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confinement brought on, procured no relaxation in the rigour of his imprisonment.
Before his trial came on, news arrived from Prague which seriously aggravated the prejudice already existing against Huss. A zealous disciple of his, one Jacobel of Misa, Parish Priest of S. Michael’s, had put himself at the head of an agitation for the restoration of lay communion in both kinds, and had actually administered the Chalice to laymen in his own church. Opinion among the Hussites was divided upon the subject; and the advice of their leader was sought for. Huss declared himself in favour of the practice in a treatise[1] which he sent to Prague. And from henceforward, the right of the laity to the Chalice became the watchword of the Bohemian Reformation. The refusal of the Cup to the laity asserted in a more ostentatious manner than any other practice of the Roman Church the spiritual inferiority of the laity to the clergy, as well as the right of the Church, not to interpret or to supplement, but to repeal the commands of Our Lord Himself. Resistance to this innovation was, therefore, peculiarly exasperating to the sacerdotal mind. Upon Huss naturally fell the odium of all that had been done by his disciples in Prague, and of much which they had not done. The most exaggerated reports were industriously circulated: it was said that the blood of Christ was carried about in flasks; that laymen administered the Sacrament to one another; that cobblers heard confessions and gave absolution.
All through his imprisonment, Huss had manifested the greatest anxiety to obtain a full and free hearing before the whole Council, and especially before the Emperor. It was with the greatest difficulty that he succeeded in obtaining a hearing at all. Two commissions[2] were successively appointed for the preliminary investigation of the case. At first, indeed, it was intended that the Council should act solely on the report of the last of these commissions; but, though he explained what his opinions were, Huss declined to defend them except before the Council itself; and the Bohemian nobles induced the Emperor to promise that he should not be condemned unheard. Accordingly, on the 6th of June, he was brought back to the city, and confined in a Franciscan Convent. In the refectory of this Convent, on three successive days, he appeared before “an assembly of all the nations.”
The first of these congregations was on the 6th of June, 1415. The Fathers were proceeding with the case in the absence of the prisoner; but Huss’ friends hastened to inform Sigismund, who sent orders that he should be allowed to appear. He was accord-
- ↑ This treatise is full of quotations from the Fathers, Decretals, Acts of Councils, &c. If it was written, as is most probable, without reference to books, the retentiveness of Huss’ memory, or (as some have thought) of his common-place books, must have been extraordinary.
- ↑ One appointed by the Pope, the other by the Council, after his flight.
