doctrine and conduct. He defended his resistance to the condemnation
of Wyclif’s books, on the ground that he had been called on to say
that every proposition of Wyclif’s was either heretical, scandalous,
or erroneous. At the same time he admitted that he had wished his soul
to be with Wyclif, on account of Wyclif’s pure life. When charged with
having appealed to Christ when condemned by the Pope, he declared
that to be a most just and efficacious appeal, a statement which was
received with laughter by his judges. At the same time he indignantly
denied having encouraged his followers to smite with the material
sword. Lastly, while maintaining the justice of the decision about the
Bohemian votes, he denied the extraordinary charge of Pálec̆ that he
had driven out the Germans.
But he was, unfortunately, doomed to irritate against him on every
occasion the intense vanity of Sigismund. One great object of his
enemies was to deprive him of any benefit accruing to him from his
safe-conduct; and they caught eagerly at an expression of his that
he had come, freely and voluntarily, to the Council. Provoked at the
constant distortions of his language, he broke out with a boast, which,
however true, was most ill-judged. If, he said, he had not wished to
come to the Council, neither King nor Emperor could have compelled
him; for there were many friends who would have hidden him in their
houses, so that neither Wenceslaus nor Sigismund could have found him.
When a murmur arose at this, John of Chlum stepped forward and said
that, though he was but a poor gentlemen in his own country, he, for
one, would have guarded Hus for a year, whoever liked or disliked it;
and that there were many others who would have protected him in strong
castles. This belittling of his power roused Sigismund’s anger. He
exclaimed that he had sent Hus his safe-conduct before he left Prague;
and that he had provided the noblemen for his escort; and he now
advised Hus to submit himself completely to the Council. Hus at once
answered, in his more ordinary tone, that he thanked Sigismund for the
safe-conduct; and, for his part, he would be glad to be corrected by
the Council if he were shown to be wrong.
On June 8th, he was examined more in detail on thirty-nine Articles
gathered from his writings. Some of these dealt with the subtle
questions of Predestination; but others were concerned with his
assertions in the “De Ecclesia” that a visible head was not necessary
to the Church; and that a Pope in mortal sin ceases to be a true Pope.
Hus was able, with great force, to appeal to the action of the Council
itself in justification of these doctrines. If a Pope in mortal sin
did not cease to be a true Pope, by what right had they deposed John
XXIII.? If the visible Head was necessary to the Church, who was the
Head _then_, when all the Popes had either resigned or been deposed?
Such arguments were probably too forcible to be convincing.
But again, by some strange fatality, Hus was further to irritate
against him the suspicion and anger of the Holy Roman Emperor. “Not
only,” said Hus, “did a Pope cease to be a true Pope if in mortal
sin, but the case of the deposition of Saul by Samuel showed that a
King might be treated in a similar way.” Sigismund was sitting at a
window in a back part of the room when this utterance was made; but the
Cardinals eagerly called him forward and made Hus repeat his statement.
Nor was this the only offence which he was doomed to commit against
the Emperor on that fatal day. When the examination had concluded,
the chief Cardinal asked Hus whether he would submit entirely to the
Council, or if he wished to defend any of the Articles alleged against
him. But when Hus demanded an opportunity for further discussion, the
Cardinal answered that the Council insisted on his abjuration and
revocation of the Articles alleged against him, and his promise not to
preach them any more. To this Hus answered, that he could not revoke
and abjure opinions which he had never held, mentioning as an instance
the denial of Transubstantiation. As for the opinions which he had set
forth, he would retract them when they had been refuted. Sigismund
endeavoured to convince him that he could abjure Articles which he had
never held; whereupon Hus ventured to dispute the Emperor’s use of the
word “abjurare.” This further denial of the power of the Roman Emperor
over the Latin language roused to a still higher pitch the irritation
of Sigismund “Super Grammaticam;” and he told Hus that, unless he would
abjure and revoke all the errors alleged against him, the Council must
deal with him according to its laws.
