BOOK VIII. 

FROM THE DEATH OF POPE BONIFACE VIII TO THE END  OF THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE,  A.D. 1303-1418.

 

CHAPTER VII. BOHEMIA.

 

THE reforming tendencies which appeared in Bohemia towards the end of the fourteenth century have been traced to the ancient connexion of that country with the Greek church, from which it is assumed that peculiar usages—such as the marriage of the clergy, the use of the vernacular tongue in the offices of the church, and the administration of the eucharistic cup to the laity—had been continued through the intermediate ages. But this theory, which was unknown to the Bohemian reformers of the time with which we are now concerned, appears to be wholly unsupported by historical fact. Nor, although some Waldenses had made their way into the country, does it appear that the reforming movement which we are about to notice derived any impulse from that party.

The first person who became conspicuous as a teacher of reformation in Bohemia was not a native of the country, but an Austrian—Conrad of Waldhausen, canon of the cathedral of Prague, and pastor of a parish near the city. Conrad appears to have adhered in all respects to the doctrine which was considered orthodox in his time, and his burning zeal was directed against practical corruptions of religion. He denounced, with indignant eloquence, the mechanical character of the usual devotions; the abuses of indulgences and relics ; the practice or simony in all forms, among which he included the performance of charitable duties for money, such as that of tending the sick; and on this ground, among others, he censured the mendicant friars. But he also assailed the principle of their system altogether, offering sixty groats to any one who would prove from Scripture that the Saviour gave his sanction to the mendicant life; and he strongly opposed the practice of devoting young persons—in some cases even children yet unborn—to the cloister, without allowing them the power of choice. He required usurers to disgorge the gains which they had unjustly acquired; whereas the friars used to quiet the consciences of such persons by teaching them that the iniquities of usury might be sanctified by bounty to the church. Yet Conrad, although he strenuously opposed the corruptions of monasticism, set a high value on the idea of the monastic life. His power as a preacher is said to have been very extraordinary; sometimes he found himself obliged to deliver his sermons in market-places, because no church was large enough to contain the multitude of hearers. He carried away from the mendicants all but a handful of “beguines”; even Jews crowded to listen to him, and he discountenanced those who would have kept them off. Conrad was favoured by the emperor Charles ; and, although the Dominicans and Franciscans combined against him, and in 1364 exhibited twenty-nine articles of accusation to the archbishop of Prague, he continued his course without any serious molestation until his death in 1369.

Contemporary with Conrad of Waldhausen was Militz, a native of Kremsier, in Moravia. Militz had attained the dignity of archdeacon of Prague, and, in addition to other benefices, possessed some landed property; he stood high in the favour of Charles IV, and was greatly respected in his ecclesiastical character. But the desire after a stricter religious life arose within him, and, resigning all the advantages of his position, he withdrew to the poverty and obscurity of a parish priest’s life in a little town or village. After a time he reap­peared at Prague, and, unlike Conrad of Waldhausen, who had used only the German language, he preached in Latin to the learned, and in the vernacular to the multitude. At first, his Bohemian sermons had little effect on account of his somewhat foreign pronuncia­tion; but this difficulty was gradually overcome, and Militz was heard four or five times a day by enthusiastic audiences. Usurers were persuaded by his eloquence to give up their gains, and women to renounce the vanities of dress; and so powerful was he in exhorting prosti­tutes to forsake a life of sin, that under his teaching a part of the city which had been known as Little Venice acquired the title of Little Jerusalem. Like Conrad, Militz attacked the mendicant system; but, whereas Conrad had confined himself to practical subjects, Militz plunged into apocalyptic speculations. Seeing in the corruption of the church a proof that antichrist was already come, he wrote a tract in which he fixed the end of the world between 1365 and 1367; he even told Charles IV to his face that he was the great antichrist, yet he did not by this forfeit the emperor’s regard. In 1357 Militz felt an irresistible impulse to set forth his opinions to Urban V, who was then about to remove to Rome. He arrived there before the pope, and by announcing his intention of discoursing on the coming of antichrist, provoked an imprisonment in the convent of Ara Coeli; but he was able to justify his orthodoxy before Urban, and was allowed to return to Prague. From this time he abandoned apocalyptic subjects, but was unwearied in his labours as a preacher; and he established a school for preachers, at which 200 or 300 students were trained under one roof, but without any vow or monastic rule. Some years later, twelve charges against him were brought before Gregory XI,—among other things, that he disparaged the clergy from the pope downwards; that he denounced their possession of property; that he denied the force of excommunication; and that he insisted on daily communion. In order to meet these charges, Militz repaired to Avignon, but while his case was pending he died there in i374.

