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A HISTORY OF BOHEMIAN

LITERATURE

His reputation for and in 1396 that of master of arts. great learning seems to have spread very rapidly at the university, for in 1401 we already find him dean of the Faculty of Arts, and in the following year he became, for the first time and

at an unusually early age, rector

He seems soon to have of the university of Prague. attracted attention by his great learning, and by the acumen which he displayed in the learned disputations that formed so large a part of the routine of mediaeval His learning was at that period noticed universities. His lectures, rather than any special religious fervour. as Dr. Lechler has conjectured, were probably founded on Wycliffe's philosophical works, which became known to the Bohemians earlier than the theological works of the English divine. A change appears to have come over the mind of Hus about the beginning of the fifteenth century. He has himself told us that after his ordination as a priest (probably in 1400) he led a yet simpler and more ascetic The principal cause of the enthusiasm, both relilife. gious and national, that henceforth distinguishes Hus was, however, undoubtedly his appointment in 1402 as rector and preacher at the Bethlehem Chapel in Prague. The foundation of the Bethlehem Chapel, which took place in 1391, and was the work of Kri2, a tradesman of Prague, and John of Milheim, one of the courtiers of King Wenceslas, is an important manifestation of the desire to reform the Roman Church and to enlarge the sphere of the native language, which was then gaining In their deed of endowment the ground in Bohemia. founders stated that their object was the encouragement of the preaching of biblical doctrines in the Bohemian No special provision for the reading of language.