Sigismund at first fully justified the confidence reposed in him by Huss

and John of Chlum. He made no attempt to say that his letters were not

intended to protect Huss from prosecution, but treated them as having

been wrongfully violated. As soon as he had heard of the arrest he had

ordered Huss's release with a threat to break open the prisons in case

of refusal. On his arrival at Constance, on Christmas Day, his

indignation was boundless and there was consequently great excitement.

He protested that he would leave Constance, and, in fact, made a show of

doing so; he even threatened to withdraw the imperial protection from

the council, but was plainly told by the cardinals that they would

themselves break it up unless he yielded. The hopes of Christendom had

been raised to too high a pitch as to the results expected from the

assemblage for him to venture on such a risk. Naturally faithless, his

insistence was a matter of pride, and self-interest easily won the day.

We have better materials for estimating his character than that of any

other prince of the century, and from first to last we find fully

justified the opinion of his contemporaries that he was wholly unworthy

of trust. During the long negotiations between the Council of Basle and

the Hussites, in which he took part, we see him endeavoring impartially

to deceive both sides, making solemn engagements with no intention of

fulfilling them, and regarded by all parties as utterly devoid of honor.

Unfortunate in war and chronically impecunious, he was ever ready to

adopt any temporary expedient to evade a difficulty, and to sacrifice

his plighted word to obtain an advantage.[511]

It cost him little, therefore, to withdraw from the assertion of his own

honor, and the matter was so speedily arranged that when on January 1,

1415, the council formally asked him that free course of justice be

allowed in the case of Huss, in spite of the pretext of safe-conduct, he

at once issued a decree declaring the council free in all matters of

faith and capable of proceeding against all who were defamed for heresy;

moreover, he pledged himself to set at naught the threats which were

freely uttered of defending Huss at all hazards. Yet the discussion

still continued during January, and the pressure on him from Bohemia was

so strong that for a while he still fluctuated irresolutely, but, April

8, he formally revoked all letters of safe-conduct. Huss himself had no

hesitation in declaring that he had been betrayed and that Sigismund had

promised his safe return. His friends took the same position. In

February an assembly of the magnates of Bohemia and Moravia, gathered at

Mezeritz, sent an address to Sigismund pointing out in language more

forcible than courtly the disgrace and humiliation attendant upon the

disregard of the imperial faith. Again, in May, after the flight of

John XXIII. had inspired new hopes as to the action of the council, two

similar assemblages held at Brünn and Prague approached him with even

stronger representations. It was all in vain. Sigismund had finally

taken his position, and he redeemed his hesitation with great show of

zeal. When, on June 7, Huss had his second hearing before the council,

Sigismund thanked the prelates for their consideration for him as shown

in their leniency to Huss, whom he sternly advised to submit, for he

could look for no human help; "We will never protect you in your errors

and pertinacity. Rather, indeed, than do so we will prepare the fire for

you with our own hands." In the final session of July 6, Huss declared,

"I came freely to the council under the public faith promised by the

emperor, here present, that I should be free from all constraint, to

bear witness to my innocence and to answer for my faith to all who call

it in question." With this he fixed his eyes on Sigismund, who blushed

deeply. The impression made in Bohemia by Sigismund's calculated

faithlessness was ineffaceable. When, in 1433, the legates of the

Council of Basle sought to throw the responsibility of the result at

Constance on the false witnesses, John Rokyzana pertinently asked them

how, if the council was inspired by the Holy Ghost, it could have been

misled by perjurers, and he alluded to the violation of the safe-conduct

in terms showing that it had been neither forgotten nor forgiven. This

had been practically manifested a year earlier, in September, 1432, when

the Council of Basle was eager to have Hussite deputies come to it, and

the Bohemians would not stir without the most exaggerated provisions to

guarantee their safety. Three safe-conducts had been furnished them--one

from Sigismund, one from the council, and one from the city of Eger, but

they still required others, from the city of Basle, the Margrave of

Brandenburg, and the Counts Palatine Dukes of Bavaria, one of whom was

the protector of the council. These were very different from that which

had satisfied the simplicity of Huss. Thus Frederic of Brandenburg and

John of Bavaria pledged themselves to furnish sufficient troops to

conduct the Bohemians safely to Basle, to guard them while there, and to

bring them back to any designated place in Bohemia. The princes,

moreover, guaranteed the safe-conducts of Sigismund and the council, and

agreed to forfeit honors and lands, to be entered upon and taken in

possession by the Bohemians in case of any unredressed violation of the

pledge. These precautions were superfluous, for the envoys had at their

back the terrible Bohemian levies which could enforce respect for

plighted faith; but when reconciliation had taken place and Sigismund

was seated on the throne of his fathers, his guarantees were again

regarded as valueless. In April, 1437, he urged John Rokyzana to visit

the council, and on the latter alleging fear that he might be treated as

was Huss at Constance, the emperor was greatly moved and exclaimed, "Do

you think that for you or for this city I would do aught against mine

honor? I have given a safe-conduct and so also has the council;" but

Rokyzana was not to be tempted by this appeal to the forfeited imperial

honor, and steadfastly refused to go.[512]

The explanation of the controversy over the violation of the

safe-conduct is perfectly simple. Germany and especially Bohemia knew so

little about the Inquisition and the systematic persecution of heresy

that surprise and indignation were excited by the application to the

case of Huss of the recognized principles of the canon law. The council

could not have done otherwise than it did without surrendering those

principles. To allow a heresiarch who had become conspicuous to all

Christendom, like Huss, to evade the punishment due to his crimes on so

flimsy a pretext as that of his having confided himself to them on a

promise of safety to which the public faith was pledged, would have

seemed to the most conscientious jurists of the council the most absurd

of solecisms. In point of fact, the best men who were there--the

Gersons, the Peter d'Aillys, the Zabarellas--were as unflinching as the

worst creatures of the curia. It had been, as we have seen, too long a

principle of inquisitorial practice that the heretic had no rights, and

that the man accused of heresy by sufficient witnesses was to be treated

as a heretic until he could clear himself, for any one to hesitate about

putting it in force in this case. When Sigismund complained that he was

dishonored by the imprisonment of Huss, the canonists of the council

promptly assured him, in the words of a contemporary orthodox burgher of

Constance, that "it could not and might not be in any law that a

heretic could enjoy a safe-conduct," and though this was prejudging the

case, we have seen how customary that was in all inquisitorial trials.

These words Sigismund himself virtually repeated in his address to Huss

in the session of June 7: "Many say that we cannot, under the law,

protect a heretic or one suspect of heresy." When Huss's execution

aroused the wildest indignation throughout Bohemia, expressed to the

council in missives of scant courtesy, the council asserted its position

in a decree formally adopted September 23, 1415, that no safe-conduct

from any secular potentate could work prejudice to the Catholic faith,

or could prevent any competent tribunal from trying, judging, and

condemning a heretic or suspected heretic, even though, if trusting to

the safe-conduct, he had come to the place of judgment and would not

have come without it. So thoroughly did the council cause this to be

recognized that, in 1432, in the Convention of Eger, stipulating the

bases of negotiation between the Hussites and the Council of Basle, it

was expressly agreed that no canons or decretals should be alleged to

derogate, infringe, or annul the safe-conducts under which the Bohemian

envoys were to appear before the council.[513]

The trial of Huss has been the subject of much indignant eloquence. It

is the most conspicuous instance of an inquisitorial process on record,

and to those unacquainted with the system of procedure which had grown

up in the development of the Holy Office, its practical denial of

justice has seemed a wilful perversity on the part of the council, while

the sublimely pathetic figure of the sufferer has necessarily awakened

the warmest sympathy. Yet, in fact, the only deviations of the council

from the ordinary course of such affairs were special marks of lenity

towards the accused. He was not subjected to the torture, as in the

customary practice in such cases he should have been, and, at the

instance of Sigismund, he was thrice permitted to appear before the

whole body and defend himself in public session. When, therefore, we see

how inevitable was his condemnation, how he could have saved himself

only at the cost of burdening his soul with perjury and converting his

remaining years into a living lie, we obtain a measure of the infamy of

the system, and can in some degree estimate the innumerable wrongs

inflicted on countless thousands of obscure and forgotten victims. In

this aspect the trial is worthy of examination, for though it presents

no novel points of procedure, except the concessions made to Huss, it

affords an instructive example of the manner in which the inquisitorial

process described in preceding chapters was practically applied.

