# John Huss: his life, teachings and death, after five hundred years/Chapter 9

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CHAPTER IX
BEFORE THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE
Rediit Constantiam . . . traditus vinctus monasterio Franciscanorum . . . donec die 6. Julii carcerem non constantiam, vitam non fidem linqueret.—Van der Hardt, 4: 306.
He returned to Constance, and was delivered chained to the convent of the Franciscans till, on July 6, he gave up his prison but not his constancy, his life but not his faith.
One of the important major events of the council temporarily checked the proceedings against Huss and led to his transfer to the prison of Gottlieben. This was the trial and flight of John XXIII. The question of the disposition to be made of the Pisan pontiff had become a pressing matter soon after Sigismund’s arrival in Constance. From the day the council opened, John occupied uncertain ground. When he left Florence to go to Constance, he was wanting to go to Rome, made free by Ladislaus’s death, but was prevented by his cardinals. The charge was made that the death of his predecessor, Alexander V, was due to poison which he administered. He was an able but an unscrupulous man. Beginning his life as a corsair, he became addicted to every crime. With the popes of the pornocracy, 904–931, and Alexander VI, he takes the palm for combining with his papal functions the basest iniquity known to human nature. At his trial before the council seventy charges were listed against him, fourteen of which were suppressed at the public reading. He had sold the same sacred offices over and over again, sold them to children, disposed of the head of John the Baptist for fifty thousand ducats, made merchandise of spurious bulls, committed adultery with his brother’s wife and ​violated nuns and other virgins, and was guilty of sodomy. It was also charged that he had called the future life in question.
Gradually the opinion gained ground that, in order to bring about the reunion of the church, it was not only necessary to set aside Gregory XII and Benedict, but also to get rid of John, whose signature had convened the council. A tract, written by an Italian and freely circulated in Constance, teemed with charges, making John out a monster. Sigismund could not resist the storm and, to avoid a worse fate, John agreed to resign. The formal announcement of his decision was made on March 2, 1415, the condition being that both his pretended rivals of the Roman and Avignon lines be gotten out of the way. His proposal was made to give peace to the church. During the announcement, John remained in a kneeling posture at the altar, apparently in deep devotion, and Sigismund, overjoyed at the rare spectacle of self-renunciation, removed his crown and bent low, kissing the pope’s feet. Five days later, John confirmed his announcement in a bull which ran: “I, John, Pope XXIII, for the peace of Christendom, profess, pronounce, agree, swear and vow to God and the church and to the sacred council, of my own will and freely to resign for the purpose of giving peace to Christ’s church by the way of my unconditional cession when and provided Peter de Luna, styled Benedict XIII, and Angelo Correr, styled Gregory XII, and their obediences, either in person or by their representatives, renounce the papal office to which they falsely lay claim.”
Twice before in the history of the church had popes abdicated, once at the synod of Sutri, 1046, and again in 1294, when Cœlestin V, the hermit of Murrhone, after a reign of less than six months, laid down his office, giving as the reasons his ​own bodily weakness and the wickedness of men. John’s self-humiliation, though he had only made conditional announcement of his resignation, was in strong contrast to his stately entry into the city less than six months before. The city of Constance went wild in rejoicing over the papal announcement, and the great churchmen, d’Ailly and Gerson, as well as vigorous pamphleteers like Nieheim, were exultant over the approaching fruition of victory in the reunification of Christendom under a single pontiff. John, however, was a character whose bond was not to be relied upon for its face value. Rumors went from mouth to mouth that he intended to break up the council and, if necessary, leave Constance in order to accomplish that result. He complained to Sigismund that the air of the city did not agree with him. The king asked him not to leave secretly, and John gave his promise not to leave until the council was dissolved. But Sigismund was not fully satisfied and, to be on the safe side, ordered the gates carefully guarded and the lake watched. So little trust was put in the pontiff’s oath that Hallum of Salisbury is said to have asserted that he deserved to be burned.
Taking advantage of the festivities connected with a tournament, which drew the throng, the wily pope set at naught the police regulations and escaped in disguise to Schaffhausen, which belonged to Ferdinand, duke of Austria. John had taken the duke into his service by appointing him gonfalonier of the church with a salary at the rate of six thousand ducats a year while engaged in this service. Well out of Constance, John wrote back that his freedom of action had been restricted by the king and complained that the practice of voting by nations, which the council had decided upon, was unfair. As an example, he gave England, which, with a few prelates, had the same vote as Italy and France, with several hundred prelates. In the council of Nice and other early councils the voting was done by the bishops. The council of Constance took a radical departure when it de​termined that the vote should be by nations. There were four nations, the English, German, Italian, and the French, to which the Spanish was later added. The representatives of these nations met in separate assemblies and discussed the questions before the council, and then recorded their vote for use in the cathedral.
When the news of the pope’s flight became known, a panic swept through Constance. Hucksters packed up their goods or bolted their booths. It was like the breaking up of a fair. Only the prompt action of Sigismund prevented the members of the council from hurriedly breaking away. The king rode through the streets, accompanied by Lewis of Bavaria, seeking to allay the excitement and with his own voice pledging security and order.
The noise raised by John’s flight, the prison walls of the Blackfriars could not deaden. Huss’s letters refer to the tremendous excitement and the confusion in which the council was involved, the low stock of provisions in Constance, and to the withdrawal of the ten florins set apart by John for his own weekly support. “I have nothing to eat,” he wrote, “and I don’t know what is going to happen to me in prison.” All his guards, who were John’s creatures, were fleeing. Huss was even afraid that the master of the papal household might carry him off by night.
Their master fled, the jailers turned the prison keys over to the king. Following the advice of members of the council, he committed the prisoner to the charge of the bishop of Constance. To Mladenowicz it seemed that this was a fitting opportunity for Sigismund to have shown honorable respect to his safe-conduct and given Huss freedom. On the night of March 24, the bishop of Constance conveyed him, bound in chains and protected by a strong body-guard, by boat to his castle, Gottlieben on the Rhine, outside the walls of the city. This charmingly situated castle, now owned by Baron Fabrice, is less than two miles from the cathedral of Con​stance and a mile from the place where Huss died. The grounds are beautified with flowers and the walls overgrown with vines. Huss’s Tower, which was pointed out to me by the baron, is 25 feet square, its walls 5 feet thick, and the ascent within is made by 124 steps of stone or wood. The top story was Huss’s place of confinement.
A beautiful view is had through the narrow casement over the lake and to the mountains beyond. A tablet in Czech and German gives the date of Huss’s confinement. Here in this high and airy tower—turri aërosa—as he called it, Huss had freedom to walk about during the day, his feet fettered; and at night his hands were chained with iron manacles fastened to the wall near his bed. So rigorous was the imprisonment at Gottlieben, which lasted more than two months. March 24 to June 5, that not a single letter written by the prisoner’s hand is preserved. There was no jailer like Robert to mediate between him and the outside world. His case was put, April 6, into the hands of a new commission, with d’Ailly at its head, with full power to examine into Wyclif’s teachings and his own. On the 17th a change was again made, d’Ailly withdrew, and four commissioners were appointed, one from each of the four nations. While the inquisition in committee was being conducted, the case was also brought before the council as a whole through protests against Huss’s treatment emanating from Bohemians and Poles sojourning in Constance and nobles in the home country.
