# John Huss: his life, teachings and death, after five hundred years/Chapter 6

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CHAPTER VI
HUSS RESISTS THE POPE
I concede that heretics should be subjected to force by the church that they may sincerely accept the faith and confess Christ and his law, for, although no one can believe except of his own free will, nevertheless a person may be forced to the physical acts which may entice him to believe.
But it is one thing to compel and another thing to exterminate or put to death.—Huss, ad octo doctores. Mon., 1: 399
Huss’s case had ceased to be a local affair. It had become the concern of Latin Christendom. The papal curia was being defied. In England, what was transpiring in Bohemia was closely associated with its own discussions over Wyclif and the measures which were there being pushed against the adherents of the Wyclifite heresy. In France. Gerson, the great theologian of his age, was about to take up Huss’s case in a series of distinct charges addressed to Konrad of Vechta, who had sent him several of Huss’s works. In Bohemia. Huss and his fortunes were the absorbing topic which seemed to take precedence of every other public question. Zbynek’s office was promptly filled by the election of Albik of Uniczow, a German of Moravia. He was the man the king wanted but incompetent. He had been a physician and accumulated a large fortune by his practice, which included the royal family. He had been married and had children. On the death of his wife, he betook himself to the priesthood. It was popularly held that in securing the office of archbishop, he paid large sums to the proper authorities in Prague and also to John XXIII. By reason of his age and incompetence he was soon superseded by Konrad of Vechta, a canon of the Wyssehrad.
​At this time, September, 1411, occurred a picturesque episode in the visit of two Englishmen, John Stokes and Hertonk van Glux. It became the occasion of identifying Huss in the public mind more closely, if possible, with Wyclif than before. The Englishmen had been sent to Ofen by Henry IV to form a league with Sigismund. Henry IV, had met Sigismund on the continent, and Henry V, in the will which he made before starting for Harfleur, left a jewelled sword to Sigismund, his most dear brother, “as the stoutest defender the church had.” In 1408 Sigismund had founded the Order of the Golden Dragon to fight against all pagans and heretics. Stokes was a licentiate of law of the university of Cambridge and Glux later was sent on another mission to Sigismund by Henry V, probably 1414.
The commissioners were invited by the masters of the university to a banquet, but declined the honor, from a purpose as it would seem, to keep aloof from the religious discussions which were rife at Prague. However, they were not successful. John Stokes, who seems for the moment to have forgotten the methods of diplomacy, in answer to a question gave it as his advice to every one wishing to retain his orthodox opinions to avoid reading or studying Wyclif’s books. This advice, he said, he gave out of love to God and the love which a man ought to have to his neighbor, for, he continued, he knew well from experience the many evils arising from such study. Such a statement, though falling unadvisedly from an Englishman of position, Huss could not let go unanswered. It was too damaging for those who had supported Wyclif in Prague and for those who did not sufficiently understand how far Wyclif was under condemnation in his own land. Huss caused a notice to be affixed to the ambassador’s lodging challenging Stokes to public debate in the university and quoting the commissioner as having said that, “no man, ​no matter how well disposed he might be, and however well rooted he might be in sound doctrine, could read Wyclif without becoming involved in heresy.” In a placard posted against the doors of the cathedral, Stokes disowned this form of statement and refused to enter into public debate at Prague on the ground that he was there as a member of an embassy and the audience would be partisan. At the same time, he signified his readiness to accept the challenge, provided the discussion was set for Paris or any other university, or appointed to be held in the presence of the curia at Rome. He also announced his willingness to meet the travelling expenses of any disputant, provided he were unable to meet the expense himself. He further stated that, when he was asked in regard to the opinion held of Wyclif in England, he had replied that he was looked upon there as a heretic, that his works had been burned wherever hands could be laid upon them, and that his opinions had been officially pronounced heretical.
Once again John Stokes and John Huss met face to face, during the council at Constance, when Huss disavowed the statement made by the Englishman, that he had seen in Prague a tract ascribed to the Bohemian master teaching the remanence of the bread.
The matter was not at an end with Stokes’s departure. After he left, Huss made an elaborate reply at the university. After detailing the circumstances under which Stokes’s statement had been made, he stated that not only did the honor of his own university, which had been using Wyclif’s works for twenty years, demand a formal rejoinder, but also the honor of Oxford and the honor of King Wenzel. He gave reasons for his hope that Wyclif was among the saved. The argument was false that because Wyclif was held to be a heretic by many prelates and priests in England, France, and Bohemia therefore he was a heretic—as false as the ​argument that because the Turks, Tartars, and Saracens did not accept Christ as God, therefore he was not the Son of God. The burning of a man did not make his books heretical any more than the crucifixion made Christ a heretic. He challenged his adversary to show that Wyclif had held a single dogma at variance with the Scriptures. For thirty years, the English master had been read and studied in Oxford, so that Stokes’s statement that no one had read and studied his books without being seduced into heretical paths was not true. It was not likely that his philosophical books would contain a breath of heresy, but, even if some of Wyclif’s books were found to contain heresies, this was no sufficient reason why they should be burned. Arius and Sabellius, it was true, drew their false tenets from the Scriptures, but in so doing they had misunderstood the Scriptures.
If for no other reason, this rejoinder would be important for the three historical statements it contains and which have already been adduced, that members of the university of Prague had been reading Wyclif for twenty years, that Wyclif translated the entire Bible into English, and that Anne of Luxemburg, wife of Richard II, had taken with her to England the Scriptures in Latin, Bohemian and German. Huss’s words imply his belief that Wyclif was called heretical for having given the Scriptures in English. To accuse Anne of heresy for having translations he pronounced a “Luciferan silliness.” Altogether, Huss’s discussion with the Englishman, John Stokes, was a most interesting episode in the literary history of the times.
