After the death of Albert what central authority there was in Bohemia was lodged in the hands of two governors, Ptacek representing the Calixtins, and Mainhard of Rosenberg, the victor of Lipan, the Catholics. In October, 1443, we hear of the Emperor Frederic III. as about starting for Bohemia where he expected to receive the regency, but his hopes were frustrated. Ptacek died in 1445, when the choice for his succession fell upon George Podiebrad, a powerful baron, who, though only twenty-four, had acquired a high reputation for military ability and sagacity. He was largely under the influence of Rokyzana, to whom doubtless his election was due. After a long interval, Rome again appeared upon the scene. Nicholas V., who ascended the papal throne in 1447, sent, in 1448, John, Cardinal of Sant’’ Angelo, to Prague as legate. The Bohemians earnestly urged him to ratify the Compactata and confirm Rokyzana as archbishop. He promised an answer, but finding the situation embarrassing, he secretly left Prague with Mainhard of Rosenberg. Popular indignation enabled George by a coup d’’état, in which there was considerable bloodshed, to render himself master of Prague and to cast Mainhard into prison, where he died soon after. George thus became the undisputed master of Bohemia. When Ladislas, in 1452, was recognized as king, George secured the regency, and when the young monarch died towards the close of 1457, at the early age of eighteen, George’s coronation as king soon followed. Under him, until just before his death in 1471, Rokyzana’s influence was almost unbounded.[584]
The situation of Bohemia, as a member of the Latin Church, was unprecedented. After the first break between Eugenius IV. and the Council of Basle the name of the pope disappears in the negotiations for the restoration of unity. These were carried on by both sides as though the conciliar authority was supreme, and the papal assent or confirmation was a matter of no moment, although a papal legate was present in January, 1436, at the conference at Stuhlweissenberg, where the matter was virtually settled. As the council drew to its weary end, powerless and discredited, the triumphant Eugenius was not disposed to recognize the validity of its acts or to ratify them gratuitously. The Bohemians alleged that he had confirmed the Compactata, but no positive evidence was forthcoming. To purchase the submission of Germany, in 1447, he had ratified a portion of the acts of the council, but the Compactata could not be included in his carefully. guarded decrees. On the accession of Nicholas V., in 1447, the Bohemians sent to him a deputation offering him their allegiance, but we have seen how wary was the legate whom he despatched in return to Prague. It is true that to obtain the abdication of Felix V., Nicholas issued a bull, June 28, 1449, approving all the acts of the council which might strictly be held to confirm the Compactata, but the character of the bull shows that it had in view rather the material interests involved in benefices and preferment. Whatever doubt the Bohemians may have had as to the papal intentions towards them was speedily dissipated.[585]
Rome, in fact, had never proposed to recognize the compromise made by the council. While the latter was busy in endeavoring to win back the Hussites, Eugenius IV. was laboring for their extermination by the usual methods, in such regions as he could reach. The relations between Bohemia and Hungary had long been close, and Hussitism had spread widely throughout the latter kingdom as well as in the Slavic territories to the south. As early as 1413 we hear complaints of Wickliffite doctrines carried into Croatia by students returning from the University of Prague. As Sigismund was King of Hungary, the Compactata were supposed to cover the Hungarian Hussites, and were published in Hungarian as well as in Bohemian, German, and Latin. We have seen, however, how false he was to his Bohemian subjects, and those of Hungary he cheerfully abandoned to Rome. Six weeks after the signature of the Compactata at Iglau, on August 22, 1436, Eugenius commissioned the indefatigable persecutor, Frà Giacomo della Marca, as Inquisitor of Hungary and Austria. He was already on the ground, for in January of that year we catch a glimpse of him as present in the conference at Stuhlweissenberg. Frà Giacomo lost no time. Before the close of the year he had traversed Hungary from end to end, with merciless severity. The Archbishop of Gran, the Chapter of Kalocsa, the Bishop of Waradein, were loud in his praises. Their dioceses, they said, had been infected with heretics so numerous that a rising was anticipated which would have exceeded in horror the Bohemian wars, but this holy man had exterminated them. The numbers whom he put to death are not enumerated, but they must have been considerable from the expressions employed, and from the terror inspired, for his associates declared that in this expedition he had received the submission of fifty-five thousand converts. As the Bishop of Waradein rapturously declared, had the Apostle Paul accompanied him he could not have effected more. Earnestly the Bishops of Csanad and Transylvania appealed to him to visit their dioceses, which abounded in heretics; and as the latter prelate speaks of the Hussites having penetrated to his bishopric from Moldavia, it shows how widely the heresy had been diffused through southeastern Europe.[586]
