BOHEMIA.
There is no historical foundation for the legend that Peter Waldo's
missionary labors carried him into Bohemia, where he died, but there can
be no question that the Waldensian heresy found a foothold among the
Czechs at a comparatively early date. Bohemia formed part of the great
archiepiscopal province of Mainz, whose metropolitan could exercise but
an ineffective supervision over a district so distant. The supremacy of
Rome pressed lightly on its turbulent ecclesiastics. In the last decade
of the twelfth century a papal legate, Cardinal Pietro, sent thither to
levy a tithe for the recovery of the Holy Land, was scandalized to find
that the law of celibacy was unknown to the secular priesthood; he did
not venture to force it on those already in orders, and his efforts to
make postulants take the vow of continence provoked a tumult which
required severe measures of suppression. In a Church thus partially
independent the abuses which stimulated revolt elsewhere might perhaps
be absent, but the field for missionary labor lay open and
unguarded.[470]
We have seen how the Inquisitor of Passau, about the middle of the
thirteenth century, describes the flourishing condition of the
Waldensian churches in Austria, along the borders of Bohemia and
Moravia, and the intense zeal of propagandism which animated their
members. Close to the west, moreover, they were to be found in the
diocese of Ratisbon. That the heresy should cross the boundary line was
inevitable, and it ran little risk of detection and persecution by a
worldly and slothful priesthood, until it gained strength enough to
declare itself openly. The alarm was first sounded by Innocent IV. in
1245, who summoned the prelates of Hungary to intervene, as those of
Bohemia apparently were not to be depended upon, and there was evidently
no inquisitorial machinery which could be employed. Innocent describes
the heresy as established so firmly and widely that it embraced not only
the simple folk, but also princes and magnates, and it was so
elaborately organized that it had a chief who was reverenced as pope.
These are all declared excommunicate, their lands confiscated for the
benefit of the first occupant, and any who shall relapse after
recantation are to be abandoned to the secular arm without a hearing, in
accordance with the canons.[471]
We have no means of knowing whether any action was taken in consequence
of this decree, but if efforts were made they did not succeed in
eradicating the heresy. In 1257 King Premysl Otokar II. applied to
Alexander IV. for aid in its suppression, as it continued to spread, and
to this request was due the first introduction of the Inquisition in
Bohemia. Two Franciscans, Lambert the German and Bartholomew lector in
Brünn, received the papal commission as inquisitors throughout Bohemia
and Moravia. It is fair to assume that they did their duty, but no
traces of their activity have reached us, nor is there any evidence that
their places were filled when they died or retired. The Inquisition may
be considered as non-existent, and when, after a long interval, we again
hear of persecution, it is in a shape that shows that the Bishop of
Prague, like his metropolitan of Mainz, was not disposed to invite papal
encroachments on his jurisdiction. In 1301 a synod of Prague deplored
the spread of heresy and ordered every one cognizant of it to give
information to the episcopal inquisitors, from which we may infer that
heretics were active, that they had been little disturbed, and that the
elaborate legislation elsewhere in force for the detection and
punishment of heresy was virtually unknown in Bohemia.[472]
In 1318 John of Drasic, the Bishop of Prague, was summoned to Avignon by
John XXII. to answer accusations brought against him by Frederic of
Schönberg, Canon of Wyschehrad, as a fautor of heresy. The complaint set
forth that heretics were so numerous that they had an archbishop and
seven bishops, each of whom had three hundred disciples. The description
of their faith would seem to indicate that there were both Waldenses and
Luciferans--the latter forming part of the sect which we have seen
described about this time as flourishing in Austria, where they are said
to have been introduced by missionaries from Bohemia--and that their
doctrines have been commingled. They are described as considering oaths
unlawful; confession and absolution could be administered indifferently
by layman or priest; rebaptism was allowed; the divine unity and the
resurrection of the dead were denied; Jesus had only a phantasmic body;
and Lucifer was expected finally to reign. Of course there were also the
customary accusations of sexual excesses committed in nocturnal
assemblies held in caverns, which only proves that there was sufficient
dread of persecution to prevent the congregations from meeting openly.
The good bishop, it appears, only permitted these wretches to be
arraigned by his inquisitors after repeated pressure from John of
Luxembourg, the king. Fourteen of them were convicted and handed over to
the secular arm, but the bishop interfered, to the great disgust of the
king, and forcibly released them, except a physician named Richard, who
was imprisoned; the bishop, moreover, discharged the inquisitors, who
evidently were his own officials and not papal appointees. These were
serious offences on the part of a prelate, and he expiated his lenity by
a confinement of several years in Avignon. Possibly his hostility to the
Franciscans may have rendered him an object of attack.[473]
Papal attention being thus called to the existence of heresy in the
east of Europe, and to the inefficiency of the local machinery for its
extermination, steps were immediately taken for the introduction of the
Inquisition. In 1318 John XXII. commissioned the Dominican Peregrine of
Oppolza and the Franciscan Nicholas of Cracow as inquisitors in the
dioceses of Cracow and Breslau, while Bohemia and Poland were intrusted
to the Dominican Colda and the Franciscan Hartmann. As usual, the
secular and ecclesiastical powers were commanded to afford them
assistance whenever called upon. Poland, doubtless, was as much in need
as Bohemia of inquisitorial supervision, for John Muscata, the Bishop of
Cracow, was as negligent as his brother of Prague, and drew upon himself
in 1319 severe reprehension from John XXII. for the sloth and neglect
which had rendered heresy bold and aggressive in his diocese. This does
not seem to have accomplished much, for in 1327 John found himself
obliged to order the Dominican Provincial of Poland to appoint
inquisitors to stem the flood of heresy which was infecting the people
from regions farther west. Germany and Bohemia apparently were sending
missionaries, whose labors met with much acceptance among the people.
King Ladislas was especially asked to lend his aid to the inquisitors;
he promptly responded by ordering the governors of his cities to support
them with the civil power, and their vigorous action was rewarded with
abundant success.[474]
Among these heretics there may have been Brethren of the Free Spirit,
but they were probably for the most part Waldenses, who at this time had
a thoroughly organized Church in Bohemia, whence emissaries were sent to
Moravia, Saxony, Silesia, and Poland. They regarded Lombardy as their
headquarters, to which they sent their youth for instruction, together
with moneys collected for the support of the parent Church. All this
could not be concealed from the vigilance of the inquisitors appointed
by John XXII. No doubt active measures of repression were carried out
with little intermission, though chance has only preserved an indication
of inquisitorial proceedings about the year 1330. Saaz and Laun are
mentioned as the cities in which heresy was most prevalent. With the
open rupture between the papacy and Louis of Bavaria its repression
became more difficult, although Bohemia under John of Luxembourg
remained faithful to the Holy See. Heretics increased in Prague and its
neighborhood; after a brief period of activity the Inquisition seems to
have disappeared; John of Drasic, whose tolerance we have seen, was
still Bishop of Prague, and fresh efforts were necessary. In 1335
Benedict XII. accordingly appointed the Franciscan Peter Naczeracz as
inquisitor in the diocese of Olmütz and the Dominican Gall of Neuburg
for that of Prague. As usual, all prelates were commanded to lend their
aid, and King John was specially reminded that he held the temporal
sword for the purpose of subduing the enemies of the faith. His son, the
future Emperor Charles IV., at that time in charge of the kingdom, was
similarly appealed to.[475]
In the subject province of Silesia, about the same period, a bold
heresiarch known as John of Pirna made a deep impression. He was
probably a Fraticello, as he taught that the pope was Antichrist and
Rome the Whore of Babylon and a synagogue of Satan. In Breslau the
magistrates and people espoused his doctrines, which were openly
preached in the streets. Breslau was ecclesiastically subject to Poland,
and in 1341 John of Schweidnitz was commissioned from Cracow as
inquisitor to suppress the growing heresy. The people, however, arose,
drove out their bishop and slew the inquisitor, for which they were
subsequently subjected to humiliating penance, and John of Pirna's bones
were exhumed and burned. The unsatisfied vengeance of Heaven added to
their punishment by a conflagration which destroyed nearly the whole
city, during which a pious woman saw an angel with a drawn sword casting
fiery coals among the houses.[476]
Bohemia and its subject provinces were thus thoroughly infected with
heresy, mostly Waldensian, when several changes took place which
increased the prominence of the kingdom and stimulated vastly its
intellectual activity. In 1344 Prague was separated from its far-off
metropolis of Mainz and was erected into an archbishopric, for which the
piety of Charles, then Margrave of Bohemia, provided a zealous and
enlightened prelate in the person of Arnest of Pardubitz. Two years
later, in 1346, Charles was elected King of the Romans by the Electors
of Trèves and Cologne in opposition to Louis of Bavaria, as the
supporter of the papacy; and a month later he succeeded to the throne of
Bohemia through the knightly death of the blind King John at Crécy.
