A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages; volume II

by Henry Charles Lea

Everything thus conspired to accelerate the progress of the revolution. Huss, who had hitherto, for the most part, confined himself to assaults upon the local ecclesiastical establishment, began to direct his attacks at the papacy itself, and in the writings of Wickliff he found ample store of arguments, which he used with great effect. He also made use of another of Wickliff’s methods by the employment of itinerant priests. This was peculiarly well adapted to accomplish the object in view, for the Bohemians were given to listening to sermons, and the unlicensed preaching for which the negligence of the established clergy gave opportunity had been a frequent source of complaint since the year 1371. The repetition of the prohibitions shows their ineffectiveness; the popular craving for spiritual instruction, which the Church could have turned to such good account, was abandoned to the agitators; the people flocked in crowds to hear them, in spite of priestly anathemas, and the great mass of the nation, from nobles to peasants, eagerly adopted the new doctrines, and were prepared to support them to the death.[494]

Matters were rapidly tending to an open rupture with Rome. In 1410 John XXIII., soon after his accession, referred to Cardinal Otto Colonna the complaints which came to Rome against Huss. On September 20 Colonna summoned him to appear in person. He sent deputies, who appealed from the cardinal to the pope, but they were thrown into prison and severely handled; and while the appeal was pending, in February, 1411, Colonna excommunicated him. On March 15 the excommunication was published in all the churches of Prague save two; the people stood by Huss, and an interdict was extended over the city, which was generally disregarded, and Huss continued to preach. While affairs were in this threatening position a new cause of trouble led to an explosion. Just as Wickliff had been stirred to fresh hostility against the papacy by the crusade which, under orders from Urban VI., the Bishop of Norwich had preached against France for its support of the rival pope Clement VII.; just as Luther was to be aroused from his obscurity by the indulgence-selling of Tetzel when Leo X. wanted money, so the Bohemians were stimulated to active opposition when John XXIII., towards the close of 1411, proclaimed a crusade with Holy Land indulgences against Ladislas of Naples, who upheld the claims of Gregory XII. Stephen Palecz, till then associated with Huss, was dean of the theological faculty. His experience of the Bolognese prison rendered him timorous about withstanding John XXIII., and he declared that there was no authority to prevent the publication of the indulgence. Huss was bolder, and a controversy arose between them which converted their former friendship into an enmity destined to bear bitter fruits. June 16, 1412, he held in the Carolinum a disputation which was a very powerful and eloquent attack upon the power of the keys, which lay at the foundation of the whole papal system. Absolution was dependent on the subjective condition of the penitent; as many popes who concede indulgences are damned, how can they defend their pardons before God? the sellers of indulgences are thieves, who take by cunning lies that which they cannot seize by violence; the pope and the whole Church Militant often err, and an unjust papal excommunication is to be disregarded. This was followed by other tracts and sermons which aroused popular enthusiasm to a lofty pitch. Wenceslas Tiem, the Dean of Passau, to whom the preaching of the crusade in Bohemia was confided, farmed out the indulgences to the highest bidders, and their sale to the people was accompanied by the usual scandals, which were well calculated to excite indignation.[495]

A few days after the disputation a crowd led by Wok of Waldstein, a favorite of King Wenceslas, carried the papal bulls of indulgence to the pillory and publicly burned them. The well-known legend attributes to Jerome of Prague a leading part in this, and relates that the bulls were strung around the neck of a strumpet mounted on a cart, who solicited the favor of the mob with lascivious gestures. No punishment was inflicted on the participants, and Wok of Waldstein continued to enjoy the royal favor. The defiance of the pope was complete, and the temper of the people was shown on July 12, when in three several churches three young mechanics named Martin, John, and Stanislas, interrupted the preachers proclaiming the indulgences, and declared them to be a lie. They were arrested and beheaded in spite of Huss’s intercession; many others were imprisoned, and some were exposed to torture. Then the people assumed a threatening aspect; the three who had been executed were reverenced as martyrs; tumults occurred, and the prisoners were released. Soon afterwards a Carmelite was begging at the doors of his church with an array of relics displayed upon a table, with the indulgences attached to them to excite the liberality of the pious. A disciple of Huss denounced the affair as a fraud and kicked over the table, and when he was seized by the friars a band of armed men broke into the house and released him, not without bloodshed.[496]

John XXIII. could not avoid taking up the gage of battle thus thrown down. The Bohemian clergy appealed to him piteously, representing the oppression to which they were subjected, and stating that many of them had been slain. He promptly responded. The major excommunication, to be published in all its awful solemnity in Prague, was pronounced against Huss; the Bethlehem chapel was ordered to be levelled with the earth; his followers were excommunicated, and all who would not within thirty days abjure heresy were summoned to answer in person before the Roman curia. In spite of this Huss continued to preach, and when an attempt was made to arrest him in the pulpit the threatening aspect of the congregation prevented its execution. He appealed to a general council, and then to God, in a protest which, in lofty terms, asserted the nullity of the sentence pronounced against him. In his treatise “De Ecclesia,” which followed not long after, he attacked the papacy in unmeasured language borrowed from Wickliff. The pope is not a pope and a true successor of Peter unless he imitates Peter; a pope given to avarice is the vicar of Judas Iscariot. So of the cardinals; if they enter save by the door of Christ they are thieves and robbers. Yet the clergy, for the most part gladly, obeyed the bull of excommunication, and Huss’s presence in Prague led to a cessation of all church observances; divine service was suspended, the new-born were not baptized, and the dead lay unburied. At the request of the king, to relieve the situation of its tension, Huss left Prague and retired to Kosi hradek, whence he directed the movements of his adherents in the city and busied himself in active controversial writing, the chief product of which was the “De Ecclesia,” which was publicly read in the Bethlehem chapel on July 8, 1413.[497]

