be directed toward a broader polemical agenda. As
such, in the introduction to the Tragedy, Agricola expressed his desire that this
play would extend the reach of previous publications and reach an audience com-
posed primarily of an idealized German “Jedermann.” He wrote: “I have happily
seen that this story has been read and performed for the masses, for everyone
young and old,” so that all would know “that Christ with his Word was openly
condemned, without any timidity, by the Antichristian synagogue at the Council
of Constance.”87 The style and language of the play further attested to this aim,
as the Tragedy was written in a simple, repetitive, rhymed German that made its
content easy both to comprehend and—​ideally—​to remember. The employment
of this style reflected Agricola’s background as a schoolmaster; just as he had ear-
lier adapted German adages for religious instruction and composed catechetical
material suited to beginning students’ abilities, by 1537 he recognized the poten-
tial of the theater as an appropriate venue for disseminating Lutheran polemics
against councils to the broadest spectrum of the German public.
There were certainly formal aspects of drama that made it a suitable medium
for this critique. The first of these was its visuality. Luther, Melanchthon, and
other Protestant leaders all understood drama primarily as a visual medium.88

 Agricola, Tragedia, p. A2v.–​A 3r.

87

  On the visuality of drama, see:  Timothy Jackson, “Drama and Dialogue in the Service
88

of the Reformation,” in The Transmission of Ideas in the Lutheran Reformation, ed. H. Robinson-​
Hammerstein (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1989), pp. 105–​131; and Glenn Ehrstine, “Seeing
 T he Prophet 211

As such, it could make the moral and soteriological oppositions that Lutheran
polemics had emphasized vis-​à-​v is their positions and those defended by Rome
visible on stage as a form of “moral instruction by contrast.”89 These contrasts
were also, crucially, personified; characters in Reformation drama were typi-
cally intended to serve less as faithful or compelling representations of individual
people, and more as embodiments of virtues and vices. For Lutheran authors, the
most positive of these virtues was the “passivity” which conferred salvation on
a protagonist for his freely subordinating his soul to God’s care.90 In Protestant
dramas, this passivity was tested by the malice of the hero’s antagonists (typi-
cally Catholic), whom playwrights depicted as driven by a nearly manic desire to
destroy those who embodied God’s truth. This style of presentation effectively
turned characters into caricatures, and thus ideal vehicles for the presentation of
religious propaganda.
A final dramaturgical practice that made plays attractive to the Lutheran
leadership was the use of “deixis” in early modern drama. Deixis referred to the
incorporation of commentators into the action on stage who explicitly stated
the soteriological message of a given play, which the scholar Glenn Ehrstine has
interpreted as an effort by authors to “overdetermine” the play’s meaning.91 These
in-​action excurses could also be complemented by introductions, prologues, and
epilogues that placed the dramatic action within an explicitly pedagogical frame-
work. Such paratextual elements, as in their prose counterparts, served to circum-
scribe the possible interpretations of the action in the play itself. This was essential
to Protestant playwrights, who feared that drama would spur merely emotional
reactions and preclude a more substantive, intellectual engagement with the sub-
ject matter.92 Such concerns led Luther, for instance, to reject absolutely the value
of medieval religious drama, and Melanchthon to disdain the “the histrionic per-
formances as earlier, under the papacy.”93 Despite these reservations, the leaders

Is Believing:  Valten Voith’s Ein Schön Lieblich Spiel von dem herlichen ursprung (1538),
Protestant ‘Law and Gospel’ Panels, and German Reformation Dramaturgy,” Daphnis 27 (1998):
503–​537.
89
  On this concept and its origins among the Lutheran leadership, see: James Parente, Religious
Drama and the Humanist Tradition: Christian Theater in Germany and in the Netherlands, 1500–​1680
(New York: E. J. Brill, 1987), p. 30.
90
 On the centrality of this concept in Protestant drama, see:  Stephen Wailes, The Rich
Man and Lazarus on the Reformation Stage:  A  Contribution to the Social History of German Drama
(Selinsgrove: Susquehanna UP, 1997), p. 53; and Parente, Religious Drama, p. 85.
91
  Glenn Ehrstine, Theater, Culture, and Community in Reformation Bern (Brill: Leiden, 2002),
p. 292.
92
 Herbert Walz, Deutsche Literatur der Reformationszeit:  Eine Einführung (Darmstadt:
Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1988), p. 116. Cf. Ehrstine, “Seeing Is Believing,” pp. 533ff.
93
  Thomas Bacon, Martin Luther and the Drama (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1976), p. 43. Melanchthon
is quoted in: Ehrstine, Theater, Culture, and Commuity, p. 5.
212 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

of the Lutheran reformation eventually accepted drama—​if suitably pious and

carefully constructed—​as a viable means of disseminating their message. After
all, even if simplified language, flatly archetypal characters, and the pontifica-
tions of on-​stage commentators may not seem to be the stuff of great entertain-
ment, in the 1530s the jump from page to stage seemed to offer the reformers a
means of reaching a mass audience more open to visual, enacted religious polem-
ics. Agricola was simply the first to recognize the potential utility of post-​biblical
history in meeting this need and the most able to adapt Hus’s story for this new
medium.
In his introduction to the Tragedy, Agricola laid out his reasons for choosing
Hus’s trial as the subject of his drama. By and large, his choice resulted from how
Hus’s trial revealed the injustice of ecclesiastical tribunals. Agricola therefore
highlighted the role of false witnesses in Hus’s condemnation, whom he compared
to Annas and Caiaphas.94 He also emphasized that the Council had promoted
“wickedness and tyranny” by undermining the authority of secular powers and
turning them into nothing more than “servants and executors” of the pope’s will.
Hus’s trial revealed this subversion, particularly vis-​à-​v is King Sigismund, “who
at other times had been a wise lord,” but was convinced by the pope to rescind his
safe conduct for Hus. In Agricola’s eyes, this imperial betrayal was responsible for
decades of war and animosity, but had its ultimate roots in papal efforts “to blind
or enthrall the emperor, kings, princes, and lords, which is still going on today.”95
The injustice of Hus’s death highlighted a second reason for Agricola’s choice
of source material; the dynamics of the proceedings marked Hus as a true martyr
whose death was equal to those of the apostles and church fathers. Agricola went
so far as to paraphrase Tertullian’s famous dictum to this effect: “The blood of
Christians is fruitful, and the more one tries to suppress them, the more spring up
from their blood.”96 For Agricola, this generative quality had become evident in
the rise of the Hussite movement and Utraquist church, but bore its ultimate fruit
in the Lutheran movement. And it was this connection that underwrote the last
point of emphasis in the introduction: Hus’s status as a prophet. In what would
prove to be a leitmotif for the play as a whole, Agricola invoked the goose/​swan
prophecy that Luther had first broadcast in 1531. As Agricola put it in his intro-
duction, Hus’s goose had undergone a metamorphosis and become “a snow white
swan” with “a bright and lovely voice, whom not only Bohemia, but nearly the
entire world, would hear sing and cry out.”97 Although melodramatic, this citation
of Hus’s apocryphal prophecy foreshadowed the Tragedy’s recurrent emphasis on
how his trial and death at Constance set the stage (pun intended) for Luther’s

94
 Agricola, Tragedia, pp. A5v.–​A 6r.
95
 Agricola, Tragedia, pp. A7r.–​A7v.
96
 Agricola, Tragedia, p. A4v.
97
  Agricola, Tragedia, p. A3v.
 T he Prophet 213

reform. More fundamentally, it also demonstrated how the conflicts that the
Lutherans faced in the second half of the 1530s both mirrored those from the
Church’s past and foretold their potential repetition and resolution in the imme-
diate future.
It should be noted that this introduction would not have been heard during a
performance of the Tragedy. It was a literary text that was to be read, rather than
seen. Agricola accommodated for the absence of this paratext, however, by includ-
ing a forward to the play that would have been declaimed, for lack of a better word,
at the beginning of a performance. This monologue introduced the audience to
the meter and rhyme scheme of the play as a whole, but it also bore a substantial
thematic weight. In short, the forward placed Hus within a world-​h istorical frame-
work that interpreted the entire course of history as a series of prophetic cycles in
which sin took root among God’s people, a pure man came forth to denounce this
evil, and he was subsequently denounced by society. In the wake of this rejec-
tion, horrible consequences were visited upon the people who had ignored God’s
warnings. According to Agricola, Noah, Lot, Moses, Daniel, and Jesus had all
been prophets of this type.98 After the death of Christ and his apostles, though,
Agricola suggested that the chain of prophets had been broken, as “the Antichrist
came openly, who manifestly set himself in power within the city of God up until
this time. By this I mean the Pope, who is that selfsame Antichrist.”99 The martyr-
dom of Hus had, however, renewed the prophetic cycle that had marked earlier
stages of salvation history; he had been, after all, “a pure man and a son of God”
who had preached God’s word “before all the devils at the Council of Constance.”
For Agricola, the prophetic revival marked by Hus’s preaching and death repre-
sented a double-​edged sword. On the one hand, his confrontation at Constance
and its outcomes provided hope that the Antichrist’s reign was coming to an end.
On the other hand, however, the rise of this new prophet also foretold the poten-
tial destruction of any “land and people” who heard God’s word but did not accept
it as a mandate for reform.100
The Tragedy itself was divided into five acts, and it followed the narrative estab-
lished by Mladoňovice (and previously edited by Agricola) quite faithfully. As a
result, the play was more a series of static vignettes in which Hus confronted his
Czech accusers, King Sigismund, and the leaders of the Council of Constance
with a series of biblical justifications for his teachings, than a cohesive, progres-
sively dramatic narrative arc. In fact, the play consisted primarily of long, alternat-
ing speeches by Hus and his interlocutors with hardly any intervening action. The

98
 Agricola, Tragedia, pp. B2r.–​B3v. This interpretation echoed the broader Lutheran construc-
tion of a cyclical church history. On this conceptualization, see: Sandl, “Interpretationswelten der
Zeitenwende”; and Benrath, “Das Verständnis der Kirchengeschichte.”
99
 Agricola, Tragedia, p. B4r.
100
 Agricola, Tragedia, p. B4v.
214 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

relative lack of activity did not preclude, however, the portrayal of Hus’s oppo-
nents as embodiments of evil. Thus, in the first act of the play, two of Hus’s primary
accusers, Michael de Causis and Stephen Páleč, gathered a small group of bishops
and monks who agreed to misrepresent Hus’s teachings during his trial.101 The
actions of these false witnesses led the council to reject Hus’s self-​defense deri-
sively throughout the ensuing trial. As such, when Hus tried to answer a charge
in the play’s third act that he supported the use of the sword against his oppo-
nents by arguing that he had referred only to the spiritual sword, “as St. Paul as
written about it,” Agricola’s stage directions noted that the council fathers should
shout him down angrily. This command echoed an earlier directive that, when
confronted with Hus’s defense of Wyclif ’s teachings, “the Cardinals and Bishops
should all laugh, and at the last statement shake their heads angrily.”102
It is useful to imagine how this scene would have appeared to an audience, with
the solitary figure of Hus citing Scripture before an assembly of noisy and hostile
men bedecked in the theatrical finery of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. Variegated
religious habits, doctors’ birettas, bishops’ miters, and cardinals’ red hats: these
would have formed an exotic tableau before which Hus stood alone. Given
Agricola’s stage directions, the actors’ tone of voice and body language would
have heightened the visual distinction between the holy Hus and his diabolical
opponents. Glenn Ehrstine has called scenes such as this “Merkbilder”: moments
on stage when actors were set in static positions that created a visual counter-
point to the opposition of their moral and theological viewpoints. According to
Ehrstine, the gestures, speech, and positioning within a Merkbilder all reinforced
each other’s message, so that the essential didactic lesson in a drama was unmis-
takable.103 Here, that central message unequivocally affirmed Hus’s status as a
persecuted martyr who had been unjustly condemned before he was even heard
by the Council of Constance. The implication, which echoed earlier Lutheran
polemics but was here illustrated in a newly dramatic way, was that any and all
sixteenth-​century Lutherans could expect the same if they entrusted the fate of
their reform to the “unholy assembly” planned for Mantua.
The central acts of the Tragedy undoubtedly portrayed Hus as an authentic
martyr of the church. It was in the last act, however, that this dramatic hagiogra-
phy took on a distinctively Lutheran cast. This was most evident in the potentially
shocking decision by Agricola not to write the execution of Hus into the script of
his play. Indeed, the action of the play ends with Hus praying after his final con-
demnation by Sigismund: “Lord Jesus, my redeemer and God, I will patiently bear

 Agricola, Tragedia, pp. B6v.–​B8v.

101

 Agricola, Tragedia, pp. D2r.–​D2v.

102

103
  For an analysis of Protestant authors’ use of this dramatic device, see:  Ehrstine, Theater,
Culture, and Community, pp. 218–​224.
 T he Prophet 215

this cruel and shameful death with your help; I will bear this affliction for your
name, witness, and word. Let me give you praise, honor, and thanks for your grace,
and lastly, into your hands I commend my spirit.”104 This prayer, which quoted
Jesus’ final words on the cross from the Gospel of Luke [23:46], was followed only
by a brief stage direction: “After this, he is led out and burnt.”105 This ending left
out the details of Hus’s execution that were contained in Mladoňovice’s account,
and thus represented a rare deviation by Agricola from his source material. In this
particular case, it seems that Agricola wanted to avoid staging Hus’s final passion,
so that audiences would not be left with a melodramatic, overly emotional conclu-
sion. Given Lutheran dramaturgical sensibilities, it was much better to leave them
with an image of a martyr who ended his life with an act of biblically inspired
prayer. This created an image of a Protestant saint who could safely be emulated,
if not venerated, and whose positive example stood in stark contrast to the dia-
bolical roles filled by his persecutors.106 This was drama’s moral instruction by
contrast at its most striking.
Hus’s final prayer did not constitute, however, Agricola’s final word on his
death. Indeed, in a paratextual bookend to his introduction and forward, Agricola
included a final, striking scene of deixis at the conclusion of the Tragedy, in which
a “Prophet” character emerged onto the stage to direct a harangue against the
“blind, obdurate people” who had killed Hus and welcomed the Devil into the
world. The prophet figure went on to invoke again the prophecy of the “poor
goose” and the coming “white swan,” and to assure the council fathers that their
evil was such that they would have to render a “strict account” of their actions
before the whole world and God himself.107 Following this diatribe, Agricola also
included a final “Conclusion” to the text. In this last speech, Agricola empha-
sized the threat of divine judgment that hung over the lands of the Holy Roman
Empire. After all, God had sent his prophet over a century earlier to proclaim
his gospel, but Hus had been killed and his message had fallen predominantly
on deaf ears. For Agricola, the danger posed by this rejection had become par-
ticularly acute, as even Hus’s prophesied successor had not entirely converted the
German lands to the true worship of God. According to Agricola, there was a sort
of divine, prophetic calculus that dictated that “the more brightly and clearly the
Word [of God] is proclaimed, the greater is the time of wrath” that follows its
rejection.108 This had certainly been the case with Christ, whose death had led

104
 Agricola, Tragedia, pp. F4r.–​F4v.
105
 Agricola, Tragedia, p. F4v.
106
  On this distinctively notion of sanctity, see: Fuchs, “Protestantische Heiligen-​memoria”;
Robert Kolb, For All the Saints:  Changing Perceptions of Martyrdom and Sainthood in the Lutheran
Reformation (Macon, GA: Mercer UP, 1987), pp. 11–​4 0; and idem, “Saint Jan Hus,” pp. 404–​4 05.
107
 Agricola, Tragedia, F4v.
108
 Agricola, Tragedia, p. F6r.
216 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

to the thousand-​year ascendance of Antichrist. And given this logic of prophetic

cycles, the German reformation had clearly reached a crisis point at which people
had to make a choice about whom they would turn to: “God and his servants, who
proclaim his judgments rightly,” or the “Devil’s mob” that had killed Jan Hus and
would try to do the same to Luther.109

Conclusion
In his recent book, Printing and Prophecy, Jonathan Green writes incisively:

Prophecy, as we have seen, entailed assumptions about texts and time.

Rather than merely a prediction of the future, prophecy resituates the
present moment in a narrative that includes the past and future . . . The
prophet, as the guiding interpreter of a textual community, could place
the present moment in a new relationship to a foundational narrative.110

This process of resituation was precisely what Lutheran authors were engaged in
throughout the 1530s, making use of Hus’s predictions about the appearance of
holy successors who would further his work of reform in order to reimagine their
place in church history. Luther and his followers had begun to develop their new
conception of history in the previous decade, as they transformed rehabilitated
heretics into martyrs and champions of God’s hidden, true church. As the second
decade of the German reformation came to a close, though, this inverted under-
standing of the Christian past was increasingly authorized and reinforced by pro-
phetic bonds that stitched past, present, and eschatological future together into a
seamless whole.
The fact that Jan Hus was seen by Luther and his followers as their most imme-
diate predecessor, combined with the rich stock of materials describing and inter-
preting his death, cast Hus a main character in the tragic drama of Lutheran church
history. And through the highly creative scholarship and polemics of authors such
as Johannes Agricola, his part in the Lutheran past became widely disseminated
among the people of the Holy Roman Empire. Hus’s main role in the disputes
of the 1530s was to be the human face of anti-​conciliar polemics, a cautionary
tale told in myriad forms and provocative detail. It is impossible to determine the
influence of those polemics on the miscarriage of the Council of Mantua in 1537;
Paul III’s suspension of its opening in April of that year was due more to the hesi-
tation of the French king and internal Italian politics than the unwillingness of

 Agricola, Tragedia, F6r. and F5r.

109

  Jonathan Green, Printing and Prophecy: Prognostication and Media Change, 1450–​1550 (Ann
110

Arbor: The U. of Michigan Press, 2012), p. 153.

 T he Prophet 217

the Schmalkaldic League and the Lutheran leaders to participate.111 But it was
certainly true that the Hus-​centered polemics of the 1530s made Mantua’s failure
predictable, and even predicted. Hus’s condemnation of councils and admonition
to those who would seek to treat with them provided both a prophetic mandate
for refusing to acknowledge the council and an interpretive framework for under-
standing its failure as a positive sign of things to come.
The designation of Hus as a prophet of the German reformation’s eventual tri-
umph represented an elevation of his place within the Lutheran sense of the past.
He became a lynchpin of historical interpretation whose death and writings had
become foundational in Lutheran understandings of the conflicts they faced in
the present. To place such an emphasis on Hus and his relationship to Luther was
not, however, without risks. In the first years of Luther’s reform, such an associa-
tion nearly marked Luther as an irredeemable threat to the political and religious
order. Although this association ultimately did not tarnish Luther’s reformation
with his contemporaries (and even burnished it, for some), in the 1530s there were
new risks in play. Theological differences between the two men could be brought
to light, and historical sources could be mined for a different view of Hus’s trial
and death, with both serving to undercut the emergent Lutheran interpretation
of the past. As we have seen, history was ductile in the hands of early modern
authors; it could be drawn out into narrative threads with radically contradictory
meanings. And so, even as Agricola and Luther were fashioning a prophet of their
own reforming work, an alternate construction was underway that presented,
paradoxically, a nearly orthodox, Catholic Hus.

  On the ultimate failure of Mantua, see: Jedin, History of the Council of Trent, vol. 1, pp. 320ff.
111
 6

The Catholic

Introduction
On October 28, 1534, Johannes Cochlaeus (d. 1552) wrote a letter. At the time,
Cochlaeus was serving as the court chaplain to Duke George of Saxony. He had
held this position for six years, and during his tenure he had proven to be one
of the most prolific and creative Catholic controversialists against the Lutheran
reform.1 Cochlaeus wrote this particular letter to Johannes Fabri, the Bishop
of Vienna, who had also served in the front lines of the pamphlet war against
Luther.2 Cochlaeus began his letter by describing a history of the Bohemian ref-
ormation that he was writing based on research he had conducted in Prague that
spring, detailing how he intended it to augment existing Catholic histories of the
region (notably that of Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini) by focusing on the Hussites’
“doctrines and schemes, as much as their deeds in war.” After this brief descrip-
tion, Cochlaeus then offered a modest proposal:

I have investigated the Compactata, in which the Bohemians take great

pride, and I hope, if they were to be acknowledged by the Apostolic See, just
as they were in Prague and Jihlava by the legates of the Council of Basel,
that not only the Hussites in Bohemia, but also a majority of the Lutherans
in Germany, could be returned to peace and unity with the Church.3

1
  The most authoritative biography of Cochlaeus remains: Martin Spahn, Johannes Cochlaeus: Ein
Lebensbild aus der Zeit der Kirchenspaltung (Berlin: Verlag von Felix L. Dames, 1898). A more recent
but nearly hagiographic account is contained in:  Remigius Bäumer, Johannes Cochlaeus (1479–​
1552): Leben und Werk im Dients der katholischen Reform (Münster: Aschendorff, 1980); and a more
balanced, short introduction to Cochlaeus’s biography can be found in: Ralph Keen, “Johannes
Cochlaeus: An Introduction to His Life and Work,” in Luther’s Lives: Two Contemporary Accounts of
Martin Luther, ed. and trans. T. Frazel et al. (New York: Manchester UP, 2002), pp. 40–​52.
2
  On Fabri, Cochlaeus, and their opposition to Luther, see: Bagchi, Luther’s Earliest Opponents,
pp. 227–​230.
3
  Johannes Cochlaeus, “Letter to Johannes Fabri” (October 28, 1534) in Walter Friedensburg,
“Beiträge zum Briefwechsel der katholischen Gelehrten Deutschlands im Reformationszeitalter,”

218
 The Catholic 219

Cochlaeus recognized that there would be obstacles to this potential reunion.

The Bohemians administered communion to infants, for instance, which had
been prohibited even in the Compactata, and they annually celebrated a feast day
for Jan Hus and Jerome of Prague, “which the Church could never reasonably
allow.”4 Still, Cochlaeus had concluded that the bulk of the Bohemians’ theology
and practice was in line with Catholic orthodoxy. As such, he hoped that Fabri
could convince Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, who was also King of Bohemia,
to convene a meeting between the Catholics and “Hussites” in order to promote a
rapprochement under the original terms of the Compactata.
Given the identity of this letter’s author and recipient, it is difficult to over-
state the sheer unlikeliness of its content. Since first taking up the Catholic
cause against Martin Luther and his ilk nearly fifteen years prior to the com-
position of this letter, Cochlaeus had written scores of texts demanding the
eradication of Luther’s heresy, which he portrayed as the recrudescence and
culmination of a diabolical tradition that had spanned history from the time
of the Israelite patriarchs up until the sixteenth-​century present. 5 Cochlaeus
had also depicted Luther as a traitor to his nation, a seditious figure who had
adopted foreign heresies and fomented political rebellion against the inter-
twined Catholic and imperial institutions that had made the German lands
great. In making both of these arguments, Cochlaeus focused on Luther’s
reverence for Jan Hus as a symptom of his heretical and treacherous nature.
After all, Hus had been a condemned heretic whose followers had defied the
combined power of Church and Empire, so Luther’s defense of him thereby
constituted a two-​fold act of betrayal. By arguing against Luther in this man-
ner, Cochlaeus placed himself firmly within the traditional intellectual frame-
works and polemical tropes of Catholic heresiology.6 It is also fair to say that he
expanded these frameworks over the course of his early career, adapting his mes-
sage to the vernacular and visual media of the pamphlet age in order to oppose
the explosive growth of the Lutheran movement more effectively. So what can be

Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 18 (1898):  106–​131, 233–​297, 420–​4 63, and 596–​636. This let-
ter: pp. 257–​2 63, pp. 258–​259.
4
 Ibid.
5
  Spahn’s biography of Cochlaeus includes a comprehensive listing of all of the Catholic
reformer’s works from 1522 until 1550; he lists 108 works written by Cochlaeus up until 1534.
See: Spahn, Ein Lebensbild, pp. 341–​372. An updated bibliography of Cochlaeus’s corpus is included
in: Monique Samuel-​Scheyder, Johannes Cochlaeus: Humaniste et adversaire de Luther (Nancy: Presses
universitaires de Nancy, 1993), pp. 717–​729.
6
  On Catholic heresiology in this period, see the work of David Bagchi, especially:  Luther’s
Earliest Opponents, ­chapter 7; and “Defining Heresies.” Cf. Christoph Volkmar, “Turning Luther’s
Weapons against Him:  The Birth of Catholic Propaganda in Saxony in the 1520s,” in The Book
Triumphant: Print in Transition in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, ed. G. Kemp and M. Walsby
(Boston: Brill, 2011), pp. 115–​129.
220 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

learned, then, from trying to understand Cochlaeus’s apparent change of heart

concerning Hus’s Bohemian heirs in the autumn of 1534?
This question requires multiple answers. On one level, examining Cochlaeus’s
shifting position enables us to see how specific exigencies that arose during the
ongoing rhetorical battle between Catholic controversialists, Luther, and his
defenders could demand tactical reversals. In this particular case, that shift can be
detected in Cochlaeus’s promotion of concessions to the Bohemians as a means of
isolating Luther from the forerunners and allies he had chosen for himself. On a
second level, an analysis of Cochlaeus’s evolving stance toward Luther and Hus also
shows how the weight of historical research conducted in service to polemical agen-
das could undermine the assumptions that had initially supported them. In other
words, Cochlaeus did not undertake to write a history of the Hussites in order to
rehabilitate them; he noted in an earlier letter that he intended to write a history of
“the old and new Hussites” to show how dangerous the Lutherans actually were.7
And yet, Cochlaeus’s extensive reading of fifteenth-​century Bohemian authors led
him to reconsider his basic ideas about the nature of the Bohemian reformation.
A comparison of Cochlaeus’s writings on Hus and the Bohemian reformation over
the first two decades of his career therefore demonstrates that the scholarly work of
even the most vitriolic partisans in the pamphlet wars of the German reformation
could force them to fundamentally reimagine their understanding of how the pres-
ent related to the past.
This second point is important not only because it sheds light on the develop-
ment of religious polemics and critical historiography in the sixteenth century,
but also because it speaks to the ongoing discussion of this development among
intellectual historians. Recent work by scholars such as Irena Backus, Anthony
Grafton, Simon Ditchfield, and Mathias Pohlig has questioned whether or not the
authors of church history during the era of the European reformations could ever
reach the critical standards established by the scholars of the Italian Renaissance
or those concerned with the revival of Roman legal studies.8 The problem, for
these modern writers, is that early modern church historians were seemingly so

 Johannes Cochlaeus, “Letter to Cardinal Girolamo Aleander” (September 8, 1534) in

7

“Beiträge,” pp. 255–​257, pp. 256–​257.

8
  I am referring here specifically to: Simon Ditchfield, Liturgy, Sanctity, and History in Tridentine
Italy:  Pietro Maria Campi and the Preservation of the Particular (New  York:  Cambridge UP, 1995);
Irena Backus, Historical Method and Confessional Identity in the Era of the Reformation (1378–​1615)
(Boston: Brill, 2003); Anthony Grafton, What Was History? The Art of History in Early Modern Europe
(New  York:  Cambridge UP, 2007); Matthias Pohlig, Zwischen Gelehrsamkeit und konfessioneller
Identitätsstiftung: Lutherische Kirchen-​und Universalgeschichtsschreibung 1546–​1617 (Tübingen: Mohr
Siebeck, 2007); and the collected essays in:  Simon Ditchfield et  al., eds., Sacred History:  Uses of
the Christian Past in the Renaissance World (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2012). See also the classic study of
early modern history writing and religious polemics: Pontien Polman, L’Élément Historique dans la
Convroverse religieuse du XVIe Siècle (Gembloux: J. Duculot, 1932).
 The Catholic 221

bound to preconceived notions of the patterns and underlying dynamics of sacred

history that they could never assess past actors and actions in their own terms. Or,
as Grafton puts it: “Their task was not to recreate the past as it really was, but to
create a confessional identity.”9 Given this view, an author like Cochlaeus should
have been too committed to traditional Catholic historical schemas to reconsider
Luther’s fundamental continuity with medieval heretics. That is, however, exactly
what he did in the course of the 1530s, and his new conception of the Lutherans’
relationship to their supposed predecessors forced Lutheran authors to raise the
bar of their own historical analyses in turn.
Ultimately, it is this extended give-​and-​take between Johannes Cochlaeus and
his Lutheran interlocutors that makes an examination of his evolving treatment
of Martin Luther and Jan Hus worthy of attention. By tracing the development of
his historical scholarship on the Bohemian reformer Jan Hus and the eponymous
movement that arose in the wake of his death, it is possible to see how the impas-
sioned, violent, and eschatologically inflected exchanges of sixteenth-​century
polemicists could actually produce sophisticated and methodologically inven-
tive historiography. It is even possible to say that the crucible of polemics in the
German reformation demanded this high level of scholarship, as authors such as
Cochlaeus could be certain that their books would be read by an audience that
was equally learned and invested, but diametrically opposed to their interpreta-
tions of the past. Thus, contrary to much of the contemporary scholarship on six-
teenth-​century church history, I would suggest that its agonistic and polemically
charged nature could—​and indeed did—​spur the production of novel, nuanced,
and even unexpected interpretations of the Christian past.10

Luther as Hus Redivivus

In order to understand the ramifications of Cochlaeus’s volte-​face in the 1530s, it is
first essential to examine his earliest texts concerning Martin Luther and Jan Hus
to establish a baseline for his historical argumentation. He authored these in the
first half of the 1520s, just as Hus was gaining notoriety among both Luther’s sup-
porters and opponents as a forerunner of the Saxon reformer, and they were basi-
cally quite typical of contemporary Catholic polemics. Cochlaeus considered Luther

9
  Grafton is here commenting on Pohlig’s analysis of sixteenth-​century Protestant historians.
See his: “Church History in Early Modern Europe: Tradition and Innovation,” in Sacred History,
pp. 3–​2 6, p. 7.
10
  C.  Scott Dixon recently uncovered a similar example of a Lutheran author changing his
mind about the nature of medieval Catholicism in the German lands, which he used to examine
the nature of intra-​Lutheran intellectual conflicts and the rise of Landesgeschichte in the seventeenth
century. See: C. Scott Dixon, “The Sense of the Past in Reformation Germany,” German History 30
(2012): 1–​21 and 175–​198.
222 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

and Hus to be basically equivalent, just the most recent avatars of an essentially
unchanging heretical tradition that had threatened the true Church throughout its
history. Granted, Cochlaeus and his fellow controversialists viewed Luther as a more
dangerous threat to the unity of the Church and the political stability of the Empire
than his predecessors had been, but that was a difference of degree, rather than kind.
Consequently, Cochlaeus’s historical polemics during this period emphasized the
twin themes of Luther’s qualitative equivalence to earlier heretics and his quantita-
tive intensification of their threat to the German lands. It is also worth noting that
Cochlaeus’s polemics (as well as those of his fellow Catholic controversialists) here
followed the same course as those of Luther and his allies, which similarly recog-
nized the qualities that Hus and Luther shared while claiming that Luther was some-
how more than Hus. The great difference, of course, was that the nascent Lutheran
party gave a positive valence to this language of continuity and intensification, while
its Catholic opponents desperately tried to re-​inscribe this connection with its tra-
ditional, negative implications. There existed, then, parallel but inverted narrative
arcs describing the relationship between Hus and Luther by 1525, and Johannes
Cochlaeus was an essential figure in constructing the Catholic version of events.
Cochlaeus was well prepared to undertake this sort of polemical campaign.
He had spent the first two decades of the sixteenth century following the career
track of a typical humanist: taking his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Cologne;
serving as a schoolmaster in Nuremberg; publishing works on classical geogra-
phy, history, and music theory; and finally gaining the patronage of the influential
Nuremberg patrician Willibald Pirckheimer.11 It was while serving as the chaper-
one to Pirckheimer’s nephews in Italy, however, that Cochlaeus’s trajectory as a
member of the humanist cultural elite swerved. It would seem that he spent more
time (and money) on this trip pursuing advanced theological study than caring
for his charges. And while this led to a falling out with Pirckheimer, it did enable
Cochlaeus to take his doctorate in theology from Ferrara in 1517.12 Cochlaeus was
ordained in Rome the following year, and he subsequently returned to Germany
in service to the Church. It is not clear if he received an explicit brief to com-
bat the rising tide of Luther’s movement at this time, but that quickly became
his main occupation. After an informal debate with Luther during the Diet of
Worms in 1521, Cochlaeus entered the lists against the Wittenberg professor and

11
  For an exhaustive assessment of Cochlaeus’s formation as a humanistic scholar, see the first
part of: Samuel-​Scheyder, Johannes Cochlaeus.
12
  Cochlaeus described his course of studies in a letter his patron written in April of 1517. On
the consequent falling out between the men, see a second letter from later that year written by Hans
and Sebald Geuder, Pirckheimer’s nephews, to Cochlaeus. Both have been published in: E. Reicke,
ed., Willibald Pirckheimers Briefwechsel, vol. 3 (Munich: Beck, 1940), pp. 94–​96 and 266–​2 68.
 The Catholic 223

quickly established himself as one of the leading literary opponents of the nascent
German reformation.13
David Bagchi has persuasively argued that the charge of “Bohemianism” was
a leitmotif among the efforts of Luther’s earliest Catholic interlocutors to dis-
credit their opponent. In many, if not most, of the initial polemical responses to
Luther after Leipzig and subsequently Worms, the idea that Luther was reviv-
ing the theological deviance, anti-​German sentiment, and social upheaval of the
Hussites assumed a central role in clarifying the danger that Luther posed to the
Holy Roman Empire.14 Cochlaeus’s early writings against Luther certainly took
up this theme, but he gave it a distinctive spin throughout a cluster of publica-
tions from the years 1523–​1525. In particular, Cochlaeus’s rhetoric concerning
Luther’s Bohemianism sought to combine a patriotic celebration of the German
nation’s favored place among Christendom and the vehement assertion of the
Hussites’ innate hostility toward the Germans as a means of invalidating Luther’s
claims to represent the best interests of his nation. Further, Cochlaeus incorpo-
rated a wide array of contemporary and ancient historical sources to embed the
contemporary conflict between Luther and the Church within a timeless, dia-
metric opposition between God’s true Church and the people who had sought to
destroy it. Within Cochlaeus’s vision of religious conflict throughout the longue
durée of the existence of God’s people on Earth, the era of the Hussite revolu-
tion occupied a prominent place as the most recent and revealing example of the
human cost of that struggle.
The first of Cochlaeus’s publications explicitly discussing Hus and Luther was
a 1523 edition of Wandalia, one of three historical chronicles covering “Germania
Magna” that were written by the dean of the Hamburg cathedral chapter, Albert
Krantz, at the end of the 1510s. Cochlaeus excerpted a portion of Wandalia, which
originally comprised a broader history of the eastern portions of the Holy Roman
Empire, that detailed the history of Bohemia from the reign of King Wenceslas
IV (1378–​1419) until the ascension of King Sigismund to the Czech throne in
1436.15 Krantz’s chronicle was deeply hostile toward the Hussite movement, and