The case against Huss was rendered stronger, almost at the outset, by

the action of his friends at home. It must have been shortly after his

arrival in Constance that Jacobel of Mies, who had succeeded Michael de

Causis in the Church of St. Adalbert, commenced to administer communion

in both elements to the laity, and thus gave rise to the most

distinguishing and obstinate feature of Bohemian heresy. Zeal for the

Eucharist had long been a marked peculiarity of religious devotion in

Bohemia. The synod of 1390 promised an indulgence of forty days to all

who bent the knee on the elevation of the host; and the frequent

partaking of the sacrament was repeatedly and strenuously urged by those

who have been classed as the precursors of Huss. Mathias of Janow had

even ventured to recommend that the cup should be restored to the laity,

but the question had never reappeared during the stormy years in which

Huss and his friends had been battling for the Wickliffite doctrines.

According to Æneas Sylvius, a certain Peter of Dresden, infected with

Waldensian errors, had left Prague with the other Germans in 1409, but

was driven from home on account of his heresy and took refuge again in

Prague, where he supported himself as a teacher of children. He it was

who suggested to Jacobel the return to the ancient practice of the

Church; the heretics, delighted to find a question in which they were

clearly in the right, eagerly embraced it. The custom spread to the

churches of St. Michael, St. Martin, the Bethlehem Chapel, and

elsewhere, in spite of the opposition of King Wenceslas and Archbishop

Conrad, who vainly threatened secular punishments and ecclesiastical

interdicts. Huss was speedily communicated with. He approved of the

custom, as indeed he could not well help doing, and his tract in its

favor, when conveyed to the disciples, gave a fresh impetus to the

movement. It was in vain that on June 15, 1415, the council condemned

the use of the cup by the laity, pronounced heretics all priests so

administering the sacrament, ordered them to be handed over to the

secular arm, and commanded all prelates and inquisitors to prosecute as

heretics those who denied the propriety of communion in one element. For

more than a century the Utraquists, or Calixtins, as they called

themselves, were the ruling party in Bohemia. The consciousness of being

in the wrong and of having to justify itself by all manner of trivial

excuses rendered the council additionally eager to crush the

insubordination of which Huss was the representative. [514]

We have seen that Huss was arrested November 28, 1414. Michael de

Causis, Stephen Palecz, and others of his enemies had presented formal

articles of accusation against him. These, drawn up in the name of

Michael, accused him of maintaining the remanence of the substance in

the Eucharist after consecration, of asserting the vitiation of the

sacraments in the hands of sinful priests and denying the power of the

keys under the same conditions, of holding that the Church should have

no temporal possessions, of disregarding excommunication, of granting

the cup to the laity, of defending the forty-five condemned articles of

Wickliff, of exciting the people against the clergy, so that if he were

allowed to return to Prague there would be a persecution such as had not

been seen since the days of Constantine, and of other errors and

offences. This was more than sufficient to justify his trial, and the

process was commenced without delay by the appointment, December 1, of

commissioners to examine him. These commissioners were, in fact,

inquisitors, and the council at large served as the assembly of experts

in which, as it will be remembered, final assent was given to the

judgment. One of the commissioners at least, Bernardo, Bishop of Città

di Castello, was already familiar with the matter, for only the year

before, as papal nuncio in Poland, he had assisted in driving away

Jerome of Prague. In addition to the articles of Michael de Causis there

was a kind of indictment against Huss presented to the commissioners by

the procurators and promoters of the council, reciting the troubles at

Prague, his excommunication, and his teaching of Wickliffite

heresies.[515]

At first the proceedings were pushed with a vigor which seemed to

promise a speedy termination of the case. As soon as Huss recovered from

his first sickness there was submitted to him a series of forty-two

errors extracted from his writings by Palecz. To these he replied

_seriatim_ in writing, explaining the false constructions which he

asserted had been placed on some passages, defending some, and limiting

and conditioning others. As he was denied the use of books, even of the

treatises which were the source of the charges, these answers manifest a

wonderful retentiveness of memory and quickness and clearness of

intellect. Sometimes he was visited in his prison by the commissioners

and personally interrogated. A Carthusian, writing from Constance, May

19, relates that the day before he had been present at such an

examination and had never seen so bold and audacious a scoundrel or one

who could so cautiously conceal the truth. On the other hand, we have

his own account of one of these interviews. The commissioners were

accompanied by Michael and Stephen to prompt them. Each article was read

to him and he was asked if such was his belief; he replied, explaining

the sense in which he held it. Then he would be asked if he would defend

it, and he would answer no, but that he would stand to the decision of

the council. Nothing could well seem more submissive or more orthodox,

and under any other system of jurisprudence conviction might well appear

impossible. Heresy, however, as we have seen, was a crime; once

committed, even through ignorance, a simple return to the Church was not

enough; belief in the errors must be admitted and then abjured, before

the criminal could be considered as penitent and entitled to the

substitution of perpetual imprisonment for the death-penalty. Huss was

condemned on heresies which he had not held rather than those which he

had taught.[516]

Thousands of miserable wretches had been convicted on a tithe of the

evidence now brought against him. Stephen Palecz, a man of the highest

repute, swore before the commissioners that since the birth of Christ

there had been no more dangerous heretics than Wickliff and Huss, and

that all who customarily attended the sermons of the latter believed in

the remanence of the substance of bread in the Eucharist. What Palecz

testified there were scores of others to substantiate and amplify.

Witnesses were there in abundance to prove that he believed in the

remanence of the bread, that the sacraments were vitiated in the hands

of sinful priests, that indulgences were of no avail, that the Church of

Rome was the synagogue of Satan, that heresy was to be overcome by

disputation and not by force, that a papal excommunication was to be

disregarded. Many of these errors he indignantly denied having

entertained, but it was in vain. In vain he wrote out in prison, as

early as March 5, 1415, his tract, "_De Sacramento Corporis et

Sanguinis_," in which he declared that full transubstantiation took

place; that God worked the miracle irrespective of the merits of the

celebrant; that the body and blood of Christ were both in the bread and

in the wine, and that he had taught this doctrine since 1401, before he

was a priest. In vain, shortly before his execution, his devotion burst

forth in a hymn in which he exclaimed:

"O quam sanctus panis iste,

Tu es solus Jesu Christe,

Caro, cibus, sacramentum,

Quo non majus est inventum!"

In vain during his public audience of June 8 he disputed earnestly in

favor of the same belief. The witnesses swore to the contrary. He had no

right to call rebutting testimony, and could only appeal to God and his

conscience. He was proved a heretic who must confess and abjure or be

burned.[517]

His only possible line of defence, as has been shown above (Vol. I. p.

446) would have lain in disabling the witnesses for mortal enmity--for

enmity such as would lead them to seek his life--and even this would not

have been available against the errors which the commissioners had

extracted, falsely, as he asserted, from his writings. As regards the

witnesses, the commissioners made an unusual concession to him when,

during his sickness in December, some fifteen of them were taken to his

cell that he might see them sworn. Some of them, it is said, declared

that they knew nothing; others were bitterly hostile to him. To this

extent he knew some of the names, and others he was acquainted with

because they were attached to depositions taken in advance at Prague for

Michael de Causis, which by some means had fallen into the hands of Huss

before he started for Constance. Some of these names, probably on this

account, were attached to the article on the subject of remanence

presented in the hearing of June 7, but in the final sentence no names

are mentioned; the witnesses to each article are designated simply by

titles, such as a canon of Prague, a priest of Litomysl, a master of

arts, a doctor of theology, etc., and when Huss asked the name of one of

them it was refused. This was strictly in accordance with rule.[518]

Yet the hostility of those who testified against him was notorious. At

the place of execution he declared that he was convicted of errors which

he did not entertain, on the evidence of false witnesses. The Bohemians

in Constance, in their memorial of May 31, 1415, to the council,

declared that the testimony against him was given by those who were his

mortal enemies. At one time he or his friends thought of disabling them

on this account, but when he asked the commissioners to permit him to

employ an advocate who could take the necessary exceptions to the

evidence, although they at first assented they finally refused, saying

that it was against the law for any one to defend a suspected heretic.

