Jan Hus Is Burned at the Council of Constance

On 6 July 1415, the Bohemian priest and scholar Jan Hus was burned at the stake in the city of Constance, condemned as a heretic by the general council of the Catholic Church. Led into the cathedral following liturgical services, he was formally degraded from the priesthood after refusing to revoke his theological teachings. The ecclesiastical assembly stripped him of his vestments, declared that the church had exhausted its measures, and transferred him to the custody of secular authorities for immediate execution outside the city.

Born in southern Bohemia to a peasant family, Hus studied at the University of Prague, earning his master's degree in 1396 before being ordained as a priest around 1400. In 1402, he became rector of the university and was appointed preacher at the Bethlehem Chapel in Prague. From this influential pulpit, he mounted fiery critiques against moral abuses in the ecclesiastical hierarchy, including the widespread practice of simony. His thought drew heavily upon the prohibited writings of the English reformer John Wycliffe, whose texts Hus translated and defended despite rising hostility from church authorities.