Imagine the heat. It's July 6, 1415. We're in
the city of Konstanz, Germany, right on the edge
of the Swiss border. And the summer air is, you
know, it's heavy, but the atmosphere in the city
square is something else. It's suffocating. It
really is. You've got this massive crowd gathered,
thousands of people. We're talking princes, cardinals,
commoners, everyone. And right in the middle
of it all, this piece of grim theater, a man
is being chained to a wooden stake. And they
haven't just tied him up, have they? The descriptions
are brutal. Oh, they're horrifying. They've piled
straw and wood, all of it mixed with pitch, right
up to his chin. It's like they're burying him
in his own pyre before they even light it. He's
been stripped of his clothes, stripped of his
priesthood, and then there's the final insult.
The hat. The hat. It's this tall, ridiculous
paper hat, almost two feet high. And they've
painted three devils on it, sort of dancing around.
It's pure humiliation. It's such a visceral image
to start with, but I think we really have to
begin at the end to understand why we're even
talking about this man today. The man at the
stake, his name is Janhos. He's a Czech theologian,
a philosopher, a... A celebrity preacher, really.
Yeah, a rock star in Prague. And he spent the
last several months chained in a dungeon, starving,
sick. And yet in this final moment when the imperial
marshal rides up and gives him one last out.
The final chance. Just recant. Just say the words,
admit you were wrong, and you get to live. And
Host just looks at him and refuses. That refusal
is, I mean, it's one of the great pivot points
of the late Middle Ages. He says, God is my witness
that the things charged against me I never preached
in the truth of the gospel, which I have written,
taught and preached. I am ready to die today.
And that refusal is exactly what we're here to
unpack today. Jan Host is often called a proto
-Protestant, you know, living a full century
before Martin Luther. But before we get into
all the heavy theology and the politics, there's
this little linguistic quirk that I just. I find
fascinating. It adds this layer of destiny to
the whole story. The name itself. The name. In
Czech, Hus literally means goose. That's right.
And he loved it. He leaned right into it. He's
from a village called Husinek, which is basically
goose town. And he used the pun all the time
in his letters. He'd write to his friends, the
goose is not yet cooked or the goose is flying
the coop. It's incredible. But the legend really
takes off right there at the stake. There's this
story, and we should be clear, it was probably
polished a bit by later historians, maybe even
by Luther himself. But the story goes that as
the flames were being lit, Hus made a prophecy.
This is a famous one, the Swan Prophecy. This
is where history gets that cinematic flair, you
know. Exactly. He supposedly said, you may roast
a weak goose today, but a swan will come after
me whom you will not be able to burn. And then
100 years later, Martin Luther shows up in Germany.
He's got his hammer, his list of grievances,
a very loud voice, and his followers just go.
Uh -huh. There's the swan. There it is. And that's
why, you know, if you walk into a Lutheran church
today, anywhere from Minnesota to Berlin, and
you look at the lectern or the stained glass,
you will very often see a swan. It's a direct
callback to the goose of Prague. So whether he
said those exact words or not, the sentiment
is, I mean, it's historically undeniable, right?
The church in 1415, they thought they were solving
a problem. They thought they were scrubbing a
stain out of the fabric of Christendom by burning
this man. They did. Instead, they lit a fuse.
A fuse that would, in many ways, blow the roof
right off the Middle Ages. So that's our mission
today. We're going to do a proper deep dive on
that explosion. We're looking at the letters,
the trial transcripts, the contemporary chronicles
to really get who Jan Hus was. And what I found
so fascinating reading the source materials,
that this isn't just some dusty church story.
It feels incredibly modern. It really does. It's
not just about, you know, transubstantiation
or some obscure point of theology. It's a story
about national identity. The Czechs versus the
Germans. A huge part of it. It's also about freedom
of speech and, you know, cancel culture in its
most lethal medieval form. It's about institutional
corruption. And at its core, it's a case study
on the price of integrity. Yeah. It asks that
terrifying question. What is your conscience
actually worth? Is it worth your career? Is it
worth your reputation? Is it worth your life?
And unlike most of us who might face that question
in small ways, Huss faced it in the most absolute
way possible. He did. Okay, so let's set the
board. To understand why burning a popular priest
was seen as the solution, we have to get the
problem. And the problem in the year 1400 wasn't
just that the church was corrupt. It was that
the church was barely functioning. We are talking
about the papal schism. The Western schism. Yeah.
If you think modern politics is polarized, do
you think having a divided government is bad?
