'An obstinate heretic...put to the fire and burned to ashes' : The Execution of Pavel Kravař, 1433

On this day in 1433 Pavel Kravař, a representative of the Bohemian proto-Protestant movement known as Hussitism, was accused of heresy, tried and convicted, and burned at the stake - apparently all in the same day - at St Andrews. This dramatic and rather brutal event provides a striking illustration of the state and outlook of the Scottish church in the 1430s, although the details of the incident - as well as the precise beliefs for which the doomed Kravař was condemned - are somewhat uncertain. Today's blog post will examine what we know of Kravař's execution and what it tells us about developments in Scottish religious attitudes in the early fifteenth-century. 

Paulus Crawar Teutonicus: Who was Pavel Kravař?

Jan Hus, after whom Hussitism was named, being burned at the stake. This image is from the Antithesis Christi et Antichristi, also known as the Jena codex (c. 1490-1500. Despite Hus's condemnation by the wider church and his eventual execution, his ideas had an enormous impact on the history of central Europe in the fifteenth-century and beyond. Image source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jan_Hus_at_the_Stake.jpg

Though the contemporary Scottish chronicler Abbot Walter Bower of Inchcolm identifies him as German (Teutonicus), Kravař probably came from the eastern part of the modern-day Czech Republic originally. Born around 1390, his surname suggests that he may have been born in the village of Kravaře, near Opava, in the Duchy of Silesia, which had been absorbed into the Kingdom of Bohemia in 1335. He matriculated, styled 'Paulus Craber', at the University of Paris and graduated with a Master of Arts in May 1415. His name appears among those 'of the English Nation' at the university, meaning he studied alongside the Anglophone students and thus presumably spoke English (an important point to note given his fatal visit to Scotland in 1433). The following year, he entered the Faculty of Arts at the University of Prague. According to his enrolment papers, at some point (presumably before studying at Paris) Kravař had trained as a Bachelor of Medicine at the University of Montpellier, and Bower too concedes that Kravař was 'an outstanding practitioner of the art of medicine'. Overall, these early endeavours give the impression of a man committed to and with a talent for learning, someone at home in an academic environment and used to moving in multi-national - and multi-lingual - circles. It is not clear whether Kravař was already sympathetic to Hussite teachings before joining the faculty at Prague, but in March 1417 the university formally adopted Hussitism as official doctrine and so it seems likely that by this point at least Kravař too had dedicated himself to this 'heresy'. 

An illustration of Prague, capital of the Kingdom of Bohemia, from the so-called Nuremburg Chronicle by Hartmann Schedel (1493). During the fifteenth-century, the city - and in particular its university - became the focal point of a growing movement for religious reform, one that would have a significant impact across Christendom - even reaching as far afield as Scotland. Image source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Liber_Chronicarum_f_229v_f.jpg

