Magistri Johannis Hus: Questiones (review)

The continued recovery of the reputation of Jan Hus has been given an important boost by the agreement between Brepols and the Academia scientiarum Bohemoslovacae regarding the publication of Hus's Opera Omnia. Hus was burnt for heresy at the Council of Constance in July 1416, an act for which John Paul II publicly apologized in December, 2000. In 1882, Johann Loserth's Hus und Wiclif popularized the idea that Hus had done little more than plagiarize John Wyclif (d. 1384), a calumny that has continued despite the labors of English-speaking scholars like Matthew Spinka, S. Harrison Thomson, and Howard Kaminsky, and Czech scholars from the time of Václav Flajshans in 1900 through to Frantisek Smahel, David Holeton, Vilém Herold, and many others now active. Professor Flajshans began to edit and publish Hus's writings in hopes of improving upon the imperfect 1558 edition of Flacius Illyricus (reprinted in 1715), and produced eight volumes by 1908. Discoveries of previously unknown works continued throughout the twentieth century, and in 1959, the Academia in Prague began to publish the Opera Omnia. They projected twenty-five volumes in the series, of which the first four would be works in Czech, and the last volume dubia, leaving twenty volumes of Hus's Latin works. Of these, the Academia published Quodlibet (Vol. XX, Bohumil Ryba, ed., 1948), Sermones de tempore qui collecta (Vol. VII, Anezka Vidmanová-Schmidtová, ed., 1959), Polemica (Vol. XXII, J. Ersil, ed., 1966), Passio Domini nostri Iesu Christi (Vol. VIII, A. Vidmanová-Schmidtová, ed., 1973), Postilla adumbrata (Vol. XIII, Bohumil Ryba, ed., 1975), and Leccionarium bipartitum, pars hiemalis (Vol. IX, A. Vidmanová-Schmidtová, ed., 1988). Hus's most famous work, De Ecclesia, was published separately in an edition by S. Harrison Thomson in 1956. This leaves thirteen volumes for possible publication in collaboration with Brepols. Aside from Questiones, Brepols has just published an expanded version of Ryba's 1948 Quodlibet.

These Questiones are short philosophical treatments of select issues Hus is likely to have produced between 1408 and 1412. He was made Master of Arts in 1396, and Kejř views it as likely that we do not yet know whether he wrote or was engaged in other questions apart from the ten edited here. Of these, it is likely that Hus was not the author of the last, Q. de Moyse legislatore, despite its association with his hand. Some Questiones have been published before this. J. Sedlák edited two in his M. Jan Hus in 1915 (Q. de supremo rectore, and de Moyse legislatore; in Kejř these are Qq. IX and X) and S. Harrison Thomson edited four in "Four Unpublished Questiones of John Hus" (Medievalia et Humanistica Vol. 7, 1952, pp. 71-88; here Qq. VIII, III, I, and V.). Of the Questiones Thomson edited, de Materia Prima (Thomson, pp.75-79) had earlier been published in partial form in Johannis Wyclif Miscellanea Philosophica II by the Wyclif Society in 1905, although the editor, M. H. Dziewicki, doubted very much that it was by Wyclif. (Elsewhere, Thomson showed that all the works published in that particular volume were likely writings of Czech scholars.) In Kejř's edition, this question varies slightly from Thomson's version; with "intendo" for Thomson's "intelligendo" in line 44, "signans" for Thomson's "significans" in line 68, and dropping the "esse" from Thomson's "dat esse quid" in line 60. The variations from Thomson diminish in the remaining 200 lines.

Thomson's edition of Q. de effectu indesinibili used only one of the two manuscripts in Prague University library, namely MS. X.H.9; Kejř uses the other, MS. X.H.18, as well in his version, which is Q. III. The third of Thomson's questions is Q. de testimonio fidei christianae, which is edited here as Q. I. Thomson used Prague University X E24 for his edition, while Kejř includes Wien 4296 as well as a...