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

by Henry Charles Lea

In the intellectual and spiritual excitement which stirred Bohemia to the depths, it was impossible that all earnest souls should thus pause on the threshold. The old Waldensian heretics, who had hailed the progress of Wickliffite and Hussite doctrines, would naturally seek to prevent the arrested development of the Calixtins from prevailing, and, as we have seen, there were plenty of zealots who were ready to throw aside all the theology of sacerdotalism. Under the energetic leadership of Ziska, Coranda, Nicholas of Pilgram, and other resolute men, the progressive elements were rapidly moulded into a powerful party, which after sloughing off impracticable enthusiasts presented itself with a definite creed and purpose, and became known as the Taborites. Of late years there has been an active controversy as to whether the Waldenses were the teachers or the disciples of the Taborites. Without denying that the fearless vigor of the latter lent added strength to the development of the former, I cannot but think that the secret Waldensianism of Bohemia had much to do both with the revolt of Huss and with the carrying out of that revolt to its logical consequences. Certain it is that there were close and friendly relations between Waldensian and Taborite, while the very name of the former was regarded by all other Bohemians as a term of reproach—in fact there was so much in common between Wickliffite and Waldensian doctrine that this could scarce be otherwise. I have already alluded to the contributions made to the Hussites in 1432 by the Waldensian churches of Dauphiné, and to the virtual coalescence of Hussitism and Waldensianism throughout Germany. When Procopius the Great, in 1433, was taking leave of the Council of Basle, he had the hardihood to inject into his address a good word for the Waldenses, saying that he had heard them well spoken of for chastity, modesty, and similar virtues. Persecution in 1430 so thinned them out that they had neither bishop nor priests; Nicholas of Pilgram, the Taborite bishop, had enjoyed consecration in the Roman Church, and thus had the right to transmit the apostolic succession, and he, in 1433, in Prague consecrated for the Waldenses as bishops two of their number, Frederic the German, and John the Italian. When, in 1451, Æneas Sylvius passed a night in Mount Tabor, and wrote a picturesque description of what he observed, he states that while all heresies had a refuge there, the Waldenses were held in chief honor as the vicars of Christ and enemies of the Holy See.[564]

When the Calixtins, in 1421, defined their position, the Taborites did the same. Various special Waldensian errors were attracting attention and obtaining currency among the people—the denial of purgatory, the vitiation of the sacrament in sinful hands, the absolute rejection of the death-punishment and of the oath—showing the influences at work. The position assumed by the Taborites was so strikingly similar to the beliefs ascribed in 1395 to the Waldenses in Austria by the Celestinian inquisitor, Peter, that it is impossible not to recognize the connection between them. While the Taborites accepted the four articles of the Calixtins they reduced the Church to a state of the utmost apostolic simplicity. Tradition was wholly thrown aside; all images were to be burned; there was no outward sign of distinction between layman and priest, the latter wearing beards, rejecting the tonsure, and using ordinary garments; all priests, moreover, were bishops, and could perform the rite of consecration; they baptized in running water, without the chrism, celebrated mass anywhere, reciting the simple words of consecration and the Paternoster in a loud voice and in the vernacular, administering the body in fragments of bread and the blood in any vessel which might be handy; all consecrations of sacred vessels, oil, and water was forbidden; purgatory, which Huss had accepted, was denied, and to manifest their contempt for the suffrages of the saints they ate more than usual on fast-days and saints’’-days; auricular confession was derided—for venial sins confession to God sufficed, for mortal ones, public confession before the brethren, when the priest would assign a penalty commensurate with the offence. At the same time the rude and uncultured vigor of the Taborites led them to regard all human learning as a snare. Those who studied the liberal arts were regarded as heathen and as sinning against the Gospel, and all writings of the doctors, save what were expressly contained in the Bible, were to be destroyed.[565]

