Prague in Black and Gold: Scenes from the Life of a European City (33 page)
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Authors: Peter Demetz
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Later German and Czech nationalists constantly looked back at the decree of Kutná Hora to nourish their belligerent feelings with melodramatic images of Czech and German villains and heroes. The question always hinges on the changing meaning of the term
natio Bohemica;
in later Hussite documents, the term
jazyk (linguagium,
or language) is frequently used to denote nationality. But to speak of a total and radical break between Czechs and Germans in 1409 is to be distinctly premature, if not demagogic; in any case the students and masters of jurisprudence in Prague, who since 1372 had been independent of the university, went on in their accustomed ways, untouched by the king’s decree, and there is strong evidence that even among the German professors not everybody joined the exodus (e.g., Johannes Hildesen of Hildesheim); new German masters, inclined to religious reform, returned to or newly joined the Prague faculty, as did Friedrich Eppinge from Dresden, a scholar particularly dear to Hus. Nor did all the masters interpret
natio Bohemica
in the new linguistic manner but preferred its traditional territorial meaning. This complexity helps to explain why, after Hus served as rector for half a year in 1409-10, he was followed, as the historian Ferdinand Seibt has shown, by Andreas Schindel, a Bohemian German from Duchcov (Dux).
natio Bohemica;
in later Hussite documents, the term
jazyk (linguagium,
or language) is frequently used to denote nationality. But to speak of a total and radical break between Czechs and Germans in 1409 is to be distinctly premature, if not demagogic; in any case the students and masters of jurisprudence in Prague, who since 1372 had been independent of the university, went on in their accustomed ways, untouched by the king’s decree, and there is strong evidence that even among the German professors not everybody joined the exodus (e.g., Johannes Hildesen of Hildesheim); new German masters, inclined to religious reform, returned to or newly joined the Prague faculty, as did Friedrich Eppinge from Dresden, a scholar particularly dear to Hus. Nor did all the masters interpret
natio Bohemica
in the new linguistic manner but preferred its traditional territorial meaning. This complexity helps to explain why, after Hus served as rector for half a year in 1409-10, he was followed, as the historian Ferdinand Seibt has shown, by Andreas Schindel, a Bohemian German from Duchcov (Dux).
Czech and German historians, for different reasons, were rather fond of the idea that Jan Hus himself had played a dominant role, heroic or villainous, in the issuance of King Václav IV’s decree and the exodus of the Germans, an early “ethnic cleansing,” but recent scholarship tends to stress that his concerns were religious rather than national. He certainly participated in presenting the necessity of change to the royal court, together with his Wyclifite friends, but he became ill at the most decisive moments of the negotiations; it is more probable that his friend Jeroným, who in the best humanist way praised the Slavs as descendants of the ancient Greeks, and his legal adviser, Jan of Jesenice (who also provided the court with a legal brief), were the most active in pushing the change. At any rate, the German students, shortly after leaving Prague, were singing a political ditty in which they named Jeroným and Jan of Jesenice as responsible for their migrations but did not mention Hus at all. At the Bethlehem chapel, Hus, in turn, praised Nicholas Augustin, often called “the Rich,” as an influential court counselor who had been instrumental in the king’s decision; the possibility that Nicholas was of German origin only complicates the situation even more. He was not the only Prague
German who, in restless times, felt closer to his fellow Czech citizens than to the Germans coming from abroad.
German who, in restless times, felt closer to his fellow Czech citizens than to the Germans coming from abroad.
The alliance of the Wyclifites and the king that produced the decree of Kutná Hora was in danger of breaking asunder three years later. It was the issue of indulgences sold in the streets that now increasingly isolated Jan Hus from many of his fellow masters, including some of his oldest friends, who were willing to support the hierarchy and the king, eager to rid Bohemia of all dangerous aspersions of heresy. The occasion was the war of the pontiffs: the Avignon pope deposed by the Council of Pisa, together with King Ladislas of Naples and Hungary, occupied Rome and drove Pope John XXIII to exile in Bologna. From there, Pope John XXIII exhorted all faithful Christians to come to the defense of his church and promised everybody who would take up arms or equip a soldier for one month “remission of such of their sins of which they were heartily contrite and which they had confessed.” In practice, people believed that if they simply paid, their sins would be forgiven.
