THE GREAT COUNCILS OF PISA AND CONSTANCE; JOHN HUSS

[1409-1429 A.D.]

The Council of Pisa, which was designed to heal the wounds of the divided church, unexpectedly inflicted upon her a new wound. On the 5th of June it passed a heavy sentence on each of the pontiffs; for it declared them both to be heretical, perjured, contumacious, unworthy of any honour, and no longer members of the church. As the next step, the council created Pietro Philarghi of Candia sovereign pontiff in their place, on the 26th of June; and he assumed the name of Alexander V. But the two pontiffs spurned the decrees of this council, and continued still to perform their functions. Benedict held a council at Perpignan, and Gregory assembled another at Austria, near Aquileia; but fearing the resentments of the Venetians, he went first to Gaeta, where he threw himself upon the protection of Ladislaus, king of Naples, and then fled, in 1412, to Rimini.

The church was thus divided among three pontiffs, who fiercely assailed each other with reciprocal excommunications, reproaches, and maledictions. Alexander V, who was elected in the Council of Pisa, died at Bologna in 1410. The sixteen cardinals, who were present in the city, immediately filled his place with Baltasare Cossa, a Neapolitan, who took the name of John XXIII, a man destitute of principle and of piety. From this war of the pontiffs vast evils arose which afflicted both the church and the state. Hence the emperor Sigismund, the king of France, and other kings and princes of Europe, spared no pains nor expense to restore harmony and bring the church again under one head. From the pontiffs it was found quite impossible to obtain any personal sacrifice for the peace of the church; so that no course remained but to assemble a general council of the whole church, to take cognisance of this great controversy. Such an assembly John XXIII, being prevailed on by the entreaties of Sigismund and hoping that it would favour his cause, appointed to be held at Constance in 1414. In this council were present the pontiff John, the emperor Sigismund, many princes of Germany, and ambassadors from the absent kings and princes of Europe, and from the republics.

The principal object of this great council was to extinguish the discord between the pontiffs; and this business was accomplished successfully. For having established by two solemn decrees, in the fourth and fifth sessions, that a pontiff is subject to a council of the whole church, and having most carefully substantiated the authority of councils, the fathers, on the 29th of May, 1415, removed John XXIII from the pontificate on account of various offences and crimes; for he had pledged himself to the council to resign the pontificate, and yet withdrew himself by flight. Gregory XII voluntarily resigned his pontificate on the 4th of July in the same year, through Carlo Malatesta. And Benedict XIII, on the 26th of July, 1417, was deprived of his rank as a pontiff by a solemn decree of the council. After these transactions, on the 11th of November, 1417, Otto Colonna was elected pontiff by the unanimous suffrages of the cardinals, and assumed the name of Martin V. Benedict XIII, who resided at Perpignan, resisted indeed, and claimed the rights and the dignity of a pontiff till his death, 1423; and after the death of this obstinate man, under the auspices of Alfonso, king of Sicily, Ægidius (Giles) Nuños, a Spaniard, was appointed to succeed him, by only two cardinals. He assumed the name of Clement VIII, and wished to be regarded as the legitimate pontiff; but in the year 1429 he was persuaded to resign the government of the church entirely to Martin V.

[1407-1416 A.D.]

The things done in this council for the repression and extirpation of heretics are not equally commendable; some of them, indeed, are quite inexcusable. Before the council sat, great religious commotions had arisen in several countries, but especially in Bohemia. There lived and taught at Prague, with much applause, an eloquent and learned man, by name John Huss, who acted as a professor of theology in the university and as a minister of holy things in the church. Vehemently did he declaim against priestly vices of every kind; which was generally done in that age, and no good man disapproved it. He likewise endeavoured, after the year 1408, to detach the university from acknowledging as pontiff Gregory XII, whom Bohemia had hitherto obeyed. This gave great offence to the archbishop of Prague and to the rest of the clergy, who were devoted partisans of Gregory. Hence arose great hostility between Huss and the archbishop, which the former kept up and increased by his discourses against the Romish court and the vices of the clergy.

