CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................2
CHAPTER 1: STORY OF JAN HUS............................................................................8
1. 1 Conversion......................................................................................................8
1. 2 Czech Reformation.......................................................................................10
1. 3 John Wycliffe...............................................................................................12
1. 4 Priest, teacher, martyr...................................................................................15
1. 5 The Hussites and Utraquists.........................................................................19
CHAPTER 2: THE LEGACY OF JAN HUS.............................................................21
2. 1 Hus Venerated..............................................................................................22
2. 2 ‘Hus as a Utraquist’......................................................................................23
2. 3 Hus as a Revolutionary.................................................................................25
2. 4 Hus as a Moralist..........................................................................................26
CHAPTER 3: TOWARDS NEW INTERPRETATIONS OF JAN HUS.................28
3. 1 Hus and the process of revision....................................................................29
3. 2 Second Vatican Council...............................................................................31
3. 3 Theological discussions from the 1960s till the 1980s.................................31
3. 4 John Paul II and the Hussite committee.......................................................34
3. 5 The Vatican Symposium..............................................................................36
CHAPTER 4: THE PAST AND THE ‘EXCLUDED OTHER’................................39
4. 1 The Czechoslovak Hussite Church...............................................................42
4. 2 The Secret Church........................................................................................46
4. 3 Charter 77.....................................................................................................48
CHAPTER 5: LIVING AND CELEBRATING TOGETHER..................................53
5. 1 The cross and the chalice..............................................................................54
5. 2 The commemorative day to honour Master Jan Hus....................................56
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................58
BIBLIOGRAPHY..........................................................................................................60
INTRODUCTION
‘You can close your eyes to reality, but not to memories.’
Stanislaw J. Lec (1909 - 1966), Polish poet and satirist
In the dissertation Memory and the Church: a contemporary ecumenical debate on Jan
Hus in the Czech Republic I would like to take up a deep interest of the late Pope John
Paul II concerning healing of the wounds of the past and reconciliation of Christians in
the present.1 The theme of the relation between the past and the Church will be
exemplified by using a contemporary ecumenical debate that focuses on Jan Hus, the
15th century Reformer from the Czech Republic.
The objective of the dissertation is to answer the question: how can we heal and purify
the wounded memory? To come to some conclusions I have to take two steps. Firstly,
the question that is set rather abstractly must be exemplified and contextualized. Only
then I can analyze how memory is passed on. The first condition is fulfilled as I focus
on the debate on Hus. Secondly, adequate thought must be given to the concept of
memory, which is rather ambiguous. Some suggestions will be made concerning the
nature of memory in this Introduction and throughout this work.
Some might argue that the past must be left behind and we should rather concentrate on
Christian unity today.2 Presumably we should simply try to forget the bad things of the
past and look at the future that will have different priorities. Or we may hope that the
old disagreements will die a natural death. However, ‘old hostilities always resurface if
they are not dealt with (and) memories of conflict will always come back unless the
conflicts are resolved’.3 Furthermore, ‘forgiveness has to ‘work backwards’ if it is to
have universal value and purpose’.4
Jan Hus
The main character of this dissertation, Master Jan Hus (1370-1415), stands as one of
the most significant figures in the history of the relation between the Czech nation and
the Church.5 Being a priest and an academic, Hus pursued reform of the Church and
1
John Paul II, ‘Tertio Millenio Adveniente’ (1994), John Paul II, ‘Ut Unum Sint’ (1995), International Theological
Committee, ‘Memory and Reconciliation: The Church and the Faults of the Past’ (1999)
2
The issue is discussed in detail in Evans, G.R., 1996, Method in ecumenical theology: the lessons so far, Chapter 5.
3
Ibid., pp. 130-131.
4
G. Daly, ‚Forgiveness and community‘, quoted in Evans, G.R., 1996, Method in ecumenical theology: the lessons
so far, p. 131.
5
In the contest „The Greatest Czech“ (BBC format) that was broadcast on Czech Television in 2005, Jan Hus made it
on the seventh position.
2
society. Fidelity to his own views led him to martyrdom. His death launched a series of
Hussite wars, which significantly influenced the religious history of Europe. In the 16th
century great Reformers of the Church, including Martin Luther and Erasmus of
Rotterdam, grasped many of Hus’ ideas anew.
The very moment Master Jan died, the history of different interpretations of Hus began,
which continues until today. He has become a corner-stone of the Religious
Reformation and one of the main dividing aspects among Czech Christians. In addition,
he has become a kind of symbol used by each age according to its ideology. However,
since the end of the 19th century interesting attempts have been made to re-read the
character and work of Master Jan. The International Symposium on Hus, convened by
John Paul II and hosted by Papal Lateran University in December 1999 can be
considered the peak of this effort up to now.
The past, memory and tradition of the Church
In this dissertation I want to conceive the contemporary ecumenical debate on Hus in
creative dialogue with the wounded memory of the Church. I understand the past of the
Church as a certain kind of collective or social memory. 6 Such conception of the past
may enable us to relate to the past not as to a set of objectively knowable facts, once
given and immutable. On the contrary, a concept of the past viewed as memory offers
the potential to bring about the necessary labour of forgiveness and reconciliation.
I learned much about memory from such diverse authors as Augustine, Pierre Bourdieu
and Paul Connerton. With Augustine, I realized the significance of memory for the
identity of a person, or even a trend towards the identification of memory and self. In
Confessions Augustine writes: „Great is the power of memory, something awe-inspiring
… a deep and endless multiplicity; and this thing is my mind, and this thing am I
myself“.7 Augustine observes that we cannot act coherently without memory, therefore
memory is indispensable for the future.8 He is even able to claim that what I do not
remember, ‘I am not,’ it does not constitute part of myself. Moreover, Augustine
already notices that memory contains the reasons of our behaviour.9
Bourdieu brings inspiration with his concept of habitus, which, as a product of history,
‘produces individual and collective practices – more history – in accordance with the
6
In this sense G.R. Evans writes: “Ecumenically speaking the most important thing about history is that it is
memory”. Evans, G.R., 1996, Method in ecumenical theology: the lessons so far, p. 136.
7
Augustine, 1991, Confessions, 10,26.
8
O’Daly, G., 1987, Augustine’s Philosophy of Mind , p. 132.
9
Ibid., pp. 136-137.
3
schemes generated by history. It ensures the active presence of past experience’. 10
Habitus governs our thought, perception and action; there is neither unforeseen novelty
nor mechanical reproduction and determinism.
For my dissertation I prefer as most fitting the definition of habitus as an embodied
history internalized as second nature and so forgotten as history. Bourdieu develops this
concept of habitus as
the active presence of the whole past of which it is the product. As such, it is
what gives practices their relative autonomy with respect to external
determinations of the immediate present. This autonomy is that of the past,
enacted and acting, which, functioning as accumulated capital, produces
history on the basis of history and so ensures the permanence in change that
makes the individual agent a world within the world. The habitus is a
spontaneity without consciousness or will, opposed as much to the
mechanical necessity of things without history in mechanistic theories as it is
to the reflexive freedom of subjects ‚without inertia‘ in rationalist theories.11
Finally, Connerton addresses the question of how is the memory of groups conveyed
and sustained.12 He stresses the role of bodies and bodily practices in the transfer of
memory and states that: “I shall seek to give an account of how practices of a noninscribed kind are transmitted, in and as a tradition”.13 He distinguishes three classes of
memories: personal, cognitive and habit-memory, paying special attention to the third
one. ‘A third class of memories consists simply in our having the capacity to reproduce
a certain performance.’14 Connerton’s concept of habit-memory will be very useful
throughout the dissertation.
Theology is also attentive to memory. If Connerton indicated that memory and tradition
are somehow related, Josef Zvěřina is able to call tradition the memory of the Church.15
In the way resembling that of Bourdieu Zvěřina writes on his concept of memory:
In all particular religions, and even more in the most intimate faith, we find
some roots of previous experiences. Tradition ensures religion as a historical
continuity and content identity. It creates symbols and rituals, myths and
formulae, yet reversely it is being instituted precisely by them. Hence,
tradition has creative and preserving aspects; it is not only preservation but
also active passing.16
This insight of Zvěřina about the two-fold character of the memory of the Church is
worthwhile. Theology thus may minister to the Church as it examines the situations and
warns in times when the Church sticks to mere preservation of the past without making
10
Bourdieu, P., 1990, The Logic of Practice, p. 54.
Ibid., 56.
12
Connerton, P., 1989, How Societies Remember, p. 1.
13
Ibid., p. 4.
14
Ibid., p. 22.
15
Zvěřina, J., 2003, Teologie Agapé, Vol. 1., pp. 83f..
16
Ibid., 84, italics Petr Jandejsek.
11
4
reference to the present or is getting lost in the chase for perpetual and uprooted
novelty.
If we accompany Zvěřina in his understanding of the tradition of the Church as
memory, in other words as a living remembrance of the past, then it is also appropriate
to distinguish Tradition (with a capital T) and tradition (with a small t). The former is
‘the revelation of God and the gift which he has made of himself in Christ, his presence
in the life of the church by the power of the Holy Spirit’. 17 The latter then are ‘the
expressions and manifestations under different historical forms of the one truth and the
one reality which is Christ’.18 According to Yves Congar, these traditions are the
specific vehicle of Tradition. They are lived out by different confessions and existing
groups. Congar welcomes this diversity, which makes ecumenism possible. He writes:
„In ecumenism I constantly welcome the expression that ‚the others‘ make the traditions
in which they live out Christianity.“ 19
The purpose of the purification of memory is not the unification of traditions, nor the
exclusion of some of them. It means chiefly to measure traditions within the Tradition.
In other words, to examine to what degree can respective traditions carry the liberating
message of faith. In this process it may also be helpful to expose my tradition to the
judgement of other traditions, notably those marginalized.
The structure of the dissertation
Having introduced the area of research, I will now give an outline of the structure of the
dissertation.
It is divided into five chapters. The story of Jan Hus is dealt with in chapter one. Here I
search for the sources of Hus’ motivation and introduce him as a passionate seeker after
truth and a determined theologian. I want to claim primarily that Jan Hus cannot be
usurped by a single Christian tradition. He belongs to both Catholic and Protestant
traditions.
The legacy of Jan Hus is discussed in chapter two. It is both a legacy of Christian
frankness and boldness, as well as that of the divided nation and Church. This chapter
focuses on what Tomáš Halík calls ‘the second life’ of Hus.20 In this chapter there is
particular reference to the four fixed representative frames in which the picture of Hus
is conveyed.
17
Faith and Order document no. 40, Geneva 1963. Quoted in Congar, Y., 1984, Diversity and Communion, p. 135.
Ibid., p. 135.
19
Ibid., p. 136.
20
Tomáš Halík in the preface to Kotyk, J., 2001, Spor o revizi Husova procesu, p. 11.
18
5
The third chapter gives an account of the attempts for a renewed interpretation of Hus
from the end of the 19th century till today. Critical attention is paid to the period
following the fall of communism in November 1989. It was primarily John Paul II who
called for the purification of memory of the Church in relation to the causa of Jan Hus.
His was also the initiation of the Committee for the study of Jan Hus, whose work
resulted in the International Symposium on Jan Hus in Lateran University in December
1999.
In chapter four I turn to three communities – the Czechoslovak Church (national
Church), the Secret Church, and Charter 77 – who experienced some kind of exclusion
and lived out their own memory of Hus. Precisely as ‘the others’ they may become
irreplaceable interpreters of the past for the mainstream Catholic Church. Critically I
will also reflect on the fact that in her well intended effort for the purification of
memory the Catholic Church has concentrated rather on herself than on those who
became victims.
The final chapter returns to the living practice of Christian communities. I will argue
that the division lies much more in the lives of these communities than on the level of
doctrine. Yves Congar writes: “Difference and division have been woven into the fabric
of social and national life”.21 Special attention will be paid to symbolic communication,
namely the use of the cross and the chalice, and the day Hus is commemorated.
By the end of my work I hope it will have been shown that the healing of wounded
memory can advance when we listen to the others and their interpretations of the past.
The process of reconciliation can only lead through patient living and celebrating
together of different Christian communities, through sharing in symbols and narratives.
Methodology
As I indicated above, the objective of the dissertation is to answer the question: how can
we heal and purify the wounded memory with particular reference to the Church in the
Czech Republic in the 21st Century. Searching for the answer I base the dissertation on
narrative history. I presume it is possible to interpret it either with a particular interest in
the Czech spiritual history, or more generally as an example of (a reflection on) the
process of forgiveness and reconciliation.
Stories are always formed within a theoretical framework. Mostly I use stories in order
to clarify and confirm theoretical claims. Some stories however serve as a ground for
further theoretical insight. In the dissertation I use the historical method. I agree with
21
Congar, M.J., 1939, Divided Christendom. A Catholic Study of the Problem of Reunion, pp. 38-39.
6
G.R. Evans that ‘most of the divisions which persist in the Church today took place in a
past which can still be seen a vivid present … so just as it is an urgent task to reconcile
our memories, so also we have to purify our memories’.22 The issue is to cleanse the
memory of those elements in it which are hostile to others. In the course of my work I
make use of different ways for the purification of memory, such as the historical
retrieval method combined with a hermeneutics of suspicion.
The dissertation combines the historical method with those applied in cultural
anthropology and ecumenical theology. Cultural anthropology provided me with the
concept of couter-discourses, focusing on ‘the other’, mostly the victims, who will thus
be given the opportunity to become the interpreters of our common past. As for
ecumenical theology, I found fresh inspiration in the idea of communion and in the
stress on the living together of divided Christian communities. Such a multidimensional
perspective is attractive for me, because of my professional background as a social
scientist.
Final remark
Since 1997 till 2005 a plenary assembly of the Catholic Church in the Czech Republic
was in process. Its objective was both to bring the results of the Second Vatican Council
to the Czech Church and to solve urgent pastoral issues of the local Church. After the
preparatory period of so-called discussion circles in parishes the work shifted to several
expert committees, the Committee for the Spiritual Reading of History being one of
them. Unfortunately for some rather obscure reasons, the proposal offered by the
Committee was excluded from the assembly proceedings. The contribution of a number
of experts in this Committee was rejected for ideological reasons.
I would like to understand this dissertation as a contribution to the spiritual and
ecumenical interpretation of the Czech history.
22
Evans, G.R., 1996, Method in ecumenical theology: the lessons so far, p. 136.
7
CHAPTER 1: STORY OF JAN HUS
The first chapter of this dissertation contains the narrative of the life of Jan Hus. I
summarize the main historical and political events of his time, which had an impact on
Hus’ life. I also mention briefly significant aspects of his theology.
I find it necessary to include some initial remarks. Although this work is located not
only in the field of the history of the Church but also in ecumenical theology, I consider
it indispensable to pay attention to the very ‘historical’ character of Master Jan Hus. I
do this also despite the fact that the dissertation focuses rather on the ‘second life’ of
Hus, his legacy and memory.23 A study of the character of Hus and his time will enable
us to discern not only dissimilarity between his and our epoch, but also many identical
themes and problems.
In the process of ordering materials on Hus and stressing some of his ideas I always try
to read his character positively. 24 I make use of sources of various Christian traditions
and thus anticipate, at least in intent, one of the tasks that lies ahead of the Church in the
Czech Republic: to compile ecumenically the biography of Hus.
Finally I want to stress in accord with Vaclav Havel, the former Czech President, who,
in dealing with the question of boasting about the Prague Spring of 1968 and the
bravery of the Czech people, wrote that “a return to the past is sensible only as a
challenge for today, but only so”.25 In this dissertation, telling the stories of the past is
justified only as an attempt to understand the truth in relation to present issues. Any
other self-serving recollection would be a descending to the world of illusion or just
waste of time.
1. 1 Conversion
Jan Hus was a Czech Catholic priest and teacher of philosophy and theology who lived
from 1370 till 1415. As in the case of many other remarkable people, his biography
cannot be separated from his teaching. On the contrary, the events of Hus’ life witness
to his faith that should be understood as faithfulness to the truth of God. The question of
truth must be stressed right at the beginning of this reflection because it may be
23
Presumably, the target audience of this dissertation is less familiar with the biography of Hus than the Czech
academic community. Hence the first chapter occupies more space than is strictly necessary for a non-historical work.
24
I am aware of the methodological problem and danger of revisionism. I agree with G.R. Evans when she writes:
“Revisionism is a notoriously dangerous game, and we have to think ecumenically strictly in terms of an
appropriation of a shared history in which there was a conflict, as a common Christian history about which there is
now peace”. Evans, G.R., 1996, Method in ecumenical theology: the lessons so far, p. 132.
25
Havel, V., 1990, O lidskou identitu, p. 195.
8
considered the main topic of Hus. The Czech theologian Jan M. Lochman asserts that
Hus’ concept of the truth was “much closer to the biblical and Hebraic emeth – bearing
witness to the truth as fidelity, as truth in the covenant with God – than to the Greek
philosophical aletheia”.26 A gradual radicalism of Hus in his following of the truth that
was completed in his martyr death where he witnessed best to his highest example,
Jesus Christ, had biblical roots. For Hus, ‘the truth of cognition or knowledge was
indispensable from the truth as action, from faith as fidelity and trust’.27
Jan Hus was born at Husinec (Goose town)28 in southern Bohemia as a son of poor
parents. With the help of some friends he started to study philosophy and theology at
the University of Prague29 with the aim of becoming a priest. Although his initial
motivation was rather material – a career of a priest promised a life of plenty and ease,
in the course of his studies he had been absorbed in current intellectual, religious and
social debates and experienced a gradual conversion prior to his ordination.
