THE WYCLIFFITES AND HUSSITES.
Wycliffe’s ministry--The Lollards--Sawtree--Other
Martyrs--Wycliffe’s bones burnt--His writings--Martyrdom of Huss
and Jerome--Persecution of the Hussites--The Waldenses.
Divine prophecy dooms a perpetual overthrow to popery; and it declares
also that this is to be accomplished by the light of the Gospel of
Christ. Instruments and agents, therefore, are needed for this important
work; and these began to increase in the _fourteenth_ century. But the
Inquisition was fearfully employed in various forms to destroy them.
Among the most distinguished opponents of the papacy, we must number
John Wycliffe, justly called “The Morning Star of the Reformation!” He
was born A.D. 1324; and being enlightened by the Holy Scriptures, his
ministry, under the Spirit of God, and his numerous writings, especially
his translation of the Bible, contributed very much to prepare the way
for the Protestant Reformation. This great man was impelled, not only by
love to the truth of Christ, but by an extensive knowledge of the
enormous evils manifestly arising from the Romish priestcraft. The papal
exactions in England were grievous, estimated at five times the amount
of the royal revenue; and the parliament determined, therefore, A.D.
1374, to seek redress by a remonstrance, sent by delegates, who should
present it to the Pope. Wycliffe was one of them; and during two years,
near the seat of “his holiness,” he had an opportunity of observing the
intrigues and iniquities of the court of Rome.
Wycliffe became the more determined in his opposition to the friars,
who, as agents of the Pope and the Inquisition, were enemies to the
welfare of the country. Their false doctrines, avarice, and wickedness
were exposed by the reformer, with the light of Divine truth; and he
possessed the best opportunities of doing good service to the cause of
Christ, as professor of divinity in the university of Oxford. But his
boldness in the Gospel provoked the papal court; and the Pope addressed
letters to the heads of the colleges, requiring them, by inquisitors and
punishment, to suppress his doctrine, and to deliver him in custody to
the archbishop of Canterbury or the bishop of London. He then appealed
to those prelates, requiring them to apprehend the daring reformer, and
to keep him in irons till they should receive his further orders from
Rome. The king also was required by the Pope to aid those prelates in
proceeding against Wycliffe. He was cited before the prelates, at the
palace of the archbishop of Canterbury; but he was secure under the
protection of John of Gaunt, the great duke of Lancaster.
Divine Providence favoured this zealous servant of Christ, so that he
escaped the prison, and died in peace, A.D. 1384. Multitudes were
enlightened by his controversial and evangelical writings, and by his
translation of the Scriptures. Many from the Continent sought his
instruction and copies of his works; by which he contributed to produce
a revolution in religion, not only in England, but in several other
kingdoms in Europe.
Wycliffe’s enemies were indefatigable during his life; and after his
death they persecuted his disciples. Oxford was regarded as infected
with his heresies; and those who followed his scriptural doctrines were
distinguished as “Lollards.” The heads of the university were,
therefore, required, on pain of excommunication, to inquire, every
month, whether any scholar held doctrines contrary to the decisions of
the church. “Twelve inquisitors of heresy--for this dreadful name,” as
Dr. Southey remarks, “had been introduced among us--were appointed at
Oxford, to search out heresy and heretical books.”
King Richard II. being deposed, was succeeded, A.D. 1392, by Henry II.,
a dupe of the prelates; and under him they procured the sanguinary
statute, _ex officio_, which authorised the bishops, as inquisitors, to
proceed against all persons suspected of heresy. This was the first law
in England for the burning of men on account of religion.
William Sawtree, parish priest of St. Osith’s, London, was the first
that was condemned to the stake in England, A.D. 1400; and the forms of
degradation and execution were carefully observed, that it might be an
exact precedent for future occasions. These forms, Dr. Southey states,
“were probably derived from the practice of the accursed Inquisition in
Languedoc; and they were well devised for prolonging the impression on
the spectators.” After the ceremonies of degradation, “the cap of a
layman was placed upon his head, and Archbishop Arundel then delivered
him, as a lay person, to the secular court of the high constable and
marshal of England there present; beseeching the court to receive
favourably the said William Sawtree, unto them thus recommitted. For
with this hypocritical recommendation to mercy the Romish church always
delivered over its victims to be burnt alive! Sawtree accordingly
suffered martyrdom at the stake in Smithfield, leaving a name slandered
by the Romanists, but held in deserved respect for the sake of the
Gospel by British Christians.”
Wycliffe’s disciples continued to be sought after by the inquisitors,
and many suffered at the stake for Christ. But volumes are required to
detail their sufferings and triumphs.
