Pavel Kravař

Who was Pavel Kravař?

Pavel Kravař, or Paul Crawar, Paul Craw, was a Hussite emissary from Bohemia who was burned at the stake for heresy at St Andrews in Scotland on 23 July 1433. He was the first of a succession of religious reformers who were martyred in the town during the course of the subsequent Protestant Reformation..

Pavel Kravař was probably a native of Kravaře, Opava District, Silesia, now part of the Czech Republic. After studying medicine at the University of Montpellier, he graduated as Master of Arts from the University of Paris in 1415. The following year, he entered the Faculty of Arts at the University of Prague, then a hotbed of Hussite activity. Around 1421, with the University now in decline, Pavel Kravař left Prague to become a physician in the service of the Polish King, Władisław II Jagiełło. He probably returned to the Bohemian capital in 1432 prior to undertaking his ill-fated mission to Scotland.