Among the pupils of Militz was Matthias of Janow, a young man of knightly family, who afterwards studied for six years at Paris, and thence was styled “Magister Parisiensis”. In 1381 Matthias became a canon of Prague, and he was confessor to the emperor Charles. The influence of Matthias, unlike that of Conrad and of Militz, was exerted chiefly by means of his writings. One of these—a tract, “Of the Abomination of Desolation”, mainly directed against the mendicant friars—has been sometimes ascribed to Hus, and sometimes to Wyclif. His chief work, “Of the Rules of the Old and New Testaments” (which is described as an inquiry into the characters of real and false Christianity), has never been printed at full length. Matthias went considerably beyond those practical measures of reform with which his predecessors had contented themselves; indeed it may be said that the later reformer Hus rather fell short of him in this respect than exceeded him. Matthias professed to regard Holy Scripture as the only source of religious knowledge, and declared himself forcibly against human inventions and precepts in religion. He was strongly opposed to the encroachments of the papacy on the church; he regarded the pope rather as antichrist than as Christ’s vicar; and he describes antichrist (whom he declares to have come long ago), in terms which seem to point at the degenerate and worldly hierarchy. He denounced the clergy in general for the vices which he imputed to them, and appears to have reprobated the greatness of the distinction which was commonly made between the clergy and the laity. Matthias was especially zealous for frequent communion of the lay people. He denied the sufficiency of what was called spiritual communion: “If we were angels”, he said, “it might possibly be enough; but for our mixed nature of body and soul an actual reception of the sacrament is necessary”; and this he deduced from the doctrine of the incarnation itself. Those (he said) who receive but once a year come to the sacrament in a spirit of bondage, and cannot know the true Christian liberty. It was supposed in later times that Matthias had advocated the administration of the eucharistic cup to the laity; but this appears to be a mistake. For some of the opinions imputed to him—among other things, for insisting on daily communion of the laity—he was condemned by a synod held at Prague in 1388, and, having submitted to make a retractation, was suspended for half a year from ministering beyond his own parish church. But he appears to have continued his teaching with little change, and to have been suffered to remain unmolested until his death in 1394.

As to the orthodoxy of these men (who, although not the only Bohemian reformers of their time, were the most distinguished among them) there have been various opinions within the Roman church, as the Bohemian writers generally maintain that they were sound in faith, and in favour of this view (which is commonly rejected by writers of other nations) are able to point to the fact that they all lived and died within the communion of Rome.

Thus far the reforming movement in Bohemia had been wholly independent of any English influence. Indeed no country of Europe might seem so unlikely to feel such influence as Bohemia—far removed as it is on all sides from any communication with our island by sea, and with a population wholly alien in descent and in language from any of the tribes which have contributed to form our nation. Yet by the accession of Charles of Luxemburg to the throne of Bohemia, and by the marriage of his daughter Anne with Richard of England, the two countries were brought into a special connexion. The princess, whose pious exercises and study of the Scriptures were afterwards commemorated in a funeral sermon by archbishop Arundel, had been so far affected by the reforming movements of her own land (where each of the three men who have been mentioned above had enjoyed the favour of her father), that she brought with her to England versions of the Gospels in the German and Bohemian tongues as well as in Latin; and when, after her death, her Bohemian attendant returned to their own country, it would seem that they carried with them much of Wyclif’s doctrine. A literary intercourse also grew up between the countries. Young Bohemians studied at Oxford; young Englishmen resorted to the university which Charles had founded in the Bohemian capital. Wyclif was already held in high honour there on account of his philosophical and physical works, which were regarded without any suspicion on account of his religious teaching; thus Hus said in 1411 that Wyclif’s writings had been read at Prague by himself and other members of the university for more than twenty years.