To these first causes of hatred against Huss, which might easily have been surmounted, others were added of greater magnitude. First, he took the side of the Realists in philosophy, and, therefore, according to the usage of the age, goaded and pressed the Nominalists to the utmost of his power; yet their number was very considerable in the university of Prague, and their influence was not small. Afterwards, in the year 1408, he brought it about that, in the controversy between the Germans and the Bohemians respecting the number of votes, the decision was in favour of the Bohemians. By the laws of the university it was ordained that in academic discussions the Bohemians should have three votes, and the other three nations but one. The university was then divided into four nations, but the Bavarian, Polish, and Saxon were comprehended under the general name of the German nation. The usage had been that the Germans, who far exceeded the Bohemians in numbers, gave three votes and the Bohemians but one. Huss, therefore, either from partiality to his country or from hatred of the Nominalists, whom the greatest part of the Germans preferred to the Realists, obtained, by means of the vast influence at court which his eloquence gave him, a decree that the Germans should be deprived of the three votes and should be bidden to content themselves with one. This result of a long contest so offended the Germans that a great multitude of them, with the rector of the university, Johann Hofmann, at their head, left the university of Prague and retired to Leipzig, where Frederick the Wise, elector of Saxony, founded a university on their account in the year 1409. This event contributed much to increase the odium against Huss and to work his ruin. The Germans being ejected from Prague, Huss inveighed more freely than before against the vices of the clergy, and also publicly preached and recommended the opinions and the books of John Wycliffe, the Englishman. [See the history of England.] Being accused before John XXIII, in the year 1410, he was excommunicated by that pontiff. Spurning this thunderbolt, he continued, with general applause, first by word of mouth, afterwards in various writings, to lash the sores of the Roman church and of the priest of every degree.

This good man, who was in love with real piety, but perhaps had sometimes too much warmth and not sufficient prudence, being summoned to the Council of Constance, went thither on the faith of a safe-conduct given by the emperor Sigismund, with a view to demonstrate his innocence and prove them liars who talked of him as an apostate from the Roman church. And certainly he had not departed in things of any moment from the religion of his times; but had only inveighed severely against the pontiffs, the court of Rome, the more considerable clergy, and the monks; which in fact had the sanction of his times, and was daily done in the Council of Constance itself. Yet his enemies, who were numerous both in Bohemia and in the council, managed the procedure against him so artfully and successfully that, in violation of the public faith, he was cast into prison; and when he would not, according to the council’s order, confess himself guilty, he was adjudged a heretic, and burned alive, on the 6th day of July, 1415. Full of faith and the love of God, he sustained this punishment with admirable constancy. The same unhappy fate was borne with the same pious fortitude and constancy by Jerome of Prague, the companion of John Huss, who had come to Constance to support and aid his friend. He yielded at first through fear of death to the mandates of the council, and renounced those opinions which the council had condemned in him; but being retained still in prison, he resumed courage, again avowed those opinions, and was, therefore, committed to the flames on the 30th of May, 1416.

Before Huss and Jerome were condemned by the council, John Wycliffe, who was considered, and not altogether without reason, as their teacher, had been pronounced infamous, and condemned by a decree of the fathers. For on the fourth day of May, 1415, the council declared a number of opinions extracted from his writings to be abominable; and ordered all his books to be destroyed, and his bones to be burned. Not long after, on the 14th of June, they passed the famous decree that the sacred supper should be administered to the laity under one kind of bread only, forbidding communion under both kinds. For in the preceding year, 1414, Jacobellus (James) of Mies, incumbent of St. Michael’s church at Prague, by the instigation of a Parisian doctor, Peter of Dresden, had begun to celebrate the communion under both kinds, at Prague; which example many other churches followed. The subject being brought before the council by one of the Bohemian bishops, it considered a remedy to be required even for this heresy. By this decree at Constance, the communion of the laity under one kind obtained the force and authority of law in the Roman church.