Jan Huss’s Revolution
Your great compatriot, Wycliffe, is rightly considered as the beginner of the Reformation. Wycliffe spoke, and his word was his great mission on earth. But his word in Bohemia became flesh—yea, more than flesh—blood and fire. Human words are never great except when transformed into a drama—when incarnated into life. Wycliffe was never so great in England as he became in Bohemia. Christianity in Bohemia was at that time relatively young, nearly three times younger than in Rome. But since Prince Borivoj was baptised by the Slav Apostle, Methodius, never did Bohemian Christianity stand nearer to the primitive Bohemian paganism than at the time when King Wenceslas ruled in Bohemia, and Pope John XXIII ruled in Rome, and Jan Huss served as preacher in a Prague chapel called the Bethlehemian. The paganism under the style of poor Jesus, against which fought Huss, was much more obstinate and aggressive than the paganism under the style of Perun, against which fought St. Methodius. Everywhere was found a substitute for Christ, everywhere a pretext for an easy life and for a broad way instead of the narrow one. Sins and virtues had been equalised by means of money. The Church buildings had been transformed into public places for the exchange of sins and virtues. “Repentance, not Money!”—exclaimed Jan Huss. But his voice was stifled by the piercing sounds of the drums by which the sale of absolution for sin was announced in the streets. Again exclaimed Jan Huss: “The whole Bohemian nation is longing after Truth.” But the traders in Christ’s blood and tears laughed him to scorn. The doctors of theology asked their colleague Huss to confess that “the Pope is the head and the Bishops the body of the Church, and all their orders must be obeyed.” But Huss did not care very much either about the head or the body, but principally about the spirit of the Christian Church. And this spirit he saw eclipsed. He saw men again falling back to the creed of serving “two masters.” He looked to the heart of the Christian religion and saw that it was sick, and his soul revolted against it. But his righteous revolution was regarded as a malevolent innovation, his words as a scandalous licence, and his tendencies as a deliberate destruction of Christianity. Therefore Jan Huss was brought before a tribunal of Christian judges, condemned to death and burnt to ashes, ad magnam Dei gloriam, as the Bishop of Lodi preached on that occasion.
The fact was that the Council of Constance was a great innovator, and that Huss stood for the true catholicity of old. He fought for the primitive Christian spirit which always inspired, vivified and purified the Christian world, and his judges introduced a quite anti-Christian, a quite new spirit into the Church, the spirit of judging and killing. The sufficient proof—if you need proof at all—of this is that Huss suffered as a Christian martyr and through painful suffering brought his cause to glory; whereas his judges killed him in the hope through a crime to promote the Christian cause, and so covered their names with shame. The truth and glory of Jan Huss’s cause were manifested last year throughout the whole of the globe. The whole world celebrated the quincentenary of his martyr death. I participated in this celebration in New York. It was a rare spectacle, that the New World saw. The Orthodox Christians, Roman Catholics, Protestants, Anglicans, Methodists and Baptists, all the Churches and denominations participated in it. We went together, we prayed together, and we felt united in one and the same spirit. That was a great moment, for many of us the unique moment, when we experienced what is meant by the catholicity, by the noble catholicity, of the Christian Church, as Bishop Westcott called it. It was an elevated and sweet feeling. The diabolical spirit of the Council of Constance never could unite us, but the Christian Catholic spirit of Jan Huss united us. The memory of Pope John XXIII divides the world, whereas the memory of the great apostle of the Bohemian nation unites it. Yet the revolution of Jan Huss was not of a personal character. It was not directed against John XXIII, or against the Vatican as Vatican—it was directed against the spirit of Forum Romanum which crept into the Vatican and dwelled there. It was directed against Jupiter, who took the place of Christ in Rome and who invisibly inspired the Council of Constance; and against Perun, who, disguised, smiled from every church in Prague, and with a smile ruled over the souls in Bohemia under the name of Christ.