Jan Hus is especially well-known as a preacher and theologian whose activities anticipated the European protestant reformation and the hussite movement. It should not be forgotten, however, that Hus worked for many years as a teacher at the Faculty of Liberal Arts. He was therefore also a philosopher reflecting on contemporary subjects, among which was the reception of the philosophical thought of John Wyclif at Prague University, and the discussion of the reality of universals connected with it. The study maps Hus’s realist conception of universals on the basis of an analysis of the dispersed fragments of his pronouncements on universals from his quaestiones and from his Sentences commentary. The author divides this mapping into four different contexts: (1) God’s nature and the Trinity of Persons; (2) the ideas in God’s mind; (3) being as an analogical quasi-universal; and (4) the very conception of universals, that is of genera and species. In these different thematical areas, the study shows that Hus’s realism played an important role in his philosophico-theological thought of constituting its philosophical grounding. It could be said that although Hus’s realistic attitudes were influenced to a great extent by the thought of John Wyclif, Hus rejected or softened Wyclif’s heterodox opinions and the demands stemming from realism. Hus’s metaphysical standpoint, in the writings in question, also do not show a direct connection with his thoughts on church reform.
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.
This paper is a loose sequel to our 2017 essay “The Hussite Era in the First Edition of Daniel Adam of Veleslavín’s Historical Calendar”, in which we argued that any researcher of an Early Modern Czech historiographic text should thoroughly compare its factual content with the sources it creatively paraphrases, mainly with Václav Hájek of Libočany’s Czech Cronicle. The present article introduces eight Czech manuscripts that emerged in the years 1741–1835 containing passages devoted to the Hussite era and retelling the story of the late 14th and 15th century, each with its own particular angle and emphasis. Since at least six authors are Catholic, their reception of Jan Hus and the militant Utraquist movement is predictably negative; however, our most interesting outputs concern the way historiographers pursued an intertextual discussion with their Humanist predecessors in the first three decades of the 15th century, while paying little or no attention to events that took place after the ratification of the Basel Compacts in 1436.
Text si všímá dvou nových keramických nálezů – kachle a formy na výrobu kachlů – s portrétem Jana Husa. Tyto exempláře tvoří spolu s dalšími dvěma, již publikovanými, uzavřenou skupinku, přičemž přes vzájemné metrické i dílčí výtvarné rozdíly pochází ústřední motiv všech kusů z jednoho společného originálu. Detailní shoda ústředního motivu s vyobrazením Jana Husa na jáchymovských medailích svědčí o tom, že tyto medaile sloužily jako předloha pro zhotovení originální formy, pokud jejím výrobcem, resp. výrobcem dřevěného pozitivního modelu, z nějž byla otištěna, nebyl přímo některý z krušnohorských řezačů pracujících pro jáchymovskou mincovnu (Hieronymus Dietrich či Hieronymus Magdeburger). Nálezová situace exempláře pocházejícího z výzkumu Pražského hradu dovoluje – v kombinaci se zprávami písemných pramenů o stavebním vývoji daného areálu – poměrně přesné datování výroby celé skupiny do 40.–50. let 16. století. Časové zařazení vzniku samotné prvotní formy se odvíjí od datování zmíněných medailí, resp. grafických předloh, a lze je klást nejspíše do druhé poloviny 30. let 16. století. Vzájemné srovnání všech čtyř kusů z hlediska ikonografického a metrického umožňuje vyslovit hypotézu o pořadí jejich vzniku a ve spojení s podrobným hodnocením technologických detailů prokazuje užití dosud jen teoreticky předpokládaných výrobních postupů. and This paper considers two new ceramic finds – a stove tile and mould for making stove tiles – bearing a portrait of Jan Hus. These examples, together with two others published previously, form a closed group, wherein – despite the mutual metric and particular artistic differences – the central motif on all the pieces comes from the same common original. The concurrence in detail with the central motif of the Jáchymov medals with depiction of Jan Hus indicates that such medals were taken as the model for the creation of the original mould, assuming that the latter’s creator – or the creator of the wooden positive from which it was imprinted – was not actually one of the carvers from the Krušné Hory Mts. who worked at the Jáchymov mint (Hieronymus Dietrich or Hieronymus Magdeburger). The finds context of the example from Prague Castle allow, when taken together with reports in written records on the progress of building work in the given area, a relatively precise dating of the products in the whole group to the 1540’s-1550’s. The appearance of the original mould may be chronologically classified by the date of the aforementioned medal, or rather its graphic precursor, and most likely may be assigned to the second half of the 1530’s. A mutual comparison of all four pieces from the iconographic and metric points of view allows a hypothesis to be advanced as to the order in which they were created, and in conjunction with a careful evaluation of the technological details demonstrates the use of a hitherto only theoretically presumed manufacturing process.
The study deals with the stay of Jan Hus at Castle Krakovec from where he was said to have departed for the council of Constance in October 1414. The historicity of this stay was recently doubted by Jan Krško, which lacked support in the sources. However, an analysis of the existing material, particularly the manuscripts of the Old Czech Annals, has shown the record of Hus´s stay at Krakovec comes from contemporary witnesses, which further increases their value. The author also proves Krško´s proposed points of departure for Hus to be unlikely in the case of Prague and thorougly ruled out in the case of Bechyně.
This study determines, from a doctrinal view, the date of the origin of Hus’s Quaestio de testimonio fidei christianae as, at the earliest, in the year 1408, and it displays in particular detail Hus’s teaching and its sources in this regard. Among these sources belong on the one hand the texts of Hus’s teacher Stanislav of Znojmo, on the other hand the texts of John Wyclif. It is the tracts of these two that allow one to reconstruct the doctrine of Hus’s standpoint. It is shown that Hus, like Stanislav and Wyclif, was a proponent of the dual creation of universals, that is by a pure act of God and by a pure potential in the sense of first matter. Hus addressed this quaestio in a theological context, or more exactly in the context of Christian faith, although his vocabulary preserves the semblance of philosophical language. Hus clearly sought, in this quaestio, to say that human reason is not capable of knowing universals, but that universals were revealed in scripture (Gen 1,21-25), and therefore every Christian must recognise their existence on the basis of faith.
Stanislav of Znojmo (died 1414), a professor of the Prague Theological Faculty, first a teacher and friend to Jan Hus, but then his decided opponent, wrote a comprehensive treatise, probably around 1403, entitled De vero et falso. The subject of my article is an analysis of the content of this work. In it, Stanislav deals with the question of the truth of a proposition and the problem of its truth-maker. The question of the truth-maker falls into the area of metaphysics, and so the author speaks of metaphysical truth. In so far as metaphysical truth is concerned, Stanislav of Znojmo defends a decidedly realist standpoint, judging that categorematic expressions are not alone in having real counterparts in the world, but syncategorematic expressions (for example, statement conjunctions, words expressing negations and so on) also have such counterparts. Stanislav’s treatise, in its overall orientation, belongs to propositionalism, a trend in logical thought widespread at the end of the Middle Ages. Although the author of the treatise De vero et falso does not cite contemporary authors, he shows a knowledge of some exponents of propositional logic (namely Gregory of Rimini, for example). His main inspiration, however, is undoubtedly the work of John Wyclif.