What changed this fun-loving and ambitious young man, who later demanded that all
priests should live in apostolic poverty, to be satisfied with the food and clothing
provided by their priestly office and give the rest to the poor? The American historian
Matthew Spinka suggests that “it was the profound study of Scripture … which, by
ruling his life and thought, transformed him into the earnest Reformer he became during
the rest of his life”.30 The truth of Scripture became a canon of his life and ministry. He
held that the necessary truths of Christianity are contained in the Scripture and even the
Pope cannot preach what is contrary to it. Against the accusation that he interprets
Scripture according to his own understanding and without reference to the Church’s
magisterium, he replied that he interpreted them by tradition as summarized in the
creeds, the principal doctors, especially those of the first five centuries, the ecumenical
councils, and the decrees of the Church.31 Indeed, at the end of his life at the Council of
Constance, after all his attempts to explain his teaching had proved to be in vain, Hus
demanded to be instructed from the Scriptures and if he were wrong in his opinion, he
would have willingly recanted and submitted himself to the Council. However, nothing
of this kind was offered to him.
26
Lochman, J.M., 1996, Zeal for Truth and Tolerance, p. 18.
Ibid., p. 18. To the concept of truth in Hus also Lochman, J.M., ‘K chápání pravdy u Husa’. In Lášek, J. (ed.), Jan
Hus mezi epochami, národy a konfesemi, pp. 175-178.
28
Hence his name Hus, which means a goose.
29
The University of Prague was established by the Emperor Charles IV in 1348, being the first university in central
and northern Europe.
30
Spinka, M., 1968, John Hus. A Biography, p. 46.
31
Ibid., 189. Hus definitely was not a proponent of the theological princip of reformation sola scriptura.
27
9
Following Spinka, I want to claim that Hus was formed especially by two streams
reaching back to the 14th century.32 One of them was the tradition of the Czech reform
movement, the other the philosophical and theological realism advocated especially by
John Wycliffe. In telling these two stories, I will attempt to show how they interacted in
Hus’ life and teaching.
1. 2 Czech Reformation
The origins of the Czech Reformation are interesting. It was the Emperor Charles IV
who called to Prague the Augustinian canon Conrad Waldhauser, once the court
preacher in Vienna. In Prague Waldhauser preached and called for the growth of true
piety, apostolic poverty and the moral life. Spinka reckons that “as a result of
[Waldhauser’s] reform activity, a native reform movement was inaugurated,
culminating in the work of John Hus”.33
However, ‘the Father of Czech Reform’ is considered to be John Milic of Kromeriz (c.
1325-1374). On his way towards a promising future career in the Imperial Chancellery,
he experienced a radical transformation and devoted himself to intensive preaching.
Entirely trusting the power of God’s Word, he eventually preached three times a day
doing so in three languages, in Czech, German and Latin. He followed the Gospel also
in a very practical way and founded in Prague a residential hostel for one of the poorest
segments in society, the prostitutes. Many of them experienced conversion after having
heard him preach and lived in this house called New Jerusalem; Milic and his associates
lived close by and cared for these women, of course not without frequent difficulties. It
is said that in the time of Milic there was no prostitute in Prague. This dimension of the
reform, namely the inseparability of the Word of God and its social expression, is
essential and will be found also in the mission of Jan Hus who later, as the University
teacher, founded a hostel called Nazareth for poor students. For Hus, the question was
not either faith or works, as for the later Reformers, since he knew that faith is dead
without love, and it may only be fulfilled in love. Thus he often spoke about fides
caritate formata, the faith formed by love for the neighbour.
Moreover, Milic discovered anew the vital importance of the Eucharist for the common
life of Christians; it served as a special reinforcement of the solidarity and new life of
Christians in face of the Eschatological judgement.34 He recommended that the
sacrament should be celebrated as often as possible, or every day. The dispute over the
32
Spinka, M., 1966, John Hus’ Concept of the Church, p. 4.
Spinka, M., 1968, John Hus. A Biography, p. 8.
34
Lochman, J.M., 1996, Zeal for Truth and Tolerance, p. 6.
33
10
communion of the laity in both elements of bread and wine was but a later issue.
Remarkably, its origins among the Czech Christians go to back the Orthodox Church. In
1413, Jerome of Prague, once a student in Oxford, later a companion of Hus in his
martyr’s death, visited Orthodox services in Poland and Lithuania where he observed
the granting of the cup to the laity. His report back in Prague generated both scandal and
sensation. The issue was disputed at the university, argued especially by Jakoubek of
Stribro, an advocate of the primitive Church order. When Jakoubek discussed this
question with Hus, Hus - by that time in exile in southern Bohemia - in principle
approved giving of the cup to the laity, but advised to delay the actual practice.
However, Jakoubek along with some of his friends soon initiated the cup.35
Another pioneer of the Czech Reformation was Matthew of Janov (c. 1355-1393).
Having spent nine years in Paris, he was a well-educated theologian. After some
unsuccessful attempts to secure a clergy career, he voluntarily embraced the life of
apostolic poverty. The contrast between the poor Christ and the wealthy Church of his
times was later also a target for Hus, himself being influenced especially by a simple
Prague priest Matthew the Poor, who ‘excelled all his confrères in humility and
voluntary poverty’.36
Matthew was, above all, a zealous student of the Bible and always carried a copy of it
with him whenever he went. He helped with the first translation of the Bible into the
Czech language. In his preaching and writing he criticised the near-idolatrous
veneration of images, relics, and saints, as well as the overemphasis on external
ritualism and ceremonialism of the church services. Similarly as then Hus, Matthew
pointed to the unjust prominence accorded to the legal over the biblical and theological
studies, he denounced corruption in high ecclesiastical offices, especially simony and
venality, and even rejected monasticism and demanded its abolition.37 Spinka calls
Matthew’s reform programme, incorporated in his main work De Regulis Veteris et
Novi testamenti, ‘restitutionalism’, meaning “the return by the Church to the teaching
and practice of the gospel of Christ and His apostles as exhibited in the primitive
Church”.38 As for ecclesiology, he taught of the true spiritual Church as the body of
Christ, which is composed exclusively of the predestinate of whom Christ alone is the
head. The Church militant, then, includes both the predestinate and the foreknown. Hus
will later pick up this teaching, especially in connection with Wycliffe’s ecclesiology.
35
Spinka, M., 1968, John Hus. A Biography, p. 256.; Lambert, M., 2000, Středověká hereze, pp. 449-456.
Spinka, M., 1968, John Hus. A Biography, p. 60.
37
Spinka, M., 1968, John Hus. A Biography, p. 19; Lambert, M., 2000, Středověká hereze, p. 419.
38
Spinka, M., 1968, John Hus. A Biography, p. 19.
36
11
Finally, a squire Thomas of Stitne (1331-1409) should be mentioned as an inspirer of
Hus. He studied at the University of Prague and was a disciple of both Milic and
Matthew. He was one of the earliest writers in Czech. His works were intended not for
the learned, but at first for the education of his own children and later for the wider
circle of readers not versed in Latin. 39 The chief contribution of Thomas lies in the fact
that he wrote in the vernacular. When in exile, Hus followed his example and wrote
numerous Czech works for the general public. Hence, a plurality of readers, ranging
from the academics to those less educated, could be introduced to the ideas of reform.
1. 3 John Wycliffe
The legacy of the Czech Reformation created a context, sources and topics for the
mission of Hus himself. He was familiar with the native reform tradition and was its
firm advocate. Yet, as he studied at the University of Prague, he met another strong
reform influence, the work of John Wycliffe (1329-1384). At the beginning of Hus’
studies, only Wycliffe’s philosophical works were known in Prague. The theological
ones were brought by Czech Oxford students only during Hus’ later years. Wycliffe’s
views, particularly concerning the role of the Pope and priests, as well as the Eucharist,
generated great interest and controversy in Prague. His books were burned in public and
debated passionately not only on the campus but also in the royal and archbishop court.
It happened that the main battle-lines were drawn roughly between the German and the
Czech masters because Wycliffe’s philosophical ultra-realism gave the Czech masters
an effective tool to tackle the popular Ockhamism40 of the German speaking masters.41
Hus was himself a faithful, though discriminate, student of the Oxford professor whose
ideas stood close to the tradition of the Czech reform movement, and eventually Hus
became the spokesman of the Czech teachers.
Now, what was so new and controversial about Wycliffe? His radical criticism of the
established Church order had its ground in ecclesiology. He taught that the historically
developed Church could not be identified with the true Church of Christ. The true
Church is invisible, composed of the predestinate elected by God alone. The visible
Church, then, should be reformed, e.g. her properties should be taken away, and this is a
primary task of the secular authorities. It is at the point of ecclesiology that Hus valued
39
Ibid., 20.
William of Ockham (c. 1280-c. 1349) taught that the freedom of God is incompatible with the existence of divine
ideas as positive models of creation. As a result, creatures have no natures, or essences, in common. There are no
realities but individual things. (Taken from Encyclopaedia Britannica, entry Western philosophy.)
41
Lambert, M., 2000, Středověká hereze, p. 425.
40
12
Wycliffe much; later, Hus’ concept of the Church was the main charge on the basis of
which he was condemned to death.42
Hus developed his teaching on the Church most systematically in De Ecclesia (1413).
He embraced the Pauline-Augustinian-Wycliffite definition of the Church as the totality
of predestinate, past, present, and future, on earth and in heaven. 43 On this basis, Hus
opposed both the Conciliarists who dominated in Constance, and the indiscriminate
adherents of the Pope at home. However, the concept of the Church as a spiritual
fellowship did not prevent him from speaking about the Church militant here on earth,44
as he was falsely accused by his enemies. This Church comprises both the predestinate
and the foreknown, but only the first constitute the Church of Christ; the latter are in the
Church, but not of the Church. It cannot be claimed with certainty that someone is or is
not predestinate, the only clue is thus ethical qualification ‘By their fruits you will know
them’. Hus’ claim that the predestinate may also be unbaptised children, pagans, and the
Jews, who will perhaps become Christians later45, bears some similarities with the
concept of the ‘anonymous Christians’ of Karl Rahner. Anyway, it was believed that the
final selection will take place on the Day of Judgement. To be sure, God desires all to
be saved and predestines none to damnation, but - as free creatures - humans may
choose to reject God’s saving grace.
For the Church militant, Hus suggested a federal concept as reflecting best the reality
where besides the Roman Church there existed other legitimate churches or
patriarchates which exceeded the Pope’s jurisdiction.46 Unlike the late Wycliffe, Hus
acknowledged the Pope as the head of the Roman Church47 but not of the Church of
Christ, his mystical body, whose head is Christ alone.
Krzystof Moskal concludes that the teaching of Hus stands in contrast to the mere
juridical concept of the Church. Furthermore, Hus claims that the ministers and office
holders must have such spiritual qualities, and follow the law of Christ in such a way so
that the people would recognize them and call them good shepherd.48
42
Spinka recounts that of the final thirty charges against Hus at the Council of Constance, twenty-five dealt with the
Church; of these twenty-five, twelve concerned the pope (Spinka, M., 1966, John Hus’ Concept of the Church, p. 5).
43
Hus, J., 1965, O církvi, p. 24. In English Spinka, M., 1968, John Hus. A Biography, p. 59.
44
Hus, J., 1965, O církvi, p. 28.
45
Spinka, M., 1966, John Hus’ Concept of the Church, p. 260.
46
Spinka, M., 1968, John Hus. A Biography, p. 183.
47
In De Ecclesia Hus writes: ‘If the acts of the Roman pope do not contradict the assumption, it should be supposed
that he is the head of that particular Church’ (quoted in Spinka, M., 1966, John Hus’ Concept of the Church, p. 273).
48
Moskal, K. ‚Husův traktát De ecclesia‘. In Drda, M.-Holeček, F.J.-Vybíral, Z. (eds.), 2001, Jan Hus na přelomu
tisícletí, p. 125.
13
As for the Eucharist, Wycliffe refused the teaching on transubstantiation as a later
artificial development and proposed, he thought, an original remanentia thesis claiming
that the elements remain in their natural substance as bread and wine and are not to be
understood metaphysically. This was one of the points on which Hus disagreed with
Wycliffe and some of his Czech fellows. Hus explained the doctrine on the Eucharist in
his own treaties De Corpore Christi (1406) where he also bravely corrected the position
of the archbishop Zbynek Zajic of Hasenburk, who - fearing the spread of remanentist
teaching - forbade any mention of bread and wine in connection with the consecrated
gifts.49
Wycliffe’s thought was rooted in philosophical realism, which was by then already a bit
old-fashioned. The philosophy of the day was nominalism which held that reality
existed only in concrete objects and not in the pre-existent idea. Wycliffe’s Platonic
realism, derived mainly from St Augustine, proposed the existence of divine ideas
(universalia) embodied in things, which were but their carriers. This abstract concept
was able to explain better the current situation of the Church and resonated with the
reform effort of both Wycliffe and the Czech teachers, Hus in particular. To reach the
ideal of the Church ‘without spot or wrinkle’ was the drive of his reformatory effort.50
Thus, realism was not just a noetic question but it had practical ethical implications.
Lochman notices that
the faith of the realists in the ontological superiority of ideas inclined them
to take the question of truth very seriously indeed. Concepts, convictions and
creedal formulations were not matters for theoretical games which would
irresponsibly ignore their life-shaping consequences. A true statement is …
something which concerns a person’s entire existence.51
Hus showed later that any double standard - a critical radicalism in theory and
pragmatic conformism in practice - is unthinkable for him: the truth as true reality
counted even for more than physical survival.52
To sum up Wycliffe’s influence on Hus, it can be claimed that Hus fully embraced the
intellectual context of philosophical realism, especially its emphasis on the identity and
integrity of theory and practice, of word and existence.53 In this sense he was a true
disciple of Wycliffe and never failed to defend him against his critics. Nevertheless,
49
Unlike the foreign Hussain scholars Matthew Spinka and Paul de Vooght, who entirely purify Hus of heresy in his
eucharistic teaching, the Czech philosopher Stanislav Sousedík concludes in his seminal study Učení o eucharistii
v díle M.Jana Husa that though Hus indeed did not teach remanentia, neither did he teach official doctrine of the
Chuch and his thought tended to remanentia (Sousedík, S., 1998, Učení o eucharistii v díle M.Jana Husa, pp. 58-60).
50
The lofty reality of the Church, not always seen, is paralleled by Cardinal Basil Hume with the story on Mount
Tabor: ‘The everyday familiar appearance of Christ gave way to a brightness like that of the sun ... Which was the
shadow, which was substance?’ (Hume, B., 1988, Towards a Civilization of Love, p. 14).
51
Lochman, J.M., 1996, Zeal for Truth and Tolerance, p. 17.
52
Read more on the distinction between medieval nominalism and realism in Dolejšová, I., ‘Hus a Páleč’ (part II). In
Lášek, J. (ed.), Jan Hus mezi epochami, národy a konfesemi, pp. 84-85.
53
Lochman, J.M., 1996, Zeal for Truth and Tolerance, p. 18.
14
Spinka asserts that “[Hus] did not accept either the philosophy or theology of Wycliffe
in all particulars, but always tested critically how far they affected essential
orthodoxy”.54 On occasion, he even corrected Wycliffe in the catholic sense, as in the
case of transubstantiation, although mostly he just passed by some controversial
Wycliffe’s views, and, generally, he interpreted Wycliffe’s works in their acceptable
sense.55 Basically, Hus used two approaches. Firstly, he explicitly agrees with
Wycliffe’s position only when he regards it as not contrary to his understanding of
gospel teaching, while he passes in silence over those articles with which he disagrees.
Secondly, Hus adds the modifiers ‘worthily and justly’ to some problematic articles of
Wycliffe, e.g. on priests in mortal sin who do not really consecrate the body of Christ
and baptise. Thus, he can hardly be accused of Donatism which denies the validity of
sacraments ministered by unworthy priests.56 Spinka asserts that Hus sometimes
transforms, even subverts, the original meaning and differs from Wycliffe to an
essential degree.57 The Belgian Benedictine, Dom Paul de Vooght, perceptively
observes that Hus’ “spirit was catholic, although his heart was with Wycliffe”.58
1. 4 Priest, teacher, martyr
Hus worked both as a teacher, from 1398 he lectured in the Faculty of Arts at the
University, and a preacher. As a teacher, he favoured non-speculative and practical
topics; moral reform and spiritual transformation of life interested him more than
abstract scholastic speculation and mysticism. The combination of teaching and
preaching became typical for him and won him broad popularity, especially when in
1402 he began to preach in the Bethlehem Chapel in Prague. The Chapel was founded
by the supporters of reform and Hus fulfilled entirely their expectations. His theological
erudition and ethical persuasiveness drew attention and favour even of Queen Sophia
who came regularly to listen to him.
It is estimated that during the following ten years Hus wrote and delivered about three
thousand sermons (J. V. Flajšhans); his method was to write them first in Latin, then he
preached in Czech. Hus’ interest in the vernacular and subsequently in the language
improvements reflects a growing influence of humanism. In Orthographia bohemica
(1406) Hus substituted the clumsy conjunction of letters hitherto employed for the
54
Spinka, M., 1968, John Hus. A Biography, p. 37.
Reading some works of Origin and Augustine in this way is largely acceptable today. Why should not be the same
applied for Jan Hus?
56
Lambert, M., 2000, Středověká hereze, p. 427.
57
Spinka, M., 1968, John Hus. A Biography, p. 159.
58
Quoted in Spinka, M., 1968, John Hus. A Biography, p. 65.
55
15
Czech letters not found in the Latin by diacritical marks. Every syllable, then, could be
expressed by one letter instead of a combination of letters. These innovations were
gradually adopted and, in their modernized form, they are in use until today. In
connection with the Czech language, it is also useful to take notice of Hus’ alleged
nationalism. Although Hus had frequent disputes with the German masters and favoured
the vernacular, all these were motivated by his concern for reform. In his Czech
Exposition of the Decalogue Hus asserts that “if I knew a virtuous foreigner, no matter
from whence, who loves God and upholds the good more than my brother, I would like
him better than my brother. Therefore, I like good English priests better than unworthy
Czech priests; and I like a good German better than a bad brother”.59
A high degree of Hus’ popularity among people was due to his emphasis on justice and
equality. 60 In his Exposition of the Lord’s Prayer he insisted that “the common
fatherhood of God places all men - popes and kings as well as their poorest subjects - on
equality. ... No one may claim Him more than another”.61 Hus sympathised with the
oppressed and exploited, presumably partly because of his own modest origins, but
mainly because of the teachings of the Gospel. In order to change such miserable
conditions he suggested not force, but moral and truly religious means.
