The Life & Times of Master John Hus

Chapter I

Europe and Bohemia at the Time of Hus

HOSTILITY to the Church of Rome is almost as ancient as the prosperity of that church. The fabled " donation of Constantine," the subject of the lamentations of Dante and so many other mediaeval writers, certainly denotes a landmark in the history of the church. The suffering early church has, in the Christian martyrs, given to humanity some of its noblest types, and the comparison of Hus to these sufferers frequently recurs in the writings of the Bohemians. When Constantine

granted to the church, not indeed sovereign power, but great*,- authority and riches, a very sudden change took place. The contrast between the martyrs of the year 313 and the wealthy and worldly prelates who, under imperial presidency, discussedmatters of dogma at Nicaea in 325 is very great. Henceforth

>4he power and influence of Ihe. church

-the conception of the priest as an individual who, by virtue .of his office, is superior to the layman, becomes more and more. widely spread. As in many cases the life of the layman was simpler, more moral, more virtuous than that of the priest,

. this., assumption caused great animosity against the clergy.

Claims such as that of receiving communion more frequently, and of partaking of the sacrament in the two kinds — a favour

not granted to laymen — were constantly brought forwardby the priests, particularly in Bohemia. These pretentions, indeed, played a very great part in the Bohemian movement for church-reform, for the Bohemians considered them as

indicating an ever-increasing endeavour on the part of the priests to raise new barriers between themselves and those who were not in holy orders. Thence sprang the fervent devotion of the Bohemians to the chalice which has surprised many writers, and has exposed the Bohemians to the ridicule of both ultramontanes and agnostics ever since the days of Hus. To the Hussites the chalice was an emblem signifying — the equality of all true Christians.

|The ideal object of all mediaeval opponents of the Church of Rome was a return to the simplicity of the primitive church, and the poverty of the clergy which that return was considered to imply. All those who, in mediaeval times, wished to rescue the church from the evil plight into which it had fallenwhether they remained in the Church of Rome or were excluded from it — felt and expressed profound veneration for poverty. As Cardinal Newman writes: l ' It will not…