Still more influential and far-reaching in its results was the founding
in 1347 of the University of Prague, to which the combined favor of pope
and emperor gave immediate lustre. Archbishop Arnest assumed its
chancellorship, learned schoolmen filled its chairs; students flocked to
it from every quarter, and it soon rivalled in numbers and reputation
its elder sisters of Oxford, Paris, and Bologna.[477]
During the latter half of the century, Bohemia, under these auspices,
was one of the most flourishing kingdoms of Europe. Its mines of the
precious metals gave it wealth; the freedom enjoyed by its peasantry
raised them mentally and morally above the level of the serfs of other
lands; culture and enlightenment were diffused from its university. It
was renowned throughout the Continent for the splendor of its churches,
which in size and number were nowhere exceeded. At the monastery of
Königsaal, where the Bohemian kings lay buried, around the walls of the
garden the whole of the Scriptures, from Genesis to Revelations, was
engraved, with letters enlarging in size with their distance from the
ground, so that all could be easily read. In the bitter struggles of
after generations the reign of King Charles was fondly looked back upon
as the golden age of Bohemia. Wealth and culture, however, were
accompanied with corruption. Nowhere were the clergy more worldly and
depraved. Concubinage was well-nigh universal, and simony pervaded the
Church in all its ranks, the sacraments were sold and penitence
compounded for. All the abuses for which clerical immunity furnished
opportunity nourished, and the land was overrun by vagrants whose
tonsure gave them charter to rob and brawl, and dice and drink. The
influences from above which moulded the Bohemian Church may be estimated
from a single instance. In 1344 Clement VI. wrote to Arnest, then simple
Bishop of Prague, calling attention to the numerous cases in his
diocese wherein preferment had been procured for minors either by force
or simony. The horror which the good pope expresses at this abuse is
significantly illustrated by his having not long before issued
dispensations to five members of one family in France, aged respectively
seven, eight, nine, ten, and eleven years, to hold canonries and other
benefices. Apparently the Bohemians had not taken the proper means to
obtain the sanction of the curia for such infraction of the canons, so
Clement ordered Arnest to dispossess the incumbents in all such cases,
and to impose due penance on them. But he was also instructed, in
conjunction with the papal collector, to force them to compound with the
papal camera for all the revenues which they had thus illegally
received, and after they had undergone this squeezing process he was
authorized to reinstate them.[478]
Such unblushing exhibitions of rapacious simony did not tend either to
the purity of the Bohemian Church, or to enhance its respect for the
Holy See, especially as the frequently recurring papal exactions
strained to the last degree the relations between the papacy and the
German churches. When, in 1354, Innocent VI., to carry on his Italian
wars, suddenly demanded a tenth of all the ecclesiastical revenues of
the empire, it threw, for several years, the whole German Church into an
uproar of rage and indignation. Some prelates refused to pay, and, when
legal proceedings were commenced against them, formulated appeals which
were contemptuously rejected as frivolous. The Bishops of Camin and
Brandenburg were only compelled to yield by the direct threat of
excommunication. Others pleaded poverty, and were mockingly reminded of
the large sums which they had succeeded in exacting from their miserable
subjects; others made the best bargain they could, and compounded for
yearly payments; others banded together and formed associations mutually
pledged to resist to the last. Frederic, Bishop of Ratisbon, took the
audacious step of seizing the papal collector and conveying him away to
a convenient castle. An ambush was laid for the Bishop of Cavaillon, the
papal nuncio charged with the business, and his life, and that of his
assistant, Henry, Archdeacon of Liége, were only saved by the active
interposition of William, Archbishop of Cologne. When, in 1372, the levy
was repeated by Gregory XI., the same spirit of resistance was aroused.
The clergy of Mainz bound themselves to each other in a solemn
engagement not to pay it, and Frederic, Archbishop of Cologne, promised
his clergy to give them all the assistance he safely could in their
refusal to submit. Trifling incidents such as these afford us a valuable
insight into the complex relations between the Holy See and the churches
of Christendom. On the one hand, there was the superstitious awe
generated by five centuries of unquestioned domination as the
representative of Christ, and there was, moreover, the dread of the
material consequences of unsuccessful revolt. On the other, there was
the indignation born of lawless oppression ever exciting to rebellion,
and the clear-sighted recognition of the venality and corruption which
rendered the Roman curia a source of contagion for all Europe. There was
ample inflammable material, which the increasing friction might at any
moment kindle into flame.[479]
Bohemia was peculiarly dangerous soil, for it was thoroughly
interpenetrated with the leaven of heresy. We hear nothing of papal
inquisitors after those commissioned by Benedict XII. in 1335, and it is
presumable that for a while the heretics had peace. Archbishop Arnest,
however, soon after his accession, set resolutely to work to purify the
morals of his Church and to uproot heresy. He held synods frequently, he
instituted a body of Correctors whose duty it was to visit all portions
of the province and punish all transgressions, and he organized an
episcopal Inquisition for the purpose of tracking out and suppressing
heresy. In the fragmentary remains of his synodal acts, the frequency
and earnestness with which this latter duty is insisted upon serve as a
measure of its importance, and of the numbers of those who had forsaken
the Church. In the earliest synod whose proceedings have reached us the
first place is given to this subject; the archdeacons were directed to
make diligent perquisition in their respective districts, both
personally and through the deans and parish priests, without exciting
suspicion, and all who were found guilty or suspect of heresy were to be
forthwith denounced to the archbishop or the inquisitor. Similar
instructions were issued in 1355; and after Arnest's death, in 1364, his
successor, John Ocko, was equally vigilant, as appears from the acts of
his synods in 1366 and 1371. The neighborhood of Pisek was especially
contaminated, and from the acts of the Consistory of 1381 it appears
that a priest named Johl, of Pisek, could not be ordained because both
his father and grandfather had been heretics. What was this heresy that
thus descended from generation to generation is not stated, but it was
doubtless Waldensian. In this same year Archbishop John, as papal legate
for his own province and for the dioceses of Ratisbon, Bamberg, and
Misnia, held a council at Prague, in which he mournfully described the
spread of the Waldenses and Sarabites--the latter probably Beghards. He
sharply reproved the bishops who, through sloth or parsimony, had not
appointed inquisitors, and threatened that if they did not do so
forthwith, he would do it himself. When, ten years later, the Church
took the alarm and acted vigorously, the Waldenses of Brandenburg, who
were prosecuted, declared that their teachers came from Bohemia.[480]
In all this activity for the suppression of heresy it is worthy of note
that the episcopal Inquisition alone is referred to. In fact there was
no papal Inquisition in Bohemia. The bull of Gregory XI., in 1372,
ordering the appointment of five inquisitors for Germany, confines their
jurisdiction to the provinces of Cologne, Mainz, Utrecht, Magdeburg,
Salzburg, and Bremen, and pointedly omits that of Prague, although the
zeal of Charles IV. might have been expected to secure the blessings of
the institution for his hereditary realm.[481] This is the more curious,
moreover, since the intellectual movement started by the University of
Prague was producing a number of men distinguished not only for learning
and piety, but for their bold attacks on the corruptions of the Church,
and their questioning of some of its most profitable dogmas. The
appearance of these precursors of Huss is one of the most remarkable
indications of the tendencies of the age in Bohemia, and shows how the
Waldensian spirit of revolt had unconsciously spread among the
population.