13
  Cochlaeus eventually published an account of his conversation with Luther as: Colloquium
Cochlaei cum Luthero, Wormatiae olim habitum (Mainz: Franz Behem, 1540), in which he described
their debate over issues of ecclesiology, the eucharist, the authority of tradition in the Church,
and whether or not Luther had received a “revelation” to justify his reform. For an analysis of this
text, see Joseph Greving’s introduction in: Otto Clemen, ed., Flugschriften aus den ersten Jahren der
Reformation, vol. 4 (Nieuwkoop: B. de Graaf, 1967), pp. 179–​183; and Samuel-​Scheyder, Johannes
Cochlaeus, pp. 394–​4 08.
14
 Bagchi, Luther’s Earliest Opponents, pp. 103–​110. Cf. Samuel-​Scheyder, Johannes Cochlaeus,
pp. 451–​456.
15
  Wandalia (Cologne: Johann Soter, 1519) was one of three histories of “Germania Magna”
written by Krantz. This edition appeared as: Hystoria Alberti Krantz von den alten hussen zu Behemen
224 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

he particularly emphasized the political and military instability that resulted from
its rise. Krantz also highlighted the antipathy between Czechs and Germans, as
it manifested itself both in Bohemia’s internal affairs and during the massively
destructive Hussite Wars. Fundamentally, Krantz’s narrative created a stark con-
trast between “the majority of Germans, who were faithful and good Christians,”
and the Bohemian heretics who “raged cruelly against all the faithful.”16 In
Cochlaeus’s hands, this dichotomy transformed Luther’s defense of Hus into an
act of betrayal against the German people.
Cochlaeus employed his introduction and epilogue to Wandalia, which he
dedicated to Duke George of Saxony, to make the implications of this betrayal
clear. By publicizing the history of the original Hussites and emphasizing their
violence against the Church and state, Cochlaeus sought to spur Duke George
to the defense of his people against the “new Hussites” in Wittenberg who would
provoke even greater chaos than their Bohemian forerunners had. Framing his
text in this manner was a savvy move. George was well known in these years for
his staunch opposition to Luther, his consistent support for Catholic controver-
sialists, and his hatred of the Hussites; George was actually the grandson of the
Hussite King George of Poděbrady, which was a cause of some shame for his fam-
ily.17 Cochlaeus thus played to Duke George’s fear and loathing in his epilogue,
stating that Luther’s teachings would result not “in a little spark, but in a great and
destructive fire which no one will be able to put out except with massive distress
and sorrow.”18 The severity of this threat ultimately caused Cochlaeus to con-
clude: “Therefore the common man should not believe in new teachings lightly,
but live in obedience to authority at all times and not esteem novelty, because it
always begets misery, suffering, and adversity.”19
Cochlaeus’s edition of Wandalia formulated a nationalistic equation that he
would expand upon and clarify in additional writings from 1523 and 1524. That
equation first asserted that good Germans were necessarily loyal Catholics, a

in Keiser Sigmunds zeiten (Strasbourg: Johannes Grüninger, 1523). On Krantz’s historical writings,

see: Ulrich Andermann, Albert Krantz: Wissenschaft und Historiographie um 1500 (Weimar: Verlag
Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1999), especially pp. 249ff.; and Harald Bollbuck, Geschichts-​ und
Raummodelle bei Albert Krantz (um 1448–​1517) und David Chytraeus (1530–​1600) (Frankfurt am
Main: Lang, 2006).
16
 Cochlaeus, Hystoria Alberti Krantz, pp. C2r.–​C2v.
17
  On Duke George’s role as a patron of the Catholic campaign against Luther, see: Otto Vossler,
“Herzog Georg der Bärtige und seine Ablehnung Luthers,” Historische Zeitschrift 184 (1957): 272–​
291; Ingetraut Ludolphy, “Die Ursachen der Gegnerschaft zwischen Luther und Herzog Georg von
Sachsen,” Luther Jahrbuch 32 (1965): 28–​4 4; and Günther Wartenberg, “Luthers Beziehungen zu
den sächsischen Fürsten,” in Leben und Werk Martin Luthers von 1526 bis 1546, ed. H. Junghans, vol. 1
(Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1983), pp. 549–​571.
18
 Cochlaeus, Hystoria Alberti Krantz, p. F4r.
19
 Ibid.
 The Catholic 225

version of “religious patriotism” in which Cochlaeus overlaid religious, ethnic,

and political components to create an idealized German identity.20 Cochlaeus
explicitly added an imperial element into this vision of German-​ness. This last
variable emphasized that Germany had become great not only because of its con-
version by Roman missionaries, but also because of the “translatio imperii” from
the Greeks to the Carolingians and subsequently the Ottonians. As such, to be
truly German was to be pro-​Empire and pro-​Rome, whereas Luther had proven
to be anti-​Empire (as evidenced by his behavior at Worms) and pro-​Bohemia.21
Cochlaeus explicitly set himself up as the defender of this vision of true German
patriotism in two additional treatises that he published at this time:  The Pious
Exhortation of Rome to Her Daughter in Faith, Germany, and the Admonition
(“Paraclesis”) of Johannes Cochlaeus to Ever-​Victorious Germany.22 In both of these
texts, Cochlaeus established parallels between Luther’s heresy and episodes from
the Old Testament and history of the early Church in order to argue that nations
and empires who had embraced heresy had all collapsed, and that the same fate
awaited Germany if it continued to embrace Luther’s alien and ultimately sedi-
tious teachings.
The first of these two texts, The Pious Exhortation, was composed in the voice
of the embodied Church, who used the mode of direct address and informal
language to address her wayward German daughter. The Exhortation’s argu-
ment was that Germany was in danger of being destroyed by God’s wrath

20
 On this concept in the German context, see: Bagchi, “‘Teutschland uber alle Welt:’
Nationalism and Catholicism in Early Reformation Germany,” ARG 82 (1991): 39–​58, especially
pp. 41–​4 4. He takes this phrase from John Bossy, who used it to describe Catholic nationalism
in the later sixteenth century, especially in the British Isles. See his: “Catholicity and Nationality
in the Northern Counter-​R eformation,” in Religion and National Identity, ed. S. Mews (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1982), pp. 285–​296. Cf. the early modern Protestant conception of “Israelite” national-
ism as elucidated in: Gorski, “The Mosaic Moment.”
21
  On the role of the “translatio imperii” in early modern German self-​conceptions, see: Werner
Goez, Translatio Imperii: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Geschichtsdenkens und der politischen Theorien im
Mittelalter und in der frühen Neuzeit (Tübingen: Mohr, 1958); and Dieter Mertens, “Mittelalterbilder
in der Frühen Neuzeit,” in Die Deutschen und ihr Mittelalter:  Themen und Funktionen moderner
Geschichtsbilder vom Mittelalter, ed. G. Althoff (Darmstadt:  Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft,
1992), pp. 29–​5 4.
22
  Pia exhortatio Romae ad Germaniam, suam in fide filiam (Tübingen: U. Morhart, 1525); and
Ad semper victricem Germaniam Johannis Cochlaei Paraclesis (Cologne: H. Alopecius, 1524). The Pia
exhortatio was also published in a German translation by Johann Dietenberger under the title: Ein
christliche Vermanung der heyligen stat Rom an das Teütschland yr Tochter im Christlichen Glauben
(Tübingen: U. Morhart, 1524). This edition’s preface was addressed to Pope Adrian VI (who died
in September 1523), which suggests that it was based on a version of the text completed in that
year. Please note that the following interpretation of both texts closely parallels that of Bagchi
in “Teutschland uber alle Welt,” although he reads these treatises primarily as reflections of
Cochlaeus’s evolving nationalism.
226 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

because it had turned away from the Church, and Cochlaeus adduced a num-
ber of biblical and historical precedents that demonstrated the danger that the
German lands faced. Central to this argument was Cochlaeus’s identification
of six Old Testament parallels to Martin Luther, each of whom had introduced
division and violence among God’s people. The first of these was Cain, and the
list also included: Noah’s son Ham; Abraham’s handmaiden Hagar and her son
Ishmael; and Solomon’s sons Jeroboam and Rehoboam, whose feud effectively
destroyed the united monarchy of Israel. Throughout The Pious Exhortation,
Cochlaeus explicitly compared these figures to Luther, calling him a new
Ishmael, “the son of the Bohemian maidservant,” or the “Saxon Jeroboam”
who desired to separate his kingdom from the Empire and Church. 23 As part
of the latter comparison, Cochlaeus noted that the Bohemians had done the
same. He thus established Hussite and biblical parallels alongside each other,
thereby creating a tradition of apostasy that was both ancient and continu-
ous, and to which Luther was the heir. Cochlaeus also used a similar biblical
idiom to emphasize his own role as a defender of divine truth and the German
nation in this text. He employed the story of Elijah’s confrontation with 450
Canaanite priests (1 Kings 18) in order to identify himself as the loyal priest
of God facing an army of heretics who worshiped “that true Hussite Baal.” 24
In short, The Pious Exhortation used a biblical frame of reference in order to
characterize the participants in early debates over Luther’s teachings as either
divinely or diabolically inspired, with no possible admixture or middle ground
between these poles.
Cochlaeus bridged the gap between the Bible and Bohemia in the rest of this
treatise, citing numerous examples from the broader history of the Church in
order to demonstrate conclusively that the toleration of heresy led to political
ruin and religious chaos. He cited the case of North Africa, for example, which
was divided by the Donatist schism during the time of Augustine and was sub-
sequently overrun by Islamic armies. Similarly, all of the lands which had been
under the power of the Byzantine Empire and the Greek Orthodox Church had
been lost to Islam in the wake of their schism with the papacy.25 Cochlaeus con-
trasted these lands with England, France, and Italy, all of which had forcibly
expelled the heretics from their midst, but linked them and their fate to Bohemia
and, potentially, Germany. Throughout The Pious Exhortation, then, Bohemia and
Hus represented the most proximate cautionary tale for Germany as a land that been
overrun by native heresy and was even now fostering Luther’s false teachings, which
had “sprouted from Hussite roots.”26

23
 Cochlaeus, Pia Exhortatio, pp. B6v. and E4r.
24
 Cochlaeus, Pia Exhortatio, pp. A8v. and B3v.
25
 Cochlaeus, Pia Exhortatio, pp. E1r.–​E2r.
26
 Cochlaeus, Pia Exhortatio, p. D6v.
 The Catholic 227

A similar vein of rhetoric and argumentation characterized the Paraclesis, which

Cochlaeus wrote as a direct address to the German nation, but from the point of view
of multiple speakers. This treatise also drew on biblical narratives as a means of fram-
ing the threat that Luther posed to the Church and Empire. Particularly in the first
pages of this text, Cochlaeus returned to the story of Abraham and his sons to con-
trast the faithful Catholics of Isaac’s lineage with the Lutherans: “those base sons of
the Hussite Hagar … recently born from the shameful fornication of the Bohemian
harlot.”27 But the major historical thrust of the Paraclesis was medieval, rather than
biblical, and narrated the intertwined histories of the German church and the impe-
rial office in order to conclude that the present Holy Roman Empire represented the
apogee of political sovereignty and Christian piety.
To make this case, Cochlaeus narrated the history of the German lands from
their origins in the pre-​Roman past and through the conversion of the German
peoples by Saint Boniface. The Paraclesis, which even adopted Boniface’s voice in
some parts, described how the saint had labored over the course of four pontifi-
cates in order to bring the German lands into the orbit of the Church. Such effort
proved that Rome had always loved the Germans best, as witnessed by the num-
ber of holy monks, learned doctors, and faithful princes who had sprung from the
region.28 Germany’s privileged place within Christendom was also proven by the
fact that it had received the imperial office from the Greeks, who had surrendered
their right to that dignity through their religious deviation and the dissolute lives
of their emperors. By contrast, the German Holy Roman Emperors had proved
to be pious benefactors and protectors of the Church. Cochlaeus therefore called
on the contemporary princes of the Empire to act as their predecessors had in
defense of the Church. According to Cochlaeus, they must take steps to suppress
Luther because his heresy had proven to be hostile in equal parts to secular and
ecclesiastical authorities, making him a traitor guilty of lèse-​majesté and deserving
of capital punishment.29
In making his case for Luther’s sedition against his nation, Cochlaeus directly
compared him and his followers to the Bohemian Táborites, whose atrocities had
marked them as the most dangerous enemies that the German people had faced
in the previous seven centuries. 30 Cochlaeus also employed a number of neolo-
gisms to reinforce this connection, referring to the Lutherans as “new Hussites,”

27
 Cochlaeus, Paraclesis, p. A5r.
28
 Cochlaeus, Paraclesis, pp. D5v.–​D6v. The period of the German lands’ conversion and the
subsequent rise of the Carolingian Empire was also seen as a high point in German history by
Protestant historians, who struggled with incorporating this time into their larger declen-
sion narratives of the medieval Church. On these tensions in Protestant writings, see: Mertens,
“Mittelalterbilder”; and Dixon, “The Sense of the Past.”
29
 Cochlaeus, Paraclesis, pp. B5v.–​B7r. and C6r.–​C7r.
30
 Cochlaeus, Paraclesis, pp. D2v.–​D3r.
228 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

“Amalekite Saxo-​Bohemians,” and “Husso-​sophists.”31 References to Luther’s

allegiance to the Bohemians were, in fact, ubiquitous throughout this text, and
they served as a loaded shorthand for accusing Luther of trying to undermine
or destroy the power structures of the Holy Roman Empire. In a typically vivid
image, Cochlaeus asserted that Luther had drunk “murky and putrid water
from the old and bitter well of the Hussites,” thereby internalizing their intrin-
sic hatred for the German people and the Roman Church. 32 As such, Cochlaeus
asserted that it was incumbent on all true Germans and faithful Christians to
oppose Luther’s teaching and oppose the movement that had arisen out of his
teaching.
Cochlaeus was quick to use Luther’s own words to prove this final point. To that
effect, he often repeated two quotations from Luther’s early works that revealed
the Wittenberg professor’s valorization of schismatics and self-​aggrandizement
vis-​à-​v is earlier heretics. The first of these citations appeared multiple times
within the Paraclesis and The Pious Exhortation, and it served—​much as his neolo-
gisms did—​as a rhetorical signpost for Cochlaeus’s larger arguments: “Blessed
is Greece, blessed is Bohemia, blessed are all who separate themselves from
Rome.”33 The second quotation appeared in the Paraclesis as part of Cochlaeus’s
extended comparison of Luther and his followers to the Táborites, and would
reappear in a number of his later writings: “Luther has bragged of himself for a
long time, that if Hus was a heretic, then he [Luther] was ten times the heretic.”34
These two quotations encapsulated Cochlaeus’s fundamental contentions in
these two texts: that Luther had cast his lot with the two nations that Germany
had superseded and been engaged in holy war with, respectively; and that Luther
understood himself as posing an even greater threat to church and state than
they ever had. The fact that Luther unapologetically condemned himself on both
these counts only reinforced Cochlaeus’s conclusions that Luther’s deviation
demanded a unified response from the Empire’s secular and ecclesiastical elites.
A final, massive text from this early period of Cochlaeus’s polemical activity
against Luther and his forerunners did more to substantiate theologically the
links that Cochlaeus had otherwise highlighted historically. In the Gloss and
Commentary on 154 Articles Drawn from a Sermon of Martin Luther on the Holy
Mass, Cochlaeus explored the roots of Luther’s attack on Catholic eucharistic

 Cochlaeus, Paraclesis, pp. A5r., I2r., C3v. and passim.

31

 Cochlaeus, Paraclesis, p. I2r.

32

33
 Cochlaeus, Pia Exhortatio, pp. A3r. and C5v. This quotation also appeared in the Paraclesis
at: pp. B1v., D3v, I3r., and I4r. The original quotation here is from Luther’s response to Sylvester
Prierias’s Epitoma Responsioinis ad Martinum Luther (Wittenberg:  Melchior Lotther, 1520) [WA
6 pp. 325–​3 48, p. 329].
34
 Cochlaeus, Paraclesis, p. D2v. This reference to Luther’s original statement is from: Martini
Lutheri responsio extemporaria ad articulos (1521) [WA 7, pp. 605–​613, p. 612].
 The Catholic 229

theology. 35 The Church’s teachings on transubstantiation and the sacrificial

nature of the Mass had come under fire from Luther as human inventions and
an attack on the sufficiency of Christ’s sacrifice in the Crucifixion. 36 Cochlaeus
therefore sought to connect Luther’s positions on these issues with previous her-
etics’ attacks on the Mass in order to discredit Luther’s critique. Not surpris-
ingly, then, references to Luther as a “new Hussite” were legion in the Gloss and
Commentary; Cochlaeus repeatedly trumpeted Luther’s preference for Hussite
eucharistic teachings over those espoused by the Church and consequently
argued that Luther sought to raise the banner of the Hussite heresy in the guise
of promoting “evangelical freedom.” Again using an informal mode of direct
address, Cochlaeus assailed Luther directly for his desire “to create a Hussite
chaos and slop out of the Christian order” by breaking down the notions of reli-
gious law, true penance, or the authority of any institution to dictate proper reli-
gious belief and practice. 37 Cochlaeus further attacked Luther for preaching that
the bread and wine were not transformed into the flesh and blood of Christ dur-
ing the act of consecration, a belief that Cochlaeus attributed to Hus as well. This
assertion of Luther’s belief in remanence lined him up with condemned heretics
such as Wyclif and Hus, and it allowed Cochlaeus to invoke the authority of the
church councils against Luther alongside his biblical and patristic proof texts. 38
Ultimately, Cochlaeus juxtaposed Luther’s preference for “your bread of Hus” to
the Church’s “body of Christ,” a contrast that echoed Cochlaeus’s earlier accusa-
tions of Luther’s idolatrous veneration for Jan Hus and further showed Luther to
be resistant to all forms of legitimate ecclesiastical authority. 39
When viewed collectively, these early treatises by Cochlaeus reveal his commit-
ment to constructing a historical argument against Martin Luther and the move-
ment that had arisen around him. The underlying logic of that argument was that
Luther represented the diabolically inspired revival of ancient heretics. In essence,
he was Cain, Ishmael, Arius, and Jan Hus. In order to support this claim, Cochlaeus
mined the history of the early and medieval Church, as well the biblical narrative, in

35
  Johannes Cochlaeus, Glos und comment Doc. Johannes dobneck Cochlaeus von Wendelstein uff
CLIIII. Artickeln gezogen uss einem Sermon Doc. Mar. Luters con der heiligen mess und nueern Testament
(Strasbourg: Johannes Grieninger, 1523). Cochlaeus was responding in this text to Luther’s Ein
Sermon von dem Neuen Testament, das ist von der heiligen Messe, which appeared in ten editions in
1520. See: WA 6, pp. 349–​378.
36
  The literature on Luther’s sacramental theology and its place in his larger conflict with Rome
is vast. For an overview of the scholarship and larger analysis of eucharistic debates in the German
reformation, see the recent works by: Lee Palmer Wandel, The Eucharist in the Reformation: Incarnation
and Liturgy (New York: Cambridge UP, 2006); and Amy Nelson Burnett, Karlstadt and the Origins of
the Eucharistic Controversy: A Study in the Circulation of Ideas (New York: Oxford UP, 2011).
37
 Cochlaeus, Glos und Comment, pp. E1v.–​E2r.
38
 Cochlaeus, Glos und Comment, pp. T3r.–​U1r.
39
 Cochlaeus, Glos und Comment, pp. k4r.–​k4v.
230 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

order to create a composite heretical mold in which Luther was cast. This typology
was intended to combat the Lutherans’ initial construction of a counter-​history
of the Church in which these dissidents became members of a brave underground
dedicated to resisting the papal Antichrist.40 One of the most prominent members
of this proto-​Protestant resistance movement was certainly Jan Hus. We must
remember that Cochlaeus was publishing his texts condemning Luther’s treachery
to the German empire and Roman church by equating it to Hus’s heresy at exactly
the same time that Otto Brunfels was compiling and publishing his dossier for the
Bohemian martyr’s de facto canonization by the Lutheran party. Here, then, is a
prime example of the nearly perfect inversion of historical polemics in the early
Reformation:  both Cochlaeus and his opponents were eager to identify Luther
with Hus and earlier dissidents from the Catholic Church based on both their the-
ology and the impact of the movements they instigated, but these authors adduced
diametrically opposed conclusions based on this identification.
Ironically, though, in his drive to depict Luther as simply the present incarna-
tion of an eternal, heretical ideal type, Cochlaeus actually limited the impact of
his arguments drawn from the Christian past. In effect, by equating Israelite apos-
tates, late antique heretics, and medieval opponents of the papacy, Cochlaeus’s
ostensibly historical polemics came to be marked by a deeply ahistorical sense of
temporal collapse, as the timeless image of the heretic that Cochlaeus constructed
in his texts elided any sense of difference or development among the individuals
and movements he condemned.41 The figure of the eternal, unchanging heretic
was one of the foundations of early Catholic polemics against the German ref-
ormation, and it was one that Cochlaeus used to great effect in his writings. It
also, however, represented an obstacle to the creation of a truly critical historical
narrative that interpreted the opponents of the Church not merely as examples of
a type, but as individuals whose teachings had emerged from specific theological
conflicts and distinct historical contexts. This latter sort of narrative could (and
would) be put into the service of the ideological conflict between the Roman
church and her opponents in the sixteenth century, but it only began to coalesce
during the second and third decades of the Reformation, when authors such as

  For summaries of these opposing viewpoints, compare: Jedin, “Kirchengeshichtliches in der

40

älteren Kontroverstheologie”; and Benrath, “Das Verständnis der Kirchengeschichte.” Cf. the con-
trast between Catholic “Tradition” and Protestant “History” in: Fuchs, “Reformation, Tradition,
und Geschichte.”
41
  This type of argument was another point of intersection/​inversion, as Euan Cameron has
drawn attention to the Lutherans’ reductionism in constructing their history of the “true” church.
According to Cameron, the search for papal opponents led sixteenth-​century Protestants to ignore
or elide theological differences among their “witnesses to the truth.” See: Euan Cameron, “Medieval
Heretics as Protestant Martyrs,” in Martyrs and Martyrologies, ed. D. Wood (Cambridge: Blackwell,
1993), pp. 185–​2 07; and idem, “One Reformation or Many? Protestant Identities in the Later
Reformation in Germany,” in Tolerance and Intolerance in the European Reformation, pp. 108–​127.
 The Catholic 231

Cochlaeus came to reconsider the value of their continuity-​based arguments

against Luther and the other reformers.

A Shifting Strategic Imperative

Cochlaeus’s first burst of publications concerning Martin Luther took its place
among a crowded marketplace of ideas concerning religious reform in the early
1520s. Mark Edwards and other scholars have shown that the years 1521–​1525
represented the high point of pamphlet production and consumption during the
first half of the sixteenth century, a wave of publication that crested and crashed
with the outbreak of the Peasants’ War.42 This conflict and its aftermath had seri-
ous ramifications for the emergent Lutheran movement, as Luther and his allies
were forced to confirm their support for the German princes and decry any politi-
cally subversive interpretations of their teachings. They did both of these things
through the medium of print, but in a more circumscribed manner than they had
during the previous years. Luther, for one, became more likely to address his writ-
ings to political elites than the public at large, and his texts shifted away from
trying to convince ideologically neutral readers of the truth of his theological
ideas and toward strengthening the resolve and commitment of an extant reli-
gious community.43 As Miriam Usher Chrisman has aptly put it, this period wit-
nessed a transition from polemic, a form of “rational, if contentious discourse”
aimed at convincing one’s audience through argumentation, to propaganda, the
one-​sided, “systematic attempt to propagate a particular opinion or doctrine.”44 It
would seem that many Lutheran authors in the years after the Peasants’ War felt
that this sort of rhetorical retrenchment had been necessitated by the potentially
disastrous association of their movement with the so-​called “Revolution of the
Common Man.”45

42
  The most substantial effort to track and analyze pamphlet publications in recent years is that
of Mark Edwards. He has published his findings in: Mark Edwards, Jr., “Catholic Controversial
Literature, 1518–​1555: Some Statistics,” ARG 79 (1988): 189–​2 05; and idem, Printing, Propaganda,
and Martin Luther (Berkeley:  U.  of California Press, 1994), c­ hapter  1. Richard Cole has pub-
lished similar conclusions (based on a different data set) in his:  “The Reformation Pamphlet at
Communication Processes,” in Flugschriften als Massenmedium der Reformationszeit, ed. H. J. Köhler
(Stuttgart: Klett-​Cotta, 1981), pp. 139–​161. For a broader interpretation of the significance of the
early pamphlet literature for the German reformation, see: Andrew Pettegree, Reformation and the
Culture of Persuasion (New York: Cambridge UP, 2005), pp. 156–​170.
43
 Edwards, Luther’s Last Battles, pp. 20ff.
44
  Miriam Usher Chrisman, “From Polemics to Propaganda: The Development of Mass Persuasion
in the Late Sixteenth Century,” ARG 73 (1982): 175–​195, pp. 175–​176. For a similar conclusion based
on transitions in Catholic controversial literature, see: Jedin, “Die geschichtliche Bedeutung.”
45
  This rechristening of the Peasants’ War derives from the work of Peter Blickle, Die Revolution
von 1525, 2nd ed. (Munich:  Oldenbourg, 1981); and its influential English translation:  The
232 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

Catholic authors were more than happy to bolster this association. In the
wake of the Peasants’ War a host of Catholic controversialists issued tracts lay-
ing the blame for the conflict squarely at Luther’s feet, arguing that his attacks on
the ecclesiastical hierarchy and teachings on evangelical freedom had inflamed
the peasants’ minds and undermined their respect for all authority.46 Catholic
rhetoric in this vein neither gave any credence to Luther’s qualifications on his
positions concerning freedom (it was strictly theological, after all, not political)
nor acknowledged Luther’s politically conservative writings from before the war,
but in doing so the Catholic controversialists seemed to intuit how Luther had
been understood by the German public better than the reformer would have cared
to admit.47 By 1525, Catholic controversialists had become more highly attuned
to the tone of Luther’s rhetoric than its actual content; the theological divergence
and personal acrimony between Luther and his opponents had become so great
at that point that any hope of changing each other’s mind had faded. Catholic
authors still understood the power of Luther’s rhetoric, though, even as they
sought to counter it, and it was at this point that authors such as Hieronymus
Emser and Johannes Cochlaeus struck upon the idea of using Luther’s own words
against him as a means of undercutting their impact.
One of the first texts to focus exclusively on Luther’s words as evidence of his
hypocrisy was Hieronymus Emser’s Answer to Luther’s “Abomination,” published
in 1525.48 This treatise organized a number of excerpts from Luther’s writings
under five headings that emphasized Luther’s efforts to deny the separate exis-
tence of the spiritual estate and the legitimacy of its social regulations, defame the
papacy and episcopacy, undermine the authority of the secular powers, and thereby
incite the commoners to rebellion under the guise of promoting evangelical freedom.
Mark Edwards has convincingly demonstrated that these themes were ubiquitous
in Catholic polemical texts from the second half of the 1520s, but it should also be
noted that the methodology of this text became increasingly common over the same
years.49 Johannes Cochlaeus worked alongside Emser toward both ends, publishing
a Response to Luther’s infamous tract Against the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of Peasants
that indicted Luther for spurring the violence of the Peasants’ War by using Luther’s

Revolution of 1525: The German Peasants’ War from a New Perspective, trans. T. Brady and E. Midelfort
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1981).
46
  For an overview and analysis of Catholic responses to the Peasants’ War, see: Mark Edwards,
Jr., “‘Lutherschmähung?’ Catholics on Luther’s Responsibility for the Peasants’ War,” Catholic
Historical Review 76 (1990): 461–​4 80.
47
  On this point, see Edwards, Luther’s Last Battles, pp. 27–​2 8 and 67.
48
 Hieronymus Emser, Auff Luthers grewel wider die heiligen Stillmesse Antwort Item wie, wo
und mit wolchen wortten Luther yhn seyn büchern tzur auffrur ermandt, geschriben und getriben
(Dresden: Emserpresse, 1525).
49
  Edwards, “Catholics on Luther’s Responsibility,” pp. 465–​474; and Keen, “Cochlaeus: Life
and Work,” pp. 43–​45.
 The Catholic 233

earlier writings as proof of his accountability for the conflict and hypocrisy in con-
demning the peasants for reiterating his own teachings.50 Certainly Cochlaeus had
used a similar approach in some of his earlier works (e.g., the Gloss and Commentary),
but in the second half of the 1520s Luther’s writings came to provide more than a
starting point for theological refutation. Rather, they offered decisive evidence that
Luther’s goal was only to say or write whatever would cause maximum damage to
the Church and state at any given time, irrespective of how it lined up with his earlier
statements or stances on a given topic.
Cochlaeus’s emphasis on Luther’s theological inconsistency in his Response
came to be characteristic of his writings against Luther from the second half of
the 1520s. And as the decade closed, Cochlaeus found himself particularly well
situated to promulgate this vision of the reformer, having been appointed as the
chaplain to the court of Duke George upon the death of Hieronymus Emser late
in 1527. As George’s chaplain, Cochlaeus was in a position to shape the ongoing
Catholic response to Luther; he had access to greater financial support and print-
ers for his work, and he could also leverage his influence to have other Catholic
controversialists’ texts published in the Saxon printing centers of Leipzig and
Dresden. 51 It was certainly still the case that Protestants out-​published their
Catholic opponents during these years, but under the aegis of Duke George
and with the support of a select number of bishops, Catholic authors associated
with ducal Saxony oversaw a vernacular polemical campaign that demonstrated
how the Church’s resources could be effectively coordinated to counteract the
Lutheran propaganda machine. 52
Cochlaeus remained at the forefront of this publishing effort, and it was with
George’s support that he produced one of the most (in)famous works of Catholic

50
  Cochlaeus’s main writing on Luther and the Peasants’ War was his: Wider die Reubischen und
Mordischen rotten der Bawren … Antwort Johannis Coclei von Wendelstein (Cologne: Peter Quentell,
1525). Quentell published a second edition in 1525, and it was reprinted in 1526 and translated
into Latin. It was also published in Dresden in 1527 by Petrus Sylvius along with a companion piece
by Sylvius, called A Clear Demonstration, as: Antwort Joannis Cochlei zu Martin Luthers buch … Jetzt
auffs nawe mit einer sonderlichen Schlussrede M. Pe. Sylvii in Druck gebracht (Dresden: W. Stöckel, 1527).
On this latter edition, see: Edwards, “Catholics on Luther’s Responsibility,” pp. 470ff.
51
  Cochlaeus’s access to local printers led to a Pyrrhic victory of sorts; although many Catholic
controversialists had their work published at this time, their work did not sell well and led to an
exodus of local printers and the collapse of the industry. On Catholic controversial efforts in
Saxony at this time, see: Volkmar, Reform statt Reformation, pp. 561–​593. See also the conclusions
about the Dresden publishing industry in: Frank Aurich, Die Anfänge des Buchdrucks in Dresden: Die
Emserpresse, 1524–​1526 (Dresden: SLUB, 2000), especially pp. 105–​106.
52
  On the development of the Catholic propaganda efforts during this time, see:  Edwards,
“Catholic Controversial Literature”; and Volkmar, “Turning Luther’s Weapons against Him.” Cf.
the data and conclusions in: Richard Crofts, “Printing, Reform, and the Catholic Reformation in
Germany (1521–​1545),” SCJ 16 (1985):  369–​381; and the overview of the statistics in:  Bagchi,
Luther’s Earliest Opponents, pp. 195–​2 01.
234 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

propaganda against Luther from the entire decade, The Seven-​Headed Luther,
which was published in both Latin and German editions in 1529. 53 This book,
which incorporated a striking frontispiece in which Luther was depicted as a mas-
sive, monstrous figure, was devoted solely to revealing the inconsistencies within
Luther’s thought. 54 The book did this by creating seven different avatars of Luther,
each of which reflected one of his roles as a teacher, polemicist, administrator,
theologian, and preacher. These different aspects of Luther disagreed with each
other endlessly in The Seven-​Headed Luther, but they all argued with words from
Luther’s own texts. The resulting image was that of a man with split personali-
ties, each trying to talk over the rest and assert the dominance of his individual
perspective over the others. This depiction of Luther represented the culmination
of the efforts in the wake of the Peasants’ War to draw the public’s attention to
the disastrous consequences of Luther’s fundamental hypocrisy and theological
instability.
At heart, The Seven-​Headed Luther was a deeply paradoxical book. On the
one hand, it reflected Cochlaeus’s humanistic attention to scholarly accuracy
and thoroughness. Over the course of the book’s forty-​five chapters, Cochlaeus
quoted from sixty different works by Luther, which were listed in a prefatory
index and scrupulously cited in the marginal notes. The individual quotations of
Luther were also accurate, and Cochlaeus rarely conflated excerpts from different
works into single quotations. 55 Cochlaeus was also consistent in characterizing
his various “Luthers”; each quoted from either the same genre of Luther’s writ-
ings or discrete periods of his career, which added coherence to their positions
throughout the book. 56 On the other hand, however, the overall presentation of
Luther in this text was highly tendentious. The quotations in the book were taken
out of their textual contexts, and they were often stripped of any qualifications

  Johannes Cochlaeus, Septiceps Lutherus, ubique sibi, suis scriptis, contrarius in visitationem saxoni-
53

cam (Leipzig: Valentin Schuman, 1529). Several extracts from the Latin text were published in the
same year and by the same printer under the title: Sieben Kopffe Martin Luthers.
54
  This illustration represented a pictorial example of the inversions in reformation polem-
ics. The image of the seven-​headed beast (cf. Rev. 13 and 17)  had been initially applied to the
pope, most famously in Lucas Cranach the Elder’s original illustrations for Revelation in Luther’s
German New Testament and in Protestant broadsheets and pamphlets. Here, Cochlaeus tried to
appropriate the eschatological symbolism of the beast and apply it to Luther. On this symbolic
contest, see: Scribner, For the Sake of Simple Folk, pp. 100–​104 and 232–​235; and Denise Hartman,
“The Apocalypse and Religious Propaganda: Illustrations by Albrecht Dürer and Lucas Cranach
the Elder,” Marginalia 11 (2010): 1–​10.
55
  Cochlaeus proclaimed his accuracy in his prefatory address “To the Reader,” and this
claim has been substantiated in:  Leif Grane, “The Image of Myth and Reality,” in Seven-​Headed
Luther: Essays in Commemoration of a Quincentenary, 1483–​1983, ed. P. Brooks (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1983), pp. 231–​253. The index of Luther’s works cited in the text (of which twenty-​eight were
in Latin and thirty-​t wo in German) can be found in: Cochlaeus, Septiceps Lutaherus, p. iiiiv.
56
  Grane, “The Image of Myth,” pp. 233–​234; and Keen, “Cochlaeus: Life and Work,” pp. 43–​4 4.
 The Catholic 235

that might have existed in the original. Cochlaeus also presented his citations
without a broader temporal framework, so there was no sense of meaningful
development in Luther’s thought over time. These polemical tactics infuriated
Luther’s defenders at the time, and contemporary scholars have also allowed this
work to get under their skin, even to the point that some have consequently dis-
missed Cochlaeus as a serious intellectual figure. 57 To say simply that this text
was manipulative and potentially dishonest, though, misses the point of a work
like this. It was supposed to goad and encourage in equal measure, as a deliberate
provocation to those who supported Luther and as decisive proof of Luther’s per-
fidy to those who agreed with Cochlaeus already; this was, in short, an exemplary
piece of propaganda.
Cochlaeus himself was clear on this. In a brief statement on “The Intention
of the Author and Utility of This Book,” he noted that he had written this work
to enable Catholic authors and preachers to refute Luther’s teachings without
having to read the entirety of his books, which were “trifling if prolix, deceptive
and full of poison.”58 In this sense, The Seven-​Headed Luther served as a successor
to texts like Eck’s Enchiridion and Bernhard von Luxemburg’s Catalogue; it was a
compendium of useful references and arguments that could be deployed against
the opponents of the Church. Cochlaeus’s text also hinted at something more,
though, as its revelation of Luther’s inherently contradictory nature begged the
question of whether or not his teachings could ever be fully allied with another
heretic’s. Cochlaeus certainly made this case regarding Hus and the Hussites, to
whom the thirty-​fi fth chapter of the book was devoted. This chapter, which pre-
ceded a discussion of the Waldensians and “heretics and schismatics in general,”
showed how Luther had flip-​flopped in his position toward the Hussites, from
his condemnation of their breaking away from the Church during the Leipzig
Debate up to his proclamation (in On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church) that
the Hussites represented the true church, while “You Romans are the heretics and
impious schismatics.”59 This treatment of Luther and the Hussites was typical of
The Seven-​Headed Luther, in that Cochlaeus did not represent Luther’s thought on
the Hussites as evolving, but rather treated it as comprising a set of mutually, eter-
nally exclusive statements. This portrayal was certainly false, but it showed that
Cochlaeus was aware of an underlying inconsistency in Luther’s treatment of his
Bohemian forerunners. So, while Cochlaeus could still gleefully quote Luther’s
assertion that he was ten times the heretic that Hus had been, he also seemed to
suggest that Luther’s rhetoric of continuity and intensification might be merely

