John Huss (Rashdall)/Section 2

by Hastings Rashdall

Section II.

THE LIFE OF HUSS IN BOHEMIA.

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John Huss was the son of poor parents living at Hussinecz, a small town in the South of Bohemia. He was born on the 5th of July, 1373.^[1] He received his early education partly in the School of his native place and partly at Praschalicz, a large town three miles from Frassiaese, He afterwards proceeded to the University of Prague, where he took his B.A. degree in 1393.

But one anecdote of any interest is preserved of Huss’ early life. The story is told by M. de Bonnechose,^[2] who, however, does not mention his authority: there is certainly a remarkably apocryphal flavour about it. It is said that on a winter’s evening the future martyr was sitting over the fire, reading the story of the sufferings of S. Lawrence. Suddenly he thrust his hand into the flames; and was only prevented by the forcible interposition of his companions from “trying what part of the sufferings of that holy man he was capable of enduring.” The only vice with which he afterwards had to reproach himself was a fondness for chess-playing, over which most philosophical game he had (as he thought} before his ordination wasted his time and lost his temper. That excessive chess-playing should have been the only folly of his youth, is a sufficient testimony to the general strictness of his life: and that he gave up excessive chess-playing, if not chess-playing altogether, upon his ordination, shows that he must have entered upon his sacred calling in a spirit rare indeed at a time when the Church was the only means of worldly advancement open to the poor man, and when the average morality of the clergy was lower than the average morality of the laity.

In 1396 Huss proceeded to the degree of M.A., and, as was usual at a time when a degree was still mainly looked upon as a qualification to teach, began to give lectures, probably upon philosophy. He also became a Bachelor of Divinity, and in 1401 was Dean of that Faculty. Wyclif’s philosophical works were then used as text-books in the Bohemian University; and Huss’ tutor, Stanislaus of Znaim, was a prominent divine of the reforming party. He was thus brought up in an atmosphere favourable to the formation of liberal opinions. But at first he was hardly inclined to go so far as his seniors. When in 1402 Jerome Faulfisch brought with him from England the theological works of the great Oxford schoolman, Stanislaus of Znaim was more inclined than his pupil to look with favour upon the new doctrines, and especially upon the denial of Transubstantiation, which, in Wyclif’s estimation, was a necessary deduction from metaphysical principles with which the students of Prague were already familiar. It is alleged that Huss was at one time so much disgusted with the heresies of Wyclif, that he said that his books ought to be cast into the Moldau. If this statement be true, the disgust soon wore off. He afterwards had the very highest reverence for the English Reformer; and, although the clear moral insight which inspired his protests against Sacerdotalism was essentially his own, every one of his distinct doctrinal opinions may be traced either to Wyclif or to Matthias of Janow. Even if (as some have contended) his opinions never crossed the line of orthodoxy, his obligations to Wyclif were great. Matthias of Janow and the Bohemian preachers of the fourteenth century had quarrelled with various ecclesiastical authorities; but they were not pen rebels against the Church. The most advanced of them, Matthias of Janow, had retracted his heresies as soon as he was required to do so by his ecclesiastical superior. But in Wyclif’s writings Huss was brought face to face with heresy, with doctrines which had been solemnly condemned by the Church, and which had not been retracted. After the study of Wyclif’s works, although his timid and cautious intellect recoiled from some of his opinions, his moral nature no longer shrank from heresy as from a contamination. His chivalrous temper prompted him to go far greater lengths in defence of one whom he considered unjustly condemned, than was required by the strict exigences of his own theological position. The prevalent opinion was that a heretic was worse than a bad man. Huss had satisfied himself that a heretic might be a man; and that books which the Church called heretical might contain more genuinely Christian teaching than books which the Church called orthodox. In the fifteenth century this was much.

John Huss soon became known as a prominent member of the national party in the University. The King was angry with the Pope of the Roman obedience use his predecessor, Boniface IX., had consented to his deposition from the Imperial throne; and, consequently, any movement of an anti-hierarchical tendency was likely to meet with some favour at Court. Huss was appointed Confessor to the Queen, who afterwards became an avowed Hussite.^[3] To his position as one of the Royal Chaplains he no doubt owed not a little of the security which he enjoyed throughout the troubles of succeeding years.

