Preachers, Partisans, and Rebellious Religion
THE MIDDLE AGES SERIES
Ruth Mazo Karras, Series Editor
Edward Peters, Founding Editor
A complete list of books in the series is available from the publisher.
Preachers, Partisans, and Rebellious Religion
Vernacular Writing and the Hussite Movement
Marcela K. Perett
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA PRESS
PHILADELPHIA
Copyright © 2018 University of Pennsylvania Press
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher.
Published by
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Perett, Marcela Klicova, author.
Title: Preachers, partisans, and rebellious religion : vernacular writing and the Hussite movement / Marcela K. Perett.
Other titles: Middle Ages series.
Description: 1st edition. | Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, [2018] | Series: Middle Ages series | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018008681 | ISBN 9780812250534 (hardcover : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Hus, Jan, 1369?–1415. | Hussites—Czech Republic—Bohemia—History. | Religion and literature—Czech Republic—Bohemia—History. | Bohemia (Czech Republic)—Church history. | Hussites—Czech Republic—Bohemia—History—Sources.
Classification: LCC BX4915.3 .P47 2018 | DDC 284/.3094371—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018008681
For Benoît and John Amaury
Contents
Chapter 1. From Golden Boy to Rabble-Rouser: Jan Hus and His Preaching Career
Chapter 2. Creating a Faction: Jan Hus and the Importance of Moral Victory
Chapter 3. Battle for the Minds: Vernacular Propaganda For and Against Hussite Reform
Chapter 4. The Parting of the Ways: Prague and Tábor
Chapter 5. Combining Education with Polemic: The Price of Theology in the Vernacular
Chapter 6. The Dangers of Popularizing Wyclif: The Eucharistic Debates That Fragmented Bohemia
Introduction
Describing the situation in Prague in 1421, Lawrence of Březová, the chief chronicler of the Hussite movement in Bohemia, records a surprising incident. He tells of a group of women in the New Town district of Prague, who were so dissatisfied with the way in which the councilmen managed the religious affairs in their district that they wrote what we might call an open letter to them. In the letter, recorded in the vernacular in an otherwise Latin chronicle, the women complain that numerous priests in Prague do not believe that the Eucharist really is God’s body and blood and that this heresy is taught to the laity. The women write: “We are afraid that many of the new priests, who hold heretical beliefs, continue to be appointed to parishes where they blaspheme against God and doctrine and against the rituals of the church. Meanwhile, you, councilmen, watch it happen and do nothing to stop it… . Therefore, we beg you to take action, for example, you could tell the priest in Poříčí that you will no longer tolerate the violence that he inflicts on the holy sacrament. If you do not wish to do this, if you continue to ignore the true faith, we will be forced to turn against you and so help us God.”1
This petition captured the squabbles between two major pro-reform factions (Prague and Tábor), characteristic of the period between 1419 and 1436, which was generally seen as the main phase of the Hussite revolution and is the central focus of this book. For most of the period, the two main reform factions struggled against each other for adherents and for control over parishes in Prague and across Bohemia, with the Eucharist looming as the most divisive subject, as some were swayed by Wycliffite and other reform ideas and others rejected them.2 The standard narrative of the Hussite reform assumes that the only notable theological discussions were held among the educated clerics. Scholars have dismissed exchanges such as this one as mere complaints by the laity who were, it is implied, naturally garrulous and had little to contribute to the theological reflections at the university. This latter assumption is partly true. The laity had little to add to the theological deliberations among the reform’s leaders, but the example shows that they knew enough about them to debate with each other and to form their own opinions. The narrative needs to be refocused to take into account the real importance of the women’s official complaint: it shows that theological debates were not confined to the clerical caste, nor were they confined to Latin. The women clearly understood the basic ramifications of the debate and officially—and in their vernacular—protested against the priests’ Wycliffite understanding of the mass, even threatening disobedience if their request, which was theological in nature, went unheeded. Moreover, the women were convinced that they—and, this is important, not their priest—held the “true faith” and swore to commit acts of civil unrest, such as turning against their councilmen, in order to promote what they understood this to be. This shows that disagreements about what constituted “true faith” divided also the laity, who held their own conclusions with impressive confidence, even in the face of powerful city magistrates.
Such was the nature of religious disagreements in fifteenth-century