John Hus, the most famous, if not the most remark­able, of the Bohemian reformers, was born in a humble condition at Hussinecz, a village near the Bavarian frontier, in i369, the year of Conrad of Waldhausen’s death. His education was completed at Prague, where it would seem that he was influenced by the teaching of Matthias of Janow; and among the writers whom he most revered were St. Augustine and Grossetete. By such studies he was prepared to welcome some theological writings of Wyclif, which were introduced into Bohemia in 1402. In his earlier years he had been devoted to the prevailing fashion of religion; at the jubilee of 1393 he had gone through all the prescribed devotions in order to obtain the indulgence, and had given his last four groschen to the priest who heard his confession; and, although he had already adopted Wyclif’s philosophical principles, he was at first so little attracted by his theology that he advised a young student, who had shown him one of the books, to burn it or to throw it into the Moldau, lest it should fall into hands in which it might do mischief. But he soon found himself fascinated; Wyclif’s books gave him new light as to the constitution of the church and as to the reforms which were to be desired in it, and from them his whole system of opinion took its character. It would seem, however, that on the important question of transubstantiation he never adopted Wyclif’s doctrine, but adhered throughout to that which was current in the church. When, at a later time, the testimonial in favour of Wyclif, under the seal of the university of Oxford, was produced in Bohemia by Peter Payne and Nicolas von Faulfisch, Hus eagerly caught at its supposed authority; but in this he seems to have been a dupe, not an accom­plice, of the forgery.

Hus became noted, as even his enemies allow, for the purity of his life, his ascetic habits, and his pleasing manners. In 1402 he was chosen as rector of the university, and in the same year he was ordained to the priesthood, and was appointed preacher at a chapel which had been founded eleven years before with an especial view to preaching in the vernacular tongue, and to which the founders—a merchant and one of the king’s councillors—had given the name of Bethlehem (the house of bread), on account of the spiritual food which was to be there distributed. Soon after this, Hus became confessor to the queen, Sophia, and acquired much influence at the court of Wenceslaus. He was also appointed synodal preacher, and in this character had the privilege of frequently addressing the clergy, whom he rebuked with a vehemence which was more likely to enrage than to amend them. He charged them with ambition and ostentation, with luxury and avarice, with contempt and oppression of the poor and with subserviency to the rich; with vindictiveness, which is said to have given rise to a proverb, “If you offend a clerk, kill him, or you will never have peace”;  with usury, drunkenness, indecent talking, concubinage, and incontinency; with gaming, betrayal of confession, and neglect of their spiritual duties. He denounced them for exacting fees, for simoniacal practices, for holding pluralities : thus, on one occasion, when requesting the prayers of his hearers for a deceased ecclesiastic, he said, “Saving the judgment of God, I would not for the whole world choose to die with so many and valuable benefices”. It was a natural result of such preaching that Hus raised up against himself much bitter enmity on the part of his brethren.

In 1403, Zbynko of Hasenburg was appointed to the see of Prague, which, through the influence of king John, had been detached from the province of Mayence, and invested with metropolitical dignity by Clement VI. The new archbishop, although a man of the world, so that he took part in warlike enterprises, was desirous of reforming ecclesiastical abuses; and for a time Hus enjoyed his favour. It was by Zbynko that the office of synodal preacher was conferred; and he even invited Hus to point out any defects  which he might observe in his administration.

The archbishop’s confidence in Hus was especially shown by appointing him, with two others, to investigate an alleged miracle, which had raised the village of Wilsnack, in Brandenburg, to a sudden celebrity. The church there had been burnt by a robber knight, and the priest, in groping among the ruins, had found in a cavity of the altar three consecrated wafers of a red colour, which was supposed to be produced by the Saviour’s blood. The bishop of Havelberg and the archbishop of Magdeburg, within whose jurisdiction Wilsnack was situated, took up the tale; innumerable cures were said to have been wrought by the miraculous host; by making vows to it, prisoners had obtained deliverance, and combatants had gained the victory in duels; and the offerings of the pil­grims whom it attracted were enough to rebuild the whole village, with a new and magnificent church. The Bohemian commissioners, however, detected much imposture in the alleged cures; and Hus set forth a tract, “On the glorified Blood of Christ”, in which he combated the popular superstitions as to relics and the craving after miracles, and strongly denounced the frauds of the clergy, who for the sake of money deluded the credulous people. In consequence of this archbishop Zbynko forbade all resort from his own diocese to Wilsnack, although the miraculous hosts continued to attract pilgrims until they were burnt by a reforming preacher in 1552.

