Patron Saint and Prophet: Jan Hus in the Bohemian and German Reformations (Oxford Studies in Historical Theology) 9780190280734, 0190280735

Table of contents :
Cover
Series
Patron Saint and Prophet
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Figures
Introduction
1. The Saint
2. The Founder
3. The Patron
4. The Apocalyptic Witness
5. The Prophet
6. The Catholic
7. The Exemplar
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

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 Ministers and Their Message in Basel, 1529–​1629 Amy Nelson Burnett

SHAPERS OF ENGLISH CALVINISM, 1660–​1714 Variety, Persistence, and Transformation Dewey D. Wallace, Jr.

THE PASSIONS OF CHRIST IN HIGH-​M EDIEVAL THOUGHT An Essay on Christological Development Kevin Madigan

THE BIBLICAL INTERPRETATION OF WILLIAM OF ALTON Timothy Bellamah, OP

GOD’S IRISHMEN Theological Debates in Cromwellian Ireland Crawford Gribben REFORMING SAINTS Saint’s Lives and Their Authors in Germany, 1470–​1530 David J. Collins GREGORY OF NAZIANZUS ON THE TRINITY AND THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD In Your Light We Shall See Light Christopher A. Beeley

MIRACLES AND THE PROTESTANT IMAGINATION The Evangelical Wonder Book in Reformation Germany Philip M. Soergel THE REFORMATION OF SUFFERING Pastoral Theology and Lay Piety in Late Medieval and Early Modern Germany Ronald K. Rittgers CHRIST MEETS ME EVERYWHERE Augustine’s Early Figurative Exegesis Michael Cameron

THE JUDAIZING CALVIN Sixteenth-​Century Debates over the Messianic Psalms G. Sujin Pak

MYSTERY UNVEILED The Crisis of the Trinity in Early Modern England Paul C. H. Lim

THE DEATH OF SCRIPTURE AND THE RISE OF BIBLICAL STUDIES Michael C. Legaspi

GOING DUTCH IN THE MODERN AGE Abraham Kuyper’s Struggle for a Free Church in the Netherlands John Halsey Wood Jr.

THE FILIOQUE History of a Doctrinal Controversy A. Edward Siecienski

CALVIN’S COMPANY OF PASTORS Pastoral Care and the Emerging Reformed Church, 1536-​1609 Scott M. Manetsch

ARE YOU ALONE WISE? Debates about Certainty in the Early Modern Church Susan E. Schreiner

THE SOTERIOLOGY OF JAMES USSHER The Act and Object of Saving Faith Richard Snoddy

EMPIRE OF SOULS Robert Bellarmine and the Christian Commonwealth Stefania Tutino

HARTFORD PURITANISM Thomas Hooker, Samuel Stone, and Their Terrifying God Baird Tipson

MARTIN BUCER’S DOCTRINE OF JUSTIFICATION Reformation Theology and Early Modern Irenicism Brian Lugioyo

AUGUSTINE, THE TRINITY, AND THE CHURCH A Reading of the Anti-​Donatist Sermons Adam Ployd

CHRISTIAN GRACE AND PAGAN VIRTUE The Theological Foundation of Ambrose’s Ethics J. Warren Smith

AUGUSTINE’S EARLY THEOLOGY OF IMAGE A Study in the Development of Pro-​Nicene Theology Gerald Boersma

KARLSTADT AND THE ORIGINS OF THE EUCHARISTIC CONTROVERSY A Study in the Circulation of Ideas Amy Nelson Burnett

PATRON SAINT AND PROPHET Jan Hus in the Bohemian and German Reformations Phillip N. Haberkern

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 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide.Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America. © Oxford University Press 2016 First Edition published in 2016 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Library of Congress Cataloging-​i n-​P ublication 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)  1.  Hus, Jan, 1369?–1415.  2.  Church history—Middle Ages, 600-1500.  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

Acknowledgments  Figures  xi Introduction 

1

1. The Saint 

21

2. The Founder  3. The Patron 

ix

68 104

4. The Apocalyptic Witness  5. The Prophet  6. The Catholic  7. The Exemplar  Conclusion 

292

Bibliography  Index  329

299

149

188 218 248

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 opportunity 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 compiling 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

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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 during 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 establishment 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 understand 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   A note on terminology: the Czech kingdom in the medieval and early modern periods comprised 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

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 fundamentally changed over time, most notably in response to the proliferation of print technology 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 faithful 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 reinterpretation 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 shifting 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 language 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 monikers “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 movement 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 historiography, the revival of Roman legal scholarship, and the advent of humanist history writing in Italy combined to alter fundamentally the ways in which people understood 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 topography 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 commemorative 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 propagating 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 interpretation 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 quality 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 century therefore presents an instructive view of how debates saturated with militant 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 balance 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 c­ hapter 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 specific, 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, historiography was for religious groups’ self-​definition in the sixteenth century’s atmosphere 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 discourse back through time and situating it within the cultic practices and religious 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 differences 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

  The classic account of Hus’s place within the religious landscape of the Bohemian reformation 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 particular 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

6

the specific historical developments and debates that shaped the Bohemian and Lutheran reformations. The second is that this book is ultimately, and a bit ironically, 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 followers 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 frameworks 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 contours 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 master’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

  Biographies of Hus are legion, but among the most influential (especially in western languages) 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). 9

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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 prophylactic 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

  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 individual 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. 10

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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, preachers 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 upcoming 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 undermined 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 students 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 university 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

  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), especially 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 century, 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 organized in four “nations,” three of which (the Saxon, Polish, and Bavarian) were dominated by 15

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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 philosophical 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 participation 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 damnation, Wyclif rejected the Church’s ability to exercise authority. After all, how could a damned individual who had been elected pope claim to possess dominion 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 persecution 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

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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 prepared 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 touchstones 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 substantial 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 nationalist 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.

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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 sermons 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 singing of vernacular hymns in worship services held there. Bethlehem Chapel consequently became a place—​much as Jerusalem had been—​where the preached word and the eucharist came together, along with the proclamation of a distinctive communal identity through Czech singing.29 These innovations in the charter of the chapel demonstrate that Hus was engaged in transforming his congregation 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 practices 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 outcomes of an individual’s membership among the elect. 31 Hus’s sermons therefore   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. 27

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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 predominantly 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 similar 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 constant 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 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 32

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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 constitution 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 masters, which consequently established Prague’s university as a bastion of Wyclifite, reformist thought. 39 In spite of the king’s support, though, the ecclesiastical campaign 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 investigating 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 indulgences 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 controversy, 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.