It has absolutely nothing on the Catholic Church
in the late 14th century. For nearly 40 years,
you had a situation where the church had two
heads. Which, just biologically speaking, Speaking
is a monster. Exactly. And theologically, it
was a complete nightmare. You had a pope in Rome.
Gregory XII, claiming to be the vicar of Christ,
the sole representative of God on earth, holding
the keys to heaven and hell. And at the exact
same time? At the exact same time, you had a
pope in Avignon, France, Benedict XIII, claiming
the exact same thing. And this wasn't just a
policy disagreement. It wasn't like one was a
moderate and one was a progressive. No, no. This
was total war. They excommunicated each other.
They called each other the Antichrist. They literally
organized crusades against one another's father.
followers. You have to imagine the spiritual
anxiety this caused for the average person. I
want to pause on that for a second, because for
us, looking back, it's just, you know, dates
in a history book. But for a peasant or a merchant
in 1400, it must have been psychologically devastating.
You believe that the pope holds the keys to the
kingdom. If you're not in communion with the
true pope, you're going to hell. But there are
two of them. How do you possibly choose? That's
the thing. You don't. Your king chooses for you.
Europe was basically carved up along political
lines. If you were French, you followed the Avignon
Pope. If you were English or German or in Bohemia,
you generally followed the Roman Pope. So salvation
becomes a matter of geography. It completely
delegitimized the institution. If the vessel
of absolute truth is at war with itself, is it
still the vessel of truth? And all of that corruption
was, well, it was trickling down. The sources
are constantly mentioning simony in this period.
Can we just define that? Because it sounds like
a character from a nursery rhyme, but it's actually...
Pretty serious. Simony is the buying and selling
of church offices. It's named after Simon Magus
from the New Testament, who tried to buy the
power of the Holy Spirit from the apostles. Right.
By the 1400s, it was systemic. It was just how
things were done. Imagine you wanted to be the
bishop of Prague. You wouldn't get the job because
you were the holiest man in Bohemia. You would
get it because you paid the pope a massive bribe.
And where would you get that money? You'd probably
borrow it from wealthy banking families. And
once you have the job, you have to pay back that
loan. So you have to start making money. Exactly.
So how do you make money as a bishop? You charge
your priests for their parishes. And how do the
priests pay you? They charge the peasants for
baptisms, for confessions, for last rites, for
burials. It was a pyramid scheme of spiritual
extortion. Everyone was squeezing the person
below them to pay off the person above them.
It's just rotten from top to bottom. So everyone
knows this is broken. The average person knows
it. The kings know it. Even a lot of the clergy
knows it. And the powers that be, they decide
to fix it. This is where it gets. Well, it's
almost comical in a very dark way. Yes. They
call it council. The Council of Pisa in 1409.
The logic seems sound right. Let's just fire
both popes and hire a new one. A clean slate.
Simple. Sound logic, but terrible execution.
The cardinals from both sides met up. They declared
both existing popes to be heretics and schismatics.
And they elected a new guy, Alexander V. They
thought, great, problem solved. And everyone
goes home happy. If only. The other two popes,
Gregory in Rome and Benedict in Avignon, they
just refused to resign. They said, you can't
fire me. I'm God's chosen. You're the heretics.
So the result of this grand plan. To fix the
two pope problem. Was three popes. Was that Christendom
now had three popes. It's a hydra. You cut off
two heads and a third one just sprouts up. Exactly.
And this is the chaotic, cynical, broken world
that Jan Hus is living in. He's in Prague. He's
watching the moral authority of the entire world
just crumble. And he isn't the only one noticing
this. Which brings us to the intellectual godfather
of this whole story. We have to talk about the
English connection. John Wycliffe. We've touched
on him before in other deep dives, but he is
absolutely central here. He's the seed. John
Wycliffe was a theologian at Oxford University
a generation before Huss. And Wycliffe was, I
mean, he was the flamethrower of his day. He
looked at the church in the late 1300s and just
said, this is all wrong. He attacked the wealth
of the clergy. He attacked the authority of the
Pope, saying a bad Pope has no authority at all.
He even questioned the Eucharist. He was radical.
Now, usually ideas in the Middle Ages travel
pretty slowly. England is a long way from Bohemia.
There's no Twitter. There's no printing press
yet. But you found this really fascinating connection
that acted as a sort of information superhighway.
The internet of the 14th century. It was a royal
wedding. In 1382, King Richard II of England
married Anna Bohemia. She was the sister of the
Czech king. And suddenly you have this massive
cultural exchange between London and Prague.
Okay, so that opens a door. A huge door. Czech
students started going to Oxford on scholarships.
