Question 1
Evaluate the interpretations in both of the two passages and explain which you think is more
convincing as an explanation of the reasons for Huss’s condemnation as a heretic.
Passage A
Huss was a student of the English scholastic theologians and his affinity to Wycliffe was to prove a matter of some embarrassment to him. Still more dangerous to his position was Huss’s constant criticism of the clergy, concerning which serious complaints were first raised in 1408. In 1412 the circumstances of the Schism were decisive in driving Huss and his supporters towards defiance of authority. In 1414 Huss agreed to the suggestion that he should accept a safe-conduct and attend the Council of Constance. Soon after his arrival he was imprisoned and accused of holding heretical, Wycliffite, opinions. Huss refused to recant his doctrines unless they could be proved erroneous by evidence from the Scriptures and he was condemned and burned. The main burden of Huss’s preaching, in fact, was clerical corruption. Ecclesiastical morals occupied much more time than theology, and even the theology was by no means whole-heartedly Wycliffite. It was a case of affinity rather than influence, for Wycliffe was a fellow scholastic with the same preoccupations. Huss rejected Wycliffe’s doctrine concerning transubstantiation and he even felt doubt about Wycliffe’s view that priests who sinned forfeited their priestly status and preferred to regard them as unworthy rather than illegal. He agreed, however, on the fundamental point that ‘the Church’ consisted of Christ and all the elect, not of the pope and cardinals. It was this which led to the view that the laity should receive communion in ‘two kinds’. Huss was informed of this development and expressed his approval.
Adapted from D. Waley, Later Medieval Europe from St. Louis to Luther, published in 1985.
Passage B
In Bohemia Wycliffe’s teachings acquired much greater influence, because of their enthusiastic reception among the Czech scholars of the University of Prague. The Bethlehem chapel at Prague was founded for the preaching of sermons in Czech to the townspeople. This was the pulpit from which John Huss, who had adopted Wycliffe’s opinions while studying philosophy at Charles College, gathered an immense following. In 1409, when he was Chancellor of the University, the staunch defence of Wycliffe’s views by its Czech scholars became entangled with their quarrels with the Germans in the university, while about the same time Huss’s attack on the riches and corruption of the clergy brought him up against the Archbishop. His support for communion in both kinds for the laity established a sharp difference between his followers and their opponents. In 1413, while Huss was preaching in Czech among the peasants of southern Bohemia, the Germans and Archbishop were preparing charges of heresy to lay against him before the forthcoming council. French academics had been trained in a school which firmly rejected the whole basis of the philosophy on which Wycliffe and Huss founded their teaching. This doomed Huss who was condemned as a heretic and burned.
Adapted from M. Keen, The Penguin History of Medieval Europe, published 1969.
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Answer