But it soon became evident that the archbishop and Hus must separate. Hus’s attacks on the clergy were renewed, and charges of Wyclifism were formally brought against him. The archbishop complained to the king; but Wenceslaus is said to have replied, “So long as Master Hus preached against us laymen, you rejoiced at it; now your turn is come, and you must be content to bear it.”

In the university also Hus became involved in quarrels. The founder, Charles IV, had divided it, after the example of Paris, into four nations—Bohemians, Saxons, Bavarians, and Poles. But as two of these were German, and as the Polish nation, being more than half composed of Silesians, Pomeranians, and Prussians, was under German influence, the Bohemians found that in their own university they were liable to be overpowered in the election of officers, and in all sorts of other questions, by the votes of foreigners. Hence a feeling of hostility grew up, and extended itself even to matters of opinion, so that, as the Germans were nominalists, the Bohemians were realists, and were inclined to liberal principles in religion. Into these differences Hus eagerly threw himself, and he found his most zealous supporter in a layman of noble family, named Jerome. Jerome was a man of ardent and impetuous character, restless and enterprising, gifted with a copious eloquence,  but without discretion to guide it. He had travelled much—to England, to Russia, to Jerusalem—sometimes affecting the character of a philosopher and theologian, sometimes that of a knight and man of the world, and in many places meeting with strange adventures; he professed to have graduated as a master of arts at Prague, Heidelberg, Cologne, and Paris. He himself states that, when in England, he was induced by the celebrity of Wyclif’s name to make copies of the Dialogue and of the Trialogue; and he was zealous for the English reformer’s doctrines.

It was a law of the Bohemian university that, while doctors and masters were at liberty to lecture without restraint, bachelors were required to use as texts the lectures of some reputed teacher of Prague, Oxford, or Paris; and in this manner Wyclif’s writings came to be much employed and known there. But this naturally excited opposition, and in forty-five propositions ascribed to Wyclif—partly derived from the council of the earthquake, and partly a new selection—were condemned by the nations which predominated in the university. Hus declined to join unreservedly in this condemnation; he called in question the genuineness of the propositions, and declared that, although no devoted follower of Wyclif, he believed the Englishman’s writings to contain many truths. Others took a similar part, and the impugned articles found a defender in Stanislaus of Znaym, who afterwards became one of Hus’s bitterest enemies. The contest went on. In 1405 the archbishop was desired by Innocent VII to be zealous in suppressing the heresies which were said to be rife in Bohemia; and in consequence of this he uttered denunciations against the adherents of Wyclif, especially with regard to his eucharistic doctrine. In 1408 Stephen, a Carthusian, and prior of Dolan, put forth a formal treatise against Wyclif’s opinions, and in the same year the forty-five propositions were again condemned by the university.

Wenceslaus, although deeply angered at the part which the popes had taken as to his deposition from the empire, was unwilling that his kingdom should lie under the imputation of heresy, more especially as such a charge would have interfered with the hope which he still cherished of recovering his lost dignity. In 1408, therefore, he desired the archbishop of Prague to inquire into the state of religion; and the result was that the archbishop, with a synod, declared Bohemia to be free from the taint of Wyclifism. But he ordered that all copies of Wyclif’s writings should be given up for examination and correction—an order, which, even if seriously meant, appears to have been ineffectual; and it was forbidden that Wyclif’s propositions should be taught in the university in their heretical sense (for as to the real meaning of some of them there was a dispute), and that any one should lecture on his Trialogue or on his work on the eucharist.