57
  This attitude is most evident in: Gotthelf Widermann, “Cochlaeus as a Polemicist,” in Seven-​
Headed Luther, pp. 195–​2 07.
58
 Cochlaeus, Septiceps Lutherus, p. iiir.
59
 Cochlaeus, Septiceps Lutherus, p. L4r.
236 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

that:  words meant to provoke and destroy, rather than statements bearing any
deeper truth.60
How could a thinker at war with himself ever come to grips with the teachings
of the Bible and the tradition of the Church in order to produce a sound body of
doctrine for the novel ecclesiastical order he was trying to create? That was the
fundamental question posed by The Seven-​Headed Luther, and Cochlaeus and his
fellow controversialists answered it in the negative by pointing to the political
and military turmoil of the 1520s as evidence for the results of Luther’s attempt.
It would not be accurate, though, to identify this strand of argumentation as the
only strategy that Catholic polemicists employed at the turn of the 1530s. Rather,
alongside their negative portrayals of Luther, Catholic authors like Cochlaeus also
produced a number of editions of “classics” of the Catholic tradition and original
texts valorizing contemporary Church practices. These coincided with the rise
of the reform party led by the future Pope Paul III in Rome, and provided a more
positive basis for Catholic polemics in the early 1530s. Cochlaeus himself pub-
lished new editions of religious and legal texts by Gregory of Nanzianzus, Isidore
of Seville, Emperor Justinian, Cassiodorus, Pope Innocent III, and the Abbot
Rupert of Deutz, all of which established the intellectual pedigree of Catholic
positions in contemporary theological debates. He also wrote a series of treatises
upholding traditional Catholic eucharistic theology (in response to the Marburg
Colloquy), works on the validity of the cult of saints and whether it was permis-
sible to read the Bible in the vernacular, and a brief work anticipating the con-
vocation of a general church council. In short, alongside his substantial polemic
corpus directed against Luther, Melanchthon, and other Protestants, Cochlaeus
also produced a significant number of texts that were dedicated to reifying the
notion that the contemporary Catholic Church—​in contrast to its opponents—​
possessed a unified, unbroken tradition of divine teaching that authorized its cur-
rent institutions, practices, and beliefs.61
During this time, Cochlaeus had the opportunity to speak officially for that
Catholic tradition; he was a leading participant in the Diet of Augsburg in 1530,
and he was one of the main authors and editors (along with Johannes Eck) of
the Holy Roman Emperor’s Confutatio of the Protestant’s Confessio Augustana.62

60
  Cochlaeus actually cited this quotation twice in his treatment of the Hussites specifically
and heretics more generally. See: Cochlaeus, Septiceps Lutherus, pp. Miv–​M iir.
61
 On Cochlaeus’s writings on the Catholic Church and its tradition from this time,
see:  Remigius Bäumer, “Johannes Cochlaeus und die Reform der Kirche,” in idem, ed.,
Reformatio Ecclesiae:  Beiträge zu kirchlichen Reformbemühungen von der Alten Kirchen bis zur Neuzeit
(Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1980), pp. 333–​354, especially pp. 340–​3 47.
62
  On the text of the Confutatio and the role played by Cochlaeus in its composition, see the
introduction to: Herbert Immenkötter, Die Confutatio der Confessio Augustana vom 3. August 1530
(Münster: Aschendorrfsche, 1979); and Bäumer, Johannes Cochlaeus, pp. 33–​41.
 The Catholic 237

After the Diet, Cochlaeus published additional texts supporting the Emperor’s
edicts against Luther and refuting various positions that had been enshrined in
the Augustana or otherwise defended by its authors, most notably Melanchthon.63
In order to understand the transformation of Cochlaeus’s polemics during the
1530s, then, it is necessary to comprehend the different ideological imperatives
that he was seeking to harmonize in the beginning of the decade. The first of
these was a holdover from the 1520s that had been reinforced by the failure of
Augsburg to bring the Protestants back into the fold of the Church, and it dictated
that Cochlaeus attack Martin Luther and his followers as seditious, heretical,
and dangerous opponents of the Church and Empire whose teachings fomented
rebellion. Related to this belief about the danger that Protestants posed to the
Empire was Cochlaeus’s growing awareness of the instability and inconsistency
of the theological and historical foundations that Luther and his allies had con-
structed for themselves. After all, the Protestants at Augsburg had not even been
able to produce one confession that they could all agree on, and Cochlaeus was
well aware of the inconsistencies within Luther’s thought after his work on The
Seven-​Headed Luther. 64
Complementary to these convictions about the nature of Luther and the move-
ment he had begun was Cochlaeus’s certainty that the Catholic Church had within
its tradition the resources to defeat its opponents and to reform itself. In particu-
lar, Cochlaeus put his faith in the ability of a church council under the leadership
of a willing pope to enact reform, a faith that appeared to be rewarded with the
election of Paul III and his subsequent push to assemble a council at Mantua.65
In sum, then, Cochlaeus was working to synthesize a belief in the legitimacy and
viability of a church council as a venue for resolving the conflict in the Church; his
conviction that Luther and his allies represented a political and military danger to
the Empire; and a growing awareness that Luther’s movement had an uncertain
relationship to both its contemporary allies and theoretical forerunners. It should
not be any surprise that he therefore returned to the history of the Bohemian ref-
ormation as a field in which he could explore how these intersecting beliefs might
together form a new mode of historical argumentation against Martin Luther.

63
  On Cochlaeus’s ongoing efforts, see: Herbert Immenkötter, Um die Einheit im Glauben: Die
Unionsverhandlungen des Augsburger Reichstag im August und September 1530 (Münster: Aschendorff,
1973); and the introductory essay in: Johannes Cochlaeus, Philippicae I—​VII, ed. R. Keen, vol. 2
(Nieuwkoop: De Graaf Publishers, 1996), pp. 1–​2 4.
64
  Besides the more famous Augustana, the cities of Strasbourg, Constance, Memmingen, and
Lindau produced the so-​called Tetrapolitana, which bore the traces of Zwinglian theology but pro-
vided enough common ground for the cities to be admitted into the Schmalkaldic League the fol-
lowing Year. On this confession, see: Thomas Brady, The Politics of the Reformation in Germany: Jacob
Sturm (1489–​1553) of Strasbourg (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1997), pp. 110–​116.
65
  Bäumer, “Johannes Cochlaeus und die Reform,” pp. 345ff.
238 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

All of which leads us back to the letters that began this chapter. Those letters
emerged from a trip that Cochlaeus took to Prague in March of 1534 as part of
a ducal embassy. While there, he received “three very old manuscripts” from the
canons of the city’s cathedral chapter that would enable him to write a new his-
tory of the Hussites.66 Cochlaeus first mentioned this history in a letter written
to the papal nuncio Pier Paolo Vergerio at the end of July in which Cochlaeus
requested 200 ducats to help with publication costs. In his later letter to Cardinal
Girolamo Aleander, Cochlaeus described his project in more detail, noting that
it covered the history of Bohemia from the time of Charles IV until the death of
King Ladislas in 1457 and stating that he planned to publish it along with a history
of “the new Hussites” in Wittenberg so that “their malicious and pernicious mach-
inations will be revealed by the most authoritative documentation.”67 Cochlaeus
also stated in both letters that he intended this work to have an international audi-
ence, since the Lutherans had “suckled apostates, through whom the whole world
might be corrupted,” unless the Church responded in a more effective manner
than it previously had.68
We have already seen one of Cochlaeus’s responses in his proposal that
Archduke Ferdinand sponsor a dialogue with the Bohemians and push for the
formal recognition of the Compactata by the papacy. Alongside that diplomatic
response, however, Cochlaeus also suggested that Catholic authors deploy a new
intellectual strategy against the “old Hussites” of Bohemia. Indeed, throughout
the letter in which he counseled reconciliation with the Bohemians, Cochlaeus
offered his history as a vehicle for stimulating dialogue with the schismatic Czechs,
going so far as to offer the Czechs a look at his manuscript so they could tell him “what
might be removed or excised, because it could cause scandal or offense” as a sign of
good faith and in an effort to truly understand their past.69 Again, given the uncom-
promising nature of Cochlaeus’s polemics from the previous decade toward Martin
Luther and his Hussite forebears, this concession is deeply surprising. It points, in
fact, to a sea change in Cochlaeus’s perception of the Bohemian reformation and the
role it would play in his continued controversial efforts against his contemporary
opponents. At the heart of that change in perception was Cochlaeus’s new recogni-
tion that there was a moderate center within the Hussite movement that had formed
the basis for the Utraquist church, and that this center shared its core theological and
sacramental tenets with the Catholic Church. Cochlaeus also seems to have realized

  Johannes Cochlaeus, “Letter to Pier Paolo Vergerio” (July 27, 1534) in “Beiträge,” pp. 253–​
66

255, p. 254.
67
  Cochlaeus, “Letter to Aleander,” pp. 256–​257.
68
  Cochlaeus, “Letter to Vergerio,” p. 254.
69
  Cochlaeus, “Letter to Fabri,” p. 259. Despite this offer, Cochlaeus requested assurances that
the exemplar of his history would be protected while out of his hands, even asking (ironically, one
hopes) for the granting of a “safe conduct” for the manuscript!
 The Catholic 239

at this time that Hus himself had been the theological progenitor of this Bohemian
mainstream. And even though Cochlaeus continued to argue that the bloodshed and
chaos that accompanied the Bohemian reformation were the unavoidable outcomes
of Hus’s defiance of Roman and imperial authority at Constance, he tempered this
conviction of Hus’s accountability with the recognition that the Bohemian “heretic”
had publically proclaimed his adherence to Catholic teachings on the nature of the
Mass, the broader sacramental framework of the Christian life, and even the primacy
of the pope within the Church.

Rehabilitating Hus
Despite his efforts to secure the financial support and imprimatur of lead-
ing Catholic figures such as Aleander and Fabri for his history of the Hussites,
Cochlaeus would not actually publish his exhaustive Twelve Books on the History
of the Hussites for fifteen years. In the meantime, however, his new understanding
of the Bohemian reformation animated a trio of publications written in 1537 and
1538, as the debate over Paul III’s convocation of a church council again brought
Jan Hus squarely into the center of reformation controversial literature. As seen
in the previous chapter, the potential convocation of a council at Mantua spurred
Martin Luther and Johannes Agricola to publish collections of Hus’s prison
letters, a new edition of Mladoňovice’s account of Hus’s trial, and a play based
on this latter text. Cochlaeus understood that the Lutherans had written these
works to demonstrate that “Jan Hus had been unjustly damned at the Council of
Constance, so that no council might be trusted.” 70 As such, he directly rebutted
all of them, writing his own history of Hus at Constance, a theological takedown
of Luther’s claims on Hus’s legacy, an attempted debunking of Hus’s correspon-
dence as a fabrication, and even his own satirical play responding to Agricola’s
Tragedy. All of these texts denied Luther’s continuity with Hus and argued that
Luther was aware of the theological chasm between him and his forerunner, and
Cochlaeus used these related arguments as the foundation for a broader critique
and reconsideration of both Catholic and Lutheran understandings of the nature
of heresy and its place in history.
The first of Cochlaeus’s Hussite writings from this period was entitled The
True History of Master Jan Hus, and this work was intended to serve as a counter-​
narrative to the new editions of Mladoňovice that Luther and Agricola had pub-
lished. In the introduction of this book, Cochlaeus asserted that he could “in no
way remain silent or permit that the Council of Constance did anything unjust
to Hus,” but would instead use the oldest and most reliable sources (as opposed

70
 Johannes Cochlaeus, “Letter to Girolamo Aleander” (October 7, 1537)  in “Beiträge,”
pp. 274–​278, p. 277.
240 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

to the Lutherans’ “false histories”) to prove that the Council had conducted itself
honorably in the matter of Hus’s trial.71 The True History put forth its historical
proof of this contention in three parts. The first of these was a narrative history of
Hus’s career in Prague and his trial in Constance; the second part was a compari-
son of John Wyclif ’s, Hus’s, and Luther’s theologies of the eucharist; and the third
part was an extended critique of Luther’s and Agricola’s edition of Hus’s prison
correspondence, which Cochlaeus argued had been substantially altered or even
forged by Luther. It was particularly in the second and third parts of this work that
Cochlaeus laid out his new, subversive reading of Luther and Hus. By highlighting
the fundamental differences in their sacramental theology and accusing Luther
of effectively manufacturing a Hus whose ideas resembled his own, Cochlaeus
sought to sever the links that both Lutheran and Catholic authors in the sixteenth
century had forged between Luther and his so-​called forerunner.
The bulk of this text, though, concerned the actual events of Hus’s trial. In
presenting his version of it, Cochlaeus deployed the fruits of his research in
Prague and from the intervening years. He cited both Petr of Mladoňovice’s
and Ulrich Richental’s eyewitness accounts of the trial—​referring to Petr as
“the unnamed Hussite” throughout the book—​which certainly represented
the urtexts of Protestant and Catholic historiography on Hus.72 Cochlaeus
also employed Hus’s own writings, as well as texts by lesser-​k nown Bohemian
authors such as Andrew of Brod, Stephen Páleč, and Jan Příbram, in setting
the stage for Hus’s trial at Constance, and he referred to secondary chronicle
sources describing the Council and the writings of figures such as Jean Gerson
to flesh out his description of the trial. By marshalling this array of sources,
Cochlaeus ostensibly managed to avoid the overtly positive or negative pre-
sentations of Hus that characterized Mladoňovice and Richental, respec-
tively. Underneath the veneer of disinterested scholarship, though, Cochlaeus
revealed his ideological loyalties both by exculpating the Holy Roman Emperor
Sigismund for the revocation of the safe conduct he offered Hus and praising
the council fathers for their diligence and restraint in their treatment of Hus.73

  Johannes Cochlaeus, Warhafftige Historia von Magister Johan Hussen von anfang seiner newen
71

Sect, biss zum ende seines lebens um Concilio zu Costnitz (Leipzig: Nicholas Wolrab, 1537), p. A2r.
72
  By using this terminology, Cochlaeus drew attention to Agricola’s choice to publish Peter
of Mladoňovice’s account anonymously and thus questioned its veracity. For Cochlaeus’s descrip-
tion of “der unbenent hussit,” see e.g.: Warhafftige Historia, pp. D8v., E1v., and G4r. For Richental’s
account of the council, it is likely that Cochlaeus used the newly published edition of this work: Das
Concilium zu Constanz gehalten ist worden (Augsburg: Heinrich Steiner, 1536).
73
  Cochlaeus, following Richental, was insistent that Hus conducted Mass while in Constance,
thus violating his excommunication. Cochlaeus also included the story of Hus’s attempted escape
from Constance in a hay wagon, and both of these acts would have abrogated the terms of his safe
conduct. In terms of Hus’s treatment by the council fathers, Cochlaeus drew equal attention to
Hus’s public hearing before the council, which gave him the opportunity to defend himself, and his
 The Catholic 241

That Cochlaeus adopted these positions is not surprising, but his apologetic
stance toward the Council should not necessarily invalidate his presentation
of events. Rather, Cochlaeus’s synthetic version of Hus’s trial based on primary
sources written by a number of sources hostile and sympathetic to Hus should
be taken as a step forward in the treatment of Hus’s trial during the German
reformation, as it represented the first attempt by an early modern author to
construct an original account of the trial based on the writings of a wide spec-
trum of participants and observers.
The other sections of this book also harnessed sophisticated humanistic
scholarship to polemical ends, with mixed results. The last part of this book, for
instance, which subjected Luther’s and Agricola’s edition of Hus’s prison letters
to rigorous linguistic and historical examination in order to show that they were
forgeries, was fundamentally incorrect. Although Cochlaeus based his argument
on the use of anachronistic language and the presence of factual errors regarding
the sequence of events at the Council in the letters, the letters were authentic.74
Conversely, the portion of The True History that focused on a detailed compari-
son between the eucharistic theologies of Wyclif, Hus, and Luther was accurate,
as Cochlaeus offered a nuanced reading of Hus’s orthodox defense of transub-
stantiation over and against Wyclif ’s belief in remanence and Luther’s teaching
on the persistence of the bread and wine’s substance alongside the real presence
of Christ. Cochlaeus adopted a rhetorical stance of confusion in light of these
differences. On one level, he was baffled that Hus had obstinately defended
Wyclif ’s orthodoxy at Constance, which had contributed significantly to Hus’s
condemnation for heresy, when the two men’s positions on the eucharist had
differed so substantially.75 On a second, more immediately relevant level,
Cochlaeus professed equal consternation that Luther considered Hus a saint
when Luther had repeatedly written that transubstantiation was “an unchris-
tian and blasphemous” invention of the papal Antichrist. Cochlaeus drove this
point home by citing Luther’s claim from 1520 that all of the positions that Hus
defended at Constance were “entirely Christian and evangelical” and posing a
rhetorical question: “How could Luther say that Hus was a holy martyr, when
Luther ascribed so great an error to him, which Hus had maintained even up to
death?” 76

literary productivity while in Constance, which suggested that his “imprisonment” was not harsh
and that he had ample opportunity to conduct scholarship. See: Cochlaeus, Warrhaftige Historia,
pp. D5v.–​E5v.
74
 Cochlaeus pointed out, for instance, that the letters referred to Sigismund as King of
Bohemia (which he did not become for another two decades) and made an error concerning the
arrival of Jerome of Prague in Constance. Cochlaeus saw both of these as indications that Luther
and Agricola had composed them. See: Cochlaeus, Warhafftige Historia, pp. G3r.–​G 4v.
75
 Cochlaeus, Warhafftige Historia, p. F6v.
76
 Cochlaeus, Warhafftige Historia, pp. F7v.–​F8r.
242 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

This question, and the fact that it did not seemingly have a satisfactory answer,
drove a second text by Cochlaeus that re-​examined the relationship between Hus
and Luther more systematically. Published in 1538, On the Immense Mercy of God
towards the Germans comprised a detailed comparison between Hus’s and Luther’s
positions on ten theological issues culled from sermons preached by each man.77
The issues that Cochlaeus chose for his comparanda would have been familiar to
readers in the 1530s, as they represented the central planks of Luther’s theological
platform. They included: the nature of the priesthood and the Church; the neces-
sity of confession and satisfaction; the soteriological utility of good works and
monastic vows; the legitimacy of the cult of saints; the existence of Purgatory; the
role of free will in determining man’s salvation; and the proper understanding of
the eucharist. For each of these topics, Cochlaeus concluded that Hus’s positions
were essentially orthodox, although Cochlaeus maintained that Hus should not
have brought them before the laity for debate.78 In contrast, Cochlaeus depicted
Luther’s stances on each of these issues as entirely inimical to the teachings of
the Church. To take but one example, Cochlaeus pointed out that Hus defended
the centrality of auricular confession in the Christian penitential cycle. Luther,
however, completely rejected confession as a rite that led to the “horrendous
destruction of souls” and allowed “demons to rend the soul into a thousand parts
and crush it completely,” statements which showed his contempt for the Church’s
sacraments and the clergy who faithfully oversaw them.79
After ten detailed comparisons such as this, Cochlaeus concluded that the fun-
damental difference between Hus and Luther was one of motivation. According
to Cochlaeus, Hus had primarily desired “to call the clergy back to their ancient
frugality and holiness of life” with his criticisms of the Church. The problem was
that Hus had done so immoderately (i.e., without the proper institutional autho-
rization) and imprudently (i.e., with harsh language and in public). Luther, how-
ever, “plotted not the reform, but the complete destruction of the Catholic clergy,
publicly denying the power of the pope over all” and attacking the Apostolic See
as “the throne of the beast.”80 Here, the disparity in their ultimate intentions
toward the Church separated Luther and Hus as much as their theology, with
Hus coming to occupy the place of a misguided but well-​intentioned critic of the
Church’s faults.
Cochlaeus’s realization that Hus’s critique of the Church was actually fairly
moderate led him to conclude that it was only God’s mercy that had spared his
contemporary Germany from a terrible fate. If Hus’s teachings had spurred the

77
  Johannes Cochlaeus, De Immensa Dei Misericordia erga Germanos, Ex Collatione Sermonum
Ioannis Hus ad unum sermonem Martini Lutheri (Leipzig: Nicholas Wolrab, 1538).
78
 Cochlaeus, De Immensa Dei Misericordia, pp. C1r.–​C1v.
79
 Cochlaeus, De Immensa Dei Misericordia, p. E4v.
80
 Cochlaeus, De Immensa Dei Misericordia, p. G3r.
 The Catholic 243

Táborites to undertake a campaign against the Church and Holy Roman Empire
marked by terrible violence and destruction, then the vehemence of Luther’s
attacks on the ecclesiastical and imperial authorities would result in even greater
violence, such as had occurred during the Peasants’ War. This eventuality thus
demanded that the German people and princes either eradicate this heresy from
their midst or await God’s wrath on their lands. Cochlaeus asserted this point
forcefully in his introduction to this text: “Nothing more certain is to be expected
for us, than our total destruction and consumption, unless we desist from our
strife.”81
This argument echoed Cochlaeus’s polemics from the previous decade, but
The True History of Master Jan Hus and On the Immense Mercy of God towards the
Germans reflected a new vein of Catholic historical polemics against the Lutheran
movement. In these texts, the argument that Luther was just another heretic was
no longer sufficient. Rather, Cochlaeus’s research into primary sources from
Hussite history had enabled, or even forced, him to conclude that Luther was
something entirely new, a thinker whose opposition to Rome did not have a truly
suitable historical analogue. Cochlaeus still argued that Hussite history could
serve as a meaningful warning to the German people; even if Hus’s and Luther’s
thought did not overlap theologically in any substantial way, their opposition to
the Church would still have parallel consequences. In making these modified
claims, Cochlaeus reflected a broader evolution in Catholic heresiological writ-
ing from the late 1530s, which increasingly came to emphasize the moral—​and
consequently the social and political—​d imensions of heresy at the expense of
the doctrinal.82 For Cochlaeus, though, this shift had a more pointed polemi-
cal end than it did for the authors of more systematic heresiological works. He was
focused on countering Lutheran claims that the conduct of Hus’s trial invalidated
the proposed Council of Mantua before it even assembled. In the course of making
this argument, Cochlaeus moved toward a broader critique of the historical tradition
that the Lutherans had claimed for themselves, a tradition in which Jan Hus occupied
a primary position. The full articulation of Cochlaeus’s critique would have to wait
for a decade, largely because the issue of the Council of Mantua was still pressing in
1538. And in that specific moment, Cochlaeus had another problem to address: how
could he broadcast his new understanding of the Lutherans’ historical confabula-
tions vis-​à-​vis Hus to a broader audience than he had previously been able to reach?
This problem occupied Cochlaeus’s attention precisely because of the pub-
lication and performance of Johannes Agricola’s Tragedy of Jan Hus. Cochlaeus
was aware of the play by October of 1537, and word of its public performance

 Cochlaeus, De Immensa Dei Misericordia, p. B1r.

81

  On this shift in the Catholic approach to the nature of heresy, see:  Bagchi, “Defining
82

Heresies,” p. 248.
244 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

moved him to counter its potential popular appeal by authoring a play of his own
in January 1538. 83 Cochlaeus chose to eschew the earnest theological exposition
and overt didacticism of Agricola’s Tragedy, however, and instead turned his dra-
matic treatment of Hus’s trial into a comedy. More specifically, Cochlaeus wrote
a satire about Martin Luther, his followers, and their wives that drew on the tra-
ditional genre of the Fastnachtspiel to present Cochlaeus’s opponents and their
literary creations as objects of derision.84 In Cochlaeus’s play, entitled A Private
Colloquy Concerning the Tragedy of Jan Hus, the issue was emphatically not whether
Hus had been a saint or a heretic.85 Rather, Cochlaeus chose to emphasize the
intellectual and aesthetic deficiencies of Hus’s defenders, whom he portrayed as
dominated by their wives, disordered by rage, and riven by internecine conflict.
Cochlaeus intended this presentation to expose the “disgraceful and inconstant
marriages of the apostates” to the public gaze and demonstrate that the Lutherans
were ruled over by “the imperious and arrogant ladies” of Wittenberg.86 It would
also, and perhaps as importantly, counter the Lutheran party’s efforts to rehabili-
tate Hus and invalidate the Council of Constance by focusing on the moral fail-
ings and intentional dishonesty of those who had undertaken to do both.
Cochlaeus’s choice of genre, style, and content in this play clearly repre-
sented a deviation from his earlier polemics. The direct, personal attacks on the
Lutherans, the ribald joking, and the snobbish criticism of Agricola’s Tragedy as
literarily amateurish all demonstrated that Cochlaeus was pursuing a new, more
oblique angle of attack against the Lutherans and Hus. Perhaps Cochlaeus felt
that his other works on Hus and Luther had exhausted the potential of traditional
polemical forms and humanist scholarship, or perhaps Cochlaeus recognized the
potential utility of drama as a medium for religious controversy.87 Either way, A

  Cochlaeus, “Letter to Aleander,” 277: “Ediderunt Lutherani nuper tragoediam Joannis Hus

83

teuthonicis rithmis, desumptam ex falsa historia, de qua supra, ut non solum libris et verbis, sed et
actione ac ludo inculcent populo.”
84
  On the characteristics of this genre, see: Eckehard Catholy, Fastnachtspiel (Stuttgart: Metzler,
1966); and Leif Søndergaard, “Combat between the Genders: Farcical Elements in the German
Fastnachtspiel,” Ludus:  Medieval and Early Renaissance Drama 6 (2002):  169–​187. On the appro-
priation of this genre during the German reformation, see:  Pettegree, Culture of the Persuasion,
pp. 80–​85.
85
  Johannes Cochlaeus (published under the name Johannes Vogelsang), Ein heimlich Gesprech
vonn der Tragedia Johannis Hussen, zwischen D. Mart. Luther und seinen guten freunden (Leipzig: Nicholas
Wolrab, 1538). A  second edition was published in 1539 by Wolfgang Stöckel in Dresden, and a
modern, critical edition was published as: Ein heimlich Gespräch von der Tragedia Johannis Huss, ed.
H. Holstein (Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1900). Citations to the text will refer to Holstein’s edition.
86
  This quotation is taken from: Johannes Cochlaeus, “Letter to Girolamo Aleander” (April 27,
1539) in W. Friedensburg, ed., Nuntiaturberichte aus Deutschland, Erste Abtheilung, 1533–​1559, vol. 4
(Gotha: FW Perthes, 1893), pp. 549–​550, p. 550.
87
  For an overview of drama’s place in sixteenth-​century polemics and religious formation,
see: Benjamin Griffin, “The Birth of the History Play: Saint, Sacrifice, and Reformation,” Studies in
 The Catholic 245

Private Colloquy represented a truly innovative departure from the typical style of
Catholic polemics against Luther and an attempt to reinforce Catholic arguments
against the Reformation through the deployment of satire and the exploitation
of contemporary fears about the potential for women to exert undue influence
over men.88
Cochlaeus’s play began with a conversation between Martin Luther and Philip
Melanchthon. In this dialogue, Luther revealed that he was furious over the publi-
cation of the Tragedy of Jan Hus (which Cochlaeus emphasized was anonymous), as
it revealed “how Wyclif, Hus, and I are bitterly against each other concerning the
sacrament of the body and blood of Christ.”89 Luther further attacked the author of
the play as a traitor to his cause for publicizing Hus’s Catholic sacramental theol-
ogy, and he even expressed his desire that someone would lop off the playwright’s
fingers and hands.90 Statements such as these helped to construct one of the play’s
major tropes: Luther’s irrationality, which derived alternately from his anger and
his lust. Luther himself acknowledged that anger was his special sin, and Cochlaeus
played off this aspect of the reformer’s personality.91 Indeed, Cochlaeus’s Luther
was always furious or enraged, and one can imagine a red-​faced actor storming
across the stage, bellowing about his enemies, and terrorizing his followers.
The main target of Luther’s ire throughout the play was Johannes Agricola, who
admitted to, and initially took pride in, being the Tragedy’s author. After all, he
had written the play to enable the common man to perceive the papists’ “wicked-
ness in councils, and to understand that what was done to Jan Hus in Constance
could also be done to our Doctor Martin in the future council.”92 The flip side of
that revelation, though, was that Agricola’s fidelity to his source had inadvertently
broadcast Hus’s rejection of key Lutheran tenets, especially concerning the pri-
macy of the papacy and the doctrine of transubstantiation. As Cochlaeus put it
in The Private Colloquy, the Tragedy showed that the Lutherans were a “new sect”
who “cannot prove that before this any sect, people, or nation have held this faith

English Literature, 1500–​1900 39 (1999): 217–​237; and Dermot Cavanagh, Language and Politics in
the Sixteenth-​Century History Play (New York: Palgrave, 2003), pp. 16–​18.
88
  This was a common Catholic trope deployed against the married religious leaders of the
Protestant churches. See: Natalie Zemon Davis, “Women on Top,” in idem, Society and Culture in
Early Modern France (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1975), pp. 124–​151, especially pp. 134–​135; and Luise
Schorn-​Schütte, “‘Gefährtin’ und ‘Mitregentin:’ Zur Socialgeschichte der evangelischen Pfarrfrau
in der frühen Neuzeit,” in Wandel der Geschlechterbeziehungen zu Beginn der Neuzeit, ed. C. Vanja and
H. Wunder (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1991), pp. 109–​153.
89
 Cochlaeus, Ein heimlich Gespräch, p. 9.
90
 Cochlaeus, Ein heimlich Gespräch, p. 7.
91
  Luther’s anger was a common topic in Reformation polemics, and Luther himself admitted
in both his correspondence and the Tischreden that it was his special sin. On Luther’s anger as a
polemical trope, see: Hendrix, Luther’s Last Battles, pp. 59–​6 0.
92
 Cochlaeus, Ein heimlich Gespräch, p. 10.
246 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

with us, which we hold unanimously.”93 Agricola responded to this concern by

claiming that “we will deny, shout down, or silence” any critics who challenged
his depiction of Hus, and he further noted that the common man would hardly
understand the differences in any case.94 This exchange recapitulated Cochlaeus’s
arguments about Hus’s orthodoxy, but extended it as well. Here, Luther and his
followers showed that they were not only aware of the theological differences
between them and their notional forerunner, but also that they were guilty of
deliberately misrepresenting the past and using their propaganda machine to gull
the common man into accepting their anti-​Roman polemics.
The conflict between Luther and Agricola in the play climaxed with Luther’s
prohibiting Agricola from publishing or preaching anything further.95 It was at
this point, though, that the women of Wittenberg took center stage, as Agricola’s
wife and daughter worked to resolve the dramatic impasse between him and
Luther. To summarize: Agricola’s wife asked Luther’s wife, Katharina, to inter-
cede with her husband on Agricola’s behalf. Katharina agreed to this interven-
tion, but demanded that Agricola’s daughter, Ortha, promise to wed Luther
should Katharina predecease him. This proposal, which was facilitated and wit-
nessed by the wives of other Lutheran leaders such as Philip Melanchthon and
Georg Spalatin, was happily accepted by Luther and Agricola in the play’s final
act, and the relationship between the men was mended. The path to this happy
resolution included a number of comic set pieces, most notably in Cochlaeus’s
staging of the women’s conversation about their husbands’ disagreement. Before
solving the issue at hand, Cochlaeus had the women indulge in a round of sala-
cious gossip: Agricola, it turned out, was a drunk and glutton who “often does not
bring home ten groschen in a whole week”; Spalatin was unable to give his wife
a child; and Melanchthon’s wife complained that she had to seduce him in his
study because he loved his books so dearly!96 This sort of satire was typical of
the Fastnachtspiel genre, and it served here to turn Cochlaeus’s Lutheran oppo-
nents into objects of scorn: men who failed to perform their masculine duties,
even though they had broken religious vows to assume them in the first place.97

93
 Cochlaeus, Ein heimlich Gespräch, p. 19.
 Cochlaeus, Ein heimlich Gespräch, p. 21.
94

95
  At this time, an actual conflict between Luther and Agricola was brewing. The cause of this
struggle was Agricola’s theology of the law, however, and not his publication of the Tragedy. The so-​
called Antinomian Controversy did lead Luther to suspect Agricola from preaching in January of
1538, although the two men were reconciled later that year. On the origins and ramifications of this
internal Lutheran debate, see: Mark Edwards, Jr., Luther and the False Brethren (Stanford: Stanford
UP, 1975), pp. 156ff.; and Timothy Wengert, Law and Gospel: Philip Melanchthon’s Debate with John
Agricola of Eisleben over Poenitentia (Baker Books: Grand Rapids, 1997), especially pp. 25–​4 0.
96
 Cochlaeus, Ein heimlich Gespräch, pp. 24–​2 8.
97
  Heidi Wunder, “What Made a Man a Man? Sixteenth-​and Seventeenth-​Century Findings,”
in Gender in Early Modern Germany, ed. U. Rublack (New York: Cambridge UP, 2002), pp. 21–​4 8.
Cf. Davis, “Women on Top.”
 The Catholic 247

In a culture that saw the household as the microcosm of the entire social order,
this depiction of the Lutheran leadership as subtly manipulated by their wives
and otherwise unable to conduct themselves as men would have emphatically,
and amusingly, called their ability to oversee any institution, much less a church,
into question.

