disagreements that were made seem so momentous that they called for the audience’s immediate response, eventually fueling the Hussite revolution.4
Mightier Than the Sword: The Evidence of Hus’s Letters
Hus’s excommunication and exile in 1412 were the culmination of struggle over indulgences, in which Hus took an uncompromising stance against the sale of indulgences in the capital.5 It was costly. Hus lost not only the patronage of the king but also the support of most of his university colleagues.6 At that time, Hus had chosen to take a radical stance for something that he considered true; he would do the same when difficult times came again two years later. As before, he declared his intent to oppose the authorities to the laity and continued to write vernacular treatises explaining why he had chosen his course of action and, increasingly, why others should follow in his footsteps.
Words were the only weapons permitted to Hus in his ongoing war against the curia. In the wake of the fourth excommunication issued against him, and with a threat of interdict on his beloved city, Hus left Prague on October 14, 1412.7 He found refuge at the castle Kozí in southern Bohemia that belonged to Jan of Ústí, one of his noble supporters. While there, he continued to write treatises both in the vernacular and in Latin. The majority of his vernacular output comes from this period, as does his most controversial treatise De ecclesia, in which he drew heavily on Wyclif’s teaching about the church. A few years later, the councilmen at Constance would mine De ecclesia for evidence of his heretical views.
After leaving Prague, Hus also kept busy writing letters and vernacular treatises, but he did not take any official steps to have the excommunication revoked.8 It seems that he had given up on proving his innocence by canonical means, instead turning to the laity for support. Because Hus no longer had access to a pulpit from which he could proclaim his message,9 he turned to a written medium to address his followers and sympathizers. Hus often used biblical language to depict himself as a prophet or a Christlike victim, single-handedly battling the forces of evil in the church and the world. This was hardly the first instance of message manipulation in the history of heresy, but it was both effective and memorable for its boldness and its wide-ranging distribution. Because he could not win the legal case brought against him by the curia, Hus retold the events in such a way that allowed him to claim moral victory.
The Antichrist as Hus’s Chief Enemy
In his letters, which were, in effect, public documents, Hus interpreted recent events as a simple story of good versus evil. Hus chose the Antichrist as his enemy and did not hesitate to equate the evil figure with the pope and his cardinals.
Saying that the pope was the Antichrist marked a new departure in Hus’s thinking. His earlier writings, prior to 1412, described the Antichrist in perfectly orthodox terms: an impersonal force opposed to God, actively luring clergy into enforcing their own commands rather than God’s will.10 Hus’s reluctance to align the Antichrist with any specific person or faction is evident.11 In fact, Hus’s teaching on the Antichrist was at that time more traditional than that of his great teacher, John Wyclif.12 But excommunication and exile drastically changed Hus’s view of his opposition. After the fall of 1412, many of his letters openly stated that the pope or the cardinals were the Antichrist or Antichrist’s servants. But these letters were all addressed to the university masters, inhabitants of Prague, and, on several occasions, “all faithful Czechs,” never to the pope or the cardinals themselves.13
Hus believed his defiance of the curia was not simple disobedience of canon law, but rather a preamble to a cosmic battle between good and evil, in which neutrality was impossible. Only weeks after he had left Prague, Hus exhorted his followers there not to be led astray by the Antichrist, meaning the ecclesiastical synod in Prague, who had issued the final excommunication.14 Using this kind of indirect language, Hus advised his sympathizers to be wary of all decrees, regulations, and instructions that came from the same ecclesiastical body, in effect telling them to be selective about accepting its authority.
Hus spoke more directly in a letter to his friend, colleague, and mentor Master Christian, in spring 1413, calling the pope “Satan” and “Antichrist” and his disciples (the cardinals) the “satellites of Antichrist.”15 This is one of the most explicit attacks on the pope and his cardinals, describing the church as completely captivated by the forces of evil, with “Satan incarnate” residing in the place of Peter (“in loco Petri resideat Sathanas cum 12 superbissimis dyabolis incarnates”).16 In another letter to the same master, Hus stated his resolve to fight against the Behemoth, whom he described as the pope and his masters, doctors, and lawyers, who “cover up the ugliness of the beast by a false name of sanctity.”17 Hus’s harsh pronouncement came on the heels of his refusal to accept a ruling by the theological faculty at the University in Prague. They put forth what they considered an orthodox definition of the church, but Hus instead clung to his own understanding of the church, inspired by Wyclif and recently formulated in his treatise De ecclesia. By stating that Satan resides in the place of Peter, Hus declared that he considered the authorities in Rome to be illegitimate.18 The conflict between Hus and the authorities was no longer an internal matter within the church, but a battle between the forces of good and evil.
By calling the pope and cardinals the Antichrist, Hus distanced himself from the authorities, creating a divide between himself and his followers on the one side and the pope and cardinals on the other. Applying such damning words to the pope also helped clarify why the curia persecuted Hus in the first place: the pope and cardinals opposed goodness and could not help attacking an innocent man who threatened them. In fact, to be prosecuted and exiled by the Antichrist spoke exceedingly well of Hus and further underscored his innocence. His overall strategy served two ends: Hus was able to distance himself from the curia (creating his own faction) and, at the same time, to force the undecided to take a stand in the conflict.
Hus as an Old Testament Prophet and Another Christ
Every good narrative needs a hero, and Hus willingly cast himself in this role. In his letters from exile to his colleagues, noble supporters, and lay sympathizers, Hus employed Scriptures to present himself as an innocent victim of unrighteous persecution and interpolated contemporary events into his preconceived framework of a cosmic battle between the people of God and the forces of the Antichrist.
Hus’s wish to sway the public opinion in his favor is best displayed in one of his open letters, written to the people of Prague in November 1413.19 A year into his life in exile, Hus continued to exhort his followers to persevere and emphasized the manifold rewards for those who did, along with the painful punishment for those who fell astray. But what were the letter’s addressees supposed to persevere in doing? When Hus visited the city, which was seldom because of the threat of an interdict, perhaps they could host him in a city filled with hostile clerics, but it would seem that Hus demanded something greater than help with travel arrangements. Hus needed his sympathizers to believe his interpretation of contemporary events and trust him when he told them who was a friend and who was an enemy.
In speaking to laymen, Hus drew parallels between himself and various scriptural persons, as well as between his situation and various scriptural events. He thought that his recent persecutions and suffering were signs of his innocence, and he used the Bible to legitimize this claim. For example, in one letter (in which Hus also rejected the advice of the theological faculty in Prague to stop preaching), Hus argued that it was better to die well than to live poorly. He especially elaborated on the blessedness of suffering and mused about the heavenly reward it would ultimately bring, alluding to a number of New Testament passages.20 When writing from exile in November 1413 to the inhabitants of Prague, Hus underlined the fact that, like him, the apostles also suffered unjust persecution.21 Writing from his jail cell in Constance, mere weeks before his death, Hus cited a similar passage: “Blessed shall you be when men shall
