Born in pre-war Czechoslovakia, Franz Machilek learned Czech as a child, and thus his works have long been characterised by a broad reflection on both Czech and non-Czech literature, making him relatively exceptional among international researchers. An exemplary case of this is the monograph on Jan Hus under review here.

As the author himself points out in the first sentence, this is a significantly expanded and annotated edition of an article which was published on the occasion of Hus' great jubilee in 2015.Footnote ¹ The book under review is new mainly in its attempt to account for the development of Hus’ theological thought in the context of his biography and literary work.

The book is divided into five parts. The author first briefly describes the perception of Hus through the centuries and traditions, that is, he summarises his ‘second life’. In the following chapter, which is the heart of the book, the troubled destiny of the Czech preacher and his rich literary work are discussed. Machilek then deals, in two separate chapters, with the specific topic of Jan Hus’ confessional perception. On the one hand, he recapitulates the discussion of his possible rehabilitation by the Roman Catholic Church which developed during the twentieth century. On the other, he focuses on the interfaith ecumenical dialogue on Hus after 1989, when there was a radical political change in Central Europe, including the opening of borders to the West. According to Machilek, these new conditions were reflected in two important conferences on Jan Hus, in Bayreuth (1993) and in the Vatican (1999).

Machilek's work describes the key moments of Hus' life and the main features and themes of his literary production relatively reliably. It is unfortunate for the reader, however, that the author mainly follows events in Prague and the Kingdom of Bohemia, that is, events in which Hus was more or less personally present. Parallel events beyond the borders of the kingdom which had an important influence on the development of his legal case are given considerably less space. In particular, the launch and process of Hus’ trial at the papal curia between 1410 and 1412 do not receive as much space as they deserve.

The purpose of Machilek's book is obviously not to analyse sources and reveal new facts, or place them in new contexts. The essence of the work, and therefore its greatest benefit, lies elsewhere. Since it excels in its inventory and accurate reproduction of modern research on Jan Hus, the book can also be seen as a valuable Forschungsbericht. The bibliographic focus of the work is not only evident from the footnotes, but the author often explicitly refers to the statements of his colleagues in the main text and directly quotes them. This can be seen, for example, in the evaluation of the significance of Hus’ commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard (pp. 91–4), or even more markedly in the evaluation of the legitimacy of Hus’ Constance trial, where the author greatly relies on the work of the Czech legal historian Jiří Kejř (pp. 199–200). One can only regret, however, that the author himself is thus lost in the shadows of other historians, and his own assessment of the controversial Czech preacher remains relatively vague.

At the same time, the author registers some recent titles without commenting on their contribution. This is the case with the book by the Czech Catholic theologian Ctirad Václav Pospíšil, Husovská dilemata [The dilemmas of Hus] (published in 2015 with a revised edition in 2020), in which he tries with some difficulty to ‘rediscover’ Hus and his epoch for modern Czechs of all confessions. Since Machilek emphasises the change in the attitude of the Roman Catholic Church and its theologians to the Czech reformer, it is a pity that the content of Pospíšil's book has shrunk to a mere bibliographic reference.

Considered within the spectrum of important works on Jan Hus which were published in the context of the 2015 jubilee,Footnote ² Machilek's book turns out to be a traditional monograph which mainly builds on the chronology of Hus’ turbulent life. However, the author's bibliographic knowledge, along with his perception of Jan Hus not only as an object of professional historiography but also as a ‘living’ figure of Christian ecumenism, make it unique. Franz Machilek writes not only as a historian, but also as a Roman Catholic Christian, as well as an eyewitness to the turbulent development of modern historiographical and ecclesiastical reflections on Jan Hus over the last fifty years.