Patron Saint and Prophet: Jan Hus in the Bohemian and German Reformations (Oxford Studies in Historical Theology) - Hardcover

This volume is a welcome contribution to the historiography of the calls for and approaches to reform in the late middle ages and the onset of the early modern period. Haberkern assesses the image of Hus in written manuscripts and books, songs, and visual representations, so that readers have access to the broader field of propagating ideas in this time. This book is a most welcome broadening of our perspective on an important figure of the Reformation era and the manner in which the interpretations of his thought and life story served following generations as they saw in their image of Hus helpful aid for conveying their own ideas. (Robert Kolb, Concordia Journal)

This fascinating book offers us new insights into the old question of 'forerunners of the Reformation.' By examining the afterlife of Jan Hus in Hussite, Lutheran and Catholic polemics, Phillip Haberkern brilliantly shows the range of ways in which an earlier form of dissent could be reinterpreted by its followers, its successors and its critics. This book is both deeply scholarly and very readable. (Euan Cameron, author of The European Reformation)

The image of Jan Hus underwent a remarkable transformation in the 150 years after his death. Paying careful attention to historical context, Philip Haberkern masterfully demonstrates that each generation shaped its view of the reformer to match its own concerns. This is a major contribution to studies of both the Bohemian and German Reformations that reveals the significance and the malleability of historical memory in the early modern period. (Amy Nelson Burnett, Paula and D.B. Varner University Professor of History, University of Nebraska-Lincoln)

A marvelous study bridging the religious cultures of late medieval and early modern Central Europe, a creative work of scholarship connecting the Reformations of Jan Hus and Martin Luther. Like Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County, the terrain that Phillip Haberkern so expertly surveys is a region where the past is never dead and where, as he demonstrates, successive generations of reformers skillfully manipulated the memory of Jan Hus to justify their confessional agendas. (Howard Louthan, Professor of History and Director of the Center for Austrian Studies at the University of Minnesota)

Overall, Patron Saint and Prophet evinces a winning formula of clear prose and cogent argumentation. The author indulges repeatedly in playful language. (Armin Kohnle and Eike Thomsen, German Historical Institute London Bulletin,)

The Bohemian preacher and religious reformer Jan Hus has been celebrated as a de facto saint since being burned at the stake as a heretic in 1415. Patron Saint and Prophet analyzes Hus's commemoration from the time of his death until the middle of the following century, tracing the ways in which both his supporters and his most outspoken opponents sought to determine whether he would be remembered as a heretic or saint. Phillip Haberkern examines how specific historical conflicts and exigencies affected the evolution of Hus's memoryâwithin the militant Hussite movement that flourished until the mid-1430s, within the Czech Utraquist church that succeeded it, and among sixteenth-century Lutherans who viewed Hus as a forerunner and even prophet of their reform.

Using close readings of written sources such as sermons and church histories, visual media including manuscript illuminations and monumental art, and oral forms of discourse such as vernacular songs and liturgical prayers, this book offers a fascinating account of how changes in media technology complemented the shifting theology of the cult of saints in order to shape early modern commemorative practices. By focusing on the ways in which the invocation of Hus catalyzed religious dissent within two distinct historical contexts, Haberkern compares the role of memory in late medieval Bohemia with the emergence of history as a constitutive religious discourse in the early modern German land. In this way, he also provides a detailed analysis of the ways in which Bohemian and German religious reformers justified their dissent from the Roman Church by invoking the past.