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.