Hus’ situation worsened seriously in 1412 when he intervened against the indulgence
preaching sponsored by Pope John XXIII.62 Although Hus did not oppose indulgences
in principle, he could not keep silent about the sacrilegious manner of their sale and the
call to war contained in the Papal bull. He knew that ‘here also exists the sin of silence,
when one refrains from the defence of truth and right’.63 Hus claimed that God’s free
forgiveness precedes the priest’s or the pope’s absolution, they merely declare it if the
sinner repents his or her sins, confesses them and resolves to sin no more. None can sell
or buy forgiveness. Moreover, the Church should fight just with the spiritual sword, not
the material one. Since the king also profited from the sale of indulgences, Hus could
not count on his support any more.
Shortly after that, Hus was excommunicated, not for heresy but because of his
unwillingness to appear before the Curia. His excommunication was accompanied by an
59
Quoted in Spinka, M., 1968, John Hus. A Biography, p. 78.
This was misinterpreted and misused by the communists in the 20th century who portrayed him as a social
revolutionary. But Hus’ attitude had biblical and theological grounds. I will return to this misinterpretation in section
2.3.
61
Quoted in Spinka, M., 1968, John Hus. A Biography, pp. 214f.
62
Pope John XXIII was engaged in the Papal Schisma. He planned a war against King Ladislas of Naples who
supported his opponent Gregory XII. The Council of Constance (1414-1418) dominated by counciliarists stood
against the unworthy Pope John XXIII. When he attempted to flee, the Council captured, unseated and arrested him.
After five centuries Patriarch of Venice G. Roncalli (Pope 1958-1963) embraced the name John XXIII again as a sign
of humility and desire to remedy faults of the past.
63
Spinka, M., 1968, John Hus. A Biography, p. 211.
60
16
interdict pronounced over Prague or any other place where he might reside. Knowing
that in Rome he would not find any justice, Hus solemnly appealed to Jesus Christ, the
most just judge and final arbiter. Legally, this was an act of revolt against ecclesiastical
jurisdiction. For Hus it was a courageous statement of faithfulness to the truth
recognised in his conscience. In this he gave preference to the law of Christ as the
highest rule before the law of the Church, or in Havel’s words today, to the intentions of
life before intentions of a system64, effectively showing that these two may but may not
be identical.65 Hus did not despise ecclesial authorities but believed that an authority
secured in its legitimacy while losing a vital link to the primal source of this legitimacy,
tended to go blind, live in illusion, even in idolatry. He knew that the Church could
practice her authority as long as she followed Christ, the source and norm of this
authority, which is ultimately the power of love.
Nonetheless, not to keep the people of Prague without the sacraments, Hus left Prague
and the nobles of southern Bohemia offered him refuge. In exile, Hus continued to
preach wherever he lived, since he considered preaching a duty and right granted by
God. A prohibition to preach was for him an abuse of the Word of God. When the
Council of Constance, summoned to reform the Church ‘in head and members’ and
especially to deal with the Papal Schism, invited Hus, he eventually decided to come
and present his teaching. Although he received from the Emperor Sigismund a safeconduct letter promising a hearing at the Council and a safe-return, for the Council from
the very beginning there were only two offers: total submission or silencing. In
Constance, Hus was imprisoned and accused of heresies. Since he was denied a proper
chance to defend his position and, following his conscience, he could not recant
accusations based often on bits of his writings torn from their context, 66 his life was
coming to end. On July 6th 1415 he was burned at the stake in Constance.
The historian of Canon law Jiří Kejř notices that “the legal action of Hus cannot be
understood as a judgement over one heretic, isolated from all events happening in the
Czech Church and on the political stage. It concerned the entire reform party; with the
conviction of Hus the Czech kingdom was convicted, too“.67 Hence in the conviction of
64
Havel, V., 1990, O lidskou identitu, p. 62.
Compare John 10: 10 and Acts 4: 19; 5: 29.
66
In his Last Declaration to the Council on 1st July 1415 Hus wrote: “I, John Hus, in hope a priest of Jesus Christ,
fearing to offend God and to fall into perjury, am not willing to recant all or any of the articles produced against me
in the testimoniem of the false witnesses. For God is my witness that I neither preached, asserted, nor defended them,
as they said that I had defended, preached, and asserted them, etc.
Furthermore, concerning the articles drawn from my books, at least those drawn correctly, I declare, if any of them
contains a false sense, that I repudiace. But fearing to offend against the truth and to speak against the opinion of the
saints, I am not willing to recant any of them“ (Quoted in Spinka, M., 1972, The Letters of John Hus, p. 206).
67
Kejř, J., 2000, Husův proces, p. 15.
65
17
Hus two of the above mentioned streams were suspected and condemned: Czech
Reformation and John Wycliffe.68
Was Jan Hus a victim of judicial murder? Should we judge the act of the Council
fathers especially contemptible because Hus was put on trial even though this decision
had been made in advance? According to Kejř, it is clear that the judges trusted false
witnesses, untrue statements and incorrect quotations from the original work of Hus.
Furthermore, there is evidence of mistakes within the trial as well as bribery.
One cannot deny that ‘Hus himself made serious mistakes, sometimes he did not behave
tactically at all, and many times he did not understand the legal situation’.69 Hus did not
intend to break the law, but he disregarded the ban of preaching in chapels, he did not
respect the interdict against him, being summoned he did not appear before the papal
court of justice. Against the interdict he appealed to the judgement of Christ and
continued to preach though under the interdict. He had serious reasons for this, but he
broke the law.
On the other hand, it is incorrect to claim that Hus significantly diverged from the
dogmas of the Church; according to Kejř Hus’ variations did not mean any principal
misdemeanour.70
Far more important for the judges of Hus was his disregard of the judiciary of the
Church and its supreme authority, including the judicial authority of the Pope. We must
realize that disobedience to the papal authority was considered heretical. In contrast to
the law of people Hus obeys the law of God. In this sense the Czech historian František
Holeček writes that Jan Hus “refused any legitimate authority besides that which
derives its content immediately from the truth, and which in addition requires moral
change (a state of grace and absence of mortal sin)“.71 According to Hus the Church –
and the state – should be grounded exclusively in the truth, its authority, and morally
righteous life.
68
Some historians believe that the background of interest in the conviction of Hus, at least at some members of the
Council of Constance, was to discredit the University of Prague – so professedly the masters of Paris, and primarily
by pointing at the Czech kingdom being a hotbed of heresies to take away attention from the ‘Wycleffite’ England –
so the English participants of Concil.
69
Kejř, J., 2000, Husův proces, p. 205.
70
A different view at the ‘dogmatic innocence’ of Hus gives Jaroslav Kadlec, still influential Czech historian of the
Church: … there is no chance to talk about a dogmatic rehabilitation of Hus. Even according to a modern Catholic
advocate Hus remains a heretic, albeit to less degree than thay have concluded so far“ (Kadlec, J., 1991, Přehled
českých církvních dějin, Vol. 1, p. 263). Yet, even if Kadlec was true, it it still possible to go with Yves Congar „For
orthodox theology heresy is, therefore, at once an opportunity for progress and a danger of one-sidedness. … Since
error is always partial, dogmatic truth runs the risk of appearing partial as well“ (Congar, Y., 1939, Divided
Christendom. A Catholic Study of the Problem of Reunion, p. 29).
71
Holeček, F., ‘Hus – chybující zastánce pravdy a lásky’. Katolický týdeník 27-28, 29. 6.-12. 7. 2004, p. 4.
18
Kejř concludes that for Hus the initial category was the law of God, which stands
supreme. If this supreme law conflicts with the rules proposed by people, the law of
God has always preference, even if that clashed with secular power. Kejř writes:
His is not legal nor legal-philosophical, but legal-theological concept of law.
… In the conflict of morality and the law, which has come now and again in
various legal systems, for Hus the decisive category was morality and will to
follow the law of God. … Between Hus and his judges gaped a huge
unsurpassable chasm.72
1. 5 The Hussites and Utraquists
Soon after the death of Hus, a series of attacks, known as the Hussites Wars, were
launched against the ‘rebellious’ Czechs, but they defended their country and
reformation successfully. In 1432 the Czech representatives were invited to the Council
of Basel, but this time they had to be taken seriously as partners. Threatened by the
military power of the Czechs, the Council eventually accepted the requirements, known
as ‘Compacts’, at least as a temporary expedient. These were based on a reform
programme called the ‘Four Articles of Prague’ (1419), which was the common
denominator of different Czech reform groups. It is fair to say that for some, e.g. the
Taborites - the religious and social radicals, the Articles were just a beginning, for
others, such as the Prague party - perhaps more in line with the thought of Hus himself,
the Articles represented a reasonable fulfilment of their reform effort. They read:
1) The Word of God was to be preached freely.
2) The sacrament of the body and blood of Christ was to be served in the
form of bread and wine (sub utraque) to all Christians.
3) Priests were to relinquish their earthly position and possessions, and all
were to lead an obedient life based on the apostolic model.
4) All public sins were to be punished and public sinners in all positions
were to be restrained.73
The first article apparently links with Hus’ call for and trust in the supremacy, power
and freedom of the Word of God. It also contains an appeal to the pastoral context, in
terms of the use of the vernacular. While not typical of Hus, a demand of the cup for the
laity, symbolizing equality of the people before God and a rejection of manipulation by
the clergy both with the memory of Christ and the faithful, became literally a flag of the
Czech Reformation. ‘Restitutionalism’, an ideal of the early Church, linking back to
Matthew, is expressed in the third article. For Hus apostolic poverty was one of those
signs that justified saying that this person is a priest ‘justly and worthily’. The fourth,
72
73
Kejř, J., 2000, Husův process, p. 212.
Lochman, J.M., 1996, Zeal for Truth and Tolerance, pp. 24f.
19
revolutionary, article exceeds the intention of Hus, and resonates rather with later
Calvinists.
The main stream of the adherents to the Articles was called the Utraquists 74 and they
flourished in a relatively peaceful cohabitation with the Catholics until 1620. In that
year the Czech ‘Protestant’ Estates lost the battle of the White Mountain in the war
against the Catholic Habsburgs and it was the beginning of the vast re-catholisation of
the Czech people. Among those many who had to leave the country was Jan Amos
Comenius, the father of modern educational methods, often called ‘the Teacher of
Nations’. Thus, the exclusion of a significant reform element from Czech Christianity
was accomplished.
74
Utraquists represented the main stream of adherents of reforms. In their communities all Christians received in
Eucharist both bread and wine (sub utraque in Latin, hence the name Utraquists; see above ‘The Four Articles of
Prague‘). Utraquists came to be known under this name firstly by their opponents, gradually they embraced it.
20
CHAPTER 2: THE LEGACY OF JAN HUS
In this chapter I want to examine the imprint Jan Hus left in the memory of the Church
and Czech nation. One can identify a whole range of areas that refer to Master Jan and
his teaching. It is possible to summarize all of them as ‘the second life’ of Hus.
Common to all areas of Hus’ second life is the propensity to cause division and
exclusion in the Czech Church and nation.
Hus, of course, caused even in his own times disagreement in the Church and nation.
The adherents of Hus tried to get him released during the time of the trial and eventually
they formed the Hussite party. This becomes even more significant after the death of
Hus (6th July 1415). The Hussite party sent to Constance a series of protest letters,
culminating in a protest paper on the 2nd September 1415 against the burning of Hus.
This letter was signed by as many as 452 Czech noblemen and lords; they disapproved
of the trial as well as of the burning of Hus. Such mobilization of the public would have
hardly been possible if Hus had recanted or died without being convicted and sentenced.
However, this did not happen and the newly established movement gained its martyr.75
The Catholic Church76 was not the one that has carried and cherished the remembrance
of Hus. On the contrary, her wish was to suppress and entirely uproot this remembrance,
especially during the process of re-catholization after 1620. It is remarkable that in spite
of a changed relationship of the Catholic Church towards Hus, which occurred mainly
in the 20th century as will be outlined in chapter three, Rome has not opened a space for
the character and work of Hus until today. It is worth listening, therefore, to those
traditions, which identify with his legacy. In that way, ‘the other’, the marginalized
voices of the past and present, can be interpreters of Hus for the Catholic Church, who
now needs to take on the role of listeners. More on that subject will be discussed in
chapter four.
I will introduce some areas connected with Jan Hus, all of them having both a religious
and political impact. The close relation of these two has been characteristic in the
history of the Czech Church. The proposed areas have preserved certain interpretations
of Hus throughout history. Being significantly value-laden and emotion-laden, they
have tended to hold alternative interpretations of Hus back. As they have served to
75
Homolková, M., 2006, Hus a význam jeho osobnosti pro současný proces sbližování církví. Diploma thesis at
Jabok Academy in Prague, pp. 19-21.
76
Of course this is simplification: after Hus’ death the Church in the Czech kingdom still understood herself Catholic;
she was labbeled Utraqustic by her opponents.
21
legitimation of action for some groups and individuals, they fulfilled entirely what the
sociologist Paul Connerton calls social memory.
According to Connerton the meaning of social memory lies in the fact that the images of
the past legitimate the present order.77 If we intend to do historical reconstruction of a
figure or event, we must take into account the strong conservative potential of social
memory.78 Connerton argues further that ‘to study the social formation of memory is to
study those acts of transfer that make remembering in common possible,’ 79 for example
rites. ‘Rites have the capacity to give value and meaning to the life of those who
perform them.’80 Rites play a vital role in commemoration of continuity81, especially
because they represent stability.
I will now introduce four aspects of Hus’ ‘second life’ – 1) Hus venerated, 2) ‘Hus as a
Utraquist’, 3) Hus as a revolutionary and 4) Hus as a moralist. Each of these aspects
contain examples of acts of transfer, such as performative language in liturgy, repetitive
liturgical calendar, and the whole range of performative rituals.
2. 1 Hus Venerated
One of the eye-witnesses of the imprisonment and death of Hus in Constance, Petr of
Mladoňovice, wrote the course of events rather successfully under the title Relatio.
Precisely this ‘Passion narrative’ contributed to the acceptance of Hus as martyr and
provided the classic image representing public opinion in the Czech kingdom. ‘Telling
of the story of Hus’ death in chapter five became a fixed text to be read annually on the
national feast, which came to be celebrated in commemoration of the ordeal of Hus on
6th July.’82
Soon the remembrance of Hus was implemented into the liturgical sanctorale in the
country. ‘Whereas in some places the day of remembrance of Hus’ death was celebrated
with requiem, as was in that time usual for the day of remembrance of any deceased
believer, elsewhere, and that is the most important point, Hus was remembered as a
saint.’83 Remembrance worship either used general patterns designed for martyrs and
confessors, or new prayers were composed.
77
Connerton, P., 1989, How Societies Remember, p. 3.
Ibid., p. 13. In chapters three to five I will explore several ways towards such historical reconstruction of Master
Jan Hus.
79
Ibid., p. 39.
80
Clifford Geertz, quoted in Connerton, P., 1989, How Societies Remember, p. 45.
81
Connerton, P., 1989, How Societies Remember, p. 48.
82
Lambert, M., 2000, Středověká hereze, p. 445.
83
Holeton, D., ‘Liturgická úcta Mistra Jana Husa’. In Lášek, J. (ed.), Jan Hus mezi epochami, národy a konfesemi,
pp. 156-157. Extensive study of David Holeton on the celebration of Hus in the life of the Church was published in
anthology Drda, M.-Holeček, F.J.-Vybíral, Z. (eds.), 2001, Jan Hus na přelomu tisícletí.
78
22
The theologian David Holeton documents the way Hus used to be understood and
venerated with three pieces, which were composed for the feast of Hus very soon. For
example, a parallel is drawn between the life of Hus and the passion of Christ: like
Jesus, Hus becomes the Lamb of God who carries the sins of the nation and in the end is
vindicated by God just like Jesus. Elsewhere, Hus is placed among the heavenly
company of martyrs. Besides felix Bohemia even felix Constantia is exalted: ‘happy
Constance to which the Czech nation sent such glorious heavenly gifts of grace for the
benefit and consolation of the Church’.84 There is a theological resemblance with felix
culpa in the Easter song Exsultet.
Apart from songs, one can mention also letters of Hus, written during his arrest in
Constance, which were addressed to friends in the Czech kingdom. They ‘gradually
became a part of the devotional production of a saint, since they were apt to strengthen
the faith of little educated adherents of the movement who could not follow the
complicated discussions within the trial’.85
In addition, for the spread of popular veneration, the pictures of Hus were also
significant. Soon after the death of the Czech Master they were placed in churches and
observed with honour. Its is worth noticing the iconographic battle that developed later:
in the Catholic tradition Hus used to be discredited by being pictured as a fat man at the
stake with a typical devilish cap meant for heretics; this was an apparent allusion not
only to his heresy but also to his alleged gluttony (‘he will certainly burn well’), this
took attention away from his heroic aspects. The protestant traditions have encouraged
the image of Hus as ascetic in appearance, not unlike John Calvin, a rigorous academic,
a typical ‘preacher of morality’. 86 A particularly well example of this image is the
picture of Jan Hus painted by Mikuláš Aleš in the end of the 19th century.
The celebration of the feasts of Saint (!) Jan Hus and Saint Jeroným Pražský was
forbidden in 1626, shortly after the House of Habsburgs ascended the throne and
launched the re-catholization. One can imagine how painful it was to leave these
traditions behind after two centuries due to the movement of re-catholization.
