John Wycliffe and Jan Hus on This Day in History

 

Religious reformers John Wycliffe and Jan Hus were condemned as heretics at the Council of Constance on this day [May 4] in 1415.

Wycliffe and Hus spoke out against the prevailing authorities and questioned their strange-hold as the only arbiters of truth and thought. 

"Along with his opposition to the church’s teachings, Wycliffe denounced the wealth of the higher clergy and sought a return to the spiritual purity and material poverty of the early church. Jan Hus shared the same disdain for the luxurious and immoral lifestyle of the upper clergy of the medieval church. Both Hus and Wycliff agreed that the Bible should be accessible to common people, thus their advocation for vernacular translations of the Bible." Source

Jan Hus was burned to death at the stake later that same year. 

As for John Wycliffe, after the Council of Constance declared him a heretic they ordered his body exhumed and burned and the ashes thrown into a nearby river. Tyrannical authorities do not like freedom of expression and they will react viciously and violently to oppose such freedoms.

George Orwell could see the future of oppression because there was such a sordid history of authoritarianism to glean from.

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