The Reformation in Bohemia, Part Two
Dates	Events, People	Remarks
1404	Visit of Conrad and James of Canterbury	1. Graduates of Oxford they came to Bohemia and planned to hold disputations over theology, and began with the supremacy of the Pope, which they denied, no doubt under the influence of Wycliffe’s teachings. 2. When the authorities put an end to their disputations, they used their ability as artists to preach a different kind of sermon: they drew a magnificent painting on the corridor of the house where they were staying: it showed Christ riding into Jerusalem on a donkey and the Pope in magnificent triple crown, gold and silver, cardinals and bishops in attendance, with trumpets going before. The painting stirred Prague to its foundations, as they gazed upon Christ and Antichrist. The furor was so great Conrad and James left the country.
1405	Lying Miracles	1. Huss was appointed along with two others to investigate the supposed miracle of the blood of Christ at Wilsnack. People were coming from everywhere, as far away as Scandinavia and Hungary, to view the miracles of what they supposed was a relic of a drop of Christ’s blood. 2. The commission declared the miracles false and a fake. The Pope issued a decree prohibiting pilgrimages to Wilsnack.
1409	Reorganizing the University of Prague	1. German students had usurped control of the university, reversing the original order that the Bohemians were to get 3 votes and the Germans 1 vote. Huss was able to protest this and return the university to its original constitution. 2. In protest, the German students and professors left with other foreign students, about 5000 or 40,000, depending upon which report you believe. They first swore a great oath to stand together. This had an added effect of spreading Hussism in Germany, because some of these students had been influenced by the ideas of Huss, ill-formed though they still were at that time. This left Prague with about 500 students, and it never again regained its prestige. The Germans formed the University of Leipzig. 3. As a result of these things, Huss was elevated to the rectorship of the university.
1410	Alexander V	1. This notorious and depraved Pope commanded Cardinal Sbinko to prosecute all those who preached in private chapels or who read or taught the teachings of Wycliffe. 2. The decree of Alexander V was carried out by John XXIII, one of the most thoroughly evil persons in the history of the world. 3. A great auto de fe was carried out—not against people at this time, but against books. About 200 books, richly bound, beautifully written, ornamented with precious stones, were burned in the public street in Prague, with bells tolling. Their richness showed that the teaching of Wycliffe had permeated the wealthy classes in Prague. After the burning satirical songs were sung in the streets, claiming that the bishop didn’t know what was in the books, and that his decree would commit the works of Aristotle and Origin to the flames. [Auto de fe means “act of faith.” It came to mean a day set aside for the execution of heretics. They burned heretics because the church felt that it was forbidden to shed blood. “The Church is untainted with blood,” was their boast, as their victims were toasted like marshmallows.] 4. Huss simply preached with greater vigor and zeal. A second order came from the Pope for Huss to appear in person at Rome to answer for his errors. To go to Rome would have meant his death. This was the Pope that had ordered the burning of Savonarola in Italy. 5. The king, the queen, the university and many lords of the realm petitioned the Pope to allow Huss to be represented by counsel and not appear in person. The pope refused, condemned Huss in absentia, and put Prague under the interdict. 6. To save Prague and his friends, Huss retired from Prague to his hometown of Hussinetz. Here he preached in all the surrounding villages and great crowds following him everywhere. Those who heard him said, “The Church has pronounced this man a heretic and a demon, yet his life is holy, and his doctrine is pure and elevating.” Like Luther in later years, Huss was protected in Hussinetz by his territorial lord.
1410-1413	John Huss	1. Huss was still a faithful catholic, in his own eyes. He did not renounce the authority of Rome, but argued against the abuse of authority. The Roman Church was still the spouse of Christ and the Pope the vicar of God. 2. He was not able to solve in his mind how it was sin for him to obey an infallible authority—but he knew it would be sin to deny Christ. The best he could do was to compare the church to Israel—the priests used legitimate authority to persecute Christ and the Apostles. This gave him some peace. 3. Huss’ maxim: “The precepts of Scripture, conveyed through the understanding, are to rule the conscience; in other words, that God speaking in the Bible, and not the Church speaking through the priesthood, is the one infallible guide of men.” This was to become the fundamental principle of the Reformation, and Huss, like the early Luther, would have recoiled at the idea of the revolution it would entail. 4. Huss began to lose support. The university condemned 45 articles of Wycliffe and six of Huss, to show their support. Two close friends deserted him. But things had quieted down in Prague and he returned to his preaching at Bethlehem. He continued to thunder against Antichrist. The university and the priests would have closed his pulpit if they had not feared the people. 5. In exile, Huss produced one of the greatest works in history on the doctrine of the church. 6. A great synod was held in 1413 to consider the teachings of Wycliffe, but came to no conclusion. 7. At this time a great and loyal friend came to give Huss support and encouragement: Jerome of Prague. He had recently escaped from prison in Vienna for preaching against the papacy and now he came home to Prague. He was a more eloquent orator than Huss and debated in the university and preached in popular assemblies; Huss preached at Bethlehem and tirelessly wrote disputations against the defender of antichrist.