2. 2 ‘Hus as a Utraquist’
After 1415 the chalice offered to the laity became ‘a symbol of the reform movement
until its suppression after the Battle of White Mountain in 1620. In 1417 communion of
84
Holeton, D., ‘Liturgická úcta Mistra Jana Husa’. In Lášek, J. (ed.), Jan Hus mezi epochami, národy a konfesemi,
pp. 159-160.
85
Lambert, M., 2000, Středověká hereze, p. 446.
86
I will write more on this aspekt of Hus in section 2.4 using an interesting insight of the Czech theologian Tomáš
Halík.
23
all those who were baptized was restored, including children, even the very young’.87 As
I mentioned before, the communion with wine as well as bread was one of the four main
requests of the Czech party. And this request became basically the only one the Pope
agreed on. Of course his reasons were quite pragmatic; he intended to appease the
situation in the Czech kingdom. For Hus himself the question of the chalice was not of
key importance. The theological proponents of the use of chalice were Jakoubek of
Stříbro and Mikuláš of Dresden. Nevertheless, of principal importance is, that the issue
came to be connected with Hus’ legacy and could be considered to be a symbol of the
Hussite movement.88
The symbol of the chalice, used within the Czech reformation movement, embodied a
whole range of meanings. Soon the chalice was placed as a logo on the flag of the
Hussite warriors in the Hussite wars against invading crusaders. This usage gave birth
to very characteristic images in the Czech history, namely the battle of the cross against
the chalice. In the 19th and the 20th centuries the historian Alois Jirásek (1851-1930) has
been influential in spreading this battle image in a series of novels and dramas. 89 This
fictional and distorted interpretation of history was used by the Czech national
revivalists against the Germans in the 19th century and ironically by the communists
against the Christian Churches in the 20th century.
The symbol of chalice, of course, offers more authentic meanings. Firstly, adherents of
‘communion in wine’, the chalice, appealed to the authority of the Bible. 90 This is
entirely in accordance with the intentions of Hus. The authority of the Bible stands
above the authority of rules defined by the Church; the latter are to be measured by the
Bible. Hand in hand goes the questioning of the authority of the Church, which may in
some cases - as in the communion in wine – be rectified if the Bible speaks against it.
The historian Milena Bartlová also notices that “… the function of the Hussite symbol
of chalice was primarily polemic: it signified the true Church and emphasised that its
central activity should be Eucharistic ministry”.91
The demand for the chalice for all Czechs could be interpreted as a call for the
decentralization of the Church. In 1434 the Council of Basil had approved the chalice
87
Holeton, D., ‘Liturgická úcta Mistra Jana Husa’. In Lášek, J. (ed.), Jan Hus mezi epochami, národy a konfesemi,
pp. 155.
88
A comprehensive study on the chalice as symbol of the Hussites was written by Milena Bartlová, ‚Ikonografie
kalicha, symbolu husitství‘ In Drda, M.-Holeček, F.J.-Vybíral, Z. (eds.), 2001, Jan Hus na přelomu tisícletí. Bartlová
remarks ‘the usage of chalice as a personal attribute of St Jan Hus was obvious if we take into account the parallel
with St John the Baptist‘.
89
Novels: Mezi proudy, Proti všem, Bratrstvo and Husitský král; Dramas: Jan Hus, Jan Žižka and Jan Roháč.
90
See Mt 26:27-28 ‘And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it; For this is
my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.’
91
Bartlová, M., ‚Ikonografie kalicha, symbolu husitství‘ In Drda, M.-Holeček, F.J.-Vybíral, Z. (eds.), 2001, Jan Hus
na přelomu tisícletí, p. 234
24
for the laity in the Czech kingdom and so it applied through the following two centuries.
Appeal to the chalice granted to the laity, bears strong egalitarian tendencies and
sometimes even explicit anticlericalism (as was the case of the radical reform centre
called Tabor, however not of the mainstream Utraquism). Thus it was possible right
from the beginning of the reform movement and also later in a non-religious context to
make the chalice a symbol of the fight against social oppression and reformulate
formerly religious issues in terms of human rights.
Stress on the symbol of the chalice led simultaneously to a refusal of the symbol of the
cross; which was used in battles by the crusaders. I will come back to this theme in
chapter five.
2. 3 Hus as a Revolutionary
The figure of the revolutionary martyr Jan Hus has functioned throughout the centuries
as a projection screen, ‘into which every period and nearly every ideological and
political movement in Bohemia projected their own ideals’.92
The character of Hus was used quite soon as a prototype of the courageously rebelling
Czechs against Rome and Catholics in general. This archetype has gained fresh
interpretations in every period and one can find it until today. “Suspicion has stuck to
every Czech Catholic within a patriotic thought pattern, that one cannot be an entirely
good Czech, because the hands of the Czech Catholics are dirty from the stake of Hus,“
writes Halík.93 Moreover, efforts of some Czech Catholics to reintegrate Hus back into
the Catholic Church have been met with scorn among foreign Catholics. It has been
said: ‘Shake with a Czech priest and a Hussite falls out’. Not without surprise especially
those priests who experienced wrongdoings in the Church identified with Jan Hus. It
will be exemplified in the story of the Czechoslovak Church told in chapter four.
It is quite understandable that Czech Catholics tended to dissociate themselves from
Hus, since it was the other side (such as the Protestants, the nationalist, or the
communists) that identified with him. The Catholics who pioneered first Catholic
attempts of positive evaluation of Hus experienced hostility not only in their own
Church, but also in the academic community.
Also the communists adopted Hus. Purged of all ‘medieval rubbish’, they understood
him as a social revolutionary. The communist historian Zdeněk Nejedlý, famous as an
eager proponent of the reconstruction of Bethlehem Chapel in Prague, stressed the
92
93
Tomáš Halík in the preface to Kotyk, J., 2001, Spor o revizi Husova procesu, p. 13.
Ibid., p. 12.
25
social aspects in the teaching of Hus and declared Hus the first modern revolutionary.
Popular opinion was influenced in this direction mainly by the Hussite film trilogy of
director Otakar Vávra from the beginning of the 1950s .94
Another example of the revolutionary interpretation of Hus is a nationalist one: Hus as a
proponent of the fight of Czechs against the Germans and foreigners in general. The
nationalist image of Hus has had a long tradition; recently he has been used in this way
by members of the extreme right-wing movement, some of whom even call themselves
‘Utraquists’. All the examples of the ideologized reading of Hus still play a significant
role in the Czech Republic, partly thanks to educational system which has not yet fully
recovered from the communist era.
2. 4 Hus as a Moralist
Tomáš Halík, professor of Charles University in Prague, himself a great admirer of
Master Jan and the Czech reformation, writes: “Moral pathos, uncompromising
criticism of institutions and the zeal for truth confronted with power, all of these
compose the Hussite ‘leitmotif’ of the history of Czech soul; whoever plays this note he
always brings something to boil in the Czech Republic”.95 Halík takes note of a very
important aspect that has to do with the category of morality. This insight of Halík can
illuminate my question: what motivates the non-Catholic Christians and the Czech
nation to make Hus a hero. Do we elevate one of us so that all could feel better and
more valuable?
In Hus’ concentration on the moral evaluation of all situations, Halík identified the root
of a dangerous stream – both religious and political – that has influenced throughout the
history of the nation. He calls it ‘Czech moralizing.’ This aspect can be found with other
great names in Czech history – Comenius, Masaryk, and Havel. It is ironically
identified as a ‘substitution of piety for ethics’. 96 Halík applies this principle to explain
why, he believes, the traditional Czech piety vanished. Faith has shifted more and more
into the ethics and influential and popular preachers of morality could be found in each
age. Halík observes that: “In every one of them there is a powerful ‘religious animation’
– however their thought inclines not so much to classic theological and metaphysical
topics, much rather to ethics, to ‘practical reason’, reformation of society or politics
understood as applied morality.“97
94
Kotyk, J., 2001, Spor o revizi Husova procesu, p. 50.
Tomáš Halík in the preface to Kotyk, J., 2001, Spor o revizi Husova procesu, p. 11-12.
96
Halík, T., 2002, Co je bez chvění není pevné, p. 210.
97
Ibid., 211.
95
26
Out of this, claims Halík, grows not only pronounced Czech criticism towards the
Catholic Church, but today especially towards politics and politicians. Those ‘in higher
places’ are a welcome target of sharp judgement and condemnation. Such attitudes are
dangerous because this rhetoric gives people the feeling of being a little superior, better
than others, only because they agree with this criticism. However, this feeling is usually
hardly more than a simple illusion and self-deceit, if it remains a mere emotional
substitution for ethical conduct.
Therefore, ‘appropriation’ of Hus by some Czech Protestants drives them to appropriate
also the role of a carrier of Hus’ legacy and thus boost their self-image. 98 Perhaps a
supposition of Halík is valid that “Hus has been subconsciously considered a ‘Czech
Christ’ by many”.99
The Catholic Church cannot solve her problem with Hus by simply putting him on
similar pedestal.
98
The name of Hus has been in the title of a Protestant theological faculty in Prague since 1919. The Czechoslovak
Church adopted his name in its full title in 1972 (hence today ordinarily called the Hussite Church).
99
Tomáš Halík in the preface to Kotyk, J., 2001, Spor o revizi Husova procesu, p. 11.
27
CHAPTER 3: TOWARDS NEW INTERPRETATIONS OF JAN HUS
In the previous chapter I went through some distinct areas in the life of the Church and
society that have supported typical interpretations of the character of Master Jan Hus
and his legacy. Those interpretations were typical in such a way that they have
generated and still generate today various kinds of antagonism, dislike, division,
frustration and even anger.
From the second half of the 19th century onwards, we can trace the first attempts of a
new, alternative reading of Hus. These aim at the rehabilitation of Hus, at the
reconciliation of different Christian traditions via an alternative interpretation of the
spiritual history of the nation, a purification of the memory. In this chapter I will
introduce several remarkable milestones on the way to achieve this aim. A closer look at
those who stood behind the initiatives brings a surprising discovery, namely that it
seems that the motivation was neither pragmatic nor nationalist. The reason was
primarily the search for truth. In many cases we can speak directly about the religious
search for truth. I believe that these activists hoped to bring about genuine healing of the
wounded memory. By returning to the past, by a comprehensive study of history and by
co-operation with scholars of different backgrounds, they tried to find out ‘what Hus
really was trying to achieve’.
Although I appreciate the approach that puts stress on serious study of history and
historical reconstruction – in this chapter some results of such study will be explored –
later I will argue that historical approach alone is insufficient if the task is to change our
attitudes today. As the Protestant historian Jana Nechutová writes:
I experienced also through my work in the Hus committee that the work on
history, with the desired results to be ‘healing of the wounds of the past’,
must be done, but we are led towards the unity of the Church of Christ
elsewhere: in the daily lives of our congregations next to the Catholic
parishes in which we, as I hope, learn about one another more and more, and
grow in mutual recognition, tolerance and acceptance.100
What we need is a creative relationship with the wounded memory today and this
reconstruction allows us to lean on a memory that reaches further than that of Jan Hus. I
mean the memory of the risen Jesus who ‘makes all things new’ (Rev 21:5). ‘God is the
agency that gives us back our memories, because God is the ‘presence’ to which all
reality is present.’101 Rowan Williams writes “memory … can be the ground of hope,
100
101
Nechutová, J., ‘Reflexe neteologa nad takzvanou Husovskou komisí’, p. 78.
Williams, R., 2002, Resurrection. Interpreting the Easter Gospel, p. 23.
28
and there is no authentic hope without memory”. 102 He realizes that the collective past
may be a record of guilt, hurt and diminution. Yet ‘what happens in resurrection is that
this memory is given back in a particular kind of context – in the presence of Jesus. …
So to be with God is to be (potentially) present to, aware of, all of one’s self and one’s
past’.103 Williams continues: “here the past is returned with a lived relationship that is
evidently moving and growing. To know that Jesus still invites is to know that he
accepts, forgives, bears and absorbs the hurt done: to hear the invitation is to know
oneself forgiven”.104
3. 1 Hus and the process of revision
Initial attempts to reinterpret Hus’ legal process emerged in the country during the
1860s.105 In that time the legacy of Hus was interpreted mainly in a nationalist way and
was used in political polemics. Liberals, later called Young Czechs, remarkably
associated themselves with the Hussite revolutionary tradition and interpreted it as a
revolt against the nobility and the Church.106 To this end they also used celebrations of
the 500th anniversary of the birth of Hus, which took place in 1869.
I will first introduce the contribution of some secular historians. The most significant
person who initiated the debate on Hus during this time was Josef Kalousek (18301915), professor at Charles University in Prague. On 2nd July 1869 he published
anonymously an article called ‘Revision of Hus’ legal process’ in the magazine Pokrok.
Here he offered ten legal reasons for understanding anew the Hus’ process. This
initiative was not however met with approval. It disappeared in the unfavourable
atmosphere of the First Vatican Council that has just begun.
Kalousek returned to his work on Hus in 1902. On 7 th September he lectured for the
students of the association ‘Krakonoš’ in Rychnov. He called his speech ‘On the need
for deepening our knowledge about Hus and his time’. Kalousek warns of the
politization and nationalization of Hus. He claims there can be no fight, since things for
which Hus struggled were approved by the Council of Trent and thus Hus was not in
rebellion. At the end of his speech Kalousek says:
… the Council of Trent practically approved the reform effort of Hus. …
There is no need for the Czech nation to be divided in friends and enemies of
102
Ibid., p. 25.
Ibid., p. 29.
104
Ibid., p. 30.
105
In this section I make use of the work of Marie Homolková, 2006, Jan Hus a význam jeho osobnosti pro současný
proces sbližování církví. Diploma Thesis at Jabok Academy of Social Work and Theology in Prague. I am very
grateful to Marie for valuable insights and kind permission to quote from her thesis.
106
Kotyk, J., 2001, Spor o revizi Husova procesu, p. 23.
103
29
Hus and to fight each other. … Let us not open old wounds that have healed.
Let us not put to the forefront what divides us but rather let us follow what
unites us.107
Another scholar who examined Hus at the beginning of the 20th century was Václav
Flajšhans. On 6th July 1904 in Národní listy he published a leading article called
‘Revision of the legal process of Hus’. Two days later another newspaper column ‘The
heresy of Hus’ came out in Národní listy, then the paper of Young Czechs, which took
up the previous leading article.108 Both articles call the conviction of Hus by the Council
of Constance judicial murder. According to Flajšhans, a revision of his process is
necessary in order to reach justice. In the following years Flajšhans publishes other
works on Jan Hus and with his systematic labour he connects to the first appeal of
Kalousek for the revision of the process from 1869.
In the first half of the 20th century Vlastimil Kybal occupied himself with Hus and wrote
a treaty called ‘Doctrine of Master Jan Hus’. Kybal co-operated with biographer Václav
Novotný and together they won the contest of the Czech Academy of Sciences and Arts
for the best work on Hus (7th March 1918). Their book tries to faithfully describe the
time of Hus and his character. Kybal depicts entire teaching of Hus ranging from his
ecclesiology, doctrine on God and Christ, to sacramentology and eschatology. This
book can be considered until today an example of objectivity and effort at giving as true
description of events as possible. In this it can inspire in the great task of elaboration of
ecumenical biography of Hus.109
Significant Czechoslovak historian Josef Pekař (1870 – 1937) paid some attention to the
question of Hus. Firstly he talked about Hus in one of his lectures already in July 1900.
Pekař opposes nationalist celebrations and glorifications of Hus as the latter lived in
very different time and we are unable to put ourselves into his place.110
Also the Czech philosopher, politician and the first president of Czechoslovakia T.G.
Masaryk was concerned with Hus throughout his writing. He interprets Czech history as
a conflict of two tendencies: reformational and anti-reformational. For Masaryk Jan Hus
is a man who divides the Czechoslovak nation because of his stance. Most of all he
understands Hus as a human being who represents ethical engagement for truth,
freedom and conscience. Masaryk stresses his high moral stance, which is the important
thing in Hus’ legacy for the future.111
107
Quoted in Kotyk, J., 2001, Spor o revizi Husova procesu, pp. 37-38.
Kotyk, J., 2001, Spor o revizi Husova procesu, p. 43.
109
Lášek, J., ‘Některé specifické úkoly husovského bádání’. In Lášek, J. (ed.), Jan Hus mezi epochami, národy a
konfesemi, p. 307.
110
Kotyk, J., 2001, Spor o revizi Husova procesu, p . 73.
111
Funda, O.A., ‘Masarykova interpretace Jana Husa’. In Lášek (ed.), Jan Hus mezi epochami, národy a konfesemi,
pp. 300-303.
108
30
3. 2 Second Vatican Council
It is an extremely interesting and important task to compare the teaching of the Second
Vatican Council with the teaching of Hus. To the best of my knowledge, such
comparison has not been properly undertaken so far.112 Perhaps it is due to a number of
methodological and hermeneutical problems and questions,113 perhaps also due to the
fact that most ‘Hussite’ scholars are not Catholics and as such are not at home in the
doctrine of the Council.114 As a Catholic myself, I propose, therefore, to pay attention to
at least five themes in which we can compare the teaching of Hus and of the Vatican
Council: 1) the significance of the Vernacular (comp. DV 22; SC 36), 2) the role of the
Scripture together with the sacred tradition as the supreme rule of faith (DV 21), 3) the
teaching on the nature of the Church – visible and spiritual (LG 3, 8, 14; GS 40), 4)
apostolic poverty of priests and all the Church (PO 17; PC 13; GS 72), and 5) the truth
in relation to the freedom of conscience (GS 16; DH 1, 2). It is by no means exhaustive
exploration, but it will illuminate my search for a comprehensive view at the
contemporary debate on Jan Hus in the Catholic Church in the Czech Republic.
