Bohemia, from the earliest times to the fall of national independence in 1620 / With a short summary of later events

by C. Edmund Maurice

But he was, unfortunately, doomed to irritate against him on every occasion the intense vanity of Sigismund. One great object of his enemies was to deprive him of any benefit accruing to him from his safe-conduct; and they caught eagerly at an expression of his that he had come, freely and voluntarily, to the Council. Provoked at the constant distortions of his language, he broke out with a boast, which, however true, was most ill-judged. If, he said, he had not wished to come to the Council, neither King nor Emperor could have compelled him; for there were many friends who would have hidden him in their houses, so that neither Wenceslaus nor Sigismund could have found him. When a murmur arose at this, John of Chlum stepped forward and said that, though he was but a poor gentlemen in his own country, he, for one, would have guarded Hus for a year, whoever liked or disliked it; and that there were many others who would have protected him in strong castles. This belittling of his power roused Sigismund’s anger. He exclaimed that he had sent Hus his safe-conduct before he left Prague; and that he had provided the noblemen for his escort; and he now advised Hus to submit himself completely to the Council. Hus at once answered, in his more ordinary tone, that he thanked Sigismund for the safe-conduct; and, for his part, he would be glad to be corrected by the Council if he were shown to be wrong.

On June 8th, he was examined more in detail on thirty-nine Articles gathered from his writings. Some of these dealt with the subtle questions of Predestination; but others were concerned with his assertions in the “De Ecclesia” that a visible head was not necessary to the Church; and that a Pope in mortal sin ceases to be a true Pope. Hus was able, with great force, to appeal to the action of the Council itself in justification of these doctrines. If a Pope in mortal sin did not cease to be a true Pope, by what right had they deposed John XXIII.? If the visible Head was necessary to the Church, who was the Head then, when all the Popes had either resigned or been deposed? Such arguments were probably too forcible to be convincing.

But again, by some strange fatality, Hus was further to irritate against him the suspicion and anger of the Holy Roman Emperor. “Not only,” said Hus, “did a Pope cease to be a true Pope if in mortal sin, but the case of the deposition of Saul by Samuel showed that a King might be treated in a similar way.” Sigismund was sitting at a window in a back part of the room when this utterance was made; but the Cardinals eagerly called him forward and made Hus repeat his statement. Nor was this the only offence which he was doomed to commit against the Emperor on that fatal day. When the examination had concluded, the chief Cardinal asked Hus whether he would submit entirely to the Council, or if he wished to defend any of the Articles alleged against him. But when Hus demanded an opportunity for further discussion, the Cardinal answered that the Council insisted on his abjuration and revocation of the Articles alleged against him, and his promise not to preach them any more. To this Hus answered, that he could not revoke and abjure opinions which he had never held, mentioning as an instance the denial of Transubstantiation. As for the opinions which he had set forth, he would retract them when they had been refuted. Sigismund endeavoured to convince him that he could abjure Articles which he had never held; whereupon Hus ventured to dispute the Emperor’s use of the word “abjurare.” This further denial of the power of the Roman Emperor over the Latin language roused to a still higher pitch the irritation of Sigismund “Super Grammaticam;” and he told Hus that, unless he would abjure and revoke all the errors alleged against him, the Council must deal with him according to its laws.

Upon this a fat and richly dressed priest, who was sitting in the window, cried out that they should not allow him to recant, since he would not keep his word; and again he quoted the falsified version of Hus’s letter. Then Pálec̆ and Michael de Causis pressed upon him a number of charges, some new and some old, mixing up actual writings and doings of Hus with doctrines which he had repudiated; and, after this had continued for some time, the Council decided to send him back to prison, to see if a period of delay would induce him to revoke his heresies.

For the moment Hus seemed to be crushed by the noise and bitterness of his enemies. He was leaving the Council with the sense that the world was entirely against him, when, as he drew near to the door, John of Chlum pressed through the crowd and shook him warmly by the hand. The memory of that handshake seems to have lingered to the last in the mind of Hus. Other friends, too, were still faithful to him; and, after he had left the Council, several of them pressed to the window of the convent where the Council was being held, to hear what should follow.

Sigismund was now thoroughly inflamed against Hus. He had belittled the protection which Sigismund had offered him, and had declared that his friends could protect him against the Emperor; he had quoted a Scriptural instance of the deposition of kings; and, above all, he had disputed Sigismund’s authority over the Latin language. Such a man could not be suffered to live; and the Emperor now declared that he delivered him over to the Council to be burnt, if they so pleased; adding further, that no recantation was to be trusted. He also implied that the death of Jerom must follow that of Hus.

Hus now saw that his fate was sealed; and one observes in his letters to his friends the tone of a man who is preparing for death. He was particularly anxious, lest the more ignorant of his followers should suffer for doctrines which they had not understood, and which they had merely adopted from a sense of personal devotion to their teacher. So he wrote to one of these followers, that, if he should be attacked for his adherence to Hus, he should answer his accusers by saying, “I hope that the Master was a good Christian, but I have not understood or read through the things which he taught in the schools.” The thought of the corruptions of the clergy still weighed upon his mind; and he advised his nephews rather to learn some manual work than to become priests; lest, if they assumed the spiritual office, they should not maintain it as it deserved.

In the meantime, the Council, with singular maladroitness, had singled out for special condemnation the granting of the Cup to the laity; and thus, at one stroke, they changed the doctrine of a few obscure men into the war-cry of an indignant nation. This decree called the attention to Hus to this matter, which, till then, he had not deeply considered; and he wrote to his successor at the Bethlehem Chapel that he ought not to oppose the granting of the Cup to the laity, since there was nothing but custom against it; and that, if he opposed Jakaubek, there would be a division amongst the faithful.

But, while Hus was thus interesting himself in the affairs of his countrymen, the Council were not suffering him to rest in peace. One of the few priests who had shown themselves friendly to Hus at the Council wrote to him urging sophistical arguments in favour of a form of recantation; and Pálec̆ paid him several visits, to worry him into confessions of heresy. Yet, bitterly as he felt the persecutions of his former follower, that same self-distrust and earnest desire for justice which he had shown in the question of the three votes, and again on his retirement from Prague, appeared, even more remarkably, in this last interview. He entreated his enemy to pardon him for having charged him with deliberate falsehood on the occasion of Pálec̆’s first attacks in the Council. The savage apostate was moved even to tears for the moment, though his pity was of short duration.

At last, on July 5th, Wenceslaus of Duba and John of Chlum were sent to the prison to demand Hus’s final answer. But these messengers had been ill-chosen as exponents of the sophistries of Sigismund and the Cardinals. John of Chlum addressed the prisoner as follows: “Master John, we are laymen and cannot advise you. Therefore, see if there is anything in the things which they object to you, in which you feel you are to blame. If so, do not fear to be instructed and to revoke it; but, if you do not feel yourself guilty in your conscience in these things, then by no means act against your conscience, nor lie in the sight of God, but rather continue till the death in the truth which you have acknowledged.” Then Hus answered, “Lord John! know, that if I knew that I had written or preached anything contrary to the law or to our Holy Mother the Church, God is my witness that I would humbly revoke it. But I always desired that they should show me better and more probable Scriptures than those that I had taught; and, if they are shown me, I will most readily recant.” A bishop, who had come with the Bohemian nobles, now introduced the sophistical platitude which is common on such occasions—“Do you wish,” he said, “to be wiser than the whole Council?” “I do not wish,” answered Hus, “to be wiser than the whole Council; but I ask you to give me the least of the Council who can inform me by better and more efficacious Scriptures; and I am ready to revoke what I said.”