Huss set out, October 11, 1414, under the escort and protection of John and Henry of Chlum and Wenceslas of Duba, all his friends, and delegated for the purpose by Sigismund. The cavalcade consisted of more than thirty horse and two carriages. It was preceded, a day in advance, by the Bishop of Lubec, who announced that Huss was being carried in chains to Constance, and warned the people not to look at him, as he could read men’s minds. Already his name had filled all Germany, and this advertisement was an additional incentive for crowds to gather and gaze on him as he passed. His reception served to foster the fatal illusions which he nursed. Everywhere, he wrote to his friends, he was treated as an honored guest and not as an excommunicate; no interdict was proclaimed where he stopped to rest, and he held discussions with magistrates and ecclesiastics. In all cities he posted notices on the church-doors that he was on his way to Constance to defend his faith, and that any one who desired to assail it was invited to do so before the council. On reaching Nuremburg, October 19, in place of deflecting to seek King Sigismund and obtain the promised safe-conduct, he proceeded direct to Constance, while Wenceslas of Duba went to the court and brought the document to him there a few days after his arrival. It was dated October 18.[504]
On November 2 Huss reached Constance, to be greeted by a crowd of twelve thousand men assembled to look upon the dreaded reforming heretic. The council had not yet been opened. On the 10th a letter from one of the party states that as yet no ambassadors from any of the kings had arrived, and though John XXIII. was there with his cardinals, no representatives from his rivals, Gregory XII. and Benedict XIII., had presented themselves. What to do with the Bohemian Wickliffite was a problem which puzzled pope and cardinal, and after much discussion it was determined to suspend his excommunication, and permit him to frequent the churches freely, at the same time requesting him not to be present at the solemnities of the council, lest it might lead to disorder. Considerable apprehension, moreover, was felt as to a sermon to the clergy which he was understood to propose delivering. Huss himself was utterly blind as to the position which he occupied. On November 4, the day before the council was opened, he wrote to his friends at home that overtures had been made to him to settle matters quietly, but that he expected to win a great victory after a great fight. On the 16th he mentioned that when the pope was celebrating mass every one but himself had assigned to him some function in the ceremony, and he characterized the omission as neglect, evidently considering that his position entitled him to recognition and distinction.[505]
He knew that his opponents had not been idle, but he did not fear them. He had been preceded in Constance by two of his bitterest enemies—Michael of Deutschbrod, known as de Causis, and Wenceslas Tiem, Dean of Passau—and these, in a few days, were reinforced by a more formidable antagonist, Stephen Palecz, fully equipped with most dangerous extracts from Huss’s writings. Wenceslas Tiem had been the bearer to Prague of the bull offering indulgences for the crusade against Ladislas of Naples, and his profitable trade had been broken up by Huss. Michael de Causis had been priest of the Church of St. Adalbert in the Neustadt of Prague; he had gained the confidence of King Wenceslas by pretending that he could render profitable some abandoned gold-mines near Iglau, and the king had intrusted him with a considerable sum of money for the purpose. After working a few days at the mines he decamped to Rome with the funds, which enabled him to purchase a commission as papal procurator “de causis fidei,” whence his appellation. He had already, in 1412, sent to Rome charges against Huss, which the latter pronounced to be lies. The day after Huss’s arrival in Constance, Michael posted on the church-doors that he would accuse him to the council as an excommunicate and suspect of heresy, but Huss treated the matter very lightly, and adopted the advice of his friends to take no notice of it until the arrival of Sigismund, who was not expected until Christmas. Meanwhile Huss himself gave ample cause for adverse comment. So perfect was his sense of innocence and security that he could not be content with prudent obscurity. Almost immediately on his arrival he began to celebrate mass in his lodgings. This attracted the people in crowds, and was necessarily a cause of scandal. Otto, Bishop of Constance, sent John Tenger, his vicar, and Conrad Helye, his official, to request Huss to cease, as he had long been under papal excommunication; but he refused, saying that he did not consider himself excommunicated, and that he would celebrate mass as often as he pleased. Although thus defied, the bishop, to avoid disturbance, contented himself with forbidding the people from attendance. Soon after this Huss placed himself, with some provisions, in a covered forage-wagon which was to be sent for hay. When the knights who were responsible for him could not find him, Henry of Lastenbock (Chlum) rushed to the burgomaster and demanded that he be searched for. The city was in an uproar; the gates were closed, horse and foot were sent in every direction to find him, and the circumstance was easily magnified into an attempt to escape.[506]