This, as we have seen, was strictly true, and if the maintenance of the

rule may seem harsh, we must remember on the other hand that the friends

of Huss were allowed unexampled liberty in working in his behalf. Their

repeated memorials to the council and their efforts with Sigismund made

them guilty of the crime of fautorship, and if there had been any

disposition to enforce the law they could have been reduced to instant

silence and have been grievously punished.[519]

It had not taken long to secure evidence more than ample for Huss's

conviction, and if his burning had been the object desired it might have

been speedily accomplished. We have seen, however, how much the

Inquisition preferred a penitent convert to a cremated heretic, and in

this case, perhaps more than in any other on record, confession and

submission were supremely desirable. Huss, as a self-confessed

heresiarch, would be deprived of all importance, and his disciples might

be expected to follow his example: as a martyr, there was no predicting

whether the result would be terror or exasperation. The milder customary

methods of the Inquisition were therefore brought to bear to break down

his stubborn obstinacy by procrastination, solitude, and despair. Had

his judges desired to be harsh they could have had recourse to torture,

which was the ordinary mode of dealing with similar cases. In this they

would have been fully justified by law and custom. The less violent but

equally efficient device of prolonged starvation could likewise have

been employed, but was mercifully forborne. Yet the slower but not less

wearing torture of indefinite imprisonment was not spared him. He was

kept in the Dominican convent until March 24. Although his petition to

be allowed to see his friends was refused, they were permitted to

furnish him with writing materials, and he employed his enforced leisure

in composing a number of tracts which, written without the aid of books,

show his extensive and accurate acquaintance with Scripture and the

Fathers. His sweet temper won the good-will of all who were brought in

contact with him, and he gratefully alludes to the kindness with which

he was treated both by his guards and by the clerks of the papal

chamber. The winning nature of the man, as well as the gold of his

friends, probably explains the correspondence which at this period he

was able to maintain with them, though all communication with him was

forbidden. Letters were conveyed back and forth clandestinely, sometimes

carried in food, in spite of the vigilance of his enemies. Michael de

Causis hovered around the gate, saying, "By the grace of God we shall

burn that heretic who has cost me so many florins," and procuring that

the wives of the guards, whom he suspected as letter-carriers, should be

excluded. All this ceased when the quarrel between pope and council

culminated. On March 20 John XXIII. secretly fled from Constance, when

the guards placed over Huss delivered the keys to Sigismund and followed

their master. The council then handed Huss over to the custody of the

Bishop of Constance, who carried him in chains by night to the castle of

Gottlieben, some miles from the city across the Rhine. His friends had

requested that he should have a more airy prison, and the request was

more than granted, for he was now confined in a room at the top of a

tall tower. Though his feet were fettered he was able to move about

during the day, but at night his arm was chained to the wall. As escape

was impossible, the confinement was evidently intended to be punitive.

Here he was completely isolated from all intercourse with his

fellow-beings and left to his own dreary introspection. Disease added to

the harshness of his prison. From the foul Dominican cell to the windy

turret-room of Gottlieben, he was exposed to every variety of

unwholesome conditions. Stone, an affection hitherto unknown to him,

tormented him greatly. Toothache and headache combined to increase his

sufferings. On one occasion a severe attack of fever, accompanied by

excessive vomiting, so prostrated him that his guards carried him out of

his cell thinking him about to die. Yet throughout all his letters from

prison the beautiful patience of the man shines forth. For the enemies

who were pursuing him to the death there is only forgiveness; for the

trials with which God has seen fit to test his servant there is only

submission. He overflows with gratitude for the steadfast affection of

his friends, and sends touching requests of remembrance to them all; he

teaches charity and gently points out the way to moral and spiritual

improvement. There is neither the pride of martyrdom nor the desire for

retribution; all is pious resignation and love and humility. Since

Christ, no man has left behind him a more affecting example of the true

Christian spirit than John Huss, while fearlessly awaiting the time when

he should suffer for what he believed to be truth. He was one of the

chosen few who exalt and glorify humanity. Yet he was but human, and the

final victory was not won without the agony of self-conquest; while at

times he comforted himself with dreams that God would not suffer him to

perish, but that like Daniel and Jonah and Susannah he would be rescued

when all help seemed vain.[520]

Hope seemed justified when the rupture occurred between the pope and the

council. No sooner was Huss made aware of the flight of John XXIII. than

he begged his friends to see Sigismund instantly and procure his

liberation. The answer was his transfer to the tower of Gottlieben. When

the pope was brought back a prisoner to the same castle of Gottlieben,

and the council proceeded to try and condemn him as a simonist and

dilapidator who was ruining the Church, while his personal vices and

crimes, unfit for description, were a scandal to Christendom, such

confirmation of all that the Wickliffites had urged might well seem to

justifiy the expectation that Huss would be released with honor. John

XXIII., however, with the wisdom of the children of the world, essayed

no defence; he confessed all that was laid to his charge, submitted to

the council, and was eventually, after a few years of imprisonment,

rewarded by Martin V. with the lofty post of Dean of the Sacred College.

Huss, with the constancy of the children of light, refused to perjure

himself by confession, and there could be no escape for him.[521]

The council had been assembled to reform the Church, and was performing

its duty in its own way, but nothing could be further from the thoughts

of its most zealous members than the revolutionary reform of Wickliff

and Huss, which would reduce the Church to apostolic poverty and deprive

it of all temporal power. Besides the doctrinal errors, attested by

abundant witnesses, there was ample material in Huss's writings to prove

him a most dangerous enemy of the whole ecclesiastical system. He had

written his tract "_De Ablatione Bonorum_" in defence of one of the

forty-five condemned Wickliffite articles which asserted that the

temporal lord could at will deprive of their temporalities ecclesiastics

who were habitual delinquents. His tract "_De Decimis_" defended

another of the articles, contending that no one in mortal sin could be a

temporal lord, a prelate, or a bishop. John Gerson, one of the leading

members of the council, had, as Chancellor of the University of Paris,

before coming to Constance, drawn up a series of twenty such dangerous

errors, extracted from Huss's treatise "_De Ecclesia_," and had urged

Archbishop Conrad of Prague to extirpate the Wickliffite heresy by

calling in the secular arm. Huss, in his deductions from the Wickliffite

doctrines of predestination, had overthrown the very foundations of the

hierarchical system. Among the cardinals in the council, Ottone Colonna

had fulminated the papal excommunication which Huss had disregarded;

Zabarella and Brancazio had been actively concerned in the proceedings

against him before the curia--all of these and many others were

thoroughly familiar with his revolutionary doctrines. What was to become

of the theocracy founded by Hildebrand if such teachings were to pass

unreproved, if their assertor was to be allowed to defend them and was

only to be adjudged a heretic when overcome in scholastic disputation?

The whole structure of sacerdotalism would be undermined and the whole

body of canon law would be disregarded if so monstrous a proposition

should be conceded. To the fathers of the council nothing could well

seem more preposterous. Then Michael de Causis had intercepted a letter,

written by Huss from prison, in which the ministers of the council were

alluded to as the servants of Antichrist, and when this was brought to

him by the commissioners he acknowledged its authenticity. Besides all

this, he had remained under excommunication for suspicion of heresy

during long years, during which he had constantly performed divine

service, and he had called the pope an Antichrist whose anathema was to

be disregarded. This of itself, as we have seen, constituted him a

self-convicted heretic.[522]

It thus was idle to suppose that the council, because it had deposed

John XXIII., would set free so contumacious a heretic, whose very

virtues only rendered him the more dangerous. The inquisitorial process

must go on to the end. Even during the bitterest and most doubtful

portion of the contest, before the pope had been brought back to

Constance, the successive steps of the trial received due attention. On

April 17 four new commissioners were appointed to replace the previous

ones, whose commissions from the pope were held to have expired, and the

new commission was expressly granted power to proceed to final sentence.

The only doubt arising was whether the condemnation of Wickliff, with

which the case of Huss was inextricably related, should be uttered in

the name of the pope or in that of the council, and its publication, May

4, in the latter form, showed that the assembly had no hesitation as to

its duty in stamping out the heresy of the master and of the disciple.

