READING HALL

DOORS OF WISDOM

A HISTORY OF THE POPES FROM THE GREAT SCHISM TO THE SACK OF ROME

BOOK II.

THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE

1414 — 1418.

CHAPTER I.

THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE AND JOHN XXIII.

1414—1415.

At the time of the assembling of the Council of Constance there was a widespread and serious desire throughout Europe for a reformation of the ecclesiastical desire for abuses which the Schism had forced into such luxuriant growth; not only was unity to be restored to the headship of the Church, but a remedy must also be found for the evils which beset the entire body. The gross extortions of the Pope and Curia must be checked and their occasion done away. The Papal invasion of ecclesiastical patronage all over Christendom must be stopped. The ordinary machinery of Church government, which had been weakened by the constant interference of the Pope, must be again restored. The clergy, whose knowledge, morality and zeal had all declined, must be brought back to discipline, so that their waning influence over earnest men might be re-established.

If we would understand aright the force of the feelings that made the Papacy hateful, till the hatred broke out into open revolt, it is worthwhile to gather a few of the impassioned utterances of this time. Dietrich Vrie, a German monk who went to Constance, in a Latin poem more remarkable for its vigor than its grace, puts the following language into the mouth of the disconsolate Church: — “The Pope, once the wonder of the world, has fallen, and with him fell the heavenly temples, my members. Now is the reign of Simon Magus, and the riches of this world prevent just judgment. The Papal Court nourishes every kind of scandal, and turns God’s houses into a market. The sacraments are basely sold; the rich is honored, the poor is despised, he who gives most is best received. Golden was the first age of the Papal Court; then came the baser age of silver; next the iron age long set its yoke on the stubborn neck. Then came the age of clay. Could aught be worse? Aye, dung; and in dung sits the Papal Court. All things are degenerate; the Papal Court is rotten; the Pope himself, head of all wickedness, plots every kind of disgraceful scheme, and, while absolving others, hurries himself to death”.

Vrie’s History of the Council of Constance begins with a denunciation of the simony, the avarice, the ambition, and the luxury of the Pope, the bishops, and the entire clergy: “What shall I say of their luxury when the facts themselves cry out most openly on the shameless life of prelates and priests! They spare neither condition nor sex; maidens and married men and those living in the world are all alike to them”. “Benefices”, he complains, “which ought to provide alms for the poor have become the patrimony of the rich. One holds eighteen, another twenty, a third twenty-four; while the poor man is despised, his knowledge and his holy life are of no account. An infant newly born is provided by his careful parents with ecclesiastical benefices. We will hand him over, say they, to such a bishop who is our friend, or whom we have served, that we may be enriched from the goods of the Lord, and our inheritance be not divided amongst so many children”. Another is nurtured with more than fatherly affection by some dean or provost, that he may succeed him — is nurtured in luxury and sin. Another, perhaps the son of a prince, is worthy of an archdeaconry, much more so if he be a bishop’s nephew. Another eagerly seeks a place on every side, flatters, cringes, dissembles, nay, does not blush to beg, crawling on hands and knees, provided that by any guile he may creep into the patrimony of the Crucified One”.

If these utterances of Vrie be thought rhetorical, the more sober spirit of Nicolas de Clemanges, Doctor of the University of Paris, and Secretary to Benedict XIII, gives no very different account. “Now-a-days in undertaking a cure of souls no mention is made of Divine services, of the salvation or edification of those entrusted to the priest’s care; the only question is about the revenue. Nor do men count the revenue to be the value of the benefice to one who is resident and serves the Church, but what it will yield to one who is far away and perhaps never intends to visit it. No one obtains a benefice however great his merit without constant and repeated asking for it. The Popes in their desire for money have drawn all manner of elections into their own hands, and appoint ignorant and useless men, provided they are rich and can afford to pay large sums. The rights of bishops and patrons are set at naught; grants of benefices in expectancy are given to men who come from the plough and do not know A from B. The claims of the Popes for first-fruits, or the first year’s revenue on presentation to a benefice, and other dues have become intolerable. Papal collectors devastate the land, and excommunicate or suspend those who do not satisfy their demands; hence churches fall into ruins, and the church plate is sold; priests leave their benefices and take to secular occupations. Ecclesiastical causes are drawn into the Papal Court on every kind of pretext, and judgment is given in favor of those who pay the most. The Papal Curia alone is rich, and benefices are heaped on Cardinals who devour their revenues in luxury and neglect their duties”.

“In this state of things”, Clemanges proceeds, “the chief care of the clergy is of their pockets, not of their flocks. They strive, scold, litigate, and would endure with greater calmness the loss of ten thousand souls than of ten thousand shillings. If by chance there arise a pastor who does not walk in this way, who despises money, or condemns avarice, or does not wring gold justly or unjustly from his people, but strives by wholesome exhortation to benefit their souls, and meditates on the law of God more than the laws of men, forthwith the teeth of all are whetted against him. They cry out that he is entirely senseless and unworthy of the priesthood; he is ignorant of the law and does not know how to defend his rights, or rule his people, or restrain them by canonical censures; he knows nothing save idle preaching which is more fitting for friars who have none of the cares of temporal administration. The study of Holy Writ and its professors are openly turned to ridicule, especially by the Popes, who set up their traditions far above the Divine commands. The sacred and noble duty of preaching is held so cheap among them that they count nothing less befitting their dignity. Episcopal jurisdiction is useless. Priests condemned for theft, homicide, rape, sacrilege, or any other serious offence are only condemned to imprisonment on a diet of bread and water, and are imprisoned only till they have paid enough money, when they walk away scot free. On the other hand, the Episcopal jurisdiction is eagerly extended over harmless rustics, and summoners scour the land to pry out offences against canon law, for which the luckless victims are harassed by a protracted process and are driven to pay heavy fines to escape. Bishops do not hesitate to sell to priests licences to keep concubines. No care is taken to ordain proper persons to the priesthood. Men who are lazy and do not choose to work, but who wish to live in idleness, fly to the priesthood; as priests, they frequent brothels and taverns, and spend their time in drinking, reveling, and gambling, fight and brawl in their cups, and with their polluted lips blaspheme the name of God and the saints, and from the embraces of prostitutes hurry to the altar. Bishops are rarely resident in their sees and are generally engaged in political or temporal pursuits; yet they are of such a character that their absence is better than their presence. Chapters and their canons are no better than bishops. Monks are undisciplined and dissolute, idle and good for nothing. The Friars, on the other hand, are active enough, but active only in rapacity and voluptuousness. Nunneries are so sunk in shame, so openly given up to evil, that it is scarcely possible to speak of them”.

Clemanges admits that there are some good men among the clergy, but “scarcely one in a thousand sincerely does what his profession requires”. The Schism is the scourge of God on these abuses, and unless a reformation be wrought worse ills will follow and the Church will be destroyed. Denunciations to the same effect might be quoted from writers of almost every land. Lamentations over the corruptions of the Church were not confined to a few enthusiasts; men of high ecclesiastical position and of undoubted orthodoxy spoke openly of the abuses which everywhere prevailed. It was not wonderful that heresy spread, that the doctrines of Wycliffe and Huss made many converts. Men went to Constance with three aims in view — to restore the unity of the Church; to reform it in head and members; and to purge it of erroneous doctrines. These objects were to be attained by means of a General Council, though the exact scope of its power was yet to be determined.

The foundation of the Council’s authority was the theory that the plenitude of ecclesiastical power vested in the universal Church, whose Head was Christ, and of which the Pope was the chief minister. The executive power in the Church rested generally with the Pope; but a Council had a concurrent jurisdiction in all important matters, a corrective power in case of abuses, and a power of removing the Pope in case of necessity. For these purposes a Council had a power of compulsion and of punishment against a Pope. Such was the general result of the teaching of the Parisian theologians which had been turned into practice by the Council of Pisa.

But the Parisian theologians did not wish to push these principles too far. In practice they only aimed at rescuing the Papal primacy from the evils of the Schism, restoring its unity, regulating its powers, and then reinstating it in its former position. There was a school of German reformers who had a more ideal system before their eyes, who aimed at diminishing the plenitude of the Papal primacy, and making it depend on the recognition of the Church. Their views are fully expressed in a treatise written in 1410, most probably the work of Deitrich of Niem, who well knew the ways of the Roman Curia: “About the means of unity and reforming the Church”. Beginning from the Creed, the writer asserts his belief in “one Catholic and Apostolic Church”. The Catholic Church consists of all who believe in Christ, who is its only Head, and it can never err; the Apostolic Church is a particular and private Church, consisting of Pope, Cardinals, and prelates; its head is supposed to be the Pope, and it can err. The Catholic Church cannot be divided; but for the sake of its members we must labor for the unity of the Apostolic Church, which stands to the Catholic Church as a genus to a species. As the object of all society is the common good, a Pope can have no rights as against the well-being of the Church. The Papal primacy has been won by guile and fraud, and usurpation; but the idea that a Pope cannot be judged by any is contrary alike to reason and Scripture. The Pope is a man, born of man, subject to sin, a few days ago a peasant’s son; how is he to become impeccable and infallible? He is bound to resign or even to die if the common good should require it. The unity of the Church must be secured by the abdication of two of the three Popes, or, if it be necessary, by the compulsory abdication of all of them. Union with a particular Pope is no part of the faith of the Catholic Church, nor is it necessary for salvation; rather, Popes contending for their private goods are in mortal sin, and have no claim on the allegiance of Christians. A General Council represents the universal Church; and when the question to be settled is the resignation of a Pope, it does not belong to the Pope to summon the Council, but to prelates and princes who represent the community. The Pope is bound to obey such a Council, which can make new laws and rescind old ones. The Council must make a general reform in the Church, must sweep away simony, and amend the ways of Pope, Cardinals, prelates, and other clergy. For this purpose it must limit the power of the Pope who has invaded the rights of bishops, drawn all matters to the Curia, and overthrown the original constitution of the Church. The authority of the Pope must be reduced to its ancient limits, the abuses of the Cardinals must be checked, and the prelates and clergy purified”. The writer of this treatise admits that there are many difficulties in the way — difficulties arising from self-interest and conservative prejudice. A Council can only succeed if supported by the Emperor who holds from God a power over the bodies of all men. The work concludes with defining the business of the Council to be: (1) the reincorporation of the members of the universal Church, (2) the establishment of one undoubted and good Pope, (3) limitation of the Papal power, (4) restoration of the ancient rights of the primitive Church, (5) provisions concerning Pope and Cardinals which may prevent future schism, and finally (6) the removal of all abuses in the government of the Church.

Such was the large plan of the reforming party in Germany. It was to be decided in the Council assembled at Constance how much of it should be carried into actual effect.

The quiet city of Constance was now to be the center of European politics; for the Council held in it was looked upon as a congress rather than a synod. Every nation in Europe felt itself more or less helpless and in need of assistance. Italy was in a condition of hopeless confusion; the Greek Empire was in its decrepitude menaced by the Turks, whom Hungary also had just reason to dread; Bohemia was torn by civil and religious discord; the Empire was feeble and divided; in France, the madness of King Charles VI gave an opportunity to the bloody feuds of the Burgundians and Armagnacs; England had gathered strength a little under Henry IV, but was disturbed by the Lollards, and was on the brink of war with France. Europe was hopelessly distracted, and longed to realize its unity in some worthy work. The disunion of the ecclesiastical system was a symbol of the civil discord which everywhere prevailed. Men looked back longingly upon a more peaceful past, and Sigismund’s appeal to old traditions met with a ready answer. The Council of Pisa had been an assemblage of prelates; through Sigismund’s participation the Council of Constance became the meeting place of all the national interests of Christendom. Slowly but sincerely all the wisest in Europe prepared to set their faces towards Constance.

Men did not assemble at once. Till the last there had been doubts whether the Pope would come. In June came the Bishop of Augsburg and the Count of the of Nellenburg to make preparations on Sigismund’s part; it was not till August 12 that the Cardinal of Viviers arrived on behalf of the Pope, and preparations were made in earnest. The magistrates and citizens of Constance set themselves diligently to work to provide lodgings, lay up stores of provisions, take measures for the safety and order of the city, and make all the numerous changes which were necessary to enable them to fulfill the honorable duty which had fallen upon them. At first, however, prelates arrived slowly, chiefly from Italy, in obedience to the Pope. On November 1, owing to the scanty attendance, John deferred the opening of the Council till the 3rd, and in so doing pronounced the Council to be a continuation of the Council of Pisa. On November 3, the opening was again deferred till the 5th, when the Pope with fifteen Cardinals, two Patriarchs, twenty-three Archbishops, and a good number of other prelates, solemnly opened the Council by a service in the cathedral, after which the first session was fixed for the 16th.

Now that the Council had begun, arrivals became more frequent, still chiefly from Italy, whence the good news of the recovery of Rome filled the Pope’s heart with joy. Meanwhile the theologians were busy in drawing up proposals for the procedure of the Council. They suggested that proctors and promoters be appointed as at Pisa, who should lay matters before the Council; besides them was to be chosen a number of doctors who between the sessions should receive suggestions and determine the form in which business should be brought forward. It was generally agreed that the first question should be the restoration of the unity of the Church by procuring, if possible, the abdication of Gregory XII and Benedict XIII. At the first session on November 16, John XXIII preached a sermon on the text, “Speak ye every man the truth”; after which a Bull was read detailing the circumstances of the summoning of the Council, and its connection with the Councils of Pisa and Rome, exhorting the members to root out the errors of Wycliffe and reform the Church, and promising to all entire freedom of consultation and action. Nothing more was done that day. As yet the Pope and the Council were watching each other, and no one was ready to take a decided step. Those amongst the Germans and Italians who wished something to be done were waiting for the French and English prelates to lead them.

With the arrival of Peter d'Ailly, Bishop of Cambrai, on November 17, begins the first formation of an opposition to the Pope, which a trivial incident soon brought to light. On November 18, lodgings were prepared in the Augustinian monastery for the Cardinal of Ragusa, legate of Gregory XII. According to custom the legate’s arms were put up above the door and with them the arms of Gregory XII. On the following night the arms were ignominiously torn down, without doubt by the orders of John XXIII. This overt action awoke at once a feeling among the members of the Council, and a congregation was called to consider the matter. It was urged that Gregory, having been deposed by the Council of Pisa, could not have any claim to be acknowledged as Pope; but the general opinion was against any decision on this broad ground; and merely agreed that the arms should not be replaced because Gregory XII was not himself present, but only his legates. Soon after this, on November 28, came a letter from Sigismund telling of his coronation at Aachen, and announcing his speedy arrival at the Council. John was compelled in courtesy to answer by a letter urging him to come as soon as possible; but he was ill at ease. His plans for managing the Council did not seem to prosper. He had hoped to overbear opposition by the multitude of Italian bishops dependent on himself; but this intention was so openly displayed that the Council, in spite of John’s efforts to the contrary, began to talk of organizing itself by nations, so as to do away with the numerical preponderance of the Italians, and allow each separate kingdom to bring forward its own special grievances. Indeed, John was not a skillful diplomat; he could not disguise his uneasiness, and was too transparent in his intrigues. He gained secret information from his partisans of everything that was being talked about, and then was not discreet enough to keep his own counsel. The opposition between the Pope and the Council was day by day increasing, and he was anxious to have a secure position before Sigismund came.

Accordingly in a congregation of Cardinals and prelates held in the Pope’s Palace, though in the Pope’s absence, on December 7, the Italian or Papal party brought forward a schedule to regulate the business of the Council. This schedule laid down that matters concerning the faith were to take precedence over other matters; that the first step should be to confirm the acts of the Council of Pisa, and empower the Pope to proceed against Gregory XII and Benedict XIII if possible by compact, if not by force; that the Pope should summon a General Council every ten years, should abolish simony, and agree to a few obvious regulations. The object of this proposal was to recognize the acts of the Council of Pisa, so far as the deposition of Gregory and Benedict was concerned, but to give the Council of Constance an independent existence so far as regarded the reformation of the Church. Questions relating to faith the opinions of Wycliffe and Huss, were first to be discussed, and no doubt they would take up time enough till the Council dissolved, and all discussions of reforms, except on a few trivial points, might be again put off. This proposal of the Italians was opposed by Peter d'Ailly and other French prelates, who objected that the present Council was a continuation of the Council of Pisa for the purpose of proceeding with the union and reformation of the Church; until that had been accomplished it must rest on the basis of the Pisan Council, and could not confirm it : whoever spoke of dissolving or proroguing this Council was a favorer of schism and heresy.

A third proposal was made by four of the old Cardinals, which was directly aimed against the Pope. It set forth bluntly and straightforwardly the reforms which were needed in the Pope’s household and personal conduct. The Pope, it laid down, ought to have fixed hours in the day for religious duties, which ought not to be slurred over nor neglected; he must show diligence in business, and avoid simony; he should appear in public in Papal attire, and should conduct himself with gravity in word and gesture; he must take care that the Papal dignity be not counted cheap in the eyes of the nations flocking to the Council, and must remember the saying that “careless masters make lazy servants” ; he should not waste his time in idle talk with irresponsible persons, but should act with proper advice, regulate everything that goes on in the Council, and honestly work with it. There was certainly no want of plain speaking; and John might have perceived, had he been wise, how dangerous was his position between those who, like Peter d'Ailly, wished to set to work at the reformation of the Church, and those who were convinced that no reformation of the Church was possible till there had been a very decided reformation in the Pope.

No conclusion was arrived at from this discussion; but few days later, D'Ailly, in a general congregation in the Pope’s presence, read a memoir in favor of proceeding mildly against Gregory and Benedict as the surest way of promoting the cause of union. Resignation ought to be made easy to them in every way; a committee might be appointed by the Council chosen from the different nations to confer with them and arrange terms for their resignation. This view of D'Ailly's was vehemently attacked both by those who were partisans of John XXIII and by those who wished to maintain to the letter the authority of the Pisan Council. D'Ailly answered the arguments of both parties, and in so doing laid down a principle which was fruitful in later times. “Although the Pisan Council”, he said, “is believed with probability to have represented the universal Church which is ruled by the Holy Spirit and cannot err; still, every Christian is not bound to believe that that Council could not err, seeing that there have been many former Councils, accounted general, which, we read, have erred. For according to some great doctors a General Council can err not only in deed but also in law, and, what is more, in faith; for it is only the universal Church which has the privilege that it cannot err in faith”. To meet the general suspicion with which the proceedings of the Council of Pisa were regarded, D'Ailly laid down the weighty principle that the faith of Christendom was to be found graven on the heart of Christendom; and the infallibility of Councils was to depend on their decrees embodying the universal consciousness of the truth.

These differences of opinion prevented any definite conclusion, and further proceedings were deferred till the arrival of Sigismund. The second session, which John had announced for December 17, was not held till March 2, 1415. On the morning of Christmas Day, amid the glare of torches, Sigismund arrived in Constance with his Queen, Barbara of Cilly, Queen Elizabeth of Hungary, the Countess of Wurtemberg, and Rudolph of Saxony. He scarcely had time to change his raiment before he made his first public appearance at early mass on Christmas morning. The Markgraf of Brandenburg bore the royal scepter; the Elector of Saxony the drawn sword, and the Count of Cilly the golden apple of the Empire. Sigismund acted as deacon at the mass, and read with majesty the Gospel, “There went out a decree from Caesar Augustus”. The Pope, after the mass was over, handed the King a sword, with a charge to use it in protection of the Church, which Sigismund swore to do. Sigismund had a love of pomp and outward magnificence, and had timed his arrival at the Council so as to gratify it to the full. Once having secured his position, he was sure to receive due respect afterwards; the staunch adherents of the Council offered extravagant incense to the Imperial dignity. He was addressed as a second Messiah come to ransom and restore the desolate Church.

Sigismund’s arrival was the signal to all who had yet delayed to hasten their journey to Constance. Day by princes and prelates, nobles and theologians from every court and every nation of Europe, had been streaming into the little town on the borders of the Boden See. From Italy, France, and Germany; from England, Sweden, Denmark, Poland, Hungary, Bohemia, even from Constantinople, flocked the representatives of power and learning. In their train came a motley crew of sightseers and adventurers of every kind. The novels of the next generation show us how Constance was regarded as the metropolis of every kind of enjoyment, gallantry, and intrigue. The number of strangers present in Constance during the Council seems to have varied between 50,000 and 100,000, amongst whom were counted 1500 prostitutes and 1400 flute players, mountebanks, and such like. Thirty thousand horses were stalled in the city; beds were provided for 36,000 men; and boys made fortunes by raking up the hay that fell from the carts which thronged the streets with fodder. Excellent precautions were taken under the direction of the Pfalzgraf Lewis for the supply of provisions and the maintenance of order. In spite of the crowd there was no lack of food, nor did the prices rise owing to the pressure. Two thousand men sufficed to preserve order, and the utmost decorum marked all the proceedings of the Council, though we read that during the session of the Council 500 men disappeared by drowning in the lake. This vast number of attendants lent splendor and magnificence to all the proceedings, and gave an overpowering sense of their importance. The number of prelates was twenty-nine cardinals, three patriarchs, thirty-three archbishops, about 150 bishops, 100 abbots, 50 provosts, 300 doctors of theology, and 1800 priests. More than 100 dukes and earls and 2400 knights are recorded as present, together with 116 representatives of cities. The Pope’s suite alone consisted of 600 horsemen, and a simple priest like Huss had eight attendants. The enumeration of such details shows both the pomp and luxury of the age, and also the surprising power of organization which enabled a little city like Constance, whose ordinary population cannot have exceeded 7000, to accommodate so vast a multitude.

The Council awaited Sigismund’s arrival before deciding what business was first to be taken in hand. John and the Italians wished to begin with the policy of condemnation of Wycliffe’s opinions and the trial of Huss; the French, headed by Peter d'Ailly, wished to take in hand first the restoration of unity to the Church. In an Advent sermon, preached before Sigismund’s arrival, on the text, “There shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars”, D'Ailly defined clearly the position of the Council. The sun, he explained, represents the Papal majesty, the moon the Imperial power, the stars the different orders of ecclesiastics: in this Council all come together to represent the Universal Church. There must be one good Pope who lives rightly and governs well, not three in impious mockery of the Trinity. The Emperor with clemency and justice must carry out the decrees of the Council; the clergy, summoned by the Pope, must assist him with their wisdom. Three things are to be done. The past must be amended — that is, the Church must be reformed — the present must be duly ordered by attaining unity, and provision must be made for the future by wise precautions. Such was the policy which D'Ailly advocated with all his zeal and learning. He laid it down that there could be no real union without reformation, and no real reformation without union. Sigismund at once fell in with D'Ailly’s policy, and his first steps showed that he wished to proceed first with the restoration of unity. On December 29 he laid before the Council a statement of his embassies to Gregory XII, to Benedict XIII, and to the King of Aragon, and asked the Council to wait for the arrival of their of the ambassadors envoys.

On January 4, 1415, the question was discussed whether the envoys of the anti-popes were to be received as cardinals or no. John’s faction strongly opposed the concession by the Council of any such distinction to the envoys of those who had been deposed at the Council of Pisa. Peter d'Ailly, true to his principle of proceeding with all possible gentleness, and throwing no hindrances in the way of a union, succeeded in carrying his point that they should be received in their cardinals’ acts. This was a severe blow to John, and showed him that he had not much to expect from Sigismund’s help. On January 12 the ambassadors of Benedict and Aragon proposed that Sigismund should advance to Nice, and there confer with Benedict and the King of Aragon about means to end the Schism; to this request no answer was given at the time. On January 25 Gregory’s ambassadors were honorably received by Sigismund and the Council, as they were under the protection of Lewis of Bavaria, who next day presented a memoir undertaking, on behalf of himself and Gregory’s adherents, to procure Gregory’s abdication, and themselves join the Council, provided John did not preside, and Gregory was invited to attend. To this John’s partisans answered that the abdication of Gregory and Benedict, according to the provisions of the Council of Pisa, was desirable, but that the question of John’s presidency could not be discussed, as he was the lawful Pope whom all were bound to obey, and he was willing to labor with all his power for the reformation of the Church.

John XXIII felt that the toils were closing round him. He had not been present at the assemblies for some time, but he was carefully informed of everything that passed. He was glad to find an opportunity of making a public appearance, and preside at the solemn ceremony of the canonization of a saint. A Swedish lady, Briget, who instituted a new monastic order and died at Rome in 1373, had been canonized already by Boniface IX. But as this had occurred during the time of the Schism, the representatives of the northern nations were desirous of having the authenticity of their countrywoman’s title placed beyond dispute. The canonization took place on February I. A Danish archbishop, after mass was over, raised a silver image of the saint to popular adoration: the Te Deum was raised by those present, and the day closed with splendid festivities.

But ceremonies and festivities did not prevent the expression of what everyone had in his mind. It was clear that the union of the Church could only be accomplished by the resignation of all the three Popes, and the offer of Gregory’s abdication brought forward prominently the desirability of John’s resignation as well. The first to break the ice and venture to express the general idea was Guillaume Filastre, a learned French prelate whom John had made cardinal. Filastre circulated a memoir in which he pointed out that the surest and quickest means of procuring union was the mutual abdication of all three Popes; if this were so, John was bound to adopt that method; for if the Good Shepherd would lay down His life for His sheep, much more ought the Pope to lay down his dignities. If he was bound to do so, the Council might compel him to do so; but he should first be asked humbly to adopt this course, and should be assured of an honorable position in the Church if he complied. Sigismund expressed his approval of this memoir, which was largely circulated, and soon reached the Pope, who had not expected to be attacked by his own Cardinals, and was greatly enraged. Filastre, however, put on a bold face, visited the Pope, and assured him that he had acted to the best of his knowledge for the good of the Church. Filastre’s memoir drew forth several answers, urging that the course which he proposed destroyed the validity of the Council of Pisa, and that it was unjust to rank a legitimate Pope with men who had been condemned as schismatics and heretics. In a matter of so great delicacy it was judged wise to proceed by means of written memoirs, and not to enter upon a public discussion till considerable unanimity had been obtained.

Peter d'Ailly again came forward to defend the original scheme of the University of Paris and remove by subtle arguments founded on expediency the formal objections urged against John’s resignation. He recognized John as the lawful Pope, and allowed the validity of all that had been done at Pisa; but, he argued, the adherents of Benedict and Gregory do not agree, and all the arguments in favor of promoting union by voluntary abdication, which were urged at Pisa, apply with still greater force when there are three Popes instead of two. In the proposal for John’s abdication he is not ranked with the Popes who were deposed, but is set above these by being summoned to perform an “act which is for the good of the Church. If he refuse, the Council, as representing the Church, may compel him to lay aside his office, though no charge be made against him, simply as a means of effecting the unity which the Church longs for”.

John now clearly saw the issue which lay before him, but he still had hopes of escaping. Memoirs might be circulated and discussions carried on amongst the right of theologians assembled in Constance, but when the matters came to voting he would be safe. He had spent money freely to secure votes: the crowd of needy Italian prelates was all dependent on him; he had created fifty new bishops with a view to their votes in the Council. John’s adversaries saw this also, and boldly raised the question who had the right to vote. According to old custom there was no doubt that this right had been exercised only by bishops and abbots, and John’s adherents demanded that the old custom should be followed. But D'Ailly answered, with his usual learning and clearness of judgment, “that in the most ancient times, as may be found in the Acts of the Apostles and Eusebius, the object was to represent in councils the Christian community; only bishops and abbots voted because they were thoroughly representative. At present priors and heads of congregations had a greater right to vote than titular abbots who represented no one. Moreover doctors of theology and law were not heard of in old times, because there were no universities; they ought now to be admitted, as they had been at Pisa, on account of their position as teachers and representatives of learning. Also, as the question under discussion was the unity of the Church, it was absurd to exclude kings and princes, or their ambassadors, since they were especially affected”. Filastre went further than D'Ailly. He demanded that all the clergy should be allowed to vote. “An ignorant king or bishop”, he said, “is no better than a crowned ass”. He urged that the status of all priests was the same, though their rank might differ. This extremely democratic view did not meet with much favor, and D'Ailly’s suggestions were practically adopted by the Council.

Moreover the large crowd of Italians, dependent on the Pope, possessed a numerical superiority which was out of proportion to the interests which they represented. There had been some discussion of this point amongst the Germans; but the arrival of the English representatives on January 21 gave the question new prominence. The English were few in number; their voting power, if votes were to be counted by heads, was insignificant. The chief of the English prelates, Robert Hallam, Bishop of Salisbury, faced this fact and proposed to the Germans a scheme for solving the difficulty. He suggested that it would be well for the Council to adopt the same system as prevailed in the universities and organize itself by nations. A session of the Council had been fixed for February 6; but the English and Germans rose and protested against procedure by individual voting: they demanded that an equal number of deputies from each nation should have the ultimate decision on all important matters. Next day the French gave in their adhesion to the plan, and the Italians were powerless to resist. Thus without any definite decree of the Council a new form of constitution was established, which made the prospect of uniting the Church much more hopeful. Henceforth every matter was first discussed by each nation separately, and their conclusions were communicated to one another. When by this means an agreement had been reached, a general congregation of the four nations was held, and the conclusions were put into a final shape. A general session of the Council then gave formal validity to the decree.

John XXIII’s hopes of being able to lead the Council were now entirely frustrated; he had to consider how he might best escape destruction. The plan of a common abdication of all three Popes was proposed in a congregation of the English, Germans, and French on February 15, and was by them laid before the Italians, who gave a reluctant assent. John’s courage was entirely upset by hearing that a memoir had been circulated by some Italian, containing a list of his crimes and vices, and demanding that an enquiry be instituted into the truth of the charges. Doubtless John’s life had not been such that he would wish its details to be exposed in the eyes of assembled Christendom. He had done many things that ill befitted a priestly character, and enough could be substantiated against him to make the blackest charges seem credible on very slight evidence. John was entirely unnerved at the prospect; he consulted with his Cardinals whether he had not better at once confess to the Council the frailties from which, as a man, he had not been exempt. They advised him to wait awhile and think over it before committing himself. John’s relief was great when he heard that many of the English and Germans opposed an enquiry into his character from a wish to spare the reputation of the Papacy, and advocated that he be urged to abdicate.

This plan had now received such unanimous assent, that it was impossible for John to oppose it openly. He professed to accept it readily; but he hoped to do so in terms so vague as to lead to no results. His first schedule was rejected as too dubious in meaning. The second met with no better success, as it indulged in needless condemnation of Gregory and Benedict as heretics. The Germans passed a series of strong resolutions which pressed hard upon John. They declared that the Council had supreme authority to end the Schism, and that John was bound under the penalty of mortal sin to accept a formula of resignation offered by the three nations. On February 28 the formula was drawn up. In it John was made to “undertake and promise” to resign, if, and as far as, Gregory and Benedict did the same. The representatives of the University of Paris suggested that this only imposed a civil obligation, which it would be well to strengthen by a religious one; they proposed the addition of the words “swear and vow”, which were unanimously accepted. On March 1 this formula was presented to the Pope in the presence of Sigismund and deputies from the nations. John received it with a good grace. First he read it to himself, and then, remarking that he had only come to Constance for the purpose of giving peace to the Church, read it aloud with a clear voice. Tears of joy streamed down many faces at the accomplishment of this first step towards the union of the Church; the assembled prelates raised the Te Deum, but more wept than sang and many did both. In the city the bells rang joyously, and the utmost delight prevailed at this first result of the Council, which had sat four months and had achieved nothing. Next day John read the same formula publicly in the cathedral; at the solemn words of promise he bowed before the altar and laid his hand upon his breast. Sigismund rose from his throne, laid aside his crown, and kneeling before the Pope kissed his foot in token of gratitude. The Patriarch of Alexandria thanked him in the name of the Council.

The unanimity between John and the Council seemed to be complete; but, when the first outburst of joy was over, John’s resignation seemed to be too good news to be true. There was a wish to bound him more completely, and it was suggested that he should embody his resignation in a Bull. At first he refused; but Sigismund’s influence obtained the Bull on March 7. The Council was anxious to be quite sure of its own position, as it was now in a position to authorize the interview which Benedict’s ambassadors had suggested between their master and Sigismund at Nice. When preparations were being made for this purpose it was suggested that John should name as his proctors, with full power to resign in his behalf, Sigismund and the prelates who were to accompany him. This was a vital point, on which John could not give way: if he did, his chances were entirely lost and his resignation, which was at present only conditional, would be irrevocably accomplished. He adroitly proposed that he should go himself to meet Benedict; but the Council remembered the innumerable obstacles which had been found to prevent the meeting of Gregory and Benedict; nor did they desire to let John leave Constance lest he should at once dissolve the Council. Mutual distrust blazed up in an instant. Frederick of Austria had come to Constance on February 18, and though he studiously avoided the Pope, rumors were rife of an understanding between them, and suspicions were keen. John made a last attempt to soften Sigismund by presenting him, on March 10, with the golden rose, which, according to old custom, the Popes consecrated, when they chose, three weeks before Easter, and presented to kings whom they delighted to honor. Sigismund received the gift with due respect, and bore it in solemn procession through the city; but it was significant that he did not keep it for himself, but offered it to the Virgin in the cathedral.