Hus was not left unnoticed at the Second Vatican Council. It was the archbishop of
Prague, Josef Cardinal Beran, who raised the ‘Hus case’ 20th September 1965 during the
debate on the Declaration on the Freedom of Religion. He said:
Also in my country the Catholic Church still suffers for what was done in
her name against the freedom of conscience in the past, such as the burning
of the priest Jan Hus in the 15th century, or later in the 17th century the
external enforcement of a great part of the Czech nation to re-accept
Catholic faith, according to applied principle ‘Cuius regio – eius religio‘.115
He argued that the issue paralysed the Czech Catholic Church. It was an ongoing
dilemma. Beran asked the fathers of the Council to deal with it and to set in motion the
process to rehabilitate Hus. The Declaration on the Freedom of Religion generally
confirmed Beran’s stress on the freedom of conscience, but none particular steps
towards reinterpretation of Hus were made.
3. 3 Theological discussions from the 1960s till the 1980s
112
Several partial attempts are connected with scholars such as Paul de Vooght, Matthew Spinka and Stefan
Swiezawsky.
113
Jana Nechutová notices dilemma on the Catholic side, “… if we do not know and even cannot precisely find out
due to non-fixed pre-Trent Catholic doctrine what so heretic Hus preached“ (Nechutová, J., ‘Reflexe neteologa nad
takzvanou Husovskou komisí’, p.73).
114
For the principles of the interpretation of the Council, see Alberigo, G.-Jossua, J.P.-Komonchak, J.A., (eds.), 1987,
The Reception of Vatican II., also Pesch, O.H., 1996, Druhý vatikanský koncil.
115
Quoted in Kotyk, J., 2001, Spor o revizi Husova procesu, p . 93.
31
One of the first positive interpretations of Hus appeared surprisingly outside the
country. A Belgian Benedictine Dom Paul de Vooght spent some time in the 1930s in
the Břevnov monastery in Prague and there he encountered the work of Hus. Jan Hus
came to be his long-life research passion. He devoted to him several treaties, which
have become indispensable for Hus scholars.116 According to de Vooght, Hus ought to
be considered a very ‘Catholic’ Reformer; in many ways Hus anticipated future changes
in the Church and theology. Unlike the Reformers of the 16th century, Jan Hus accepted
as important sources of faith the Holy tradition, the Fathers of the Church, ecumenical
councils of the old Church and Canon law. It is fair to say, however, that he did so only
if he considered their position in accordance with Holy Scriptures. De Vooght
understood this to be close to the criterion set by the Vatican Council.117 In this opinion
de Vooght is joined by the American historian Matthew Spinka who writes that: “Hus’
ideas, condemned as heretical by the Council of Constance, are recognizably formative
in the reforms adopted by the Vatican Council, although not consciously under his
name”.118
The work of de Vooght became a starting point for discussions and encountered both
agreement and criticism. De Vooght published a series of articles in the Czech samizdat
(the underground press) during the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s. Although
some of the theses offered by de Vooght might be inconclusive, he succeeded to open
the debate anew.119
At the beginning of the 1980s another remarkable Catholic theologian entered the
debate, a Czech Jezuite in exile Tomáš Špidlík, then Cardinal. In the magazine Nový
život published in Rome his article called ‘The burning question of Czech ecumenism’
appeared in 1982.120 Špidlík admits that members of the Czech nation have lived divided
since the times of the Hussite wars. This division is due to great extend to the legacy of
Jan Hus.
Furthermore, in his article Tomáš Špidlík reports on a symposium which the Christian
academy arranged in Brixen in September 1981. The theme of the symposium was:
116
Vooght, P., 1960, L’hérésie de Jean Huss; Vooght, P., 1960, Hussiana.
‘Dei Verbum’ reads: “This teaching office is not above the word of God, but serves it, teaching only what has
been handed on, listening to it devoutly …” (DV 10).
118
Spinka, M., 1968, John Hus. A Biography, p. 3. The same view is anyway shared by then synod senior of the
Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren Pavel Smetana: „In his understanding of the Church Hus certainly went
beyond self-understanding of the Church of that time, yet in some ways he anticipated even the ideas of 16 century
reformation, in other ways then the emphases Catholic Church made at Second Vatican Council“ (quoted in Kotyk,
J., 2001, Spor o revizi Husova procesu, p. 107).
119
Homolková, M., 2006, Hus a význam jeho osobnosti pro současný proces sbližování církví, p. 28.
120
Špidlík, T., ‘Palčivá otázka českého ekumenismu’ Teologické texty 9/1979-1989, pp. 35-36, available from
http://teologicketexty.ufouni.cz/_scan/1989/09/35.jpg and following page.
117
32
‘Master Jan Hus, his character and new significance’. Špidlík considers it important that
the meeting attracted significant figures from various religious backgrounds.
Consequently, the discussion was undertaken in the spirit of ecumenism. The topic of
Jan Hus was discussed from a historical, philological and theological perspective.
Špidlík appreciated the lecture of the evangelical theologian and chancellor of Basil
University, Jan Milíč Lochman who spoke on Hus’ relation to ‘truth’. Špidlík asked the
question: “Why was the name of Hus always a sign of resistance and certain irritation?
Does this mean lack of tolerance on our Catholic side?”121 Precisely here Špidlík values
Lochman’s contribution which stressed that the Hus’s question should be a purely
religious question and we should not misuse Hus as a symbol for something he has
never been.
Tendencies towards a re-interpretation and new dialogue about the figure of Hus
received a strong impetus in the 1980s thanks to an article called ‘Jan Hus – a heretic or
forerunner of the Second Vatican Council?’ published by the Polish philosopher Stefan
Swiezawski.122
Six months later the article appeared in Czech samizdat Teologické texty; here it met
with great response and generated animated discussions. The reactions of some
theologians and philosophers were positive, others deeply disagreed with Swiezawski.
Most responses came out of Catholic circles. According to Swiezawski the problem of
Hus still prevents the Catholic Church from being close to the Czech nation. The
leading theme of Swiezawski’s article describes Hus as a figure with a deep concern for
the renewal of the Church and for his opinions as a forerunner of a range of concerns
raised by the Second Vatican Council. Swiezawski therefore concludes that Hus did not
put forward heretical ideas. In some of his works Hus might have arrived at ideas that
were too radical for his time, but Swiezawski does not consider them heretic, an he
states emphatically that: “It seems, then, that the demand of justice is for the Holy
Father to decide on the beginning of a revision of the process, which ended in Hus’
conviction in Constance, and to purify the great martyr from unjust accusations.”123
121
Ibid., p. 35.
Swieżawski, S., ‘Jan Hus – heretik, nebo předchůdce 2. vat. koncilu?‘ Teologické texty 11/1979-1989, pp. 20-25,
available from http://teologicketexty.ufouni.cz/_scan/1989/11/20.jpg and following pages. Swiezawski was a
significant Polish philosopher, a professor at the Catholic University in Lublin and he focused on the history of
philosophy in the 15th century. He came to be interested in Hus thanks to the dialogue with his friend Karol Wojtyla.
On 9th February 1986 Swiezawski published an article on Hus in a Polish magazine Tygodnik powszachny, No 6.
123
Swieżawski, S., ‘Jan Hus – heretik, nebo předchůdce 2. vat. koncilu?‘ Teologické texty 11/1979-1989, p. 24,
available from http://teologicketexty.ufouni.cz/_scan/1989/11/24.jpg.
122
33
Swiezawski’s article inspired lively discussions on the pages of the magazine
Teologické texty and Studie. In 1986 professor Tomáš Halík joined the debate by
writing a response to the Swiezawski’s article. Under the pseudonym Kalyptos he
published his study entitled ‘The Return of Master Jan Hus’, which was released in
Teologické texty and in 1988 in Studie.124
In his study Halík focuses on ‘the broader aspects, preconditions and possible impact of
Catholic reinterpretations of Jan Hus’.125 Halík does not call for the legal rehabilitation
of Hus, but for Catholics to be able to include Hus in their tradition and interpret his
position critically. Halík considers Hus a Catholic and a part of the indivisible Catholic
tradition. Halík believes that, only if Hus is readmitted to the Catholic tradition, Czech
Catholicism can be understood as an integrative force and inspirer of spiritual renewal.
Only then can the Catholic Church connect with the Czech nation.
Halík makes a distinction between Hus as a historical person and Hus as a symbol, a
legend. Hus is more than a historical figure, because he becomes a projection screen for
a number of attitudes and ideas.126 Halík thinks that revision of Hus’ legal process is not
so important. It may in fact re-ignite Catholic/Protestant divisions. Rather than revision
and theological re-evaluation of Hus’ books, Halík calls for the important task of ‘the
acceptance of the phenomenon of Jan Hus into the whole of the Catholic tradition’.127
At the end of his article Tomáš Halík suggests to arrange an ecumenical conference,
which would work on individual aspects of Hus’s life and teaching on expert level. This
was not possible in the 1980s, because of the communist regime. But the conferences
took place in 1993 and 1999.
3. 4 John Paul II and the Hussite committee
An explicit pardon of the Catholic Church for the death of Jan Hus was finally given in
1990 during the visit of Pope John Paul II to Prague. Visiting Prague Castle on 21st
April, the Pope addressed representatives of cultural organizations and non-Catholic
Churches. In the speech he expressed his thoughts regarding Hus:
I remember that at the Second Vatican Council precisely a Czech Cardinal,
Archbishop Josef Beran, stood up with a speech in defence of the principle
of religious freedom and tolerance. With pain he recalled the fate of a Czech
priest Jan Hus and also the violence and eccentricities spread in that time
124
Halík, T. (Kalypton), ‘Návrat mistra Jana Husa’ Teologické texty 13/1879-1989, pp. 20-23, available from http://
www.teologicketexty.cz/index.php?s=clanek&kod=20060131232051&strana=20&nadpis=7.-hlas-strana-20 and
following pages.
125
Halík, T., 1995, Víra a kultura, p. 98.
126
Ibid., p. 99.
127
Halík, T. (Kalypton), ‘Návrat mistra Jana Husa’ Teologické texty 13/1879-1989, p. 22, available from
http://teologicketexty.ufouni.cz/_scan/1989/13/22.jpg.
34
and later. I have in mind the words Cardinal Archbishop of Prague said
about this priest, whose significance for the religious and cultural history of
the Czech nation is so huge. There will be a task for experts – primarily
Czech theologians – to delimit a place for Master Jan Hus among the
Reformers of the Church. … In any case, leaving aside theological views he
held, we cannot deny the integrity of Hus’s personal life and effort for
education and the moral elevation of the nation. Are these not the elements
which may unite, rather than divide those who believe in Christ? And is not
in this time of new beginnings such a struggle for unity a challenge for your
history?”128
Moreover, feeling the burden of the Hus memory, the Pope suggested that an
ecumenical group of scholars should study the ‘Hus case’ anew so that it would not be
an issue dividing Christians any longer. He called upon Czech theologians to find an
appropriate place for Hus among the Reformers of the Church and find an answer to the
question how Hus is able to unite Christians of various denominations. This challenge
was taken on in the work of interdisciplinary and ecumenical committee summoned by
the Archbishop of Prague, Cardinal Miloslav Vlk.
The committee for the study of problematic with regard to the person, life and work of
Master Jan Hus was established by the Czech Episcopal Conference on 11th June 1993.
It consisted of 26 members. By the fourth meeting the group was ecumenical: as well as
Catholics there were also members of the Czechoslovak Hussite Church, the
Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren and non-confessional historians. ‘The objective
of the committee is … to prepare documents, on which the Catholic Church and
specifically the Pontifical Council for the Unity of the Church could possibly base a
new position on the figure of Jan Hus and the Czech reformation as a whole.’129 The
committee addressed a range of ‘Hussite’ problematic, from the identity of the
predecessors of the Czech Reformation, to Hus’ character and teaching, the Council of
Constance right up to the ‘second life’ of these historical phenomena. The Protestant
historian Jana Nechutová, a member of the committee, acknowledged the generous
effort of the Catholic Church to own the injury which the Church had caused, and that
the ‘wounds that we remembered with sorrow’, were honestly and openly discussed. 130
She gratefully acknowledges the committee to be ‘a school of ecumenical
cooperation’.131
128
Quoted in Halík, T., 1995, Víra a kultura, p. 99.
Nechutová, J., ‘Reflexe neteologa nad takzvanou Husovskou komisí’, p. 70.
130
Ibid., p. 70.
131
Ibid., p. 74. During ongoing debates the Hus’ committee also came across the second most painful hurt the Czech
Protestants suffered, namely the recatholization after the loss in the Battle at White Mountain. Hence a second
committee was established by the Czech Episcopal Conference and the Ecumenical Council of Churches, whose task
is to deal with this period.
129
35
In the same year, 1993, an international symposium ‘Jan Hus among epochs, nations
and confessions’ was arranged as Pope John Paul II had suggested at his visit to Prague.
This symposium took place in Bayreuth, Germany. More than 150 scholars from 13
countries took part. The honorary chairmen of the symposium were Cardinal Edward
Idris Cassidy, president of the Pontifical Council for the Unity of the Church, and
Lutheran bishop Johannes Hanselmann, chairman of the World Lutheran Alliance.132
Pope John Paul II had understood the significance of the revision of a negative attitude
towards Hus for the Czech nation, for Czech Catholics as well as for the ecumenical
movement in the world. In the Apostolic letter Tertio Millenio Adveniente in 1994 he
had mentioned the need for forgiveness and reconciliation, though without an explicit
reference to Hus, in his appeal to bring about the ‘purification of memory’ and ‘healing
the scars of the past’. He wrote: „it is appropriate that, as the Second Millennium of
Christianity draws to a close, the Church should become more fully conscious of the
sinfulness of her children … before God and man she always acknowledges as her own
her sinful sons and daughters“.133 The Pope sees the Jubilee 2000 as an opportunity for
‘the children’ of the Church to purify themselves, through repentance of past errors and
instances of infidelity, inconsistency, and slowness to act.
„The sins of the past
unfortunately still burden us and remain ever present temptations.“ 134 The Church is
called to ask for Christ’s forgiveness. Finally Pope John Paul II mentions „intolerance
and even the use of violence in the service of truth“ and reminds people of the principle
stated by the Council: “The truth cannot impose itself except by virtue of its own truth,
as it wins over the mind with both gentleness and power“.135
Jana Nechutová assesses the tone of Tertio Millenio Adveniente and the following
encyclical Ut Unum Sint (1995) on ecumenism in this way:
I dare to say that here the Pope is not triumphalistic but brotherly; I dare to
claim that here the Pope of Rome and his Cardinals do not act as the body of
the Church and carriers of the spiritual sword, rather as the servant of the
servants of God. It speaks about errors and failures of the Church in the past,
about violence and intolerance, and about the need for penance.136
3. 5 The Vatican Symposium
132
Kotyk, J., 2001, Spor o revizi Husova procesu, p. 98.
John Paul II, ‘Tertio Millenio Adveniente’ (1994), 33.
134
Ibid., 34.
135
Ibid., 35; also Second Vatican Council, ‘Dignitatis Humanae’, 1.
136
Nechutová, J., ‘Reflexe neteologa nad takzvanou Husovskou komisí’, p. 74.
133
36
Activities of the Hus’ committee culminated on the eve of Great Jubilee 2000 with the
International Symposium on Jan Hus held in the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome
in December 1999. Speeches of the representatives of Churches and the state
characterize how extensive the ‘official politics’ of Hus has been. Apart from the great
joy and gratefulness to God – having in mind centuries of painful division – I believe, it
is legitimate and necessary to critically look anew at the issues.
The Pope believed the symposium to be yet another stage in promoting a deeper
understanding of the life and work of Hus and the Pope described Hus as
one of the most famous among the many significant Czech Masters who
graduated from the University of Prague. Hus is a memorable figure for
many reasons. Namely it is his moral courage with which he faced
adversaries and his death made him a figure of special importance for the
Czech nation; the nation which itself had to endure much suffering in its
history .137
Critical words come when the Pope admits
today, on the eve of Great Jubilee I feel obliged to express deep contrition at
the cruel death as Jan Hus was handed over to and the subsequent wound
which this opened in the minds and hearts of the Czech people and became a
source of conflict and division. … Wounds of the past centuries must be
healed by a new perspective on the future and by the establishment of new
relationships. Our Lord Jesus Christ, who is ‘our peace’ and ‘hath broken
down the middle wall of partition between us’ (Eph 2:14).138
The key significance the Pope assigns to the scientific effort to reach deeper and
comprehensive understanding of the historical truth is problematic. In my opinion, a
mere struggle for the knowledge of historical truth – moreover, taking into account all
limits which accompany such effort – is insufficient, although it certainly is important. I
believe that in the process of reconciliation and healing it is more important to learn
how the past impacts us today.
The Pope also mentions the demand for ‘an uncomfortable’ truth, which asks us to
‘leave our deeply rooted prejudices and stereotypes behind’. This is true both for
Churches and ecclesial communities as well as for nations and individuals. And the
Pope concludes: ”The truth that liberates us from errors is the same truth that makes us
free for love“.139 I can only agree with the Pope as he writes that the solution for us
today is not to put the so far ‘silenced’ Hus on a Catholic pedestal, rather we should let
ourselves be inspired by Hus and learn from history: “a figure such as Master Jan Hus,
137
Address of the Pope John Paul II at the International symposium on Master Jan Hus (Papal Lateran University, 1518th December 1999) in Vatican’s „sala del concistoro“ on 17th December 1999.
138
Ibid.
139
Ibid.