Conclusion
By considering this play alongside Cochlaeus’s other writings on Hus from this
period and in contrast to Agricola’s and Luther’s contemporary works, it is pos-
sible to gain a new view on the dynamics of Reformation propaganda in the 1530s.
Certainly this world of polemical exchange was characterized by tendentious
arguments and overheated, antagonistic rhetoric. It was also, however, marked by
sophisticated historical scholarship and even, on occasion, a burst of humor. This
was, in short, not only a period of ideological entrenchment, but also a moment
when authors engaged with the past creatively in order to appeal to their audi-
ences in new ways and counter their opponents’ arguments more effectively. This
potential for innovation was seen most clearly in Agricola’s and Cochleaus’s plays,
both of which used the vernacular and the possibilities afforded by the dramatic
medium (in its various traditions) to restate their cases for the interpretation of
Jan Hus’s trial.
These plays, though, and the more traditional polemical writings that framed
them, also contained the seeds of a much broader revision and expansion of the
historical narratives that were becoming increasingly central to the self-​defini-
tion of the competing churches in the German lands. By examining the first two
decades of Johannes Cochlaeus’s career, we get a sense of how those narratives
were in transition, from a relatively simplistic perception of Luther’s continuity
with medieval heretics to a more nuanced understanding of the real differences
between Luther and Hus. It was in the following decade, though, that this transi-
tion would complete itself, as Cochlaeus finally published a massive quartet of
works that laid out his new, historicized understanding of Luther, Hus, and their
place in the history of the church. These works would, in turn, spur a Lutheran
response that culminated in the most substantial reconceptualization of church
history in the sixteenth century. No matter the confessional orientation of the
author, though, Jan Hus remained at the center of that historiographical revolu-
tion, acting as a pivot around which the cyclical intervention of God in history
had revealed itself.
 7

The Exemplar

Introduction
In 1557, a group of Lutheran and Catholic theologians were scheduled to meet
at Worms and discuss the implementation of the Peace of Augsburg in the Holy
Roman Empire and the possibility of a formal rapprochement between their
churches.1 Writing to the Ernestine Duke of Saxony, John Frederick II, and
his brother in the run-​up to the colloquy, the Lutheran scholar and polemicist
Matthias Flacius Illyricus offered a historical admonition against any efforts at rec-
onciliation: “It seems to me that the sad reflection and image of the ruined church
and religion of the Hussites, whose situation was so similar to ours, should always
be before our eyes.”2 Flacius elaborated by describing how, within twenty years of
Hus’s martyrdom, “the whole blossom of the wise and powerful Bohemians” had
faded, as many of the Hussites’ leaders longed to return to union with Rome and
conceded their evangelical beliefs to the papal Antichrist. Flacius’s judgment of
Hus’s heirs was consequently harsh. Because they had sought peace with Rome,
“the Hussites plainly would have ceased to exist, except that Luther appeared.”3
Flacius feared that the same fate awaited contemporary Lutherans, and he was
uniquely qualified to offer this assessment. He had survived the series of crises
that had rocked the mid-​century Lutheran church, when the convocation of the
Council of Trent in 1545, the death of Martin Luther in 1546, and the victory
of Emperor Charles V in the Schmalkaldic War in 1547 had collectively threat-
ened its existence. He had also spent the intervening years engaged in his own

1
 On the colloquy, see:  Benno von Bundschuh, Das Wormser Religionsgespräch von
1557:Unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der kaiserlichen Religionspolitik (Münster:  Aschendorffsche
Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1988), especially pp. 272ff.; and Otto Scheib, Die innerchristlichen
Religionsgespräche im Abendland, vol. 1 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2009), pp. 224–​228.
2
  This letter has been published in a modern edition as: Matthias Flacius Illyricus, “Letter
to the Saxon Dukes,” (July 23, 1557) in Zur Geschichte der Deutschen Protestanten, 1555–​1559,
ed. G. Wolf (Berlin: O. Seehagen, 1888), pp. 304–​316. This quotation: p. 314.
3
  Flacius, “Letter to the Saxon Dukes,” p. 315.

248
 The Exemplar 249

battles against the Catholic Church and his fellow Lutherans who—​according
to Flacius, at least—​had sought peace with the Catholics at the expense of evan-
gelical doctrine. Flacius had emerged from this internecine conflict to become
one of the leading voices of the so-​called Gnesio-​Lutherans, who looked back to
Luther’s pugnacious example in refusing to countenance any compromise with
the papal Antichrist and his political underlings.4 In making his case for contin-
ued resistance, Flacius held up Luther as exemplary, the last link in a chain of suf-
fering Christians who had maintained their faith in God despite persecution and
oppression. He also perceived the utility, and even necessity, of demonstrating
the unbroken continuity of that succession of Christian confessors to whom he
and his fellow Lutherans were the heirs, and so he sought to produce a definitive
history of God’s church on Earth.
This history, which Flacius imagined in two parts, synthesized dogmatics and
prosopography. For Flacius, as for Luther, the lifeblood of church history was
the body of doctrine contained in the Scripture that enabled men to understand
God’s work in, and will for, the world. 5 It was this teaching, rather than any insti-
tution or community of people, that constituted the true church. To this theo-
logical definition of the church, however, Flacius added a human face. Under the
influence of Philip Melanchthon, he elected to track the course of God’s word
through history by cataloguing the lives, teachings, and deaths of those who
had defended it against the forces of Antichrist. 6 These “witnesses to the truth,”
as Flacius called them, came to serve as the embodiment of the hidden, suffer-
ing church throughout history and the personification of the teachings around

4
  On Flacius’s role as a leader of the Gnesio-​Lutherans, see: Robert Kolb, “Dynamics of Party
Conflict in the Saxon Late Reformation: Gnesio-​Lutherans vs. Philippists,” The Journal of Modern
History 49 (1977): 1289–​1305; and the deeply sympathetic presentation in: Oliver Olson, Matthias
Flacius and the Survival of Luther’s Reform (Wiesbaden:  Harrasowitz Verlag, 2002), especially
pp. 138–​168;
5
  On this doctrinal emphasis in Lutheran ecclesiastical historiography, see:  John Headley,
Luther’s View of Church History (New Haven: Yale UP, 1963), especially pp. 221ff.; Markus Wreidt,
“Luther’s Concept of History and the Formation of an Evangelical Identity,” in Protestant History and
Identity in Sixteenth-​Century Europe, ed. B. Gordon (Brookfield, VT: Ashgate, 1996), pp. 31–​45; and
Johannes Schilling, “Die Wiederentdeckung des Evangeliums: Wie die Wittenberger Reformatoren
ihre Geschichte rekonstruierten,” in Die Präsenz der Antike im Übergang vom Mittelalter zur Frühen
Neuzeit, ed. L. Grensmann et al. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004), pp. 125–​142.
6
  This intellectual debt was ironic, in the sense that Flacius considered Melanchthon to be the
leader of the Lutheran party that was willing to compromise with the Emperor, and thus a traitor
to the tradition that Melanchthon had done so much to create and define. On Flacius’s scholarly
dependence on Melanchthon, see: Robert Kolb, “Philipp’s Foes, but Followers Nonetheless: Late
Humanism among the Gnesio-​Lutherans,” in The Harvest of Humanism in Central Europe: Essays in
Honor of Lewis W. Spitz, ed. M. Fleischer (St. Louis: Concordia, 1992), pp. 159–​176; and Matthias
Pohlig, “Matthias Flacius, Simon Goulart and the Catalogus testium veritatis:  Protestant
Historiography in an Age of Inner-​Protestant Struggle,” ARG 101 (2010): 263–​274.
250 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

which it formed.7 It is safe to say that no witness so captured Flacius’s attention

or encapsulated more fully the dynamics and dangers of church history than Jan
Hus. Indeed, sandwiched between the publication of Flacius’s two major his-
torical projects, The Catalogue of Witnesses to the Truth (1556) and the Magdeburg
Centuries (first volume, 1559), he brought an 800-​page, two-​volume collection
entitled The History and Monuments of Jan Hus and Jerome of Prague, Confessors
of Christ, to press.8 This work interpreted the story of Hus’s life and death as a
microcosm of the entire history of the church. It was, in short, the apogee of
sixteenth-​century efforts to commemorate Jan Hus as a prophet and saint for the
Lutheran church.
Flacius was not alone in directing his attention at Hus and his followers at
this time. In fact, his work followed hard on the heels of a series of historical
and martyrological writings that placed Hus and the Bohemian reformation
in a privileged position on the cusp of the radical reorientation of human his-
tory. For the authors of these texts—​including the Lutheran pastor Ludwig
Rabus, the French reformed scholar Jean Crespin, the Dutch Anabaptist
Adriaen van Haemstede, and most famously the Englishman John Foxe—​
Hus had helped instigate the reform which was finally coming to fruition
amongst their respective communities.9 But these authors neither focused
exclusively on Hus nor embedded him within a comprehensive history of the
doctrinal and institutional conf licts that characterized the church’s existence
as Flacius did.
Indeed, a Catholic was the only author who did so: Johannes Cochlaeus, who
finally published his magnum opus on the history of the Hussites, along with a
series of associated historical writings, in 1549. Flacius acknowledged Cochlaeus’s
work on Hus as an impetus for his own historical research into the Bohemian ref-
ormation. According to Flacius, he had felt compelled to undertake it as an act of
historical salvage, as it were, to rescue Hus from the process of Catholicization
that Cochlaeus had initiated during the previous decade. As such, the inter-
play between Cochlaeus’s and Flacius’s competing histories of Hus reveals the
contours of a remarkable intellectual battle that raged around the middle of the

 On the concept of these witnesses and their place in Flacius’s historical scholarship,
7

see the definitive work by Harald Bollbuck:  Wahrheitszeugnis, Gottes Auftrag und Zeitkritik:  die
Kirchengeschichte der Magdeburger Zenturien und ihre Arbeitstechniken (Wiesbaden:  Harrassowitz,
2014), especially pp. 66–​85.
8
  Matthias Flacius Illyricus, ed., Ioannis Hus, et Hieronymi Pragensis Confessorum Christi Historia
et Monumenta (Nuremberg: Johannes Montanus and Ulrich Neuber, 1558).
9
 On the proliferation of martyrologies among sixteenth-​ century Protestant authors,
see:  Robert Kolb, For All the Saints:  Changing Perceptions of Martyrdom and Sainthood in the
Lutheran Reformation (Macon, GA: Mercer UP, 1987); Brad Gregory, Salvation at Stake: Christian
Martyrdom in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1999); and Peter Burschel, Sterben
und Unsterblichkeit: Zur Kultur des Martyriums in der frühen Neuzeit (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2004).
 The Exemplar 251

sixteenth century, as both Catholic and Protestant authors sought to reconstruct

the church’s past in order to claim the high ground in their struggle for its future.
In fact, I  would suggest that we consider the decade after the Schmalkaldic
War as a “history moment,” when the crises confronting the German reformation
spurred its most vocal and visible leaders to turn to church history in order to make
sense of the bewildering present moment.10 In doing so, authors such as Flacius
made the case that their coreligionists’ suffering both identified them as mem-
bers in the true church and guaranteed their eventual vindication. Conversely,
Catholic authors such as Cochlaeus used the examples of past heresies to suggest
that only more suffering could result from continued resistance and schism, espe-
cially since Martin Luther had proven himself more depraved, more devious, and
more malevolent than any heresiarch who had preceded him. And while many of
these arguments recapitulated those made during the debates of the 1520s and
1530s, the pamphlets and plays of those decades had been replaced by massive
works of scholarship containing comprehensive accounts of the entire existence
of God’s people on Earth.
Irena Backus has recently suggested that Lutheran historiography from this
period was marked by dual emphases on the continuity of right teaching and the
eternality of the struggle between God and the devil, which had the unintended
consequence of producing an oddly static vision of history. As she cogently argues,
these twin themes lent themselves to the construction of a cyclical narrative in
which the actors played archetypal roles as they worked through the same basic
conflict over and over again.11 Put another way, despite the shift of scenery and
the switch from Hebrew to German and Latin, Luther and his papal opponents
became Elijah and the priests of Baal redivivi. In highlighting the unified structure
of history, however, historians like Flacius did more than merely cast present con-
flicts as typological reflections of past persecutions. Additionally, they portrayed
the true church’s present struggles as projections of their ultimate resolution in
the future. Flacius captured this prophetic component to history in his preface to
the first volume of the Magdeburg Centuries: “Sacred history forcibly reminds [us]

10
  I am here adapting Andrew Pettegree’s description the first half of the 1520s as a “pamphlet
moment,” in which the widespread production of cheap literary texts enabled the rapid spread of
Luther’s ideas throughout the Holy Roman Empire and allowed the population to stay abreast of
the developments in his conflict with Rome. The notion of a “literature of crisis” was developed
by Peter Matheson to explain the rapid diffusion of textual responses to the religious conflict that
marked the spread of the Reformation in Germany and their ability to shape the public perception
of that conflict. See:  Pettegree, Reformation and the Culture of Persuasion, pp.  163–​170; and Peter
Matheson, The Rhetoric of the Reformation (London: T & T Clark, 1998), p. 36.
11
  Irena Backus, Historical Method and Confessional Identity in the Era of the Reformation (1378–​
1615) (Boston:  Brill, 2003), p.  330. Cf. the similar conclusions in:  Siegfried Wiedenhofer,
Formalstrukturen humanistischer und reformatorischer Theologie bei Philipp Melanchthon, vol. 1
(Munich: Peter Lang, 1976), pp. 472ff.
252 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

about the end of the world and the future glory, joy and eternal life of the pious,
and also about the dejection and damnation of the impious, even though many
of them have seemed to prosper for a great while in this miserable and calamitous
world.”12 In this view, history was both a record of former times and a forecast of
imminent events, offering solace and understanding for contemporaries by col-
lapsing the temporal distinctions between the revealed past, a tumultuous present,
and a potentially glorious future. Bearing this in mind, we can begin to perceive
how history offered both admonitions and reasons for optimism to Lutherans in
the 1550s. Against the “sad example” of the Hussites stood the triumphant Hus,
a martyr whose steadfast death had foretold his final apotheosis in the Lutheran
reformation, when his example and teachings would be properly honored as a tem-
plate for true Christians facing the reality of persecution and the threat of apostasy.

The Crises of Mid-​Century Lutheranism

The string of setbacks facing Lutheranism at this time could hardly have been
imagined in the late 1530s. Even as Cochlaeus and Agricola were sending dramatic
volleys back and forth at each other, the much anticipated Council of Mantua was
falling apart amidst hostility between the French and Spanish kings, thus elimi-
nating one potential threat to the Protestants’ status within the German lands.
At the same time, the Lutheran-​led Schmalkaldic League was using Emperor
Charles V’s need for peace (and taxes) to wage war against France and the Turks
as leverage both to safeguard its political position within the Empire and to
begin negotiations for a workable, “national” settlement to the ongoing religious
schism.13 The collapse of Mantua and ascendancy of the Schmalkaldic League
provided signs of hope for the Lutherans in the late 1530s, and this optimism was
only bolstered by the death of Duke George of Saxony in April of 1539, which
resulted in a Lutheran taking the ducal title as Henry IV. It was thus from a posi-
tion of relative strength that many Protestant leaders participated in a series of
colloquies (at Frankfurt in 1539, Hagenau and Worms in 1540, and Regensburg
in 1541) that were geared toward formalizing the political and religious status quo
while allowing for the resumption of the imperial government’s normal judicial, fis-
cal, and military functioning.14

  This introduction has been edited and published as:  Matthias Flacius Illyricus, “Epistola
12

Dedicatoria,” in Die Anfänge der reformatorischen Geschichtschreibung:  Melanchthon, Sleidan, Flacius

und die Magdeburger Zenturien, ed. H. Scheible (Gütersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1966), pp. 55–​70, p. 57.
13
  Hubert Jedin, A History of The Council of Trent, 2 vols., trans. E. Graf (London: Nelson, 1957),
vol. 1, pp. 313–​354.
14
  On these colloquies and their impact on the imperial government, see:  Thomas Brady,
Protestant Politics:  Jacob Sturm (1489–​1553) and the German Reformation (Atlantic Highlands,
 The Exemplar 253

Alongside the irenic leaders on both sides of the confessional divide who par-
ticipated in this religious diplomacy, however, militant parties also existed among
both the Catholics and Protestants. In particular, the Protestant Landgrave
Philip of Hesse and Elector John Frederick of Saxony sought to consolidate
the Protestant hold on northern Germany by sponsoring the annexation of
Gelderland by the Duke of Cleves-​Jülich in 1538 and the seizure of Brunswick
from its Catholic duke, Henry, in 1542. The second of these ploys was success-
ful, and it resulted in the neutralization of the most militant Catholic ruler of
the region. Despite its success, though, the conquest of Brunswick revealed fault
lines within the Schmalkaldic League; the league’s urban members bore a dispro-
portionate burden of the war’s debt despite gaining nothing from the campaign,
and the overtly aggressive act belied the League’s defensive purpose.15 As such,
the Protestant rulers’ attack on Brunswick opened them up to retaliation from
Charles V, which he could couch in political terms as a police action against bla-
tant “disturbers of the peace.”16
Charles only pursued such action against the princely leaders of the
Schmalkaldic League in the autumn of 1544, after concluding the Treaty of
Crépy with the French king, Francis I. That treaty coincided with a temporary
cessation of hostilities with the Ottomans (partially brokered by the French),
which freed Charles up from his most pressing military obligations.17 The Treaty
of Crépy also dictated that Francis and Charles would support the convocation of
a general church council, so Pope Paul III consequently issued a bull in November

NJ: Humanities Press, 1995), pp. 206–​219; Cornelius Augustijn, “Die Religionsgespräche der vier-
ziger Jahre,” in Die Religionsgespräche der Reformationszeit, ed. G. Müller (Gütersloh: Gerd Mohn,
1980), pp. 43–​53; and Scheib, Die innerchristlichen Religionsgespräche, vol. 1, pp. 182–​196.
15
  On these tensions within the League, see: Adolf Hasenclever, Die Politik der Schmalkaldener
vor Ausbruch des schmalkaldischen Krieges (Vaduz:  Kraus Reprint, 1965), pp. 151–​180; Georg
Schmidt, “Die Freien und Reichstädte im Schmalkaldischen Bund,” in Martin Luther:  Probleme
seiner Zeit, ed. V. Press and D. Stievermann (Stuttgart: Klett-​Cotta, 1986), pp. 177–​218; and Thomas
Brady, “Phases and Strategies of the Schmalkaldic League: A Perspective after 450 Years,” ARG 74
(1983): 162–​181,” especially pp. 171–​172.
16
  Regarding the long-​term political ramifications of the attack on Brunswick, see:  Brady,
Protestant Politics, pp.  262–​272; and Ferdinand Seibt, Karl V.  Der Kaiser und die Reformation
(Berlin:  Siedler, 1990), pp. 164–​166. Although Charles used this political justification for the
ensuing war, he was aware that this pretext would not fool anyone about the religious nature of
his conflict with Philip and John-​Frederick. On Charles’s awareness regarding this language, see
his letter of June 9, 1546 to his sister, Maria of Hungary. This letter is quoted at length in: Jedin, A
History, vol. 2, pp. 203–​2 04.
17
  On the resolution of Charles’s conflict with France and its impact on affairs in the Holy
Roman Empire, see:  Heinz Schilling, “Veni, Vidi, Vixit Deus—​K arl V zwischen Keligionskrieg
und Religionsfried,” ARG 89 (1998):  144–​166; and James Tracy, Emperor Charles V, Impresario
of War:  Campaign Strategy, International Finance, and Domestic Politics (New  York:  Cambridge UP,
2002), especially pp. 191–​2 03.
254 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

to convene a council the following March.18 And while the opening of the council
was delayed by several months, it finally began in Trent on December 13, 1545.
The previous decade of polemics and negotiations had taught Charles that the
Protestants would never accept the rulings of such a council vis-​à-​v is the legiti-
macy of their reforms;19 he therefore negotiated with Paul III to gain the papacy’s
backing for a military campaign against the Schmalkaldic League that would
break the political power of the Protestants and force them to accept the council’s
eventual decisions.20
Charles undertook the organization and prosecution of this campaign, known
as the Schmalkaldic War, throughout 1546. He officially mobilized his troops
in June, and while no major confrontations took place that year, the inability
of the Schmalkaldeners to engage Charles’s forces decisively led to the surren-
der of many of the League’s urban members to the emperor, attrition within the
Protestant armies, and the negotiation of a secret agreement between Charles
and the Lutheran Duke Moritz of Saxony.21 These losses tipped the scales of the
conflict decidedly in Charles’s favor, and his combined forces won a shattering
victory over the League at Mühlberg on April 25, 1547. In the wake of this bat-
tle and his capture of Elector John-​Frederick, Charles summoned a meeting of
the Imperial Diet at Augsburg in September. At this so-​called “Armored Diet,”
Charles stripped his princely opponents of their titles and lands, but opted not
to take a religious hard line against the Lutherans. Instead of simply outlawing
Lutheran beliefs, practices, and leaders, Charles authorized a commission com-
posed of two Catholics and one Lutheran (ironically, Johannes Agricola) to create
a temporary religious settlement for the Empire until the Council of Trent could
decide matters permanently.22
This settlement, commonly known as the Augsburg Interim, presented the
Empire’s Lutherans with a serious problem. On the one hand, it recognized certain

  On the political negotiations that led to this bull, known as Laetare Jerusalem, see: Jedin, A
18

History, vol. 1, pp. 503ff.; and Karl Brandi, Kaiser Karl V: Werden und Schicksal einer Persönlichkeit und
eines Weltreiches, 2 vols. (Munich: F. Bruckmann, 1941), pp. 517–​522.
19
  On the development of this Lutheran polemic over the previous decade and the Lutherans’
response to the convocation of Trent, see: Thomas Brockmann, Die Konzilsfrage in den Flug-​und
Streitschriften des deutschen Sprachraumes 1518–​1563 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998),
pp. 333–​3 41.
20
  The terms of this treaty are detailed in: Jedin, A History, vol. 1, pp. 522–​524.
21
  Moritz’s alliance with Charles V was based on the inter-​Saxon rivalry between the ducal and
electoral houses, and on Moritz’s calculations about the strength of Charles’s position. On Moritz’s
political calculations and decision to ally with the emperor, see: Wieland Held, 1547, Die Schlacht
bei Mühlberg/​Elbe: Entscheidung auf dem Wege zum albertinischen Kurfürstentum Sachsen (Leipzig: Sax-​
Verlag Beucha, 1997), especially pp. 25ff.
22
  Horst Rabe’s work over three decades has done much to illuminate the religious politics
surrounding this diet at Augsburg. See in particular his: Reichsbund und Interim: Die Verfassungs-​
und Religionspolitik Karls V. und der Reichstag von Augsburg 1547/​1548 (Köln: Böhlau Verlag, 1971),
 The Exemplar 255

Protestant practices as licit (notably the administration of communion in both

kinds to the laity and the marriage of priests) and promoted a doctrine of justifi-
cation that seemed to be consonant with Luther’s teachings. On the other hand,
however, the Interim also affirmed the soteriological value of certain Catholic
practices (e.g., the veneration of saints and good works) and restored much of
Catholicism’s liturgical apparatus. As such, the Interim posed an existential ques-
tion to the Empire’s Lutherans: were there certain points on which compromise
with Rome and the emperor was acceptable? To the emerging Gnesio-​Lutheran
party, this was a simple question whose answer was unequivocally “no.” To
others, though, called Philippists after their nominal leader Melanchthon, the
answer was a qualified “yes”; perhaps certain issues of religious practice were
truly adiaphora—​that is, nonessential to salvation—​and could be negotiated
upon.23 This meant that a compromise religious settlement could, in principle,
be accepted, rather than actively resisted. Gnesio-​Lutherans rejected this view,
though, as they had constructed their religious identity in absolute opposition to
Catholic beliefs and practices.24 As a result of these differing views, the Interim
effectively created a rift between Lutherans that would result in the splintering of
their church into competing camps.
It is worth pausing to take stock of the Lutherans’ situation at this moment.
First, the Catholic Church, with the support of the two most powerful rulers
in Europe, had finally convoked a council to consider matters of reform and to
refute the Protestant heresies that had sprung up across Europe over the previ-
ous generation. Second, the Holy Roman Emperor had dedicated his resources
to eliminating the political foundation for religious dissent from his realms and
had done so resoundingly, removing Lutheran princes from power and subduing
the urban communes of the Empire that had been so crucial as incubators for the
German reformation. Third, that emperor had not only recognized the Council
of Trent’s authority to render a final judgment of the religious schism, but had
also introduced a temporary measure governing religion that had resulted in an
internecine conflict among the Lutherans. And to top it all off, this conjuncture of

especially ­chapter 1; “Zur Entstehung des Augsburgs Interims 1547/​4 8,” ARG 94 (2003): 6–​104;
and “Zur Interimspolitik Karls V.” in Das Interim 1548/​50: Herrschaftskrise und Glaubenskonflikt, ed.
L. Schorn-​Schütte (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlaghaus, 2005), pp. 127–​146.
23
  For the origins of this terminology and the internal dynamics of the Lutheran schism,
see: Günter Wartenberg, “Das Augsburger Interim und die Leipziger Landtagsvorlage zum
Interim,” in Politik und Bekenntnis:  Die Reaktion auf das Interim von 1548, ed. I. Dingel and
G. Wartenberg (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2006), pp. 15–​3 2; and Irene Dingel,
“The Culture of Conf lict in the Controversies Leading to the Formula of Concord (1548–​
1580),” in Lutheran Ecclesiastical Culture, 1550–​1 675, ed. R. Kolb (Boston:  Brill, 2008),
pp. 15– ​6 4.
24
 On the Gnesio-​Lutherans’ self-​conception in opposition to Rome, see:  Oliver Olson,
“Theology of Revolution: Magdeburg, 1550–​1551,” SCJ 3 (1972): 56–​79; and Kolb, “Philipp’s Foes.”
256 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

political and religious crises took place just months after the death of the “third
Elijah,” Martin Luther.25
Luther died on February 18, 1546 in his hometown of Eisleben. Perhaps need-
less to say, this event sent shockwaves through the movement that bore his name,
and it is nearly impossible to imagine the fragmentation of the Lutheran party in
1548 had Luther still been alive. Indeed, the gravitational pull of Luther’s person-
ality had kept his movement unified for a generation, so at his death a number of
leading preachers and intellectuals within it sought to shape the immediate mem-
ory of Luther’s life and reform while establishing themselves as the legitimate
heirs of his legacy. Several of Luther’s closest followers moved to cast Luther’s
death within the mold of the saints and their exemplary passage to eternal life,
publishing an account that portrayed Luther’s last moments as exemplifying the
“good death” of the medieval ars moriendi.26 These men also preached and pub-
lished sermons that presented Luther as a prophet who, in the words of Michael
Coelius, “struck the tremendous idol of papal indulgences to the ground, just as
Elijah in his time attacked and conquered idolatry.”27 In a similar vein, the former
Wittenberg professor Justus Jonas predicted in his funeral sermon for Luther that
the papists would strike at the Lutherans in the wake of their prophet’s death, since
the Bible demonstrated that “after the death of each high prophet and beloved man
of God, a horrid punishment followed.”28 Given this pattern, Coelius could only
pray that he and Luther’s followers might receive his prophetic “mantle,” as had
Elisha from Elijah, in order to promote evangelical teaching and continue his bat-
tle against Roman idolatry.29 This language, as well as the more general perception

25
  On the identification of Luther with Elijah, see:  Robert Kolb, Luther as Prophet, Teacher,
and Hero: Images of the Reformer, 1520–​1560 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1999), especially
chs. 1–​2; idem, For All the Saints, pp.  136–​138; and Matthias Pohlig, Zwischen Gelehrsamkeit und
konfessioneller Identitätsstiftung:  Lutherische Kirchen-​und Universalgeschichtsschreibung 1546–​1617
(Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007), pp. 100–​107.
26
  An immediate publication by two eyewitnesses sought to dispel rumors that Luther had
either recanted his heresy on his deathbed or suffered physically in his last moments. See: Michael
Coelius and Justus Jonas, Vom Christlichen abschied aus diesem tödlichen leben des Ehrwirdigen
Herrn D.  Martini Lutheri bericht (Wittenberg:  George Rhau, 1546). For the most extensive dis-
cussion of Luther and the “ars moriendi” tradition, see:  Susan Boettcher, “Martin Luther seliger
Gedächtnis: The Memory of Martin Luther, 1546–​1566” (unpublished dissertation: University of
Wisconsin-​Madison, 1998), especially pp. 175–​198.
27
  Coelius was a former student at Wittenberg and the court preacher in Mansfeld; he was in
Eisleben when Luther died, and he preached his sermon just three days after Luther’s death. It
was published as the second sermon in: Zwo Tröstliche Predigt uber der Leich D. Doct. Martini Luther
zu Eissleben den XIX.  und XX. Februarii (Wittenberg:  George Rhaw, 1546), pp. E3r.–​I4v. This
quotation: p. F2v.
28
  Jonas delivered this sermon on February 19 in Eisleben, and it was published as the first part
of: Zwo Tröstliche Predigt, pp. A2r.–​E2v. This quotation: p. D3v.
29
 Coelius, Zwo Tröstliche Predigt, p. F4v.
 The Exemplar 257

of impending persecution, certainly echoed the words used by Bohemian preach-

ers in the preceding century on the heels of Hus’s death. Another parallel to the
immediate commemoration of Hus was the elevation of Luther to a saintly status
that imbued his image and words with nearly totemic authority.
No one was more important in this initial construction of Luther’s prophetic
status than Luther’s longtime collaborator and fellow Wittenberg professor,
Philip Melanchthon. In his funerary sermon for Luther, Melanchthon highlighted
Luther’s role as one of five “great miracle workers” from the history of God’s peo-
ple, asserting that he—​like Isaiah, John the Baptist, Paul, and Augustine before
him—​had served as an “instrument” for revealing God’s truth and uprooting reli-
gious error. 30 Melanchthon highlighted Luther’s constructive role as a prophet
throughout this sermon, emphasizing that Luther had restored the sacraments
and made the Bible available to all people. And while Melanchthon also knew
that “the death of great teachers and leaders often signifies that their followers
will suffer greatly,” he ended the Oration with a prayer that God “would mercifully
avert such retribution” and allow evangelical teaching to spread throughout the
world. 31
Melanchthon also produced a truncated, overtly hagiographical biography
of Luther which was published in 1548. 32 This brief work extolled Luther’s piety
and learning, but essentially cut off after the Diet of Worms in 1521, as this inci-
dent exemplified Luther’s prophetic role within the church for Melanchthon. It
was in this confrontation with the emperor and the ecclesiastical princes of the
Empire that Luther clarified the key points of his teaching on justification and
professed his commitment to the promulgation of God’s word. For Melanchthon,
everything after this moment represented elaborations on these central themes.
More important than the biography itself, though, was the framework in which
Melanchthon placed Luther’s life. Here, even more than in his funerary sermon,
Melanchthon depicted Luther as an instrument of God who embodied the spirit

30
  Melanchthon’s sermon was also published separately in five editions (two Latin, three
German) during 1546. I cite here from: Oratio Uber der Leich des Ehrwirdigen herrn D. Martini Luthers …
Verdeudscht aus dem Latiein durch D. Caspar Creutziger (Wittenberg: George Rhaw, 1546), p. B1r. On
this sermon and its publication, see: James Weiss, “Erasmus at Luther’s Funeral: Melanchthon’s
Commemorations of Luther in 1546,” SCJ 16 (1985): 91–​114.
31
 Melanchthon, Oratio, p. C3v.
32
 Philip Melanchthon, Historia de Vita et Actis Reverendissimi Viri D.  Mart. Lutheri
(Erfurt: Gervasius Sthurmerus, 1548). This biography was published along with Melanchthon’s
funeral oration, an address he gave to Wittenberg students in 1546, and a series of poems commem-
orating Luther’s accomplishments; it went through at least a half dozen editions in the decade after
Luther’s death. On this biography, see: Eike Wolgast, “Biographie als Autoritätsstiftung: Die ersten
evangelischen Lutherbiographen,” in Biographie zwischen Renaissance und Barock, ed. W. Berschin
(Heidelberg: Mattes Verlag, 1993), pp. 41–​72; and Irena Backus, Life Writing in Reformation Europe
(Burlington: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 2–​7.
258 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

of his age. That age was the fifth in the history of the church, which would precede
a sixth and last age of human history; like the previous four, it was marked by
the conflict between God’s instruments and the tools of Satan who, like Origen,
the Pelagians, and the medieval popes before them, had sought to pervert God’s
teachings. 33 The conflict between God’s and the devil’s servants was cyclical
in this reading of the past, so Luther was not entirely unique. Still, though, his
appearance in the world and his activity against the papal Antichrist suggested
that history was moving inexorably toward an apocalyptic climax.
Melanchthon shared this eschatological orientation with the other authors who
first commemorated Luther in the immediate aftermath of his death. Coelius,
for example, situated himself and his audience in “the last days under the papal
Antichrist, when all error, heresy, sects, and idolatry have come together in a soup-​
stock of atrocity.”34 This eschatological reading of contemporary events emphasized
Luther’s link to Elijah as one of the two apocalyptic witnesses of Revelation 11, an
identification that heightened the stakes of his successors’ response to his death.35
According to Johannes Bugenhagen, who published a final sermon on Luther’s
death, it was incumbent on all Protestants to continue the fight “against the king-
dom of Satan and against various damnable idolatries and human laws.” This would
be a tribute to Luther, whom Bugenhagen equated to the angel of Revelation 14 who
“had the eternal gospel to proclaim to those who live on Earth.”36 Like his fellow
Lutherans, Bugenhagen knew that this fight would entail great suffering, but his
apocalyptic expectations guaranteed that this struggle would be transitory. Indeed,
Bugenhagen offered solace to his audience by quoting John 16 and affirming that
“you will weep and mourn while the world rejoices. You will grieve, but your grief
will turn to joy.”37
It is significant that Bugenhagen concluded his text with an “Epitaph and
Prophecy” in both German and Latin that he attributed to Luther: “O pope,
while living I was your plague, and dying I will be your death.”38 The inclusion of
this dictum lent Luther’s authority to Bugenhagen’s own predictions about the

  On this historical schema, see: Melanchthon, Historia de Vita, pp. B6v.–​C1r. See also: Pierre
33

Fraenkel, Testimonia Patrum: The Function of Patristic Arguments in the Theology of Philip Melanchthon
(Geneva: Droz, 1961), pp. 82–​109; and Pohlig, Zwischen Gelehrsamkeit, pp. 108–​110.
34
 Coelius, Zwo Tröstliche Predigt, p. F1v.
35
 On this identification in Lutheran polemics, see:  Robin Barnes, Prophecy and
Gnosis:  Apocalypticism in the Wake of the Lutheran Reformation (Stanford:  Stanford UP, 1988),
p. 52; and Rodney Petersen, The Theme of “Two Witnesses” in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
(New York: Oxford UP, 1993), pp. 97–​106.
36
  Johannes Bugenhagen, Ein Christliche Predigt, uber der Leich und begrebnis, des Ehrwirdigen
D. Martini Luthers (Wittenberg: George Rhau, 1546), pp. A4r.–​A4v.
37
 Bugenhagen, Ein Christliche Predigt, p. B1r.
38
 Bugenhagen, Ein Christliche Predigt, p. D1v. This quotation was also included at the conclu-
sion of Jonas’s sermon. See: Jonas, Zwo Tröstliche Predigt, p. E1v.
 The Exemplar 259

survival and triumph of religious reform in the German lands and suggested that
joy at the papacy’s fall might soon replace the grief being experienced by Luther’s
friends and followers. Certainly the events of 1547–​1548 belied this eschatologi-
cally inflected optimism, but they did not ultimately destroy it. Rather, the out-
come of the Schmalkaldic War and the fragmentation of leadership after Luther’s
death drove the second-​generation leaders of his movement to look to the past in
order to comprehend the present and anticipate the future. Indeed, it was through
a more intensive engagement with church history that Lutherans discovered pre-
vious moments of crisis and recovery when God’s faithful people had persevered
and triumphed over oppression. It should not be surprising, then, that Lutheran
authors focused particularly on Hussite history in searching for an analogue
to their present moment. After all, both movements had lost leaders at fraught
moments, when a hostile foreign ruler and church council eagerly sat in judgment
of their reforms. But just as the prophet Hus had foretold the survival of his reform
and its supersession by the Lutherans, so too had Luther foreseen that his follow-
ers would outlast persecution and ultimately triumph. 39 Perhaps more surprising,
though, was the fact that Lutherans were not alone in turning to the history of
the Bohemian reformation in order to understand the era after the Schmalkaldic
War. In fact, Catholic authors were equally quick to mine the recent past in order
to alert the authorities to the danger and opportunity that the Church and Empire
faced in 1548.