In John Huss the liberal movement to which the study of Matthias of Janow and Wyclif had given rise in the University, formed a junction with the stream of popular religious life which had sprung from the teaching of Milicz and Conrad. A Bohemian knight, John of Mühlheim, and a merchant named Kreutz, had built a Chapel which was to be specially devoted to regular preaching in Bohemian on Sundays and holydays. Up to this time, in the words of the deed of foundation, “preachers, particularly preachers in the vulgar tongue, were compelled to wander about from one house or corner to another.” The new Chapel was dedicated to the Holy Innocents in Bethlehem. Its foundation was authorised by “the confirmation of the Lord Archbishop John, who laid the first stones of it with his own hands, by the King’s Charter (Libertatio), and by a grant of Privilege from Pope Gregory (Privilegiatio).”^[4] Thee Chapel was thus possessed of a perfectly regular ecclesiastical status; but it was no doubt looked upon by the parochial clergy of Prague with the same kind of suspicion which the Proprietary Chapels of the early Evangelicals excited among the “high and dry” Churchmen of the last century. Two years after he had held the office of Rector of the University, Huss became one of the “preachers and rectors” of this chapel. The mantle of Milicz and Conrad had fallen upon Huss. The Chapel was crowded Sunday after Sunday with persons of every class of society. The Queen was often among his auditors: there were nobles, priests, students, as well as burghers and artizans. The chapel is said to have held at times as many as three thousand people.^[5] Universities have been in all ages the homes of great religious movements. They supply the preacher not only with congregations com to a large extent of men of culture and education; but with congregations, a large part of which will in a few years be scattered over the length and breadth of the land. Luther at Wittemberg; Ridley, Latimer, and Simeon at Cambridge; Newman at Oxford; Huss at Prague, have thus taught the hundreds who should hereafter be the teachers of hundreds of thousands.

The popularity of Wyclif’s writings and the consequent diffusion of his doctrines among the students now began to excite the alarm of the clergy. In 1403, the Archbishop’s official and the Chapter of the Cathedral requested the University to examine forty-five propositions extracted from his books. The debate was a contest between the German and the Bohemian parties. The voting was by nations. Two of the four nations, the Bavarian and Saxon, were wholly German: while of the Polish nation more than half were Germans. The Bohemians were consequently outvoted; and the forty-five propositions were condemned. This condemnation of the great Realist raised the antagonism between German and Bohemian into a deadly feud. The clergy of Prague sided with the orthodox Germans; the King favoured the Bohemians from motives of policy, the nation at large from feelings of patriotism. The contest raged furiously for six years. Theological, national, and philosophical differences were each of them held a sufficient excuse for a free use of bow and arrows in the streets of a mediæval University. In the present contest all these motives were combined: it was a struggle between German and Bohemian, between Nominalist and Realist, between a Church party and a Reforming party. At last, in 1409, the Bohemians succeeded in persuading the King to issue an edict^[6] which gave the combined Bavarian, Saxon, and Polish nations one vote, while the Bohemians were to enjoy three. The Germans had taken a solemn oath that if they were deprived of their privileges, they would leave Prague in a body. They kept their word.

The inhabitants of the once flourishing town soon found that they had been gratifying their patriotic instincts at the expense of their commercial interests. For a time Huss, who was elected Rector a second time by the victorious minority, incurred some odium, even among his countrymen, on account of the part which he had taken in obtaining the edict; and in the Universities which were founded or largely augmented by the five thousand or more ejected Germans, hatred of Huss must have become a tradition. The national insult was wiped out at Constance.

During the first part of the struggle which ended in the withdrawal of the Germans, the personal orthodoxy of Huss does not appear to have been assailed. Zbynek of Hasenburg, the new Archbishop of Prague, showed as much reforming zeal as could be expected in an ecclesiastic in whose mind the interests of religion were subordinated to the interests of his order. At the beginning of his episcopate, he requested the reforming preacher to call his attention to any abuse in the diocese which fell under his notice. Shortly afterwards, Huss was one of a commission of three Masters appointed by the Archbishop to examine into the truth of one of those miracles for which the popular mind of the Middle Ages had an insatiable appetite. The church of Wilsnack had been destroyed by a robber knight in the preceding century: in a cavity of its ruined altar were found three wafers covered with a kind of red mould which often forms upon bread long exposed to the air. This redness was at once attributed to a miraculous manifestation of that blood, the “substance” of which was, according to the theology of the time, already present in the consecrated host. From far and near, from the most northern countries of Europe, as well as from all parts of Bohemia, crowds of pilgrims flocked to Wilsnack to adore the blood of their Redeemer: marvellous cures were said to have been effected. The Commission reported unfavourably to the alleged miracles; and an archiepiscopal mandate forbade the pilgrimage under pain of excommunication. Huss supported his opinions in a pamphlet, in which he expresses pretty plainly his opinion that miracles had long ceased in the Church. He goes to the root of the matter by questioning the spiritual utility of such portents, even if real, and condemns the unbelief which sought after signs no less than the avarice which invented them.

Huss enjoyed other proofs of his Diocesan’s favour. Three times he preached before the Diocesan Synod assembled in the Archbishop’s palace. In these discourses^[7] he attacked in strong language the worldliness and immorality of the Clergy; but language as strong was used by his judges at the Council of Constance. From Latin invectives the clergy had little to fear: and it was not till Huss began to transfer his denunciations of his brethren to the pulpit of Bethlehem Chapel that any attempt was made to silence the daring preacher. At a later period heresies were discovered in the last of these sermons, but not until offence had been given by his Bohemian discourses.

