The trial of Huss has been the subject of much indignant eloquence. It is the most conspicuous instance of an inquisitorial process on record, and to those unacquainted with the system of procedure which had grown up in the development of the Holy Office, its practical denial of justice has seemed a wilful perversity on the part of the council, while the sublimely pathetic figure of the sufferer has necessarily awakened the warmest sympathy. Yet, in fact, the only deviations of the council from the ordinary course of such affairs were special marks of lenity towards the accused. He was not subjected to the torture, as in the customary practice in such cases he should have been, and, at the instance of Sigismund, he was thrice permitted to appear before the whole body and defend himself in public session. When, therefore, we see how inevitable was his condemnation, how he could have saved himself only at the cost of burdening his soul with perjury and converting his remaining years into a living lie, we obtain a measure of the infamy of the system, and can in some degree estimate the innumerable wrongs inflicted on countless thousands of obscure and forgotten victims. In this aspect the trial is worthy of examination, for though it presents no novel points of procedure, except the concessions made to Huss, it affords an instructive example of the manner in which the inquisitorial process described in preceding chapters was practically applied.
The case against Huss was rendered stronger, almost at the outset, by the action of his friends at home. It must have been shortly after his arrival in Constance that Jacobel of Mies, who had succeeded Michael de Causis in the Church of St. Adalbert, commenced to administer communion in both elements to the laity, and thus gave rise to the most distinguishing and obstinate feature of Bohemian heresy. Zeal for the Eucharist had long been a marked peculiarity of religious devotion in Bohemia. The synod of 1390 promised an indulgence of forty days to all who bent the knee on the elevation of the host; and the frequent partaking of the sacrament was repeatedly and strenuously urged by those who have been classed as the precursors of Huss. Mathias of Janow had even ventured to recommend that the cup should be restored to the laity, but the question had never reappeared during the stormy years in which Huss and his friends had been battling for the Wickliffite doctrines. According to Æneas Sylvius, a certain Peter of Dresden, infected with Waldensian errors, had left Prague with the other Germans in 1409, but was driven from home on account of his heresy and took refuge again in Prague, where he supported himself as a teacher of children. He it was who suggested to Jacobel the return to the ancient practice of the Church; the heretics, delighted to find a question in which they were clearly in the right, eagerly embraced it. The custom spread to the churches of St. Michael, St. Martin, the Bethlehem Chapel, and elsewhere, in spite of the opposition of King Wenceslas and Archbishop Conrad, who vainly threatened secular punishments and ecclesiastical interdicts. Huss was speedily communicated with. He approved of the custom, as indeed he could not well help doing, and his tract in its favor, when conveyed to the disciples, gave a fresh impetus to the movement. It was in vain that on June 15, 1415, the council condemned the use of the cup by the laity, pronounced heretics all priests so administering the sacrament, ordered them to be handed over to the secular arm, and commanded all prelates and inquisitors to prosecute as heretics those who denied the propriety of communion in one element. For more than a century the Utraquists, or Calixtins, as they called themselves, were the ruling party in Bohemia. The consciousness of being in the wrong and of having to justify itself by all manner of trivial excuses rendered the council additionally eager to crush the insubordination of which Huss was the representative. [514]
We have seen that Huss was arrested November 28, 1414. Michael de Causis, Stephen Palecz, and others of his enemies had presented formal articles of accusation against him. These, drawn up in the name of Michael, accused him of maintaining the remanence of the substance in the Eucharist after consecration, of asserting the vitiation of the sacraments in the hands of sinful priests and denying the power of the keys under the same conditions, of holding that the Church should have no temporal possessions, of disregarding excommunication, of granting the cup to the laity, of defending the forty-five condemned articles of Wickliff, of exciting the people against the clergy, so that if he were allowed to return to Prague there would be a persecution such as had not been seen since the days of Constantine, and of other errors and offences. This was more than sufficient to justify his trial, and the process was commenced without delay by the appointment, December 1, of commissioners to examine him. These commissioners were, in fact, inquisitors, and the council at large served as the assembly of experts in which, as it will be remembered, final assent was given to the judgment. One of the commissioners at least, Bernardo, Bishop of Città di Castello, was already familiar with the matter, for only the year before, as papal nuncio in Poland, he had assisted in driving away Jerome of Prague. In addition to the articles of Michael de Causis there was a kind of indictment against Huss presented to the commissioners by the procurators and promoters of the council, reciting the troubles at Prague, his excommunication, and his teaching of Wickliffite heresies.[515]
