Jan Hus

Jan Hus was a Czech theologian and philosopher who became a Church reformer, the inspiration of the Hussite movement, and a seminal figure of the Bohemian Reformation whose teachings influenced Martin Luther more than a century later. Ordained a Catholic priest, he preached in Prague and rose to master, dean and rector at Charles University, while opposing the Bohemian Church's positions on ecclesiology, simony and the Eucharist and speaking out against the sale of indulgences. Excommunicated for his defiance, he continued preaching through several years of controversy before travelling to the Council of Constance under a promise of safe conduct to defend his views; he was instead arrested, tried, and asked to recant. He refused, and on 6 July 1415 he was burned at the stake for heresy, a death that provoked his followers, the Hussites, to defeat five successive papal crusades between 1420 and 1431.