Sigismund soon showed that he was not moved by this touching mark of Papal affection. Next day, March II, he presided at a congregation, in which some members spoke of electing a new Pope, after securing the abdication of the three claimants. Archbishop of Mainz rose and protested that he could obey no one except John XXIII. Words ran high; the old accusations against John were again brought up, and the assembly dispersed in confusion. It was clear that there was war between Sigismund and the Pope. John did not mean to take any steps to accomplish his resignation; Sigismund was resolved to hold him to his promise. As John would not give way, it was clear that he must be purposing to leave Constance. Sigismund gave orders that the gates should be closely guarded. When one of the Cardinals attempted to pass he was turned back. John summoned the great lords and magistrates of the city, and loudly complained to the Council, with good reason, of this violation of the safe-conduct under which they were all assembled. The burgomaster of Constance pleaded Sigismund’s orders; Frederick of Austria stood forward and declared that, for his part, he intended to keep the safe-conduct which he had promised. Next day, March 14, Sigismund summoned a congregation of the French, Germans, and English, who sent to the Pope a renewed demand that he would appoint proctors to carry out his abdication; they added a request that he would promise not to dissolve the Council or allow anyone to leave Constance till union had been achieved. With these demands Sigismund sent his excuse about the watch over the gate; he said that he had set it at the request of some of the Cardinals, who feared lest the Council should melt away; he wished, however, in all things to stand by his safe-conduct. John agreed not to dissolve the Council, but suggested its transference to some place in the neighborhood of Nice, where he might more conveniently meet Benedict and perform his resignation in person.

Matters were now in a very awkward position. Sigismund and the three Transalpine nations stood opposed to the Pope and the Italians. John’s resistance clearly indicated an intention of quitting Constance; this made his opponents more eager to deprive him by any means of the power of harming them. In a congregation on March 17 the Germans and English were for insisting on the appointment of proctors by the Pope; but the French were opposed to driving matters to extremities, and voted for adjournment. The French already had had experience of the difficulties in the way of using violence to a Pope; they had also a stronger sense of decorum than the Teutons, and seem to have resented the high-handed way in which Sigismund managed matters. The close alliance between the English and the Germans somewhat annoyed them; for, though the mission of the Council was a peaceful one, national animosity could not be entirely silenced, and the French knew that England was on the brink of waging an unjust war of invasion against their country. No sooner was there the faintest sign of a breach in the serried front of the Transalpine nations than the Italians hastened to take advantage of it. They sent five Cardinals to detach the French from the English and Germans. Amongst them was Peter d'Ailly, for the Cardinals as Italian prelates formed part of the Italian nation. D'Ailly, who had been the most prominent man in the beginning of the Council, disapproved of the violent and revolutionary spirit which had been developed since Sigismund’s arrival. He now used his influence with the French to induce them not to join with the Germans and English in their scheme of forcing the Pope to appoint proctors; he also begged them to withdraw from the method of voting by nations, and advocate the old method of personal voting. Though D'Ailly had argued strongly in favor of extending the franchise, he was not prepared to admit an entire change in the method of voting.

The prospect of a union between the French and the Italians enraged still more the Germans and English. At a Congregation on March 19 the English proposed that John be seized and made prisoner. Sigismund, followed by the English and Germans, proceeded with this demand to an assembly where the French were sitting in conference with the five Cardinals deputed by the Italians. If the French had before resented Sigismund’s conduct, they now blazed up at this unwarrantable interference, and angrily demanded that their deliberations should be left undisturbed. The English and Germans withdrew, but Sigismund and his lords remained. The French demanded that the lords also should withdraw. Sigismund lost his temper, for the majority of those who sat amongst the French were his subjects. He angrily exclaimed, “Now it will be seen who is for union and faithful to the Roman Empire”. Peter d'Ailly, indignant at this attempted coercion, rose and left the room; the other four Cardinals protested that they were not free to deliberate. On the King’s departure messengers were sent to ask if the French were to consider themselves free. Sigismund had now recovered his equanimity, and answered that they were perfectly free; he had spoken in haste. At the same time he ordered all who did not belong to the French nation to quit their assembly on pain of imprisonment. The quarrel seemed to have become serious; but the ambassadors of the French King, who had arrived on March 5, entered the French assembly, and said that the French King wished that the Pope should appoint proctors, and should not leave Constance nor dissolve the Council. This calmed the wrath of the French, who now separated themselves again from the Italians and joined the Germans and English.

There now seemed to be no hope for John XXIII, but the sense of his danger at length spurred him to Frederick take the desperate step of fleeing from Constance. He had bound to himself Frederick of Austria, a young and adventurous prince, who hated Sigismund, feared the Council, and hoped to gain much from the Pope. He had come to Constance, and there found his pride outraged by the commanding position assigned to Sigismund. He had been called upon by Sigismund to do homage for his lands, and, though at first he refused, was driven to do so by the good terms on which the King stood with the Swiss cantons, the hereditary foes of the Austrian House. He strove to detach Sigismund from the Swiss by offering aid for a war against them. But Sigismund was too wily for him, and gave the Swiss information of his proposals; when the Swiss envoys arrived in Constance, Sigismund confronted them with Frederick, and offered his services to settle any disputes which might exist between them. Outwitted and filled with shame and rage, Frederick stammered out excuses, and had to arrange matters with the Swiss by pleading that he had been misinformed. But Frederick’s humiliation made him burn with desire to upset Sigismund’s triumphal progress at the Council. He knew that he would not stand alone, and that John still had powerful friends. The Duke of Burgundy wished by all means to dissolve the Council; the Archbishop of Mainz was Sigismund’s foe and a staunch adherent of John; the Markgraf of Baden had been won over to John’s side by the substantial argument of a gift of 16,000 florins.

John and Frederick laid their plans cautiously and skillfully, yet not without awakening some suspicion. Sigismund thought it well to visit the Pope and reassure him. He found him in the evening lying on his bed, and enquired about his health; John answered that the air of Constance did not agree with him. Sigismund said that there were many pleasant residences near Constance where he might go for change of air, and offered to accompany him; he begged him not to think of leaving Constance secretly. John answered that he had no intention of leaving till the Council was dissolved. Men afterwards regarded this answer as framed like an oracle of old; John meant that by his departure he would dissolve the Council. No sooner was the King gone than John, in the hearing of his attendants, called him a “beggar, a drunkard, a fool, and a barbarian”. He accused Sigismund of sending to demand a bribe for keeping him in his Papal office. Most likely John here laid his finger on Sigismund’s weak point; Sigismund was poor, and may have demanded money for the expenses of the Council from the Pope, whom he was laboring to drive from his office. John’s attendants wondered to hear such plain speaking: their master’s tongue was loosened by the thought that he would soon be rid of the necessity of the intolerable self-restraint under which he had been lately living.

Next day, March 20, a tournament was held outside the walls, in which Frederick of Austria had challenged the son of the Count of Cilly to break a lance with him. The town was emptied of the throng, which flocked to the spectacle. In the general confusion the Pope, disguised as a groom, mounted on a sorry nag, covered by a grey cloak and a hat slouched over his face, with a bow hanging from his saddle, passed out unperceived. He slowly made his way to Ermatingen, on the Unter See, where a boat was waiting to convey him to Schaffhausen, a town belonging to Frederick. In the midst of the tourney a servant whispered the news into Frederick’s ear. He continued the joust for a while, and gracefully allowed his adversary to win the prize; then he took horse and rode off the same evening to join the Pope at Schaffhausen.

CHAPTER II.

DEPOSITION OF JOHN XXIII.

1415

Great was the tumult in Constance when at nightfall the flight of the Pope became known. The mob rushed to plunder the Pope’s palace; merchants began to pack their goods and prepare to defend themselves against a riot; most men thought that the Council had come to an end. The prelates who had spoken against John looked on themselves as ruined; those who were zealous for the reform of the Church saw their hopes entirely overthrown. But Sigismund showed energy and determination in this crisis. He ordered the burgomaster to call the citizens under arms and maintain order, and the Italian merchants saw with wonder the ease with which quiet was restored. Next day Sigismund, accompanied by Lewis of Bavaria, rode through the city, and with his own mouth exhorted all men to quietness and courage; he made proclamation that if John were fled he knew how to bring him back; meanwhile any one was free to follow him who chose. In a general congregation he held the same language, affirming that he would protect the Council and would labor for union even to death: he accused Frederick of Austria of abetting the Pope’s flight, and cited him to appear and answer for his deeds. The College of Cardinals chose three of their number as a deputation to John to beg him not to dissolve the Council, but appoint proctors to carry out his resignation. The same day brought a letter from John to Sigismund. “By the grace of God we are free and in agreeable atmosphere at Schaffhausen, where we came unknown to our son Frederick of Austria, with no intention of going back from our promise of abdicating to promote the peace of the Church, but that we may carry it out in freedom and with regard to our health”. The needless lie about Frederick of Austria was not calculated to carry much conviction of the truth of the Pope’s promises.

Before the departure of the Cardinals, the Council wishing to have a clear definition of their authority, so as not to depend entirely on the influence of Sigismund, requested Gerson, as the most learned theologian present, to preach upon the subject. Gerson’s sermon on March 23 laid down the general principles that the Church is united to its one Head, Christ, and that a General Council, representing the Church, is the authority or rule, guided by the Holy Ghost, ordained by Christ, which all, even the Pope, are bound to obey; the Pope is not so far above positive law as to set aside the decrees of a Council which can limit, though not abolish, the Pope’s power. The representatives of the University of Paris extended these principles of Gerson, and asserted that the Council could not be dissolved, but might continue itself and invoke the secular arm against all who refused to obey it; some went further than the majority would admit, and asserted that the Council was in all points above the Pope, and was not bound to obey him.

The Cardinals now found themselves in a difficult position; they did not wish to break with the Council, yet so long as John professed his willingness to abdicate they had not sufficient grounds for shaking off their allegiance to him. They thought it wiser not to be present at Gerson’s sermon, though they were informed by Sigismund of its purport, which the three Cardinal deputies, accompanied by the Archbishop of Rheims, communicated to the Pope at Schaffhausen. Meanwhile John had written letters to the University of Paris, the King of France, and the Duke of Orleans, explaining the reasons of his flight. In them he artfully tried to play upon the hatred of the French to the English, and on the French King’s jealousy of Sigismund. He complained that the English and Germans had leagued themselves together to carry matters with a high hand, and that Sigismund had tried to make himself master of the Council; for these reasons he had retired to Schaffhausen, but was ready to accomplish his abdication, and wished to journey through France on his way to meet Benedict. These letters were written to no purpose, as they were only referred back to the Council. On the same day John sent to Constance a peremptory order to all the officers of the Curia to join him at Schaffhausen within six days, under pain of excommunication. Seven Cardinals left Constance next day, and went to Schaffhausen, as did the greater part of the Curia.

On March 25 the Archbishop of Rheims returned with letters from the Pope to Sigismund, saying that he had gone to Schaffhausen merely for change of air, not through any fear of danger. He offered to appoint as proctors to accomplish his resignation, in case Gregory and Benedict also resigned, the whole body of Cardinals, or three of them, and four prelates, one out of each nation, of whom three should be empowered to act. But the Council was full of suspicion of John and of his Cardinals; it resolved to go its own way according to the principles laid down by Gerson, and to pay no further heed to the Pope. So strong was the Council that it refused to consider the reasonable difficulties of the Cardinals, who felt themselves bound to hold by John until he openly set himself in opposition to the Council. The Cardinals, like all moderate men who try to guide their conduct by ordinary rules in extraordinary crises, were regarded with suspicion by both sides. They were not summoned to the assembly of nations held on March 26 to prepare decrees which were to be submitted to a session of the Council on the same day; the resolutions were only handed to them to read over before the session of the Council opened. They demanded that the session be deferred till the return of their envoys from the Pope; they were told that Sigismund and the Council were weary of subterfuges.

They were in sore perplexity; a wave of revolutionary spirit threatened to sweep away Pope and Cardinals at the same time. It seemed to some sufficiently dreadful that a session of the Council should be held without the Pope; though for this at least the precedent of the Council of Pisa could be claimed. But it was an unheard-of innovation that the Council should meet in spite of Pope and Cardinals; the exclusive aristocracy which had been willing to weaken the monarchical system of the Church found that its own position was almost lost as well. Some of the Cardinals at once retired to John; many thought it wise to pretend illness and watch how events turned out; only two determined to make a last effort to save the dignity of the Cardinals from the violence of the Council. Peter d'Ailly and Zabarella presented themselves at the session and succeeded in obtaining the respect due to their rank. D'Ailly celebrated the mass and presided; Zabarella read the decrees, which affirmed that the Council had been duly summoned to Constance, was not dissolved by the Pope’s flight, and ought not to be dissolved till the Schism was ended and the Church reformed; meanwhile the Council would not be transferred to another place without its own assent, nor should prelates leave the Council till its work was done. A loud cry of “Placet” followed the reading of these decrees. Then Zabarella went on to read a protest in behalf of himself and D'Ailly, saying that so long as John labored for the peace of the Church they must hold by him; they could have wished that this session had been deferred, but, as the Council determined otherwise, they thought it right to be present, in the hope that what was done would be confirmed by the Pope. The skillful and courageous behavior of the two Cardinals saved the prestige of the Sacred College, and prevented an irrevocable breach between the Council and the old traditions of the Church, which would have strengthened the hands of John XXIII.

On the same evening the envoys of the Cardinals returned from Schaffhausen, and next day, March 27, before a general congregation, reported the Pope’s offer to appoint the Cardinals as his proctors, so that two of them could carry out his resignation, even against his will; he promised not to dissolve the Council till there was a perfect union of the Church; he demanded security for his own person and indemnity for the Duke of Austria. But the Council was too suspicious of John to trust to any fair promises, nor did the attitude of the Cardinals who had come from Schaffhausen tend to confirm their confidence. In the discussion that followed some of them ventured to hint that the Pope’s withdrawal had dissolved the Council; they were angrily answered that the Pope was not above the Council, but subject to it. The suspicions entertained against the Cardinals were increased by the fact that a copy of John’s summons to his Curia to attend him at Schaffhausen had been posted on the doors of the Cathedral of Constance, clearly at the instigation of some of the Cardinals who had returned from visiting the Pope. The publication next day, March 25, of a prolongation of the period within which they were bound to leave Constance, only increased the irritation of the Council. Congregations of the nations set to work busily to frame decrees establishing the authority of the Council without the Pope; and the Cardinals, in alarm, saw the opinions of the most advanced advocates of the reforming party being adopted with enthusiasm by the entire Council. In vain they endeavored to arrest the current of opinion by offering new concessions on behalf of the Pope; Sigismund should be joined as proctor to the Cardinals, and the summons to the Curia to leave Constance should be entirely withdrawn. It was too late; the distrust of John XXIII and the Cardinals was too deep-seated and had been too well deserved. Under the excitement of the last few days the Council had risen to a sense of its own importance, and was determined to assert itself in spite of Pope or Cardinals.

John XXIII, who was kept well informed of what was passing, grew alarmed at the turn which affairs were john taking. Before the Council had asserted its power he thought it wise to remove himself to a more secure spot than Schaffhausen. The position of Frederick of Austria seemed precarious. The Swiss Confederates were preparing to attack him; many of his own vassals renounced their allegiance; Schaffhausen would not be safe against an attack. So on March 29, on a rainy day, John left Schaffhausen. Outside the gate he paused, and caused a notary to draw up a protest that all his oaths, vows, and promises made at Constance had been drawn from him through fear of violence; then he galloped off to the strong castle of Lauffenberg, some thirty miles higher up the Rhine. He did not take with him even the Cardinals who were at Schaffhausen, and they returned ignominiously to Constance, where they were received with decorous contempt. John had now thrown off the veil and justified the suspicions of his adversaries. His policy of chicanery and prevarication had been baffled by the resolute attitude of the Council, and he was driven at last to try the chances of open war.

The Cardinals still desperately strove to check the alarming advance of the pretensions of the Council. They saw, and saw rightly, that an unmodified assertion of the supremacy of a General Council over the Pope meant the introduction of a new principle into the existing government of the Church. They threatened to absent themselves from the session to be held on March 30, unless the articles to be proposed were modified. Sigismund offered to lay their views before the nations, and gave them vague hopes that some slight changes might be made. They prevailed on the French ambassadors and the deputies of the University to join with them in begging Sigismund to lay aside his intention of making war on Frederick of Austria; but Sigismund was inexorable. After much anxious deliberation all the Cardinals who were in Constance, except Peter d'Ailly and the Cardinal of Viviers, presented themselves at the session held on March 30. Cardinal Orsini presided; Sigismund appeared in royal robes, accompanied by several lords and about two hundred fathers. The decrees were given to the Cardinal Zabarella to read. They set forth that “This Synod, lawfully assembled in the Holy Ghost, forming a General Council representing the Catholic Church Militant, has its power immediately from Christ, and all men, of every rank and dignity, even the Pope, are bound to obey it in matters pertaining to the faith and the extirpation of the present schism”. — So far Zabarella read, but seeing that the words went on, — “and general reformation of the Church of God in head and members”, he paused, and saying that they were contrary to general opinion, omitted them, and passed on to the next decrees, declaring that the Pope could not dissolve the Council, and that all acts done by him to the detriment of the Council should be null and void. The Cardinals were willing to admit the supremacy of the Council over the Pope for the immediate purpose of ending the Schism, but they were not willing that it should extend to the matter which more closely concerned themselves, that of the reformation of the Church. In the tumult that followed his omission of the words of the decree it was not sure how much he read afterwards. The session broke up in confusion, and the wrath of the Council against the Cardinals blazed higher. A pamphlet, written by some German prelate, attacked them in no measured language. They had been in league with the Pope against the Council; many of them had followed him to Schaffhausen, and had only returned because they were not satisfied with the cookery there. Their character might be seen by that of the Pope whom they elected — a tyrant, a homicide, a Simoniac, steeped in unmentionable vices. If they chose him as being the best among their number, what was to be thought of the rest?

Yet the Council behaved with dignity. It named deputies to confer with Zabarella, but it refused to reconsider the decrees themselves. On April 6 another session was held, in which the former decrees were again submitted and approved, on being read by the Bishop of Posen, with two additions — that any one refusing to obey the decrees of the Council might be punished, and that John XXIII had enjoyed full liberty while at Constance. This last decree was an answer to John’s plea on leaving Schaffhausen, that he had fled from Constance through fear of violence. On this point his cunning had overreached itself, as the moral force which a plea of coercion might have possessed was lost by his first excuse that he left for the sake of change of air. He published a further allegation on April 7 that he fled lest the obvious violence to which he was exposed at Constance might afford a pretext to Gregory and Benedict for withdrawing their offers of resignation. John was much too plausible, and failed entirely to see that he could not establish his moral character in the face of Europe by putting forward pleas which no one could profess to believe.

John was soon driven to feel his helplessness. On April 6 the Council besought Sigismund to bring back the Pope to Constance. On April 7 the ban of the Empire was issued against Frederick of Austria, and the excommunication of the Council was pronounced against the disturber of its peace. The hope of booty made many willing to carry out the behests of the King and the Council. Frederick, Burkgraf of Nurnberg, led an army into Swabia, where strong towns fell before him. Schaffhausen, too weak to endure a siege, at once submitted to Sigismund. Another army was gathered from Bavaria and overran the Tyrol. Still Frederick of Austria might have held out securely if the Swiss had maintained neutrality, as at first they intended to do in accordance with a fifty years’ peace which they had made with Austria in 1412. But Sigismund urged that an engagement was not binding in the case of an excommunicated man; he held before them the prospect of increase of territory at Frederick’s expense; he promised to make no peace with Frederick that did not guarantee their safety. The fathers of the Council added a threat of excommunication if they did not lend their aid to the cause of the Church. Then the scruples of the Swiss were overcome; they poured their levies into the Austrian possessions and advanced victoriously to the walls of Baden. On another side the Pfalzgraf Lewis overran Alsace; Frederick of Austria, in Freiburg, where he had fled for safety, received nothing but messages of calamity. John XXIII himself went to Freiburg on April 10, and was convinced that he could gain aid from the Duke of Burgundy. He strove in vain to encourage Frederick to hold out till succors came; he placed all his treasure at Frederick’s disposal, promised him the aid of Italian condottieri, held out hopes of help from Venice and Milan, if Frederick would but resist for a time. But Frederick’s spirit was broken; he thought only of making his peace on any terms with Sigismund, and regarded John’s person as a valuable pledge by which he might appease the storm which he had drawn upon his own head.

Meanwhile the Council went its way with stately decorum. On April 17 a general session approved a letter addressed to all the kings and princes of Europe, recounting the circumstances of the Pope’s flight, dwelling upon his entire freedom of action at Constance, lamenting the fortunes of the Church under such an unworthy shepherd, announcing the intention of the Council to send envoys to demand John’s return. The Council appointed as its envoys Cardinals Filastre and Zabarella, and drew up a document for John to sign, appointing proctors to carry out his resignation; John was to be required within two days to return to Constance, or take up his abode at Ulm, Ravensburg, or Basel, till his resignation was accomplished. In this session also the ill-concealed hatred against the Cardinals found expression in a proposal to exclude them from the sittings of the Council. A memoir, probably written by Dietrich of Niem, was read, arguing that if the object of the Council were the reformation of its head and members — i.e., the Pope and the Cardinals — the Cardinals ought not to be judges in their own cause; by their election of John XXIII they had sufficiently scandalized the Church, and had shown themselves ready to aid him in thwarting the Council. No conclusion was come to on this point, but we see how high feeling must have run by the fact that the Council found it necessary to forbid the publication of libelous or defamatory documents under pain of excommunication.

Next day, April 18, the Cardinals presented a series of propositions affirming the authority and headship of the Roman Church over a General Council. Even over the Universal Church the Roman Church, or the Pope, has authority immediately from God as much as a General Council; indeed, the Roman Church forms the principal part of a General Council, over which the Pope presides, and in his absence the Cardinals; without the assent of the Roman Church, nothing could be decided by a Council. The theologians set themselves to answer this document clause by clause, but we see that they were hard pressed in doing so. Throughout the discussions of the last thirty years the arguments in favor of a Council had owed their force to the Schism and its evils had been founded on a plea of present necessity. But the arguments against schismatic Popes lost much of their power when applied to the united College of Cardinals. The advocates of the Council had been enabled to set up the claims of the Universal Church against those of the Roman Church, because the unity of the Roman Church was destroyed by the doubt as to its head. But no one ventured to impugn the validity of the position of the College of Cardinals; and when they asserted themselves as the rightful representatives of the Roman Church, and took their stand upon its privileges, the theologians of the Council were in a strait. They answered the pleas of the Cardinals hesitatingly, rather carping at the expressions used than venturing to attack the conclusions. The Church of Rome, they admit, is head of all the Churches, yet not for the sake of nourishing schism; there is a difference between a Council summoned to decide matters of faith and one summoned to extinguish a schism caused by the Cardinals themselves; whatever power the Cardinals might have in the first case, they ought not in the second case to judge their own cause. We see in this the weakness of the Conciliar argument. Taking advantage of a disputed succession in the Papal monarchy, it attempted to raise, in a time of anarchy, a cry for a representative system in the government of the Church. Against the distracted monarchy it could make good its position; but when the nobles of the Court asserted in their own defence the principles on which the monarchy was founded, the advocates of the representative system did not dare directly to dispute them. The Council did not decree the exclusion of the Cardinals; but practically they were rendered powerless by the fact that the conclusions of the assemblies of the nations were only handed to them a short while before the sessions of the Council, so that they had no time to influence the final decisions. On May 2 they demanded the power to organize themselves like the nations, urging that the English nation was only represented by twenty. The Council, however, refused, and bade them each join their own nation. Finally, at the session on May 25, we find the College of Cardinals ranking by the side of the nations, though the understanding between them was never cordial.

On April 19 the Cardinals Filastre and Zabarella left Constance to bear the Council’s proposals to John XXIII. They found that he had left Freiburg for Breisach, still holding to his plan of drawing nearer to the territory of the Duke of Burgundy, who he hoped would send an escort to conduct him to Avignon. But, with the fate of Frederick of Austria before his eyes, John of Burgundy hesitated to incur the hostility of the Council. John XXIII remained at Breisach, where the envoys found him on April 23, and laid before him the Council’s demands. John promised to answer them next day; but next day they learned with astonishment that he had fled in the early dawn to Neuenburg. The envoys accordingly retraced their steps to Freiburg, where, to their surprise, they again found the Pope on April 27.

John XXIII’s course was now run. Frederick of Austria had taken the first steps towards reconciliation with Sigismund, and knew that for this purpose he must be prepared to deliver over John to his foes. John was accordingly summoned by Frederick to take refuge in Freiburg for greater safety, and with a heavy heart was compelled to obey. There he had to listen again to the demands of the envoys of the Council, and sullenly answered that he would send his proctors in a few days. On the return of the legates to Constance, April 29, it was resolved to cite John to appear. Next day Frederick of Austria came humbly to Constance to beg Sigismund’s forgiveness, and John’s proctor, bearing his demands and reservations, was not thought worthy of notice.

The Council was now omnipotent, and determined to give John XXIII no quarter. In a session on May 2 a citation was issued summoning him to answer charges of heresy, schism, simony, maladministration, waste of Church property, and scandals caused to the Church by his life and character. On May 4 the citation was affixed to the gates of Constance, and next day the humiliation of Frederick of Austria before Sigismund gave the Council a foretaste of its triumph. In the refectory of the Franciscan monastery Sigismund sat on his throne surrounded by deputies of the four nations and the ambassadors of the Italian States who were present in Constance. The Duke of Austria was introduced as a humble suppliant by Frederick of Nurnberg and Lewis of Bavaria, who, in his behalf, supplicated for pardon, and submitted his lands and person to the royal grace. Sigismund asked Frederick if he assented to this prayer; on bended knee, with broken voice, Frederick repeated his request for mercy. Sigismund raised him from his knees, saying, “I am sorry that you have brought this upon yourself”. Then Frederick swore fealty to Sigismund, resigned his lands into Sigismund’s hands to hold at his good pleasure, promised to bring back Pope John to Constance and to remain as hostage till his promises were fulfilled. The heart of Sigismund swelled with pride at his triumph; turning to the Italian ambassadors, he exclaimed, “You know what mighty men the Dukes of Austria are; see now what a German King can do”. It was a pardonable boast, and Sigismund deserved a triumph for his skill in seizing the opportunity of raising the dignity of the Empire on the weakness of the Church.

The Council did not entirely trust to Frederick’s power of bringing John to Constance. On May 9 the Burggraf Nurnberg, with 300 armed men, escorted to Freiburg envoys of the Council who begged John to return. John put a good face on the matter, and professed his readiness, but took no steps beyond sending a secret commission to the Cardinals d'Ailly, Filastre, and Zabarella to act as proctors in his defense. After some hesitation they refused to act on his behalf; and the Council, in session on May 13, ruled that the citation had been addressed to him in person, and that he was bound to appear himself. Next day he was condemned for contumacy, and was declared suspended from the Papal office. Commissioners were appointed to examine witnesses and draw up charges against John, and they were not long in discharging their office. A terrible list of seventy articles was drawn out against John, though these were for very shame reduced to fifty-four before they were laid before the Council. They covered John’s whole life and left him no shred of virtue, no vestige of reputation. From the days of his youth he was steeped in vice, of evil disposition, lying, disobedient to his parents; each step in his career had been gained by underhand means; he had poisoned his predecessor, had despised the rites of religion like a pagan, was an oppressor of the poor, a robber of churches, stained by carnal indulgences, a vessel of every kind of sin. Besides these general terms of abuse the specific charges against him range from incest to an offer to sell the Florentines the sacred relic of the head of John the Baptist, belonging to the Monastery of S. Silvestro at Rome. Amidst this overwhelming mass of accusations there is only one thing of which we feel convinced, that John certainly had the power of inspiring deep animosity.

Meanwhile John himself was brought by Frederick of Nurnberg to Radolfszell, eight miles from Constance. He refused to go any further; his spirit was broken, and he was only anxious to escape the shame of a personal humiliation. He was accordingly left at Radolfszell strictly guarded. On May 20 envoys of the Council announced to him his suspension from the Papacy, and demanded the insignia of his office, the seal and the fisherman’s ring. John submitted with tears and expressions of contrition. On May 25 the articles against him were laid before the Council, with a statement of the number and nature of the witnesses on each head. They received the solemn approval of a proctor nominated by each nation. The Council was terribly unanimous; even the contest with the Cardinals was laid aside, and the College at last was allowed to organize itself as a nation, for we find the Cardinal of Viviers acting as proctor to convey the assent of the College. Five Cardinals were sent to announce to John that his deposition was imminent. John did not trust himself to reply in words, but handed them a writing, in which he declared that he was willing to submit to the Council in all things, and would not object to its decision, whatever it might be; he only asked them to respect his honor and person.

The Council was gratified by this unqualified submission, but thought it well to take all precautions. Next day five commissioners were sent to carry to John the articles on which he was accused, and summon him to answer in person if he thought fit. John refused to read the articles, and repeated his previous answer, that he submitted to the Council, which could not err; in its infallibility was his one defense; he only asked that his honor be spared as much as possible. He sent a letter to Sigismund, “his only hope after God”, reminding him of their past relations, begging him “by the bowels of compassion of Jesus Christ to be mindful of your plighted word, by which you gave us hope”, and entreating him to use his influence with the Council on the side of mercy. John’s submission disarmed the extreme bitterness felt against him, and the sentence of deprivation pronounced against him on May 29 was couched in much milder terms than the articles would have warranted. It set forth the evils with which John’s flight from Constance had threatened the unity of the Church, and then proceeded, “Our Lord Pope John was moreover a notorious simoniac, a waster of the goods and rights not only of the Roman Church but others, an evil administrator both of the spiritualities and temporalities of the Church, causing notorious scandal to the Church of God and Christian people by his detestable and unseemly life and manners, both before and since his accession to the Papacy”. In spite of frequent monitions he persisted in his evil course, and therefore is now deposed as “unworthy, useless, and harmful”; all Christians are freed from their allegiance, and are forbidden to recognize him any longer as Pope. After the deposition of John, care was taken for the future by a decree that no new election should be made, in case of vacancy, without the express consent of the Council, and that none of the three contending claimants should be re-elected. A solemn procession of the whole Council round the city of Constance celebrated this final assurance of their triumph. The deposed Pope, now called once more by his former name of Baldassare Cossa, was brought for safe keeping into the strong castle of Gottlieben, close to Constance. But there was a suspicion that some discontented spirits had again opened correspondence with him; and Sigismund handed him over to the custody of the Pfalzgraf Lewis, who held the office of Protector of the Council. Lewis sent him to the Castle of Heidelberg, where he remained so long as the Council sat, attended only by Germans, whose language he did not understand and with whom he communicated only by signs.

Thus fell John XXIII: undefended and, it would seem, unpitied; nor has posterity reversed the verdict of the Council. Yet it is difficult not to reel that John had hard measure dealt to him in the exceptional obloquy which has been his lot. Elected to the Papacy in return for his signal services in the Council of Pisa, he was ignominiously deposed by the Council which claimed to be a continuation of that of Pisa. Here, as elsewhere, the revolution swallowed up its own child, and John’s character has met with the fate which always befalls those whom everyone is interested to malign and no one is interested to defend. In his early career he established his reputation for courage and political sagacity by his administration of Bologna; but his capacities were those of a soldier of fortune and few looked upon him seriously as a priest. As the chief man in North Italy he had it in his power to dispose of the fortunes of the Council of Pisa, and the Cardinals could scarcely help rewarding him for his services by the gift of the Papacy. But in his exalted position everything went amiss with John, and his entire want of success in Italian affairs compelled him, sorely against his will, to appeal to the sympathies of Christendom. His previous training in a life of military adventure made him light-hearted in running into danger; his entire ignorance of the religious feeling of Europe made him utterly unable to cope with his danger when once it gathered round him. It was one thing to play off against one another condottieri generals and win by trickery the towns of Forli and Faenza; it was another thing to guide the deliberations of an assembly of theologians profoundly convinced of their own powers. John had neither learning nor moral character to enable him to hold his own in the face of the Council. He had nothing but intrigue, which he managed so ill as to make it impossible for anyone to hold by him through respect for the Papal dignity. Betrayed first by Sigismund and then by Frederick of Austria, he lost all self-command and self-confidence. When force of character rests neither upon moral nor intellectual principles, it rapidly decays under adverse circumstances. When John found that his first endeavors to manage the Council were unsuccessful he began to lose his nerve and then blundered more and more lamentably. The Council took advantage of each of his mistakes, and drove him remorselessly from point to point; John contested each point in detail with the weapons of mean subterfuge, and thus entirely ruined his prestige in the eyes of Europe. Everything went against him, and when he fell there was no one interested to save him or even to give him shelter. Everyone felt that such a man never ought to have been elected Pope. He was nothing more nor less than an Italian military adventurer, and his camp life had been scandalous enough to make any stories against him sound credible.