We now come to John XXIII’s sale of indulgences in Prague and Huss’s opposition which it aroused. As Luther one hundred years later, so Huss was forced into an attitude of open defiance of the pope by the sale of pardon for sin. No name of vender stands out prominently in Huss’s experience as does the name of Tetzel in the case of the Wittenberg monk. On the other hand, Huss at this point personally ​antagonized the pope, John XXIII, as Luther did not antagonize Leo X in his XCV Theses in 1517.
The occasion for the sale of indulgences was the call made by John for a crusade against Ladislaus, king of Naples. John issued two bulls summoning the dioceses of Prague, Magdeburg and other parts to a holy war against this prince and his followers. Ladislaus, left an orphan at seven by the assassination of his father. Charles of Durazzo, in 1384, had a stormy career. His ability was first tested in the assertion of his rights against a rival, Louis of Anjou. In 1389, he was recognized as rightful sovereign by Boniface IX, as he was later by Boniface’s successor, Innocent VII, 1404–1406, both Neapolitans like himself; still later he was recognized by Gregory XII. Louis had the support of the Avignon pope. When Gregory was unable to maintain himself in Rome, Ladislaus occupied the city, 1407. The Pisan pontiffs, Alexander V and John XXIII, took sides against him. Ladislaus was defeated in 1411, but speedily recovered from his defeat and received support from the faithless John XXIII; but he became weary of his pontifical supporter and, ambitious of unifying Italy, he retook Rome, June 8, 1413. His soldiers sacked the city and were accused of stalling their horses in St. Peter’s church, trampling on the host and throwing out relics. Ladislaus died of a vicious disease or of poison a year later at Naples.
The two papal bulls calling for a crusade, dated September and December, 1411 stigmatized Ladislaus, “who sacrilegiously called himself king of Jerusalem and Sicily,” a per​jurer, blasphemer, schismatic and relapsed heretic, the friend of heretics, a conspirator against the papal see and the church and the supporter of that son of malediction, Angelo Correr—Gregory XII—heretic and schismatic. Men of every class and station, from the king and cardinals down, were adjured to gird on the sword against the refractory prince. “By the grace of God and the authority of the Apostles Peter and Paul” John promised to all who took the cross, being penitent, pardon and augmentation of eternal salvation, and also to those unable to go on the campaign who provided for substitutes or contributed to the cost of the sacred undertaking. The participants in this new crusade were to have the same indulgence as those who went across the sea to rescue the Holy Land. The crusade was pronounced a campaign “to protect the church, the mother and teacher of all the faithful, and to defend the city in which Divinity wished to dwell—seeing God had made it the foundation for the militant church even through the shed blood of the saints and also the seat of Peter.”
The crusade was the well-tried instrument employed by popes against heretics and disobedient princes—war by the sword for spiritual offenses. So Innocent III summoned Christendom against the Albigenses of Southern France and called upon the king of France to bring the refractory John of England to submission. So Innocent IV spread the flames of sedition against Frederick II and summoned Germany and Sicily to revolt against him, their sovereign. So Urban IV appealed to Charles of Anjou to proceed against Conradin, the last of the Hohenstaufen, the young scion of “the poisonous brood of a dragon of poisonous race.” And so, after Huss’s death, popes were to invoke bloody wars against the Hussites themselves. In resisting John XXIII’s appeal, Huss had before him the example of Wyclif, who resisted the crusade of Christian in conflict with Christian proclaimed by Urban VI against ​Clement VII of Avignon and preached in England by Henry de Spenser, bishop of Norwich. In this case, the pontiff of the Roman line promised indulgence for a year to all who would enlist. The dead as well as the living were included in the benefits which were to accrue. Wyclif’s burning words were launched against the enterprise in his Cruciata, one of his last tracts. He pronounced it an expedition for worldly mastery and stigmatized the promised indulgence the abomination of desolation in the holy place. Not from this tract, but from Wyclif’s Treatise on the Church, in the portion treating of indulgences, did Huss draw copious extracts for his attack.
In May, 1412, Wenzel of Tiem, dean of Passau, brought John’s bulls to Prague, and at the same time the pallium to Albik. To avoid as far as possible the scandals which attached to the sale of indulgences in Prague, in 1393, the archbishop stipulated that the amounts paid, which on the former occasion were graduated according to the condition of the suppliants, should in this case be left to the option of each individual. Tiem reserved Prague for himself and placed the money chests in three places, the cathedral, the Teyn Church and the Wyssehrad. The beating of drums aroused the indifferent to sympathy with the holy traffic. The other parts of Bohemia were farmed out to deans and rectors.
In order to forestall any opposition Huss might be proposing to make, Albik summoned him to his presence to meet the papal delegates. Asked whether he intended to obey the papal summons, he replied that he would with all his heart obey the Apostolic mandates. Interpreting Apostolic mandates and papal mandates to be convertible terms, the legates exclaimed: “See, lord archbishop, he will obey the mandates of our Lord.” To this Huss replied: “My lords, understand me; I said that with my whole heart I am minded to obey the Apostolic mandates and to obey them in all points, but what I call the Apostolic mandates are the doctrines of ​Christ’s Apostles, and so far as the mandates of the Roman pontiff are in accord with the Apostolic mandates and doctrine, that is, according to the rule of Christ, so far I intend most certainly to obey them. But, if I find them to be at variance, I will not obey them even if you put before my eyes fire for the burning of my body.”