Jan Hus was a graduate of the University of Prague - earning a bachelor's degree in 1393 and a masters in 1396 - and in 1402 became rector of the university. At the time, Catholicism was gripped by an arcane but serious crisis known as the Papal Schism, whereby rival popes based at Rome and Avignon vied for recognition among the various secular authorities of western Christendom as God's sole rightful representative on Earth. In 1409 the Council of Pisa attempted to settle the dispute by denouncing both popes and appointing one of their own, but since neither the Roman nor the Avignon pontiff accepted this decision it merely meant there were now three popes, sowing further discord and confusion. Hus was far from the only churchman, in Prague or elsewhere, to express distaste for this state of affairs, nor to view the schism as being symptomatic of deeper issues with Catholic orthodoxy as it had come to be practiced by the early fifteenth-century. But the particularly 'revolutionary' intellectual culture that had developed in Prague since the founding of the university in 1348 provided especially fertile ground for Hus's provocative ideas to take root in Bohemian society. Broadly-speaking, Hus expressed four main principles that served as a challenge to contemporary Church doctrine. The laity, he believed, should receive both bread and wine (representing the body and blood of Christ) as part of the sacrament of Holy Communion. Most medieval churches used only bread, and even then not as part of the regular service. Hus also insisted that all people should be able to read the Scriptures in their own language, and that thus equipped laymen had as much right to preach the word of God as the clergy. He called for the lifestyles of clergymen to conform more closely to scriptural practices, for an end to indulgences, and the reduction of financial burdens on the laity more generally. Finally, he also called for the transgressions of the clergy - of which he thought there were many - ought to be punished according to the law. Hus was greatly influenced by the teachings of the English religious reformer John Wyclif (d. 1384), whose writings had been translated into Czech and widely distributed among literate Bohemians. Wyclif's ideas gained further traction in Bohemia when, in 1414 or 1415, the prominent Lollard (as Wyclif's followers were called) Peter Payne (known as Petr Engliš among the Bohemians) fled to Prague to escape persecution in England. When the second Pisan pope John XXIII attempted to call a crusade against King Ladislaus of Naples for supporting the Roman pope Gregory XII in 1410, Hus preached against participating and his followers caused unrest across the city. Eventually compelled to withdraw into the countryside under pressure from the authorities, Hus continued writing voraciously against church orthodoxy and began to gain followers as far afield as Poland, Hungary, and the Holy Roman Empire. In 1414, Sigismund of Hungary, Holy Roman Emperor and brother of the Bohemian king Václav IV (who unsurprisingly resented the unrest caused by Hus's followers), arranged the Council of Constance, an ecumenical council at which Hus was made to stand trial for his teachings. For a full month from 5th June 1415, Hus faced the questioning of the council. He remained defiant and repeatedly challenged the church authorities to prove, with reference to the Bible, how what he had said and written was heretical, but this cut no ice with his accusers. Hus was burned at the stake as a heretic on 6th July 1415, a little under a year before Kravař took up his position at the University of Prague. This was the catalyst for religious revolution in Bohemia, resulting in no fewer than five crusades between 1420 and 1431 directed at restoring orthodox Catholicism to the kingdom (and failing to do so). 

A fifteenth-century illustration of a 'wagenburg' (wagon fort'), a tactic for which the Hussites became particularly famous. Armoured wagons would be deployed in a square or circular formation, providing a formidable defence for this within. It may be that in the 1420s Kravař travelled abroad as a physician to a company of Hussite mercenaries and through them found employment with the King of Poland. Image source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wagenburg.jpg

The extent to which Kravař's beliefs were in line with the core Hussite teachings is uncertain. Most histories, both scholarly and otherwise, have tended to assume he was fairly radical, largely based on the unsourced assertions of our earliest accounts of his execution. A degree of caution is probably wise however when considering these testimonies, coloured as they were by the circumstances of his death. It seems fair at least to suppose that whether he was a moderate or a radical Hussite, he was eager to proselytise on behalf of the movement. This can be inferred from the fact that he did not remain long at the faculty at Prague, but travelled abroad instead. To an extent, his departure from the university may reflect the institution's decline as a result of the conflicts provoked by Bohemia's adherence to Hussitism, but undoubtedly Kravař carried these revolutionary teachings wherever he went (as his treatment in Scotland confirms). In about 1421 or 1422, Kravař found employment as a physician in the service of Władysław II Jagiełło, Grand Duke of Lithuania and King of Poland. A letter from Kravař to the Polish king, dated January 1432, survives and is the only undisputed writing of his to survive. In it, he seeks an audience with King Władysław in order to impart undisclosed information which he intriguingly claims is vital for the preservation of peace and tranquillity in Poland and its neighbours. He also complains that his wages - an annuity of sixteen marks - had gone unpaid for the past four years! This latter point may reflect something of a general cooling of relations between the Polish king and his Bohemian servants. Władysław had initially been on good terms with the Hussites and when Václav IV had died in 1419 Władysław had been invited to succeed him as King of Bohemia. Unwilling to fully commit to the 'heresy', Władysław demurred in favour of his nephew Sigismund Korybut, who ultimately proved unacceptable to the more radical elements within the Hussite movement. Korybut was briefly driven from Bohemia in 1422 and permanently deposed in 1427, which rather soured Władysław's attitude towards the Hussite cause. The letter was produced at Toruń (Thorn) on the River Vistula, which at the time Kravař was writing was occupied by the Teutonic Order and not strictly speaking part of Władysław's kingdom. It is tempting to speculate that Kravař was thus engaged in some form of espionage on behalf of the Polish king and that the information in question concerned the on-going conflict between Władysław and the Teutonic Order. Władysław employed considerable numbers of Hussite mercenaries - who quickly developed a reputation for cunning and effectiveness on the battlefields of central and eastern Europe - and it may be that Kravař's excursions in Poland began as a physician to troops such as these. Yet it is just as likely that this missive concerns far more mundane matters, with Kravař withholding the details not because he feared exposure as a royal spy but rather as a means to encourage the king to grant him a personal audience. No response from the Polish king survives, so we cannot be sure whether Kravař ever got his hoped for meeting. It is not clear whether Kravař had returned to Bohemia between his time in Poland and his fateful voyage to Scotland, but he next appears under suspicion at St Andrews. 

