Czech reformer.

Born in Bohemia, Jan Hus is regarded as a national hero, not only for her religious and political activity but also for her contribution to the blooming of the Czech literary language.

It is of its native small village, Husinec, that it draws its patronym. It makes its studies in Prague, at the Charles university, where he will be professor and of which he will become vice-chancellor. Ordered priest in 1400, it starts to preach, always in this same city, in the vault of Bethlehem. In her sermons, pronounced in Czech language, Jan Hus protests against the decline of the clergy, and preaches a return to the religion of the first ages of Christianity.

In 1408, the archbishop of Prague prohibits to him to go up in pulpit. Jan Hus passes in addition to, affirming himself soon like a chief of scale national, able to gather Czech energies which he galvanizes vis-a-vis the Germanic influence.

In 1411, to have adopted the theses heretics of the English John Wyclif, Hus is excommunicated. It writes its De Ecclesia (“Of the Church”), in which it supports that the pope, the bishops and the priests corrupt officials are excluded from the Christian community (sales of indulgence and simony). Withdrawn in Bohemia of the South, it continues its action in favor of its reform and finishes its complete translation of the Bible in Czech language.

The council of Constancy, convened in 1414 in order to restore the authority of the Church, then seriously compromised by the simultaneous existence of three popes, the fact of appearing as an heretic (in particular because the doctrines hussite recommend the communion under two species, bread and wine). Jan Hus defends her ideas with ardor and refuses to retract. At the end of a hasty lawsuit, he is condemned to died for heresy, and burned alive with Constance on on July 6th, 1415. He was already assembled on roughing-hew it, when an old woman approached to bring her faggot. By seeing it, the torture victim exclaimed: “O sancta simplicitas! ” (O holy simplicity!), wanting to show, by this exclamation remained proverbial, that the most innocent being can make the evil by ignorance. Certain historians allot the sentence not to Jan Hus, but to her Jerome disciple of Prague, which was burned alive on on May 30th, 1416 - is one year after its Master.

The martyrdom of Jan Hus, far from putting a term at effervescence hussite, is at the origin of a powerful movement of revolt, which exceeds the simple religious framework to give itself a political objective: the national independence of Bohemia. The hussites fight during more than twenty years against the king of Bohemia Sigismond of Luxembourg. During these bloody wars hussites illustrates another Czech hero, Jan Zizka. All the future of the Reform in Central Europe is played during these dark years.