The part which the university had taken in the late proceeding incited Hus and Jerome to attempt an important change in its constitution; and their plans were favoured by the circumstances of the time. The council of Pisa was about to meet. Wenceslaus, influenced by France and hoping to recover the empire, took part with it, while the university, under the dominating influence of the German nations, adhered to Gregory XII. Hence the king was disposed to fall in with Hus’s scheme; and in January 1409 he decreed that the Bohemian nation should for the future have three votes in the university, while the other three nations collectively should have but one vote; in like manner (it was said), as the French had three votes at Paris, and the Italians at Bologna. It was in vain that the Germans petitioned against this; and, after having solemnly bound themselves by an engagement that, if the decree should be carried out, they would withdraw from Prague and would never return, they found themselves obliged to fulfil their threat. Out of more than 7000 members of the university, only 2000 were left; of the 5000 seceders, some attached themselves to existing universities, such as Cracow, while others founded the universities of Ingolstadt and Leipzig. Hus was again chosen rector of the Bohemian university; but, while stories to his discredit were sedulously spread in foreign countries by those who charged him with having expelled them from Prague, he found that his success had also raised up against him many enemies at home, especially among those citizens of Prague whose interests had suffered through the withdrawal of the foreign students.

Hus had been zealous for the council of Pisa, as promising a better hope of reform than any that was to be expected from a pope, and he exerted himself actively in detaching those whom he could influence from the party of Gregory XII. By this he drew on himself, in common with others who had opposed Gregory, a sentence from the archbishop of suspension from preaching and from all priestly functions; while, on the other hand, many of the clergy who adhered to Gregory were severely treated by the king. The prohibition of preaching was unheeded by Hus, who seems to have believed that his ordination gave him a privilege as to this of which he could not be deprived. The chapel of Bethlehem resounded with his unsparing invectives against the vices of all classes of men; and cardinal Peter d’Ailly seems to have had reason for telling him, long after, that he had done wrong in denouncing the faults of cardinals and prelates before audiences which were not qualified to understand or to judge of such topics, and could only be inflamed by them. Fresh charges were now brought against him—that by his preaching he fomented quarrels between the Bohemians and the Germans; that he abused the clergy and the archbishop, so that a mob excited by him had once beset the archiepiscopal palace; that he persisted in his attacks notwithstanding all warnings, and drew people from their parish churches to listen to them; that he had spoken of Wyclif as a venerable man, who had been called a heretic because he spoke the truth, and had expressed a wish that his soul might be with that of Wyclif; that he denied the power of the church in punishing; that he mocked at the authority of the church and her doctors; that he denied the validity of ministrations performed by one who was in mortal sin; and that, without distinguishing between exactions and free gifts, he condemned as a heretic any priest who received money in connexion with the administration of a sacrament. As to some of these points it would seem that he was not really chargeable with anything more than the indiscretion of using language which was almost certain to be misunderstood. Thus he declared that in his words about Wyclif’s soul he had not taken it on himself positively to affirm the English doctor’s salvation; and he admitted that God’s sacraments are validly administered by evil as well as by good priests, forasmuch as the Divine power operates alike through both.

Archbishop Zbynko at length found himself obliged to yield as to the council of Pisa, and to acknowledge his pope, Alexander V. The change was unfavourable to Hus, as the pope was now more likely to listen to the archbishop’s representations. In consequence of these, Alexander addressed to Zbynko a bull, stating that the errors of the condemned heresiarch Wyclif were reported to be rife in Bohemia, and desiring him to forbid all preaching except in cathedral, parochial, or monastic churches. In compliance with this bull, the archbishop ordered that preaching in private chapels should cease, and it was understood that Bethlehem chapel was especially aimed at. The bull was received with great indignation by the Bohemian nobles. Hus declared that it had been surreptitiously obtained; that he could not, out of obedience either to the archbishop or to the pope, refrain from preaching; he appealed “from the pope ill-informed to the pope when he should be better informed”; he contended that Bethlehem chapel did not fall under the prohibition, and, in reliance on the deed of foundation and on his appeal, he continued to preach as before.