In the year after the date of this sermon (1407), the good understanding between Huss and Zbynek came to an end. In 1405 Innocent VII. had addressed a bull to the Archbishop, directing him to suppress the heresies alleged to be rife in Bohemia. In a Synod held by him in the following year, ecclesiastical penalties were denounced against all who should presume to teach the doctrines of Wyclif. The part which Huss had taken in defending those doctrines could hardly have been regarded in a favourable light by the Archbishop. His generous interference in the trial of an heretical priest, Nicholas of Welesnowicz, before the Archbishop’s Vicar-General, must have been still less acceptable to that prelate. When required to make answer upon oath, Nicholas refused to swear upon the crucifix or any other created thing. Huss defended his refusal on the authority of S. Chrysostom. The Vicar-General’s reply was, “Ha! Master; you came here to listen, not to argue.” Huss repeated his protest. “Is it just,” he asked, “that you should condemn this priest, saying that he holds the errors of the Waldensians when he has sworn to you by God?” The priest was condemned, and after a short imprisonment, banished from the diocese. Huss sent an indignant remonstrance to the Archbishop.^[8] The letter is characteristic. He declines altogether to enter into the merits of the theological question at issue, and confines himself to complaining that a good priest should be banished for preaching the gospel, while priests guilty of every imaginable crime went unpunished.

At a Synod held in June, 1408, decrees were published against persons propagating erroneous opinions touching the Sacrament of the Altar, against preaching “tending to the confusion of the Clergy,” and against the use of all new Bohemian hymns (Cantilence) with four specified exceptions.^[9] These last prohibitions were obviously directed against the vernacular preaching and the popular services of Bethlehem Chapel, which were emptying the parish churches and destroying the influence and the profits of the parochial clergy. This proceeding was followed by a direct attack upon the preacher. The articles of charge and Huss’ answers to them are preserved.^[10] They are three in number. The first alleges that he had taught that all “who received money from their parishioners, especially from the poor, for confession, by way of offertory, and for the sacraments of the Church, were guilty of heresy, not making any distinction whether the fees were taken before or after the administration of the said sacraments.” In justification of this language Huss triumphantly quotes, among other authorities, a Papal bull in which the words “before or after” are expressly added to the prohibition of this kind of Simony. The second article alleges that after the death of a certain well-beneficed Master Peter Wzerub, Huss had said in the pulpit, “I would not for all the world die in the possession of so many and such rich benefices,” and also that he had wished that his soul might be where Wyclif’s soul was. Both these charges are substantially admitted, although the words had, of course, been separated from their context. To the third charge of “excessive” preaching against the clergy, Huss pleaded that his preaching had been by no means excessive. It will be observed that the charges really brought home to the accused only amounted to breaches of ecclesiastical discipline, with the exception, perhaps, of the expression touching Wyclif’s soul. It is characteristic of the man that as yet his only heresy is sympathy with heretics.

The prosecution of 1408 appears to have been dropped, but in the year following other Articles were exhibited, to which Huss was required to make answer upon oath before the Archbishop’s Inquisitor.^[11] We find the old charges renewed and expanded. The accusation of stirring up the people is repeated in a variety of forms. One of the Articles on this head is amusingly hypothetical. It is alleged that on a certain occasion the people were so excited by Huss’ preachings against the Archbishop and his clergy, that they went straight from the chapel “with great tumult and noise before the Archbishop’s Court with seditious words, and unless the Archbishop had taken care to have them removed, he (Huss) would perchance have brought it about that some one should have been maltreated.” Another charge is that the accused had ventured some years back, in private conversation, to question the propriety of laying a whole town under interdict because the Archbishop^[12] of Prague had been ducked and his Dean “detained.” There are two Articles of a more serious character, which show that during this year the germs of those strangely expressed anti-sacerdotal doctrines which were elaborated in the books condemned at Constance, had already taken shape in their author’s mind. Huss is reported to have said, “What is the Roman Church? There it is that Anti-Christ has fixed his foot which cannot easily be moved:”—and again, “No prelate can excommunicate any one unless God excommunicate him first.” Moreover now began a long series of unfounded attacks upon the orthodoxy of his Sacramental teaching. He is charged with having maintained that “a priest in mortal sin cannot make the true body of Christ.” The important qualification “worthily” had been omitted: the fact that the unworthy priest effected the miraculous transformation was never, either now or at any later period, denied by John Huss.

From the Court of the Archbishop Huss appealed to the Pope, apparently before any trial had taken place: and before the close of the year (Dec. 1409) Zbynek was cited to Rome. Pending the appeal, proceedings were stayed. But events had now taken place which gave the Archbishop a fresh pretext for silencing the dangerous preacher.