What were their views with respect to the Lord’s Supper cannot be stated with precision. Laurence of Brezowa, a Calixtin bitterly hostile to them, says that they consecrated the elements in a loud voice and in the vulgar tongue, that the people might be assured that they were receiving the real body and the real blood, which infers belief in transubstantiation. In 1431 Procopius the Great and other leaders of the Taborites issued a proclamation defining their position, in which they asserted their disbelief in purgatory, in the intercessory power of the Virgin and saints, in masses for the dead, in absolution through indulgences, etc., but said nothing against transubstantiation. When, in 1436, the legates of the Council of Basle complained of the non-observance of the Compactata, one of their grievances was that Bohemia still sheltered Wickliffites who believed in the remanence of the substance of the bread, but they said nothing about the existence of any worse form of belief. On the other hand, the Taborite Bishop, Nicholas of Pilgram, strongly asserted that Christ was only present spiritually, that no veneration was due to the consecrated elements, and that there was less idolatry in those who of old adored moles and bats and snakes than in Christians who worshipped the host, for those things at least had life. During the negotiations, in January, 1433, the legates of the council presented a series of twenty-eight articles, attributed to the Bohemians, and asked for definite answers, yea or nay. One of these was a denial of transubstantiation, and the Bohemians could never be induced to make the desired reply. Peter Chelcicky reproached the Taborites with concealing their belief on the subject, but it is probable that there was no absolute accord among them. The Chiliast leaven doubtless spread the denial of transubstantiation; others probably adopted the Wickliffite doctrine of remanence; others again may have preserved the orthodox faith, and all resented the appellation of Pikards, with which the Bohemians designated those who disbelieved in the absolute conversion of the elements. Certain it is that the question did not come up with any prominence in the negotiations with the Council of Basle; and in the description which Æneas Sylvius gives, in 1451, of the Taborites of Mount Tabor he simply says that some of them are so foolish that they hold the doctrine of Berenger, that the body of Christ is only figuratively in the sacrament.[566]

It was impossible that harmony could be preserved between Taborite and Calixtin when there was so marked a divergence of religious conviction. They quarrelled and held conferences and persecuted each other, but they presented a united front to the levies of crusaders which Europe repeatedly sent against them, and Sigismund’s hope of reconquering the throne of his fathers grew more and more remote. The death of Ziska, in 1424, made little difference, save that his immediate followers organized themselves into a separate party under the name of Orphans, but continued in all things to co-operate with the Taborites. He was succeeded in the leadership by the warrior-priest Procopius Rasa, or the Great, whose military skill continued to hold banded Europe at bay. Hussitism, moreover, was spreading into the neighboring lands, especially to the south and east, requiring, as we shall see hereafter, the strenuous efforts of the Inquisition to eradicate it from Hungary and the Danubian provinces. In Poland its missionary efforts called forth an edict from King Ladislas V., April 6, 1424, ordering all his subjects to join in exterminating heretics; every Pole who returned from a sojourn in Bohemia was subjected to examination by the inquisitors or episcopal officials, and all who should not return by June 1 were declared heretics, their estates confiscated, and their children subjected to the customary disabilities.[567] The Church was completely baffled. It had triumphed over a similar revolt in Languedoc, and had shown the world, in characters of blood and fire, how it utilized its triumphs. It now had a different problem to solve. Force having failed, it was obliged to discover some formula of reconciliation which should not too nearly peril its claim to infallibility.

To do it justice, it did not yield without compulsion. Tired of standing on the defensive against assaults whose repetition seemed endless, Procopius, in 1427, adopted the policy of aggression. He would win peace by making the coterminous states feel the miseries of war, and in a series of relentlessly destructive raids, continued till 1432, he carried desolation into all the surrounding provinces. Thus in a foray of 1429, which cut a swath through Franconia, Saxony, and the Vogtland, over a hundred castles and fortified towns were captured, and an immense booty was carried back to Bohemia. Misnia, Lusatia, Silesia, Bavaria, Austria, and Hungary in turn felt the weight of the Hussite sword, while the prompt retirement of the invaders in every case showed that retaliation and not conquest was their object. It was no wonder that a general cry for peace went up among those who bore the brunt of the effort to reassert the papal supremacy.[568]

Meanwhile the Church was perplexed with another yet more vexatious question. Christendom never ceased to clamor for the reform of which it had been cheated at Constance. Skilful procrastination had wearied the reforming fathers, and they had consented, in 1418, to the dissolution of the council, hoping that the promises made in the election of Martin V. would be fulfilled. They took the precaution, however, to provide for an endless series of councils, which might be expected to resume and complete their unfinished work, and the plan which they laid out shows how deep-seated was the distrust entertained of the papacy. Another general council was ordered to be held in five years, then one in seven years thereafter, and finally a perpetual succession at intervals of ten years, with careful provisions to nullify the expected evasions of the popes.[569]

As far as relates to Germany, Martin endeavored to perform the two duties for which he had been elected—the suppression of heresy and the reformation of the Church—by sending, in 1422, Cardinal Branda thither as legate. To accomplish the former object the legate was directed to preach another crusade, that of 1421 having ended so disastrously. As regards the latter feature of his mission, the papal commission and the decree issued in conformity with it by Branda describe the vices of the German clergy in terms quite as severe as those employed by Huss and his followers, and furnish a complete justification of the Bohemian revolt. The only wonder is that pope or kaiser could expect the populations to rest satisfied with the ministrations of men who assumed to be gifted with supernatural power and to speak in the name of the Redeemer, while steeped to the lips in every form of greed, uncleanness, and lust. The constitution which Branda issued to cure these evils only prescribed a repetition of remedies which had vainly been applied for centuries. It simply attacked the symptoms and not the cause of the disease, and it consequently remained inoperative.[570]