The excitement over the bulls in Prague ran high. The peddling of pardons for money stirred Huss’s soul within him, and in the pulpit, before the university and in a document which he joined others in signing in the Bethlehem chapel, March 3, 1412, he gave no faltering expression to his highwrought indignation.
The document took up three questions. The first, inquiring whether the pope is to be believed in, he answered by denying that he is to be believed in in the sense in which we believe in God, although we may believe what the pope says and believe that he is pope. The second question, whether confession to the priest is essential to salvation, was answered in the negative. Here Huss quoted Peter the Lombard’s statement and also employed the case of the publican who did not appear before a priest and yet was justified. Likewise, he referred to the cases of the patriarchs under the old law, young children, the dumb, and to those living in deserts or languishing in captivity, all of whom confess not to a priest, and yet, he said, it would be “an awful and diabolical piety to condemn them.”
​The third question was as to whether any of Pharaoh’s army drowned in the Red Sea or those destroyed in Sodom were saved. Quoting Jerome, Huss held it possible that some of those unfortunates were saved and that, without revelation to the contrary, mortal men ought not to affirm of any man that he is eternally damned. He maintains his view also on the basis of Christ’s words: “Judge not that ye be not judged.”
In his commentary on the Sentences of Peter the Lombard, Huss does not make it quite clear what his position was on the subject of priestly absolution. He says, p. 605, that “God gave to priests the power of binding and loosing; that is, of showing the men who have been bound and loosed, and that they bind when they impose upon persons who have made confession the satisfaction of penance and they loose when they remit something of that satisfaction, or they bind when they place under excommunication and loose when they release from excommunication.” This power is like the power which the priest had in the Old Testament in cures of leprosy—“they adjudge and show sins remitted of God.”
Huss’s theological colleagues at the university were now arrayed solidly against him. In formal meeting they charged him with proclaiming that the papal bulls were an evident token that antichrist was fully come, and the pope was to be resisted as the chief enemy and adversary of Christ. Huss’s announcement that he would discuss the subject at the university was met on the part of faculty with a petition to the ​archbishop to prohibit the discussion. Huss’s statement about antichrist was ascribed to his dependence upon Wyclif. The Wyclifite articles had led to bitter dispute and discords not only in the university but among the people. The petition laid down the principle that the pope has the right to give full remission of all sins-and that he might call upon the people to defend the Roman city against heretics and schismatics. The document also forbade bachelors of theology to discuss the papal bulls. Stephen Palecz, dean of the faculty, was one of the signers.
In spite of this resistance of the theological faculty, the discussion was held in the university, June 7, 1412. The attendance was large. The rector, Marcus of Königgrätz, presided. Huss’s treatment was embodied in one of his most elaborate writings and is equal to any of them in clearness and force of statement. It is declared by Loserth to stand as the pre-eminent work among his writings and to be in its style a model of acute and telling argument. This judgment, however, is not to be taken as inconsistent with the author’s estimate of the Treatise on the Church, which, Loserth says, has “always been regarded as Huss’s most important piece of writing by friends and foes alike.” Here are set forth at length Huss’s views on indulgences and the temporal authority of the pope.
In his opening words he declares that the honor of God, the good of the church and his own conscience—propria conscientia—were involved in his attitude to the transaction of John XXIII. He protested that he wished to say nothing contrary to the law of Christ, which was the narrow way of life and the truth. Against the fallacy of giving obedience to John’s bulls, he brought considerations from the limited authority of the papal office, from the wrong of using bad measures for the defense of the church, and from the error that gifts of money constitute no valid claim to plenary ab​solution from the penalty and guilt of sin—absolutio plenaria a culpa et pœna. Acts not done from love of man cannot have God’s approval, and, it is probable, that a decree resulting in the killing of human beings does not proceed from the love of Christ, nor can the impoverishment of a people to provide the means for such killing be consonant with God’s will.
As for the pardon of sins, the Christian priest enjoys the right to absolve from penalty and guilt, but he can actually absolve only with the aid of a special revelation. Wise priests absolve only on condition that the sinner feels sorrow for his sin, promises to sin no more, and puts his confidence in God’s mercy, Ezek. 18: 21, 22. No one is capable of receiving indulgence unless he be disposed thereto by God’s grace. Pardon God alone can grant.
As for getting money for wars, it behooves the spiritual powers to employ spiritual weapons, not carnal; offer prayer, issue writings to convince the heart, and, if necessary, suffer death. “Vengeance is mine. I will repay, saith the Lord.” Oh, that the Roman pontiff might accept and follow in humility this rule of Paul! Authority is not given Peter’s vicar and bishops to draw the material sword. Their weapons should be tears and prayers. Nor should the pope authorize war for what seems to be to his own advantage in securing and confirming secular power. These positions Huss proved from Scripture and quotations drawn from Augustine, Jerome, Gregory and St. Bernard. Conceding that the church, which is the body of the faithful-universitas fidelium-has the two swords, the spiritual and the material, he insists that the church consists of three parts—the soldiery, the clergy, and the people—and that the material sword is to be wielded by that part of the church which is made up of the soldiery. And as the church’s spiritual sword is not to be used by the soldiery of this world in the same way as it is used by the priests, so in like manner the material sword is not to be used ​by the spiritual leaders of the church to fight against the bodies of men but by the secular soldiery, whose chief business it is to defend the law of Christ and his church. The distinction between the soldiery—militia—and the clergy is clearly made, as also the distinction between the two swords. The spiritual sword is the Word of God, Eph. 6. The material sword is referred to in Romans 13: 4. “He beareth not the sword in vain: for he is a minister of God, an avenger for wrath to him that doeth evil.” He who uses the spiritual sword does not draw the blood of the sinner.
