at Prague (1412). Preceded by drummers they entered the city, and established themselves in the market-place. They called on all passers-by to contribute money or goods in exchange for indulgences. The sale of indulgences had been one of the abuses which the Bohemian Church reformers had from the first most strenuously opposed. Hus, in his Bethlehem Chapel, spoke strongly against the granting of these indulgences, which he said were given to aid in the slaughter of the soldiers of Ladislas, who could but obey their king. At the same time he disclaimed all intention of taking sides in the quarrel between the two Popes.
Hus also succeeded—contrary to the wishes of the archbishop—in bringing the question of the indulgences before the university. A very stormy meeting of the professors, magisters, and students took place under the presidency of the Rector of the university. Hus and Magister Jerome of Prague violently inveighed against the sale of indulgences, which they declared to be unchristian. The fiery eloquence of Jerome appealed to the younger students even more than that of Hus, and at the end of the disputation they conducted him home in triumph.
Jerome of Prague—who had led a wandering life, visiting among other places Oxford, where he had copied some of Wycliffe's writings—had first become known in Bohemia by a speech he made (1410) in favour of Wycliffe's doctrines. He had then left Bohemia, and had now only just returned to that country, which he again quitted shortly afterwards. It may here be noticed that the influence of Jerome on the religious movement in Bohemia, from which country he was often absent, has been greatly over-rated. His visits to many countries and courts, and the eloquent letter in which Poggio Bracciolini described his death,[1] attracted the attention of all Europe to him at a period when the political condition of Austria and Bohemia rendered inquiry into the details of the Hussite movement an impossibility.
The echo of the stormy debates at the university still further excited the people of Prague, already much moved by the sermons of Hus in the Bethlehem Chapel. To prevent disturbances, the magistrates of Prague, by order of Venceslas, issued a decree forbidding any one under penalty of death to discuss the papal decrees publicly; this,