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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 university 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 insuperable rift between him and the king. Wenceslas’s actions during the demonstrations 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 eventually 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 undoubtedly 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 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). 41

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attack on Hus’s local opponents and a closely argued defense of Wyclifite predestinarian 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, represent the totality of Hus’s output from this time. He also wrote vernacular devotional 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 development of the Bohemian and German reformations was his death. Hus’s imprisonment, 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 guarantee 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 consistently remained some his most influential writings, as their condemnation of the Council of Constance’s diabolical subversion and biblical ignorance provided rhetorical ammunition for generations of Czech and German polemicists. These letters also demonstrated that Hus had fully accepted the eventuality of his   On the composition and recitation of this text, see: Marin, L’archevêque, p. 124.   Hus’s work as a vernacular theologian has been the subject of a growing body of recent scholarship. 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 writing) which was later revoked has been a major issue in scholarship on the legitimacy of Hus’s execution. 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). 44 45

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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 during which Catholics, Hussites, Utraquists, and Lutherans brought their interpretations 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 attendant 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

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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 revolutionary 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 collective action. The second chapter picks up this narrative and explores the evolution 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 analyzes 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 political resistance nearly a century later. Finally, this chapter anticipates the Lutheran commemoration of Hus by establishing the complementarity of liturgical commemorative 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

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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 modern 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 identification 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 compendium of Antichristology. And while it turns out that none of the works in this collection was actually written by Hus, that misattribution paradoxically highlights 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 articulation 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 disobedient, but essentially orthodox, Catholic whose teachings had nothing in common 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

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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 history 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 followers 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 historical 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 deceptions 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 persecution.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   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. 49

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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 central 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 traditions to sustain themselves through the periods of external conflict and internal 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 elimination 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 person 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   The articles have been published as: “Decretum Sancti Constantiensis Concilii et per immediatum 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. 1

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22

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 immediately 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 mixture 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.   This league initially circulated a letter in September 1415 protesting Hus’s orthodoxy. It was sent with the seals of 452 nobles to the Council of Constance early in 1416. The letter has been published 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. 3 4

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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 context of the Christian Middle Ages, memory incorporated both the mental faculty that allowed men consciously to recollect the past and the ritual act of commemoration 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 intellectual 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

 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 manuscript 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. 5

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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 liturgical 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 internal incoherence.12 Paul Post argues that this circulation results in the “liturgical inculturation” of the rituals’ participants, which results in the valorization of certain 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.

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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 communities 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, vernacular 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 demonstrated that the establishment of a new saint’s cult was often, or even always, political.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 ideological and material stakes.16 But none of those studies deal with the de facto canonization 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.

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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 punishment 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 attention. 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. 17

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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’ statements 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 parallels, but also minimized his suffering vis-​à-​v is Christ’s, stating that “I, a miserable 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 binding 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 unwilling 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 martyrdom. 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.

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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 language of theological debate or weighed down by Petr’s nearly obsessive attention 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 righteous 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

  Petr of Mladoňovice, Relatio, p. 118. Cf. Luke 23:44–​4 8.   The proselytizing potential of martyrdom and its ability to destabilize ecclesiastical authority 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 manuscripts. 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. 24 25

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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 bargain, noting that the king blushed violently when Hus called him out for reneging 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 construction 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 commemorate 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.   Petr of Mladoňovice, Narratio Historica, p. 128. 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 commemoration of John Wyclif, among dissident communities both in England and in Prague. It also 28 29

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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 different 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 passio 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 virtues 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 relationship 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 commitment 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.

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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,” citing 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 contrast 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  Barbatus, Passio M. Johannis Hus, p. 15.   Kelley locates a similar impulse—​towards a new appreciation for suffering, but not necessarily 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 introduction 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 dobová 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. 39 40

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irrational doctors” at Constance, whose madness had led them “to embrace and venerate 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 audience 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 concio”) 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 understood 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 suffer 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 transposition 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.  Jakoubek, Passio, p. 15. 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 contains 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. 45 46

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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 substantial persecution before death; and the third combined the first two by enduring 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 zealously 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; neither 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  Jakoubek, Sermo Habitus, p. 232.   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. 51 52

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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 identification 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.   On Matěj’s biography of Milíč and its impact on the perception of preachers within the 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 writings, 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. 55 56

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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 eternally 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 prototypical. Throughout the Bohemian reformation, the commemoration of its martyrs 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 reformation 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

 Jakoubek, Sermo Habitus, p. 242.   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. 60 61

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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,” encapsulated 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 stereotypical 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 insatiable 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.

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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 pretended 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 virtues; 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 present 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 development 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

  “Ó svolánie konstanské,”in Výbor z České literatury, pp. 273–​275, p. 273.   “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. 66 67

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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 sermons, 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 preaching 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 exercise 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 judgment 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,” 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. 70

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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 traditional modes of commemoration (sermons, Masses, and songs) and specific associations 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 pronouncements from the years after 1415 that delineated the rapidly shifting political 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 decision 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 recordatione 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.”

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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 justification 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 accusations 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 obedient 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 preaching throughout the Czech kingdom.

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

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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 nobility, 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 deviance. 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 pertinacious 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   “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). 81

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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 narrative 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 difference, however, was that Richental’s depiction of the Hungarian king emphasized his majesty and honorable conduct while highlighting Hus’s treachery. In general, 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 giving 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 recognition 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 descriptions, Richental presented Sigismund as appropriately subordinate to ecclesiastical 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.  Richental, Chronik, pp. 112–​117.

86 87

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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 imprisonment 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 demonstrating 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 presentation 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.  Richental, Chronik, p. 44.  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 during 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 modern 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. 88 89

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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 attendees. 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 cardinals marching in front of a rich canopy shading a monstrance. Following the monstrance 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 interpretation 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). 

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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 monasteries, 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 further 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 following 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.

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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 excommunicated 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 religious leaders whose actions had prompted the interdict. This attempt to turn popular opinion against the emergent Hussite party, however, completely mistook 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 disseminate their message within the full array of the city’s sacred spaces, and their surviving 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 postilla at this time that drew its pericopes from the so-​called “little apocalypse”

  Kaminsky noted that the ostensible reason for the imposition of the interdict seemed radically 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. 99

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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 institutional church at the time of Constantine and Sylvester. Prior to that moment, the clergy had been characterized by its “bravery, fortitude, love and perseverance,” 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 perseveres up to the end, not assenting to evil because of fear, threats, or persecution, ‘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 recognition 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 condemnation of communion in both kinds. With this act, the council had “slain Christ   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. 101

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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, noting 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 accustomed 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 attributable 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. 106

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miraculous, because the more the world is against it, the more gloriously 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 apocalyptic drama that was now unfolding in the world. This land, as exemplified and inspired by its saints, was understood to bear the responsibility of disseminating 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 characteristic 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 overcome 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 p​ reparations 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 practices 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

  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. 111

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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 contrast 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 evangelizing 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 notably 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 eventually 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 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. 116

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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 resonate 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’ eschatological 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 articulated a remarkably nuanced set of theological and polemical messages that clearly derived from, but expanded upon, the work of the movement’s theological leaders.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  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 receptio:  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 internalized 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. 120

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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 theology 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 manuscripts, see: Mutlová, “Communicating Texts through Images.”

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It was in this period that Nicholas composed the Tables, which visually represented 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 scholars 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 hussitischer 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’ humility 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.

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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 rhetoric. 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.

