things.39 The article was not attacking simony, which clerics continued to practice. The doctrinal issue was that not ceasing the practice after being warned produced mortal sin and made those clerics unfit for office. What Hus’s accusers objected to most vigorously was the fact that Hus preached against persistent simony “before a large number of people of both sexes,” even advising them against attending the churches of persistent sinners. Hus’s accusers alleged that these sermons contradicted the teaching of the holy church, damaging and scandalizing both clergy and laity.40
The second article alleged that Hus berated a well-known and wealthy priest and master, Peter Všerub. This must have been a phenomenal moment: Hus is reported as having said that he would not accept the entire world if it meant he would die while in possession of so many and so large benefices as Master Peter had held. This might not have been so bad, if Hus had not chosen to make this statement at Peter’s funeral. Instead of praising the deceased, which was expected then as it is now, Hus turned the dead cleric into a figure of what was wrong with the church. This was typical of the kind of rhetorical performance that must have irritated his colleagues and his superiors. But Hus had clearly gone beyond being merely an irritant. His accusers feared that such preaching would not edify the people but would only incite them to turn against the clergy.41
The third and final article alleged that Hus, in a public sermon, berated the clergy of Prague. In so doing, he was allegedly in violation of synodal decrees, which ruled that all priests were prohibited from preaching excessively against the priestly rank. The accusers argued that Hus used his sermons to turn people against all clergy and to incite hatred against them.42 They also alleged that Hus’s sermons damaged devoted minds, extinguished charity, and rendered the clergy unpleasant to the people, leaving his audiences agitated and discontent.43
From the perspective of the authorities, these accusations were a part of a larger problem that was brewing in the capital in the first decade of the fifteenth century: Wyclif’s ideas.44 Wyclif’s works first arrived in Prague in the 1380s, reaching a critical mass in the 1390s, and the reception was a complicated and strife-ridden affair. The scholarly exchange was, in part, the result of a newfound closeness between England and Bohemia. The two countries had been enjoying a period of rich cultural and religious cross-pollination that started with the outbreak of the Great Schism in 1378, which diverted Czech students from Paris (obedient to the Avignon popes) to England (which, like Bohemia, remained loyal to the popes in Rome). This new affinity intensified in the wake of Richard II’s marriage to Anne of Bohemia in 1382. The universities in Prague and Oxford benefited from this new connection, with numerous academic exchanges of students, as well as books, and with a new scholarship for Czech students studying at Oxford.45 Brought back from England by Jerome of Prague, Wyclif’s tractates, such as Dialogus, Trialogus, and two unspecified Eucharistic tractates (possibly De Eucharistia and De Apostasia), began to circulate around the university, launching a serious study and discussion of Wyclif’s ideas there, especially of his teaching about the nature of the church.46 Wyclif’s teachings, in particular his philosophy of extreme realism, found an eager and accepting audience among the Czech masters at the university in Prague.47 Since then, it not only gave a unifying program to the pro-reform masters at the university (answering many of their questions that were already in the air but that had stumped the Czech-speaking reformers), but also became intertwined with the Czech-German antagonism at the university, giving a distinct voice to the Czech minority there over and against the prevailing philosophy of nominalism among their German colleagues.48
Wyclif’s teachings found ardent supporters at the university, but the church authorities tended to view this support as suspect. In 1403, the first set of forty-five articles (which would be cited again at the Council of Constance) was condemned in Prague, to the great chagrin of many university masters there. Between 1406 and 1408, the synods in the city took up the problem of Wyclif’s remanence, banning all teaching of Wyclif’s treatises. This escalated in the archbishop’s order that all of Wyclif’s books be handed over in 1409 and culminated in the public burning of Wyclif’s books in 1410.
Hus was drawn into this general nervousness about Wyclif’s influence in Prague. In 1408, a group of parish priests from Prague filed a host of accusations against Hus, arguing that he criticized other clerics from his pulpit and insulted their reputation, even claiming that Hus had preached Wyclif’s Eucharistic doctrine of remanence. The synod’s interference reveals how nervous the authorities felt about Hus’s influence on the ordinary faithful. In fact, Hus spent most of his time in the pulpit proclaiming the need for a personal, inner conversion of every individual. Occasionally, he preached on the subject of priestly immorality, arguing that it put an obstacle in the path of the lay faithful if the priests did not serve as moral exemplars and guides on the path to salvation.
In accusations against Hus, the problem was one of context. Although Hus delivered sermons critical of the clergy at synods as well as on the university soil, he attracted the suspicion of the archbishop only after saying the same things in Bethlehem Chapel before the laity.49 The rules for castigating clerical immorality were different at synods or on the university soil, where only clerics were present. In those situations, his fellow priests welcomed his harshness and even sought it out. The archbishop of Prague invited Hus to preach at the local synod, not once but twice, in 1405 and again in 1407. The invitations stopped after the first set of accusations in 1408. But before Hus was enmeshed in legal action, he was chosen to be a kind of ecclesiastical keynote speaker at both synods, setting the tone for the entire gathering. On both occasions, Hus delivered a searing critique of simony, clerical laziness, and immorality evident in the two extant synodal sermons. In the first meeting on October 19, 1405, Hus chose to preach on a verse from the Gospel of Matthew (22:37), “Diliges Dominum Deum tuum.” In his sermon, he speaks about the church as the bride of Christ, lambasting those clerics who had turned away from God’s love and from following Christ. In the meeting two years later, on October 18, 1407, Hus preached on a verse from Ephesians (6:14), “State succincti lumbos,” and criticized clerics who lived with concubines, calling them heretics.50
Hus’s sermons at the university, six of which are extant, were no different. In Hus’s sermon delivered at the university on December 5, 1404, he especially railed against hypocrisy among the clergy, which was directly related to their negligence of clerical duties and, of course, greed and simony.51 Greed was, in Hus’s view, the root of all evil in the church, and he especially despised those who strove after ecclesiastical honors and appointments, and those who possessed multiple benefices. He continually reminded his audience of the church’s own rulings against multiple benefices and simony. He also reminded his listeners that the general synod itself banned payments to priests for holy services, including baptisms, funerals, and holy communion. Hus lamented the fact that this rule had been consistently disobeyed, and complained that very few priests did not receive money in exchange for spiritual services. It bears repeating that Bethlehem’s charter was set up in order to counter these very customs that were rife among the clergy.
Hus’s high view of the priestly vocation is evident from his insistence that those who did not live up to a strict—and somewhat radical—standard of behavior ought to be removed from the preaching office and from the church. Citing the words of Jesus to his disciples, Hus admonished his fellow clergy in unequivocal terms: “you are the salt of the people,” he told them, “by your exemplary life and illumination through your salubrious teaching.”52 The priest who failed to live well also failed to show the path of salvation to the faithful entrusted to his care and therefore was no longer effective. The sermons delivered before the clergy were as critical as those before the people. Hus did not flatter the clergy to their faces and complain about them behind their backs; if anything, he spoke with even greater candor and indignation to his colleagues.
Hus’s case shows that complaints against clerical greed and immorality were an accepted (and applauded) part of life in the clerical circles, but were not tolerated when raised before the laity. And Hus used the pulpit in Bethlehem to air complaints about
