
In the fourteenth century John Wyclif in England, professor at Oxford University, vehemently opposed the idea of peasant subordination, that whatever land they had they held by grace of the lord. In other words, peasants were not viewed as truly human with any rights. Wyclif argued that we all, peasants and nobility, held whatever we had from God who was the sovereign ruler of the universe. These ideas were reflected in the writings of Geoffrey Chaucer and John Ball’s famous taunting poem, “When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?” Wyclif logically moved to applying this principle of everything being held from God to theological doctrines. Thus, he advanced the idea of sovereign grace, predestination, and salvation as a gift from God.

Jerome of Prague, a teacher at Oxford University, was very much influenced by the ideas of Wyclif and these other radical English thinkers, and passed them on to his friend and professor at Charles University in Prague, John Hus. Hus was not only an excellent and popular university professor, but he was the preacher at Bethlehem Chapel in Prague. His sermons began to reflect the thinking of Wyclif on salvation by grace, divine election, and the sovereignty of God.
The king of Bohemia was a Hapsburg, very Catholic, and also one of the seven electors of the Holy Roman Emperor. He was quite disturbed when informed of the sermons of Hus, and the upshot was that Hus was called before the Council of Constance in 1415 which became for him a tribunal, actually an inquisition, and tried for his beliefs. A dunce cap was placed on his head, and he was tortured and mocked; yet he refused to recant. He was declared a heretic and burned at the stake. Wyclif, on the other hand, survived because he was protected by the powerful John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, and the father of the future king Henry IV. John of Gaunt was himself the son of the former king Edward III. Such a powerful friend in such a high place saved Wyclif.
Both Wyclif in England and Hus in Bohemia are considered forerunners of the Reformation. Their influence was felt in the Lollards in England and the Bohemian Brethren. Both of these movements were merged into the Protestant Reformation in the next century. Because Hus in Czech sounds like the Czech word for goose, the emblem of the goose became a sign used by the Roman Church to identify Protestants. When Martin Luther became the leader of a new reform movement in Germany, signs and posters of geese were seen all over Germany as Luther was proclaimed the German Hus.
As a result of Hus and in spite of his martyrdom, perhaps because of it, Bohemia became a “Protestant” state which endured until the end of the Thirty Years’ War in 1648. Today Hus is regarded as a Czech national hero, and his status stands in Stare Mesto (the old square) in Prague.
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