1412c	Huss’s doctrine of the church	1. The Holy Catholic Church is the body or congregation of all the predestinate, the dead, the living and those yet to be. The Roman pontiff and the cardinals are not the Church. The Church can exist without cardinals and a pope, and in fact for hundreds of years there were no cardinals. 2. Christ Himself is the Rock, and the Church is founded on him by virtue of predestination. In view of Peter’s clear and positive confession, "the Rock—Petra — said to Peter—Petro — ’I say unto thee, Thou art Peter, that is, a confessor of the true Rock which Rock I am.’ And upon the Rock, that is, myself, I will build this Church." 3. The Roman bishop, he said, was on an equality with other bishops until Constantine made him pope. It was then that he began to usurp authority. Through ignorance and the love of money the pope may err, and has erred, and to rebel against an erring pope is to obey Christ. 4. No papal excommunication may be an impediment to doing what Christ did and taught to be done. 5. The power to forgive sins belongs to no mortal man anymore than it belonged to the priest to whom Christ sent the lepers. The lepers were cleansed before they reached the priest. Indeed, many popes who conceded the most ample indulgences were themselves damned. 6. In denying the infallibility of the pope and of the Church visible, and in setting aside the sacerdotal power of the priesthood to open and shut the kingdom of heaven, Huss broke with the accepted theory of Western Christendom; he committed the unpardonable sin of the Middle Ages. 7. He unashamedly took ideas, even whole paragraphs from Wycliffe. He did not credit Wycliffe because Wycliffe’s writing had been condemned.
1414	The Great Schism. The horror of the infallible Pope.	1. The Great Schism came about because of the Babylonian Captivity of the Church, a period of about 77 years in which the Popes set up shop in Avignon in France because they were afraid of their rivals in Italy. For some reason the last of these “French popes,” Gregory XI moved back to Rome to look after affairs and complicated things by dying there. 2. Upon the death of Gregory XI, the Italian noblemen forced the cardinals to elect an Italian Pope, Urban VI. As soon as they got out of Italy, however, the French cardinals repudiated Urban VI, and elected a French Pope. So now their were two popes and two bodies of cardinals, both infallible and excommunicating each other. The Schism lasted from 1378-1415 and overlaps the time of history we are studying concerning John Huss. 3. The rebellion in Bohemia would no doubt have been crushed much earlier had the popes and anti-popes not been occupied with other things. 4. At the time of Huss there were three popes; John XXIII of the Italian Bishops, Gregory XII of the French, Benedict XIII of the Spanish. These popes all made war on each other, excommunicated each other, called each other antichrist, and demanded absolute authority over all the earth. It was a most grievous sight, and bearable to the child of God only by understanding that the Apostle had said that antichrist would sit in the temple of God pretending to be God. Huss said, “If we must obey, to whom is our obedience to be paid?” 5. The rival popes hired soldiers and paid for them with scandalous trade in spiritual thing: pardons, dispensations and places in Paradise were offered to whoever had the gold. Offices were sold and bought by the highest bidder. Sometimes the popes themselves led the armies and waxed bloody against their enemies.
Wylie: “It is distressing to dwell on this deplorable picture. Of the practice of piety nothing remained save a few superstitious rites. Truth, justice, and order banished from among men, force was the arbiter in all things, and nothing was heard but the clash of arms and the sighings of oppressed nations, while above the strife rose the furious voices of the rival Popes frantically hurling anathemas at one another. This was truly a melancholy spectacle; but it was necessary, perhaps, that the evil should grow to this head, if peradventure the eyes of men might be opened, and they might see that it was indeed a "bitter thing" that they had forsaken the "easy yoke" of the Gospel, and submitted to a power that set no limits to its usurpations, and which, clothing itself with the prerogatives of God, was waging a war of extermination against all the rights of man.”

Main source is J. A. Wylie’s The History of the Reformation. Other sources were also used.

Bohemia, Moravia, and Slovakia together made up the nation of Czechoslovakia which broke apart after the end of the Cold War. Bohemia and Moravia now are known as the Czech Republic