# John Huss: his life, teachings and death, after five hundred years/Chapter 8

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CHAPTER VIII
HUSS BEFORE THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE
Quum Deus maximus et justissimus judex sit, qui errare non potest, causam ei commendavi, non dico meam sed ejus ipsins.—Huss, Doc., 726.
Since God is the supreme and most just judge and never errs, I have committed the cause to Him; I do not say mine but His own.
Huss’s appeal to be heard before a council was never realized in the way he hoped. Nevertheless, his appearance before the general council, which met at Constance, 1414–1418, must be regarded as one of the most notable trials in the history of church procedure. The two questions of supreme importance, which this convention was convoked to discuss, were the healing of the papal schism and the reform of the church in head and members. The case of Huss scarcely yielded to these subjects in the interest it excited and the time devoted to its discussion. It was tantamount to the maintenance of the purity of the church’s doctrine. So also, just two centuries before, the famous fourth Lateran council of 1215—the twelfth œcumenical council—under the presidency of Innocent III, took measures to maintain the church’s doctrinal purity by disciplinary decrees and by measures to exterminate the heresy which had arisen in Southern France.
Of all ecclesiastical assemblies of the Middle Ages the synod of Constance is at once the most spectacular and the most imposing. It was a veritable parliament of the nations of Western Europe, where the leading intellects of the age ​engaged in discussion, some of whom felt the spirit of free inquiry which was then stirring in Latin Christendom. As in 1046, at the instance of Henry III, the synod of Sutri deposed three popes, all resident in Rome, and elected a fourth, so for the second time this council decided between the claims of three pontiffs and, setting all three aside, chose a fourth. This it did by virtue of the supreme authority it asserted for itself in the church on earth. Gregory XII of the Roman line was prevailed upon to resign. Benedict XIII of the Avignon line, and John XXIII of the Pisan succession were deposed. Martin V was then elected pope and all Western Christendom was reunited under a single earthly head with the exception of a small Spanish territory, where a few thousand adherents continued to cling to the obedience of Benedict until that vigorous ruler’s death, 1424.
Effective as the council’s action was in doing away with the rival popes, its decision constituting itself the supreme tribunal in the church was doomed to be rudely set aside. The church had been reading, or was about to read, stirring tracts issued by Konrad of Gelnhausen, Henry of Langenstein, Gerson, Dietrich of Nieheim, Peter d’Ailly, and Nicholas of Clemanges, in which were discussed the questions of the supreme earthly seat of authority and the undone condition of the church, the result in part of the papal schism. The decision of its fifth session, when it placed itself above the pope, was in accord with the theory of the ancient church but conflicted with the theory for which Gregory VII, Innocent III, and Boniface VIII had stood.
An œcumenical council, so Gerson asserted in a famous sermon preached at Constance, March 23, 1415, has authority to punish popes and set them aside. A pontiff is set over the church as Joseph was set over his master’s wife, not to debauch her but to guard her interests. A pontiff may be ​guilty of heresy, and by that fact is deposed of God. In the boldest and most powerful of these tracts, Nieheim declared that a pope might be worse than the devi—pejor quam diabolus—that he is not infallible and that, like Christ, he is subject to the earthly tribunal. The canons of a council are immutable except as they may be set aside by the decision of a succeeding council, and the pope has no authority to adjourn a council. But, as has been said, the proud proclamation of the great council of Constance did not long hold good. In less than half of a century it was set aside with a single stroke of the pen by Pius II in his bull Execrabilis, 1459, which declared that an appeal from a papal decision deserved excommunication. For to Christ’s vicar it had been given to feed Christ’s flock and to loose and bind on earth and in heaven. All appeals to a council, which were compared to a pestiferous venom, were to be punished with ecclesiastical anathema.
The council of Pisa, which had elected Alexander V, in adjourning, 1409, had appointed another council to meet in three years. It convened April 12, 1412, in Rome, but was poorly attended, burned Wyclif’s writings, and had no further significance. John XXIII was wholly disinclined to witness the assembling of another council, where discussion might be unchecked and doctors of the church arrogate to themselves authority over the papacy. Envoys sent by the university of Paris sought to persuade him. His hand, however, was forced by Sigismund, heir to the empire. Sigismund’s imperial claims and restless energy were soon to make him the most conspicuous civil personage in Christendom. His interest in the council was due less to a high religious purpose to bring about reforms in the church than to an ambition to play a leading part in the eyes of his generation. He had some taste for books and spoke several languages, but was frivolous, unreliable, and sensual. Æneas Sylvius declared him to be witty in conversation, given to wine and ​women, and mixed up, according to popular rumor, in thousands of love intrigues. He spent money lavishly, a weakness from which his brother Wenzel was free.
Although to Sigismund, more than to John, the council was due, yet to the opinion of the scholarly guild of Europe it was due more than to both these dignitaries. Pressed by the Hussite disputes in Bohemia, the king saw in the council a feasible way for settling them, but also a means of displaying his own authority at the expense of his elder brother Wenzel both as a champion of orthodoxy and the protector of the rights of Bohemia. His initiative in seeking the appointment of the council, united with his imperial claims, called forth repeatedly from John XXIII the address “Advocate and Defender of the Church,” a title Sigismund did not shrink from using himself. The sack of Rome by Ladislaus forced John XXIII into the king’s hands. A delegation of two of John’s cardinals met Sigismund at Como, October 13, 1413. One of them was Zabarella, former professor at Padua, and known there as the king of canon law, and now since his elevation, in 1410, popularly known as the cardinal of Florence. His commentaries on the Decretals and Clementines were highly prized. The legates signified the pope’s readiness to summon the council. The place led to much discussion. Bologna, Genoa, Nice, Rome, and cities north of the Alps were suggested. October 30, Sigismund announced the coming synod.
