Book Review: The memory and motivation of Jan Hus, medieval priest and martyr

Thomas A. Fudge has marked this momentous sexcentenary with a trilogy of monographs, of which the first, Jan Hus: religious reform and social revolution in Bohemia, appeared in 2010, the second is the subject of this review and the third, The trial of Jan Hus: medieval heresy and criminal procedure, is devoted to the Constance trial. In chapter iii he says that 'a complete study of Hus's ethics has yet to be undertaken', but is able to see that 'in the life and thought of Jan Hus, ethics as an expression of the law of God is unavoidably subjective and ultimately a matter of individual judgment and conscience'. The climax of the work is chapter viii, in which the spirit of Hussite religion is analysed and demonstrated to be different from both that of the late medieval institutional Church (in its 'refusal to conform to the authority') and of the Lutheran and Calvinist reformation (in its 'refusal to abandon the church and establish a shadow institution').