John Huss took in the year 1394 his degree as bachelor of theology in that University of Prague upon the fortunes of which he was destined to exercise so lasting an influence; and four years later, in 1398, he began to deliver lectures there. Huss had early taken his degree in a school higher than any school of man's. He himself has told us how he was once careless and disobedient, how the word of the Cross had taken hold of him with strength, and penetrated him through and through as with a mighty purifying fire. What he had learned in the school of Christ he could not keep to himself. Holding, in addition to his academical position, a lectureship founded by two pious laymen for the preaching of the Word in the Bohemian tongue (1401), he soon signalized himself by his diligence in breaking the bread of life to hungering souls, and his boldness in rebuking vice in high places as in low. So long as he confined himself to reproving the sins of the laity, he found little opposition, nay, rather support and applause. But when he brought the clergy and monks also within the circle of his condemnation, and began to upbraid them for their covetousness, their ambition, their luxury, their sloth, and for other vices, they turned resentfully upon him, and sought to undermine his authority, everywhere spreading reports of the unsoundness of his teaching.
Let us see on what side he mainly exposed himself to charges such as these. Many things had recently wrought together to bring into nearness countries geographically so remote from one another as Bohemia and England. Anne, wife of our second Richard, was a sister of Wenceslaus, King of Bohemia. The two flourishing universities of Oxford and Prague were bound together by their common zeal for Realism. This may seem to us but a slight and fantastic bond; it was in those days a very strong one indeed. Young English scholars studied at Prague, young Bohemian at Oxford. Now, Oxford, long after Wycliffe's death, was full of interest for his doctrine; and among the many strangers sojourning there, it could hardly fail that some should imbibe opinions and bring back with them books of one whom they had there learned to know and to honor. Thus Jerome, called of Prague, on his return from the English university, gave a new impulse to the study of Wycliffe's writings, bearer as he was of several among these which had not hitherto travelled so far.
This man, whose fortunes were so tragically bound up with those of Huss, who should share with him in the same fiery doom, was his junior by several years; his superior in eloquence, in talents, in gifts—for certainly Huss was not a theologian of the first order; speculative theologian he was not at all—but notably his inferior in moderation and practical good-sense. Huss never shared in his friend's indiscriminate admiration of Wycliffe. When, in 1403, some forty-five theses, which either were or professed to be drawn from the writings of the English reformer, were brought before the university, that they might be condemned as heretical, Huss expressed himself with extreme caution and reserve. Many of these, he affirmed, were true when a man took them aright; but he could not say this of all. Not first at the Council of Constance, but long before, he had refused to undertake the responsibility of Wycliffe's teaching on the holy eucharist. But he did not conceal what he had learned from Wycliffe's writings. By these there had been opened to him a deeper glimpse into the corruptions of the Church, and its need of reformation in the head and in the members, than ever he had before obtained. His preaching, with the new accesses of insight which now were his, more than ever exasperated his foes.
While matters were in this strained condition, events took place at Prague which are too closely connected with the story that we are telling, exercised too great an influence in bringing about the issues that lie before us, to allow us to pass them by, even though they may prove somewhat long to relate. The University of Prague, though recently founded—it only dated back to the year 1348—was now, next after those of Paris and Oxford, the most illustrious in Europe. Saying this I say much; for we must not measure the influence and authority of a university at that day by the influence and authority, great as these are, which it may now possess. This university, like that of Paris, on the pattern of which it had been modelled, was divided into four "nations"—four groups, that is, or families of scholars—each of these having in academical affairs a single collective vote. These nations were the Bavarian, the Saxon, the Polish, and the Bohemian. This does not appear at first an unfair division—two German and two Slavonic; but in practical working the Polish was so largely recruited from Silesia and other German or half-German lands that its vote was in fact German also.