The sturdy Bohemian was evidently a troublesome subject to deal with. In the eyes of the faithful it was quite scandal enough to see at liberty a priest who had openly defied a papal excommunication, and had defended the recognized errors of Wickliff; there was, moreover, every probability that he would carry out his audacious design of preaching to the clergy a sermon in which the vices of the papal court and the shortcomings of the whole ecclesiastical body would be pitilessly and eloquently exposed, and it would be proved from Scripture that the whole system had no warrant in the law of Christ. The path which the pope and his cardinals had to tread in managing the council was likely to be tortuous and thorny enough without this additional element of disturbance and turbulence. It was far safer to disarm him at once, to anticipate his attacks by treating him legally as one accused of heresy and awaiting trial. Stephen Palecz and Michael de Causis, and a crowd of other Bohemian doctors and priests whom Huss had roughly handled, had already furnished ample material for his indictment, and in the inquisitorial process the first step was to make sure that the accused should not escape. Even had the case been one in which bail could be taken, Huss had the whole kingdom of Bohemia at his back; bail to any amount would be furnished and forfeited, and, once safe at home, he would have laughed to scorn a condemnation for contumacy. Such might reasonably be the arguments of the cardinals when the resolve was taken to arrest him, but the execution of the design was either inexcusably insidious, or the manifestation of irresolution which reached its conclusion only by degrees. On November 28 the cardinals, in consistory with the pope, sent to Huss’s lodgings the Bishops of Augsburg and Trent, with Henry of Ulm, the burgomaster of Constance, to summon him at once before them to defend his faith. The envoys greeted him kindly, and though both he and John of Chlum protested that the summons was a violation of the safe-conduct, he immediately consented to go, although he said he had come to Constance to appear openly in the council, and not secretly before the cardinals. He added that he could not be imprisoned because he had a safe-conduct. John of Chlum and some friends accompanied him to the palace occupied by the pope. When the cardinals told him he was accused of disseminating many heresies, he replied that he would rather die than be convicted of a single one; he had come with alacrity to Constance, and if he was found in error he would willingly abjure. To this the cardinals said, “You have answered well.” No further examination was had, but John XXIII., whose policy was to embroil the council with Sigismund, took occasion to ask John of Chlum whether Huss had an imperial safe-conduct, to which Chlum replied, “Holy father, you know that he has.” Again the pope asked the question and received the same answer, but none of the cardinals requested to see the document. When the morning session was over, guards were placed over Huss and John of Chlum. The weary afternoon wore away in suspense, while the cardinals held another session in which Stephen Palecz and Michael de Causis were busy. The tedium of detention was only broken by a simple-looking Franciscan, who accosted Huss and asked for instruction on the subject of transubstantiation, and, on being satisfactorily answered, inquired about the union of humanity and divinity in Christ. Huss recognized that he was no simple inquirer, for he had asked the most difficult question in theology; he declined further colloquy, and on the retiring of the friar was informed by the guards that he was Master Didaco, renowned as the subtlest theologian of Lombardy. About nightfall John of Chlum was allowed to depart, while Huss was detained, and soon after Stephen and Michael came exultingly and told him that he was now in their power, and should not escape till he had paid the last penny. He was taken under guard to the house of the precentor of the cathedral, in charge of the Bishop of Lausanne, regent of the apostolic chamber, and after eight days was transferred to the Dominican convent on the Rhine. Here he was confined in a cell adjoining the latrines, where a fever soon caused his life to be despaired of. His sudden death would have been a most untoward event, and the pope sent his own physicians to restore him. It was in vain that his friends in Prague procured from Archbishop Conrad a declaration affirming that he had never found Huss to vary from the faith in a single word. His fate had already been virtually decided.[507]
John of Chlum’s first thought on regaining his liberty was to hasten to the pope and to expostulate with him. When the safe-conduct had reached Constance, Chlum had at once exhibited it to John XXIII., who is reported to have declared, on reading it, that if his own brother had been slain by Huss the latter should be safe while in Constance so far as he was concerned. Now he disclaimed all responsibility and threw the blame on the cardinals.[508] This question as to the safe-conduct and its violation has been the subject of so warm a discussion, and it illustrates so completely a phase of the relations between the Church and heretics, that its brief consideration here is not out of place.