They'd go there, they'd study, and they would
pick up Wycliffe's books. Which were probably
buzzing with controversy at Oxford at the time.
Oh, absolutely. These were the banned books,
the edgy books that everyone wanted to read.
And these Czech students, they carried them back
to Prague in their luggage. We even have records
from 1406 of two students bringing a document
with the seal of Oxford University to Prague.
explicitly praising Wycliffe's work. So Jan Hus
is a young scholar in Prague. He's rising through
the ranks, and he gets his hands on this imported
literature. Specifically, a book called The Triologus.
And Hus is just captivated. Now, we do have to
be a little nuanced here. Hus didn't agree with
everything Wycliffe wrote. Wycliffe was very
radical on the Eucharist, for example. He basically
denied transubstantiation. The idea that the
bread and wine literally become the body and
blood of Christ. Right. Hus was more conservative
there. He stayed pretty orthodox on that point.
But on the corruption, on the idea that the Bible
is superior to the pope, on the idea that the
true church is the community of believers, not
just the clerical hierarchy. He was all in. All
in. He starts translating Wycliffe's works into
Czech. He's basically distributing the underground
literature of the Middle Ages. He's taking these
high -level academic Latin critiques and making
them available to everyone. And he's doing this
from a very powerful platform. This is where
we need to look at who Hus actually was. I mean,
he wasn't some grumpy hermit living in a cave,
right? Not at all. By 1402, he's the rector of
the University of Prague. But even more importantly,
he was the appointed preacher at a place called
the Bethlehem Chapel. The Bethlehem Chapel. This
place comes up in every single source as a critical
location. What made it so special? It wasn't
a cathedral, was it? No, not at all. It was more
of a preaching hall. But it was massive. It could
hold 3 ,000 people. I mean, that is a megachurch
by medieval standards. But the key thing, the
revolutionary thing, was its charter. It was
founded specifically for preaching in the vernacular.
In Czech. In Czech. And that is the game changer.
In a normal church, the liturgy is in Latin.
The Bible reading is in Latin. The mystery of
faith is literally hidden behind a language barrier.
The common people, they watch the show, they
smell the incense, they see the gold vestments,
but they don't really know the script. It's a
passive experience. Very. But at the Bethlehem
Chapel, his is taking these high -level academic
debates about corruption, about the three popes,
about simony, and he's explaining them to the
shopkeepers and the blacksmiths and the farmers
in their own language, their own slang. It's
that feeling when you finally have a complex
topic explained simply. It's empowering. It makes
you feel smart. It makes you feel involved. He's
democratizing theology. He's telling them, your
priests are lying to you. They're stealing from
you. And the Bible, which I'm now reading to
you in your own language, says they are wrong.
He's weaponizing the vernacular. And because
of that, he becomes a folk hero almost overnight.
But this popularity, it starts to get tangled
up with something else. We can't ignore the nationalism
aspect here. The sources just keep bringing up
Czech versus German. Yes. You absolutely cannot
understand the Hus story without understanding
the ethnic tension in Prague at the time. Prague
was this big cosmopolitan city. It was the capital
of the Holy Roman Empire for a while. But the
native Czech population often felt like second
-class citizens in their own home. In what way?
Well, the upper clergy. Mostly German. The wealthy
merchants who owned the big townhouses on the
square, mostly German. The city council, dominated
by Germans. The Czechs felt squeezed, both economically
and culturally. And this tension played out very
aggressively at the university. The Kutna Hora
decree. This sounds like campus politics gone
completely off the rails, but with, like, geopolitical
stakes. That is exactly what it is. The University
of Prague was modeled on Paris, so it was divided
into four nations for voting purposes. The Czech
nation, the Bavarian nation, the Saxon nation,
and the Polish nation. And I'm guessing the Bavarian,
Saxon, and Polish nations tended to vote together.
They were the German bloc. Yeah. Even the Polish
nation at the university was, at the time, mostly
staffed by German -speaking Salatians. So on
any issue... Hiring a professor, university policy,
theological debates. The Germans had three votes
and the Czechs had one. So the Czechs were permanently
outvoted in their own university. Always. It
was incredibly frustrating for Czech scholars
like Hus. It meant that university always leaned
toward the German and Roman perspective. But
then the people's schism breaks everything open.