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Martin was quite specific in identifying the fundamental cause of this spreading 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 considered 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 pressure, 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 surrender 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 archbishop 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

  Pope Martin V, Inter Cunctus, col. 1205.   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. 136 137

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The university faculty in Prague had also publicly defended both of these practices by this time, thus providing intellectual heft and moral authority to the continuing development of Hussite theology, especially regarding the sacraments. The university masters had also, along with the priests of Prague’s churches, participated 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 further delineated Hussite theology by affirming the validity of a number of traditional 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 opposition 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 position 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 sermons 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 historical commentary. Despite this limitation in the sources, though, both contemporary 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 eucharistique 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 chroniclers 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

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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 converted, 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 audience 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 functioned 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.

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heresies would not be preached or made public.” On the contrary, though, the people of Bohemia commemorated Hus’s death with reverence and sadness, proving 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 victory in death with “the opinion of the world,” which thought that death could render 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 invocations 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.   Želivský, “Octave Pasche,” in Dochovaná Kázání, pp. 48–​59, pp. 55–​56. 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. 147 148

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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 foremost 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 sermon, 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.   Želivský, “Octave Pasche,” p. 56.

154 155

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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 councilmen 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 sermon 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, agreeing 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 gathered 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.

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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 persecute 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 patriarchs 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

  Kaminsky, “The Prague Insurrection,” pp. 114–​120.   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. 159 160

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entire Hussite movement. The militant images and idioms of death, conquest, and victory that authors like Jan Hus and Jakoubek of Stříbro had deployed figuratively or soteriologically here became concrete, turned into a platform for violent, 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 correspondence, 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, spectacular 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

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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 mixture 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 interpret 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 resistance evolved into a reality, with the martyrdom of Jan Hus serving as a rallying 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 following 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 leadership, 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 obedience 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 religious 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 negotiations 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 c­ hapter 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.

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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 overwhelming 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 foreshadowing 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

 Payne, Oratio ad Sigismundum, p. 88.  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. 4 5

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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 revolutionary 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 reformation, 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 revolution (roughly 1419–​1434) as the apogee of the Bohemian reformation and either downplayed or ignored the signal achievement of the Bohemian reformation 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 factors, 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 published studies of particular moments or events from the era after the Council of Basel, their output 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 nachrevolutionären 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.

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practices that the full spectrum of the Hussite movement shared. The demand for evangelical preaching, the pre-​eminence of the law of God, the administration 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 divergent conditions, Hus’s words and the memories of his deeds maintained a continual, 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 manifestos, 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 heresy, to the throne of Bohemia.10 Although Sigismund’s role in the religious and

  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. 9

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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 communion 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 government 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 judgment 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 western 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.   Sigismund’s negotiations with the Bohemians in late 1419 and early 1420 are treated at 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. 11 12

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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 ecclesiastical 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 vigorous 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 assumptions 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 committed 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 leveled 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.

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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 ultimately 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 military, 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 initially 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.

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months of 1420. 22 For Jakoubek, the Maccabees should serve only a metaphorical 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 movement’s secular support, Jakoubek and other university masters began to countenance 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 initial 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.

  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 masters 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 angelorum 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. 22

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This threat provoked a response from the Hussites that was both ideologically 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 parties. 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 kingdom 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 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. 26

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an un-​Christian tyrant rather than the rightful king of Bohemia.29 These grievances 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 evidence 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 devotion 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 substantiate 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 hussitischen 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 liturgical 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.

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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 prowess, 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 eastern 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 wellbeing 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 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. 35

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of them gained any lasting commemoration among the Bohemians, their collective suffering added to the critical mass of martyrs whose suffering was understood 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 crusaders 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 gathered 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 impression 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 nothing 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 merits of their forefathers, whose memory is always glorified” with Sigismund himself, whose actions in Constance and afterward had shown him to be entirely   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. 38

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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 circulated among both the Bohemians and the crusading army. This manifesto provided 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 communities 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; 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. 42

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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 anyone who witnesses them.47 The manifesto provided extensive biblical and patristic citations that confirmed 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 abandoned 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 uniformity 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   “Vyhlášení čtyř pražských artikulů městem Prahou,” pp. 282–​2 84.   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 hussitische 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.” 47 48

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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 foreign 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 tactics 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 poisonous 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 manifestos. 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.   Porok České koruny, p. 38. 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. 50 51

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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 heresy 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 godless 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 witness recollected that of Israelite heroes from the biblical narrative. Jan Hus certainly 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 reformation. 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.

  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), especially ­chapter 4. 56

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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 compared 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 heavenly 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 central 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 universal 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 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. 58

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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 hierarchies 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 reformers 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   The archbishop’s shift in allegiance was documented in a letter he composed to the city councils 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 significance 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. 61

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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 appropriate. 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 theology 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 additional 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 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. 65

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The collapse of the fourth crusade was exemplary of these failings. The legate 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 approaching. 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 crusading 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 hesitation, 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  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. 67

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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 hysterical 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 monasteries 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 manuscript 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.

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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 preference 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

  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. 73

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Such conduct led Andreas to compare the Hussites to the Israelites’ Egyptian slavemasters, 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 supplied 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 foreshadowed 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.   This sermon has been published as: Johannes de Ragusio, “Sermo vor Papst Martin V. Über 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. 77 78

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had employed this them in their treatises, and they were joined by the Polish professor Stanislas of Skalbimierz, who identified the Hussites with Korah, Dathan, and Abiron, who had opposed Moses and Aaron in Numbers 16 and been swallowed 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 during 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 foremost, 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   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 spectantes 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. 83

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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 increasing 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 disputation. 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.”  Payne, Oratio, p. 85. 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. 86 87

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through “a fraternal audience” during which they could explain their doctrines. The problem, of course, was that the Church had never countenanced such a hearing, but had repeatedly opted for war.91 The second Hussite manifesto then proceeded 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 foundations. 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 crusading 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 crusaders 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 fitting 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 crusaders, 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

  “Manifest města Prahy,” p. 304.   “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. 91 92

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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 consistent 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 election 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 leadership 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 possibility 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 initial 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. 94

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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 happen. 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’ obedience 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 surprising 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   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

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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 intentions, 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, liturgical, 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 chalice 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 provoked.”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.

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against them. Even the Bohemians’ arrival at Basel signaled the continued influence 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 partially 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 rituals, 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   Johannes de Ragusio, Tractatus, p. 258.   On these, debates, see the overview by: Paul De Vooght, “La confrontation des thèses hussites 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. 103 104

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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 conduct, 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 citations 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 centered 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 relationship 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 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. 108

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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 forbidden 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 eloquent 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 generation 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 protestation 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,

  Biskupec, “Oratio,” p. 24.   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. 113 114

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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 militancy from the previous decade into a learned tone, with the Bohemian speakers heroically facing off with the assembled hierarchy of the Catholic Church. The ensuing months of negotiations between the Bohemians and the Council’s representatives who traveled to Prague, however, are rendered as a tragic denouement. In this telling, the canny conciliar delegates perceived that many Bohemians could be persuaded to accept peace for the price of the communion chalice, while uncharacteristic 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 during 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).

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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 consider 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 reformist 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 communion 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 interpretation, 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.”

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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 promises of considerable local autonomy. Their agreement with Sigismund, for example, 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 sympathizers at his court, granted considerable judicial power to the nobility in the provinces, 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, inconclusive wars. That the war between the Hussites and their imperial and papal opponents had been fought over matters of divine authority here took a backseat 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 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. 121

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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 leaders 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 understanding 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 pastoral 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.

