The Bohemian Context 71succeeded him in Bohemia and the Empire in 1378 he was regarded as
incompetent and dethroned as emperor in 1400. Despite similar prob-
lems in Bohemia he retained the crown until his death, childless, in
1419, living just long enough to be involved in the outbreak of the
Hussite revolt.
The Hussite revolt
This revolt in the early fifteenth century was a seminal event in
Bohemian history, and one which was still significant in 1618, some
two hundred years later. Jan Hus himself was not directly involved, as
he had been executed for heresy a few years earlier, but although his
ideas were not the only underlying causes of the revolt his death was its
principal trigger. Hus was an academic and sometime rector of Prague
university, and like many academics of the period he was also in holy
orders and a regular and respected preacher. His religious outlook was
strongly influenced by the thought and writings of the Oxford theolo-
gian John Wycliffe, who died in 1384, and like him and like Luther later
Hus sought the reform rather than the replacement of the established
Catholic order. Wycliffe’s ideas on grace and predestination, although
complex, effectively undermined the claim to authority of the pope
and the church hierarchy, as well as the right of the church and its
prelates to hold lands or to exercise temporal power. Instead he accorded
supremacy in worldly matters to the secular authorities, while criti-
cising the wealth and the many abuses he saw in the church of his
day. Although Wycliffe himself was never excommunicated many of
his teachings were subsequently proscribed by the pope, despite which
they built up a strong following in Bohemia, and in Prague in partic-
ular, in the first decade of the 1400s. Starting in the university, where
Hus was one of a number of proponents, this spread to include a sig-
nificant proportion of the nobility, as well as townsmen, before the
archbishop of Prague took action in 1409, burning Wycliffe’s books
and prohibiting preaching on their themes. Hus and others ignored
this, publicly defending Wycliffe’s works and inciting demonstrations
in Prague, while the archbishop, finding no support from the king, was
forced to flee the city.
In the following few years the controversy escalated, with Hus increas-
ingly in the forefront. Matters came to a head in 1412 when, in another
link with Luther, he publicly criticised the sale of indulgences (absolu-
tion from sins for the payment of a fee), leading to papal confirmation
of his earlier excommunication for failing to obey the ban on Wycliffite