# John Huss: his life, teachings and death, after five hundred years/Chapter 12

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CHAPTER XII
HUSS’S WRITINGS AND THE HUSSITES
Ego impudens omnia Johannis Hus et docui et tenui, breviter sumus omnes Husita ignorantes.—Luther. Letter to Spalatin, Feb. 1520.
Shamelessly (unawares) I both taught and held all the teachings of Huss: in short, we were all Hussites without knowing it.
No human soul ever bore itself with loftier fortitude or sweeter or humbler charity than John Huss.—Lea, Inquisition, 2: 487.
John Huss and many others have waged harder battles than we do. If our cause is great, its author and champion is great also.—Luther. Letter to Melanchthon, June 27, 1530.
The three men during the Middle Ages who received the sentence of death as a direct consequence of the action of the church and who have a distinct place in history are Arnold of Brescia, Huss and Savonarola. Arnold of Brescia left no writings and his followers in Northern Italy are dim shadows in the past of whom, at best, we know but very little. Savonarola, of whom Alexander VI said he should be put to death even though he were another John the Baptist, left admirers but no followers, and his limited writings, such as they are, have only a personal interest. John Huss left both a large body of writings and also a devoted body of followers, whose fortunes have contributed a noteworthy chapter to the history of the church. His writings, chiefly in Latin, covering four or five departments, include his sermons, his letters, his exegetical works, his polemical writings, intended to set forth his opinion on points of controversy, and his theological Commentary on the Sentences of Peter the Lombard. His Czech writings, which are much smaller in extent, are praised for their style by Bohemian writers competent to speak.
​Of his sermons specimens have already been given. His letters, frequently quoted in this volume, have an undying value for the purposes of edification, and are a chief authority for his opinions and experiences in the last years of his life. His commentaries on the Psalms and his explanations of the Decalogue and the Lord’s Prayer attest his devotional spirit, but have no place of importance in the history of Biblical exposition.
His Commentary on the Sentences of Peter the Lombard, published for the first time 1905, has a distinct value and enables us to appreciate more than we did before the extent of Huss’s independent learning. The volume contains nearly eight hundred pages. Peter the Lombard, who died, 1164, furnished in his four books of Sentences the theological text-book of the Middle Ages. It was used by all the Schoolmen after his day in their lectures, including Thomas Aquinas. Huss’s Commentary was delivered, as a series of lectures between 1407 and 1409, before his troubles had fairly begun. He follows the original closely. However, in cases not a few he indicates that he does not consider himself to have exhausted the specific subject under treatment, asserting that he had left many questions undiscussed. Huss himself quoted from his Commentary and carried it with him to Constance. He used recent theologians, such as Durandus, Bradwardine and Wyclif.
Of Huss’s many polemical works, including his Treatise on Indulgences, Wyclif’s Tract on the Trinity and The Answer to the Eight Doctors, the chief is the Treatise on the Church—de Ecclesia. It was the one from which the charges were drawn that brought its author to the stake. The treatise was called forth by the document of the eight members of the theological faculty of the university of Prague written in defense ​of John XXIII’s bulls of indulgence and in protest against the XLV Articles of Wyclif. Prepared during the period of his semi-voluntary exile from Prague, 1413, and intended to be a justification of his disregard of the ecclesiastical censures issued against him and the citation calling him to Rome, the work has properly a place among the notable writings on the subject of ecclesiology. For nearly a thousand years that subject had had no elaborate treatment. Augustine, in the fifth century, without giving a definition of the church, furnished materials of the greatest importance in themselves and for history in his controversial works against the Donatist dissenters. Before him, Cyprian, who died a martyr 258, presented the first definite work in the department of ecclesiology in his Unity of the Church. Wyclif’s great work reopened the discussion and he was followed by Huss.
During the Middle Ages the definition and nature of the church were taken for granted and not discussed as a distinct topic. The Roman Church was as clearly defined as was the Roman empire, with its sovereign, its courts and its ceremonies. The Schoolman who came nearest to entering into a discussion was Hugo de St. Victor, who calls the holy Catholic church the body of Christ vivified by one spirit, united by one faith and sanctified. “What is the church,” he asks, “but the totality of the faithful—the totality of Christians?” Peter the Lombard nowhere takes up the definition, and Thomas Aquinas, with whom begins the special treatment of the papacy in systems of theology, also practically ignored the subject except in passages where he was considering the pope’s absolute supremacy. According to the mediæval idea drawn from Augustine, the church is the visible Christian institution, the corporation out of which there is no salvation. The definition was narrowed to the limits of the Roman Church as we have it definitely stated in the profession de​manded of the Waldenses, namely: “We believe with the heart and confess that the one church is not of the heretics, but is the Holy Roman Catholic Church, outside of which no one can be saved.”
Huss, who set himself against this definition, expressly opposed Boniface’s bull Unam sanctam. Wyclif had pronounced its declaration to be detested which made subjection to the Roman pontiff necessary to salvation. In the disputes which followed Boniface’s death, Ockam declared that the church is the body of the faithful, including clerics and laymen, thus setting aside the narrower definition—not confined to the ignorant—that the church is the pope and the cardinals. Konrad of Gelnhausen and others followed Ockam’s definition, including, however, Bernard’s additional statement: “in the unity of the sacraments.” Both claimed that outside the Roman communion, which is a particular church, there may be salvation.
Wyclif’s Treatise on the Church—de Ecclesia—went much further and not only defined the church as the body of the elect, but seems almost to advocate the evangelical theory recognizing the universal priesthood of believers. Beyond this work, which was written only about thirty years before his own, Huss does not go. Huss’s views are Wyclif’s views; his Scriptural proofs, as the case necessarily demands, largely Wyclif’s proofs. His indebtedness to his English forerunner is evident not only in the movement of his ideas, but in large sections which are copied almost verbally from Wyclif’s works.
Huss’s treatise does not occupy a place of importance in the history of ecclesiology by the originality of its teachings. It has, however, its place from the facts that its positions were taken up at the great assembly at Constance, that its author, on account of them, suffered the death penalty, and ​that, whereas Wyclif’s treatise was not published until 1886, Huss’s work was printed in 1520, at Wittenberg, and its teachings known to Luther. Through Huss’s memory the question of the church was kept prominent before Europe. At the close of the fifteenth century Wessel, the Holland Reformer, exclaimed: “The church cannot err; but what is the church? It is the communion of the saints, to which all true believers belong, who are bound together by one faith, one love, one hope.” The nature and prerogatives of the church constituted a fundamental question which was awaiting settlement. To Boniface’s proud assertion, which Ockam, Marsiglius of Padua, Wyclif and Huss, in the light of Scripture and history, declared to be without foundation, it remained for the Reformation to give the heaviest blow.