From Deut. 17: 8 the people in their ignorance have the idea that all commands emanating from the pope are to be obeyed. They are certainly wrong. The pope is not to be obeyed when he calls for a crusade for the extermination of his enemies, whom he has before damned. Assuredly Christ did not proceed upon this principle. He rebuked James and John for wanting to call down fire from heaven upon his enemies. Let the pope ask himself why he summons Christians to exterminate, not Samaritans but fellow Christians. Would that the clergy might make the life of Christ and the Apostles their example, and by patience and forbearance follow the Lamb who taketh away the sin of the world! It behooves not the priest to strive or enter into litigation.
The barter of pardons is contrary to the Scriptures. Peter did not sell Simon Magus the forgiveness of sins. The sale of remissions for sin by the papal commissioners is simony. Sins are to be remitted without money and without price. Prayer, fasting, and other good works the bulls make no mention of—only money. Why does the pope not have refuge in prayer rather than in gold and silver? Christ prayed for Peter that his faith fail not. And it is clear that he taught Peter, and through him his vicars, to have recourse in times of necessity to God by prayer and not to depend on money or corporal battle. Would that the pope followed Christ in interceding for his enemies, saying in the name of the church, ​“My kingdom is not of this world,” by doing good and blessing those that speak evil of it! The pope pretends to forgive sins in his own name. The chief power of the Apostles was preaching the Gospel. Even upon the penitent the pope cannot confer forgiveness. Did not Peter refuse to grant it to Simon Magus, bidding him pray to God that the thought of his heart might be forgiven? It is in ignorance that the pope offers absolution without making an exception even of the reprobate. In so doing he places himself above Christ.
In order to grant indulgences discriminatingly, the pope would be obliged in all cases to know that God approves of his act, but such knowledge he often lacks from want of revelation and Scripture precept. How can he sell what God does not want sold? In offering pardons he arrogates to himself the prerogative which is God’s alone, for indulgence is the remission of an injury done to God himself, and this power he cannot commit to a creature. If the pope knows who is to be absolved, then he actually knows who the predestined are. But that he knows as little as he knows the hour when Peter died and the day future judgment. If he is capable of dispensing with the divine sentence, then he infinitely exceeds Peter. However, he is neither impeccable nor infallible. The assertion that the pope cannot err is not only false but blasphemous, for in case he could not err he would be sinless, as was Christ—ipse papa non potest errare, est non solum falsa, sed et blasphema. At the highest, his act is nothing more than the announcement which one makes who is appointed by God as a herald. It is not contrary to the faith to hold that popes have gone to perdition.
The papal gift of indulgence is not only a presumption, being against Scripture and the reason of things, but, as a matter of experience, it is found to be absurd. A man apprised of the bull, be he parricide, thief, adulterer, or simoniac, if he confess sins, though he be ever so deficient in his con​trition, provided he gave money for this crusade—on him the pope would confer indulgence from guilt and penalty. On the other hand, a man not apprised of the bull, though he keep God’s commands and have only venial sins, if he be contrite and confess and yet does not give money, he will not receive indulgence or pardon. At death, the former goes at once to heaven because he is absolved from the penalty of purgatory and from guilt; the other into purgatorial pains.
As for a pope’s giving indulgence to the dead, he might, if he had this power, abolish purgatory itself. For he might absolve all in purgatory and confer perpetual pardon and grace. There would be nothing to prevent this result but perchance his own envy and neglect. In fact, he might keep all from going to purgatory and, in that case, make of no effect the church’s prayers and its other offices for the dead. At death every one would immediately fly to heaven, having no need of the church’s suffrages.
The pope’s bulls absolve equally all, no matter what their sins may be—murder or venial faults. It is marvellous that the pope does not insert in his bull the quality and degree of the sins to be forgiven, as he inserts the amount of money to be paid. If one should unjustly put a thousand men to death, and another sin only venially, both being contrite would be released from penalty and guilt. And the latter, if he had more money than the other, would be expected by the commission to give more than the former, and for no other imaginary reason than the appetite for money. This whole​sale remitting from penalty and guilt savors of a deluge of satisfaction for offenses; so that the more people a man might put to death the more would God and man be under obligation to pardon. The man enlisting in the crusade might kill priests and even papal commissioners themselves and appropriate their money, and yet he would come under the terms of the indulgence. However, Huss does not know whether in the last case the pope would allow the validity of the indulgence unless the moneys were restored.
The pope’s call to a crusade, involving the killing of Christians under Ladislaus’s rule and their spoliation is plainly against Christ’s word to Peter to put up his sword and the rebuke of the disciples who called for vengeance upon the Samaritan village. Therefore, it deserves no obedience. The Scriptures give not a single case of a saint saying: “I have forgiven thy sin. I have absolved thee.” Nor can the case of a saint be discovered who gave indulgence for a given number of years or days from the penalty and guilt of sin.
Huss closes his fiery tract by comparing a pontiff who uses the Scriptural power in an unwarranted way to a tyrant. One is to be disobeyed as well as the other. If the papal utterances agree with the law of Christ, they are to be obeyed. If they are at variance with it, then Christ’s disciples must stand loyally and manfully with Christ against all papal bulls whatsoever and be ready, if necessary, to endure malediction and death. When the pope uses his power in an unscriptural way, to resist him is not a sin, it is a mandate.