Conrad of Waldhausen, who died in 1369, is reckoned the earliest of
these. He maintained strict orthodoxy, but his denunciation in his
sermons of the vices of the clergy, and especially of the Mendicants,
created a deep sensation. More prominent in every way was Milicz of
Kremsier, who, in 1363, resigned the office of private secretary to the
emperor, the function of Corrector intrusted to him by Archbishop
Arnest, and several rich preferments, in order to devote himself
exclusively to preaching. His sermons in Czech, German, and Latin were
filled with audacious attacks on the sins and crimes of clergy and
laity, and the evils of the time led him to prophesy the advent of
Antichrist between 1365 and 1367. In the latter year he went to Rome in
order to lay before Urban V. his views on the present and future of the
Church. While awaiting Urban's advent from Avignon, he affixed on the
portal of St. Peter's an announcement of a sermon on the subject, which
led the Inquisition to throw him into prison, but in October, on the
arrival of the pope, he was released and treated with distinction. On
his return to Prague he preached with greater violence than ever. To get
rid of him the priesthood accused him to the emperor and archbishop, but
in vain. Then they formulated twelve articles of accusation against him
to the pope, and obtained, in January, 1374, from Gregory XI., bulls
denouncing him as a persistent heresiarch who had filled all Bohemia,
Poland, Silesia, and the neighboring lands with his errors. According to
them, he taught not only that Antichrist had come, that the Church was
extinct, that pope, cardinals, bishops and prelates showed no light of
truth, but he permitted to his followers the unlimited gratification of
their passions. Milicz undauntedly pursued his course until an
inquisitorial prosecution was commenced against him, when he appealed to
the pope. In Lent, 1374, he went to Avignon, where he readily proved
his innocence, and on May 21 was admitted to preach before the
cardinals, but he died June 29, before the formal decision of his case
was published. It is highly probable that he was a Joachite--one of
those who, as we shall see hereafter, reverenced the memory and believed
in the apocalyptic prophecies of the Abbot Joachim of Flora.[482]
The spirit of indignation and disquiet did not confine itself to
denunciations of clerical abuses. Men were growing bolder, and began to
question some of the cherished dogmas which gave rise to those abuses.
In the synod of 1384 one of the subjects discussed was whether the
saints were cognizant of the prayers addressed to them, and whether the
worshipper was benefited by their suffrages--the mere raising of such a
question showing how dangerously bold had become the spirit of inquiry.
The man who most fitly represented this tendency was Mathias of Janow,
whom the Archbishop John of Jenzenstein utilized in his efforts to
reform the incurable disorders of the clergy. Mathias was led to trace
the troubles to their causes, and to teach heresies from the
consequences of which even the protection of the archbishop could not
wholly defend him. In the synod of 1389 he was forced to make public
recantation of his errors in holding that the images of Christ and the
saints gave rise to idolatry, and that they ought to be banished from
the churches and burned; that relics were of no service, and the
intercession of saints was useless; while his teaching that every one
should be urged to take communion daily foreshadowed the eucharistic
troubles which play so large a part in the Hussite excitement. Yet he
was allowed to escape with six months' suspension from preaching and
hearing confessions outside of his own parochial church, a mistaken
lenity which he repaid by continuing to teach the same errors more
audaciously than ever, and even urging that the laity be admitted to
communion in both elements. Mathias was not alone in his heterodoxy, for
in the same synod of 1389 a priest named Andreas was obliged to revoke
the same heresy respecting images, and another named Jacob was suspended
from preaching for ten years for a still more offensive expression of
similar beliefs, with the addition that suffrages for the dead were
useless, that the Virgin could not help her devotees, and that the
archbishop had erred in granting an indulgence to those who adored her
image, and that the utterances of the holy doctors of the Church are not
to be received.[483]
Other earnest men who prepared the way for what was to follow were Henry
of Oyta, Thomas of Stitny, John of Stekno, and Matthew of Cracow. Step
by step the progress of free thought advanced, and when, in 1393, a
papal indulgence was preached in Prague, Wenceslas Rohle, pastor of St.
Martin's in the Altstadt, ventured to denounce it as a fraud, though
only under his breath, for fear of the Pharisees. All this, it is
evident, could only be favorable to the growth of Waldensianism, as is
seen in the activity of the sectaries. It was missionaries from Bohemia
who founded the communities in Brandenburg and Pomerania; and, as we
have seen, a well-informed writer, in 1395, asserts that they were
numbered by thousands in Thuringia, Misnia, Bohemia, Moravia, Austria,
and Hungary, notwithstanding that a thousand of them had been converted
within two years in the districts extending from Thuringia to
Moravia.[484]
While Bohemia was thus the scene of an agitation the outcome of which no
man could foretell, a similar movement was running a still more rapid
course in England, which was destined to exercise a decisive influence
on the result. The assaults of John Wickliff were the most serious
danger encountered by the hierarchy since the Hildebrandine theocracy
had been established. For the first time a trained scholastic intellect
of remarkable force and clearness, informed with all the philosophy and
theology of the schools, was led to question the domination which the
Church had acquired over the life, here and hereafter, of its members.
It was not the poor peasant or artisan who found the Scriptures in
contradiction to the teaching of the pulpit and the confessional, and
with the practical examples set by the sacerdotal class; but it was a
man who stood in learning and argumentative power on a level with the
foremost schoolmen of the Middle Ages; who could quote not only Christ
and the apostles, but the fathers and doctors of the Church, the
decretals and the canons, Aristotle and his commentators; who could
weave all these into the dialectics so dear to students and masters of
theology, and who could frame a system of philosophy suited to the
intellectual wants of the age. It is true that William of Ockham had
been bold in his attacks on the overgrown papal system, but he was a
partisan of Louis of Bavaria, and, with Marsiglio of Padua, his aim had
merely been to set the State above the Church. With the subjection of
the empire to the papacy the works of both had perished and their labors
had been forgotten. The infidelity of the Averrhoists had never taken
root among the people, and had been wisely treated by the Church with
the leniency of contempt. It was the secret of Wickliff's influence that
he had worked out his conclusions in single-hearted efforts to search
for truth; his views developed gradually as he was led from one point to
another; he spared neither prince nor prelate; he labored to instruct
the poor more zealously perhaps than to influence the great, and men of
all ranks, from the peasant to the schoolman, recognized in him a leader
who sought to make them better, stronger, more valiant in the struggle
with Apollyon. It is no wonder that his work proved not merely
ephemeral; that his fame as a heresiarch filled all the schools and
became everywhere synonymous with rebellion against the sacerdotal
system; that simple Waldenses in Spain and Germany became thereafter
known as Wickliffites. Yet the endurance of his teachings was due to his
Bohemian disciples; at home, after a brief period of rapid development,
they were virtually crushed out by the combined power of Church and
State.
As the heresy of Huss was in nearly all details copied from his master,
Wickliff, it is necessary, in order to understand the nature of the
Hussite movement, to cast a brief glance at the views of the English
reformer. About four years after his death, in 1388 and 1389,
twenty-five articles of accusation were brought against his followers,
whose reply gives, in the most vigorous English, a summary of his
tenets. Few documents of the period are more interesting as a picture of
the worldliness and corruption of the Church, and of the wrathful
indignation aroused by the hideous contrast between the teaching of
Christ and the lives of those who claimed to represent him. It is
observable that the only purely speculative error admitted is that
concerning the Eucharist; all the others relate to the doctrines which
gave to the Church control over the souls and purses of the faithful, or
to the abuses arising from the worldly and sensual character of the
clergy. It was an essentially practical reform, inspired for the most
part with rare common-sense and with wonderfully little exaggeration,
considering the magnitude of the evils which pressed so heavily upon
Christendom.
