to submit to the authority of the medieval church. These men and women galvanized a revolution, named for Hus, whose strength had hitherto been unseen at any time in the Middle Ages. The Hussite movement changed the landscape of the medieval religious world forever.
Schweitzer’s work was controversial and any quest for the historical Hus is bound to arouse disagreement, though not to the same extent as Jesus scholarship. Jesus has more clout than Hus and more people have emotional connections to images and understandings of Jesus than there are people who feel a connection to Hus or who sense a duty to defend Hus. In that sense, the quest of the historical Hus is, apart from the ongoing concerted work of a handful of scholars, a passing fancy which will not last long. Nevertheless, after 600 years, Hus remains a man who cannot and should not be ignored by those who wish to take Christian history seriously. Nevertheless, many of those who engage in the quest of the historical Hus are doomed to failure. The Hus that many see and the Hus that many will find after the historical quest, looking back through six centuries of either Catholic or Protestant darkness, is only the reflection of their own faces, seen through the dimness at the bottom of a deep well.62
Thomas A. Fudge University of New England, Australia
Endnotes 1 This is the “Very Fine Chronicle of Jan Žižka” in František M. Bartoš, ed., Listy Bratra Jana a Kronika velmi pěkná a Janu Žižkovi (Prague: Blahoslav, 1949), p. 36. 2 This according to an old Czech chronicle in František Šimek, ed., Staré letopisy české z vratislavského rukopisu novočeským pravopisem (Prague: Historický spolek, 1937), p. 4. 3 Copenhagen, Det Kongelige Bibliothek (Royal Library) MS GKS 1551 4°, fols 22r-24v at fol. 22v. 4 http://www.moravian.edu/about/collegehistory Accessed 29 August 2015. 5 The History of the Church known as the Unitas Fratrum or the Unity of the Brethren (Bethlehem: Moravian Publication Office, 1885), p. 78.
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6 Thomas A. Fudge, Jan Hus Between Time and Eternity: Reconsidering a Medieval Heretic (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2016), pp. 79-97 treats Hus from the vantage point of his detractors. This is delineated in a cycle of accusations from 1414. František Palacký, ed., Documenta Mag. Joannis Hus vitam, doctrinam, causam in constantiensi concilio actam et controversias de religione in Bohemia annis 1403-1418 motas illustrantia (Prague: Tempský, 1869), pp. 204-24 at p. 222. 7 Matthias Flacius Illyricus, ed., Historia et monumenta Ioannis Hus atque Hieronymi Pragensis, 2 vols (Nürnberg: Montanus and Neuberus, 1558; 1715), vol. 1, p. 103.
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