Seldom, if ever, has one author been under so deep a debt of obligation to a teacher as Huss was to Wyclif. Not only did Huss adopt many of the ideas of Wyclif, he appropriated whole paragraphs of his writing and transferred them to his own pages. While this cannot be gainsaid, yet in explanation it must be said that Huss was no servile imitator nor did he seek to play a part in the garments of another. His soul burned with passion for the truths which he defended. Moreover, his treatises have a character of their own. They are more direct and practical than Wyclif’s and better adapted to reach the ear of the average man, and move him. Wyclif goes off into all sorts of side discussions which are not essential to his main point and shows more of the scholastic tendency to enter upon nice philosophic discriminations. Both are Scriptural, but Huss the more Scriptural, arguing from the standpoint of an experimental knowledge of the Scriptures as well as from their letter. Wyclif has the sharpness of the polemic, Huss the persuasion of the advocate. Huss does not employ the strong epithets with which Wyclif accentuates his statements. He nowhere calls the pope “the ​vicar of the fiend” or a “terrible devil,” the epithet Wyclif employs of Gregory XI.
It must also be remembered that Huss issued his polemical writings within the narrow limits of two or three years, beginning with his Treatise on Indulgences. In each case the cause was urgent, the feeling intense in Prague and in the writer’s own heart. What he wrote, he was obliged to write quickly.
The Commentary on the Sentences shows that Huss had a much larger gift for original thought and writing than it has been recently the custom to credit him with. This work has the marks of independent theological discussion and it also evinces Huss’s acquaintance with the wide field of theological knowledge. He quotes Wyclif, though not at length. He refers to him once by name, and then to bear witness to his deep regard for his master and give expression to his own merciful view of the judgments of God. Referring to those who with great assurance pronounced Wyclif eternally damned in hell, he declared that he ventured to dissent from that judgment and hoped that Wyclif was of the number of the saved. And he observed that, in case Wyclif was in heaven, there would be additional ground for praising the Lord, who has received him there or, in case Wyclif was in purgatory, he hoped the Lord would in his mercy liberate him quickly. Huss had been speaking in the line of hopeful reliance upon God’s mercy. First and last, he says: “I lean more toward hope, trusting the mercy of God, than to despair, looking in the direction of eternal damnation, from which the omnipotent God in mercy deliver us, and we praise God for His most gracious mercy, because even in the hour of death He is so merciful to forgive.”
​Huss’s Commentary is a clear, straightforward and judicious theological treatise, with a strong practical tendency. It is to be regarded as a moderate statement of the theology of the age in which its author lived. He does not depart from the official tenets, yet he modifies them. Certain prurient questions he declines altogether to answer. Such questions he pronounces of little profit, and, as in the case of the condition of the lost, he relegates the solution of many of the problems to the light of the day of judgment. The author places above all scientific knowledge of religion, the law of Christ and the duty of love to one’s neighbor which he turns aside again and again to emphasize, as he does also the words, that by their fruits shall men be known.
Huss has also the honor of having had a part in Bohemian hymnody. He sent to certain nuns a song to be chanted at vespers, a chant which he bade them sing with the heart as well as with the melody of the lips. As in the movement led by Savonarola there was a revival of hymn singing, so it was in Prague under Huss’s leadership. Huss revived ancient Bohemian hymns and, after his death, the singing of sacred songs characterized his followers. Three hymns are ascribed to him in the hymn-book of the Bohemian Brethren, 1576. Among all the 1516 hymns of the Moravian hymn-book, published at Bethlehem, 1891, only one is ascribed to him:
To avert from men God’s wrath Jesus suffered in our stead; By an ignominious death He a full atonement made.
A Latin hymn ascribed to Huss of old has these as its first two verses:
Jesus Christus nostra salus, Quod reclamat omnis malus, Nobis in sui memoriam, Dedit hanc panis hostiam.
O quam sanctus panis iste, Tu solus es Jesu Christe, Caro, cibus, sacramentum, Quo non majus est inventum.
Our true salvation Jesus Christ, From evil all recalling, To us the sacred bread has given, In memory of himself.
O, how sacred is this bread Thou alone, O Jesus Christ Art flesh, food and sacrament Than which naught greater can be found.
Huss’s influence was perpetuated in a large body of devoted followers in Bohemia and Moravia. Seldom, if ever, has a nation shown such personal love for a national and religious leader. His spirit had won the hearts of his people, his teachings had attracted their intellectual approval. His death had deepened into a strong stream their devotion to him and his cause. For him and his teachings the nation showed itself willing to undergo the bitterest of persecutions until a large part of it had suffered the martyrdom of banishment or death.
When the news of Huss’s death reached Bohemia, a large part of the nation broke out in revolt. The bishop of Leitomysl, the chief Bohemian ecclesiastic at Constance, Sigismund, and the council itself, all three sought to check the rebellion, now by explanations and now by threats. Only a rapid survey can here be given of the devotion shown to Huss’s memory, the development of the parties which honored his name, the desolating crusades which were preached against the Hussites by the pope, the lamentable strife between the two wings of his followers and the extermination of Hussitism.
​So profound was the impression Huss’s death made upon his people that in Prague and in the villages, in church and on street, every man was distinctly for him or against him. A contemporary chronicler says: “Every household in Bohemia is divided, the wife against the husband, the father against the child, and the host against his guests.” The houses of the anti-Hussites were plundered or even destroyed. Priests of the old way suffered personal injury or were driven from their parishes. The doubtful report ran on the streets of Constance that priests were even drowned in the Moldau and killed with the sword.
Especially was the Iron Bishop, John of Leitomysl, the object of popular indignation. He was looked upon as the unfeeling leader against Huss at Constance. Nobles sequestrated part of his domains and on his return he had to be protected from violence. On the other hand, great nobles identified themselves with the Hussite movement, Cenek of Wartemberg, Lacek of Krawar and others, men who occupied the highest positions in the state. Wenzel, if he did not espouse the cause of the religious revolution, at least showed himself indifferent in seeing that the peace was kept. The queen was an open sympathizer and was surrounded by women of like mind. John of Jesenicz continued to be a favorite at the court. Had Wenzel been a man of strength, he would probably have abandoned his cautious attitude and openly supported the great body of his nobles in defending Huss’s memory and promoting the principles for which he died.
