Preachers, Partisans, and Rebellious Religion. Marcela K. Perett
explained the following: God does not answer some prayers, because some people are not worthy of being heard and because some requests are not good for salvation.68 We should love our neighbor even if he or she is evil, because all were created by God, in God’s image and likeness.69 The best body postures for prayer are kneeling down or prostration.70 And the Savior spent so much with the sinners for several reasons, to lead them out of sin and to show them that he was the Savior of sinners, as it is written in Luke 19:10.71
Hus also found the time to entertain lesser subjects, those that did not have a bearing on one’s salvation at all, honoring the sheer curiosity of the faithful. For example, he paused his discussion of Jesus’s preaching in Galilee to remark on New Testament geography and culture, explaining that Tyra and Sidon were both towns and that Galilee was the term one used to describe the whole region in the Jewish land and that it was also where Christ was born.72 Elsewhere, Hus explained words like “scribe … in Latin ‘publicanus,’ ”73 and “ ‘tabernacula,’ which means eternal tents.”74 The explanations might seem superfluous, pertaining neither to salvation nor moral goodness, but they were important enough for Hus to include them for the sake of knowledge.
Throughout the Postil, Hus paused to address questions of translation, often giving his audience the Latin term or phrase before reflecting on how best to translate them. Sometimes, he admitted, the Czech vernacular did not have an appropriate term, in which case he attempted to find a phrase or circumlocution that would convey what was needed. Most controversially, Hus frequently admitted that a multiplicity of interpretations of the scriptural text at hand was possible, both in the Postil and in the Expositions. For example, in a sermon written for the second Sunday after Easter, Hus explained that some understood the “sheepfold” mentioned by Jesus to refer to the ultimate conversion of Jews to the Christian faith, but others thought it referred to a full conversion of the elect.75 Drawing attention to the Bible’s potential for multiplicity of meaning appears counterproductive to Hus’s stated intention to educate, as it might usher in confusion and uncertainty. However, acknowledging that multiple readings existed allowed Hus to make a clear distinction between the biblical text and its interpretation, moreover underscoring the importance of a competent interpreter.
The injunction to make sure one obeys the right kind of cleric is at the heart of Hus’s spiritual advice but has seldom been commented upon.76 Yet it seems clear that Hus’s advice to the laity was influenced by the events of Hus’s own life, especially the way he has been treated by the ecclesiastical authorities since his excommunication and exile. The external events that proved especially formative (and that he mentions frequently) were his excommunication, the interruption of divine services, the ban on preaching in Bethlehem Chapel, and the threat of the chapel’s destruction.77 Related to these events were personal decisions that Hus made in response to them. They too shaped Hus’s spiritual advice to the laity, especially those that he was not fully sure about, often wondering in writing whether he had made the right choice and reassuring himself that he had. Two decisions especially haunted him: his refusal to travel to Rome to defend his appeal in 1410 and his subsequent decision to abandon his post at Bethlehem Chapel in face of excommunication and interdict in the fall of 1412. The events framing Hus’s life influenced Hus’s spirituality: he called for struggle against unjust authorities, promoted active discernment of which clerics were worth obeying, and called on the believers to stand up against the forces of the Antichrist.
Indeed, Hus interwove serious criticisms of priests who abused their power or failed in their duties all through his spiritual exhortation. In On Simony, Hus told his audience how to recognize those who are the inheritors of Balaam. They were “those who preach for money and wrongly condemn people.”78 This contains a contemporary reference: an accusation of those who preached in favor of indulgences and who excommunicated him. And there were other contemporary references. For example, Hus lambasted the decision, by a papal bull by Alexander V, to ban preaching in private chapels, a decision that was clearly supposed to put a stop to Hus’s preaching in Bethlehem.79
But excommunication proved to be his most frequent example. Hus explained on more than one occasion that the authorities were excommunicating people (such as himself) for the wrong reasons, certainly not out of love, wishing for amendment of their ways. “But they excommunicate a lot of priests but Christ accepts them, and I too hope for his holy mercy that he would accept me even though they have rejected me, because I preach his word in spite of them.”80 Hus insisted that any spiritual punishment meted out in error could not harm the soul, because clerics could not override God’s decision. And although the clerics might threaten and say that any excommunication was damaging, “know that if you are certain that you are innocent, you need not fear that this excommunication would harm you, for it is impossible that anything should harm your soul if you are free of sin.”81
This was a recipe for rebellion: According to the canon law, of course, even excommunication that was thought to be unjust had to be obeyed, otherwise the system would fall into pieces.82 But Hus ignored that and advised his followers likewise to ignore decisions that he or they considered erroneous. In telling the faithful to be discerning about decisions made by his clerical superiors, he communicated to them that the punishments meted out against him were unjust and invited them to consider carefully any church ruling issued against them.
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