TRIAL AND BURNING OF JOHN HUSS
THE HUSSITE WARS
A.D. 1415
RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH
Among the heralds of the Reformation, John Wycliffe, the English Protestant who antedated Protestantism by a century and a half, holds the first position in order of time. For many years after the death of Wycliffe the movement which he began continued to be, as it was at first, confined to England; but at length it was to acquire a wider significance and to enter upon its European extension.
Not long after his own day the spirit of Wycliffe—even before knowledge of his work had crossed the Channel—had come to a new birth on the Continent. And when some sparks of Wycliffe's own fire were blown over the half of Europe—even as far as Bohemia—the kindred fires which had long burned in spite of all suppression were quickened into a living and a spreading flame.
While then there was a direct and vital influence from the work of the English reformer which gave to his teachings partial identity with those of his Bohemian successors, the movement led by these was still quite independent and national.
The central figure of the Bohemian Reformation was John Huss, or Hus, the son of a peasant. He was born in 1369 at Husinetz—of which his own name is a contraction—in Southern Bohemia. The principal events of his life, from the time that he took his degree at the University of Prague until his death at the stake, July 6, 1415, will be found in Trench's sympathetic but discriminating narrative.
F we look for the proper forerunners of Huss, his true spiritual ancestors, we shall find them in his own land, in a succession of earnest and faithful preachers—among these Militz (d. 1374) and Janow (d. 1394) stand out the most prominently—who had sown seed which could hardly have failed to bear fruit sooner or later, though no line of Wycliffe's writings had ever found its way to Bohemia. This land, not German, however it may have been early drawn into the circle of German interests, with a population Slavonic in the main, had first received the faith through the preaching of Greek monks. The Bohemian Church probably owed to this fact that, though incorporated from the first with the churches of the West, uses and customs prevailed in it—as the preaching in the mother tongue, the marriage of the clergy, communion in both kinds—which it only slowly and unwillingly relinquished. It was not till the fourteenth century that its lines were drawn throughout in exact conformity with those of Rome. All this deserves to be kept in mind; for it helps to account for the kindly reception which the seed sown by the later Bohemian reformers found, falling as this did in a soil to which it was not altogether strange.
John Huss took in the year 1394 his degree as bachelor of theology in that University of Prague upon the fortunes of which he was destined to exercise so lasting an influence; and four years later, in 1398, he began to deliver lectures there. Huss had early taken his degree in a school higher than any school of man's. He himself has told us how he was once careless and disobedient, how the word of the Cross had taken hold of him with strength, and penetrated him through and through as with a mighty purifying fire. What he had learned in the school of Christ he could not keep to himself. Holding, in addition to his academical position, a lectureship founded by two pious laymen for the preaching of the Word in the Bohemian tongue (1401), he soon signalized himself by his diligence in breaking the bread of life to hungering souls, and his boldness in rebuking vice in high places as in low. So long as he confined himself to reproving the sins of the laity, he found little opposition, nay, rather support and applause. But when he brought the clergy and monks also within the circle of his condemnation, and began to upbraid them for their covetousness, their ambition, their luxury, their sloth, and for other vices, they turned resentfully upon him, and sought to undermine his authority, everywhere spreading reports of the unsoundness of his teaching.
Let us see on what side he mainly exposed himself to charges such as these. Many things had recently wrought together to bring into nearness countries geographically so remote from one another as Bohemia and England. Anne, wife of our second Richard, was a sister of Wenceslaus, King of Bohemia. The two flourishing universities of Oxford and Prague were bound together by their common zeal for Realism. This may seem to us but a slight and fantastic bond; it was in those days a very strong one indeed. Young English scholars studied at Prague, young Bohemian at Oxford. Now, Oxford, long after Wycliffe's death, was full of interest for his doctrine; and among the many strangers sojourning there, it could hardly fail that some should imbibe opinions and bring back with them books of one whom they had there learned to know and to honor. Thus Jerome, called of Prague, on his return from the English university, gave a new impulse to the study of Wycliffe's writings, bearer as he was of several among these which had not hitherto travelled so far.
This man, whose fortunes were so tragically bound up with those of Huss, who should share with him in the same fiery doom, was his junior by several years; his superior in eloquence, in talents, in gifts—for certainly Huss was not a theologian of the first order; speculative theologian he was not at all—but notably his inferior in moderation and practical good-sense. Huss never shared in his friend's indiscriminate admiration of Wycliffe. When, in 1403, some forty-five theses, which either were or professed to be drawn from the writings of the English reformer, were brought before the university, that they might be condemned as heretical, Huss expressed himself with extreme caution and reserve. Many of these, he affirmed, were true when a man took them aright; but he could not say this of all. Not first at the Council of Constance, but long before, he had refused to undertake the responsibility of Wycliffe's teaching on the holy eucharist. But he did not conceal what he had learned from Wycliffe's writings. By these there had been opened to him a deeper glimpse into the corruptions of the Church, and its need of reformation in the head and in the members, than ever he had before obtained. His preaching, with the new accesses of insight which now were his, more than ever exasperated his foes.
