Wyclif’s teachings found ardent supporters at the university, but the church authorities tended to view this support as suspect. In 1403, the first set of forty-five articles (which would be cited again at the Council of Constance) was condemned in Prague, to the great chagrin of many university masters there. Between 1406 and 1408, the synods in the city took up the problem of Wyclif’s remanence, banning all teaching of Wyclif’s treatises. This escalated in the archbishop’s order that all of Wyclif’s books be handed over in 1409 and culminated in the public burning of Wyclif’s books in 1410.
Hus was drawn into this general nervousness about Wyclif’s influence in Prague. In 1408, a group of parish priests from Prague filed a host of accusations against Hus, arguing that he criticized other clerics from his pulpit and insulted their reputation, even claiming that Hus had preached Wyclif’s Eucharistic doctrine of remanence. The synod’s interference reveals how nervous the authorities felt about Hus’s influence on the ordinary faithful. In fact, Hus spent most of his time in the pulpit proclaiming the need for a personal, inner conversion of every individual. Occasionally, he preached on the subject of priestly immorality, arguing that it put an obstacle in the path of the lay faithful if the priests did not serve as moral exemplars and guides on the path to salvation.
In accusations against Hus, the problem was one of context. Although Hus delivered sermons critical of the clergy at synods as well as on the university soil, he attracted the suspicion of the archbishop only after saying the same things in Bethlehem Chapel before the laity.49 The rules for castigating clerical immorality were different at synods or on the university soil, where only clerics were present. In those situations, his fellow priests welcomed his harshness and even sought it out. The archbishop of Prague invited Hus to preach at the local synod, not once but twice, in 1405 and again in 1407. The invitations stopped after the first set of accusations in 1408. But before Hus was enmeshed in legal action, he was chosen to be a kind of ecclesiastical keynote speaker at both synods, setting the tone for the entire gathering. On both occasions, Hus delivered a searing critique of simony, clerical laziness, and immorality evident in the two extant synodal sermons. In the first meeting on October 19, 1405, Hus chose to preach on a verse from the Gospel of Matthew (22:37), “Diliges Dominum Deum tuum.” In his sermon, he speaks about the church as the bride of Christ, lambasting those clerics who had turned away from God’s love and from following Christ. In the meeting two years later, on October 18, 1407, Hus preached on a verse from Ephesians (6:14), “State succincti lumbos,” and criticized clerics who lived with concubines, calling them heretics.50
Hus’s sermons at the university, six of which are extant, were no different. In Hus’s sermon delivered at the university on December 5, 1404, he especially railed against hypocrisy among the clergy, which was directly related to their negligence of clerical duties and, of course, greed and simony.51 Greed was, in Hus’s view, the root of all evil in the church, and he especially despised those who strove after ecclesiastical honors and appointments, and those who possessed multiple benefices. He continually reminded his audience of the church’s own rulings against multiple benefices and simony. He also reminded his listeners that the general synod itself banned payments to priests for holy services, including baptisms, funerals, and holy communion. Hus lamented the fact that this rule had been consistently disobeyed, and complained that very few priests did not receive money in exchange for spiritual services. It bears repeating that Bethlehem’s charter was set up in order to counter these very customs that were rife among the clergy.
Hus’s high view of the priestly vocation is evident from his insistence that those who did not live up to a strict—and somewhat radical—standard of behavior ought to be removed from the preaching office and from the church. Citing the words of Jesus to his disciples, Hus admonished his fellow clergy in unequivocal terms: “you are the salt of the people,” he told them, “by your exemplary life and illumination through your salubrious teaching.”52 The priest who failed to live well also failed to show the path of salvation to the faithful entrusted to his care and therefore was no longer effective. The sermons delivered before the clergy were as critical as those before the people. Hus did not flatter the clergy to their faces and complain about them behind their backs; if anything, he spoke with even greater candor and indignation to his colleagues.
Hus’s case shows that complaints against clerical greed and immorality were an accepted (and applauded) part of life in the clerical circles, but were not tolerated when raised before the laity. And Hus used the pulpit in Bethlehem to air complaints about the clergy in Prague, addressing criticisms of fellow clerics to the laity. This simply was not done. The clerics believed that the laity should not be dragged into what was, they thought, the church’s internal business. One was supposed to reserve such criticisms for gatherings of the clergy, in the same way that present-day political parties try to deal with internal issues internally, and frown upon their members leaking internal disputes to the public. Hus transgressed this boundary, a decision that was the first sign of the movement that took his name: addressing internal clerical business to the laity. But it is clear that the laity enjoyed listening to Hus speaking on these topics and berating fellow clerics. This created the kind of intimacy that arises between two parties when they unite in criticizing a third, and it won Hus a sizeable following of like-minded clerics and laity.
In 1409, Hus was confronted with another set of accusations. This time, he was accused by the inquisitor of Prague, Jan Protiva. The inquisitor accused Hus of preaching excessively against the clergy and of inciting the people against them. He argued that Hus’s preaching damaged the reputation of priests and discouraged lay obedience. The inquisitor also accused Hus of urging the faithful to leave their parish and come to Bethlehem Chapel instead, even exhorting the faithful to disobey those prelates and priests who lived in sin. Finally, the inquisitor accused Hus of preaching that priests in mortal sin could not celebrate a valid mass or any other sacrament.53 As before, Hus answered all complaints against him, arguing that he had not violated any decrees. But the archbishop would not be placated. In his view, Hus’s preaching posed a threat, and Bethlehem Chapel came to be seen by the ecclesiastical hierarchy as a font of error and sedition. The nature of the accusations is significant: if Hus even hinted that the faithful who were dissatisfied with their parish priests—or whose priests were judged to live in sin—ought to leave their parish and come to Bethlehem instead, then this is evidence that he began to see his chapel as an alternative place of worship and that he was beginning to see his supporters and sympathizers among the faithful as a kind of para-church organization. Telling the faithful to disobey sinful prelates—or those Hus described as sinful—and leave their parishes may have made sense in light of Hus’s Wycliffite ecclesiology, but it amounted to a piece of advice that was both disruptive and subversive.
This was no longer merely a local trouble. Soon after, the archbishop turned to the curia. And in response, in December 1409, Pope Alexander V issued a bull authorizing the archbishop to prosecute error. This was the bull that legitimized the collection (and later destruction) of Wyclif’s books