Hus’s Later Sermons: Evidence of Radicalization
As a direct result of the charges, Hus’s message intensified, and he began speaking out against clerical corruption and immorality with the kind of harsh candor that he had previously reserved for addressing the clerics directly. The tenor of his sermons shifted noticeably: the collection of sermons preached in the Bethlehem Chapel between 1410 and 141254 shows a different kind of a preacher from the one in 1403. Salvation of the faithful remained the cornerstone of Hus’s preaching efforts, but that subject was now intertwined with a critique of the inefficacy of his fellow clergy in a way that was absent in earlier sermons. This development signaled a shift in Hus’s thinking: a radicalization of Hus’s stances and opinions. Hus did not hesitate to criticize the clerical rank to the point of separating himself from all morally corrupt clerics. In doing so, he adopted what has been described as an extraclerical position, that is to say, using his position as a member of the elite clerical establishment to criticize the behavior of other clergy for failing to live out the ideals that they espoused.55 It accomplished two goals. It allowed him to distance himself from the institutional clergy that he criticized and to appeal to the laity, letting them know that he was a viable alternative.
It seems clear that Hus used the chapel as a venue for voicing his dissent. After he was banned by the papal bull from preaching, Hus spoke publicly against the decree and about his intent not to comply. The pulpit in Bethlehem proved the perfect venue, and the audience he had cultivated for the past eight years were the perfect recipients for his message of public dissent. In a spectacular sermon delivered on June 25, 1410, Hus announced his disobedience of the papal bull and read from his appeal. Then he turned to his audience, asking those gathered if they supported him in this decision, and they shouted out that they would. This event signaled that the laity gathered at Bethlehem was willing to defy authorities in order to stand with Hus. In effect, he took his appeal to the laity and presented them with the choice of obeying the church authorities or obeying him, a move that would have serious and lasting implications for religious life in Bohemia.56 This was the beginning of his open campaign of disobedience, one of the first moments in which Hus can be seen as deliberately creating a party of followers loyal to him as opposed to the official authorities.
In a number of subsequent sermons Hus then declared that he did not wish to obey the prelates or even the archbishop in this matter.57 He then exhorted the faithful to disobey the counsel of those in authority (parents, both natural and spiritual) if, in their view, the judgments of these authorities went against God’s commandments.58 “Let us not obey the king himself or a prelate should they order us to do something which defies the example of Christ, because by disobeying the mortal’s erroneous command we are obeying Christ.”59 This is an invitation with serious and lasting consequences. Hus says that it is at times possible to obey Christ by disobeying the church hierarchy, in other words, he presents a divide between Christ and the church. In light of Hus’s ecclesiology, this makes perfect sense.
As of 1410, Hus distanced himself from ecclesiastical authorities and began styling himself not so much their reformer but their alternative. One of the strategies that Hus employed to present himself as a reformed alternative to the corrupt authorities was to speak about the church as already divided, as composed of “us” and “them,” two camps, one containing himself and his followers, the other his opponents. To underscore the depth of the chasm, Hus equated his opponents with the party of Judas, explaining that, like Judas, they followed Christ solely for the sake of alms. Hus equated this with serving as priests for the sake of benefices and taking holy orders so as to have an easy life.60 The “us versus them” mentality is evident throughout these later sermons. In one example, Hus illustrated the division between the two parties by saying that, whereas Christ said, go preach God’s word, they (meaning Christ’s and, fittingly, Hus’s opponents) say do not preach, do not offer God’s word gratis. Whereas Christ said not to bring gold or silver with you, they say the opposite, and whereas Christ said, we do not want to be served, the corrupt clergy claim the opposite. At the end of the sermon, Hus appealed directly to his listeners: “let us not act like this [meaning like Christ’s and Hus’s opponents], but let us compare our lives with the life of Christ, so that with him we could enter the eternal kingdom.”61 In order to underscore the differences between the two camps, Hus described the pope and prelates as the enemies of God and the Scriptures. In a direct allusion to the papal ban on preaching, Hus argued that because the pope and prelates ignored God’s command that his word be preached in the whole world, they showed themselves as “enemies of the Scriptures … and false witnesses.” Such enemies of the Scriptures ought to be condemned, Hus insisted, by all who love God and also by God. Hus styled himself and his followers as the party of God, of the Scriptures and of such authorities as the apostles, and also Augustine, Gregory, Pope Leo, Bede, John Chrysostom, and Anacletus, with whom Hus agreed that “one should not obey [another man] in evil.”62
As a way of discovering who belonged to which party, Hus invited his faithful to test the lives of those around them. In one memorable sermon, he advised them: “When you see any Christian, immediately think whether his life agrees with the Scriptures. If you think that it does”—Hus here emphasized each person’s responsibility for his own discernment—“then he is a true Christian, if he does not act the way that Christ had ordered he is false.”63 This invitation illustrates Hus’s conviction about the importance of the Scriptures in the life of the laity. However, it is a deeply unsettling proposition. In effect, Hus gave the laity the license to judge the clergy’s spiritual mandate and to decide for themselves whether they would recognize (and obey) it or not.
Hus’s status as a reformer is unassailable. His preaching marks him (and others in his generation) as a pro-reform cleric. But laity existed as a kind of afterthought in this pro-reform world. What kind of action or behavior marked them as being in favor of reform? Hus was the first to stir the laity into (what he considered) reform action by giving them a discernible identity: attendance at Bethlehem, willingness to ditch clerics seen as corrupt or immoral, disobedience of commands seen as unjust, and loyalty to himself. This was a way of being and of doing that distinguished them from those who were less committed to the goals of reform. The following sections will explore the ways in which Hus used different vernacular media to persuade the laity to take his side over that of the authorities.
The Speaking Walls of Bethlehem: Exhorting the Laity to Dissent
The pulpit in Bethlehem Chapel was crucial to Hus’s work as a preacher.64 But the chapel’s physical space had another function: its decoration and configuration underscored the message contained in the daily sermons, first of compliance and later of dissent.65 Probably the most surprising feature of the chapel’s interior design is that three texts, rather than images, served as the main focus of the chapel’s decorative program.66 It is possible that images also adorned Bethlehem’s walls but this is not entirely clear.67 All three of the texts now appear on the walls of the reconstructed chapel. What is important for our analysis, and what is not immediately clear from the modern appearance of the chapel, is the order in which each of these texts was put up. From contemporary letters and chance remarks in other documents, it appears that the three texts were not all introduced at the same time. The vernacular confession of faith and the Ten Commandments came first, sometime in 1411 and were followed by Hus’s own treatise On the Six Errors (De sex erroribus), dealing with errors that Hus perceived as rampant in the church, a little over a year later.68
The timing and selection of the particular texts that would be inscribed on the walls of Bethlehem Chapel illustrate the increasing radicalization of John Hus’s reform initiative. The gradual rollout of these texts suggests that the chapel space reflected and responded to the unfolding historical events: whenever