37
that posed a great disagreement in the past, might be now an object of dialogue,
confrontation and joint deepening“.140
I also have some reservations about the joint statement of representatives of the Catholic
Church and the Ecumenical Council of Churches, Cardinal Miloslav Vlk and Pavel
Smetana. When they claim that we learned, “how we can conceive the historical trauma
with quiet objectivity and humility, because we stand face to face with the truth, which
binds all and frees all“141 they realize insufficiently that the recognized truth also, and
maybe primarily, should make us uncomfortable. This is a misleading appeal to our own
transformation. Moreover, the statement mentions only one concrete proposal: „Our
next step should be co-operative labour of specialists from different Christian Churches
for the development of an ecumenical textbook about the history of the Church in the
Czech Republic.”142
The Czech President, Václav Havel replied to the Pope’s words, saying: “As you
express the contrition at the death of Hus, a great historical injustice is being redressed
and the heavy burden is taken down from the Czech nation. May this generous step
contribute to inner reconciliation in our society and in our souls“.143
In the Czech media the justification given for the burning of Jan Hus as stated by the
Pope has generally not met with a positive response (so for example Martin Komárek in
his article ‘Apology to a dead man’ in Dnes newspaper). More appreciative were the
primarily Christian journalists of various denominations. They acknowledged the ability
of self-reflection and self-criticism of the Catholic Church, which was given, however
late (so wrote the Catholic journalist Petr Příhoda) and also appreciated the appeal of
the Pope to get rid of old prejudices and stereotypes (so wrote the Protestant journalist
Miloš Rejchrt).
140
Ibid.
Cardinal Miloslav Vlk and Synod senior Pavel Smetana: Joint declaration to Roman symposium on Master Jan
Hus, Prague 1st January 2000.
142
Ibid.
143
Havel, V., 1999-2003 (Projevy), p. 35.
141
38
CHAPTER 4: THE PAST AND THE ‘EXCLUDED OTHER’
The Catholic teaching on reconciliation and penance contains the responsibility of the
perpetrator for the restoration of the broken affairs.144 Of course, reconciliation is a free
gift from God, and restoration is a fruit of this gift and an expression of good will on
behalf of the penitent. Restoration is a necessary part in the process of reconciliation. In
this chapter I will argue that in her well-expressed desire to heal the wounded memory,
the Catholic Church needs to restore relations with those who represent the ‘excluded
other’.
The burning of Jan Hus at the stake was a powerful symbolical act. It expressed that
those who held power in the Church and the state could not tolerate critique and
difference. Instead of destroying ‘a seed of heresy’, the burning of Hus generated a
memory of frustration, exclusion and separation. These memories have gradually grown
into distinctive Christian traditions. The process of reintegration of the ‘excluded other’
is considered to be a part of penance. The Catholic Church will have to go
conscientiously through these memories, whatever they may be. In words of Rowan
Williams: “If forgiveness is liberation, it is also a recovery of the past in hope, a return
of memory, in which what is potentionally threatening, destructive, despair-inducing, in
the past is transfigured into the ground of hope”.145
In a broader sense, the ‘Hussite’ exclusion represents the way the Catholic Church has
tended to deal with many other cases and situations of critique and otherness. In this
chapter I will introduce three communities and events; all of them having some relation
to Jan Hus. Beforehand, however, I believe it is important to ask the question: what
does reintegration of the ‘excluded other’ actually mean? I will offer a three-fold
response.
Firstly, the Catholic Church needs to reaffirm its catholicity and acknowledge that for
the most part this catholicity is imperfect. Namely it has been darkened by the sins of
the faithful, e.g. the acts of exclusion. Thus, to reintegrate the ‘excluded other’ – in our
context Jan Hus and his legacy – restores the catholicity of the Church. This means to
144
Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition, 1997
Article 1459 Many sins wrong our neighbor. One must do what is possible in order to repair the harm (e.g., return
stolen goods, restore the reputation of someone slandered, pay compensation for injuries). Simple justice requires as
much. But sin also injures and weakens the sinner himself, as well as his relationships with God and neighbor.
Absolution takes away sin, but it does not remedy all the disorders sin has caused. Raised up from sin, the sinner
must still recover his full spiritual health by doing something more to make amends for the sin: he must "make
satisfaction for" or "expiate" his sins. This satisfaction is also called "penance."
Article 1494 The confessor proposes the performance of certain acts of "satisfaction" or "penance" to be performed
by the penitent in order to repair the harm caused by sin and to re-establish habits befitting a disciple of Christ.
145
Williams, R., 2002, Resurrection. Interpreting the Easter Gospel, p. 26.
39
confess that the Church was closed to variety, otherness, and critique – as far as these
are understood in a positive sense as the abundance of God’s gifts. The catholicity is
always in danger of being suppressed. The opposite of ecumenism is not
confessionalism but sectarianism: stressing partial truth to the detriment of the
abundance of truth. To overcome sectarianism in the Church requires facing and
overcoming partial and therefore misleading truths. Life is so abundant and rich. Should
it be otherwise with the life and faith of the Church?
I can support this point by the method of historical retrieval. The theologian Jeremy
Morris has persuasively asserted that this method - used by Yves Congar - understands
the rich and ‘comprehensive’ truth of the Church as fully enmeshed in the history and
shaped by the history in its expressions. Morris writes:
The grounds of church division can be understood only through a sensitive
and sympathetic appreciation of the histories of separated Christian
communities. In this way, Congar was able to countenance the re-reception
of Christian truth, including those doctrines which may have been ignored or
distorted in the Church’s history.146
This method seeks to discern the truth in the positive affirmations made by ‘the others’
in their context, thus, to take history seriously and open new possibilities today.
Secondly, the reintegration of the ‘excluded other’ develops important new
relationships. In 1999 the International Theological Commission published a document
called Memory and Reconciliation: The Church and the Faults of the Past .147 Trusting
in the power of the Truth, this document offers ‘a theological reflection on the
conditions which make acts of ‘purification of memory’ possible in connection with the
recognition of the faults of the past’.148 Among these faults are the use of force in the
service of truth, including improper means of evangelization, insensitivity to the cultural
values of people, lack of respect to the conscience and ‘all forms of force used in the
repression and correction of errors’149 are highlighted. The Church is encouraged to
admit responsibility for evil deeds committed against others, which is a necessary
presupposition for the request of forgiveness. The Church should not consider
reciprocity an indispensable condition; rather she should show gestures of reparation
and avoid perpetuating negative images of the other. This policy prepared the ground
for the Pope’s apologies at Easter 2000.
So far, so good. Yet Memory and Reconciliation can be submitted to criticism for its
‘fixation on the perpetrator rather than the victim’ as Geiko Müller-Fahrenholz puts it in
146
Morris, J., ‘The Unity We Seek: Prospects for the Local Church’. In: Morris, J.-Sagovsky, N. (eds.), 2003, The
Unity We Have and the Unity We Seek, p. 103.
147
International Theological Committee, ‘Memory and Reconciliation: The Church and the Faults of the Past’ (1999).
148
Ibid.
149
Ibid.,5.3.
40
a different context.150 Using this insight of Müller-Fahrenholz, I read the Memory and
Reconciliation document and admit that I can find hardly any compassionate
appreciation of how the faults committed by the Church in the past affected the victims.
Therefore, the generosity concerning reciprocity could be interpreted as mere ignorance
and lack of interest in the other. Ultimately, the document could be understood as
contributing to an improvement of the perpetrator’s distorted image and self-esteem.
But ‘there can be no forgiveness where perpetrators ... lack the courage to disarm
themselves in front of the victims’.151
Reading the document in this way I want to stress that it should also be ‘the others’, the
excluded and wounded ones, whose interpretation of the situation of the past the Church
needs to hear. The role of those who ‘embody’ the legacy of Hus152 would then
contribute to the Church to overcome her own alienation, to be more fully herself. The
Church cannot perform this alone. This ‘cannot’ is not only a moral imperative, but
rather the necessary epistemological presupposition. Only face to face with those
excluded, who live out their practice in their own way, can the Catholic community
really heal its own memory. Otherwise, purification of memory becomes just a kind of
collective therapy but not a process of re-integration and reconciliation.153
Rowan Williams supports this idea as he writes “the vision of the victim as saviour
operates to remove threat and fear: it makes it possible for us to remember, because we
are assured that our destructiveness is not the last word”.154 Although by victim he
means Jesus Christ here, analogically we can think of any victim who opens the past for
us in new ways. They can ‘turn the past of guilt and injury into a resource, the soil on
which a richer identity may grow’.155
Finally, Richard Terdiman, professor of literature and history of consciousness, reminds
us that there is nothing natural about our memories, all is artifice, susceptible to the
most varied manipulations, subordinated to the discourse of dominance. These
privileged discourses are effortlessly in place. ‘Dominance, of course, is itself sustained
by memory – but a selective, highly ideologized form of recollection. … Although
memory sustains hegemony, it also subverts it through its capacity to recollect and to
150
Müller-Fahrenholz, G., 1997, The Art of Forgiveness, p. 9.
Ibid., p. 26.
152
On the side of the Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren it is the historian Jana Nechutová who takes up this role:
„… As for the changed view at Hus, the Catholic Church heads towards closeness of the Catholic and Reformation
positions and to this good we are obliged to help“ (Nechutová, J., ‘Reflexe neteologa nad takzvanou Husovskou
komisí’, p. 77).
153
The way of listening to the others was applied, at least implicitly, during the Second Vatican Council, through the
presence of non-Catholic observers and consultants.
154
Williams, R., 2002, Resurrection. Interpreting the Easter Gospel, p. 27.
155
Ibid., p. 27.
151
41
restore the alternative discourses.’156 Terdiman urges he search for counter-discourses,
which dispose with ‘an analytic power and a capacity to resituate perception and
comprehension that their dominant antagonists cannot exhibit’.157 He writes:
Discourses of domination, in their effort to stabilize the flux of social life
and veil the violence by which such order is established, ceaselessly attempt
to erase the difference that marks this flow of time, but memory – of events,
of institutions, of language itself – preserve such difference.158
In this chapter I will raise this ‘difference’ in three narratives on the communities which
have experienced exclusion: 1) The Czechoslovak Hussite Church 2) The Secret
Church, and 3) Charter 77. I believe their voices should be listened to in the
contemporary ecumenical debate on Jan Hus.
4. 1 The Czechoslovak Hussite Church
The first community I want to introduce is the Czechoslovak Hussite Church. It grew up
from a group of reform Catholic priests called Jednota, the Union, at the beginning of
the 20th century. The origins of the Union can be traced back to the end of the 19th
century and the movement of the Catholic Modernism.159 Intentions of those people,
commonly but inaccurately called Catholic modernists, were to renew the relationship
between Catholicism and the world of modern thought; the most famous names being
probably Alfred Loisy in France and George Tyrrell in England. 160 At its best, the mode
of Czech modernism was literary rather than theological and biblical, yet, in its zeal for
credibility and contextualization of Christianity161 it followed the example of its more
famous Western fellows. ‘According to them theology should be in the first instance
reflection on praxis, rather than merely a list of answers to difficult questions.’162
Another strong source of the Union was the growing stress on nationality, especially
facing the reality of the Catholic State Church in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Most
156
Terdiman, R., 1993, Present Past. Modernity and the Memory Crisis, p. 20.
Ibid., p. 19.
158
Ibid., pp. 70-71.
159
A historian Pavel Marek however remarks that we cannot entirely identify the Union with Modernism; there was
rather a partial overlap in persons and program (Marek, P., 2003, Český katolicismus 1890-1914, p. 388).
160
Marek summarized the evaluation of Modernism by the leadership of the Catholic Church in the following way:
“Vatican refused Modernism as a harmful novelty and struggled to keep recognized traditions by all means” (Marek,
P., 2003, Český katolicismus 1890-1914, p. 282). To give an example one can recall the encyclical Pascendi of Pius
X from 1907: ‚Modernism is a transition from Protestantism to atheism‘. As was also the case of the teaching of Hus,
many ideas of so-called Modernists entered the doctrine of the Second Vatican Council (Comp. Pesch, O.H., 1996,
Druhý Vatikánský koncil).
161
The programme of the Czech modernism from 1906 (but in reality reaching back to 1848) included modernization
of the constitution of the Church, introduction of the vernacular into the liturgy, and making the celibacy voluntary
(Raban, M., 2000, Sněm české katolické církve. Obnova synodality, p. 182). According to Marek there were two main
reasons for neglecting of theological topics: lack of competence and effort to avoid accusation of reforming the
Catholic doctrine (Marek, P., 2003, Český katolicismus 1890-1914, p. 295).
162
Tonzar, D., 2002, Vznik a vývoj novodobé husitské teologie a Církev československá husitská, p. 26.
157
42
bishops in the Czech part of the Empire were German-speaking noblemen 163, the Church
itself being an instrument of the state’s administration and ideology.
It was no surprise that in 1918, when independent Czechoslovakia was established, the
nationalist voices calling ‘Away from Vienna’ were strongly accompanied by those
calling ‘Away from Rome’. This was not without support from the first president,
Thomas G. Masaryk. Many Czechs experienced the Catholic Church as alienated from
the Czech nation. It was a real dilemma for the ordinary Catholic faithful and priests,
even more when Masaryk grounded the concept of the renewed state in the tradition of
Hus and the Czech Reformation.
Struggling with this situation, the Union published in 1919 a special appeal to the
Catholic Church entitled ‘What We Want’. It is so interesting and relevant to the
argument of this dissertation that I will present it at length. The demand was for:
1) Introduction of the Czech and Slovak language into a liturgy for the
Czechoslovak nation.
2) Establishment within the Catholic Church, of a Czechoslovak patriarchate
which would be not merely a titular one, but one endowed with certain
jurisdiction, as was the custom in the first Christian centuries.
3) Freedom of religion in the state for all, as well as for us.
4) Fostering of a truly religious and moral life and good education.
5) Abolishment of compulsory celibacy of Catholic priests and making it
totally optional, as was the case in the early Church, so that clerical life
would become freed from the terrible burden of internal suffering.
6) Widening of responsibility of the faithful in the Church so that they will
have not only obligations, but also certain rights, as was true in the early
Church.
7) Amelioration of the study and education of seminarians.
8) A new adaptation of the Breviary, so that it would not be a book for
mechanical recitation, but an inspirational tool for the religious uplift of men
to God.
9) We desire that church ownership should not be concentrated in a few
hands (Olomouc and Prague archbishoprics); and that properties of some
richly endowed monasteries should be used for the benefit of all.
10) As long as the religious orders and congregations serve their proper
functions and deserve to continue their existence in this territory, they should
have their mother houses and major superiors in this country and not abroad.
In all this we want to liberate ecclesiastical life from absolutism and from
unbearable and undesirable centralization; we want to be filled with the spirit
of the first Christians; we want to eliminate those foreign elements, which
have been found unsuited to the organism of this nation; we want to ensure
development of religious life and the use of all positive resources of the
163
The gap between some bishops and the Czech people is well illustrated by the case of the Prague archbishop Paul
Huyn. He learned about the proclamation of independence while being on a visitation to Cheb in west Bohemia.
Terrified by the loss of political support, he never returned to Prague but immediately looked for a refuge in Rome
(Raban, M., 2000, Sněm české katolické církve. Obnova synodality, p. 84).
43
Czechoslovak nation for the benefit of mankind and the growth of our
country. Whoever is good, let him join us! 164
This extraordinary blend reflects truly the atmosphere of the time. Nationalist
sentiments of the 19th century meet the deeply prophetic ideas which will become the
subject of theological debate throughout the 20th century. It must be stressed that the
Union claimed the task of integrating all Christian traditions in Bohemia, ranging from
Sts Cyril and Methodius (hence the Orthodox link), to the Czech Reformation with its
hero Jan Hus, to recent Catholic Modernism and radical theological criticism.
Links to Hus were explicit in the Czechoslovak Church.165 As for the ‘Hussite’ topics,
the ‚What We Want‘ statement demands Czech liturgy and the Bible in Czech, rather
than Latin.166 A call for a patriarchate responds well to Hus’ concept of the federal
Church; here the Union showed implicitly a temporal liking of the Orthodox
ecclesiology. In theology, the emphasis is put on ‘the correspondence of theological
thinking to the life of individual and society’ as well as ‘the principle of primacy of the
living Christ in the testimony of the Scriptures before the institutional authority of the
Church’.167 The demand for voluntary celibacy also reflected the atmosphere of the time.
A group of Union priests brought the requirements to Rome. Since there was no
immediate response, modest optimism prevailed. However, when shortly afterwards the
new archbishop of Prague, a very conservative person, was appointed by Vatican
without any consultation with the Union, their hope proved to be in vain. Indeed, apart
from a limited possibility of using the vernacular, all other demands were refuted.
Consequently, archbishop Frantisek Kordac forbade the Union. Although the Union was
really a strong body, it included over 90 per cent of the Czech clergy168, most of them
submitted themselves to the archbishop’s decision.169
164
Quoted in Nemec, L., 1975, The Czechoslovak Heresy and Schism. The Emergence of a National Czechoslovak
Church, p. 12.
165
Tonzar quotes one shibboleth of the new Czechoslovak Church of the time which comes from Karla Statečného:
“To finish the Czech religious reformation” (Tonzar, D., 2002, Vznik a vývoj novodobé husitské teologie a Církev
československá husitská, p. 62) This slogan later got into the emblem of the Hussite Theological Faculty. A
theologian Ivana Dolejšová (Noble) submitted this approach to reformation and tradition to criticism as it is too static
(Dolejšová, I., ‘Co dluží modernismu CČSH’. In Dolejšová, I.-Hradilek, P., 1999, Budoucnost modernismu? Ročenka
Getseman. Praha: Síť, pp. 40-44).
166
This is not arbitrary at all, since ‘resurrection’ of the language was the foremost feature of the nation’s renewal in
the nineteenth century and precisely at that time there was a chance to link the nation with the Church through the
language.
167
Tonzar, D., 2002, Vznik a vývoj novodobé husitské teologie a Církev československá husitská, p. 63.
168
Raban, M., 2000, Sněm české katolické církve. Obnova synodality, p. 85.
169
A repeted appeal of the archbishop Kordač to priests who cause scandal in the world combined with a
proclamation for them to be obedient sons of the Church describes well the pressure under which the priests got.