Cochlaeus and the Lutheran Crisis

Once again, Johannes Cochlaeus was at the forefront of Catholic efforts to deal
historically with the impact and significance of current conflicts. The previous
decade, though, had not been kind to him. In the wake of Duke George’s death,
his harsh polemics fell out of step with the push for reconciliation that the col-
loquies of the early 1540s represented, and he was relegated to the margins of
the Catholic engagement with the German reformation. Cochlaeus was also lit-
erally pushed to the margins of the Empire, as the death of his chief patron left
him with only a position as canon in the cathedral chapter of Breslau in Silesia.
Breslau was far from the intellectual centers and polemical frontlines of the mid-​
1540s, and Cochlaeus struggled to find support for his publications. As a result,
he sat on many of his most substantial projects over the course of the decade,
publishing them only after the convocation of Trent and the Protestants’ defeat

39
  Both Bugenhagen and Jonas explicitly included Hus’s swan/​goose prophecy in their ser-
mons as a secondary form of prophetic sanction for Luther’s movement that had effectively guaran-
teed its survival. See: Bugenhagen, Ein Christliche Predigt, p. B1v.; and Jonas, Zwo Tröstliche Predigt,
p. D4v.
260 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

in the Schmalkaldic War.40 Even at that time Cochlaeus was conflicted about
what Charles V’s victory meant for the Empire and the Church. The emperor
had defeated the Protestants and imposed harsh penalties on their leaders, which
was undoubtedly positive. Still, Charles had been hesitant to drop the decisive
hammer blow on the Lutheran party and had even made theological concessions
to them.41 In response to this perceived wavering, Cochlaeus issued a string of
lengthy works in 1548–​1549 advocating strategies for the elimination of any
independent Lutheran party in the German lands.
The best known of Cochlaeus’s publications from these years was the Commentary
on the Acts and Writings of Martin Luther, a detailed biography that Cochlaeus had first
undertaken and largely completed by 1534, but that was not published until 1549.42
Attached to this work was a short treatise “On the Reasons for Writing History,”
which had initially been written by the jurist Conrad Braun.43 Along with this short
piece, Cochlaeus also pushed two, much longer texts by Braun through the press of
Franz Behem in 1549 and 1550. Cochlaeus contributed prefaces to both these books,
entitled On Sedition and On Heretics, in which he extolled Braun’s work as offering a
practical guide to the justification and mechanics of suppressing religious and politi-
cal dissension.44 The last of Cochlaeus’s major historical works from this time was
his Twelve Books of Hussite History, which finally offered the comprehensive narra-
tive history of the Bohemian reformation that he had promised fifteen years earlier.
Cochlaeus also appended a second, shorter work to the Twelve Books known as the
Seventh Philippic, which he intended to expose the danger that Philip Melanchthon’s
seemingly moderate response to the Interim posed to imperial peace.45

40
  The most substantial treatment of Cochlaeus’s career and output during this period can be
found in the work of Ralph Keen. See especially: “The Arguments and Audiences of Cochlaeus’s
‘Philippica VII,’” Catholic Historical Review 78 (1992): 371–​394; and his introductory essay in: Keen,
Philippicae I–​VII, vol. 2, pp. 1–​6 6.
41
  For an overview of Catholic responses to the Interim, see: Heribert Smolinsky, “Altgläubige
Kontroverstheologen und das Interim,” in Politik und Bekenntnis, pp. 51–​6 4. On Cochlaeus’s
response, see: Remigius Bäumer, “Die Religionspolitik Karls V. im Urteil der Lutherkommentare
des Johannes Cochlaeus,” in Politik und Konfession: Festschrift für Konrad Repgen zum 60. Geburtstag,
ed. D. Albrecht et al. (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1983), pp. 31–​47.
42
  Johannes Cochlaeus, Commentaria Ioannis Cochlaei, de Actis et Scriptis Martini Lutheri Saxonis
(Mainz: Franz Behem, 1549). On the structure, content, and impact of this work, see the authori-
tative work by: Adolf Herte, Das katolische Lutherbild im Bann der Lutherkommentare des Cochläus,
3  vols. (Münster:  Aschendorffsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1943). Cf. Keen, “An Introduction,”
pp. 48–​52; and Backus, Life Writing, pp. 20–​25.
43
  For a detailed analysis of Braun’s career as a jurist and polemicist, see: Maria Barbara Rössner,
Konrad Braun (ca. 1495–​1563): Ein katholischer Jurist, Politiker, Kontroverstheologe und Kirchenreformer
im konfessionellen Zeitalter (Münster: Aschendorff, 1991).
44
  Conrad Braun, Libri Sex de Haereticis in Genere (Mainz: Franz Behem, 1549); and idem, De
Seditionibus Libri Sex (Mainz: Franz Behem, 1550).
45
  Johannes Cochlaeus, Historiae Hussitarum Libri Duodecim (Mainz: Francis Behem, 1549).
 The Exemplar 261

According to Ralph Keen, this collection of texts represented nothing less than
“a thousand-​page brief to the authorities against the dangers of Protestantism.”46
He is certainly right. His argument needs to be extended, though, to take
Cochlaeus’s belief that these texts described how those dangers could be over-
come into account. Indeed, when read alongside each other these works present a
comprehensive view of imperial and ecclesiastical history that served a prescrip-
tive function by establishing precedents that dictated how the emperor should act
either to elicit the Protestants’ total submission to his (and the Church’s) author-
ity or simply to eliminate them. From this perspective, Cochlaeus’s editions of
Braun’s works On Sedition and On Heretics represented veritable sourcebooks for
historical examples of rebellion and the ways in which past secular and religious
authorities had dealt with them. And it was this last element of Braun’s work
that was particularly important to Cochlaeus, as Braun had created a detailed
script for the repression of dissent based on his reading of both the imperial and
Christian past.
For Braun, sedition and heresy were closely related, as both entailed the rejec-
tion of rightful authorities. Sedition was primarily a political issue, of course, while
heresy was a religious matter, but Braun was also clear that the latter was a type
of the former, given the authority that was invested in the pope as the sovereign
ruler of the Church.47 Indeed, Braun spent much of the first part of On Sedition
explaining exactly how heresy was a form of sedition, tracing this particular sin
all the way back to the moment when Chore, Dathan, and Abyron attempted to
undermine Moses’ and Aaron’s authority (and thus God’s authority) among the
Israelites.48 For Braun, this sort of internal challenge to sovereignty had always pre-
sented the greatest threat to legitimate rulers, a conclusion which he saw borne out
in the histories of the Greek city-​states, the Roman Empire, the kingdoms of medi-
eval Christendom, and even the Church.49 As such, he pled with King Ferdinand
of Bohemia in his dedicatory letter for On Sedition to eliminate the seditious her-
etics from the Holy Roman Empire, even though external wars had always gained
greater glory for kings. 50

46
  Keen, “Cochlaeus: An Introduction,” p. 51.
47
  Braun explicitly equates the emperor and pope as the “supreme powers” over their respective
realms in society, and he defends the pope’s absolute supremacy in the Church through a direct
comparison to the emperors. On the foundations and parameters of the pope’s power, see: Braun,
De Seditionibus, pp. 18–​23.
48
 Braun, De Seditionibus, pp. 7–​8 .
49
  Braun notes that there had been twenty-​n ine instances of papal schisms in the history of the
Church, when the “unity of this civil society” was destroyed. He then compared this strife to the
experience of the Roman Republic under the Gracchi and the civil war under the First Triumvirate.
See: Braun, De Seditionibus, pp. 8–​11.
50
 Braun, De Seditionibus, pp. a2r.–​a 2v.
262 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

In describing the causes of sedition, Braun was candid about how breakdowns
in secular and ecclesiastical leadership could result in rebellion. Based on a sur-
vey of the ancient history of the Church, Braun argued that both Arianism and
Islam had spread because the imperial and ecclesiastical authorities had failed to
marshal an appropriate response to them. He also blamed the rise of the Hussites
on King Wenceslas’s failure to act decisively against them and the persistence
of the Great Schism, which had created an atmosphere of uncertainty and even
anarchy in the Church. 51 Braun intended these narratives of past leaders’ failures
and their results to serve as a warning to contemporary elites; certainly neither
Ferdinand nor Charles would want their names appended to Braun’s catalogue of
negligent rulers. And this is where Braun’s book On Heretics came in, as it provided
an explicit set of instructions for how leaders ought to respond to heresy and
sedition. In fact, the entire second half of this work catalogued these responses
exhaustively, including the judicial procedures and punishments appropriate for
heretics, the proper means for restoring a kingdom and the institutional church
after the outbreak of heresy, and even the extrajudicial “means by which heresies
and schisms might be restrained or extinguished.”52
Cochlaeus drew specific attention to the utility of this last section, which com-
prised the third book of On Heresies. In a brief address “To the Reader,” he noted that
Braun’s advice on the repression of heresy had become particularly relevant because
negotiations with contemporary heretics had proven to be fruitless. According to
Cochlaeus, the colloquies’ promise of peace had proven to be a false hope, since
“not only the peace and unity of the Church, but also all morals, discipline, and obe-
dience had fallen into ruin.”53 Consequently, faithful princes and Church leaders
had had to take action against the heretics, and Braun’s work provided a guide for
the successful completion of their work. According to Braun, the two most effective
means of eliminating heresy were the decrees of a general council and the applica-
tion of military force. Braun preferred the former to the latter, but he also accepted
that war was often made necessary by both the deceitfulness of heretics and the
impossibility of any true Christian’s accepting a “false peace” with God’s enemies
for the sake of temporal stability.54 Braun actually blamed the persistence of her-
esy and the subsequent lack of unity among the Germans for the deterioration of
the nation’s “martial virtues” and the gains made by the Turks in Asia, Africa, and
Europe.55 He therefore called on the secular powers within the Empire to act deci-
sively to remove the root cause of that disunity before it was too late.

 Braun, De Seditionibus, p. 105.

51

  These are the headings in the table of contents for books four, five, and three of De Haereticis,
52

respectively. See: Braun, De Haereticis, pp. b1r.–​b2v.

53
  Johannes Cochlaeus, “Ad Lectorem,” in De Haereticis, p. b3r.
54
 Braun, De Haereticis, pp. 202–​2 03.
55
 Braun, De Haereticis, p. A4r.
 The Exemplar 263

On Sedition and On Heresies offered extensive arguments and blueprints for the
repression of rebellion, drawing on two thousand years of historical examples,
Roman law, and papal and conciliar decrees to make their case. Braun also pro-
vided a distillation of his main themes in a short tract “On the Reasons for Writing
History,” which Cochlaeus included as a preface to his biography of Martin
Luther. In this essay, Braun argued that all people should study history because
it provided a guide for right action through the application of examples from the
past. Braun went so far as to attribute (like the Lutherans) a strongly predictive
element to history, “For history teaches us how to connect past events to the
present, and through these connections to suppose or even foresee what might
occur in the future.”56 According to Braun, the didactic potential of history was
particularly important for magistrates and princes who could learn how to deal
with rebellion from the actions of past leaders. Without that knowledge, though,
secular and ecclesiastical leaders might allow heresy to flourish, even though “this
is the greatest danger: that the mass of heretical weeds will increase greatly in a
short time, if it is not immediately suppressed and ripped out by the roots.”57
In making this argument, Braun explicitly cited the examples of Jan Hus
and Martin Luther. Both of these men had been heretics, but both had been
allowed to flourish before any decisive steps had been taken against them. This
lack of response had had tragic consequences, and it is therefore possible to read
Cochlaeus’s Commentary on the Life and Deeds of Martin Luther and his Twelve
Books of Hussite History as detailed narratives of those outcomes. The more
famous of these two works is undoubtedly the Commentary, the first full biog-
raphy of Luther and a work that colored the Catholic perceptions of Luther and
the Church’s consequent dealings with the Lutheran denomination well into the
twentieth century. 58 Much like his earlier publications on Luther, Cochlaeus’s
biography was marked by a central paradox:  it was characterized by careful
scholarship and an intimate familiarity with Luther’s works, on the one hand,
and by a seemingly facile acceptance of legends and libels about Luther, on the
other. The depth of research that underlay this work was attested to in the index
of Luther’s works which Cochlaeus appended to the Commentary. 59 Cochlaeus

56
  Braun, “Epistola de ratione scribendi historias,” in Commentaria, pp. b4r.–​c1v., p. b4r.
57
  Braun, “Epistola,” p. c1r. In a letter to Ercole d’Este, the Duke of Ferrara, which also preceded
the Commentaria, Cochlaeus adapted this agricultural metaphor to hunting, arguing that secular
and ecclesiastical authorities must “capture predators when they are still small,” rather than allow-
ing them to grow and wreak havoc. See: Cochlaeus, Commentaria, p. a2v. Cf. Keen, “Cochlaeus: Life
and Work,” p. 51.
58
  All current work on the Commentary is fundamentally indebted to the work of Adolf Herte. See
in particular his: Die Lutherkommentare des Johannes Cochläus, kritische Studie zur Geschichtsschreibung
im Zeitalter der Glaubensspaltung (Münster: Aschendorff, 1935); and Das katolische Lutherbild.
59
 Cochlaeus, Commentaria, pp. 321–​327.
264 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

listed 186 works written or translated by Luther, and he demonstrated his

familiarity with them throughout the body of his biography with a host of scru-
pulous citations and accurate paraphrases. The extent of Cochlaeus’s animos-
ity toward Luther, though, was especially evident in the book’s preface, where
Cochlaeus asserted that Luther’s heresy was the most dangerous ever visited
upon the Church, reported the widespread belief that Luther had been sired by
an incubus who had seduced his mother, and stated that Luther’s “faction” was
characterized by corrupt morals and sexual depravity that had permitted “every
barrier to carnal desire to be removed and the ancient decency of women to be
extinguished” under the guise of evangelical freedom.60 These bookends to the
Commentary reveal the uneasy coexistence of detailed research and ad hominem
attacks in this text, a juxtaposition that makes it difficult to tease out its value as a
source for information about Luther’s actions and motivations. Despite that lim-
itation, though, the Commentary is deeply significant for understanding Catholic
historical polemics at mid-​century and the ways in which they contextualized
Luther’s reform within the broader history of the Church.
The Commentary was essentially a continuation and intensification of the rhet-
oric that characterized both The Seven-​Headed Luther and Cochlaeus’s historical
polemics from the 1530s, in the sense that Luther was portrayed throughout as
self-​contradictory and inconstant, a man driven primarily by his hatred for the
Church. According to Cochlaeus, this hatred had caused Luther to ally himself
with “those who were manifestly excommunicates, such as the Pighards and
Hussites,” and to “thrust forward, hawk about, and inculcate the condemned
errors” of many medieval heretics under the pretext of their being evangelical. 61
Staying consistent with his writings against Luther from the late 1530s, though,
Cochlaeus rejected these attempted associations. He asserted instead that
Luther’s errors were “much more repulsive” than those of earlier figures and that
the Lutherans’ own efforts to rehabilitate Hus, for instance, only revealed that the
Bohemian heretic had “denied publicly, before everyone, those articles which the
Lutherans hold most dear.”62
In making this case, Cochlaeus was consistently self-​referential. He rou-
tinely incorporated his earlier works against Luther into the Commentary, thus
allowing his previous and present arguments to amplify each other, albeit in a
circular fashion. Cochlaeus also situated those arguments within a journalistic
account of Luther’s life that was validated both by numerous external sources
and Cochlaeus’s participation in many of the events included in the text, which

 Cochlaeus, Commentaria, pp. c3v.–​c4r.

60

 Cochlaeus, Commentaria, pp. 79 and 38.

61

62
  Cochlaeus made this point twice: once in reference to the 1529 publication of Mladoňovice’s
account of Hus’s trial and again during his account of the pamphlet wars concerning Hus in 1538.
These quotations can be found in: Cochlaeus, Commentaria, pp. 200 and 291.
 The Exemplar 265

provided the Commentary with a marked sense of immediacy.63 Unfortunately,

Cochlaeus’s portrayal of Luther was also characterized by a great deal of repeti-
tion in terms of his central arguments, which could make for tortuous reading.
One can therefore imagine some readers’ relief at reaching Cochlaeus’s account
of Luther’s death and the end of this work, which Cochlaeus concluded with a
request that his audience “consider what Luther accomplished through his many
labors, troubles, and efforts.” For Cochlaeus, Luther’s “rebellion and seditious
urging” had resulted only in the death of thousands of people and the rise of chaos
in the Empire, so that it was now beset by war and “shrank away from the peaceful
General Council and the Pope, from whom it received Christ’s faith, as if from the
Antichrist, because of Luther’s sinful teachings.”64
Given his decades of admonitions to the German nation concerning Luther,
this conclusion was perhaps foregone. Both Cochlaeus’s earlier writings and his
editions of Braun had demonstrated that nations could only be ruined by tolerat-
ing heresy, so it was not surprising that Germany had finally been overcome by
war. History could, however, provide more than admonitory precedents; it could
also offer roadmaps for moving beyond such conflict. Braun’s On Heresies, for
instance, included lengthy sections on rebuilding the ecclesiastical infrastructure
and fabric of order in regions affected by heresy.65 I would suggest that Cochlaeus’s
Twelve Books of Hussite History can be read as a parallel work to On Heresies: nar-
rower in focus and argument, but similarly dedicated both to cataloguing error
and remediating its consequences.
The Twelve Books actually comprised four distinct parts. The first was a nar-
rative history of the Bohemian reformation up to 1471, broken up into the titu-
lar twelve books; the second and third parts were editions of fifteenth-​century
Bohemian texts by Jan Rokycana and Jan Příbram, respectively, which attested
to the Catholic orthodoxy of mainstream Hussite and Utraquist thought66; and

63
  Cochlaeus’s treatment of the Diet of Worms was typical of this, in that much of his account
relied on the Acta et Res Gestae D. Martini Lutheri, in Comitiis Principum Wormaciae (Strasbourg: Johann
Schott, 1521), which was sympathetic to Luther but recorded the interplay between Luther and the
emperor in detail. Alongside this source, Cochlaeus interspersed his own recollections of meeting
Luther at Worms (published in 1540), references to thirteen of Luther’s devotional writings, and
a pair of Luther’s controversial writings against private confession and Jacob Latomus, a theolo-
gian from Louvain. As a whole, these sources granted authenticity and a veneer of neutrality to
Cochlaeus’s account. See: Cochlaeus, Commentaria, pp. 29–​47. On the significance of this rhetori-
cal approach, see: Keen, “An Introduction,” pp. 49–​50.
64
 Cochlaeus, Commentaria, pp. 318–​319.
65
  In the sixth book of On Heresies, Braun discusses support for Catholic preaching (ch. 3), the
restoration of Catholic schools (ch. 5), the burning of heretical books (ch. 6), and the prohibition
of public disputations on religion (ch. 8). See the table of contents in: Braun, De Haereticis, p. b2v.
66
  Both of these texts originated c. 1430 in Bohemia, and are known in their manuscript ver-
sions as “De quinque prioribus sacramentis” and the “Professio fidei,” respectively. Rokycana’s text
266 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

the fourth part was the Seventh Philippic, which heightened the theological con-
trasts between the Germans and Bohemians that the previous two works had
illuminated and attacked Lutheran attempts to deny or limit the emperor’s right
to impose a religious settlement on the Empire. As a whole, this work recapitu-
lated and expanded on Cochlaeus’s earlier attempts to use the Hussites against
the Lutherans by demonstrating that while no meaningful theological ties bound
them together, the former still foreshadowed the consequences that lay in store
for the latter. In 1549, however, those consequences had become more concrete
than they had been a decade earlier. No longer did Cochlaeus have to settle for
predictions of an uncertain doom for Germany and the Lutherans; now he could
draw on the recent experience of the Schmalkaldic War not only to predict the
proximate outcomes for the Empire’s heretics, but also to offer an alternate path
toward unity based on the example of the Bohemian reformation.
This historical argument for present action included two parts. The first
involved the recognition that the Lutherans and other Protestants had deviated
substantially from the teachings of even those that they claimed as forerunners.
Cochlaeus first made this case in his narrative history of the Bohemian reforma-
tion, in which he drew from both Catholic accounts (notably those of Piccolomini,
Krantz, and Richental) and Hussite texts to reconstruct Hus’s trial and its after-
math. Throughout his narrative, Cochlaeus argued that Hus had defended essen-
tially orthodox positions during his trial, but had denied the Council of Constance’s
authority in trying him. The issue, for Cochlaeus, was therefore Hus’s intracta-
bility, rather than his theological deviance. In presenting this view, Cochlaeus
emphasized the Council’s patience with Hus, while also incorporating Richental’s
story of Hus’s attempted flights to demonstrate Hus’s faithlessness.67 These actions
also exculpated Sigismund for his retraction of Hus’s safe conduct, which became
a justified response to the priest’s attempted escape. This view had been dominant
among Catholic writers since the time of Richental, but Cochlaeus went further
to argue that it was the unwillingness of Hus’s followers to accept this fact that
ultimately led to the destruction of the Hussite wars. Basically, it was because the
Czechs had regarded Hus as the “holy patron and martyr of Bohemia,” rather than
accepting that his actions had necessitated the Church’s condemnation and execu-
tion of him, that a decade of religious violence had occurred.68
For Cochlaeus, this misattribution of sanctity and the consequent loathing
of Rome had only become worse among the “new Hussites in Germany” who

survives in five medieval manuscripts, while Příbram’s text has no extant witnesses. On the prov-
enance of both texts, see: František Bartoš, Literarni Cinnost M. Jana Rokycany, M. Jana Příbrama,
M. Petra Payna (Prague: NCAVU, 1928), pp. 22–​23 and 78–​79.
67
 Cochlaeus, Historiae Hussitarum, pp. 75–​8 0.
68
  On the Czechs’ veneration of Hus as a saint, see: Cochlaeus, Historiae Hussitarum, pp. 102
and 153–​154.
 The Exemplar 267

actually held heterodox religious views. Cochlaeus specifically identified Luther,

Brunfels, and Agricola as the culprits in renewing the veneration of Hus, and he
also blamed them for deceiving the German people and stirring up unrest.69 But
just as the period after Hus’s death offered a historical precedent for the recent rise
of anti-​ecclesiastical sentiment in the German lands, so too did that era offer evi-
dence that some people could retain their good sense. Cochlaeus therefore pre-
sented his two Hussite treatises as evidence of many Bohemians’ orthodoxy, using
Rokycana’s and Příbram’s discussions of sacramental theology, liturgy, ecclesias-
tical organization, good works, and the cult of the saints in order to demonstrate
how true religion could survive heretical onslaughts. Cochlaeus used copious
paratexts throughout the Twelve Books to highlight this essential point, including
prefaces and marginal notes that clarified the patristic and biblical sources of the
Bohemians’ thought. He contrasted these, though, to the “novel inventions and
impieties” of contemporary Lutherans and Zwinglians.70 Cochlaeus also extolled
the utility of the Hussites’ works as guides for the refutation of the Protestants’
heresy. Příbram, after all, had been engaged in polemical battles against the
Táborites and Prague radicals throughout the 1420s, and the Lutherans were
nothing other than “new Táborites in Germany.” 71 As such, Příbram’s arguments
retained their relevance as a means of combatting Protestant heresies and held out
the possibility of winning back some dissidents.
That these arguments were still necessary was proven in Cochlaeus’s Seventh
Phillippic, which followed the two Hussite tracts. Cochlaeus framed this text,
which was a refutation of Philip Melanchthon’s 1548 treatise Objections to the
Interim, as a summary of the novel and dangerous doctrine that the Lutherans
had formulated in response to the Augsburg Interim.72 When put alongside the
previous Hussite works, Cochlaeus was confident that his Philippic would prove
“how great is the distance between the Lutherans and Zwinglians, concerning
the sacraments and ceremonies from not only the Hussite and Catholic tradition,
but also all other professors of the Christian faith.” 73 Taken together, then, these
three subsidiary texts provided the Twelve Books with an exhaustive argument—​
taken solely from the writings of the Bohemian and German reformers—​t hat the

69
 Cochlaeus, Historiae Hussitarum, p. 79, 80, 103, and passim.
70
 This quotation comes from the preface to Rokycana’s De Septem Sacramentis Ecclesiae.
See: Cochlaeus, Historiae Hussitarum, p. 443.
71
  Cochlaeus identifies his opponents as such in multiple places. See, e.g., his marginal notes
to: Historiae Hussitarum, pp. 449, 502, and 507.
72
 Melanchthon’s text was originally published as:  Bedenckens auffs Interim des Ehrwirdigen
und Hochgelarten Herrn Philippi Melanthonis (Wittenberg:  George Rhau, 1548). On this text and
Cochlaeus’s response, see: Keen, “Audience and Arguments”; and idem, Phillippicae I–​VII, vol. 2,
pp. 61–​65.
73
  This quotation appears in a short address “Ad Lectorem” that preceded the actual text of the
Philippic. See: Cochlaeus, Historiae Hussitarum, p. 548.
268 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

German Protestants were entirely isolated, both theologically and historically

speaking, from their notional forebears.
Having cut the Lutherans off from their historical support systems, Cochlaeus
proposed an alternative to their continued resistance via a historical analogy
in the Twelve Books between the present moment and the situation faced by the
Hussites in their dealings with the Council of Basel from 1433 to 1436. Those
years had witnessed the Hussites’ negotiations with the Council and their accep-
tance of reunion with the Church after over a decade of holy war. Cochlaeus had
chronicled the causes of that conflict and the atrocities that marred it over the first
half of the Twelve Books, dwelling on the murder of noncombatants—​especially
priests, monks, and nuns—​and the destruction of Bohemia’s sacred landscape.74
With his description of the debates and negotiations at Basel, though, the tone
of his narrative changed. Reasoned theological exchange (in which the defend-
ers of Catholic truth naturally triumphed) supplanted irrational violence, and the
desire for the restoration of order overcame the heretics’ hatred for the Church.
It was this transition that Cochlaeus sought to impel among his contemporary
audience. This only made sense, since then, as now, the prospect of peace for the
heretics and the Church (as mediated by a general council) was very real. Then, as
now, the experience of war and civil dissension made such peace especially attrac-
tive. And then, as now, a seemingly workable compromise for accepting some
diversity in religious belief and practice was on the table with imperial sanction.
The question, though, was whether the Lutherans would accept it, or if they
would reject the imperial offer of peace and continue to defy the secular and reli-
gious authorities. In the Twelve Books, the negotiations for the Basel Compactata
occurred in a climactic position at the end of the sixth book.75 It was the fulcrum of
the narrative, so to speak, promising an end to the spectacular violence that marked
the first half of Cochlaeus’s history. It would seem that he saw 1548/​49 as a similar,
potential turning point. He therefore offered Příbram, and especially Rokycana, as
the voices of reason who had spoken for peace and reunion, and he juxtaposed their
teachings to the dangerous lies of Melanchthon. The second half of Cochlaeus’s his-
tory of the Bohemian reformation suggested what would happen if Germany pre-
ferred the latter; it was a chronicle of the Hussites’ (and especially Rokycana’s) bad
faith after Basel and the renewed conflicts that resulted from it. Contrary to this
extended cautionary tale, though, Cochlaeus held out the possibility of real peace
that the negotiations over the Basel Compactata had initially offered.
Cochlaeus spelled out the parameters of that peace most clearly on the last page
of the Twelve Books, where he offered a set of quotations and a final admonition as

74
  On the violence of the Hussites, see, e.g.: Cochlaeus, Historiae Hussitarum, pp. 154–​156, 172–​
174, 181–​183, and 222–​229.
75
 Cochlaeus, Historiae Hussitarum, pp. 247–​255.
 The Exemplar 269

an epigraph (or perhaps epitaph) to his Hussite history. In an uncharacteristically

brief address “To the Reader,” Cochlaeus averred that he had written this work
not to discredit the Bohemians, but only out of concern for his fellow Germans,
“that they might consider how much danger threatens all of Germany, if in their
arrogance they do not cease pertinaciously resisting and contradicting our most
powerful and victorious emperor.” 76 After this warning, Cochlaeus offered a quo-
tation from Jan Rokycana that had initially been included in the Twelve Books as
part of a description of the conclusion of his discussions with Cardinal Giuliano
Cesarini over the Basel Compactata: “Since we are thus consoled, we are able to
return to our own [country], to comfort those who are at all oppressed and anx-
ious, or gravely threatened by war in these most dangerous years and days …
Thus we will return with exultation, bearing bundles of joy, unity, peace, and
tranquility.”77
In 1549, Rokycana’s statement of satisfaction at his movement’s reconciliation
with Rome could easily have been interpreted as a potential script for Lutheran
leaders who might accept peace with Emperor Charles. The historical overlaps
at this moment between the German and Bohemian reformations were clear to
Cochlaeus, and he intended his works to broadcast these congruencies to the lead-
ers of both the Catholic and Protestant parties in the Empire. Using Braun’s work,
Cochlaeus had laid out an intellectual framework for understanding the dangers
of religious sedition and eliminating them. Through his biography of Luther,
Cochlaeus had shown how the Saxon professor’s movement had exemplified that
sort of dissent and resulted in utter chaos. With his history of the Bohemian refor-
mation, Cochlaeus had shown that a return to unity and obedience was possible
at certain moments, and that the Holy Roman Empire had entered one of these
limited windows of opportunity.
Cochlaeus’s last set of monumental works on the Bohemian precedent for
the German reformation represented the culmination of his historical polemics
over the span of three decades. These polemics were marked by seemingly con-
tradictory assertions of both the radical theological discontinuity between the
Lutherans and medieval heretics and the clear historical relevance of their her-
esies to the present moment. Throughout the 1520s and the following decade,
Cochlaeus had formulated these arguments defensively—​as a response to the
Lutherans’ construction of a new church history for themselves. By the 1540s,
though, Cochlaeus had gotten out in front of his Lutheran opponents, and he
appeared to have turned the history of Jan Hus and his followers decisively against
them. By using the history of the Hussites at Basel as a script for rapprochement,
Cochlaeus had transformed the successors of his surprisingly Catholic Hus into

 Cochlaeus, Historiae Hussitarum, p. 599.

76

  Ibid. The quotation also appeared on: Cochlaeus, Historiae Hussitarum, p. 249.

77
270 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

a potential model for the Lutherans’ submission to Charles and the Catholic
Church. This shocking reinterpretation of Hussite history did not, however, go
unanswered, although it fell to a relatively new and uncompromisingly radical
voice from among the Lutherans to reclaim Hus, and to some extent his followers,
for those who still opposed Rome and her secular allies.