The document in question shows the Wickliffite belief to be that the
popes of the period were Antichrist; all the hierarchy, from the pope
down, were accursed by reason of their greed, their simony, their
cruelty, their lust of power, and their evil lives. Unless they give
satisfaction "thai schul be depper dampned then Judas Scarioth." The
pope was not to be obeyed, his decretals were naught, and his
excommunication and that of his bishops were to be disregarded. The
indulgences so freely proffered in return for money or for the services
of crusaders in slaying Christians were false and fraudulent. Yet the
power of the keys in pious hands was not denied--"Certes, as holy
prestis of lyvynge and cunnynge of holy writte han keyes of heven and
bene vicaris of Jesus Crist, so viciouse prestis, unkonnynge of holy
writte, ful of pride and covetise, han keyes of helle and bene vicaris
of Sathanas." Though auricular confession might be useful, it was not
necessary, for men should trust in Christ. Image-worship was unlawful,
and representations of the Trinity were forbidden--"Hit semes that this
offrynge ymages is a sotile cast of Antichriste and his clerkis for to
drawe almes fro pore men.... Certis, these ymages of hemselfe may do
nouther gode nor yvel to mennis soules, but thai myghtten warme a man's
body in colde if thai were sette upon a fire." The invocation of saints
was useless; the best of them could do nothing but what God ordained,
and many of those customarily invoked were in hell, for in modern times
sinners stood a better chance of canonization than holy men. It was the
same with their feast-days; those of the apostles and early saints might
be observed, but not the rest. Song was not to be used in divine
service, and prayer was as efficient anywhere as in church, for the
churches were not holy--"all suche chirches bene gretely poluted and
cursud of God, nomely for sellynge of leccherie and fals swering upon
bokus. Sithen tho chirches bene dunnus of thefis and habitacionis of
fendis." Ecclesiastics must not live in luxury and pomp, but as poor
men "gyvynge ensaumple of holynes by ther conversacion." The Church
must be deprived of all its temporalities, and whatever was necessary
for the support of its members must be held in common. Tithes and
offerings were not to be given to sinful priests; it was simony for a
priest to receive payment for his spiritual ministrations, though he
might sell his labor in honest vocations, such as teaching and the
binding of books, and though no one was forbidden to make an oblation at
mass, provided he did not seek to obtain more than his share in the
sacrifice. All parish priests and vicars who did not perform their
functions were to be removed, and especially all who were non-resident.
All priests and deacons, moreover, were to preach zealously, for which
no special license or commission was required.
All these tenets of which they were accused the Wickliffites admitted
and defended in the most incisive fashion, but there were two articles
which they denied. Wickliff's teaching so closely resembled that of the
Waldenses that it was natural that the orthodox should attribute to him
the two Waldensian errors which regarded all oaths as unlawful, and held
that priests in mortal sin could not administer the sacraments. To the
former, his followers replied that, though they rejected all unnecessary
swearing, they admitted that "If hit be nedeful for to swere for a
spedful treuthe men mowe wele swere as God did in the olde lawe." As to
the latter, they said that the sinful priest can give sacraments
efficient to those who worthily receive them, though he receive
damnation unto himself. The prominence of the Fraticelli also suggested
the imputation that the Wickliffites believed the entire renunciation of
property to be essential to salvation; but this they denied, saying that
a man might make lawful gains and hold them, but that he must use them
well.[485]
All these antisacerdotal teachings flowed directly from the
resoluteness with which Wickliff carried out to its logical conclusion
the Augustinian doctrine of predestination, thus necessarily striking at
the root of all human mediation, the suffrages of the saints,
justification by works, and all the machinery of the Church for the
purchase and sale of salvation. In this, as in the rest, Huss followed
him, though the distinction between his principles and the orthodox ones
of the Thomists and other schoolmen was too subtle to render this point
one which the Church could easily condemn.[486]
The one serious speculative error of Wickliff lay in his effort to
reconcile the mystery of the Eucharist with the stubborn fact that after
consecration the bread remained bread and the wine continued to be wine.
He did not deny conversion into the body and blood of Christ; they were
really present in the sacrifice, but his reason refused to acknowledge
transubstantiation, and he invented a theory of the remanence of the
substance coexisting with the divine elements. Into these dangerous
subtleties Huss refused to follow his master. It was the one point on
which he declined to accept the reasoning of the Englishman, and yet, as
we shall see, it served as a principal excuse for hurrying him to the
stake.
Wickliff's career as a heresiarch was unexampled, and its peculiarities
serve to explain much that would otherwise be incomprehensible in the
growth and tolerance of his doctrines in Bohemia, and in the simplicity
with which Huss refused to believe that he could himself be regarded as
a heretic. Although, as early as 1377, the assistance which Wickliff
rendered to Edward III. in diminishing the papal revenues moved Gregory
XI. to command his immediate prosecution as a heretic, yet the political
situation was such as to render ineffectual all efforts to carry out
these instructions; he was never even excommunicated, and was allowed to
die peacefully in his rectory of Lutterworth on the last day of the year
1384. No further action was taken by Rome until the question of his
heresy was raised in Prague. Although, in 1409, Alexander V. ordered
Archbishop Zbinco not to permit his errors to be taught or his books to
be read, yet when, in 1410, John XXIII. referred his writings to a
commission of four cardinals, who convoked an assembly of theologians
for their examination, a majority decided that Archbishop Zbinko had not
been justified in burning them. It was not until the Council of Rome, in
1413, that there was a formal and authoritative condemnation pronounced,
and it was left for the Council of Constance, in 1415, to proclaim
Wickliff as a heresiarch, to order his bones exhumed, and to define his
errors with the authority of the Church Universal. Huss might well, to
the last, believe in the authenticity of the spurious letters of the
University of Oxford, brought to Prague about 1403, in which Wickliff
was declared perfectly orthodox, and might conscientiously assert that
his books continued to be read and taught there.[487]
The marriage of Anne of Luxembourg, sister of Wenceslas of Bohemia, to
Richard II., in 1382, led to considerable intercourse between the
kingdoms until her death, in 1394. Many Bohemians visited England during
the excitement caused by Wickliff's controversies, and his writings were
carried to Prague, where they found great acceptance. Huss tells us that
about 1390 they commenced to be read in the University of Prague, and
that they continued thenceforth to be studied. No orthodox Bohemian had
hitherto ventured as far as the daring Englishman, but there were many
who had entered on the same path, to say nothing of the secret
Waldensian heretics, and the general feeling excited throughout Germany
by the reckless simony and sale of indulgences which marked the later
years of Boniface IX. Thus the movement which had been in progress since
the middle of the century received a fresh impulsion from the
circumstances under which the works of Wickliff were perused and
scattered abroad in innumerable copies. All of his treatises were
eagerly sought for. A MS. in the Hofbliothek of Vienna gives a catalogue
of ninety of them which were known in Bohemia, and it is to those
regions that we must look for the remains of his voluminous labors, the
greater part of which were successfully suppressed at home. In time he
came to be reverenced as the fifth Evangelist, and a fragment of stone
from his tomb was venerated at Prague as a relic. Still more suggestive
of his commanding influence is the fidelity with which Huss followed his
reasoning, and oftentimes the arrangement, and even the words, of his
treatises.[488]
John of Husinec, commonly known as Huss, who became the leading exponent
and protomartyr of Wickliffitism in Bohemia, is supposed to have been
born in 1369, of parents whose poverty forced him to earn his own
livelihood. In 1393 he obtained the degree of bachelor of arts; in 1394
that of bachelor of theology; in 1396 that of master of arts; but the
doctorate he never attained, though in 1398 he was already lecturing in
the university; in 1401 he was dean of the philosophical faculty, and
rector in 1402. Curiously enough, he embraced the Realist philosophy,
and won great applause in his combats with the Nominalists. So little
promise did his early years give of his career as a reformer that, in
1392, he spent his last four groschen for an indulgence, when he had
only dry crusts for food. In 1400 he was ordained as priest, and two
years later he was appointed preacher to the Bethlehem chapel, where his
earnest eloquence soon rendered him the spiritual leader of the people.
The study of Wickliff's writings, begun shortly after this, quickened
his appreciation of the evils of a corrupted Church, and when Archbishop
Zbinco of Hasenburg, shortly after his consecration in 1403, appointed
him as preacher to the annual synods, Huss improved the opportunity to
address to the assembled clergy a series of terrible invectives against
their worldliness and filthiness of living, which excited general
popular hatred and contempt for them. After one of peculiar vigor, in
October, 1407, the clamor among the ecclesiastics grew so strong that
they presented a formal complaint against him to Archbishop Zbinco, and
he was deprived of the position. By this time he was recognized as the
leader in the effort to purify the Church, and to reduce it to its
ancient simplicity, with such men as Stephen Palecz, Stanislas of Znaim,
John of Jessinetz, Jerome of Prague, and many others eminent for
learning and piety as his collaborators. To some of these he was
inferior in intellectual gifts, but his fearless temper, his unbending
rectitude, his blameless life, and his kindly nature won for him the
affectionate veneration of the people and rendered him its idol.[489]
Discussion grew hot and passions became embittered. Old jealousies and
hatreds between the Teutonic and Czech races contributed to render the
religious quarrel unappeasable. The vices and oppression of the clergy
had alienated from them popular respect, and the fiery diatribes of the
Bethlehem chapel were listened to eagerly, while the Wickliffite
doctrines, which taught the baselessness of the whole sacerdotal system,
were welcomed as a revelation, and spread rapidly through all classes.
