Section IV

Huss Before the Council of Constance

This section comprises the chapters 18 through 23 and completes volume I. They are listed below. To go directly to any particular chapter click on the link to that chapter. Otherwise you can scroll down as you read chapter by chapter.

Chapter 18    The Communion of the Cup at Constance  
Chapter 19    The Pope Deposed  
Chapter 20    Huss Examined in Prison  
Chapter 21    Huss' First and Second Audience before the Council  
Chapter 22    Huss' Third Audience Before the Council  
Chapter 23    Huss' Third Audience Before the Council Continued

It was in this tenth session of the council (May 14th) that a new subject was presented for discussion. This was the use of the cup in the eucharist, a practice long discontinued by the church, but now revived at Prague. This practice, or communion in both kinds, as it was called, had prevailed in the Greek church from the earliest times; and the intimate relations which had subsisted between that church and the churches of Bohemia had not been without their influence in introducing it anew in the city of Prague. The Bohemians, moreover, had not all forgotten their traditions of a Slavonic Bible, and religious services celebrated in their national language. Even when the Latin practice had become prevalent under Charles IV, in the fourteenth century, and the communion in both kinds was no longer publicly allowed, there were still those who sought the enjoyment of their Christian liberty in the secrecy of private dwellings, and in the depths of forests.

As the Bible became more known and read, the minds of men were led to ponder over the original institution of the sacrament. The difference between the ancient original, and the modern corrupted practice, could not escape their notice. Discussion necessarily arose, and a doctrine so palpably appealing to the senses as the use of the cup could not fail to make a deep impression upon the minds of the multitude. The result was, that wherever the Bohemian reformation triumphed, there was a disposition favorable to arguments for the restoration of the cup.

We have already seen that the practice did not originate with Huss. We find no reference made to it in connection with his name, previous to his arrival at Constance. He may have considered it a matter of minor importance, or, without having made a careful examination of it, may have silently acquiesced in the prevalent opinions. Doubtless it would not have been wise to have made the claims of a mere outward rite the basis of an appeal which could be enforced only by a living apprehension of the spiritual truths of the gospel. Huss was already a prisoner at Constance, when the doctrine of the cup began to be discussed at Prague. Two of his friends, both of them doctors, and numbered among his adherents, were the leaders of the new movement. As to Jacobel, the most noted of these, we scarcely need the testimony of one who was afterward a pope, that he was a man of the highest eminence for learning and integrity. He was a zealous defender of evangelical views, and an uncompromising enemy of ecclesiastical corruption. He sought the purity of the church, and carefully studied its original constitution. His views and feelings led him strongly to sympathize with Huss, and his study of the Bible opened his eyes more and more clearly to the prevalent errors of the times. After the departure of Huss for Constance, he seems to have succeeded, in great measure, to his position in the esteem and regard of the people. He was curate of the parish of St. Michael, in the city of Prague, and was also connected with the university. Scarcely had Huss left the city, when Jacobel, undeterred by fear of consequences, began to propose and defend the use of the cup. The subject, if we are to believe Æneas Sylvius, was first brought to his notice by Peter of Dresden. This man seems to have cultivated the acquaintance of Jacobel, as one of spirit kindred to his own. He seized a fitting occasion to speak to him on the subject of the use of the cup, and expressed his surprise that a man of his learning and devotion had not detected the error that had so long prevailed in the church. He pointed out the inconsistency between the present practice of the church and the original institution of the sacrament, quoting the language of Christ, "Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you." The attention of Jacobel was at once arrested. He determined, therefore, to investigate the subject. He found the early traditions of the church and the authority of the fathers altogether on the side of the original form of the ordinance. His resolution was quickly formed, and he immediately took measures to secure the restoration of the cup in the eucharist. His influence was great among his own congregation, and his popularity might have secured the adoption by them of his own views without tedious discussion. He chose, however, to bring the subject in the first place before the university, and according to the customs of the day proposed theses upon the subject, which he was prepared to maintain and defend (March 25). Meanwhile one of his colleagues came over to his views, which he no longer hesitated to present to the people from the pulpit (March 29). It was not long before he ventured on the introduction of the cup, a measure which the mass of the people readily approved, and which was applauded highly by a great majority of the members of the university. It was from the clergy that the opposition with which he had to contend sprang. Jacobel was driven out from his own church, but the doors of the St. Martin’s church were opened to him, and he was here received with a hearty welcome. He continued, therefore, to publish and defend his views, in spite of all the obstacles thrown in his way.