Not until five days had elapsed after Huss’s death did Leitomysl venture to apprise the king of what had occurred. Instead of proceeding at once to communicate the news, he apologized for having been silent so long and he approached his statement gradually with remarks about Gregory XII’s resignation and Benedict’s probable refusal to resign. He ​then announced that Huss had been burned alive, that his teachings and the teachings of Wyclif had been condemned and that Jerome’s case was being considered. He expressed the general regret that no messenger had reached the council from the king, and that it was rumored, though he believed falsely, that the king had looked with favor upon Huss. He heard that many things had been reported to Wenzel about himself which seemed to indicate that he was acting in opposition to the king and the kingdom of Bohemia, but he called upon the king not to give them credence. On his return from Constance, he would explain his course, and, as he thought, to the king’s satisfaction.
In very different tone and language did the bishop on the same day write to Konrad, archbishop of Prague. He declared he had worked with might to assert the fair fame of Bohemia and to deliver it from the pestiferous and most dangerous heresy and schism with which it was threatened because of those most dangerous heresiarchs, John Wyclif and John Huss. All rigor had been employed by the council in its procedure. As for himself, he had not tried to palliate in the least the events which had been occurring in Bohemia, and he hoped that the archbishop would now see to it that the king sent legates to Constance and promised obedience for his kingdom.
A strong plea for the unity of the Bohemian church was made by the council itself in demanding that its decrees be obeyed. In a communication dated July 26, addressed to the nobles and other chief citizens of Bohemia, “the holy synod of Constance, representing the universal church of God,” declared that it had Bohemia upon its heart day and night. It spoke of the hideousness of the terrible schism and the most pernicious wickedness of the heresy which had arisen in that time. The synod had taken measures to restore to the church the sweetness of peace and to free it from noxious ​briars. By his foul and detestable doctrine, John Wyclif had sought to turn the church away from fundamental teachings. No one had ever before assailed the faith under the veil of the Christian religion as he had done and no one had been so perverse and contumacious in defying holy church. His books had been ordered burned and his bones exhumed. His poisonous doctrine had infected the minds of John Huss and Jerome. From such men of perdition the synod had attempted to free the kingdom of Bohemia. Huss had been given every opportunity at Constance and had been heard repeatedly by commissions in private and in public. The emperor, Sigismund, had been present. The synod had attempted to persuade Huss of his errors and proceeded in a spirit of forbearance, wishing the life and not the death of the sinner. At the devil’s instigation, he persisted and became more perverse. He was sentenced and went forth to death through the act of the civil power. The synod adjured the magnates of Bohemia to prevent pestiferous men from sowing the seeds of Wyclifite and Hussite heresy and to see to it that the stain might be completely wiped out from Bohemia.
The council was ready to back up its sentence with all the authority at its command. In sending the bishop of Leitomysl back to Bohemia, with the commission to uproot heresy, restore order and strike a death blow at the moral cancer, the council commended him as a “son of obedience and a brave and discreet soldier of Christ.” It instructed him to excommunicate rebellious prelates, depriving them of their livings, and also all obstinate laymen of every degree, from the nobles down, who were suspects of heresy, and to deprive them and their children forever of all rights and lands given them by the church. And, if necessary, he should call in the aid of the secular arm—auxilium brachii secularis.
The feeling in Bohemia was not to be allayed with letters nor was order to be established by the presence of the ​powerful bishop with the authority of the council behind him. Early in September the revolt took the form of a pact by which the nobles agreed to defend Huss’s memory against aspersion and to perpetuate the principles of his teaching. It was signed at a diet held in Prague and pledged the nobles’ support for a period of six years. Four hundred and fifty-two Bohemian and Moravian magnates attached their signatures.
This notable agreement started out with quotations from the Scriptures: “All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them” and “love is the fulfilling of the law.” In view of this rule, the signers expressed themselves as confounded at the condemnation of Huss to the flames, a man honored as a teacher and as an evangelical preacher, and at the same time their most beloved brother. He was a good, righteous and Catholic man, known and respected for many years in Bohemia for his good life, a man who had taught and preached the law of the Gospel, detesting heresies and admonishing all to detest them and to love the things which make for peace and charity. How such a man could be condemned, living most piously in Christ and urging all to the limit of his power to obey the Gospel, they could not comprehend. What they said of Huss, they might also say of Jerome, a man of eloquence and learning, incarcerated and already, as was probable, given over to most cruel death as a heretic. Their injuries they would leave to God, their complaints they would lay before the next pope whom they promised to obey.
Further, they pledged themselves to defend the law of the Lord Jesus Christ and his faithful teachers, even unto the shedding of their blood. They promised obedience to all righteous authority exercised by their bishops, but would refuse to submit to unjust acts. They would respect only such just excommunications as the bishops of Bohemia and Moravia might ​publicly post up. In disputed matters they would appeal for counsel to the university of Prague. Whatever the apostolic see commanded they would submit to, provided it was not contrary to God and His law. A committee was appointed by the diet to pass judgment upon episcopal censures and to see that the pact was observed, consisting of Cenek of Wartemberg, Lacek of Krawar and Bocek of Podiebrad.
Here we have unimpeachable testimony to the personal purity of Huss and the profound influence he had exerted in his native land. What he had preached. Bohemian nobles regarded as in accord with the Scriptures, upon which they firmly planted themselves as determining the rule of faith and daily conduct. The document promised full liberty of preaching, and the signers pledged themselves to support it three times on the Lord’s Day on their territories and in all churches and monasteries without allowing any hinderance. Any priest coming and asking for the privilege of preaching the Word of God should have the privilege granted
The council also had sympathizers, who met October 1, at Böhmisch Brod under the protection of archbishop Konrad. Fourteen of them signed a paper, which is not extant but which, it is known, pledged the signers to the support of the council. King Wenzel, it is said, promised by word of mouth his adhesion to this second document.
