r/MedievalHistory • u/EntranceFeisty8373 • 2d ago
Hus underrated?
Can anyone tell me why Martin Luther is the first name that comes to mind when telling the story of the reformation when Jan Hus triggered a similar reformation in the late Middle Ages a century earlier? At first glance they both seem to oppose the same things: Church excesses, simony, the sacraments etc... And his criticisms seemed to be adopted across Czech before Luther nailed his thesis in Wittenburg. Is it simply a Western European bias, or are the two movements significantly different?
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u/HotHoliday968 2d ago
There were several "proto-Protestant" reform movements prior to Luther (Waldensians, Lollards, Abelards, Fraticelli, Gottesfreunde, etc - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Protestantism) that are not the Reformation because they are not THE protestant reformation that formed the branches as we know them. They all contributed ideas, like how Wycliffe inspired Hus while he was at university in Prague, but they just didn't reach the critical mass that divided the Christian world the same.
Like Hus, they were mostly retained to their locality and immediate issues, but the main thing about the Hussites is Jan was killed, his followers went off the deep end, and, in the end, the moderates ended up winning out and being forced back into Holy Mother Church. If there had been more outcomes or theological movements off of Hus, then maybe it might be seen as more, but the Hussites tied things in with their identity that prevented it from spreading too much, in spite of some similarly shared points. That and the devestation caused by the marauding peasant bands didn't exactly make it took good for them.
In truth, without the invention of the printing press yet to spread information to the growing literate and decentralized HRE, there would've been high chances of Luther could've just being another minor reformer. But his protection by the Duke of Saxony and the use of pamphlets made his theological points spread far faster and easier to receive and debate, rather than at the end of a Hussite píšťala.
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u/Sourcerid 1d ago edited 1d ago
Also a good chunk of monastic orders were themselves somewhat splinter movements that got better absorbed by the Church.
I'd say the conversion of the Teutonic Order and the Duke of Saxony might've been bigger parts than the Printing Press, that's a phenomena that took pace quite after the reformation was adopted by some of the political forces, which relied less on printed books, and we saw in the Hussites those religious movements spreading quite easily without the press. The printing press and the reformation happened in relatively close in times so we might try to force a relation of causation but really the protestant reformation is but a part of a string of attritions with the church that had all very varying results, usually the worse the more distant the church was with local institutions. England was a bit more integrated with the church and the reformation there is where it came later and weaker.
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u/CobainPatocrator 2d ago
Simply put, Hussitism didn't really leave the Kingdom of Bohemia. Luther's criticisms of the Church ignited a centuries-long crisis in Europe that irreversibly severed multiple kingdoms and millions of people from the previously unified Catholic Church. Many people trace their religious lineage to Luther, far fewer trace back to Hus.
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u/-Belisarios- 1d ago
Unified church? Sorry but before there were Easternorthodox, Copts and Nestorians and many others splitting off
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u/Watchhistory 2d ago
In the classes of the history of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synond in which I was brought up Huss and many others were taught, both before and Martin Luther, including Calvin.
Of course, though Martin Luther was The Man, and all he wrote was The Doctrine, right after the Old and New Testaments.
People cannot imagine probably how much of all this I was require to memorize and recite.
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u/TheRedLionPassant 1d ago
And even before him, Wycliffe.
To be clear, Wycliffe is known as the 'Morning Star of the Reformation' for good reason, and even today is commemorated as a saint and reformer by the Church of England. Likewise, Hus, who he influenced, is considered to have been an influence on Luther and Zwingli. The Hussites have always existed to some extent in Bohemia and still exist as the modern Moravian Church, which is based largely in Czechia, Slovakia and Germany, and in the 18th century underwent a revival which influenced the development of the Methodist Church in England.
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u/Sourcerid 1d ago
Because Luther is the one that started the process to irreversibly separate certain parts of Europe to the Church, plus those parts also contain England which has "won" the "race" of history so to speak.
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u/FR23Dust 2d ago
Luther was responsible for the actual schism when it happened