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  • The Memory and Motivation of Jan Hus, Medieval Priest and Martyr by Thomas A. Fudge
  • Jeanne E. Grant
The Memory and Motivation of Jan Hus, Medieval Priest and Martyr. By Thomas A. Fudge. [Europa Sacra, Vol. 11.] (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols Publishers. 2013. Pp. xiii, 291. €80,00. ISBN 978-2-503-54442-7.)

Arriving in plenty of time for the sexcentenary of Jan Hus’s immolation, The Memory and Motivation of Jan Hus poses an interpretation of Hus’s and his theology’s significance for medieval Christian history. It is a biography of Hus, but, because so few self-reflective sources exist, it is a hermeneutical biography that draws on a variety of texts and is set firmly in the historical context of the fifteenth century. Besides opening Czech and other continental scholarship to English readers by including references to and explanations of Czech historiography, it shows that Hus is best understood in his European setting. It is the second monograph in a trilogy by Thomas A. Fudge, the other two being Jan Hus: Religious Reform and Social Revolution in Bohemia (London, 2010) and The Trial of Jan Hus (New York, 2013). This second monograph may be the best book to read first as it covers the Czech reformer-preacher in the most accessible and broadest terms of the three; indeed, the inclusion of references in one book to the other two books indicates that all three were intended to support one another. Fudge’s focus on writings by Hus and others allows him to utilize deceptively simple and admirably straightforward questions—such as “what did Hus think he was doing?”—which are asked throughout as effective rhetorical devices to keep attention on the themes of motivation and memory. Through a consistently source- and historiographically grounded and careful analysis of language used by Hus and others, the author offers an even-handed explanation of Hus’s role and place in late-medieval church reform, including in relevance to such ideas as conciliarism, imitatio Christi, devotio moderna, and those of Peter Lombard and John Wyclif—topics likely more familiar to medievalists than the nuances of Hus’s motivations and theology, and so Fudge’s contribution to medieval and Hussite studies is noteworthy. The unconventional biography that emerges is of Hus’s tranformation from a practicing preacher who [End Page 338] above all wants moral reform of the Church to a heretic unable to avoid a probably desired Christlike martyrdom and then to a popular saint as an ideal Hus in memory was created over the course of decades and centuries. Analyzing memory helps Fudge define the “spirit of Hussitism” as Hus’s continued postmortem influence via his guiding theological principles. Even-handedness is evident is Fudge’s balanced interpretation of Hus’s positive and negative characteristics, concluded from weighed consideration of Hus’s own writings and those of others who both opposed and supported him. Similar treatment is accorded Hus’s main legal adversary, Michael de Causis, about whom is also asked, “what did he think he was doing?” In the end, motivation is compellingly used to analyze both the story of Hus’s martyrdom/heresy and the subsequent memory of Hus. The results of this monograph’s approach are (1) a detailed picture of a cautious theologian who became a preacher of reform unable to do anything but accept the heretic’s mantle because of his belief that his ethics (read theology) was congruent with the law of God and (2) a sophisticated evaluation of the created memory of Hus.

If one were to have the ambition to assign a history of Hus to advanced undergraduates, this would be it, although all or any of the trilogy would be suitable for graduate students. Fudge’s trilogy joins a few other volumes (one example is Howard Kaminsky’s A History of the Hussite Revolution [Berkeley, 1967]) as the standard work to which English readers should turn first.

Jeanne E. Grant
Metropolitan State University
St. Paul, MN
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