The first of these, signed by a number of Bohemian and Polish noblemen at the time in Constance, was presented May 13 to the four nations assembled in the refectory of the Franciscan convent. The document reasserted that Huss had come to Constance, under promise of safe-conduct from the king, to give public statement of his tenets. He had been incarcerated without a hearing and become so ​reduced in prison that he was in danger of losing his reason. And this had occurred while other persons, accused of heresy at Pisa, were allowed their personal liberty. The kingdom of Bohemia was suffering under the unjust aspersion of heresy. The document petitioned that Huss be at once set at liberty. His health made delay dangerous. It then went on to deny the charge that the cup was being freely distributed in Bohemia. In the discussion which followed, the bishop of Leitomysl made an address denying the accuracy of the statements. Very many towns and cities in Bohemia, he said, were infected with Wyclifism. The attempts to root it out had been in vain. Wyclifism was rank heresy. The Wyclifists held that the use of the cup by the laity was essential to salvation. A woman of Prague of the Wyclifist sect, so he alleged, had ruthlessly taken the host from the hands of a priest and eaten it, and even Bohemian shoemakers were daring to distribute the bread and wine and to turn confessors. These sectarists pronounced priests guilty of sacrilege who refused to distribute the wine. As he had done before, so again the bishop begged the Fathers to put down the excesses in Bohemia.
Two days later, May 16, the bishop of Carcassonne made a reply to the petition of the nobles, the entire German nation, as well as delegates from the other three nations, and also a number of the signers of the petition being present. The bishop declared that the Bohemian and Polish nobles were in error when they said that Huss had come to Constance under the imperial protection. The salvus conductus had not been given until fifteen days after Huss’s arrival. As for the second point, that Huss had been arrested and imprisoned without a hearing, the fact was that he had been cited to Rome and had neglected to appear and that, in view of his prolonged excommunication, he was no longer a simple ​heretic but a heresiarch, the inventor and sower of new errors. Moreover, as for his having publicly preached in Constance, this was a fact, as his opponents declared, a fact which John of Chlum’s pledged word had not proved untrue.
In making their reply, the nobles declared the suggestion that the passport had not been promised before Huss’s arrival in Constance gave the lie to the imperial chancery. On the day of his arrest, in answer to a question put by John XXIII, he had stated that, as they all knew, he had such a passport from the king, and on the succeeding days it was shown to many lords, bishops, and other persons in Constance. The nobles continued that Huss had been ready to go to Rome and had sent procurators to the holy city and that, as for the excommunication, he had appealed from it to Christ and the council, and had come to Constance for the very purpose of making a public showing of his faith. To this John of Chlum added that, as for the charge that Huss had publicly preached in Constance, not only had he not preached, but he had not even set his foot across the threshold of the house where he lodged from the time he entered it to the day he was arrested. In reference to the Wyclifite practices prevalent in Bohemia, as charged by the bishop of Leitomysl, the Bohemians and Poles flatly denied the charge. It was a question, they said, of observation and of veracity as between them and the Iron Bishop. In this meeting the deposition of the bishop of Nazareth—Bishop-sup-with-the-devil—attesting Huss’s orthodoxy was read.
A petition signed at Brünn by nine high Moravian noblemen and other noblemen, dated May 8, 1415, was read May 31 in the council. It was addressed to Sigismund and interceded that Huss might not be left in a corner but have an open hearing, called Huss a good man and a faithful and honest preacher and minister of the Holy Scriptures. The nobles reminded the king of his written public promise which he had given to Huss, “although there was no need of a ​passport for a good and pious man.” In defiance of the law, right and this public promise, Huss had been thrown into a close prison. Now, they heard, he had been taken into custody by the bishop of Constance and subjected to even more rigorous imprisonment, and that the bishop had cruelly and wrongfully put him in chains. In begging for his release, they pledged their word, “a word they would not break for anything in the world,” that Huss would remain in Constance until he had a public hearing.
To this second appeal the patriarch of Antioch in the name of the council gave reply that, if the assertion of Huss’s innocence were found to be well made and the excerpts from his book extracted by doctors misrepresented him, these things would appear in a public hearing, which he thereupon set for June 5. As for the word of the nobles, he declared that not the word of a thousand men should be taken as a surety for a man who was in nowise to be believed. Certainly such a flagrant heretic was not to be placed in the hands of any persons giving a guarantee, whoever they might be.
The most weighty of these appeals, dated May 12, was signed by two hundred and fifty Bohemian and Moravian nobles and read in the council, June 12. It was likewise addressed to Sigismund. The signers called the king’s attention to the promise which John had given the year before, that all, even heretics, going to Constance should have safety there and back. Huss they pronounced the most honest of men and a faithful preacher of the divine Word. He had gone to Constance to rid Bohemia of the ill fame of heresy. Witnesses, more in number than his enemies and more trustworthy than they, had borne testimony that he had never preached anything unsound or heretical, but, on the contrary, only the truth and the divine law as set forth in the sacred Scriptures and explained by the holy Fathers. In spite of law and the king’s public promise, Huss had been cast into ​prison. All Bohemia was burdened with the disgrace and shame of having an innocent man treated like a criminal. Sigismund, they alleged, was able easily to secure obedience to his will and have Huss released so that he might return “to us in Bohemia” with the same safety with which he had gone to Constance. The king’s honor as well as Bohemia’s peace and honor were bound up in securing this result.
In another document, signed by other Bohemian nobles and dated May 12, 1415, an urgent call was made to the Bohemian and Moravian nobles at Constance to be insistent in interceding with the king not to permit the iniquity being perpetrated upon Huss to continue. As they heard, so they said, Huss “had been seized by royal authority and in the king’s city” in spite of his having been given public promise of security, they called upon the king to release him and to accord him the same full liberty to return to Bohemia he had exercised in going to Constance.
In these appeals, which the signers affirmed represented the views of the people at large, the high personal character of Huss is vouched for, as also his fidelity in preaching the Gospel. The arrest and imprisonment are treated as criminal injustice and in violation of solemn pledges. The ignominy put upon Huss is regarded as an insult to Bohemia. With unanimity, they put the same interpretation upon the meaning and intent of Sigismund’s passport—salvus conductus.
It would have been quite according to the inhumane usages of that age—usages also in vogue in later centuries—if, in spite of the high character of many of the churchmen met at Constance, Huss had been kept in prison, completely shut off from the world, until his death. Others, whose views were called in question though their piety was not denied, and some of whose names we know, suffered this awful fate; as, for example, Carranza, archbishop of Toledo, and Michael de Molinos, author of The Spiritual Guide, both in Rome. ​This fate Huss feared for himself, and it is quite possible that he owed his deliverance to these appeals by Bohemia and Moravia. The protest of the signers, so many in number and of such high standing, it would have been audacity indeed in the council to have ignored.