A fresh order was issued by the archbishop that all copies of Wyclif’s writings should be delivered up; and a commission of doctors, being appointed to examine them, condemned not only the Dialogue and the Trialogue, with the treatises on the Eucharist, on Simony, and on Civil Dominion, but a work on the Reality of Universals, and other writings of a purely philosophical nature. It was announced that there was to be a great bonfire of Wyclif’s books. The university petitioned the king against this, and Zbynko assured him that it should not be carried out without his consent. But in violation of this promise, and under the pretence that Wenceslaus had not expressly forbidden the burning, the archbishop soon after surrounded his palace with guards, and caused about two hundred volumes of Wyclif’s writings, with some works of Militz and others,—many of them precious for beauty of penmanship and of binding—to be committed to the flames, while Te Deum was chanted and all the bells of the churches were rung “as if for the dead”. Two days later Hus and his associates in the late protest were solemnly excommunicated. Yet the condemned books had not been all destroyed, and fresh copies were speedily multiplied.

By these proceedings a great excitement was produced. The archbishop, while publishing his ban in the cathedral, was interrupted by a serious outbreak; and there were fights in which some lives were lost. The archbishop was derided in ballads as an “alphabetarian”, who had burnt books which he could not read. Hus, in his sermons, condemned the burning in a more serious strain. It had not, he said, rooted out any evil from a single heart, but had destroyed many good and holy thoughts; it had given occasion for disorder, hatred, even bloodshed. He also set forth a treatise in which he maintained, on the authority of fathers and ecclesiastical writers, that the books of heretics (under which name he would not include any one who did not contradict Holy Scripture “by word, writing, or deed”), ought not to be burnt, but read. He declared, with reference to the archbishop’s prohibitions and censures, that he must obey God, and not man; and he, with some friends, announced that on certain days they would publicly defend certain of Wyclif’s books against all assailants.

On the election of John XXIII as pope, Hus renewed his appeal; and the king and queen wrote letters in his favour, requesting that the prohibition of preaching except in churches of certain kinds might be withdrawn, so that there should be no interference with Bethlehem chapel. Commissioners were appointed to inquire into the case, and Hus was cited to appear at Bologna;  but he was advised by his friends that his life would be in danger, as plots were laid to cut him off by the way. It seemed to him that to expose himself to death without any prospect of advantage to the church would be a tempting of God; he therefore contented himself with sending advocates to plead his cause, while the king, the queen, and the nobles of Bohemia, the university of Prague and the magistrates of the city, entreated the pope by letters that he might be excused from obeying the citation in person, and might be allowed to carry on his ministry as before. The representatives whom Hus sent to Bologna were unable to obtain a hearing; some of them were imprisoned and otherwise ill treated; and Cardinal Brancacci, the last commissioner to whom the affair was referred, pronounced against him—excommunicating him with all his adherents, and decreeing that any place in which he might be should be interdicted. Archbishop Zbynko soon after uttered an interdict against Prague, whereupon Wenceslaus, in anger, punished some of the clergy for obeying it, while both he and his queen continued their intercessions with the pope in behalf of Hus, and entreated that the orthodoxy of Bohemia might not be defamed through misrepresentations. After a time, the archbishop, finding that he was unable to make head against the opposing influences, and that pope John was not likely to give him any effective support, became desirous of a compromise. A commission of ten persons, appointed by the king to consider how peace might be restored, advised that the archbishop should report Bohemia to be free from the infection of heresy, and should request the pope to recall the citation of Hus with the excommunication which had been pronounced against him. To this Zbynko consented; but, although a letter to the pope had been prepared, the execution of the plan was prevented by the archbishop’s death, when on his way to invoke the support of the king’s brother, Sigismund of Hungary, in the religious distractions of Bohemia.

In September 1411 Hus addressed to the pope a letter which was intended to vindicate himself against the misrepresentations which had been made of his opinions. He denies having taught that the material bread remains in the sacrament of the altar; that the host, when elevated, is Christ’s body, but ceases to be so when lowered again; that a priest in mortal sin cannot consecrate; that secular lords may refuse to pay tithes, and may take away the possessions of the clergy. He also denied that he had caused the withdrawal of the Germans from Prague; it was, he said, the effect of the resolution which they had taken in the belief that without them the university could not subsist. He maintained that Bethlehem was not a private chapel, explained his reasons for not complying with the citation to the papal court, and entreated that he might be excused on this account, and might be released from the consequences which had followed.