How so? King Wenceslas IV of Bohemia, who was
a character in his own right, often drunk, very
volatile. Not the most stable guy. He wants the
university to support the Pisa Pope, Alexander
V. It helps his own political alliances in Europe.
So the king says, university, you need to vote
for Alexander. And the German nations at the
university say, no, they refuse. They want to
stick with the Roman Pope, Gregory XII. They
openly defy the king. So Hus and the Czechs see
an opportunity. A huge one. They go to the king
and say, we'll support you, your majesty. We
will back your pope. And the king rewards their
loyalty. He flips the entire table. In 1409,
at a place called Kutna Hora, he issues a decree
that changes the university's constitution. Overnight,
the Czech nation gets three votes and the three
foreign nations combined get only one. Wow. Talk
about a power shift. It's a complete reversal.
It was a total humiliation for the Germans. And
they didn't just grumble about it. They walked
out. It was a mass exodus. The estimates vary,
but we're talking somewhere between 800 and 2
,000 German masters and students just packed
up and left Prague. Where did they go? Many of
them went on to found the University of Leipzig
in Germany. But the bigger problem for Huss is
that they left angry. Yeah. They went out into
the rest of Europe, to Vienna, to Heidelberg,
to Cologne, and they were spreading a narrative.
Is that narrative? Prague is a nest of heretics.
They hate the church. They follow that crazy
Englishman Wycliffe. They're dangerous rebels.
So Hus wins the battle for Prague. He becomes
the first Czech rector under the new system.
But he loses the public relations war in Europe.
Completely. He basically painted a giant target
on his own back. Yeah. To the rest of the world,
he was now the ringleader of this rebellious,
heretical city. He was isolated. Okay, so we
have the schism, we have the nationalism, the
vernacular preaching. But the spark that really
lights the fire, the thing that moves this whole
thing from an academic dispute to a death sentence
is... His indulgences. We usually associate this
with Luther and the 95 BCs, but Hus was there
a century earlier. It's almost the exact same
story. History rhyming perfectly. It's 1411.
We have a new piece of Pope, John XXIII. And
we should be very clear, this is not the beloved
modern Pope, John XXIII, who called Vatican II.
This guy was a piece of work. He was a gangster
in robes. Before he was Pope, Baldassare Cosa
was a military man, possibly a pirate in his
youth. I mean, a total warlord. And in 1411,
he wants to wage a war against the king of Naples,
who's protecting one of his rival popes. And
wars are expensive. Very. Mercenaries need to
be paid. So to fund it, he issues a massive sale
of indulgences across Europe. For the listener
who might be a little rusty on medieval theology,
an indulgence is basically a certificate that
reduces your time in purgatory after you die.
Correct. The idea is that the church controls
this treasury of merit, the surplus goodness
of Christ and the saints. You pay money to the
church. And the pope draws on that treasury to
pay off your debt of sin. But in this case, it
was explicitly for war. The sales pitch was basically,
give me money so I can hire soldiers to kill
my enemies and I'll get you into heaven faster.
It's so transactional. You're funding bloodshed
with spiritual promises. And Hus looked at this
and was just appalled. He couldn't reconcile
with the Bible at all. He stands up in the Bethlehem
Chapel and he thunders against it. He says, the
pope cannot buy forgiveness. Only God forgives.
He argued that no pope has the right to take
up the sword. He said, man obtains forgiveness
of sins by true repentance, not by money. That's
a direct challenge to the Pope's wallet and his
power. And the city just exploded. You have to
remember, the Czechs were already fired up. They
saw this foreign Pope trying to fleece them to
fight a war in Italy they couldn't care less
about. There were protests and then tragedy.
The three students? Yes, three young men. Their
names were Martin, Jan, and Steikak. They interrupted
a priest who was selling indulgences in a church.
They called it a lie. They shouted, the Pope
is lying to us. And they were arrested by the
city authorities. And who's pleaded for them?
He did. He begged for leniency. But the authorities,
probably under pressure from the German faction
on the council, had them beheaded in the street.
The first martyrs. The first blood. And the reaction
from the Hussite movement was so telling. They
didn't back down. Huss didn't say, OK, guys,
let's cool it. They took the bodies of those
three boys, carried them in a solemn procession,
and buried them in the Beslehem Chapel with reverence
as if they were saints. This was the point of
no return. The church realized we can't just
debate this guy. We have to crush him. So the
pope strikes back, excommunicates. Aggravated
excommunication, yes. But they went even further.
They placed the entire city of Prague under an
interdict. Can you explain what an interdict
actually felt like for a city? Because it sounds
like this sort of dry legal term, but it was
much more visceral than that. Oh, it was the
ultimate collective punishment, a spiritual blockade.