The active measures also, which during this period were taken against

Jerome of Prague, were an indication not to be mistaken of the purposes

of the council. Yet how little the friends of Huss understood the real

position of affairs, and how false hopes had been excited by the rupture

with the pope, is seen in their efforts at this juncture to press the

trial to a conclusion. Under the procrastinating policy of the

Inquisition it is quite possible that Huss would have been left to his

solitary musings for a time indefinitely longer, in hopes that his

resolution would at last give way, but for the efforts of his friends,

who hoped to secure his release. On May 13 they presented a memorial

complaining of his treatment, imprisoned in irons and perishing of

hunger and thirst, without trial or conviction, in violation of the

safe-conduct and of the pledged faith of the empire. They also

remonstrated against the stories which were circulated to prejudice the

case, that in Bohemia the blood of Christ was carried around in bottles,

and that cobblers heard confession and celebrated mass. On May 16 the

council replied to the effect that as far back as 1411 Huss had had a

hearing before the Holy See and had been excommunicated, and had since

then not only proved himself a heretic, but a heresiarch, by remaining

under excommunication and preaching forbidden doctrines, even in

Constance itself. As for the safe-conduct, we have seen how it was

pretended to have been procured after the arrest. This elusive answer

might have shown how the case was already prejudged by those who were to

decide it; yet again, on May 18, the Bohemians presented a rejoinder

urging promptitude. It was fully expected in Constance that a session

would be held on the 22d, at which Huss would be condemned; but about

this time attention was engrossed by the trial of John XXIII., who was

at length deposed, May 29, and notified of his deposition on the 31st.

Sigismund was now preparing for the voyage to Spain, which was expected

to take place in June, and if anything was to be done with Huss before

his departure further delay was inadmissible. Probably the Bohemians

imagined that in some indefinable way he would yet save their leader. On

May 31, therefore, they presented another memorial, reiterating their

complaints about the safe-conduct and asking for a speedy public

hearing. Sigismund entered during the discussion and strenuously urged

the public audience, which was finally promised. Huss's friends further

urged that he should be brought from his prison and be allowed a few

days to recover from his harsh incarceration, and a show was made of

complying with the request. On the same day John of Chlum had the

satisfaction of forwarding to Gottlieben an order for the transmission

of Huss to Constance. The next day, June 1, a special deputation from

the council followed and presented to him the thirty articles which had

been proved against him. They reported that he submitted himself to the

council; but he maintained that he only agreed to do so on such points

as he could be proved to have taught erroneously. At last he was brought

to Constance in chains and confined in the Franciscan convent.[523]

In the routine of the inquisitorial process there was no necessity for

further parley with the accused. The articles of heresy were proved

against him, and if he continued obstinately to deny them delivery to

the secular arm was a matter of course. There had been no intention of

permitting such an innovation on the regular procedure as a public

audience, but Sigismund could see, if the council could not, that its

denial would have a most unfortunate influence on public opinion in

Bohemia, where, in the prevailing ignorance as to the inquisitorial

rules, it would be claimed that the council was afraid to face their

champion and was forced to condemn him unheard. It could, in reality,

have no influence on the result, for the case was already virtually

decided, but Huss's friends could not recognize this, and an attempt was

made, without success, to speculate on their eagerness, by a demand for

two thousand florins to defray the alleged expenses. The audiences which

followed were thus wholly irregular, and may be briefly dismissed as in

no sense entitled to the importance which has commonly been ascribed to

them.[524]

On June 5 a congregation of the council was held in the Franciscan

convent. At first the intention was to carry out the ordinary

inquisitorial procedure by considering, in the absence of Huss, the

articles proved against him, but Peter Mladenowic hastened to John of

Chlum and Wenceslas of Duba, who forthwith appealed to Sigismund. The

latter at once sent the Palsgrave Louis and Frederic Burggrave of

Nuremberg to the council, with orders that nothing should be done until

Huss was present and his books were before them for verification. At

length, therefore, he had the long-desired opportunity of meeting his

adversaries, and defending himself in public debate. The books from

which his errors had been extracted were laid before him--his treatise

"_De Ecclesia_" and his tracts against Stephen Palecz and Stanislaus

of Znaim--and he acknowledged them to be his. The articles were taken up

in succession. He was required to answer to each a simple yea or nay,

and when he desired to explain anything a scene of indescribable

confusion arose. When he asked to be taught wherein he had erred he was

told that he must first recant his heresies, which was strictly in

accordance with the law. The day wore away in the discussion, and it had

to be renewed on the 7th, and again on the 8th--Sigismund being present

on these latter occasions. Huss defended himself gallantly, with

wonderful quickness of thought and dialectical skill, but nothing could

be more unlike the free debate which he had deluded himself into

anticipating when he left Prague. Although the Cardinal of Ostia, who

presided, endeavored to show fairness, the assembly at times became a

howling mob with shouts of "Burn him! Burn him!" Interruptions were

incessant, he was baited on all sides with questions, and frequently his

replies were drowned in clamor. As a judicial act it was a mockery, but

it served the purpose desired by Sigismund, and the Church had shown

itself not afraid of public discussion with the heresiarch. At the end

of the third day of this tumultuous wrangling Huss was exhausted almost

to fainting. The night before toothache had deprived him of sleep, an

attack of fever supervened, and six months of harsh imprisonment had

left him little physical endurance. The proceedings terminated with the

cardinals urging him to recant and promising him merciful treatment if

he would throw himself upon the mercy of the council. He asked for

another hearing, saying that he would submit if his arguments and

authorities were insufficient. To this Cardinal Peter d'Ailly replied

that the unanimous decision of the doctors was that he must confess his

error in publishing the articles ascribed to him, he must swear never in

future to believe or teach them, and must recant them publicly. Huss

begged the council for the love of God not to force him to wrong his

conscience, for abjuration meant the renunciation of an error previously

entertained, and many of those brought against him he had never held.

Sigismund asked him why he could not renounce errors which he said had

been ascribed to him through perjury, and Huss had to explain to him the

technical meaning of abjuration. One member of the council even objected

to the accused being admitted to recantation, because he was not to be

trusted, but this would have been wholly illegal. Even in the case of

relapse the heretic always had a right to confess and recant, and the

council was not to be betrayed into so manifest a denial of justice. It

was impossible, in such a crowd of eager persecutors, to maintain the

legal forms in all strictness, and there followed a number of volunteer

accusations by individuals, on which an irregular discussion could not

be repressed. Finally, as Huss was withdrawn, John of Chlum succeeded in

giving him a friendly grasp of the hand and a word of sympathy. To the

forlorn and despised heretic that touch and voice were a solace which

nerved him for the yet harder trials of the succeeding weeks.[525]

His conscientious endurance was now to be tested to the uttermost. The

wise general policy of the Inquisition, which preferred a confessed

penitent to a martyr, was specially applicable in this case, for though

Sigismund and the council underestimated the Bohemian fervor and

obstinacy, the dullest could see that Huss confessing to having taught

heresy and humbly seeking reconciliation would dispirit his followers,

while no one could guess the extent of the conflagration which might

spread from his pyre. Accordingly efforts were redoubled to induce him

to confess and recant. Sigismund had prepared the way by assuring him

during the public audience that no mercy would be shown him and that

persistent denial would bring him to the stake, while he was not

notified that behind the bland promises of mercy for submission there

lay a sentence, which, while expressing joy at his humbly seeking

absolution, pronounced him to be pernicious, scandalous, and seditious,

and condemned him to degradation from the priesthood and to perpetual

imprisonment. The council could do no otherwise, for this, as we have

seen, was the punishment provided by the canons for repentant heretics,

and yet in estimating the noble firmness of Huss we must bear in mind

that no intimation of it seems to have been made to him.[526]

The obstacle in the way of Huss's abjuration lay not so much in the

heresies which he had taught, as in those which he had not taught. On

legal testimony his judges had found him guilty of all, but the worst of

them, such as the remanence of the substance and the vitiation of the

sacraments in polluted hands, he denied energetically ever to have held

or expressed. Many of the errors extracted from his works, moreover, he

repudiated, asserting that the passages had been garbled and perverted.

