Preachers, Partisans, and Rebellious Religion. Marcela K. Perett
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against bringing the case before the laity.96 But John was momentarily away from Prague, and Hus acted in a way that maximized his public exposure even if it meant opting out of the legal system.97 The appeal was unprecedented in the history of medieval canon law and, in effect, illegal: “From the perspective of the papal court and its officers, the appeal was a deliberate breach of legal procedure, an effort to obfuscate canon law, and an act of defiance against the jurisdictional authority of the church.”98 There was some legal precedent, but no one before Hus had only appealed to Christ (all others also directed their appeal to some earthly institution). Moreover, Hus was the first to appeal a legal decision made by a court.99 Hus’s appeal was perhaps legally unwise, but it ultimately proved a public relations coup. Because he was unable to win the lawsuit brought against him by the curia, Hus reframed the contest as something he could win and claimed a moral, if not a legal, victory before a large audience of clerics and laity.
The “Appeal to Christ” consists of two parts, incongruent in their content but well suited to rally Hus’s supporters and demonstrate his innocence. The first part uses Old Testament language to frame Hus’s experience at the hands of the curia, depicting Hus as an innocent, unjustly persecuted victim of evildoers. There is no mention of canon law in the first section of the document; Hus relies solely on biblical allusions to victimhood and persecution.100
The document opens with a powerful invocation of God. Hus referred to Psalms 144 and 145 in calling on God the Father, the defender of those who suffer wrong, who is near to those who call upon him in truth, who frees those in fetters, fulfills the wishes of those who fear him, who preserves those who love him and crushes unrepentant sinners. Not coincidentally, Hus underscored the role of God as a helper to the oppressed, that is, in this case, himself. Hus turned next to Christ, who was unjustly hounded by prelates, masters, and Pharisees, priests, corrupt judges, and witnesses. The parallel between Christ’s and Hus’s lives was unmistakable. He couched his appeal in the language of the Psalms and the prophets, calling on Christ to be his helper and protector. His enemies were plotting against him and wished to cut him off from the land of the living (Jeremiah 11:18–20). Hus pleaded that Christ deliver him from his enemies (Psalm 58:2) and begged God to see and consider him (Lamentations 1:11). He complained that the enemies who afflicted him had multiplied (Psalm 3:2) and consulted together, that they were free to pursue and capture him (Psalm 70:10–11). Convinced that God had forsaken him, Hus continued to plead with Christ to look upon him, for many dogs had surrounded him and the council of the evildoers had besieged him. They had spoken against him with deceitful tongues, assaulted him with words of hatred and fought against him without cause. They denigrated him (Psalm 108:3–4) and repaid him with evil for good, and hatred for his love (Psalm 108:5).
However, the tone and content shift abruptly as Hus begins refuting the legal charges brought against him by the curia.101 Hus’s failure to appeal before the pope was the core of his legal troubles and also of his appeal. Hus used precise legal terminology to explain that he failed to appear before the judge (contumacia) not out of pride (contemptus), as he had been accused.102 Hus reasoned that it would have been too dangerous for him to undertake the trip to Rome back in 1410 when summoned. Two of his university colleagues, Stanislav of Znojmo and Stephen of Páleč, did try to appear before the curia in Rome two years previously, in order to clear themselves of charges of Wycliffite heresy. But they made it only as far as Bologna, where they were robbed, imprisoned, and generally mistreated as if they were the “worst of criminals.”103 Given what had happened to these two masters, Hus judged that he would have been in danger as well. Hus also argued that the trip had become unnecessary, because he and the archbishop had long ago officially reconciled. Hus was telling the truth, although he did not mention that the king had coerced the archbishop into the reconciliation, in order to claim that his realm was free of heretics. Overall, Hus argued, the legal case against him was riddled with holes, and the proper legal procedure had not been observed: the court denied him impartial judges and witnesses and chose a location for the proceedings that was inaccessible.104
The real reason behind his persecution was, Hus argued, a personal vendetta by Michael de Causis, a compatriot and one of his longtime enemies, who was leading the prosecution again him. Hus describes himself as oppressed by unjust excommunication (“per excomunicacionem pretensam oppresso”), instigated by his enemy and accuser Michael de Causis (“per instigatorem et adversarium meum”). Not only had he not received a fair hearing, the court, taking advice from de Causis, had also rejected any testimony of extenuating circumstances. They refused the notarized and sealed testimonies of university representatives.105 De Causis delayed the proceedings when it suited the prosecution and refused to hear Hus’s witnesses. In Hus’s view, the charges brought against him were based on personal hatred rather than proper legal procedure, an allegation that fits with his self-presentation as an innocent victim, akin to Christ.
The document has been interpreted in various ways: Václav Flajšhans has argued that the document served the purpose of announcing Hus’s rejection of ecclesiastical authorities in favor of secular courts, a revolutionary act in itself. More recently, Thomas Fudge has tempered this view by suggesting that Hus’s act “makes sense and is not an act of radicalism or revolutionary intent” but rather an expression of Hus’s commitment to imitate Christ whereas Pavel Soukup has drawn attention to the public aspect of the act.106 All three have their basis. Although God was ostensibly the intended recipient of the appeal, Hus clearly planned to be overheard by a human audience—there is no other reason why he would have devoted so much space to explanations of the curia’s legal proceedings. Hus wished everyone else to know how he had been mistreated, by whom, and why and planned to use any resulting sympathies toward assembling his own opposition party.
The document addresses the lords of the realm directly, in the same order that their names would appear on official documents and charters, which infused the document with a semblance of legitimacy.107 Hus must have hoped that the lords would be sympathetic to his plea and able to offer an alternative jurisdiction, in the High Court. A precedent did exist. In the previous year, the king appointed a high-ranking committee to study and resolve a standing conflict between the archbishop and Hus regarding the ban on preaching.108 And it seems that a royally sponsored resolution was within Hus’s reach again. Within two months, on January 3, 1413, the king ordered the clergy to meet “in order that the pestiferous dissension among the clergy of our realm … be removed and completely extirpated.”109 It appears that the king promised to support Hus over the pope if the preacher stopped his incendiary preaching. This, however, was not the kind of resolution that Hus had in mind, and the meeting eventually came to nothing.
Hus’s identification with Christ and the self-portrayal as the innocent victim in his “Appeal to Christ” endowed him with an aura of moral authority, which he continued to exploit in order to make a compelling case in his favor.
Conclusion
Jan Hus, Bethlehem’s most famous preacher, went from the archbishop’s golden boy to a persona non grata within only a few years. His downfall illustrates the concerns of ecclesiastical authorities as well as their desperate efforts to remain in control over what was preached in Bohemia’s capital. While they welcomed his reforming efforts within the close circle of the clerics, they were suspicious of his taking the same message to the laity. This is understandable. In Hus’s hands, the message of reform gained a distinctly subversive tint when—instead of catechesis—Hus began teaching the laity about the limitations of clerical authority and telling them to leave their parish if it happened to be led by an immoral or corrupt priest. In this view, lay reform consisted of passing a judgment about their clergy and deciding to act on that judgment by disobeying them and even leaving their assigned parish church. This was in keeping with Hus’s Wycliffite ecclesiology. If the communitas praedestinatorum is distinct from the visible church, then it makes sense to take precautions to ensure that one is not ensnared by clerics who are not, in fact, part of God’s church.
However, the archbishop thought differently and accused Hus of inciting the common people to sedition and rebellion against the pope, and the curia launched legal proceedings against him in an effort to ban him from Bethlehem Chapel. In the fall of 1412, the