CHAPTER IX
BEFORE THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE
Rediit Constantiam . . . traditus vinctus monasterio Franciscanorum . . . donec die 6. Julii carcerem non constantiam, vitam non fidem linqueret.—Van der Hardt, 4: 306.
He returned to Constance, and was delivered chained to the convent of the Franciscans till, on July 6, he gave up his prison but not his constancy, his life but not his faith.
One of the important major events of the council temporarily checked the proceedings against Huss and led to his transfer to the prison of Gottlieben. This was the trial and flight of John XXIII. The question of the disposition to be made of the Pisan pontiff had become a pressing matter soon after Sigismund’s arrival in Constance. From the day the council opened, John occupied uncertain ground. When he left Florence to go to Constance, he was wanting to go to Rome, made free by Ladislaus’s death, but was prevented by his cardinals. The charge was made that the death of his predecessor, Alexander V, was due to poison which he administered. He was an able but an unscrupulous man. Beginning his life as a corsair, he became addicted to every crime. With the popes of the pornocracy, 904–931, and Alexander VI, he takes the palm for combining with his papal functions the basest iniquity known to human nature. At his trial before the council seventy charges were listed against him, fourteen of which were suppressed at the public reading. He had sold the same sacred offices over and over again, sold them to children, disposed of the head of John the Baptist for fifty thousand ducats, made merchandise of spurious bulls, committed adultery with his brother’s wife and
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