Toward a Lutheran History of the Church

After Mühlberg and the Augsburg Diet, the vast majority of Protestant political
powers in the Holy Roman Empire submitted to Charles V. But one city did not,
and in the years 1548–​1551 it was only the “Chancery of God” at Magdeburg that
seemed to stand against the emperor.78 It was this city that fostered a community
of militant Lutheran preachers and printers who articulated an “urban theology”
of resistance that affirmed the commune’s right to determine its religious identity
based on both imperial legal precedent and a biblical template recalling Judith’s
Bethulia and the Maccabees’ Jerusalem.79 It was Magdeburg alone that withstood
a yearlong siege at the hands of Moritz of Saxony, yielding only when it received
guarantees that the city would be allowed to maintain its Lutheran faith and
practice. The ideological leader of this resistance was Nicholas von Amsdorf, the
superintendent of the city’s churches and former Lutheran bishop of Naumburg.
He was joined, though, by other Lutheran pastors and authors who had left or
been driven out of their positions after the Schmalkaldic War.80 Most notable
among these émigrés was the Croatian Hebraist and biblical exegete Matthias
Flacius Illyricus, who soon emerged as one of the most learned, vitriolic, and pro-
lific Lutheran controversialists in the decade after Luther’s death.
In many ways, Flacius’s career was a mirror to Cochlaeus’s. He spent time
in the center of the Lutheran universe as a student and professor at Wittenberg
(from 1541 to 1549), but his caustic rhetoric and unwillingness to compromise
on theological matters made him a polarizing figure. He was undoubtedly a gifted
linguist and scholar, but he often coupled his intellectual efforts with ad hominem
attacks against those with whom he disagreed. As such, his texts often oscillated

78
  On the history of Magdeburg in this period, see particularly: Thomas Kaufmann, Das Ende
der Reformation: Magdeburgs “Herrgotts Kanzlei” (1548–​1551/​2) (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003);
and Nathan Rein, The Chancery of God: Protestant Print, Polemic and Propaganda against the Empire,
Magdeburg 1546–​1551 (Burlington: Ashgate, 2008).
79
  On this terminology, see: Rein, The Chancery of God, p. 180. See also: David Whitford, “From
Speyer to Magdeburg: The Development and Maturation of a Hybrid Theory of Resistance,” ARG
96 (2005): 57–​8 0.
80
 On Amsdorf ’s role in Magdeburg, see:  Robert Kolb, Nicholas von Amsdorf (1483–​
1565): Popular Polemics in the Preservation of Luther’s Legacy (Nieuwkoop: B. De Graaf, 1978), espe-
cially ­chapter 2.
 The Exemplar 271

wildly between serious scholarship and slander, which has made Flacius a difficult
figure for scholars to pin down. He certainly has his defenders, who portray his
obstreperous personality (contra Melanchthon’s supposed passivity) as neces-
sary for the preservation of Luther’s reform during a period of crisis. 81 Flacius also
has his detractors, though, who have depicted him as a shameless self-​promoter
and needlessly offensive person who attacked others in an effort to secure his
own priority among second-​generation Lutherans.82 No matter one’s stance on
this matter, though, it is undeniable that Flacius spent his career wearing out his
welcome in a variety of Lutheran centers, moving from post to post while still
managing to publish a remarkable array of treatises on church history and biblical
interpretation. 83
Although (or perhaps because) Flacius could be so difficult, he was ideally
suited to serving as a theorist and defender of Magdeburg’s resistance to Charles
V. Here, his learning and combative nature could serve the larger goal of justify-
ing the city’s refusal to accept the Augsburg Interim. In making his case, Flacius
turned to the biblical narrative and history of the Church in order to find prec-
edents for Magdeburg’s actions. These historical arguments were integrated into
a larger, legal argument that affirmed the city’s sole competence in determining
its religious identity by holding up the right of lower magistrates to resist their
superiors when doing otherwise would overturn divine commandments. 84 This
recourse to the law of God echoed Hussite polemics from the time of the Hussite
Wars, and authors such as Nicholas von Amsdorf and Nicholas Gallus invoked
these ideas repeatedly in offering an explanation for Magdeburg’s defiance of

81
  The most vocal of these is certainly Oliver Olson. See, e.g.: Flacius and the Survival of Luther’s
Reform. See also the more recent work of Luka Ilić: “Der heilige Mann und thewre held: Flacius’s View
of Luther,” in Matija Vlačić Ilirik [III]:  Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Matthias
Flacius Illyricus, ed. M. Miladinov (Labin: Grad Labin, 2011), pp. 294–​315.
82
  This skepticism toward Flacius is best exemplified by the work of Ronald Diener, who has
served as Olson’s bête noire for the last four decades. See his: “The Magdeburg Centuries: A Bibliotecal
and Historical Anaylsis” (Unpublished dissertation: Harvard Divinity School, 1978), especially
pp. 39–​127.
83
  Over the course of his career, Flacius worked in Wittenberg, Magdeburg, Jena, Regensburg,
Antwerp, Strasbourg, and Frankfurt. Of all these cities, Flacius left only Magdeburg of his own
volition. In all of the other cities, he left amidst either personal or theological controversy. The
most thorough and even-​handed account of Flacius’s scholarly peregrinations remains the 1859
biography by Wilhelm Preger, now reprinted as:  Matthias Flacius Illyricus und seine Zeit, 2  vols.
(Hildesheim: G. Olm, 1964).
84
  On the development of Lutheran resistance theory, see: Cynthia Schoenberger, “Luther and
the Justifiabilty of Resistance to Legitimate Authority,” Journal of the History of Ideas 40 (1979): 3–​
20; Robert von Friedeburg, Self-​Defence and Religious Strife in Early Modern Europe:  England and
Germany, 1530–​1680 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), especially chs. 2 and 3; and James Estes, Peace,
Order, and the Glory of God: Secular Authority and the Church in the Thought of Luther and Melanchthon,
1519–​1558 (Brill: Boston, 2005), especially ch. 5.
272 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

the emperor. Their apologetic campaign culminated in the publication of the

Magdeburg Confession in 1550, which served as a comprehensive articulation of
Lutheran resistance theory. 85 In this text, it was the moral duty of the leaders
of the Christian (read: Lutheran) commune to resist the emperor’s illegitimate
efforts to suppress the evangelical truth and restrict the practice of religion.
In a number of publications from the years 1548–​1551, Flacius provided a com-
plementary, historical pedigree for such resistance. He, like Braun and Cochlaeus
before him, mined the history of Israel and the Church under the Roman Empire
to find analogues for the present age, but he focused on moments when overreach-
ing tyrants sought to suppress the true worship of God. Based on this research and
drawing from Luther’s understanding of the underlying dynamics of church history,
Flacius came to articulate a vision of the past and present in which “the godless liar”
always sought to silence or kill “the true servant of God.”86 The faithful should there-
fore expect that suffering would result from their adherence to God’s commands, but
remain confident that such persecution only validated their identity as “the children
of the Holy God.” As Flacius put it: “Whoever will not take up the cross, must follow
after the devil and seek after good days here [on Earth]. But it is 100,000 times better
to suffer with Christ than to rule with the devil.”87 In an early pamphlet entitled A
Short Account of the Interim, Flacius enlisted a series of biblical texts to affirm this basic
truth, asserting that “all of God’s holy ones must be conformed to the Lord Christ
through the cross … as the whole Holy Scripture makes abundantly clear, as in Acts
14:22: ‘We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God.’ ”88
Although Flacius was clear that suffering was to be expected of all Christians,
he also specified how this general rule had become particularly applicable
in the context of his time. He stated explicitly that the Council of Trent, for
instance, “had been assembled and is ruled, not by the Holy Spirit, but by the
most holy spirit of the Devil!”89 Further, this council could only exert its influ-
ence because the Lutherans had “first been impelled by the sword” to accept its

85
  On the Confession, see: Robert von Friedeburg, “In Defence of Patria: Resisting Magistrates
and the Duties of Patriots in the Empire, 1530s–​1640s,” SCJ 32 (2001): 357–​382; David Whitford,
Tyranny and Resistance: The Magdeburg Confession and the Lutheran Tradition (St. Louis: Concordia,
2001); and Kaufmann, Das Ende der Reformation, pp. 176–​198.
86
  This text was originally published under a pseudonym as: Johannes Waremund, Ein gemeine
Protestation und Klagschrift aller frommen Christen wieder das Interim (Magdeburg:  Michael Lotter,
1548), here pp. F4v.–​G1r.
87
 Flacius, Ein gemeine Protestation, p. H1r.
88
  Matthias Flacius Illyricus, Ein kurtzer Bericht vom Interim darauss man leichtlich kan die leer und
Geist desselbigen Buchs erkennen, Durch Theodorum Henetum allen fromen Christen zu dieser zeit nützlich
und tröstlich (Magdeburg: Michael Lotter, 1548), p. C1r. This pamphlet went through four editions
in 1548. On its publication, see: Kaufmann, Das Ende der Reformation, p. 498.
89
 Flacius, Ein kurtzer Bericht, p. A3r.
 The Exemplar 273

decrees.90 Flacius also identified the Lutherans’ Catholic opponents as “the

Jewish priests who were so obdurate in their wickedness, that they would not
believe in Jesus or the truth that he spoke.”91 He also referred to them as the
“godless priests of Baal,” and through these tropes he tacitly equated himself and
his readers to the faithful Israelites and early followers of Christ.92 By using this
rhetoric, Flacius also linked the conflicts faced by God’s people in the Old and
New Testaments with those faced by the true church at Magdeburg, “which is
not mere wood and stone, like those of the godless servants of Antichrist who
persecute true religion, but is rather a gathering of Christians who hear and con-
fess God’s word.”93
In 1549, Flacius published a text entitled Certain Letters of the Reverend Father
of Pious Memory, Doctor Martin Luther.94 This collection of excerpts from let-
ters written around time of the Diet of Augsburg in 1530 emphasized Luther’s
understanding of church history as essentially a series of unremitting attacks on
the faithful, but highlighted that such constant persecution had never actually
destroyed the true church. Rather, its deepest crises had spurred its regenera-
tion. In making this argument about the basic structures of sacred history, Luther
had begun with the Bible, but also extended his historical survey into the Roman
and medieval periods. Take, for instance, Luther’s account of the rise of the king-
dom of Israel:  “King Saul miserably stabbed himself, because his people were
defeated and his three sons were slain in the same battle (I Samuel 31). What else
could one think, except that it was all over for the Jewish kingdom? But after-
wards, in David’s and Solomon’s time, it first came to its highest power and holi-
ness.”95 Similarly, the church in the time of the Roman emperors Maximian and
Diocletian had been “horribly persecuted, and the emperors attempted to eradi-
cate the Christians entirely,” but they too had failed to eradicate the true church.96

90
 Ibid.
91
 Flacius, Ein gemeine Protestation, p. A2r.
92
  Matthias Flacius Illyricus, Ein Christliche vermanung M. Matthie Flacii Illyrici zur bestendigkeit
inn der waren reinen Religion Jhesu Christi (Magdeburg: Michael Lotter, 1550), B1r. On the rhetorical
trope of the Baalite priests in Flacius’s writings, see: Bollbuck, Wahrheitszeugnis, pp. 86–​88.
93
  Matthias Flacius Illyricus, Das alle verfolger der Kirchen Christi zu Magdeburgk Christi des Herrn
selbs verfolger sindt (Magdeburg: Michael Lotter, 1551), B1r.
94
  This text was originally printed in Latin under the title: Aliquot Epistolae Reverendi Patris Piae
Memoriae D. Martini Lutheri quibusdam Theologis ad Augustana Comitia. Anno 1530 (n.p., 1549). In the
following year, the text appeared in a more extensive German translation as: Etliche tröstliche ver-
manungen in sache das heilige Gottliche Wort betreffend, zu dieser betrübten zeit sehr nützlich und tröstlich
zu lesen. D.  Martinus Luther, Anno MDXXX (Magdeburg:  Christian Rödinger, 1550) [WA 30/​I I,
697–​710].
95
 Flacius, Etliche tröstliche Vermanungen, p. 706.
96
 Flacius, Etliche tröstliche Vermanungen, p. 703.
274 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

According to Luther’s letters, this pattern had emerged again in the fifteenth
century with the rise of the Bohemian reformation:

Thus when the papists burned Jan Hus at the Council of Constance in
1416 [sic], they triumphed and considered it assured that they had right-
fully elevated the papacy. But the pope had also never before been more
despised than at that time.97

Or, as Luther put it when describing the persecution of the faithful more gener-
ally: “so it was also in the time of Jan Hus and of many other greater and more
solemn men in our time.”98 With the inclusion of Hus among the righteous
oppressed, Luther brought the pattern he perceived in church history almost up
until his present day. By publishing this florilegium of Luther’s letters, Flacius
both made it absolutely current and positioned himself and his coreligionists in
Magdeburg as the true heirs of Luther and the other saints, whose perseverance in
response to imperial and papal persecution validated their claims to represent the
true church and guaranteed their eternal reward.
In a final text from this period, called the Clearest Marks of True and False
Religion, Flacius wrote more systematically about the nature of that church.99
The preface to this text laid out Flacius’s emerging understanding of church his-
tory at this time. Here, he asserted that the earliest Christian community had
maintained its purity until seventy years after the death of Christ, when the last
evangelist, John, died. According to Flacius, after that point the history of the
institutional church was one long decline, as hypocrisy, theological errors, novel
cultic practices, and various sins of the flesh crept into the formerly pristine body
of Christ.100 This decline had been reversed, however, by Martin Luther, “the
man of God, our father, teacher, and third Elijah, sent before the final and ter-
rible advent of the Lord for the restoration of the truth.”101 Like many of Luther’s
earlier memorialists, Flacius foresaw a time of trouble following the death of this
great man. In spite of this, Flacius hoped that some Christians would be willing to

97
 Flacius, Etliche tröstliche Vermanungen, p. 706.
98
 Flacius, Etliche tröstliche Vermanungen, p. 703.
99
  This text comprised two parts. The first was a list of fifty “marks” of the true and false
religions; the second was a list of the “marks of the Antichrist.” This text was originally
printed in Latin, as: Clarissimae Quaedam Note Vere ac False Religioinis atque adeo ipsius Antichristi
(Magdeburg: Michael Lotter, 1549). In the same year, an abridged version was printed in German
as: Etliche greiffliche gewisse unnd scheinbarliche warzeichen (Magdeburg: Christian Rödinger, 1549).
100
 Flacius, Clarissimae Quaedam Note, pp. A2r–​A 2v.
101
 Flacius, Clarissimae Quaedam Note, A2v. Although the timelines varied in terms of when cor-
ruption had set in, the sense of church history as a declension narrative was absolutely typical of
Lutheran historiography. On this trope, see: Benrath, “Das Verständnis der Kirchengeschichte”;
and Dixon, “The Sense of the Past.”
 The Exemplar 275

suffer for the truth that Luther had restored and resist the “ministers of Antichrist”
and the errors with which they hoped to seduce to elect. For Flacius, these errors
represented “the wisdom of the old Adam, that judges it to be better to become a
persecutor than a confessor of Christ.”102
After this preface, Flacius included an address “To the Christian Reader, to
Persevere up until the End.” This extended apostrophe assured its audience that
they were members of the true church, and thus the recipients of a heavenly
reward, no matter what the pope decreed. Indeed, Flacius denied that the papal
church could rightfully claim the title of “Ecclesia” and asserted that no one should
be fooled by its religious trappings, as the devil could take “the form of an angel of
light.”103 Flacius therefore asserted that there were two churches in the world, the
true and the false, and that the true church could be known because it comprised
“those whom the impious excommunicate and eject from their synagogues.”104
Flacius traced the origins of these two churches to Cain and Abel, and his text fol-
lowed the development of the true church through Noah, Abraham, the Hebrew
prophets, Christ, and the apostles. Flacius considered Luther to be the heir of
all these biblical figures, and he was therefore unsurprised that the pope and his
political allies branded Luther a terrible heretic. Concerning their condemnation
of Luther and his followers, Flacius asserted: “Therefore it must be firmly con-
cluded that we who suffer on account of Christ’s truth have always remained in
the church, and that this is especially true when we are falsely called heretics or
schismatics by the adversaries of Christ’s truth.”105
This text ultimately offered a simple hermeneutic for the interpretation of eccle-
siastical history: those who had had been cast out of the institutional church had
actually been members of the true church. These churches were locked in an eternal
war with each other, and this conflict would only be resolved with the “final and ter-
rible” coming of Christ. For Flacius, as for many Lutheran authors before him, the
internecine struggle between the churches stemmed from the fact that the visible
church had been corrupted and taken over by the papal Antichrist. Flacius there-
fore ended his text with a comprehensive analysis of the scriptural evidence that
the pope was the Antichrist. Nothing in this argument was particularly novel, but
Flacius hinted at a more expansive historical grounding for his attack on the papacy,
noting that: “Jan Hus, Savonarola, Luther of pious memory, and many other men
excelling in piety and erudition did not doubt that this very man [the pope] was the
man of sin and the Antichrist, and they concluded this for the strongest reasons.”106

102
 Flacius, Clarissimae Quaedam Note, p. A3v.
103
 Flacius, Clarissimae Quaedam Note, p. A6r.
104
 Flacius, Clarissimae Quaedam Note, p. A7r.
105
 Flacius, Clarissimae Quaedam Note, p. A8v.
106
 Flacius, Clarissimae Quaedam Note, p. G4r. On Savonarola’s place among the medieval “saints”
of the Lutheran church, see: Kolb, “ ‘Saint John Hus’ and ‘Jerome Savonarola, Confessor of God.’ ”
276 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

Here, two men burned at the stake in the fifteenth century served as the mouth-
pieces of a tradition of critique that had culminated in Luther and Flacius. At this
point, however, Flacius was not fully prepared to integrate observations like this
into a more systematic history of the true church. He had begun to describe this
church in his writings from these years, but had not developed a narrative frame-
work that would encompass and link the biblical stories of God’s people and the
recent experiences of Luther and his followers. Indeed, it would take five years
for Flacius to gather enough documentation to span the intervening centuries,
thereby demonstrating that God had always found individuals and communities
who would risk their lives for the sake of their faith. It was this process of research
and discovery that would ultimately place Flacius (and Hus) in the center of the
polemical and scholarly exchanges that characterized the German reformation’s
history moment.

History as a Literature of Crisis

That moment was characterized, first and foremost, by an explosion of histori-
cal texts produced by authors across Europe who sought to engage critically
with the ancient and recent past in order to legitimize the various Protestant
movements that had sprung up over the previous three decades and expli-
cate the reasons why they had survived. Although this burst of historiogra-
phy included legal and political histories, its most characteristic genre was
the martyrology, as authors from the Lutheran, Swiss and Dutch Reformed,
Anabaptist, and English reform movements catalogued the sufferings of recent
victims of religious persecution and embedded them within the biblical and
apostolic traditions of holy death.107 These texts had two main purposes: the first
was to console the authors’ fellow believers and encourage them to stand firm
in their confessions of faith, while the second was linked to proselytization. As
Brad Gregory puts it, “what edified believers might make open supporters of the
sympathetic or the curious, just as martyrs’ dying behavior sometimes converted
spectators.”108
One of the most remarkable features of these texts was their authors’ famil-
iarity with each other’s work and their personal ties to each other. Indeed, this
period witnessed the internationalization of Protestantism to an unprecedented
degree, as various figures in exile from their homelands (as a result of the

107
  The most notable example of political history from this period was Johannes Sleidan’s
history of Charles V’s reign, first published in 1555. On Sleidan and his work, see:  Donald
Kelley, “Johann Sleidan and the Origins of History as a Profession,” Journal of Modern History 32
(1980): 573–​598; and Alexandra Kess, Johann Sleidan and the Protestant View of History (Burlington,
VT: Ashgate, 2008).
108
 Gregory, Salvation at Stake, p. 176.
 The Exemplar 277

Schmalkaldic War and reign of Queen Mary in England) met and formed rela-
tionships based on their common experience of persecution. The English author
John Foxe, for instance, worked on the publication of Lutheran martyrologies
in the Basel print shop of Johannes Oporinus during the 1550s. While there,
Foxe worked alongside the Swiss polymath Heinrich Pantaleon, who wrote his
own martyrology in 1563.109 It is also likely that Foxe met both Ludwig Rabus,
the author of the first Lutheran martyrology, and Johannes Sleidan, the official
historian of the Schmalkaldic League, while in Strasbourg during 1554. Sleidan
was also in correspondence with the Frenchman Jean Crespin, who wrote his
own martyrology in that year. In short, these dense personal networks facilitated
an exchange of ideas and historical materials that enabled these authors to write
their martyrologies, while also opening up new avenues for their publication and
distribution.110
It is worth noting that Hus played a prominent role in nearly all of these men’s
publications. Foxe began his first, Latin martyrology with Hus, as did Crespin, and
Hus also appeared as the first medieval martyr in Ludwig Rabus’s book.111 In this
last work, Hus’s story ran to over a hundred pages and included both a narrative
of his trial (drawn from Mladoňovice) and nearly a dozen of Hus’s letters. Based
on Rabus’s selections, it seems that he drew primarily on Luther’s Very Godly and
Erudite Letters of Jan Hus for his account of the Bohemian martyr’s trial and death.112
Rabus also adopted that text’s thematic presentation of Hus as a prophet by incor-
porating marginal notes that drew attention to Hus’s predictions of coming reform-
ers and his certainty that the Bohemian reform movement would last beyond his

109
 On Oporinus’s publishing house as a center of trans-​European Protestant networks,
see: Martin Steinmann, Johannes Oporinus: Ein Basler Buchdrucker um die Mitte des 16. Jahrhunderts
(Basel: Helbing und Lichtenhahn, 1967), pp. 65–​72. On Foxe’s time in Basel, see: T. Freeman and
M. Greengrass, “The Acts and Monuments and the Protestant Continental Martyrologies,” avail-
able on: John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs Online Variorum Edition—​Introductory Essays, available at: http://​
www.johnfoxe.org/​i ndex.php?realm=more&gototype=modern&type=essay&book=essay5.
110
  On these personal networks and their impact, see: Donald Kelley, “Martyrs, Myths, and the
Massacre: the Background of St. Bartholomew,” The American Historical Review 77 (1972): 1323–​
1342; Andrew Pettegree, “Haemstede and Foxe,” in John Foxe and the English Reformation, ed. D.
Loades (Brookfield, VT: Scolar Press, 1997), pp. 278–​294; Nicholas Watson, “Jean Crespin and
the First English Martyrology of the Reformation,” in John Foxe and the English Reformation, pp.
192–​2 09; and Gregory, Salvation at Stake, pp. 165ff.
111
  Rabus’s work was first published as:  Der Heyligen ausserwöhlten Gottes Zeugen, Bekennern,
und Martyren … Historien (Strasbourg:  Balthasar Beck, 1552). Seven subsequent volumes
were published as:  Historien der heyligen ausserwöhlten Gottes Zeügen, Bekennern, und Martyren
(Strasbourg:  Emmel, 1554–​ 1558). On Hus’s prominent place in Protestant martyrologies,
see: Gregory, Salvation at Stake, p. 171; Kolb, For All the Saints, pp. 38–​39 and 58–​6 0; and E. Evenden
and T. Freeman, Religion and the Book in Early Modern England: The Making of John Foxe’s Book of
Martyrs (New York: Cambridge UP, 2011), especially pp. 56–​79.
112
  Rabus also included Luther’s preface to Some Very Godly and Erudite Letters in his entry for
Hus. See: Rabus, Historien der heyligen, vol. 2, pp. 82r.–​86r.
278 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

death.113 Rabus’s granting of primacy to Hus among the post-​patristic martyrs

was, in one sense, entirely typical of the emergent Lutheran historical sensibility;
like Brunfels, Agricola, and Luther himself, Rabus considered Hus to be the most
significant predecessor of the Lutheran movement. That said, by essentially skip-
ping the 1000 years between the last ancient martyr and the death of Jan Hus in his
book, Rabus also undercut any potential claims about the Lutherans’ representing
the current face of a continuous tradition of persecuted Christians that spanned all
of history.114
Rabus did state in the preface to his martyrology that the conflict between
God’s holy confessors and their diabolical persecutors was eternal, but that
claim could only partially offset the sense of discontinuity that emerged from the
arrangement of his work.115 The rupture, though, that Hus’s death implicitly rep-
resented could also be turned to a positive rhetorical purpose if it was interpreted
as the moment when the tradition of Christian martyrdom renewed itself after
lying dormant for a millennium.116 Understood in this light, Hus’s death repre-
sented an inflection point where the decline of the church had begun to reverse
itself, a process that had only accelerated in the sixteenth century. For Protestants
writing in the 1550s, that process had run up against harsh, diabolical opposition
in their time that threatened to destroy the widespread reform of the church. The
present moment therefore came to be seen as located on the threshold of an escha-
tological transformation.117
This sense of apocalyptic expectation was clear in the work of Philip
Melanchthon, who was editing and expanding the universal history of Johannes
Carion at this time. Carion had been the court astronomer of Brandenburg until his
death in 1537, and he had first published his Chronicle, a work purporting to narrate
the entire history of the world, in 1532.118 Melanchthon had provided an introduction

  These marginal notes echo those found in Luther’s collection, and Rabus uses both the term
113

“weissagung” and “Prophecey” to described Hus’s predictions. See: Rabus, Historien der heyligen,
vol. 2, pp. 78r., 79v., and 80r.
114
 Kolb, For All the Saints, pp. 23–​27.
115
 Rabus, Historien der heyligen, vol. 1, pp. ivr.–​v v.
116
  On the idea that Hus’s death inaugurated the end times, see: Kolb, For All the Saints, p. 59;
and Pohlig, Zwischen Gelehrsamkeit, pp. 348–​360.
117
  On this idea of decline and reversal, see: Christoph Markschies, “Die eine Reformation und
die vielen Reformen oder Braucht evangelische Kirchengeschichtsschreibung Dekadenzmodelle?”
ZKG 106 (1995): 70–​9 7; and Schilling, “Die Wiederentdeckung,” pp. 139–​142.
118
  Carion had also been Melanchthon’s student in Wittenberg. On the relationship between
the men and Melanchthon’s work on the Chronicon, see: Gotthard Münch, “Das Chronicon Carionis
Philippicum: Ein Beitrag zur Würdigung Melanchthons,” Sachsen und Anhalt 1 (1925): 199–​2 83;
Uwe Neddermeyer, “Kaspar Peucer (1525–​1602): Melanchthons Universalsgeschichtschreibung,”
in Melanchthon in seinen Schulern, ed. H. Scheible (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1997), pp. 69–​102;
and Pohlig, Zwischen Gelehrsamkeit, pp. 175–​181.
 The Exemplar 279

to Carion’s first edition, and he also translated the text and expanded it throughout
the 1550s, publishing the first two volumes of his new edition in 1558 and 1560.119
In his preface to the first of his editions, Melanchthon used two “biblical” prophe-
cies to establish overlapping temporal frameworks for understanding human history.
The first of these schemas, known as the “house of Elijah,” saw human history falling
into three, two-​thousand year ages.120 According to Melanchthon, the first of these
(lasting from Adam to Abraham) had been essentially “barren”; the second period
(lasting from Abraham to the Incarnation) had been the period of the law; and the
third age comprised the “time of the Messiah.”121 Melanchthon also, however, sub-
divided the second and third periods using the “four kingdoms” model first eluci-
dated in Daniel 2:31ff. According to the Lutheran interpretation of this prophetic
vision, the Holy Roman Empire represented the last of four kingdoms that would
dominate the secular order prior to the second coming of Christ. The juxtaposi-
tion of these frameworks allowed Melanchthon to incorporate both the secular and
sacred into his universal history; indeed, any distinction between these categories
was ultimately false for Melanchthon.122 And while the house of Elijah model did not
mathematically suggest the imminent end of time, the Turkish threat to the integrity
of Christian Europe and the attempts of the papacy to undermine the sovereignty of
the Emperor did suggest to Melanchthon that he and his readers were living in “this
turbulent last age of the world among the ruins of the empires.”123 This text thus rein-
forced the reflections on the eschatological significance of contemporary history that
Melanchthon had made in the immediate wake of Luther’s death by placing them
within an increasingly expansive frame of historical reference.
In both Melanchthon’s universal history and Rabus’s martyrology, contem-
porary events were read as eschatological signs of the times. These authors saw
the situation that mid-​century Lutherans faced as a condensed recapitulation of
the entire, agonistic history of God’s people on Earth, and they tried to console
their readers with the assurance that their suffering and persecution would soon

119
  The introductory material to Melancthon’s 1558 edition included a dedicatory letter and a
Latin translation of his German preface to Carion’s 1532 edition. Both the letter and preface have
been published in a modern edition as: Philip Melanchthon, Epistola Dedicatoria, in Die Anfänge der
reformatorischen Geschichtschreibung, pp. 27–​41.
120
 This periodization did not actually derive from any biblical text, but rather from the
Babylonian Talmud. On the house of Elijah in Christian thought, see: Headley, Luther’s View of
Church History, pp. 108ff.
121
 Melanchthon, Epistola Dedicatoria, p. 38.
122
  On the unified nature of universal history in Melanchthon’s thought, see: Adalbert Klempt,
“Die protestantische Universalgeschichtschreibung vom 16. bis 18. Jahrhundert,” in Mensch
und Weltgeschichte: Zur Geschichte der Universalgeschichtschreibung, ed. A. Randa (Munich: Anton
Pustet, 1969), pp. 205–​236, especially pp. 205–​213; and Joachim Knape, “Melanchthon und die
Historien,” ARG 91 (2000): 111–​126.
123
 Melanchthon, Epistola Dedicatoria, p. 41.
280 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

end. These authors likely expected that ending to be accomplished through divine
agency as a prelude to the eschaton; they certainly did not expect that it would
result from the action of Duke Moritz of Saxony, who turned coat once again and
led a rebellion against Emperor Charles V in 1552.124 His Princes’ Revolt resulted
in Charles’s forced acceptance of the Peace of Passau, which recognized the legal-
ity of Lutheranism in the Empire. The Passau agreement also served as the tem-
plate for the Peace of Augsburg, which rendered the Holy Roman Empire legally
(and permanently) bi-​confessional in 1555 under the formula of “cuius regio, eius
religio.”125 This agreement effectively rolled back every gain that Charles had made
during the previous decade and led him to abdicate from the imperial office. The
Peace of Augsburg also laid the groundwork for a five-​decade period of relative
stability within the Empire marked by the absence of large-​scale confessional
conflicts.126
We might expect that this settlement would have reduced the urgency of intra-​
and inter-​confessional historical polemics, but, just as in the Czech lands after the
conclusion of the Peace of Kutná Hora in 1485, that was not the case. Rather, the
establishment of political peace and the grounds for equal intellectual exchange
between Catholics and Protestants made the need for militant self-​definition
more pressing. From the Gnesio-​Lutheran perspective, moments of ostensible
peace for the church had often led to vulnerability, as the people of God could
be seduced by false promises when not in a state of spiritual high alert. Hussite
history, as Flacius suggested in the epigraph to this chapter, eloquently attested
to that fact. And given this object lesson, the Peace of Augsburg did not signal a
cessation of polemically oriented historical scholarship among the leaders of the
German reformation, but actually led to a spike in the publication of historical
polemics.
No figure is more closely associated with this surge in historiography than
Matthias Flacius Illyricus. He had spent the years after the siege of Magdeburg
engaged in extensive, international historical research, establishing contacts with

  This Princes’ Revolt was made possible by the support of the French King Henry II, who
124

signed the Treaty of Chambord with Moritz in January of 1552. Henry II attacked Charles’s
forces throughout Alsace and the western Empire, while Moritz and his allies drove imperial
forces out of the eastern and southern German lands. The Peace of Passau was concluded in
August. On this rebellion and its outcomes, see: Seibt, Karl V., 187–​193; and Armin Kohnle,
“Nürnberg—​Passau—​A ugsburg:  Der lange Weg zum Religionsfrieden,” in Der Augsburger
Religionsfrieden 1555, ed. H. Schilling and H. Smolinksy (Münster: Aschendorff Verlag, 2007),
pp. 5–​15.
125
  For an overview and analysis of the background and outcomes of the Diet of Augsburg in
1555, with an exhaustive bibliography of recent and classical scholarship, see: Axel Gotthard, Der
Aubsburger Religionsfrieden (Münster: Aschendorff Verlag, 2004).
126
  These consequences are assessed thoroughly in: Thomas Brady, German Histories in the Age
of Reformations, 1400–​1650 (New York: Cambridge UP, 2009), ch. 12.
 The Exemplar 281

scholars across Europe and setting them to gathering materials for a comprehen-
sive Lutheran church history.127 He also took steps to secure financial backing
for this project, and he produced two texts that documented his efforts to create
what was, for all intents and purposes, the first institute for historical research in
Europe.128 Within these two documents, Flacius laid out the intellectual as well as
practical frameworks for a comprehensive church history. Flacius appended the
first of these, known as the Scheda, to a letter he sent to Caspar von Nidbruck, a
prominent member of the Habsburg court in Vienna, on November 10, 1552.129
Nidbruck had been a student with Flacius, and his position in Vienna enabled him
to cultivate and maintain an extensive network of contacts with scholars and cler-
ical elites throughout central and eastern Europe. As such, he was an ideal partner
for Flacius in terms of procuring manuscript sources; his role in a Catholic gov-
ernment, however, also necessitated that his correspondence and collaboration be
concealed by pseudonyms and go-​betweens.130 Despite this handicap, Nidbruck
managed to remain the most important contributor to Flacius’s collection efforts
throughout the early 1550s, and his letters to and from Flacius reveal the evolving
aims of the Croatian scholar’s historical enterprise.
In the Scheda, Flacius proposed to write a book detailing the lives and teachings
of “the 7,000 pious men who, purely loving Christ, detested the Roman Baal.”131
Flacius drew this number from the words of Elijah in 1 Kings 19:18, but it was
merely figurative. He actually decided to record the stories of 400 individuals
who had resisted papal authority and had sought to preserve “the initial purity and

127
  For a detailed analysis of Flacius’s network of collaborators and the means by which it
was maintained, see: Martina Hartmann, Humanismus und Kirchenkritik: Matthias Flacius Illyricus
als Erforscher des Mittelalters (Stuttgart:  Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 2001), especially ­chapter  3. See
also: Gregory Lyon, “Baudouin, Flacius, and the Plan for the Magdeburg Centuries,” Journal of the
History of Ideas 64 (2003): 253–​272.
128
 This description is Anthony Grafton’s. See his:  “Where Was Salomon’s House?
Ecclesiastical History and the Intellectual Origins of Bacon’s New Atlantis,” in Die Europäische
Gelehrtenrepublik im Zeitalter der Konfessionalismus, ed. H. Jaumann (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz
Verlag, 2001), pp. 21–​3 8. Cf. the similar conclusions in:  Heinz Scheible, Die Entstehung
der Magdeburger Zenturien:  Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der historiographischen Methode
(Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1966).
129
  The bulk of the correspondence between Flacius and Nidbruck has been published in: Victor
Bibl, “Der Briefwechsel zwischen Flacius und Nidbruck,” Jahrbuch der Gesellschaft für die Geschichte
der Protestantismus in Österreich 17 (1896): 1–​2 4; 18 (1897): 201–​238; 19 (1898): 96–​110; and 20
(1899): 83–​116. The text of this letter is contained in: Bibl, “Der Briefwechsel,” vol. 17, pp. 7–​10.
130
 On Nidbruck’s and Flacius’s collaboration, see:  Ronald Diener, “Zur Methodik der
Magdeburger Centurien,” in Catalogus und Centurien:  Interdisziplinäre Studien zu Matthias Flacius
und den Magdeburger Centurien, ed. M. Hartmann and A. Mentzel-​R euters (Tübingen:  Mohr
Siebeck, 2008), pp. 129–​173; Hartmann, Humanismus und Kirchenkritik, pp. 57–​61; and Bollbuck,
Wahrheitszeugnis, pp. 153–​163.
131
 Flacius, Scheda, p. 7.
282 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

simplicity” of the apostolic church from the “malice of the impious.”132 According to
Flacius, these individuals’ lives and deaths had illuminated the basic ebb-​and-​flow
dynamic of church history, as their witness had allowed “the light of truth to shine
forth more clearly, but then the darkness of impiety would increase and that light
would be obscured.” Collectively, though, these 400 individuals demonstrated that
the Lutheran church was no new thing, but represented instead the present incarna-
tion of the true church, which had existed “always and in all times.”133
In a second programmatic text composed in 1554, Flacius discussed the essen-
tial characteristics of that eternal, true church at greater length. Flacius wrote this
text, known as the Consultation on Writing an Accurate and Learned History of the
Church, as a sort of grant proposal to the Count Palatine, Otto-​Henry.134 In this trea-
tise, Flacius proposed to write a doctrinal history of the church that would comple-
ment and expand on prosopographical approaches to the Christian past. Flacius
still affirmed in the Consultation that there was real value in recounting the lives
and deaths of the faithful and their opposition “to the pseudo-​apostles who pervert
true piety with their depraved desires.” He argued, however, that it was also neces-
sary to chronicle the emergence and preservation of right teaching, “for doctrine
is the very thing brought forth for eternal life and upon which our whole spiritual
life depends.”135 Flacius was well aware that this new kind of history would con-
stitute a massive undertaking. His original list of sources needed for the project
included: local chronicles and annals, inquisition records, all writings “by pious men
against the Antichrist and his abominations,” liturgical texts, early historical works
by Christians, and “books written by papists against those who believe rightly.”136
To handle this massive corpus of texts, Flacius sought a minimum of 500 florins for
each of six years to support four scholars working collectively on this task.137

 Flacius, Scheda, p. 8. Both Luther and Melanchthon had also used this passage to describe
132

the true church over time. On the genealogy of the 7,000 in Lutheran thought, see:  Harald
Bollbuck, “Die Magdeburger Centurien:  Entstehung und Arbeitstechnik eines kirchenhisto-
rischen Unternehmens,” and Vera von der Osten-​Sacken, “Die kleine Herde der 7000—​Die
aufrechten Bekenner in M. Flacius Illyricus konzeptionellen Beiträgen zur Neuformulierung der
Kirchengeschichtschreibung aus protestantischer Sicht,” in Matija Vlačić. Ilirik, pp. 248–​279 and
pp. 184–​213, respectively.
133
 Flacius, Scheda, p. 8.
134
 This text has been published in a modern edition by:  Karl Schottenloher, ed.,
Pfalzgraf Ottheinrich und das Buch:  Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der evangelischen Publizistik
(Münster: Aschendorffsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1927), pp. 147–​157. On this text and the his-
torical methodology it outlined, see the analysis and bibliography in:  Diener, “Zur Methodik,”
pp. 135ff., and Bollbuck, “Entstehung und Arbeitstechnik,” pp. 262–​2 67.
135
 Flacius, Consultatio, pp. 148–​149.
136
 Flacius, Scheda, p. 8.
137
 Flacius first laid out this organizational structure in a letter to Nidbruck written on
October 1, 1553. See: Bibl, “Der Briefwechsel,” vol. 17, 10–​12. On the actualization of this plan in
 The Exemplar 283

At the conclusion of the Consultation, Flacius laid out the polemical necessity of
his chosen projects. Here, he stated explicitly that reading Johannes Cochlaeus’s
“prolix” historical writings had convinced him that it was necessary to narrate the
“life, actions, and religious struggles” of figures such as Martin Luther and Jan
Hus because “we who embrace the truth must create a history of those men and
pious doctors and weave a history of those matters with a devotion to preserving
the truth.”138 Flacius’s choice of words here, using “to create” and “to weave” in
order to describe the writing of history, is significant. These verbs denoted more
than the recording of past events, and suggested instead the purposeful crafting
of a narrative that conveyed the true meaning of history as a record of the continu-
ous transmission of right doctrine via an unbroken chain of faithful witnesses. In
articulating this vision and understanding of history, Flacius placed Hus at the
center of his schema. Indeed, the Bohemian martyr came to serve as the last link
of Flacius’s proverbial chain connecting the Lutheran present to the entirety of
the true church’s past. But Hus’s significance for Flacius can only be understood
in the context of his larger arguments about continuity and persecution as the
central features of Christian history.