King Wenceslas had vainly tried to bring about a pacification of the troubles in which passions were daily growing wilder, complicated by the race hatred between Teuton and Czech. A confused series of disputations and conferences and controversial tracts occupied the first half of the year 1413, which only embittered those who took part in them and rendered harmony more distant than ever. In fact there was no possible middle term, no compromise in which the disputants could unite. It was no longer a question of reforming the morals of the clergy, as to the necessity of which all were agreed. The controversy had drifted to the causes of clerical corruption, springing, as Wickliff and Huss and their disciples clearly saw, from the very principles on which the whole structure of Latin Christianity was based. Either the power of the keys was a truth vital to the salvation of mankind, or it was a lie cunningly invented and boldly utilized to gratify the lust of power and the greed of avarice. Between these two antagonistic postulates dialectic subtlety was powerless to frame a project of reconciliation, and argument only hardened each side in its belief. One or the other must triumph utterly, and force alone could decide the controversy. Wearied at last with his unavailing efforts, Wenceslas finally cut the matter short by banishing the leaders of the conservatives, Stephen Palecz, Stanislas of Znaim, Peter of Znaim, and John Elias. Stanislas retired to Moravia, where, after incredible industry in controversial writing, he died on the road to the Council of Constance; Stephen survived him and revenged them both.[498]

Huss and his adherents were now masters of the field; and though he abstained from returning to Prague, except an occasional visit incognito, until his departure for Constance, he could truly say, when he stood up in the council to meet his accusers, “I came hither of my own free will. Had I refused to come neither the king nor the emperor could have forced me, so numerous are the Bohemian lords who love me and who would have afforded me protection.” And when the Cardinal Peter d’Ailly indignantly exclaimed, “See the impudence of the man,” and a murmur ran around the whole assembly, John of Chlum calmly arose and said, “He speaks the truth, for though I have little power compared with others in Bohemia, I could easily defend him for a year against the whole strength of both monarchs. Judge, then, how much more could they whose forces are greater and whose castles are stronger than mine.”[499]

While thus in Bohemia the upholders of the old order of things were silenced and reformation in the morals of the clergy was enforced with no gentle hand, the news spread around Christendom that the long-desired general council was to be convoked at last for the settlement of the Great Schism, the reformation of the Church from its head downwards, and the suppression of heresy. Many strivings had there been to effect this, but the policy of the Italian popes, as at Pisa, had thus far successfully eluded the dreaded decision. The pressure grew, however, until it became overwhelming. With the rival vicars of Christ each showering perdition upon the adherents of the others, the spiritual condition of the faithful was most anxious and a solution of the tremendous question was the most pressing necessity for all who believed what the Latin Church had assiduously taught for a thousand years. The politics of Europe, moreover, were hopelessly complicated by the strife, and no peace was to be expected while so dangerous an element of discord continued to exist. This was especially the case in Germany, where independent princes and prelates each selected for himself the pope of his preference, leading to bitter and intricate quarrels. Second only in importance to this was the reform of the abuses and corruption, the venality and license of the clergy, which made themselves felt everywhere, from the courts of the pontiffs to the meanest hamlet. Heresy likewise was to be met and suppressed, for though England could deal single-handed with the Lollardry within her shores, the aspect of matters in Bohemia was threatening, and Sigismund, the emperor-elect, as the heir of his childless brother Wenceslas, was deeply concerned in the pacification of the kingdom. In vain John XXIII. endeavored to have the council held in Italy, where he could control it. The nations insisted on some place where the free parliament of Christendom could convene unshackled and debate unchecked. Sigismund selected the episcopal city of Constance; John, hard pressed by Ladislas of Naples and driven from Rome, was forced to yield, and, December 9, 1413, issued his bull convoking the assemblage for the first of the following November. Not only were all prelates and religious corporations ordered to be represented, but all princes and rulers were commanded to be there in person or by deputy. Imperial letters from Sigismund, which accompanied the bull, gave assurance that the powers of State and Church would be combined to reach the result desired by all.[500]