While matters were in this strained condition, events took place at Prague which are too closely connected with the story that we are telling, exercised too great an influence in bringing about the issues that lie before us, to allow us to pass them by, even though they may prove somewhat long to relate. The University of Prague, though recently founded—it only dated back to the year 1348—was now, next after those of Paris and Oxford, the most illustrious in Europe. Saying this I say much; for we must not measure the influence and authority of a university at that day by the influence and authority, great as these are, which it may now possess. This university, like that of Paris, on the pattern of which it had been modelled, was divided into four "nations"—four groups, that is, or families of scholars—each of these having in academical affairs a single collective vote. These nations were the Bavarian, the Saxon, the Polish, and the Bohemian. This does not appear at first an unfair division—two German and two Slavonic; but in practical working the Polish was so largely recruited from Silesia and other German or half-German lands that its vote was in fact German also.
The Teutonic votes were thus as three to one, and the Bohemians, in their own land and in their own university, on every important matter hopelessly outvoted. When, by aid of this preponderance, the university was made to condemn the teaching of Wycliffe in those forty-five points, matters came to a crisis. Urged by Huss—who as a stout patriot, and an earnest lover of the Bohemian language and literature, had more than a theological interest in the matter—by Jerome, by a large number of the Bohemian nobility, King Wenceslaus published an edict whereby the relations of natives and foreigners were completely reversed. There should be henceforth three votes for the Bohemian nation, and only one for the three others. Such a shifting of the weight certainly appears as a redressing of one inequality by creating another. At all events it was so earnestly resented by the Germans, by professors and students alike, that they quitted the university in a body, some say of five thousand and some of thirty thousand, and founded the rival University of Leipsic, leaving no more than two thousand students at Prague. Full of indignation against Huss, whom they regarded as the prime author of this affront and wrong, they spread throughout Germany the most unfavorable reports of him and of his teaching.
This exodus of the foreigners had left Huss, who was now rector of the university, with a freer field than before. But church matters at Prague did not mend; they became more confused and threatening every day, until presently Huss stood in open opposition with the hierarchy of his time. Pope John XXIII, having a quarrel with the King of Naples, proclaimed a crusade against him, with what had become a constant accompaniment of this—indulgences to the crusaders. But to denounce indulgences, as Huss with fierce indignation did now, was to wound Pope John in a most sensitive part. He was excommunicated at once, and every place which should harbor him stricken with an interdict. While matters were in this frame the Council of Constance was opened, which should appease all the troubles of Christendom and correct whatever was amiss. The Bohemian difficulty could not be omitted, and Huss was summoned to make answer at Constance for himself.
He had not been there four weeks when he was required to appear before the Pope and cardinals, November 18, 1414. After a brief informal hearing he was committed to harsh durance, from which he never issued as a free man again. Sigismund, the German King and Emperor-elect, who had furnished Huss with a safe-conduct which should protect him, "going to the Council, tarrying at the Council, returning from the Council," was absent from Constance at the time, and heard with real displeasure how lightly regarded this promise and pledge of his had been.
Some big words, too, he spoke, threatening to come himself and release the prisoner by force; but, being waited on by a deputation from the council, who represented to him that he, as a layman, in giving such a safe-conduct had exceeded his powers, and intruded into a region which was not his, Sigismund was convinced, or affected to be convinced. Doubtless the temptations to be convinced were strong. Had he insisted on the liberation of Huss, the danger was imminent that the council, for which he had labored so earnestly, would be broken up on the plea that its rightful freedom was denied it. He did not choose to run this risk, preferring to leave an everlasting blot upon his name.
Some modern sophists assure us that this safe-conduct—or free pass, as they prefer to call it—engaged the imperial word for Huss' safety in going to the council, but for nothing more—a most perfidious document, if this is all which it undertook; for the words—I quote the more important of them in the original Latin—are as follows: "ut ei transire, stare, morari, redire permittatis." But the treachery was not in the document, and nobody at the time attempted to find it there. If this had not engaged the honor of the Emperor, what cause of complaint would he have had against the cardinals as having entangled him in a breach of his word? what need of their solemn ambassage to him? Untrue also is the assertion that this was so little regarded by Huss himself as a safe-conduct covering the whole period during which he should be exposed to the malice of his enemies that he never appealed to it or claimed protection from it. He did so appeal at this second formal hearing, June 7th, the first at which Sigismund was present. "I am here," he there said, "under the King's promise that I should return to Bohemia in safety"; while at his last, by a look and by a few like words, he brought the royal word-breaker to a blush, evident to all present, July 6th.