The successor of Zbynko was Albic of Uniczow, who, before entering into holy orders, had been the king’s physician. The dean of Passau, who conveyed the pall for the new archbishop, was also the bearer of a papal bull, by which a crusade was proclaimed against Ladislaus, king of Naples, as being excommunicate, with large offers of indulgences and other privileges. Wenceslaus allowed this bull to be published in Bohemia, although he was soon disgusted by the impudent pretensions and proceedings of those who undertook the publication, as well as by the serious drain of money which was paid for commutation of personal service. The German clergy of Prague obeyed the papal orders; but Hus and Jerome vehemently opposed the bull, denouncing it as an antichristian act that, for the non-fulfilment of the conditions 0n which the kingdom of Naples was held under the papacy, a crusade should be proclaimed against a Christian prince, and that indulgences should be prostituted by the promise of absolution as a reward for money or for bloodshed. A new and formidable commotion arose. Some who had hitherto been associated with Hus—especially Stephen of Palecz, an eminent doctor of theology—now took the papal side; and thus a breach was made in the party which had until then been bound together by community of national feeling and of philosophical and religious opinion. Palecz became one of the bitterest among the opponents of Hus; he and other doctors of the university wrote against him, and denounced all opposition to the bull; but Hus persisted in his course, and, when some preachers inveighed against him in the churches, they were interrupted by the laity, who in general favoured the reformer. Hus offered to maintain his opinions in disputation, on condition that, if proved to be wrong, he should be burnt, provided that the other party would submit to the same fate in case of defeat. But as they offered to sacrifice only one out of the many who were banded against the solitary champion, he declared that the terms were unequal, and nothing came of his strange challenge.

The exciting discourses of Hus and Jerome were heard with enthusiasm by the students, who showed their zealous sympathy by escorting them home at night. But this was not enough for some of their friends, who caused the bull to be paraded about the city, fixed to the breasts of a prostitute who was seated in a cart, and afterwards to be burnt at the pillory. The chief contriver of this scene was Woksa of Waldstein, one of the king’s courtiers; but the impetuous Jerome was so far favourable to it that it was generally ascribed to him, and afterwards became the foundation of one of the charges against him at Constance.

Wenceslaus now forbade all language of insult against the pope, and all resistance to his bulls, under pain of death. But Hus continued his preaching, and the excitement became more alarming. One day, as a preacher of the crusade was setting forth his indulgences in a church, he was interrupted by three young men, belonging to the class of artisans, who told him that he lied, that master Hus had taught them the vanity of such privileges, and that the pope was antichrist for proclaiming them. The three were carried before the magistrates of the city, and next day were condemned to die, in accordance with the king’s late decree. Hus earnestly interceded for them, declaring that, if any one were to be put to death, he was himself more guilty than they; and the council appears to have promised that their lives should be spared. But when the popular agitation had been thus calmed, the young men were hastily executed. The passions of the multitude were now stirred to the uttermost. When the executioner proclaimed, in the usual form,  “Whoso doth the like, let him expect the like!”, a general cry burst forth, “We are all ready to do and to suffer the like!” Female devotees dipped their handkerchiefs in the blood of the victims, and treasured it up as a precious relic; some of the crowd even licked the blood. The bodies were carried off by the people, and were borne with solemn pomp to interment in the chapel of Bethlehem, which thence took the name of the Three Saints or Martyrs. Hus himself did not hesitate to speak of them as martyrs in sermons and writings; and, although he had not even been present at the funeral procession, he continued to the end of his life to be charged with having been the author of the movement.