Not until nearly a year had elapsed since Huss’s death did Bohemia hear directly from the emperor, Sigismund. After that event he had journeyed to Spain to induce Benedict to resign and go from there to England. In the first of three letters, written from Paris, March, 1416, the emperor commended the nobles who remained true to the council. To the signers of the pact he wrote that the troubles in which Huss became involved were due most probably to his having gone alone to Constance. Several times Sigismund himself had left the council in indignation, but, if he had objected to the continuation of the trial, that body would have adjourned. ​If the nobles of Bohemia persisted in defending Huss’s cause, they would be resisting the whole body of Christendom. He hoped they would give aid to his brother and assume a position which would be profitable to themselves and Bohemia.
In the third letter, addressed to the members of both parties, Sigismund expressed sorrow for the situation in which his dearest brother was placed and wrote, they were all Christians and for that reason it was becoming to observe order and discipline. Their fathers had handed down to them the true religion and he begged them to follow the path of peace and avoid strife.
The bishop of Leitomysl, who found himself unsafe in his own diocese, had a strong support in the vicar-general of Prague and the cathedral chapter. With the exception of the cathedral, the stronger parishes of the city were in the hands of Hussite priests. On September 5, the very day the nobles were signing the pact, the cathedral chapter, following past decisions of the synod of Prague and the decree of the council at Constance, ordered priests to abandon giving the cup to the laity upon pain of excommunication and, two weeks later, it ordered the execution of the ban upon all itinerant preachers.
On November 1, it placed the capital under the interdict, one of the grounds set forth being the presence of John of Jesenicz at the palace, upon whom had been laid the ban of excommunication. In spite of Jesenicz’s withdrawal from the city a few weeks later and in spite of the king’s protest, the interdict was maintained. It was urged that others, such as Cenko of Wartemberg, who were under the ban, remained in the city and that the Hussite priests, who had been installed in place of the old incumbents, were celebrating in sacred things, and that some of the old priests had been seized and were led to prison by the Prague magistrates. The king was called upon to see that the nobles under excom​munication left the city and that the other complaints were recognized.
In February, 1416, the council of Constance summoned to its bar the four hundred and fifty-two nobles. A commissioner from each of the nations was appointed to act on a court of trial. On hearing of the citation, Sigismund demanded that further proceedings be postponed until his return to Constance. That such measures were insufficient to meet the situation, appears distinctly from a letter addressed by the council to the nobility of Bohemia a month later. It lamented again the leaven of wickedness which originated with the old enemy of mankind, the serpent, who is never at rest and had manifested his power in John Wyclif, of accursed memory, John Huss and others, and inebriated them with the chalice of Babylon. These, in turn, had handed that cup of damnable error and wickedness to others. Some, who according to the flesh were prominent among the nobility, had damnably conspired against Christ to defend their errors.
As for Huss, he had been convicted many times of the most manifest and dangerous heresies both judicially and by scholastic arguments. In spite of the law, divine and human, that he should not be released from prison and chains, he was accorded public hearings and an opportunity for repentance. The attempt was also made to bring him back to the lap of the church and to the truth of the Christian religion by exhortations of sweetest love and superabundant instruction about the Catholic faith. These admonitions fell on dull, viperous ears, for Huss loved iniquity and at last, going to his own place, he received the reward due him and his followers for their crimes—he the most miserable of all miserable men.
The council adjured the nobles to protect the church and assist its legate, the bishop of Leitomysl, in the whole​some work of purifying the kingdom of heretical infection. Rumors of the worst kind were abundant in Constance, to the effect that monasteries and their occupants, as well as the secular clergy and their churches, had been robbed and all sorts of injuries and indignities heaped upon the old clergy, even unto murder.
Archbishop Konrad himself was cited to appear before the council and answer for his indifference. Nor did the king and his consort, Sophia, escape. On the contrary, charges were preferred against them. The council accused the king of tolerating John of Jesenicz at the court, defending those who preached heresies, favoring the communion in both kinds, winking at the expulsion of some of the Catholic clergy and the substitution of Hussites in their places. Sophia was accused of having often heard Huss preach after the censures of the church had been launched against him, of supporting his heretical views and practices, of receiving the cup and of casting out priests hostile to the new views and introducing others who distributed the cup to the laity.
The council ordered the magistrates of Prague and the Wyssehrad to deliver Jesenicz up to the diocesan for imprisonment and called upon the emperor to take up the case of his brother and bring him to a right state of mind and practice. It announced to the emperor that in Bohemia the hot flames were spreading throughout the entire country, threatening all Catholics who were pious believers. The veritable sons of Belial, the followers of Wyclif, Huss and Jerome, went even so far as to enter into sacrilegious marriages and in their sermons treat Huss and Jerome as saints, worshipping them as citizens of heaven and singing masses to them as martyrs, men whom the holy church had delivered over to Satan as heretics and blasphemers. The deplorable state of things, it alleged, was made worse by the attitude taken by the university which many scholars, anxious for knowledge, had attended in a previous period, but was then shunned by ​every conscientious man who hated the errors which thrived there, especially by every foreigner.
The council reminded Sigismund that one reason for its having been convened was that it might take measures for the extermination of heresy and the reforming of a world infected with error. This task it had in part fulfilled by consigning two heretics to the secular arm. It belonged to him as the defender and advocate of the church to put forth his might to abash perfidy and eliminate all heresy. Delay was dangerous. He should be quick to act for the salvation of those who were wandering about as lost. He should act while there was yet hope.
This was an open call to the emperor to put down by the sword, if necessary, the religious revolt of Bohemia. The appeal did not wait long to be complied with and the responsibility for the blood with which Bohemia was drenched in the anti-Hussite crusade rests upon the council.
To the council’s address, which was passed by the five nations, Sigismund replied that, if his brother had not sufficient authority to proceed, he would go to his aid. If it were necessary to resort to force and the sword, he prayed that the execution of the task might be committed to another rather than himself, lest he be exposed to the suspicion of being moved, not with zeal against the Wyclifites but by a desire to humble his brother and make spoil of his kingdom. In a further communication to the barons, dated September 4, 1417, Sigismund called their attention to the wide-spread rebellion in Bohemia, and, if possible, outdid the council in the appalling narrative he gave of the injuries heaped upon the priests of the old régime. He referred to the Neronic persecution which was going on with the purpose of forcing the priests to abjure the Catholic faith. In fact, so dire was the persecution that such a use of force in religion had not been known, even in the times of Pharaoh or the pagan persecutors of the church. The council had brought charges ​against Wenzel, but he had interfered to protect his best beloved brother, in the hope that he would put aside his indifference and put a stop to the enormities which were being perpetrated. In case the council found its ecclesiastical censures unavailing and felt itself obliged to insist on secular aid, he hoped the barons would exonerate him from all guilt in the case.