The king and John met at Lodi, and, after in vain attempting to effect a change in the place of meeting. John assented to Constance and attached his seal to the summons of the council. Sigismund is said to have rebuked the pon​tiff’s scandalous life, and the report went that for a payment of fifty thousand gold guldens he promised not to join in any attempt to unseat John. Thus the two great luminaries of this mundane sphere, as Sigismund wrote to Charles VI of France, were side by side, pope and emperor, appointed to rule the one over the spiritual, the other over the material, affairs of the world.
Œcumenical councils had decided questions of heresy before, beginning with the first council, 325, held at Nice, which punished the heresy of Arius. Early in the spring of 1414, while sojourning at Friuli, in Lombardy, Sigismund commissioned Lord Wenzel of Duba, Henry Chlum of Lacembok, and Henry’s nephew, John of Chlum on their return to Bohemia to propose to Huss that he refer his case to the council for adjudication without delay. At the same time, if we follow Peter of Mladenowicz’s report, these noblemen brought assurances from the king that he would send Huss letters of safe-conduct both for the journey to Constance and the return journey to Bohemia. Huss’s assent, which seems to have been given with alacrity, marked an epoch in his life and introduces its last chapters—his imprisonment and trial and his death at the stake. There can be no doubt that, though at times he may have shared the misgivings of friends for his safety, he looked forward to the council with a courage born of the conviction that he was innocent and that he would receive fair treatment.
Before starting on the journey, and with the help of his friends, he made every effort to secure clean papers certifying to his good standing in the church in his own country. A diocesan synod met in Prague, August 27. The day before, Huss, who was in the city, had posted up against the cathedral and the churches, and at the gateways of the palaces of the archbishop and the king, notices in Latin, German and Czech ​that he was ready to defend himself and his orthodoxy before the synod. Copies are preserved. He was denied admittance to the sittings. Interpreting, however, the synod’s silence as a confession of his innocence, he again posted up at the gateway of the royal palace in the old town a notice intended for the king and queen to the effect that in the archbishop’s court “no one in the whole kingdom of Bohemia” had appeared against him. He was ready to appear before the pope and the council assured that, if accused of heresy, he would receive a verdict of not guilty. But, should he be pronounced a heretic, he would not shrink from suffering the punishment appointed for heretics.
From the papal inquisitor Nicholas, bishop of Nazareth, he received a certificate of good standing, which bears a notary’s seal, dated August 30, 1414. In an open audience in which Jesenicz and other friends of Huss were present, the inquisitor affirmed that he had often been present when Huss preached, talked with him over matters of Scripture and met him many times at the hospitable board, and that, far from finding him a heretic, he had always found him to be “a true and Catholic man, who had no taint of heresy about him.” From this deposition the amiable prelate was afterward known as the bishop-sup-with-the-devil.
At still another synod, held in October, and according to the sealed attestation of the supreme Burgrave of Prague and others. Archbishop Konrad, in answer to a question put by Huss’s friends, affirmed that he knew of no heresy or error of which Huss could be justly accused.
Writing to Sigismund, September 1, 1414, Huss announced his purpose of proceeding to Constance under the protection of the king’s passport, providing safety on the journey—salvus conductus. He begged the king to secure for him a safe hearing in public and expressed his willingness ​to die, if necessary, for Christ and his most true law. In secret he had taught nothing. What he had spoken, he had spoken in public places where professors and university graduates, priests, nobles, and other men met.
In the meantime Huss’s enemies were not asleep. Sealed depositions were taken from John of Protiva, a former incumbent of Bethlehem chapel, and Andrew of Broda, Huss’s bitter foe, to be used against him at the council. On the basis of sermons they had heard and of rumors they had picked up on the streets, these men testified, among other things, that Huss held to the remanence of the bread after the words of institution and to the incompetence of priests in mortal sin to absolve. These depositions were in Huss’s hands at Krakowec before he set out for Constance. Copies with his interlineations and notes are still extant.
On October 11, 1414, the journey to Constance began. Our account of its stages is derived in part from Huss’s own letters and in part from Mladenowicz, one of his companions who remained with him until the end, even to standing by at the stake and watching his friend’s dying agony. Huss had been placed by Sigismund and Wenzel under the protection of three Bohemian nobles, John of Chlum, Henry of Chlum, his uncle, and Wenzel of Duba. John of Chlum and Wenzel of Duba had fought with Sigismund in his Venetian campaign on account of Zara. Huss’s expenses were met from contributions made by his friends. A charge with which he was frequently plied at Constance was that he had been made rich by the gifts of his influential supporters. On the other hand, he was worried during the progress of his journey lest he should want for the necessities of life, and more worried during his imprisonment in Constance about the repayment of the moneys advanced. A handsome horse and a carriage were given him by Lord Pflug of Rabstein and another horse by another nobleman. In a parting letter, written to his ​Bohemian friends, whom he calls brothers and sisters, he expressed some doubt whether he would see them again alive. He called them to witness that he had publicly presented the Word of God and presented it without heresy and without errors. He assured them he was no heretic. He spoke seriously of the great dangers which lay before him and the possibility of his being put to death, but, if by his death he might contribute to God’s glory and their advantage, he interceded that it might please God to enable him to meet death without sinful fear and, if it should please God to bring him back, they would be all the more joyful at seeing each other and assuredly so if they should not meet until they met in heaven. Constance, whither he was going, held many and influential enemies, and he asked their prayers for the gift of wisdom and constancy by the Holy Spirit that he might be preserved in the midst of his enemies, well remembering that Christ had left an example of patient suffering under trial, imprisonment, and even death.
As a precautionary measure, Huss put a sealed will into the hands of his favorite pupil, marked with instructions that it should not be opened except in case of his death. He called upon Martin to be true to the vow of chastity, to guard himself against all temptations to incontinence, and to recall what he had been taught by Huss from his youth up—to act as a servant of Jesus Christ. He reminded Martin that he had hated the avarice and the incontinent lives of the clergy, and he warned him against giving away to the desire for fine clothes, high position, and against being seduced by the bad customs of the day. Huss also reminded him of his own manner of life before his ordination and begged Martin not to imitate him in any folly Martin might have seen in him. It is here Huss mentions his fondness for chess, to which reference has already been made, a game, he said, at which he had wasted much time and had provoked himself ​as well as others to displays of anger. For his innumerable sins he asked the young man’s pardon as he also asked his prayers. He closed the document by bequeathing to Martin a gray cloak, if he chose to have it, and a white cloak to the parish priest. In case he did not care for the gray cloak, Huss asked him to give it to his faithful servant, George, or in its stead a guinea.