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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, gloriosi,” by the poet Venantius Fortunatus. This song had been used for nearly a millennium 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.

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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 commemorate 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 narratives 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 collective 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 carnival 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 ecclesiastical 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, especially 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.

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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 increasingly (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-​century 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 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. 5

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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 remarkable 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 reciprocity.” 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 complex 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 heightened 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

  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,” especially pp. 61–​63. 8

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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 supported the program of Bishop Philibert of Coutances, the Council of Basel’s representative 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 revolutionary era.11 Philibert also blocked the ordination of Utraquist clergy and sought to win the Prague burghers to the Catholic side by emphasizing the similarities 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 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. 10

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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 radicalism in the wake of his accession to the Bohemian throne. Sigismund’s initial target 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 followers in Prague. This display of judicial ferocity backfired, though, as contemporary 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 administrative 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.

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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 doctrine 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 developed 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 nobility. 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 enthusiastically 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 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 assumption 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. 16

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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 campaign 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 delegated some of the leading lights of the Catholic Church to work toward reintegrating 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 recognition 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 administration 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 sacramental theologian and preacher Jakoubek. 23 This terminology was unique among Catholic polemics against the Utraquists, but it is worth noting that   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. 20

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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 provocative 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’ eucharistic novelty when offering a last warning to his correspondents:  “You have experienced how many bad things you suffer when you place those who introduce 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 journeyed 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.

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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 consonant 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 letter 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 themselves, 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.

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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 following 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 shaping 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

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problem, though, was that George would be resisted by the Táborites and their radical, Waldensian-​i nspired opposition to the Church, which Piccolomini mistakenly 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 possible 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 tempering 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 compactatis 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 election as king, see: Odložilík, The Hussite King, pp. 71–​73. 38   Piccolomini, “Oratio XVII,” pp. 369 and 379.

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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 crusade 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 following century as the most exhaustive and insightful history of the Bohemian reformation 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 interpretation 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.   This text has been printed in multiple modern editions. The following citations are taken 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. 39 40

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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 fleeting. 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 limiting the influence of future church councils and trying to abrogate a number of concordats that previous popes had signed and which gave considerable ecclesiastical 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.

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had also failed to submit to the apostolic see in matters of religion, and they continued to prefer their own fallen leaders—​Pius mentioned Jakoubek and Peter Payne by name in this context—​to the proper religious authorities.48 Such continued 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 measures 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 number 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 increasingly 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 consistory. 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 influential 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.   Two accounts of this assembly, which took place on August 12, survive; both confirm that 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. 48 49

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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 disciples’ confusion over the meaning of Christ’s death with the time of incomprehension that had persisted in the Church until the “revelation” of the chalice in 1414. 52 In describing this revelation, Rokycana (somewhat inaccurately) emphasized 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 sermon 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 persecution as characteristic of both Hus and the Bohemian nation as a whole. Here, Rokycana explicitly compared Hus to Peter, Paul, and Saint Stephen, comparisons 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’   On the composition of the Postilla and its preservation by students who recorded the sermons, 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. 51

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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 regarding 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.   Václav of Dráchov, “Sermo de M. Iohanne Hus,” in FRB 8, pp. 373–​376. On Dráchov’s career 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. 56 57

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“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.

  Dráchov, “Sermo de M. Iohanne Hus,” p. 376.  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 translation for this song included in: Holeton and Vlhová-​Wörner, “A Remarkable Witness,” pp. 172–​177. 64   “Rex Regum,” p. 176. 61 62

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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 worship. 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 celebration 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 “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 sanctorum martyrum” (fols. 352r–​357v) and a sermon for Advent (fols. 358v–​366v) following. On this collection, see: Marek, “Husitské postily,” pp. 23–​4 8. 65

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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 depiction would have been familiar to an Utraquist audience from the various passion 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 everyone 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 relationship 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 thinking with their own emergent tradition and synthesizing Hus’s own words, the earliest commemorations of his death, traditional liturgical tunes, and new lyrical compositions in order to create a truly unique set of expressions of religious identity. In the following 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.

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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 technically 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 recognize 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, poisoning 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. 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. 70

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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 pretensions 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 perdition.” 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 excommunicated 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.

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It was in the wake of this final decree that a foreign monarch emerged to champion 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 subsequent 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 administration 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 preceded 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 letter 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 ­chapter  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.

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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 consistent 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 relinquished 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 sponsored 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 decidedly 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 cardinals ‘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   The concessions that Vladislav agreed to were issued on June 16, 1471. They have been published 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. 83

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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 particularly 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, 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. 88

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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 illuminate 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 components 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 create a multimedia experience geared toward the instruction of the laity. The significance 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 accessible 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 people 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.

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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 separate them from Christ.”93 In praising these martyrs, Václav was explicit in identifying 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 literally: “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 torment, at least we should endure being cursed on account of God [and] those calling 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 thematic 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.   Priest Václav, “Sancti Johannes Hus,” fols. 51r and 52r. 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. 93 94

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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 venerated 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 weakened 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 antiphon 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.

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Jerome, these texts were typical of Utraquist compositions. Jerome never disappeared 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 protector 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 veneration 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 original 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.  Geary, Living With the Dead, p. 81. 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. 103 104

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martyrdom under Emperor Maximian.107 Like those faithful fighters who had come through “harsh conflicts” but now “shine like stars,” the Bohemian martyrs 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 depiction 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 warrior 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 articulated 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 vernacular 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 familiar 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.

  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. 107

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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 intercede 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 hagiography, 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 emphasized 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 hagiographic 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.   This text has been published in a modern edition as: Život, to jest šlechetné obcování ctného svatého 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. 111 112

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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 gathered 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

 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. 117

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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 suppress 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 association granted Polák authority within Utraquist circles, and he quickly came to serve as a spokesman for the imprisoned priests. Accounts of his imprisonment 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 reminiscent 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 throughout 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 Křesťané, silně doúfajte,” in Nejedlý, Dějiny husitského zpěvu, vol. 6, pp. 235–​237. On the importance 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. 119

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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 acceptance of the throne. The articles further called for the prohibition of administering 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 governments 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 agreement also called for individuals’ freedom of conscience; nobles were forbidden from compelling their tenants and subordinates in matters of religion, and people 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   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 agreements made at Kutná Hora, see:  Eberhard, Konfessionsbildung und Stände, pp.  46–​6 0. The correspondence 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. 123

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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 religious 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 differences between Prague and Rome. The ways in which this dyad was commemorated 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 identity 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 incomplete. 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 centuries, 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. 127

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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 paintings 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 complemented 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 contained 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. 

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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 pictorially 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 manuscript 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 elements. 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   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. 134

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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 inversion. 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 crusaders, 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 illumination 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 preaching 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 thinking 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.

  MS NM IV B 24, fol. 76r.   MS NM IV B 24, fol. 56r. 140   MS NM IV B 24, fol. 5v. 138 139

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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 concerning 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 collection 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. 

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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 material 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 eschatological 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 foundation 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 canonical 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.