No such assemblage had been seen in Christendom since Innocent III., two centuries before, in the plenitude of his power, had summoned the representatives of Latin Christianity to sit with him in the Lateran. The later council might boast fewer mitred heads than the earlier, but it was a far more important body. Called primarily to sit in judgment on the claims of rival popes, its mere convocation was a recognition of its supremacy over the successor of Peter. From its decision there could be no appeal, and the questions to be submitted to it were far more weighty than those which had tasked the consciences of the Lateran fathers. From every part of Europe the Church sent its best and worthiest to take counsel together in this crisis of its fate—men like Chancellor Gerson and Cardinal Peter d’Ailly of Cambrai, as earnest for reform and as sensible of existing wrongs as Wickliff or Huss themselves. The universities poured forth their ablest doctors of theology and canon law. Princes and potentates were there in person or by their representatives, and crowds of every rank in life, from the noble to the juggler. The mere magnitude of the assemblage produced a powerful effect on the minds of all contemporaries, and the wildest estimates were current of the numbers present. One chronicler assures us that there were, besides members of the council, sixty thousand five hundred persons present, of whom sixteen thousand were of gentle blood, from knights and squires up to princes. The same authority informs us that there were four hundred and fifty public women, but an official census of the council, carefully taken, reports that the number was not less than seven hundred, and even succubi were popularly said to have joined in the nefarious trade. Thus the strength and the weakness, the virtue and the vice of the fifteenth century were gathered together to find relief as best they might for the troubles which threatened to overwhelm the Church. After many doubts and much hesitation John XXIII. fulfilled his promise to be present, relying upon his stores of gold to win a triumph over his adversaries and over the council itself.[501]

It was inevitable that Huss should tempt his fate at Constance. To both Sigismund and Wenceslas it was of the utmost importance that some authoritative decision should put an end to the strife within the Bohemian Church. The reformers had always professed their desire to submit their demands to a free general council, and Huss himself had appealed to such a council from the papal sentence of excommunication. To hesitate now would be to abandon his life’s work, to admit that he dared not face the assembled piety and learning of the Church, and to confess himself a heretic. The host of adversaries in the Bohemian clergy whom his bitter invectives had inflamed and whose preferment had been forfeited through the agitation which he had led would surely be there to blacken him and to misrepresent his cause, and all would be lost if he were not present to defend it in person. They had long jeered him for not daring to present himself to the Holy See in obedience to its summons, and had pronounced blasphemous his appeal to Christ from its excommunication. To hesitate to submit his cause to the council would give his adversaries an inestimable advantage. Besides, incredible as it may seem in view of the violence of his assaults upon the doctrine which rendered the high places in the hierarchy profitable, and his persistent denial of the validity of his excommunication, he believed himself to be in full communion with the Church, that he would find the council in sympathy with his views, and that certain sermons which he had prepared would, when delivered before the assembled prelates, be efficient in bringing about the reforms which he advocated. In his singleness of mind he could not comprehend that men who had thundered as vehemently as himself against current abuses and corruptions, but who had not dared to assail the principles from which those evils sprang, would shrink back aghast from his bolder doctrinal aberrations, and would regard him as a heretic subject to the inquisitorial rule prescribing the naked alternative of recantation or the stake.[502]

When, therefore, the imperial and royal wishes for his presence at Constance were signified to him, with a promise of safe-conduct and full security, he willingly assented, and so anxious was he to be present at the opening of the council that he did not even wait for the promised safe-conduct, which reached him only after his arrival there. That some discussion took place among his friends as to the danger to be incurred there can be no doubt. Jerome of Prague, when on his trial, asserted that he had persuaded Huss to go, and Huss in one of his letters from prison alludes to the warnings which he had received. He himself was evidently not wholly without misgivings. A sealed letter left with his disciple, Master Martin, not to be opened till news should be received of his death, alludes to the persecution which he had suffered for restraining the inordinate lives of the clergy, and his expectation that it would soon reach its consummation. He makes disposition of his slender effects—his gray gown, his white gown, and sixty grossi, which comprise the whole of his worldly gear—and expresses his remorse for the time wasted before his ordination, when he used to play chess to the loss of his own temper and that of others. The unaffected simplicity and pure-heartedness of the man shine like a divine light through the brief words of his last request. A letter in the vernacular to his disciples also announces his fear that his enemies may seek in the council to take his life by false testimony. He asks the prayers of his friends that he may have eloquence to uphold the truth and constancy to endure to the last. Still, he did not wholly neglect precautions. Not only did he procure from the inquisitor Nicholas, Bishop of Nazareth, the certificate of his orthodoxy already alluded to, but he posted, August 26, throughout Prague a notice in Latin and Bohemian that he would appear before the archbishop, then holding a convocation of the Bohemian clergy, and challenged all who impugned his faith to come forward and accuse him either there or at Constance, asserting his readiness to submit to the punishment of heresy in case he was convicted, but that accusers who failed should be subjected to the talio. When John of Jessinetz, his representative, presented himself the next day at the door of the convocation, he was refused admission on the pretext that the body was deliberating on national affairs, and he was told to come back another time. In the assembly of nobles, however, Huss obtained an audience of the archbishop, who was also papal legate, and who declared that he knew of nothing to render Huss guilty except that he ought to purge himself of the excommunication. Of this a certified notarial instrument was sent to Sigismund by Huss with the statement that under the imperial safe-conduct he was ready to go to Constance to defend publicly the faith for which he was prepared, if necessary, to die.[503]