Yet it was not to the moral indignation caused by his character that John XXIII owed his fall, but to the policy of Sigismund and the Council, who were bent upon restoring unmistakably the outward unity of the Church. When John threw difficulties in the way of their plan of a common abdication of the three contending claimants of the Papacy, a civil war followed, in which victory declared against John. His rebellion was signally punished, and it was necessary not only to depose him, but to render it impossible for anyone to revive his claims. John had few friends, and they could do nothing for him. The Council was omnipotent, and suddenly applied to him a moral standard which would have condemned many of his predecessors; at Constance every tongue and pen was turned against John. A calm Italian observer blamed John for trusting himself to a Council composed of turbulent spirits who wished to turn the world upside down. He admired his versatility and capacity; in his youth a student, he afterwards distinguished himself greatly as a general and administrator; unfortunately he meddled in ecclesiastical matters which he did not understand; and his ability was forgotten in the contemplation of his misfortunes. This seems to have been the prevailing opinion in Italy. Cosimo dei Medici, who was not likely to befriend an utterly worthless man, retained both affection and respect for the deposed Baldassare Cossa, and gave him shelter in his last days. Still it must be admitted that, whatever good qualities John possessed, they were useless to him as Pope, and his ignorance and heedlessness of the spiritual duties of his sacred office gave the Council a handle against him. No remorse was felt in making him a victim to the zeal for the union of the distracted Church. "

CHAPTER III.

RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS IN ENGLAND AND BOHEMIA.

When the dispossessed Baldassare Cossa was taken as prisoner to the Castle of Gottlieben, there was another prisoner of the Council within its walls, a Bohemian priest, John Huss, who was accused of heresy. At the beginning of the Council it had been a question keenly disputed whether the motion of the unity or the purification of the faith, of the Church should take precedence. Both matters had in some degree progressed, and the two prisoners at Gottlieben, Cossa and Huss, were witnesses of the two sides of the Council’s energy.

The form of heresy which engaged its attention was one with which the Council might have been expected to feel some sympathy, for it had its root in a deep-seated moral repugnance to the existing abuses in the ecclesiastical system and a longing for their reform. It had the same aim as the Council itself. But though men were all convinced of the need of reform, they differed widely in the basis which they were ready to adopt. Abuses were so widespread that everyone wished to remedy them; but some merely wished to remove the abuses of the existing system, others wished to remodel the system itself. The system of the Church had grown with the life of Christendom, and the individual Christian recognized his religious life as forming part of the corporate life of the Church. So far as the ecclesiastical system, under the political exigencies of the Papal monarchy, had strayed from its original purpose, and threw stumbling-blocks in the way of the spiritual power of the Church itself, so far were the fathers of the Council of Constance anxious for reform. But the troubled times of the Schism and the misuse of the Papal power drove others to criticize the nature and basis of the ecclesiastical system itself, and had led them to the conclusion that it was inadequate to the needs of the individual soul, and ought to be reorganized on a new basis. The leading spirits at Constance were anxious to reform the Church system; but they looked with horror on those who wished to create it afresh. Part of the work which they had before them was the extirpation of the errors of Wycliffe and Huss, and the purification of the faith of England and Bohemia.

We have spoken of Wycliffe in the three phases of his career, as an upholder of the rights of the kingdom against Papal aggression, as a reformer of the morals of the clergy, and as a critic of the system and doctrine of the Church. In the first phase all Englishmen went with him in the second he was in accord not only with the best minds amongst his own countrymen, but with the best minds in Europe; but when he attacked in unmeasured terms the foundations of the ecclesiastical system, it was felt that he threatened the existence of the Church and even of civil society. It must be owned that the moral sense of the individual was set up by Wycliffe in dangerous superiority over law, and that his dialectical subtlety led him to indulge in theories and maxims which were capable of wider extension than he intended. We cannot be surprised that the English hierarchy set their faces against Wycliffe’s teaching, and did their utmost to put down a movement which menaced their own existence. After Wycliffe’s death the party of the Lollards, or “Canters”, as they were called, formed a compact body and grew in numbers and influence. They had always been favored by the discontented gentry, and numbered amongst their adherents several men of rank. In 1395, during Richard II’s absence in Ireland, the Lollards presented to Parliament a petition for the reform of the Church, in which they expressed themselves with astonishing boldness. They set forth the decay of the Church, owing to its temporal grandeur and the consequent corruption of the clergy.

The ordinary Roman priesthood, it set forth, is no longer the true priesthood ordained by Christ; the pretended miracle of the mass leads men to idolatry; the enforced celibacy of the clergy causes immoral living; the use of needless benedictions and exorcisms savors of necromancy rather than theology; prayers for the dead are merely means of gaining alms; auricular confession only exalts the pride of the priest; pilgrimages to deaf images and relics are akin to idol worship; monastic vows lead to much social disorder; war and homicide are contrary to the law of Christ, and occupations serving only for luxury are sinful. Inasmuch as the Church of England has gone astray in these matters, following its stepmother, the Church of Rome, the petitioners pray for its reformation and restoration to primitive perfection. We have here a plan of social as well as ecclesiastical reform, founded upon Wycliffe’s principles and expressed for the most part in Wycliffe’s language. So important did Richard II consider this movement to be that he hastily returned from Ireland, and demanded from the chiefs of the Lollard party an oath of abjuration of their opinions. They seem to have given way at once, a proof that the movement had amongst its most influential followers no real meaning, but expressed rather general discontent than any scheme which they seriously hoped to realize.

The petition of the Lollards naturally awakened the indignation of the leaders of the clergy. In 1396 Archbishop Courtenay, who had shown little or no disposition for repression, was succeeded by Thomas Arundel, who resolved to take vigorous measures against the insolence of the Lollards. At a provincial synod held in February, 1397, eighteen propositions of Wycliffe were condemned. They were drawn from the Trialogus by some learned member of the University of Oxford, which was now anxious to restore its reputation for orthodoxy. The condemned propositions consist of ten which tend to weaken the sacramental system of the Church, five which disparage the clerical order and the legitimacy of temporal possessions by the Church; the other three assert the superiority of Scripture over ecclesiastical tradition, the moral basis of authority, and the philosophic doctrine of necessity. Not only did the ecclesiastical synod condemn these doctrines, but a trained controversialist, a Franciscan friar, William Woodford, wrote a refutation of them, at the Archbishop’s bidding.

Archbishop Arundel had thus prepared the way for stringent measures against the Lollards: the clergy condemned them, the learned refuted them. But before he could strike a blow he was himself stricken. Political questions swallowed up ecclesiastical disputes: the nation was too busy with other things to attend either to the Lollards or to the clergy. The Earls of Arundel and Gloucester were put to death; the Archbishop himself was impeached by the submissive Commons, and was condemned to banishment. Pope Boniface IX did not choose to quarrel with the King about an Archbishop, and translated Arundel to the see of St. Andrews. But Richard II’s triumph was short-lived, and Arundel took a leading part in the events which set Henry of Lancaster upon the English throne. Under Henry IV Arundel was more powerful than ever, and was resolute in his hostility to the Lollards. Public opinion seems to have turned decidedly against them, for many of their chief supporters had been staunch adherents of the fallen tyrant. Henry IV was greatly indebted to the help of the clergy for his easy accession to the throne, and had many promises to fulfill. He was poor and needed money; he was weak and needed political support. He was, moreover, fervently orthodox, and may not have been sorry to dissociate himself at once from his father’s unworthy intrigues with the Lollard party.

Accordingly, in 1401, a petition was addressed to the King by the clergy, praying for legislative measures against the Lollards who escaped ecclesiastical jurisdiction. The petition received the assent of King, Lords, and Commons, and a clause was inserted in the statute for the year enacting that a heretic convicted in a spiritual court was to be handed over to the secular arm to be burnt. Immediately after this a Lollard preacher, William Sautre, met his doom as a heretic. The country as a whole had now pronounced its opinion against Lollardism, which henceforth became more and more an expression of political and social discontent, and lost much of its religious meaning.

In 1406 another petition was presented to Parliament setting forth that the Lollards were dangerous to public order in matters temporal and spiritual alike; they disseminated disquieting rumors and aimed at upsetting the peace of the kingdom. No fresh steps were taken, but the revolutionary attempt of the Lollard leader, Sir John Oldcastle, at the beginning of the reign of Henry V, led to a more severe act against Lollardism in 1414; by it the secular power was empowered to enquire after heretics, and on suspicion hand them over for trial to the spiritual courts. From this time Lollardism disappeared. The French war found employment for adventurous minds : political parties afterwards had many grounds for contention without sheltering themselves behind religious factions; the thirst for free enquiry died away in the Universities; England entered upon a career of administrative helplessness and personal selfishness in high places which left no room for discussion of abstract principles. The smoldering discontent with society, into which Lollardism passed away, still lingered and at times blazed forth; but it had none of the elements of a serious religious movement.

The teaching of Wycliffe produced no deep impression in England. Partly this was due to his own character. Wycliffe was a keen, acute dialectician; but his spirit was too critical, his teaching too negative, to inspire deep enthusiasm or supply a position round which men would rally to the death. Wycliffe himself had none of the spirit of a martyr, and his followers were ready to recant rather than to suffer. The movement was in its origin academic rather than popular, and was used at once for party purposes, from the traces of which it never quite escaped. It lent colorable countenance to socialist doctrines and awakened hostility as being subversive to society. In short, its force was frittered away in various directions; there was no great national interest with which it was decidedly identified. Perhaps the condition of English politics was unfavorable to a great religious movement; there was no decided popular party, no place for political action founded upon broad principles. Still, though Wycliffe set in motion no great movement and left no lasting impression of his definite opinions, he did much to awaken controversy, and, by his translation of the Bible, he spread among the people knowledge of the Scriptures. He thus prepared the way for the testing and reception of new opinions in the sixteenth century, and it is not an exaggeration to date from the time of Wycliffe that reverence for the exact words of Scripture, which has always been the special characteristic of English religious life.

The immediate importance of Wycliffe in the history of the world lies in the fact that in the remote country of Bohemia his writings became one element of the first great national movement towards a new religious system.

There was much in the early traditions of the Bohemian kingdom to dispose it to revolt from the Papal dominion. The history of Bohemia was that of a history of Slavonic tribe thrown into the midst of German peoples. The wave of German conquest flowed around it, and it saw in the Holy Roman Empire merely a means of extending the power of the invading Germans. Christianity came to Bohemia from two sides — from Germany and Byzantium; but the Slavs listened to the preaching of the Greek monks, Cyril and Methodius, though the Papacy reaped the fruit of these conversions, and behaved wisely in humoring the prejudices of the new converts. Moravia was made into a separate diocese, and the use of a Slavonic liturgy was allowed. The German Church resented this ecclesiastical organization of the Slavonic peoples, and the cohesion of the Slavs was soon destroyed by the terrible invasion of Magyars, which severed the Slavic peoples and left Bohemia a helpless prey to German influences. The liturgy of Cyril and Methodius was suppressed, and gradually disappeared, though it lingered in some obscure places till the middle of the fourteenth century. In its very origin Latin Christianity in Bohemia was forced upon the unwilling Czechs, and was a badge of Teutonic supremacy. The soil was ready to receive opinions contrary to the ecclesiastical system, and nowhere did the heretical sects of the thirteenth century, the Bogomilians and Waldenses, take deeper root than in Bohemia.

The reign of Charles IV (1346-1378) forms a decisive epoch in Bohemian history. The Pfaffenkaiser, raised to the Empire by the influence of the Church, was bound to use his power in the Church’s behalf. Charles IV has been differently judged according to different conceptions of his duty. To the political theorist or reformer, who looked to the Emperor to inspire Europe with a new spirit, Charles IV seemed an indolent and self-indulgent ruler. To the Germans Charles IV seemed destitute of dignity, weak and incapable — a king who did not care to maintain his prerogatives against the encroachments of his nobles, but regarded Germany as a province annexed to Bohemia. It is true that Charles IV paid no heed to the Empire, and allowed Germany to go its own way; but he devoted himself to the interests of his Bohemian subjects, so that his reign is the golden age of their national annals. “A model of a father to Bohemia and a model of a stepfather to Germany”, the Emperor Maximilian called him in later years. “He made Prague”, said an admirer, “what Rome and Constantinople had been”. He adorned his capital, elevated it into the seat of an archbishopric, and founded a university which soon took its place by the side of the great Universities of Paris, Oxford and Bologna.

These steps of Charles IV, so far as they strengthened the organization of the Church, increased the influence of the Germans. But, besides increasing the power of the Church, Charles IV’s zeal led him to wish for a reform in the clergy, and round the cry for reform which Charles IV fostered the national spirit of the Czechs slowly and unconsciously rallied. The Church in Bohemia was wealthy and powerful; the Archbishop of Prague was lord of 329 towns and villages; the Cathedral of Prague maintained 300 ecclesiastics; there were at least no convents in the land. Simony was rife, and, as a consequence, negligence of duty, exaction, and corruption of manners prevailed among the clergy. A visitation held in 1379 convicted of immorality sixteen clergymen out of thirty who were visited.

Charles IV and the Archbishop Ernest of Pardubic were anxious to restore the zeal and morality of the Bohemian clergy. Charles’s reforming zeal led him to summon from Austria an earnest preacher, Conrad of Waldhausen, who came to Prague in 1360, and began to denounce pride, luxury, and avarice, with such effect that crowds thronged to his preaching, and showed the power of his words by returning to simplicity of life. Conrad was led to ask himself how it was that he succeeded where the ordinary ministrations of the clergy failed. His meditations led him to attack the simony and other vices of the clergy, and especially of the friars. It was in vain that the clergy accused Conrad of heresy. The King and the Archbishop upheld him against their attacks, and it is by the irony of fate that in his zeal for the purity of the Bohemian Church the orthodox King set on foot a movement which involved his son in bloody war against his people and made Bohemia a hotbed of heresy.

The earnestness of Conrad of Waldhausen raised up followers, chief of whom was Milicz of Kremsier, in Moravia, who in 1363 laid aside his canonry at Prague to devote himself to the work of preaching to the poor. The teaching of Conrad had only been addressed to the Germans; but Milicz preached in the Bohemian language, and by his fiery mysticism appealed to the imagination of the people. He expounded prophecy and terrified, his hearers by his denunciations. The tone of his preaching became more mystical, and the visions of the Apocalypse filled his imagination. One day his zeal carried him so far that, preaching before Charles IV, he denounced him as antichrist. But the Emperor forgave him, and when he was accused of heresy and appealed to Pope Urban V in 1367, Charles warmly recommended him to the Pope. Milicz went to Rome, but while waiting for the Pope’s return affixed a notice to the door of S. Peter’s that he was ready to prove in a sermon the speedy coming of antichrist. For this he was imprisoned; but Urban V on his arrival released him and treated him kindly. Milicz returned to Prague, justified against his accusers, but ceased afterwards to preach about antichrist. His saintly character impressed all who came near him, and he was the consoler of many troubled hearts. The wonders wrought by his preaching and the growing number of converts, who laid aside their evil courses and submitted themselves to his guidance, soon kindled the jealousy of the clergy, who again denounced him as a heretic to the Pope. The charges against him were chiefly his preaching of antichrist, his abuse of the clergy, disregard of excommunication, and excessive puritanism in several points. He was summoned to Avignon by Gregory XI, and died there in 1374.

Milicz had succeeded in kindling the imagination and awakening the religious enthusiasm of the Bohemians. By his words and by his actions he had set before them a lofty idea of personal holiness and purity. “He was”, says one of his followers, “the image and son of our Lord Jesus Christ, the express similitude of His apostles”. He quickened religious zeal, deepened men’s grasp on spiritual truth, and left behind him a band of devoted followers bent on walking in his steps. But what he had expressed in the form of mysticism, in stirring appeals to men’s feelings, his followers, chief amongst whom Mathias of Janow and Thomas Stitny, worked out in their writings into dogmatic forms. Mathias of Janow was not so much a preacher as a theologian, and in his work “De regulis veteris et novi Testamenti” drew out from the Bible alone, disregarding the works of the fathers and the traditions of the Church, the rules of a holy and Christian life. He insisted upon the sufficiency of the Scriptures; he urged the need of having Christ in the heart, and not merely on the lips; he dwelt upon the danger of ceremonies in hiding from men’s eyes the sufficiency of Christ as the sole Redeemer who suffices for the salvation of all who believe in Him. In urging these conclusions Mathias had no consciousness of a breach with the existing ecclesiastical system, but he none the less struck blows against it which sapped its hold upon the minds of men. Mathias, however, wrote in Latin, and so addressed himself only to the more educated and intelligent. Thomas of Stitny, a Bohemian nobleman, followed in the steps of Milicz and wrote for the Bohemian people. In clear and simple language he carried home to men’s minds the same truths as Mathias insisted upon, the need of faith founded on the Word of God, showing itself in good works and not resting on ceremonial observances. This spiritual movement in Bohemia would have died away, as so many others had done, if it had not found in the University of Prague an organized body which gave it stability and force.

Founded in 1348, the University of Prague, under the fostering care of Charles IV, rapidly increased in importance, so that in 1372 it counted 4000 students. Its constitution was a matter of some difficulty, and the faculties of theology and jurisprudence strove for supremacy till, in 1372, the jurists formed themselves into a separate university. Following the example of Paris, the University of Prague divided itself into four nations, Bohemian, Bavarian, Saxon, and Polish. At the end of the fourteenth century the foundation of universities at Cracow, Vienna, Heidelberg, Koln, and Erfurt in some degree diminished the importance of Prague, but it still remained the chief center of intellectual life among the German and Slavonic peoples. The Poles, however, were few in number, and their vote was practically exercised by the Germans of Silesia. The Czechs found themselves in a minority in the university which had been founded in their behalf, and the struggle of nationalities, which prevailed throughout Bohemia, raged fiercely in academic matters. The Czechs claimed exclusive possession of the colleges, which, as elsewhere, were foundations to encourage research. Their claims were supported by King Wenzel, who with all his failings was true to the Bohemian people and by their help maintained himself upon his throne.

We may gather from Wenzel’s conduct to the Archbishop, John of Jenstein, how slight was the hold which the Wenzel had upon popular favor, how deep was the impression produced by the reforming preachers. John of Jenstein was made Archbishop of Prague in 1378 because he had won Wenzel’s favor by his pleasant manners and skill in the chase. The story of Becket and Henry II was almost reproduced. A change came over the Archbishop; he became a rigid ascetic, and his new sense of duty brought him into frequent collisions with the King. The quarrel came to a crisis in 1393, when John of Jenstein hastened to fill up the vacant abbacy of Kladruby, though he knew that the King was applying to the Pope to suppress it for the purpose of founding a new bishopric. Wenzel’s wrath was ungovernable; he summoned John to Prague, and passionately ordered him and three of his followers to be seized and imprisoned. Two of them were tortured, and Wenzel ordered all of them to be drowned; but when his rage passed away he bethought himself of the consequences which might follow from drowning an archbishop, and reluctantly ordered his prisoners to be released. One of them, John of Pomuc, was so severely injured by the torture that his life was hopeless, and Wenzel ordered him to be thrown into the Moldau. Archbishop John was driven to humble himself before Wenzel; he met with no support from the clergy or the people, and at last fled to Rome, where Boniface IX refused to take any steps that might lead to a quarrel with Wenzel, from whom at that time he looked for help in Italy. John was driven to resign his archbishopric and died in Rome in 1400.

That Wenzel should with impunity and success offer such violence to the metropolitan of the Bohemian Church is a striking evidence that the clergy were looked upon with indifference, if not with dislike. The death of John of Pomuc caused no commotion in Bohemia. The University of Prague showed no desire to interfere in the quarrel between Wenzel and the Archbishop. Huss was accused afterwards of openly expressing his approval of the murder of John of Pomuc; his answer, that he only said that the drowning or imprisoning of a priest was no reason for putting the kingdom under an interdict, shows that he certainly made no protest nor raised his voice against Wenzel’s conduct. It is a curious point in later history that this John of Pomuc was chosen by the Jesuits to supplant the memory of Huss as a martyr in the minds of the Bohemians. But legend gathered round John’s history; he was confused with a confessor of Wenzel’s queen, and was said to have been thrown into the Moldau because he refused to violate the secrets of the confessional at the bidding of a jealous and tyrannical husband. The legend took root in Bohemia in the dark days of the Catholic reaction, and the imaginary confessor was canonized in 1729 under the name of S. John Nepomucen. He answered his purpose in providing Bohemia with a national saint and in substituting a more poetical martyr for John Huss, who was only burnt at the stake for his theological opinions.

There were in Bohemia, at the end of the fourteenth century, many political elements which favored a revolutionary movement. There was an ill-concealed jealousy of the Czechs against the German middle classes, which tended to combine with the puritan movement against the abuses of the clergy. The rising of the German nobles against Wenzel, and the pretensions of Rupert to replace him in the Empire, identified his cause still more strongly with that of the Czech nationality. In the University of Prague the reforming party became similarly identified with the Czechs, who were striving to maintain their privileges against the Germans. Soon a new impulse and a more definite form was given to the energies of the reformers by the spread in the University of Prague of the writings of Wycliffe. The keen, clear criticisms of ecclesiastical dogmas, which had not taken root in England because they were associated with no national or political interest, supplied a form to the religious aspirations which were in Bohemia associated with a widespread popular movement. The connection between Bohemia and England, which followed on Richard II’’s marriage with Wenzel’s sister Anne, increased the natural intercourse which existed in those days between universities.

From Oxford the writings of Wycliffe were brought to Prague, as early as 1385, by Jerome of Prague, who was himself a student at Oxford. The questions which they raised, especially the question of Transubstantiation, were eagerly discussed by an increasing party in the University, of whom John Hus became the chief representative.

CHAPTER IV.

JOHN HUSS IN BOHEMIA

1398—1414.

John Huss was born of humble parents in the little village of Husinec in 1369, and rose by his talents and his industry to high fame in the University of Prague. There he began to teach in 1398, and with his friend Nicolas of Leitomysl founded a philosophic school on the basis of the philosophical writings of Wycliffe. From Wycliffe’s philosophy he advanced to Wycliffe’s theology, which seemed to find an echo in his own moral nature. From the first, however, he saw the dangers to which the acceptance of Wycliffe’s teaching was likely to lead. “Oh, Wycliffe, Wycliffe”, he exclaimed in a sermon, “you will trouble the heads of many!” Nor was the influence of Huss confined only to academic circles. One of the marks of the religious activity produced by the preaching of Milicz was the foundation in Prague by a wealthy burgher of a chapel called Bethlehem, for the purpose of procuring for the Czechs sermons in their native tongue. The nomination of Huss as priest of the Chapel of Bethlehem in 1402 gave him the means of appealing forcibly to the popular mind.

Huss summed up in his own person all the political and religious aspirations of the Czechs, and gave them dear, forcible expression in his sermons. Sprung from the people, he maintained that Bohemia ought to be for the Bohemians, as Germany was for the Germans, and France for the French. Of pure and austere life, his countenance bore the traces of constant self-denial, and his loftiness of purpose lent force to his words. From the time that he undertook the Chapel of Bethlehem he devoted himself to the work of popular preaching, and his penetrating intelligence, his clearness of expression, his splendid eloquence, made his sermons produce a more lasting impression than the more impassioned harangues of Conrad or the more mystical and imaginative discourses of Milicz. He exactly expressed the thoughts that were surging in the minds of the people, and gave them definiteness and form. It was clear that Huss was not merely a popular preacher; he threatened to become the founder of a new school of religious thought.

At first Hus followed in the same lines as his predecessors strove to bring about a moral reformation of the Church by means of the existing authorities. The feebleness of the Archbishop of Prague, his death, and a long vacancy in the see left the ground open for the Wycliffite teachers; but in 1403 a reaction set in. The office of rector of the University passed by rotation from the Bohemians to the Germans, and it was proposed to affirm in Bohemia the acts of the Council of London in 1382, which condemned the writings of Wycliffe. It was a great matter for the opponents of the reforming party to be able to identify their teaching with that of one who had been already condemned for heresy. Though the reforming movement in Bohemia had an independent existence, it borrowed its principles from England with remarkable docility. Wycliffe’s writings supplied the philosophical basis which was wanting in Bohemia, and Huss was willing to be judged as a pupil of the great English philosopher and divine. A German master of the University, John Hubner, laid before the Chapter of Prague the twenty-four articles of Wycliffe’s teaching condemned by the Synod of London, and added twenty-one of his own discovery. These forty-five articles were submitted to the University on May 28, 1403. Wycliffe’s followers contented themselves with protesting that the articles were not to be found in Wycliffe’s writings; but after some warm discussion the majority condemned the articles laid before them, and a decree was passed that no member of the University was to teach them either in public or in private.

This decree of the University, however, produced no effect. The new Archbishop of Prague, Zbynek, was no theologian, and was attracted by the earnestness of Huss. The clerical party had no hope of help from him, and applied directly to Innocent VII, who, in 1405, addressed to the Archbishop a monition to greater diligence in rooting out the errors and heresy of Wycliffe. Little, however, was done in this direction, perhaps owing to the influence of Huss, who was so trusted by the Archbishop that he requested him to bring before his notice any defects of ecclesiastical discipline which, in his opinion, needed correction. Moreover, the position of Huss as confessor to Queen Sophia gave him considerable influence at Court, and Wenzel was so indignant at the refusal of Innocent VII, and afterwards of Gregory XII, to recognize him as Emperor, that he had no objection to see a more independent ecclesiastical party establishing itself in his kingdom.

But affairs soon destroyed this agreement between Huss and the Archbishop and Court. Zbynek was beginning to be exercised in his mind at the frequent discussions about the Eucharist, and in 1406 published a pastoral defining what he considered to be the true doctrine. The preparations for the Council of Pisa exercised great influence over Wenzel, who hoped to secure from the Council, or the Council’s Pope, a recognition of his Imperial title, but saw that for this end he must be ready to purge his kingdom of its reputation for heresy. In May, 1408, the condemned opinions of Wycliffe were read over to a congregation of the Bohemian nation of the University, and lectures or disputations on the works of Wycliffe were forbidden. Some of the Bohemian masters were tried for heresy before the Archbishop’s court, and a letter of Huss to the Archbishop, couched in lofty tones of moral remonstrance, besought him not to punish the lowly priests who were striving to do their duty in preaching the Gospel, when there were so many of their accusers who were given up to avarice and luxury. From this time a breach was made between Hus and the Archbishop, which went on increasing. The Archbishop, however, satisfied with his victory for the present, declared in a provincial synod on July 17, 1408, that no heretics were to be found in his diocese: he ordered all the books of Wycliffe to be burned, and enjoined on the clergy to preach transubstantiation to the people.

The questions raised by the Schism of the Papacy gave Huss and his party unexpected help. Wenzel was desirous to have his kingdom cleared of the charge of heresy, that he might more decidedly take part in the negotiations about the summons of the Council of Pisa. He was ill-disposed to Gregory XII, who carried out his predecessor’s policy, and continued to recognize Rupert as King of the Romans. Wenzel was urged by the French Court to join in the Council of Pisa, and, on November 24, wrote to the Cardinals that he was willing to do so, provided his ambassadors were received as those of the King of the Romans. Meanwhile he wished to withdraw from the allegiance of Gregory XII and declare neutrality within his kingdom. The reforming party naturally hoped for some changes in their favor from a Council, and supported the King’s desire. Archbishop Zbynek and the orthodox party opposed it. When the King appealed to the University of Prague, the Bohemians were on his side; the Germans sided with the Archbishop. The question of the neutrality drew together the Bohemian masters in the University. Many who had combated Huss as a heretic were now with him. The King’s anger gave the Bohemian academic party an opportunity of gaining a triumph over their German adversaries. A deputation, of whom Huss was one, represented to the King the grievances of the Bohemians, who had only one vote in the University, while the Germans had three. They urged that the Bohemian masters had increased in number, while the Germans had diminished; in learning, as well as in numbers, the Bohemians were at least equal to the Germans. While they were young they were content to be in bondage; but now the fullness of time was come, when they need no more be regarded as servants, but heirs of all that the original foundation of Charles IV had meant to bestow upon them. The cause of the Bohemian masters was warmly applauded by some of Wenzel’s favorites, and also by the ambassadors of France. On January 18, 1409, the King issued an angry decree that it was unjust that the Germans, who were foreigners, should have three votes and the true heirs of the kingdom only one: he ordered that henceforth the Bohemians should have three votes and the Germans one. On January 22 he published a decree renouncing the obedience of Gregory XII.

The Czechs were triumphant. Huss in a sermon openly thanked God for this victory over the Germans. Popular excitement ran high, and the Germans in vain strove to resist. They declared that they would leave the University rather than obey. They refused to elect any officials, and when the King nominated them by royal authority the German masters carried their threat into execution and left Prague. According to the most moderate computation, two thousand are said to have departed, leaving but scanty remnants behind.

This hasty, passionate step of Wenzel was the destruction of the European importance of the University of Prague, and was a decisive moment in the intellectual development of Germany. The emigrant masters formed a new university at Leipzig, and many of them went to the young universities of Germany. Henceforth there was no great centre of learning in Germany, and a powerful bond of national union was lost. But the loss was counterbalanced by the vigorous growth of scattered universities, which leavened more thoroughly with the traditions of learning the mass of the German people. The importance of Prague as one of the great cities of the world began to decline, and the strife of Germans and Czechs was no longer to be contested, when it could most surely have been healed, in the bloodless sphere of academic disputation. More immediate consequences followed on this decree of Wenzel. He had wished only to pave the way to his adhesion to the Council of Pisa; he kindled into a flame the smoldering spirit of the Bohemian people, and did much to identify the nation with the cause of ecclesiastical reform. This great national victory was also a victory for the reformers. But it was won at a heavy cost; the enemy was baffled, not crushed. The emigrant masters were dispersed throughout Germany filled with hatred of their victorious rivals. They spread far and wide the story of their woes; they painted in the blackest colors the wickedness, the impiety of the Bohemians. When we seek afterwards for the causes which led Germany to pour its crusading bands upon the Bohemian land, we may find it in the bitterness which the woes of the emigrant students carried into all quarters.

Meanwhile Wenzel was satisfied with the results of his measure, and its meaning was clearly shown by the election of Huss as the first rector of the mutilated University. The Cardinals and the Council of Pisa received Wenzel’s ambassadors, disavowed Rupert, and restored to Wenzel in the eyes of Christendom his lofty position as King of the Romans. When the Council’s Pope had been duly elected, on Wenzel would naturally devolve the duty of securing his universal recognition. But Wenzel found with shame that he was powerless even in his own land. Archbishop Zbynek refused to recognize Alexander V, and was supported by the clergy; he even laid Prague under an interdict. Wenzel replied by confiscating the goods of those clergy who joined the Archbishop in withdrawing from Prague. Zbynek was driven to submit, and reluctantly acknowledged Alexander V in September, 1409. These events, however, kindled anew the animosity of the Bohemians against the clergy, and arrayed the Court, the reformers, and the Bohemian people against the Germans and the clergy. The Archbishop’s mind became more and more exasperated against Huss, who had preached loudly in the King’s behalf, and he prepared to wipe away in a conflict with Huss the discomfiture which he had undergone. Articles against Huss had already, before the end of 1408, been presented to the Archbishop, complaining that he defamed the clergy in his sermons and brought them into contempt with the people. In 1409 new articles were presented, and Huss was summoned to answer before the Archbishop’s inquisitor to charges of defaming the clergy, speaking in praise of Wycliffe, and kindling contention between Germans and Bohemians. Huss does not seem to nave appeared to answer to these charges: indeed, a counter charge was raised against the Archbishop in the Papal court, and Alexander V, who can have felt little goodwill to Zbynek, summoned him to answer to these charges. The summons, however, was soon countermanded, as the Archbishop’s envoys laid before the Pope an account of ecclesiastical matters in Bohemia, and Alexander V became impressed with the gravity of the situation. He issued a Bull from Pistoia on December 20, bidding the Archbishop appoint a commission of six doctors, who were to purge his diocese from heresy, forbid the spread of Wycliffe’s doctrines, and remove from the eyes of the faithful the books of Wycliffe. Appeals to the Pope by those accused on any of these points were disallowed beforehand by the Bull.

When this Bull was published in Prague the reformers felt that for a time they must bow before the storm. Huss himself brought to the Archbishop the books of Wycliffe which he possessed, with a request that Zbynek would point out the errors which they contained, and he was ready to combat them in public. Zbynek’s commissioners contented themselves with reporting that Wycliffe’s writings, which they specified by name, contained manifest heresy and error, and were to be condemned. Whereupon, on June 16, the Archbishop ordered the books to be burned, denounced Wycliffe’s opinions and prohibited all teaching in private places and chapels. Already, on June 14, the University had met and protested against the condemnation of the books of Wycliffe, asserting, as was true, that the Archbishop and his commissioners had not had time to examine their contents. On June 20 they renewed their protest, and Huss, seeing himself pushed to extremities, proceeded to a bold step in defiance of ecclesiastical authority. Alexander V was dead, and there was a chance that his successor might be disposed to reconsider the Bohemian question. Disregarding the Archbishop’s decree, Huss again ascended the pulpit in his Chapel of Bethlehem; disregarding the Bull of Alexander V, he appealed from a Pope wrongly informed to a Pope better informed. He called upon the people, he called upon his congregation, to support him in the line which he resolved to pursue. He read the Pope’s Bull, the Archbishop’s decree: he recalled the previous declaration of Zbynek that there were no heretics in Bohemia; he declared the charges contained in the Bull to be untrue.