While these communications were being interchanged between Constance and Prague, Huss’s friend, Jerome, was being tried: and he was burned, May 30, 1416. Jerome differed from Huss in the circumstances of his birth, being of a noble family, and in his personal presence, being a large and strong man. He was restless, as his career shows. Educated in Prague, where he was promoted to the B. A, degree, 1398, he travelled abroad and after various experiences went to Oxford, where he copied with his own hand Wyclif’s Dialogus and Trialogus, which he took back with him to Bohemia. In 1403, he visited Palestine and two years later was at Paris, and afterward at Cologne and Heidelberg, taking the M. A, degree from each university.
From the first, Jerome was on intimate terms with Huss and, in 1410, defended Wyclif’s writings at the Prague university, though he denied accepting everything that Wyclif stood for. At Vienna he was cast into prison on the charge of being a Wyclifite. He escaped, but was followed with the ban of excommunication by the archbishop of Vienna. He stood by Hușs in the strife over the rights of the Bohemian nation at the university and in attacking the crusading letters of John XXIII. When Huss started out for his journey to Constance, Jerome warned him that he would not get back alive. Against Huss’s advice he appeared in Constance in the spring of 1415, and posted up a notice asking for safeconduct from the council and Sigismund.
While returning to Prague, he was seized at Hirschau and taken back to Constance, May 23, with chains on his ​hands. He was remanded to prison and, at his trial in the Franciscan refectory, was recognized by Gerson and teachers of Heidelberg and Cologne as one of their former students and inclined to heretical looseness. The proceedings against him were delayed by Huss’s execution. On June 6, in a letter written to John of Chlum, Huss referred to Jerome as his beloved brother, to whom he hoped dying constancy would be given, as also to himself. He had heard from commissioners of the council that Jerome would suffer death. Writing to his friends in Bohemia on June 27, Huss said, to quote the letter again, that God only knew why his own death and the death of his dear brother Jerome were being delayed. He hoped that Jerome would die without incurring guilt and show a firmer spirit in the hour of the ordeal than he himself, a weak sinner, possessed.
Huss’s case being disposed of, the council exerted itself to turn Jerome from his errors and its attempt was crowned with success. Converted from his perfidy, the prisoner made his recantation in the presence of the four nations and later, September 23, before the council in its nineteenth session. Being at the time, as he declared, under no compulsion he repudiated the articles of Wyclif and of Huss, approved the condemnation of the two men and promised to communicate to the Bohemian people a statement of his act and the reasons leading him to it. The rigor of his imprisonment was relaxed, but a difference of opinion prevailed as to the wisdom of his release. D’Ailly, Zabarella and other influential councillors favored it, while Gerson took the other side. The moderate party yielded.
Jerome continued to languish in prison for nearly six months, when a new trial was inaugurated, apparently at the ​instance of certain Carmelites who had recently reached Constance. It is possible they were moved by the recollection of Jerome’s sacrilege in overthrowing the reliquary in the Carmelite church of Maria Schnee in Prague and his abuse of the monks at that time. Jerome had written no tracts from which charges could be drawn. One hundred and seven charges based on the testimony of witnesses recited how, as a young man, he had sucked in the poison of Wyclifism at Oxford and had carried Wyclif’s writings to Bohemia, where he had circulated them. He had placed on the walls of his room a portrait of the Englishman with his head surrounded with the aureole, the mark of sainthood. He was a close friend of Huss. As a chief actor, he had taken part in the Hussite tumults in Prague and at the university. He had also expressly declared that the Greeks and Ruthenians were good Christians.
May 23, 1416, had been appointed as the day when Jerome should do final penance at a public session of the council. In the meantime, as was to be the case with archbishop Cranmer, one hundred and forty years later, the prisoner’s courage revived, and, instead of doing penance, he laid down a testimony to his highest regard for Wyclif and Huss and to the injury which had been done in condemning them. Huss was a pure man and a righteous preacher of the Gospel. He was ready to assert until death all the articles against the offenses and pomp of the prelates which Wyclif and Huss had stated. In his previous profession against them he had been guilty of falsehood.
The council, meeting in the cathedral, May 30, for its twenty-first session, pronounced sentence upon the heretic. The sermon was again preached by the bishop of Lodi. The text, Mark 16: 14, ran: “The Lord upbraided them with their unbelief and hardness of heart.” Unless heretics recanted, he said, they were to be rooted up. Jerome, after he had abjured, had returned like a dog to his vomit. Ascend​ing a bench. Jerome made an eloquent defense, a most graphic report of which we have from an eye-witness. Poggio Bracciolini, the Italian humanist and historian of Florence. He denied that he held heretical articles and in his closing words cited his judges to appear in his presence at the bar of the most high and righteous Judge, at the same time predicting that in the meantime his memory would plague their consciences. The holy synod then pronounced him a follower of Wyclif and Huss, a rotten and withered branch—palmitem putridum et aridum—to be cut off from the church and delivered to the secular arm to receive the vengeance due the crime of heresy. A cap was placed on his head painted with red devils. The ceremony presenting him a chalice was not repeated, for he was a laic.
The condemned man went forth from the church with cheerful countenance, singing the creed and the litany on the way to the place of execution. The stake was reared on the spot where Huss had suffered. He kissed it, and when his garments were removed, the wood and straw were heaped up to his chin which was covered with a heavy beard. The flames were slow in putting an end to his misery when compared with Huss. Jerome addressed the people, professing his faith in the Apostles’ Creed and saying that he died for refusing to profess to the council that Huss had been justly condemned. On the contrary, he knew Huss was a true preacher of the Gospel. As he was dying, he chanted the Easter hymn. Hail. Holy Day—Salve festa dies. After saying, “Lord, into thy hands I commend my spirit,” he exclaimed in Bohemian: “Almighty Lord God, have mercy upon me and forgive my sins, for thou knowest that I love thee sincerely.” His clothes were cast into the flames and the remains of his body carted off to the lake. According to Richental, many learned people wept that Jerome had to die, for they thought he was almost more learned than Huss.