In the eye of the law this denial was mere contumacy which only

aggravated his guilt. The first condition of reconciliation was

confessing under oath that he was guilty of having held these errors and

then abjuring them. This was committing perjury to God in the most

solemn fashion, and to a tender conscience like that of Huss it was

worse than death. From this dilemma there was no escape. On the one hand

lay the legal system, contrived with Satanic ingenuity and unalterable;

on the other lay the purity of character which led Huss to reject

without hesitation all the specious subterfuges suggested to beguile

him.[527]

For a month the struggle continued, and no human soul ever bore itself

with loftier fortitude or sweeter or humbler charity. He asked for a

confessor, and intimated that he would prefer Stephen Palecz, the enemy

who had hounded him to the death. Palecz came and heard his confession,

and then urged him to abjure, saying that he ought not to mind the

humiliation. "The humiliation of condemnation and burning is greater,"

replied Huss, "how then can I fear humiliation? But advise me: what

would you do if you knew for certain that you did not hold the errors

imputed to you? Would you abjure?" Palecz burst into tears and could

only stammer, "It is difficult." He wept again freely when Huss begged

his pardon for harsh words used in the heat of strife, and especially

for calling him a falsifier. Another confessor was sent to him, who

listened to him kindly and gave him absolution without insisting on

preliminary abjuration, which was a most irregular concession--indeed,

almost incredible. Many others were allowed to visit him in the hope of

persuading him to confess and recant. One learned doctor urged his

submission, saying, "If the council told me I had but one eye, I would

confess it to be so, though I know I have two," but Huss was impervious

to such example. An Englishman adduced the precedent of the English

doctors who had, without exception, abjured the heresies of Wickliff

when required to do so; but when Huss offered to swear that he had never

held or taught the heresies imputed to him, and that he would never hold

or teach them, his baffled advisers withdrew.[528]

The most formidable effort, however, was of an official character. At

the final hearing of June 8, Cardinal Zabarella had promised him that a

recantation in a form strictly limited would be submitted to him, and

the promise was fulfilled in a paper skilfully drawn up, so as to

satisfy his scruples. It represented him as protesting anew that much

had been imputed to him which he had never believed, but that

nevertheless he submitted himself in everything to the correction and

orders of the council in abjuring, revoking, and retracting, and in

accepting whatever merciful penance the council might prescribe for his

salvation. Carefully as this was phrased to elude the difficulty, Huss

rejected it without hesitation. In some matters, he said, he would be

denying the truth, in others he would be perjuring himself. It were

better to die than to fall into the hands of the Lord in the effort to

escape momentary suffering. Then one of the fathers of the

council--supposed to be the Cardinal of Ostia, the highest in rank of

the Sacred College--addressed him as his "dearest and most cherished

brother," with the most honeyed persuasiveness, begging him not to

confide too absolutely in his own judgment. In making the abjuration it

will not be he that condemns truth, but the council; as for perjury, if

perjury there be, it will fall on the heads of those who exact it. Yet

Huss was not to be enticed with such allurements; he could not quiet his

conscience with casuistry such as this, and he deliberately chose death.

In daily expectation of the dreadful sentence, he quietly put his simple

affairs in order. Peter Mladenowic, the notary, had rendered him

zealous service and should be paid out of his sixty grossi. His little

debts were to be settled, and his books, apparently his only other

property, were to be distributed. Kind remembrances were sent to his

numerous friends, and they were told if they had learned any good of him

to hold fast to it; if they had seen in him aught reprehensible to cast

it aside. It was not that he was insensible, for he describes in moving

terms the mental conflicts and agony which he endured in his hopeless

prison, expecting each day to be led forth to an agonizing death, but

the spirit rose superior to the flesh and remained victor in the

struggle. Solicitous to retain the good opinion of his disciples, he

managed to transmit to them, on June 18, a copy of the articles proved

against him, together with a report of what his defence had been. Of

those drawn from his writings he retracted none, although many he

declared to be false and garbled. Those alleged against him by witnesses

he mostly asserted to be lies, and he pathetically concluded, "It only

remains for me to abjure and revoke and undergo fearful penance or to

burn. May the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost grant me the spirit of wisdom

and fortitude to persevere to the end and to escape the snares of

Satan!"[529]

In hope of his weakening, the end was postponed until the approaching

departure of Sigismund rendered further delay impossible. Yet effort was

not abandoned till the last. On July 1 a deputation of prelates

endeavored to persuade him that he could reasonably recant, but he

handed them a written confession calling God to witness that he had

never taught many of the articles; as for the rest, if there were error

in them he detested it, but he could not abjure any of them. Puzzled by

his unexpected tenacity of purpose, and earnestly desirous of avoiding

the catastrophe, a final and unprecedented concession was agreed upon.

On July 5 Zabarella and Peter d'Ailly sent for him and offered to let

him deny the heresies proved by witnesses if he would abjure those

extracted from his books. This was, in fact, an abandonment of all

inquisitorial precedent, but Huss had persistently declared that most

of the latter were fraudulently drawn, so as to attribute to him errors

which he had never held, and he was immovable. As a last resource, later

in the same day, Sigismund sent his friends John of Chlum and Wenceslas

of Duba, with four bishops, to ask him whether he would persevere or

recant, but his answer was as firm as ever. To the friendly adjuration

of John of Chlum he replied with tears that he would willingly revoke

anything in which he could be proved to have erred. The bishops

pronounced him obstinate in error and left him.[530]

Thus the extraordinary efforts of the council to save itself and him

were vain, and nothing remained but the inevitable final act of the

tragedy. The next day, July 6, saw the most gorgeous _auto de fé_ on

record. The cathedral of Constance was crowded with Sigismund and his

nobles, the great officers of the empire with their insignia, the

prelates in their splendid robes. While mass was sung, Huss, as an

excommunicate, was kept waiting at the door; when brought in he was

placed on an elevated bench by a table on which stood a coffer

containing priestly vestments. After some preliminaries, including a

sermon by the Bishop of Lodi, in which he assured Sigismund that the

events of that day would confer on him immortal glory, the articles of

which Huss was convicted were recited. In vain he protested that he

believed in transubstantiation and in the validity of the sacrament in

polluted hands. He was ordered to hold his tongue, and on his persisting

the beadles were told to silence him, but in spite of this he continued

to utter protests. The sentence was then read in the name of the

council, condemning him both for his written errors and those which had

been proved by witnesses. He was declared a pertinacious and

incorrigible heretic who did not desire to return to the Church; his

books were ordered to be burned, and himself to be degraded from the

priesthood and abandoned to the secular court. Seven bishops arrayed

him in priestly garb and warned him to recant while yet there was time.

He turned to the crowd, and with broken voice declared that he could not

confess the errors which he had never entertained, lest he should lie to

God, when the bishops interrupted him, crying that they had waited long

enough, for he was obstinate in his heresy. He was degraded in the usual

manner, stripped of his sacerdotal vestments, his fingers scraped; but

when the tonsure was to be disposed of an absurd quarrel arose among the

bishops as to whether the head should be shaved with a razor or the

tonsure be destroyed with scissors. Scissors won the day, and a cross

was cut in his hair. Then on his head was placed a conical paper cap, a

cubit in height, adorned with painted devils and the inscription, "This

is the heresiarch." In accordance with the universal custom no

proceedings by the secular authorities were regarded as necessary. As

soon as the ecclesiastical court had pronounced him a heretic and handed

him over, the laws against heresy operated of themselves. Sigismund, it

is true, might have delayed the execution for six days, but this would

have been so unusual as to have excited most unfavorable comment. There

had already been afforded ample opportunity for resipiscence, and the

convict could always still recant up to the lighting of the fagots.

Nothing could reasonably be hoped from further postponement, and

Sigismund's approaching departure counselled promptitude. He therefore

briefly ordered the Palsgrave Louis to take charge of the culprit and to

do to him as to a heretic. Louis called to Hans Hazen, the imperial vogt

of Constance, "Vogt, take him as judged of both of us and burn him as a

heretic." Then he was led forth, and the council calmly turned to other

business, unconscious that it had performed the most momentous act of

the century.[531]

The place of execution was a meadow near the river, to which he was

conducted by two thousand armed men, with Palsgrave Louis at their

head, and a vast crowd, including many nobles, prelates, and cardinals.