“They are lies, they are lies”, exclaimed with one voice the congregation.

“I have appealed, I do appeal”, continued Huss, against the Archbishop’s decrees. “Will you be on my side?”

“We will, we will”, was the enthusiastic answer.

“Know, then”, he went on, “that, since it is my duty to preach, my purpose stands to do so, or be driven beyond the earth or die in prison; for man may lie, but God lies not. Think of this, ye who purpose to stand by me, and have no fear of excommunication for joining in my appeal”.

The language of the appeal itself was equally resolute. The Bull of Alexander V, it affirms, was surreptitiously obtained by Zbynek on false grounds; its authority came to an end with Alexander’s death, and Zbynek’s decrees were therefore invalid. As for Wycliffe’s books, even if they contained some errors, theological students ought not to be prohibited from reading them. The Archbishop’s decree closing the chapels was an attempt to hinder the preaching of the Gospel and could not be obeyed, for “we must obey God rather than men in things which are necessary for salvation”. The decisive step of a breach with the ecclesiastical system had now been taken. Huss asserted, as against authority, the sanction of the individual conscience, and he called on those who thought with him to array themselves on his side. Huss had stepped from the position of a reformer to that of a revolutionist.

Zbynek was not slow to take up the challenge. Wenzel in vain strove to arrange a compromise. On July 16 the Archbishop gathered the clergy round him, and in solemn state burned two hundred volumes of Wycliffe’s writings which had been surrendered to him. The Te Deum was chanted during the ceremony, and all the church bells in Prague rang out a joyous peal in honor of the event. Two days afterwards Zbynek excommunicated Huss and all who had joined in his appeal, as disobedient and impugners of the Catholic faith.

If by these strong measures Zbynek hoped to overawe the people he was entirely mistaken. Epigrams on the man who burned the books he had not read passed from mouth to mouth; songs declared that it was done to spite the Czechs. When the Archbishop came in state to the cathedral door, accompanied by forty clergy, to pronounce the excommunication against Huss, the uproar of the people forced him to retire for safety into the church. Wenzel, though hostile to the Archbishop, found it necessary to interfere, and in a high-handed way devised a compromise. Libelous songs were prohibited on pain of death; the Archbishop was ordered to pay tack to the owners of the books he had burned their value, and to withdraw his excommunication. When he hesitated his revenues were seized for the purpose. Wenzel also wrote to Pope John XXIII, asserting that Bohemia was free from heresy, and begging him to revoke the Bull of Alexander V, which had produced nothing but mischief and ill-feeling. But the Archbishop had forestalled the King at the Papal Court; he had sent Huss’s appeal and a statement of his own case. John XXIII referred the matter to Cardinal Oddo Colonna, afterwards Pope Martin V, who lost no time in making his decision. In a letter dated from Bologna, August 24, he enjoined the Archbishop to proceed according to the Bull of Alexander V, and if necessary to call in the secular arm to his aid; Huss was summoned to appear personally at the Papal Court to answer for himself.

This letter reached Prague soon after Wenzel’s letter to the Pope had been dispatched. The Archbishop triumphed, but Wenzel felt himself personally aggrieved, and wrote again to the Pope, asserting that there was no ground of fear for the religious condition of his kingdom; he took Huss under his personal protection, begged the Pope to withdraw his summons, confirm the privileges of the Chapel of Bethlehem, and allow Huss to continue in peace his useful ministrations. The friends of Huss gathered round him and loudly declared that they would not suffer him to be exposed to the perils of a journey to Rome through lands that were filled with his bitter enemies. But John XXIII naturally thought that opinions reflecting on the luxury, worldly lives, and evil living of the clergy ought not to be allowed free scope. In spite of Wenzel’s remonstrances, Huss was declared by Cardinal Colonna contumacious for not appearing, and was pronounced excommunicated (February, 1411).

Political considerations, however, soon admonished John XXIII to pay more heed to Wenzel’s requests. The death of Jobst of Moravia (January 17, 1411) left the title of King of the Romans in the hands of one or other of the brothers, Wenzel or Sigismund. Sigismund was still an adherent of Gregory XII; and John XXIII felt that it would not be wise to drive Wenzel to join his brother; moreover, he hoped for Wenzel’s aid in bringing over Sigismund to his own obedience. He therefore resolved to procrastinate in the matter of Huss, and transferred the cause from the hands of Cardinal Colonna to those of a new commission, which allowed the matter to stand over. The sentence of excommunication against Huss was not rescinded, and the Archbishop ordered it to be promulgated in Prague. Little attention was paid to it, and Zbynek, already infuriated by the seizure of his goods to pay for the books which he had burnt, laid Prague under an interdict. Wenzel in great wrath drove out the priests, who, in obedience to the Archbishop, refused to perform the services, and seized their goods. The nobles were always ready to stand by the King when they could lay hands on the property of the clergy, whose riches they looked upon with a jealous eye. Zbynek, who hoped by his extreme measure to strike terror into Wenzel and the people found himself entirely mistaken. With the example of John of Jenstein before his eyes, he did not think it wise to exasperate the King further or to trust to the Pope for help in extremities. Most probably John XXIII privately advised him to make peace with the King. At all events he agreed to submit his disputes with Huss and the University to arbiters appointed by Wenzel, who gave their decision (July 6) that the Archbishop should submit to the King, should write to the Pope saying that there were no heresies in Bohemia, and that the disputes between himself and the University were at an end, that all excommunications should be recalled and all suits suspended. The King on his side was to do all he could to check the growth of error, and was to restore all benefices taken from the clergy. To this Zbynek was forced to consent. But the letter to the Pope, though written, was never sent. Before the disputed points could be practically arranged, Zbynek died, on September 28. He was a man of blameless life and high character. Hus sincerely regretted his death and honored him for his attempts to reform the lives and morals of the clergy. He had been his friend in the early part of his episcopate, and Huss considered the persecution of himself as due to the Archbishop’s advisers, not to himself. The new Archbishop, Albik, was an old man, who knew and cared little about theology. He was Wenzel’s physician, and was of an easy disposition, rich and avaricious; nothing but the dread of Wenzel’s displeasure drove him to accept the office of Archbishop. Under him it seemed as though peace would be again restored, and there was quiet for a while.

Huss, however, had, unknown to himself, drifted far away from the old ecclesiastical system. His conscience had become more sensitive, and his feeling that he must guard against offending the conscience of others had become more intense. Hitherto he had raised the voice of moral reproach against the abuses of the clergy; occasion soon drove him to raise the same protest against the abuses of the Papacy itself. John XXIII, in his struggle against Ladislas, appealed to Christendom for help. He issued Bulls of excommunication, proclaimed a crusade, promised indulgences to the faithful who took part in it, and sent commissioners to stir up their zeal. The Papal legate in Bohemia for this purpose, Wenzel Tiem, Dean of Passau, was not wanting in energy. Three chests were put up in public places to receive contributions; indulgences were preached in the market-place, and those who had no money might pay in kind. The parish clergy were enlisted in the legate’s service, and used the confessional as a means of extorting money.

There was nothing new in this, nothing exceptionally scandalous. Yet it set the whole nature of Huss in revolt. He denounced the crusade as opposed to Christian charity; he vehemently attacked the methods by which money was being raised. In vain the theological faculty of the University dissented from him, pointing out that it was, and had been for centuries, the belief of Christendom that the Pope could give remission of sins, and that he was justified in calling on the faithful to help him in time of need. In spite of the efforts of the University to prevent it, Huss held a public disputation against the Pope’s Bull on June 7, 1412. Huss in his argument discussed the two questions of the validity of indulgences and the justice of a crusade. While admitting the priestly power of absolution, he urged that its efficacy depended on the true repentance of him who received it, and that God only knew who were predestinated to salvation. Neither priest nor Pope could grant privileges contrary to the law of Christ; in following the example of Christ could salvation most surely be obtained. Huss’s subtle arguments met with many answers, but his fiery scholar Jerome of Prague by a storm of eloquence so carried away the younger scholars that they escorted him in triumph home. In the general excitement the noisiest and least thoughtful spirits, as usual, took the lead. One of the King’s favorites, Wok of Waldstein, organized a piece of buffoonery which was meant to be a reprisal for the burning of Wycliffe’s books two years before. A student, dressed as a courtesan, was seated in a car with the Pope’s Bull fastened round his neck; surrounded by a motley throng, the car was drawn through the city to the Neustadt, where the Bull was burnt (June 24).

Wenzel was naturally indignant at this uproar, and ordered the magistrates of the city to punish with death those who spoke against the indulgences. On Sunday, July 10, three young men of the lower orders were apprehended for having cried out in churches that the indulgences were a lie. In vain Huss, accompanied by two thousand students, pleaded before the magistrates in behalf of the prisoners. Their fault, he said, was his : if anyone ought to suffer, it was himself. The magistrates gave him a fair answer, but a few hours afterwards, on Monday afternoon, the three prisoners were brought out for execution, surrounded by armed men. A vast crowd followed the procession in solemn silence. When the executioner proclaimed, “All who do like them must expect their punishment”, many voices exclaimed that they were ready to do and suffer the same. A band of students took possession of the three corpses, and, chanting the martyr’s psalm, “Isti sunt sancti”, bore them to the Chapel of Bethlehem, where they were solemnly buried. The first blood had been shed in the religious strife in Bohemia; the reformation had won its first martyrs. Huss declared in a sermon that he would not part with their bodies for thousands of gold and silver.

The opponents of Huss felt that he could not be silenced by means of the University, where a large majority was on his side. They accordingly had recourse to the royal authority, and asked Wenzel to forbid the teaching of the forty-five articles taken from the writings of Wycliffe, which had been condemned in 1408. To these were added six new articles bearing on the present disturbance, condemning the opinion that priestly absolution was not in itself effectual but merely declaratory, and the opinion that the Pope might not ask for subsidies in his temporal needs. Wenzel forbade under pain of banishment the teaching of any of these condemned articles, but refused to go further and prohibit from preaching those who were accused as prime causes of the late disturbance. Not content with the aid of the King, the clergy of Prague also complained to the Pope. John XXIII, naturally incensed at the news of this defiance offered in Bohemia to his authority, handed over the trial of Huss to Cardinal Annibaldi, who lost no time in pronouncing against Huss the greater excommunication: if within twenty days he did not submit to the Church, none were to speak to him or receive him into their houses; the offices of the Church were to cease when he was present, and the sentence against him was to be solemnly read in all churches in Bohemia every Sunday. Nor was this all. By a second decree all the faithful were required to seize the person of Huss and deliver him to the Archbishop of Prague or the Bishop of Leitomysl to be burned; his Chapel of Bethlehem was to be leveled with the ground.

The denunciations of the Papacy have never been lacking in severity, but they have rarely been carried at once into effect. Huss appealed from the Pope to Jesus Christ, the true head of the Church; it was a curious piece of formalism to maintain himself still within the communion into the Church. His foes were ready to proceed against him : so long as he was in Prague the interdict was rigidly observed by the clergy. But the resolute attitude of his friends portended a bloody conflict. Wenzel interfered to prevent it, and prevailed on Huss, for the sake of keeping the peace, to leave Prague for a time; he promised to do his utmost to reconcile him with the clergy. Huss obeyed the royal request, though with a feeling that he was forsaking his post, and left Prague in December, 1412.

Wenzel was genuinely anxious to have things amicably settled, and appointed a Commission, with the Archbishop at its head, to draw up the terms of a reconciliation. But when once theological disputes arise, every step towards a formal agreement is keenly criticized. The representatives of the University theologians objected to be called in the preamble “a party”; they declared that they expressed the opinions of the Church; they defined the Church as that “whose present head was Pope John XXIII, and whose body was the Cardinals, and the opinions of that Church must be obeyed in all concerning the Catholic faith”. The friends of Huss were willing to accept this with the addition “as far as a good and faithful Christian ought”. The four doctors who represented the University objected, and protested against the Commissioners. Wenzel regarded them as throwing willful hindrances in the way of his project of peace, and angrily banished them from his kingdom.

This victory of the followers of Huss was followed by a political triumph that was of still greater importance. The strength of Huss’s party in Prague lay in the Bohemians, and the strength of the orthodox party lay in the German middle class. Prague consisted of three separate municipalities. On the left bank of the Moldau lay the Old Town and the New Town; on the right bank of the Moldau the Little Town nestled round the cathedral and the royal palace of the Hradschin. In the New Town the Czechs were in a majority; but in the Old Town the municipal council was chiefly in the hands of the well-to-do Germans, which accounts for the vigor displayed by the magistracy in suppressing all objections to the sale of indulgences. In late years the struggle of Germans and Czechs had been bitter within the Old Town; and Wenzel, in pursuit of his pacific policy, ordered, on October 21, 1413, that henceforth the names of twenty-five Germans and twenty-five Bohemians be submitted to him, from whom he would choose eighteen, nine from each nation, who should constitute the Council. From this time the superiority of the Germans was broken, and they no longer had the government of the Old Town in their hands.

Wenzel’s repressive measures produced external peace for a time. Hus in his exile spread his opinions still more widely throughout the land. Tractates addresses to the people flowed unceasingly from his pen, as well as his great treatise “De Ecclesia”. Freed from the excitement which had constantly attended his last six years in Prague, the literary activity of Huss was now unimpeded. Nor must Huss be regarded only as a controversialist; he was the great framer of the Bohemian tongue. He adapted the Roman alphabet more fully to the expression of the Czech sounds; and the orthography which Huss introduced exists up to this day in Bohemia. He was, moreover, anxious for the purity of the Czech language, reproved the citizens of Prague for their combination of German and Czech, and was in his own writings and speech a linguistic purist.

In the treatise “De Ecclesia” Huss expresses most clearly his opinions, though it is not as a thinker that Huss owes his chief claim to the consideration of after times. His strength lay in his moral rather than in his intellectual qualities. His opinions were not logically developed, as were those of Wycliffe, but for that very reason they awakened a louder echo amongst his hearers. Huss was deeply impressed with the abuses of the ecclesiastical system, which were everywhere apparent. He was above all things a preacher, bent upon awakening men to a new spiritual life, and keenly sensitive of the difficulties thrown in his way by the failings and vices of the clergy. Huss had no wish to attack the system of the Roman Church, no wish to act in opposition to its established rules; he maintained conscientiously to the last that he was a faithful son of the Roman Church. But the necessity of attacking abuses led him on step by step to set up the law of Christ as superior to all other enactments, as sufficient in itself for the regulation of the Church; and this law of Christ he defined as the law of the Gospel as laid down by Christ during the sojourn on earth of Himself and the Apostles. His adversaries at once pointed out that, starting from this principle, he maintained the right of each individual to interpret Scripture according to his own pleasure, and so introduced disorder into the Church.

Besides this claim for the sufficiency of Scripture instead of ecclesiastical tradition Huss, from his deep moral earnestness, adopted the Augustinian view of predestination, and defined the true Church as the body of the elect. There were true Christians and false Christians; it was one thing to be in the Church and another thing to be of the Church. Those only were of the Church who by the grace of predestination were made members of Christ. The Pope was not the head of the Church, but was only the Vicar of Peter, chief of the Apostles; and the Pope was only Vicar of Peter so far as he followed in the steps of Peter. Spiritual power was given that those who exercised it might lead the people to imitate Christ; it is to be resisted if it hinders them in that duty. The Pope cannot claim an absolute obedience; his commands are to be obeyed only as being founded on the law of Christ, and if contrary thereto ought to be resisted. No ecclesiastical censures ought to prevent a priest from fulfilling the commands of Christ, for he can reach the kingdom of heaven under the leadership of his Master, Christ. We find in this much that reminds us of Wycliffe; but what Wycliffe reasoned out calmly, with a full sense of the difficulties involved in his view, Huss asserts with passionate earnestness, applying only so much of his principles as covers his own position at the time. The ideas of Huss were drawn from Wycliffe; and the conception of the Church as a purely spiritual body corresponded in many ways with the general tendencies of current opinion. The language of Huss might be paralleled on some points by the language of Gerson and D'Ailly. All who were anxious for reform, and saw that reform was hopeless through the Papacy, tended to criticize the Papal power in the same strain. It is the strong personality of the writer that attracts us in the case of Huss. Everything he writes is the result of his own soul’s experience, is penetrated with a deep moral earnestness, illumined by a boldness and a self-forgetfulness that breathe the spirit of the cry, “Let God be true and every man a liar”.

In this literary activity Huss spent his exile from Prague. He was in constant communication with his followers there, and his letters of encouragement to them in their trials, and of exhortation to approve their opinions by goodness of life, give us a touching picture of simple, earnest piety rooted on a deep consciousness of God’s abiding presence. These letters show us neither a fanatic nor a passionate party-leader, but a man of childlike spirit, whose one desire was to discharge faithfully his pastoral duties and do all things as in the sight of God and not of man.

Thus passed the year 1413. There was truce between the two parties in Bohemia, but both were eagerly expecting what the future might bring. John XXIII’s Council in Rome at the beginning of the year had condemned the writings of Wycliffe, but the proceedings of the Council were too trivial to awaken much attention. But when the Council of Constance was first announced, both sides felt that it must have a decisive influence on the state of affairs in Bohemia. John was anxious to bring into prominence the Bohemian dispute; it was the one question that might stave off for a while any discussion of the reform of the Church. In fact, the Bohemian movement rested entirely upon a desire for reform: it put before Christendom one set of principles, one way of procedure which would make a thorough reform of the Church possible. Though John did not know much about theology, he knew enough about human nature to feel convinced that the principles of the Bohemian reformers would not commend themselves to the ecclesiastical hierarchy assembled in the Council. He trusted that the difficulties which their discussion might raise would blunt the earnestness of the reformers in the Council, by identifying their cause with principles that were clearly subversive of the order of the Church. Sigismund on his side was urged by his vanity as well as his self-interest to use the prestige of a united Christendom to reduce into order Bohemia, of which, as his brother Wenzel was childless, he was the heir. Accordingly he lost no time in negotiating with Huss that he should appear before the Council and plead his own cause. He offered Huss his safe-conduct, promised to procure him an audience before the Council and to afford him a safe return in case his matter was not decided to his satisfaction. Huss’s friends besought him not to go. “Assuredly you will be condemned”, they pleaded. They warned him not to trust too much to Sigismund’s safe-conduct. But Huss considered it to be his duty to go and make profession of his faith, in spite of all dangers: he had not considered that he was called upon to risk his life in going before the Pope two years ago, but now he had a safe-conduct against the perils of the journey, and had hopes of appearing before a competent and impartial tribunal. He set out on his journey to Constance on October 11, amidst the sad forebodings of his friends. “God be with you”, said a good shoemaker as he bade him farewell; “God be with you: I fear you will never come back”.

Huss was anxious to be in good time at the Council, so ho left Prague before he had received the promised safe-conduct from Sigismund. He was escorted by two Bohemian barons, Wenzel of Duba and John of Chlum, who were afterwards joined by a third, Henry of Latzenborck. On his journey Huss sent before him, into the various towns through which he passed, public notices that he was going to Constance to clear himself of heresy, and that those who had any accusation against him should prepare to present it before the Council. Everywhere he was received with respectful curiosity by the people, and in many cases by the clergy. The Germans no longer saw in Huss a national antagonist, but rather a religious reformer. They were willing to stand neutral until the Council had pronounced its decision on his doctrines.

On November 3, Huss entered Constance and took up his abode in the house of a good widow close by the Schnetzthor. His arrival was announced by John of Chlum and Henry of Latzenborck to the Pope, who assured them that he wished to do nothing by violence. In the true style of a condottiere general he said that, even if Huss had killed his own brother, he should be safe in Constance. On November 3, Wenzel of Duba, who had ridden from Nurnberg to Sigismund, returned with the royal safe-conduct, which ordered all men to give Huss free passage and allow him to stay or return at pleasure. In full confidence for the future, in the simple belief that a plain statement of his real opinions would suffice to clear away all misrepresentations, and that the truth would prevail, Huss awaited the opening of the Council. He expected that Sigismund would arrive at Christmas, and that the Council, if not dissolved before, would have finished all its business by Easter.

CHAPTER V.

THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE AND THE BOHEMIAN REFORMERS

1414—1416

From his lodging by the city wall Huss looked out with surprise on the assembling of the Council, on the pomp that signified the arrival of princes of the Church; but he had no enthusiasm in his heart. He saw only the vice and luxury that accompanied this gathering of the faithful. “Would that you could see this Council”, he wrote afterwards to his Bohemian friends, “which is called most holy and infallible; truly you would see great wickedness, so that I have been told by Swabians that Constance could not in thirty years be purged of the sins which the Council has committed in the city”. Huss stayed quietly in his house, for he was still excommunicated, and the place where he was lay under an interdict. The Pope sent him a message saying that the interdict was suspended, and that he was at liberty to visit the churches of Constance; but, to avoid scandal, he was not to be present at High Mass. Huss seems to have made no use of this permission; he was busily employed at home in preparing for his defence.

Meanwhile his enemies were actively engaged in poisoning the Council against him. Chief amongst his opponents were the Bishop of Leitomysl and Michael of Nemecky Brod, who had formerly been a priest in Prague, but had been appointed by the Pope “procurator de causis fidei”, and from his office was generally called Michael de Causis. There too was Wenzel Tiem, anxious to avenge himself upon the man who had done such harm to his financing operations in the sale of indulgences. From the University of Prague came Stephen Palecz, who had formerly been a friend of Huss; but, alarmed at Huss’s action against the preaching of indulgences, had changed sides, and afterwards showed all a renegade’s bitterness against his former leader. Huss complains that the Bohe­mians were his bitterest foes; they gave their own account of what had happened in Bohemia, brought Huss’s writings to Constance and interpreted his Bohemian works, as they alone knew the language. Through the activity of these powerful opponents Huss’s cause was judged beforehand, and the only question which the Council had before it was the method of his condemnation.

It is difficult to see where Huss expected to find partisans in the Council. The Pope and the Cardinals had already declared themselves against him. England had abandoned Wycliffe, and was not likely to raise its voice in favor of Hus. France in its distracted condition brought its political animosities to the Council, and was not likely to lend help to one whose principles were subversive of political order. Already the ecclesiastical reformers of the University of Paris had taken steps to cut themselves off from all connection with those of Prague. In May, 1414, Gerson wrote to Conrad, the new Archbishop of Prague, exhorting him to root out the Wycliffite errors. On September 24, he sent the Archbishop twenty articles taken from the writings of Huss, which the theological faculty of the University of Paris had condemned as erroneous. These articles mostly dealt with Huss’s conception of the Church as the body of those predestinated to salvation, and the consequent inference that the commands of those predestinated to damnation were not binding on the faithful. Gerson was horrified at such a theory of the Church; he regarded it as subversive of all law and order. He and the conservative reformers of Paris were willing to reform the existing abuses in the ecclesiastical system, and for that purpose admitted a power residing in the whole body of the Church which was superior on emergencies to that of its ordinary ruler; but they shrank from a new conception of the Church which would allow the private judgment of the predestinated to override all authority. Gerson regarded Huss as a dangerous revolutionist; he wrote to the Archbishop on September 24, “The most dangerous error, destructive of all political order and quiet, is this—that one predestined to damnation or living in mortal sin, has no rule, jurisdiction, or power over others in a Christian people. Against such an error it seems to my humility that all power, spiritual and temporal, ought to rise and exterminate it by fire and sword rather than by curious reasoning. For political power is not founded on the title of predestination or grace, since that would be most uncertain, but is established according to laws ecclesiastical and civil”. The antagonism between the two schools of thought was profound. Huss, in his desire to deepen the consciousness of spiritual life, and bind together the faithful by an invisible bond of union with Christianity, was willing to sacrifice all outward organization. Gerson regarded the Church as a religious polity whose laws and constitution needed reform; but the most fatal enemy to that reform was the spirit of revolution which threatened the whole fabric with destruction. As a statesman and as a logician Gerson regarded Huss’s views as extremely dangerous. Hus, stirred only by his desire for greater holiness in the Church, believed that he could move the Council as he moved his congregation of Bethlehem. He wished only for an opportunity of setting forth his opinions before assembled Christendom, and thought that their manifest truth could not fail to carry conviction. There was a child­like simplicity about his character, and an ignorance of the world which some writers of modern times have mistaken for vanity.

Feeling that the Council was entirely on their side, the enemies of Huss were anxious to proceed against him before Sigismund’s arrival. John XXIII on his part was equally willing that the Council should find some occupation for its activity. The first step was to seize the person of Huss. Ungrounded rumors were spread that he had made an attempt to leave the city in a hay cart; it was urged that he said mass every day in his own house, and that many went to visit him and hear his false doctrines. Accordingly, on November 28, the Bishops of Augsburg and Trent, together with the burgomaster of Constance, came to Hus’s house while he was at dinner with John of Chlum, and informed him that the Pope and the Cardinals were ready to hear him. John of Chlum angrily answered that Huss had come at Sigismund’s request to speak before the Council; it was Sigismund’s will that he should not speak before his arrival. The Bishop of Trent answered that they had come on an errand of peace. On this Huss rose from the table and said that he had not come to Constance to confer with the Cardinals but to speak before the Council; nevertheless he was willing to go and answer anywhere for the truth. He bade adieu to his weeping landlady, who had seen the armed men with whom these messengers of peace had surrounded her house, and as Huss mounted his horse she begged his blessing, as from one who never would return.

When Huss appeared, at twelve o'clock, before the Cardinals in the Pope’s palace, he was told that there were many grievous charges against him of sowing errors in Bohemia. He answered, “Most reverend fathers, know that I would rather die than hold a single error. I came of my own accord to this Council, and if it be proved that I have erred in anything I am willing humbly to be corrected and amend”. The Cardinals said that his words were fair, and then rose, leaving Hus and John of Chlum under the guard of the soldiers who had escorted them there. A subtle theologian, in the guise of a simple friar in quest for truth, came meanwhile to talk with Huss on the doctrine of the Eucharist and the two natures of Christ. Hus, however, discovered him, and guarded against his desire for religious confidences.

At four o'clock the Cardinals again assembled to consider Huss’s case. The articles prepared by Michael de Causis were laid before them. They accused Huss (1) of teaching the necessity of receiving the Eucharist under both kinds and of attacking transubstantiation; (2) of making the validity of the sacraments depend on the moral character of the priest; (3) of erroneous doctrine concerning the nature of the Church, its possessions, its discipline, and its organization. Huss’s opponents were there, and urged the necessity for putting him in prison; if he were to escape from Constance he would boast that he had been tried and acquitted, and would do more harm than any heretic since the times of Constantine the Great. It was evening when the master of the Pope’s household came to announce to John of Chlum that he was free to depart if he chose, but Huss must remain in the palace. The fiery Bohemian forced his way into the Pope’s chamber. “Holy Father”, he exclaimed, “this is not what you promised. I told you that Master Huss came here under the safe-conduct of my master the King of the Romans; and you answered that if he ‘had killed your brother he should be safe’. I wish to raise my voice and warn those who have violated my master’s safe-conduct”. The Pope called the Cardinals to witness that he had never sent to take Huss prisoner. He afterwards called John of Chlum aside, and said to him: “You know how matters stand between me and the Cardinals; they have brought me Huss as a prisoner, and I am bound to receive him”. John XXIII cared little about his promise, or about Huss; he frankly admitted that he was thinking only how to save himself. Huss was led to the house of one of the Canons of Constance, where he was guarded for eight days. On December 6 he was taken to the Convent of the Dominicans, on a small island close to the shore of the lake. There he was cast into a dark and narrow dungeon, damp with the waters of the lake, and close to the mouth of a sewer. In this noisome spot he was attacked by fever, so that his life was despaired of, and John sent his own physicians to attend him.

The anger of John of Chlum at the imprisonment of Huss gave a sample of the spirit which afterwards animated the whole Bohemian nation. He did not cease to complain in Constance of the Pope and his Cardinals; he showed Sigismund’s safe-conduct to all whom he met; he even fixed on the doors of the cathedral a solemn protest against the Papal perfidy. Sigismund himself was equally indignant at the dishonor done to his promise; he requested that Huss be immediately released from prison, otherwise he would come and break down the doors himself. But the enemies of Huss were more powerful than the remonstrances of Sigismund. Perhaps John XXIII was not sorry to find a subject about which he might try to create a quarrel between Sigismund and the Council. Proceedings against Huss were begun; on December 4 the Pope appointed a commission of three, headed by the Patriarch of Constantinople, to receive testimonies against Huss. Huss asked in vain for an advocate to take exception to the witnesses, of whom many were his personal foes. He was answered that it was contrary to law for anyone to defend a suspected heretic.

When Sigismund arrived in Constance on December 25, the first question that engaged his attention was that of Huss’s imprisonment. He demanded of the Pope that Huss should be released. John XXIII gave him the same answer as he had given to John of Chlum; he referred him to the Cardinals and the Council, whose work it was. Discussion went on sharply for some time. Sigismund urged that he was bound to see his safe-conduct respected; the fathers of the Council answered that they were bound to judge according to the law one suspected of heresy. When Sigismund urged the indignation which was rising in Bohemia at Huss’s imprisonment, he was answered that there would be serious danger to all authority, ecclesiastical and civil, if Huss were to escape to Bohemia and again commence his mischievous preaching. Sigismund threatened to leave Constance if Hus were not released; the Council answered that it also must dissolve itself if he wished to hinder it in the performance of its duty.

We are so far removed from a state of opinion in which a king could be urged to break his word, on the ground that it was only plighted to a heretic, that it is difficult for us to appreciate the arguments by which such conduct could be justified. The Council maintained that one of its chief objects was to put down heresy. Huss was certainly a heretic, and must be tried as such; he was now in their power, and if he were to escape the evil would be greatly increased. It was not their business to consider how he had put himself in their power. The existence of the Council was independent of Sigismund’s help, and it must not allow its independence to be fettered at the outset by Sigismund's interference. Moreover, the terrible conception of heresy in the Middle Ages put the heretic outside the limits of a king’s protection. He was a plague-spot in the body of a State, and must be cut out at once, lest the contagion spread. Heresy in a land was a blot on the national honor, which kings were bound to preserve intact; the heretic was a traitor against God, much more a traitor against his own sovereign. It was the clear duty of all in authority to protect themselves and the community against the risks which the spread of heresy inevitably brought. Nor could a promise of safe-conduct rashly made override the higher duties of a king. No promise was binding if its observance proved to be prejudicial to the Catholic faith. Rash and wicked promises are not binding, and the goodness of a promise must in some cases be judged by its result. “Call to mind”, urged the Bishop of Arras, “the oath of Herod, which the result proved to be an evil one; so in the case of a heretic with a safe-conduct, his obstinacy makes it necessary that the decree be changed; for that promise is impious which is fulfilled by a crime”. Such is a sample of the reasons which led the wisest and best men of Christendom to urge Sigismund to a shameless breach of faith. Their arguments were enforced by Sigismund’s fear lest the Council dissolve if he refused to listen, and so all the glory which he hoped to gain be lost to himself, and all the benefits of a reunion of Christendom be lost to mankind. King Ferdinand of Aragon wrote to Sigismund, expressing his surprise at any hesitation about punishing Huss. It was impossible, he said, to break faith with one who had already broken faith with God. This letter must have produced a great impression on Sigismund; if the Council were to succeed, Aragon must be brought to acknowledge its authority, and no pretext must be given which might cover a refusal. Over­borne by these considerations, Sigismund abandoned Huss to his fate.

We cannot resist a feeling of moral indignation at such sentiments and at such conduct. It is true that freedom of opinion has been established among us at the present day by the teaching of experience: we have learned that duty has an existence amongst men independent of the law of the Church. Such a conception did not exist in the Middle Ages. The belief that rightness of conduct depended on rightness of religious opinion was universal, and the spirit of persecution was but the logical expression of this belief. Yet, as a matter of fact, the spirit of persecution solely for matters of opinion had largely died away, and only existed where political or personal interests were involved in its maintenance. The treatment of Wycliffe in England was an example which the Council might well have followed. It preferred to fall back upon the procedure of the Inquisition. It revived persecution for the purpose of showing its own orthodoxy under exceptional circumstances, and it won Sigismund’s consent by the offer of political advantage in quieting his Bohemian kingdom. Huss was made a victim of the need felt by a revolutionary party for some opportunity of defining the limits of its revolutionary zeal.

