Skip to main content

John Huss



John Huss (Jan Hus) 1369-1415 was a Czech priest, church reformer, a seminal figure in the Bohemian Reformation and a key predecessor to Protestantism. After John Wycliffe, the theorist of ecclesiastical Reformation, Hus is considered the first Church reformer, as he lived before Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli. His teachings had a strong influence on Martin Luther himself.

Hus was burned at the stake  on July 6, 1415, for heresy against the doctrines of the Catholic Church, including those on ecclesiology, statues, the Eucharist (Holy communion continually re-crucifying Christ, unbiblical teaching that it mystically turns into the real body & blood of Christ, etc), and other theological topics.

At the place of execution, he knelt down, spread out his hands, and prayed aloud. The executioner undressed Hus and tied his hands behind his back with ropes, and bound his neck with a chain to a stake around which wood and straw had been piled up so that it covered him to the neck. At the last moment, the imperial marshal, von Pappenheim, in the presence of the Count Palatine, asked Hus to recant and thus save his own life. Hus declined thus:

"God is my witness that the things charged against me I never preached. In the same truth of the Gospel which I have written, taught, and preached, drawing upon the sayings and positions of the holy doctors, I am ready to die today."

Anecdotally, it has been claimed that the executioners had trouble intensifying the fire. An old woman then came to the stake and threw a relatively small amount of brushwood on it. Upon seeing her act, a suffering Hus then exclaimed, "Sancta Simplicitas!". The phrase's Czech Translation, "Holy simplicity!" is still used today when commenting on a person's stupid action and naïveté, in this case, the clumsy Catholic executioners.

It is said that when he was about to expire, he cried out, "Christ, son of the Living God, have mercy on us!" Hus' ashes were later thrown into the Rhine River.

Responding with horror to the execution of Hus, the people of Bohemia moved even more rapidly away from Papal teachings, provoking Rome to pronounce a crusade against them (1 March 1420): Pope Martin V issued a Papal bull authorizing the killing of all supporters of reformers like Hus and Wycliffe.

Jan Hus was a key contributor to Protestantism, whose teachings had a strong influence on the states of Europe and on Martin Luther. In New York City, a church in Brooklyn (located at 153 Ocean Avenue), and a church and a theatre in Manhattan (located at 351 East 74th Street) are named for Hus: respectively the John Hus Moravian Church, the Jan Hus Presbyterian Church. A statue of Jan Hus was erected at the Union Cemetery in Bohemia, New York (on Long Island) by Czech immigrants to the New York area in 1893.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is Your Pastor a Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing?

In this age of cultural Christianity, and what I mean by that is Christianity that is changed to fit the current popular ideas.  Christianity that is custom tailored to suit the community’s various wants, tastes, and needs. Did you know that when one of the trendy new “modern churches” are planning to plant a campus (that’s the new trendy name for these modern, progressive churches now, “campuses” ) they send interviewers into the community to talk with people to find out what they want in a church.  What sort of programs they like and what kind of sermons they want to hear, and then they tailor the entire worship service around what the community wants.  This is not church folks, this is a social club.   The problem with this new fangled Christianity is that people may know very well what they want, but what they need is an entirely different story.  Many people today want to be entertained in a worship service.  They want loud music, they want drama skits...
Post a Comment
Read more

Why the Reformation Still Matters

  In an era of spiritual confusion and cultural fragmentation, the Reformation stands as a poignant reminder that truth is worth fighting for.    October isn’t just about falling leaves and pumpkin spice ;  it’s Reformation Month. On October 31, 1517, Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the church door in Wittenberg, sparking a movement that would reshape the church, challenge empires, and recover the gospel’s blazing center: salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. This month, I’m launching a series of blog posts that explore why the Reformation still matters, how its truths confront our modern confusion, comfort our weary hearts, and call us back to the beauty of biblical grace.   When most people hear the term “Reformation,” they think of dusty history books, old church controversies, or perhaps Martin Luther wielding a hammer. However, the truth is that the Reformation isn’t just a chapter in church history; it’s a living legacy. It’...
Post a Comment
Read more

America is no Longer Good

French writer Alexis de Tocqueville, after visiting America in 1831, said “I sought for the greatness of the United States in her commodious harbors, her ample rivers, her fertile fields, and boundless forests, and it was not there. I sought for it in her rich mines, her vast world commerce, her public school system, and in her institutions of higher learning, and it was not there. I looked for it in her democratic Congress and her matchless Constitution, and it was not there. Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great!”   I read Democracy in America in college.  De Tocqueville traveled all over America searching for what made us a great nation and he found the old time church with old time preachers, preaching hellfire and brimstone sermons was what made America ...
Post a Comment
Read more