The route followed was circuitous, in order that he might be carried

past the episcopal palace, in front of which his books were burning,

whereat he smiled. Pity from man there was none to look for, but he

sought comfort on high, repeating to himself, "Christ Jesus, Son of the

living God, have mercy upon me!" and when he came in sight of the stake

he fell on his knees and prayed. He was asked if he wished to confess,

and said that he would gladly do so if there were space. A wide circle

was formed, and Ulrich Schorand, who, according to custom, had been

providently empowered to take advantage of any final weakening, came

forward, saying, "Dear sir and master, if you will recant your unbelief

of heresy, for which you must suffer, I will willingly hear your

confession; but if you will not, you know right well that, according to

canon law, no one can administer the sacrament to a heretic." To this

Huss answered, "It is not necessary: I am no mortal sinner." His paper

crown fell off and he smiled as his guards replaced it. He desired to

take leave of his keepers, and when they were brought to him he thanked

them for their kindness, saying that they had been to him rather

brothers than jailers. Then he commenced to address the crowd in German,

telling them that he suffered for errors which he did not hold, sworn to

by perjured witnesses; but this could not be permitted, and he was cut

short. When bound to the stake and two cartloads of fagots and straw

were piled up around him the palsgrave and vogt for the last time

adjured him to abjure. Even yet he could have saved himself, but he only

repeated that he had been convicted by false witnesses of errors never

entertained by him. They clapped their hands and then withdrew, and the

executioners applied the fire. Twice Huss was heard to exclaim, "Christ

Jesus, Son of the living God, have mercy upon me!" then a wind

springing up and blowing the flames and smoke into his face checked

further utterance, but his head was seen to shake and his lips to move

while one might twice or thrice recite a paternoster. The tragedy was

over; the sorely-tried soul had escaped from its tormentors, and the

bitterest enemies of the reformer could not refuse to him the praise

that no philosopher of old had faced death with more composure than he

had shown in his dreadful extremity. No faltering of the voice had

betrayed an internal struggle. Palsgrave Louis, seeing Huss's mantle on

the arm of one of the executioners, ordered it thrown into the flames

lest it should be reverenced as a relic, and promised the man to

compensate him. With the same view the body was carefully reduced to

ashes and thrown into the Rhine, and even the earth around the stake was

dug up and carted off; yet the Bohemians long hovered around the spot

and carried home fragments of the neighboring clay, which they

reverenced as relics of their martyr. The next day thanks were returned

to God, in a solemn procession in which figured Sigismund and his queen,

the princes and nobles, nineteen cardinals, two patriarchs,

seventy-seven bishops, and all the clergy of the council. A few days

later Sigismund, who had delayed his departure for Spain to see the

matter concluded, left Constance, feeling that his work was done.[532]

The long-continued teaching of the Church, that persistent heresy was

the one crime for which there could be no pardon or excuse, seemed to

deprive even the wisest and purest of all power of reasoning where it

was concerned. There was no hesitation in admitting that the pestilent

heresy of the Hussites was caused by the simoniacal corruptions of the

Roman curia, whereby many Christian souls were led to eternal perdition,

and that it could not be eradicated until a thorough reformation was

effected. Yet in place of drawing from this the necessary deduction, the

feeling of the council is reflected by its historian in the blasphemous

representation of Christ as recording with satisfaction the hideous

details of the execution, and as saying that the wicked soul of the

heretic commenced in temporal flame the torment which it would suffer

through eternity in hell. The trial, in fact, had been conducted in

accordance with the universally received practice in such cases, the

only exceptions being in favor of the accused. If the result was

inevitable, it was the fault of the system and not of the judges, and

their consciences might well feel satisfied.[533]

Great was the disgust of the orthodox when they learned that this pious

view of the matter was not entertained in Prague, and it required the

most positive assurances of eye-witnesses to make them believe the

incredible fact that, from king to peasant in Bohemia, there was

practical unanimity in the belief that he who had been condemned and

executed as a heretic was a martyr; that the popular songs sung in the

streets represented him as one who had shed his blood for Christ, and

that he was inserted in the calendar of saints, with his feast on July

6, the day of his execution. The good fathers, however, were not long in

finding, from indubitable evidence, that they had made a grave mistake

as to the Bohemian temper, and that they had only succeeded in inflaming

the disease which they had sought to eradicate. As soon as the defiance

excited in Bohemia could be learned in Constance, the council made haste

to write, July 26, to the authorities there, protesting that Huss and

Jerome of Prague had been treated with all tenderness, that the

persistent heresy of the former had forced his delivery to the secular

court for judgment, and that all similar heretics would be treated in

the same manner. The Bohemians were exhorted to justify, by similar

persecution, the good opinion of their orthodoxy which the council had

formed from the report of the Bishop of Litomysl, whose popular name of

Iron John sufficiently indicates his inflexibility. This good opinion

was not sustained when a protest was received from the barons of Bohemia

and Moravia, hastily drawn up as soon as the news of the execution had

reached them--a protest which the council promptly ordered to be burned.

Its letter of July 26 led to the convocation of a national assembly, in

which an address was framed and received the signatures of nearly five

hundred barons, knights, and gentlemen. In this they asserted their

belief in Huss's purity and orthodoxy; that he had unjustly been put to

death without confession or lawful conviction; that Jerome they supposed

had shared the same fate; that the defamation of the kingdom for heresy

was the work of liars, and that any one who asserted it, saving

Sigismund, lied in his throat, was the vilest of traitors and the worst

of heretics, and as such they would prosecute him before the future

pope. A more dangerous symptom of rebellion was a pledge signed by the

magnates, agreeing that all priests should be allowed to preach freely

the truths of Scripture, that no bishop should be permitted to interfere

with them unless they taught errors, and that no excommunications or

interdicts from abroad should be received or observed.[534]

This was firing at long range with no result but mutual exacerbation,

and it was probably the stimulus of Bohemian disaffection which led the

council about this time to act vigorously in the case of Jerome of

Prague, whom the Bohemian nobles had erroneously believed to have shared

the fate of Huss.

Jerome of Prague stands before us as one of those meteoric natures which

would be dismissed by the student as half mythical, if the substantial

facts which are on record did not fix the details of his career with an

exactness leaving no room for doubt. Born at Prague, his early training

was received at a time when men's minds were beginning to waver in the

confusion of the Great Schism, and under the impulsion of the

Wickliffite writings. About the year 1400 he was brought under the

influence of Huss, and thereafter he continued to be the steadfast

adherent and supporter of the great protestant against the corruptions

of the Church. Already, at Paris, Cologne, Heidelberg, and Cracow--at

all of which he had been decorated with the honors of the

universities--he had disturbed the philosophic calm of the schools with

his subtleties on the theory of universals; at Paris, indeed, the

disturbance had gone so far that John Gerson, the chancellor of the

university, had driven him forth, perhaps retaining a grudge which

explains his zeal in the prosecution of his old antagonist. His restless

spirit left scarce a region of the known civilized world unvisited. At

Oxford, attracted by the reputation of Wickliff, he had copied with his

own hand the Dialogus and the Trialogus, and had carried those

outpourings of revolt to Prague, where they added fresh fuel to the

rapidly rising fires of Bohemian insubordination. On a second visit he

had been seized as a heretic, and had escaped through the intervention

of the University of Prague. In Palestine he had trodden in the

footsteps of the Saviour and had bent in reverence at the Holy

Sepulchre. In Lithuania he had sought to convert the heathen. In Russia

he had endeavored to win over the schismatic Greek. In Poland and

Hungary he had scattered the doctrines of Wickliff and Huss. Driven out

of Hungary, in 1410, he was arrested and thrown in prison in Vienna, by

the papal inquisitor and episcopal official, for teaching Hussitism and

infecting with it the university of that city. His trial was commenced

and a day was set for its hearing, prior to which he was allowed his

liberty on his oath not to leave the city, under pain of

excommunication. Claiming that an extorted oath was of no force, he

escaped, and from Olmütz wrote a free-and-easy letter to the Bishop of

Passau, suggesting that the prosecutors and witnesses may be sent to

Prague, where the trial can be finished. The excommunication, indeed,

followed him to Prague, but in the tumultuous condition of Bohemia it

gave him no trouble, though the University of Vienna wrote to the

University of Prague that by remaining more than a year under the

excommunication he had incurred the guilt of heresy, for which he ought

to be condemned; and meanwhile the converts whom he had made in Vienna

continued to give occupation to the Inquisition, and the university

which interfered in their behalf incurred the suspicion of heresy. In

the stirring events which followed, his restless and aggressive spirit

would not allow him to be inactive, and the popular impression of his

reckless audacity is shown in the story of his hanging the papal bulls

of indulgence around the neck of a strumpet and carrying her to the

place where they were to be burned. In 1413 he again visited Poland,

where in a short time he succeeded in causing an unprecedented

excitement, and was speedily sent back to Prague. His whole life had

been spent in intellectual digladiation, from his youthful philosophic

contests to the maturer struggles with the overwhelming forces of the

hierarchy. A layman, not in holy orders and unfurnished with priestly

gown and tonsure, he had preached to admiring crowds of Majjars, Poles,

and Czechs; nor was he wholly unskilled in the use of the arms of the

flesh. On his trial he admitted that he had once been drawn into a

quarrel with some monks in a monastery, when two of them attacked him

with swords, and he defended himself successfully with a weapon hastily

snatched from the hand of a bystander. His enemies, indeed, accused him

of having, on another occasion, drawn a dagger on a Dominican friar, and

of having been only prevented by force from stabbing him to the death.