​The discussion which the indulgence campaign called forth not only constitutes one of the more important events in Huss’s career, but is one of the sources from which we derive a satisfactory conception of his real views. The issue was distinctly stated and Huss’s exact meaning not clouded by any of that uncertainty which arose from the repeated charges which he made at Constance, that his writings were misquoted and his views not accurately stated by his accusers. From the standpoint of the teaching of the church in that age, he was certainly a heretic. He had chosen another foundation for his theology than the mediæval and papal system. He planted himself firmly on the Scriptures as the supreme authority in matters of faith and conduct. He held the teaching of free grace and Christ’s immediate forgiveness, and thus set himself against the mediæval dogma of penance and the necessity of priestly intervention. He denied the pope’s infallibility. He insisted that pardon for sin was not to be bought with money, all papal bulls to the contrary. He enunciated the principle of the lordship of conscience. He asserted preaching to be the chief function of the priesthood.
A most important result of the discussion which John’s bulls aroused was the definite detachment of old friends at the university. The other members of the faculty of theology took sides against him by giving their active support to the bulls and definitely repudiating the teachings of Wyclif. Stanislaus of Znaim and Michael Palecz, friends of his student days, were from this time on arrayed against Huss, and became his determined accusers before the church authorities. At first Palecz had found palpable errors in Tiem’s articles of absolution, but he underwent a change of mind. Palecz, Huss ​called “his revered teacher,” “his former friend” and, my chief companion” and Stanislaus “my teacher from whom I have learned many good things.” But when truth was at stake, he preferred it to both. On this point he wrote: “Palecz is my friend, truth is my friend, and if both remain my friends, it is just to give the place of honor to the truth.”
Another who had taken strong sides against him, and a bitter foe to the end, was Michael Deutschbrod, formerly parish priest in Prague, known as Michael de Causis, or the Pleader, from an honor conferred upon him by John XXIII as advocate in matters of the faith. As the representative at Rome of the party hostile to Huss, he needed not the special urging of priests in Prague to proceed with vigor in securing a drastic papal handling of the Prague situation, and especially of that son of iniquity—filius iniquitatis—Huss.
Among the friends who stood by him was the one who was to follow him as a martyr at the stake, Jerome of Prague. Jerome followed Huss’s address at the university with an address of his own which produced such an impression upon the student body that he was popularly regarded as having carried off the honors of the day. He was placed under excommunication as an advocate of Wyclif, and he and others were thrown into prison. Common fame had it that me advocated the errors of Wyclif, not only in Prague, but in Heidelberg, Vienna, and Hungary.
At this juncture the popular excitement found dramatic expression in a procession headed by Wok of Waldstein, one of the king’s favorites, followed by a noisy crowd of students. In the centre was a wagon on which a student stood clad as a harlot, with strings of bells around his neck and written docu​ments at his feet. The procession moved from the cathedral to the Moldau and then across the bridge to the old city. The books, thrown under a gallows, were committed to the flames. In this act, which was intended to be a parody of the burning of Wyclif’s books, Jerome took a prominent part. An account has been left one of the students who took part, Martin Lupac, d. 1468.
The preachers of pardons had no easy time of it. Public ministrations were interrupted by acts of violence. The rioters, cleric and laymen, men and women, were thrown into prison. The king, many of whose courtiers were in sympathy with the disturbances, was forced to take note of them. When they broke out he was at his summer residence at Zebrak. Thither he called the magistrates of the three Prague towns and ordered them to punish with death all offending in any way against the papal bulls and those preaching the indulgences. In spite of this apparently decisive attitude on the part of her royal consort, the queen continued to attend services at the Bethlehem chapel and Wok remained unpunished.
The riots culminated in the execution of three of the rioters, Martin, John, and Stafcon, written also Stasek, the last a shoemaker from Poland. Martin had cried out in one of the churches that the pope had shown himself to be antichrist by announcing a crusade against Christians. John threw a vender of indulgences out of a convent. Stafcon had also protested in the church against the sale of pardons. Vivid accounts of these facts and the scenes that followed Huss gives in his Treatise on the Church and in his Bohemian sermons. In the hope of making a lasting impression, the magistrates summoned the populace to be present at the execution set for July 11, 1412. Knowing that the three prisoners were sentenced to suffer for the views he had promulged, Huss, accompanied by other masters and followed ​by a large body of students, hastened to the city hall, protested to the magistrates in behalf of the accused, and announced himself willing to suffer in their stead, whose alleged guilt was more his than theirs. On receiving assurance that they would receive no harm, Huss returned to his house. But several hours afterward the unhappy men were dragged from prison and hurried off to their death.
From fear of the growing crowds, the executioner did his work before the usual place appointed for criminal executions was reached, and the public crier called out that all who might be guilty of a like offense would receive the same punishment. A number of voices were heard exclaiming that they were willing to suffer and they were forthwith arrested. White sheets provided by a woman were thrown over the bodies of the dead, and the throng of students, led by John of Giczin, lifted them up and carried them to the Bethlehem chapel, chanting the solemn chant, “These are holy.” There they were buried by Huss. In derision, the chapel was thenceforward called the Chapel of the Three Martyrs.