The next step, therefore, against him was to attempt to write him down. The doctors were urged to attack him with the pen; but Jacobel did not fail to answer them in a triumphant manner. The controversy soon attracted the attention of the nation. All Bohemia was interested in it. Conrad, the archbishop of Prague, attempted to smother the flame by excommunicating its author. But Jacobel was not thus to be silenced. He only preached with renewed energy in contempt of the sentence launched against him. Supported by the people, he continued his labors under the very eye of the archbishop. The clergy, driven to desperation, had but one resource left. They determined to apply at once to the authority of the council. It was a countryman of Huss, and one of his bitterest adversaries, John, bishop of Leitomischel, who was charged with the commission of denouncing the heresy of Jacobel.

The controversy that now arose was one that the council could not compose. First the pen, and then the sword, were called into requisition; but pen and sword both proved powerless to suppress the popular conviction in favor of a rite so clearly established by scriptural authority and ancient precedent as the use of the cup. In this controversy Jacobel proved himself a man of fearless spirit and superior ability. He maintained his theses, not only from scripture, but by copious references to the fathers, the scholastics, some of the popes, and the canon law. From all these he drew the conclusion that the administration of the sacrament to all Christians, under the form of bread and wine, is the word, the law, the truth, the ordinance, and the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, his apostles, and the primitive church—a practice never to be annulled or changed by any custom, however ancient, of the Roman church, nor by the constitution or decree of any pope or council.

The first reply to Jacobel was anonymous, and seems to have been written at Constance. Its tone indicates that matters had not yet proceeded to an open rupture. It is addressed to Jacobel personally, and in it he is styled brother, and eloquent preacher of the word of God. Jacobel is reproved for his disregard of ecclesiastical authority, and his innovation upon the sacred rites of the church. The applause which he met is incidentally referred to, and in a manner to show that the immense majority were ranged upon his side. His contempt for the archbishop’s excommunication is then noticed, and an attempt is made to refute his argument in his own defense—the argument drawn from that commission of Christ, "Go ye into all the world," etc.

Other subjects, besides the one of the cup, are drawn into controversy. Jacobel is reproached for having taught that tithes are merely alms, that may be withdrawn by the secular power from an unworthy clergy. His conduct in preaching beyond his own limits, going from church to church throughout Bohemia, and thus spreading his views, is charged as highly reprehensible. He seems to have strongly insisted on reducing the clergy to the simplicity, if not poverty, of their early state, that, avoiding pomp, avarice, and luxury, they may more freely preach the word of God. His antagonist paradoxically maintains the present condition of the church to be superior to that of its primitive state, molded to a more ornate, devout, and honorable form, and that the wealth and power of the clergy were necessary and useful to the restraint of popular vice and error. His argument against the communion of the laity, under the form of the cup, shows ingenuity, if not sophistry. The multitudes in the desert were fed with bread alone. Christ at Emmaus broke the bread, but nothing is said of the wine. Had he wished that all should commune under both forms, he would have invited his own mother, as well as the seventy disciples, to be present at the institution of the ordinance. The only argument that even seemed to bear directly upon the subject, was the practice under the Old Testament, enjoined by the law, that the priests should drink the wine and the honey presented in offerings, and to none but the Levites was this allowed.

