The outbreak of Schism in 1378 introduced a shift in searching for a new source of authority which could legitimise the church reform. Since the early 1390s, the conciliar tradition preferring the canon law as the leading authority for determining the Schism has been constituted and supported among French or German theologians. Nevertheless, in the late 1370s, John Wyclif developed another solution for church reform favouring God’s law and the ideal of a top-down reformation led by righteous civil lords, which Jan Hus and his followers further adopted within the early 15th Century. Conciliarism and the English model for church reform proposed by Wyclif competed in politics after 1409. Recently, new sources treating the clashes over authority issues in the Middle Ages were published, which shed new light on the problem.
The sermon with central theme Diliges Dominum Deum was preached by Jan Hus as his first synodical sermon at the synod of Prague Archdiocese on the feast of st. Lucas at the 19th of October 1405. This text, written in form of thematic preaching, is concerned with usual problems of the Church at that time, especially with sins of adultery and simony. The value of the sermon lies in an opening part, in which Jan Hus described his ecclesiological meanings based on the opinions of John Wycliff. This occurence of Wycliffe's ecclesiology is one of the earliest evidences of his influence over Jan Hus' concept of the Church. The aim of this paper is to introduce the sermon Diliges and the context, in which was preached. Attention will be paid not only to content, but also to form of the sermon.