The long Schism was gradually sapping the foundations of the Papal supremacy. For thirty years it had been uncertain which half of Christendom was ruled by the Vicar of Christ: nor was the spiritual vitality of either such as to warrant an experimental determination of the question. Under these circumstances there was no small ground for fearing that men might begin to ask themselves whether after all an earthly Head was necessary to the Church’s well-being. But in the meantime all the abuses of the Roman Court flourished in two places at once: Christendom was preyed upon by two Pontiffs instead of one. The Schism was injurious alike to the material interests of Churchmen, and to the spiritual efficiency of the Church. On all hands it began to be felt that some amendment were required in a theory of Church Unity which unchurched one half—no man could say which half—of the Western commonwealth of nations. Under such circumstances the eyes of Europe were naturally turned to the theologians of that University which had long been known as the sworn foe of the sworn champions of the Papacy, the Mendicant Friars, if not of the Papacy itself. As far back as the year 1381 the University of Paris had resolved that they would use their utmost endeavours to induce the Princes and Prelates of Europe to consent to submit the claims of the rival Popes to the arbitration of a General Council, which the theologians of Paris had, even in the most flourishing days of the Papacy, maintained to be the sovereign power of the Catholic Church. Their efforts were at last so far successful that in 1408 the Church and realm of France definitively renounced its allegiance to Benedict XIII. It was fortunate that at such a crisis the College of Cardinals numbered among its members at least one avowed Gallican. Cardinal d’Ailly of Florence served as a connecting link between the Cardinals and the University of Paris. The Cardinals on either side were aroused to make a serious effort for the termination of the Schism. But each Pope preferred the certainty of the spoils of half Christendom to the chance of unquestioned sovereignty. Disgusted with the obstinacy of their masters, the Cardinals were at length driven to act for themselves. A majority of either section of the Sacred College determined to convoke a General Council at Pisa.

In March, 1408, there assembled in obedience to the summons of the Cardinals, besides twenty-two members of their own order, “four titular patriarchs, with archbishops, bishops, abbots (including the heads of the chief religious orders), envoys of many sovereign princes, proctors from Cathedral chapters, and a host of Masters and Doctors who represented the new and powerful influence of the universities.”^[13] The Council cited the rival Popes, and on their non-appearance declared them contumacious. Evidence was then taken, upon which Angelo Corario and Peter de Luna were condemned as “notorious schismatics, obstinate and incorrigible heretics, perjurers, and vow-breakers,” and were solemnly declared to be deprived from the Pontificate and cut off from the Church. The Sacred College proceeded to a new election. Their choice fell upon the learned Franciscan theologian Peter Philargi, Cardinal Archbishop of Milan, who took the title of Alexander V.

Among the secular princes who had sent envoys to the Council, and who now recognised the Pope of its election, was the King of Bohemia. The sympathies of the Bohemian party in the University were on the same side. Huss in particular had from the first warmly supported the attempt of the Cardinals to restore unity to the Church. But the Germans, the Archbishop, and the clergy of the diocese refused all compliance with the King’s wishes. It was mainly to secure the assent of the University to his submission to Alexander V.^[14] that Wenzel was prevailed upon to issue the Edict which transferred to the Bohemians the three votes formerly enjoyed by the Germans. Four days after the date of that Edict (Jan. 22, 1409), a Royal proclamation prohibited all obedience to Gregory XII.^[15] The Archbishop immediately suspended all the Masters of the University who recognised the new Pope from the exercise of priestly functions within his diocese; and with many of his clergy fled the country. The confiscation of the property of the exiles, and the almost universal acknowledgment of Alexander V., soon brought the Archbishop to reason. A sort of concordat was arranged. Zbynek and his obedient clergy abandoned Gregory XII., and were restored to their benefices. The suspension of the Masters was removed, and the disobedience of Huss and some others overlooked. In July, a Diocesan Synod gave further effect to the wishes of the King, who was anxious for the removal of suspicions which might be injurious to the success of his political schemes,^[16] by determining that no heresy existed in Bohemia. The reconciliation of the spiritual and temporal powers was solemnly proclaimed at a great assembly of the spiritual and temporal lords of the realm.

No sooner was Zbynek restored to his temporalities than he transferred his complaints against Huss to the court of the new Pontiff. It appears that an order for the surrender of Wyclif’s books for examination had already been promulgated, and that certain students of the University had appealed against the order on the ground that it was contrary to the privileges of the University. Zbynek now, in the year following that in which he had solemnly pronounced the realm free from heresy, procured a bull from Alexander V., by which the heresies of Wyclif, particularly his denial of Transubstantiation, were declared to be on the increase. It was, therefore, ordered that all the heresiarch’s writings should be surrendered for examination by a Commission of four Doctors of Divinity and two of Canon Law, to be appointed by the Archbishop, who, after receiving the report of the Commission, was to proceed to a definitive sentence upon the matter, all appeals to the Apostolical See then pending or hereafter to be made being referred absolutely to his decision.^[17] Moreover, all preaching in private Chapels was to cease.

