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Hus heirs (and fans)

This wonderful man was a distant relative of mine. My maiden name was Huss, my family is from the same region as Jan Hus, and we have discovered many links to him in our family tree. What I find funny is that my sister and I are the only evangelical Christians in a long, long line of Roman Catholics. One would think that Hus's battles and convictions would have had more effect on his family.

Victoria Reed
Mount Vernon Nazarene College
Mount Vernon, Ohio

I am a pastor in the Unity of the Brethren, a church that views itself as a descendant of the Hussite tradition. While the Moravians became what they are through their interaction with Count Nikolaus von Zinzendorf, our people are descended from the Hussites who remained in the Czech lands and held onto their beliefs and identity. In the 1800s, cheap farmland in Texas attracted Czechs to the United States. In 1903, rather than merge with an American church, they organized a denomination to exercise their freedom and to honor their religious roots.

Mark Labaj
Temple Brethren Church
Temple, Texas

The new Jan Hus issue is fabulous! As a historian specializing in Czech things, I've wondered why you hadn't done Hus long ago. I must have bought 10 copies of the Komensky (Comenius, issue 13) issue for my English-reading Czech friends. I'll be ordering lots of copies of this one, too.

Karen Freeze
University of Washington
Seattle, Washington

Name game

I just received my copy of issue 68, and I find references throughout to Pope John XXIII in the fifteenth century. I thought John XXIII was the twentieth-century pope who convened Vatican II. Can you clarify this for me?

Pat Wadsworth
Via msn.com

Because Cardinal Baldassare, the first John XXIII, was not properly elected, the Roman Catholic church considers him an anti-pope. Thus the name John XXIII was still available. But because Baldassare was such a reprehensible character, for 500 years after him no other pope wanted to be called John.

When Cardinal Roncalli became Pope John XXIII in 1958, many were puzzled by his choice of name. He said that he selected it to honor his father and because, historically, Johns tended to have short pontificates (Roncalli was nearly 80 at his election). However, he probably had another reason: the first John XXIII had called the Council of Constance, and the second John XXIII may have been looking ahead already to Vatican II.

—ed.

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