Iohannes Hus: Proice omnia ista

Magistri Iohannis Hus Opera omnia

Petra Mutlová, Zuzana Čermáková Lukšová

Masaryk university, Faculty of Arts, 2025.

Ratio edendi

The text survives in 3 manuscripts, all of which are presently housed in the National Library of Czechia in Prague: X C 3, fol. 124ra-125ra (siglum A), X H 18, fol. 2v-4r (B), VIII E 5, fol. 49r-50r (C). This inception speech for an uknown candidate was delivered by Jan Hus sometime after 1400.

Manuscript A originated in Bohemia in the first third of the 15th century and apart from other material, it contains several university speeches by Hus and others. Manuscript B is from the 15th century and contains a number of questions discussed at Prague university to which it belonged, namely to the library of Charles’s college. Manuscript C originated in Bohemia in the 15th century and contains material connected to Prague University (questions, disputations, recommendation speeches and the like).

The collation of all three copies showed that none of them could have been copied directly from another and the apparatus therefore records all variant readings. The text in manuscript A is the base copy for the reconstructed text and its wording is followed with the exception of a few omissions, which are then supplied with the wording from the other copies. The ortography of A provides the norm of the edition and graphical variants of the other two copies together with a few apparent scribal errors are not recorded in the apparatus. Analysis of the variant readings shows that there is an apparent division between manuscript A and the group BC. Manuscripts B and C are genetically closer to each other, as can be seen both from the frequency and the significance of their shared readings. Nevertheless, while B shares more than 40% of its variant readings with C, in case of C there are further 45% of singular readings and omissions which rules out a direct common model. Four cases of emendations resulting in divergence between the readings of B and C prove this beyond doubt. There are three problematic adjustments of quotations from the authorities which are commented upon in the apparatus.

Witnesses

• A: National Library of the Czech Republic, X C 3. Digital version
• B: National Library of the Czech Republic, X H 18. Digital version
• C: National Library of the Czech Republic, VIII E 5. Digital version

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