The distribution of the cup to the laity in the city of Prague, to which reference is made in one of these appeals, was rendering, if possible, Huss’s case more difficult of satisfactory explanation. This practice introduced a new element of division. Huss had received news of it in prison. To us, extraordinary as it may seem, the withholding of the cup from laymen had become a general custom in the West. The original reason for it may have been either an effort to emphasize the distinction of the priesthood and the laity or to prevent profanation of the sacred blood by its being spilled or eructated by the receiver. The custom was justified by the shrewdest sophistry of which the mediæval theologians were capable, from Alexander of Hales, d. 1245, down. Once fixed by ecclesiastical considerations, the attempt was made to justify it by Scriptural authority. The best that could be done from this standpoint was done by Thomas Aquinas, who recalled that Christ distributed bread to the five thousand but not drink. However, if the reference were to be taken too seriously, it might have been argued that fish would have been a proper, if not a necessary, substitute for the wine.
But the practice was based upon other grounds. Anselm, a century or two before Aquinas, had insisted that the whole Christ was in the transmuted wine and the whole Christ in the transubstantiated bread; but Anselm did not resort to speculation to justify the withdrawal of the cup. Otherwise Alexander Hales, who insisted that it should be withheld for the purpose of teaching the laity the doctrine that the whole Christ is in each of the elements, that laymen might know that in partaking of the bread alone they are partaking of Christ’s full body. It remained for the council of Constance ​to threaten with excommunication all who distributed the wine to the laity. The enlightened churchman, Gerson, who voted for this enactment, referred to Acts 2: 42, 46, as showing that the breaking of bread was alone practised soon after the inception of the church, and urged the danger of profanation to the wine by spilling it or by its coming in contact with the beards of laymen. There was likewise, he argued, the danger of its being frozen or turning to vinegar, and also the danger, if both elements were administered, of seeming to show that at the communion priest and layman are on an equality. Moreover, Christ had commanded only the Apostles to partake of both elements. The last consideration was based upon the words: “Drink ye all of it.” However, we may well reply, the words of institution in the case of the bread might with equal plausibility be applied to the Apostles alone and their successors, the priests, and in this way the layman be deprived of both of the elements in the Lord’s Supper.
Jacobellus of Mies, the most prominent theological master left in Prague, began to practise the double communion soon after the migration of the doctors to the council and seems to have had the support of many of Huss’s followers. The Scriptures being taken as authority, many church rites and customs consecrated by the usage of years are found to be of human authority and vanish away in its plain light as of no necessary obligation. This was the case with the innovators in Prague as also with Huss and Wyclif. In several of the Prague churches both elements were distributed. The archbishop’s excommunication pronounced upon Jacobellus seems to have made little impression.
When the news of the innovation first came to Huss’s ears he was inclined to resent the change, but he speedily ​assumed a different attitude and wrote a tract in its favor. His object in so doing was to unite his followers and his attitude had the desired result. He leaned upon the plain teaching of Scripture, making the use of the cup as essential as the use of the brcad. Ancas Sylvius joined in spreading the charge against Jacobellus that he made the partaking of the wine necessary to salvation. The use of the cup by the laity became the battle-ground between Hussitism and the Catholic authorities after Huss’s death. The Roman practice forbidding it called forth the protests of Luther and the other Reformers. If there were any members of the council who had doubt about Huss’s heresy, the innovation confirmed them in the conviction that he was a dangerous character, a corrupt branch to be cut off lest it infect the vine of the church.
The council’s decrec formally condemning Wyclif and his teachings also definitely placed that tribunal in closer array against the prisoner. On May 4, two hundred and sixty errors, ascribed to the English divine, were proscribed, and his bones ordered exhumed from their resting-place, provided they could be distinguished from the bones of the faithful sleepers, and ordered cast at a distance from the place of ecclesiastical sepulture. The decrec was not carried out until 1429, when Martin V issued a special brief cnjoining its cxecution. “The holy synod,” so ran the decree,” declares the said John Wyclif to have been a notorious heretic, excommunicates him, and condemns his memory as of one who died an obstinate heretic.”
While Huss was still at Gottlieben, John XXIII was checked in his flight, arrested and brought back to Constance and placed as a prisoner in the same castle. Whether, during his two days’ confinement in Gottlieben, the two men saw one another across the courtyard is not known. As strangely disparate were the ends of this pope and Huss as were their careers. The one guilty, as the council charged, ​of all turpitude and deposed was, after a period of confinement at Heidelberg, released and made cardinal bishop of Tusculum, in the possession of which dignity le died six months later, 1419. A splendid tomb, the work of Donatello and Michelozzo, was crected to his memory by the Florentines in the baptistry of their city. Huss, against whose private character and devotion to duty, as he saw it, no charges were made, was harried and burned at the stake, his ashes scattered on the Rhine and his memory declared pestilential. A rude bowlder marks the place of his death. But while John’s name is only a memory and his carcer a warning. Huss lives in the hearts of many as a wholesome and uplifting force.
In order to be within close reach of the Franciscan friary, at which the hearing was announced for June 5. Huss, as it would seem, was removed on the morning of that very day to a tower adjoining it. Our knowledge of his affairs, so scant during the period of his imprisonment at Gottlieben, suddenly becomes full and satisfactory with his removal to his new prison, which lacked some of the rigors of his previous confinement. His correspondence begins again the very day of his arrival at the Franciscan convent. In his first letter he speaks of his food as once more plentiful and wholesome.
The public hearing, now to be held, was an unusual concession made to Sigismund. The inquisitional trials were wont to be held in utter secrecy. In this case all the prelates and other members of the council were present at the hearing. As was the custom with the inquisition on such occasions, the fiftieth psalm was read, one verse of which runs: “Unto the wicked God saith. What hast thou to do to declare my statutes, and that thou hast taken my covenant in thy mouth?” The thirty articles which the commission of eight, headed by d’Ailly, had presented to Huss, May 19, as being proven against him were then read, together with his last letter written to his Bohemian friends as he was about to start on ​the journey to Constance, in which he spoke of going to meet inveterate foes and the possibility of his death. It was evident that the council’s purpose was to sentence Huss forthwith, without giving him a chance to defend himself. One who was listening and had seen the text of the sentence informed Peter Mladenowicz of this purpose. Running to John of Chlum and Wenzel of Duba, Mladenowicz apprised them of what was about to be done. They in turn hastened to the king to inform him and handed him autographic copies of Huss’s Treatise on the Church and his tracts against Palecz and Stanislaus of Znaim.
Without delay the king despatched Lewis, count palatine, and Frederick, burgrave of Nürnberg, to inform the council that it was the royal will that no condemnation be pronounced until the king first had notice of it, and that Huss should be given a patient hearing. The messengers then handed the Treatise on the Church and those against Palecz and Znaim to the council, with the understanding that they should be returned without erasures or the introduction of new material. Being asked whether the three writings were his, Huss declared they were and that if anything was taught in them which was erroneous or evil he was ready humbly to recall it. As the thirty articles and the depositions of the witnesses were being read and Huss attempted to reply, members of the council strove to drown his voice by vociferous cries, exclaiming: “Be done with your sophistry and say yes or no.” Others laughed at him, and, when he attempted to adduce authorities, they joined in asserting that they were not to the point. Finding his efforts unavailing, Huss then kept silent, so that members cried out: “See, thou art silent. It is plain thou givest assent to the errors.” Huss was not disappointed in finding that the synod was not in​clined to prove from the Fathers and the Scriptures that the charges made against him were well taken and that its mind was made up and the verdict virtually decided upon.
