Jerome of Prague - Early Life and Education

Early Life and Education

Jerome spent time teaching at the universities of Paris, Cologne, and Heidelberg, but was accused of heresy at all these universities and forced to return to Bohemia. He spent much of his life traveling about various universities, but frequently returned to Bohemia where he was virtually safe from any prosecution. He earned popular renown, as his rhetoric and oratory skills were acclaimed and often roused the public into demonstrations against the church, although they sometimes ended badly. He secured, in 1399, permission to travel. In 1401 he returned to Prague, but in 1402 visited England, where, at Oxford University, he copied out the Dialogus and Trialogus of John Wyclif, and thus evinced his interest in Lollardry. He became an ardent and outspoken advocate of realism and, thereafter, of Wyclifism; charges of which were constantly getting him into trouble. In 1403 he went to Jerusalem, in 1405 to Paris. There he took his Master's degree, but Jean Gerson drove him out. In 1406 he took the same degree at the University of Cologne, and a little later at the University of Heidelberg.

He was no safer in Prague, where he returned, and where, in 1407, he took the same degree. In that year he returned to Oxford, but was again compelled to flee. During 1408 and 1409 he was in Prague, and there his pronounced Czech preferences aroused opposition to him in some quarters. Early in January 1410, he made a cautious speech in favour of Wyclif's philosophical views, and this was cited against him at the Council of Constance four years later. In March 1410, a Papal Bull against Wyclif's writings was issued, and on the charge of favouring them, Jerome was imprisoned in Vienna, but managed to escape to Moravia. For this he was excommunicated by the bishop of Kraków. Returned to Prague, he appeared publicly as the advocate of Hus. Popular legend attributes to Jerome leadership of a protest in which papal bulls were first strung around the neck of a prostitute in a cart and then carried to the pillory in Prague to be publicly burned, but the leader was actually Wok of Waldstein.