The Trial of Jan Hus: Medieval Heresy and Criminal Procedure. By Thomas A. Fudge. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. xxiii + 392 pp. $74.00 cloth.

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)The Trial of Jan Hus: Medieval Heresy and Criminal Procedure . By Thomas A. Fudge . New York : Oxford University Press , 2013. xxiii + 392 pp. $74.00 cloth.Book Reviews and NotesThe Trial of Jan Hus is the third and last of a series of studies of the Bohemian reformer by Thomas A. Fudge. It seeks to chronicle in careful detail the variety of court proceedings against Hus in the first two decades of the fifteenth century. But this book contains more than narrative; it also quite unapologetically offers judgments, both of Hus and his trial: "I believe the evidence shows conclusively that Jan Hus was a heretic. I am also convinced that . . . the trial was legal" (347). In reaching these conclusions, Fudge positions himself outside the mainstream of scholarly writings on Hus and the case against him, works which at one point he polemically characterizes as containing "little more than the pious longings of their evaluators . . . a projection of their own ideas and desires" (346). While this volume's textual analysis is in many ways to be commended, the tone of comments like these mars the overall effectiveness of its argument.In his first three chapters, Fudge begins with a survey of the events leading up to the burning of Hus at the Council of Constance in 1415, as well as with an overview of the procedures that governed late medieval heresy trials. A strength of Fudge's analysis throughout the book is his meticulous examination of the specific provisions of canon law that shaped the church's treatment of Hus. Thus it is no surprise that Fudge treats heresy as primarily a legal category, although he also recounts the ways in which it signified intellectual deviance, religious formation and reform, a challenge to the social order, and a purported form of madness, disease, perversion, and the work of the devil.Chapter 4 initiates Fudge's detailed account of Hus's confrontations with the institutional church, which began in Prague in 1403 with the assembly of a list of Wycliffite articles that unnamed university masters were accused of circulating and affirming. Subsequent chapters trace the evolution of the process against Hus both in Bohemia and at the papal court. Along the way, the reader meets a colorful cast of characters: the sharp Jan Jesenice, Hus's lead attorney for most of the process; Michael de Causis, his primary antagonist; the local archbishop, Zbynek; and participants in the Council of Constance such as Jean Gerson. On Fudge's account, Hus committed significant strategic errors at least twice in the course of the proceedings against him: first by issuing a direct appeal to the judgment of Christ, one that according to Fudge placed him outside the processes of the church and rendered his argument preposterous in the eyes of many; and second by accepting Emperor Sigismund's safe-conduct to attend the Council of Constance. Because Hus had already been excommunicated for heresy at the time of the council and because heretics had no rights in medieval canon law, Fudge argues, the church and its associates were under no legal obligation to honor any promise made to him. …