Writing of the experiences of the day, he recalled the clamor of the Jews against Jesus before the crucifixion. Among all the clergy he had failed to discover a single friend except “the father” and a Polish doctor. Further, he felt that the councillors had not come to the main point, which he regarded as embodied in the teachings in his small treatises, all of which they would insist upon his retracting. As he leared might be the case, the council was not ready to listen to Augustine’s definition of the church, based upon the decree of predestination. He wrote to John of Chlum that he was expecting death, and he would rather have his body consumed in the flames than be hidden away in the concealment and darkness of a dungeon forever. In the former case, Christendom would at least know what his position really was.
In adjourning, the assembly left with Huss the responsibility of confessing all the articles taken from his books as erroneous. As he was being conducted by the bishop of Riga from the refectory to his prison, he noticed his friends, and, giving them his hand, said: “Have no fear for me.” When they replied they had no fear, he said again: “I know it well. I know it well.” Ascending the stairway, he turned and blessed the people who stood by, smiled and seemed to be in good spirits.
The second hearing, on June 7, was delayed until ten o’clock by an almost total eclipse of the sun. A grim aspect was given to the occasion by the guard of city soldiers which surrounded the convent building. At this meeting the king was present, and Huss saw him for the first time in Constance. The proceedings were conducted with some decoruni, as the order had gone forth that persons shouting were to be ejected. The vivid description given by Mladenowicz is corroborated ​and supplemented by Huss’s letters written at the close of the day.
Two articles had been stricken out from the list of the charges of June 5,—a gain of less importance than Huss fancied it to be. Witnesses—doctors, prelates, parish priests and others—were called upon to bear witness to the accusation that since 1410 Huss had been preaching the doctrines of Wyclif and other erroncous doctrines of his own invention. The XIV Wyclifite Articles were brought in evidence, as also Huss’s attitude to the burning of Wyclif’s books, and the trouble at the university with the Germans. A charge on which great stress was laid was the remanence of the material bread. This charge Huss denied, calling God and his conscience to witness; but in explanation of his use of the term panis, bread, he said that he had used it against the archbishop’s prohibition but in conformity with John 6, where the Lord spoke of himself again and again as bread and the bread of angels. However, he did not use the expression material bread. Here a question was interjected concerning Universals and their bearing on the substance of consecrated bread. This was intended to be a trap, the object being to show that if Huss were a Realist he could not believe in the transubstantiation of the clements. In being a Realist, Huss followed Wyclif and deposed that he accepted Universals in the sense used by St. Anselm and others. By the order of the French king, Realism had been pronounced erroneous, and all other views except Nominalism expatriated from France.
The introduction of a question, philosophical and scholastic in its import, did not appeal to all the members. D’Ailly, who was a Nominalist, and seemed to be in hot temper, had said that if Huss followed Anselm, then after the consecration of the elements the material bread remained. Three ​Englishmen entered into the discussion. One started up and sought to lay bare how, on the Realistic theory, the primal substance must remain in the elements after consecration. To this Huss replied that such puerile argument befitted schoolboys. A second Englishman standing close to Huss started to prove that on that theory after the consecration the substantial form of the material bread remained and also the substance of the original bread was not annihilated. Huss replied, that it was true it was not annihilated, but by an exceptional law—singulariter—it ceased to be and was transubstantiated into the body of Christ. An Englishman then replied that Huss, following Wyclif, was now answering with reservation, but that, nevertheless, he held that the real bread remained. To this Huss retorted that, before God, he was speaking sincerely and from the heart, and that he believed the consecrated bread was the rcal body which was born of Mary, suffered, died and rose again and sitteth at the right hand of God. This was substantially the wording of the definition of the fourth Lateran council, which defined the dogma of transubstantiation. One of the Englishmen then went on to say that there was no reason for introducing into the hearing an irrelevant question which meant nothing for an act which was an act of faith; Huss was right.
At this point a familiar figure appeared, the Englishman Stokes, whom we have met at Prague, and whó deposed that he had seen in the Bohemian capital a book, ascribed to Huss, teaching remanence. To this Huss replied that it was not true. On others adding their testimonies that Huss had preached this doctrine, the Florentine cardinal Zabarella appealed to the law, that in the mouth of two or threc witnesses a thing is established. To this Huss made answer that God and his conscience knew what he had preached and had in his heart, and all the testimonies of his adversaries would do him no injury. Another doctor who attempted to explain transubstantiation got confused and sat down, saying of ​Huss: “It is all heresy,” According to one of Huss’s letters, one of the English doctors in a private hearing told him that Wyclif was bent upon destroying all learning. Going over the examination in his prison, Huss expressed the opinion that he had silenced d’Ailly. When he referred to his conscience there was such a clamor that Huss exclaimed: “I thought that there would be more reverence, religion and order in this council.” So great was the disorder that the king called for silence. At this point d’Ailly and Zabarella interjected that the council could not base its verdict upon what was in Huss’s conscience but only upon the express statements of witnesses and Huss’s own admissions—nos non possumus secundum tuam conscientiam judicare. Huss, they said, had expressed himself against Palecz’s testimony, who had drawn his charges from Huss’s books, and also the testimony of the chancellor of Paris, Gerson; but Gerson, d’Ailly went on to say, “was certainly a great authority, a great doctor, if any could be found in Christendom.” Huss had written to his friends that he wished God would give him time to write of the lies invented by the rector of the Paris university, who had so unfairly charged him with heresy.
Among other statements ascribed to Huss were these: That tithes are to be regarded as pure alms and that the rich on pain of eternal damnation are under obligations to do the six works of mercy, Matt. 25: 44. With reference to these charges, the bishop of Salisbury observed that “if all are obliged to do the six works of mercy, then it follows that the poor who can give nothing will be damned.” But Huss replied that he had limited his statement to a particular class.
Another charge was that he had called upon his adherents to resist his adversaries by resort to the material sword, appealing for this counsel to Moses’ example. To this he replied ​that the words had been falsely ascribed to him. In preaching about the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, he had exhorted that all should gird themselves with the sword and defend the truth of the Gospel, but, in order that his enemies might not have wherewith to entrap him, he had been careful to add that he spoke not of the material sword, but of the sword which is the Word of God. At this the members of the council cried out, twitting him with the strange inconsistency of his reference to Moses’ sword, if the explanation he was then making was genuine.
As for the charge of having broken up the university of Prague, he replied that the question of giving three votes to the Bohemians was one of justice and conforming to the charters of Paris and Bologna.
The main objection, underlying all the accusations, was Huss’s admiration of Wyclif and his alleged advocacy of Wyclif’s teachings, not only in the university but also in the pulpit. To this charge Huss replied that he had not defended any erroneous doctrines, which in this quarter or that might be ascribed to Wyclif, and that he did not know of any Bohemian who had defended any such erroneous doctrine. He knew of no Bohemian who had been a heretic or was a heretic at that time. Wyclif was not his father. And, as regards the XLV Articles, he persisted in his refusal to assent to their condemnation on the ground that the doctors themselves had not decided to which category they severally belonged—catholic, heretical, erroneous or scandalous. As for his protest against Zbynek’s burning of Wyclif’s books. Zbynek was not justified in his action and had no business to burn them without first reading them and finding out what were their contents.