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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” during 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 sermon: “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 incorporated earlier materials and themes while expanding to new media and genres to further their reach. These vehicles of memory also showed how Utraquist preachers, 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   Koranda, “Sermo de martyribus,” p. 369.  Ibid. 146   Koranda, “Sermo de martyribus,” p. 368. 147   Koranda, “Sermo de martyribus,” p. 369. 148   Koranda, “Sermo de martyribus,” pp. 371–​372. 144 145

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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 themselves 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 immediate 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 religious 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 historical exigencies and devotional imperatives, though, these three chapters have argued that Hussite and Utraquist commemorative practices were focused on preserving 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 elaborate 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 latter 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 leaders also served as a means of guaranteeing his active intercession on behalf of his

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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 therefore 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 interlocutors 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 conflicted 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 disputation 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 sogenannten 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.

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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 doctrine 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 immediately alienated political leaders who equated the Hussite heresy with political rebellion.4 On a third, intellectual level, Eck also manipulated Luther into defending 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 opponents, Eck’s identification of Luther as another Hus had potentially devastating ramifications. From the perspective of Catholic polemicists, Eck’s discovery of Luther’s affinities was unsurprising. According to their heresiology, there was certainly nothing 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’ doctrine 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 conflict 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, “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. 4

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Catholic authors’ condemnation by equation did, however, also draw attention to the fact that Luther was not the first to oppose the papacy. Perhaps unintentionally, 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 provided a precedent and model for the political orchestration of religious reform by the nobility; and second, that the highest institutions of the Church, and particularly 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 campaign 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 revolutionary 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 unimaginable. This textual Hus was also a distorted reflection of the historical or hagiographic 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.

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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 himself 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 confessional 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 slippery 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.   For detailed overviews of Luther’s legal and intellectual struggle with the Catholic hierarchy 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. 8 9

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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 interpretation 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 consumption 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 underlying 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, arguing 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 challenged 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 questioned 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.

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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 authority 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 concerning 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 brokered 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 superior 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 confrontation 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, 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 disputatoria, 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. 14

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which viva voce confrontations were bookended by publications that placed the matters under discussion before the public eye. Within that expansive and inclusive gaze, matters of high theology became a topic of debate for people throughout 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 unprepared,” 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   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. 18

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Constance during a break in the debate, Luther concluded that “among the articles of Jan Hus and the Bohemians, many are clearly most Christian and evangelical.”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 scriptura 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 beginning. 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 expanding 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.   Disputatio Lipsiae habita, p. 287. 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. 24 25

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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 prominence in the Leipzig Debate and Luther’s continued engagement with the implications 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 letters 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 present 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, enjoining 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 printing, 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.

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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 heresiarch 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 publication 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 published 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 neutral 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 headings 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.   Martin Luther, “Letter to George Spalatin” (Feb., 1520) in WABr 2, pp. 40–​42, p. 42. 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. 34 35

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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, exhaustively 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 instruments 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.

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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 execution 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 condemning forty-​one of Luther’s teachings. This bull decried Luther’s revival of the heresies “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.   On the intensification and crystallization of Luther’s Antichrist language and the papacy, 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. 44 45

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of this bull [Exsurge] to be the Antichrist, and I write against that Antichrist, having 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 accusation 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 opponents 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 broadcast a debate about authority in the Church across the Empire and place his conflict with Rome at the center of public consciousness. Unintentionally, or at least

 Luther, Adversus execrabilem Antichristi bullam, p. 598.  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. 49 50

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unwillingly, Catholic authors had aided and abetted the eruption of this theological 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: throughout 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 emperor’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 imperial 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.

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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 exception 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 indirectly) 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 association 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 keyssers 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.

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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 meaningful in the unfolding of its German counterpart, as the possibility of Luther’s allying 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 collaboration between Catholic rulers and polemicists could effectively counter the influence of Luther’s incipient reform movement, as witnessed by Emser’s continued 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 traditional sacramental theology of the Church; in light of this focus, Luther’s rhetorical   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 subsequent 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 sacramentorum 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. 61

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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 continued 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 published 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 questioned 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, entitled The Articles and Origins of the Waldensians, the Poor of Lyons, John Wycliffe, and   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 developing 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. 65

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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 necessary 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 curriculum 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 written 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 running 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 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 . 71

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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 antecedents 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 practices, 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 condemnations 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   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. 75

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alphabetically; and the Catalogue’s fourth book brought Bernhard’s history of heresy 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 understanding, 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 necessarily 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 serpentine 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 separate 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’ 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. 80

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(“Praga”) was made corrupt (“prava”) by Hus, so Luther had maliciously transformed 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 genealogy of Luther’s dissent. Certainly Luther had been inspired and informed by medieval 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   Bernhard von Luxemburg, Catalogus, p. L3r.   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. 85 86

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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 dissidence 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 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.” 89

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This pamphlet provoked an almost immediate response from Capito, who published 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 foundations 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 primary source research. He cited Piccolomini’s history of Bohemia, an anonymous “Bohemian history” and “true chronicle” of the Hussite movement, and the official 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 secular 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 history, 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), especially 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.

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1524 also witnessed the publication of another essential source for promoting 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 apostolic purity.100 For Reinhardt, the Hussites’ teachings, especially those that mandated 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 amelioration 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 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. 98

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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 authoritative 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 represented 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 institutional 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 identification 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 articulated their own distinctive understandings of the Bohemian reformation’s significance 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 mantle 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.

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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 exposure 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 manuscript 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   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 scientific 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 105 106

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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 acknowledge 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 commended 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 support 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 publish a “dossier” for Hus’s canonization.114 From this perspective, Hus’s opposition 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,”

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Luther in April 1525, referring to Hus as “that extremely holy man, who is worthy 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 eventually 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 comprehensive 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.

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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 contrary, 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 eschatological 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 excerpting 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.

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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’ construction 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 allegiance 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 reaffirmed 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 volume, 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 eschatological 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.”

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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 biographies 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 asserting 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 is actually a conflation of verses 33 and 35, which read: (v.33) “Et docti in populo docebunt plurimi: 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. 128

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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 institutional 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.

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historicize the complaints that had become common cultural currency in the growing 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 protomartyr 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 combined 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 idealized 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 preaching, 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.  Brunfels, Processus Consistorialis, pp. C3v–​C 4r.

135 136

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. 

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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 justice 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 sentence 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 captions 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 exhaustively 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.

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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 emulated and expanded upon. As the 1520s unfolded, this question gained a heightened eschatological importance; the sharpening of Luther’s rhetoric against the

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papacy as the seat of Antichrist retroactively imbued Hus’s struggle against the institutional Church a century earlier with apocalyptic urgency. Catholic polemics 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 movement 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 condemning 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 conscience. 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 completed 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 biblical 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.

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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 conflation 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 succeed 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.

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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 leaders’ 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 impending 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 performance 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 personifying and making visible the contrast and conflict between true Christians and the diabolically inspired ecclesiastical hierarchy. It also made a spectacle of that hierarchy 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 pervaded 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 language, 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).

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within a tradition of polemics that anticipated and foretold the moment when the corruption of the institutional church would be revealed and even purified 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 revelatory 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.