In May 1412, the pope’s special envoy and commissioner, Wenzel Tiem, actually a southern Moravian German from Mikulov (Nikolsburg), arrived in Bohemia, ingeniously set up a network of subagents to sell indulgences, organized festive Prague propaganda processions with fifes and drums, and placed huge coffers at the churches of St. Vitus, the Týn, and St. Jakob to protect the incoming monies. In Prague, where the practice of indulgences had been opposed as early as 1393 by the German Dominican Heinrich of Bitterfeld, nearly everybody was appalled, but in private rather than in public; after all, the sale of indulgences had been fully approved by the king, who was expecting his appropriate cut. But Jan Hus condemned the sale of indulgences, saying they were “not in harmony with the apostolic mandate,” challenged the authorities of church and kingdom, and once again strongly articulated the conflict between Wyclifites and church loyalists, mostly doctors of theology on the faculty of arts. The university resolved to bring the problem to the attention of the king, who in turn, after meeting a few dignitaries, officially confirmed that the earlier condemnation of Wyclif was legitimate and that all public demonstrations against the sale of indulgences were forbidden.
The council of the Old Town, once again dominated by a German majority, was set to follow the king’s wishes loyally and strictly when,
during mass on Sunday, July 10, 1412, three young men by the names of Jan, Martin, and Stašek, all Czechs and artisans, demonstratively raised their voices at St. Vitus, the Týn, and St. Jakob against the sale of indulgences ; they all were quickly arrested and dragged to the Old Town prison. Early next morning, a restive crowd gathered at the Old Town Square to demonstrate in favor of the prisoners. Jan Hus, together with a few masters and students, appeared at the town hall to put in a good word for the young men, proclaiming that it was actually he who was responsible for their deeds. The cunning town councillor assured him that the prisoners would be treated gently, but as soon as he had left, the three young men were marched out of the prison and beheaded. It was the first blood shed in the Hussite revolution.
during mass on Sunday, July 10, 1412, three young men by the names of Jan, Martin, and Stašek, all Czechs and artisans, demonstratively raised their voices at St. Vitus, the Týn, and St. Jakob against the sale of indulgences ; they all were quickly arrested and dragged to the Old Town prison. Early next morning, a restive crowd gathered at the Old Town Square to demonstrate in favor of the prisoners. Jan Hus, together with a few masters and students, appeared at the town hall to put in a good word for the young men, proclaiming that it was actually he who was responsible for their deeds. The cunning town councillor assured him that the prisoners would be treated gently, but as soon as he had left, the three young men were marched out of the prison and beheaded. It was the first blood shed in the Hussite revolution.
The townspeople in the square put the corpses on white linen (later adversaries of the Hussites suggested that pious
“begutae”
licked blood from the cobblestones) and carried them in solemn procession through the Old Town to the Bethlehem chapel, where a fiery young preacher intoned the “Isti sunt martyres” (“These are martyrs”). Soon, a militant squad of armed church loyalists attacked the Bethlehem chapel but was repulsed by the virtually bare-handed followers of Hus; King Václav IV, who wanted peace, told Hus to leave town. A royal commission convened to negotiate between the factions failed miserably, and the king, in a curious decision, then exiled four of Hus’s most bitter enemies, doctors of theology, ordering them to leave Prague and Bohemia and to cease disturbing the peace at once (most of them went to Moravia). But Prague did not quiet down, and the exiled Hus, living under the protection of Czech nobles at the castles of Kozí and Krakovec, used the opportunity to preach to the country people and to write his most important theological and moral essays in Latin and Czech.
“begutae”
licked blood from the cobblestones) and carried them in solemn procession through the Old Town to the Bethlehem chapel, where a fiery young preacher intoned the “Isti sunt martyres” (“These are martyrs”). Soon, a militant squad of armed church loyalists attacked the Bethlehem chapel but was repulsed by the virtually bare-handed followers of Hus; King Václav IV, who wanted peace, told Hus to leave town. A royal commission convened to negotiate between the factions failed miserably, and the king, in a curious decision, then exiled four of Hus’s most bitter enemies, doctors of theology, ordering them to leave Prague and Bohemia and to cease disturbing the peace at once (most of them went to Moravia). But Prague did not quiet down, and the exiled Hus, living under the protection of Czech nobles at the castles of Kozí and Krakovec, used the opportunity to preach to the country people and to write his most important theological and moral essays in Latin and Czech.