Upon this a fat and richly dressed priest, who was sitting in the
window, cried out that they should not allow him to recant, since he
would not keep his word; and again he quoted the falsified version of
Hus’s letter. Then Pálec̆ and Michael de Causis pressed upon him a
number of charges, some new and some old, mixing up actual writings
and doings of Hus with doctrines which he had repudiated; and, after
this had continued for some time, the Council decided to send him back
to prison, to see if a period of delay would induce him to revoke his
heresies.
For the moment Hus seemed to be crushed by the noise and bitterness of
his enemies. He was leaving the Council with the sense that the world
was entirely against him, when, as he drew near to the door, John of
Chlum pressed through the crowd and shook him warmly by the hand. The
memory of that handshake seems to have lingered to the last in the mind
of Hus. Other friends, too, were still faithful to him; and, after he
had left the Council, several of them pressed to the window of the
convent where the Council was being held, to hear what should follow.
Sigismund was now thoroughly inflamed against Hus. He had belittled
the protection which Sigismund had offered him, and had declared that
his friends could protect him against the Emperor; he had quoted a
Scriptural instance of the deposition of kings; and, above all, he
had disputed Sigismund’s authority over the Latin language. Such a
man could not be suffered to live; and the Emperor now declared that
he delivered him over to the Council to be burnt, if they so pleased;
adding further, that no recantation was to be trusted. He also implied
that the death of Jerom must follow that of Hus.
Hus now saw that his fate was sealed; and one observes in his letters
to his friends the tone of a man who is preparing for death. He was
particularly anxious, lest the more ignorant of his followers should
suffer for doctrines which they had not understood, and which they had
merely adopted from a sense of personal devotion to their teacher. So
he wrote to one of these followers, that, if he should be attacked for
his adherence to Hus, he should answer his accusers by saying, “I hope
that the Master was a good Christian, but I have not understood or read
through the things which he taught in the schools.” The thought of the
corruptions of the clergy still weighed upon his mind; and he advised
his nephews rather to learn some manual work than to become priests;
lest, if they assumed the spiritual office, they should not maintain it
as it deserved.
In the meantime, the Council, with singular maladroitness, had singled
out for special condemnation the granting of the Cup to the laity;
and thus, at one stroke, they changed the doctrine of a few obscure
men into the war-cry of an indignant nation. This decree called the
attention to Hus to this matter, which, till then, he had not deeply
considered; and he wrote to his successor at the Bethlehem Chapel
that he ought not to oppose the granting of the Cup to the laity,
since there was nothing but custom against it; and that, if he opposed
Jakaubek, there would be a division amongst the faithful.
But, while Hus was thus interesting himself in the affairs of his
countrymen, the Council were not suffering him to rest in peace. One
of the few priests who had shown themselves friendly to Hus at the
Council wrote to him urging sophistical arguments in favour of a form
of recantation; and Pálec̆ paid him several visits, to worry him into
confessions of heresy. Yet, bitterly as he felt the persecutions of his
former follower, that same self-distrust and earnest desire for justice
which he had shown in the question of the three votes, and again on his
retirement from Prague, appeared, even more remarkably, in this last
interview. He entreated his enemy to pardon him for having charged him
with deliberate falsehood on the occasion of Pálec̆’s first attacks
in the Council. The savage apostate was moved even to tears for the
moment, though his pity was of short duration.
At last, on July 5th, Wenceslaus of Duba and John of Chlum were sent
to the prison to demand Hus’s final answer. But these messengers had
been ill-chosen as exponents of the sophistries of Sigismund and the
Cardinals. John of Chlum addressed the prisoner as follows: “Master
John, we are laymen and cannot advise you. Therefore, see if there is
anything in the things which they object to you, in which you feel you
are to blame. If so, do not fear to be instructed and to revoke it;
but, if you do not feel yourself guilty in your conscience in these
things, then by no means act against your conscience, nor lie in the
sight of God, but rather continue till the death in the truth which
you have acknowledged.” Then Hus answered, “Lord John! know, that if
I knew that I had written or preached anything contrary to the law or
to our Holy Mother the Church, God is my witness that I would humbly
revoke it. But I always desired that they should show me better and
more probable Scriptures than those that I had taught; and, if they
are shown me, I will most readily recant.” A bishop, who had come with
the Bohemian nobles, now introduced the sophistical platitude which is
common on such occasions--“Do you wish,” he said, “to be wiser than the
whole Council?” “I do not wish,” answered Hus, “to be wiser than the
whole Council; but I ask you to give me the least of the Council who
can inform me by better and more efficacious Scriptures; and I am ready
to revoke what I said.”
