The Great Cloud of Witnesses · The Reformation
Jan Hus
1372–1415 · Bohemian (Czech)
The Prague preacher burned at the stake under a promise of safe conduct, singing as the fire was lit.
The life
Jan Hus preached to thousands at Prague's Bethlehem Chapel in their own Czech language — an act nearly as radical as what he preached, which was Wycliffe's conviction that Christ, not the pope, is head of the church, and that Scripture judges councils rather than the other way around. Summoned to the Council of Constance under an imperial promise of safe conduct, he was arrested on arrival, kept in chains, and asked only to recant. He answered that he could not recant what he had never taught, nor deny what Scripture taught.
He was burned on July 6, 1415, reportedly singing until the fire took his voice. A century later Luther, accused of being a Hussite, read Hus's writings and said: 'We are all Hussites without knowing it.'