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BOOK II.
THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE
1414 — 1418.
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.
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