Page:The life & times of Master John Hus by Count Lützow.djvu/66

 constantly in the writings of the Bohemian reformers, and he was famed as the most learned Bohemian of his time. It is permissible to include him among the Bohemian reformers, not only because of his constant relations with these men, which I have frequently mentioned, but also because he, as he has stated in a letter to which I have already alluded, complained of the hostility of the mendicant friars who accused him of being an “Armachanus.” The year of the birth of Ranco is uncertain, but we find him a student at the University of Paris in 1348. He there belonged to the “English” nation, which, besides English, included also Scotchmen and Germans as well as the few students from Slavic countries. Ranco soon obtained the reputation of being a very profound theologian, and the university conferred great honours on him—a fact to which Stitny alluded in a passage that I have quoted above. In 1355, Ranco became rector of the University of Paris, and he appears to have remained in France for a considerable time. He must, however, have returned to his country some time before the year 1364, as we read that he was in that year one of the canons of the cathedral of Prague, who were appointed to report on the orthodoxy of the views of Milic. Ranco, as already stated, declared that Milic had spoken under the direct inspiration of the Holy Ghost. From the somewhat scanty statements concerning Ranco which have reached us, it appears that he was not a man of a conciliatory nature, and he was frequently involved in the sometimes turbulent theological controversies that then raged at the university. The fact that Ranco, at a time when the university was still largely German, openly declared himself a Bohemian, and defended the interests of his countrymen, drew on him the hatred of many of the German scholars. Probably, in consequence of this ill-will, Ranco again left Bohemia and proceeded to Avignon. He appears at this time also to have lost the favour of the emperor; but Charles, always lenient to truly pious and zealous churchmen, soon allowed him to return to his country. On