It is a regrettable fact that, outside of Central Europe, little scholarly attention has been paid to the Czech lands during the medieval and early modern periods. The major exception to this rule has generally been an interest in the life and trial of Jan Hus and the Hussite wars, which have attracted the attention of many scholars worldwide. Despite the curiosity that many scholars have in Hus and his followers, however, there remains a dearth of work on the subject in English. Thomas A. Fudge is noteworthy in his scholarly devotion to the life and works of Jan Hus, and Fudge has made great contributions to the English-language historiography on the subject.

In his latest work, The Trial of Jan Hus: Medieval Heresy and Criminal Procedure, Fudge seeks to provide a detailed breakdown of the “entire legal process involving Jan Hus and the Latin church from 1410 to 1415” (xix). This he provides over several chapters, the first three of which function as a sort of abridged version of some of his longer works, in particular his Jan Hus: Religious Reform and Social Revolution in Bohemia (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2010), in which he argued convincingly about the heretical aspects of Hus's life and work. Readers are led through an explication of the law surrounding medieval heresy trials and cautioned against “the application of subjective value judgments applied to the documentary evidence” (29), which has led other scholars to judge Hus's designation as a heretic to be false. Fudge reminds readers, in the words of L. P. Hartley, that “[t]he past is a foreign country: they do things differently there” (xix). As a result, it is imperative to understand how medieval heresy was judged when considering the Hus case, and Fudge provides a detailed breakdown of legal procedure in order to do so.

His later chapters work in chronological order to explain the various stages of legal proceedings against Hus. Fudge first discusses the 1409 beginnings of the case against Hus in Bohemia, prior to the council of Constance, to which he was invited by the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund, and where he would meet his end. The four separate excommunications that Hus underwent in this period are considered and discussed at length. Fudge then discusses a fascinating aspect of Hus's defense: his 1412 direct appeal “to an imaginary heavenly court presided over by Christ and procedurally based on the law of God,” a move which “had no legal basis and was indicative that Hus no longer believed in the integrity of the ecclesiastical court system” (190). Here Fudge argues convincingly that many aspects of Hus's defense had no bearing on Church legal proceedings, and despite the emotional reaction that they may produce in us now, they were not a part of a comprehensive legal rebuttal. The sixth chapter looks at the Ordo Procedendi, which provides an overview of the trial from 1412 to 1414. Although a useful piece of evidence, the Ordo is highly problematic as a witness, and Fudge stresses that some of its inclusions seem to stem from what he terms “boilerplate inventions” (120) regarding Hus's theoretical heretical behavior. In his final two chapters, Fudge focuses on the trial at Constance itself and the accusations that Hus faced there. As in his earlier works, Fudge once again concludes that Hus was indeed a heretic. The Trial of Jan Hus differs from his earlier efforts, however, in that it arrives at this deduction through a detailed consideration of the legal structures within which Hus was charged.

The book itself is a pleasure to read and at times caused this reviewer to laugh out loud, as in Fudge's recount of Hus's attempt to debate a Cambridge University Master named John Stokes, who had condemned Wycliffe. (“The notice was posted on church doors. Stokes declined. Hus went ahead anyway.” [150]). The Trial of Jan Hus is an excellent resource for those seeking to learn more about the specifics of the Hus trial, or indeed about canon law and heresy in the late medieval period in general. Whereas other studies on the subject have been written in Czech, notably Jiří Kejř's excellent Husovo odvolání od soudu papežova k soudu Kristovu (Ústí nad Labem: Albis International, 1999), this is to date the most comprehensive analysis of the subject in English and a welcome addition to the extant literature.