Part of our Lent Study Group, with Dr Hana Tonzarová on the right © Ricky Yates
As I mentioned in my first post of 2015, this year marks the six-hundredth anniversary of the martyrdom of the early Czech Church reformer, Jan Hus. So at the suggestion of my good friend and colleague Rev’d Dr Karen Moritz, our 2015 St Clement’s Lent Course has been looking at various aspects of the Bohemian Reformation, in which Hus was a major figure.
The course has been held on successive Tuesday evenings during Lent, commencing on Tuesday 24th February, and will conclude in two days time, on Tuesday 24th March. It has been really encouraging to have between ten to twelve attendees each week, nearly all of whom have been present for every session.
In our first session, Karen Moritz presented an excellent overview of the period in question; cca. 1350 – 1620. She explained how the reform movement began during the reign of Charles IV (1346 -1378), and continued after his death. Its theological foundations were then established over the following forty years, with the preaching and writing of Jan Hus being central.
Following Hus being burnt at the stake in Konstanz in 1415, there followed a period of both revolution and radicalisation, before a settlement was reached in 1434, whereby the Utraquist Church, giving Communion in both kinds, was allowed to exist alongside the unreformed Roman Catholic Church, where only bread was given, and then only on rare occasions.
However, from 1520 onwards, following the beginning of the German Reformation initiated by Martin Luther, the next one hundred years saw ever-increasing efforts to suppress the Utraquist Church, culminating in the Battle of White Mountain in 1620. This then led to the re-Catholicization of the Church in Czech lands.
It fell to me to lead our second session, where I explained the influence of the teaching and writing of the early English Church reformer, John Wycliffe, upon Jan Hus. My own alma mater is Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, named to celebrate his legacy.
Wycliffe lived from c1328/30 – 1384. Hus from c1371/2 – 1415. There was therefore, no direct communication between them as Hus was just entering his teens when Wycliffe died. But Wycliffe’s writings in Latin, circulated in Bohemia and greatly influenced the philosophy and teaching of Hus. Some of the published works of Hus, most notably his De ecclesia, are plagiarised versions of the writings of Wycliffe, in an era when no law of copyright existed!
I pointed out the irony of language. Wycliffe preached & taught in vernacular English, Hus in vernacular Czech. But Latin, the language of the educated elite, was their means of communication 🙂
The presenter for our third session, was Father William Faix, an American Roman Catholic priest living and working in Prague and a member of the Augustinian order. He mainly spoke about Martin Luther and his Roman Catholic years, also as a member of the Augustinian order! But at the end of his presentation, he remarked how Luther realised that his own writings which began the German Reformation, actually brought his thinking into line with that of Jan Hus.
The presenter of our fourth session last Tuesday, at which both photographs in this post were taken, was Dr Hana Tonzarová, a priest in the Czechoslovak Hussite Church. Her Church, until 1970, the Czechoslovak National Church, was formed in 1920. It arose from a movement within the Roman Catholic Church of the newly created nation of Czechoslovakia, wanting to celebrate mass in vernacular Czech or Slovak. When the request to do so was refused by Pope Benedict XV, with strong encouragement of the new Czechoslovak government, around 10-15% of the Roman Catholic Church within the new nation, broke away to form this new national Church.
Hana gave an excellent power point presentation, both explaining more about Jan Hus and his life and teaching, but also how her own Church sees him, and how his martyrdom in 1415, is going to be commemorated this year – the six-hundredth anniversary of his death in Konstanz.
Our final session this coming Tuesday, will be presented by Dr Peter Moree, a Dutchman married to a Czech, who teaches in the Protestant Faculty of Charles University. He is going to speak about the legacy of Jan Hus and how his teaching and writing have been both used and abused, down the past six hundred years.
In very simple terms, this course has been both educative and inspirational, one from which I have gained a great deal.