It was not by such shallow reasonings and incongruous citations, as these that Jacobel was to be driven from a position so impregnably fortified as his own, by the plain language of scripture. His antagonist can meet him here only by the unsustained assertion, that the passage on which he relied was addressed solely to the apostles and their successors; and his interpretation of this passage, in reference to spiritual eating and drinking, places him in a position where consistency would require him to go yet further. A Quaker’s argument would have left him entirely indefensible in observing any outward form of the ordinance whatever. But, abandoning the ground of scripture, and almost altogether neglecting the argument from the writings of the fathers, he enlarges on the inconvenience that would result from allowing the cup to the laity. He maintains, that caution requires to avoid the incongruity and the great guilt that are in danger of being incurred, from spilling the blood of Christ upon the robes of the women, or suffering it to wet the beards of the men, or fall to the ground. He cites the decree of Pope Pius, that if a drop of the consecrated wine should by negligence be spilt upon the earth, or upon a cloak, the sin should be expiated by forty days of prayer and fasting, with abstinence from the mass for the same space of time. If the drop has fallen upon a stone, the stone is to be rasped, and the fragments deposited with the sacred relics. If it fell upon a cloak, the cloak was to be burned. If upon the sod, it was to be licked up with the tongue, and the sod laid away in the sacred repository. From all this Jacobel’s antagonist infers, that if a layman should spill a drop of the consecrated wine upon his beard or garment, he ought with his beard and garment to be burned up and thrust to the bottom of hell, unless he should repent. The reason given against the administration of the cup to the sick at a distance is the danger of the fall of man or beast.

If, then, the sick may commune under one form only, why not all, he asks. The danger of the wine turning to vinegar; the difficulty of many persons in drinking or even enduring the smell of wine; the great size of the vessels that would be necessary if all were to commune; the difficulty of raising the vessel in time of war, when thousands were to partake, are subjects successively noticed; and, to conclude all, it is maintained that the flesh of Christ necessarily includes the blood, so that the laity and clergy do in reality receive the same, that is, Christ, and one no less or more than the other.

The writer then proceeds to sustain his positions by the authority of the Roman church—an authority necessarily binding upon the consciences of all. He cites the language of St. Augustine, "I would not believe the gospel if the authority of the Catholic church did not induce me thereto," and then maintains that as the Catholic and Roman church has established the form of communion, the question is thereby finally settled.

In this reply to Jacobel, we find by incidental allusions that he had allowed or authorized other changes at Prague which were regarded in the light of innovations, and as revolutionary if not heretical in their nature. He had taught that the parishioner is not bound to confess to his parish priest, or receive the communion at his hands only; but in case he is unworthy or vicious, another may be applied to. He refused to recognize the authority of the pope as superior to that of the parish priest in the matter of absolution, or even in some other respects. Popular songs had been introduced, which were sung in the streets, the markets, and the churches—some of them, we are given to understand, far from complimentary to the character of the prelates, and these Jacobel refused his influence to suppress. On these accounts also, his antagonist reproves him, closing his treatise however, in language which shows a high esteem for Jacobel as his brother, asking pardon for anything improper, wrong, or displeasing which be may have uttered, and expressing his willingness to be corrected in whatever fault be may have fallen.

This anonymous letter to Jacobel was soon followed by a treatise quite similar in character from the pen of his townsman, Andrew Broda, residing at the time at Constance. The similarity is indeed so striking that we can have no hesitation in ascribing both to the same source, though the latter treatise is more harsh and severe.

Jacobel does not suffer Broda’s treatise to pass in silence. He commences his reply by protesting, as he declares he had formerly done in the university when the subject was brought before it, that in this most important matter, as in every other, be had no intention to say, write, or maintain anything presumptuously in opposition to the holy Catholic church of Jesus Christ, or against the true Christian faith and the perfect law of God, and if anything of this sort should escape him, through ignorance, inadvertence, or the imperfection to which he confesses himself subject, be revokes and retracts it, subjecting himself to the correction of those to whom it belongs to restore the erring. He refers to the numerous treatises in which he had already defended the use of the cup, and in which he had sustained himself by the authority of scripture and of holy men, and then proceeds to refute the arguments of Broda, seriatim. This he does in a manner most complete and triumphant. He adverts to Broda’s false glosses of the authorities which he had cited, whether from scripture or the fathers, exposing his gross perversions of their original meaning, and detecting not only the weakness of his opponent’s arguments, but the dishonest reasoning and sophistry by which the author himself could scarcely have been deceived. Broda had objected to Jacobel that he refused to receive the authority of eminent doctors, but the latter has manifestly the advantage when he exposes his opponent as rejecting the authority of those whose words he could not pervert. Broda, relying upon pontifical decrees and decisions, had held that the pope, with cardinals, prelates, and bishops, could not err. Jacobel boldly avowed an opposite belief. He triumphantly appealed to their avarice and simony, as well as other vices, which plainly showed that they entered not by the door into the sheepfold. Such a church as the one called the Roman, made up of such materials, Jacobel boldly asserted, might err in life and doctrine, calling evil good, and light darkness. He even cites papal authority from the decretals to sustain him in his position. Broda had demanded of Jacobel that he should with him give faith to the legends of the church, but Jacobel, without absolutely rejecting them as false, everywhere manifests his decided preference for the authority of scripture. His opponent asks him when the church first began to depart from the purity of its early practice, and for how long a time the use of the cup had prevailed in the primitive church. "Why," answers Jacobel, "does the doctor put such a question to me, when by reason of the malice with which he pursues me he would not receive or believe the truth if I should utter it?" He then refers Broda to the scriptures for an answer. "When the abomination of desolation was first to be seen in the holy place; when iniquity began to abound, and the love of many to wax cold throughout the whole church; when impious men, true to their nature, began to pollute the sanctuary; when fraud and forgery found their way into the church, then this sacrifice was taken away from the people, and the cup was withheld."