The tap-root of these disturbances was the Wyclifian scheme, and it was recognized that, until it was cut out, the restoration of quiet could not be looked for in the city. At the king’s order, the university again sat in judgment, July 10, 1412, upon the XLV Articles, with the aim of reviewing the original decree of 1403, which, it will be remembered, forbade any one to affirm in private or in public these Wyclifian principles. Now, eight of the masters, including Palecz, Stanislaus and Andrew of Broda, passed a sentence stigmatizing under three heads the articles as heretical, false, or scandalous. Among the alleged heretical articles were the denial of transubstantiation and that the pope is not the immediate vicar of Christ. The decree, issued in 1403, forbade any one ​to hold or preach any of the articles on pain of being held a heretic and called upon the king to execute civil penalties even to exile from the Bohemian kingdom. To these XLV Articles were appended six, or perhaps nine, others, pronouncing the penalty due heresy upon all who did not hold to the sacraments and the power of the keys in the sense held by the Holy Roman Church, who denied that reverence should be paid to relics or asserted that “the great antichrist predicted in Holy Writ” had already come. The same punishment was invoked upon those who affirmed that customs of the church not plainly contained in the Scriptures have no binding force, that priests do no more than declare the penitent confessor absolved, and that the pope has no right to call upon Christians to fight against their fellow Christians in defense of the apostolic see and solicit moneys for that purpose in return for absolution.
Accepting this sweeping sentence, the king had the resolution to order those holding the XLV Articles banished from the realm. At the same time he bade the doctors attempt to compose the difficulty by peaceable measures. At the call of the city magistrates week later, masters of the university and clergy met at the city hall and reaffirmed the condemnation of the articles. At the same time, however, other masters, bachelors, and many students met at the university building and protested the articles had been condemned without reasonable examination. In an elaborate defense made at the university, Huss vindicated at least five of them. No article, he affirmed, should be condemned which is not explicitly or by fair implication condemned in the Scriptures. He contended that those who cease preaching the Word of God or give up hearing it preached out of regard for a sentence of excommunication will be found traitors at the day of judgment, that every deacon and priest has the right to preach irrespective of a permission from the apos​tolic see or a bishop, that tithes are alms, that no one in mortal sin may validly administer the sacraments of baptism, the Lord’s Supper, absolution, and ordination, and that the king may deprive priests unfaithful in their duties of their worldly support. No pope or bishop or other mortal, he insisted, has the authority to stop priest and deacon from preaching. A king has not the right to forbid his subjects giving alms. No more has a spiritual superior the right to forbid the giving of the spiritual alms of the sermon to those who are spiritually needy and thirsty.
In an audience before the king at Zebrak, Huss, in vindication of his views, offered to undergo a test on condition that each of the other eight doctors did the same, each of them as well as himself submitting to the ordeal of burning as heretics in case of failure to make good his position. All of the eight were present at the audience and refused to yield to Huss’s suggestion. The situation was aggravated rather than appeased by the audience.
Huss’s unequivocal opposition to what was the traditional view of the church came out if possible more distinctly than before in his reply to the writing of the eight doctors. It must be remembered that the eight had declared themselves in favor of John XXIII’s bulls of indulgence. In this document the chief question which Huss dwelt upon was the question of papal authority, which he treated chiefly in the light of the New Testament practice. He elaborated the essential principles laid down in the writings against John’s bulls already adduced and took up the arguments of the doctors one by one. He made a clear distinction between mandates issuing from the Apostles and commands contained in papal bulls. Bulls are only to be obeyed so far as they conform to the Gospel of Christ and the epistles of the Apostles. Bulls had often been recalled or superseded or, in case of a pope’s death, allowed to lapse. He had heard ​that the French and English would not admit John’s bulls against Ladislaus. The papal legates who were commissioned to carry them to Apulia did not dare to show themselves in that territory. On the other hand, the Bohemians, less bold than Balaam’s ass, had admitted the bulls and allowed indulgences to be offered. In the papal sale of indulgences in 1393, under Boniface IX, absolution from the penalty and guilt of sin was offered only for definite amounts prescribed by confessors, namely, upon the basis of the cost the purchaser or his family would be at to go to Rome on foot or on horse during the jubilee year. Certainly any man who had any knowledge of the law of Christ would say that this practice was in contempt of this law, for Christ plainly taught: “Freely ye have received, freely give.”
The pope’s fallibility was proved from the experiences and words of the Apostles. On his way to Damascus, Paul was stopped, and the papers made out by the Sanhedrin rendered invalid by revelation. The pope had likewise given letters, citing and excommunicating men and women who followed Christ’s pure law and delivering them over to the secular arm. Such bulls should be resisted not only by the faculty of the university, but by the king and his council. In their messages, Peter, Paul, John and James sent salutations and encouragements to the chur not sentences of condemnation. Peter called the Roman see not Rome, but Babylon. “The church that is in Babylon saluteth you,” he wrote. He did not say, “give me money.” He did not curse and excommunicate those who preached the Gospel, but said: “Grace be with you and peace be multiplied.” Christ’s messages did not stigmatize those who persecuted him and crucified him. And yet the papal bull stigmatized Ladislaus and his friends as perjurers, schismatics, blasphemers, the defenders of heretics and conspirators against the church and called for their punishment. Christ taught that men should bless those that curse them and love their enemies.