The Archbishop proceeded to execute the bull, and on the 16th of June, 1410,^[18] all the writings of Wyclif which had been surrendered to the Commission, many of them works of a purely philosophical character, were condemned to the flames. On the 21st the University solemnly declared its dissen^[19] from the Archbishop’s judgment. Indignant at an order which violated their privileges and destroyed their property, the Masters solicited and obtained the interference of the King. Zbynek promised that the sentence should not be executed without the royal permission: but on the 16th of the following month this promise was broken. The Archbishop surrounded his palace with an armed guard; and in its court-yard two hundred volumes of Wyclif’s writings, as well as works of Milicz and others, were solemnly committed to the flames. A great assembly of dignitaries and clergy shouted Te Deums round the bonfire; and the bells of the churches tolled “as if for the dead.” This ridiculous proceeding excited the greatest indignation. Once more the popular feeling against the clergy sought expression in satire, ribald songs, threats, insults, and actual violence. The Archbishop found it expedient to retire to Rudnicz; whence, two days after the burning of the books, he fulminated his excommunication against Huss and his adherents.^[20] The news of the excommunication increased both the popular excitement and the royal displeasure. The King ordered the magistrates of the city to sequestrate the temporalities of the Archbishop and of those of his priests who published the excommunication in their churches. Some of the clergy were imprisoned. The Primate retaliated with a wholesale excommunication^[21] of all the magistrates and officers who had been directly or indirectly concerned in executing the royal commands.

The Archbishop’s exile lasted about a year. He was fond of affecting to pose as a S. Thomas of Canterbury; but he was not equal to the part, and could never sustain it for long together. He agreed that the questions in dispute between himself and the University should be referred to the arbitration of the King and his Council. The arbitrators determined^[22] that there should be, to use diplomatic language, a return to the status quo ante bellum. The Archbishop was to take off all ecclesiastical censures pronounced by himself, and to procure the cancelling of those imposed by the Pope: he was to report to the Pope that no heresy existed in Bohemia, and to request that all proceedings pending in the Papal Courts might be stopped. On these conditions the Archbishop and those who had obeyed him were to be restored to their benefices, and the imprisoned clerks released. Neither side fulfilled its part of the agreement. The letter which the Archbishop was to have written to the Pope, was never despatched; while on his part, he complained that the clerical revenues were still intercepted, and the popular violence still unchecked. Again he left Prague; and proceeded to the Court of the King’s brother Sigismund, where he died before he could obtain an opportunity of laying his grievances before the Emperor.^[23]

The Pope had referred Huss’ appeal to the Cardinal Oddo of Colonna; and with it a further complaint which had been received from Bohemia, alleging that Huss had continued preaching in spite of the prohibition and had used language disrespectful to the Holy See. The Cardinal dismissed the appeal, and enjoined the Archbishop to “proceed to further measures according to the bull of Alexander V.,” and to excommunicate Huss and his adherents. This, as we have seen, he had already done, the appeal being treated as ab initio null and void in accordance with the terms of the bull. Moreover, Huss was cited to appear personally before the Cardinal.^[24]

Alexander V. had now been succeeded by a Pope who was generally believed to have procured by bribery his election to the throne which he had rendered vacant by poison. The official letter^[25] of John XXIII., notifying his election, must have been received in Prague at about the time of the Archbishop’s sentence upon Wyclif’s books. Against that sentence^[26] Huss, together with one Master and five Bachelors of Arts, had, a month before the excommunication, made his appeal from the Pope “male informato” to the Pope “melius informato,” from the delegate of Alexander V. to John XXIII. in person.

Meanwhile, the Preacher of Bethlehem Chapel remained excommunicated; but the services and sermons were continued as before. In the life of every reformer there comes a time when some of his disciples are offended at him, and walk no more with him. Hitherto, the quarrel of Huss had been the quarrel of the University. His old tutor Stanislaus of Znaim, and his intimate friend Palecz had been on his side throughout: Palecz had been one of the representatives of the University in the late arbitration. An occasional dispute with a ecclesiastical superior was no more incompatible with a mediæval ecclesiastic’s notions of canonical obedience, than a “defiance” of his feudal suzerain with a mediæval layman’s notions of feudal subordination. But now the affair was gradually drifting from the position of a dispute within the Church into that of a hostile movement from without. It was high time for those who did not intend to be heretics to beat a retreat.

Huss’ next step separated him for ever from the leading Theologians of Prague. Zbynek was succeeded by the King’s physician, Albic of Uniczow. The Legate entrusted with the pallium of the new Primate, was also the bearer of a bull proclaiming a crusade against the Pope’s rebellious vassal, Ladislaus King of Naples, who was now ravaging the Papal territories. Plenary indulgence was promised as the reward of assistance, personal or pecuniary, against the enemy of the Church. From every pulpit the virtues of the parchments were extolled. Much was said of the potency and certainty of the charm: little of the “true penitence and confession” which were formally announced as the conditions upon which its benefits were to be obtained. Huss announced that he would hold a public disputation against the Indulgences. This was perhaps a more direct defiance of ecclesiastical authority than any of which he had hitherto been guilty. Yet the difference between this step and his former proceedings is not sufficiently marked to account for a change so sudden and so complete as that which now took place in the relations between Huss and his former friends. From the time of Huss’ opposition to the Pope’s indulgences, the reforming Doctors became zealous champions of the Papacy, and bitter enemies of Huss; and the bitterest of all was his old friend Palecz. It is reasonable to suppose that Huss must now have begun in the pulpit and in private conversation to enunciate the doctrines afterwards defended in the “Quaestio de Indulgentiis.” In that case the alarm of the most liberal Catholic is easily accounted for: for those doctrines amount to a virtual negation of the value of all Indulgences and priestly absolutions whatsoever.