It means that as long as Jan Hus is present in
the city of Prague, the church goes on strike,
no masses can be said, no babies can be baptized,
no couples can be married, and most terrifyingly
of all, no Christian burials. So if your mother
dies while the interdict is in effect? She's
thrown in a ditch in unconsecrated ground. For
a medieval person, that means her soul is in
mortal peril. It puts the spiritual safety of
every single citizen at risk. It's designed to
turn the population against the troublemaker.
The neighbors start looking at Hus and saying,
get out. You are hurting us. It's weaponizing
the people against him. Get rid of Hus or your
grandmother goes to hell. Exactly. And Hus, to
his credit, he didn't want the city to suffer.
He realized his presence was the problem. So
he leaves Prague. He goes into a self -imposed
exile in the countryside, staying at the castles
of sympathetic nobles who protect him. But he
doesn't stay quiet out there in the countryside.
Not at all. In fact, this exile period is incredibly
productive for him. He realizes that while the
university scholars can read his dense Latin
treatises, the common people need guidance. So
he starts writing furiously in Czech. This is
when he writes his most famous work. the ecclesia
the church and in the ecclesia he makes a claim
that just it really undermines the whole catholic
structure he redefines what the church actually
is right he argues that the pope is only the
head of the church if he lives according to the
bible if he doesn't he's just another man hust
defines the true church as the body of the predestined,
the invisible community of true believers, regardless
of their rank or status. So it's not the institution.
It's not the institution. The institution is
not the same as the spiritual reality. You can
be a bishop and not be part of the true church
if you're wicked. You can be a peasant and be
a key member of the true church. It's radical
stuff. And during this time, he does something
seemingly small, but with this huge impact on
the Czech language itself, he literally changes
the alphabet. He does. He was a teacher at heart.
He looked at Czech spelling, which was a mess,
and he wanted to make it easier for people to
read and write. So he introduced the hot check,
that little hook or checkmark you see above letters
like shish and shis in Czech today. What did
that do? It standardized the spelling. It replaced
the need to write multiple letters to make a
single sound. It's a legacy that every single
Czech speaker uses every single day 600 years
later. That's wild. It's like if Shakespeare
had also invented a few new letters for the alphabet
while writing Hamlet. It shows his commitment
to the people. He wanted the Bible and religious
texts to be accessible. He wanted literacy to
spread. But while he's writing in the countryside,
he makes a move that the sources all call revolutionary.
On October 18th, 1412, he makes a formal legal
appeal. But he doesn't appeal to the pope. No.
He's given up on the popes by this point. He
realizes the whole system is rigged against him.
So he formally appeals his case directly to Jesus
Christ. Which sounds very pious to us, but legally
in that time. Legally, it was anarchy. The entire
medieval structure was built on the idea that
the church is the sole mediator between man and
God. You can't just go over their heads to the
CEO. By appealing to Christ, Host was effectively
saying, your entire hierarchy is irrelevant if
it acts against scripture. I am bypassing your
earthly courts and going straight to the supreme
judge. It was a total rejection of their jurisdiction.
So now he's a complete rogue agent. He has bypassed
the entire system. And now the powers that be
decide they need to settle this once and for
all. This is where King Sigismund of Hungary
enters the picture. Sigismund is the brother
of the Bohemian king Wenceslaus. He's also the
king of the Romans, the head of the Holy Roman
Empire, effectively. He's the most powerful secular
ruler in Europe. And he has two big problems
he wants to solve. The three popes and the Bohemian
heresy. So he calls a massive general council
in the city of Constance in 1414. The Council
of Constance. This is the Super Bowl of medieval
church politics. And they invite Hus. They do.
Sigismund sends a message to Hus. Come to Constance.
Explain your views to the assembled fathers of
the church. We will hear you out. And Hus agrees
to go. Why? I mean, did he really think he could
convince them? He did. Hus was a true academic
and a true believer at heart. He thought, if
I can just show them the Bible, if I can just
explain my logic clearly, they will see that
I am right. He didn't see himself as a heretic.
He saw himself as a faithful Catholic reformer.
He thought, once they hear the truth, they'll
have to agree. It seems tragically naive looking
back. It does. But he wasn't completely naive.
He knew it was dangerous. He wrote his will before
he left. He wrote letters to his followers saying,
if I die. But he thought he had an ace in the
hole. The safe conduct pass. The Savo Conductus.
A formal document issued by the king of the Romans
himself. It guaranteed that Hus should be allowed
to pass to Constance, stay there, and... This
is the crucial part. Return to Bohemia freely
and securely. Return securely. That's the promise.
That's the promise. So Hus arrives in Constance
in November 1414. And at first he's free. He's
staying with a widow in town. But, and this is
classic Hus, he can't stop himself. He keeps
preaching. He says mass in his private room.