Archbishop Arundel procured “a law for ever,” A.D. 1410, “that whosoever
they were that should read the Scriptures in the mother tongue,” which
was then denounced as “Wycliffe’s learning,” should “forfeit lands,
cattle, body, life, and goods, from their heirs for ever, and so be
condemned for heretics to God, enemies to the crown, and most arrant
traitors to the land.”
Bale says, “Anon after, that Act was proclaimed throughout the realm,
and then the bishops, the priests, and the monks, had a world somewhat
to their minds. For then were many taken in divers quarters, and
suffered most cruel deaths. And many fled out of the land into Germany,
Bohemia, France, Spain, Portugal, and into Scotland, Wales, and Ireland,
working there many marvels against the false kingdom, too long to write.
In the Christmas following was Sir Roger Acton, knight, Master John
Browne, and Sir John Beverly, a learned preacher, and divers others,
imprisoned for quarrelling with certain priests. In January following,
A.D. 1413, was the before-named Sir Roger Acton, Master John Browne, Sir
John Beverly, and _thirty-six_ more, of whom the more part were
gentlemen of birth, convicted of heresy by the bishops, and condemned of
treason by the temporality, and, according to the Act, were first hanged
and then burned in the Giles-field. In the same year, also, one John
Claydon, a skinner, and one Richard Turning, a baker, were both hanged
and burned in Smithfield by that Act, besides what was done in all other
quarters of England; which was no small number, if it were thoroughly
known.” Fox calls Sir Roger Acton “this worthy, noble, virtuous knight,”
in giving an account of the dreadful persecutions of these faithful
martyrs of Christ.
Wycliffe’s ashes were not allowed to rest in quiet: for, A.D. 1415, by
the council of Constance, forty-four conclusions, drawn from his
writings, were declared to be heretical, and their author condemned as
an obstinate heretic. Inquisitors sought his bones, which were ordered
to be dug up and cast upon a dunghill; but the sentence was not executed
till A.D. 1428, when Pope Martin V. sent order to Fleming, bishop of
Lincoln, once a professed favourer of the reformed doctrine. The
inquisitors obeyed the order of the bishop--the bones were burnt, and
the ashes were cast into the adjoining rivulet, Swift. From Lutterworth,
as Dr. Fuller beautifully remarks, “this brook conveyed his ashes into
the Avon; Avon into Severn; Severn into the narrow seas; they into the
ocean. And thus the ashes of Wycliffe are emblems of his doctrine, which
is now dispersed all over the world!”
Wycliffe’s writings were copied and circulated among studious inquirers
after the Gospel in several nations; and, as the sister of Wenceslaus,
king of Bohemia, had become the queen of Richard II., learned Bohemians
frequented England. One of these, Jerome of Prague, on his return from
study at Oxford, A.D. 1400, carried with him some of Wycliffe’s books,
which became the means of enlightening John Huss, a famous divine of
Prague university. He laboured to promote a reformation, opposing the
false miracles, and impostures, and evil lives of the priests. But the
archbishop being incensed against him, accused him before the
Inquisition, from which he appealed by proctors to Cardinal Colonna, who
declared him contumacious, and excommunicated him. He then appealed to
the Pope, who confirmed the sentence, and excommunicated his followers.
But he continued his labours in teaching and writing, until he was
summoned before the council of Constance. The Emperor Sigismund pledged
his honour for his protection, and John, Count of Chlum, interposed on
his behalf; but that holy synod violated the solemn engagement of the
emperor, seizing his person, and requiring him to plead guilty of heresy
in thirty propositions extracted from his writings. With this
requisition of the inquisitors Huss could not comply; yet he protested
his readiness to yield to the testimony of Holy Scripture. Being then
presented before the council, in the presence of the emperor, the
princes of the empire, and an immense assemblage of prelates, he was
condemned to the stake, and his writings to be burned.
Dignified priests endeavoured in vain to induce him to recant. The
bishops stripped him of his priestly robes, and put on his head a mitre
of paper, on which devils were painted, with the inscription,
“Ringleader of Heretics.” They then delivered him to the unworthy
emperor, and he to the duke of Bavaria. His books were burnt at the
church gate, and he was led to the stake at the suburbs of the city. He
manifested the true spirit of a martyr for Christ. Multitudes attended
his execution, and were astonished at his piety, saying, “What this man
has done before, we know not; but we hear him now offer up most
excellent prayers to God.”