Stanislaus and the rest of the Doctors of the Theological Faculty prohibited the disputation. But on the day appointed, the 17th of June, 1412, Huss appeared in his “Cathedra” in the Schools, and there boldly attacked the whole fabric of Sacerdotalism. At the conclusion of the lecture, Jerome of Prague, a far more brilliant orator than Huss, harangued the crowd of students and others who were assembled in the School, and awakened in his hearers an enthusiasm which showed that public feeling in Bohemia was already ripe for a revolt against Rome. In the evening the two Reformers were escorted home in triumph by their excited supporters.

The proceedings of this day seem to anticipate that open declaration of war against the Papacy which was inaugurated with more success a century afterwards by the burning of Leo X.’s bulls at Wittemberg. But there is a coarseness about the Bohemian demonstration which does not augur well for the future of the movement. A loose woman was placed in a chariot and carried round the town with the Papal bulls hung round her neck; a mob of armed townsmen and students followed the car and afterwards burned the lying parchments in revenge for the destruction of Wyclif ’s books.

Wenzel had consented to the publication of the bull, probably from fear of Sigismund. He now enjoined the magistrates to prohibit all insults to the Pope or resistance to his bulls under pain of death. But the popular excitement was not to be suppressed by threats. When one of the indulgence-hawkers was discoursing in the accustomed strain upon the value of his wares, three young artizans in the crowd shouted out, “Thou liest! Master Huss has taught us better than that. We know it is all a lie.” The culprits were seized, taken before the magistrates, and condemned to death. Huss immediately proceeded to the Council-chamber at the head of a crowd of two thousand students, and there demanded with all the eloquence of indignation the remission of the sentence. “I did it,” he exclaimed, “and I will bear the penalty. I and all who are with me are ready to receive the same sentence.” The Senate^[27] feared the people, and promised that the sentence should not be carried out. But no sooner had the mob dispersed, than the prisoners were hurried off to the place of execution. The affair got wind, and the officers were obliged to behead their prisoners on the road, just in time to anticipate a rescue. The criminals were treated as martyrs. Handkerchiefs were dipped in their blood; and their burial-place, the Chapel of Bethlehem, was named the Chapel of the Three Saints.

The dispute between Huss and the Doctors continued. The King, while he asserted his orthodoxy by prohibiting the teaching of the doctrines on the subject of Indulgences condemned by the Faculty, consulted his own inclinations and the safety of his throne by refusing to silence his Consort’s popular chaplain. When told to refute the heretic instead of trying to shut his mouth, the Doctors complained that Huss would not commit his opinions to writing. Huss offered to accept their challenge, on condition that whichever party should be vanquished in the disputation, should suffer death at the stake. The eight Doctors having seriously debated the proposal, submitted that the forfeit on their side should be the death of only one of their number. Huss refused to assent to the unequal terms. Who was to be the umpire in this strange contest, is a question which does not appear to have suggested itself to either side.

The Theologians now sought to obtain from the Holy Father that redress, rather vengeance, which their own sovereign refused them they sent a paid agent to Rome, one Michael de Causis, who having fled from Bohemia with a considerable amount of the King’s money in his pockets, had adopted the suitable profession of a “Proctor in matters of Faith " in the Papal Courts. It would be tedious to trace the history of the suit through all its mysterious transferences from one Cardinal to another. The upshot of the matter was that the Cardinal de S. Angelo refused to dispense with a personal appearance on the part of Huss, condemned him for contumacy, confirmed the sentence of excommucation previously pronounced against him and his adherents, and added to it one of Interdict against the place of his abode. Huss’ proctors, still remonstrating against the sentence, were imprisoned. One of them, however, the learned civilian and canonist Jesenic of Prague, managed to escape, and returned to Bohemia. There he published a treatise in which he attempted to demonstrate the canonical nullity of all the proceedings hitherto taken against Huss. But it was in vain to show that rules had been disregarded which owed their validity to the same authority which now set them aside; and Huss saw no reason to hope that he should obtain from an assembly of Cardinals and Bishops that justice which individual Cardinals and Bishops denied him. Accordingly, towards the close of 1412, he appealed not to a General Council, but to “the only just Judge, Jesus Christ.” This appeal curiously illustrates a very marked characteristic of Huss’ mind, the combination of great moral fearlessness with great intellectual or theological caution. The document by which he really declares his revolt from the whole system of Sacerdotal Christianity, is worded with all the precision and formality of a legal instrument. Great moral principles and the merest technicalities appear side by side. He enumerates the causes which prevented his personal appearance at Rome, shows that the principles of Canon Law and of natural justice had alike been violated in the proceedings of the Papal Courts, and in justification of his conduct appeals to our Lord’s disobedience to the Jewish Sanhedrim, and to the authority of Chrysostom, of Bishop Andrew of Prague, and Robert Grostête, Bishop of Lincoln, whom he imagines to have made similar appeals under similar circumstances.