He had said, so it was further witnessed, that when the monks and clergy failed in St. Paul’s Cathedral to convict Wyclif, the very heavens had come to Wyclif’s help with thunder and lightning, and the earth had belched forth its ​protest, so that the clergy with difficulty escaped the rage of the populace. And then, to confirm his sympathy with Wyclif, he had exclaimed: “Oh, that my soul were there where John Wyclif’s soul is!”—utinam anima mea esset ibi, ubi est anima Joannes Wyclif! To this testimony Huss replied that what he really said was, that he knew not where the soul of Wyclif was. He hoped that Wyclif was saved and that his own soul might be there where he hoped Wyclif’s soul was. At this point, the members broke out in loud murmurs of derision, also manifesting their feelings by shaking their heads.
When the objection was read that Huss had appealed from the decisions of the two popes, Alexander V and John XXIII, he answered: “Is it not permissible to appeal to Christ? I hereby publicly avow that there is no safer or more efficacious appeal than the appeal to Jesus Christ.” Here again the council was greatly excited and abandoned itself to derisive outcries. Huss went on: “The law allows appeal from a lower to a higher judge, and who is a more mighty and just judge and who able more effectually to help the burdened and oppressed than Christ, Christ who neither errs nor is able to err?”
D’Ailly interposed that Huss had spoken in a much milder tone in his tower prison at Gottlieben—where Huss, according to his own statement, had had many hearings—than he was employing before the council and assured him that his change of manner was not helping his case. At this, Huss justified himself by declaring that in the tower the inquisitors had spoken to him kindly, but the members of the council seemed almost unanimously to be vociferating against him, so that he had come to the conclusion that they were all his enemies.
When d’Ailly reminded the prisoner that in the audience before the pope and the cardinals, at the palace, he insisted that he had come to Constance of his own free will, and that ​no one, not even the king of Bohemia or the king of the Romans, could have forced him to come against his will, Huss replied: “Yes, and there was no one there to shout me down, but here every one is crying me down.” Then, speaking to the main point, Huss went on to make the famous statement already quoted, that, indeed, not only had he come of his own free will, but if he had not wished to come, there were lords in Bohemia of such power, who loved him, that he could have found safe refuge in their castles; for that neither that king—referring to Wenzel—nor this one—referring to Sigismund—could have compelled him to come. Shaking his head and changing to an indignant cxpression of face, the cardinal exclaimed: “What temerity!” To those near him, John of Chlum then remarked that what Huss said was true and that he himself, though a poor knight, would have held Huss for a whole year against all enemies and that there were many and great lords, who loved him and had the strongest castles, who would hold him, if they wished, safe in the face of both those kings.
Finally d’Ailly reminded Huss that in the tower he had expressed himself ready to submit to the council’s decision and he recommended him at that time to rely on its mercy and not attempt to explain away errors. As for the instruction which he sought, the cardinal told him that the declaration of the doctors was final.
At this juncture Sigismund, taking an active part in the proceedings, addressed himself to Huss, remarking that he had given him the passport—salvus conductus—before Huss left Prague, and that he had commissioned Duba and John of Chlum to accompany him in order that he might have a public hearing in Constance and be able to answer for his faith. Now, he had had a fair and public bearing, and he was grateful to Duba and Chlum, no matter if there were some who condemned him for giving a salvus conductus to a heretic, or at Ieast to one suspected of heresy, “Therefore,” he continued, “as the cardinal has just counselled you so I ​counsel you, not to hold on obstinately to anything, but in the things proved against you and to which you have confessed place yourself wholly at the mercy of the holy council, that for our sakes and for the sake of our brother and for the sake of the kingdom of Bohemia the council may accord to you some grace, and that you may receive penance for the things proved. I have told them that I have no idea of shielding a heretic. Nay, if any one should be found to persist obstinately in his heresy I would wish to be the first to start the fire and burn him.”
To this address Huss replied that he was thankful to the king for the passport and that, in coming to Constance, he had no purpose of obstinately defending errors, but, on the contrary, his purpose was to correct errors, if any were proved against him. Before leaving, Sigismund promised Huss, at the next hearing, a written statement of the accusations with which he was charged. Huss was then conducted to his prison by the bishop of Riga, to whose care both he and Jerome of Prague had been committed.
In writing of the incidents of this hearing of June 7, Huss said that two Englishmen tried to set forth the doctrine of the eucharistic presence but broke down, one of them when he came to discuss the multiplication of Christ’s body. The other pronounced Huss another Berengar. This monk Berengar was condemned at a Roman synod, 1059, for his denial of the doctrine of transubstantiation and, falling upon his face, retracted. Although he afterward returned to his former views, he was protected by his friend, Gregory VII. He regretted that he had been led to recant by fear of excommunication from the church and the worst of deaths at the hands of the people.
Huss refers also to the hootings and hissings which greeted some of his statements. At times he was overwhelmed by ​the uproar, so that, on one occasion, Sigismund had to call for a calm hearing for the accused. Huss represents that the demand was that he should accept the council’s decision without sufficient reasons being given for his doing so and without being shown his errors.
On the 8th of June, the last formal hearing was held. Sigismund was again present in the Grayfriars refectory and d’Ailly was the prominent judicial character. Thirty-nine articles were put in evidence, twenty-six of them taken from Huss’s Treatise on the Church, seven from his tracts against Palecz and six from his tract against Stanislaus. As the articles were being read aloud, an English ecclesiastic read the pertinent text from the original of Huss’s works that no occasion might be left for controversy over his exact meaning. As this was going on, d’Ailly again and again turned to the king and others, remarking that the excerpts were worse and more dangerous than the formulated articles of accusation made Huss’s meaning out to be.
The first eight articles bore on predestination as the distinguishing mark of those who were of the church and ran substantially as follows: The universal church is the totality of the predestinate. Paul never belonged to the devil’s household, although he performed certain acts worthy of the body of the damned. So it was with Peter who, by the Lord’s permission, was guilty of perjury. No part of the church can finally fall away for the reason that predestinating love never fails. No place of honor or human election or any other visible and tangible mark constitutes membership in the Catholic church. Judas had the marks but never was a true disciple of Christ.
At the 10th article declaring that only followers of Christ in this life can be called Christ’s vicars, and that if the supposed ​vicar walks in other ways he is the messenger of antichrist, the leaders of the council—præsidentes—shook their heads and, looking at one another, smiled. The 12th article stated that the papal dignity had been derived from the Cæsars. After the pertinent section from the Treatise on the Church was read, Huss deposed that so far as the outward symbols of power and temporal goods were concerned, the papal dignity had its origin with Constantine, but so far as the spiritual function of ruling the church went, it proceeded directly from Christ. Here d’Ailly interjected that out of respect for the emperor, the Nicene council gave him the place of honor, although that place really belonged to the pope. Why did Huss, therefore, not say that the pope’s supremacy emanated from the council rather than from Cæsar? Huss replied: “On account of the dotation, as I have said, which Cæsar made.”