King Wenceslas was inclined to give them such support as his indolence
and self-indulgence would permit, and his queen, Sophia, was even more
favorably disposed. Yet the clergy and their friends could not submit
quietly to the spoliation of their privileges and wealth, although the
Great Schism, in weakening the influence of the Roman curia, rendered
its support less efficient. Preachers who assailed their vices were
thrown into prison as heretics and were exiled, and the writings of
Wickliff, which formed the key of the position, were fiercely assaulted
and desperately defended. The weak point in them was the substitution of
remanence for transubstantiation; and although this was discarded by
Huss and his followers, it served as an unguarded point through which
the whole position might be carried. The synod of 1405 asserted the
doctrine of transubstantiation in its most absolute shape; any one
teaching otherwise was pronounced a heretic, and was ordered to be
reported to the archbishop for punishment. In 1406 this was repeated in
a still more threatening form, showing that the Wickliffite views had
obstinate defenders; as, indeed, is to be seen by a tract of Thomas of
Stitny, written in 1400. Already, in 1403, a series of forty-five
articles extracted from Wickliff's works was formally condemned by the
university. Around these the battle raged with fury; the condemnation
was repeated in 1408, and in 1410 Archbishop Zbinco solemnly burned in
the courtyard of his palace two hundred of the forbidden books, while
the populace revenged itself by singing through the streets rude rhymes,
in which the prelate is said to have burned books which he could not
read; for his ignorance was notorious, and he was reported to have first
acquired the alphabet after his elevation.[490]
In the strife between rival popes it suited the policy of King
Wenceslas, in 1408, to maintain neutrality, and he induced the
university to send envoys to the cardinals who had renounced allegiance
to both Benedict XIII. and Gregory XII. In this mission were included
Stephen Palecz and Stanislas of Znaim, but the whole party fell, in
Bologna, into the hands of Balthasar Cossa, the papal legate (afterwards
John XXIII.), who threw them all in prison as suspect of heresy, and it
required no little effort to secure their release. This adventure cooled
the zeal of Stephen and Stanislas; they gradually changed sides, and
from the warmest friends of Huss they became, as we shall see, his most
dangerous and implacable enemies.[491]
In this affair the university had not seconded the wishes of the king
with the alacrity which he had expected, and Huss took advantage of the
royal displeasure to effect a revolution in that institution, which had
hitherto proved the chief obstacle in the progress of reform. It was
divided, in the ordinary manner, into four "nations." As each of these
nations had a vote, the Bohemians constantly found themselves
outnumbered by the foreigners. It was now proposed to adopt the
constitution of the University of Paris, where the French nation had
three votes, and all the foreign nations collectively but one. The
vacillation of Wenceslas delayed decision, but in January, 1409, he
signed the decree which ordered the change. The German students and
professors bound themselves by a vow to procure the revocation of the
decree or to leave the university. Failing in the former alternative,
they abandoned the city in vast numbers, founding the University of
Leipsic, and spreading throughout Europe the report that Bohemia was a
nest of heretics. The dyke was broken down, and the flood of
Wickliffitism poured over the land with little to check its progress. In
vain did Alexander V. and John XXIII. command Archbishop Zbinco to
suppress the heresy, and in vain did the struggling prelate hold
assemblies and issue comminatory decrees. The tide bore all before it,
and Zbinco at last, in 1411, abandoned his ungrateful see to appeal to
Wenceslas's brother Sigismund, then recently elected King of the Romans,
but died on the journey.[492]
This removed the last obstacle. The new archbishop, Albik of Unicow,
previously physician to Wenceslas, was old and weak, and more given to
accumulating money than to defending the faith. He was said to carry the
key of his wine-cellar himself, to have only a wretched old crone for a
cook, and to sell habitually all presents made to him. Thoroughly
unfitted for the crisis, he resigned in 1413, and was succeeded by
Conrad of Vechta, who, after some hesitation, cast his lot with the
followers of Huss. Yet, during these troubles, the papal Inquisition
seems to have been established in Prague, and, strangely enough, to have
seen nothing in the Hussite movement to call for its interference,
though it could act against Waldenses and other recognized heretics.
When, in 1408, the king ordered Archbishop Zbinco to make a thorough
perquisition after heresy, Nicholas of Vilemonic, known as Abraham,
priest of the Church of the Holy Spirit in Prague, was tried before the
inquisitors Moritz and Jaroslav for Waldensianism, and was thrown into
prison for asserting that he could preach under authority from Christ
without that of the archbishop. Huss interposed in his favor, but his
liberation was postponed through his refusal to repeat, on the Gospels,
an oath which he had already sworn by God. One of the accusations
brought against Huss at Constance was the favor which he showed to
Waldensian and other heretics; and yet, when he was about to depart on
his fateful journey to Constance, the papal inquisitor Nicholas, Bishop
of Nazareth, gave him a formal certificate, attested by a notarial act,
to the effect that he had long known him intimately, and had never heard
an heretical expression from him, and that no one had ever accused him
of heresy before the tribunal. The Hussite and Waldensian movements were
too nearly akin for Huss not to sympathize with the acknowledged
heretics, and in the virtual spiritual anarchy of these tumultuous years
Waldensian influence must have made itself more and more felt, and the
sectaries must have been emboldened to show themselves ever more
openly.[493]
Everything thus conspired to accelerate the progress of the revolution.
Huss, who had hitherto, for the most part, confined himself to assaults
upon the local ecclesiastical establishment, began to direct his attacks
at the papacy itself, and in the writings of Wickliff he found ample
store of arguments, which he used with great effect. He also made use of
another of Wickliff's methods by the employment of itinerant priests.
This was peculiarly well adapted to accomplish the object in view, for
the Bohemians were given to listening to sermons, and the unlicensed
preaching for which the negligence of the established clergy gave
opportunity had been a frequent source of complaint since the year 1371.
The repetition of the prohibitions shows their ineffectiveness; the
popular craving for spiritual instruction, which the Church could have
turned to such good account, was abandoned to the agitators; the people
flocked in crowds to hear them, in spite of priestly anathemas, and the
great mass of the nation, from nobles to peasants, eagerly adopted the
new doctrines, and were prepared to support them to the death.[494]
Matters were rapidly tending to an open rupture with Rome. In 1410 John
XXIII., soon after his accession, referred to Cardinal Otto Colonna the
complaints which came to Rome against Huss. On September 20 Colonna
summoned him to appear in person. He sent deputies, who appealed from
the cardinal to the pope, but they were thrown into prison and severely
handled; and while the appeal was pending, in February, 1411, Colonna
excommunicated him. On March 15 the excommunication was published in all
the churches of Prague save two; the people stood by Huss, and an
interdict was extended over the city, which was generally disregarded,
and Huss continued to preach. While affairs were in this threatening
position a new cause of trouble led to an explosion. Just as Wickliff
had been stirred to fresh hostility against the papacy by the crusade
which, under orders from Urban VI., the Bishop of Norwich had preached
against France for its support of the rival pope Clement VII.; just as
Luther was to be aroused from his obscurity by the indulgence-selling of
Tetzel when Leo X. wanted money, so the Bohemians were stimulated to
active opposition when John XXIII., towards the close of 1411,
proclaimed a crusade with Holy Land indulgences against Ladislas of
Naples, who upheld the claims of Gregory XII. Stephen Palecz, till then
associated with Huss, was dean of the theological faculty. His
experience of the Bolognese prison rendered him timorous about
withstanding John XXIII., and he declared that there was no authority to
prevent the publication of the indulgence. Huss was bolder, and a
controversy arose between them which converted their former friendship
into an enmity destined to bear bitter fruits. June 16, 1412, he held in
the Carolinum a disputation which was a very powerful and eloquent
attack upon the power of the keys, which lay at the foundation of the
whole papal system. Absolution was dependent on the subjective condition
of the penitent; as many popes who concede indulgences are damned, how
can they defend their pardons before God? the sellers of indulgences are
thieves, who take by cunning lies that which they cannot seize by
violence; the pope and the whole Church Militant often err, and an
unjust papal excommunication is to be disregarded. This was followed by
other tracts and sermons which aroused popular enthusiasm to a lofty
pitch. Wenceslas Tiem, the Dean of Passau, to whom the preaching of the
crusade in Bohemia was confided, farmed out the indulgences to the
highest bidders, and their sale to the people was accompanied by the
usual scandals, which were well calculated to excite indignation.[495]
A few days after the disputation a crowd led by Wok of Waldstein, a
favorite of King Wenceslas, carried the papal bulls of indulgence to the
pillory and publicly burned them. The well-known legend attributes to
Jerome of Prague a leading part in this, and relates that the bulls were
strung around the neck of a strumpet mounted on a cart, who solicited
the favor of the mob with lascivious gestures. No punishment was
inflicted on the participants, and Wok of Waldstein continued to enjoy
the royal favor. The defiance of the pope was complete, and the temper
of the people was shown on July 12, when in three several churches three
young mechanics named Martin, John, and Stanislas, interrupted the
preachers proclaiming the indulgences, and declared them to be a lie.