The agitation at Prague continued. Hus combated the abuse of indulgences with untiring zeal, in sermons, disputations, and tracts; he denied that any human judge could with certainty forgive sins, and maintained that an excommunication unjustly uttered was no more to be dreaded than the ban of the Jewish synagogue. The parties became more violent and exasperated; the Germans were for pulling down Bethlehem chapel, while, on the other side, Hus had often to lament the discredit brought on his cause by partisans whose zeal was neither tempered by discretion nor adorned by consistency of life. Archbishop Albic, feeling himself unequal to contend with the difficulties of the case, exchanged his see for a lower but more tranquil dignity, and was succeeded by Conrad of Vechta, a Westphalian, formerly bishop of Olmütz, who, after having acted as administrator of the diocese for some months, was enthroned in July 1413.

The university of Prague had again condemned the forty-five propositions ascribed to Wyclif in July 1412; the clergy of the city had addressed to the pope a letter against Hus; and on the festival of the Purification, 1413, it was decreed by a council at Rome, under John XXIII, that all Wyclif’s works, of whatever kind, should be burnt, inasmuch as, although there might be truth in some of them, it was mixed with error. Hus was excommunicated and anathematized for his disregard of citations to the papal court. Every place in which he might be was to be interdicted; all who should countenance him were to be partakers in his condemnation; and it was ordered that the sentence should be everywhere published with the most solemn forms of the church. The new archbishop proceeded, with the king’s consent, to carry out these decrees, pronouncing an interdict on all Prague except the royal quarter, and ordering that Bethlehem chapel, as being the centre of the reforming movement, should be demolished. Hus protested against his condemnation; he set forth an appeal to the Saviour, in very earnest terms, and, after having caused a protest to be engraved on the walls of Bethlehem chapel, he withdrew from the tumults of Prague, at the king’s request, and with an assurance that Wenceslaus would endeavour to bring about a reconciliation with the clergy. For a time he lived in retirement, partly in the castles of nobles who favoured his opinions, but chiefly in the neighbourhood where the Hussite town of Tabor was afterwards founded. He kept up a lively correspondence with his followers at Prague, whom he exhorted not to allow the old place of his ministrations to be destroyed; and, notwithstanding the sentences which had been pronounced against him, he continued his preaching, which, wherever he went, aroused a strong indignation against the system of the Roman church, with its corruptions of doctrine and of practice. His pen, too, was actively employed in the production of writings in Latin, Bohemian, and German; and to this time belongs the treatise ‘Of the Church’, which is the most important of his works.

Resting on the rigid doctrine of predestination, Hus says that to be in the church is not the same as to be of the church. Some are in the church both in name and reality; some neither in the one nor in the other, as the foreknown heathen; some in name only, as the foreknown hypocrites, some in reality, although nominally they are without, as those predestined Christians whom the officers of antichrist profess to exclude by ecclesiastical censures. No one can be assured of his predestination, except through special revelation, so that it is surprising how the worldly clergy can have the confidence to claim the true membership of the church. Christ alone is head of the church; St. Peter was not its head, but was chief of the apostles. The pope is the vicar of St. Peter, if he walk in his steps; but if he give into covetousness, he is the vicar of Judas Iscariot. The pope and cardinals are not the body of the church; but they are the chief part of it as to dignity, if they follow Christ in humility. The pope owes his preeminence to Constantine, whose alleged donation Hus believes as firmly as he believes the tale of pope Joan. He reprobates the flattery which was commonly used towards the pope, and denounces the luxury and other corruptions of the cardinals. He disowns the charge of disobedience to the church, justifies himself as to the matters which had brought him under censure, and declares that excommunications, interdicts, and other sentences, if unjustly pronounced, are of no effect, and are not to be regarded. God alone, he says, knows to whom sin is to be forgiven; and Christ is the only true Roman high-priest, whom all are bound to obey in order to salvation.

This treatise was written in consequence of the proceedings of a synod at Prague, where Hus was represented by John of Jessinitz, a doctor of canon law; but there was no definite result; and it was followed up by other writings against the chiefs of the ecclesiastical party. While Hus had been compelled to leave Prague, Jerome, too, withdrew, probably of his own accord, and betook himself again to travel—in the course of which he made his way into Russia. Before his return, Hus had already set out to present himself before the council of Constance.

 

 

CHAPTER VIII.

FROM THE ELECTION OF POPE ALEXANDER V TO THE END OF THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE. A.D. 1409-1418.