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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 associated 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 religious deviance a tragedy; the official conciliar documents expressed no such sympathy, 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 historical 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 theological 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 connected 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 parallel 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 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. 13

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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 ecclesiastical 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 pedagogical 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 traditional 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.   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. 18

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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 adding 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 preface 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 assembled at Constance. Granted, the content of the text belied this tone; Mladoňovice had been committed 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 entertain 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.   Petr of Mladoňovice, History und warhafftige geschicht, p. Aiir. 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. 22 23

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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 execution at Constance and the failings of church councils more generally. Its ostensibly straightforward presentation of Hus’s trial created a baseline of detailed historical 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 elimination 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 interpretations 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 dynamics that existed in tension within the developing Lutheran historical consciousness.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   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. 25

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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 actually convening in the 1520s, largely because Popes Leo X and Clement VII (r. 1523–​1534) never seriously contemplated holding one. The papacy was sensitive to any questions about its supremacy over the Church after the tumultuous 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 destabilizing 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 gathering. 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 territories that took their lead from Wittenberg.   The best account of the continued demand for a council remains Hubert Jedin’s. On the 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 kanonistische 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. 26

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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 recognition 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 persistence 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 genossenschaftlichen 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).

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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 convene 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 combat 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 impending 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 writers. 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 invalidate 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.   On the Protestant grievances, see:  Eike Wolgast, “Das Konzil in den Erörterungen der 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. 33 34

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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 combining 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 formulate 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 deviations 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 contrasting 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 papacy’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 confessores (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].

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“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 elevation 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 contradicting 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, sitting 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 institutional, Antichristian church—​here represented by the council—​and the true, suffering 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 certifying 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.  Luther, Disputatio Circularis, p. 16. 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. 41 42

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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 constituted 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 censure 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 histories, 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   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. 47

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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 histories 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 correspondence 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 vocamus (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 c­ hapter 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. 51

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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 heresy?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 inability to refute his arguments with biblical proof texts. In light of the council’s conduct, 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 authorities 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   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. 53

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conduct of the council. For Hus, as with Luther, this moral contrast inevitably 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 consolation.”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 foreshadowing. 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  Luther, Tres Epistolae, p. 31.  Ibid. 60  Luther, Tres Epistolae, p. 30. 61  Luther, Tres Epistolae, p. 27. 62  Luther, Tres Epistolae, p. 29. 58 59

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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 accompanied 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 concluded 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 expectations 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 sanctity 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   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. 63

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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 jurisdiction 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 militant.”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 second 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 theology 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 (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. 68

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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 institution.” 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 foundation of legitimate Christian practice.76 The inclusion of this decree amongst Hus’s writings in defense of communion in both kinds highlighted a stark contrast 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 further emphasized by Agricola’s commentary, which clarified the moral and soteriological 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 correspondence 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,

 Agricola, Disputatio Ioannis Hus, p. B7v.  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. 74 75

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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 deciding 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 followers 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 collection, 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 iniquity exposed more clearly to the faithful people.” A marginal gloss to this passage 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  Luther, Epistoale Quaedam, pp. A2v.–​A 3r.  Luther, Epistolae Quaedam, p. A5r. 81  Ibid. 82   Epistolae Quaedam, p. D6v. 83   Epistolae Quaedam, p. F6r. 79 80

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the paucity of notes in this volume that drew the eye. It was the occasional interruption 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” foretold 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 academic 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   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. 84

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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 religious 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 composed 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 earlier adapted German adages for religious instruction and composed catechetical material suited to beginning students’ abilities, by 1537 he recognized the potential 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.   On the visuality of drama, see:  Timothy Jackson, “Drama and Dialogue in the Service 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 87

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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 typically 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 (typically 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 framework. Such paratextual elements, as in their prose counterparts, served to circumscribe 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 subject matter.92 Such concerns led Luther, for instance, to reject absolutely the value of medieval religious drama, and Melanchthon to disdain the “the histrionic performances 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.

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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 pontifications of on-​stage commentators may not seem to be the stuff of great entertainment, 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 polemics. 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 introduction, 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  Agricola, Tragedia, pp. A5v.–​A 6r.  Agricola, Tragedia, pp. A7r.–​A7v. 96  Agricola, Tragedia, p. A4v. 97   Agricola, Tragedia, p. A3v. 94 95

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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 immediate 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 including 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 framework 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 rejection, 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 martyrdom 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 represented 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 potential 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 established 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, progressively dramatic narrative arc. In fact, the play consisted primarily of long, alternating speeches by Hus and his interlocutors with hardly any intervening action. The 98  Agricola, Tragedia, pp. B2r.–​B3v. This interpretation echoed the broader Lutheran construction 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.

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relative lack of activity did not preclude, however, the portrayal of Hus’s opponents 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 derisively 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 opponents 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 counterpoint 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 unmistakable.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 hagiography 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 condemnation by Sigismund: “Lord Jesus, my redeemer and God, I will patiently bear

 Agricola, Tragedia, pp. B6v.–​B8v.  Agricola, Tragedia, pp. D2r.–​D2v. 103   For an analysis of Protestant authors’ use of this dramatic device, see:  Ehrstine, Theater, Culture, and Community, pp. 218–​224. 101 102

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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 conclusion. 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 diabolical 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 emphasized 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 particularly 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

 Agricola, Tragedia, pp. F4r.–​F4v.  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. 104 105

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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 understanding of the Christian past was increasingly authorized and reinforced by prophetic 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 immediate predecessor, combined with the rich stock of materials describing and interpreting 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 hesitation of the French king and internal Italian politics than the unwillingness of  Agricola, Tragedia, F6r. and F5r.   Jonathan Green, Printing and Prophecy: Prognostication and Media Change, 1450–​1550 (Ann Arbor: The U. of Michigan Press, 2012), p. 153. 109 110

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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 understanding its failure as a positive sign of things to come. The designation of Hus as a prophet of the German reformation’s eventual triumph 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 association 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.

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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 reformation 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 description, 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,”

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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 overstate 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 composition 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 intertwined 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 manner, Cochlaeus placed himself firmly within the traditional intellectual frameworks 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 message 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 letter: 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.

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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 agendas 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 present related to the past. This second point is important not only because it sheds light on the development 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 “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). 7

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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 impassioned, violent, and eschatologically inflected exchanges of sixteenth-​century polemicists could actually produce sophisticated and methodologically inventive 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 interpretations of the past. Thus, contrary to much of the contemporary scholarship on sixteenth-​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 supporters and opponents as a forerunner of the Saxon reformer, and they were basically quite typical of contemporary Catholic polemics. Cochlaeus considered Luther   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. 9

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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 quantitative 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 recognized the qualities that Hus and Luther shared while claiming that Luther was somehow 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 traditional, 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 geography, history, and music theory; and finally gaining the patronage of the influential Nuremberg patrician Willibald Pirckheimer.11 It was while serving as the chaperone 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 combat 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.

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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 discredit their opponent. In many, if not most, of the initial polemical responses to Luther after Leipzig and subsequently Worms, the idea that Luther was reviving 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 publications 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 incorporated a wide array of contemporary and ancient historical sources to embed the contemporary conflict between Luther and the Church within a timeless, diametric 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 revolution 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

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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 contrast 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 controversialists, 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 family.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 conclude: “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.