“Overwhelming majority of the priests engaged in the reform movement with idealistic reasons; subjectively they
followed the benefit of the Church as a whole, priests and laity alike, and now they were to accept allegation that they
had laboured against the Church, distored and subverted her, yes caused the schisms” (Marek, P., 2003, Český
katolicismus 1890-1914, p. 471). One can see well the ideal image of the priest of the time: man that resigns from
one’s own opinion and rather goes against own conscience.
44
A radical part of the Union called Ohnisko, later the Club of Reformed Priests, first
continued negotiations and began to introduce reforms, such as Czech Masses and
marriages of priests, via facti. Eventually they decided to form an independent, nationbased Czechoslovak Church (8th January 1920), and ensured that a bishop from the
Serbian Orthodox Church consecrated their first bishop. A wide range of theological
opinions lead to a subsequent split and the new Czech Orthodox Church came into
being. The Czechoslovak Church has always tried to balance a wide spectrum of
thoughts ranging from minimalism of a Unitarian style to a Catholic tradition of the
Czech Reformation. Eventually, in 1971 the Czechoslovak Church reinforced the latter
identity by taking ‘Hussite’ into its title. The membership of this Church reached its
peak before World War II, diminishing gradually after that. The number of the people
belonging to the Orthodox Church was constantly low, however, the Church established
high credibility, when in 1942 the first bishop Gorazd and some faithful members were
executed by the Nazis after the former had provided a refuge for the assassins of
Reinhard Heidrich, the Nazi protector in Bohemia.
Inevitably, a question arises whether a division of the Czech Catholic Church in 1920
would have happened, if the Pope and the Czech bishops had been more pastorally
sensitive, courageous and open to dialogue.170 The theologian Tonzar writes: “Reforms
originally aimed at neither heresy nor schism, should have occurred within the Roman
Catholic Church”.171 However, the Catholic Church at that time was not ready for the
proposed changes. The hostile relationship to the ‘Hus story’ was retained and a
transformative potential for the Czech priests and the faithful was again rejected and
excluded from the Church.172
The community of the Czechoslovak Hussite Church is still present as the second
largest non-Catholic Church in the Czech Republic. This Church has always been
struggling to find its identity. Right from its establishment it has acknowledged the
legacy of Jan Hus and strove to represent it both scholarly and in the worship of the
Church. It seems natural that this Church would be an important partner of the Catholic
Church in the dialogue on reconciliation and healing of the wounded past. The dialogue
should not only concentrate on Hus, but also on the matter of exclusion and
170
The historian Pavel Marek concludes that the provisions against the modernists (not only in the Czech context)
were too harsh and insensitive, and consequently quite contraproductive (Marek, P., 2003, Český katolicismus 18901914, p. 291). Although Marek speaks about the beginning of the 20th century, procedures remained unchanged in the
1920s.
171
Tonzar, D., 2002, Vznik a vývoj novodobé husitské teologie a Církev československá husitská, p. 55.
172
The reform stream among the Czech priests reaches back at least until the 1840s. “The basic binding idea of the
stream has ever been strong belief in usefulness of changes in relation to the Church.” Nevertheless, “precisely in this
last point … the line was interrupted in 1920; the modernists split and began to fulfil the content of the reform
movement by different means” (Marek, P., 2003, Český katolicismus 1890-1914, p. 359).
45
misrepresentation experienced by the founders of this Church. While they were still
members of the Catholic Church, they struggled to ‘get closer to the message of Christ
and wanted to explain intelligibly the doctrine of the Church it order to make it
accessible to everyone’.173
4. 2 The Secret Church
Some thirty years after the establishment of the Czechoslovak Church another
remarkable community came into being within the Catholic Church, namely the Secret
(underground) Church. In the time of Communism this initiative, internally very varied,
developed remarkable pastoral and theological activities in the reform tradition.
Unfortunately, its fate resembles too much the previous reform movements.
After the communist coup in 1948 had brought to an end the optimistic recovery of a
post-war, independent Czechoslovakia, the possibilities of the Church’s public life were
drastically curtailed. As a result, various secret structures of the Church were
established, the most striking of them being probably ‘Koinotes’ (Fellowship). This
movement gathered around bishop Felix M. Davidek. He was consecrated bishop in
secret and for security reasons even some of his close friends were unaware of this.
Having spent several years in prison, he organized theological teaching in private
houses and built up a whole secret-reserve structure of bishops and priests in case that
clergy working in the Church would be deported to Siberia. These priests and bishops,
of course, kept their civil jobs and ministered in secret.
Davidek was inspired by the theology of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and claimed that “it
was the prime duty of Christians to hasten the evolution of the world to Point Omega the return of Jesus Christ”.174 With his prophetic vision and deep pastoral sensitivity for
the needs of the time, Davídek decided to consecrate married men both priests and
bishops, formally for the Greek Catholic Church.175 Moreover, after the issue had been
discussed at a synod of Koinotes, he eventually granted priesthood ordination to
women, arguing that “under certain circumstances, the ordination of women is
supported by the pastoral-sociological needs and the cultural-anthropological needs.
173
Tonzar, D., 2002, Vznik a vývoj novodobé husitské teologie a Církev československá husitská, p. 26.
Mádr, O., ‚Underground Church: Participation of the Laity or Sectarianism?‘ , p. 22.
175
The Greek Catholic Church in Bohemia is an Orthodox Church in union with the Roman Catholic Church (also:
the Catholic Church of the Eastern rite). The name ‘Greek Catholic’ has been used in the countries of the former
Austrio-Hungarian Empire. This Church acknowledges the primacy of the Pope and keeps its own liturgy,
administration and the Canon law, including the marriage of priests (Filipi, P., 1998, Krestanstvo, p. 108).
174
46
Furthermore, it originates from the tradition of the Church. Therefore, the canon law
had to be adjusted”.176
The protestant theologian Jakub Trojan said: “You can become corrupt or your faith can
flourish under persecution just as either can happen in comfort and affluence”. 177
Persecution is destructive for the Church but also a challenge to survive and to change
thought and practices, especially when the condition of public life resembles too much
the chaos the early Church had to face. In many aspects, the secret Church showed a
deep sensitivity for the pastoral context and represented a real sense of the faith (fulness) (sensus fidei) of the whole community. Simplicity of liturgy, communion in
bread and wine, participation of the whole community, house-based assemblies, the
faithful living in the base communities, house Bible and theology study groups, civil
vocation of the priests and the bishops, their family life - all of these are just examples
of the life and spirit of the secret Church. Consecration of married men and,
subsequently, of women, expressed this ‘living under the pastoral rule of life’.
After 1989, the presence of the Secret Church became a problem and the newly
appointed Czech bishops asked Vatican to resolve it. Whereas John Paul II during his
visit to Prague in 1990 deeply appreciated the ministry of the secret priests, the
Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith and the Czechoslovak bishops showed again a
lack of sensitivity and courage. A solution was suggested that resembled too much that
of 1920. It was decided that all priests should pass an examination and be conditionally
ordained again; single priests, then, would be integrated into diocesan structures,
married priests and bishops could either serve as deacons in the Roman or as priests in
the Greek Catholic Church, women priests were not taken into account at all. 178 Most
men submitted themselves to this decision, presumably with problems in their
conscience, while others protested and argued that this solution devaluated not only
their ordination but also decades of honest and risky work.179 Moreover, the new pastoral
models developed and confirmed in practice were suppressed by this ‘normalization’. It
could be said that in this case the rule of the ecclesial law defeated again the rule of
176
Raban, M., 2000, Sněm české katolické církve. Obnova synodality, p. 187. For an extensive exploration in the story
of one of the ordained women see Winter, M., 2001, Out of the Depths: The Story of Ludmila Javorova, Roman
Catholic Priest.
177
Hedberg, A., 1992, Faith under fire and the revolutions in Eastern Europe, p. 65.
178
These provisions are contained in so-called Normae; it was delivered to the Czech episcopacy from the Roman
Curia in 1992 (Fiala, P.-Hanuš, J., 1999, Skrytá církev. Felix M. Davídek a společenství Koinótés, p. 193).
179
Fiala, P.-Hanuš, J., 1999, Skrytá církev. Felix M. Davídek a společenství Koinótés, pp. 198-199.
47
life.180 The pastoral and theological tradition of the secret Church was despised and - if
not excluded altogether - pushed to the edge of the Church and barely tolerated.
“The acceptance of the Secret Church as a partner in dialogue comes across huge
difficulties,” wrote Fiala and Hanuš about the situation in 1996.181 Today this has not
changed dramatically. It seems that the attitude of the ‘official’ Church towards the
Secret Church could be described as passive tolerance combined with the hope that
these uncomfortable communities will sooner or later fade out or dissolve themselves in
the ‘official’ Church. That has not happened yet, at least not everywhere. Hence, a
partner for the dialogue on the healing of the wounds of the past concerning the relation
between the Secret and the ‘official’ Church is still available. It is therefore still
possible, to learn from the pastoral and theological resources of the Secret Church,
which was established with such courage and faithfulness.182
4. 3 Charter 77
The last community to be introduced is a civil association called Charter 77.183 The
number 77 reflects the year of establishment of this community – 1977. Charter 77
presents one of the bravest attempts to resist the lies and brutality of the communist
regime and to stand up for human rights. It has also Christian origins and a number of
Christians from various Churches took part in Charter. Vaclav Havel speaks about the
idea of non-violent resistance that has Christian origins, naming T.G. Masaryk, J.A.
Comenius and P. Chelčický as its proponents in the past. ‘Charter 77 reconnected with
this tradition, with the conception of decisive but non-violent resistance against
totalitarian system.’184
In the story of Charter 77 we can see how ‘the Hussite’ ideas have sprang out now and
again in the history. I want to use in this context the term ‘continuity in intent’ coined
180
Davídek’s understanding of the Church law was quite opposite: “Even law must be permanently supplemented.
Life precedes code and code then codifies life. However, if we stopped developing life, we would not be able to
properly develop even code” (quoted in Fiala, P.-Hanuš, J., 1999, Skrytá církev. Felix M. Davídek a společenství
Koinótés, p. 322).
181
Fiala, P.-Hanuš, J., 1999, Skrytá církev. Felix M. Davídek a společenství Koinótés, p. 202.
182
The Secret Church is still a burning issue the ‘official’ Church, no less because it stands as a permanent pointer at
the (not sufficiently resolved) problem of collaboration and discredit of some priests and other members of the
Church during communism. Apparently this topic is very acute also in neighbouring Poland.
183
In this section I make extensive use of the work of Zdeňka Kombercová, 2004, Křesťané a Charta 77. BA Thesis
at the Protestant Theological Faculty of Charles University in Prague. I am extremely grateful to Zdeňka for her
valuable insights and kind permission to quote from her thesis.
184
Hedberg, A., 1992, Faith under fire and the revolutions in Eastern Europe, p. 4.
48
by the theologian Otakar A. Funda. He uses this term to explain that while there is not a
direct historical continuity between Hus‘ effort and Czech national revival (a process
going back to the 19th century and culminating in the proclamation of an independent
Czechoslovakia in 1918), still we can speak of a continuity in intent. Particularly the
ethical factor, the ethical moment is found in the shared struggle to ‘live in truth’. 185
Also Joseph Seifert writes that “Hus with his ideas concerning the relation of freedom
and truth appears if not in the beginning, then certainly inside a great tradition of Czech
thought”.186 Not only Václav Havel but Charter 77 as a whole is identified with this
tradition, according to Seifert.
After the Soviet tanks had destroyed the attempt to build up socialism with a ‘human
face’, also known as the Prague Spring of 1968, the restoration of hard line communism
began with renewed force. Ironically, the period was called normalization. In 1976 the
Czechoslovak government ratified The Helsinki Agreement on human rights though the
contrast with the political practice was considerable. Some people, among them the
playwright and essayist Vaclav Havel, felt this discrepancy strongly and pointed to the
abuse of basic human and civil rights. The document, that came to be known as Charter
77, stated:
it is important to point out that many basic civic rights exist only on paper …
the right of freedom of speech simply does not exist … young people have
no right to education because of their parents’ opinions … the freedom of
communication is impossible to exercise because of the central (state)
control of all communication media, publishing and culture.187
The background of people belonging to Charter 77 was very diverse: there were
underground musicians, communists, writers, artists, philosophers, critics, Protestants,
Catholics,188 and many others.189 The common ground was the defence of basic human
rights.
Representatives of Churches were forced to produce statements including a clear stand
against Charter 77. Not a single person in the leadership of Churches stood up for those
who signed the Charter.190 However, individual lay Christians and priests signed the
Charter. One of them, the theologian Josef Zvěřina, who had been persecuted and
185
Funda, O.A., Masarykova interpretace Jana Husa. In Lášek, J. (ed.), Jan Hus mezi epochami, národy a konfesemi,
p. 301.
186
Seifert, J., ‚Pravda jako fundament svobody a svědomí (K etice Jana Husa)‘ In Drda, M.-Holeček, F.J.-Vybíral, Z.
(eds.), 2001, Jan Hus na přelomu tisícletí, p. 282.
187
Bradley, J.F.N., Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Revolution – A Political Analysis, pp. 20-21.
188
Most signers and sympathizers of Charter 77 came from two biggest Churches in the Czech Republic: Roman
Catholic Church and Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren.
189
A professor at Charles University in Prague Jan Patočka, one of the initiators and the first spokespersons of
Charter 77, writes: “Charter is neither association nor organization, its base is purely personal and moral, and
commitments coming of it are of the same character“ (Patočka, J., ‘Čím je a čím není Charta’. In Prečan, V. (ed.),
1980, Křesťané a Charta 77: výběr dokumentů a textů. Mnichov: Index+Opus Bonum, p. 32).
190
Kombercová, Z., 2004, Křesťané a Charta 77, p. 9.
49
arrested in the 1950s, wrote that he had signed Charter ‘because of justice and truth’. 191
Doing this he shielded all other Catholic signers. He collaborated with dissidents who
deeply appreciated him for his courage and kindness. He was a great personality, a
leading spirit, able to unite people. Pope John Paul II belonged to his admirers.192
Zdeňka Kombercová writes that Josef Zvěřina understood Charter 77 as an act of
overcoming hatred and pointing the way towards unity. She writes:
It is a search for inner unity, that’s why Zvěřina joins Charter by signing it.
Charter is a confession of faith in human beings, which is for Christians
connected with faith in God: ‚For he that loveth not his brother whom he
hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?‘ (1 John 4:20b).
Charter originates in love for freedom, truth and justice, it is an expression
of unity and human fellowship, therefore it becomes ‘a historical event in
this broken world’.193
Many priests and believers did not understand the meaning of Charter 77 and
considered it harmful. This attitude came primarily out of fear, but also from an
awareness that the Charter was signed by people who were hostile to the Church. Thus
Cardinal František Tomášek was worried since there were some former communists in
Charter with whom he had had unfortunate dealings. Bishop Jaroslav Škarvada recalls
that Tomášek once said: “Should I acknowledge Charter 77 founded by people such as
Jiří Hájek? None has ever bawled me out the way he did when he was the Minister for
Culture“.194 To this argument of Tomášek that there were former communists in Charter
77, Zvěřina objects that even sinners have the right to stand up for justice. Another one
who signed was the Jesuit František Lízna who declared later: “Charter 77 was
fascinating for me since it defended the oppressed in public, while our Church as a
whole was discredited because of its statement directed against the Charter. Yet, even
then there remained a handful of the faithful who supported it“.195
Cardinal Tomášek was angry with the priests who signed Charter. Václav Malý, one of
them, was rebuked for doing wrong thing, for playing into the hands of the enemies of
the Church and thereby discrediting his priestly vocation. Malý defended himself and
said that he had followed his own conscience. This view he supported with the words
from the Gospel of Matthew: ‘Plain “Yes” or “No” is all you need to say; anything
beyond that comes from the evil one’ (Mt 5:37). The historian Václav Vaško writes:
„The movement of dissidents gained full support of Cardinal Tomášek only at the end
191
Open letter of Josef Zvěřina to the editorial board of a communist newspaper Rudé právo (Red Right). In Prečan,
V. (ed.), 1980, Křesťané a Charta 77: výběr dokumentů a textů, p. 103.
192
Křížková, M.R., 1997, Žít jako znamení: rozhovory s Josefem Zvěřinou, pp. 149-151.
193
Kombercová, Z., 2004, Křesťané a Charta 77, p. 15.
194
Quoted in Kombercová, Z., 2004, Křesťané a Charta 77, p. 16.
195
Ibid., p. 17.
50
of 1978 when the Cardinal of Krakow Karol Wojtyla became the Pope“. 196 Marie Rút
Křížková remembers a visit to Tomášek shortly before she became a spokesperson of
Charter in February 1983, the first woman in this position representing Christians.197
The cardinal gave her the apostolic blessing for this difficult role. Every single year then
right until the ‘Velvet Revolution’ Tomášek granted his apostolic blessing to other
spokespersons of the Charter.198
Charter 77 was not a Christian association and her declarations did not mention God
and his kingdom, but
it struggles for the freedom of faith … It draws attention to the painful
problems in society and sees them in their proper context and urgency. In
this we recognize flashes of the future universality of the Kingdom of God to
which all nations of the earth will belong.199
We can find links to Hus also in the community of Charter 77. The evangelical
Christians in Charter, and many others, understood their activities in the context of
legacy of Master Jan Hus. With its stress on the freedom of faith and on the solidarity
with the poor, Charter 77 was very close to Jan Hus. Of course, the supreme idea of
both Hus and Charter was to live in the truth: ‘’Hence, you faithful Christian, search for
the truth, listen to the truth, learn the truth, love the truth, speak the truth, guard the
truth, defend the truth up to death …’.200
Apart from the idea of universality of the kingdom of God we can notice in Charter also
the desire for unity. It was such a ‘strange ecumenism’ 201: writers, philosophers,
Catholics, Protestants, democrats, and former communists. According to Josef Zvěřina
Charter showed a way to unity, especially the inner unity: “The only acceptable unity is
the inner unity, free, unity of truth, unity of the power-less, of people ‘pure heart’ who
reject every wrong, injustice, and every hatred“.202
Although being a fellowship of a limited number of people, it became a symbol, an
effective sign of freedom and liberation for many Czech people. Philosopher Jan
Patocka, one of its first three spokesmen (besides Vaclav Havel and a former politician
Jiri Hajek), wrote, “It is the hope of Charter 77 that our citizens may learn to act as free
196
Ibid., p. 23.