​A great bowlder now marks the place where Jerome and Huss died, bearing their names with the simple date of their death. Burned on the same site, and companions in life, they were commemorated in Bohemia as witnesses together for the Gospel and as glorious martyrs. They were painted as saints on the walls of churches and a Hussite liturgy of 1491 put them side by side with Stephen and St. Lawrence. To quote again that elegant writer, Æneas Sylvius, Huss and Jerome were regarded among the Bohemians as deserving the honors paid to martyrs and were held in no less honor in Prague than Paul and Peter among the Romans.
Poggio’s account of Jerome’s last address contained in his letter addressed to Leonardo Aretino is a piece of elegant literature often quoted. Poggio opens his letter by saying that he was moved to give a description of Jerome’s trial and death on account of the solemnity of the occasion and chiefly on account of the man’s eloquence and doctrinal teaching. The following statement gives the substance of this remarkable document:
Many persons he moved with humor, many with satire, many very often he caused to laugh in spite of the sad affair, jesting at their reproaches. He said that there had been many excellent men who had suffered for their virtues and been oppressed by false witnesses and condemned by wicked judges. . . . He took them back to Socrates, unjustly condemned by his fellow citizens, who did not shun death or pain when he might have avoided both. He mentioned the captivity of Plato, the flight of Anaxagoras, the torture of Zeno, and the unjust condemnation of many other pagans. . . . Thence he passed to the Hebrew examples, first calling up Moses, the liberator of his people, Joseph, sold by his brethren, Isaiah, Daniel, Susanna. . . . Coming down to John the Baptist and then to the Saviour, he showed how, in each case, they were condemned by false witnesses and false judges. . . . Then he took up Stephen, killed by the body of the priests, and all the Apostles, condemned to death as popular agitators and despisers of the gods. . . . He dwelt at length upon the principle that such treatment was most iniquitous when it came from the hand of a council of priests. . . . Then, proceeding to praise John Huss, who had been condemned to be burned, he called him a good man, just and holy, unworthy of such a death, saying that he himself was prepared to go to any punishment whatsoever. Huss had never held opinions hostile to the church of God, but only against the abuses of the clergy and the pride, the arrogance and the pomp of prelates, who spent their patrimony, not on the poor but on mistresses, boon companions, horses, kennels of dogs and other things unworthy of the religion of Christ. . . .
He displayed the greatest cleverness, for when his address was often interrupted with various disturbances, he left no one unscathed, but turned trenchantly upon his accusers and forced them to blush or to keep silent. . . . For three hundred and forty days he had lain in the bottom of a foul, dark tower. He did not complain of the harshness of this treatment but expressed his wonder that such inhumanity could be shown. In the dungeon, he said, he had not only no facilities for reading, but none for seeing. . . . He stood there fearless and unterrified, not alone despising death, but seeking it, so that you would have said he was an​other Cato. Oh, man, worthy of the everlasting memory of men! I praise not that which he advanced, if anything contrary to the institutions of the church, but I admire his learning, his eloquence, his persuasiveness of speech, his adroitness in reply. . . .
One of the tasks the council had set for itself was accomplished. The best it knew to do against heresy, it had done. Wyclif’s writings were condemned and his bones ordered dug up from their quiet resting-place in the parish churchyard of Lutterworth lest the earth be longer defiled by them: and the Bohemian teachers, Huss and Jerome, who followed him of England, were silenced in death. Strange that such acts could have been thought of, much more had unanimous approval in a Christian council and that there are any—if indeed there be any—who would give them their approval to-day. The feeling expressed by the text “Thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground,” which the editor put on the title-page of the large edition of Huss’s writings, if it is still shared, is not a feeling of vengeance for what the council of Constance did, but a feeling that due respect should be accorded to the memories of these men who were honest in their convictions, pure in their lives, and ​depended with their whole heart upon Christ, whom they sought to honor.
As it was Huss’s solemn hope that at the tribunal of God he might be found not to have repudiated a single tittle of Christ’s law, so, following St. Jerome, he expressed the wish that, as an old man, he might hold the faith he had been taught as a boy; and in that same precious faith he wished to die, even as every child of predestination wishes to die. That best of masters—optimus magister—the address Huss often applied to Christ-himself had suffered false accusation and bitter death. The disciple is not above his Lord.
After November 11, 1417, the church of the West was again under one head by the election of Otto Colonna—Martin V, to whom the case of Huss was fully known. It had been committed to him by John XXIII, and he had pronounced the first excommunication against the dead heretic. One of Martin’s first acts, February 22, 1418, after the council’s dissolution was the reiterated condemnation of the articles brought against Wyclif and Huss and the excommunication of all of both sexes who persisted in the pestilential doctrines of those heresiarchs and Jerome of Prague. Martin also called upon all men to seize the heretics, put them in chains and proceed against them with civil penalties.
In Bohemia, serious dissensions broke out in the ranks of Huss’s followers, which resulted in the development of two wings, the Taborites, who settled at Tabor with John Ziska as leader, and the Calixtines or Utraquists, so called from the fact that they distributed the calix or chalice to the laity at the Lord’s Supper. The city of Tabor was built near the site of Austi, the castle where Huss spent most of his semi-voluntary exile from Prague. The location, sixty-eight miles south of the capital city, was well adapted to be a stronghold, and ​the streets were so laid out that an army penetrating through the walls could not see from one end of them to the other. Founded in 1419, the city still exists and has a museum containing many objects of interest dating from the Hussite wars and fronted by a bronze statue of Ziska, the sturdy, one-eyed Taborite soldier. The city has a small Protestant church, recently built, which reminds the visitor that the whole region round about, now Catholic, once resounded to the Hussite hymns and witnessed the simple ceremonies of their Puritan faith. The Taborites were the rigorous party, going even to a fanatical extreme. The Calixtines, more conservative and finally contenting themselves with the use of the сир and the free use of the Scriptures, were largely confined to the city of Prague.
Early in 1417, the university, taking note of this dissension, and led by Jacobellus of Mies, Christian of Prachaticz and John of Reinstein, all friends of Huss, condemned the party of the Hussites who were denying purgatory, prayers for the dead, who banished images from the church, abandoned the use of candles, incense, the ringing of bells and consecrated baptismal water, who refused judicial oaths, demanded the mass in the vulgar tongue, and that only such ceremonies be practised as were distinctly set forth in the New Testament. These errors and others were set forth in twenty-three articles issued by a council of the masters and clergy of Prague a year and a half later. The term Taborites is not used, although that party was meant.
