The Council of Constance, convened from 1414 to resolve the Western Schism and address Church reform, condemned the Czech reformer Jan Hus as a heretic and burned him at the stake on 6 July 1415 despite a promise of safe conduct. Hus had championed vernacular preaching and drawn heavily on Wycliffe's ideas, and his execution sparked the Hussite Wars in Bohemia, a prolonged conflict with enormous consequences for central European culture. The council's simultaneous attempt to heal the Church and silence its critics illustrated the deep contradictions of late medieval ecclesiastical authority.

Jan Hus was not only a theologian but a shaper of written Czech, and his execution galvanised a Bohemian literary culture that used vernacular hymns, satire, and religious verse as weapons of resistance. The Hussite movement produced a rich tradition of Czech devotional poetry and song that drew ordinary people into active literary participation, anticipating the reformist uses of the vernacular that would sweep Europe a century later. The memory of Hus as martyr became a touchstone for Central European poets seeking models of principled resistance to power.