All of his contemporaries bear testimony to his wonderful powers. His

commanding presence, his glittering eyes, his sable hair and flowing

beard, his deep and impressive voice, his persuasive accents, enabled

him to throw his influence over all with whom he came in contact; while

his miraculous stores of learning, his unmatched readiness, and the

subtlety of his intellect, rendered him an enemy of the Church only one

degree less dangerous than the steadfast and irreproachable Huss.[535]

Jerome had watched from Prague the fate of his friend with daily

increasing anxiety, and when the rupture between pope and council seemed

to promise immunity for the opponents of hierarchical corruption he

could not resist the temptation to aid in his rescue, and to assist in

what appeared to be the approaching overthrow of the evils which he had

so long combated. April 4, 1415, he came secretly to Constance, but

speedily found how groundless were his hopes and how dangerous was the

atmosphere of the place. Christann of Prachaticz, one of Huss's chief

disciples, had recently ventured to visit Constance, had been arrested,

and articles of accusation had been presented against him, when on the

intervention of the Bohemian ambassadors he had been liberated under

oath to present himself when summoned--an oath which he had forfeited by

promptly escaping to Bohemia. Jerome contented himself with posting a

notice on the walls affirming the orthodoxy of Huss; he withdrew at once

to Ueberlingen and asked for a safe-conduct. The response was ambiguous,

but, like a moth hovering around the fatal candle-flame, he returned to

Constance, where, April 7, he affixed another notice on the church

doors addressed to Sigismund and the council. It stated that he had come

of his own free will to answer all accusations of heresy, and if

convicted he was ready to endure the penalty, but he asked a

safe-conduct in coming and going, and if incarcerated or treated with

violence during his stay the council would be committing injustice of

which he could not suspect so many learned and wise men. This senseless

bravado is only to be explained by his erratic temperament, and it did

not prevent him from taking precautions as to his safety. He suddenly

changed his mind, and on April 9, after obtaining from the Bohemians at

Constance testimonial letters, he escaped from the city, none too soon,

for the officials were in search of his lodgings, which they discovered

a few days after at the Gutjar, in St. Paul Street, where in his haste

he had left behind him the significant memento of a sword. This time he

no longer trifled with fate, but travelled rapidly towards Bohemia. At

Hirsau, however, his impetuous temper led him into a discussion in which

he stigmatized the council as a synagogue of Satan. He was seized April

24, and the papers found upon him betrayed him. John of Bavaria threw

him into the castle of Sulzbach, notified the council of his capture,

and in obedience to its commands he was forthwith carried thither in

chains.[536]

Meanwhile the council had responded to his appeal by publishing, April

18, a formal inquisitorial citation summoning him, as a suspected and

defamed heretic, the suppression of whom was its chief duty, to appear

for trial within fifteen days, in default of which he would be proceeded

against in contumacy. A safe-conduct was offered him, but it was

expressly declared subject to the exigencies of the faith. Unaware of

his capture, on May 2 a new citation was published and his trial as

contumacious was ordered, and this was repeated on the 4th. On May 24

his captors brought him to the city loaded with chains, and took him to

the Franciscan convent, where a tumultuous congregation of the council

greeted his arrival. Here Gerson gratified his rancor against his old

opponent, loudly berating him for having taught falsely at Paris,

Heidelberg, and Cologne, and the rectors of the two latter universities

corroborated the accusations. His replies were sharp and ready, but were

drowned in the roar of fresh charges, mingled with shouts of "Burn him!

Burn him!" Thence he was carried to a dungeon in the Cemetery of St.

Paul, where he was chained hand and foot to a bench too high for him to

sit on, and for two days he was fed on bread and water, until his

friends ascertained his place of imprisonment and made interest with the

jailer to give him better food. He soon fell dangerously sick and asked

for a confessor, after which he was less rigorously fettered, but he

never left the prison except for audience and execution.[537]

Stephen Palecz, Michael de Causis, and the rest were ready with their

accusations, nor could there be difficulty in accumulating a mass of

testimony sufficient to convict twenty such men as Jerome. His trial

proceeded according to the regular inquisitorial process, the

commissioners finding him much more learned and skilful than Huss; but,

brilliant as was his defence when under examination, his nervous

temperament unfitted him to bear, like Huss, the long-protracted agony.

Sometimes with dialectic subtlety he turned his examiners to ridicule,

at others he vacillated between obduracy and submission. Finally he

weakened under the strain, while the rebellious attitude of the

Bohemians doubtless led the council to increase the pressure. On

September 11 he was brought before the assembly, where he read a long

and elaborate recantation. Huss's sweetness of temper, he said, had

attracted him, and his earnest exposition of Scripture truths had led

him to believe that such a man could not teach heresy. He could not

believe that the thirty articles condemned by the council were really

Huss's, until he had obtained a book in Huss's own hand-writing, and on

comparing them article by article he found them to be so. He therefore

spontaneously and of free will condemned them, some of them as

heretical, others as erroneous, others as scandalous. He also condemned

the forty-five articles of Wickliff; he submitted himself wholly to the

council, he condemned whatever it condemned, and he asked for fitting

penance to be assigned him. He did not even shrink from a deeper

degradation. He wrote to Bohemia that Huss had been justly executed,

that he had become convinced of his friend's errors and could not

defend them.[538]

This was not a strictly formal abjuration such as was customarily

required of prisoners of the Inquisition, yet it might have sufficed. It

was read before a private congregation of the council, and some more

public humiliation was needed. At the next general session, therefore,

September 23, Jerome was placed in the pulpit, where he repeated his

recantation, with an explanation of an expression in it, adding a

recantation of his theory of Universals, and winding up by a solemn oath

of abjuration in which he invoked an eternal anathema on all who

wandered from the faith and on himself if he should do so. He had been

told that he would not be allowed to return to Bohemia, but might select

some Swabian monastery in which to reside, on condition that he should

write home, over his hand and seal, that his teaching and that of Huss

were false and not to be followed. This he promised to do, as, indeed,

he had already done, but he was remanded to his prison, though his

treatment was somewhat less harsh than before.[539]

Had the council been wise, it would have treated him as leniently as

possible. A dishonored apostate, his power of evil was gone, and

generosity would have been policy. The canons, however, prescribed harsh

prison for converted heretics, whose conversion was always regarded as

doubtful, and the assembled fathers were too bigoted to be wise. The

zealots converted the apostate to a martyr, whose steadfast constancy

redeemed his temporary weakness, and regained for him the forfeited

influence over the imagination of his disciples.

His remorse was not long in showing itself. Stephen Palecz, Michael de

Causis, and his other enemies who were still hovering around his prison,

soon got wind of his self-accusation. John Gerson, whose hostility

seems to have been insatiable, readily made himself their mouthpiece,

and in a learned dissertation on the essentials of revocations called

the attention of the council, October 29, to the unsatisfactory

character of that of Jerome. Some Carmelites, apparently arriving from

Prague, furnished new accusations, and demands were made that he be

required to answer additional articles. Some of the Cardinals,

Zabarella, Pierre d'Ailly, Giordano Orsini, Antonio da Aquileia, on the

other hand, labored with the council to procure his liberation, but on

being actively opposed by the Germans and Bohemians and accused of

receiving bribes from the heretics and King Wenceslas, they abandoned

the hopeless defence. Accordingly, February 24, 1416, a new commission

was appointed to hold an inquisition on him. The whole ground was gone

over again in examining him, from the Wickliffite heresies to his

exciting rebellion in Prague and contumaciously enduring the

excommunication incurred in Vienna. April 27 the commissioners made

their report, and the _Promotor Hæreticæ Pravitatis_, or prosecutor for

heresy, accompanied it with a long indictment enumerating his offences.