The theological faculty further formulated the Hussite doctrine in four articles which demanded free preaching of the Gospel, the administration of both elements in the Lord’s Supper, the deprivation of clergymen possessed of riches and ​the removal of priests with mortal sins. Between these two parties the nobles were divided, but, following the university, Cenek of Wartemberg, Lacek of Krawar and other nobles, ordered all clergymen on their domains to distribute the cup on pain of losing their places and induced the suffragan-bishop of Prague to give ordination to a number of Hussites.
The council of Constance was not slow in meeting this new rebellion by declaring the ordination invalid, and Gerson opposed to it his tract against the distribution of the cup, in which he called upon the church to depend less upon moral methods and more upon the secular authority in enforcing the council’s act.
Affairs entered into a new stage at the sudden death of that unfortunate monarch, Wenzel, August 16, 1419. A year before, he had resisted Martin V by forbidding heretics to appear in the court of the cardinal-inquisitor whom Martin had sent to Bohemia. The council had passed twenty-four articles calling upon the king to protect the church in all its regulations and to reinstate clergymen who had been deprived of their livings, to burn all Hussite writings and forbid all singing of Hussite songs, to deliver over to the council such leaders of heresy as Jacobellus, John of Reinstein, Jesenicz, Christian of Prachaticz, Simon of Tissnow and Simon of Rokyzan, and to treat all laymen taking the cup as heretics. Moved by these demands and the advice of Sigismund, Wenzel proceeded with some energy, banished John of Jesenicz from the city and ordered the old priests reinstated, but set apart three churches for the Utraquists. He lived long enough to see the interdict lifted from the city.
Wenzel’s death followed upon an armed disturbance in the streets of Prague. Many of his councillors had left the court rather than yield to the measures of repression. One of these, John of Ziska, led a procession to the old town hall ​and threw out of the windows the magistrates, some of whom died from the fall, the rest being despatched by the mob. Prague was the scene of rioting, and all the old priests were expelled by the inflamed Hussite party. The Taborites, with Ziska and Nicholas of Pistna at their head, marched against the city and, in common with the Utraquists, resisted the queen, who had been appointed regent, and her army, made up in part of mercenaries. Great destruction of property followed. Peace was arranged by Cenek of Wartemberg, and the Taborites retired. Sigismund, the heir to the Bohemian throne, was rejected by the nation at large, and civil war followed his attempt to make good his claim to the crown. Hussite preachers stigmatized him as the dragon of the Apocalypse. He was destined not to enter Prague until six months before his death.
The country of Huss was now destined to be attacked by five crusades proclaimed one after the other by Martin V, beginning with 1420. They were summoned against the Wyclifists, Hussites and other heretics. The atrocities perpetrated were great, and a misfortune of no less proportions than the crusades was that the Taborite and Calixtine parties were often at war with one another. Ziska fell 1424. The last of the crusades, 1431, was preached by Cardinal Julian Cæsarini in Germany, and one hundred and thirty thousand troops responded; but the crusading army, under the lead of Frederick of Brandenburg, quailed before the songs and shrank before the impetus of the Hussite troops in the disastrous defeat at Tauss.
A third stage in the history of Hussitism was opened with the negotiations entered into with the council of Basel by the Calixtine and Taborite parties, represented respectively by John Rokyzan and Procopius the Great as leaders. These delegates insisted upon the respectful use of the names of Wyclif and Huss on the floor of the synod and employed the Bohemian tongue in the religious services held in their ​own lodgings. The deliberations resulted in the so-called Compactata, four articles, whose chief stipulation was the right of the Bohemians to distribute the cup to the laity. These compacts were afterward set aside by Pius II, 1462, the same pontiff who set aside the decree of Constance declaring the authority of general councils final.
Archbishop Konrad, who had identified himself with the Calixtines, died in 1431. He was followed by Rokyzan, who administered the archdiocese of Prague until his death, 1471, although he was never recognized by Rome. Sigismund, who died 1437, was followed by his son-in-law, Albert of Austria. In 1458 the crown went to George Podiebrad, a Bohemian nobleman who had acted for several years as regent under Ladislaus Postumus. Podiebrad was the leader of the Calixtine party, and under him and Rokyzan that party retained its strength in the city. The king had to contend against Matthias Corvinus of Hungary, to whom the apostolic see had transferred the Bohemian crown. In the meantime the Calixtines had defeated the Taborites at Lipan, 1434, when Procopius and 13,000 of his followers fell. Tabor was taken by Podiebrad, 1452. The king died in his wars with Matthias, 1471. The throne then passed to the house of Hapsburg. By various agreements the Calixtines were confirmed in their rights. Not only Bohemia and Moravia but also adjoining lands were largely under the influence of the law of religious liberty.
A third party grew up in Bohemia from the Hussite stock, known as the Bohemian Brethren. Its exact origin is a matter of dispute. It appears distinctly 1457 and seems to have had some connection with the Austrian Waldenses. One of the earliest of the Waldensian leaders was Peter Chelcicky, a marked religious personage, of whom we would like to know a great deal more than we do. By 1500 these dissenters had increased to 200,000, grouped in three hundred or more congregations. They had their own confession, ​catechism and hymnology. They rejected war and oaths. Brethren, including Michael Weiss, the hymn-writer, visited Luther, who at an early date had in his hand a copy of their catechism.
Under Maximilian II, 1564–1576, there was a fair prospect of all Bohemia and the German provinces of Austria becoming Protestant. Döllinger says that in some of the provinces nine-tenths of the population was Protestant. But later, under Ferdinand II, d. 1637, who had been brought up under strict Jesuit influences, the Hussites endured the bitterest of persécutions. The downfall of Bohemian and Moravian Protestantism followed. The Jesuits, who had established themselves in Austria, were indefatigable in their efforts to bring about this result. They acted, we may suppose, upon the judgment which Cochlæus set forth, that there had never been a mortal man who was more dangerous and pestilential to Bohemia than Huss. By moral persuasion and legislation, by confiscation of lands, by the expulsion of the Protestant population and by its extermination with the sword, their work was accomplished. The Protestant nobles were forbidden by law to have preaching even in their castles.