Huss’s party consisted of thirty persons, all mounted. In addition to the three delegates appointed by Sigismund, there were John, Cardinal of Reinstein, who had for a long time acted as Wenzel’s diplomatic agent, and John of Chlum’s amanuensis and clerk, Peter of Mladenowicz. As he was departing, among the many who expressed fears that he was starting on a journey from which he would not return was Jerome of Prague.
The route led through Biernau, Neustadt, Sulzbach, Hersbruck and Lauf to Nürnberg, which the party reached October 19, and from thence by way of Biberach in Würtemberg and Ravensburg on the lake of Constance. From Ravensburg they took boat to the city toward which their faces were turned. Notes left us in Huss’s own letters give a chatty account of the experiences by the way. Nowhere did he veil his identity. In spite of warnings that he had powers of sorcery, given by the bishop of Lebus, a canon of Prague, who preceded the party from place to place by a day’s journey, he was everywhere kindly received. The papal interdict was nowhere enforced. Teutons as well as Latins, officials, and people of all classes everywhere turned out to see him as if, so he wrote, they were going to a fair.
Priests and magistrates entertained him. At Biernau the parish priest received him into his house and set before him a large tankard of wine. At Nürnberg, where he had a notable reception, a few months before Sigismund had gone the rounds of the churches and worn the ​skull of St. Cyprian. The priest of St. Sebaldus and other priests, and also the city officials had a conference with him lasting four hours. In the company was a Carthusian doctor who disputed with him at length, but, in spite of this, he felt that there was not an enemy among them all, and he was surprised to find among the Germans as much cordiality as was shown by his own people, the Bohemians. John of Chlum and Wenzel of Duba were indefatigable in rendering good service and, as Huss asserts, acted as heralds of the truth. Farther on in the journey, at Biberach, John argued so shrewdly with the priests and other men of culture on the papal prerogative that the rumor spread that he was a doctor of divinity. Using the incident, Huss playfully nicknamed him doctor of Piberach.
At Nürnberg, Wenzel of Duba, turned aside and proceeded northward, to Spires, to secure from the king the official passport—salvus conductus. Again and again Huss refers to the fact that the journey had been made without passport although he had received the promise of it from Sigismund. The party reached Constance on a Sabbath, November 3, and was met outside the city by a great throng. The people accompanied him until he came to the house of a widow, Fida, who lived near the Schnetzthor, where Huss lodged. The house still stands on the street now called the Hussgasse and bears a bronze tablet placed there by fellow Bohemians, 1878, containing the inscription in German and Czech—The Lodging of the Bohemian Reformer, Master J. Huss, 1414. The throng was attracted in part by curiosity to see the heretic and in part by a parade which it was announced the pope, cardinals, and other dignitaries were to make on that day but which was frustrated by the pope’s sudden illness. Barons John of Chlum and Lacembok went immediately to the bishop’s palace, where the pope was stopping, and laid Huss’s case before him. The pope gave ​them the assurance that no violence would be employed, no, not even if Huss were charged with killing John’s own brother. They pleaded Sigismund’s solemn pledge. But his enemies were in readiness and the very day after Huss’s arrival, Michael de Causis posted up a notice against the cathedral that he and his supporters had opened proceedings against John Huss, obstinate, excommunicate, and suspected of heresy.
Constance, now a city of Baden, was for the moment the centre to which all eyes in Western Europe were turned. Even the emperor of Byzantium had been in correspondence with Sigismund about attendance upon the council. Nieheim and other writers of the day praised the beauty of its location and the salubriousness of the climate. The picture given of the city in Van der Hardt shows in the foreground the Dominican convent, situated on an island, in which Huss was to be imprisoned, behind it the city, walled and divided into two parts by a wide street, and to the north the river Rhine. It had been an important metropolis for the overland trade from Venice and Lombardy. The old stock exchange, the Kauffhaus, still standing, was built in 1387. It was made an imperial city by the family of the Hohenstaufen, and was visited by the distinguished members of that house, Frederick Barbarossa, Henry VI, and Frederick II, as well as by young Konradin on his unfortunate journey to Italy to receive his grandfather’s crown and to meet with his pitiful death, 1268. The seat of a bishop, the see of Constance at one time included a large part of Würtemberg, Baden, Switzerland. With its incumbent, in the early part of the sixteenth century, Zwingli had to do. The see was abolished in 1826. A week before Huss’s arrival, John XXIII had entered the city in great style, riding on a white palfrey covered with a red cloth and accompanied by nine cardinals and sixteen ​hundred mounted horsemen, the bridles of his horse being held by the count of Montferrat and an Orsini. The city magistrates furnished the bishop’s palace, where the pope lodged, with four large casks of French wine, four of Elsass, and eight of native wines, and the citizens of Constance made him a gift of a large drinking-cup made of silver gilded with gold. The city attracted people of every rank bent on all sorts of business. Such a scene on so grand a scale had not been witnessed in the West before. It was a golden occasion for social and mercantile intercourse, for pride and display as well as a religious event concerning the well-being of Latin Christendom. In comparison with this assembly, the synod at Clermont, 1095, the fourth Lateran, 1215, and the councils held in Lyons, 1245 and 1274, were provincial synods. Here all Catholic nations were represented by delegations from Bohemia to Scotland. The chief scholarship of the age as well as the leading prelates were there. The normal population of the city, which was under six thousand, was enormously swollen by the flood of strangers, whose number is put at from fifty thousand to one hundred and fifty thousand by Richental, a resident of the city who, twenty years after the council adjourned, wrote down a graphic account of what he had seen. He had the interest of a modern reporter, went everywhere, into alley and palace, from house to house, taking down notes. His busy pen preserved the names of all the visiting dignitaries, civil and religious, together with their retainers. There were thirty thousand beds for strangers. Five hundred are said to have been drowned in the lake during the progress of the council. Bakers, grooms, goldsmiths, scribes, money-changers, merchantmen, and sutlers of every sort, even to traffickers from the Orient, flocked together to minister to the needs and tastes of princes and prelates. According to the tables of Richental there were in attendance 33 cardinals, 5 patriarchs, 47 archbishops, 145 ​bishops, 93 titular bishops, 217 doctors of theology, 361 doctors of both laws, and 171 doctors of medicine. Thirty-seven universities were represented. There were 83 envoys representing kings and princes, 38 dukes, 173 counts, 71 barons, more than 1,500 knights, and also 142 writers of bulls, 1,700 buglers, fiddlers, and other players on musical instruments. In addition, the chronicler informs us, there were 700 women of the street who openly practised their trade in rented rooms, while the number who practised it secretly was not recorded.