The Construction of Continuity

Flacius first delineated these arguments in 1556, when he published his Catalogue
of Witnesses to the Truth. This martyrology was explicitly intended to demonstrate
that “the true church and religion are perpetual,” in the sense that it was con-
structed both around a consistent core of doctrine and of an unbroken chain of
believers.139 This book focused particularly on those believers, as Flacius sought
to show that there had always been a body of the faithful who preserved the teach-
ings and practices of the apostolic church despite persecution.140 In narrating the
history of this church, Flacius noted that he would place its martyrs at the center of
his account, as their lives and deaths had left textual footprints for the historian to
track. He also asserted, though, that “where there was one doctor who perceived
correctly, there were also many listeners … Therefore from historical testimonies

Magdeburg over the ensuing years, see: Diener, “Zur Methodik”; Grafton, “Where Was Salomon’s
House?” and Bollbuck, Wahrheitszeugnis, ch. 4.
138
 Flacius, Consultatio, pp. 156–​157.
139
  Matthias Flacius Illyricus, Catalogus testium veritatis, qui ante nostram aetatem reclamarunt
Papae (Basel: Johannes Oporinus, 1556), this quotation: p. A1r.
140
  On the methodology and arguments of the Catalogue, see: Wilhelm Schmidt-​Biggemann,
“Flacius Illyricus’ ‘Catalogus testium veritatis’ als kontroverstheologische Polemik,” in
Reformer als Ketzer:  Heterodoxe Bewegungen von Vorreformatoren, ed. G. Frank and F. Niewöhner
(Stuttgart:  Friedrich Frommann Verlag, 2004), pp. 263–​ 291; Hartmann, Humanismus und
Kirchenkritik, ch. 6; and Osten-​Sacken, “Die kleine Herde,” especially pp. 200–​2 07.
284 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

it can be abundantly demonstrated that there always existed no few thousands of

people and an upright multitude with a common way of thinking.”141 With this
acknowledgment of the unsung audience of the proto-​Lutheran “saints,” Flacius
attempted to bring his readers into the eternal battle between the true and false
churches that the Catalogue described. In effect, Flacius sought to create a textual
community out of himself and his notional audience that represented the present
incarnation of the past religious leaders and congregations who had constituted
the true church through their collective act of doctrinal preservation.142
In the process of making his case for the Lutherans’ continuity with earlier wit-
nesses, Flacius provided a veritable grand tour of medieval religious literature. He
mined patristic writings, Catholic hagiography, monastic chronicles, and inquisi-
torial records to discover those who had opposed the papacy and espoused evan-
gelical teachings, which he often reduced to questioning the pope’s power and
elevating the centrality of Christ and his sacrifice in salvation.143 In attempting
to find such figures from the early Middle Ages, Flacius inevitably had to stretch
even this minimalist definition of evangelical. He did not have to do so for the
four centuries prior to the outbreak of Luther’s reform, though, as he was certain
that heretical groups such as the Hussites and Waldensians had espoused essen-
tially Lutheran doctrine. This argument had been made even in the early 1520s by
both Protestant authors and their Catholic opponents. Understood as a response
to Cochlaeus’s writings from the previous decade, though, and as an effort to bol-
ster Lutheran arguments about their historical genealogy in the wake of the Peace
of Augsburg, the Catalogue takes on new significance as an exhaustive rebuttal to
those who would deny the Lutherans’ status as the heirs of the apostolic church.
Jan Hus and his Bohemian forerunners and followers were central to the
construction of this tradition. They collectively served as a bridge between the
Lutherans and the Waldensians, whom Flacius considered to have been the most
evangelical of medieval heretics.144 Hus individually represented the center of

 Flacius, Catalogus, p. A4r.

141

  This notion of a “textual community” constituted by a collective engagement with a key

142

religious text is taken from: Brian Stock, Listening for the Text: On the Uses of the Past (Baltimore: The
Johns Hopkins UP, 1990), pp. 23ff.
143
  For an overview of Flacius’s bibliographical research, see: Thomas Haye, “Der Catalogus tes-
tium veritatis des Matthias Flacius Illyricus—​eine Einführung in die Literatur des Mittelalters?”
ARG 83 (1992): 31–​47.
144
  In the beginning of his entry on Hus and Jerome of Prague, Flacius noted that they had
revived Waldensian doctrine on the eucharist and the sufficiency of grace for salvation, which
he equated to the “Christi Evangelium.” Interestingly, his source for this argument was Aeneas
Sylvius Piccolomini, but Flacius rendered this connection positive, contrary to his source material.
See: Flacius, Catalogus, p. 849. On Flacius’s treatment of the Waldensians more generally, see: Euan
Cameron, The Reformation of the Heretics: The Waldenses of the Alps, 1480–​1580 (Oxford: Clarendon,
1984), pp. 237–​2 47.
 The Exemplar 285

gravity for this collection of witnesses, a martyr whose prophetic foretelling of

Luther connected the medieval opponents of the papacy with the contempo-
rary Lutheran church. Altogether, Flacius included eight individuals from the
Bohemian reformation in the Catalogue: Jan Milíč of Kroměříž, Matěj of Janov,
Hus, Jerome of Prague, Peter of Dresden, Jakoubek of Stříbro, Jan Žižka, and
Peter Payne. He also referenced five German “Hussites” who were executed in
the Empire between 1420 and 1456.145 These figures were not all equal in Flacius’s
eyes. He placed them on a spectrum based on the intensity of their opposition to
the papacy, the value of good works to salvation, and the coercive power of the
ecclesiastical hierarchy. According to these metrics, the most evangelical of the
Bohemians had been the Táborites and their leader Žižka, “who adhered closely
to Waldensian doctrines, which were even more pure than those that Hus held
concerning religion.”146 Hus, though, had still been significantly more evangelical
in his teaching than Rokycana, whom Flacius portrayed as a Hussite traitor who
had rejected his mentor’s evangelical beliefs and gone crawling back to Rome.147
It is impossible not to see this depiction of Rokycana as a direct response to
Cochlaeus, whose Twelve Books Flacius dismissed as “invective, rather than his-
tory, and entirely filled with lies.”148 By placing Rokycana on the margins of his
history of the Bohemian reformation, Flacius was also choosing a different stem
line for his Lutheran genealogy. In the Catalogue, it consisted of Hus’s Táborite
and German successors, who had adopted Waldensian theology and the Wyclifite
intellectual vocabulary that had first been synthesized by earlier Bohemian
reformers such as Milíč, Matěj, and Jakoubek.149 And even if Hus had not con-
tributed much to that theological inheritance, his martyrdom had galvanized
the Czechs and spurred them to translate these reformist ideas into a program
for collective action. He had also foretold how that program would be completed

145
  Flacius referred specifically to:  Iohannes Draendorff (d. 1424); Peter Tornau (d. 1426);
Henricus Grunfelder (d. 1420); Henricus Radtgeber (d. 1423); and Matthias Hager (d. 1456).
See: Flacius, Catalogus, p. 853. On these men and their membership within a notional “interna-
tional Hussitism,” see the introductory essay in: A. de Lange and K. Utz Tremp, eds., Friedrich Reiser
und die “waldensisch-​hussitische Internationale” im 15. Jahrhundert (Heidelberg: Verlag Regionalkultur,
2006), pp. 7–​2 8.
146
 Flacius, Catalogus, p. 851.
147
  Ibid. Interestingly, Flacius attributed Rokycana’s treachery to his belief that certain matters
were adiaphora. Flacius noted that Rokycana believed that only communion in both kinds was
truly necessary to salvation, so he compromised on the other core tenets of the Bohemian reform
as embodied in the Four Articles.
148
 Flacius, Catalogus, p. 852.
149
  Flacius was certainly aware of Wyclif ’s influence on the Bohemian reformers (especially
Peter Payne), but he attributed greater importance to the survival of Waldensian ideas concerning
the priesthood and sacraments among the Hussites than the importation of Wyclif ’s critique of the
papacy on the theology of the Hussites. See: Flacius, Catalogus, pp. 846–​8 49.
286 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

“through Luther’s most remarkable gifts” in his prophecy of the swan and goose,
which Flacius included in his entry on Hus.150 That utterance bridged the gap
between the true church’s past and present, and it demonstrated how Flacius’s
intertwined concepts of church history as biography and dogmatics looked when
applied to a specific historical moment and movement. In short, Flacius’s account
of the Bohemian reformation via his biographies of its leaders (and apostates)
exemplified how ideas migrated across time and space but remained ultimately
coherent as a bequest for the next generation of witnesses, whose existence was
guaranteed by divine revelation.
In retrospect, one laconic statement by Flacius in the midst of his entry on Hus
smacks of the greatest irony. In summarizing Hus’s contributions as an author
and theologian, Flacius remarked: “Many writings of the most holy man Jan Hus
are extant, some published and some in manuscript, so it is not necessary for me to
discuss his teachings at length.”151 Two years later, though, Flacius did think it was
necessary. In that year, he published his The History and Monuments of Jan Hus and
Jerome of Prague, Confessors of Christ, an encyclopedic collections of texts by and about
Hus and Jerome that included:  over thirty of Hus’s sermons and his correspon-
dence; his polemical writings and an assortment of texts associated with his trial in
Constance; both the shorter and longer passion narratives for Hus written by Petr
of Mladoňovice; and all of the texts from Brunfels’s three editions of Hussitica, along
with the prefaces and dedications that Luther had contributed to these earlier pub-
lications. All told, Flacius’s collection included forty-​five texts that had never been
published before, which he marked with a special sigil (♣) in the table of contents to
indicate their special status.152 Taken as a whole, this collection provided eloquent
testimony to the success of Flacius and von Nidbruck’s collaborative research on the
Hussite past. It also demonstrated how central Hus’s story had become in Flacius’s
conception of church history as exemplary of its underlying dynamics.
Flacius made this clear in the paratexts that he set around his collection,
especially on the title pages of both volumes. In the first volume, Flacius used
a citation to Genesis 4:10 (“The voice of your brother’s blood cries to me from
the earth”) to identify Hus as the heir of Abel, whom Flacius identified as the
founder of the true church, while condemning Hus’s persecutors as the sons of
Cain.153 In the second volume, Flacius began with a quotation from Revelation
7:14: “These are the ones who have come out of a great tribulation, who have
washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”154 This

 Flacius, Catalogus, p. 850.

150

 Ibid.
151

152
  “Hac nota consignavimus scripta, quae antea typis impressa nunquam fuerunt: ♣” Flacius,
Historia et Monumenta, vol. 1, p. a2v.
153
 Flacius, Historia et Monumenta, vol. 1, p. a1r.
154
 Flacius, Historia et Monumenta, vol. 2, p. a1r.
 The Exemplar 287

reference placed Hus among those who would be raised up by Christ at the last
judgment, so that the combination of both quotations associated Hus typolog-
ically with the origins and apotheosis of the true church. As such, Hus’s story
came to stand in for the entirety of that church’s history, marked as it was by
the proclamation of God’s word, consequent persecution, and ultimate victory
through the perseverance of faith.
Flacius did more to incorporate Hus explicitly into this larger narrative with
his preface to the History and Monuments. In that opening address, Flacius
asserted that it was “an infallible argument for the presence of God in the
church, that doctors have repeatedly been awakened who understand and
refute errors, preserve the purity of doctrine, and persevere in the footsteps of
our Lord.” Flacius further stated that the constant presence of these teachers
was complemented by their commemoration within the true church of God,
which “has celebrated the memory of those who, despite danger to their voice
and life, have professed heavenly doctrine and been a witness to all posterity.”
According to Flacius, “the divine voice promises that this celebration will be
valid and perpetual in the future, because even though the preaching of the
righteous, which was given for the pious, was brief and wretched in this life,
in heaven it will be granted an eternal recollection and reward.”155 By affirm-
ing Hus’s place among these righteous men and consequently condemning the
“savagery of the pope’s henchmen” and their efforts to eradicate the memory of
Hus’s “great labors” and “mighty spirit,” Flacius ensured that Hus’s deeds and
teachings would “shine forth clearly.”156 In short, the History and Monuments
foreshadowed the eternal acknowledgment of Hus’s place among God’s people
by preserving a historical memory for the present church that would last into
an indefinite future.
Consider a woodcut and accompanying poem that Flacius included in both
volumes of this work (see Figure  7.1). The image itself depicted the still-​living
Hus bound at neck and waist to a vertical pole, surrounded by flames, wearing
an unadorned robe, one shoe, and a hat decorated with three cavorting demons.
The details of this image adhered closely to textual and visual descriptions of
Hus’s execution that had originated in the fifteenth century, and Hus’s distinc-
tive hat had become his primary iconographic identifier as “Saint” Jan Hus among
Protestants.157 Above the image itself, a brief inscription stated:  “This was the

155
 Flacius, Historia et Monumenta, vol. 1, p. a2r.
156
 Flacius, Historia et Monumenta, vol. 1, pp. a2r–​a 2v.
157
  On the development of this motif in the martyrological literature of the sixteenth century,
see: Margaret Aston and Elizabeth Ingram, “The Iconography of the Acts and Monuments,” in John
Foxe and the English Reformation, pp. 66–​142, especially pp. 90ff. Cf. Jan Royt, “Ikonografie Mistra
Jana Husa v 15. až 18. století,” in Husitský Tábor Supplementum 1, ed. M. Drda et al. (Tábor: Sborník
Husitského Muzea, 2001), pp. 405–​451.
288 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

Figure 7.1  Matthias Flacius Illyricus; Historia et Monumenta, Volume 1, p. a8v. 

likeness of the venerable Hus, as he gave his body to be burned for Christ.”158
Below the image, a poem made use of an extended ornithological metaphor pun-
ning off of Hus’s last name in order to emphasize his worthiness as an object of
pious veneration:

Conquering the white hawks with snowy purity

Save your Bohemians, o beloved goose!
Eternal glory enfolds you and your memorable name,

 Flacius, Historia et Monumenta, P. a8v. The same inscription, image, and verse are included
158

in vol. 2, p. a2v.
 The Exemplar 289

That neither fury nor time is able to destroy.

Although the black raven with furtive feathers has obscured your
splendor
And crowed with its filthy mouth,
Still there is no Bohemian, nor will there be a more glorious bird,
Who will be able to oppose you with living voice.
For a flock of birds may delight the ears with vain songs,
But you delight the pious with your pure heart and words.159

Here, the combination of inscription, verse, and image made it absolutely clear
that Flacius considered Hus to have been a leading member of the band of wit-
nesses that comprised the true church in his earlier Catalogue. The whole contents
of the History and Monuments also attested to the value of Hus’s words for propa-
gating true doctrine. The imbrication of these two, central purposes in Flacius’s
historical enterprise within the figure of Hus therefore demonstrated his exem-
plarity as an embodiment of the perseverance that characterized the entire his-
tory of the true church. Flacius would begin to publish the comprehensive history
of that church that he and his colleagues at Magdeburg had planned the follow-
ing year, and that project would ultimately become the touchstone of Protestant
historiography for the ensuing generations. What should not be lost, however,
was how the life, death, and afterlife of one man could personify the ebb and flow
of sacred history through the articulation of evangelical truth, the experience of
persecution, and the long-​term preservation of the true church through personal
witness and the construction of historical memory.

Conclusion
There was a triumphalist tone to the Catalogue, History and Monuments, and eventu-
ally the Magdeburg Centuries. In all of these works, the fact that there had been some-
one to write them and (hopefully) many people to read them attested to the unlikely
survival and imminent triumph of the church that they described and defined. But
this tone should not obscure the fact that these texts were written and published at a
time when internal tensions and potential external threats still dogged the Lutheran
church. We might recall Flacius’s words in the weeks before the Regensburg collo-
quy, when he wrote that “there is no greater threat to true piety than the bogus recon-
ciliations and agreements” which the “false brethren” and supporters of the Interim
had tried to foist on the Lutherans.160 And these words echoed the sentiments of

 Ibid.
159

  Flacius, “Letter to the Saxon Dukes,” 304.

160
290 PATRON SA INT A N D PROPH ET

Conrad Braun and Johannes Cochlaeus from the previous decade, when they had
warned the Holy Roman Emperor and other Catholic princes not to accept a false
peace with the Lutheran heretics, but to subdue their opponents entirely. Optimism
and admonition, expectation and trepidation: these elements were always in ten-
sion in the scholarly works that emerged from the German reformation’s history
moment.
In this chapter, I have argued that the figure of Jan Hus was a personification
of that moment and the currents of conflict and eschatological expectation that
characterized it. Much as the textual commemorations of Hus had served as
an arena for debating the legitimacy of the papacy and the nobility’s capacity
for religious reform in the 1520s, or the ability of church councils to determine
matters of faith in the 1530s, in the following decades the history of Hus and the
movement he spawned became a microcosm for the broader history of God’s
people on Earth. Was that a story of repeated, diabolical threats countered by
the power of the united Church and Empire, or a tale of small bands of perse-
cuted, faithful Christians who had persevered with divine aid? That was the
ultimate question, and authors such as Cochlaeus and Flacius went to unprec-
edented scholarly lengths in the 1540s and 1550s in order to answer it.
In providing their answers, and in seeking to determine the continuity of
Lutherans with the saints/​heretics who had come before them, sixteenth-​
century scholars and polemicists established church history as a constitutive
discourse in religious identity.161 By situating themselves within competing,
comprehensive visions of the church’s past, these authors both sought to deter-
mine political action in the present and forecast the outcomes of that action in
the future. Historiography, then, was about much more that recounting events
that already occurred; it was, perhaps primarily, about navigating events that
had not yet unfolded. It was especially within this context that the story of Jan
Hus and the Bohemian reformation maintained its resonance for the Lutherans
and their Catholic interlocutors as a completed iteration of the timeless cycle
of proclamation, opposition, and survival that ultimately characterized sacred
history. Understood in this way, the historical texts of this chapter represented
the culmination of the previous thirty years’ treatments of Jan Hus. Building off
of those pamphlets, prefaces, and plays, authors like Flacius and Cochlaeus had

161
  This is the essential point of much of the recent scholarship on ecclesiastical historiography
in the early modern period. Exemplary statements of this argument can be found in the essays
in: Mark Greengrass and Matthias Pohlig, eds., “Themenschwerpunkt/​Focal Point: The Protestant
Reformation and the Middle Ages,” ARG 101 (2010); Anthony Grafton, “Church History in
Early Modern Europe:  Tradition and Innovation,” in Sacred History:  Uses of the Christian Past in
the Renaissance World, ed. S. Ditchfield et al. (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2012), pp. 3–​2 6; and Backus,
Historical Method, especially the introduction.
 The Exemplar 291

embedded Hus within diametrically opposed interpretations of the Christian

past that agreed on only one thing:  that a proper knowledge and understand-
ing of the rise and fall of the movement started by Jan Hus in the previous cen-
tury could illuminate the larger dynamics that had determined that history as
a whole.
 Conclusion

Consider the first page of the Martinic Bible (see Figure C.1). It is here, beneath
the lavishly illuminated capital to the first chapter of the book of Genesis, that we
can see the earliest extant depiction of Hus’s execution rendered by a sympathetic
artist. Hus is recognizable for his heretic’s hat, and he is bound to a sturdy stake
by a chain at the neck and ropes at his waist. Bundles of wood at the foot of the
pyre are already aflame, and Hus’s clean-​shaven face is turned slightly towards an
unseen audience or interlocutor. This early image already contains a number of
visual attributes that would become canonical in the artistic portrayal of Hus, but
one feature of this illumination is distinctive. In the foreground of the picture, a
man moves away from the fire but looks back over his shoulder towards the mar-
tyr. In his right hand is a small book.1
It is tempting to identify this nameless figure as Petr of Mladoňovice, whose
eyewitness accounts of Hus’s trial and death proved so crucial in the creation
of the Czech preacher’s cult. Indeed, this entire book has been concerned with
tracing the implications of this primary act of preservation and transmis-
sion, which in turn begat poems, pamphlets, plays, prayers, songs, sermons,
and treatises dedicated to elaborating on Petr’s fundamental identification of
Jan Hus as an authentic Christian martyr-​saint. Whether in periods of holy
war, fragile peace, or escalating religious tensions, the textual relics that Hus
had left behind served as a source that the groups who claimed to be his heirs
could mine to fuel their rhetorical campaigns against both their internal and
external opponents. But the figure of Hus that later religious leaders crafted
to mount their arguments was essentially fungible, and it is one of the central
contentions of this project that we must pay careful attention to the shifting

1
 On this illumination, see:  Martina Šárovcová, “Jan Květ a Martinická bible,” in
Tvarujete si sami? Sborník příspěvků ze Třetího sjezdu historiků umění, ed. M. Bartlová and H. Látal
(Prague: Nakladatelství Lidové Noviny, 2010), pp. 274–​2 84; and Milena Bartlová, “Iconography
of Jan Hus,” in A Companion to Jan Hus, ed. O. Pavliček and F. Šmahel (Boston: Brill, 2015), pp.
325–​3 41.

292
Figure C.1  Hus Being Burned at the Stake; the Martinic Bible (MS KAVČR 1 TB 3),
Fol. 11b © Library of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. 
294 Conclusion

Figures C.2 and C.3  Medallion of Jan Hus Produced in Nuremberg, c. 1530; By
Hieronymus Dietrich, Husitský Muzeum, Tábor, #N-​Me 6362. 

contours of debate and the specific historical exigencies that drove the produc-
tion of commemorations of Hus if we are to understand how his image evolved
over time and transformed the patron saint of the Bohemian reformation into
a Lutheran prophet.
The results of Hus’s gradual transformation are captured in a medallion
issued in Nuremberg during the 1530s (see Figures C.2 and C.3). On one side
of this silver coin Hus is depicted in profile; he is bearded, emaciated, and wears
a doctor’s biretta over collared robes. Around this image are words drawn from
the Nicene Creed: “I believe there to be one holy and catholic Church.” On the
obverse of the medallion is an image of Hus bound to a stake with a pile of wood
stacked at his feet. He is wearing a hat (whose demons have been effaced by
time), and he is naked except for a loincloth. The opening line of Hus’s supposed
prophecy about Martin Luther is written in a band around the edge of the coin’s
face: “With a hundred years having passed, you will also answer to me before
God.” Coins and medals were produced to commemorate many events during
the German reformation, most notably its hundred-​year anniversary in 1617. 2
In this particular case, though, the paired images and words of the medal repre-
sented a precious repackaging of Hus. Here, the textual and dramatic portrayal
of the Bohemian priest that had animated the work of scholars like Johannes
Agricola was given a more concrete form that could become ubiquitous—​
carried or distributed anywhere as a tangible memento of the German reforma-
tion’s prophetic foundations.
The visualization of Hus during the sixteenth century also extended beyond
images of his martyrdom. Whether shown administering communion to mem-
bers of the Saxon Elector’s house alongside Martin Luther or placed among a
crowd of the first-​and second-​generation leaders of the Lutheran church, Hus was

 For an analysis of these medals as religious propaganda, see:  Scribner, “Incombustible

2

Luther,” pp. 55–​61.
 Conclusion 295

often shown as an active participant in early modern religious reform. 3 And while
he was often depicted in subordinate positions to contemporary reformers—​
especially Luther—​t he artistic representation of Hus’s continued engagement in
the work of ministry suggests that this figure and the Christian history he repre-
sented had not been relegated to a distant, or at least distinct, past. This conclusion
illustrates this book’s argument as a whole, namely, that both fifteenth-​century
Utraquists and sixteenth-​century Lutheran authors maintained a holistic sense
of time in which the church’s past, present, and future were bound together by
the ties of prophecy, liturgical memoria, and speculation about the world’s immi-
nent end. Granted, both the means and theology by which this holistic sense was
maintained changed between the Bohemian and German reformations, as did
the technologies with which commemorative materials were preserved. But such
transformations, I think, neither dismembered the unified temporal horizon that
structured the liturgical commemorations and the written histories of Jan Hus in
the era of the European reformations nor diminished the role that Hus’s writings
and death played in legitimizing religious dissent in central Europe.
To assert this fundamental continuity is to call for the reconsideration of some
recent historiography that has argued that the Protestant reformations signaled a
decisive break from medieval practices and mindsets that were dedicated to preserv-
ing the dead’s place among living society. Recently, scholars such as Constantine
Fasolt and Craig Koslofsky have argued that during the early modern period, and
especially during the German reformation, people’s sense of the past changed. For
Koslofsky, it was the Reformation’s rejection of Purgatory and consignment of the
dead to social and physical burial spaces outside the community of the living that
severed the present’s direct relation to the past.4 He sees the German reformation
as rejecting memoria and its emphasis on the presence of the dead in living society,
which therefore led to “a past that is history: profane, finite, finished, and separate.”5
Fasolt also sees a decisive shift in historical consciousness taking place during
the early modern period, and although he is more elusive about the specifics, he
boldly asserts that sixteenth-​century Europe witnessed “history’s origin in the

3
  On the visual transformation of Hus into a more ascetic figure in sixteenth-​century art,
see:  Milena Bartlová, “Kdy Jan Hus zhubl a nechal si narůst plnovous? Vizuální komunikační
media jako historiografický pramen,” in Zrození Mýtu: Dva životy husitské epochy, ed. R. Novotný
et al. (Prague: Paseka, 2011), pp. 205–​215. See also: Thomas Fudge, “Picturing the Death and Life
of Jan Hus in the Iconography of Early Modern Europe,” Kosmas: Czechoslovak and Central European
Journal 23 (2009): 1–​18.
4
  On this argument, see the introduction to: Craig Koslofsky, The Reformation of the Dead: Death
and Ritual in Early Modern Germany, 1450–​1700 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000); and idem,
“From Presence to Remembrance: the Transformation of Memory in the German Reformation,”
in The Work of Memory: New Directions in the Study of German Society and Culture, ed. A. Confino and
P. Fritszche (Chicago: U. of Illinois Press, 2002), pp. 25–​38.
5
  Koslofsky, “From Presence to Remembrance,” p. 34.
296 Conclusion

great early modern war on medieval forms of order” and its use “as a weapon against
a certain form of government.”6 Fasolt additionally claims that this new historical
mentality depended in part on the principle that “the past is gone forever,” citing
the need of early modern scholars to fence off portions of the past that they could
pick over in order to substantiate arguments about their present.7 Fasolt’s larger
point is that contemporary historians do exactly the same thing, but that we are
less aware that we are doing it, and less candid in acknowledging that “history is
not as innocent as it appears to be. It is not merely a form of understanding, but also
a form of self-​assertion.”8 This observation is certainly true, and a striking demand
that historians be more explicit about the intellectual and ideological commit-
ments that structure our scholarship. Within this larger project, though, there
lies a similar underlying argument to Koslofsky’s: that the Reformation promoted
an intellectual shift that perceived the past and present as indelibly separated by
demanding the transformation of a living and organic memorial culture into a style
of historical discourse that saw the past as distinct and separate.
While it is clear that the sixteenth century witnessed a significant shift in how
the past was preserved and utilized within religious discourse, there is a problem
with these scholars’ emphasis on disjunction. That problem is prophecy. The cen-
trality of a figure like Hus in emergent Lutheran historical discourse suggests that
any break between past and present within early modern mindsets could be—​and
certainly was—​bridged by the words and example of individuals (or even move-
ments) who offered insight into the future unfolding of history. And that insight
was not simply abstract or eschatological. In conflicts over the potential errancy
of church councils, the role of the nobility in reforming the Church, or the pos-
sibility of negotiation with emperor and pope on matters of reform, Hus’s words
and the example of the Bohemian reformation offered both practical guidance
and specific admonitions to sixteenth-​century Lutherans that gained additional
authority from Hus’s status as a prophet and saint.
By way of conclusion, then, this book has sought to demonstrate how the com-
memoration of Jan Hus in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was deployed at
crucial junctures in order to justify religious reform and even revolution. By draw-
ing on different components of Hus’s theological teachings, his work as a preacher,
and narrative elements from the judicial process that led to his death, authors from
across the confessional spectrum used the figure of Hus to authorize disparate,
and often discordant, courses of action. Over the course of 150 years following

  Fasolt has made this argument exhaustively in his magisterial work:  The Limits of History
6

(Chicago: U. of Chicago Press, 2004), especially pp. 19–​2 0. Cf. the more provocative, pity restate-
ment of his main thesis in:  “The Limits of History in Brief,” Historically Speaking 6 (2005):  5–​10,
pp. 7–​8 .
7
 Fasolt, The Limits of History, ix.
8
  Fasolt, “The Limits of History in Brief,” 5.
 Conclusion 297

his death, Hus remained at the center of the debates that framed the Bohemian
and German reformations; and the myriad ways in which late medieval and early
modern authors, preachers, and artists represented him attest to both his potency
as a symbol of reform and their creativity in finding new means and media for
displaying that symbol. Underlying this specific analysis of Hus’s resonance and
relevance for both the Bohemian and German reformations, however, is also an
argument about how close attention to the commemoration of Jan Hus can enable
us to discern the outlines of a broader transformation in the style in which early
modern scholars invented and engaged with their pasts, even if there was, I think,
a much slower and more fragmentary evolution of the substance of their historical
consciousness. The past was always present in fifteenth-​and sixteenth-​century reli-
gious debate, and the afterlives of Jan Hus illuminate that persistence through the
spectacular emergence and contested evolution of two reformations.
 BI BLIOGR A PH Y

Abbreviations
AČ Archiv Český
ARG Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte
BRRP Bohemian Reformation and Religious Practice
CV Communio Viatorum
Die Hussitische Šmahel, František, Die Hussitische Revolution, ed.
Revolution A. Patschovsky, trans. T. K rzenck, 3 vols. (Hannover: Hansche
Buchhandlung, 2002).
Documenta Palacký, František, ed. Documenta mag. Joannis Hus:  Vitam,
doctrinam, causam in Constantiensi concilio actam et controver-
sias de religione in Bohemia, annis 1403–​1418 motas illustrantia
(Prague: B. F. Tempsky, 1869).
FRB Fontes rerum Bohemicarum
Geschichtschreiber Höfler, Karl, ed., Geschichtschreiber der Husitischen Bewegung in
Böhmen, 3 vols. (Graz: Akademische Druck-​u. Verlagsanstalt,
1865–​1866).
Historia et Illyricus, Matthias Flacius, ed., Joannis Huss et Hieronymi.
Monumenta Pragensis confessorum Christi historia et monumenta, 2 vols.
(Nuremberg: Johann vom Berg and Ulrich Neuber, 1558).
Korespondence Novotný, Václav, ed., M. Jana Husi Korespondence a Dokumenty
(Prague: NKVPNHC, 1920).
MCG von Birk, E., and Palacký, F., eds., Monumenta conciliorum
generalium seculi decimi quinti, 4  vols. (Vienna:  Typis C.R.
Officinae typographicae aulae et status, 1857–​1935).
SRS Stenzel, G.A., ed., Scriptores Rerum Silesiacarum, 17  vols.
(Breslau: Max, 1835–​1902).
UB Palacký, František, ed., Urkundliche Beiträge zur Geschichte
des Hussitenkrieges vom Jahre 1419 an, 2  vols. (Prague:  B.F.
Tempsky, 1873).

299
300 Bibliogr aphy

UBZG  Palacký, František, ed., Urkundliche Beiträge zur

Geschichte Böhmens und seiner Nachbarländers im Zeitalter
Georgs von Podiebrad (1450–​ 1471) (Vienna:  Hofs und
Staatsdruckerei, 1860).
WA D. Martin Luthers Werke, 73 vols. (Weimar: H. Böhlau, 1883–​).
WABr D.  Martin Luthers Werke, 4.  Abt.:  Briefwechsel, 18  vols.
(Weimar: H. Böhlau, 1883–​).
Zwischen Zeiten Seibt, Ferdinand, ed., Jan Hus:  Zwischen Zeiten, Völkern,
Konfessionen: Vorträge des internationalen Symposions in Bayreuth
vom 22. bis 26. September 1993 (Munich: R . Oldenbourg, 1997).