At first the proceedings were pushed with a vigor which seemed to promise a speedy termination of the case. As soon as Huss recovered from his first sickness there was submitted to him a series of forty-two errors extracted from his writings by Palecz. To these he replied seriatim in writing, explaining the false constructions which he asserted had been placed on some passages, defending some, and limiting and conditioning others. As he was denied the use of books, even of the treatises which were the source of the charges, these answers manifest a wonderful retentiveness of memory and quickness and clearness of intellect. Sometimes he was visited in his prison by the commissioners and personally interrogated. A Carthusian, writing from Constance, May 19, relates that the day before he had been present at such an examination and had never seen so bold and audacious a scoundrel or one who could so cautiously conceal the truth. On the other hand, we have his own account of one of these interviews. The commissioners were accompanied by Michael and Stephen to prompt them. Each article was read to him and he was asked if such was his belief; he replied, explaining the sense in which he held it. Then he would be asked if he would defend it, and he would answer no, but that he would stand to the decision of the council. Nothing could well seem more submissive or more orthodox, and under any other system of jurisprudence conviction might well appear impossible. Heresy, however, as we have seen, was a crime; once committed, even through ignorance, a simple return to the Church was not enough; belief in the errors must be admitted and then abjured, before the criminal could be considered as penitent and entitled to the substitution of perpetual imprisonment for the death-penalty. Huss was condemned on heresies which he had not held rather than those which he had taught.[516]
Thousands of miserable wretches had been convicted on a tithe of the evidence now brought against him. Stephen Palecz, a man of the highest repute, swore before the commissioners that since the birth of Christ there had been no more dangerous heretics than Wickliff and Huss, and that all who customarily attended the sermons of the latter believed in the remanence of the substance of bread in the Eucharist. What Palecz testified there were scores of others to substantiate and amplify. Witnesses were there in abundance to prove that he believed in the remanence of the bread, that the sacraments were vitiated in the hands of sinful priests, that indulgences were of no avail, that the Church of Rome was the synagogue of Satan, that heresy was to be overcome by disputation and not by force, that a papal excommunication was to be disregarded. Many of these errors he indignantly denied having entertained, but it was in vain. In vain he wrote out in prison, as early as March 5, 1415, his tract, “De Sacramento Corporis et Sanguinis,” in which he declared that full transubstantiation took place; that God worked the miracle irrespective of the merits of the celebrant; that the body and blood of Christ were both in the bread and in the wine, and that he had taught this doctrine since 1401, before he was a priest. In vain, shortly before his execution, his devotion burst forth in a hymn in which he exclaimed:
“O quam sanctus panis iste,
Tu es solus Jesu Christe,
Caro, cibus, sacramentum,
Quo non majus est inventum!”
In vain during his public audience of June 8 he disputed earnestly in favor of the same belief. The witnesses swore to the contrary. He had no right to call rebutting testimony, and could only appeal to God and his conscience. He was proved a heretic who must confess and abjure or be burned.[517]
His only possible line of defence, as has been shown above (Vol. I. p. 446) would have lain in disabling the witnesses for mortal enmity—for enmity such as would lead them to seek his life—and even this would not have been available against the errors which the commissioners had extracted, falsely, as he asserted, from his writings. As regards the witnesses, the commissioners made an unusual concession to him when, during his sickness in December, some fifteen of them were taken to his cell that he might see them sworn. Some of them, it is said, declared that they knew nothing; others were bitterly hostile to him. To this extent he knew some of the names, and others he was acquainted with because they were attached to depositions taken in advance at Prague for Michael de Causis, which by some means had fallen into the hands of Huss before he started for Constance. Some of these names, probably on this account, were attached to the article on the subject of remanence presented in the hearing of June 7, but in the final sentence no names are mentioned; the witnesses to each article are designated simply by titles, such as a canon of Prague, a priest of Litomysl, a master of arts, a doctor of theology, etc., and when Huss asked the name of one of them it was refused. This was strictly in accordance with rule.[518]