The imperial safe-conduct issued to Huss was in the ordinary form, without limitation or condition. It was addressed to all the princes and subjects of the empire, ecclesiastical and secular, and to all nobles and magistrates and officials, informing them that Huss was taken into the protection of the king and of the empire, and ordering that he be permitted to pass, remain, and return without impediment, and that all help which he might require should be extended to him. Thus it was not a simple viaticum for protection during the journey from Bohemia, and it was not so regarded by any one. That it was intended as a safeguard during the council and the return home is shown by its issue, October 18, after Huss’s departure from Prague, and its reaching him in Constance after his arrival there. That his imprisonment was at once looked upon as a gross violation of the imperial pledge is seen in the protests which John of Chlum affixed to the church doors on December 15, probably as soon as Sigismund could be heard from, and again on the 24th, when the king was near Constance and was to arrive the next day. This paper recited that Huss had come under the imperial protection and safe-conduct to answer in public audience all who might question his faith. That, in the absence of Sigismund, who would not have permitted it, and in contempt of his safe-conduct, Huss had been thrown into prison. That the imperial ambassadors had vainly demanded his release, and that when Sigismund comes he should plainly make known to all men his grief and indignation at this violation of the imperial pledge.[509]
The suggestion that the safe-conduct was a mere passport designedly insufficient to protect Huss is a recent discovery which would not have been left to the ingenuity of modern times if it could have been alleged during the warm debate which raged over the question at Constance. That nobody thought of it then is sufficient proof that such an excuse is untenable. Such an assertion would have been all-sufficient when, May 13, 1415, the Bohemians in Constance presented a memorial to the council in which they referred to the treatment of Huss as a violation of the safe-conduct. Yet in its answer the council had no thought of making such an allegation, while at the same time Sigismund’s services in the quarrel with John XXIII. were too recent, and still too necessary, for the good fathers to inflict on him the disgrace of publicly declaring that they had righteously overruled his attempt to protect a heretic. They therefore had recourse to a lie manufactured for the occasion, by asserting, in spite of the notorious existence of the safe-conduct in Constance at the time of Huss’s arrest, that witnesses worthy of credit had proved that it had not been procured until fifteen days after that occurrence, and therefore that no public faith had been violated in the proceedings. This argument, which Sigismund himself asserted to be false in the public session of June 7, is an admission that the public faith was violated. A single fact such as this outweighs all the special pleadings of modern apologists.[510]
Sigismund at first fully justified the confidence reposed in him by Huss and John of Chlum. He made no attempt to say that his letters were not intended to protect Huss from prosecution, but treated them as having been wrongfully violated. As soon as he had heard of the arrest he had ordered Huss’s release with a threat to break open the prisons in case of refusal. On his arrival at Constance, on Christmas Day, his indignation was boundless and there was consequently great excitement. He protested that he would leave Constance, and, in fact, made a show of doing so; he even threatened to withdraw the imperial protection from the council, but was plainly told by the cardinals that they would themselves break it up unless he yielded. The hopes of Christendom had been raised to too high a pitch as to the results expected from the assemblage for him to venture on such a risk. Naturally faithless, his insistence was a matter of pride, and self-interest easily won the day. We have better materials for estimating his character than that of any other prince of the century, and from first to last we find fully justified the opinion of his contemporaries that he was wholly unworthy of trust. During the long negotiations between the Council of Basle and the Hussites, in which he took part, we see him endeavoring impartially to deceive both sides, making solemn engagements with no intention of fulfilling them, and regarded by all parties as utterly devoid of honor. Unfortunate in war and chronically impecunious, he was ever ready to adopt any temporary expedient to evade a difficulty, and to sacrifice his plighted word to obtain an advantage.[511]
It cost him little, therefore, to withdraw from the assertion of his own honor, and the matter was so speedily arranged that when on January 1, 1415, the council formally asked him that free course of justice be allowed in the case of Huss, in spite of the pretext of safe-conduct, he at once issued a decree declaring the council free in all matters of faith and capable of proceeding against all who were defamed for heresy; moreover, he pledged himself to set at naught the threats which were freely uttered of defending Huss at all hazards. Yet the discussion still continued during January, and the pressure on him from Bohemia was so strong that for a while he still fluctuated irresolutely, but, April 8, he formally revoked all letters of safe-conduct. Huss himself had no hesitation in declaring that he had been betrayed and that Sigismund had promised his safe return. His friends took the same position. In February an assembly of the magnates of Bohemia and Moravia, gathered at Mezeritz, sent an address to Sigismund pointing out in language more forcible than courtly the disgrace and humiliation attendant upon the disregard of the imperial faith. Again, in May, after the