The accusations leveled against Hus by Archbishop Zbyn
k, his onetime friend and ally, in a document presented to the Roman Curia in 1410, triggered investigations and proceedings that continued, as it were, on their own, independent of the incumbent pontiffs and cardinals entrusted with the matter, in this respect strongly resembling Kafka’s court, ever awake even if apparently dormant, and always watching the Prague lawyer K. The Curia worked with all possible speed (a papal order signed in December arrived in Prague only in March, due to snows on the Alpine passes); the commissions were able to rely on denunciatory information submitted from Prague by the Czech priest Jan Protiva, the local inquisitor, Maurice Rva
ka, and the odious Michal, a Prague parish priest who made it his true vocation to denounce Hus in the most strident terms (he
was called “de Causis” because of his zeal for legal procedures). Considering the vulnerability of the Roman hierarchy in the years of the schism, the Curia was surprisingly successful and violent in fighting Hus’s allies when they began arriving in Italy for various reasons; Jan of Jesenice was imprisoned and barely escaped; Št
pán Pále
, once the fellow student closest to Jan Hus and shortly to be one of his main accusers, was arrested and robbed of his belongings by Cardinal Baldassarre Cossa (soon to be Pope John XXIII). By the time of the indulgences controversy, the Prague “heresy” had become an international problem: the famous Paris theologian Jean Gerson admonished Archbishop Zbyn
k to proceed against the sinners, and the pope wrote to King Václav IV in similar terms. Something had to be done. When Sigismund—Václav’s half brother and heir presumptive, king of Hungary and, since 1411, Roman king as well, a man of large ambitions—prevailed on John XXIII to call a grand council at Constance, on the border of southern Germany and Switzerland, to reform the church, Jan Hus and his ideas were high on the agenda, though not the most pressing business.
k, his onetime friend and ally, in a document presented to the Roman Curia in 1410, triggered investigations and proceedings that continued, as it were, on their own, independent of the incumbent pontiffs and cardinals entrusted with the matter, in this respect strongly resembling Kafka’s court, ever awake even if apparently dormant, and always watching the Prague lawyer K. The Curia worked with all possible speed (a papal order signed in December arrived in Prague only in March, due to snows on the Alpine passes); the commissions were able to rely on denunciatory information submitted from Prague by the Czech priest Jan Protiva, the local inquisitor, Maurice Rvaka, and the odious Michal, a Prague parish priest who made it his true vocation to denounce Hus in the most strident terms (hewas called “de Causis” because of his zeal for legal procedures). Considering the vulnerability of the Roman hierarchy in the years of the schism, the Curia was surprisingly successful and violent in fighting Hus’s allies when they began arriving in Italy for various reasons; Jan of Jesenice was imprisoned and barely escaped; Št
pán Pále, once the fellow student closest to Jan Hus and shortly to be one of his main accusers, was arrested and robbed of his belongings by Cardinal Baldassarre Cossa (soon to be Pope John XXIII). By the time of the indulgences controversy, the Prague “heresy” had become an international problem: the famous Paris theologian Jean Gerson admonished Archbishop Zbynk to proceed against the sinners, and the pope wrote to King Václav IV in similar terms. Something had to be done. When Sigismund—Václav’s half brother and heir presumptive, king of Hungary and, since 1411, Roman king as well, a man of large ambitions—prevailed on John XXIII to call a grand council at Constance, on the border of southern Germany and Switzerland, to reform the church, Jan Hus and his ideas were high on the agenda, though not the most pressing business.Jan Hus went to Constance with hopes and fears, yet strangely, if not naively, believing that he would be able to convince the council by rational discourse that he was not a heretic in light of the Bible. He seems to have assumed that the council would be, essentially, another Bethlehem gathering, more adversarial perhaps but open to argument, and before leaving he prepared two personal statements which he, the excommunicated B.A. from the Bohemian provinces, proposed to present to the world’s most famous experts on canon law, trained in Bologna and Paris. He left the castle of Krakovec on October 11, 1414, with a group of friends and escorts in wagons and on horseback, wended his way to Nuremberg and, stared at by friendly crowds, through southern Germany. He reached Constance on November 3 and, together with his friends, took lodging at the house of Fida, a pious widow living on St. Paul’s Street. Much has been made of the safe-conduct promised him, in earlier negotiations, by Emperor Sigismund, but the document, delivered to him considerably later, turned out to be a laissez-passer rather than a letter of protection; it is possible that, in the exhilaration of the journey, Hus did not want to concern himself with its exact wording, since the document would have been worthless anyway if the traveler were condemned as a heretic. Sigismund was far more concerned with his political ambitions than with Hus, and when the council asked him to allow Hus to be formally arrested he consented (sending a letter by special messenger). On a pretext, Hus was prompted to leave the widow Fida’s house and shifted under guard
to the local Dominican monastery (now a luxury hotel), where he was put in a narrow cell close to the cesspool; he promptly came down with a high fever and other ailments. The council did not procrastinate; the pope named a special commission to continue and conclude the investigation of Hus; work began immediately, relying on the documents earlier prepared by Hus’s Prague enemies, above all his former buddy Št
pán Pále
and Michal de Causis.
to the local Dominican monastery (now a luxury hotel), where he was put in a narrow cell close to the cesspool; he promptly came down with a high fever and other ailments. The council did not procrastinate; the pope named a special commission to continue and conclude the investigation of Hus; work began immediately, relying on the documents earlier prepared by Hus’s Prague enemies, above all his former buddy Št
pán Páleand Michal de Causis.Other books
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