The Memory and Motivation of Jan Hus, Medieval Priest and Martyr by Thomas A. Fudge (review)

Over the past two decades Thomas Fudge has established himself as one of the leading authorities on the early fifteenth-century Bohemian heretic-martyr, Jan Hus and the eponymous central European, pre-Reformation, religious reform movement, Hussitism. In a steady stream of articles and monographs, Fudge has systematically mined the primary material (Hus’s writings alone run to more than twenty-five volumes) and assimilated voluminous secondary and ancillary literature in Latin, Czech, and German. In English-language scholarship on Jan Hus, Thomas Fudge dominates the field.

Memory and Motivation is a book of deep reflection and impressive erudition but there is nothing remote or dry in Fudge’s writing. This is history engagé conveying in lively, often discursive prose something of the heady quality and impassioned oratory that characterised Jan Hus’s preaching. Elsewhere, Fudge has articulated his four new perspectives on Hus: he actively contributed to his own death; he cultivated a martyr’s complex; the men of the Council of Constance went to some lengths in an effort to spare his life; at one and the same time he was devout reformer and heretic. In varying degrees these, themes are in play throughout the ‘Memory’ and ‘Motivation’ of this volume.

Chapter 1 summarises Hus’s rise from obscurity to prominence as the leading preacher at Prague’s Bethlehem Chapel, the most persuasive voice calling for reform of the Latin Church. Among the various ideas that set him at odds with the Church was his belief that immorality disqualified clergy from exercising priestly office in addition to his denial that obedience to the pope was necessary for salvation. In sketching out the intellectual battle lines, Fudge makes clear that whatever the social and political ramifications attributed to Hus’s ideas, his prime motivation was spiritual renewal and a revitalisation of the authentic faith after the manner of the early Christians.

Chapters 2 and 4 delve into Hus’s writings, correspondence, and trial documents in quest of fons et origo, the motivating forces which animated his thoughts and actions. Fudge reveals a man of great rectitude and equally great naivety. Firm in the belief that he was a divine messenger, Hus possessed unshakable conviction that he alone understood the truth and that he alone would determine the criteria for discerning it. Many of Hus’s attitudinal traits are found encapsulated in the curiously titled Knížkj proti knězi kuchmistrovi (‘Booklets contra the kitchen-master Prelate’). In this little treatise, written only a year before his death while in exile from Prague, Hus responds to attacks on him ostensibly from an anonymous former priest. Fudge’s close reading of this text (in fact, a systematic rebuttal by Hus of the full complement of major accusations most frequently levelled against him) provides us with many subtle insights into what Hus thought he was doing: standing firm in defence of truth; practising the imitation of Christ; and preparing for martyrdom.

Fudge’s rather rambling chapter dealing with Hus’s ethics corroborates Jiří Kejř’s contention that ‘Hus created for himself an idealized reality that represented for him acting in accordance with the will of God without regard for the feelings and perception of the surrounding world’. Ethically irreproachable and blithely disdainful of his enemies, Hus inevitably drew fire from less righteous clerics. And none proved to be a more tenacious opponent than the ecclesiastical lawyer, Michael Smradař. His unrelenting and ultimately successful campaign against Hus is given detailed coverage in Chapter 5.

Chapters 6 to 8 address the various ways Hus’s memoria was constructed. Drawing on the latest musicological research and refining interpretations he first advanced in Magnificent Ride, Fudge explores the wide variety of song texts (popular tunes, satirical songs, cantiones contrafacts, processionals, and liturgical hymns) that arose soon after Hus’s martyrdom and continued to be produced for several generations. All sides engaged in the...