They were arrested and beheaded in spite of Huss's intercession; many
others were imprisoned, and some were exposed to torture. Then the
people assumed a threatening aspect; the three who had been executed
were reverenced as martyrs; tumults occurred, and the prisoners were
released. Soon afterwards a Carmelite was begging at the doors of his
church with an array of relics displayed upon a table, with the
indulgences attached to them to excite the liberality of the pious. A
disciple of Huss denounced the affair as a fraud and kicked over the
table, and when he was seized by the friars a band of armed men broke
into the house and released him, not without bloodshed.[496]
John XXIII. could not avoid taking up the gage of battle thus thrown
down. The Bohemian clergy appealed to him piteously, representing the
oppression to which they were subjected, and stating that many of them
had been slain. He promptly responded. The major excommunication, to be
published in all its awful solemnity in Prague, was pronounced against
Huss; the Bethlehem chapel was ordered to be levelled with the earth;
his followers were excommunicated, and all who would not within thirty
days abjure heresy were summoned to answer in person before the Roman
curia. In spite of this Huss continued to preach, and when an attempt
was made to arrest him in the pulpit the threatening aspect of the
congregation prevented its execution. He appealed to a general council,
and then to God, in a protest which, in lofty terms, asserted the
nullity of the sentence pronounced against him. In his treatise "De
Ecclesia," which followed not long after, he attacked the papacy in
unmeasured language borrowed from Wickliff. The pope is not a pope and a
true successor of Peter unless he imitates Peter; a pope given to
avarice is the vicar of Judas Iscariot. So of the cardinals; if they
enter save by the door of Christ they are thieves and robbers. Yet the
clergy, for the most part gladly, obeyed the bull of excommunication,
and Huss's presence in Prague led to a cessation of all church
observances; divine service was suspended, the new-born were not
baptized, and the dead lay unburied. At the request of the king, to
relieve the situation of its tension, Huss left Prague and retired to
Kosi hradek, whence he directed the movements of his adherents in the
city and busied himself in active controversial writing, the chief
product of which was the "De Ecclesia," which was publicly read in the
Bethlehem chapel on July 8, 1413.[497]
King Wenceslas had vainly tried to bring about a pacification of the
troubles in which passions were daily growing wilder, complicated by the
race hatred between Teuton and Czech. A confused series of disputations
and conferences and controversial tracts occupied the first half of the
year 1413, which only embittered those who took part in them and
rendered harmony more distant than ever. In fact there was no possible
middle term, no compromise in which the disputants could unite. It was
no longer a question of reforming the morals of the clergy, as to the
necessity of which all were agreed. The controversy had drifted to the
causes of clerical corruption, springing, as Wickliff and Huss and their
disciples clearly saw, from the very principles on which the whole
structure of Latin Christianity was based. Either the power of the keys
was a truth vital to the salvation of mankind, or it was a lie cunningly
invented and boldly utilized to gratify the lust of power and the greed
of avarice. Between these two antagonistic postulates dialectic subtlety
was powerless to frame a project of reconciliation, and argument only
hardened each side in its belief. One or the other must triumph utterly,
and force alone could decide the controversy. Wearied at last with his
unavailing efforts, Wenceslas finally cut the matter short by banishing
the leaders of the conservatives, Stephen Palecz, Stanislas of Znaim,
Peter of Znaim, and John Elias. Stanislas retired to Moravia, where,
after incredible industry in controversial writing, he died on the road
to the Council of Constance; Stephen survived him and revenged them
both.[498]
Huss and his adherents were now masters of the field; and though he
abstained from returning to Prague, except an occasional visit
incognito, until his departure for Constance, he could truly say, when
he stood up in the council to meet his accusers, "I came hither of my
own free will. Had I refused to come neither the king nor the emperor
could have forced me, so numerous are the Bohemian lords who love me and
who would have afforded me protection." And when the Cardinal Peter
d'Ailly indignantly exclaimed, "See the impudence of the man," and a
murmur ran around the whole assembly, John of Chlum calmly arose and
said, "He speaks the truth, for though I have little power compared
with others in Bohemia, I could easily defend him for a year against the
whole strength of both monarchs. Judge, then, how much more could they
whose forces are greater and whose castles are stronger than
mine."[499]
* * * * *
While thus in Bohemia the upholders of the old order of things were
silenced and reformation in the morals of the clergy was enforced with
no gentle hand, the news spread around Christendom that the long-desired
general council was to be convoked at last for the settlement of the
Great Schism, the reformation of the Church from its head downwards, and
the suppression of heresy. Many strivings had there been to effect
this, but the policy of the Italian popes, as at Pisa, had thus far
successfully eluded the dreaded decision. The pressure grew, however,
until it became overwhelming. With the rival vicars of Christ each
showering perdition upon the adherents of the others, the spiritual
condition of the faithful was most anxious and a solution of the
tremendous question was the most pressing necessity for all who believed
what the Latin Church had assiduously taught for a thousand years. The
politics of Europe, moreover, were hopelessly complicated by the strife,
and no peace was to be expected while so dangerous an element of discord
continued to exist. This was especially the case in Germany, where
independent princes and prelates each selected for himself the pope of
his preference, leading to bitter and intricate quarrels. Second only in
importance to this was the reform of the abuses and corruption, the
venality and license of the clergy, which made themselves felt
everywhere, from the courts of the pontiffs to the meanest hamlet.
Heresy likewise was to be met and suppressed, for though England could
deal single-handed with the Lollardry within her shores, the aspect of
matters in Bohemia was threatening, and Sigismund, the emperor-elect, as
the heir of his childless brother Wenceslas, was deeply concerned in the
pacification of the kingdom. In vain John XXIII. endeavored to have the
council held in Italy, where he could control it. The nations insisted
on some place where the free parliament of Christendom could convene
unshackled and debate unchecked. Sigismund selected the episcopal city
of Constance; John, hard pressed by Ladislas of Naples and driven from
Rome, was forced to yield, and, December 9, 1413, issued his bull
convoking the assemblage for the first of the following November. Not
only were all prelates and religious corporations ordered to be
represented, but all princes and rulers were commanded to be there in
person or by deputy. Imperial letters from Sigismund, which accompanied
the bull, gave assurance that the powers of State and Church would be
combined to reach the result desired by all.[500]
No such assemblage had been seen in Christendom since Innocent III., two
centuries before, in the plenitude of his power, had summoned the
representatives of Latin Christianity to sit with him in the Lateran.
