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XLII.: To John of Chlum ( Blackfriars, without date: February 1415) - Jan Huss, The Letters of John Hus [1904]

Edition used:

The Letters of John Hus. With Introductions and Explanatory Notes by Herbert B. Workman and R. Martin Pope (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1904).

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XLII.

To John of Chlum

(Blackfriars, without date: February 1415)

Noble and gracious lord, I am greatly comforted. I beg you for God’s sake not to be weary of your long-continued and great efforts on my account: for the God of truth and the Lord of justice is standing by you to give you your reward.

These commissioners urged me persistently for several days to hand over my case to twelve or thirteen masters! I refused to submit myself to them. But after I had written with my own hand replies in reference to the forty-five articles of Wyclif, and to the others which are charged against me, I at once wrote out in the presence of the notaries and commissioners a protest expressing my desire to appear before the whole Council and give an account of the beliefs I hold.

The articles which they have extracted from my book De Ecclesia by false omissions and additions shall be brought to light by God’s grace, and also the reply which I wrote in prison, though I had not a single book to help me.1

A harder comforter in time of sickness I have never found in my life than Palecz!

All the clerks of the Pope’s household2 and all my goalers treat me with much kindness. The Lord delivered Jonah from the whale’s belly, David from the lions’ den, the three children from the fiery furnace, Susannah from the accusation of false witnesses:3 and He can deliver me, if expedient, for the glory of His name and for the preaching of His word. But if a death precious in the Lord’s sight shall fall to me, the Lord’s name be blessed. If I could only see the King once more along with our Bohemian friends, I should be comforted.

I have been much rejoiced at the news.4 Surely the Lord hath comforted me. I was glad to hear of Henry Skopek’s health.5 It is good of you to send me a Bible.6 Don’t be distressed about me. For what profit hath it? Written in prison at midnight. Please reward that faithful friend of mine to whom I am specially indebted.7

The letters written to Jakoubek to which Hus refers in the following letter are lost. Jakoubek (Jacobellus or Little James, so called from his stature), whose fuller name was Jakoubek ze Střibra of Mies, had taken his B.A. at Prague in 1393, his M.A. in 1397. He was therefore older than Hus, and from the first had been one of the leading spirits among the Reformers. He had succeeded Michael the Pleader as vicar of St. Adalbert’s. He had now become the leader of the Utraquists in the question of the cup. Two Waldensians from Dresden, Peter and Nicholas, ‘who were given to asking curious questions,’ had raised the matter, and on being expelled from the diocese had come to Prague. Here they had persuaded Jakoubek, in the summer of 1414, to return to the primitive custom of the Church. So at four churches in Prague, St. Michael’s, St. Nicholas’s, St. Adalbert’s, and St. Martin’s, the laymen once more partook of the communion under both species. But at the Bethlehem, under priest Hawlik, there seems to have been a protest against the innovation (p. 248, infra). As we have seen already (p. 169), this led to a division among the Reformers, and Chlum invoked the authority of Hus. Hitherto, Hus had taken little interest in the matter—in fact, in his De Cœna Domini, written at a later date, he still practically concedes the Roman position.1 But his views were already undergoing a rapid change, and he soon committed himself decisively to the opinions of Jakoubek (infra, 245, 248). The lengthy discussions of the matter between Jakoubek and Andrew Brod have been preserved for us in Hardt (iii. 335-933), and prove Jakoubek to have been an acute and well-read debater.

[1 ]This answer to Hus is preserved for us in Doc. 204-24. It is remarkable for its full quotations of Scripture. Its other quotations are familiar to us already in the De Ecclesia itself, and prove that Hus had a good verbal memory of his own work. Probably Hus did not reckon his ‘Bible’ (see below) as ‘a book.’

[2 ]Cameræ.

[3 ]Cf. p. 197.

[4 ]Possibly the news of the growing dissensions between John and the Council.

[5 ]P. 169, n. 2.

[6 ]See n. 1 above.

[7 ]Gaoler Robert.

[1 ]See Mon. i. 40d., last par.