John Huss, the Bohemian reformer, had been summoned to Constance, that he might give an account of himself, and had been furnished with a safe-conduct (as it was called), in which the emperor assured him of protection on his way to the council and back. But, although at first he was treated as if he were free, it was pretended, soon after his arrival, that he wished to run away; and under this pretence he was shut up in a dark and filthy prison. Huss had no friends in the council; for the reforming part of the members would have nothing to do with him, lest it should be thought that they agreed with him in all his notions. And when he was at length brought out from prison, where his health had suffered much, and when he was required to answer for himself, without having been allowed the use of books to prepare himself, all the parties in the council turned on him at once. His trial lasted three days. The charges against him were mostly about Wyclif's doctrines, which had been often condemned by councils at Rome and elsewhere, but which Huss was supposed to hold; and when he tried to explain that in some things he did not agree with Wyclif, nobody would believe him. Some of his bitterest persecutors were men who had once been his friends, and had gone with him in his reforming opinions.
After his trial, Huss was sent back to prison for a month, and all kinds of ways were tried to persuade him to give up the opinions which were blamed in him; but he stood firm in what he believed to be the truth. At length he was brought out to hear his sentence. He claimed the protection of the emperor, whose safe-conduct he had received (as we have seen). But Sigismund had been hard pressed by Huss's enemies, who told him that a promise made to one who is wrong in the faith is not to be kept; and the emperor had weakly and treacherously yielded, so that he could only blush for shame when Huss reminded him of the safe-conduct.
Huss was condemned to death, and was degraded from his orders, as the custom was; that is to say, they first put into his hands the vessels used at the consecration of the Lord's Supper, which were the signs of his being a priest; and by taking away these from him, they reduced him from a priest to a deacon. Then they took away the tokens of his being a deacon, and so they stripped him of his other orders, one after another; and when at last they had turned him back into a layman, they led him away to be burnt. It is said that, as he saw an old woman carrying a faggot to the pile which was to burn him, he smiled and said, "O holy simplicity!" meaning that her intention was good, although the poor old creature was ignorant and misled. He bore his death with great patience and courage; and then his ashes and such scorched bits of his dress as remained were thrown into the Rhine, lest his followers should treasure them up as relics (July 6, 1415).
About ten months after the death of Huss, his old friend and companion, Jerome of Prague, was condemned by the council to be burnt, and suffered with a firmness which even those who were most strongly against him could not but admire (May 30, 1416).
When Pope John had been got rid of, Gregory XII., the most respectable of the three rival popes, agreed to resign his claims. But the third pope, Benedict XIII., would hear of no proposals for his resignation, and shut himself up in a castle on the coast of Spain, where he not only continued to call himself pope, but after his death two popes of his line were set up in succession. The council of Constance, however, finding Benedict obstinate, did not trouble itself further about him, and went on to treat the papacy as vacant.
There was a great dispute whether the reform of the Church (which people had long asked for), or the choice of a new pope, should be first taken in hand; and at length it was resolved to elect a pope without further delay. The choice was to be made by the cardinals and some others who were joined with them; and these electors were all shut up in the Exchange of Constance—a building which is still to be seen there. While the election was going on, multitudes of all ranks, and even the emperor himself among them, went from time to time in slow procession round the Exchange, chanting in a low tone litanies, in which they prayed that the choice of the electors might be guided for the good of the Church. And when at last an opening was made in the wall from within, and through it a voice proclaimed, "We have a pope: Lord Otho of Colonna!" the news spread at once through all Constance. The people seemed to be wild with joy that the division of the Church, which had lasted so long, was now healed. All the bells of the town pealed forth joyfully, and it is said that a crowd of not less than 80,000 people hurried at once to the Exchange. The emperor in his delight threw himself at the new pope's feet; and for hours together vast numbers thronged the cathedral, where the pope was placed on the high altar, and gave them his blessing. It was on St. Martin's day, the 11th of November, 1417, that this election took place; and from this the pope styled himself Martin V. But the joy which had been shown at his election was more than the effect warranted. The council had chosen a pope before taking up the reform of the Church; and the new pope was no friend to reform. During the rest of the time that the council was assembled, he did all that he could to thwart attempts at reform; and when, at the end of it, he rode away from Constance, with the emperor holding his bridle on one side and one of the chief German princes on the other, while a crowd of princes, nobles, clergy, and others, as many as 40,000, accompanied him, it seemed as if the pope had got above all the sovereigns of the world.
The great thing done by the council of Constance was, that it declared a general council to be above the pope, and entitled to depose popes if the good of the Church should require it.
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