The shift in tone and message between the first set of texts, inscribed sometime in 1411, and the polemical treatise, inscribed contemporaneously or shortly after Hus’s exile in October 1412, bespeaks a massive change in strategy. The Ten Commandments and the confession of faith were inscribed in the vernacular and do not depart from the contemporary standard of orthodoxy. Their display served as a reminder of the essentials of the faith, fully in keeping with the chapel’s mission to advance the goals of lay catechesis, serve the spiritual needs of the Czech speakers in Prague, and promote interior conversion to Christ. The Ten Commandments, especially, were being increasingly displayed on tablets or walls in churches around Europe.
The confession of faith (credo) was not in any way controversial. It was said during the Latin celebration of the mass, but Hus wrote it out in the vernacular, to remind his followers what they held as most important. For an added effect, Hus changed the grammar in the credo, from the usual first person singular to a singular imperative, to convey the impression that he was addressing each of the individuals directly. Thus, the walls admonished those present to “believe,” as a command, “in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic church, and the communion of saints,” instead of the usual “I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic church, and the communion of saints.” The entire confession of faith was retold in this way, commanding faith according to the belief of the church. Along with the Ten Commandments, also in the grammatical form of a singular imperative, the walls featured an unimpeachably orthodox exhortation to faith and set the rules of observance for the community of Czech faithful at Bethlehem. The writings on the walls served not as much as a reminder but rather as a command.
The remarkable thing about the writings that Hus commissioned to be put on the walls of his chapel, in addition to the fact that he selected textual ornamentation, is the fact that both texts appeared in the vernacular. This decision was a conscious, premeditated move, in keeping with the chapel’s mission, which was to serve the spiritual needs of the Czech-speaking population of Prague. This use of the vernacular would send a powerful message to all who came to hear Jan Hus preach. But the fact that the two texts were displayed in the Czech vernacular was important for other reasons as well. It signaled a tacit exclusion of those for whom the preaching space was not intended: the Germans. At the beginning of the fifteenth century, Prague had a sizable German community. Many Germans were associated with the royal court, others came by way of ecclesiastical and other appointments. Still others were descendants of German colonists, who had settled there back in the thirteenth century. The two linguistic groups generally coexisted peacefully, but resentment was at times felt toward the Germans, who despite being relative newcomers occupied many of the highest positions of authority in the state and the city. Many if not most citizens of Prague were probably functionally bilingual—business was conducted in both Czech and German—but even if the Germans were able to read the texts on the Bethlehem walls, the language would have signaled exclusion to them.
Although by 1411 Jan Hus was already calling for the reform of clerical life, the space where he preached did not contain any physical displays of his reform agenda. It was not until his excommunication and exile in October of 1412, which followed the pope’s ban on preaching in Bethlehem Chapel, that Hus added a polemical treatise, written in Latin, to the wall decorations. In comparison with the earlier inscriptions, this later one, made in Latin, was highly polemical. It is this move from the uncontroversial to the polemical that signaled a shift in Hus’s view of his reforming mission to the laity.
And indeed, much had changed since 1411. One of the most important domestic developments had been the king’s decision to support Pope John XXIII’s policy of selling indulgences in order to finance a crusading expedition against a political adversary. King Wenceslas, who for reasons of his own needed to maintain his alliance with John XXIII, allowed the collection of indulgences to begin in his territory. In response, Jan Hus and his followers spoke up sharply and repeatedly against this decision. Ultimately, Hus’s opposition to the king would amount to political suicide, but that would not become clear until a few years later when Hus’s falling out with the king deprived him of a patron who could have protected him from condemnation at the Council of Constance in 1415. However, back in the year 1412, Jan Hus was not to be deterred by the loss of his most powerful ally. In fact, he attempted to compensate for it by recruiting an entirely new constituency, the people of Prague.
After October 1412, Hus began deliberately to mobilize the laity in support of his interpretation of what was wrong with the church and commissioned his treatise On the Six Errors to be inscribed on the walls of Bethlehem Chapel. The new inscription was a declaration of war on corrupt clerics and the church that shielded them, but also a veiled declaration of his own innocence in the curia’s continuing lawsuit against him. The treatise, written and displayed in Latin (though a vernacular version did circulate), was entirely composed of quotations from patristic authors addressing six errant practices that Hus saw plaguing the contemporary church.69 In the treatise, Hus refuted the claims that priests could create God (that is, in the sacrament of the Eucharist) and forgive sins against others. He also warned against holding belief in the Virgin Mary, the saints, and the popes in the same sense as in God. Here he drew on Augustine’s distinction between different kinds of belief: believing in someone, believing about someone, and believing someone.70 In the fourth section, Hus argued against the notion that the clergy, the prelates, or even the pope ought to be obeyed without question. Hus’s fifth argument was that a condemnation could only be considered valid if it was in accord with God’s law. Finally, Hus argued against simony, the purchase or sale of spiritual things. He viewed this as a pernicious vice, spreading through the body of the church, as he put it, like leprosy.
In order to make his criticism more authoritative and scathing, it consisted entirely of quotations from the Bible and the church fathers and was inscribed in this way on the southern and northern walls of Bethlehem Chapel. Because the inscriptions could hardly be deciphered by those present, being written above the audience’s head and in Latin, their significance was largely symbolic. They were there and Hus could point to them if he liked.71 In this way, it was as if Jesus, the apostle Paul, Augustine, and Gregory the Great were themselves directly criticizing the errors in the contemporary church, with Hus merely serving as their messenger. The quotations later appeared together with his commentary as a book (discussed later in this chapter), but only the direct quotations were inscribed on the walls in Bethlehem.
It is possible that Hus expanded upon the quotations in his sermons, but his choice to display texts by esteemed and unshakable authorities of the ancient church rather than his own words of commentary is of great importance. By posting them publicly, Hus was, in effect, claiming that he (and the ideals that he stood for) had the authority of the early church behind him. With the church fathers figuratively by his side, Hus channeled the authority of the Scriptures as well as of revered figures such as Augustine, Gregory the Great, and Jerome, in support of his preaching and reform agenda. The small site of his preaching, the Bethlehem Chapel, was thus transformed into a repository of apostolic truth. A space intended to meet the spiritual needs of the Czech population in Prague became the headquarters of a movement calling for disobedience to papal authority. The decoration of Bethlehem Chapel bears witness to the shift: whereas the two original texts, the confession of faith and the Ten Commandments, could not be found objectionable by any ecclesiastical authority, the quotations had highly polemical implications. Whereas the two original texts served as instructions in obedience to the teaching of the church, the later text served as a moral justification for disobedience.
Hus’s public criticism of clerical privilege and immorality was not unusual among pro-reform preachers. But Hus disseminated his opinions publicly, encouraging the laity to identify and speak against clerical immorality, in effect telling them that they could decide what was right and moral. But this was no invitation to follow one’s personal truth: Hus used a number of strategies to persuade the laity to follow his own judgment on what was right and moral. His implied leadership was apparent everywhere, even in the choice of wall inscriptions.