But to return a little. More than seven months elapsed before Huss could obtain a hearing before the council. This was granted to him at last. Thrice heard, June 5, 7, 8, 1415—if, indeed, such tumultuary sittings, where the man speaking for his life, and for much more than his life, was continually interrupted and overborne by hostile voices, by loud cries of "Recant, recant!" may be reckoned as hearings at all—he bore himself, by the confession of all, with courage, meekness, and dignity. The charges brought against him were various; some so far-fetched as that urged by a Nominalist from the University of Paris—for Paris was Nominalist now—namely, that as a Realist he could not be sound on the doctrine of the eucharist. Others were vague enough, as that he had sown discord between the church and the state. Nor were accusations wanting which touched a really weak point in his teaching, namely, the subjective aspect which undoubtedly some aspects of it wore; as when he taught that not the baptized, but the predestinated to life, constituted the Church. Beset as he was by the most accomplished theologians of the age, the best or the worst advantage was sure to be made of any vulnerable side which he exposed.
But there were charges against him with more in them of danger than these. The point which was really at issue between him and his adversaries concerned the relative authority of the Church and of Scripture. What they demanded of him was a retractation of all the articles brought against him, with an unconditional submission to the council. Some of the articles, he replied, charged him with teaching things which he had never taught, and he could not by this formal act of retractation admit that he had taught them. Let any doctrine of his be shown to be contrary to God's holy Word, and he would retract it; but such unconditional submission he could not yield.
His fate was now sealed—that is, unless he could be induced to recant; in which event, though he did not know it, his sentence would have been degradation from the priesthood and a lifelong imprisonment. Many efforts up to the last moment were made by friend and foe to persuade him to this, but in vain. And now once more, July 6th, he is brought before the council, but this time for sentence and for doom. The sentence passed, his suffering begins. The long list of his heresies, among which they are not ashamed to include many which he has distinctly repudiated, is read out in his hearing. He is clothed with priestly garments, that these, piece by piece, and each with an appropriate insult malediction, may be stripped from him again. The sacred vessels are placed in his hands, that from him, "accursed Judas that he is," they may be taken again. There is some difficulty in erasing his tonsure; but this difficulty with a little violence and cruelty is overcome. A tall paper cap, painted over with flames and devils, and inscribed "Heresiarch," is placed upon his head. This done, and his soul having been duly delivered to Satan, his body is surrendered to the secular arm. One last touch is not wanting. As men bind him to the stake, attention is called to the fact that his face is turned to the east. This honor must not be his, upon whom no sun of righteousness shall ever rise. He is unfastened, and refastened anew. All is borne with perfect meekness, in the thought and in the strength of Him who had borne so much more for sinners, the Just for the unjust; and so, in his fire-chariot of a painful martyrdom, Huss passes from our sight.
Some may wonder that he, a reformer, should have been so treated by a council, itself also reforming, and with a man like Gerson—Doctor Christianissimus was the title he bore—virtually at its head. But a little consideration will dispel this surprise, and lead us to the conclusion that a council less earnestly bent on reforms of its own would probably have dealt more mildly with him. His position and theirs, however we may ascribe alike to him and to them a desire to reform the Church, were fundamentally different. They, when they deposed a pope, where they proclaimed the general superiority of councils over popes, had no intention of diminishing one jot the Church's authority in matters of faith, but only of changing the seat of that authority, substituting an ecclesiastical aristocracy for an ecclesiastical monarchy—or despotism, as long since it had grown to be. And thus the more earnest the council was to carry out a reformation in discipline, the more eager was it also to make evident to all the world that it did not intend to touch doctrine, but would uphold this as it had received it. It is not then uncharitable to suspect that the leading men of the council—like those reformers at Geneva who a century and a half later, 1553, sent Servetus to the stake—were not sorry to be able to give so signal an evidence of their zeal for the maintenance of the faith which they had received, as thus, in the condemnation of Huss, they had the opportunity of doing. Nor may we leave altogether out of account that the German element must of necessity have been strong in a council held on the shores of the Bodensee; while in his vindication of Bohemian nationality, perhaps an excessive vindication, Huss had offended and embittered the Germans to the uttermost.
If any had flattered themselves that with the death of Huss the Reformation in Bohemia had also received its death-blow, they had not long to wait for a painful undeception. Words fail to describe the tempest of passionate indignation with which the tidings of his execution, followed within a year by that of Jerome, were received there. Both were honored as martyrs, and already, in the fierce exasperation of men's spirits against the authors of their doom, there was a prophecy of the unutterable woes which were even at the door. Some watchword by which his followers could know and be known—this watchword, if possible, a spell of power like that which Luther had found in the doctrine of justification by faith—was still wanting. One, however, was soon found; which indeed had this drawback, that it concerned a matter disciplinary rather than doctrinal, yet having a real value as a visible witness for the rights of the laity in the Church of Christ. So far as we know, Huss had not himself laid any special stress on communion under both kinds; but in 1414—he was then already at Constance—the subject had come to the forefront at Prague; and, being consulted, Huss had entirely approved of such communion as most conformable to the original institution and to the practice of the primitive Church. On the other hand, the council, learning the agitation of men's spirits in this direction, had declared what is called the "Concomitance"—that is, that wherever one kind was present, there was also the other, which being so, nothing was, indeed, withholden from the communicant through the withholding of the cup. At the same time the council had solemnly condemned as a heretic everyone who refused to submit himself to the decision of the Church in this matter, June 15, 1415.
