Pavel Soukup's book is a biography of the late medieval Czech university master and popular preacher, probably best known for being condemned at the Council of Constance and burned at the stake as a heretic in 1415. Originally written in German and published by W. Kohlhammer Press in Stuttgart in 2014, this slender book aims to “reduce Hus to his proper, original environs” (ix). The result is a scholarly yet highly readable account of Jan Hus's career and thought understood in the context of early fifteenth-century Prague. As told by Soukup, it is a tragic story of a saintly man overcome by ecclesiastical authorities, in whose efficacy he had long since lost faith.

Soukup frames the entire biography as a search to uncover the reasons behind Hus's conviction by the council, bookending the narrative with chapters about the trial proceedings at Constance and Hus's experience there (chapters 1 and 15). In order to understand Hus's death, the author looks to the society in which Hus lived for answers. He concludes that, within the milieu of the fifteenth-century church, scarred as it was by the Great Schism and the specter of John Wyclif's heresy, “the conflict between [Hus] and the representatives of ecclesiastical power was inevitable” (165). Faced with such powerful opponents, Hus was doomed no matter what.

Instead of choosing between a thematic and a chronological approach to the narrative, the author tries to do both. After a brief biography (chapter 3), he explores different aspects of Hus's career. Each of these becomes a thematic exploration of a different moment in Hus's life, such as his tenure at the Bethlehem Chapel (chapters 4, 10, and 11), his role at the synods of the church (chapter 6), his career at Prague University (chapters 7 and 8), his run-ins with the church authorities (chapters 5, 9, 12, and 15), and his academic and vernacular writings (chapters 13 and 14). In addition to biographical details, there are forays into political maneuvering at the university in Prague, effects of the papal schism, late medieval ecclesiology, and medieval reform in the church as a whole and in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Bohemia specifically, to name just a few topics covered. Each foray is brief, evokes the big picture, and contains a helpful bibliography. But this approach makes for difficult reading at times as details of this or that late medieval institution or development distract from the basic trajectory of Hus's life.

The author's compassion—even admiration—for Hus and his steadfastness in the face of bureaucratic cruelty is in evidence throughout. And while admiring a fine man is a fine thing, it can be problematic should admiration drive the interpretation as it sometimes does here. There are times when the sources give us a conflicting picture of what Hus did on a given occasion, but the author always foregrounds the version of events that reflects best on Hus. The indulgence crisis of 1412 is a good example. When three young men were put to death in Prague because they protested the sale of indulgences, Hus may or may not have been silent for two full weeks following their execution before he addressed the faithful on the matter. According to the accusations presented some two years later in Constance, Hus celebrated a mass for the three men “the day following the execution” and immediately “spoke of them as martyrs.” However, the Old Czech Chronicle has him taking action “only two weeks after the execution” (104).

Which it was matters a great deal. Speaking of these men publicly as martyrs only a day after their surprise execution signals a mind that is made up, resolute, and ready to lead, whereas waiting a fortnight speaks of hesitation or even internal conflict. But the reader is left to his or her own devices here. Instead of acknowledging the interpretative dilemma, Soukup chooses to rely on hostile accusations at Constance and takes them as illustrative of Hus's unquestionable readiness to lead the protesters against the ecclesiastical establishment in July 1412. This small quibble leads to a larger difficulty: in this otherwise very balanced book, there are moments when the saintliness of its protagonist is upheld a little too rigorously.

However, this is not only a book about Jan Hus and his demise. Rather, Soukup's slim book aims to be iconoclastic. At stake is our understanding of the sixteenth-century Reformation. Soukup wishes to see Hus and Hussitism not as some vaguely prophetic forerunners but as integral parts of the story. To that end, Soukup devotes the epilogue (chapter 16) to a comparison between Martin Luther and Hus, noting each reformer's adherence to the Bible and to his own conscience. He closes by quoting Luther as saying, “Until now I have unknowingly taught and espoused all the views of Jan Hus. In short, we are all Hussites without our knowing it” (160). Compelling commonalities certainly exist: internal disunity and doctrinal divisiveness among the Hussites that prefigured doctrinal conflict among the sixteenth-century reformers as well as eventual religious toleration, independence from Rome, and rejection of the “pope-led institutional church in matters of salvation” (164), which defined both. Nevertheless, it would require a different book to make this argument convincingly, one—I hasten to add—that would offer a welcome rebuttal to contemporary discussions among Reformation historians.

Pavel Soukup's book is a valuable addition to the English-speaking literature on Hus and an important corrective with its unfailing commitment to the big picture. Even if its portrayal of Jan Hus, his career and motivations, is somewhat idealistic, it only follows Hus's own predilection: to think the best of each man and his capacity for sound judgment until proven otherwise.