There is one part of this document which must not be passed over. Huss states that his proctors had declared themselves “willing to oppose themselves with any one who should be willing to the punishment of fire and make themselves parties in the Roman Court:” L’Enfant^[28] sees in these words a proposal to submit the questions at issue to the decision of the Ordeal of Fire. But Huss nowhere shows any disposition to countenance popular superstitions: he believed that recent miracles were either impostures or due to the agency of evil spirits. Moreover, trials by Ordeal had long been condemned by the Church, and it is probable that they had by this time fallen into general disuse. It is far more probable that the offer of his proctors was only a repetition of the challenge which he had already made in person to the eight Doctors. At all events, it is quite inconceivable that one who on all other occasions showed himself rash only when others were in danger, should seriously have proposed to remain at home while his representatives offered to be burnt on his behalf. Both Huss and his proctors must have known perfectly well that the proposal could not be accepted; it was in fact a piece of grim and solemn irony.

Meanwhile, Sunday after Sunday, within the closed doors of the Churches^[29] the Apostolic cursings sounded, and the smouldering tapers were trampled under foot. While Huss remained in Prague, a cloud must hang over the city: no procession of joy or sorrow could thread its streets; no sound of church-bell, no note of music could break the gloom. The King persuaded Huss for the sake of peace to leave Prague for a while. He retired to the Castle of the friendly Lord of his native village. For a year and a half he remained in the country, staying in the castles of the nobility, and preaching at times in the villages through which he passed. In this way nobles and knights, yeomen and serfs, became personally attached to the teacher, whose name they were hereafter to inscribe upon the banner of national independence.

This was the period of Huss’ literary activity. It will be more convenient to postpone the discussion of the doctrines put forward in the “De Ecclesia” and the other works written at this time, until we are able to discuss their author’s theological position as a whole. For the present, we must return to the position of affairs in Prague. The efforts made by the King to effect a compromise between the parties came to nothing. The King punished the obstinacy of the Theologians by banishing four of their number, among whom were Palecz and Stanislaus.^[30] Huss’ exile was brought to a close by a summons to give a reason for the faith that was in him before the assembled powers of Western Christendom.

The Council of Pisa had, at the conclusion of its deliberations, determined that another General Council should assemble within five years to complete the work of reforming the Church “in its Head and Members.” Sigismund demanded that the Pope should give effect to the decree of the Council. A Pontiff who owed his election to the reforming Cardinals, and who could only hope to regain his lost Italian dominions by the help of the reforming King of the Romans, could not positively refuse compliance. He tried to put off the evil day by prolonging the negotiations as to the place of meeting. At last, however, the firmness of Sigismund compelled him to agree to the convocation of a General Council, for the first time in the history of the Papacy, in a city of the Empire. Not least among the evils from which the Council was to deliver the Church, was the spread of heresy in Bohemia. Sigismund desired his brother Wenzel to send Huss to Constance. Five years before, Huss had refused to appear in Italy in obedience to the summons of the Pope. Had he now declined to appear before the fathers of Constance, the nobles of Bohemia would have been as ready to defend him in life as they were afterwards to avenge his death. On each occasion he debated the question of conscience presented to him with singular simplicity. He was willing to die; but his imagination was not excited by the prospect of the martyr’s crown. Yet when the Imperial safe-conduct was offered him, it was clearly his duty to go: although from the fact that he left a letter behind him with directions that it should not be opened till the news of his death was received, it is clear that he was far from placing implicit confidence in the protection which was promised him.

For his own part, there was nothing which Huss desired more than an opportunity of clearing himself before such an assembly from accusations which he believed to be founded on nothing but misrepresentation. Innocent of many of the heresies laid to his charge, he imagined that all the opinions which he really held were conformable to the doctrine of the Church. He was aware that worldly men had denied the evangelical truths which he preached; and he was aware that, in these latter days, worldly men were predominant in the Church. But the Sacerdotalism which he denounced appeared to him so entirely opposed to those truths, that he could not understand how any spiritually-minded man could seriously believe in the teaching of Christ and in the teaching of the indulgence-hawkers also. He had, in short, no conception of the extent to which Sacerdotalism had imposed upon the minds of good and great men. And hence, although he was far from expecting a triumph at Constance, he did not despair of an acquittal. He hoped that at all events he should find some in that assembly who had not bowed the knee to Baal: he was confident that if he were only allowed an opportunity of preaching before the Council, a minority at least of its members would come over to his side. Even after his imprisonment at Constance, these hopes were never entirely laid aside until the final refusal of the Council to grant him such a hearing as he desired.