But there was no temper of submission in Bohemia—least of all when the University of Prague gave its voice in favor of this demand. Wenceslaus, the well-intentioned but poor-spirited King, was quite unable to keep peace between the rival factions, and could only slip out of his difficulties by dying, August 16, 1419. Sigismund, his brother, was also his successor; but of one thing the Bohemians were at this time resolved; namely, that the royal betrayer of his word should not reign over them. And thus a condition of miserable anarchy followed, and, in the end, of open war; which, lasting for eleven years, could be matched by few wars in the cruelties and atrocities by which on both sides it was disgraced. In Ziska, their blind chief, the Hussites had a leader with a born genius for war. It was he who invented the movable wagon-fortress whereof we hear so much, against which the German chivalry would break as idle waves upon a rock. Three times crusading armies—for this name they bore, thinking with no serious opposition to enforce the decrees of the council—invaded Bohemia, to be thrice driven back with utter defeat, disgrace, and loss; the Hussites, who for a long while were content with merely repelling the invaders, after a while, and as the only way of conquering a peace, turning the tables, and wasting with fire and sword all neighboring German lands.
A conflict so hideous could not long be waged without a rapid deterioration of all who were engaged in it. The spirit of Huss more and more departed from those who called themselves by his name. Intestine strifes devoured their strength. There were first the Moderates—Calixtines, Utraquists, or "Those of Prague," they were called—who, weary of the long struggle, were willing to return to the bosom of the Church if only the cup (calix), and thus communion under both kinds (sub utraque), were guaranteed to them, with two or three secondary matters. Not so the Taborites, who drew their name from a mountain fastness which they fortified and called Mount Tabor. These, the Ultras, the democratic radical party, separating themselves off as early as 1419, had left Huss and his teaching very far behind. Ignoring the whole historical development of Christianity, they demanded that a clean sweep should be made of everything in the Church's practice for which an express and literal warrant in Scripture could not be found. When at the Council of Basel an agreement was patched up with the Calixtines on the footing which I have just named, 1433, a few further promises being thrown in which might mean anything and, as the issue proved, did mean nothing, the Taborites would not listen to the compromise. Again they appealed to arms: but now their old comrades and allies had passed to the other side; and, defeated in battle, 1434, their stronghold taken and destroyed, 1453, their political power forever broken, they, too, as so many before and since, were doomed to learn that violence is weakness in disguise, and that the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.
Whether the Church of Rome made the concessions to the Calixtines which she did, with the intention of retracting them at the first opportunity, it is impossible to say. This, however, is certain, that half a dozen years had scarcely elapsed before these concessions were brought into question and dispute; while, in less than thirty, Pope Pius II formally withdrew altogether the papal recognition of them, 1462; though a struggle for their maintenance, not always unsuccessful, lasted on into the century ensuing.
It was in truth a melancholy close of a movement so hopefully begun. And yet not altogether the close; for, indeed, nothing, in which any elements of true heroism are mingled, so disappears as to leave no traces of itself behind. If it does no more, it serves to feed the high tradition of the world—that most precious of all bequests to the present age from the ages which are behind it. But there was more than this. If much was consumed, yet not all. Something—and that the best worth the saving—was saved from the fires, having first been purified in them. The stormy zealots, as many as had taken the sword, had for the most part perished by the sword.
But there were some who made for themselves a better future than the sword could have ever made. A feeble remnant, extricating themselves from the wreck and ruin of their party, and having been taught of God in his severest school, pious Calixtines, too, that were little content with the Compacts of Basel, a few stray Waldensians mingling with them, all these, drawing together in an evil time, refashioned and reconstituted themselves in humblest guise, though not in guise so humble that they could escape the cruel attentions of Rome. Seeking to build on a true scriptural foundation, with a scheme of doctrine, it may be, dogmatically incomplete—even as that of Huss himself had been—with their episcopate lost and never since recovered, the Unitas Fratrum, the Moravian Brethren, trampled and trodden down, but overcoming now, not by weapons of carnal warfare, but by the blood of the Cross, lived on to hail the breaking of a fairer dawn, and to be themselves greeted as witnesses for God, who in a dark and gloomy day, and having but a little strength, had kept his word, and not denied his name.