Jerome, resolved on death, had recovered his audacity; he not only, in

spite of his recantation, denied that he was a heretic, but complained

of unjust imprisonment and claimed to be indemnified for expenses and

damages. His marvellous dialectical dexterity had evidently nonplussed

the slower intellects of his examiners, who had found themselves unable

to cope with his subtlety, for the council was asked, in conclusion, to

diminish the diet on which he was described as feasting gluttonously,

and by judicious starvation, the proper torment of heretics, to bring

him to submission. Moreover, authority was asked to use torture and to

force him to answer definitely yes or no to all questions as to his

belief. If then he continues contumaciously to deny what has been or may

be proved against him, he is to be handed over to the secular arm, in

accordance with the canon law, as a pertinacious and incorrigible

heretic. Thus with Jerome, as with Huss, the invariable principle of

inquisitorial procedure was applied, that the denial of heretical

opinions was simply an evidence and an aggravation of guilt.[540]

In this case, more than in that of Huss, the council seems to have taken

upon itself the part of an inquisitorial tribunal, with its

commissioners simply as examiners to take testimony, possibly because

Jerome had refused to accept them as judges on account of enmity towards

him. There is no evidence that it consented to the superfluous infamy of

torturing, or even of starving its victim. The commissioners were left

to their own devices as to extracting a confession, and May 9 they made

another report of the whole case from beginning to end, for what object

is not apparent, unless to demonstrate their helplessness. Having thus

wearied them out, Jerome finally promised to answer categorically before

the council. Perhaps it was curiosity to hear him, perhaps the precedent

set in the case of Huss weighed with the fathers. The concession was

made to him, and at a general session held May 23 he was brought in and

the oath was offered to him. He refused to take it, saying that he would

do so if he would be allowed to speak freely, but if he was only to say

yes or no he would not. As the articles were read over he remained

silent as to a portion, while to the rest he answered affirmatively or

negatively, occasionally making a distinction, and answering with

admirable readiness the clamors and interruptions which assailed him

from all sides. The day wore away in this, and the completion of the

hearing was adjourned till the 26th. Again the same scene occurred till

the series of articles was exhausted, when the chief of the

commissioners, John, Patriarch of Constantinople, summed up, saying that

Jerome was convicted of fourfold heresy; but as he had repeatedly asked

to be heard he should be allowed to speak, in order to silence absurd

reflections on the council; moreover, if he was prepared to confess and

repent, he still would be received to mercy, but if obdurate, justice

must take its course.[541]

Of the scene which followed we have a vivid account in a letter to

Leonardo Aretino from Poggio Bracciolini, who attended the council as

apostolic secretary. Poggio had already been profoundly impressed with

the quickness and readiness of a man who for three hundred and forty

days had lain in the filth and squalor of a noisome dungeon, but now he

breaks forth in unqualified admiration--"He stood fearless, undaunted,

not merely despising death, but longing for it, like another Cato. O man

worthy of eternal remembrance among men! If he held beliefs contrary to

the rules of the Church I do not praise him, but I admire his learning,

his knowledge of so many things, his eloquence, and the subtlety of his

answers." In the midst of that turbulent and noisy crowd, his eloquence

was so great that Poggio evidently thinks he would have been acquitted

had he not courted death.[542]

His address was a most skilful vindication, gliding with seemingly

careless negligence over the dangerous spots in his career--for his

whole life had been made the subject of indictment--and giving most

plausible explanations of that which could not be suppressed, as though

the Bohemian troubles had been solely due to political differences. As

for his recantation, his judges had promised him kindly treatment if he

would throw himself on the mercy of the council. He was but a man, with

a human dread of a dreadful death by fire; he had weakly yielded to

persuasion, he had abjured, he had written to Bohemia as required, he

had condemned the teaching of John Huss. Here he rose to the full height

of his manly and self-devoted eloquence. Huss was a just and holy man,

to whom he would cleave to the last; no sin that he had ever committed

so weighed upon his conscience as his cowardly abjuration, which now he

solemnly revoked. Wickliff had written with a profounder truth than any

man before him, and dread of the stake alone could have induced him to

condemn such a master, saving only the doctrine on the sacrament, of

which he could not approve. Then he burst forth into a ringing invective

on the vices of the clergy, and especially of the Roman curia, which had

stimulated Wickliff and Huss to their efforts for reform. The good

fathers of the council might be stunned for a moment by the fierce

self-sacrifice of the man who thus deliberately threw away his life, but

they soon recovered themselves, and quietly assigned the following

Saturday for his definite sentence. Although, as a self-confessed

relapsed, he was entitled to no further consideration, they proposed,

with unusual mercy, to give him four days to reconsider and repent, but

he had been addressing an audience far beyond the narrow walls of the

Cathedral of Constance, and his words were seeds which sprouted forth in

armed warriors.[543]

On May 30 the final acts of the tragedy were hurried through; the

council assembled early, and by ten o'clock Jerome was at the stake.

After the mass, the Bishop of Lodi preached a sermon. He had been

selected to perform the same office at the condemnation of Huss, and the

brutality of his triumph over the unfortunate prisoner on this occasion

even exceeded his former effort. The charity and tenderness with which

Jerome had been treated ought to have softened his heart, even had the

recollection of his crimes failed to do so. A comparison was drawn

between the favor shown him and the severity customary with suspected

heretics. "You were not tortured--I wish you had been, for it would

have forced you to vomit forth all your errors; such treatment would

have opened your eyes, which guilt had closed." The nobles present were

called upon to mark how Huss and Jerome, two base-born men, plebeians of

the lowest rank and unknown origin, had dared to trouble the noble

kingdom of Bohemia, and what evils had sprung from the presumption of

those two peasants. Then Jerome in a few dignified sentences replied,

asserting his conscientiousness and deploring his condemnation of

Wickliff and Huss. Cardinal Zabarella, he said, was winning him over

when his judges were changed and he would not plead to new ones. His

abjuration was read to him; he acknowledged it; he said it had been

extorted by the dread of fire. Then the prosecutor asked for a definite

sentence in writing against him, and the head commissioner, John of

Constantinople, read a long one condemning him as a supporter of

Wickliff and Huss, and ending with the declaration that he was a

relapsed heretic and anathematized excommunicate. To this the council

unanimously responded "_Placet_." There was no pretence of asking

mercy for him. He was handed over to the secular power with a command

that it should do its duty under the sentence rendered. Not being in

orders, there was no ceremony of degradation to be performed, but a tall

paper crown with painted devils was brought. He tossed his cap among the

prelates and put on the crown, saying, "Our Lord Jesus Christ, when

about to die for me, wore a crown of thorns. In place of that, I gladly

bear this for his sake," and with this he was hurried off to execution

on the same spot where Huss had suffered.[544]

The details of the execution were much the same, except that Jerome was

stripped and a cloth tied around his loins. He sang the Creed and a

litany, and when his voice could no longer be heard in the flames his

lips were still seen to move as though praying to himself; after his

beard was burned off, a blister the size of an egg was seen to form

itself, showing that he still was alive, and his agony was unusually

prolonged, through his extraordinary strength and vitality. One

eye-witness says that he shrieked awfully, but other unfriendly

witnesses declare that he continued praying till his voice was checked

by the fire, and Poggio, who was present, was much impressed with his

cheerful courage to the last. When bound to the stake, the executioner

offered to light the fire from behind, where he could not see it, but he

refused: "Come forward," he said, "and light the fire where I can see

it. Had I feared this, I would not have been here." Æneas Sylvius

likewise couples him with Huss for the unsurpassed constancy of his

death. After it was over, his bedding, shoes, cap, and all his personal

effects were brought from his dungeon and thrown upon the pile, that no

relic of him might be left, and the ashes were cast into the Rhine.[545]

It only remained to secure the submission of John of Chlum, the

courageous defender of Huss. He had remained in Constance and was in the

power of the council. What means were adopted for his abasement do not

appear, but, on July 1, he swore to maintain the faith, admitted that

Huss and Jerome had suffered justly, and desired letters of his

declaration to be made, that he might send them to Bohemia.[546]