flight of John XXIII. had inspired new hopes as to the action of the council, two similar assemblages held at Brünn and Prague approached him with even stronger representations. It was all in vain. Sigismund had finally taken his position, and he redeemed his hesitation with great show of zeal. When, on June 7, Huss had his second hearing before the council, Sigismund thanked the prelates for their consideration for him as shown in their leniency to Huss, whom he sternly advised to submit, for he could look for no human help; “We will never protect you in your errors and pertinacity. Rather, indeed, than do so we will prepare the fire for you with our own hands.” In the final session of July 6, Huss declared, “I came freely to the council under the public faith promised by the emperor, here present, that I should be free from all constraint, to bear witness to my innocence and to answer for my faith to all who call it in question.” With this he fixed his eyes on Sigismund, who blushed deeply. The impression made in Bohemia by Sigismund’s calculated faithlessness was ineffaceable. When, in 1433, the legates of the Council of Basle sought to throw the responsibility of the result at Constance on the false witnesses, John Rokyzana pertinently asked them how, if the council was inspired by the Holy Ghost, it could have been misled by perjurers, and he alluded to the violation of the safe-conduct in terms showing that it had been neither forgotten nor forgiven. This had been practically manifested a year earlier, in September, 1432, when the Council of Basle was eager to have Hussite deputies come to it, and the Bohemians would not stir without the most exaggerated provisions to guarantee their safety. Three safe-conducts had been furnished them—one from Sigismund, one from the council, and one from the city of Eger, but they still required others, from the city of Basle, the Margrave of Brandenburg, and the Counts Palatine Dukes of Bavaria, one of whom was the protector of the council. These were very different from that which had satisfied the simplicity of Huss. Thus Frederic of Brandenburg and John of Bavaria pledged themselves to furnish sufficient troops to conduct the Bohemians safely to Basle, to guard them while there, and to bring them back to any designated place in Bohemia. The princes, moreover, guaranteed the safe-conducts of Sigismund and the council, and agreed to forfeit honors and lands, to be entered upon and taken in possession by the Bohemians in case of any unredressed violation of the pledge. These precautions were superfluous, for the envoys had at their back the terrible Bohemian levies which could enforce respect for plighted faith; but when reconciliation had taken place and Sigismund was seated on the throne of his fathers, his guarantees were again regarded as valueless. In April, 1437, he urged John Rokyzana to visit the council, and on the latter alleging fear that he might be treated as was Huss at Constance, the emperor was greatly moved and exclaimed, “Do you think that for you or for this city I would do aught against mine honor? I have given a safe-conduct and so also has the council;” but Rokyzana was not to be tempted by this appeal to the forfeited imperial honor, and steadfastly refused to go.[512]
The explanation of the controversy over the violation of the safe-conduct is perfectly simple. Germany and especially Bohemia knew so little about the Inquisition and the systematic persecution of heresy that surprise and indignation were excited by the application to the case of Huss of the recognized principles of the canon law. The council could not have done otherwise than it did without surrendering those principles. To allow a heresiarch who had become conspicuous to all Christendom, like Huss, to evade the punishment due to his crimes on so flimsy a pretext as that of his having confided himself to them on a promise of safety to which the public faith was pledged, would have seemed to the most conscientious jurists of the council the most absurd of solecisms. In point of fact, the best men who were there—the Gersons, the Peter d’Aillys, the Zabarellas—were as unflinching as the worst creatures of the curia. It had been, as we have seen, too long a principle of inquisitorial practice that the heretic had no rights, and that the man accused of heresy by sufficient witnesses was to be treated as a heretic until he could clear himself, for any one to hesitate about putting it in force in this case. When Sigismund complained that he was dishonored by the imprisonment of Huss, the canonists of the council promptly assured him, in the words of a contemporary orthodox burgher of Constance, that “it could not and might not be in any law that a heretic could enjoy a safe-conduct,” and though this was prejudging the case, we have seen how customary that was in all inquisitorial trials. These words Sigismund himself virtually repeated in his address to Huss in the session of June 7: “Many say that we cannot, under the law, protect a heretic or one suspect of heresy.” When Huss’s execution aroused the wildest indignation throughout Bohemia, expressed to the council in missives of scant courtesy, the council asserted its position in a decree formally adopted September 23, 1415, that no safe-conduct from any secular potentate could work prejudice to the Catholic faith, or could prevent any competent tribunal from trying, judging, and condemning a heretic or suspected heretic, even though, if trusting to the safe-conduct, he had come to the place of judgment and would not have come without it. So thoroughly did the council cause this to be recognized that, in 1432, in the Convention of Eger, stipulating the bases of negotiation between the Hussites and the Council of Basle, it was expressly agreed that no canons or decretals should be alleged to derogate, infringe, or annul the safe-conducts under which the Bohemian envoys were to appear before the council.[513]