Suddenly, in 1437, Frà Giacomo’s career was interrupted. He had crushed the Fraticelli of Italy, the wild Cathari of Bosnia, and the fiercer Hussites of Hungary, but when he attacked the orthodox concubinary priests of Fünfkirchen, and strove to force them to abandon the illicit partners who were universally kept, they proved too strong for even his iron will and seasoned nerves, backed though he was by the power of pope and kaiser and the awful authority of the Inquisition. They raised such a storm at this attempted invasion of their accustomed privileges that he was obliged to abandon his work and fly for his life. He appealed to Eugenius, and Eugenius to Sigismund. The latter wrote to Henry, the Bishop of Fünfkirchen, peremptorily ordering him to recall Giacomo and give him every aid, and also to Giacomo, assuring him of support. Thus assailed, Bishop Henry gave instructions that Giacomo should be supplied with all necessaries, but the attempt to enforce chastity on the priesthood seems to have been abandoned. The customary penalty in Hungary for such offences was five marks, and the synods of Gran in 1450 and 1480 complain that the archdeacons not only keep these fines for themselves, but encourage the criminals in order to derive profit from them; in fact, they issued in Hungary, as in many other places, licenses to sin, which may, perhaps, explain the indignation caused by Giacomo’s interference and its lack of success.[587]
He appears to have meddled no longer with the private lives of the orthodox clergy, but to have devoted his energies to the easier work of exterminating heretics. Early in 1437 we hear of him south of the Danube, where the Bishop of Sreim praised his effective work; by putting to death all who could not be converted, he had saved the diocese from a rising of the Hussites, in which all the clergy would have been slain. Eugenius rewarded him by describing him as “a vigorous and most ruthless extirpator of heresy,” and granting him the power of appointing subordinate inquisitors, thus rendering him an inquisitor-general in all the wide region confided to him. It was probably a result of the quarrel over the priestly concubines that led, in 1438, Simon of Bacska, Archdeacon of Fünfkirchen, to excommunicate him; but that official was speedily forced to withdraw the anathema by the Emperor Albert and the Archbishop of Gran. For a while his labors were interrupted by a call to attend the Council of Ferrara, held in 1438 by Eugenius IV., to offset the hostile assemblage at Basle, but he speedily returned to Hungary. It was doubtless owing to his efforts that in Poland the barons and cities entered into a solemn league and covenant to suppress heresy, April 25, 1438—just before Poland intervened in Bohemia to protect the Hussites from the Emperor Albert. In 1439 Giacomo’s zeal received a check on the more immediate fields of his labors. In Sreim he delivered to the secular arm, as convicted heretics, a priest and three associates; their friends assembled in force, broke open the prison and carried off the culprits, and, what is difficult to understand, unless the heresy was merely concubinage, the Archbishop of Kalocsa, when appealed to, protected the criminals. Giacomo had recourse to the Emperor Albert, who wrote sharply to the archbishop in June; and this proving ineffectual, again in August. What was the result of the affair is not known, but Albert, as we have seen, died in October, to the great detriment of religion; and in 1440 Giacomo left Hungary on account of ill-health. He seems not to have been immediately replaced, and, in the absence of organized persecution, the tares speedily began to multiply again among the wheat. In January, 1444, Eugenius IV., deploring the spread of Hussitism throughout the Danubian regions, appointed the Observantine Vicar Fabiano of Bacs as inquisitor for the whole Slavonian vicariate, which included Hungary, with power to appoint inquisitors under him. These were authorized to act in complete independence of the local prelates; Holy Land indulgences were promised to all who would aid them, and excommunication, removable only by pope or inquisitor, against all withholding assistance. In July, 1446, Eugenius again alludes to the flourishing condition of Hussitism in Hungary and Moldavia, in spite of the labors of the friars, and he recurs to the question which baffled Giacomo della Marca. Many parish priests, he says, in these regions not only keep concubines publicly, but teach that there is no sin in intercourse between unmarried persons; the question has been asked him whether this is heresy, justiciable by the Inquisition; this he answers in the affirmative, and authorizes Fabiano and his deputies to treat it as such. Apparently it was not the practice itself, but the justification of it, which was so heinous.[588]