The later council might boast fewer mitred heads than the earlier, but
it was a far more important body. Called primarily to sit in judgment on
the claims of rival popes, its mere convocation was a recognition of its
supremacy over the successor of Peter. From its decision there could be
no appeal, and the questions to be submitted to it were far more weighty
than those which had tasked the consciences of the Lateran fathers. From
every part of Europe the Church sent its best and worthiest to take
counsel together in this crisis of its fate--men like Chancellor Gerson
and Cardinal Peter d'Ailly of Cambrai, as earnest for reform and as
sensible of existing wrongs as Wickliff or Huss themselves. The
universities poured forth their ablest doctors of theology and canon
law. Princes and potentates were there in person or by their
representatives, and crowds of every rank in life, from the noble to the
juggler. The mere magnitude of the assemblage produced a powerful effect
on the minds of all contemporaries, and the wildest estimates were
current of the numbers present. One chronicler assures us that there
were, besides members of the council, sixty thousand five hundred
persons present, of whom sixteen thousand were of gentle blood, from
knights and squires up to princes. The same authority informs us that
there were four hundred and fifty public women, but an official census
of the council, carefully taken, reports that the number was not less
than seven hundred, and even _succubi_ were popularly said to have
joined in the nefarious trade. Thus the strength and the weakness, the
virtue and the vice of the fifteenth century were gathered together to
find relief as best they might for the troubles which threatened to
overwhelm the Church. After many doubts and much hesitation John XXIII.
fulfilled his promise to be present, relying upon his stores of gold to
win a triumph over his adversaries and over the council itself.[501]
It was inevitable that Huss should tempt his fate at Constance. To both
Sigismund and Wenceslas it was of the utmost importance that some
authoritative decision should put an end to the strife within the
Bohemian Church. The reformers had always professed their desire to
submit their demands to a free general council, and Huss himself had
appealed to such a council from the papal sentence of excommunication.
To hesitate now would be to abandon his life's work, to admit that he
dared not face the assembled piety and learning of the Church, and to
confess himself a heretic. The host of adversaries in the Bohemian
clergy whom his bitter invectives had inflamed and whose preferment had
been forfeited through the agitation which he had led would surely be
there to blacken him and to misrepresent his cause, and all would be
lost if he were not present to defend it in person. They had long jeered
him for not daring to present himself to the Holy See in obedience to
its summons, and had pronounced blasphemous his appeal to Christ from
its excommunication. To hesitate to submit his cause to the council
would give his adversaries an inestimable advantage. Besides, incredible
as it may seem in view of the violence of his assaults upon the doctrine
which rendered the high places in the hierarchy profitable, and his
persistent denial of the validity of his excommunication, he believed
himself to be in full communion with the Church, that he would find the
council in sympathy with his views, and that certain sermons which he
had prepared would, when delivered before the assembled prelates, be
efficient in bringing about the reforms which he advocated. In his
singleness of mind he could not comprehend that men who had thundered as
vehemently as himself against current abuses and corruptions, but who
had not dared to assail the principles from which those evils sprang,
would shrink back aghast from his bolder doctrinal aberrations, and
would regard him as a heretic subject to the inquisitorial rule
prescribing the naked alternative of recantation or the stake.[502]
When, therefore, the imperial and royal wishes for his presence at
Constance were signified to him, with a promise of safe-conduct and full
security, he willingly assented, and so anxious was he to be present at
the opening of the council that he did not even wait for the promised
safe-conduct, which reached him only after his arrival there. That some
discussion took place among his friends as to the danger to be incurred
there can be no doubt. Jerome of Prague, when on his trial, asserted
that he had persuaded Huss to go, and Huss in one of his letters from
prison alludes to the warnings which he had received. He himself was
evidently not wholly without misgivings. A sealed letter left with his
disciple, Master Martin, not to be opened till news should be received
of his death, alludes to the persecution which he had suffered for
restraining the inordinate lives of the clergy, and his expectation that
it would soon reach its consummation. He makes disposition of his
slender effects--his gray gown, his white gown, and sixty grossi, which
comprise the whole of his worldly gear--and expresses his remorse for
the time wasted before his ordination, when he used to play chess to the
loss of his own temper and that of others. The unaffected simplicity and
pure-heartedness of the man shine like a divine light through the brief
words of his last request. A letter in the vernacular to his disciples
also announces his fear that his enemies may seek in the council to take
his life by false testimony. He asks the prayers of his friends that he
may have eloquence to uphold the truth and constancy to endure to the
last. Still, he did not wholly neglect precautions. Not only did he
procure from the inquisitor Nicholas, Bishop of Nazareth, the
certificate of his orthodoxy already alluded to, but he posted, August
26, throughout Prague a notice in Latin and Bohemian that he would
appear before the archbishop, then holding a convocation of the Bohemian
clergy, and challenged all who impugned his faith to come forward and
accuse him either there or at Constance, asserting his readiness to
submit to the punishment of heresy in case he was convicted, but that
accusers who failed should be subjected to the talio. When John of
Jessinetz, his representative, presented himself the next day at the
door of the convocation, he was refused admission on the pretext that
the body was deliberating on national affairs, and he was told to come
back another time. In the assembly of nobles, however, Huss obtained an
audience of the archbishop, who was also papal legate, and who declared
that he knew of nothing to render Huss guilty except that he ought to
purge himself of the excommunication. Of this a certified notarial
instrument was sent to Sigismund by Huss with the statement that under
the imperial safe-conduct he was ready to go to Constance to defend
publicly the faith for which he was prepared, if necessary, to die.[503]
Huss set out, October 11, 1414, under the escort and protection of John
and Henry of Chlum and Wenceslas of Duba, all his friends, and delegated
for the purpose by Sigismund. The cavalcade consisted of more than
thirty horse and two carriages. It was preceded, a day in advance, by
the Bishop of Lubec, who announced that Huss was being carried in chains
to Constance, and warned the people not to look at him, as he could read
men's minds. Already his name had filled all Germany, and this
advertisement was an additional incentive for crowds to gather and gaze
on him as he passed. His reception served to foster the fatal illusions
which he nursed. Everywhere, he wrote to his friends, he was treated as
an honored guest and not as an excommunicate; no interdict was
proclaimed where he stopped to rest, and he held discussions with
magistrates and ecclesiastics. In all cities he posted notices on the
church-doors that he was on his way to Constance to defend his faith,
and that any one who desired to assail it was invited to do so before
the council. On reaching Nuremburg, October 19, in place of deflecting
to seek King Sigismund and obtain the promised safe-conduct, he
proceeded direct to Constance, while Wenceslas of Duba went to the court
and brought the document to him there a few days after his arrival. It
was dated October 18.[504]
On November 2 Huss reached Constance, to be greeted by a crowd of twelve
thousand men assembled to look upon the dreaded reforming heretic. The
council had not yet been opened. On the 10th a letter from one of the
party states that as yet no ambassadors from any of the kings had
arrived, and though John XXIII. was there with his cardinals, no
representatives from his rivals, Gregory XII. and Benedict XIII., had
presented themselves. What to do with the Bohemian Wickliffite was a
problem which puzzled pope and cardinal, and after much discussion it
was determined to suspend his excommunication, and permit him to
frequent the churches freely, at the same time requesting him not to be
present at the solemnities of the council, lest it might lead to
disorder. Considerable apprehension, moreover, was felt as to a sermon
to the clergy which he was understood to propose delivering. Huss
himself was utterly blind as to the position which he occupied. On
November 4, the day before the council was opened, he wrote to his
friends at home that overtures had been made to him to settle matters
quietly, but that he expected to win a great victory after a great
fight. On the 16th he mentioned that when the pope was celebrating mass
every one but himself had assigned to him some function in the ceremony,
and he characterized the omission as neglect, evidently considering that
his position entitled him to recognition and distinction.[505]
He knew that his opponents had not been idle, but he did not fear them.
He had been preceded in Constance by two of his bitterest
enemies--Michael of Deutschbrod, known as de Causis, and Wenceslas Tiem,
Dean of Passau--and these, in a few days, were reinforced by a more
formidable antagonist, Stephen Palecz, fully equipped with most
dangerous extracts from Huss's writings. Wenceslas Tiem had been the
bearer to Prague of the bull offering indulgences for the crusade
against Ladislas of Naples, and his profitable trade had been broken up
by Huss. Michael de Causis had been priest of the Church of St. Adalbert
in the Neustadt of Prague; he had gained the confidence of King
Wenceslas by pretending that he could render profitable some abandoned
gold-mines near Iglau, and the king had intrusted him with a
considerable sum of money for the purpose. After working a few days at
the mines he decamped to Rome with the funds, which enabled him to
purchase a commission as papal procurator "_de causis fidei_," whence
his appellation. He had already, in 1412, sent to Rome charges against
Huss, which the latter pronounced to be lies. The day after Huss's
arrival in Constance, Michael posted on the church-doors that he would
accuse him to the council as an excommunicate and suspect of heresy, but
Huss treated the matter very lightly, and adopted the advice of his
friends to take no notice of it until the arrival of Sigismund, who was
not expected until Christmas. Meanwhile Huss himself gave ample cause
for adverse comment. So perfect was his sense of innocence and security
that he could not be content with prudent obscurity. Almost immediately
on his arrival he began to celebrate mass in his lodgings. This
attracted the people in crowds, and was necessarily a cause of scandal.