The arrival of different delegations caused great excitement. The English and Scotch, numbering a dozen and accompanied by seven or eight hundred mounted men, were headed by fifers and other musicians as they entered the city January 21, 1415. The representatives of the university of Paris, who arrived in February, awakened equal interest. The entry of John of Nassau, archbishop of Mainz, attended by 700 mounted followers, created a sensation. The archbishop was clad in full armor-helmet, coat of mail, and greaves. January 17, 1415, King Sigismund went out to meet Duke Lewis of Bavaria, who was accompanied by the bishops of Spires and Treves and a retinue of 400 horsemen. The streets presented the spectacle of a merry fair. There were tournaments, dances, acrobatic shows, processions, and musical displays. The police regulations were precise. Riding and shouting at night were forbidden. After dark, chains were stretched across some of the streets, and persons going out after curfew were to carry their own lights. Regulated prices for food and laundering were intended to check extortion. The most eminent personages in attendance, after Sigismund and the pope, were Cardinals d'Ailly, Zabarella and Fillastre, Hallum, bishop of Salisbury, who died during the ​sessions and was buried at Constance, and John Gerson of Paris. Fillastre left a valuable journal of the council’s proceedings.
Now and then in Huss’s letters we catch entertaining glimpses of the functions that were going on in the city and the gossip that passed from mouth to mouth on its streets. A rumor which he mentioned proved untrue, that Benedict XIII was on his way to Constance. The asses the cardinals rode on, he tells us, were scrubs. On his arrival he found many Bohemians already stranded, and he wrote requesting aid for them. He chats about the price of horses and how he had sent his own horse, Rabstein, back to Ravensburg. He had kept it that he might be ready, if necessary, to ride outside the city to meet the king, who, however, so the rumor went, was not to arrive until Christmas Day. John of Chlum, he says, was protecting him right manfully and like a true knight, and doing more preaching than he himself.
To Huss’s misfortune, even the liberty of his lodging in widow Fida’s house was quickly to be taken from him, and from thenceforth only such rumors reached him as penetrated through prison walls. His hopes of a fair and open audience were doomed to bitter disappointment. The orderly procedure and solemn attention to business which he had looked forward to gave away before the actual impression of another sort. He complained of unfairness for himself and his Bohemian friends. Of the general conditions prevailing in the city he wrote that “this council is the scene of great foulness, for I hear it said by the Swabians, as though it were a proverb, that a generation will not suffice to purge Constance from the sins which it has committed in the city.“ His numerous enemies were indefatigable in creating and encouraging an unfavorable sentiment against him, insisting that he be treated as a heretic. Michael de Causis, as has been said, was there. So also was Peter Palecz and the Iron Bishop, ​Leitomysl. The day after Huss’s arrival, Michael posted up formal notice of the proceedings, in which he was to be a prosecutor. Palecz and Michael not only drew up charges from his Treatise on the Church, but actually went about among the cardinals, archbishops, and other prelates to stir up prejudice against him or confirm suspicion, associating with themselves in this business members of the Dominican order. Huss’s hope was in Sigismund, not yet on the ground, and supremely in Christ, whom he called “his strong champion”—bellator fortis.
November 9, the week after Huss’s arrival, John XXIII, in answer to the request of Huss’s friends, sent word that the interdict was suspended and that Huss was free to go to and fro in the city and in the churches, with the caution that he should not attend high masses and should avoid mixing with the people. This seemed to be a good omen. And, as we learn from a letter written by John of Reinstein, Huss was celebrating mass daily in his lodgings; but the same authority bears witness to the uneasiness in the city occasioned by Huss’s presence. He speaks of a false rumor circulated, he knew not by friend or foe, to the effect that Huss was to preach in the cathedral on the Sabbath after he was writing, and that he had promised a ducat to every one who was present to listen to his strictures upon the clergy. This valuable letter closes with a reference to Huss’s name, that the Goose is not yet cooked and not afraid of being cooked, for geese were not eaten on that St. Martinmas, which happened to fall on Saturday, a day when geese were not eaten. With all who came to his lodgings Huss spoke freely, but he was wise in not going beyond his lodgings, as John of Chlum distinctly stated.
But Huss, after all, was a heretic and under the ban of the curia. His liberty was an offense to the rigorous party, continually reminded by the hostile Bohemians of the cer​tainty of Huss’s heresy. Even if it had been canonical, it was not safe to allow him to be free. When he was arrested, the arrest was accomplished under the garb of duplicity. On November 28, less than a month after Huss’s entry into Constance, the mayor of the city, Hans of Baden, and the bishops of Trent and Augsburg appeared at the widow’s lodgings near the Schnetzthor and announced that the pope and cardinals were ready to give Huss a hearing and that they were sent to conduct him to their presence. John of Chlum saw through the ruse, and, rising to his feet, appealed to the king’s safe-conduct and his announcement that it was his will that nothing be done to Huss until his arrival. He charged the party with defying the king’s honor. Addressing the mayor, Chlum said in German: “If the devil came to have his case tried he ought to have a fair and honest hearing.”
