Hus, Jan (c.1369–1415)

From his appointment as rector of the Bethlehem chapel in Prague in 1402 until his execution at the Council of Constance in 1415, Jan Hus advanced the goals of an ecclesiastical reform movement with Czech national overtones. Hus’ ministerial and academic posts provided a broad platform for his leadership. He preached tenaciously against clerical abuses. At the University of Prague he taught philosophical and ecclesiological doctrines which, his opponents charged, were taken from the radical Oxford reformer, John Wyclif. Whereas Wyclif’s philosophical realism (for example, the indestructibility of ‘being’) led him to adopt several positions condemned as heretical, Hus’ polemic, in which he castigated the fiscalization and bureaucratization of the papacy, sprang more from his ideals of evangelical minority and apostolic poverty.