Yet the hostility of those who testified against him was notorious. At the place of execution he declared that he was convicted of errors which he did not entertain, on the evidence of false witnesses. The Bohemians in Constance, in their memorial of May 31, 1415, to the council, declared that the testimony against him was given by those who were his mortal enemies. At one time he or his friends thought of disabling them on this account, but when he asked the commissioners to permit him to employ an advocate who could take the necessary exceptions to the evidence, although they at first assented they finally refused, saying that it was against the law for any one to defend a suspected heretic. This, as we have seen, was strictly true, and if the maintenance of the rule may seem harsh, we must remember on the other hand that the friends of Huss were allowed unexampled liberty in working in his behalf. Their repeated memorials to the council and their efforts with Sigismund made them guilty of the crime of fautorship, and if there had been any disposition to enforce the law they could have been reduced to instant silence and have been grievously punished.[519]
It had not taken long to secure evidence more than ample for Huss’s conviction, and if his burning had been the object desired it might have been speedily accomplished. We have seen, however, how much the Inquisition preferred a penitent convert to a cremated heretic, and in this case, perhaps more than in any other on record, confession and submission were supremely desirable. Huss, as a self-confessed heresiarch, would be deprived of all importance, and his disciples might be expected to follow his example: as a martyr, there was no predicting whether the result would be terror or exasperation. The milder customary methods of the Inquisition were therefore brought to bear to break down his stubborn obstinacy by procrastination, solitude, and despair. Had his judges desired to be harsh they could have had recourse to torture, which was the ordinary mode of dealing with similar cases. In this they would have been fully justified by law and custom. The less violent but equally efficient device of prolonged starvation could likewise have been employed, but was mercifully forborne. Yet the slower but not less wearing torture of indefinite imprisonment was not spared him. He was kept in the Dominican convent until March 24. Although his petition to be allowed to see his friends was refused, they were permitted to furnish him with writing materials, and he employed his enforced leisure in composing a number of tracts which, written without the aid of books, show his extensive and accurate acquaintance with Scripture and the Fathers. His sweet temper won the good-will of all who were brought in contact with him, and he gratefully alludes to the kindness with which he was treated both by his guards and by the clerks of the papal chamber. The winning nature of the man, as well as the gold of his friends, probably explains the correspondence which at this period he was able to maintain with them, though all communication with him was forbidden. Letters were conveyed back and forth clandestinely, sometimes carried in food, in spite of the vigilance of his enemies. Michael de Causis hovered around the gate, saying, “By the grace of God we shall burn that heretic who has cost me so many florins,” and procuring that the wives of the guards, whom he suspected as letter-carriers, should be excluded. All this ceased when the quarrel between pope and council culminated. On March 20 John XXIII. secretly fled from Constance, when the guards placed over Huss delivered the keys to Sigismund and followed their master. The council then handed Huss over to the custody of the Bishop of Constance, who carried him in chains by night to the castle of Gottlieben, some miles from the city across the Rhine. His friends had requested that he should have a more airy prison, and the request was more than granted, for he was now confined in a room at the top of a tall tower. Though his feet were fettered he was able to move about during the day, but at night his arm was chained to the wall. As escape was impossible, the confinement was evidently intended to be punitive. Here he was completely isolated from all intercourse with his fellow-beings and left to his own dreary introspection. Disease added to the harshness of his prison. From the foul Dominican cell to the windy turret-room of Gottlieben, he was exposed to every variety of unwholesome conditions. Stone, an affection hitherto unknown to him, tormented him greatly. Toothache and headache combined to increase his sufferings. On one occasion a severe attack of fever, accompanied by excessive vomiting, so prostrated him that his guards carried him out of his cell thinking him about to die. Yet throughout all his letters from prison the beautiful patience of the man shines forth. For the enemies who were pursuing him to the death there is only forgiveness; for the trials with which God has seen fit to test his servant there is only submission. He overflows with gratitude for the steadfast affection of his friends, and sends touching requests of remembrance to them all; he teaches charity and gently points out the way to moral and spiritual improvement. There is neither the pride of martyrdom nor the desire for retribution; all is pious resignation and love and humility. Since Christ, no man has left behind him a more affecting example of the true Christian spirit than John Huss, while fearlessly awaiting the time when he should suffer for what he believed to be truth. He was one of the chosen few who exalt and glorify humanity. Yet he was but human, and the final victory was not won without the agony of self-conquest; while at times he comforted himself with dreams that God would not suffer him to perish, but that like Daniel and Jonah and Susannah he would be rescued when all help seemed vain.[520]