The question of the abdication of John XXIII threw the cause of Huss for a time into the background. John’s flight on March 20 put the responsibility of Huss’s imprisonment in the hands of Sigismund and the Council. For a moment the friends of Huss hoped that Sigismund would use this opportunity and set Huss at liberty. He might have done so with safety, for the Council was now too far dependent upon him to take much umbrage at his doings. But Sigismund had entirely identified himself with the Council, and had no further qualms of conscience about his treatment of Huss; he is even said to have taken credit to himself for his firmness of purpose. There were great fears that the friends of Huss might attempt a rescue; so on March 24 Sigismund handed over the custody of Huss to the Bishop of Constance, who removed him by night, under a strong escort, to the Castle of Gottlieben, two miles above Constance, on the Rhine, where he was kept in chains. On April 6 a new commission, at the head of which were the Cardinals of Cambrai and St. Mark, was appointed to examine the heresies of Wycliffe and Huss. As the Council was anxious to have this matter ready to hand when it had finished its conflict with John XXIII, it again transferred, on April 17, the examination of Huss to another commission, whose members had more leisure than the Cardinals. No time was lost in inaugurating the Council’s activity against heresy. In the eighth session, on May 4, Wycliffe was condemned as the leader and chief of the heretics of the time. The forty-five articles taken from Wycliffe’s writings were condemned as heretical; two hundred and six others, which had been drawn up by the ingenuity of the University of Oxford, were declared heretical, erroneous, or scandalous; the writings of Wycliffe were ordered to be burnt; his memory was condemned, and it was decreed that his bones be exhumed and cast out of consecrated ground.

The friends of Huss saw that if they hoped to save him must act promptly. On May 16 a petition was presented to the Council, signed by Wenzel of Duba, John of Chlum, Henry of Latzenborck, and 0ther Bohemian nobles in Constance, praying for Huss’s release from prison, on the ground that he had come voluntarily with a safe-conduct to plead on behalf of his opinions, and had been thrown into prison unheard, in violation of the safe-conduct, though heretics condemned by the Council of Pisa were allowed to come and go freely. There were replies and counter-replies, which only embittered the enemies of Huss. At last, on May 10, an answer was given by the Patriarch of Antioch, on behalf of the Council, that they would in no case release from prison a man who was not to be trusted, but that, in answer to the request for a public audience, the Council would hear him on June 5.

If Huss’s cause had been prejudged by the Council when he was put in prison, everything that had happened since then had only strengthened the conviction that Hus and his opinions were most dangerous to the peace of the Church. The news from Bohemia told that the revolt against ecclesiastical authority was rapidly spreading. After the departure of Huss the chief place amongst his followers was taken by one Jakubek of Mies, who attacked the custom of the Church by preaching the necessity of the reception of the Eucharist under both kinds. The question had previously been raised by Mathias of Janow, but in obedience to the Archbishop of Prague had been laid aside. Jakubek, not content with holding a disputation before the University in defense of his views, proceeded to administer the Communion under both kinds in several churches in Prague, heedless of the Archbishop’s excommunication. There was some difference of opinion on this question amongst Huss’s followers in Bohemia, and the opinion of Huss was requested. Huss gave his opinion in favor of Jakubek, on the ground that the Communion under both kinds was more in accordance with the teaching of S. Paul and the custom of the primitive Church; but it is evident from his way of speaking that he did not consider the question as one of vital importance. However, a letter of his to Jakubek, and Jakubek’s answer, which was expressed in imprudent language, fell into the hands of the spies of Michael de Causis, and were used to prove still more clearly the dangerous character of Huss.

Moreover, the friends of Huss showed a zeal in his behalf which the Council regarded as unseemly, if not suspicious. Huss wrote to warn them to curb their desire to come and visit him. One of them, Christian of Prachatic, was imprisoned on the accusation of Michael de Causis, and was only released on Sigismund’s intervention, who had a special care for him as a learned astronomer. Huss’s warnings, however, did not prevent his fiery scholar, Jerome of Prague, from venturing secretly to Constance. Jerome was the knight-errant of the Hussite movement, whose restless activity spread its influence far and wide. Sprung from a noble family, he represented the alliance between Huss and the Bohemian aristocracy. He studied at Heidelberg, Koln, Paris, and Oxford, and wandered over Europe in quest of adventures. He had been imprisoned as a heretic at Pesth and at Vienna, and had only escaped through the intervention of his noble friends and of the University of Prague. He had dreamed of a reconciliation between the Bohemian reformers and the Greek Church. Violent and impetuous in all things, he hastened to Constance, where he kept himself hid, and on April 7 posted on the church doors a request for a safe-conduct, saying that he was willing to appear before the Council and answer for his opinions. On April 17 the Council cited him to appear within fifteen days, giving him a safe-conduct against violence, but announcing the intention of proceeding legally against him. Jerome already repented of his rashness; he judged it wiser to return to Prague, but was recognized when close on the Bohemian frontier, at Hirschau, was made prisoner and was sent back to Constance, where he arrived on May 23. He was led in chains by his captor to the Franciscan monastery, where a general congregation of the Council was sitting. Jerome was asked why he had not appeared in answer to the citation, and answered that he had not received it in time to do so; he had waited for some time, but had turned his face homewards in despair before it was issued. Angry cries arose on every side, for Jerome’s keen tongue and fiery temper had raised him enemies wherever he had gone. Academic hatred blazed up; the hostility of the Nominalists against the Realistic philosophy was proved to be no inconsiderable element in the opposition to the tenets of Wycliffe and Huss. Gerson exclaimed, “When you were at Paris, you disturbed the University with false positions, especially in the matter of universals and ideas and other scandalous doctrines”. A doctor from Heidelberg cried out, “When you were at Heidelberg you painted up a shield comparing the Trinity to water, snow, and ice”. He alluded to a diagram which Jerome had drawn out to illustrate his philosophic views, in which water, snow, and ice, as three forms of one substance, were paralleled with the three Persons co-existing in the Trinity. Jerome demanded that his opinions be proved erroneous; if so, he was willing humbly to recall them. There were loud cries, “Burn him, burn him”. “If you wish my death”, he exclaimed, “so be it in God's name”. “Nay”, said the chivalrous Robert Hallam, Bishop of Salisbury, “Nay, Jerome; for it is written, I will not the death of a sinner, but rather that he be converted and live”. In the midst of general confusion Jerome was hurried off to prison in the tower of S. Paul’s Church—a dark and narrow dungeon where he could not see to read, and was treated with the utmost rigor.

The hopes of Huss and his friends fell lower and lower, as the months of his imprisonment went on. The Commissioners of the Council plied Huss with questions and framed their indictment against him. Huss labored hard to prepare his defense, and still found time to write little tractates for the use of his friends and even of his guards. His own desire was that he might have the opportunity of defending his opinions openly. So entirely were they the expression of his whole moral nature, that he could not imagine it possible for anyone to consider that the frank expression of such opinions was really culpable.

But the Council saw no reason for listening to Huss’s explanations. In their mind his guilt was clear; his writings contained opinions contrary to the system of the Church; he had openly acted in defiance of ecclesiastical authority, and had taught others to do the same. It was useless to give one another such opportunity of raising his voice. The Council that had just been victorious over a Pope thought it beneath its dignity to waste time over a heretic. The very fact of the overthrow of John XXIII made the condemnation of Huss more necessary. If the Council had been compelled by the emergency to overstep the bounds of precedent in its dealings with the Pope, Huss afforded it an opportunity of showing Christendom how clearly it distinguished between reform and revolution; how its anxiety to amend the evils of the Church did not lead it to deviate from the old ecclesiastical traditions. The real state of affairs was accurately expressed in the advice given to Huss by a friend who was a man of the world, “If the Council were to assert that you have only one eye, though you have two, you ought to agree with the Council’s opinion”. Huss answered, “If the whole world were to tell me so, I could not, so long as I have the reason that I now enjoy, agree without doing violence to my conscience”. Hus had the spirit of a martyr, because he had the singleness of character which made life impossible if purchased by the overthrow of his moral and intellectual sincerity.

So when, on June 5, the Fathers of the Council assembled in the refectory of the Franciscan Convent, they came to condemn Huss, not to hear him. Before Huss was brought in, the report of the Commissioners appointed to examine his case was read. A Bohemian, looking over the reader’s shoulder, saw that it ended in a condemnation of various articles taken from Huss’s writings. When John of Chlum and Wenzel of Duba heard this they went to Sigismund, who was not present at the congregation, and besought him to interfere. Sigismund was moved to send Frederick of Nurnberg and the Pfalzgraf Lewis to request the Council not to condemn Huss unheard, but to give a careful hearing to his defense. The friends of Huss objected that the articles against Huss were taken from garbled copies of his writings, and they laid before the Council Huss’s original manuscript of the “De Ecclesia” and other works on condition that they should be safely returned.

After these preliminaries, Huss was brought in. He admitted that the manuscripts which he was shown were his; he added that if they were proved to contain any errors, he was ready to amend them. The first article of his accusation was then read, and Huss began to answer it. He had not proceeded far before he was stopped by cries on all sides. It was not the Council’s notion of a defence that the accused should discuss the standard of orthodoxy, or bring forward quotations from the Fathers in proof of each of his opinions. To them the rule of faith was the Church, and the Church was represented by the Council. It was for them to say what opinions were heretical or erroneous. The only question in Huss’s case was whether or not he owned the opinions of which he was accused. “Have done with your sophistries”, was the cry, “and answer yes or no”. When he quoted from the writings of the early Fathers, he was told that was not to the point: when he was silent, his foes exclaimed: “Your silence shows assent to these errors”. The more sober members decided the Council to defer for two days the further hearing of Huss.

At the second audience, June 7, Sigismund was present, and there was greater order, owing to a proclamation, in the name of the King and the Council, that any one crying out in a disorderly way would be removed. The first point on which Hus was accused was his view of the Sacrament of the Altar, about which Huss denied, as he always had done, that he shared Wycliffe’s views. Peter d'Ailly, who was president at the session, tried to discuss the question on philosophical grounds, and to prove that Huss, as a realist who believed in universals, could not accept the true doctrine on the subject. The English, who had been experienced in this question since Wycliffe’s days, took a great share in the discussion. At last one of them brought it to an end by declaring that these philosophical points had nothing to do with the matter: he declared himself satisfied with the soundness of Huss’s opinion on this point. There was some warmth in the discussion, and many spoke at once, till Huss exclaimed, “I expected to find in the Council more piety, reverence, and order”. This exclamation produced silence, for it was a quiet appeal to the mandate against interruption: but D'Ailly resented the remark, and said, “When you were in your prison, you spoke more modestly”. “Yes”, retorted Hus, “for there at least I was not disturbed”.

The discussion then passed into an attempt to discover: what was the nature of the evidence by which a man’s opinions were to be determined. Cardinal Zabarella remarked to Huss that, according to Scripture, “In the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established”: as on most points there were at least twenty witnesses who deposed against Huss, it was difficult to see what he could gain by denying the charges. Huss answered, “If God and my conscience witness for me that I never taught what I am accused of teaching, the testimony of my opponents hurts me not”. To this Cardinal d'Ailly observed with truth, “We cannot judge according to your conscience, but according to the testimony laid before us”. Here, in fact, lay the inevitable difference in point of view that made the trial of Huss seem, in his own eyes, to be a mere mockery of justice.

The discussion wandered on aimlessly. Hus was accused of defending Wycliffe and his doctrines, of causing disturbances in the University of Prague and in the kingdom of Bohemia. Cardinal d'Ailly quoted, in support of the charge of sedition, a remark by Huss when he was first brought before the Cardinals, that he had come to Constance of his own free will, and if he had not wished to do so, neither the King of Bohemia nor the King of the Romans could have compelled him. Hus answered, “Yes, there are many lords in Bohemia who love me, in whose castles I could have been hid, so that neither King could have compelled me”. D'Ailly cried out on such audacity; but John of Chlum rose and said sturdily, “What he speaks is true. I am but a poor knight in our kingdom, yet I would willingly keep him for a year, whomsoever it pleased or displeased, so that no one could take him. There are many great lords who love him and would keep him in their castles as long as they chose, even against both Kings together”.

John’s remark was noble and brave and true, but it was not politic. The King of the Romans, the disposer of Christendom, the idol of the Council, sat by with wrath and heard the bitter truth about his mightiness, and was publicly braved for the sake of an obscure heretic. President d'Ailly saw an opportunity for closing triumphantly this unprofitable wrangle. Turning to Huss, he said, “You declared in prison that you were willing to submit to the judgment of the Council: I advise you to do so, and the Council will deal mercifully with you”. Sigismund, smarting under the affront of John of Chlum, publicly abandoned Huss. He told him that he had given him a safe-conduct for the purpose of procuring him a hearing before the Council. He had now been heard: there was nothing to be done but submit to the Council, which, for the sake of Wenzel and himself, would deal mercifully with him. “If, however”, he continued, “you persist in your errors, it is for the Council to determine what it will do. I have said that I will not defend a heretic; nay, if any one remained obstinate in heresy, I would, with my own hands, burn him. I advise you to submit entirely to the Council’s grace, and the sooner the better, lest you be involved in deeper error”. Huss thanked Sigismund—it must have been ironically—for his safe-conduct, repeated his vague statement that he was willing to abandon any errors about which he was better informed, and was conducted back to his prison.

The audience was continued next day, June 8, when thirty-nine articles against Huss were laid before the Council: twenty-six of them were taken from the treatise “De Ecclesia”, the remainder from his controversial writings. Huss’s manuscript was before the Council, and each article was compared with the passages on which it was founded: D'Ailly observed on several articles that they were milder than Huss’s words justified. The articles chiefly turned on Huss’s conception of the Church as the body of the predestinated, and the consequent dependence of ecclesiastical power on the worthiness of him who exercised it. Huss objected to several of the articles, that they did not properly express his meaning, were taken out of connection with the context, and paid no attention to the limitations which had accompanied his statements. To the article that “a wicked pope or prelate is not truly a pastor”, Huss put in a limitation that he meant they were not priests so far as their merits went, but he admitted that they were priests so far as their office was concerned. To back up this fine distinction, he urged the case of John XXIII, and asked whether he were really a pope, or really a robber. The Cardinals looked at one another and smiled, but answered, “Oh, he was a true pope”. The whole proceeding was wearisome and profitless, for the Council had no doubt that Huss’s teaching as a whole was opposed to all order, and they had in their favor the practical argument of the Bohemian disturbances. It was useless for Huss to palliate each separate article and urge that there was a sense in which it might have an orthodox meaning.

In spite of his attempts to be cautious, Huss occasionally betrayed the revolutionary nature of his views if pushed to the extreme. When the article was read, “If a pope, bishop, or prelate be in mortal sin, he is not a true pope, bishop, or prelate”, Huss urged the words of Samuel to Saul, “Because thou hast rejected the word of the Lord, He hath rejected thee from being king”. Sigismund at the time was talking in a window with Frederick of Nurnberg and the Pfalzgraf Lewis; there was a cry, “Call the King, for this affects him”. When Sigismund had returned to his place, Huss was asked to repeat his remark. Sigismund with truth and pertinence remarked, “Huss, no one is without sin”. Peter d'Ailly was resolved not to let slip the opportunity of showing the danger attending Huss’s opinions if they were extended to political as well as religious matters. “It was not enough for you”, he exclaimed, “by your writings and teaching to throw down the spiritual power; you wish also to oust kings from their places”.

At length the reading of the articles and their attestation was ended. D'Ailly, as president, addressed Huss: “There are two ways open for your choice. Either submit yourself entirely to the mercy of the Council, which, for the sake of the King of the Romans and the King of Bohemia, will deal kindly with you; or, if you wish further to maintain your opinions, an opportunity will be given you. Know, however, that there are here many learned men, who have such strong reasons against your articles that I fear if you attempt to defend them further you will be involved in graver errors. I speak as an adviser, not as a judge”. There were cries on all sides urging Huss to submit. He answered, “I came here freely, not to defend anything obstinately, but to submit to better information if I was wrong. I crave another audience to explain my meaning, and if my arguments do not prevail, I am willing to submit humbly to the information of the Council”. His words awakened the anger of many. “The Council is not here to inform, but to judge; he is equivocating”, was cried out on all sides. Huss amended his words: he was willing to submit to their correction and decision. On this D'Ailly at once rose, and said that sixty doctors had unanimously decided on the steps which Huss must take: “He must humbly recognize his errors, abjure and revoke the articles against him, promise never to teach them again, but henceforth to preach and teach the opposite”. Huss answered that he could not lie and abjure doctrines which he had never held, as was the case with some of the articles brought against him. Hereon a verbal dispute arose about the meaning of abjuration, which Sigismund tried to settle by the remark that he was ready to abjure all errors, but this did not imply that he had previously held them. Cardinal Zabarella at last told Huss that a written form of abjuration would be submitted to him, and he could make up his mind at leisure. Huss demanded another chance of explaining his doctrines; but Sigismund warned him that two courses only were open—either he must abjure and submit to the Council’s mercy, or the Council would proceed to assert its rights. A desultory conversation followed. At last Palecz, moved in some way by the solemnity of the occasion, rose and protested that in promoting the cause against Huss he had been actuated by no personal motive, but solely by zeal for the truth. Michael de Causis said the same. Huss answered, “I stand before the judgment seat of God, who will judge both you and me after our deserts”. He was then taken back to his prison.

The laymen quickly left the Council chamber, and Sigismund remained talking in the window with some of the chief prelates. The Bohemians, John of Chlum, Wenzel of Duba, and Peter Mladenowic, remained sadly behind the rest, and so heard Sigismund’s conversation. With indignation and dismay they heard him urge on the Fathers Huss’s condemnation. There was more than enough evidence, he said; if Huss would not abjure, let him be burned. Even if he did abjure, it would be well to inhibit him from preaching again, as he could not be trusted; they must make an end of the matter, and root out all Huss’s followers, beginning with Jerome, whom they had in their hands. “It was only in my boyhood”, ended Sigismund, “that this sect arose in Bohemia, and see how it has grown and multiplied”. The prelates agreed with the King’s opinion, and Sigismund retired satisfied with his acuteness in turning things to his own advantage. He thought that vigorous measures on the part of the Council would overawe the turbulent spirits in Bohemia, and would spare him much trouble when the time came that he inherited the Bohemian crown. The unguarded words that he spoke lost him his Bohemian kingdom forever. Sigismund might have been forgiven for refusing to come into collision with the rights of the Council by insisting on the observance of his safe-conduct; he could never be forgiven for joining the ranks of Huss’s foes and hounding on the Council to condemn him. As King of the Romans he might have duties which brought him into conflict with the wishes of the Bohemians; he was discovered secretly using his influence against them, and striving to crush what the Bohemians longed to assert. The insult to the nation, of inciting the Council to root out errors from Bohemia, was deeply felt and bitterly resented. The people steeled their hearts to assert that they would not have this man to rule over them.

An attempt was made to bring Huss to retract. Some member of the Council, whom Huss knew and respected, was chosen to submit to him a formula of retractation, setting forth, “though many things are laid to my charge which I never thought, yet I submit myself concerning all such points, either drawn from my books or from the depositions of witnesses, to the order, definition, and correction of the Holy Council”. Huss answered that he could not condemn many truths which seemed to the Council scandalous; he could not perjure himself by renouncing errors which he did not hold, and so scandalizing Christian people who had heard him preach the contrary. “I stand”, he ended, “at the judgment-seat of Christ, to whom I have appealed, knowing that He will judge every man, not according to false or erroneous witness, but according to the truth and each one’s deserts”. There was no longer any attempt at special pleading. Huss asserted against authority the rights of the individual conscience, and removed his cause from the tribunal of man to the judgment-seat of God. A new spirit had arisen in Christendom when a man felt that his life and character had been so definitely built up round opinions which the Church condemned, that it was easier for him to die than to resign the truths which made him what he was.

There was but one course open to the Council, yet it hesitated to proceed to the condemnation of Hus. On June 15 it turned its attention again to the innovations introduced into Bohemia by Jakubek of Mies, in the administration of the Eucharist. It issued a decree declaring the administration under both kinds to be heretical, because opposed to the custom and ordinance of the Church, which had been made to prevent irregularities. Huss, in his letters to his friends, did not scruple to call this decree mere madness, in that it set the custom of the Roman Church against the plain words of Christ and of S. Paul. He wrote also to Havlik, who had taken his place as preacher in the Bethlehem Chapel, exhorting him not to withstand Jakubek’s teaching in this matter, and so cause a schism among the faithful by paying heed to this decree of the Council. Huss set himself more and more decidedly against the Council, and all efforts to induce him to submit were unavailing. Even Palecz, the friend of Huss’s youth and now his bitterest foe, visited him in prison and besought him to abjure.

“What would you do”, said Huss, “if you were charged with errors which you knew for certain that you never held? Would you abjure?”

“It is a hard matter”, answered Palecz, and burst into tears.

It was characteristic of Huss that he asked to have Palecz as his confessor, for he was his chief adversary. Palecz shrank from the office, but paid his former friend another visit, and excused himself for the part that he had taken against him.

Huss resolutely prepared to die, and wrote to bid farewell to his various friends in Bohemia and at Constance. A tranquil yet determined spirit breathes through his letters; the charm of his personal character is seen in the tenderness and thoughtfulness of the messages which he sends. Repeated deputations from the Council vainly endeavored to prove to him the duty, the easiness of recantation. At last, on July 1, a formal answer in writing was returned by Hus to the Council. He said that, fearing to offend God, and fearing to commit perjury, he was unwilling to retract any of the articles brought against him. On July 5, at Sigismund’s request, the Bohemian nobles, John of Chlum and Wenzel of Duba, accompanied the representatives of the Council on a last visit to Huss. John of Chlum manfully addressed him, and his words are a strong proof of the sturdy moral spirit which Huss had awakened in his followers: “We are laymen and cannot advise you; consider, however, and if you feel that you are guilty in any of the matters laid to your charge, have no shame in recanting. If, however, you do not feel yourself guilty, by no means act contrary to your conscience, and do not lie in the sight of God, but rather persevere unto death in the truth which you know”. Huss answered: “If I knew that I had written or preached anything erroneous, contrary to the law and the Church, God is my witness that I would in all humility retract. But my wish always has been that better doctrine be proved to me out of Scripture, and then I would be most ready to recant”. One of the Bishops said indignantly:

“Will you be wiser than the whole Council?”.

Huss answered, “Show me the least member of the Council who will inform me better out of the Scriptures, and I will forthwith retract”.

 “He is obstinate in his heresy”, exclaimed the prelates, and Huss was led back to his prison.

Next day, July 6, was a general session of the Council in the Cathedral, which Sigismund attended in royal state. During the celebration of mass Huss was kept standing in the porch with an armed escort. He was brought in to listen to a sermon on the sin of heresy from the Bishop of Lodi. He was stationed before a raised platform, on which was a stand containing all the articles of a priest’s dress. During the sermon Huss knelt in prayer. When the sermon was over a proctor of the Council demanded sentence against Huss. A doctor mounted the pulpit and read a selection from the condemned articles of Wycliffe and the conclusions of the process against Huss. More than once Huss tried to answer to the charges, but he was ordered to keep silence. He pleaded that he wished to clear himself of error in the eyes of those who stood by; afterwards they might deal with him as they chose. When he was forbidden to speak, he again knelt in prayer. The number and rank, but not the names, of the witnesses to each charge, together with a summary of their testimony, was then read. Huss was aroused by hearing new charges brought against him, amongst others the monstrous assertion that he had declared himself to be the Fourth Person of the Trinity. He indignantly asked the name of the one doctor who was quoted as witness, but was answered that there was no need of naming him now. When he was charged with despising the Papal excommunication and refusing to answer the Pope’s summons, he again protested that he had desired nothing more than to prove his own innocence, and had for that purpose come to Constance of his own free will, trusting in the Imperial safe-conduct. As he said this he looked fixedly at Sigismund, who blushed through shame.

After this recital of his crimes, the sentence of the Council against Huss was read. First his writings, Latin and Bohemian, were condemned as heretical and ordered to be burnt. Huss asked how they could know that his Bohemian writings were heretical, seeing they had never read them. The sentence went on, that Huss himself as a pertinacious heretic be degraded from the priesthood. When the reading of the sentence was over, Huss prayed aloud: “O Lord Jesus Christ, pardon all my enemies, for Thy great mercy’s sake, I beseech Thee. Thou know that they have falsely accused me, brought forward false witnesses and forged false articles against me. Pardon them through Thy immense mercy”. The Archbishop of Milan, with six other Bishops, proceeded to the formal degradation of Huss. He was set on the platform in the middle of the cathedral, and was invested in the full priestly dress, with the chalice in his hand. Again he was exhorted to retract. He turned to the people, and, with tears streaming down his face, said, “See how these Bishops expect me to abjure: yet I fear to do so, lest I be a liar in the sight of the Lord—lest I offend my conscience and the truth of God, since I never held these articles which witness falsely against me, but rather wrote and taught the opposite. I fear, too, to scandalize the multitude to which I preached”.

The Bishops then proceeded to his degradation. Each article of his priestly office was taken from him with solemn formality, and his tonsure was cut on four sides. Then it was pronounced, “The Church has taken from him all rights of the Church; and commits him to the secular arm”. The paper cap, painted over with fiends, was put on his head, with the words, “We commit your soul to the devil”. Sigismund gave him to the charge of Lewis of Bavaria, who handed him to the civic officers for execution. As the procession passed out of the church Huss saw his books being burned in the churchyard. He was led out of the town into a suburb called Brüel, where in a meadow the stake had been prepared. To the last he asserted to the bystanders that he had never taught the things laid to his charge. When he was bound to the stake and Lewis of Bavaria again begged him to recant, Huss answered that the charges against him were false: “I am prepared to die in that truth of the Gospel which I taught and wrote”. As the pile was kindled Huss began to sing from the Liturgy:—

“O Christ, Son of the living God, have mercy upon us;

O Christ, Son of the living God, have mercy upon me;

Thou who wast born of the Virgin Mary”.

The wind swept the flames upward into his face, and he remained speechless. His lips were seen to move for a few minutes and then his spirit passed away. The attendants took great care that his body was all reduced to ashes. His clothes, which, according to custom, belonged to the executioner, were bought from him by Lewis of Bavaria, and were also burned. The ashes were flung into the Rhine: it was determined that Bohemia should have no relics of her martyr.

Huss died protesting against the unfairness of his trial.

It is indeed impossible that a trial for opinions should ever be considered fair by the accused. He is charged with subverting the existing system of thought; he answers that some modification of the existing system is necessary, and that his opinions, if rightly understood, are not subversive, but amending. Into this issue his judges cannot follow him. It is as though a man accused of high treason were to urge that his treason is the noblest patriotism. There may be truth in his allegation, but it is a truth which human justice cannot take into account. The judge is appointed to execute existing laws, and till those laws are altered by the properly constituted authority, the best attempts to amend them by individual protest must be reckoned as rebellion. No doubt Huss’s Bohemian foes did their best to ruin him; but his opinions were judged by the Council to be subversive of the ecclesiastical system, and when he refused to submit to that decision, he was necessarily regarded as an obstinate heretic. It is useless to criticize particular points in his trial. The Council was anxious for his submission and gave him every opportunity to make it. But it is the glory of Huss that he first deliberately asserted the rights of the individual conscience against ecclesiastical authority, and sealed his assertion by his own life-blood.

The Council still had Jerome in their hands, but they were in no haste to proceed against him. The news of the death of Huss kindled in Bohemia the bitterest wrath. It was a national insult, and branded Bohemia in the eyes of Christendom as the home of heresy. The clergy and monks were regarded with hatred as the causes of Huss’s persecution. In Prague there was a riot, in which the clergy were severely handled; a crowd of Bohemians ravaged the lands of the Bishop of Leitomysl, who had been especially active in the prosecution of Huss. The Council thought it desirable to try and calm the irritation in Bohemia, and on July 23 sent a letter to the Bohemian clergy exhorting them to persevere in the extirpation of heresy. This letter only had the effect of sharpening the antagonism of the two parties in Bohemia. One party drew more closely to the side of the Council and of Catholic orthodoxy; the other more pronouncedly, asserted the claims of Bohemia to settle its religious controversies without foreign interference. The Bishop of Leitomysl was sent by the Council to protect the interests of the Church; but so strong was the feeling against him in Bohemia that he felt it wise to stay indoors, and lived in fear of his personal safety.

On September 2 a meeting was held at Prague of sixty-two Bohemian and Moravian nobles, who drew up an angry reply to the Council’s letter. They asserted their respect for Huss and their belief in his innocence; they defended Bohemia from the charge of heresy; they branded as a liar and traitor anyone who maintained such a charge for the future; they declared themselves determined to defend with their blood the law of Christ and its devout preachers in Bohemia. This letter received as many as 450 signatures. On September 5 the Hussite lords entered into a formal bond, or covenant, to uphold freedom of preaching in Bohemia, and defend against episcopal prohibition or excommunication all faithful preachers; the University of Prague was recognized as the arbiter in doctrinal matters. On October 1 a similar covenant was entered into by the Catholic nobles to uphold the Church, the Council, and the worship of their forefathers. Wenzel took no steps to prevent these threatenings of disturbance. He was angry at the execution of Huss, which he regarded as a slight upon himself and his kingdom. He was especially angry that it had been done under Sigismund’s sanction; for he still regarded himself as King of the Romans, and was indignant at this intrusion of Sigismund into matters concerning the kingdom of Bohemia. Moreover, Queen Sophia grieved over the death of her confessor, whom she revered, and whose genuine piety she knew. Though Wenzel gave a verbal adhesion to the Catholic League, he was not thought to be in earnest.

The fathers of Constance had seen what little impression their severity produced on Huss; they learned that it produced equally little on his followers in Bohemia. Hence there was a general wish to win over Jerome if possible to the Council’s side, or, at least, to spare the Council the odium of making another martyr. Every method was used to induce Jerome to retract; till, overcome by the pleadings of men whose character he could not but respect, he consented on September 10 to make his submission to the Council. He wrote to his Bohemian friends that, on examination of the articles against Huss, he found many of them heretical, and on comparing them with Huss’s own manuscript writings he had been forced to own that the articles fairly represented Huss’s words: he consequently felt bound to admit that Huss had been justly dealt with by the Council; though he wished to defend Huss’s honor, he did not wish to be associated with his errors. The Council was proud of its triumph, and caused Jerome to renew his retractation in a more formal manner in a public session on September 23. It also passed a decree against those who assailed Sigismund for violating his safe-conduct to Huss. The decree asserted that “neither by natural, divine, nor human law was any promise to be observed to the prejudice of the Catholic faith”.

Jerome’s recantation did not procure his freedom. He was taken back to prison, though his confinement was made much less rigid. The Commissioners who had examined him—Cardinals Zabarella, D'Ailly, Orsini and the Cardinal of Apulia—urged his release; but the Bohemian party dreaded the results of his return to Bohemia, and declared that his retractation was not sincere. Gerson wrote a pamphlet to examine the amount of evidence to be attached to the retractation of one accused of heresy. The fanaticism that had been aroused by antagonism to the Hussites won at Constance the victory which it could not win in Bohemia. The Council determined to proceed against Jerome, and on February 24, 1416, appointed fresh Commissioners to examine witnesses on the points laid to his charge. On April 27 the articles of accusation were laid before the Council. Jerome had not been a writer or preacher like Huss, and his works could not be quoted against him; but every act of his life was set forth as a separate charge. He had been to England, and had brought back the books of Wycliffe; he had been concerned in all the disturbances in Bohemia; he had rambled over Europe, carrying heresy in his train. Every daring act into which his impetuous temper had led him was now raked up against him. He had interfered to aid a citizen, whose servant was being carried off for some slight cause to a monastery prison, and when the monks attacked him, had snatched a sword from one of the citizens and put them to flight. He had been moved with pity for a young monk whose abbot denied him the necessaries of life, and had accompanied him into the abbot’s presence, where he flung off his cowl and rushed away from the monastery. He had slapped the face of a monk who publicly insulted him.

Jerome demanded a public audience in which to answer these charges, and on May 23 was brought before the Council. Amongst those present at his trial was Florentine scholar Poggio Bracciolini, who had come to Constance as secretary to John XXIII. On the dispersal of the Papal household he had wandered for a time in Germany, searching for manuscripts of the classics, and had again returned to Constance to seek his fortune from some patron of learning. Poggio was deeply impressed by the vigorous personality of Jerome, and communicated his impressions in a letter to his friend Leonardo Bruni. As a man of letters and of culture Poggio looked with some slight contempt on the theological disputes of the assembled fathers. As an Italian he found it hard to sympathize with men who thought it worthwhile to rebel against the system of the Church. To his mind theological questions were not of much importance. The established system must, of course, be maintained for the preservation of order; but, after a decent recognition of its outward authority, the cultivated individual might think or act as he pleased so long as he avoided open collision. Poggio had no fellow-feeling with a man who was prepared to die for his opinions: he thought him clumsy for reducing himself to such an unpleasant alternative. But he was attracted to Jerome by his force, his mental versatility, his fiery self-confidence, his keen wit, and, above all, his philosophic spirit. To Poggio Jerome was an interesting study of character, and he saw the permanent and human interest attaching to the religious martyr. From Poggio’s testimony we are able to bring vividly before our eyes the scene of Jerome’s trial.