People start gathering to hear him. And the local
clergy are furious. They're saying the heretic
is here and he's still spreading his poison.
So the trap springs. Rumors start flying that
Hus is planning to flee. Which was completely
untrue. And the church authorities have him arrested
on November 28th. They drag him away from his
dinner table. But wait a minute, what about the
safe conduct? The king's personal promise? Sigismund
was reportedly furious at first. He felt his
honor was being violated. He stormed out of the
council chamber. He threatened to leave Constance.
But the prelates, the high church officials,
they took him aside. And they used this very
dangerous... Very chilly piece of medieval logic
on him. What did they tell him? They told him
promises made to heretics are not binding. They
argued that his duty to God and the unity of
the church outweighed his promise to a single
man accused of heresy. They effectively said,
if you protect him, you're hindering the work
of the Holy Spirit. Wow. No faith need be kept
with heretics. That's the phrase. And Sigismund
cased. He withdrew his protection. He chose the
political unity of the council over his personal
honor. And from that moment, Jan Hus was doomed.
And he's thrown into a dungeon. And we're not
talking about a modern jail cell here. No. He
was moved to Gottlieb and Castle. He was held
in a tower, often chained day and night. One
source says his arm was chained to the wall.
His feet were in irons. The food was terrible
and scarce. The cell was right next to the castle
latrines, so the smell was unbearable. He became
severely ill. He had hemorrhoids. He was vomiting
blood. He had raging fevers. He spent 73 days
in these conditions, completely isolated. It
sounds like they were trying to break him psychologically
before the trial even began. Absolutely. They
wanted a broken, defeated man to walk into that
trial and just say, I give up. I recant. But
when the trial finally happens in June of 1415,
he isn't broken. He's physically weak, but his
mind is sharp as a tack. He's brought before
the council this huge assembly of cardinals in
their red robes, bishops, theologians, and they
refuse to give him a defense lawyer. That was
forbidden in heresy trials. He's still alone.
And how did the trial actually work? It wasn't
a trial in our sense of finding out the truth.
It was a verification of guilt. They read out
39 sentences that they had extracted from his
writings. Some of them were accurate, quotes,
things he actually believed, like, a pope who
sins is not the true head of the church. Which
he would admit to. Yes. He would say, I wrote
that, and here's the Bible verse that supports
my position. But then they read things he never
said. They accused him of claiming he was the
fourth person of the Trinity. Complete fabrications.
And when he tried to defend himself. to explain
the context they just shouted him down the records
say the noise was so loud at times that he couldn't
even be heard they screamed burn him burn him
whenever he tried to explain the nuance of his
position and his defense strategy just remained
the same through it all show me in the bible
that was his constant refrain convinced me from
scripture he said i am willing to recant if my
errors should be proven to me from the bible
but the council wasn't interested in a bible
study they were interested in submission their
position was The authority of the church says
you are wrong, therefore you are wrong. Recant.
It's a clash of two different operating systems,
isn't it? Hus is running on sola scriptura, scripture
alone, before that was even a term. The council
is running on authority of the institution. They
literally can't communicate. Right. And then
they tried to trap him with a blanket recantation.
They asked him to sign a single document recanting
all 39 articles. So if he signs it, he's recanting
the things he actually believes. Yes. But he
is also admitting that he taught the crazy things
he never taught. Exactly. It is the classic,
when did you stop beating your wife trap? Yeah.
If he says, I recant, he is confessing to being
a heretic on points where he was actually orthodox.
He would be lying. And he said, how can I recant
what I never held? I would be bearing false witness
against myself. So it came down to conscience.
It did. He refused to lie to save his own skin.
He wrote a letter from prison saying, I write
this in chains expecting my death. I would not,
for a chapel full of gold, recant from the truth.
So we arrive at July 6th, 1415, the final day.
And it starts with this ceremony of degradation.
This is a highly ritualized process, isn't it?
They don't just kill him. They have to unmake
him as a priest first. It's chillingly theatrical.
They bring him to the cathedral. They dress him
in his full priestly vestments, the owl, the
stole, the chasuble. They put a chalice in his
hand. It's like they're getting him ready to
perform mass one last time. And then they just
reverse it? Step by step. A bishop takes the
chalice from his hand and says, We take from
thee the cup of redemption thou accursed Judas.
