Jerome of Prague and the Foundations of the Hussite Movement

The life and work of Jerome of Prague have been overlooked outside Czech historiography, but represent an important chapter in the understanding of late medieval European history. Thomas A. Fudge makes a case for the central importance of Jerome, peer of Jan Hus, by reconstructing his biography using the original Latin and Czech sources and drawing significantly upon German, French, English, and Czech scholarship. The book traces the development of Jerome's life, paying special attention to the controversies he caused at the universities of Paris, Cologne, Heidelberg, Vienna, and Prague. Of particular note are the two heresy trials in which he was a defendant (Vienna 1410-12 and Constance 1415-16). Fudge situates Jerome within the philosophical conflicts of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. He argues that Jerome is not only an important component in the intellectual history of the Middle Ages, and a leading personality in the church's war on heresy, but is also an essential influence on the development of the Hussite movement in Bohemia. As the Italian humanist Poggio Bracciolini remarked, after hearing Jerome speak at the Council of Constance in 1416, "this was a man to remember." Jerome of Prague and the Foundations of the Hussite Movement brings to life a little known but indisputably significant figure of the late Middle Ages.

Thomas A. Fudge is Professor Medieval History the University of New England in Australia. Internationally recognized as an authority on Hussite history, he is the author of twelve books including The Trial of Jan Hus (OUP 2013).

List of Maps and Illustrations
Abbreviations
Introduction
1. An Emerging Intellectual Knight-Errant
2. Jerome as a Wyclifite Thinker
3. Disputation and Discord: The Fugitive and the Establishment
4. Heresy and Intrigue in Vienna
5. Iconoclasm: Attacking Medieval Religious Practice
6. Trial at the Council of Constance
7. Five days in May: The Battle for Conscience
8. Heretic and Hero at the Stake
9 Jerome Remembered: Liturgy, Revolution, Commemoration
Appendices
The Shield of the Christian Faith
In Praise of the Liberal Arts
Letter to Andreas Grillenberg
Albert of Kraków, letter to Václav Králík
Letter to Sigismund
Public letter of the Czech Barons
Citation of Jerome to the Council of Constance
Revocation of Jerome
Letter to Lacek of Kravá
Giacomo Balardi, sermon against Jerome
Accounts of Jerome's death
Poggio Bracciolini, letter to Leonardo Bruni
Bibliography