The Thirty Years’ War, which began with the revolt of Bohemia against Ferdinand II, 1618, and the election of Frederick of the Palatinate as its king, not only left Bohemia bleeding but Bohemian Protestantism to all appearances done to death. In the battle at the White Mountain, near Prague, 1620. Frederick was completely defeated, and with his defeat the fate of Bohemian Hussitism was sealed. Twenty-seven distinguished Protestants were executed on the public square, near the spot where the proposed monument to Huss is to be erected in 1915 by the subscription of Bohemians who have revived the memory of their great countryman ​burned to death at Constance, whose cause the ancestors of so many of them defended even to the loss of their lives.
All Protestant teachers and preachers were given, in 1624, a week to leave the country on pain of death. Bohemian and German Bibles and all Bohemian works published after 1414 were placed under the suspicion of heresy and burned in great numbers in the market-places and under the gallows. One Jesuit. Anton Koniasch, boasted he had burned 60,000 such books. Thus the Czech literature was threatened with utter destruction. Protestants had been forbidden all rights—marriage, worship, merchandise or making a will. Ferdinand’s vow to exterminate heretics, if in doing so he had to rule over a desert, was realized. More than 30,000 families, including 400 nobles, emigrated, and the Bohemian people, which at the beginning of the Thirty Years’ War numbered between 3,000,000 and 4,000,000, was reduced at its close to 700,000 or 800,000. The last of the bishops of the Bohemian Brethren, Comenius, died in exile in Holland, 1670. Hussites, if there were any who remained in Bohemia and retained their ancient faith, kept it a secret.
The Hussite spirit was crushed but not extinguished. Sparks burned again and turned to a flame in the Moravian church. In 1722 two Moravian families, led by Christian David, settled at Herrnhut, near Dresden, on lands set apart by Count Zinzendorf. From that spot as a centre this humble body of sincere Christians has illuminated the world by its missionary devotion, carrying the spirit and the teachings of Huss to regions of whose existence that good man never dreamed, even to the remotest ends of the earth and the most destitute populations—the islands of the West Indies, the Mosquito Coast, Greenland and Labrador, the natives of Australia, the lepers of Jerusalem, the table-land of Thibet. The sparks of the old Hussite flame also began to show signs of life in Bohemia itself after the edicts of religious toleration issued in 1781 and 1848. At present, the pastors of the ​Evangelical church of that land, given larger freedom by the law of 1861, are most faithful and active and find themselves unable for lack of ministerial force and financial equipment to take advantage of the opportunities being offered of again proclaiming the evangelical faith for which Huss died. Among the Czech people, his memory is again coming to honor. His spirit still moves to and fro across the old bridge of the Moldau, and his voice may yet be heard again preaching in all the villages of his native land, Bohemia.
* ↑ Palacky, Gesch., 299 sq. Wratislaw, 349–375. Lützow, 200 sqq. Two of Huss’s letters written from Constance were printed 1459 and four 1495.
* ↑ Magister J. Hus: Super IV. Sententiarum. The genuineness is not doubted. Flajshans gives the arguments, p. viii sqq.
* ↑ Loserth, Wiclif and Hus, p. 182, says: “Friends and foes alike have always regarded it with respect.”
* ↑ Doc. 475–480. The document was dated Feb. 6, 1413.
* ↑ De Sacramentis, 1: 2.
* ↑ Schwane, Dogmengeschichte, p. 504.
* ↑ Loserth’s ed. London, 1886, p. 595.
* ↑ This is shown clearly by Loserth, pp. 181–290.
* ↑ P. 621. Loserth after the publication of Huss’s Commentary modified his sweeping judgment in regard to Huss’s dependence upon Wyclif and said: “We can assume it as certain that our previous judgment in regard to Huss’s literary work must be altered in several points, and that it will be apprised at a considerably higher value than heretofore.”—Mittheil. des Inst. f. österr. Geschichtsforschung. No. 26.
* ↑ Flajshans ed., p. xl.
* ↑ Mon., 2: 520. Doctor Philip Schaff quotes two of the verses in his Christ in Song, 464.
* ↑ Palacky, Gesch., 378. Nieheim in Hardt, 2: 410. Palacky, Gesch., 371, doubts the rumor.
* ↑ Doc., 564 sqq.
* ↑ Doc., 568 sqq.
* ↑ Doc., 580–595.
* ↑ Doc., 619–621.
* ↑ The bull was posted up at Passau, May 3, 1416, May 5, at Constance, May 10, in Vienna, etc.
* ↑ Doc., 615–619.
* ↑ Doc., 141. For Jerome’s life, see Mon., 2: 522–534. In 1878, Jaroslav Goll published at Prague a MS, which he had found in Freiburg giving an account of Jerome’s arrest and death.
* ↑ For a full account of the trial, Hardt, 4: 629–691, 6: 191 sqq.; Mansi, 27: 794 sqq., 842–864. For Jerome’s recantation, also Mon., 2: 525 sq.
* ↑ Richental, p. 83, says that Jerome cried out terribly—gräulich—while he was being burned, for “he was a large, strong man.”
* ↑ Schwab, Gerson, 609. Enemies charged that Huss was placed among the holy gods,” Hardt, 6: 181.
* ↑ See Shepherd’s Life of Poggio. The letter is also contained in Mon., 2: 532–534; Doc., 624–629; Hardt, 3: 64–71; Hefele, 7: 280–283; German trsl., Palacky, Gesch., 386 sq.; Engl, trsl., Whitcomb, Lit. Source-Book of the Ital. Renaissance, 40–47. Æneas Sylvius, chap. XXXVI, refers to this letter as the letter of “that noble writer,” etc.
* ↑ Mon., 1: 325, 330.
* ↑ Mirbt, 170–172.
* ↑ Æneas Sylvius, who gives a vivid description of Tabor, which he visited, says the inhabitants called themselves “Brethren of Tabor, just as if with the three disciples they had seen Christ the Saviour on the Mount of Transfiguration.”—Hist. Boh., chap. XL.
* ↑ Doc., 654–656, 667–681.
* ↑ Schwab, 604 sq.
* ↑ Doc., 682 sqq. Palacky. Gesch., 410 sqq. The twenty-four articles also in Hefele, 344 sq.
* ↑ Nullum unquam fuisse mortalem regno Bohemia nocentiorem aut pestilentiorem quam Hus, p. 114.