Huss wished to address the people; but the elector palatine prevented
him, ordering that he should immediately be burnt. The martyr then cried
with a loud voice, “Lord Jesus, I humbly suffer this cruel death for thy
sake; I pray thee forgive all my enemies.” Thus suffered Dr. John Huss,
as a faithful martyr of Jesus, A.D. 1415; leaving a most instructive
example to the church of God, and the fame, as Luther testifies, of
being “a most rational expounder of Scripture.”
Jerome also was sacrificed to papal bigotry. For, having translated the
works of Wycliffe into his native language, and professed himself a
reformer of Christian doctrine and worship in connexion with Dr. Huss,
when he heard of his friend’s danger at Constance, he repaired thither
in hope of rendering him some assistance. Jerome found that the
inquisitors had caused him also to be cited before the council, and
that his own destruction had been determined. He returned, therefore, to
Bohemia, after writing to the emperor in favour of his friend; but he
was arrested, and imprisoned for nearly a year. By the tortures and
entreaties of the inquisitors he was induced to sign a recantation. His
conscience, however, would not allow him to suffer this to stand; and he
was brought again before the inquisitors. He defended the principles of
his martyred friend, and made a solemn appeal to his persecutors:--“How
unjust is it, that ye will not hear me! Ye confined me three hundred and
forty days in several prisons, where I have been cramped with irons,
almost poisoned with filth and stench, and pinched with the want of all
necessaries. During this time, ye always gave to my enemies a hearing,
but refused to hear me so much as a single hour. I came to Constance to
defend John Huss, because I advised him to go thither, and had promised
to come to his assistance, in case he should be oppressed. Nor am I
ashamed to make here a public confession of my own cowardice. I confess,
and tremble while I think of it, that, through fear of punishment by
fire, I basely consented against my conscience to the condemnation of
Wycliffe and Huss. I appeal to the Sovereign Judge of all the earth, in
whose presence ye must shortly answer me!”
Jerome’s judges were implacable, and he was murdered at the stake,
singing a hymn in the flames, while he yielded up his spirit to his
Divine Redeemer, A.D. 1416.
Many of the nobles of Bohemia regarded the murder of these two excellent
men as an outrage against their nation, and they meditated revenge. This
passion was inflamed by the policy of Pope Martin, who promoted the
organisation of the Inquisition in their country, and excited the
Catholics in Moravia to unite in the destruction of the Hussites. King
Wenceslaus inclined to support the Pope, but through terror of being
opposed in the bloody work, he died, A.D. 1419, when the crown of
Bohemia falling to the emperor, Sigismund sent an army on a crusade
against the heretics. Multitudes fell victims to their cruel bigotry,
and perished in the mines of Kuttenburgh, and by drowning, as well as at
the stake. It is said there were thrown into one mine 1,701 persons;
into another, 1,038; and into a third, 1,334, A.D. 1420.
The chief magistrate of Litomerici, a cruel bigot, to gratify the
inquisitors, caused _twenty-four_ of the principal citizens to be
arrested and accused of heresy. One of these was the husband of his own
daughter. They were imprisoned in a lofty tower; and, when perishing
with hunger and cold, they were brought out and sentenced to immediate
death by drowning in the river Albis. The magistrate himself had to
pronounce the sentence upon them, which he performed, regardless of the
tears and entreaties of his daughter; and the whole were conveyed in
carts, bound hand and foot, to the river, into which they were plunged,
while officers were employed, armed with iron forks and poles, to watch
that none might escape, and to stab those who should make the attempt.
The young lady, being unable to move her cruel father to pity, plunged
into the river, in hope of aiding her husband to escape--but she failed;
and the next day the bodies of both were found in the water, her arms
clasped around the body of her husband! Other instances of murderous
cruelty, equally shocking, are recorded of the bloody operations of the
Inquisition.
Many of the Hussites now withdrew to a high mountain, which they
fortified; and there they held their religious meetings, administering
the Lord’s supper, not only in bread, but with wine, which had been
forbidden by the Catholics. Their fortification they called _Tabor_, and
the people were hence called _Taborites_. They chose leaders, and
defeated the troops of the emperor in eleven engagements; so that they
gained the use of the cup in the Lord’s supper, by the consent of the
council of Basil, A.D. 1431.
Part of the Hussites sought more than the cup; they insisted on having a
reformation according to the Scriptures. They were still persecuted by
the Catholics, and obliged to conceal themselves in thickets and caves,
kindling fire only at night, when they read the Scriptures and united in
the social worship of God. Stephen, their last bishop, having been burnt
alive for his profession of Christ, the Bohemian brethren united with
the Waldenses, A.D. 1480.