Primary Sources
M A N U S C R I P T S C O N S U LT E D
Czech National Librar y in Prag ue
MS NKP VIII E 3—​Collection of sermons by Jakoubek of Stříbro, c. 1415–​1429
MS NKP VI E 24—​A nonymous sermon collection, pre-​1419
MS NKP VI E 23—​A nonymous sermon collection, c. 1415
MS NKP V G 3—​Collection of sermons by Jan Želivský, c. 1419
MS NKP III H 9—​Collection of Sunday sermons by Václav Dráchow, 1461
MS NKP VI C 20a—​Liturgical book, c. 1500
MS NKP VI B 24—​Liturgical book from Prague, c. 1500
MS NKP XXIII F 113—​Collection of sermons by Priest Václav, c. 1478
MS NKP 42 G 28—​ copy of the Breviarus Horarum Canonicarum secundum Rubricam
Archiepiscopatus Eccclesie Pragensis (Nuremberg: Georg Stuchs, 1492)
National Museum in Prague
MS NM IV B 24—​Collection of printed works and manuscript illuminations commonly known
as the Jena Codex, c. 1495

Prague Cathedral Chapter Library

MS kapitol. F 40—​A nonymous sermon collection, c. 1415–​1420
MS kapitol. F 116—​A nonymous Utraquist postilla, likely composed by Václav Koranda, post
1480

Prague Castle Library

MS Pražského hradu F 59—​Collection of sermons by Václav Dráchow, c. 1460–​1469

Library of the Czech Academy of Arts and Sciences

MS KAVČR 1 TB 3—​I lluminated Bible known as the Martinic Bible, c. 1431

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 IN DEX
Adamites: 85
Agricola, Johannes: 18, 190, 193–​195, 205–​2 07,
210–​217, 239–​2 41, 243–​2 47, 252, 254, 267,
278, 294; Tragedy of Jan Hus: 190, 210–​215,
239, 243–​2 46
Albrecht of Austria, King of Bohemia: 109
Aleander, Girolamo, Cardinal: 238–​2 39
Andreas of Regensburg: 89–​9 0
Andrew of Brod: 88–​89, 240
Antichrist: 7, 9, 22, 33, 51–​5 3, 57, 74, 80, 83,
87, 91, 134, 151–​152, 160–​161, 166–​167,
173, 176–​178, 180–​182, 185, 187–​188, 191,
194, 200, 202–​2 04, 208, 210, 213, 216, 230,
241, 248–​2 49, 258, 265, 273, 274 n. 99, 275,
282; Papal Antichrist: 16, 18, 151–​1 52,
160–​161, 173–​174, 176–​177, 181–​182,
185, 187, 191, 203, 208, 213, 230, 241,
248–​2 49, 258
Apocalypse: 3, 7, 18, 50–​55, 57, 60, 67, 151, 160,
174, 177, 187, 189, 204, 258, 278
Augsburg: 153, 188, 196, 236–​2 37, 248, 254,
270, 273, 280, 284
Augsburg Interim: 254–​255, 260, 267,
271–​272, 289
Barbatus, Jan: 23 n. 5, 30–​33, 43, 139
Battle of Lipany: 100–​101, 110
Beaufort, Henry, Cardinal: 86–​87
Bernhard von Luxemburg: 150, 167–​169,
178, 235
Bethlehem Chapel: 7, 11–​15, 23, 32, 57, 99,
120, 209
Bible: 30, 95, 153–​156, 165, 198–​199, 203–​2 04,
226, 236, 256–​257, 273
biblical figures: 82–​83, 89–​91, 209, 213, 226,
251, 257, 273, 279; Elijah as model (see
Elijah); models for Hus: 16, 30–​31, 34, 61,
63, 65, 82, 88, 130, 134, 286; Hussites as
Maccabees: 69, 74–​75, 92
329
Bohemia; Hus as symbol of: 32, 35, 37, 53, 61, 67,
91–​94, 103, 105–​107, 118–​119, 122, 128–​129,
131, 134, 147–​148, 297; national church: 67,
70–​71, 77–​8 0, 100–​103, 105, 118, 123, 126,
128, 135, 147 (see also Church and Utraquist);
reformation: 2–​6 , 14–​16, 19, 25, 35, 60
n. 140, 70–​71, 100, 103, 110, 114, 123, 135,
142, 147, 164, 173, 177, 187, 220, 238–​2 39,
250, 259–​2 60, 265–​2 66, 268–​2 69, 274,
285–​2 86, 294–​297
Bracciolini, Poggio: 142, 192
Braun, Conrad: 260–​2 63, 265, 269, 272, 290
Breslau: 73, 124–​125, 259
Brunfels, Otto: 174–​178, 180–​182, 185, 189, 191,
193, 208, 230, 267, 278, 286
Bugenhagen, Johannes: 201 n. 47, 258, 259 n. 39
Cajetan, Thomas, Cardinal: 152–​153
Capito, Wolfgang: 170–​171
Carion, Johannes: 278–​279
Carvajal, Juan, Cardinal Legate: 110–​111,
125 n. 76
Caspar von Nidbruck: 281, 282 n. 137, 286
Castiglione, Branda, Cardinal: 86
Catholic Church. See Church
Cesarini, Giuliano, Cardinal: 86, 93–​95, 269
chalice (blood of Christ): 41, 54, 72, 96–​9 7, 100,
103, 106, 112, 118–​119, 122, 124, 128–​129,
133, 138–​139, 142, 146–​147, 206 n. 70 as
Hussite symbol: 54, 97, 106, 118, 124, 128,
138–​139, 142, 147
Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor: 162, 188,
196–​198, 248, 252–​2 53, 254 n. 21, 260,
270–​271, 276 n. 107, 280
Cheb Judge: 95–​96
Chelčický, Petr: 95
Church; apostolic/​primitive model: 2, 4, 7–​11,
34–​35, 51, 53, 56, 81, 93, 95, 97–​98, 119, 139,
141–​142, 190, 200, 207, 282–​2 84; as bearer of
330 Index
tradition/​Holy Spirit: 97; Catholic: 10, 17–​18,
21–​22, 25, 35, 37–​50, 53–​56, 59, 68, 81, 97–​98,
100, 104, 106, 108, 111–​112, 115–​117, 130,
134–​135, 141, 152, 154, 158–​160, 166, 169,
173, 175–​176, 181, 228, 230, 235–​238, 249,
255, 270; as community of predestined: 8–​9,
11, 107, 156; in Czech lands: 1–​2 , 17, 34–​35,
38, 41, 44, 49–​50, 67, 70–​71, 77–​8 0, 100–​103,
105, 118, 123, 126, 128, 135, 147; hierarchy
of: 1, 8, 12–​13, 15, 21–​22, 35–​36, 42, 44, 54,
56, 90, 94, 97, 100, 108, 160, 171, 173, 190,
194–​195, 197, 200–​2 01, 205, 207, 214, 232,
285; Lutheran: 1, 20, 216, 248, 250, 281–​2 82,
285, 289, 294; Roman authority of: 16–​18, 25,
37, 40–​42, 54, 98, 116, 155–​156, 161, 166–​
167, 169, 181, 195, 198, 201, 207, 229, 239,
255, 261, 266, 281; true vs. false Church: 8,
10–​11, 14, 16, 18–​19, 49, 76, 107, 118, 123, 135,
141, 189–​191, 193, 195, 201, 216, 222–​223,
235, 249, 251, 273–​276, 282–​284, 286–​287,
289; Utraquist: 17, 20, 70–​71, 100–​102, 105–​
111, 117–​124, 126–​128, 131, 135, 138, 141,
147, 151, 192, 212, 238
Clement VII, Pope: 196
Clerk, John: 164–​165
Cochlaeus, Johannes: 18–​19, 218–​2 47, 250–​252,
259–​270, 272, 283–​2 85, 290; response to
Hus: 218–​2 47, 250, 285; response to Luther:
218–​2 47, 251, 259–​270
Coelius, Michael: 256, 258
commemoration of Hus: 1–​6, 15–​30, 34–​4 0,
44, 54, 66–​67, 71, 75, 103–​107, 120–​123, 128,
130–​134, 139–​148, 151, 192, 257, 287–​290,
294–​297; by Catholics: 3, 19, 37–​38, 44,
66–​67; by Hussites: 2–​6, 17, 22–​2 3, 25–​30,
35–​4 0, 44, 54, 62, 66–​67, 71, 75, 103–​107,
120–​123, 128, 130–​134, 139–​148, 151, 192;
by Lutherans: 2–​6, 18, 250, 257, 287–​290,
294–​297
communion: 1, 7–​8, 11, 38, 61, 72, 76, 80, 85–​86,
98–​99, 105, 112, 117, 126, 129, 137–​139, 141,
148, 162, 200, 202, 206–​2 07, 223 n. 13,
228–​229, 236, 240–​2 42; doctrine of
transubstantiation (see transubstantiation);
in both kinds: 21, 50–​51, 59, 63, 65, 71–​72,
77, 80–​81, 85, 96, 98, 101–​102, 105, 108, 111,
118–​119, 123, 126, 128–​129, 134–​135, 141,
145–​146, 165, 200, 206–​2 07, 255 (see also
Utraquist); theology of: 1, 7–​8, 24 n. 13, 80,
85, 98, 112, 207, 228–​229, 236, 240–​2 41,
284 n. 144
Compactata (1436): 70, 101 n. 120, 102 n. 121,
103, 106, 108–​111, 113, 115, 117–​118, 123,
127, 137, 218–​219, 238, 268–​2 69; revocation
of (1462): 106, 110–​111, 117–​118, 123
Conrad of Vechta, Archbishop of Prague: 85
conversion: 112–​113, 215, 227, 276
Corvinus, Matthias, King of Hungary: 106–​107,
126–​127, 135, 146
Council; of Basel (1431): 2–​3 n. 2, 17, 54, 69–​70,
94–​9 7, 100–​101, 108, 112, 114, 147, 155 n. 21,
171, 218, 268; of Constance (1415): 1, 15–​17,
21–​22, 26–​2 8, 29–​30 n. 34, 32–​33, 35–​4 4,
51–​52, 54, 59, 61, 64, 66, 73, 79, 81, 94–​9 9,
104, 107, 119–​120, 132–​133, 147, 149, 151,
155 n. 21, 156, 158, 162–​163, 166, 171–​172,
192–​195, 198–​2 07, 210, 213–​214, 239–​2 41,
244–​2 45, 266, 274, 286; of Trent (1545–​1563):
248, 254–​255, 259, 272
Crespin, Jean: 250, 277; crusade: 13, 22, 67–​8 0,
83–​87, 89–​95, 101, 115, 124–​126, 143, 171;
additional anti-​Hussite: 68–​70, 84, 86–​87,
89–​95, 101, 125–​126, 171; anti-​Turkish: 115,
124–​126, 252; first anti-​Hussite (1420): 67,
71–​8 4, 91–​9 2
cult of Hus: 1, 4, 17–​18, 23–​39, 66, 105, 120, 123,
131–​134, 146–​147, 292; Catholic resistance
to: 37–​38, 50; development of: 17–​18, 23–​39,
146–​147; feast day of (July 6): 1, 16–​18, 38–​39,
50, 64, 75, 103, 105, 107, 120–​122, 128–​133,
147–​148, 219; role of memory in: 16–​18, 23–​25,
28, 39, 105
cult of saints: 4, 18, 23, 60, 147, 236, 242
Czech. See Bohemia
defenestration: 65, 71
deixis: 211, 215
diet: 72, 100, 103, 114 n. 31, 124–​125, 127, 136–​137,
162, 188, 196, 222, 236–​2 37, 254, 267, 270,
273; in Brno (1419): 72; of Kutná Hora
(1485): 137; of Speyer (1526, 1529): 196;
of St Lawrence (1478): 127, 135; of Worms
(1521): 151, 162–​163, 222–​223, 225, 248,
257, 265 n. 63
Donatist: 150, 156, 166, 226
Eck, Johannes: 149, 154, 155 n. 19, 163, 167, 236
Edict of Worms (1521): 188, 196
Ehrstine, Glenn: 211, 214
Elijah: 7, 30, 33–​3 4, 63, 132, 134, 226, 251, 256,
258, 274, 279, 281; as model for preacher: 7,
33–​3 4, 256; as symbol for Hus: 30, 33–​3 4,
63, 132, 134; as symbol for Luther: 251, 256,
258, 274
Emser, Hieronymus: 150, 163–​167, 232–​2 33
Eucharist. See Communion
Eugenius IV, Pope: 94–​95, 110–​111
excommunication: 13–​14, 22, 50, 59, 124–​125,
153, 162, 181, 207, 240 n. 73, 274–​175; of
Hus: 13–​14, 240 n. 73; of Luther: 153, 162
exile: 14–​15, 37 n. 69, 59, 88 n. 70, 118, 189, 276
Exsurge Domine: 160–​162, 165, 173
 Index
Fabri, Johannes, Bishop of Vienna: 218–​219, 239
Fernand of Lucena: 59, 73, 82
Four Articles: 80–​81, 92–​93, 96–​98, 100, 102
n. 121, 172
Franciscan order: 112–​113, 135–​137
Frederick III, Holy Roman Emperor: 112
Frederick, Margrave of Brandenburg: 87, 92
Fudge, Thomas: 2–​3 n. 2, 5–​6, 16 n. 48, 55
n. 121, 71 n. 9
Gallus, Nicholas: 271
George, Duke of Saxony: 162–​164, 218, 224,
233, 252, 259
George of Poděbrady, King of Bohemia: 106–​107,
110, 114–​118, 124–​126, 128, 224
George the Hermit: 134
German reformation: 2–​6, 15–​16, 18–​19, 148,
149 n. 1, 151–​152, 154, 156, 162, 164, 166,
173, 181–​182, 187, 195, 198, 212, 216–​217,
220–​221, 223, 230, 241, 245, 247, 251–​252,
255, 259, 269, 276, 280, 290, 294–​297
Giovanni da Capistrano: 112–​114, 124
Glorious Campaign: 92, 163
Gnesio–​Lutheran: 249, 255, 280
goose/​s wan prophecy: 189, 212, 215, 259
n. 39, 286
Gregory XII, Pope: 13
Heidelberg Disputation: 152–​153
Henry VIII, King of England: 164–​165
Heresy: 2, 4, 13, 21, 33–​3 4, 38, 40–​43, 49–​50,
52, 58–​61, 67, 71, 77, 79, 87, 89, 90–​94,
113, 116, 124, 150–​152, 156, 158, 161–​170,
172, 178, 198, 200–​2 01, 208, 216, 219–​227,
229–​2 30, 235–​2 39, 241, 243, 258, 260–​2 68;
historical tradition of: 91, 151–​152, 165–​169,
187, 222, 238–​2 39, 269, 290; Hussites
accused of: 38, 40, 50, 58–​59, 61, 68, 73, 77,
79, 81, 87–​89, 90–​91, 94, 101, 113, 115–​116,
130, 156, 226, 170, 192, 224, 266–​2 67, 284;
repression of: 40, 163, 262–​2 63; as sedition:
150, 172, 227, 261–​2 63
history; Catholic construction of: 19, 218–​225,
229–​2 30, 238–​2 43, 259, 260–​2 66, 268–​270;
Hussite narrative of: 2, 4, 16, 66, 100, 116,
119, 142, 148, 171–​173, as literature of crisis:
276–​2 83; Lutheran construction of: 2, 4, 6,
16, 19, 148, 151–​152, 173, 175, 181, 190–​191,
194–​195, 212–​213, 216–​217, 247–​252, 259,
270–​291, 295–​296; rhetoric of continuity:
283–​291
humanist: 3, 23, 114, 158, 170–​171, 174 n. 109,
192, 222, 234, 241, 244
Hus, Jan; as apocalyptic witness: 18, 149–​187,
189, 204–​2 05; biography/​vita of: 6, 123,
134, 145, 178, 286; comparison to Christ:
331
12, 26–​31, 38, 51–​52, 64, 119, 121, 123, 134,
190, 204; cult of (see cult of Hus); death of:
1–​3, 15–​18, 22–​2 3, 25–​33, 35–​37, 39–​41,
43–​4 4, 48–​49, 53–​58, 61–​62, 64–​67, 71, 73,
75, 77, 80, 83, 89, 99, 103–​105, 107, 122–​123,
129–​131, 134, 139, 142, 145–​147, 151–​152,
157, 159–​161, 163, 172–​173, 175, 177, 182,
185–​187, 190–​195, 202–​205, 209, 212–​217,
221, 241, 250, 252, 257, 267, 274–​275, 277–​278,
287–​289, 292–​297; as exemplar: 17, 57, 63, 66,
77, 91, 93–​94, 99, 128, 136, 185, 187, 248–​291;
as foil to Sigismund: 28–​29, 42, 44, 76–​77; as
forerunner to Luther: 5, 18, 159, 173, 189, 207,
220–​221, 239–​2 40, 278; as heretic: 1, 12–​16,
21–​22, 25, 37–​38, 40–​4 4, 49, 59, 67, 87, 91,
99, 105, 116, 139, 148–​150, 159, 162, 165, 168,
178, 205, 209, 219, 226, 228–​229, 230, 239,
241, 244, 263–​2 64, 284, 292; as intercessor:
107, 123, 131–​132, 135, 147; as martyr: 5, 10,
15–​17, 25–​38, 51, 53, 65–​67, 71, 83, 93, 96,
100, 103–​105, 111–​112, 120–​122, 129–​135,
139, 141, 145–​148, 152, 172–​173, 175–​178,
180–​182, 185, 190–​193, 205, 210, 212–​216,
230, 241, 248, 252, 266, 277–​278, 283,
285, 288, 292, 294; as militant saint: 31, 62,
128–​130, 133–​135; memorialization of (see
commemoration of Hus); On the Church (De
Ecclesia): 14–​15, 157–​159; passion narrative
(passio): 17, 23, 28–​33, 35, 105, 123, 139, 142,
145, 148, 215, 286; as patron: 3, 17, 31–​32, 67,
90, 102, 104–​148, 266, 294; as preacher: 1, 6,
10–​13, 15, 23, 33–​3 4, 36, 38, 50–​51, 54, 57,
61, 63, 66, 90, 99, 136, 142, 144, 152, 176, 182,
183, 203, 213, 292, 296; as prophet: 3, 18, 20,
33–​3 4, 54, 148, 152, 173, 188–​217, 250, 259,
277–​278, 285–​2 86, 294, 296; as saint: 1, 16,
21–​67, 77, 90, 102, 106, 116, 119–​123, 128–​
132, 134, 136, 138, 141, 145–​148, 167, 175,
178–​182, 185, 192, 194, 205, 215, 230, 241,
244, 250, 287, 292, 294, 296; Sermon on Peace:
15, 98; as symbol of Czech nation: 32, 35,
37, 53, 61, 67, 91–​94, 103, 105–​107, 118–​119,
122, 128–​129, 131, 134, 147–​148, 297; textual
legacy of: 25, 57–​58, 63, 99, 120, 157–​158,
204–​210, 286; trial of: 2, 5–​6, 15–​16, 18, 26–​
30, 40–​43, 120, 134, 142–​143, 146, 152, 160–​
163, 182, 185, 187, 189–​195, 202–​210, 212,
214, 217, 239–​244, 247, 266, 277, 286, 292; at
University of Prague: 6, 10–​14, 26, 121–​123
Hussite; assembly of: 32, 55, 63–​65, 78, 135 as
elect: 9–​11, 34–​35, 61, 69, 76, 83, 90, 98, 119,
121; fragmentation of: 17, 70, 84–​85, 96, 101;
martyrs: 14, 34–​35, 51, 56, 64, 69, 71–​73,
76–​8 0, 82–​83, 105, 116, 128–​134, 136, 139,
140, 141, 145–​148; militant stance: 3, 17, 31,
41, 55, 66–​67, 69, 71–​81, 86–​87, 92–​94, 96,
332
100–​102, 110, 116, 127–​128, 130–​133, 135,
142, 146–​147; as movement: 2, 14, 17–​19,
25, 31, 37, 50, 55–​59, 65–​6 6, 69–​75, 78, 80,
99–​103, 116, 138, 147, 151, 163, 169–​171,
187, 191, 212, 223, 238, 259; political support
for: 13, 59–​6 0, 106–​107, 110, 115–​116,
124–​125, 170; radicalism: 17, 25, 37, 39, 55,
60–​6 6, 70, 75, 78, 85, 109, 115, 129–​130,
267; rapprochement: 69–​70, 92–​95, 101–​103,
108, 114–​115, 137–​138, 218; rejection of
Sigismund: 72–​83; violence against: 41, 58,
63–​65, 68–​79, 86–​87, 93, 102, 124–​126, 129,
137 (see also crusade)
Hussite revolution: 17, 25, 37, 61, 71, 74–​81, 100,
105, 107, 109–​110, 147, 223. See also uprising
Hussitica: 176–​177, 185, 191, 207, 286
Illyricus, Matthias Flacius: 16, 19, 248–​252,
269–​276, 280–​291
indulgences: 13–​14, 34, 55, 116, 152–​154, 161,
171, 181, 256
interdict: 14, 22, 50, 55–​56, 58–​59, 125
Jagiellon dynasty: 1–​2 n. 1, 127, 135
Jakoubek of Stříbro: 23, 31–​35, 50–​51, 52 n. 106,
55, 57, 62–​64, 66, 73–​75, 98 n. 110, 99, 111–​112,
118–​119, 168, 285
Jan of Jesenice: 50
Jerome of Prague: 21–​2 2, 34–​3 5, 38–​3 9, 43
n. 90, 59, 62, 64, 73, 82, 89–​91, 105, 116,
131–​133, 142–​143, 145–​146, 168, 189,
192–​193, 201, 219, 241 n. 74, 250, 284
n. 144, 285–​2 86
John XXIII, Pope: 13, 42, 52, 203
John Frederick I, Elector of Saxony: 198, 248,
253–​254
John of Ragusa: 90, 96–​9 7, 155 n. 21
Kardinál, Jan: 53–​5 4, 62
Koranda, Václav: 74, 127–​128, 145–​146
Krantz, Albert: 223–​224, 266
Krása, Jan: 73, 77, 80, 82, 124
Kutná Hora: 13, 77, 101 n. 120, 107, 109, 110
n. 16, 129, 136–​139, 141, 146, 280
Ladislas “Posthumus” of Naples, King of
Bohemia: 1–​2 n. 1, 13, 115–​116, 124, 238
law of God: 53, 60, 69, 71, 74, 80–​81, 83, 84, 88,
92, 103, 130, 203, 206, 271
Lawrence of Březova: 50, 59 n. 138, 64 n. 158,
71 n. 10, 72–​73, 77–​78, 79 n. 40, 81, 84 n. 60,
85, n. 62
League of Zelená Hora: 125
Leipzig Debate: 149–​164, 175, 185, 223, 235
Leo X, Pope: 153 n. 13, 160, 165, 196
Ludolf von Sagan: 88–​9 0
Index
liturgy: 1–​2, 4–​5, 16–​18, 24–​26, 28, 38–​39, 55,
60, 66, 70, 86, 102–​103, 105, 107, 118, 121–​123,
128–​134, 139–​142, 145, 147–​148, 192, 255,
267, 282, 295; Utraquist: 18, 25–​2 6, 28,
38–​39, 55, 60, 66, 70, 86, 103, 105, 107, 118,
121–​123, 128–​134, 139–​142, 145, 147–​148,
192, 295
Luther, Martin; comparison to Elijah (see
Elijah); critique of councils: 18, 149, 156–​159,
162–​163, 190, 199–​2 07, 210–​217, 239, 296;
critique of papal Church: 150–​156, 159–​162,
181, 185, 199–​2 03, 208, 242, 258, 274–​275;
excommunication of: 153, 162; as Heretic:
150–​156, 160–​170, 187, 198, 219–​222, 225,
227–​2 30, 235–​2 37, 243, 247, 251, 263–​2 65,
275; Ninety-​Five Theses: 152; as prophet:
251, 256–​259, 275; as successor to Hus: 18,
167–​170, 191, 215–​216, 221–​2 31; use of Hus:
149–​160, 200–​210; writings of: 154–​155, 157,
159–​161, 163, 189, 199–​210, 232, 235, 239,
273–​274
Lutheran. See also Church; growth of movement:
1–​2 , 20, 148, 187, 212, 216, 219, 222, 231,
243–​250, 255, 259, 269, 278, 281–​2 85, 289,
294; reformation (see German reformation);
splintering of movement: 255–​256, 259
Magdeburg: 270–​274, 280, 282–​2 83
n. 137, 289
Magni, Nicholas: 91
Martin V, Pope: 21–​22, 39, 42, 58–​59, 68, 73, 86,
89 n. 75, 90, 94, 185
martyrdom: 5, 10, 14–​17, 24–​38, 51, 53, 64–​67,
69, 71–​73, 75–​79, 83–​8 4, 88–​89, 91, 93, 96,
100, 103–​105, 111–​112, 120–​122, 128–​135,
139, 140–​141, 145–​148, 152, 172–​173,
175–​178, 180–​182, 185, 190–​193, 205, 210,
212–​216, 230, 241, 248, 252, 266, 276–​278,
283, 285, 288, 292, 294; Catholic: 84, 88–​91,
112; Czech nation (see Hussite); of Hus (see
Hus, Jan)
martyrology: 5, 55, 130, 145, 250, 276–​279, 283
Matěj of Janov: 7–​8, 10, 34, 51–​52, 177, 285
media/​p erformance: 2–​3 , 5, 17–​18, 24–​2 5, 41,
55, 66, 71, 105, 121–​122, 129–​136, 138–​148,
210–​219, 231–​2 33, 243–​2 44, 247, 297;
art/​i magery: 1–​2 , 44, 45–​4 9, 55–​57, 86,
97, 103, 116, 127, 138–​1 39, 140, 141–​147,
179, 182–​183; drama: 1, 18, 190, 193, 195,
210–​216, 239, 243–​2 47, 251, 290, 292,
294; monumental art: 17, 138–​1 39, 146;
print: 2, 17–​18, 20, 143, 145–​146, 148, 151,
156–​1 57, 202, 216, 231–​2 33, 270, 277;
satire: 44, 49, 66, 81–​8 3, 239, 244–​2 46;
song (see music); woodcuts: 177–​180,
182–​184, 287, 288
 Index
Melanchthon, Philip: 180, 210–​211, 236–​2 37,
245–​2 46, 249, 255, 257–​258, 260, 267–​2 68,
271, 278–​279, 282 n. 132
memoria: 23–​25, 67, 107, 120, 122, 130, 135,
146, 295
Michael de Causis: 214
Milíč of Kroměříž: 7–​8 , 10–​11, 12 n. 33, 34,
51–​52, 61, 113, 285
Moritz, Duke of Saxony: 254, 270, 280
Müntzer, Thomas: 19
music: 1–​2 , 5, 17, 22, 25, 35–​39, 44, 49, 55–​57,
66, 82–​83, 104–​105, 109 n. 13, 111, 121–​123,
127, 129–​137, 147, 289, 292; hymns/​liturgical:
11, 19, 38, 104–​105, 121–​122, 132–​133, 137; as
propaganda: 22, 35–​37, 39, 44, 49, 55–​56, 66,
111, 122–​123, 129, 131, 133–​136; vernacular
songs: 1, 17, 25, 35–​37, 39, 49, 55, 105,
122–​123, 133–​134, 137, 147
Netter, Thomas: 89
Nicholas V, Pope: 110–​112, 114
Nicholas “Biskupec” of Pelhřimov: 85, 98–​9 9,
114, 168
Nicholas von Amsdorf: 270–​271
Nicholas of Cusa, Cardinal: 111–​114, 155 n. 21
Nicholas of Dresden: 56–​57, 141–​142
Nider, Johannes: 95–​9 7
Nuremberg: 87, 92–​93, 96, 192, 197, 222, 294
Orebites/​Orphans: 78, 80, 96, 99–​100
Páleč, Stephen: 214, 240
pamphlets: 1, 156–​157, 165–​166, 169–​171,
173, 190, 199–​2 00, 218–​220, 231, 251, 272,
290, 292
passion narrative (passio). See Hus, Jan
Paul II, Pope: 125–​126
Paul III, Pope: 189, 197, 199, 216, 236–​2 37, 239,
253–​254
Payne, Peter: 68–​69, 92, 100, 118, 168, 285
peace; of Augsburg (1555): 248, 280, 284; of
Kutná Hora (1485): 101 n. 120, 107, 137–​138,
280; of Passau (1552): 280
Peasants’ War: 150, 231–​2 32, 234, 243
Petr of Mladoňovice: 26–​31, 41–​43, 103, 134,
142, 189 n. 7, 190, 193–​195, 207–​2 08, 213,
215, 239–​2 40, 264 n. 62, 277, 286, 292
Philibert of Coutances: 108–​109, 118
Philip, Landgrave of Hesse: 253
Piccolomini, Aeneas Sylvius. See Pius II
Pikarts. See Adamites
Pius II, Pope: 106 n. 5, 111, 113 n. 28, 114–​118,
124–​125, 171, 218, 266, 284 n. 144
Poduška, Jan: 157
Polák, Michael: 136, 145–​146
Poland: 73, 85, 127, 136
333
polemics: 3–​4, 172, 186–​187, 189, 220–​221;
Catholic anti-​Hussite: 37–​38, 41–​4 4, 49–​50,
58–​59, 84, 87–​91, 111–​112, 263–​2 67;
Catholic anti-​Lutheran: 18–​19, 150–​155,
163–​170, 218, 231–​2 47, 250–​252, 263–​2 67;
commentary (paratext): 192, 211–​213;
Hussite: 26–​33, 35–​36, 39, 50–​5 4, 60–​65,
68–​69, 74–​76, 79–​83, 92, 98–​99, 104, 118–​122,
131–​133; Hussite anti-​Catholic: 14–​16, 51–​52,
56–​58, 60–​6 6, 68–​69, 74–​83, 92, 98–​9 9;
Lutheran: 18, 157–​160, 171–​185, 189–​190,
193–​195, 210–​217, 248–​250; Lutheran
anti-​Catholic: 160–​161, 171–​185, 198–​2 08,
210–​217, 273–​276; mirroring: 42, 84, 87, 90–​92;
versus propaganda: 231
Poor of Lyons. See Waldensian
Prague: 1, 6–​8, 10–​17, 19, 21–​2 3, 26, 34, 39,
50–​53, 55–​5 6, 58– ​6 0, 63– ​6 5, 69–​7 2, 74,
76–​8 6, 91–​9 3, 95–​9 6, 98, 100–​102, 105,
107–​116, 118, 123–​1 24, 126, 129, 131,
134–​138, 157, 164–​165, 168–​169, 189,
207, 209, 218, 238, 240, 267; coronation
of Sigismund: 79; re-​C atholicization of:
69–​70, 108, 111–​115; University of (see
University of Prague); Uprising of 1419 and
1483 (see uprising); as Utraquist center:
25, 50–​5 3, 56, 59, 72, 76–​8 0, 85–​8 6, 92,
100–​101, 105, 107, 110, 118, 136–​138,
168–​169, 209
preaching. See sermons
Příbram, Jan: 240, 265, 267–​2 68
processions: 14, 44–​4 6, 55, 105, 118
Procopius the Notary: 39, 56
propaganda: 49, 56, 76, 78 n. 35, 83, 91, 181,
231, 233–​2 35, 246–​2 47; satirical: 49, 81–​83;
versus polemics: 231; visual: 56–​58, 97, 210–​212,
287–​2 89
Rabus, Ludwig: 250, 277–​279
Regensburg: 114 n. 31, 252, 271 n. 83, 289
Reinlein, Oswald: 90
Richental, Ulrich: vii, 41–​4 4, 45–​4 8, 240, 266
Rohač, Jan: 109
Rokycana, Jan: 98, 102, 108, 110, 118–​120, 124,
126–​127, 136, 168, 265, 267–​2 69, 285
Roman Church. See Church
Roždalovský, Václav: 157–​158
Samson of Časlav: 84
satire: 49, 66, 82–​83, 244–​2 46; satirical
Mass: 49–​50
Schmalkaldic League: 197, 217, 237 n. 64,
252–​254, 277
Schmalkaldic War: 248, 251, 254, 259, 266, 277
sedition: 150, 172, 227, 260–​2 63, 269
Sermon on Peace. See Hus, Jan
334 Index
sermons: 1–​2 , 5, 8, 11–​1 2, 15, 17, 19, 25,
32–​3 5, 37, 39, 44, 50–​57, 60–​6 6, 87–​8 8,
90– ​91, 98– ​9 9, 103–​105, 118–​1 23,
127–​1 30, 133–​1 35, 145–​147, 176–​177,
228, 242, 256–​2 58, 286, 292; against
Roman Church: 12, 54, 56–​57, 60–​61, 65;
anti-​H us: 17, 87–​8 8, 90–​91; by Hus:
11–​1 2, 15, 57, 98, 242, 286;
commemorating Hus: 17, 19, 25, 32–​3 5,
37, 44, 50, 54–​5 6, 63–​6 6, 98–​9 9,
103–​105, 119–​1 23, 129–​1 30, 133–​1 35,
146–​147, 292; on Luther: 228, 242,
256–​2 58; as radical propaganda: 54–​5 5,
60– ​6 6, 127–​1 30
Seven-​Headed Luther: 234–​2 37, 264
Sigismund of Hungary, Holy Roman Emperor:
1, 15, 17, 23, 26–​29, 38–​39, 41–​4 4, 49,
52, 59, 66, 68–​6 9, 71–​8 4, 85 n. 61, 86–​8 7,
92–​93, 95, 101–​103, 108–​109, 115, 132,
139, 159, 212–​214, 223, 240, 241 n. 74, 266;
contrast with Hus/​Hussites: 42, 76–​8 0,
87; coronation in Prague: 79; rhetorical
demonization of: 28–​29, 42, 49, 52, 74–​8 3,
87, 139
Sleidan, Johannes: 276 n. 107, 277
songs. See music
Stanislas of Skalbimierz: 91
suffering: 2, 9, 12, 16, 18–​19, 21, 27, 30–​3 3,
36, 38, 54, 61–​6 3, 69, 75, 79, 84, 89, 91–​9 2,
95, 112, 118–​1 20, 123–​1 24, 128–​136, 141,
146–​148, 175, 180, 185, 192, 200, 204,
224, 249, 251, 256 n. 26, 257–​2 58, 272,
275–​276, 279
Tábor/​Táborites: 63–​6 4, 66, 74–​75, 78–​8 0,
84–​86, 93, 95–​96, 98, 100, 110, 114–​116,
227–​228, 243, 267, 285
Tragedy of Jan Hus. See Agricola, Johannes
transubstantiation: 1, 229, 241, 245
Treaty: 70, 103, 108, 111, 117, 125, 127, 137, 253;
Compactata (1436) (see Compactata); of Crépy
(1544): 253
Treger, Conrad: 170–​171
Turks: 89–​9 0, 115–​116, 124–​126, 170, 252–​253,
262, 279; crusades against (see crusade) as
Rhetorical Construct: 89–​9 0, 170
Ulrich of Znojmo: 99
University of Prague: 6–​14, 21–​22, 26, 53,
55–​56, 60, 62, 74–​75, 80, 87–​88, 121, 123,
136, 207
uprisings; of 1419: 17, 63–​67, 70–​71, 74; of 1483:
107, 136–​137
Utraquist: 2–​3, 16–​17, 20–​21, 50–​51, 70–​72,
100–​102, 105–​139, 141–​143, 145–​148, 151,
157, 164 n. 61, 165 n. 65, 192, 202 n. 52, 212,
238, 265, 295. See also Bohemia; Hussite
development of church: 17, 20, 70–​71,
100–​102, 106–​111, 118–​124, 126–​128, 147,
151, 238; eucharistic practices of: 21, 50–​51,
59, 63, 65, 71–​72, 77, 80–​81, 85, 96, 98, 101–​102,
105, 108, 111, 115, 118–​119, 122–​123, 126,
128–​129, 134–​135, 138–​139, 141,
145–​146, 165, 206–​2 07, 285 n. 147; liturgy of:
17, 77 n. 33, 105, 107, 121–​123, 127–​135,
138–​139, 145, 192, 295 (see also liturgy); role
of Hus: 70–​71, 102, 105–​107, 119–​123,
128–​136, 138–​139, 142, 146–​148, 157, 192,
202 n. 52, 295
Václav of Dráchov: 120–​123
Vyšehrad castle: 84
Waldensian: 115, 150, 165–​166, 167 n. 77, 235,
284–​2 85
Waldhauser, Konrad: 7–​8, 11
Wenceslas, Saint: 76, 88–​89, 135, 138
Wenceslas IV, King of Bohemia: 13–​14, 17, 21–​22,
39, 52, 59–​61, 63–​66, 71, 136, 223, 262
Wittenberg: 154, 164, 166 n. 74, 169, 196, 200,
201 n. 47, 224, 238, 244, 246, 256–​257, 270,
271 n. 83, 278 n. 118
Wyclif, John: 8–​13, 15, 21–​22, 29–​30 n. 34, 38,
40–​41, 49, 59, 68 n. 1, 72, 75, 88, 91, 98 n. 108,
100, 155, 165–​166, 167 n. 77, 214, 229, 240–​241,
245, 285
Wyclifite Mass: 49
Zajíc, Zbyněk, Archbishop of Prague: 12
Želivský, Jan: 60–​67, 74, 82, 113, 116, 136, 168
Žižka, Jan: 78, 85, 96, 98 n. 110, 109–​110, 116,
117 n. 43, 142, 168, 285
Zwinglian: 237 n. 64, 267