When Jerome appeared he was called upon to answer to each of the articles brought against him. This he refused for a long time to do, and demanded that he should first state his own case, and then answer his adversaries’ allegations. When his claim was overruled he said, “What iniquity is this, that I, who have been kept in a foul prison for three hundred and forty days without means of preparing my defence, while my adversaries have always had your ears, am now refused an hour to defend myself? Your minds are prejudiced against me as a heretic; you judged me to be wicked before you had any means of knowing what manner of man I was. And yet you are men, not gods; mortals, not eternal; you are liable to error and mistake. The more you claim to be held as lights of the world, the more careful you ought to be to approve your justice to all men. I, whose cause you judge, am of no repute, nor do I speak for myself, for death comes to all; but I would not have so many wise men do an unjust act, which will do more harm by the precedent it gives than by the punishment it inflicts”.

He was heard with murmurs. The articles against him were read one by one from the pulpit. He put forth all his skill and eloquence to plead against their truth. Poggio was amazed at the dignity, openness, and vigor with which he spoke. “If he really believed what he said, not only could no cause of death be found in him, but not even of the slightest offence”. Sometimes with jest, sometimes with irony, sometimes with sarcasm, sometimes with fiery indignation, sometimes with fervid eloquence, he answered the charges brought against him. When he was pressed on the question of Transubstantiation, and was charged with having said that after consecration the bread remained bread, he dryly said, “At the baker’s it remains bread”. When a Dominican fiercely attacked him, he exclaimed, “Hypocrite, hold your tongue”. When another made oath on his conscience, he rejoined, “That is the surest way to deceive”. So numerous were the charges against him that his case had to be put off for three days, till May 26.

In the next audience the reading of the articles and testimony against him was ended, and Jerome with difficulty obtained leave to speak. Beginning with an humble prayer to God, he began a magnificent defence. Gifted with a sweet, clear, resonant voice, he sometimes poured forth torrents of fiery indignation and sometimes touched the chords of deepest pathos. He set forth the glorious fate of those who in old times had suffered wrongfully. Beginning with Socrates, he traced the persecutions of philosophers down to Boethius. Then he turned to the Scriptures, and from Joseph down to Stephen showed how goodness had met with calumny and persecution. Stephen, he urged, was put to death by an assembly of priests; the Apostles were persecuted as subverters of order and movers of sedition. He pleaded that no greater iniquity could be committed than that priests should be wrongfully condemned to death by priests; yet this had often occurred in the past. Then, turning to his own case, he showed that the witnesses against him were moved by personal animosity, and were not worthy of belief. He had come to the Council to clear his own character; he had hoped that men in these days might do as they had done of old, engage in amicable discussion with a view of investigating the truth. Augustine and Jerome had differed, nay, had asserted, on some points, contrary opinions, without any suspicion of heresy on either side.

His audience was moved by his eloquence, and sat expecting that he would urge his retractation and ask pardon for his errors. To their surprise and grief, he went on to say that he was conscious of no errors, and could not retract the false charges brought against him. He had recanted through fear and against his conscience, but now revoked the letter he had written to Bohemia. He had looked on Huss as a just and holy man, whose fate he was prepared to share, leaving the lying witnesses against him to answer for their doings in the presence of God, whom they could not deceive. A cry arose from the Council, and many strove to induce Jerome to explain away his words. But his courage had returned, and he was resolved to tread in his master’s footsteps to the stake. He repeated his belief in the opinions of Huss and of Wycliffe, except in points concerning the Eucharist, where he held with the doctors of the Church. “Huss”, he exclaimed, “spoke not against the Church of God, but against the abuses of the clergy, the pride and pomp of the prelates. The patrimony of the Church should be spent on the poor, on strangers and on buildings; but it is spent on harlots and banquets, horses and dogs, splendid apparel, and other things unworthy of Christ’s religion”.

The Council still gave him a few days for consideration, but to no purpose. On May 30 he was brought before a general session in the cathedral. The eloquence of the Bishop of Lodi was again called into request to convince the obstinate heretic of the justice of his doom. When the sermon was over Jerome repeated the withdrawal of his former retractation. Sentence was passed against him, and he was led away to be burned in the same place as Huss. Like Huss, he went to die with calm and cheerful face. As he left the cathedral he began to chant the Creed and then the Litany. When he reached the place of execution he knelt before the stake, as though it had been an image of Huss, and prayed. As he was bound he again recited the Creed, and called the people to witness that in that faith he died. When the executioner was going to light the pile at his back he called to him. “Come in front, and light it before my face; if I had feared death, I would never have come here”. As the flames gathered round him he sang a hymn till his voice was choked by the smoke. As in the case of Huss, his clothes were burned, and his ashes were cast into the Rhine.

The Council had done all that lay in its power to restore peace in Bohemia.

CHAPTER VI.

SIGISMUND’S JOURNEY, AND THE COUNCIL DURING HIS ABSENCE.

1415-1416.

The Council had displayed its zeal for the promotion of the unity of the Church, both within and without, by deposing a Pope and burning two heretics. But there still remained other pretenders to the Papal dignity; and the trials of Hus and Jerome were only episodes in the more important question of the resignation of the contending Popes.

Gregory XII, weary of the conflict, and seeing himself abandoned on every side, submitted with good grace to abdicate. After a few negotiations about preliminaries, the abdication was formally carried out by Carlo Malatesta, acting as Gregory’s proctor, in a general session of the Council, on July 4, 1415. The two Colleges of Cardinals were united, Gregory’s acts in the Papacy were ratified, his officials were confirmed in their offices; he himself received the title of Cardinal of Porto and the legation in the March of Ancona for life; he was declared ineligible for re-election to the Papacy, but was to rank next to the future Pope. At the same time a decree was passed that the Council should not be dissolved till it had elected a new Pope.

There still remained Benedict XIII, who had agreed to be present at a conference at Nice between Ferdinand of Aragon and Sigismund, in June, 1415. But the exciting scenes which followed on the flight of John XXIII obliged Sigismund to defer his departure till July 18. Owing to the illness of the King of Aragon, the place of meeting was changed from Nice to Perpignan. Thither went Benedict XIII in June, and waited till the end of the month, when he declared Sigismund contumacious and retired to Valencia. Sigismund, in a speech to the Council before his departure, announced his intentions on a grand scale. He purposed first to appease the Schism, then to make peace between France and England, between Poland and the Teutonic knights; and after this general pacification of Europe, to undertake a crusade against the Turks. It was Sigismund’s merit that he formed great plans of European importance; it was his weakness that he never considered what means he had to carry them into execution. To obtain money for this journey, which was to have such mighty results, he was compelled to raise 250,000 marks by making over Brandenburg to the wealthy Frederick, Burggraf of Nurnberg. Frederick had already lent him 150,000 marks, and now, for the additional sum, obtained from the needy Emperor a grant of Brandenburg and the electoral dignity.

Sigismund set out in state with a train of 4000 knights, amid the good wishes of the fathers of the Council, who ordered a solemn procession to be made every Sunday, and mass to be said for his safety. He journeyed over Schaffhausen to Basel, and thence to Chambery and Narbonne, where he arrived on August 15. There he stayed for a month, waiting for the arrival at Perpignan of Ferdinand of Aragon, whose health scarcely permitted the journey. On September 18, he entered Perpignan, where Ferdinand awaited him. Benedict, who had raised objections about a safe-conduct, and had demanded that Sigismund should treat him as Pope, was at length driven by Ferdinand’s pressure to appear also towards the end of September. The efforts of Ferdinand and Sigismund could do nothing to bend the obstinate spirit of Benedict to submit to the Council. He answered that to him the way of justice seemed better than the way of abdication. If, however, the kings thought otherwise, he was ready to abdicate, provided that the decrees of the Council of Pisa were revoked, the Council of Constance dissolved, and a new Council called in some free and impartial place—in the south of France or Aragon. As regarded the election of a new Pope, he claimed that he alone should nominate, as being the only Cardinal appointed by Gregory XI before the Schism. If that was not acceptable, he would appoint a committee of his Cardinals, and the Council might appoint an equal number of their Cardinals; the new election should be made by a majority in each committee agreeing to the same person. After such election he would abdicate, retaining his Cardinals, with full legatine power over all his present obedience.

Benedict was true to his old principles. He had been elected Pope by as good a title as his predecessors, and he saw no reason why he should abandon his legal rights. Threats were useless against his stubbornness. When the Kings of Aragon, Navarre, and Castile threatened him with a withdrawal of obedience if he did not give way, he only grew more determined in his refusal. Sigismund found himself unsafe at Perpignan; his enemies seemed resolved to attack him when he was in a foreign land. A fire suspiciously broke out in a house adjoining his own, and the Infante Alfonso rushed to his rescue with assurances of his father’s protection. Some of Sigismund’s German followers rode away and left him without giving any reason. A suspicious embassy came from Frederick of Austria, which was said to have two notorious poisoners in its train. Fearing for his personal safety, Sigismund withdrew to Narbonne in the beginning of November, where he was followed by the ambassadors of the Spanish princes and of Scotland. New negotiations were set on foot, and Benedict, seeing himself threatened with a withdrawal of obedience, fled to the neighboring fortress of Collioure, intending to take refuge in Sardinia; his galleys, however, were destroyed by the ships of the neighboring ports. Several of his Cardinals, at the request of the King of Aragon, returned to Perpignan; and Benedict, who scorned to yield, retired to the rocky fortress of Peñiscola, which belonged to his family. Popular feeling was everywhere turning against him; his staunch upholder—the great Dominican preacher, Vincent Ferrer—went as ambassador to urge Benedict to resign, and on his refusal raised his voice in favor of union with the Council of Constance.

Negotiations went on rapidly between Sigismund and the King of Aragon. At last, on December 13, twelve articles were drawn up at Narbonne between the representatives of the Council and those of Benedict’s obedience. It was agreed that the Council of Constance should issue a summons to the princes and prelates of Benedict’s obedience to come to Constance within three months and form a General Council; a similar summons was to be addressed by Benedict’s obedience to the Council of Constance. When in this way the dignity of both parties had been preserved, the General Council so formed was to proceed to the deposition of Benedict, the election of a new Pope, the reformation of the Church, and the destruction of heresy. Benedict’s acts till his first summons to withdraw on November 15 were to be ratified, his Cardinals and other officials recognized by the Council, and a safe-conduct given to himself if he chose to appear.

Great was the joy of the Council when, on the evening of December 29, the news of this compact was brought t0 Constance. Communications with Narbonne had been rare, and rumors of every sort prevailed. The Council found their proceedings a little dull in Sigismund’s absence. Commissioners might sit and discuss various questions of Church reform, but it was clear that nothing would be done till Sigismund was back again. The expenses of a stay in Constance began to weigh heavily, and the representatives of universities and other corporations found it necessary to urge on their constituents the importance of the work on which the Council was engaged, and the need of their continued presence at Constance. The first joy of the Council at the good news from Narbonne was a little checked when it came to consider the formalities that had to be gone through before its real business could proceed any further. Sigismund had not obtained, as had been hoped, the resignation of Benedict XIII; the way was not yet open for ending the Schism; but the union of Spain with the Council would bring about again the union of Christendom. Hopes of ending the Council by Easter, 1415, were exchanged for expectations that it might be over in September, 1416. The good news that Ferdinand of Aragon had on January 6 ordered the publication throughout his dominions of the withdrawal of allegiance from Benedict XIII hardly compensated for the news that Sigismund proposed to make a journey to Paris and London to arrange for peace between France and England. The ambassadors of the Council, who returned on January 29, assured them of the great use of this step in procuring the unity of the Church, and brought Sigismund’s promise that he would return as soon as possible.

If Sigismund, before leaving Constance, had set forth as one of his objects the establishment of peace between France and England, events that had happened since then had increased the danger which the union of Christendom was likely to incur from the growth of national animosity. In August, 1415, Henry V had sailed to France, in September had taken Harfleur, and in October had inflicted on the French army the crushing defeat of Agincourt. The Council thought that Sigismund’s presence was consequently more than ever necessary at Constance to keep the peace and hasten on the business. But Sigismund had his own ends to serve while serving the Council. He had already succeeded in asserting anew the glories of the Imperial name in the affairs of the Church; he was equally resolved to assert it in the politics of Europe. His scheme of uniting Europe in a crusade against the Turk might be a dream; but at least it was a noble dream. In matters more immediately at hand—the full reunion and reform of the Church—Sigismund saw that nothing could be done on a satisfactory basis unless Europe were agreed. As bearing the Imperial name, Sigismund resolved to try and unite Europe for this purpose. It is true that he had little save the Imperial name to support him in his good intentions; yet, if his plan succeeded, he would work a lasting result for the good of Christendom, and would assert the old prestige of the Empire.

Full of hope, he entered Paris on March 1, 1416, and was received with splendid festivities. But the fierce p antagonism of the Burgundian and Orleanist factions had been intensified by the national discomfiture, and Sigismund found that in the disturbed state of Paris he could obtain no definite understanding: what one party accepted the other refused. Yet Sigismund tried his utmost to win the French Court to his projects: he offered to wed his daughter Elizabeth with the second son of Charles VI, and so make him heir to the Hungarian throne, as he had no male offspring. When he found that he could do nothing in Paris, he pursued his way to England, and even on his journey was treated with contumely at Abbeville and Boulogne. It was clear that there was a strong party in France which had no wish for peace.

Sigismund arrived in London on May 3, and there also great festivities were held in his honor. He took with him William, Duke of Holland, an ally of England, a relative of the French King, and consequently likely to be trusted by both parties. Henry V was willing to accept Sigismund’s offer of mediation and agree to a truce for three years, on condition of retaining Harfleur, a small compensation for the glorious campaign of Agincourt. Preliminaries were agreed to, and a conference between the three monarchs was arranged; but suddenly negotiations were broken off by the successful intrigues of the Count of Armagnac. William of Holland abruptly left England, and Sigismund found his mediation ignominiously disavowed. Sigismund was bitterly disappointed, and was placed in an awkward situation by this sudden change in the policy of France. Public opinion in England regarded him with grave suspicion, and he was entirely in the hands of Henry V. The Imperial honor had been sullied and the Imperial dignity outraged in this negotiation, from which Sigismund had hoped so much. He wrote angrily to the French King, and withdrew from further complicity in his affairs. He had indeed cause to be aggrieved, for he had not merely failed, but his failure threatened to be disastrous. He could not return to Constance crestfallen and discredited; he could not even leave England suspicious of his good intentions.

One course only remained open for him—to abandon his alliance with France, and draw nearer to England. Henry V, on his part, was ready enough to renew the policy of Edward I and Edward III, of forming an alliance with Germany against France. On August 15 Sigismund concluded at Canterbury an offensive and defensive alliance with Henry V, on the ground that the French favored the Schism of the Church, and opposed all efforts to make peace with England. It was an event of no small importance in European politics; it was a breach of the long-standing friendship between France and the house of Luxemburg—a friendship which Sigismund’s grandfather, John of Bohemia, had sealed with his blood on the field of Crecy. At the end of August Sigismund went to Calais, where Henry V soon joined him, and again a conference for peace was held; to it came the Duke of Burgundy, who, in his hatred against the Count of Armagnac, was ready to listen to Henry V’s proposals for a separate alliance. When the conference was over Sigismund bethought himself of returning to Constance. He was so short of money that he had to send his trusty servant, Eberard Windeck, to Bruges to pawn for 18,000 ducats the presents which he had received from Henry V and his Court. From Calais he went by sea to Dordrecht, and then made his way slowly up the Rhine to Constance, where he arrived on January 27, 1417, after an absence of nearly a year and a half.

Great was the delight of the Council at Sigismund’s return; he was met outside the wall, and was escorted in solemn procession to the cathedral. But the account of his reception shows us how strong an element of discord the national animosity between the French and English had introduced into the Council. The English observed with pride that Sigismund wore round his neck the Order of the Garter; and the Bishop of Salisbury, after meeting Sigismund, rode hastily away to the cathedral, that he might frustrate Peter d'Ailly, and get possession of the pulpit for the purpose of delivering a sermon of welcome. Sigismund, on his side, did not scruple to manifest in a marked way his wish for a good understanding with the English. On January 29 he received the English nation at a private audience, shook hands with each of its members, praised all that he had seen in England, and assured them of his wish to work with them for the reformation of the Church. On Sunday, January 31, he wore the robes of the Garter at high mass, and was afterwards entertained by the English at a magnificent banquet, which was enlivened by a miracle play representing the birth of Christ, the adoration of the Magi, and the massacre of the Innocents.

During Sigismund’s absence from Constance the Council had been unanimous only in condemning Jerome of Prague for heresy. The rest of its business had advanced but slowly. It is true that at the end of July a commission had been appointed to report upon the measures necessary for a reform of the Church in head and members. The commission consisted of thirty-five members, eight from each of the four nations, and three Cardinals, D'Ailly, Zabarella, and Adimari. There was no lack of material for the labours of the commissioners: sermons, memoirs, and tractates furnished them with copious lists of grievances. But the difficulty was to decide where to begin. All were anxious to do something; but each regarded as sacred the interests of his own order, and it was impossible to attack the fabric of abuses without endangering some of the props which supported the existing organization of the hierarchy. The general outline of the reforming scheme was clear and simple enough: it was a demand that the Pope should live on his own revenues, should abstain from interference in episcopal and capitular elections and presentations to benefices throughout Christendom, and should not unnecessarily interfere with episcopal or national jurisdictions. All these questions were really questions of finance, and the times were not favorable to serious financial reform. The Papal dominions in Italy were in the hands of the invader, and there was little revenue which could at that time be said to belong indisputably to the Pope. If the Pope were to be prohibited from making any demands on ecclesiastical revenues, he would be left almost penniless, and the Cardinals who depended on him would be destitute. Moreover, the Pope’s claims to raise money were the sign of the recognition of his supremacy, and it was difficult to forbid his extortion without impairing his necessary authority. The College of Cardinals during Sigismund’s absence regained its prestige and influence in the Council, and had a direct and personal interest in preventing any unreasonable diminution of the Papal revenues or of the Papal power. The reform commission found it necessary to proceed slowly and cautiously: they could only obtain unanimity on unimportant points; when they discussed matters of graver moment it was a question what was to be allowed to remain in the present necessity.

The tax which the French were most anxious to see reformed was the one called annates, which included French payments demanded by the Curia on the collation to a benefice. Such dues seem to have had their origin in the custom of making presents to those who officiated at ordinations, a custom which the Papacy had organized into a definite tax on all bishops and abbots, whose nomination passed through the Papal Consistory; the tax was levied upon a moderate assessment of the yearly value of their revenues in the books of the Consistory. During the Schism this sort of revenue was extended, it is said by the ingenuity of Boniface IX, to all benefices, and incoming incumbents were in every case required to pay half the revenues of the first year to the Pope, under a penalty of excommunication if they refused. The abolition of this oppressive impost was loudly demanded by the French deputies in the commission; but the Cardinals offered determined opposition to their pleadings, and urged that annates were the chief support of the Pope and the College of Cardinals, if they were abolished at present the Pope and Cardinals would be left penniless. Their opposition so far weighed with the representatives of the other nations that they agreed to allow this question to stand over. In truth, the question of annates affected France more closely than any other kingdom, as the necessity of supporting a Pope during the Schism had weighed most heavily on France. England had withstood the attempts of Boniface IX to extend the payment of annates to all benefices, and the old payment only was made by bishops. In Italy benefices were of small value, and the civic communities knew how to protect themselves against Papal aggression; in Germany the bishops were more powerful than in France, and so could defend themselves. The French complained that they paid more than all the other nations put together, and bore the burden and heat of the day. This might be true; but when a proposal was made to substitute for annates a yearly tax of one-fiftieth of the value of all benefices above ten ducats for the maintenance of the Curia, we are not surprised that the more favored nations hesitated to adopt the new scheme.

The French were not so ready as the other nations to let the question of annates stand over. When they Failure of found that they were beaten in the commission, they tried to bring pressure to bear upon that body by taking action in their own nation. Accordingly, on October 15, 1415, the French nation discussed the question for themselves. Their debates were tumultuous, and extended over seven sittings, as each man gave his vote and stated his reasons separately. At last, on November 2, the majority was declared to be in favour of the abolition of annates, and the appointment of a commission to consider the means of making a fair provision for the Pope and Cardinals in their stead. This conclusion was communicated to the other nations, and their cooperation was invited to carry it out; but the Italians entirely rejected the proposal, and the Germans and English did not think it advisable to discuss the matter at that time. The Cardinals called on the Procurator Fiscal of the Apostolic See to lodge a protest against the proposal as an encroachment on the Papal rights. The French replied by setting forth at length their grievances; but nothing was done. The failure of this first attempt at common action in the matter of reform damped the ardor of the most advanced reformers, and showed the Cardinals their strength as a compact body when opposed to varying national interests.

After this effort of the French the Reform Commission was left to continue its labors in peace. On December 19 the German nation moved that the Council proceed to consider measures to put down simony, but no practical steps were taken. Even on the question of the reform of the Benedictine Order agreement was so difficult that, though the Council definitely appointed commissioners on February 19, 1416, the matter was allowed to stand over. On April 5 Sigismund wrote from Paris to the Council, begging them to suspend all important matters till his return, and meanwhile to employ themselves with considering the reform of the clergy, especially in Germany. He recommended for their consideration such points as the manners, dress, and bearing of the clergy, and the prevention of hereditary claims over the lands of the Church. He urged them also to reconsider their proceedings in the matter of Jean Petit.

This last question was, in fact, the only one in which the Council had shown any ardor, and it was simply a transference to Constance of the political animosity by which France was convulsed. As the struggle in Bohemia between the Czechs and Germans had made its way to the Council Chamber, so the struggle in France between Orléanistes and Burgundians penetrated into matters which craved for ecclesiastical decision. Louis of Orleans, brother of Charles VI of France, had been murdered in 1407, and there was no doubt that the murder had been instigated by his opponent, the Duke of Burgundy. It might have been expected that such an act would have met with reprobation at the hands of those who were the guardians of public morality. But Louis of Orleans had been the supporter of Benedict XIII, who was the opponent of the policy of the University of Paris, and had shown himself willing to diminish its privileges and importance. One of the doctors of the University, Jean Petit, made an apology for the Duke of Burgundy before the helpless King on March 8, 1408. He justified his patron by a series of ingenious sophistries which affected the very foundations of political society. He set forth that any subject who plots against the welfare of his sovereign is worthy of death, and that his culpability is increased in proportion to his high degree. Hence it is lawful, nay, meritorious, for any one, without waiting for an express command, but relying on moral and divine law, to kill such traitor and tyrant, and the more meritorious in proportion to his high degree. Promises which are contrary to the welfare of the sovereign are not binding, and ought to be set aside; nay, dissimulation is justifiable if it renders easier the death of the traitor. Besides enunciating these propositions, Petit assailed the memory of the Duke of Orleans, and accused him of sorcery and evil practices to compass the King’s death. Arguments might serve for a time to justify, in the opinion of his partisans, one who was master of the situation. But the moderate party in the University, headed by Gerson, looked with alarm on the enunciation of principles which they considered subversive both of moral and political order. So long as the Duke of Burgundy was supreme they could do little to make their voices heard; but when in 1412 the Armagnac party succeeded in driving the Duke of Burgundy from Paris, they were eager to justify the memory of the murdered Duke of Orleans and fix a moral stigma on their opponents. In 1413 the Bishop of Paris summoned a Council to examine the doctrines of Petit, who had died two years before. After some deliberation nine propositions drawn from the writings of Petit were condemned in February, 1414, and his book was publicly burned. The Duke of Burgundy appealed against this decision to the Pope, and John XXIII deputed three Cardinals to examine the matter. Their deliberations were yet pending when the Council was summoned, and so this important controversy was transferred to Constance. The representatives of the University of Paris were chosen from those opposed to the views of Petit; the Burgundian ambassadors were ordered to prevent Petit’s official condemnation. It was this state of parties that led John XXIII to hope for help against the Council from the Duke of Burgundy, and the Council was by no means anxious to alienate so powerful a prince.

As soon, however, as the Council was rid of all fear from John XXIII, and by its proceedings against Hus had shown its zeal to maintain the purity of the faith, Gerson pressed for the condemnation of the doctrines of Petit. On June 15, 1415, a commission was appointed to examine the matter; and as Sigismund was anxious to have something decided before he went away, the Council on July 6, the same day on which it condemned Hus as a heretic, passed a decree which it hoped might be an acceptable compromise in the matter of Jean Petit. The decree set forth that the Council, in its desire to extirpate all erroneous opinions, declares heretical the assertion that any tyrant may be killed by any vassal or subject of his own, even by treachery, in despite of oaths, and without any judicial sentence being passed against him. The decree made no mention of France or of Petit; it was purely general, and did not go into the details of Petit’s arguments, but merely condemned an abstract proposition without any reference to the events which called it forth.

Gerson was indignant at this lenient treatment of Petit, especially when contrasted with the severity shown at the same time towards Hus. He asserted that if Hus had been allowed an advocate, he would never have been condemned. He went so far in his indignation as to say that he would rather be tried by Jews and heathens than by the Council. He entered with strong personal warmth into the controversy, and was not content to let it rest, although the prospect of a war with England made the French Court anxious that nothing should be done which could alienate the Duke of Burgundy. He pressed for a further decision on Petit’s propositions, and involved himself in a dispute with the Bishop of Arras, who argued that they concerned points of philosophy and politics rather than theology. Gerson carried his zeal beyond the limits of discretion, and wearied the Council with his repeated expostulations. Naturally the Council did not like to be told that they, who had not spared a pope, ought not, through fear of a prince, to desert the defense of the truth. Taking advantage of this feeling, a Franciscan, Jean de Rocha, presented before the Commission for Matters of the Faith twenty-five articles drawn from Gerson’s writings, which he declared to be heretical. The Bishop of Arras similarly accused of heresy Peter d'Ailly. The Council which was the scene of such proceedings had entirely lost its moral force. When the learned fathers of the Church tried to brand as heretics those who took the opposite side in national politics, we cannot wonder that the condemnation of Jerome of Prague by such a tribunal did not at once carry conviction to the rebellious Bohemians. They had some grounds at least for arguing that the wisest of the Council, Gerson and D'Ailly, were eager for the condemnation of Hus, that it might pave the way for the condemnation of Petit,—that Gerson’s suspicions of the sincerity of Jerome’s recantation were sharpened by the feeling that his own orthodoxy was not above attack.

It would seem that the majority of the Council were heartily wearied of this question, and in the beginning of 1416 was a general request that the Commissioners on Matters of Faith should pronounce an opinion, one way or the other, on the nine propositions of Petit. But the matter was further complicated by the action of the Cardinals Orsini, Zabarella, and Pancerini, who had been deputed by John XXIII to consider the appeal of the Duke of Burgundy against the decision of the Council of Paris. They now gave their judgment on that appeal, and quashed the proceedings of the Parisian Council on grounds of informality. It had proceeded in a matter of faith of which only the Pope could take cognizance, and also had not summoned the accused parties, but had founded its judgment on passages which were not authentic writings of Petit The Cardinals seem to have taken this step from a desire to reserve the whole question for the decision of a future Pope.

But in France the position of parties had again changed. After the defeat of Agincourt, the Orléanistes represented the national and patriotic party, and the Duke of Burgundy had to flee to Flanders. The Orléanistes possessed themselves of the royal authority, and in the King’s name pressed for the condemnation of Petit. On March 19 they appealed from the decision of the commissioners to that of the Council. The commissioners in their defense published the opinions of canonists which they had collected: twenty-six were in favour of condemning Petit, sixty-one were against the condemnation. It may seem to us monstrous that such should have been the result.

But the Council had already pronounced its decision against the general principle of the lawfulness of tyrannicide, and many thought that it was undesirable for political reasons to go farther. Many regarded the question as not properly a theological question, and objected to its decision on purely theological grounds; many regarded it as a mere party matter in which the Council would do well not to meddle. Moreover, the question in itself admitted of some doubt in a time when political institutions were in a rudimentary stage. Political assassinations wore a different aspect in days when the destinies of a nation might rest on the caprice of an individual. Classical and biblical antiquity supplied instances of tyrannicide which won the admiration of posterity. Many felt unwilling in their hearts that the Church should absolutely forbid conduct which it could not be denied was sometimes useful.

Still Gerson pursued his point, and the struggle between himself and the Bishop of Arras waxed warmer. Sigismund wrote from Paris urging that the decision of the three Cardinals against the proceedings of the Bishop of Paris should be recalled; but the Cardinals wrote back a justification of their own conduct. The weary controversy still went on and occupied the time and energies of the Council. It awakened such strong feeling that the Burgundian prelates separated themselves from the rest of the Gallican nation. Gerson flung himself entirely into this question, and so diminished the influence which his learning had previously gained him at Constance. The Council would not decide the matter, but preferred to leave it for the future Pope. Gerson exclaimed that no reformation could be wrought by the Council, unless it were under a wise and powerful head. When Sigismund returned to Constance, Gerson hoped that he would use his influence to have the matter settled. But the change which the English alliance had wrought in Sigismund’s political attitude made him unwilling to offend the Duke of Burgundy. The French prelates remained in a state of gloomy dissatisfaction, and the animosities which this dreary question had raised destroyed the unanimity of the Council and did much to hamper its future labors.

Nor was this the only cause of disunion in the Council. The assembled fathers were eagerly waiting the opportunity of finishing their greatest and most important task, the restoration of the unity of the Church. For this purpose they needed the incorporation of the Spanish kingdoms and the formal deposition of Benedict XIII. The death of Ferdinand of Aragon on April 2, 1416, caused some delay in sending ambassadors; and his successor, Alfonso V, though anxious to carry out his father’s plans, was not in a position to do so at once. Not till September 5 did the Aragonese envoys arrive, and they were at first unwilling to join the Council till they had been joined by the representatives of Castile. At length their scruples were overcome, and on October 15 a fifth nation, the Spanish, was constituted in the Council. But this process was not completed without difficulties which portended future troubles. First the Portuguese, who had joined the Council on June 1, protested against the formation of a Spanish nation as disparaging the honor of Portugal, which claimed to be a nation by itself. Next the Aragonese claimed precedence over the English, and the English protested against their claim. The French then allowed the Aragonese to sit alternately with themselves, protesting that they did so without prejudice to the dignity of the French nation.

The alliance thus made between the French and Aragonese was used by the French as a means of French annoying the English. The Aragonese raised the question of the right of the English to be considered a nation. Loud hissings were heard in the Council Chamber at this attempt to introduce a spirit of faction, and the Aragonese ambassadors left the room. The question was dismissed, but the ill-feeling created by it remained; the English and French wore arms in the streets, and there was constant fear of an open collision. So serious was the discord that, on December 23, a congregation continued wrangling till late at night, and then fell to blows, so that the Pfalzgraf Lewis and Frederick of Nurnberg had to be hastily summoned to preserve order.

This was the state of things that awaited Sigismund on his arrival at Constance, and his change of political attitude during his absence deprived him of the power to exercise any moderating influence upon the discord which wasted the energies of the Council.

CHAPTER VII.

THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE AND THE ELECTION OF MARTIN V.

1417.

We may feel that the conflicts which agitated the fathers at Constance displayed a petty spirit and an undue of attention to formal matters, yet they were more truly the signs of the growth of strong national feelings that were affecting European politics. The ideal unity of the Church when embodied in a European congress could not rise superior to the actual antagonisms of contending nations. Indeed the very question that called the Council together was in its origin political; the Schism in the Church had arisen through the desire of France to secure the Papacy on the side of her own national interests. Art experience of the evils of the Schism had led Europe to wish to end it by the arbitration of a General Council. On the question of the union of the Church there had been at Constance practical unanimity; but when that point was on a fair way to solution the same unanimity was no longer to be expected in other matters. The very nature of the questions which the Council next took in hand shows the strength of national sentiment. The condemnation of Hus was not merely a matter of faith; it was a step towards suppressing the movement of the Czechs against the Germans in Eastern Europe. The question of Jean Petit was a transference to Constance of the struggle of parties which was rending France asunder. In like manner the deadly contest between France and England carried its national antagonism into the affairs of the Council.

It is true that there was no question of doctrine or of ecclesiastical practice round which this contest could rage; for that very reason it sought expression in trivial matters, and the point of the constitution of the Council opened up a wide field to technical ingenuity. It would have been a difficult matter to arrange with any definiteness a scheme for the representation of united Christendom, nor was this ever attempted at Constance. The constitution of the Council was established in a haphazard way at the beginning; the organization into four nations had been practically accepted at a time when the Council was anxious to proceed to business and assert its position against John XXIII. The incorporation with the Council of the Spanish kingdoms gave the French an opportunity of discussing the general organization of Christendom, and so aiming a blow at the pride and honor of England. The leader of the French in this attack was Peter d'Ailly, who probably had ulterior objects in view, and was glad of an opportunity for educating his nation to follow his lead. If feeling ran high between the French and the English during Sigismund’s absence, it ran higher when on his return he showed signal marks of favor to his new allies.