If Rome was thus active in repressing Hussitism, and thus regardless of the Compactata while crippled by the quarrel with the fathers of Basle, it may readily be imagined that, after the abdication of Felix V. and the restoration of unquestioned supremacy, Nicholas V. was not disposed to respect the bargain made by the council or to regard the Calixtins in any light but that of heretics. It was in vain that the Bohemians proffered obedience if only the Compactata were confirmed, with a tacit condition that Rokyzana’s claims to the archbishopric should be recognized. Ostensibly the sole difficulty in the way of reunion lay in the use of the cup by the laity and the communion of infants; save this there was by this time but little to distinguish the Calixtins from the rest of the Latin churches, although occasionally the question of the sequestrated church lands emerged into view. The papacy had taken its position, however, and it would have plunged all Christendom into war, as, in fact, it more than once attempted, rather than admit that the Council of Basle had been justified in purchasing peace by conceding communion in both elements. Behind this, however, was the question of Rokyzana’s confirmation. Æneas Sylvius informs us that in 1451 he convinced George Podiebrad of the impossibility of effecting this, and secured a promise that the attempt should be abandoned, he pledging himself that if George would present the names of several suitable persons the pope would select one, and peace would then be established. This treated the Compactata as of minor importance, and was doubtless wholly unauthorized. Neither George nor Rokyzana gave up their hopes; the effort was renewed again and again, now with the pope, now with the Emperor Frederic III., and now with the German Diet, but all to no purpose. Occasionally when there was an object to be gained hopes would be held out, only to be withdrawn. The papal emissaries represented Rokyzana to Rome as the most wicked and perfidious of heresiarchs, whose recognition would be the destruction of what remained of Catholicism in Bohemia, and there never was the slightest idea of confirming him.[589]
When the overthrow of Mainhard of Rosenberg and the concentration of power in the hands of George Podiebrad showed that no further hopes were to be built on the Catholic party in Bohemia, Nicholas V. fell back upon the old methods and resolved to try what could be done by a missionary inquisitor. He had at hand an instrument admirably fitted for the work. Giovanni da Capistrano, vicar-general of the Observantine Franciscans, had commenced his career as an inquisitor in 1417; he was now in his sixty-sixth year, vigorous and implacable as ever. Small and insignificant in appearance, shrivelled by austerities until he seemed to consist only of skin and bone and nerves, he rarely tasted meat and allowed himself but four hours of sleep out of the twenty-four, the remainder being all too few for his restless and indefatigable activity. His saintly and self-denying life had gained him enviable powers as a thaumaturge, and his reputation as a preacher drew crowds to listen to his eloquence. In 1451 he was busy in exterminating the Fraticelli, but he suspended his bloody work at the call of Nicholas to undertake the conversion of the Hussites. Nothing was omitted that could contribute to the dramatic effect of his mission. Before assuming it he sought the divine assent by consulting the Virgin at Assisi, when the heavenly light diffused around him was a sign that his apostolate was confirmed; he accepted the enlarged powers which extended his inquisitorial commission to the Bohemian territories, and set forth. Everywhere on his road multitudes assembled to see and listen to the man of God, and everywhere his miraculous powers manifested the authenticity of his mission. At Brescia he addressed an assembly computed at one hundred and twenty thousand souls, and, though walls and trees were broken down by the masses of men gathered thickly upon them, not a human being was injured. At the crossing of the River Sile, near Treviso, the party, with true Observantine austerity, had no money to pay ferriage, and the surly ferryman refused free transportation; but Capistrano quietly took the habit of San Bernardino, which he carried with him, laid it upon the waters, and they shrank away till all had passed dry-shod, when they resumed their former volume. Thus heralded, his way through Venice and Vienna was a triumphal progress; crowds of sixty thousand or one hundred thousand to hear him preach were common; men came from a distance of five hundred miles to listen to him; at Vienna three hundred thousand were reckoned present; the sick were brought before him in thousands, and the miraculous cures which he wrought were computed by hundreds. The ecclesiastical machinery was evidently well-devised and effectively worked, and the desired impression was produced.[590]
In vain the emperor asked permission for him to visit Prague. Podiebrad and Rokyzana refused it peremptorily, and Capistrano’s zeal for martyrdom was not sufficient to prompt him to disregard their wishes. Furnished with imperial letters to the Catholic nobles and to their leader, Ulric Mainhard of Rosenberg, he turned in July to the safer region of Moravia, where presumably the influence of Podiebrad and Rokyzana was not so strong. Here his career indicates how little foundation there was for the persistent Catholic complaints of the proscriptive intolerance of the Calixtins. Though on Bohemian territory, Catholic and Hussite seem to have been dwelling together in mutual harmony; the Bishop of Olmütz was a Catholic, and no hindrance seems to have been experienced by Capistrano in his labors for the conversion of the so-called heretics. Beginning at Brünn, August 1, 1451, there is a register containing names and dates of more than eleven thousand conversions made by him up to May, 1452. Yet at the same time he was restricted to persuasion, and was not allowed to use