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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 conversion 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 seditious 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 argument was that Germany was in danger of being destroyed by God’s wrath

 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” nationalism 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. 20

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because it had turned away from the Church, and Cochlaeus adduced a number 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 continuous, 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 subsequently 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 contrasted 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  Cochlaeus, Pia Exhortatio, pp. B6v. and E4r.  Cochlaeus, Pia Exhortatio, pp. A8v. and B3v. 25  Cochlaeus, Pia Exhortatio, pp. E1r.–​E2r. 26  Cochlaeus, Pia Exhortatio, p. D6v. 23 24

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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 framing 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 contrast 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 imperial 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 pontificates 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 number 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 neologisms to reinforce this connection, referring to the Lutherans as “new Hussites,”

 Cochlaeus, Paraclesis, p. A5r.  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 declension 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. 27 28

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“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 intrinsic 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 neologisms 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.  Cochlaeus, Paraclesis, p. I2r. 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]. 31 32

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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 heretics’ attacks on the Mass in order to discredit Luther’s critique. Not surprisingly, 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 religious law, true penance, or the authority of any institution to dictate proper religious 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 during 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 accusations 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 commitment to constructing a historical argument against Martin Luther and the movement 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   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. 35

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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 theology 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 incarnation of an eternal, heretical ideal type, Cochlaeus actually limited the impact of his arguments drawn from the Christian past. In effect, by equating Israelite apostates, 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 reformation, 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 älteren Kontroverstheologie”; and Benrath, “Das Verständnis der Kirchengeschichte.” Cf. the contrast 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. 40

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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 serious ramifications for the emergent Lutheran movement, as Luther and his allies were forced to confirm their support for the German princes and decry any politically 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 writings 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 religious community.43 As Miriam Usher Chrisman has aptly put it, this period witnessed 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 published 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

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Catholic authors were more than happy to bolster this association. In the wake of the Peasants’ War a host of Catholic controversialists issued tracts laying 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 existence 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.

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earlier writings as proof of his accountability for the conflict and hypocrisy in condemning 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 printers 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   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. 50

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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 massive, 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 personalities, 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 writings 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 saxonicam (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 polemics. 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. 53

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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 dismissed 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 perfidy 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 preceded 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, eternally 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.

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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 published 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 permissible to read the Bible in the vernacular, and a brief work anticipating the convocation 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 current 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.

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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 constructed 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 movement 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 particular, 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 reformation 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 provided enough common ground for the cities to be admitted into the Schmalkaldic League the following 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.

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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 history 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 machinations will be revealed by the most authoritative documentation.”67 Cochlaeus also stated in both letters that he intended this work to have an international audience, 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 uncompromising 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 recognition 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–​ 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! 66

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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 leading 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 correspondence 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 published. 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  Johannes Cochlaeus, “Letter to Girolamo Aleander” (October 7, 1537)  in “Beiträge,” pp. 274–​278, p. 277. 70

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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 comparison 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 presentations of Hus that characterized Mladoňovice and Richental, respectively. 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 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 description 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 71

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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 spectrum 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 comparison between the eucharistic theologies of Wyclif, Hus, and Luther was accurate, as Cochlaeus offered a nuanced reading of Hus’s orthodox defense of transubstantiation 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 unchristian 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.

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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 necessity 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 fundamental 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 authorization) and imprudently (i.e., with harsh language and in public). Luther, however, “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.

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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 writing 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 polemical 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 confabulations 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 publication 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.   On this shift in the Catholic approach to the nature of heresy, see:  Bagchi, “Defining Heresies,” p. 248. 81 82

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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 dramatic 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 traditional 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 rehabilitate Hus and invalidate the Council of Constance by focusing on the moral failings and intentional dishonesty of those who had undertaken to do both. Cochlaeus’s choice of genre, style, and content in this play clearly represented 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 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 appropriation 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 83

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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 publication 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 theology, 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’ “wickedness 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 primacy 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.

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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 intercede with her husband on Agricola’s behalf. Katharina agreed to this intervention, but demanded that Agricola’s daughter, Ortha, promise to wed Luther should Katharina predecease him. This proposal, which was facilitated and witnessed 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 salacious 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 opponents 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  Cochlaeus, Ein heimlich Gespräch, p. 19.  Cochlaeus, Ein heimlich Gespräch, p. 21. 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.” 93 94

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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 possible 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 audiences 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-​definition 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 transition 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 revolution, 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 reconciliation: “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 threatened its existence. He had also spent the intervening years engaged in his own

 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. 1

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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 evangelical 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 continued resistance, Flacius held up Luther as exemplary, the last link in a chain of suffering 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 institution or community of people, that constituted the true church. To this theological 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, suffering 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.

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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 historical 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 history. 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 reformation. 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 interplay 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, 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). 7

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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 members 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, especially 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 conflicts 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]   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. 10

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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 collapsing 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 template 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 eliminating 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 position 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, fiscal, and military functioning.14

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

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Alongside the irenic leaders on both sides of the confessional divide who participated 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 successful, 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 disproportionate 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 blatant “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 vierziger 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.

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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 legitimacy 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 surrender 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 battle 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 composed 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 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), 18

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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 justification 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 question 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 previous 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.”

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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 needless 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 personality 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 memory 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 published 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 battle 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 discussion 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.

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of impending persecution, certainly echoed the words used by Bohemian preachers 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 people, 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 religious 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 incident 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 commemorating 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.

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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 kingdom 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 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 conclusion of Jonas’s sermon. See: Jonas, Zwo Tröstliche Predigt, p. E1v. 33

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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 eschatologically inflected optimism, but they did not ultimately destroy it. Rather, the outcome 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 previous 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 followers 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 colloquies of the early 1540s represented, and he was relegated to the margins of the Catholic engagement with the German reformation. Cochlaeus was also literally 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 sermons as a secondary form of prophetic sanction for Luther’s movement that had effectively guaranteed its survival. See: Bugenhagen, Ein Christliche Predigt, p. B1v.; and Jonas, Zwo Tröstliche Predigt, p. D4v.