When the bishop of Trent remarked that they were there in the interests of peace and to prevent disturbance, Huss rose from the table and declared that he had not come to present his case before the pope and the curia, but before the whole council sitting in session. Nevertheless, he was ready to go before the pope and the cardinals. In the meantime the soldiery had surrounded the house. Giving himself up and, as he was descending the stairway, Huss met his hostess. She took leave of him with tears while he invoked upon her the divine blessing. Then, mounted upon a little horse, he was led through a vast and curious crowd to the bishop’s palace. The language used by the bishop of Trent points to the unrest in Constance over Huss’s unrestricted freedom, and it would seem not unreasonable that mob violence was feared.
The arrest, as asserted by Mladenowicz, was at the direct instigation of Palecz and Michael de Causis. The charge is made by Richental that Huss had attempted to flee by concealing himself in a wagon loaded with hay. Richental, as has been said, wrote twenty years after this alleged event, ​and his story is in flat contradiction to Mladenowicz’s account. As told by him, the story ran that the wagon was discovered by Lacembok, who called upon the mayor of the city to have all the gates closed and Huss seized. Huss was at once delivered up to John XXIII and imprisoned by him. One feature of the tale, unlikely upon its face, is that Lacembok, a warm friend, was responsible for the detection and seizure. The date given. March 3, 1415, is also impossible, being three months after Huss was put in close confinement. It is possible that a vague rumor was afloat that, in view of the strong sentiment against him. Huss had been attempting to make his escape, and it is also possible that Michael may have made use of these rumors in urging Huss’s arrest.
From this moment on, Huss had no chance. He was treated as a criminal—his case was prejudged. He was in the position of a guilty man. Much as d’Ailly, Zabarella, and others may have been in favor of dealing with him fairly, the views accredited to him were obnoxious to the age. One course and one only was open to Huss—retraction. His arrest confirmed him in the fear that he would be obliged to retract or suffer death. Mladenowicz reports him as having said to the bishop of Trent, when he was about to obey the summons to leave his lodgings: “I would choose death rather than deny the truth as I have learned it from the Scriptures and otherwise.” From now on his position was similar to Luther’s position before Cardinal Cajetan at Augsburg. The cardinal called upon Luther to retract, refusing to allow him to argue.
Introduced into the presence of the pope and the cardinals, Huss was told that reports had come from many quarters that he had sown many errors in Bohemia. To this Huss replied that he would rather die than hold errors. Of his free will, he had come to the council, and he was willing to ​be corrected if he was found to hold errors. The cardinals pronouncing the words well spoken, retired for consultation. While Huss was waiting for their return a Franciscan, whose name was afterward learned to be Didacus, entered the room and drew Huss into a conversation. Mladenowicz says he was suborned to entrap Huss. Pretending to be an ignorant and unlearned man seeking instruction, he inquired whether Huss believed that after the words of institution the material bread remains. Huss denied it and, when the monk expressed surprise, repeated his denial a second and a third time.
Here John of Chlum interfered and pronounced it an unheard of insult to call upon a man to repeat his solemn affirmation even to the third time. The monk then protested that the knight must not find fault with him for he was a simple and unlearned man, and he went on to ask Huss about the hypostatical union of the divinity with humanity in Christ’s person. Throwing off a remark in Bohemian that his visitor was not after all a simple and unlearned man, Huss accused the monk of duplicity and tried to show it from the nature of his questions. The Franciscan then withdrew with an expression of thanks. Huss was informed later by the attendants of John XXIII that Didacus was reputed to be the most subtle theologian of Lombardy. On hearing this, he expressed his regret that he had not known it, for he would have plied him with the Scriptures and not have answered as he did.
When the cardinals reappeared at 4 p. m., Palecz and Michael and also John of Reinstein, Mladenowicz, and others were present. Palecz and Michael gave their elation vent in acts and words and piqued John of Reinstein on Huss’s being trapped at last and being in the way of getting his deserts. He would not get off until he had paid the uttermost farthing. In the evening, the pope’s chamberlain ​informed Huss that he was to be kept under guard. In vain did John of Chlum hasten to the pontiff, who was still in audience with the cardinals, and complain that he had broken his pledged word to protect Huss against violence. He again appealed to the promise given by Sigismund. The cardinals present the pope called to witness that the arrest was none of his doings and, drawing John aside, whispered: “You know how I stand with the cardinals. They gave him over to me. I had to receive him as a captive.” The Franciscan monk, so he stated, had not been sent by him and was a base fellow.
That night Huss was taken to the house of a canon of Constance, where a cardinal was lodging. After a week’s detention he was removed. December 6, 1414, to the Dominican convent, where he remained in close confinement until the last of March, 1415. Here he was thrown into a dungeon hard by the latrines. Carpenters and other mechanics had been engaged for several days in repairing the bolts and locks and in putting up six beds and a stove for the guards.
The old Black Friars’ convent was transformed, in 1875, into the Insul Hotel, one of the most picturesque stoppingplaces in all Europe. Founded in 1236, it was the retreat which Amandus Suso entered, and where he gave himself up to the most painful and exaggerated self-mortifications. Here Chrysoloras was formally received by the council, and here he died, 1415. Here the French and Italian nations sat during the sessions of the council. The convent withstood the siege of the Swedes in 1633, during the Thirty Years’ War. In the period of the Reformation it had been used as a hospital. Taken over with the city of Constance by Austria in 1649, it was again occupied by the friars. In 1785 Joseph II turned it over to a colony from Geneva with their looms. More recently Count Zeppelin was born there. The chapel, with its vaulted roof, now serves as the hotel dining-room. Surrounded by an attractive garden and with ​a court planted with flowers, its arches overgrown with vines, the structure looks out upon the beautiful lake of Constance. The walls of the inner court are painted with frescos illustrating historical scenes in the history of Constance and the convent itself from 600 to 1888—the date when the Emperor William II met with Adolph of Nassau and effected a reconciliation with the two houses they represented, separated in 1866. One of the smaller pictures represents Huss chained. The tower in which he was confined still remains. A few steps away is the Rhine resuming its course to the north. The present cheerful surroundings, bright flowers, shady walks, the groups of ducks and other fowl in the canals, the sounds of daily music in the park—these are in strong contrast to Huss’s grim imprisonment and the harsh methods of the inquisition enacted within its walls five hundred years ago.