Hus just replies, But I trust in God that I shall
drink it this day in his kingdom. They rip the
robes off him one by one. And then they go for
his haircut? The taunter, that shaved spot on
a priest's head. They took shears and just hacked
at his hair to destroy it, to erase the mark
of his ordination. They even argued amongst themselves
over whether to shave it or cut it, just to mock
him. And finally, the paper hat. The caputium,
that tall paper miter painted with devils fighting
for his soul and inscribed with the single Latin
word heresiarcha. Ringleader of heretics. Exactly.
They were literally demonizing him before they
killed him. The church then says, We have nothing
more to do with you. And hands him over to the
secular arm, the soldiers, for execution. Because
technically, the church doesn't spill blood.
A very convenient legal fiction. We're not killing
you. The state is. They handed him over to Sigismund's
men. And they lead him out of the city to a place
called the Brule, a meadow outside the walls.
The stake is waiting. He walked calmly. The sources
say he prayed and sang hymns on the way. When
he saw the stake, he knelt down and prayed again.
The executioner stripped him of his remaining
clothes, tied his hands behind his back, and
chained his neck to the post. They piled the
wood and straw mixed with pitch all around him.
And then there's that one last moment, the final
chance. The imperial marshal, a man named von
Pappenheim, rides up on his horse. The fire hasn't
been lit yet. And he looks at Hus and asks him
one last time, recant, save yourself. And Hus
looks out over the crowd, over the wood that
is about to consume him, and he says it. God
is my witness that the things charged against
me I never preached. In the truth of the gospel
which I have written, taught, and preached, I
am ready to die today. He didn't waver, not for
a second. I didn't. He chose the truth over his
life. And then the fire was lit. And there's
that incredible, heartbreaking anecdote about
the old woman, Sanctus Simplicitus. Yes. So the
fire is either struggling to catch, or maybe
it's not burning hot enough at first. And this
old peasant woman... Probably very pious, probably
believing every single thing the priest had ever
told her. She thinks she's doing a good deed
for God. She comes shuffling up and throws a
little bundle of brushwood onto the fire to help
burn the heretic. She thinks she is helping God
by killing him. Precisely. And Hus sees her.
He's already in agony. The heat is rising. And
he doesn't curse her. He doesn't scream at her.
He looks at her and says, Oh, sanctus simplicitas.
Oh, holy simplicity. That's just, it's heartbreaking.
It is. He pitied her. He saw her as another victim
of the same system that was killing him. A system
that had taught her that hate was an act of piety.
He forgave her ignorance in his dying breath.
And as the flames rose, he didn't scream in agony.
He sang. He chanted the carolation, Lord have
mercy. He sang, Christ, son of the living God,
have mercy on us. He sang until the smoke choked
him and finally silenced his voice. And they
didn't just leave his body there. They were incredibly
thorough. They were terrified of him becoming
a martyr with relics. They knew that if they
left a single bone, his followers would take
it back to Prague and build a shrine around it.
So they waited until the body was consumed. Then
they smashed his skull and bones with clubs to
break them into the smallest possible pieces.
They found his heart, which hadn't burned completely,
and threw it back into the fire. Then they shoveled
up all the ashes, the dirt around the stake,
everything, and threw it all into the Rhine River.
To erase him. No grave, no bones, no trace. They
wanted to wash him out of history completely.
But you can't drown an idea in a river, can you?
You cannot. In fact, the execution had the exact
opposite effect. The council thought, okay, the
goose is cooked, problem solved, the Czechs will
be scared now and they'll get back in line. But
when the news of the execution reached Prague,
it wasn't fear that took over. It was pure rage.
Which brings us to the aftermath. The swan sings.
Or... More accurately, the swan's followers start
swinging swords. The Bohemian protest. In September
of 1415, just a couple of months after the execution,
452 Bohemian nobles signed a document. They put
their formal wax seals on it. And they sent it
to the Council of Constance. What did it say?
It basically said, John Hus was a good and righteous
man. He was a faithful Catholic. You who executed
him are the traitors. You are the murderers.
And we will defend the law of God and the freedom
to preach it with our blood if we have to. That
is a declaration of war. It was. And the church
responded in kind to the new Pope, Martin V.
