Page:The life & times of Master John Hus by Count Lützow.djvu/16

viii of countries from which they could derive funds was diminishing, the claims of Rome on Bohemia became more urgent and more frequent. The discontent caused by the rapacity of the rival pontiffs, whose violent controversies did not raise the Western Church in the esteem of the Bohemian people, found a centre in the University of Prague. Under the influence of this university, a school of theologians sprung up who are known as the forerunners of Hus. These writers long remained almost unknown, and it is only since the revival of Bohemian literature in the nineteenth century that their works have again begun to attract attention. Even now much work has to be done and many MSS. remain unprinted; still it can already be stated that recent research has thrown much new light on Hus and the Hussite movement. I have in this work endeavoured to give a resume of the studies of modern Bohemian writers on this movement. These works, mostly written in the national language, have by no means received hitherto the attention which they well deserve.

It may be here stated that these writings prove clearly the existence in Bohemia of a strong national movement in favour of church-reform, which depended by no means entirely on foreign influences. As Dr. Kybal recently wrote in his valuable work on Matthew of Janov, the greatest of the forerunners of Hus: “The view that Hussitism is merely artificially fostered Wycliffism appears to me logically and historically as nonsense.” It would be invidious to attribute to racial antagonism the recent attempts of German writers to depreciate the importance of Hus. Yet it is certain that the German writers, who recently have extolled Wycliffe at the expense of Hus, have attributed to the English divine greater originality