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Jan Hus

John Huss

Lived
c. 1372–1415
Era
Medieval
Where
Prague, Bohemia
Tradition
Hussite

Burned at Constance under a safe-conduct

Rector of the university at Prague and a preacher in Czech at the Bethlehem Chapel, who took up Wycliffe's attacks on clerical wealth and indulgences, was excommunicated, and went to the Council of Constance under a written safe-conduct from the emperor to defend himself.

Why it matters

He was arrested on arrival, tried, refused to recant what he denied having taught, and burned in 1415; the council held that no faith need be kept with a heretic. Bohemia went to war over it and won a settlement no other medieval dissent achieved. Luther, reading him a century later, said that he had been a Hussite without knowing it. The Moravian church descends from his followers.

In the record

  1. 1414–1418 AD Council

    Council of Constance

    Tried and burned, having come under an imperial safe-conduct

All the figures, from the apostolic age to the present, or the timeline they stand in.

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