On the following day he was brought forth to receive his final
condemnation. The articles on which he was to be condemned were read
out against him, though he continued to protest against the manner
in which his words had been perverted. To his horror, he found that
they had added to the charges against him a new article, in which
he was accused of saying that he was a fourth person of the Deity.
He demanded the name of the author of this slander; but the Council
refused to tell him. Then, as a climax to his offences, they quoted
his appeal to Christ as against the Pope. At that he cried out “O Lord
God! do this Council condemn Thy law and Thy acts as an error? because
Thou, when oppressed by Thy enemies, didst commit Thy cause to Thy God
and Father, and gavest us thereby an example to appeal to Thee as the
justest Judge, humbly demanding Thy help.” Then for the last time he
recapitulated the circumstances under which he had come to the Council.
When he referred to the safe-conduct, he fixed his eye upon Sigismund;
and the Emperor was observed to blush. This blush is worth mentioning
as the only sign of grace in that mean and treacherous career. But,
of course, neither appeal nor blush could avail Hus anything; and his
statement was almost immediately followed by his condemnation to the
stake.
Then he knelt down and said, “Lord Jesus Christ, pardon all my enemies
for Thy great mercy; Thou knowest that they have falsely accused me,
that they have produced false witnesses, and that they have produced
false articles against me; pardon them for Thy mercy.” This prayer
was received with shouts of laughter. Then they stripped him of his
priestly dress, and put on him a crown which declared him to be an
Heresiarch. This was followed by a proclamation committing his soul to
the devil, to which he answered, “And I commit it to my blessed Lord
Jesus Christ.”
He had now quite recovered his composure; and, on his way to the
stake, he smiled when he saw the place where his books were being
burnt; and he smiled again when the paper crown fell off his head and
he saw the three demons which had been painted on it. When they put a
heavy chain round his neck to fasten him to the stake, he exclaimed,
“The Lord Jesus my Redeemer was bound with a heavier chain for me.”
Even after the faggots had been piled round him, the officials came to
him, asking him to recant. He answered by repudiating the false charges
that had been made against him, and declared that he had only preached
the truth of the gospel and the holy Doctors. Then, as they lit the
fire round him, he cried out, “Christ, Son of the living God, have
mercy on me;” but, as he added the words, “Who wast born of the Virgin
Mary,” a flame struck him on the mouth, and he died praying.
N.B.--For the two stories which are most generally quoted
about Hus, I can find no sufficient authority. The beautiful
tradition of his comment on the woman who brought the faggot
to burn him, seems to belong to a much later date; while the
earliest authority, which I have discovered, for the prophecy
about the goose and the swan, is Martin Luther himself. But
both the stories are eminently characteristic; and they deserve
to live as legend, if not as authentic history.
IX.
FROM THE DEATH OF HUS TO THE FIRST CORONATION OF SIGISMUND.
(July 6, 1415-July 28, 1420.)
Few great teachers are ever well represented by their immediate
followers and disciples; but hardly any have been distinguished from
their followers by so many and such important differences as those
which separated John Hus from the men who are known by his name. First
of all there was the gulf which separates the man who rejoices to die
for his faith from those who delight in killing on its behalf. But
that difference between teacher and follower, though much more vital,
is, perhaps, also more common than the barrier of doctrinal difference
which separated Hus from those who claimed to represent him. The very
practice, which supplied the war-cry of the coming struggle, was
one which Hus had merely approved with a friendly tolerance, never
advocated with any special enthusiasm; and that difference of feeling
is characteristic of the whole relations between Hus and his followers.
