Did You Ever Wonder... Who came before Luther?

While Martin Luther was certainly the leader of the Reformation, there were voices that rose before him that desired to challenge long held thoughts in the church.

Jan Hus (sometimes called “John Huss”) was one such man.  Active almost a century before Luther, he was born to a very poor family.  He studied to be a priest in part to escape that poverty, and as such began to have a time of awakening which led him to challenge the Roman Catholic Church.  He lived and worked in what is now the Czech Republic.  

Hus believed that many priests used their power to gain financial advantage and were immoral in other ways.  He wanted priests to focus on their own personal morality as a result.

He also believed that the Bible, then exclusively translated into Latin, should be easily accessible and readable by all people. This would finally come to be when Luther translated the Bible into German.

There were others that came before Luther, but Hus is probably the most famous and certainly had the greatest following.