The unsanitary condition of the Dominican prison wrought, in conjunction with the prisoner’s undone nervous state, to bring Huss to the very verge of death. Fever set in, and so desperate was his plight that the pope sent his own physician to administer clysters. At the pope’s order, Huss, January 8, 1415, was transferred to another and less unwholesome apartment. By January 19, he was sufficiently recovered to be writing again to his friends. The purpose was to shut him out from the world, and by the rigor of prison discipline to bring him to repentance. Among the books which he had with him was a copy of his Commentary on Peter the Lombard’s Sentences. These and even his Vulgate Bible were taken from him. He made moving appeals for books, and his case easily suggests John Tyndale in his prison at Vilvorde begging the king of England to send him a Hebrew grammar and Bible to while away the lonesome hours. In February, John of Chlum was able to get a Bible into the dungeon. Huss won the sympathy of his jailer, Robert, and the clerks of the papal household treated him with ​kindness. Through Robert’s mediation he was kept in communication with his friends in Constance. At his request and the instance of his other guards. Huss wrote short treatises on the Lord’s Prayer, the ten commandments, marriage, and the Lord’s Supper.
A prisoner could hardly have had more true and faithful friends than Huss had in John of Chlum and Mladenowicz. To their sympathy they added the most strenuous efforts to secure for him release and a fair hearing. Chlum he called the dearest of friends, the noble and gracious lord and guardian of the faith. This nobleman posted an announcement on the cathedral door, December 15 and 24, written in German and Latin, appealing to the king’s passport. On hearing of the arrest, Sigismund is said to have broken out in a rage, swearing he would break down the doors of Huss’s prison if he were not released before his arrival in Constance. His peremptory order for Huss’s release was disregarded.
Huss’s letters written during his captivity of eight months are among the most affecting epistolary collections in existence and have a character of their own. Fifty in number, they were smuggled out of the prison through his jailer. Robert, and other guards. They begin with January 19, 1415, and end with letters written to John of Chlum. Wenzel of Duba, and friends in Bohemia. June 29, 1415, a week before his death. Workman, who has given an excellent translation of them, says: “They will appeal to every reader by their tenderness and true piety.“ They give us an insight into the writer’s innermost feelings, his affection for his friends, his deep interest in the progress of his case, and the events occurring at Constance. They are full of little details bearing upon his health, his needs, his dreams, the news from Jerome, the marriage of Wenzel of Duba. Now he asks John of Chlum ​to send him another shirt, now he announces that his writing material is getting low or has run out. One of his communications to John of Chlum was written on a ragged three-cornered piece of paper.
Huss spent whole nights scribbling down his thoughts in prose and rhyme and answering the charges of Palecz and his examiners. He could not sleep, or at best his sleep was broken by dreams. One night in March he dreamed about Bethlehem chapel and imagined that all the pictures of Christ that hung on its walls were in danger of being destroyed. Then he fancied seeing in their places other and more beautiful pictures, painted by many painters, upon which he looked with delight. He heard the people cry out: “Let the bishops and priests come and destroy these pictures if they will.” Then there was great rejoicing at Bethlehem. On waking, he found himself laughing. The interpretation that John of Chlum put upon the dream was that the Hussite preachers had painted the more beautiful pictures and that Huss, the Goose, who was even then laid on the altar, would rejoice in heaven as he looked down and saw the pictures painted by the old priests destroyed and replaced by others.
But, above all, in his letters we are let into the realm of Huss’s religious feelings. During his imprisonment, as he takes occasion to inform us, he came to appreciate for the first time the spiritual comforts hidden in the Psalms, that book which has been the chief liturgy of devout souls in hours of penitence and praise, in the midst of cares and disappointments, in times of the felt need of aid and consolation. There, as he said, he walked with the Good Shepherd, who restoreth the soul and supplieth all the wants of his people.
The official examination was conducted through commissioners appointed by the council, and, at the last, in the presence of the council as a whole in the Franciscan refectory. Huss appeared once in the cathedral and once only, the morn​ing of July 6, 1415, when the sentence of death was pronounced. During the progress of the trial and even to the end, Palecz and Michael de Causis continued busy formulating the charges and acting as informants to the commissions. From the first, Huss protested that he had come to Constance with the implied, if not the express, assurance from the king that he would have opportunity to make a public statement of his case, unimpeded by his Bohemian or other foes. To the end, he claimed that faith was broken. The official testimonies to his orthodoxy secured in Prague were in the first instance completely ignored and he was treated as a heretic; and, from the very first, fettered with charges made by his foes, he was put in a position where it was impossible, or at least most difficult, for him to get an impartial verdict.
The first examination, which took place December 4, 1414, was conducted by a commission of three, appointed by John XXIII, the patriarch of Constantinople, the bishop of Lebus, and the bishop of Citta di Costella. The last examiner had met Jesenicz in Cracow, 1413, and succeeded in having him expelled from the city. Among the witnesses were John of Monsternberg and Peter Storch, originally connected with the university of Prague and then at Leipzig, Palecz, Michael de Causis, Peter, preacher at St. Clements, Prague, the abbot Peter of St. Ambrose’s, Prague, and Dr. Nicholas Zeiselmeister of the same city. On one occasion, when one of the witnesses, a layman, was called, to the general disappointment he deposed that he had nothing to say, and Michael de Causis exclaimed that as for himself he would be glad to testify against his own father if his father held anything contrary to the faith.