On the one hand the constitutional reforms of the Church, hinted at in
the “De Ecclesia,” would certainly have been rejected by the Calixtine
party; while, on the other hand, the doctrines and practices of the
Taborites would have been opposed by Hus himself. It will therefore be
more convenient, in describing the following struggle, to speak of the
Reformers by their doctrinal name of “Utraquists,” rather than by the
personal but misleading title of “Hussite.”
But, if the spirit of the living Hus could scarcely be said to rest
upon those who called themselves by his name, undoubtedly the death
of Hus was recognised, on both sides, as the essential cause of the
wars which followed. Men might wrangle about this or that doctrine or
practice; but the murder of a Bohemian, in a place to which he had been
sent under the special protection of the King and the nobles, was a
point which could never be forgiven or forgotten against Sigismund or
the Council of Constance; especially when this murder was connected
with an attempt to brand as heretics the whole Bohemian nation. This
feeling breathes through the fiery letter of the nobles of Bohemia,
which was sent to the Council on the 2nd of September, 1415. They
accused the Councillors of having condemned Hus on false evidence; and
they declared him to be a good Catholic. They give the lie to all to
dare to assert that there is heresy in Bohemia or Moravia, except only
to the Emperor Sigismund, who, they _hope_, is innocent in the matter;
and they declare that they will defend the law of Christ and His
preachers, even to the shedding of blood.
While the nobles threw down their gauntlet to the Council in this
formal manner, the main body of the people showed their feeling by
fierce riots against the monks. Churches and monasteries were burnt;
many monks were driven from Prague, and some priests were killed in
the riots. The Archbishop of Prague determined to stand by his Order;
and he too fixed on the Communion in both kinds as the dividing line
between the two parties. Finding that he could neither prohibit this
practice nor obtain compensation for the injuries done to the clergy,
he laid Prague under an Interdict.
This Interdict became a new source of division. The Utraquists utterly
disregarded it, and exposed themselves to the charge of rebellion
against the Church. The Catholics, on the other hand, scrupulously
recognised the archbishop’s decree, and therefore felt bound to
celebrate their services only in the Vys̆ehrad, which was outside the
prohibited area. The Catholic visits to that fortress were compared by
the Utraquists to the more celebrated pilgrimages to Mecca; and hence
the name of Mahometan was added to the other terms of abuse, which were
being so freely scattered by the rival theologians.
The attitude of Wenceslaus was wavering and uncertain. He had, indeed,
been disposed to accept the Council’s condemnation of the granting
of the Cup to the laity; but he had used his best influence to save
Hus, and he had resented his execution, as another proof of that
faithlessness of Sigismund, of which he had already had such painful
experience. He refused, however, to join the League which the nobles
had formed to defend the liberties of Bohemia, partly, perhaps, because
they connected it with a defence of the practice just condemned by the
Council; and he even consented to support an Opposition League formed
by the Catholic nobles in defence of the Church.
Sigismund, on his part, began to entertain hopes that he might contrive
to sow division between these rival parties; and, feeling that his
share in the death of Hus was the point which prevented his success in
these intrigues, he wrote to the Bohemian nobles assuring them that
he deeply regretted that death, that he had done his best to prevent
it, and that, if Hus had only consented to come under the Emperor’s
protection to Constance, instead of starting alone from Prague, all
would have been well; but he added that he could not have saved Hus at
the last, without breaking up the Council altogether. Whether these
falsehoods deceived any one may be doubted. At any rate they did not
accomplish Sigismund’s immediate purpose; for, when the Bishop of
Litomys̆l arrived, with authority from the Council to suppress heresy
in Bohemia, he received no encouragement either from king or from
nobles, and, when he attempted violence, he was driven out by force.
