simply was not done. The clerics believed that the laity should not be dragged into what was, they thought, the church’s internal business. One was supposed to reserve such criticisms for gatherings of the clergy, in the same way that present-day political parties try to deal with internal issues internally, and frown upon their members leaking internal disputes to the public. Hus transgressed this boundary, a decision that was the first sign of the movement that took his name: addressing internal clerical business to the laity. But it is clear that the laity enjoyed listening to Hus speaking on these topics and berating fellow clerics. This created the kind of intimacy that arises between two parties when they unite in criticizing a third, and it won Hus a sizeable following of like-minded clerics and laity.
In 1409, Hus was confronted with another set of accusations. This time, he was accused by the inquisitor of Prague, Jan Protiva. The inquisitor accused Hus of preaching excessively against the clergy and of inciting the people against them. He argued that Hus’s preaching damaged the reputation of priests and discouraged lay obedience. The inquisitor also accused Hus of urging the faithful to leave their parish and come to Bethlehem Chapel instead, even exhorting the faithful to disobey those prelates and priests who lived in sin. Finally, the inquisitor accused Hus of preaching that priests in mortal sin could not celebrate a valid mass or any other sacrament.53 As before, Hus answered all complaints against him, arguing that he had not violated any decrees. But the archbishop would not be placated. In his view, Hus’s preaching posed a threat, and Bethlehem Chapel came to be seen by the ecclesiastical hierarchy as a font of error and sedition. The nature of the accusations is significant: if Hus even hinted that the faithful who were dissatisfied with their parish priests—or whose priests were judged to live in sin—ought to leave their parish and come to Bethlehem instead, then this is evidence that he began to see his chapel as an alternative place of worship and that he was beginning to see his supporters and sympathizers among the faithful as a kind of para-church organization. Telling the faithful to disobey sinful prelates—or those Hus described as sinful—and leave their parishes may have made sense in light of Hus’s Wycliffite ecclesiology, but it amounted to a piece of advice that was both disruptive and subversive.
This was no longer merely a local trouble. Soon after, the archbishop turned to the curia. And in response, in December 1409, Pope Alexander V issued a bull authorizing the archbishop to prosecute error. This was the bull that legitimized the collection (and later destruction) of Wyclif’s books in Prague mentioned above. It also banned preaching in places other than the cathedral, collegiate, parish, or monastic churches, a decision that was clearly aimed against the Bethlehem Chapel, though neither Hus nor Bethlehem was mentioned by name. The authorities may not have wished to add fuel to the fire by singling out Hus specifically, but the intent of the ban was clear. This ban also confirms that the authorities had identified Bethlehem as a source of trouble, well aware of the kind of dangers that Hus’s growing organization posed to the hierarchical church.
Hus’s Later Sermons: Evidence of Radicalization
As a direct result of the charges, Hus’s message intensified, and he began speaking out against clerical corruption and immorality with the kind of harsh candor that he had previously reserved for addressing the clerics directly. The tenor of his sermons shifted noticeably: the collection of sermons preached in the Bethlehem Chapel between 1410 and 141254 shows a different kind of a preacher from the one in 1403. Salvation of the faithful remained the cornerstone of Hus’s preaching efforts, but that subject was now intertwined with a critique of the inefficacy of his fellow clergy in a way that was absent in earlier sermons. This development signaled a shift in Hus’s thinking: a radicalization of Hus’s stances and opinions. Hus did not hesitate to criticize the clerical rank to the point of separating himself from all morally corrupt clerics. In doing so, he adopted what has been described as an extraclerical position, that is to say, using his position as a member of the elite clerical establishment to criticize the behavior of other clergy for failing to live out the ideals that they espoused.55 It accomplished two goals. It allowed him to distance himself from the institutional clergy that he criticized and to appeal to the laity, letting them know that he was a viable alternative.
It seems clear that Hus used the chapel as a venue for voicing his dissent. After he was banned by the papal bull from preaching, Hus spoke publicly against the decree and about his intent not to comply. The pulpit in Bethlehem proved the perfect venue, and the audience he had cultivated for the past eight years were the perfect recipients for his message of public dissent. In a spectacular sermon delivered on June 25, 1410, Hus announced his disobedience of the papal bull and read from his appeal. Then he turned to his audience, asking those gathered if they supported him in this decision, and they shouted out that they would. This event signaled that the laity gathered at Bethlehem was willing to defy authorities in order to stand with Hus. In effect, he took his appeal to the laity and presented them with the choice of obeying the church authorities or obeying him, a move that would have serious and lasting implications for religious life in Bohemia.56 This was the beginning of his open campaign of disobedience, one of the first moments in which Hus can be seen as deliberately creating a party of followers loyal to him as opposed to the official authorities.
In a number of subsequent sermons Hus then declared that he did not wish to obey the prelates or even the archbishop in this matter.57 He then exhorted the faithful to disobey the counsel of those in authority (parents, both natural and spiritual) if, in their view, the judgments of these authorities went against God’s commandments.58 “Let us not obey the king himself or a prelate should they order us to do something which defies the example of Christ, because by disobeying the mortal’s erroneous command we are obeying Christ.”59 This is an invitation with serious and lasting consequences. Hus says that it is at times possible to obey Christ by disobeying the church hierarchy, in other words, he presents a divide between Christ and the church. In light of Hus’s ecclesiology, this makes perfect sense.
As of 1410, Hus distanced himself from ecclesiastical authorities and began styling himself not so much their reformer but their alternative. One of the strategies that Hus employed to present himself as a reformed alternative to the corrupt authorities was to speak about the church as already divided, as composed of “us” and “them,” two camps, one containing himself and his followers, the other his opponents. To underscore the depth of the chasm, Hus equated his opponents with the party of Judas, explaining that, like Judas, they followed Christ solely for the sake of alms. Hus equated this with serving as priests for the sake of benefices and taking holy orders so as to have an easy life.60 The “us versus them” mentality is evident throughout these later sermons. In one example, Hus illustrated the division between the two parties by saying that, whereas Christ said, go preach God’s word, they (meaning Christ’s and, fittingly, Hus’s opponents) say do not preach, do not offer God’s word gratis. Whereas Christ said not to bring gold or silver with you, they say the opposite, and whereas Christ said, we do not want to be served, the corrupt clergy claim the opposite. At the end of the sermon, Hus appealed directly to his listeners: “let us not act like this [meaning like Christ’s and Hus’s opponents], but let us compare our lives with the life of Christ, so that with him we could enter the eternal kingdom.”61 In order to underscore the differences between the two camps, Hus described the pope and prelates as the enemies of God and the Scriptures. In a direct allusion to the papal ban on preaching, Hus argued that because the pope and prelates ignored God’s command that his word be preached in the whole world, they showed themselves as “enemies of the Scriptures … and false witnesses.” Such enemies of the Scriptures ought to be condemned, Hus insisted, by all who love God and also by God. Hus styled himself and his followers as the party of God, of the Scriptures and of such authorities as the apostles, and also Augustine, Gregory, Pope Leo, Bede, John Chrysostom, and Anacletus, with whom Hus agreed that “one should not obey [another man] in evil.”62
As a way of discovering who belonged to which party, Hus invited his faithful to test the lives of those around them. In one memorable sermon, he advised them: “When you see any Christian, immediately think whether his life agrees with the Scriptures. If you think
