Matthew of Janov

About this book

. and the revolutionary Hussite movement that would permanently transform European Christianity. The book examines Matthew's education in Paris, his development of comprehensive arguments for frequent lay communion, his iconoclastic critique of religious images, his apocalyptic identification of ecclesiastical corruption as the work of Antichrist, and his concept of the church as an invisible communio sanctorum distinct from corrupt visible institutions. Through careful analysis of how Matthew's theology was appropriated by moderate Utraquists and radical Taborites alike, this work illuminates the complex process by which medieval scholastic theology turned its analytical power against the very ecclesiastical system it had been designed to defend, creating an intellectual bridge between the Middle Ages and the Protestant Reformation.