The other half or our Lent Study Group with Dr Hana Tonzarová the second on the left © Ricky Yates
What an interesting and appropriate Lent course for this significant year, Ricky. I would have thoroughly enjoyed it. I very much appreciated all the background information I was given to read when I visited the Bethlehem Chapel and other important sites during my visits to Prague and came away much better informed about Jan Hus and his time.
I’m sure you would have enjoyed it, Perpetua. And most pleasingly, it has appealed to a wide cross section of our congregation & beyond.
Hi Ricky,
Thank you for a most enlightening post, your Lent Course sounds fascinating, I would have loved to be present if that were possible to hear the presentations and the discussions afterwards. So many men and women in so many far flung places have contributed their thoughts and philosophies to our modern world and sadly very many of them were murdered by the state and religious powers of their time for their efforts at reform and renewal. How different this world might have been if the principles of freedom of expression and thought had become accepted earlier. Your post has encouraged me to do some research on John Wycliffe, a man I was unaware of before now. Thank you.
Hi Sean – Thank you as always, for visiting & commenting here.
I couldn’t agree more with these two sentences from your comment. ‘So many men and women in so many far flung places have contributed their thoughts and philosophies to our modern world and sadly very many of them were murdered by the state and religious powers of their time for their efforts at reform and renewal. How different this world might have been if the principles of freedom of expression and thought had become accepted earlier’. Wonderfully well-expressed!
As for John Wycliffe, I’m very glad to have helped enlighten you!
I agree with Sean that this looks to have been a fascinating course. Coincidentally, I was reading a review of a book about Wycliffe a couple of weeks ago ( http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/1725 )
The point about both Wycliffe and Hus writing in Latin shows that Latin was for so long what English has become today. There’s a book by Jurgen Leonhardt that suggests that 1723 was a big year for Latin as that was when Bach got the gig of Kantor at Leipzig Thomasschule and he was the first person to hold the post who wasn’t expected to tutor Latin as well. It’s an arbitary date, of course, but symbolic.
The rise and rise of English as a lingua franca is handy for us native speakers and is useful financially for me personally but has meant that I’ve done some faintly ridiculous work recently such as proofing a Czech anthropologist’s Phd thesis for submission to Charles University and a Brazilian dentist’s article for a Brazilian dentistry journal. When I asked why they’d written in English, they both told me the only way to get access to an international audience was through English.
Hope you manage to get to Husinec again this year to see where Hus was born and to Prachatice, where he was schooled before leaving for Prague.
Many thanks for this comment, David, especially for leaving it here, following our Facebook discussion.
I totally agree with what you say about Latin being the lingua franca between the educated elite of different countries, before the more recent rise of English. But because, during the time of both Wycliffe and Hus, Latin was not understood by the vast majority of the population of Europe, both Wycliffe and Hus preached in their respective vernacular languages and also wrote some material in English or Czech, so the ordinary people could understand both scripture & theology. But the reason Hus could read and understand the thinking of Wycliffe, was because he also wrote in Latin.
You can be sure there will be a blog post about both Husinec & Prachatice in due course!
This is fascinating! What a great course to be a part of – as a participant and presenter. When we cover the evolution of English in one of my IB courses, I always mention Wycliffe. I didn’t know about the connection with Hus, though; thanks for sharing. I hope you’re having a lovely Lenten season and wish you a blessed Easter.
It was a very good course to be part of and most educative. Inspired by Wycliffe, his followers at the end of the fourteenth century, produced a translation of the Bible from the Latin Vulgate, into the English of that time, which clearly impacted on the development of the language.
From 1380 onwards, copies of Wycliffe’s writings in Latin, began to circulate in Bohemia. Some now only exist in Czech translation, with the original in Latin having been lost. This was due in part to there being much closer relations between England & Bohemia, following the marriage in 1382, of Anne, sister of King Václav IV, to King Richard II.
The course was VERY helpful. Learnt so much! Thank you 🙂
You’re very welcome, Tash! You might note you appear in both photographs 🙂