The Teutonic votes were thus as three to one, and the Bohemians, in their own land and in their own university, on every important matter hopelessly outvoted. When, by aid of this preponderance, the university was made to condemn the teaching of Wycliffe in those forty-five points, matters came to a crisis. Urged by Huss—who as a stout patriot, and an earnest lover of the Bohemian language and literature, had more than a theological interest in the matter—by Jerome, by a large number of the Bohemian nobility, King Wenceslaus published an edict whereby the relations of natives and foreigners were completely reversed. There should be henceforth three votes for the Bohemian nation, and only one for the three others. Such a shifting of the weight certainly appears as a redressing of one inequality by creating another. At all events it was so earnestly resented by the Germans, by professors and students alike, that they quitted the university in a body, some say of five thousand and some of thirty thousand, and founded the rival University of Leipsic, leaving no more than two thousand students at Prague. Full of indignation against Huss, whom they regarded as the prime author of this affront and wrong, they spread throughout Germany the most unfavorable reports of him and of his teaching.
This exodus of the foreigners had left Huss, who was now rector of the university, with a freer field than before. But church matters at Prague did not mend; they became more confused and threatening every day, until presently Huss stood in open opposition with the hierarchy of his time. Pope John XXIII, having a quarrel with the King of Naples, proclaimed a crusade against him, with what had become a constant accompaniment of this—indulgences to the crusaders. But to denounce indulgences, as Huss with fierce indignation did now, was to wound Pope John in a most sensitive part. He was excommunicated at once, and every place which should harbor him stricken with an interdict. While matters were in this frame the Council of Constance was opened, which should appease all the troubles of Christendom and correct whatever was amiss. The Bohemian difficulty could not be omitted, and Huss was summoned to make answer at Constance for himself.
He had not been there four weeks when he was required to appear before the Pope and cardinals, November 18, 1414. After a brief informal hearing he was committed to harsh durance, from which he never issued as a free man again. Sigismund, the German King and Emperor-elect, who had furnished Huss with a safe-conduct which should protect him, "going to the Council, tarrying at the Council, returning from the Council," was absent from Constance at the time, and heard with real displeasure how lightly regarded this promise and pledge of his had been.
Some big words, too, he spoke, threatening to come himself and release the prisoner by force; but, being waited on by a deputation from the council, who represented to him that he, as a layman, in giving such a safe-conduct had exceeded his powers, and intruded into a region which was not his, Sigismund was convinced, or affected to be convinced. Doubtless the temptations to be convinced were strong. Had he insisted on the liberation of Huss, the danger was imminent that the council, for which he had labored so earnestly, would be broken up on the plea that its rightful freedom was denied it. He did not choose to run this risk, preferring to leave an everlasting blot upon his name.
Some modern sophists assure us that this safe-conduct—or free pass, as they prefer to call it—engaged the imperial word for Huss' safety in going to the council, but for nothing more—a most perfidious document, if this is all which it undertook; for the words—I quote the more important of them in the original Latin—are as follows: "ut ei transire, stare, morari, redire permittatis." But the treachery was not in the document, and nobody at the time attempted to find it there. If this had not engaged the honor of the Emperor, what cause of complaint would he have had against the cardinals as having entangled him in a breach of his word? what need of their solemn ambassage to him? Untrue also is the assertion that this was so little regarded by Huss himself as a safe-conduct covering the whole period during which he should be exposed to the malice of his enemies that he never appealed to it or claimed protection from it. He did so appeal at this second formal hearing, June 7th, the first at which Sigismund was present. "I am here," he there said, "under the King's promise that I should return to Bohemia in safety"; while at his last, by a look and by a few like words, he brought the royal word-breaker to a blush, evident to all present, July 6th.
But to return a little. More than seven months elapsed before Huss could obtain a hearing before the council. This was granted to him at last. Thrice heard, June 5, 7, 8, 1415—if, indeed, such tumultuary sittings, where the man speaking for his life, and for much more than his life, was continually interrupted and overborne by hostile voices, by loud cries of "Recant, recant!" may be reckoned as hearings at all—he bore himself, by the confession of all, with courage, meekness, and dignity. The charges brought against him were various; some so far-fetched as that urged by a Nominalist from the University of Paris—for Paris was Nominalist now—namely, that as a Realist he could not be sound on the doctrine of the eucharist. Others were vague enough, as that he had sown discord between the church and the state. Nor were accusations wanting which touched a really weak point in his teaching, namely, the subjective aspect which undoubtedly some aspects of it wore; as when he taught that not the baptized, but the predestinated to life, constituted the Church. Beset as he was by the most accomplished theologians of the age, the best or the worst advantage was sure to be made of any vulnerable side which he exposed.