Accordingly the French determined to open a formal attack upon the English; and on March 3, 1417, the ambassadors of the French King laid before the Council a protest, which set forth that England was not a nation that ought to rank as equal to Italy, France, Germany, or Spain, which all contain many nations within themselves.

The Constitutions of Benedict XII had recognized in Christendom four nations, and an ecclesiastical assembly ought to abide by the Papal Constitutions. Those four nations were the Italian, German, French, and Spanish; and now that the Spanish nation had joined the Council, the English should be added to the German nation, with which they were counted in the Bull of Benedict XII. Neither according to its political nor its ecclesiastical divisions was England equal to the other four nations. It had been allowed to count as a nation before the coming of the Spaniards to keep up the number of nations to four. But now that the Council became a new Council, it ought to revise its former arrangements for the conduct of its business. The French therefore demanded either that the English should be added to the German nation; or if it was considered necessary to keep up a distinct English nation, then that the other nations should be divided according to their respective governments; or else that the method of voting by nations should be entirely done away.

While this protest was being read to the Council hisses and loud exclamations of dissent were heard, Sigismund interposed to prevent the reading from being finished, on the ground that it was entirely contrary to the customary procedure for anything to be read in the Council which had not previously been approved by the nations. Moreover, as Protector of the Council, he ordered that thenceforth nothing be brought forward in public sessions to the prejudice of the Council, especially such things as might hinder the union of the Church. But the English were not content with this vindication. They put forth their learning to answer the arguments of the French, and on March 30 handed into the Council a written reply, in which they styled themselves “the ambassadors of the King of England and France”, and called the French King “our adversary of France”. They proved, first, that the Constitution of Benedict XII was not dealing with a division of Christendom into nations, but solely with a method of arranging episcopal visitations and chapters of Benedictines. They retaliated with crushing statistics the charges of the French about the smallness of the English kingdom compared with France. Eight kingdoms were subject to the English crown, not counting the Orcades and other islands to the number of sixty, which by themselves were as large as the kingdom of France. The realm of the English King contained 110 dioceses, that of the French King only 60. Britain was 800 miles long, or forty days’ journey, and France was not generally supposed to have such a great extent. France had not more than 6000 parish churches, England had 52,000. England was converted by Joseph of Arimathea, France only by Dionysius the Areopagite. The proposal to put England and Germany together was entirely absurd, as these two nations comprised between them almost half Christendom. The natural, as well as canonical, division of nations was into northern, southern, eastern, and western; the English were at the head of the northern group, the Germans of the eastern, the Italians of the southern, and the French and Spanish were left to make up the western. The English on these grounds branded the arguments of the French as empty and frivolous, and protested against any change being made which might affect the position of the English nation. The protest was received by the Council, and no attempt was made to change the constitution of the nations. Indeed the procedure of the French can scarcely have been intended seriously, but was merely an affront to the English, and a step in the education of the French party in opposition to Sigismund's influence.

By the side of these altercations the great business of the Council, the deposition of Benedict XIII, was slowly proceeding. On November 5, 1416, after the arrival of the Aragonese ambassadors, Commissioners were appointed to receive evidence against Peter de Luna on the charges of breaking his promises and oaths, and throwing obstacles in the way of the union of the Church. So quickly did the Commissioners do their work that on November 28 a citation was issued to Benedict to appear personally at Constance within seventy days after receiving the summons. Two Benedictine monks were sent to serve the citation. They made their way to Peñiscola, and were received by Benedict’s nephew with 200 armed men, who escorted them into Benedict’s presence on January 22, 1417. The old man looked at the black monks as they approached, and said, “Here come the crows of the Council”. “Yes”, was the muttered answer, “crows gather round a dead body”. Benedict listened to the reading of the citation, uttering from time to time indignant exclamations, “That is not true, they lie”. He repeated his old proposals—that a new Council should be summoned, and that he should elect the new Pope. He haughtily asserted that he was right and that the Council was wrong. Grasping the arm of his chair, he repeated, “This is the ark of Noah”. The determination of Benedict XIII was as unbroken as ever; the world might abandon him, but he would remain true to himself and his dignity.

On March 10 the Council received the account of their ambassadors to Benedict XIII, and on April 1 declared him guilty of contumacy. Commissioners were appointed to examine the charges against him and hear witnesses. But final sentence could not be passed till the union of the Spanish kingdoms had been accomplished, and this formal act was again made the occasion of raising serious questions. The ambassadors of Castile only arrived in Constance on March 29; but Castile was not very firm in its allegiance to the Council, and its envoys seem willingly to have lent themselves to the projects of the Curial party. The English suspected Peter d'Ailly of getting hold of them for his own purposes, and using the incorporation of Castile as the means of accomplishing his plan of identifying the French nation with the party of the Cardinals. At all events, the Castilians declared themselves on the side of the Curial party, and demanded as a condition of their incorporation with the Council that the preliminaries of a new Papal election should be settled.

This demand raised at once a question that had long been simmering. The Council had met for the threefold purpose of restoring the unity of the Church, purging it from heresy, and reforming it in head and members. In the deposition of the three contending Popes and the condemnation of the opinions of Wycliffe and Huss there had been practical unanimity; but the question of reform was likely to lead to greater differences of opinion, and the proceedings of the Reform Commission showed the difficulties which were in the way. Men were not agreed whether the reformation should be dealt with in a radical or a conservative spirit; if it were to be done radically, it must be done by the Council before the election of a new Pope; if it were to be done tenderly, a Pope must first be elected to look after the interests of the Papacy and the Curia. The circumstances attending the opening of the Council had created a precedent for approaching burning questions in the technical form of discussing which should be undertaken first. John XXIII was defeated on the question of precedence between the cause of union and the cause of faith; when the Council decided to undertake the union of the Church before discussing the heresies of Huss, the fate of John was practically decided. In the first flush of the Council’s triumph over the Pope the cause of reform seemed to have a promising future; but the absence of Sigismund, the long period of inactivity, and the growing heat of national jealousies afforded an opportunity to the Curial party which they were not slow to use. The proceedings relative to the deposition of John warned the Cardinals of their danger if a revolutionary spirit were to prevail, and during Sigismund’s absence the Cardinals drew closely together, and obtained a powerful influence over the Council. They knew that they could count on the allegiance of the Italian nation, and their policy was to take advantage of any disunion in the ranks of the other three nations. Such an opportunity had been afforded by the discontent of a section of the French nation at the proceedings about Jean Petit, and still more by the national animosity between the French and English, which had been increased by Sigismund’s political change. The incorporation of the Spanish kingdoms afforded the Curial party a chance of trying their strength. On the incorporation of Aragon they raised the question of the constitution of the Council; next on the incorporation of Castile they raised the question of the Council’s business. This they did in the recognized form of a discussion about priority of procedure. Ought not one point to be finished before another was undertaken? Ought not the unity of the Church to be definitely restored by a new election before the more doubtful subject of reform was taken in hand? This was the point which the Castilians were induced to raise, and their request brought to a crisis a number of conflicting opinions which weighed differently with different nations and classes in the Council.

First of all, there were strong political differences which Sigismund’s alliance with England brought prominently into the foreground at Constance. The Council regarded Sigismund with suspicion after his political change. Yet during the vacancy of the Papacy Sigismund was sure to be the most powerful person in the Council: he was its Protector; it was in his hands; he could bring pressure to bear upon it at his will. The French began to doubt whether it was wise to help the English and Germans, whom they regarded as their national foes, to arrange the condition of the future Pope. The Schism had arisen from the influence exercised by France over the Papacy; and France had only laid aside her claims because they were a source of embarrassment rather than of profit. Yet France could not allow her influence to pass to Germany, and did not wish to prolong a Council which might again establish the Imperial supremacy in Christendom, especially when the Emperor was in close alliance with England. The forthcoming Papal election would be an event of considerable political importance, and Sigismund must not be allowed to influence it for his own purposes. To these political reasons were added considerations arising directly from the question of reform itself. Men discovered that it was not a matter to be undertaken lightly, and that declamations against abuses were not easily converted into schemes of redress. In the foreground of Papal abuses were the exaction of annates and the collation to benefices; but an attempt to abolish annates aroused the deepest apprehension of the Cardinals and Curia, who asked how they were to be maintained without them. Similarly the attack on the Papal collations to benefices alarmed the Universities, whose graduates found that the claims of learning were more liberally recognized by the Popes than by Ordinaries immersed in official business. The University of Paris had had experience of this truth during the period of withdrawal of obedience from Benedict XIII; it had complained, and had been met with desultory promises. Many members of the academic party thought that a reform would be more tenderly accomplished after the election of a Pope who would advocate his own cause.

Moreover, there was much plausibility in the cry that another matter ought not to be undertaken till the main object of the Council was accomplished. It had decided to undertake first the cause of unity. It had advanced so far as to get rid of the rival claimants; why should it hesitate to accomplish its work, and confer on the Church one undoubted head? Delay was fraught with danger; there was at present a unanimity which might soon be destroyed. The Council had already sat so long as to weary the patience of those who were still detained at Constance. Growing weariness and disputes about the reformation question might make the Council dwindle entirely away before the Papal elections were decided, and so all might still be left in doubt, and a schism worse than the first again desolate Christendom. In the disturbed state of Europe war might break out in the neighborhood, and the Council be broken up by force, or be deprived suddenly of supplies. It was a serious risk to keep the important matter of the new election undecided in the face of all the contingencies that might happen.

There was a good deal of force in these arguments of temporary expediency—enough to impress the waverers; but the real question was whether the reformation of the Church was to be seriously undertaken or not. Sigismund sincerely desired it; the party of the Curia were determined to resist by all means in their power. All depended on the success of either side in gaining adherents. Sigismund was allied with Henry V of England, and was sure of the cooperation of the English nation. Henry V kept an observant watch on affairs at Constance, sent his instructions to the five bishops who were at the head of the English nation, and commanded that all his liegemen should follow the directions of the bishops, or else leave Constance under penalty of forfeiture of all their goods.

Perhaps this very resoluteness of the English and Germans made it easy for the Curial party to win over the French. The alliance of England and Germany was adverse to the interests of France; why should France support it in the Council? Under the name of a reform in the Church, the Papacy might be brought under German influence, might be turned into a political instrument against France. We can only guess at these causes for the adhesion of France to the Curial party, which we find an accomplished fact within a few months after the return of Sigismund. The records of the Council deal only with its sessions and its congregations; we know little of the proceedings within the separate nations, and have nothing save general considerations to guide us in this matter.

It is, however, noticeable that the most important man amongst the French was also the most important man amongst the Cardinals, and Peter d'Ailly seems to have been the means of winning over the French nation to the side of the Curial party. It is true that so late as November, 1416, D'Ailly had pressed for a reform of the Church, which he declared was a matter concerning the faith, and not to be considered separately. But D'Ailly had never been very famous for consistency, and had shown a capacity for turning with the tide, and conciliating opposing interests. He had accepted from Benedict XIII the bishopric of Cambrai, without deserting the party of the University of Paris; he had received from the Pope the Cardinal’s hat, without ceasing to be a royal ambassador in opposition to the Pope. He had been one of the most manful upholders of the right of the Council to proceed against John XXIII, yet had protested against the action of the Council in asserting its superiority to the Pope. He had pressed for reform before a Papal election, but had no difficulty in assuring himself that reform would be more safely accomplished under the Papal presidency. In the case of Germany and England the influence of their kings was strong enough to keep the nations united in their policy, whatever individual difference of opinion may have existed in their ranks, France had no such head; it would have been difficult for the king —even if his policy had been decided— to enforce unanimity on the representatives of the French nation; as it was, he had no interest to do so. The influence of the University of Paris, which had so long been predominant in matters ecclesiastical, was now broken. The affair of Jean Petit had ended in the defeat of Gerson and the purely academic party, and Gerson’s heat in this matter had ruined his influence. D'Ailly’s position as a Cardinal led him to grow more and more conservative in the matter of reform, and the national hostility of France against Germany and England enabled him to bring the French nation to join in opposition to their revolutionary schemes.

In this state of parties the Castilians were induced to raise the question which was to decide the scope of the future activity of the Council; and the Cardinals strained every nerve to give a decisive proof of their strength. Besides the demand for a settlement of the preliminaries of a new Papal election, the Castilians formally asked for a guarantee of freedom to the Council, and the French seized upon this as an occasion to harass Sigismund, by pressing for a more ample form of safe-conduct. The Cardinals made a formal declaration that they had enjoyed perfect freedom, save in their assent to the decree forbidding the election of a Pope without the consent of the Council; this they had accepted, not through any pressure from Sigismund, but through fear of being branded as schismatics if they objected. Men were greatly alarmed at this equivocal utterance; it was a covert threat that unless the Cardinals were respected in future, they might cast a doubt upon the legitimacy of what had been done in the past.

Accordingly, there was great confusion at Constance. Projects for the regulation of the new election were broached and rejected. Complaints were made about want of freedom; the city magistrates were asked to protect the Council; protests were lodged against unworthy treatment; and in the midst of the consequent confusion, the Cardinals urged the acceptance of their proposals about the new election as the one means of restoring peace. Sigismund, however, managed to avert the entire dissolution of the Council. The Castilians were somewhat alarmed at the violence of the storm which they had raised; they were not really desirous of the failure of the Council, and Sigismund prevailed on them, on June 16, to withdraw their conditions and unite themselves to the Council.

Peace, however, was not restored. The Cardinals took advantage of some complaint that the judges of the Council had overstepped their powers. The French, Italian, and Spanish nations joined them in another attack upon Sigismund. They protested that they were not in full enjoyment of their liberty, and would take no further part in the Council, till they had ample guarantees for freedom. Sigismund naturally objected to grant a demand which cast a reflection upon the past proceedings of the Council. Again discord raged for some weeks, till both parties were weary, and agreed on July 11 to a compromise, which was proposed by the ambassadors of Savoy. Sigismund granted an ample assurance of the freedom of the Council on condition that the order of procedure was fixed to be, first, the deposition of Benedict XIII; next, the reform of the Church in its head and in the Curia; thirdly, a new Papal election. The Cardinals had so far triumphed as to reserve for the new Pope the reformation of the Church in its general features; Sigismund retained the important point that the reformation of the Papacy and of the Curia should precede the appointment of an undoubted Pope. The struggle ended for the time; but the compromise was of the nature of a truce, not of a lasting peace. Sigismund’s position had been forced, and after giving way so far he might be driven to give way still more.

When in this way agreement had been again restored, the Council proceeded to the deposition of Benedict XIII. On July 26 he was again cited, declared contumacious, and sentence was passed against him. It declared that, after examining witnesses, the Council pronounced him to be perjured and the cause of scandal to the universal Church, a favorer of inveterate schism, a hinderer 0f the union 0f the Church, a heretic who had wandered from the faith; as such he was pronounced unworthy of all rank and dignity, deprived of all right in the Papacy and in the Roman Church, and lopped off like a dry bough from the Catholic Church. This sentence was published throughout Constance amid general rejoicings. The bells were rung, the citizens kept holiday, and Sigismund’s heralds rode through the streets proclaiming the sentence.

Now that the union of the Church had been established, there remained for the Council only the question of reform, in accordance with the agreement made between Sigismund and the Cardinals. For this purpose the report of the Reform Commission was ready as a basis for discussion. The Commission had continued its labors till October 8, 1416, and had drawn up its conclusions in a tentative form. First came six chapters dealing with the reformation of the Curia, providing for the holding of future Councils with power to depose wicked and mischievous Popes, defining the duties of the Pope and his relations to the Cardinals, fixing the number of Cardinals at eighteen and prescribing their qualifications. On these points the Commissioners seem to have been agreed, as their conclusions were drawn up in the shape of decrees for the Council to pass. Then came a number of petitions for reform which were put into a shape that might admit of discussion. The report ended with a number of protocols which seem to contain a summary of suggestions and questions raised before the Commissioners. But the points, taken all together, touch only on the removal of crying and obvious abuses — dispensations, exemptions, pluralities, appeals to Rome, simony, clerical concubinage, non-residence of bishops and the like. None of them affect the basis of the Papal system or try to alter the constitution of the Church where it was proved to be defective. They contain little which a provincial synod might not have decreed, nothing which was worthy of the labors of a General Council.

Even this report, harmless as it was, was not taken into the Council’s consideration. Such was the respect paid to technicalities, that a report drawn up before the incorporation of the Spanish kingdoms was not considered to be of sufficient authority for the newly-constituted assembly to discuss. It would have been possible to continue the Commission with the addition of Spanish representatives; but the Council wanted to gain time, and there was some plausibility in the objection that such a Commission would be unwieldy through its numbers. Accordingly, a new Commission of twenty-five doctors and prelates, five from each nation, was appointed to revise the work of their predecessors. This they proceeded to do; and while they were busy with their labors, the Curial party had leisure to renew their attack upon the compromise which had so lately been accepted.

When once the prospect of a new Papal election was in view, it was natural that men should wish for its accomplishment. Many must have felt shocked in their inmost hearts at the anomalous state of things that existed in the Church. Many more were swayed by motives of self-interest, and felt that promotion was to be gained from a Pope, but nothing from the Council. All were wearied with their long stay in Constance, and wished to see a definite end to their labors. Moreover, the talk about a new election intensified national jealousy and suspicion. It was easy to raise an outcry that Sigismund was using the Council for his own purposes and meant to finish his design by securing his hold upon the Papacy, when he and the victorious Henry V would be arbiters of the destinies of Europe. The Cardinals had formed their party and had already made trial of their strength. They were sure of the allegiance of three of the five nations and determined to attack the position of the Germans and English by pressing for an immediate election to the Papacy. Accordingly, on September 9, the Cardinals presented to a general congregation a protest setting forth their readiness to proceed to the election of a Pope, lest harm ensue to the Church through their negligence; they professed that this should be done without prejudice to the cause of reformation.

The reading of this protest was interrupted by loud cries, and Sigismund rose and left the cathedral, followed by the Patriarch of Antioch. Someone called out, “Let the heretics go”, which galled Sigismund to the quick. When he showed his anger some of the members of the Council professed fear for their personal safety. Rumors were spread that Sigismund was preparing to overawe the Council by armed force. The Castilians, who had never shown themselves much in earnest, and who were in strife with the Aragonese about precedence, took the opportunity of this alarm to leave Constance, but they had not proceeded farther than Steckborn when they were brought back by Sigismund’s troops. So great was Sigismund's anger that he ordered the cathedral and the Bishop’s palace to be closed against the Cardinals, so as to prevent their further deliberations. They held a meeting next day, sitting on the steps in the court­yard of the palace, and sent to the city magistrates and Frederick of Brandenburg to demand security and freedom. After some mediation the Cardinals were allowed to be present at a general congregation held the next day (September 11).

In this congregation the Cardinals presented and read a second protest against the action of the German nation couched in stronger language than the first. They said that they and three nations wished to proceed to the election of a Pope, and were hindered by the German nation and a few others. They washed their hands of all responsibility for the evils which might happen in consequence to the Church. They insisted that they had a majority of the nations, and that those who opposed them were merely the adherents of Sigismund, who were of no individual weight, as they had no weight apart from their own nation. They declared that they desired a reformation as much as did the Germans, but the first reformation needed was the remedy of the monstrous condition of a headless Church. It is noticeable that the protest makes no mention of the English nation. Robert Hallam, Bishop of Salisbury, who had been their leader and who stood high in Sigismund’s confidence, died on September 7; and the English seem at once to have fallen away from Sigismund’s policy through sheer feebleness. They at once appointed deputies to confer with the Cardinals about the method to be pursued in a new election, and Sigismund was left to learn the fact from the Cardinals. When he refused to believe them, the Bishop of Lichfield was driven to confess the truth, but lamely added that nevertheless the English wished to follow the German nation. Sigismund was not unnaturally indignant with his traitorous allies, and loaded them with abuse.

After the reading of this protest there was renewed confusion. Again rumors were spread of the fierceness of Sigismund’s wrath. At one time it was said that he intended to imprison all the Cardinals; then that he had consented to limit his fury to six of the ring­leaders. Next day the Cardinals appeared wearing their red hats, in token that they were ready, if need be, to suffer martyrdom. But they were well aware that they would not be put to that test, and knew that their organization was everywhere working conversions. The Cardinals protested against the breach of national organization caused by the existence of a party devoted to Sigismund; the Archbishop of Milan, the Cardinals Correr and Condulmier, returned to their national allegiance. All who did not belong to the English and German nations were now on the side of the Cardinals.

September 13 was devoted to the funeral rites of Robert Hallam, who had won respect by his boldness and straightforwardness, and all were desirous to do him honor. But on the next day the Germans appeared with an answer to the protest of the Cardinals; they indignantly cleared themselves of the charges of schism and heresy which their opponents had brought against them. If future schism was to be avoided, it could only be by a genuine reformation of the Roman Curia. The chair of the Pope needed cleansing before it was fit for a new occupant. The cause of the Schism was to be found in the self-seeking and carnal minds of the Cardinals, who could be no otherwise, so long as reservations, commendams, usurpations of ecclesiastical patronage, annates, simony, and all the abuses of the Papal law courts were allowed to go on unchecked.

The Germans had said their say, and Sigismund was still prepared to hold his own; but the ranks of his followers sensibly decreased, for his position had rendered untenable by the desertion of the English. English nation had a policy: his colleagues were opportunists. But it is difficult to suppose that they acted without permission from the English King. Probably Hallam was entrusted with a discretionary power, which he saw no reason for using, but which his colleagues were only too ready to employ. They offered themselves to the Cardinals as mediators with Sigismund and their offer was accepted. The possible need of mediation suggested to Henry V a policy which he hoped would be creditable to England and would establish a claim upon the gratitude of a new Pope. Sigismund might have the glory of struggling for reform; Henry V would enjoy the credit of proposing a compromise. So Henry Beaufort, his uncle, was judiciously sent on a mission which brought him into the neighborhood of Constance. We are justified in assuming that he left England to bring the news of Henry’s change of policy, to explain its reasons to Sigismund, and to cooperate with him for the purpose of giving a new direction to the joint policy of England and Germany. Henry V was an ideal politician, as much as Sigismund, and had a project of a Crusade against the Turks as soon as the conquest of France had been achieved. Probably he was convinced that the dangers of continuing to demand an immediate reformation of the Church were too great to render a dogged obstinacy any longer desirable. He was profoundly orthodox, and may have, become convinced that Sigismund’s policy was dangerous. Anyhow, the question of reform did not affect England as closely as it affected Germany. The laws of England gave the Crown means of defending the rights of the English Church, which a strong king could use at his pleasure. The Council of Constance had now sat so long that little was to be hoped from its future activity. The treaty of Canterbury had brought no political advantage to England, for Sigismund pleaded the pressure of business at Constance as a reason why he could not help his English ally in the field. Probably Henry thought it expedient that he and Sigismund should use their influence to secure a satisfactory election to the Papacy, rather than embitter ecclesiastical questions by a longer resistance to a majority who could not be quelled. Whatever were Henry’s motives, the English nation deserted the cause of Sigismund, and the death of Robert Hallam hastened a change of front, which was being kept in reserve as a last maneuver.

As soon as the German nation was left alone desertions gradually took place. Sigismund’s party gradually dissolved; all who had been his personal adherents abandoned him and united themselves to their own nations. Even the German nation was no longer united. The Bishops of Riga and Chur, who stood high in Sigismund’s confidence, promised their adhesion to the Cardinals on condition that the Pope when elected should stay at Constance with the Council till the work of reformation had been accomplished. It is said that they were won over by the promise of rich benefices, and they certainly were afterwards promoted. Sigismund could hold out no longer, and early in October gave his consent to the election of a Pope, provided that an undertaking were given by the Council, that immediately after his election and before his coronation the work of reformation should be set on foot. But the Cardinals hesitated to give this guarantee and raised technical difficulties regarding its form. Meanwhile, as a sop to the reforming party, a decree was passed on October 9, embodying some few of the reforms on which there was a general agreement.

The decree of October 9 was the first fruits of the reform wrought at Constance. It begins with the famous decree Frequens, which provided for the recurrence of General Councils. The next Council was to be held in seven years’ time, and after that they were to follow at intervals of five years. This was the result of all the movement which the Schism had set on foot. The exceptional measure necessary to heal the Schism became established on the foundation of ancient usage; its revival was to prevent for the future the growth of evil customs in the Church and was to supply a sure means of slowly remedying those which already existed. Henceforth General Councils were to be restored to their primitive position in the organization of the Church, and the Papal despotism was to be curbed by the creation of an ecclesiastical parliament. As a corollary to this proposition, it was decreed that in case of schism a Council might convoke itself at any time. A few of the most crying grievances of the clergy were redressed by enactments that the Pope should not translate prelates against their will, nor reserve to his own use the possessions of clergy on their death, nor the procurations due at visitations.

The passing of this decree did not do much to clear the way for a settlement of Sigismund’s demand of a guarantee for future reform. After much negotiation about the form which such a guarantee should take, the Cardinals finally said that they could not bind the future Pope. The Cardinals were anxious to know what part they were to have in the election. Though they could not hope to have the exclusive right, yet they were resolved not to be reduced to the level of deputies of their respective nations, and before giving any guarantee they wished to secure their own position. Again everything was in confusion at Constance till it was suggested by the English to the Cardinals that there was close at hand an influential prelate who might be called in to mediate. Henry Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester, half-brother of Henry IV of England, and powerful in English politics, was at that time at Ulm, ostensibly on his way as a pilgrim to the Holy Land. He was accordingly summoned to Constance, where he was welcomed by the King and Cardinals, and by his mediation an agreement was at last arranged between the contending parties. It provided that a guarantee for carrying out the reformation after the election of the Pope should be embodied in a decree of the Council; that those points contained in the report of the Reform Commissioners concerning which all the nations were agreed, should be laid before the Council for its approval; and that Commissioners should be appointed to determine the method of the new Papal election. The influence of England was used to make the best terms possible between the Germans, who were driven to give way, and the victorious Cardinals, whose obstinacy increased with their success.

The Commissioners were appointed on October II, and had some difficulty in agreeing on a mode of election, which should regard the claims of the Cardinals and at the same time satisfy the national feeling in the Council. The Germans proposed that each nation should appoint fifteen electors; and as there were fifteen Italian Cardinals they should represent the Italian nation. The scheme proposed by the French was ultimately adopted.

On October 30 the final result of this protracted struggle was embodied in decrees. It was enacted that the future Pope, with the Council or with deputies of the several nations, should reform the Church in its head and in the Roman Curia, dealing with eighteen specified points which had been agreed to by the Reform Commission; after the election of deputies for this object, the other members of the Council might retire. It was further decreed that the election of the Pope be made by the Cardinals and six deputies to be elected by each nation within ten days: two-thirds of the Cardinals and two-thirds of the deputies of each nation were to agree before an election could be made.

These decrees show at a glance how completely the reforming party had been worsted, and the enthusiasm for reform was spent. Step by step the Cardinals had succeeded in limiting the sphere of the Council’s activity. In July the aim of the Council had been defined as the reformation of the Pope and Curia before a Papal election, and after it the general reformation of the Church. By the end of October the reformation of the Church was dropped entirely, and all that the Council wished to do was to help the new Pope to reform his office and Curia, and that not unreservedly, but simply in eighteen specified points to which the zeal of the Council and the labors of the Reform Commission had ultimately dwindled.

In fact, as soon as a Papal election became possible, it swallowed up all other considerations and absorbed all attention. Men who had spent three long years at Constance wished to see the outward and visible sign of the work that they had done to reunite the Church; they wished to see a Pope appointed who might recognize and requite their zeal. No sooner were the decrees passed than preparations for the election were busily pressed. In the Kaufhaus of Constance chambers were constructed for the fifty-three members of the Conclave— twenty-three Cardinals and thirty electors chosen by the five nations. Sigismund took oath to protect the Conclave; guards and officers were appointed to provide for its safety, and every customary formality was carefully observed. On the afternoon of November 8, the Cardinals and electors assembled in the Bishop’s palace. They were met outside by Sigismund, who dismounted from his horse, took each by the hand and greeted him kindly. The solemnity of the occasion wiped out all traces of former rivalries, and tears were shed at the sight of this restored unanimity. The Munsterplatz was filled with a kneeling crowd, amongst whom knelt Sigismund. The doors of the cathedral were thrown open, and the Patriarch of Antioch surrounded by the clergy advanced and prayed and gave the benediction. All rose from their knees and a procession of the electors was formed. Sigismund rode first, and when all had entered the Conclave, they laid their hands in his and swore to make a true and honest choice. With a few words of friendly exhortation, Sigismund left them, and the Conclave was closed. 

Next day, November 9, was spent in settling the method of voting, about which there was some difference of opinion. The Cardinals wished to retain the customary method of voting by means of papers which were placed on the altar, and then submitted to scrutiny; others were desirous of adopting more open, and, as they thought, simpler methods. At last, however, the Cardinals prevailed; but it was not till the morning of November 10 that any votes were taken. The first scrutiny was indecisive, and nothing was done on that day. But next morning when the votes were counted it was found that four Cardinals stood distinctly ahead of all others —the Cardinals of Ostia, Venice, Saluzzo, and Colonna. Of these Colonna alone received votes from every nation, and in two nations, the Italian and English, possessed the requisite majority. Indeed the English voted for him alone, and doubtless their example produced a great impression.

Among the Cardinals, Oddo Colonna was marked out as a Roman of noble family, a man who had remained neutral during the struggles which rent the Council, unobjectionable on every ground, and personally acceptable both to Henry V and Sigismund. He was not, however, the candidate most favored by the Cardinals themselves, though many hastened to accede to him when they saw that opinion was strongly inclining in his favor. On a second scrutiny he received fifteen votes from the Cardinals, and had a two-thirds majority in every nation. For a time there was a pause. Then several Cardinals left the room so as to delay the election. Only the Cardinals of S. Marco and De Foix remained talking with one another. They were not sure what their absent colleagues might do; they feared lest they might return in a body and accede to Colonna. At last the Cardinal of S. Marco spoke out, “To finish this matter and unite the Church we two accede to Cardinal Colonna”. The necessary majority was now secured. The electors, according to custom, placed Colonna on the altar, kissed his feet, and chanted the Te Deum. The cry was raised to those outside, “We have a Pope, Oddo Colonna”, and the news spread fast through the city. It was not yet midday when it reached Sigismund, who, forgetful of all dignity, hastened in his joy to the Conclave, thanked the electors for their worthy choice, and, prostrating himself before the new Pope, humbly kissed his feet. A solemn procession was formed to the cathedral. The new Pope, who took the name of Martin V because it was S. Martin’s day, mounted on horseback, while Sigismund held his bridle on the right, Frederick of Brandenburg on the left. Again he was placed on the altar in the cathedral, amid a solemn service of thanksgiving. Then he retired to the Bishop’s palace, which was thenceforward his abode.

The election of Oddo Colonna was one which gave universal satisfaction, and Sigismund’s unrestrained manifestations of delight show that he regarded it with unfeigned self-congratulation. Politically, he had gained an adherent where he feared that he might have elevated a foe. Colonna was not the candidate of the French party, and there was nothing more to fear from their influence over the Council, on grounds that affected the Papacy, its position in Italy, and the recovery of the patrimony of the Church, Colonna, as a member of the most powerful Roman family, seemed likely to restore the Papal prestige. Moreover, he gave hopes of favoring the cause of the reformation. He was known as the poorest and simplest among the Car- dinals,1 and was a man of genial kindly nature, who had never shown any capacity for intrigue. No one could object to his election; for he had held himself aloof from all the quarrels which had convulsed the Council, had made no enemies, and was regarded as a moderate and sensible man. He was the choice of the nations, not of the Cardinals; and his election was a testimony to the general desire to reunite the Church under a Pope who could not be claimed as a partisan by any of the factions which had arisen in the Council.

CHAPTER VIII.

MARTIN V AND THE REFORMATION AT CONSTANCE—END OF THE COUNCIL.

1417-1418.

Whatever hopes had been entertained that Martin V might favor the work of reformation received a shock from his first pontifical act. Instead of regarding his position as somewhat exceptional, of instead of awaiting the results of further deliberation of the Council, he followed the custom of his predecessor, and on the day after his election approved and edited the rules of the Papal Chancery. The moment that the officials of the Curia had obtained a head, they felt themselves strong enough to fight for the abuses on which they throve. The Vice-Chancellor, the Cardinal of Ostia, who had published the Chancery regulations of John XXIII, hastened to lay them before Martin V, with a demand that he should maintain the rights of his office; and the new Pope at once complied. This act of Martin V struck at the root of the reforming efforts of the Council. The abuses which after long deliberation had been selected as the most crying were organized and protected in the rules of the Papal Chancery.

