Jan Hus

So yeah, I think in my first book, I look at what the Czechs were trying to discover about their past to really almost create a national identity.

So they look at Jan Hus and they s- they sort of say, "What can we take from this medieval figure?" Or they kind of invent a version of St.

Wenceslas and say, um, "Okay, how do we make him a symbol of who we are?" So you do, you see tremendous creativity.

You have, you know, the painters who, who decorate the interior of the National Museum with these epic murals.

And so to be Czech often meant to not be German and therefore sometimes to not be Jewish, although there were some Jews who gravitated toward the Czech community.

But yeah, I, I kind of fell in love with those stories too in my... especially writing my first book.

And I remember the first day that I was at the city archive when I was a graduate student, I was looking at the records of the committee that built the Jan Hus Memorial, and there was a sign-in sheet of who was there at that first meeting.

And you could see people were using different pens, just like you might pass around a sheet at a meeting.

So yeah, I think, and my first book, I look at what the Czechs were trying to discover about their past to really almost create a national identity.

So they look at Jan Hus and And they sort of say, what can we take from this medieval figure? Or they kind of invent a version of St.

Wenceslas and say, okay, how do we make him a symbol of who we are? So you do, you see tremendous creativity.

You have, you know, the painters who decorate buildings.

And so to be Czech often meant to not be German and therefore sometimes to not be Jewish, although there were some Jews who gravitated toward the Czech community.

But yeah, I kind of fell in love with those stories too, especially writing my first book.

And I remember the first day that I was at the City Archive when I was a graduate student, I was looking at the records of the committee that built the Jan Hus Memorial, and there was a sign-in sheet of who was there at that first meeting.

And you could see people were using different pens, just like you might pass around a sheet at a meeting.

There's always been.

Even in the Dark Ages, the followers of John Wycliffe, the Lollards, or a hundred years before Luther was the Bohemian Brethren under Jan Hus.

Other times it was the Waldensians, the Valdési.

This is in the Dark Ages now.

It was also a time of deep Christian-on-Christian violence.

By the time you get to John Wycliffe, Jan Hus, and the Proto-Reformation, you have Christians hanging other Christians at the stake for their beliefs.

John Wycliffe was killed because he translated the Bible from Latin into the vernacular.

And then we get to the Reformation and the European wars of religion.

The marriage of Anne of Bohemia to the English king Richard II brought the two courts into communication.

Jerome of Prague carried Wycliffe's writings from Oxford to his own country, where they had a profound influence on John Huss, who became the leader of a national religious movement.

Huss was betrayed by the emperor and put to death at Constance in 1415.

This martyrdom led to a long war in Bohemia from 1415 to 36, when racial and political dissensions were mixed with those of religion.

The movement, ceasing to be a united national one, was crushed, but the Hussite doctrines were still held by the people, and many of the reformers' pamphlets were circulated in Germany.

Luther, however, does not seem to have been influenced by them, for it was only after the disputation at Leipzig in 1518 that he carefully studied the teachings of the Bohemian and then declared that he had hitherto been a Hussite without knowing it and that Paul and Augustine were Hussites too.

Other movements less like the Lutheran had a far greater influence upon the 16th century Reformation by preparing the minds of the people for its reception.

In the later Middle Ages, many German translations of the Scriptures were circulated and read in spite of the prohibition of the popes, and the natural result of this study was that laymen began to think for themselves.

The two sides squared off around the question of vernacular Bibles, with one saying that the medieval church was fine with their use, citing a number of early medieval manuscripts translated into vernacular languages such as Old Church Slavonic, Old English, Old High German, and so on.

Yet their opponent retorted that the church clearly prescribed vernacular Bibles, given the Council of Constance in 1415 specifically pointed to vernacular Bibles as heretical behavior, posthumously charging John Wycliffe with heresy and burning and banning his writings before ordering the execution of Jan Hus under the same pretenses.

How could two people be right about the same question? Was the medieval church accepting of vernacular Bibles or not? How could it be that we have two equally satisfying answers, each with their own evidence to back it up? Well, not to put too fine a point on it, but the term medieval, historical periodization generally, and hindsight all combine to flatten both time and our perspective.

The European Middle Ages cover over 1,000 years and the breadth of an entire continent.

they were also saying, you guys are not doing this right.

You guys are not doing this thing.

And all of those critiques, all of the critiques that they made would eventually be rolled up into Jan Hus.

And then Martin Luther.

In short, in all the long time from the past down to the present, there could not have been Christians on earth if infant baptism were not valid.

Since God has confirmed infant baptism by giving his Holy Spirit, as is perfectly recognized in such church fathers as St. Bernard, Garrison, John Huss, and others who were baptized in infancy.

And since the Holy Christian Church will continue to the end of the world, our opponents must acknowledge that infant baptism is pleasing to God.

For he can never go against himself, foster lies and evil, or give his grace and spirit for such purposes.