Modern History Sourcebook:
Jan Hus: Final Declaration, July 1, 1415
I, Jan Hus, in hope a priest of Jesus Christ, fearing to offend God, and fearing to
fall into perjury, do hereby profess my unwillingness to abjure all or any of the articles
produced against me by false witnesses. For God is my witness that I neither preached,
affirmed, nor defended them, though they say that I did. Moreover, concerning the articles
that they have extracted from my books, I say that I detest any false interpretation which
any of them bears. But inasmuch as I fear to offend against the truth, or to gainsay the
opinion of the doctors of the Church, I cannot abjure any one of them. And if it were
possible that my voice could now reach the whole world, as at the Day of Judgment every
lie and every sin that I have committed will be made manifest, then would I gladly abjure
before all the world every falsehood and error which I either had thought of saying or
actually said!
I say I write this of my own free will and choice.
Written with my own hand, on the first day of July.
Source:
From: Herbert B. Workman and R. Martin Pope, eds., The Letters of John Hus,
(London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1904), pp. 275-276
Scanned by: J. S. Arkenberg, Dept. of History, Cal. State Fullerton. Prof. Arkenberg
has modernized the text.
This text is part of the Internet
Modern History Sourcebook. The Sourcebook is a collection of public domain and
copy-permitted texts for introductory level classes in modern European and World history.
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© Paul Halsall, July 1998
halsall@murray.fordham.edu
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