Four important articles, concerning the pope and the cardinals, affirmed that the Roman pontiff is not the head of a particular church unless he be predestinated by God, and his authority is null and void unless his life and conduct be conformed to Christ’s law; nor are they truly cardinals who refuse to follow in the steps of Christ and the Apostles. Here d’Ailly asserted that Huss had preached and written out of all moderation against the cardinals, and that such preaching was not necessary for the people but ought to be practised, if practised at all, in the presence of the cardinals themselves. To this Huss made the reply that among his auditors had been priests and other learned men, and he had spoken as he did so that they and future priests might be on their guard. The cardinal added: “You do very ill to attempt by such preaching to discredit and cast down the church.”
Article XVIII set forth that “no heretic should be handed over by the ecclesiastical power to the civil power to be punished by physical death.” When the corresponding section had been read from the Treatise on the Church, Huss ​added that a heretic ought to be instructed kindly, tenderly and faithfully from the sacred Scriptures and by reasons based on them—sacris scripturis et rationibus ex illis—as was Augustine’s custom in dealing with heretics. He had not said that, after having been thus labored with and refusing to abandon his errors, a heretic should not be punished even with corporal punishment. At this there was a buzz.
Then Huss went on to speak of the chief priests, scribes and Pharisees, who delivered Christ to Pilate, saying: “It is not lawful for us to put any one to death.” These were more flagrant murderers, he continued, than Pilate, for Christ said: “He who hath delivered me up hath the greater sin.” Then the buzz turned to a tumult and the council cried out: “Who is like unto those scribes and Pharisees? Do you pretend to mean those who deliver a heretic over to the secular arm?” Huss replied: “Those, I mean, who deliver the innocent over to the secular arm for death, as did the chief priests and Pharisees, who delivered Christ up to Pilate.” Then they shouted: “No, no, here you are speaking of the doctors.” To this the cardinal of Cambray added: “These things as stated in the Treatise are much more serious than the formal articles indicate.”
The 19th article asserted that civil princes should compel priests to observe Christ’s law. So far as the report goes there was here no criticism.
Article XX set forth that ecclesiastical obedience is an invention of the priests of the church and outside the express authority of Scripture. In explaining this statement, Huss said that there are three kinds of obedience—spiritual, due to God; civil, due to the state, and ecclesiastical, due to the church; the last enactments being derived from the priesthood.
Article XXI set forth that if a person excommunicated by the pope appealed to Christ, the punishment due excommunication is suspended. Here Huss added that it was ​true that he had made a final appeal to Christ, but not until two years and more after his procurators had failed to secure a hearing. To this d’Ailly replied: “So you wish to set yourself above Paul who, under an accusation at Jerusalem, appealed not to Christ but to Cæsar.” Huss answered: “Very well, and if he had done this in the first instance he would have been esteemed a heretic. But Paul did not appeal to Cæsar of his own suggestion but by the revelation of Christ, who had appeared to him, saying: ‘Be faithful, for thou must go to Rome!’” Here the members of the council filled the chamber with derisive laughter, and when they raised the objection that Huss had officiated at the mass while under the sentence of excommunication, Huss explained that he had ministered, it was true, in divine things, but under the protection of his appeal to Christ. Asked, if he had been absolved by the pope, he replied in the negative. At this point the cardinal of Florence nodded to the notary to take down Huss’s statement.
In Article XXII the principle is laid down that whatsoever is done by a sinful man is sinful, and by a virtuous man is virtuous. D’Ailly followed up the reading by saying that according to the Scriptures we have all sinned, and if we say we have not sinned we deceive ourselves; so that it would seem that we always act sinfully. Huss replied that here the reference was to venial sins, which may exist in conjunction with a virtuous habit of mind. Here an Englishman, called William, interjected: “But these things do not comport with acts morally good.” Quoting Augustine, Huss replied: “If thou fillest thyself with wine thy life blasphemes, no matter what praises thy tongue may recite.”
Clamor prevented the defendant from proceeding, as they shouted that the quotation had no application to the proposition. This William seems to have been, as Wylie suggests, William Gorach, or Grach, principal of Hart Hall, Oxford, and later vice-chancellor of the university in 1439.
​Articles XXIII and XXIV demand for the true priest the right to preach in spite of a sentence of excommunication. Here, Huss explained that he had reference to an unjust sentence at variance with the written law and the Word of God. A priest conforming his life to God’s precepts has no business to cease from preaching nor should he stand in fear of an unjust prohibition as though it were a ground of condemnation. The Florentine cardinal Zabarella, remarked that there were laws demanding that even an unjust censure was to be dreaded. Huss answered that, as he remembered, there were eight, reasons for dreading excommunication. “No more than that?” retorted the cardinal, to which Huss replied: “There may be more.”
Article XXV stated that ecclesiastical censures are of antichrist invented by the clergy for the subjection of the people and its own exaltation. These the laity are under no obligation to obey.
Article XXVI: The interdict should not be laid upon the people, seeing that Christ did not fulminate this censure either in view of his own injuries or the treatment given to John the Baptist. Here d’Ailly again interposed that there were even worse things on this subject in the Treatise on the Church than this formula. Huss denied the form of the article.
The articles extracted from Huss’s work, written against Palecz, aroused most demonstration and clamor. The first asserted that if the pope, a bishop or prelate are in mortal sin they are not pope, bishop or prelate. After the reading of the original text, Huss said that the statement was true not only of prelates but also of kings. If a king was in mortal sin he was not a king in the sight of God. He quoted I Sam. 15: 26, where the Lord said through Samuel to Saul, who should have put the Amalekite to death but did not: “In that thou hast rejected my word I will also reject thee that thou mayest be king.” Although Saul in the sight of men ​might have been considered king after this act of disobedience, yet in reality he was not.
At that moment Sigismund, who happened to be standing at the window of the refectory, was remarking to the count palatine and the burgrave of Nürnberg, who stood outside, that in all Christendom there was no such heretic as John Huss. The members of the council followed Huss’s statement by crying out: “Call in the king.” As the king did not hear, those on the platform cried out over the heads of those standing near the king: “Bring him, that he may hear, for what is being said concerns him.” Upon request, Huss repeated what he had said, and when he had concluded, Sigismund remarked: “John Huss, there is no man who doesn’t sin—nemo sine crimine vivit.” And, as reported by Mladenowicz, d’Ailly, wishing to excite the secular princes still more against the accused, asked whether it was not enough for him to have attempted in his writings to revile and humble the spiritual estate. Did he now wish to cast down the royal office also? Palecz then went on to explain that king and pope were names of offices, and the name Christian was intended to express merit, so that a pope could be a real pope, or a king a legitimate king, even if they were not true Christians. Hesitating a little, Huss retorted that, if that exposition was well made, it might be applied to Balthasar Cossa, John XXIII, who had been deposed. If he was a true pope, why had he been deposed? To this Sigismund made the remark that until recently members of the council had held to Balthasar on the ground that he was the true pope, and he was deposed from the papacy because of his notorious wickednesses, which had scandalized the church of God, and because he had plundered the church’s goods.
The 2d, 3d and 4th articles concerned predestination, and stated that a reprobate pope was not a member of the militant church and consequently not head of the church militant, and that such a pope or prelate was no ​shepherd, but a thief and a robber. Here Huss seems to have limited the meaning, which the article has on its face, by declaring that what was said was true from the standpoint of merit—quoad meritum. In the sight of God such persons were not pontiffs and prelates, although in the sight of men and in view of their election they might be treated as such. Rising behind Huss, a black-hooded monk of Fuerstat warned the synod not to be deceived by Huss’s explanations, even though they might be found in his books, for he had himself tested Huss and satisfied himself that they were originally not in the books, and the explanations Huss was making he had gotten from him. Turning upon the objector, Huss replied that his views, as explained by him that day, were stated in his books, and he reiterated that the case of John XXIII, now called Balthasar, illustrated his position exactly. If he was not true pope, then he was a thief and robber. At this, the members of the council looked at one another and laughed in derision, exclaiming: “Indeed, he was true pope!”