The Chancery itself was a necessary branch of the administrative department of the Papacy, and was concerned with the care of the Papal archives, and the Papal the preparation and execution of all the official documents of the Pope. Such a department necessarily had rules, and these rules were revised and republished by each Pope on his accession. They regulated the dispatch of business by the Chancery, and during the period of the Avignonese Papacy had been largely increased so as to cover the growth of the system of Papal reservations and the extension of the Papal jurisdiction. John XXII and Benedict XII greatly enlarged their scope, but the earliest edition of them that we possess is that of John XXIII, which Martin V now confirmed in its integrity. The rules thus established as part of the constitution of the Church reserved to the Pope all the chief dignities in cathedral, collegiate and conventual churches provided for the issue of expectative graces, or promises of next appointment to benefices, and fixed the payments due for such grants. They regulated Papal dispensations from ecclesiastical disqualifications, from residence at benefices, from the need of ordination by holders of benefices who were employed in the service of the Curia or in study. They provided for pluralities, indulgences, and the conduct of appeals before the Curia. In short, they set forth the system by which the Papacy had managed to divert to itself the revenues of the Church; they were the code on which rested the abuses of the Papal power which the Council hoped to eradicate.

Perhaps this act of Martin V was not at once divulged, Corona as the Chancery regulations were not formally published till February 26, 1418. If it was known, men did not in their first flush of joy appreciate its full significance. It might be urged that the act was merely formal, that a Pope must have a Chancery, and the Chancery must have its rules; their publication in no way hindered their subsequent reformation. However that might be, nothing disturbed the harmony at Constance. On November 13 Martin V, who was only a Cardinal-deacon, was ordained priest, and next day was consecrated bishop. The next few days were spent in receiving homage from all the clergy and nobles in Constance. On November 21 all was ready for the Pope’s coronation, which was carried out with great splendor. At midnight he was anointed in the cathedral. At eight in the morning the coronation took place on a raised platform in the courtyard of the Bishop’s palace. The tow was burned before the Pope, with the admonition, “Sic transit gloria mundi”. Then Martin V mounted a horse and went in stately procession through the town, Sigismund and Frederick of Brandenburg holding the reins of his steed. The Jews met him, according to custom, bearing the volume of the law, and begging him to confirm their privileges. Martin, perhaps not at once understanding the ceremony, refused the volume; but Sigismund took it and said:

“The law of Moses is just and good, nor do we reject it, but you do not keep it as you ought”. Then he gave them back the volume, and Martin, who had now his cue, said: “Almighty God remove the veil from your eyes, and make you see the light of everlasting life”. It is impossible not to feel that Sigismund was excellently fitted to discharge the duties of a Pope with punctilious decorum.

It would seem that Sigismund was so satisfied with the election of Martin V that he did not raise the question of proceeding with the reformation before the coronation of the Pope, according to the agreement which he had made with the Cardinals. But immediately after the coronation, a new Reform Commission was formed of six Cardinals and as many deputies from each nation. The Commissioners did not, however, proceed rapidly with their work. The old difficulties at once revived. The Germans and the French prelates wished to abolish Papal provisions; the representatives of the French Universities joined with the Italians and Spaniards to maintain in their own interests the rights of the Pope. The English, who by the statutes against Provisors had settled the matter for themselves, were indifferent. The previous quarrels of the nations in the Council were a hindrance to joint action. The French besought Sigismund to use his influence to further the reformation. Sigismund answered: “When I was urgent that the reformation should be undertaken before the election of a Pope, you would not consent. Now we have a Pope; go to him, for I no longer have the same interest in the matter as I had before”. Indeed, Sigismund seems to have given up reform as hopeless, and resolved to make the best terms he could for himself. On January 23, 1418, he publicly received at the hands of the Pope a formal recognition of his position as King of the Romans, and a few days afterwards obtained a grant of a tenth of the ecclesiastical revenues of three German provinces, as a recompense for the expenses which he had incurred in the Council’s behalf.

In this state of collision of interests and general lethargy and weariness, it became clear that nothing could be done in the way of a common scheme of reform. The Germans were the first to recognize this and presented to the Pope in January, 1418, a series of articles of reformation founded on the labors of the previous Commission. A clamor for reform was directed to the Pope; and a squib published by a Spaniard, headed “A Mass for Simony”, helped to warn Martin V that he must in some way declare himself, for Benedict XIII still had adherents. So far Martin V had refused to state his intentions. He saw that his wisest policy was to allow the reforming party to involve themselves in difficulties and to bide his time. When asked to declare his opinion, he answered with the utmost courtesy that if the nations agreed on any point, he was desirous to do what he could for the reformation. At last he judged it prudent to speak, and on January 18, 1418, put forward the Papal idea of reform in the shape of an answer to the points set forward in the decree of October 30, which had been the guarantee on which the Germans consented to the election of a Pope. On all the points therein contained the Pope agreed to some slight surrender of his prerogatives in favor of the Ordinaries; but one point, the definition of the “causes for which a Pope could be admonished or deposed”, was dismissed with the remark, “It does not seem good to us, as it did not to several nations, that on this point anything new should be determined or decreed”. The programme of the Pope was referred to the nations for their opinion. Again there were the old difficulties. The nations could not agree on the amendments which they wished to make. Martin V could now urge that he had done his part, and that the obstacles arose from the want of concord among the several nations. He kept pressing them to quicken their deliberations; and while he awaited their decision he continued to exercise the old powers of the Papacy, and made numerous grants in expectancy, which no doubt gave a practical proof to many that the Papal system after all had its advantages.

It was natural that the Council, which was before enfeebled by its own divisions, should find itself growing still feebler before a Pope. The influence of the Papal office was strong over men’s imaginations. The joy felt throughout Europe at the termination of the Schism was reflected among the Fathers at Constance. The ambassadors who came to congratulate the new Pope on his accession could not fail to deepen the impression of his importance. The death of Gregory XII on October 18, 1417, was an additional security for Martin V’s position. Moreover, the prestige of the Pope was increased by the arrival in Constance on February 19 of an embassy from the Greek Emperor, headed by the Archbishop of Kiev, to negotiate for the union of the Eastern and Western Churches. The luckless Greeks saw themselves day by day more and more helpless to resist the invading Turks, and their leaders deemed it politic to remove by union with the Latin Church the religious differences which had done much to sunder the East and West. During the Schism it had been hopeless to prosecute their scheme, as reconciliation with one Pope would only have won for them the hostility of the obedience of his rival. But their desire was known; and soon after the Council of Pisa, Gerson, preaching before the French King, urged the convocation of another Council in three years’ time, that the Greeks might then appear and negotiate for their union with Western Christendom. So soon as the Council of Constance had succeeded in establishing internal unity in the Latin Church, the Greek envoys made their appearance. They were honorably received by Sigismund, who rode out to meet them. With wondering eyes the Latin prelates gazed on the Greek ecclesiastics, whose long black hair flowed down their shoulders, who wore long beards, and had nothing but the tonsure to mark their priestly office. During their stay in Constance the Greeks practiced their own ritual, and were courteously treated by the Council; but it does not appear that much was done towards the object which they had in view. The distracted state of opinion in Constance was not calculated to inspire them with much confidence. The Council did not last long enough for the question to be seriously discussed. We find, however, that friendly relations were established between Martin V and the Greek Emperor, for Martin gave his consent to a project of intermarriage between the Emperor’s sons and Latin ladies.

It was natural for Martin V to urge the rapid dissolution of the Council. So long as it remained sitting unpleasant questions were sure to be forced upon him. The condemnation of Jean Petit, which had been deferred by the Council, was now laid before the Pope for his decision, and there was added to it another question of like character. A Dominican friar, John of Falkenberg, had written a libel against the King of Poland at the instigation of his enemies, the Teutonic Knights. This libel asserted that the King of Poland and his people were only worthy of the hatred of all Christian men, and ought to be exterminated like pagans. It was brought before the Commissioners in Matters of Faith early in 1417, was by them condemned and ordered to be burned; but its formal condemnation was left for the new Pope. Thus the Poles and the French alike called on Martin to condemn their enemies; but Martin was too politic to wish to offend either the Duke of Burgundy or the Teutonic Knights. The French and the Poles published a protest setting forth the scandals that would be caused by any refusal of justice. When this produced no effect, the Poles intimated their intention of appealing to a future Council. Martin V thought it desirable to check, if possible, this dangerous privilege, and in a consistory on March 10 promulgated a constitution which asserted: “No one may appeal from the supreme judge, that is, the apostolic seat or the Roman Pontiff, Vicar on earth of Jesus Christ, or may decline his authority in matters of faith”. To this constitution the Poles determined to pay no heed, and Gerson pointed out that it was destructive to the whole theory on which the Councils of Pisa and Constance rested their authority. It was indeed clear that if the Council remained sitting and this question were discussed, a collision between the Pope and the Council would be inevitable.

But Martin V knew before he took this step that the days of the Council were numbered, and that the majority of those in Constance were anxiously awaiting its end. He had made an agreement to accept a few general reforms in the Church, and to remedy for each nation some of the abuses of which they complained. He also endorsed the proceedings of the Council by issuing on Feb. 22 a Bull against the errors of Wycliffe and Huss, and drew up twenty-four articles, which were sent to Bohemia as the Council’s prescription for ending the religious strife. They were not couched in conciliatory language, and matters had gone too far for reconciliation; but they expressed Martin’s acquiescence in what had been done.

The settlement of the reformation question expresses the weariness and incompetence of the Council. There was no sufficient statesmanship to unite contending elements of which it was composed, and direct them to a common end. The desire for reformation with which the Council opened had so lost its force in the collision of national interests that even the restricted programme embodied in the decree of October 30, 1417, was found to be more than could be accomplished. After much aimless discussion, it was finally agreed that a synodal decree should be passed about a few of these eighteen points on which there was tolerable unanimity, and that all other questions should be left for the Pope to settle with the several nations according to their grievances. On March 21 the Council approved of statutes in which the Pope withdrew exemptions and incorporations granted since the death of Gregory XI abandoned the Papal claims to ecclesiastical revenues during vacancies; condemned simony; withdrew dispensations from discharging the duties of ecclesiastical offices while receiving their revenues; promised not to impose tenths except for a real necessity, nor specially in any kingdom or province without consulting its bishops; and enjoined greater regularity in clerical dress and demeanor.

The rest of the eighteen points raised by the decree of October 30, 1417, were settled by separate agreements or concordats with the different nations. In the session of March 21, 1418, the Council gave its separate approbation to these concordats, and solemnly declared that the synodal decrees then passed, together with the concordats, fulfilled the requirements of the decree of October 30. The Council as a whole accepted the decrees, the nations separately accepted the concordats; then the Council declared that these two together fulfilled the guarantee on the strength of which a Papal election had been agreed to. It is true that the concordats themselves had not yet been definitely accepted, but it would seem that they had been substantially agreed to. The difficulties in the way of their publication lay rather in the fact that the nations could not agree in themselves than that the Curia raised any objections. The German and French concordats were signed on April 15, the English not till July 12. It is remarkable that, while England and Germany made concordats each for themselves, dealing with special points in their relations towards the Roman Church, the three Romance peoples held together; and what is known as the French concordat represents the alliance which the last days of the Council had brought about, and which was the cause of the triumph of the Curia. The Spanish and Italian nations had asked for reforms which did not materially affect the Papal primacy; by answering their requests in common with those of the French, the special grant of certain remissions of annates to the French nation only would be regarded as a more signal mark of favor.

The questions dealt with in the concordats were not of much importance. They consisted chiefly of such of the points of the reform programme of Martin V as each nation thought to be necessary or desirable for its own good. The English concordat was very short, and provided only for the proper organization of the Cardinal College, the due admission of Englishmen to office in the Curia, the check of Papal indulgences, of unions of benefices and dispensations from canonical disabilities, and the somewhat curious revocation of permissions granted to bishops of wearing any part of the pontifical attire. It is clear that on all essential points the English preferred to rest on their own national laws rather than entrust themselves to grants and privileges given by the Pope. The English concordat is entirely trivial, but is in the form of a perpetual grant or charter. The other two were only a temporary compromise, restricted in their operation to five years. The payment of annates was reluctantly submitted to, with some restrictions, by the Germans and the French as a necessary means, under existing circumstances, of supplying the Pope with revenues. But in a few years’ time, when he was established in Rome and had won back the possessions of the Roman Church, he might fairly be required to live off his own. They bargained that in five years the question of annates should be again considered; and the Pope, being obliged to give way, did so on condition that the grants which he was making on other points should be similarly limited in time. As several of these grants concerned questions of organic reform, such as the reorganization of the College of Cardinals, a limitation of time was absurd in their case. Still more absurd was it that the articles about the Cardinals were established in perpetuity by the English Concordat and only for five years by the French and German concordats. That such conditions should have been admitted as satisfactory by the Council is only a sign how entirely its members were overcome by weariness, and how helpless they felt to grapple with the practical questions raised by the cry for reform.

In fact, everyone wanted to get away from Constance, and the most sanguine hoped that, after a few years of rest, the next General Council would find greater unanimity among the nations. As soon as the decree of March 21 had been passed the reforming work of the Council of Constance was virtually at an end; but before it separated a trivial matter was brought forward which involved principles more important for future reform than any contained in the concordats. A complaint was made to the Pope of the irregular institution within the Church of a new ideal of Christian life.

A spirit of refined pietism had for some time prevailed in the Netherlands, till it received a definite organization from the fervor of Gerhard Groot, a mission preacher whose eloquence produced great results in the province of Utrecht. But Gerhard Groot was not merely a preacher; he was also a theological student, and a man whose beautiful character attracted a number of young men to follow him. Some were his friends, some his scholars, and others were employed by him to copy manuscripts, which he was fond of collecting and disseminating. From these various elements a small society gradually sprang up around him, which took an organized shape under the name of the Brotherhood of Common Life. The Brethren lived in common, devoted to good works, and especially to the cause of popular education. Gerhard Groot died at Deventer, which was the centre of his labors, in 1384; but his system lived under the guidance of Florentius Radewins, and the spirit which inspired the Brotherhood is still vocal to Christendom in the pages of Thomas a Kempis.

It was, however, only natural that the old monastic orders Position should look with suspicion on the rise of a rival. The Brethren of the Common Life were fiercely attacked by the Friars, and at last the question of the legality of their position was brought before the decision of assembled Christendom. Matthias Grabow, a Dominican of Groningen, wrote a book against the Brotherhood, and when reproved by the Bishop of Utrecht, appealed to the Pope. His position was that worldly possessions are inseparable from a life in the world, and that those only who enter an established religious order can meritoriously practice the three ascetic duties of poverty, chastity, and obedience. The monastic life claimed for itself, not only an unquestioned superiority, but also the exclusive right of practicing its fundamental virtues. The recognized monastic orders would allow no extension of their principles, and would admit of no middle term between themselves and the ordinary life of man.

Martin V submitted the question to a commission of theologians. D'Ailly and Gerson had a last opportunity of showing that their reforming views still had a meaning. D'Ailly attacked the phrase “verae religions”, and Grabow declared it to be heresy to assert that there was no true religion, save amongst monks. Gerson, on April 3, 1418, presented an examination of Grabow’s propositions. He laid down that there was one religion only, the religion of Christ, which can be practiced without vows and needs nothing to add to its perfection. The monastic orders are wrongly called “states of perfection”; they are only assemblies of those striving towards perfection. The opinions of Grabow would exclude from true religion popes and prelates, who had not taken monastic vows—nay, even Christ Himself. The obligations undertaken by monks were many of them equally adapted for laymen also, and ought to be brought home to them. He pronounced the opinions of Grabow to be erroneous, even heretical and worthy of condemnation. His opinion was followed, and Grabow retracted. The Brethren of the Common Life were thenceforth unmolested and enjoyed papal recognition. The mediaeval notion of the perfection of monastic life received a severe blow; and though the reformers of Constance could not agree to sweep away the abuses of the existing system of the Church, they resisted an attempt to check the free development of Christian zeal.

Nothing now remained for the Council except formally to separate. Martin V celebrated with great ecclesiastical pomp the festivities of Easter, while the Council prepared for its dissolution. On April 19 he fixed Pavia as the seat of the next Council, which was to be held in seven years’ time. On April 22 was held the last general session; but the Council did not part in peace, as the ambassadors of Poland rose and demanded from Pope and Council the condemnation of the writings of Falkenberg, otherwise they would appeal to the future Council. There was some confusion, and Martin V answered that all the decrees passed by the Council in matters of faith he would ratify, but nothing more. The Polish envoy would have proceeded to read his protest and appeal, but Martin forbade him. The Bishop of Catania preached a farewell sermon on the text, “Now ye have sorrow, but I shall see you again and your heart shall rejoice”. The decree of the dissolution of the Council was read, and indulgences were granted to those who had been present at it. Then rose Doctor Ardecin of Novara, and in the name of Sigismund declared the trouble and expense which the Council had caused him, which, however, he did not regret, seeing that it had wrought the unity of the Church; if anything had been done amiss it had not been by his fault. He thanked all the members of the Council for their presence, and declared himself ready to support the Church until death.

The Council was now over; but Sigismund was anxious to keep Martin V in Germany. It was not entirely beyond his hopes that the Papacy might now for a time be in the hands of Germany, as before it had been in the hands of France. He besought Martin to remain at least till the next Easter, and offered him Basel, Strasburg, or Mainz as his place of residence; but Martin answered that the miserable condition of the States of the Church needed a ruler’s hand, and that his place was in Rome. Sigismund had already had reason to discover that Martin was not likely to be a tool in his hands. He reluctantly saw his preparations for departure, and at last, on May 16, escorted him to Gottlieben, where Martin took ship to Schaffhausen, whence he journeyed to Geneva.

Sigismund did not find it so easy to leave Constance. The attendants of the needy monarch received scanty pay from their master, and were most of them deeply indebted to the burghers of Constance, who were not willing to let them go till they had paid their debts. In vain Sigismund tried to negotiate through the city magistrates for an extension of credit. He was forced as a last resource to call a meeting of creditors in the Exchange of the city and trust to his own eloquence. He spoke at length of his good offices to the citizens of Constance in summoning the Council to their city and maintaining it there so long; he dwelt upon the profit they had made thereby, and the glory they had gained throughout the world; then he turned to pleasing flattery and praised them for the way in which they had more than justified by their behavior all his anticipations. “With such words”, says Reichenthal, “he caused the poor folk to think that all he said was true, and rested on good grounds”. When he saw that he had gained the people’s hearts, he proposed to leave in pledge for the debt his gold and silver plate. The creditors relented and accepted his offer. Then Sigismund thanked them warmly for their confidence, and went on to say that it would be a great disgrace to him if he robbed his table of its plate; he begged them instead to take his fine linen and hangings, which he could more easily dispense with for a time. The luckless creditors could not avoid consenting. The linen was handed over, and no pains were spared in entering the various debts in ledgers. Then, on May 21, Sigismund and his needy followers rode away; but the pledges were never redeemed, and when the creditors came to examine them they found them to be unsalable, as they were all embroidered with Sigismund’s arms. Many of the citizens of Constance were reduced to poverty through their trust in Sigismund’s words; and the plausible and shifty king left behind him a mixed legacy of misery and grandeur as the record of his long sojourn in the walls of Constance.

The members of the Council quickly dispersed to their homes. During the long period of the session many eminent men had died in Constance. Manuel Gerson. Chrysoloras, a learned Greek who by his teaching had done much to further the knowledge of Greek letters in Italy, died in April, 1415, to the grief of all his learned friends. That such a man as John XXIII should have brought a Greek scholar in his train is a curious testimony of the advance of the new learning to political importance. The death of Robert Hallam, Bishop of Salisbury, in September, 1417, was followed by that of Cardinal Zabarella, and the Council lost thereby two of its most distinguished members. With the dissolution of the Council the other men who had been eminent at its beginning sank into insignificance. Peter d'Ailly went back to France as Papal legate, and died in 1420. Gerson’s attitude in the affair of Jean Petit had raised him such determined enemies in France that he dared not return, but found shelter first in Bavaria and afterwards at Vienna. After the murder of the Duke of Burgundy in September, 1419, he went back to Lyons, where in the monastery of S. Paul he ended his days in works of piety and devotion, and died in 1429. We can best picture the disastrous results of the Council of Constance when we see how entirely it destroyed the great reforming party of the University of Paris, and condemned its learned and eloquent leader to end his days in banishment and obscurity.

Those who returned home from the Council could not, with any feeling of satisfaction, contrast the results which they brought home with the anticipations with which they had set out for Constance. It is true that they had restored the unity of the Church by the election of a Pope, and that they had purged the Church of heresy by their dealings with Hus; but the state of affairs in Bohemia was not such as to assure them that their high-handed procedure had been entirely successful. Many must have been inclined to admit with Gerson that there had been a strange contrast between the determined condemnation of Hus and the indifference shown to the more pernicious doctrines of Jean Petit and Falkenberg. They must have admitted that the Bohemians had some grounds for dissatisfaction, some reason for complaining of respect of persons. As regards the reformation of the Church, the most determined optimists could not say more than that the question remained open, and that they looked to a future Council to carry on the work which they had begun. The representatives of the various nations could not flatter themselves that the concordats which they took back with them were of much importance. In France the Government determined not to recognize the concordat; they thought it better to curb the Papal exactions by the use of the royal power, and uphold the legislation which the pressure of the Schism had called forth in 1406, forbidding the prelates to observe Papal reservations and the clergy to pay undue exactions to the Pope. Before the concordat reached France, at the end of March, 1418, royal decrees again established the old liberties of the Gallican Church against Papal reservations and exactions. France preferred to follow the example of England, and assert the liberties of its Church on the basis of the royal sovereignty rather than on the ecclesiastical basis of a Papal grant. When the concordat was presented, on June 10, 1418, to the Parliament of Paris, to be registered among the laws of the land, it was rejected as being contrary to the laws just enacted by the royal authority. It is true that a few months later the Duke of Burgundy became supreme in Paris, abolished the decrees of March, and recognized the concordat; but a new convention was made with Martin V by the Duke of Bedford as regent of France in 1425, and this took the place of the agreement made at Constance. In England no notice was taken of the concordat, which indeed was sufficiently insignificant. In Germany it was not laid before the Diet, nor was any attempt made to secure for it legislative authority; it remained as a compact between the Pope and the ecclesiastical authorities, and seems to have been fairly well observed during the five years for which it was originally granted.

Before leaving the Council of Constance it is worthwhile to take a general view of the actual points for reform which were there brought forward. The original desire of the reforming party for a general reorganization of the ecclesiastical system rapidly faded away before the difficulties of the task, and the practical proposals that were made represent the actual grievances felt by the bishops and clergy in consequence of Papal aggression. The aspirations of the Council did not ultimately go farther than the defence of the power of the Ordinary against Papal interference. The proposals of the Council afford an opportunity for noting the extent to which the Papal headship had broken down the machinery of the Church, had destroyed its political independence, and had introduced abuses into its system.

The first point to which naturally the Council attached great importance was the revival of the synodal system of the Church, a primitive institution suppressed by the Papal absolutism, but which the pressure of the Schism had again brought into prominence. The authority of a General Council to decide in cases of a disputed election to the Papacy was asserted as the means of avoiding the possibility of another schism, and the periodical recurrence of General Councils was to be the future panacea for all ills which the present was powerless to cure. An attempt was made to limit the plenitude of the Papal absolutism, by converting the profession of faith made by the Pope on his election into an oath to maintain the established constitutions of the Church: but the attempt was unavailing, and the formula drawn up by Boniface VIII remained unaltered.

The reorganization of the College of Cardinals was regarded as necessary both for the stability of the Papacy and the relief of the Church. It was agreed that Cardinals ought to be chosen from every nation, so as to prevent the Papacy from falling into the hands of any one Power, to the risk of another schism. The number of the College was fixed at eighteen, or twenty-four at the outside, so as to lighten the burden of maintaining Cardinals out of the revenues of the Church; amongst them was to be a good proportion of doctors of theology, so as to deal satisfactorily with theological questions. These points of detail were accepted by Martin V in the concordats, which rapidly became a dead letter. But the desire on the part of many to convert the College of Cardinals into a Council, without whose advice and consent the Pope was not to act, found no expression in any of the acts of the Council.

The great practical questions, however, concerned the heavy taxation which the Papacy had gradually imposed on the Church. The political enterprises of the Papacy in the thirteenth century, and its loss of territorial revenues during the Avignonese captivity, had grievously embarrassed Papal finance. The Popes set themselves to raise money by extending their old privilege of providing for their own agents and officials by presenting them to rich benefices. For this purpose they issued Bulls, reserving for their own appointment certain benefices, and setting aside the rights of the Ordinary as patron. Round this custom grew up every kind of financial extortion. Dues were exacted from the Papal nominees, which soon rose to the amount of the revenues of the first year on all benefices conferred in the Consistory, and under Boniface IX to a half of the revenues of the first year on all other benefices to which the Pope presented. To obtain these annates, which were the chief source of Papal revenue, the power of reservation and provision was pushed to its utmost extent, and John XXIII exacted the payment of these dues before issuing letters of institution. The patronage of all important posts was taken away from the bishops; the Papal nominees, being heavily taxed themselves, were driven to raise money by every means from their benefices; churches and ecclesiastical buildings were allowed to fall into decay.

Moreover, the Popes exercised most unscrupulously this power of reservation and collation to all benefices. Bishops and clergy found themselves translated against their will from one post to another, which they were compelled to accept, and pay fresh dues for their collation. This point touched all the higher clergy so closely that the Council’s decree of October 9, 1417, provided that bishops should not be translated against their will, save for a grave reason to be approved by a majority of the Cardinals. An extension of the power of reservation was that of making grants in expectancy—that is, of the next presentation to a benefice already occupied. John XXIII exacted the payment of dues on installation before issuing his grants in expectancy, and would grant the same benefice to several candidates at once; each would be induced to pay, though only one could obtain the prize. Although the abuses of such a system are manifest enough, yet the Reform Commission could not agree how to deal with them, and the matter propped 0ut of the deliberations of the Council. The whole question of Papal reservations was so complicated by the jealousy of the Universities against the Ordinaries that nothing was done to affect the Pope's power in this matter, though the French and German concordats prescribed certain limitations.

The reform of the Papal law courts was another point on which much was said but little was decided. The Papal law extension of the jurisdiction of ecclesiastical courts in civil matters was felt to be an increasing grievance, and a desire was expressed at Constance to see the limits of the two jurisdictions more clearly established. The ease with which appeals even on trivial matters were received by the Roman courts was destructive of the power of the ordinary courts, afforded a screen to wealthy and powerful wrong­doers, and was an intolerable hardship to poor suitors. Closely connected with this were the exemptions from episcopal or metropolitan jurisdiction which were largely granted to monasteries and chapters. The poor man, when wronged by one who enjoyed such an exemption, had practically no redress, for he could not carry his complaint before the Pope. Martin V, by the decrees of March 21, 1418, cancelled all exemptions granted during the Schism, and undertook that for the future they should only be made on good reasons.

Other points were given up by Martin V, such as the incorporation of benefices with monasteries, and the reservation to the Pope of the revenues of benefices during the time of vacancy. This last had been a right of the bishops which the Popes during the fourteenth century had wrested from them, and which Martin V was willing to resign to save the more important privilege of annates. The custom also of granting offices in commendam to one who drew their revenues without discharging their duties weighed heavily on many monasteries, and was provided against in the French and German concordats. The freedom of the clergy from taxation had been broken through by the crusading movement, and during the Schism Popes had used the right of exacting tenths of ecclesiastical revenues, partly to recruit their own finances, partly to grant them as bribes to princes whom they wished to win over to their obedience. The decrees of March 21, 1418, enacted that for the future tenths should only be imposed in case of special necessity, with the consent of the Cardinals and of the prelates of every land on which they were imposed. Before the passing of this decree Martin V had granted to Sigismund a tenth of the ecclesiastical revenues of Germany, to which the Germans offered a determined resistance, and which was probably the cause of the Council’s persistence on this point.

Other abuses of the Papal power were those of dispensations and indulgences. Dispensations were readily given by the Popes in matrimonial cases, as well as in cases of ecclesiastical disability. An outcry was early raised against them on the grounds of their interference with social relationships, the injury which they did to the Church by allowing unfit persons to hold office, and the handle which they gave to simony. The Council, however, went no farther than to enact that Papal dispensations should not be given to persons who were unfit to discharge the duties of benefices of which they enjoyed the revenues. On the question of indulgences the Council did nothing, and even the concordats did not aim at doing more than giving the bishops a suspensory power in gross cases. Simony had been too notorious under Boniface IX and John XXIII not to engage the attention of the Council; and the decree of March 21, 1418, enacted that those who obtained ecclesiastical offices by simony should be ipso facto suspended. It was easy to denounce simony; but it is obvious that it could only be seriously attacked by showing more decision than the Council was prepared to show in cutting off every abuse which gave an opportunity for its exercise.

Other points which appeared in the programme of the reformers concerned the position of the Pope, and were meant to enforce on him the necessity of living on his own revenues. The definition of the circumstances under which a Pope might be admonished or deposed was set aside by Martin, and the Papacy retired from the Council with its supremacy unimpaired. Enactments, which had been proposed, forbidding the alienation of the States of the Church, and suppressing nepotism by providing for the government of the Papal territories by ecclesiastical vicars, were all allowed to drop in the final settlement. Proposals to limit the grants made to Cardinals of offices which they never visited were also laid aside till the future of the States of the Church was more clearly seen.

This brief survey of the aspirations and achievements of the Council in the way of reform will suffice to show how entire was its failure to accomplish any permanent results. During the abeyance of the Papacy, while Europe was smarting under the exactions which the maintenance of two Papal courts had involved, while everyone had before his eyes the ruin wrought in the ecclesiastical system by Papal usurpations, a splendid opportunity was offered for a temperate and conservative reformation. The collective wisdom of Europe after nearly four years’ labour and discussion was found unequal to the task. The Council shrank from a consideration of the basis of the Christian life, and mercilessly con­demned Hus as a rebel because he advocated the reformation of the Church with a view to the needs of the individual soul. When it had thus dismissed one possible form of reformation, it showed no capacity for devising a reformation of its own. The decisive correction of abuses required more statesmanship and more disinterestedness than were to be found among the fathers of Constance. There were men of keen penetration and intelligence, men who were able to criticize and suggest points of view, but there were none who united firmness of character, strong moral purpose, and large patriotism to the interests of Christendom. Gerson and D'Ailly could write and speak with fervor about the need of reform : they came to Constance as the leaders of a powerful academic party, which had many adherents in every land. But, when it came to the point, D'Ailly could not prefer the interests of the Church to the privileges of the Cardinals’ College, and was found in the hour of need to be fighting on behalf of the rights of the Curia. Gerson threw himself into a small political dispute, and frittered away his influence in contending bitterly for things of no moment. The academic party grew alarmed at the prospect of an increase in the power of the bishops, and held by the Pope as likely to do more for learning. No uniform policy could be obtained from the Council even in matters of detail; unanimity was only possible on the most trivial points.

The failure of the Council is partly to be attributed to the difficulties of its composition and organization. An ecclesiastical parliament, representative of the whole of Europe, was indeed a difficult thing to call into being and reduce to order. The organization of the Council was settled in a haphazard way. The qualification necessary for those who were to take part in its deliberations was determined with a view to the existing emergency. The conciliar division into nations, adopted with a view of lessening the influence of the Pope, became in the end a hindrance to united action. The nations deliberating apart had just enough contact with one another to intensify national jealousies, and not enough to eliminate national selfishness. Instead of uniting to reform the Papacy before electing a new Pope, national parties were ready to struggle for the possession of the Papacy and the consequent influence in the politics of Europe. But while the Council thus suffered from all the evils of national and political antagonism, it was unwilling to receive any of the benefits which it might have obtained from the same source. It acted as a purely ecclesiastical assembly, and made no effort to obtain the help of the State to secure effect to its decisions on Church matters. Sigismund was useful as Protector of the Council, but when he wished to protect Hus, when he ventured to press the question of reformation, the Council complained loudly of undue interference, and threatened to dissolve. Sigismund left Constance in October, 1417, that the freedom of the assembled fathers might be secured, that they might be left to decide for themselves the conditions on which they would proceed to the election of a Pope.

While the Council stood on this purely ecclesiastical basis, its nations in no sense expressed the national desires of Europe. The points brought forward for reform show clearly enough that the real question in the Council was the struggle of the bishops to make good their position against the Pope. The ecclesiastical aristocracy took advantage of the temporary abasement of the Papal monarchy to increase its own powers and importance. So soon as it was seem that this was the general upshot of the schemes of the Reform Commissioners other interests began to cool in the matter, and difficulties began to be felt. The Universities had no wish to see the Papacy curbed for the benefit of the Episcopate. The increase of the power of the ecclesiastical aristocracy was not an end which any of the reformers desired. It were better to leave things alone rather than only secure so doubtful a gain.

On all sides difficulties and disunion prevailed, so that men were wearied and hopeless. The most sanguine, as he left Constance, could only hope that at least a beginning had been made for conciliar action in the future, and that the new Council which was to meet in five years’ time would have the experience of the past to guide it to a more successful issue.

On his part also Martin V left Constance thankful that the Papal power had suffered so little at the hands of the Council, and with the reflection that he had five years before him in which to devise means for saving the Papacy from further interference.