Page:The life & times of Master John Hus by Count Lützow.djvu/94

 than to his companions, for while Hus and Jerome perished in the flames, Jacobellus died peacefully at Prague in 1429 as honoured leader of the utraquist or Hussite church.

The plan of studies pursued by young Hus at the university was that usually followed by youthful students of theology at mediæval universities. Dr. Flajshans has in his valuable work on Hus given an interesting account of these studies, referring specially to the customs peculiar to the university of Prague. Great importance was attached to theological disputations, in which the subtlety of scholastic distinctions and definitions found full play. Hus appears to have shown great aptitude for the exercises, and this no doubt accounts for the skill and acuteness which he afterwards displayed at Constance, when confronted with the most learned and most Subtle theologians of Europe. In 1393, at an unusually early age, Hus obtained the first of academic honours, that of bachelor of arts. Together with him, several companions, among them Jacobellus, went through the ordeal of the previous examinations, which took place in the large hall of the Carolinum, the college founded by Charles. Probably shortly afterwards the Archbishop John of Jenzenstein conferred on Hus the minor orders, though it appears that he was only ordained as a priest considerably later. He continued meanwhile to pursue successfully his academic career. In 1394 he became a bachelor of divinity, and in 1396 a master of arts. In 1402 he became, at an unusually early age, for the first time rector of the university. It was probably in 1400 that Hus was ordained a priest, but as Dr. Lechler has noted, Hus, like Melanchthon, who played so great a part in the German reformation, never obtained the degree of doctor of divinity. Though Hus had from the first been noted for his piety, his religious enthusiasm, as he has told us, and contemporary writers confirm, became yet greater after he had been ordained. Though Hus, whose home was in the frontier districts where the struggle between Slav and Teuton is always fiercest, no