Before taking his departure for Constance, Huss appeared once more in Prague. Even those who from their position would have seemed the least likely to favour one accused of heresy, appear to have recognised that the character of the nation was to some extent involved in the character of John Huss: they felt that he was being betrayed by malicious enemies into the hands of foreigners who hated their nation. He was, indeed, refused admittance to the Synod then sitting: but the Synod which had opposed him so strenuously in former years, does not now seem to have taken any prominent part against him. The new Archbishop, Conrad of Vechta,^[31] who had been appointed to the see on account of his supposed zeal for orthodoxy, gave Huss a letter in which he stated that he had nothing to allege against him, but the fact of his excommunication. The “Inquisitor of heretical pravity,” a member of the Court before which he had so boldly defended the heretic Nicholas of Welesnowicz, certified that having had many opportunities of conversing with him as to his theological opinions he had always found him perfectly orthodox.

He left Prague on the 11th of October, without the safe-conduct, which he did not receive till he had been three days in Constance.^[32] He was accompanied on his journey by two of his most ardent supporters, the Knights Wenzel of Duba and John of Chlum, to whose protection Sigismund had confided him. He was welcomed almost with enthusiasm by the magistrates and inhabitants of many of the German towns through which he passed; even the humble parish priests, who were unaffected by the broils of the Universities, wished the heretic God-speed. Some of them told him that they had always thought as he did. The unexpected kindness which he received from the hereditary enemies of his nation, did something to inspire him with the hope that he should not find himself absolutely without a friend among the hundreds of churchmen who were now wending their way towards the Imperial City of Constance.

 

1. This is the year given by L’Enfant. Other historians give 1369. L’Enfant enjoys a great reputation for accuracy, and as 20 appears a more natural age for a B.A. degree than 24, I have retained his statement.
2. “Réformateurs avant la Réforme,” book I. chap. i.
3. After her husband’s death, Sigismund compelled her to retire to Presbourg. L’Enfant, “ Council of Constance,” vol. 1. p. 25.
4. Palacky’s “Documenta Mag. Jo. Hus Vitam, etc., illustrantia,” p. 169. (This work will be cited as “Doc.”)
5. “Articles of Michael de Causis,” Doc. 169.
6. Doc. 347.
7. L’Enfant notices that the last of these Sermons, unlike the former ones, has no Invocation of the Virgin and no Ave Maria. If this omission was really made in the Sermons as delivered, and if the custom of introducing them on such occasions was a universal one, the circumstance could hardly have escaped the observation of his accusers. L’Enfant, “Council of Constance,” vol. 1., p. 29.
8. Doc. 3.
9. Doc. 333.
10. Doc. 153.
11. Doc. 164.
12. I presume that this is the personage meant by “the Lord John of pious memory.” (Art. 4 of Articles of 1409). An Archbishop John was the predecessor of Zbynek.
13. Robertson, vol. vii., p. 253.
14. See Robertson, vol. vii., p. 316, note y.
15. Doc. 348.
16. Wenzel had not given up his pretensions to the Imperial Crown: he still styles himself “Romanorum rex semper Augustus.” He sent ambassadors to Pisa only on condition of their being received as the ambassadors of “the true King of the Romans.” Doc. 343.
17. Doc. 374.
18. Doc. 378.
19. Doc. 386.
20. Doc. 397.
21. Doc. 429, where there is nothing whatever to warrant the “atque interdicti contra civitatem Pragensem amtitumque duorum milliariorum” inserted by Palacky in the heading. The document contains nothing about an Interdict. Surely the Interdict spoken of in Doc. 432, and in the decision of the arbitration, p. 439 (“eos D. Archiepiscopus excommunicatione liberare atque interdictum tollere debet”), is that of Doc. 378, where the Archbishop “interdicit ne verbum Dei in locis privatis civitatis Pragensis prædicetur.”
22. Doc. 437. The Archbishop afterwards pretended that he did not know that the King had authorised the sequestration.
23. It is convenient to use this term, although Sigismund was legally only King of the Romans.
24. Doc. 401.
25. Doc. 376.
26. Doc. 387. The University was exempt “in all causes from all ordinary judges, even legati nati, or even delegates or sub-delegates appointed or to be appointed by the Apostolic See.”
27. The Senators of Old Prague, one of the three separate towns which composed the capital, were for the most part Germans, and therefore hostile to Huss and his party. It was, no doubt, this body which condemned the “three Saints.”
28. L’Enfant, vol. 1., p. 34. He supports this view by a reference to the case of Savonarola. Huss’ temperament was, however, the very opposite of Savonarola’s: and the Ordeal proposed in his case does not seem to have been authorised by the Pope.
29. Divine offices were allowed to be celebrated without music and with closed doors, after all excommunicated persons had been excluded.
30. Doc. 510. Stanislaus died before the Council of Constance.
31. Albic of Uniczow had retired from a position the difficulties of which he had found too much for him. Conrad afterwards joined the Calixtine section of the Hussites.
32. This fact has been used by the apologists of the Council, among other equally sophistical excuses, to justify their breach of faith.