inquisitorial methods. As his converts were voluntary, he smoothed the path of the repentant heretic, reconciling him to the Church with only the infliction of a salutary penance, and allowing him to retain all his possessions and dignities. Where the heretic was hardened, he was powerless, except through such miraculous power as he could wield. The situation was an anomalous one—unexampled, in fact, in the Middle Ages—of heretic and Catholic dwelling together in peace, the heretic in the ascendant, yet not only tolerating the Catholic, but allowing a man like Capistrano to wander through the land denouncing heretics and making conversions unmolested. To Capistrano the position was irritating in the extreme, insomuch as he was limited to the arts of persuasion, and was unable to enforce his arguments with the dungeon and the stake. This peculiar state of things is well illustrated by an adventure related of him at Breslau. Though Silesia had a Catholic bishop, it belonged to Bohemia, and mutual tolerance was established. In the summer of 1453 Capistrano came there and labored to convert the Hussites, but these sons of Belial, to ridicule his miraculous powers, placed a young man in a bier, carried him to where the inquisitor was preaching, and asked the latter to resuscitate the dead. Capistrano sternly replied, “Let him have his portion with the dead in eternity!” and went his way. Then the heretics said to the crowd, “We have holier men among us;” and one of them went to the coffin, calling to its inmate, “Peter, arise!” and then whispering, “It is time to get up;” but there was no response, and the unfortunate youth was found to be really dead. Yet at this very time Capistrano had no difficulty in exercising his inquisitorial office pitilessly when the victims were unfortunate Jews. A country priest was said to have sold them eight consecrated hosts for use in their infernal rites. Capistrano seized those implicated, tortured them to confession, and burned them, while a woman who was implicated was torn with red-hot pincers. An old Jewess embraced Christianity, and soon afterwards was slain. The Jews were accused of the murder, and also of that of a Christian boy. Capistrano made another onslaught on them, and this time burned no less than forty-one. It is easy to gather from this incident what would have been the fate of the Hussites had he been able to wreak his will on them. Those of Moldavia and Poland, whither he despatched three of his associate inquisitors under Ladislas the Hungarian, probably felt the full rigor of the canons.[591]
During all this the Calixtin leaders had not been wholly indifferent. At the commencement of Capistrano’s mission Rokyzana wrote to him in a friendly tone, remonstrating with him for condemning as a heresy the communion in both elements, which the Council of Basle had permitted to the Bohemians. Some correspondence ensued, in which Capistrano took high ground as to the use of the cup and the papal supremacy; there were negotiations for a conference, and at one time hopes were entertained of an accommodation. Capistrano, however, skilfully eluded a disputation on various pretexts, but really, as we learn from his confidential letter to the cardinal-legate, Nicholas of Cusa, because he knew that the Calixtins had on their side the weight of authority and tradition. Both parties gradually lost their temper and published against each other letters filled with scurrility. Having thus rendered amicable negotiations impossible, Capistrano could safely, in 1452, ask Podiebrad for a safe-conduct to Prague, and on its refusal summon him to render the aid and service due to him as apostolic commissioner and inquisitor.[592]
When the German princes assembled in the Diet of 1452 the Bohemians addressed them, complaining that although they were living in peace and obedience to the Holy See, the provisions of the Compactata, which declared that no one should be stigmatized as a heretic for partaking in both elements, were violated by a friar named Capistrano, who, under the guise of an apostolic commissioner and inquisitor, was traversing their territories proclaiming that all Utraquists were heretics. The agreement which had cost so much blood was thus plainly infringed, and, notwithstanding their desire for peace, a persistence in this would revive all the old troubles. This was significant of strife, and Capistrano, on his side, was eagerly engaged in stimulating it. He wrote to the pope that certain propositions of accommodation entertained by the cardinal-legate were disgraceful, and spoke hopefully of negotiations which he was carrying on with the German princes for a new crusade against the Hussites. Nicholas of Cusa was effectually snubbed for daring to talk of conferences and terms of accommodation. He promptly threw himself on the other side and contributed his share towards provoking a fresh conflict, by issuing, in June, 1452, an encyclical to the Bohemians, in which he plainly told them that those who were not with the Church must be against it; that the Compactata must be thrown aside, as they had not effected the union for which they were designed, and that nothing save pure and simple obedience to the Holy See could be entertained. To render the irritation complete needed only the exquisite insolence with which he assured them that the Church was too pious a mother to concede to her children what she knew to be injurious.[593]