Because they did finally elect a single pope
at Constance, he issued a bull authorizing a
crusade against the Hussites. He called on all
of Christendom to march on Bohemia and crush
them. A crusade against fellow Christians in
the heart of Europe. Yes, the Hussite Wars. They
lasted from 1419 to 1434. And this is where the
story just becomes a military miracle. The Catholic
Church and the Holy Roman Empire launched five
consecutive crusades against tiny Bohemia. The
Teutonic Knights, the Knights of Germany, Austria,
Hungary, mercenaries from all over Europe. They
all marched on Prague. And Bohemia won. Bohemia
won. They didn't just survive. They utterly crushed
the Crusader armies time after time. How? I mean,
they were peasants and minor nobles against the
armored might of all of Europe. They had a secret
weapon, a general named Jan Hiszke. Tell us about
Hiszke. He is one of the greatest military geniuses
in history. and he is almost unknown outside
of this specific context. He was a one -eyed
veteran, and later in the wars, he went completely
blind, but continued to command the armies to
victory from a wagon. He realized his peasant
army couldn't fight armored knights in an open
field, so he invented the wagon burg. The wagon
fort. Exactly. He took ordinary farm wagons,
armored them with thick wooden planks and iron
chains. He would circle them up on a hilltop
or chain them together in a line to create a
mobile fortress. And he loaded them with men
carrying early firearms, hand cannons, and crossbows.
So he invented medieval tanks. Effectively, yes.
The knights would charge, expecting to just run
down these peasants. But they would smash into
this wall of wood. The Hussites would then blast
them with gunpowder and crossbow bolts from behind
cover. The horses would panic. The knights would
get bogged down. And then once the charge was
broken, the Hussites would pour out from between
the wagons with these terrifying flails -modified
grain threshers with spikes on the end and just
finish them off. That's incredible. It was psychological
warfare, too. The Hussites would march into battle
singing these defiant hymns like, Ye who are
warriors of God. By the time of the Fourth Crusade,
the massive Crusader army heard the Hussites
singing in the distance, and they literally turned
and ran away before the battle even started.
They were terrified of the heretics. So the church,
this mighty institution that burned Huss, eventually
has to basically surrender. They were forced
to the negotiating table. They realized they
could not kill the Hussite movement. I am. So
in 1436, they agreed to the Basel Compacts. What
was that? It was a compromise, but a historic
one. The church officially allowed the Bohemians
to practice their own version of Christianity.
They could give the cup of wine to the laity
during communion, which was a huge Hussite demand,
a symbol of spiritual equality. It was essentially
the first time a group had successfully broken
away from the uniformity of Rome and survived.
So as Huss didn't live to see it, but his ideas
won. In a huge way, yes. A century later, something
like 90 % of the Czech lands were Hussite in
one form or another. And the legacy continues.
We mentioned the connection to Luther. Oh, it's
direct. Luther found a copy of Hus' sermons in
a library when he was a young monk. And he was
shocked. He wrote to a friend, I have been teaching
all of Hus' ideas without knowing it. We are
all Hussites. Hus paved the road that Luther
would eventually walk on. And what about today?
Well, there's the Meridian Church, the Unitas
Fraterum, which traces its roots directly back
to Hus' followers. They're still active all over
the world today. known for their focus on simplicity
and service. And the Catholic Church itself finally
addressed this, didn't they? It took a little
while. It took nearly 600 years. But in 1999,
Pope John Paul II issued an apology. He expressed
deep regret for the cruel death inflicted on
Hus, and he praised his moral courage. The goose
finally got his apology from the swan's successors.
And in the Czech Republic today, July 6th is
a national holiday, Jan Hus Day. He's consistently
voted the greatest Czech hero in national surveys.
If you go to the Old Town Square in Prague today,
there's this massive brooding statue of him right
in the center, dominating the square. And the
motto of the Czech president is, Truth prevails,
Pravda VTZ. That is a direct Hussite slogan.
It's a staggering story. From a poor boy in a
village called Goosetown to a man who changed
the course of history simply by saying no. It's
the power of the individual conscience. Hus wasn't
some radical anarchist who wanted to burn the
world down. He was a man who believed that truth
was objective and that authority, no matter how
powerful, was not absolute. He believed that
if the king or the pope contradicts the truth,
you follow the truth. Which brings us to our
final thought for you, the listener. This story,
for all its medieval context, feels incredibly
relevant to the world we live in now. It really
does. Yeah. Jan Hus died because he refused to
admit to errors he didn't commit. He could have
walked away. He could have just nodded, said,
I recant, signed the paper, and gone back to
a quiet life. I mean, no one would have really
blamed him. In our age, we are just flooded with
information. Truth can feel so flexible. Spin
is everything. And we are so often pressured
to just go along to get along in our jobs, our
social circles, our politics. Exactly. So the
question Hutz leaves us with is, what is the
price of your personal integrity? If you were
bound to that stake and all you had to do was
say a few words you didn't believe in order to
save your own life, would you do it? Or would
you have the courage to be the goose that refuses
to be cooked? That's a heavy question to end
on. Thanks for joining us on this deep dive into
the fire. Thank you. We'll see you next time.