Indeed, whatever terms the nobles of Bohemia might have thought right
to make with Sigismund, as the heir to the Bohemian throne, they could
not, with any credit to themselves, come to terms at this time with
the Council of Constance. In the same letter in which the nobles
had condemned the burning of Hus, they had also complained of the
imprisonment of Jerom; and with Jerom it was clear that the Council
were determined to proceed to extremities. Worn with starvation and
chains, the unfortunate prisoner at last yielded to his persecutors;
and, while his countrymen were protesting against his imprisonment, he
had consented to recant his errors, and to acknowledge the justice of
the death of Hus. The Italian cardinals now desired to set him free;
but the German and Bohemian members of the Council, backed by the
Chancellor of the University of Paris, insisted that this recantation
was not to be trusted, and that Jerom should be further examined as
to his doctrines. Michael de Causis and Stephen Pálec̆ fastened with
relentless eagerness on their second victim, and, by so doing, they
saved his honour and reputation, and gave him an opportunity of showing
his better side.
In May, 1416, he was granted a new hearing before the Council; and,
after having been for some time pestered with questions, he was at
last allowed to speak for himself. His long oration, filled with
classical allusions, greatly impressed the Italian scholar, Poggio
Bracciolini, who was present on this occasion. But it will scarcely
strike modern readers as so edifying as the simpler utterances of Hus.
The conclusion, however, was more worthy of the occasion. It contained
a manly and straightforward eulogy on Hus, an expression of his deep
regret at the weakness which had led him to recant, and a declaration
of his adherence to the teaching both of Hus and of Wyclif. Then, on
May 14, 1416, he was led out to be burnt, and went singing to the stake.
If this execution had not been sufficient to prevent a reconciliation
between the Bohemians and the Council of Constance, another event of
the same period would certainly have deepened the division between
them. The Bishop of Olmütz died about this time, and Wenceslaus
nominated a new bishop in his stead. The Council, however, intervened;
and they not only rejected Wenceslaus’s nominee, but they demanded that
he should accept instead that Bishop of Litomys̆l whom he had just
driven out of the country as a disturber of the peace, and who was
so deeply hated for his prominent share in the condemnation of Hus.
Wenceslaus of course refused, and thereby widened the gulf between
himself and the orthodox Catholics.
Unfortunately, however, the effect of this consolidation of national
feeling was speedily weakened by the divisions which had begun to show
themselves in the Utraquist party. Teachers were coming to the front
who demanded far more sweeping reforms than those which Jakaubek of
Kladrau and the other friends of Hus were at all disposed to approve;
and they wished to enforce these reforms by the extremest violence. As
these reforms were aimed, not only at abuses in the Church, but also
at the influence of the wealthy men in the State, the Reformers soon
roused against them the fears and anger of the well-to-do citizens of
Prague. Nor were these alarms likely to be modified when it became
evident that two men, at least, of important position and remarkable
ability, were disposed to place themselves at the head of the reforming
movement.
The leader who first attracted the attention of the crowd and the fears
of the King was Nicholaus of Hus, the Guardian of the Fortress of Hus,
and the proprietor of the village of Husinec. He had been a favourite
with the King, and was reputed, even by his enemies, to be a man of
great ability and insight. He now gathered together such great crowds
of people for prayer and preaching that Wenceslaus began to suspect him
of aiming at the throne. But the more pacific abilities of Nicholaus
were soon to be thrown into the shade by his fiercer and more brilliant
ally, John Z̆iz̆ka of Troc̆nov.
Though Z̆iz̆ka, like Nicholaus, had been a favourite at Court, he
had already once offended the king by a daring act of independence.
Influenced, no doubt, by Sigismund and his friends, Wenceslaus had at
one time supported the Order of Teutonic Knights in their struggle
against the King of Poland. The anti-German feeling in Bohemia was
already running high, even at that time; and sympathy with their
Slavonic kinsmen induced many Bohemian officers to hasten to the
support of the Poles, in opposition to the wish of the King. In this
semi-rebellious movement Z̆iz̆ka had taken a prominent part; but he
had, since then, been pardoned and received back into favour. His
independent spirit, however, was ill-suited to a Court life, and he
was not long in giving new offence to Wenceslaus.
[Illustration: MARKET-PLACE OF PRACHATICE, THE TOWN WHERE HUS AND
Z̆IZ̆KA WENT TO SCHOOL.]