cially if the priestly adulterer or robber is imprisoned. If, again, a box on the ear is given to a priest in a quarrel in a tavern, and there is a dispute about dice or women, citations and excommunications are issued. If, however, a priest’s blood be drawn, they put a stop to divine services and compel the guilty person to go to Rome, saying that none save the pope can absolve a man who draws a priest’s blood. But, if a priest cuts off a person’s foot or hand or kills an innocent person, neither is the priest put under the ban nor a stop put to divine services. Why so? Because one devil does not pick out another devil’s eye.[1] Huss’s reference to the exemption of priests from punishment reminds us of what Luther said in his address to the German nobility: “If a priest is killed, the whole country is laid under the interdict. Why not also if a peasant is killed?”
Again, Huss said from the pulpit: “Our bishops and priests of to-day, and especially our cathedral canons, and lazy mass-celebrators, hardly wait for the close of the service to hurry out of church, one part to the tavern and the other part hither and thither to engage in amusements unworthy of a priest, yea, even to dance. The monks prepare dances and entertainments in the public houses in the hope of winning the people and being intrusted with masses, and these rascally ministers of the devil never for a moment think that at the celebration of the Lord’s Supper Christ gives to the disciples his own body and blood. . . . Like Judas, who went away to the high priest to sell Christ, many of our priests, profligate in their lives like beasts, run away from the table of God, the one to serve mammon, the other wantonness, the one to the gaming-table, the other to the dance or chase, all of which are forbidden to priests. And these very ones who ought to be leaders in imitating Christ are his chief enemies.”
In another sermon, he exclaimed: “Has a church no
- ↑ Langsdorff, p. 57. For quotations from the parish registers, see Loserth, 295–301.