In accordance with the custom in cases of heresy, no proctor or attorney was allowed Huss, though he had requested one. The defendant was confronted by the com​mission with the XLV Articles of Wyclif and forty-two articles taken from his own Treatise on the Church and other writings. To these he was given opportunity to make reply. On the one hand, he entered a protest that many of the charges were flat misrepresentations and that others containing extracts from his works also misrepresented his views by taking his words out of their connection. Some of the charges he pronounced to be pure inventions of Palecz and others. On the other hand, he reaffirmed others as right, as, for example, that no one stained with mortal sin belongs to the true church, that the predestinate have a radical grace from which it is not possible for them to fall, and that princes have authority to sequestrate church possessions and expel unworthy priests. In regard to the last tenet, he bade John of Chlum to tell Sigismund that if it were condemned as heresy the king himself would be open to condemnation as a heretic for having deprived bishops of their temporal goods, as his father, Charles IV, had done before him. The commission’s recommendation that his case be set before a jury of twelve doctors, Huss rejected. Later on Jesenicz took the ground that Huss had committed a technical error in making any reply whatsoever as a prisoner.
In addition to these charges, the formal articles sent by Gerson, of which mention has already been made, were brought in evidence against him. He promised to reply to them, if he lived. These divers accusations were renewed again and again during the progress of the trial with small modification.
Many also were the insinuations with which Huss was vexed. For example, a bishop accused him of setting up a new law as well as having preached all the XLV and the forty-two articles. Writing to John of Chlum, he expressed the opinion that the commission had not much against him except that he had preached against the crusading bulls, administered the sacraments while under excommunication, ​and had appealed from the pope. These three charges were made against him in committee, and extracts from his treatise against indulgences and his appeal from the pope’s decision were read in his presence. His last letter written to his Bohemian friends before leaving Prague was also adduced in evidence against him. Especially damaging were the references he had made to many and great enemies which he affirmed were awaiting him at Constance, the declaration that the most relentless of his enemies were persons of his own household, and that it was not on account of any heresy he was going to Constance, for he held none. Aggravating also were the statements that he was ready to die if by his death he might glorify God, and that nothing but the help of God could protect him against such a sentence.
In the meantime, an event of prime importance in the history of the council had occurred—the arrival of Sigismund. This prince had been crowned in Aachen, November 8, 1414, and started southward four days later. On Christmas Eve, or rather after midnight early Christmas morning, Sigismund made his entry into Constance, accompanied by the queen, Barbara, and her father the Count of Cilley. The cold was intense. After changing their garments and warming themselves for an hour, they proceeded through the wintry streets between avenues of torches and under tapestries of gold held by the burgesses to the cathedral for the matin services which began at cockcrowing. The pope in full pontificals received them. Clad as a deacon and with the crown on his head, the king intoned the service and read the Scriptures about the taxing of the world by Cæsar Augustus and the birth in the manger. Mass followed mass, no less than nine, or some reports say eleven, hours being spent in the solemn services in the cold spaces of the great edifice. At their close, John conferred on the king a sword with an admonition to protect the church.
​Both on the part of the council and of Huss and his friends much was expected from Sigismund, who was compared to Daniel who had rescued Susanna, and, as if he were another Charlemagne, to King David. But he also, chief prince though he was of Christendom, showed himself unable to resist the hierarchy as John had been unable to resist the cardinals at the time of Huss’s arrest. Prior to the king’s arrival, the councillors had spent much time over the question, whether the king’s passport to a suspect of heresy was valid, exempting him from trial and arrest. Their conclusion was in the negative. A suspect was to be dealt with according to the laws of the church, just as if no such civil passport had been given. At first, Sigismund disputed this position and on several occasions withdrew from the meetings of the council in anger. He even threatened to abandon Constance altogether if the council insisted upon its interpretation. Finally, when he saw that the council was in danger of breaking up, the king yielded. For such an issue as the council’s dissolution Sigismund was not willing to be responsible. It was decided that the trial should at once proceed without further impediment on the part of the monarch. Without doubt, the principle was fully discussed which the council solemnly pronounced after Huss’s death, namely, that word was not to be kept with a heretic.
Though the trial was to proceed strictly according to the laws of the church, Sigismund continued to be looked to as in a greater or less degree responsible for Huss’s protection. His word had been given and his passport seems to have been appealed to as if it meant that Huss was to be immune from all violence until he got back to Bohemia. In this sense was it understood by the nobles of Bohemia and Moravia who supported Huss. Early in 1415 Moravian barons addressed to the king a protest against Huss’s arrest and ​imprisonment. They reminded him of his promise of safe-conduct, which was known all through Moravia and Bohemia. Huss had started from Prague ready to answer the charges made against him, and he deserved an open and fair hearing, even as he himself had openly and without fear preached the divine law.
On the other hand, foreign influences as well as the council’s were brought to bear to urge upon the king the duty of giving Huss short shrift. In a communication addressed to him by Ferdinand, king of Aragon, Ferdinand expressed his great wonder that Sigismund had not put the prisoner to death straight off. He called upon the king to proceed without delay to mete out the punishment due to the iniquitous John Huss, of whom he had heard and whom God had condemned. By so doing he would gain for himself an eternal reward. Would not the king without parley put to death even a wife, a mother, or a child who should attempt to persuade him to worship false gods? Was it not written that a heretic, after he has been warned the second time, should be avoided?
As for Huss himself, the hope which Sigismund’s arrival had started must soon have given way to something like despair. He must have felt that he was hoping against hope. He had felt assured he could accomplish much, if he saw the king face to face. He sent requests to him for a personal audience, but received no reply. If he might only “talk with the king about matters concerning the good of Christianity and his own good,” he would be most glad. Deeper became his disappointment as he found “that the king had forgotten him,” not communicating to him a single word: it was the bitterest of disappointments. Should he be sentenced before being allowed to speak a word with him? If that was to the king’s honor, it was the king’s lookout. As for the council, he pleaded that, were he granted a hearing, the king might at least be present and occupy a seat where ​he would be able to hear and understand what Huss had to say. This was his last lingering hope and this was granted; but in the sovereign the prisoner found a poor protector.