Broda had called him a disciple of Antichrist, because he would not obey the commands of those who occupied Moses’ seat. Jacobel replies that he had never refused to receive their commands when accordant with the gospel, but "to our scribes and Pharisees, commanding what is opposed to God’s law," he had never allowed that obedience was due. In such a case their excommunication was frivolous and vain. The seeming curse, humbly endured by the innocent, would be changed to a blessing. Here he cites the example of Chrysostom, who, though excommunicated and banished, was afterwards recalled, against the will of his superiors, and who, while thus pretendedly excommunicated, did not cease to preach to the people. "Why then," he asks, "should not I imitate these holy men in preaching and ministering to the people, notwithstanding my pretended excommunication?"

Broda had charged Jacobel with disturbing the peace of the church. To this Jacobel replies, that to observe the law of the gospel to the saving of souls and the glory of God, is not to sin against charity, while Christ himself, in saying "I came not to bring peace, but a sword," showed that the peace of wicked men ought to be disturbed. It was better, he maintained, that offenses should arise than that the truth should be betrayed.

The silence of Broda on the corruptions of the church, or the gentleness with which he treats them, is not paused over by Jacobel in silence. He maintains that his opponent is, on these grounds, in danger of being himself suspected of simony. As to confessing in cases by law reserved, Jacobel maintains that this had rarely been done, but, in cases of necessity, he could not refuse those who, like some of the priests themselves, had been pursued by hatred, because they had zealously congregated to hear the preaching of the word of God.

Throughout the whole argument of Jacobel we are struck by the reverence with which he bows to the simple authority of the scriptures. He indeed refers to the eminent names in the history of the church, whose views upon the matter in dispute manifestly coincided with his own. But he does not forget that even Peter and Paul were once at variance; and the name of Thomas Aquinas is no authority with one who openly points out his gross departure on other subjects from the plain doctrines of the gospel. Laudable practices there well might be, instituted for the church, to promote or facilitate the observance of evangelical truth, but never could these be suffered to preponderate over the authority of Christ’s express commandments. Here was, in reality, the turning point of the whole controversy. Jacobel had assumed the true Protestant ground. Broda’s position was utterly indefensible, unless the authority of the pope and of the Romish church was allowed to supersede the express commands of the author of Christianity himself.

Nor did the evident aim of Broda to bring in to the aid of his arguments the power of the secular arm escape the notice of Jacobel. He showed that the restraint which Broda spoke of, quoting from Augustine, was but another name for the adoption of violent measures on the part of the civil power to suppress hated opinions. Jacobel commits his cause to the Supreme Judge, who alone could not err, while he vindicates the language of St. Augustine from the sense in which it was employed.

The conclusion of Jacobel’s defense displays a deep consciousness of the rectitude of his purpose, the danger which he incurred, and the unspeakable importance of that cause in which the individual was but a humble instrument of the divine glory.

"I am fully aware," he says, "that by what I have done I have laid myself open to the malicious assaults of many, who, stung by envy, will taunt where they cannot argue."