​The priest indeed can absolve and give indulgence, but only as God has absolved before and as the priest’s absolution is in accord with the law of Christ. Even laymen may remit sins, as appears from the Lord’s Prayer. In taking this position, Huss follows Wyclif’s de Ecclesia. He condemns the popes for wearing the garments of Cæsar and a golden crown. People wishing to get under the shadow of Peter today pass into the presence of papal pomp and attire. Peter did not forbid Ananias’s and Sapphira’s interment as the pope forbids burial for those who refuse to obey his bulls. Such is the contrast of the lives of popes, cardinals, and clerics to the lives of the Apostles that, if they should try to cast out demons according to the power given by Christ, the demons would reply: “Jesus I know and Peter and Paul and the other Apostles I know, but who are you?” As for heresy, nothing is so fatal to the good cause as hypocrisy. Evil that is manifest flees from the light and hides itself. Heresy is pernicious in that many are led away by it, but it is also useful because the faithful are tried by it and are led to isolate themselves from the unbelieving. Heresy is an aping of the true doctrine and the ministries of the Gospel, and as a monkey has all of the members of a human being and in all things imitates him, so heresy has all the rites of the church and yet is not of the church.
The power to remit sin it was customary to argue, Huss goes on to say, from the rite of baptism, in which the priest gives baptismal grace and delivers from all pain of hell and purgatory, so that in case the baptized child die, incurring no post-baptismal sin, it goes immediately to heaven. Huss’s reply is that, in case of necessity, laymen and even women may baptize, but that it would be misleading to conclude from this practice that laymen also have the power to give remission from all sin. The form of the statement “we absolve” belongs properly not to the pope, but only to God himself. The pope dare use these words only in a conditional sense: ​“We absolve provided the sinner repent and does the works of repentance.”
Huss then takes up again the inhibition of preaching in chapels, first pronounced by Alexander V, and the waging of hostilities with the church’s sanction, legalized by John against Ladislaus. The contention of the eight doctors was that behind him the pope had examples in the New Testament such as the Israelites’ war against Amalek, but for the case in hand this historic example was insufficient, for God never authorized war against Christians. The pope and clergy had no business with the material sword. Christ bade Peter put it into the sheath. John’s militant bulls were also contrary to the precedents of church practice. The canon law laid down the rule that “no cleric should pronounce a judgment of blood or carry it out or be present when it is carried out.” It is inconsistent for the pope to wish to put men to death on the plea that they are not submissive to papal authority or deprive the pope of temporalities, for he does not put the Jews to death who deny Christ’s law. The reason is easily given. The Jews did not deprive the pope of temporalities, although they were accomplices of Ladislaus.
Manifest heretics are to be coerced by the church in matters of the faith, but in such a way that they may be induced truly to believe in Christ and in his law, for no one can believe except of his own free will—nemo potest credere nisi volens. Nevertheless, a man can be forced to the outward acts which, as the needle carries the thread, may entice to real faith. The Lord bade them “to compel them” to go to the marriage feast, but to compel is one thing and to ​put to death is quite another. Here Huss has in mind the famous words of Augustine uttered during his controversy with the Donatists. After moral measures of persuasion were found to be of no avail, the great Father recommended the use of physical force. He did not at any time go so far as to recommend the death penalty for heresy and insubordination to the church, but, as Neander showed, the counsel easily leads to the use of the death penalty, and Augustine’s words were interpreted by Thomas Aquinas and the other Schoolmen to justify and teach the death penalty for heresy.
In favor of the papal right to declare war against heretics, Huss continues, the doctors had not only adduced the case of Israel’s treatment of Amalek and the cases of Samuel and Agag, Paul and Elymas, and Ananias and Sapphira, but had used such passages as John 14: 12: “The works that I do shall ye do also; and greater works than these shall ye do.” They had also used Christ’s treatment of the traffickers in the temple. Granting, for the sake of argument, that the pope is endowed of God with the same authority as Peter, when he calls for war, he ought in this case to start with those who rob the church, the simoniacs, which would mean starting at his own household. It is evident, however, that the pope is not omniscient and does not know everything that would be of profit to the church. He might act in all cases as Peter did, if he were in all cases filled with the Holy Ghost. As for the death of Ananias and Sapphira, it was not Peter but God who felled them to the ground, and the purpose was to strengthen the faith of the church. By prophetic endowment Peter discovered their deceit and prophesied the death of Sapphira. He was not acting in his own interests, but in God’s interest, when he did what he did on that occasion.
The armor with which the pope should be endued is described in the last chapter of the Ephesians. There he may read of the sword of the Spirit, a weapon meant for defense, as the Apostle indicates, and which was nothing more ​nor less than the Word of God. The weapons there described, the pope and bishop should use, accompanying their use with prayer and tears. As for the summons of Pope Leo IV to the people to enlist against the Saracens, that was a summons for the people to defend themselves against their enemies, who were threatening Rome. But it was a very different thing for the faithful to gird themselves with the sword for the extermination of Christians and for the pope to do the same for the sake of earthly riches. The most a bishop has the right to do, in the case of a righteous war, is to consult with the princes and to exhort them to fight for their subjects. Moreover, princes and the people are under no obligation to obey their spiritual superiors except in so far as the commands proceed according to God’s law. Even under such circumstances alone were the Jewish people obligated to obey their rulers, the scribes and Pharisees.
These fervid writings, full of argument. Scripture and feeling, called forth by John XXIII’s bull summoning Bohemia to war against Ladislaus, show that Huss had removed far from the mediæval position that the church has an absolute right over those whom it has baptized and to see to it that heretics are put out of the world-exterminated, to use Huss’s own word. The foundations of the church. Huss insisted, are spiritual. Its purpose is to persuade the sinner, to correct his errors and to heal his wounds, and not to put upon him any physical compulsion, unless, perchance, such a measure be fairly adapted to win him to faith in Christ and the Gospel. In the Treatise on the Church he said, as plainly as words could state it, that the heretic should not receive capital punishment. To save the body of the faithful by putting heretics to death is a principle the church has no authority to act upon, unless in such cases she is evidently inspired so to do. Her duty is to recall the errant and save the sinner by preaching. Faith, to be acceptable and real faith, must be a voluntary habit of the soul.