He also begged John of Chlum to intercede with the king that he might be released from prison and have opportunity freely to take counsel with his friends. He hoped on that he might be allowed to preach before the council. With this in view, he had prepared three sermons before leaving Prague; but day after day and week after week passed, and no citation came to appear before it. He had been told he could not get a hearing except by the payment of two thousand ducats. It was a common charge, as has been intimated, that Huss was provided with an abundance of money. In one of the examinations held in the Dominican convent, an archbishop remarked that he had seventy thousand florins, and Michael de Causis insolently put the question to him, how much the barons in Bohemia held in keeping for him? Huss’s expenses were, according to his own statement, high. At least a part of the money with which he met his expenses were loans from poor as well as rich, money it was one of his dying concerns to have refunded.
In March, Huss was again low, racked with the stone— a new experience and with fever and vomiting. The lies circulated against him were many. He speaks of a bag of lies let loose to hurt him and his cause. He was disturbed at the relentless hostility of Palecz and Michael, and the constant watch had over him by spies employed by Michael. Palecz, whom Huss now called the ringleader among his enemies—omnium ductor—went to the extent of proposing that all Huss’s Bohemian adherents be cited before the commission and forced to abjure his alleged errors. Conversations passed between the old friends and colleagues behind the prison walls.
​After all, Huss was an unprotected heretic, and heresy was the crime of crimes, the offense above all others in this world to be abhorred. The only refuge left was God, and to him Huss turned with all the tender piety of which he was capable. As God had delivered Jonah from the whale’s belly and Daniel from the lions’ den, and the three young men from the burning fiery furnace and Susanna from her false accusers, so, he wrote, He was able to deliver him provided such deliverance would be for His glory. In His mercy, He could release the Goose though locked up in vilest prison. With litanies and prayers he helped to fill out sleepless nights and, in suffering he kept the passion of the Lord constantly before his eyes. He looked forward with regret that he would not have the privilege of taking the communion at Easter. He called upon his friends in Bohemia to partake of it worthily. Consolation was afforded him by a visit paid him by Prachaticz in March. In the presence of this true friend and special benefactor, as he called him, he broke down in tears. At the instance of Michael de Causis. Prachaticz was afterward seized, but again released upon signing a profession of faith and by Sigismund’s interference.
In Huss’s opinion it was not safe for a Bohemian to venture near the council, and he warned his friends, especially Jesenicz and Jerome of Prague, under no circumstances to venture to come to Constance. On the 4th of April, Jerome actually dared to enter the city, and affixed a notice on the city gates affirming Huss’s orthodoxy. Again, in a few days, he returned and, in an announcement written in three languages, posted upon the doors of the cathedral and the Kauffhaus, he called upon the king to give him a letter of safe-conduct that he might appear before the council with safety and defend Huss. He then retired. On the 17th of April the council promised to protect him against violence, but, doubting its word, Jerome attempted to flee to Bohemia. Recog​nized and seized, he was sent to Constance. He did not see Huss. On hearing of his imprisonment, Huss expressed the opinion that Jerome would suffer death as well as himself. Jerome was at once taken to the Franciscan convent and, after an examination instituted by the council, was transferred to a dungeon in the cemetery of St. Paul’s, chained hand and foot. A sickness followed from which he recovered.
* ↑ Funk, K.-gesch., 6th ed., 496, pronounces it eine der grossartigsten Kirchenversammlungen welche die Geschichte kennt.
* ↑ Du Pin’s ed, of Gerson’s Works, 2: 219. The terms church and general council he used as synonymous, p. 172.
* ↑ At festivities given Sigismund at Innsbruck by Duke Frederick of Austria, ruler of the Tyrol, the daughter of a notable citizen was violated and the crime charged now to one, now to the other of these princes, both of whom denied it. For an account of his gallantries in Strassburg, see Wylie, p. 24. Palacky, Gesch., 3: 309 sqq., ascribes to the emperor some of the chivalric temper of his father, Charles IV.
* ↑ Finke, Acta conc. const., p. 177. This author gives valuable documents bearing on the convention of the council. See also Mansi, 28: 3 sqq.
* ↑ Mon., 1: 2. Doc., p. 66.
* ↑ Mon., 1: 3. Mladenowicz in Doc., 239, 243.
* ↑ Palacky, Gesch., 3: 1, p. 314.
* ↑ Doc., 71-73.
* ↑ Doc., 79, 83, 245 sq.
* ↑ Finke, Acta, p. 163.
* ↑ Doc., 77, 78. Palacky, Gesch., p. 320.
* ↑ Richental, 25–28.
* ↑ Van der Hardt, 5: 50–53, gives the number of visitors as 18,000 prelates and priests, 80,000 laymen, including 1,500 loose women.
* ↑ Doc., p. 139.
* ↑ Mon., 1: 318. Doc., p. 246.
* ↑ Doc., 247. Richental, 58. Palacky, Gesch., p. 322. Wylie, pp. 139 sqq. Helfert, a Roman Catholic writer, also rejects the tale. Palacky suggests that Richental may have confused Huss with Jerome, who made his escape from Constance after his first arrest.
* ↑ This incident is one of those portions cut out of Palacky’s History of Bohemia by the censor in the edition of 1845.
* ↑ Doc., 87, 99, 254. It seems certain that Huss had with him a copy of his own Com. on Peter the Lombard: Flajshans, Mistr Jan Hus, p. 360.
* ↑ Mon. 1:95. Eng. transl. of the placard, Gillet, 1: 395 sq.
* ↑ Workman, Letters, p. 172. The Latin and Czech texts, Doc., 83–150.
* ↑ Doc., 89, 91, 96, 255.
* ↑ Mladenowicz, Doc., 255 sqq.
* ↑ Doc., 84, 88. See Lea, Inquis. I: chap. XI.
* ↑ Doc., 89, 92.
* ↑ De inquisitione Hussii per Cæsarem non amplius impedienda. Hardt, 4: 32. Palacky. Gesch., p. 329.
* ↑ Doc., 88–91. The three sermons, Mon., 55–71.
* ↑ Doc., 92, 99, 101, 121.
* ↑ Doc., 88, 90.
* ↑ Doc., 96, 99.