Article V declared that the pope is not and should not be called most blessed. To this Huss added that it is said of Christ: “Thou alone art holy. Thou alone art the Lord.”
Article VI, stating that a pope living contrary to the example of Christ, though he were canonically elected, ascends to the papacy not through Christ, Huss explained by saying that the matter was not put in these words in his book; but he affirmed that, if a pope or other prelate live contrary to Christ, in pride and other vices, he does not ascend to his office through Christ, the humble door, even though elected in a human way, but climbs up some other way. Judas, though chosen to the apostolate by Christ, nevertheless did not ascend through Christ into the sheepfold of the church, for he was a thief and the son of perdition. Palecz tried to parry the force of Huss’s words, but Huss went on to maintain his position by quoting from Scripture.
​Article VII charged Huss with representing the condemnation of the XLV Wyclifite Articles as irrational and iniquitous, and that no one of them was heretical, erroneous or scandalous. When d’Ailly said, “Master, and did you not say that you are not minded to defend any of Wyclif’s errors, and yet from your books it appears that you did defend these articles publicly,” Huss replied that he had no idea of defending any errors of Wyclif, or the errors of any one else, but that it was against his conscience to assent without explanation to the condemnation of Wyclif’s articles when there was nothing to allege from Scripture against them; and the general condemnation of the articles as a whole would not hold. Some of them were not open to condemnation.
Thereupon the six articles drawn from Huss’s book against Stanislaus were taken up. Among them were the statements that Christ might rule his church much better through his disciples scattered through the earth and apart from “such wicked heads” as the prelates sometimes were, and that neither the popes were the universal pastors of Christ’s sheep nor was Peter. In favor of the first proposition he adduced the cases of John XXIII, who had been deposed, and Gregory XII, who had resigned. And he went on to say that, though there was at that time no papal head, nevertheless Christ had not ceased from governing his own church. The statement called forth the derision of the assembly.
Article VI, read that “The Apostles and the Lord’s faithful priests in things necessary to salvation governed the church before the papal office was introduced.” At this, the members exclaimed: “See, he turns prophet!” Huss reaffirmed the statement made in the charge and again insisted that at that time there was no pope; and that things might go on that way for two years or, for aught any one knew, for an indefinite time. Palecz interjected: “Ah, and that is highly possible, is it?” Huss answered that it was quite possible. At this point Stokes, the Englishman, again ​stepped in and twitted Huss upon asserting these tenets as if they were his own, when, in fact, they were not really his but Wycliffs. The path he was following was the path trodden before him by Wyclif.
At the conclusion of the reading of the thirty-nine articles, d’Ailly, addressing Huss, pointed out that there were two ways open to him-one, of putting himself completely at the council’s mercy, in which case, out of respect for Sigismund and the king of Bohemia and for Huss’s own good, the council would be moved to deal with him graciously and in a humane manner—pie et humaniter. The other was of asking for another audience that he might defend himself once more, but in this case he should bear in mind that he had already been heard by many distinguished men and doctors who had given reasons against the thirty-nine errors and there was danger of his being still further involved if another audience were accorded. In a friendly spirit, as he remarked, he counselled Huss to take the former course. Others joined in advising him to throw himself on the council’s mercy.
To this advice Huss replied with bowed head, repeating what he had said often before, that it was of his own free will he had come to Constance and with no purpose of obstinately defending his views, but in the hope of being informed of his errors, if he held any and, in that case, of submitting to the council. He, therefore, asked that an audience be granted him that he might have opportunity to expound his meaning concerning the articles adduced against him, at the same time assuring the council that, if his reasons and writings were considered to be against the truth, he would humbly submit to the better information offered by the council. Great commotion followed these remarks, many crying out that he seemed willing to yield to the council’s information but not to its correction and definition. Huss replied that he was ready to yield in all three ways. D’Ailly then demanded: 1. That he abjure the heretical articles ​approved by sixty doctors. 2. Swear never to preach or teach them again. 3. Make public renunciation. 4. Promise to uphold and preach the opposite.
With reference to the advice given by d’Ailly, drawn from the weighty sixty names, Huss wrote, under date of June 26: “What a wonderful piece of information! By this reasoning the virgin St. Catherine ought to have receded from the truth and the faith of Jesus Christ because fifty doctors opposed her! Truly this beloved virgin persisted unto death and won over the doctors, a thing which as a sinner I am not able to do.” Huss was referring to Catherine of Alexandria who, according to tradition, received the highest place in the liberal arts. Maximin promised the highest rewards to the philosopher who would win her back to paganism. But she overcame them all and was broken on the St. Catherine’s wheel. Her body was transported to Mt. Sinai, where the famous convent commemorates her memory.
In reply to d’Ailly, Huss affirmed that he was ready to yield to the council and be informed, but he asked, for God’s sake, that the snare of damnation should not be thrown about him and that he be not called upon to abjure articles that he had never held and renounce things which had never been in his heart, especially that, after the consecration, only the material bread remains. It was against his conscience to abjure articles he had never held and thus to tell a lie. When he called his conscience to witness, many cried out: “And did your conscience never intimate to you that you had erred?” At this point, the king called upon Huss to yield to the cardinal’s counsel and put aside his unwillingness to abjure all the erroneous articles. As for himself, he did not wish to hold a single error and would abjure all errors, even if he had not held a single one. To this Huss replied that the word abjure did not properly apply in such a case. Zaba​rella then interrupted by promising Huss that a carefully guarded formula of abjuration would be placed in his hands.
At this most solemn moment, the king again counselled Huss to abjure his errors and throw himself upon the council’s clemency in the hope that the council might show him mercy, and he asked him, in view of the laws under which the doctors acted, what fate he might expect if he persisted in the opposite course. To this Huss made answer once more that all he asked was a public hearing, in which he might set forth his plain meaning, and that he was willing to submit, but only in so far as he did not thereby offend God and his conscience—solum quod Deum et conscientiam non offendam. He asserted that the main charges concerned his utterances about the popes and other prelates.
Yet once more Sigismund called upon the prisoner to choose the path of abjuration. The charges had been attested by two or more witnesses and by men of distinction—magni viri. In case he refused, the council would proceed according to its prescribed rules. At this point a certain old, bald-headed bishop, so Mladenowicz writes, ventured to interpose that these rules were contained in the section on heretics in the Clementines and the liber Sextus. These were two books of the canon law.
