October 1414 – May 1416
Constance, 1414–1416
At the urging of Sigismund, King of the Romans and Wenceslas’s heir, Pope John XXIII calls a general council to Constance for 1 November 1414 to end the schism of three popes. Hus sets out on 11 October 1414, before he holds Sigismund’s safe conduct, with the lords Václav of Dubá and Jan of Chlum, and travels by Nuremberg. He reaches Constance on 3 November. The safe conduct guarantees only his journey through Sigismund’s lands.
Václav Brožík, Master Jan Hus at the Council of Constance, 1883Wikimedia Commons, Václav Brožík, Public domain (Vaclav Brozik - Hus.jpg)
On 28 November 1414 Hus is arrested in the pope’s palace, and from 6 December he is held in the Dominican friary on an island in the lake. After Pope John XXIII flees the council in March 1415, Hus is moved to the bishop’s castle of Gottlieben on the Rhine. At hearings on 5, 7 and 8 June he asks to be shown his errors from Scripture and refuses to recant. On 6 July 1415 the council condemns him in the cathedral, and he is burned the same day outside the town and his ashes are thrown into the Rhine.
Hus burned at Constance, from the Jena Codex, about 1490–1510Wikimedia Commons, attributed to Janíček Zmilelý of Písek, Public domain (Jan Hus at the Stake.jpg)
On 2 September 1415, 452 nobles of Bohemia and Moravia set their seals to letters of protest against the burning. Jerome of Prague, Hus’s friend, comes to Constance in April 1415, is arrested at Hirschau in the Upper Palatinate on his way home and brought back to the council. He recants in September, takes back the recantation on 26 May 1416 and is burned on 30 May at the place where Hus died.
The letter of the Bohemian and Moravian nobles to the council against the burning of Hus, 2 September 1415, with its sealsWikimedia Commons, unknown author, Public domain (Stížný list české a moravské šlechty kostnickému koncilu.jpg)
Sources
- Matthew Spinka, John Hus at the Council of Constance (1965).
- Thomas A. Fudge, The Trial of Jan Hus: Medieval Heresy and Criminal Procedure (2013).
- Thomas A. Fudge, Jerome of Prague and the Foundations of the Hussite Movement (2016).
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