Five years had elapsed since the ending of the Council of Constance. Nothing had been accomplished to suppress heresy or reform the Church, and when in due time the Council of Siena assembled, in 1423, it remained to be seen whether the unfinished work of Constance could be completed. Under the presidency of four papal legates it was held that the attendance of prelates and princes was too small to permit the work of reformation to be undertaken, but it was sufficient to justify the council in confirming the promises made by Martin of forgiveness of sins for all who should assist in exterminating the heretics. All Christian princes were summoned to lend their aid in the good work without delay if they wished to escape divine vengeance and the penalties provided by law. All commerce of every kind with the heretics was forbidden, especially in victuals, cloth, arms, gunpowder, and lead; every one trading with them, or any prince permitting communication with them over his lands was pronounced subject to the punishments decreed against heresy. Bohemia was to be isolated and starved into submission by a material blockade enforced by spiritual censures.[571]

As for reformation, it was found that all efforts seriously to consider it were skilfully blocked by the legates. This is not surprising, as the Church was to be reformed in its head as well as in its members, and the head was recognized as the chief source of infection. A project presented by the Gallican deputies described in indignant bitterness the abuses of the curia—the sale of preferments and dignities to the highest bidder, irrespective of fitness, with the consequent destruction of benefices and plunder of the people; the papal dispensations which enabled the most incongruous pluralities to be held by individuals, and the other devices whereby Rome was enriched at the cost of religion; the centralizing of all jurisdiction in Rome to the spoliation of the indigent who dwelt at a distance; the papal decrees which set aside the salutary regulations of general councils—showing how nugatory had been the reformatory regulations wherewith Martin, when elected, had parried the attacks of the Council of Constance. The disappointment of the Council of Siena at the baffling of its efforts was leading to a tension of feeling that grew dangerous. A French friar, Guillaume Joselme, preached a sermon in which he demonstrated that the pope was the servant and not the master of the Church. The legates denounced him as a heretic, and ordered the magistrates of Siena to arrest him, but they, unlike Sigismund, replied that they had given a safe-conduct to all the members of the council, and could not go behind it. Finally, finding that under the control of the papacy no reformatory action was possible, the attempt was made to shorten to two or three years the seven years’’ interval that was to elapse before the next council. All the several nations had agreed to it when its enactment was prevented by the legates suddenly dissolving the council, March 8, 1424, in spite of a protest intimating very plainly that they had prevented all reformatory legislation. The seven years’’ interval was preserved, and the next council was indicated for Basle, in 1431. The reformers consoled themselves by pointing out that, of the four papal representatives concerned in thus strangling the council, three died within a year, of terrible deaths, manifestly the divine vengeance on their wickedness. Martin made a show of supplementing this lack of performance by appointing a commission of three cardinals to carry on the work of reform, and requested all complaints and suggestions to be sent to them—a measure which was as profitless in result as it was intended to be. Equally illusory was a constitution issued shortly after, restraining the ostentation and extravagance of the cardinals, and prohibiting them from assuming the “protection” of any prince or potentate, or asking favors except for the poor or for their own retainers and kindred, thus reducing the importance of the Sacred College as a factor of the Holy See and exalting his own.[572]

The time fixed for the assembling of the Council of Basle, March, 1431, was rapidly drawing nigh without any action on the part of Martin looking to its convocation. He who owed his election to a general council was notorious for abhorring the very name of council. At length, on November 8, 1430, there appeared on the doors of the papal palace, and in the most conspicuous places in Rome, an anonymous notice, purporting to be issued by two Christian kings, reciting the necessity of holding a council in obedience to the decrees of Constance, and appending some conclusions of a threatening character, to the effect that if the pope and cardinals impede it, or even evade promoting it, they are to be held as fautors of heresy; that if the pope does not open the council himself or by his deputies, those who may be present will be compelled by divine law to withdraw obedience from him, and Christendom will be bound to obey them, and that they will be forced to proceed summarily to his deposition and that of the cardinals as fautors of heresy. It was evident that Christendom was determined to have the council, with the pope or without him, and Martin, after holding out till the last moment, was compelled to yield. He had appointed, January 11, 1431, Cardinal Giuliano Cesarini as legate to preach another crusade with plenary indulgences against the Hussites, and to him he issued, February 1, a commission to open and preside at the council. One of those most earnest in bringing this about was the Cardinal of Siena. Had he been able to forecast the future he would have tempered his zeal. Within three weeks Martin was dead, and on March 3 the Cardinal of Siena was elected his successor, taking the name of Eugenius IV.[573]