'Sent from Bohemia by the heretics of Prague': The Burning of Pavel Kravař

The Battle of Domažlice in 1431, as depicted in the so-called Jena codex. The defeat of a crusading army by the Hussites at this engagement forced the Church authorities to pursue a more conciliatory policy towards these supposed heretics, resulting in something of a détente being arranged at the Council of Basel. This in turn encouraged the Hussites to embark on a campaign of proselytising across western Europe. Kravař's mission to Scotland may have been part of this recruitment drive. Image source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hussitenkriege.tif

Happily, we are blessed with three key sources for Kravař's mission to Scotland and his subsequent execution. The earliest narrative is found in the Scotichronicon, an exhaustive history of Scotland written by Walter Bower, Abbot of Inchcolm, in the 1440s. Bower had served as abbot of nearby Inchcolm Abbey - located on an island in the River Forth - from 1417 and so would have been active at the time of execution. He had been a canon at St Andrews Cathedral from around 1400 until his appointment to Inchcolm, was apparently an eyewitness to the celebrations that accompanied the arrival of papal bulls concerning the university in 1414, and probably studied canon law and theology there - perhaps among the first generation of students there. He thus had access to plenty of first-hand sources of information on the event and may even have been present himself in 1433 (though he does not explicitly claim to have been). Furthermore, the chronicler Hector Boece provides an account of Kravař's execution in Scotorum historiae, published in 1527. Finally, John Knox's History of the Reformation in Scotland, written shortly after 1560, offers an intriguing and - unlike Bower and Boece - sympathetic version of events. Sadly none of these sources offer any insight into why Kravař was sent to Scotland, other than in the most obvious sense that the Hussites were at this time seeking allies and converts anywhere they could find them. It has generally been presumed that Kravař's mission was part of the wider evangelising offensive launched by the Hussites in response to the apparently conciliatory atmosphere of the Council of Basel. However, there is some reason to suppose that the Hussites may have viewed Scotland as being particularly receptive to 'heretic' ideas in this period. In 1408, James Resby, an English friar, had been burned at the stake in Perth for spreading Wyclif's teachings. As early as 1410, a work titled Nova Scocie, an excoriating attack on the excesses of the Scottish clergy, had reached Prague and been translated into Czech. The reformist content of this document surely resonated with the Hussites. The foundation of a university at St Andrews in 1411 may also have seemed like an encouraging sign for the Hussites, since the University of Prague had done so much to foster the intellectual environment in which Hussitism had developed and taken root. This prospect was not lost on the academic authorities at St Andrews, who from 1417 - if not earlier - required students to swear an oath to defend the Church against Lollardy. On 12th March 1424, a parliament at Perth issued legislation concerning 'lollardis and heretykis' that required the Scottish bishops to conduct enquiries in their dioceses and punish those found guilty 'as the law of halykirke requiris'. All of these points may have led the Hussites to view Scotland as fertile ground for their proselytising. One reason that Kravař in particular might have been chosen for this undertaking is his apparent ability to speak English, suggested by his presence among those 'of the English Nation' at the University of Paris in 1415. During his time there, Kravař may also have encountered or even befriended John Crannoch, a talented Scottish theologian who had been serving as Bishop of Brechin since 1426/7. Intriguingly, Bower indicates that Kravař was sent by 'Peter Crek', aka Peter Payne, the English Lollard who had fled to Prague in the mid-1410s. Whatever his reason for coming to Scotland, while at St Andrews in the summer of 1433 he fell into the hands of Lawrence of Lindores, one of the university's founders and inquisitor-general for Scotland. 