* ↑ Wylie, pp. 9–11. On Glux and Stokes, see also Lenz. König Sigismund.
* ↑ Replica contra Anglicum J. Stokes. Mon., 1: 135–139.
* ↑ Charles had been called by Urban VI, 1381, and given the crown of Naples in the stead of Johanna, who had supported the Avignon line. Against her Urban summoned a crusade. Charles turned against Urban, who excommunicated him and made his high dignity an object of ridicule, as Pastor says, by going four times a day to the window and with sound of bell and with burning candles formally excommunicating Charles’s army at Nocera. Charles had Johanna murdered, 1382.
* ↑ Æneas Sylvius on Ladislaus’s crusade, chap. 35. For the texts of the bulls, see Mon., 1: 212–215.
* ↑ Latin Works, 2: 577 sqq.
* ↑ Mon., 1: 367.
* ↑ In the matter of penance a complete change took place in the teaching of the church in the twelfth century. The theory of the early church elaborated by Tertullian was that alms, prayers, and other works of penance are efficient to remove the penalty of sins committed after baptism. Beginning with Alexander of Hales, d. 1245, confession to the priest was made requisite to salvation. Peter the Lombard, who lived a century earlier, had taken the opposite view, contrition of heart and confession to God were sufficient. But Thomas Aquinas followed Alexander, and from that date four things were made necessary to penance—contrition of heart, confession to the priest, works of satisfaction and the priestly absolution. The Rheims version of the New Testament, 1582, translates the Greek word metanœo, usually “do penance,” though not uniformly, and by so doing puts into the New Testament an institution of the later church and mistranslates the Greek. The change to the later mediæval view was helped on by a tract foisted upon Augustine in the twelfth century, de vera et falsa penitentia, which Gratian incorporated in his Decretum.
* ↑ Here Huss approached closely to the ground occupied a hundred years later by Zwingli, who extended the benefits of the atonement to good heathen like [[Portal:Socrates|]] and Aristides and was strongly inclined to extend it to all the children of heathen dying in infancy, if he did not actually do so. The ground on which he based this hope was God’s predestination, which is entirely of free grace.
* ↑ Doc., 448–451.
* ↑ Wiclif and Hus, p. 141. Huss’s Treatise, Mon. 1: 215–235.
* ↑ Mon., 1: 220, 222.
* ↑ Mon., 1: 228. Wyclif, de Ecclesia, 570 sq., speaks of canonists and theologians who held “that the pope has power to grant indulgences to an infinite number of persons for an infinite period of time and that therefore his power is infinitely greater than the power of a bishop, who can give indulgences only for forty days.” Having such power, “what excuse has he that he does not release from eternal damnation his neighbor, whom he ought to love as himself, and yet without sufficient grounds omits so to do?” Shall a man be excused who is commanded even to pull his brother’s ox on the Sabbath day out of the pit if he neglects to free his brother’s soul from hell?
* ↑ Mon., 1: 234. Huss makes large use of Wyclif in this tract, but it is an exaggeration when Loserth, p. 141, says: “From the definition of the indulgence onward everything is the property of Wyclif. The most weighty parts are derived from that chapter of Wyclif’s de Ecclesia which treats of indulgences and is taken word for word.” Huss’s definition of an indulgence is verbally the same as Wyclif’s with some added words simplifying, Mon., 1: 216, also p. 377; de Ecclesia, p. 549; and in many of the important points the treatments agree. Huss, however, has much material of his own pertaining to the general subject as well as bearing directly upon the contents of John XXIII’s bulls. He refers more frequently to the Scriptures than does Wyclif, and most aptly, using the quotations with great effect in the cases cited and the case of the publican. To many things in Wyclif’s treatment he makes no reference as to the thesaurus meritorum, p. 572. As I shall have occasion to say under the head of the de Ecclesia. Huss’s treatment is free from the biting sarcasm which runs through Wyclif when he treats of the pope and the hierarchy, and Huss’s method is better adapted to reach a popular audience.
* ↑ Amicus Palec, amica veritas, utrisque amicis existentibus sanctum est præhonorare veritatem. Mon., 1: 318, 330, 331. Super IV. Sent., 20. Huss dated Palecz’s estrangement from this time, ascribing it definitely to the difference over the sale of indulgences. Indulgentiarum venditio me ab isto doctore primum separavit.
* ↑ Doc., 416 sqq., 429.
* ↑ Palacky, Gesch., 278.
* ↑ Palacky, Gesch., III, pt. I, p. 280. Æneas Sylvius, 35, also says the three men were buried in Bethlehem chapel and their bodies looked upon as sacred relics. For the account in the Bohemian sermons, Doc., 725 sq.
* ↑ Mon., 1: 139–169.
* ↑ Responsio ad scriptum octo doctorum, Mon., 1: 366–408.
* ↑ Huss does not take up wars against the Saracens. In preaching the second crusade, 1147, and in his de Militibus Templi Bernard justified such wars on the ground that the Saracens held the Holy Land. It was better, he said, that pagans should be put to death than that the rod of the wicked should rest upon the lot of the righteous. The righteous fear no sin in killing the enemy of Christ. Christ’s soldier can securely kill and more safely die. When he dies, it profits himself. When he slays, it profits Christ. It seems strange that, so far as I know, Huss nowhere refers to the papal crusades against the Waldenses and Cathari.