John Wyclif (d. 1384), famous Oxford philosopher-theologian and controversialist, was posthumously condemned as a heretic at the Council of Constance in 1415. Wyclif's influence was pan-European and had a particular impact on Prague, where Jan Hus, from Charles University, was his avowed disciple and the leader of a dissident reformist movement. Hus, condemned to the stake at Constance, gathered around him a prolific circle of disciples who changed the landscape of late medieval religion and literature in Bohemia, just as Wyclif's own followers had done in England. Both thinkers, and the movements associated with them, played a crucial role in the transformation of later medieval European thought, in particular through a radically enlarged role of textual production in the vernaculars (especially Middle English and Old Czech), as well as in Latin, in the philosophical, theological, and ecclesiological realms. This interdisciplinary volume of essays brings together cutting-edge research from scholars working in these and contiguous fields and asks fundamental questions about the methods that informed Wycliffite and Hussite writings and those by their interlocutors and opponents. Viewing these debates through a methodological lens enables a reassessment of the impact that they had, and the responses they elicited, across a range of European cultures, from England in the west via France and Austria to Bohemia in the east.

This intellectual history of the dissident Hussite reform movement in early 15th century Bohemia explains the process of Hussite radicalization, which led to their overthrow of secular and religious structures in the so-called "first European revolution". It does this by discovering the political relevance of diverse heterodox leaders and the discourses they adapted into mobilizing calls to conflict. As such, the work represents a reimagining of the Hussite revolution which emphasizes the symbolic worldview of its agents. This includes an appreciation of the Hussite debt to unexpected traditions of thought, and of the movement's participation in innovative visions of theo-political order.

In early fifteenth-century Prague, disagreements about religion came to be shouted in the streets and taught to the laity in the vernacular, giving rise to a new kind of public engagement that would persist into the early modern era and beyond. The reforming followers of Jan Hus brought theological learning to the people through a variety of genres, including songs, poems, tractates, letters, manifestos, and sermons. At the same time, university masters provided the laity with an education that enabled them to discuss contentious issues and arrive at their own conclusions, emphasizing that they held the freedom to make up their own minds about important theological issues. This marketplace of competing religious ideas in the vernacular emerged in Bohemia a full hundred years before the Reformation. In Preachers, Partisans, and Rebellious Religion, Marcela K. Perett examines the early phases of the so-called Hussite revolution, between 1412, when Jan Hus first radicalized his followers, and 1436, the year of the agreement at the Council of Basel granting papal permission for the ritual practice of the Utraquist, or moderate Hussite, faction to continue. These were years during which the leaders of competing reform movements needed to garner the laity's support and employed the vernacular for that purpose, translating and simplifying basic theological arguments about the Bible, the church's ritual practice, and authority in the church. Perett illustrates that the vernacular discourse, even if it revolved around the same topics, was nothing like the Latin debates on the issues, often appealing to emotion rather than doctrinal positions. In the end, as Preachers, Partisans, and Rebellious Religion demonstrates, the process of vernacularization increased rather than decreased religious factionalism and radicalism as agreement about theological issues became impossible.

The Hussite movement was a historical watershed, in which popular and scholastic theology combined with a nascent Czech nationalism to produce a full-scale social revolution that presaged the Protestant Reformation and the birth of the modern nation state. The Hussites defeated the forces of the Empire and the Pope, and their king George Poděbrady was the first to advocate a trans-national European state. Jan Hus is remembered as a martyr for church reform, but his colleagues formulated a theology that scholars are now recognizing to have had influence on Luther and the birth of Protestantism. Another Bohemian associated with the movement, Petr Chelčick , was the first to advocate a radical pacifist Christian anarchism. This survey introduces the reader to the events, people, and ideas that define this remarkable movement.

This volume launches the book series of “Inquire – International Centre for Research on Inquisitions” of the University of Bologna, a research network that engages with the history of religious justice from the 13th to the 20th century. This first publication offers twenty chapters that take stock of the current historiography on medieval and early modern Inquisitions (the Spanish, Portuguese and Roman Inquisitions) and their modern continuations. Through the analysis of specific questions related to religious repression in Europe and the Iberian colonial territories extending from the Middle Ages to today, the contributions here examine the history of the perception of tribunals and the most recent historiographical trends. New research perspectives thus emerge on a subject that continues to intrigue those interested in the practices of justice and censorship, the history of religious dissent and the genesis of intolerance in the Western world and beyond.

The religious reformation in fifteenth century Bohemia was also a social, political, and cultural revolution - the first of the great upheavals that transformed the medieval into the modern world. Beginning with a revival of evangelical pietism among the people of Prague, then coming under the leadership of the Czech intelligentsia of Prague's university, the reform movement reached its highest point under Master John Hus, who fused the fervor of pietism with the systematic political program developed by the English reformer John Wyclif. When Hus passed from the scene by submitting himself to the Council of Constance, leadership of the movement was taken up by the more radical Jakoubek of Stribro - pioneer of what was to become Hussitism's most characteristic practice, lay communion in both kinds (utraquism). At the same time, the propagation of the reform by Jakoubek's disciples among the townsmen and peasantry of the realm balanced the more conservative tendencies of the university masters and the Hussite feudality; by 1417 the Hussite movement was an uneasy coalition of religio-political tendencies ranging from extreme conservatism to Waldensian sectarianism. Out of the interplay among the Hussite parties and their various reactions to the pressures from Pope and Emporer there emerged two main types of reformation - one centered in Prague, the other in Tabor. Both were condemned by the Roman church, but the movement in Prague, less extreme, never ceased to hope for a reversal of that decision. Tabor, on the other hand, went all the way to heresy, schism, and revolution, ending with the form of the autonomous congregational community, organized as a city-state, in 'de facto' secession from the medieval order. Religious reformism, sectarian heresy of every sort, national passions, class hatreds, laicization, and anticlericalism - all the disturbing factors at work in late-medieval Europe came together in the Hussite revolution, which provided examples of virtually every form of change with which Europe would be concerned for the next three centuries.

This book presents an overview together with a detailed examination of the life and ideas of a major thinker and protagonist of the first half of the fourteenth century, Richard FitzRalph (1300-60, Armachanus). A central figure in debates at Oxford, Avignon and Ireland, FitzRalph is perhaps best-known for his central role in the poverty controversies of the 1350s. Each of the chapters collected here sheds a different perspective on the many aspects of FitzRalph’s life and works, from his time at the University of Oxford, his role as preacher and pastoral concerns, his contacts with the Eastern Churches, and finally his case at the Papal court against the privileges granted to the Franciscans. His influence and later reputation is also examined. Contributors include: Michael W. Dunne, Jean-François Genest†, Michael Haren, Elżbieta Jung, Severin V. Kitanov, Stephen Lahey, Monika Michałowska, Simon Nolan O.Carm, Bridget Riley, Chris Schabel, and John T. Slotemaker