The ruins of Inchcolm Abbey, on an island in the River Forth. Walter Bower served as abbot of Inchcolm from 1417 until his death in 1449, and from about 1441-5 he composed his magisterial work the Scotichronicon. Recounting Scottish history down to his own time, Bower preserves the earliest surviving account of Kravař's execution. Image source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Inchcolm_Abbey,_Inchcolm,_Firth_of_Forth,_Scotland-9April2011.jpg

Lawrence of Lindores (whose name may indicate that he was born in Fife, less than twenty miles from St Andrews) had, like Kravař, studied among those 'of the English Nation' at the University of Paris, receiving - among other accolades - a Master of Arts in 1393 and a Bachelor of Theology in 1403. By 1408 he was rector of Criech, near St Andrews, and his interests would remain focused around Scotland's first university town for the rest of his life. Also in this year he became the first person to be named inquisitor-general for Scotland. Although his initial commission had been given by the Avignon pope Benedict XIII, Lawrence retained the office and authority of inquisitor-general until his death in 1437. The inquisitions of the fifteenth-century were somewhat less organised (and for the most part less lethal) than those that would unleash immeasurable horror on various 'non-conforming' communities in the sixteenth-century, but nevertheless Lawrence was given a fairly broad and somewhat vague remit to root out heretics and punish them according to Church law. It had been Lawrence who had presided over the trial at Perth which had seen the Lollard James Resby condemned to the flames in 1408 (the only other case besides Kravař's known to have ended in an execution). He is described in rather fearsome terms by Bower - who probably knew Lawrence personally - as 'the inquisitor of heretical depravity, who gave heretics or Lollards no peace anywhere in the kingdom'. 

Templars being burned at the stake, from f. 44v of the Chroniques de France ou de St Denis (Royal 20 C VII , after 1380). The use of such a brutal punishment for heresy is illustrative of the seriousness with which this transgression was viewed in medieval Christendom. Image source: http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/ILLUMIN.ASP?Size=mid&IllID=42584

Bower's account strongly implies that Kravař's arrest, trial, conviction and execution all took place on the same day. Boece on the other hand suggests the process took a little longer, which is more in keeping with standard practice for inquisitions of the time. According to Boece's narrative, Kravař was arrested by Henry Wardlaw, Bishop of St Andrews, and handed over to the professors of theology for questioning. Boece makes no mention of Lawrence - who might conceivably have been described as a professor of theology but usually taught in the arts - and instead claims that John Fogo, Abbot of Melrose, led the interrogation. Here Boece is likely confused, especially since he goes on to claim that Fogo's appointment as Abbot of Melrose was made as reward for his efforts in prosecuting Kravař (despite having already been in the role for almost a decade by 1433). The nature of the questioning that Kravař underwent is not specified by either Bower or Boece, but we cannot rule out some form of physical coercion or torture. Knox also fails to mention any details about Kravař's treatment at the hands of his interrogators, but he does claim that during his execution a brass ball was placed in his mouth so that 'he should not give confession of his faith to the people, neither yet that they should understand the defence which he had against their unjust accusation and condemnation'. Such a practice might also delay asphyxiation - the most common cause of death when a person was burned at the stake, as Dr Lawrence Moonan has noted - and could thus prolong Kravař's torment. However, Knox was writing over a century after the fact and this claim may better reflect the practices of his own time than those of the 1430s. There is at least some reason to suppose Kravař was noted at the time for his eloquence. Although the fiercely orthodox Bower is unsurprisingly critical of Kravař's heretical beliefs, he nonetheless approvingly describes him as being 'fluent and skilled in divinity and in biblical argument' before claiming that 'he displayed his stupidity by stubbornly maintaining nearly all the erroneous articles associated with Prague and Wyclif'. The 'nearly' is interesting here, and may indicate that Kravař was a more moderate reformer than has sometimes been assumed. Bower goes on to demonstrate a remarkable familiarity with the core Hussite teachings - though he of course strongly disapproves of them - so he would apparently have been well-placed to assess the extent of Kravař's 'heresy'.