When Huss again started to address the king and to explain the reasons for his coming to Constance, he was interrupted by an outcry that he was obstinate, had held his errors many years and had no intention of retracting. A fat priest, sitting at the window and clad in a splendid garment, called out that the accused, in case he did abjure, would abjure not with the heart, but only with the tongue and would not hold to his word. He was not to be believed. Huss again protested that, as a faithful Christian, he wished humbly to submit to the decision of holy mother church. When an article was shown him directed against the pope with a gloss attached, Huss declared the gloss had already ​been shown him in the Dominican prison, but that he was not its author. He thought it had been written by Jesenicz. Pressed, Huss declared he did not accept its teachings. At this point in his report, Mladenowicz seems to apologize for Huss’s answer on the ground of the sleepless night he had passed, racked by toothache and other ills. He apparently was retreating from his true views.
His connection with the services attending the burial of the three Prague martyrs, Martin, Stafcon and John, was then adduced. Englishmen produced a copy of a letter from the university of Oxford which, as they said. Huss had read in a sermon—at the same time showing the seal—with the purpose of commending Wyclif. Huss declared he had read it because it bore the Oxford seal and was brought to Prague by two students. On giving the name of Nicholas Faulfisch as one of the students and pointing to Palecz as a witness, Palecz replied that Faulfisch was no Englishman, but a Bohemian, and had brought with him to Prague a piece of stone from Wyclif’s tomb which afterward, as Huss well knew, was revered in Prague as a relic. The Englishmen then produced another writing, certified to by the chancellor of Oxford, which contained two hundred and sixty errors taken from Wyclif’s writings, which were sent to Constance for condemnation.
Before the breaking up of the assembly, personal explanations were made by Palecz and Michael de Causis, assuring the council that, in pleading against Huss, they had been actuated by pure motives. They called God to witness that they had been moved by no personal bitterness, but solely by regard for the oath they had taken when they became doctors of theology. In reply to these attestations Huss exclaimed: “I stand at God’s tribunal, who will judge me and you justly, according to our merits.” D’Ailly then commended Palecz and the other doctors who had presented ​the accusations based upon Huss’s writings and once more pronounced the text of his writings as more worthy of condemnation than the formulated articles.
In reading over the proceedings, it does not occur to us to accuse Palecz of unworthy motives or to doubt that there were perhaps a number of men in the council who were anxious to give Huss a certain amount of protection and to grant him a fair opportunity of extricating himself from the position in which he was placed. Among these were d’Ailly and Zabarella, men who had no doubt of his serious departure from Catholic doctrine.
The majority of the councillors, as is often the case in ecclesiastical assemblies sitting in judgment upon erroneous doctrines, real or alleged, seem not to have been ready to listen to a reasonable discussion. They had prejudged the case. Explanations were useless. Retraction was their demand. Huss was a dangerous heretic. A heretic had no standing. He was the embodiment of all conceivable wickedness, fit only for the flames and perdition.
Sigismund, as we may believe, with an eye to his promise of safe-conduct and his standing with the Bohemian and Moravian nobles, sought to save Huss from the worst fate. Of the obligations under which he was placed by the passport, we shall speak further on.
Huss was an innovator whose statements struck at the root of church authority. The rule of belief and action he placed in the Scriptures as interpreted by the individual. From our standpoint, the principle he was contending for was the right of the individual conscience in the presence of the open Bible. D’Ailly and the council took the opposite ground. The eminent French cardinal knew nothing but the supreme authority of the church. As represented in the council at Constance, it had deposed a pope, John XXIII. It had the right to settle doctrine and what it said was law. No in​dividual had any rights against that tribunal—no right to teach in the church, no right to life itself. Tschackert says: “The Bohemian had defined the church as the body of the predestinate; d’Ailly had a different conception. To recognize Huss, d’Ailly would have had to lay down the purple.”
From the standpoint of our own age, Huss’s appeal for an opportunity to present his views in a detailed and connected form was proper, but the canons of that age were otherwise. Huss’s writings were in the hands of the commissions. They had been examined and passed upon as containing much that was either erroneous or heretical. If allowed standing, the structure of the canon law would fall. The council does not deserve unmixed blame. It was the creature of its age and its predecessors, and the same palliation can be made of its action as is made for John Calvin in Geneva. Its misfortune was that it represented the system which had exalted an organization at the expense of the authority of the Scriptures and individual rights of conscience. The ground Huss occupied, without knowing it, was radically out of accord with this system and was substantially the ground that Luther and the Protestant Reformers afterward took, though in details the Protestant Reformers went much further than he did. Let the Scriptures be taken as the final and sufficient rule of human opinion and conduct, then individual dissent from the accredited doctrines of the church ceases to be in itself an iniquity, a crime.
Had Huss been allowed to make a formal and orderly defense, there can be little doubt that the issue would have been the very same. Measured by the standard of his times, judged by the canon law and by the practice of several centuries, he was far and away a heretic and deserving the penalty which the Middle Ages accorded to heretics—perpetual imprisonment or death. To shift the ground of accountability to the conscience was, as d’Ailly and others stated, a principle unknown to ecclesiastical procedure. The ​fabric built up by councils and Schoolmen, and not a lonely priest’s opinion, was determinative and final.
What disappoints the student of the council of Constance is that no testimony was offered by any of the councillors in favor of Huss. And after its adjournment not a single voice, so far as we know, was raised by an authoritative teacher of Europe to indicate that he felt that the council of which he was a member had made any mistake. Gerson’s statement that if Huss had had an attorney he would have been saved, was a remark he made in pique, in view of the council’s refusal to condemn tyrannicide.
Huss’s clerical friends in Bohemia had no theological weight. His lay friends were numerous and powerful, but laymen were no judges in matters of doctrine. The emperor and the council were unanimously against him.
* ↑ See Schaff, Church Hist., with the authorities, vol. V, 1: 154. Richental is particularly full in the details of the happenings in Constance at the time of John’s flight.
* ↑ Hardt, 4: 100. Mansi, 27: 592.
* ↑ Doc., 259. This woman seems to have preached in the church in 1416. Palacky, Gesch., note, p. 334.
* ↑ Mladenowicz, Doc., 271. The Brünn appeal. Doc., 547 sq.
* ↑ Doc., 554.
* ↑ Schwab, J. Gerson, pp. 604 sqq. For strange customs in connection with the distribution of the cup, see Schaff, Ch. Hist., vol. V, 1: 726 sq.; V, 2: 211 sq.
* ↑ Mladenowicz, Doc., p. 274.
* ↑ For important details we are dependent upon Mladenowicz, Huss’s friend, alone, and it is not impossible that he gave a partisan coloring to some of his statements.
* ↑ Doc., 101, 105, 276.
* ↑ Tschackert, Peter d’Ailli, p. 226 sq. Mladenowicz. Doc., p. 277. See Schwab, Gerson, p. 586 sq.
* ↑ Mladenowicz, Doc., p. 278.
* ↑ Mladenowicz, Doc., 282.
* ↑ Schaff, 4: 558 sqq. Huss refers to Berengar at length in his de corpore Christi, Mon. 1: 203.
* ↑ Doc., 286–315. Eng, transl., Gillett 1: 582–600. Hefele gives an abbreviated statement, 159–164. Compare the anti-Wyclif and Huss articles as condemned by Martin V. Mirbt, 171 sq.
* ↑ Mladenowicz, Doc., 308, is followed by Hefele, 7: 167. Huss in two letters speaks of fifty doctors. Doc., 107, 140.
* ↑ Doc., 312.
* ↑ See Palacky, Gesch., III, 7: 348–354. Tschackert, 233 sq.