Otto, Bishop of Constance, sent John Tenger, his vicar, and Conrad
Helye, his official, to request Huss to cease, as he had long been under
papal excommunication; but he refused, saying that he did not consider
himself excommunicated, and that he would celebrate mass as often as he
pleased. Although thus defied, the bishop, to avoid disturbance,
contented himself with forbidding the people from attendance. Soon after
this Huss placed himself, with some provisions, in a covered
forage-wagon which was to be sent for hay. When the knights who were
responsible for him could not find him, Henry of Lastenbock (Chlum)
rushed to the burgomaster and demanded that he be searched for. The city
was in an uproar; the gates were closed, horse and foot were sent in
every direction to find him, and the circumstance was easily magnified
into an attempt to escape.[506]
The sturdy Bohemian was evidently a troublesome subject to deal with. In
the eyes of the faithful it was quite scandal enough to see at liberty a
priest who had openly defied a papal excommunication, and had defended
the recognized errors of Wickliff; there was, moreover, every
probability that he would carry out his audacious design of preaching to
the clergy a sermon in which the vices of the papal court and the
shortcomings of the whole ecclesiastical body would be pitilessly and
eloquently exposed, and it would be proved from Scripture that the whole
system had no warrant in the law of Christ. The path which the pope and
his cardinals had to tread in managing the council was likely to be
tortuous and thorny enough without this additional element of
disturbance and turbulence. It was far safer to disarm him at once, to
anticipate his attacks by treating him legally as one accused of heresy
and awaiting trial. Stephen Palecz and Michael de Causis, and a crowd of
other Bohemian doctors and priests whom Huss had roughly handled, had
already furnished ample material for his indictment, and in the
inquisitorial process the first step was to make sure that the accused
should not escape. Even had the case been one in which bail could be
taken, Huss had the whole kingdom of Bohemia at his back; bail to any
amount would be furnished and forfeited, and, once safe at home, he
would have laughed to scorn a condemnation for contumacy. Such might
reasonably be the arguments of the cardinals when the resolve was taken
to arrest him, but the execution of the design was either inexcusably
insidious, or the manifestation of irresolution which reached its
conclusion only by degrees. On November 28 the cardinals, in consistory
with the pope, sent to Huss's lodgings the Bishops of Augsburg and
Trent, with Henry of Ulm, the burgomaster of Constance, to summon him at
once before them to defend his faith. The envoys greeted him kindly, and
though both he and John of Chlum protested that the summons was a
violation of the safe-conduct, he immediately consented to go, although
he said he had come to Constance to appear openly in the council, and
not secretly before the cardinals. He added that he could not be
imprisoned because he had a safe-conduct. John of Chlum and some friends
accompanied him to the palace occupied by the pope. When the cardinals
told him he was accused of disseminating many heresies, he replied that
he would rather die than be convicted of a single one; he had come with
alacrity to Constance, and if he was found in error he would willingly
abjure. To this the cardinals said, "You have answered well." No
further examination was had, but John XXIII., whose policy was to
embroil the council with Sigismund, took occasion to ask John of Chlum
whether Huss had an imperial safe-conduct, to which Chlum replied,
"Holy father, you know that he has." Again the pope asked the question
and received the same answer, but none of the cardinals requested to see
the document. When the morning session was over, guards were placed over
Huss and John of Chlum. The weary afternoon wore away in suspense, while
the cardinals held another session in which Stephen Palecz and Michael
de Causis were busy. The tedium of detention was only broken by a
simple-looking Franciscan, who accosted Huss and asked for instruction
on the subject of transubstantiation, and, on being satisfactorily
answered, inquired about the union of humanity and divinity in Christ.
Huss recognized that he was no simple inquirer, for he had asked the
most difficult question in theology; he declined further colloquy, and
on the retiring of the friar was informed by the guards that he was
Master Didaco, renowned as the subtlest theologian of Lombardy. About
nightfall John of Chlum was allowed to depart, while Huss was detained,
and soon after Stephen and Michael came exultingly and told him that he
was now in their power, and should not escape till he had paid the last
penny. He was taken under guard to the house of the precentor of the
cathedral, in charge of the Bishop of Lausanne, regent of the apostolic
chamber, and after eight days was transferred to the Dominican convent
on the Rhine. Here he was confined in a cell adjoining the latrines,
where a fever soon caused his life to be despaired of. His sudden death
would have been a most untoward event, and the pope sent his own
physicians to restore him. It was in vain that his friends in Prague
procured from Archbishop Conrad a declaration affirming that he had
never found Huss to vary from the faith in a single word. His fate had
already been virtually decided.[507]
John of Chlum's first thought on regaining his liberty was to hasten to
the pope and to expostulate with him. When the safe-conduct had reached
Constance, Chlum had at once exhibited it to John XXIII., who is
reported to have declared, on reading it, that if his own brother had
been slain by Huss the latter should be safe while in Constance so far
as he was concerned. Now he disclaimed all responsibility and threw the
blame on the cardinals.[508] This question as to the safe-conduct and
its violation has been the subject of so warm a discussion, and it
illustrates so completely a phase of the relations between the Church
and heretics, that its brief consideration here is not out of place.
The imperial safe-conduct issued to Huss was in the ordinary form,
without limitation or condition. It was addressed to all the princes and
subjects of the empire, ecclesiastical and secular, and to all nobles
and magistrates and officials, informing them that Huss was taken into
the protection of the king and of the empire, and ordering that he be
permitted to pass, remain, and return without impediment, and that all
help which he might require should be extended to him. Thus it was not a
simple _viaticum_ for protection during the journey from Bohemia, and it
was not so regarded by any one. That it was intended as a safeguard
during the council and the return home is shown by its issue, October
18, after Huss's departure from Prague, and its reaching him in
Constance after his arrival there. That his imprisonment was at once
looked upon as a gross violation of the imperial pledge is seen in the
protests which John of Chlum affixed to the church doors on December 15,
probably as soon as Sigismund could be heard from, and again on the
24th, when the king was near Constance and was to arrive the next day.
This paper recited that Huss had come under the imperial protection and
safe-conduct to answer in public audience all who might question his
faith. That, in the absence of Sigismund, who would not have permitted
it, and in contempt of his safe-conduct, Huss had been thrown into
prison. That the imperial ambassadors had vainly demanded his release,
and that when Sigismund comes he should plainly make known to all men
his grief and indignation at this violation of the imperial pledge.[509]
The suggestion that the safe-conduct was a mere passport designedly
insufficient to protect Huss is a recent discovery which would not have
been left to the ingenuity of modern times if it could have been alleged
during the warm debate which raged over the question at Constance. That
nobody thought of it then is sufficient proof that such an excuse is
untenable. Such an assertion would have been all-sufficient when, May
13, 1415, the Bohemians in Constance presented a memorial to the council
in which they referred to the treatment of Huss as a violation of the
safe-conduct. Yet in its answer the council had no thought of making
such an allegation, while at the same time Sigismund's services in the
quarrel with John XXIII. were too recent, and still too necessary, for
the good fathers to inflict on him the disgrace of publicly declaring
that they had righteously overruled his attempt to protect a heretic.
They therefore had recourse to a lie manufactured for the occasion, by
asserting, in spite of the notorious existence of the safe-conduct in
Constance at the time of Huss's arrest, that witnesses worthy of credit
had proved that it had not been procured until fifteen days after that
occurrence, and therefore that no public faith had been violated in the
proceedings. This argument, which Sigismund himself asserted to be false
in the public session of June 7, is an admission that the public faith
was violated. A single fact such as this outweighs all the special
pleadings of modern apologists.[510]