The vicar-general, Kbel, turning upon him, exclaimed with passion that he was there not to argue but as a spectator.[1] Huss complained that wicked and incestuous priests were left untouched while some of the best were being indicted. In spite of Huss’s intercession, the accused was kept in prison and later banished by the archbishop.
Pressed by a summons from Gregory XII, May 15, 1408, and at the king’s instance, the archbishop instituted “a diligent and searching investigation” in his diocese for proof whether Bohemia was Wyclifite and heretical or not. The result was such that at a general synod made up of the clergy and the constituency of the university, held two months later, July 17, 1408, the archbishop felt justified in announcing that not a single person could be found in the diocese of Prague holding heresy or addicted to error, and he informed the pope that Bohemia was true to the Catholic faith all through.[2]
So prominently identified was Huss with the new doctrines, that his attitude called forth from certain of the clergy in 1408 an indictment against him addressed to the archbishop. The charges were that in the Bethlehem chapel, before a large audience made up of men and women, he had declared, at variance with the teaching of the Fathers, that it was a sin for the priests to take money for burials and celebrating the sacraments. He made the clergy odious in the sight of the people by announcing that he wished his soul to be where the soul of Wyclif was—vellet animam suam ibi fore ubi est anima Wycleff[3]—and following Wyclif he held to the remanence of the bread and wine after the words of institution. While he was dining with the rector of St. Clement’s he had struck the table with his fist and exclaimed: “What is the Roman church? There antichrist has planted his foot.” He was also charged with preaching often and abusively against the clergy so as to bring it into disrepute with the people as it had never before been up to that time. It is possible that
