Page:The letters of John Hus.djvu/48

 the end Stanislas was ‘forced to recant.’ With Stanislas, though less prominent and pronounced, Stephen Palecz was closely associated. In the Church, as on the stage, one man in his time plays many parts.

Among these Realists or Wyclifists we must already reckon John Hus. In a Taborite document we read: ‘These books of the evangelical doctor, as is known from credible witnesses, opened the eyes of Master John Hus of blessed memory, whilst reading and re-reading the same in connection with his adherents.’ At one time it would seem he had shrunk back from Wyclif’s theological teaching, though welcoming his philosophical positions. “Oh, Wyclif, Wyclif,” he had cried in a Czech sermon, making use of an untranslatable pun, “how you will make our heads to waggle (zwikles).” But this dread was fast disappearing.

Hitherto any part that Hus may have taken in the controversy over Wyclif had been political rather than religious. But in 1408 circumstances arose which compelled Hus, in spite of himself, to place himself at the head of the Bohemian Lollards, though he probably still deceived himself by imagining that they were but Czech Realists. This continued unconsciousness of whither he was drifting, together with the drift itself, is brought out very clearly in the first letter of Hus preserved for us, written in the early summer of 1408. From this point we shall leave the Letters, as far as possible, to tell their own story, adding only such connecting narratives and notes as may be needful to bind together these living fragments into an intelligible whole.