Charter 77 used to have three spokespersons every year. One represented ‘democrats’, another former
communists, the last then Christians.
198
Quoted in Kombercová, Z., 2004, Křesťané a Charta 77, p. 23.
199
Kombercová, Z., 2004, Křesťané a Charta 77, p. 26.
200
Hus, J., 1975, ‘Výklad víry’. In Opera Omnia I: Výklady, p. 69.
201
Kombercová, Z., 2004, Křesťané a Charta 77, p. 35.
202
Zvěřina, J., 1995, Pět cest k radosti, p. 234.
197
51
persons, self-motivated and responsible, while those in authority may realize that the
sole respect worth winning comes from a people confident of its worth”.203
Charter 77 has much to say to the established Churches today. Like Jan Hus, those who
signed Charter 77 wanted to live in truth. Jan Hus would say: to live in truth is to follow
the law of Christ. People came from different backgrounds, with different memories,
and they were not judged. Rather, Charter 77 invited people to share in a common
struggle for the truth. They did not have to leave their identity behind, yet the identity
underwent a change as they engaged in the work for the common good. They were able
to form a fellowship, very diverse but still in unity. This is an inspiration for those who
participate in the contemporary ecumenical debate on Jan Hus in the Czech Republic.
203
Quoted in Prečan, V. (ed.), 1980, Křesťané a Charta 77: výběr dokumentů a textů, p. 346.
52
CHAPTER 5: LIVING AND CELEBRATING TOGETHER
Jan Hus would be in full agreement with Walter Kasper, a contemporary representative
of the Pontifical Council for the Unity of Christians, when he writes that:
The churches did not diverge only through discussion, they diverged through
alienation, i.e. the way they lived. Therefore they have to come closer to
each other again in their lives; they must get accustomed to each other, pray
together, work together and live together.204
It is a process of healing and growing, purification of both memory and the Church.
This process of healing happens when people of different beliefs and opinions decide to
live in communio (fellowship). Kasper understands communio in a theological sense
rather than in a secular and sociological sense.205 Jesus speaks about the supreme
realization of this fellowship when he prays, ‘May they all be one; as you, Father, are in
me, and I in you, so also may they be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me’
(John 17:21). The relation of Jesus to His Father sets an example for the relation among
Christian communities. In fact, they may be one only if their fellowship is rooted in
God. Jan Hus understood this two-fold character of fellowship: fellowship with God,
which we call faith, and fellowship among people, that takes seriously people’s daily
concerns and struggles. Earlier I wrote about a hostel for poor students, which Hus
founded according to his belief that faith is dead without love and that faith ought to be
formed by love for the neighbour. This shows the way for Christians today as it did in
his time: to practise mutual care for one another, which is rooted in the fellowship with
God. Only then can the old wounds be healed. This needs to be at the heart of any
ecumenical debate.
This key ecumenical concept of communio (also koinonia) is connected with the world
of symbols. Nicholas Sagovsky writes: “There can be no koinonia without shared
participation in symbols … To be human is to inhabit a world of symbols in which
language is only one (secondary) mode of symbolic communication”. 206 It seems that
this insight may explain why it is difficult for Christian communities to live together.
There may be little difference in doctrine and the words they use in worship. In the
ecumenical debate on Hus, for example, different Christian communities are able to
come to substantial agreement about the significance of the life and teaching of Hus. It
was illustrated during the International Symposium on Jan Hus held in the Pontifical
Lateran University in Rome in December 1999.
204
Kasper, W., 2004, That They May All Be One. The Call to Unity Today, p. 72.
Ibid., pp. 50-74.
206
Sagovsky, N., 2000, Ecumenism. Christian Origins and the Practice of Communion, pp. 10-11.
205
53
Yet, when visiting a Catholic and a Protestant congregation, one can sense an entirely
different appreciation of Hus. As a symbol perceived by the Catholic congregation he
represents disobedience, doubts in faith, otherness which needed to be excluded.
Therefore, the symbolic representation, e.g. their memory of Hus in the context of the
history of their Church, is one of unease and disapproval. That is to say, their loyalty is
to the Church, not to the integrity of Hus. On the contrary, on the Protestant side Hus as
a symbol represents stability in faith207, search for truth and an example to be followed.
One side has reservations about precisely the same symbols that the other side admires.
One can see that symbolic communication among the Catholic and the Protestant
communities can be problematic. The reason for this must be in the memory of their
respective traditions. Yves Congar makes the perceptive observation that: „Difference
and division have been woven into the fabric of social and national life“.208
When the divided Christian communities have the courage to establish connections and
create an atmosphere of trust and conviviality, the differences become less significant
and they form in a symbolic way the body of Christ. As Rowan William in his
meditation on the resurrection writes: ‘To know that Jesus still invites, is to know that
he accepts, forgives, bears and absorbs the hurt done: to hear the invitation is to know
oneself forgiven’.209 Divided Christian communities can symbolically communicate as
they listen to the words of the Bible and hopefully in the future share in the authentic
communio, namely the Eucharist.
It is relevant to the contemporary ecumenical debate in the Czech Republic to introduce
two other examples of symbolic communication that relates to Hus: 1) the usage of the
cross in the Evangelical Church of the Czech Brethren and 2) the practice of the
celebration of Hus’ commemorative day. Both have the potential to create
misunderstanding and cause division. But they also embody the potential to unite.
5. 1 The cross and the chalice
I have already mentioned the controversy between the cross and the chalice in the
discussion about ‘Hus as a Utraquist’, namely that the followers of Hus received in
207
A song composed by a famous Protestant pastor in the Czech Republic, Svatopluk Karásek, says: “Do not take the
old faith away from us, It was good for Master Jan – faith as firm as a bridge”.
208
Congar, M.J., 1939, Divided Christendom. A Catholic Study of the Problem of Reunion, pp. 38-39.
209
Williams, R., 2002, Resurrection. Interpreting the Easter Gospel, p. 30.
54
Eucharist both bread and wine, the chalice came to be connected with Hus’ legacy and
could be considered to be the symbol of the Hussite movement, in contrast to the cross,
which appeared in the flags of crusaders. I want to join the contemporary debate on
these powerful symbols, which as in the time after Hus, cause division. Interestingly the
debate is under way mostly in non-Catholic Churches.
The cross is a central theme of the overall Christian self-understanding and its place is
primarily in liturgy. The symbol of the cross, nevertheless, has gone through dark times,
e.g. it was used by the crusaders. In the Czech Protestant mindset the cross is as a
reminder of the fight of the crusaders against the Hussites. It also symbolizes the
process of re-catholization. The symbol of a cross, though in a different shape, was also
used in Nazi ideology in the 20th century. Consequently, quite a number of people today
associate the cross with something negative; there is a certain aversion to the cross. This
is an obstacle to ecumenical relations and a very particular example can be seen in the
Czech Republic.
The Synod of the Evangelical Church of the Czech Brethren, which is the largest nonCatholic Church in the country, assigned to the synodical council in 2002, ‘a debate on
the cross, which should be implemented in the visual representation of the Church in
this time’210. This challenge was soon followed by a brief theological study called
Towards the Understanding of the Cross among Czech Evangelicals:
The antinomy of the cross and the chalice became in certain time a sign of
power-political conceptions rather than an authentic expression of faith.
Sticking to this stereotype even at the beginning of the 21st century may
indicate inability to cope with our own history, to overcome limiting and
divisive prejudices, and may become an obstacle to new ecumenical
relations.211
Members of the Church are called upon to understand the symbol of the cross in
connection with the Christian faith as a central and significant feature: ‘The cross is a
basic Christian symbol, the sign of the love of Christ, in which he offered his life for us.
In this sense it is also ‘our’ symbol and there is no reason to be scared of it and avoid
it’.212
Nevertheless, the following discussion within this Church revived the problem with the
perception of the cross as a ‘foreign’ object. Stormy arguments began, live as well as on
the Internet. A plausible explanation of this reaction can be found in Richard
Terdiman’s theory of ‘materials memory’. He believes that: “Certain products and
materials resume their shape after they have been deformed. … This may be a useful
210
Available from http://www.srcce.cz/, 12th July 2006, Sborová zásilka č. 12/2002.
Available from http://www.srcce.cz/, 12th July 2006, Sborová zásilka č. 4/2003.
212
Available from http://www.srcce.cz/, 12th July 2006, Sborová zásilka č. 4/2003.
211
55
notion of understanding the conservative character built into social existence and
practice.”213 Thus, even if the majority of the members of the Evangelical Church of the
Czech Brethren accept today that the symbol of the cross belongs to the Christian
identity, they still associate it with negative feelings. The pressure of in-built long-term
tradition is inestimable. For them the chalice rather than the cross is the idiosyncratic
Christian symbol. In this, they believe, they are connected to the tradition of
truthfulness that Hus represents. At the same time, the anti-Catholic sentiment in this
position is not insignificant.
Martin Grombiřik brought another very illuminating idea into the discussion; he made
use of Picard’s distinction between symbol and sign as its caricature.214 ‘According to
Picard, a symbol has narrative power; it gathers people together without the use of
violence and does that unnoticed; ‘silent testimony radiates out of it’. Even if a narrative
may be a way to participate in a symbol, it continues to live its own life and speak from
itself.’215 However, symbol can degrade to a mere sign, which only pretends to be a
symbol, and in reality is not symbol at all. It may be so with the concept of the chalice
and the cross. Grombiřik urges to ‘rehabilitate’ the cross in Czech Protestantism, in
other words to re-elevate the cross back to the level where it belongs: the level of
expressing the crucified Jesus Christ. ‘Rehabilitation’ of the cross will lead
paradoxically to the same ‘rehabilitation’ of the chalice. Thus, both symbols will
demand that we live and celebrate together and then come back where they belong: they
will together point towards Christ and the Easter mystery of our redemption. The
genuine search for truthfulness is the legacy of Hus. This clearly finds a place on the
agenda of any contemporary ecumenical debate.
5. 2 The commemorative day to honour Master Jan Hus
The historian Josef Pekař wrote in 1925: „Having the feast of Hus, should we not try to
sanctify it with learning about the real Hus? We will do that in order that this great day
when we remember our history will no longer be a day of fighting and anger“.216
213
Terdiman, R., 1993, Present Past. Modernity and the Memory Crisis, p. 35.
Picard, M., 1947, Hitler in uns Selbst. Quoted in Grombiřík, M., ‘Kříž a kalich jako symbol a znak’, available
from http://www.christnet.cz/magazin/clanek.asp?clanek=152&zamysleni=true, 8th December 2005.
215
Grombiřik, M., ‘Kříž a kalich jako symbol a znak’, available from http://www.christnet.cz/magazin/clanek.asp?
clanek=152&zamysleni=true, 8th December 2005.
216
Quoted Kotyk, J., 2001, Spor o revizi Husova procesu, p. 69.
214
56
Today, the 6th July, the commemorative day of Hus’ death, is a public holiday. NonCatholic Churches run services in honour of Hus, especially in his birthplace Husinec
near Prachatice.
On this day Hus is remembered as a significant person of the Czech nation, a
man who endured in truth and love for God. With his effort aimed at the
remedy of the Church he is understood as one of the predecessors of
Protestant Churches. The Czechoslovak Hussite Church conceives him as
the example to which they orient in its activities.217
Sometimes Catholic representatives are invited as guests to these celebrations, but the
Catholic Church as a whole is silent. In the Catholic churches there are no official
services organized. In spite of all John Paul II spoke in favour of Jan Hus, the Catholic
Church in the Czech Republic has not yet found proper space for Hus in its liturgical
calendar.
The work of the ‘Hussite committee’ demonstrates that Hus is a bearer of both
traditions – Catholic and Protestant. Hence precisely on his day he could become a
reason of the coming together of all Churches. On this day Churches could offer to each
other true Christian hospitality. This is particularly important in the context of a secular
society. The Churches have to remember that non-religious admirers of Jan Hus could
also participate in the hospitality and imaginative commemorative services could come
of this. It would be interesting to recognize that Hus not only belongs to elevated
theological debates, but he still features in the popular imagination. For example the
Czech pastor and human rights activist Svatopluk Karásek sings in one of his favourite
songs: “Do not take the old faith away from us, It was good for Master Jan – faith as
firm as a bridge”.
Therefore, the notion of ecumenisms and the contemporary ecumenical debate on Hus
must be very broad and extend not just to include the memory of the Church, but also
the contemporary significance of Hus for non-religious people.
Among Catholics a question could be possibly raised concerning the canonization of
Master Jan and his inclusion in the Catholic liturgical calendar. The very character of
Hus and his legacy resist this solution. More courageous than to canonize Hus is to
accept him as a critic, as the one who shows us a mirror, who stands for the ‘excluded
other’. Professor Halík writes:
Hus is ours (of the Catholic Church) not as a standard used in procession,
slogan on the flag, as ‘our program’, but primarily as our shadow, our debt,
our cross – and at the same time as our task. … As long as Czech
217
Homolková, M., 2006, Hus a význam jeho osobnosti pro současný proces sbližování církví, p. 47.
57
Catholicism understands Hus as a strange and external phenomenon, it will
be neither fully catholic218, nor fully Czech.219
The Protestant historian Jana Nechutová provides yet another perspective when she
asks:
Do we seriously consider closeness of Catholic and Protestant views
positively, or do we fear the loss of our ‘evangelical’ identity, especially
when the initiative towards the closeness comes from the Catholic side? No
doubt, we must not understand the identity of our (Protestant) Church,
which has its origins in the reformation, as a set of elements, which make us
distinct from the Catholics.220
In a similar sense writes also Pavel Smetana, the former synodical senior of the
Evangelical Church of the Czech Brethren: “No single Church, no confession can fully
usurp Hus“.221
One of the practical solutions could be to use ecumenical calendars; some have already
been created.222 The Churches should commemorate, in their own way, not only Hus, but
also Martin Luther and other (step)saints. Fresh rethinking about the shape of the
commemoration and veneration of these witnesses to God could be inspiring for the
contemporary Christian practice of the commemoration of the saints.223 We will be, of
course, confronted with the question whether the celebration of saints is authentic
worship or rather the strengthening of our own confessional identity. Perhaps this
broader perspective will allow us live and celebrate together and direct us back to the
memory of salvation brought by Christ, which has been witnessed in history in very
diverse, yet extraordinary ways by women and men especially blessed and by Master
Jan Hus.
CONCLUSION
In one of his most famous letters Hus writes:
Hence, you faithful Christian, search for the truth, listen to the truth, learn
the truth, love the truth, speak the truth, guard the truth, defend the truth up
to death, for the truth saves you from sin, from the devil, from the death of
218
For the theme of catholicity see also the beginning of chapter four.
Halík, T. (Kalypton), ‘Návrat mistra Jana Husa’ Teologické texty 13/1879-1989, p. 22, available from
http://teologicketexty.ufouni.cz/_scan/1989/13/22.jpg.
220
Nechutová, J., ‘Reflexe neteologa nad takzvanou Husovskou komisí’, p. 78.
221
Quoted in Kotyk, J., 2001, Spor o revizi Husova procesu, p. 106.
222
In the Czech context ecumenical calendars are composed by some alternative Christian initiatives, such as
theological magazine Getsemany (available from www.getsemany.cz) and an evangelical liturgical movement Coena
(www. coena.edunix.cz ).
223
During my study year in Cambridge I used to visit services in the chapel of Ridley Hall. I had many opportinities
to meditate on the ecumenism of sanctorum. Windows of the chapel are decorated with the fathers of the undivided
Church (e.g. Augustine and Anselm) on one side, on the other side with characters precious to the Anglican tradition
(e.g. Crammer and Ridley).
219
58
soul and finally from the death eternal which is eternal separation from the
grace of God.224
In this dissertation Memory and the Church: a contemporary ecumenical debate on Jan
Hus in the Czech Republic I attempted to find an answer to the question: how can we
heal and purify the wounded memory of the contributions of this remarkable man. In
response to this question I followed attentively and critically the way it has been dealt
with historically and by Czech Churches in a contemporary ecumenical context.
I want to claim that purification of wounded memories cannot be done without a study
of history together with all those who have been affected. It is equally important to
study the legacy Hus left behind – or as professor Halík calls it, his ‘second life’. Only
thus can we learn about the diversity of strands and traditions that carry a different
understanding of the same history. ‘Excluded others’ are indispensable interpreters of
our common past.
The study of history must be done so that wounded memory may be healed. Yet in order
to reach the full communion we have to focus on the daily practices of our parishes and
congregations. Only through living and celebrating together, and paying attention to the
significance of symbolic communication, are we on the way to reconciliation and
mutual acceptance.
In conclusion I want to draw attention to a powerful symbolic act, which occurred on
the 15th January 1969 when Jan Palach, a young student, set fire on himself near the
statue of St. Wenceslas in Wenceslas Square, Prague, in protest against the occupation
of the country by the Soviet Army. Both Jan Palach and in extraordinary parallel also
Jan Hus, stand ironically as living torches, reminding the Czech people that living in
truth is costly.
224
Hus, J., 1975, ‘Výklad víry’. In Opera Omnia I: Výklady, p. 69.
59
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Abbreviations of the Second Vatican Council documents quoted in the dissertation
Constitutions:
DV
Dei Verbum
SC
Sacrosanctum Concilium
LG
Lumen Gentium
GS
Gaudium et Spes
Declarations:
DH
Dignitatis Humanae
Decrees:
PO
Presbyterorum Ordinis
PC
Dignitatis Humanae
64