The former site of the Mercat Cross in the centre of St Andrews. Boece claims the execution took place at the Mercat Cross, the most public site in the town, providing the authorities with the greatest opportunity to draw attention to Kravař's grisly fate. Image source: https://andyandjudi.com/2015/04/06/st-andrews-walking-tour/7-st-andrews-mercat-cross-on-the-cobble-stone-market-street/

Prof J. H. Baxter, himself a Professor of Divinity at the University of St Andrews, saw the harsh treatment of Kravař as a consequence of quite specific and contingent converging political interests of the king, the Church, and the university. James I, having spent the first eighteen years of his reign as a prisoner in England, had learned a particular distaste for heresy from his captors of Henry IV and Henry V of England and was keen to use this zeal as a pretext for reasserting his personal authority following his return to Scotland. The Scottish church meanwhile had been somewhat embarrassingly slow on the uptake when the Council of Constance had condemned Jan Hus and sought to end the schism by electing Martin V as the sole pope, and was thus keen to demonstrate its orthodoxy in as public and striking a manner as possible. And the university, being equally dependent on the crown and the church for patronage, was swift to acquiesce to the demands of both. Yet the reality is somewhat more complex than this. While the restoration of royal authority and prestige was certainly the central feature of James I's kingship on his release from captivity, James had in fact returned to Scotland in 1424. During the nine years between James's release and Kravař's execution, the king had been remarkably successful in establishing himself as the supreme arbiter of law and order within his kingdom, and so cannot be assumed to have been keenly interested in using the case of Kravař to reinforce this impression. Indeed Bower, whose explicit intention in writing the Scotichronicon was the edification of James I's son James II during his minority (and who never usually missed an opportunity to lionise the elder James), makes no mention of the king's involvement in the incident, and neither does Knox. Even Boece merely notes the king's satisfaction with the outcome, offering no indication that he had been involved in bringing this about. Similarly, while the Scottish Church's response to the Council of Constance had been lukewarm at best, a number of Scottish clergymen had nonetheless attended. This apparent indifference to the Council's efforts at ending the schism was largely influenced by the Scottish government, which at the time headed by James I's uncle Robert Stewart, duke of Albany. By 1433 Albany was some thirteen years dead and his family disgraced, offering the Scots more than enough excuse to distance themselves from these decisions. Even Albany himself gave up on adherence to the now anti-pope Benedict XIII after pressure organised to a large extent by the community at the University of St Andrews. At a general council at Perth in October 1418, the Scottish political community formally committed themselves to Pope Martin V, less than a year after his election. It thus seems difficult to believe that the Scottish Church would still feel desperate to prove its orthodox credentials a decade and a half later. The fact that the university played such a key role in securing Scottish recognition of the decisions made at Constance may offer our best explanation as to why Kravař suffered the particular fate he did in St Andrews of all places. Far from being a timid entity beholden to church and state to prop it up, nor yet the hotbed of sedition and reformist potential that the hapless Kravař may have hoped, the fledgling university seems to have been a bastion of orthodoxy and religious conservatism, which leapt at the opportunity to publicly punish a heretic when one was found in their midst. In this sense, the university reflected the Scottish political community more widely, which mostly sought to uphold the established order and generally looked with suspicion on more radical alternatives.