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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 political 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 narrative 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   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 authoritative 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). 40

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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 overcome into account. Indeed, when read alongside each other these works present a comprehensive view of imperial and ecclesiastical history that served a prescriptive function by establishing precedents that dictated how the emperor should act either to elicit the Protestants’ total submission to his (and the Church’s) authority 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 rejection 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 presented 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 medieval 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 heretics from the Holy Roman Empire, even though external wars had always gained greater glory for kings. 50

  Keen, “Cochlaeus: An Introduction,” p. 51.   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. 46 47

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In describing the causes of sedition, Braun was candid about how breakdowns in secular and ecclesiastical leadership could result in rebellion. Based on a survey 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 comprised 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 obedience 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 application 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 heresy 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 decisively to remove the root cause of that disunity before it was too late.  Braun, De Seditionibus, p. 105.   These are the headings in the table of contents for books four, five, and three of De Haereticis, 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. 51 52

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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 provided 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 biography 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

  Braun, “Epistola de ratione scribendi historias,” in Commentaria, pp. b4r.–​c1v., p. b4r.   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 allowing 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. 56 57

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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 scrupulous citations and accurate paraphrases. The extent of Cochlaeus’s animosity 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 limitation, 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 rhetoric 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 routinely 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.  Cochlaeus, Commentaria, pp. 79 and 38. 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. 60 61

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provided the Commentary with a marked sense of immediacy.63 Unfortunately, Cochlaeus’s portrayal of Luther was also characterized by a great deal of repetition 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 tolerating 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: narrower 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 narrative history of the Bohemian reformation up to 1471, broken up into the titular 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 theologian 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 rhetorical 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 versions as “De quinque prioribus sacramentis” and the “Professio fidei,” respectively. Rokycana’s text

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the fourth part was the Seventh Philippic, which heightened the theological contrasts 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 recapitulated 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 reformation, 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 aftermath. Throughout his narrative, Cochlaeus argued that Hus had defended essentially 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 intractability, 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 execution 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 provenance 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.

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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 evidence that some people could retain their good sense. Cochlaeus therefore presented his two Hussite treatises as evidence of many Bohemians’ orthodoxy, using Rokycana’s and Příbram’s discussions of sacramental theology, liturgy, ecclesiastical 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  Cochlaeus, Historiae Hussitarum, p. 79, 80, 103, and passim.  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. 69 70

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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 acceptance 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 defenders 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 attractive. 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 religious 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 history of the Bohemian reformation suggested what would happen if Germany preferred 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.

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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 quotation 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 anxious, 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 leaders 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 reformation, 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 contradictory assertions of both the radical theological discontinuity between the Lutherans and medieval heretics and the clear historical relevance of their heresies 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.   Ibid. The quotation also appeared on: Cochlaeus, Historiae Hussitarum, p. 249.

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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 prolific 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), especially ­chapter 2.

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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 necessary 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 justifying 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 precedents 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.

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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 complementary, 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 overreaching 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 therefore 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 influence 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.

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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 confess 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 letters 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 regeneration. 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 kingdom 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 afterwards, in David’s and Solomon’s time, it first came to its highest power and holiness.”95 Similarly, the church in the time of the Roman emperors Maximian and Diocletian had been “horribly persecuted, and the emperors attempted to eradicate the Christians entirely,” but they too had failed to eradicate the true church.96

 Ibid.  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 vermanungen 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. 90 91

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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 rightfully 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 generally: “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 history 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 terrible 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  Flacius, Etliche tröstliche Vermanungen, p. 706.  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 corruption 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.” 97 98

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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 followed 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 concluded 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 ecclesiastical 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 terrible” 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 therefore 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  Flacius, Clarissimae Quaedam Note, p. A3v.  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.’ ” 102 103

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Here, two men burned at the stake in the fifteenth century served as the mouthpieces 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 framework 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 historical 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 explicate the reasons why they had survived. Although this burst of historiography 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’ familiarity 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.

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Schmalkaldic War and reign of Queen Mary in England) met and formed relationships 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 incorporating marginal notes that drew attention to Hus’s predictions of coming reformers and his certainty that the Bohemian reform movement would last beyond his  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,” available 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. 109

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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 skipping 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 represented 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 represented 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 eschatological 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 “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. 113

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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” prophecies 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, subdivided the second and third periods using the “four kingdoms” model first elucidated 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 juxtaposition 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 reinforced 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, contemporary 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.

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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 legality of Lutheranism in the Empire. The Passau agreement also served as the template 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 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. 124

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scholars across Europe and setting them to gathering materials for a comprehensive 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 clerical 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 government, 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.

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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 incarnation of the true church, which had existed “always and in all times.”133 In a second programmatic text composed in 1554, Flacius discussed the essential 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 treatise, Flacius proposed to write a doctrinal history of the church that would complement 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 necessary 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 constitute 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 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 kirchenhistorischen 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 historical 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 132

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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 continuous 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 constructed 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 teachings 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.

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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 witnesses, Flacius provided a veritable grand tour of medieval religious literature. He mined patristic writings, Catholic hagiography, monastic chronicles, and inquisitorial records to discover those who had opposed the papacy and espoused evangelical 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 essentially 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 bolster 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.   This notion of a “textual community” constituted by a collective engagement with a key 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 testium 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. 141 142

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gravity for this collection of witnesses, a martyr whose prophetic foretelling of Luther connected the medieval opponents of the papacy with the contemporary 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 history, 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 contributed 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

  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 “international 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. 145

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“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 correspondence; 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 publications. 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.  Ibid. 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. 150 151

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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 typologically 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 affirming 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 distinctive 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

 Flacius, Historia et Monumenta, vol. 1, p. a2r.  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. 155 156

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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 punning 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 in vol. 2, p. a2v. 158

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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 witnesses 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 propagating true doctrine. The imbrication of these two, central purposes in Flacius’s historical enterprise within the figure of Hus therefore demonstrated his exemplarity as an embodiment of the perseverance that characterized the entire history 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 following 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 eventually the Magdeburg Centuries. In all of these works, the fact that there had been someone 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 colloquy, when he wrote that “there is no greater threat to true piety than the bogus reconciliations 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.   Flacius, “Letter to the Saxon Dukes,” 304.

159 160

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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 tension 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 persecuted, faithful Christians who had persevered with divine aid? That was the ultimate question, and authors such as Cochlaeus and Flacius went to unprecedented 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 determine 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.

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embedded Hus within diametrically opposed interpretations of the Christian past that agreed on only one thing:  that a proper knowledge and understanding of the rise and fall of the movement started by Jan Hus in the previous century 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 martyr. 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 transmission, 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.

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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. 

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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 production 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 represented 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 reformation’s prophetic foundations. The visualization of Hus during the sixteenth century also extended beyond images of his martyrdom. Whether shown administering communion to members 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 Luther,” pp. 55–​61. 2

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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 represented 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 imminent 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 preserving 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   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. 3

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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 commitments 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 centrality 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 movements) 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 possibility 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 commemoration of Jan Hus in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was deployed at crucial junctures in order to justify religious reform and even revolution. By drawing 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 (Chicago: U. of Chicago Press, 2004), especially pp. 19–​2 0. Cf. the more provocative, pity restatement 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. 6

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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 religious 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 controversias 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

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300

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

Printed and Online Primary Source Collections Aland, Kurt, and Mirbt, Carl, eds. and trans., Quellen zur Geschichte des Papsttums und des Römischen Katholizismus, 2 vols. (Tübingen: JCB Mohr, 1967). Baronio, Cesare, and Raynaldi, Odorico, Annales Ecclesiastici (Paris: H. Lagny, 1864–​1883). Bartoš, František, ed., Manifesty Mĕsta Prahy z Doby Husitské (Prague: Nákladem Obce Hlavního Mĕsta Prahy, 1932). –––-​, ed., Orationes quibus Nicolaus de Pelhřimov … et Ulricus de Znojmo … in Concilio Basiliensi anno 1433 ineunte defenderunt (Tábor: Jihočeská Spolecnost, 1935).

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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

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

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

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

Index

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

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