"I know that I am thrusting my hand into the fires of hatreds, but I here attest that, according to my ability in this matter of faith, I preach and defend the ministrations of the cup to the laity, and I exhort others to do the same to the end that the kingdom of lust and of Antichrist may to some extent be purged, and the spirit of fervor and devotion, so long extinct among Christian nations, may be revived; and that some may be moved to that holy zeal of God for the edification and restoration of the house of God, that will cry out, ‘Do good in thy good pleasure, O Lord, to Zion, that the walls of Jerusalem may be built!’ I beseech each reader, therefore, to prove these or whatsoever other of my words, and hold them each even to the end, and I desire to be corrected by any such, if I have said anything at variance with the truth, or anything not accordant with the rule of charity.

"I therefore request all to whom this present writing shall come, piously and charitably to interpret and accept it for God’s sake. And whether I have lapsed in word, assertion, opinion, or superfluity of words, or possibly in too excessive and severe reprehension of the doctor, or in any words of a satirical turn employed for rebuke, so as to excite passion, or in my zeal, if perchance not according to knowledge, or by unfit expression of truths, for all these, I say, I ask pardon.

"And I subject myself to the correction of him who is Lord of all, and of his creature whom he would have deputed for this purpose.

"But if in these writings there be that which is fit and useful, for this be praise and glory to God forever and ever. Amen."

The discussion upon the subject was kept up between the advocates and the opponents of the utraque. The adherents of Huss were divided in opinion. The subject was one which the practical nature of his mind had never led him closely to investigate. The more palpable and gross corruptions of the church, which had a more direct and obvious bearing upon morals and religion, had absorbed his attention. But circumstances had now arisen in which it was no longer permitted him to remain silent. His opinion was requested. What it would be, could scarce have been to his friends a matter of doubt. The respect of Huss for the scriptures, as the sole and supreme authority for the truth of doctrine, was not inferior to that of Jacobel. He, too, would decide each question by the law of Christ as laid down in the written word. Throughout his trial, his appeal was constantly made to its divine authority, and all he asked was to be convicted of his error from the sacred page, or be absolved on the ground of conformity to its doctrines. The answer of Huss to the question proposed was an approval of Jacobel’s doctrine. He was not blind to the danger which he incurred by expressing this approval. Yet he shrunk not from that fidelity to his convictions which was so eminently characteristic of him. From his prison at Gottlieben his voice was heard; and those of his adherents who had withheld their approval from what they regarded as an innovation of Jacobel, no longer withstood it. The doctrine of the use of the cup prevailed by an overwhelming majority. The voice of the university was almost unanimously in its favor. The absence at Constance of the most virulent opponents of Huss allowed it greater harmony and unanimity in its decisions. What support and sympathy Jacobel received from this quarter may be judged from the manner in which he speaks of it in his defense. "The members of our university," said he, "do not strut about in a remarkable and sumptuous costume, in order to set off their dignity the more. They are not of the class of whom our Lord speak, as loving the first places at feasts and synagogues, in order to be saluted at public places and to hear themselves called, Master! Is it not a disgrace to the church, as St. Jerome says, to preach Jesus Christ, poor, crucified, in want of everything, with bodies loaded with fat, with well-fed faces and vermilion lip? If we are in the apostles’ places, it is not merely in order to preach their doctrines, but to imitate their mode of life."

Intelligence of the state of things at Prague had reached Constance, and begun to excite alarm. Broda’s interposition had proved of no avail. It had only given occasion for a triumphant refutation, which made the adherents of the old doctrine feel how untenable was their position. The teachings of Jacobel, already possessed of a stronghold in the university, were spreading more widely every day throughout Bohemia. It was at this period, when the approval of the new doctrine on the part of Huss was strongly suspected but could not be proved, that Broda found a powerful ally in a fellow-country man and a former antagonist of Huss. John the Iron, as he was not inappropriately called, bishop of Leitomischel, denounced the innovation of Jacobel before the council. Personal hostility undoubtedly embittered him against Huss and Jacobel. His election as bishop was opposed by Wenzel and a large body of the reformers, as well as by Conrad, archbishop of Prague. The council of Constance, however, decided in his favor; and the energies of the soldier, the general, and the bishop, all which characters he had sustained, broke out in virulence against the Bohemian reformers. Although without any authority as yet for the assertion, he sought to implicate Huss in the recent transactions at Prague by ascribing to him the origin of the innovations. To aggravate the odium against the reformers, he represented the wine for the communion—the blood of Christ, as he called it—as carried about in flasks all over the kingdom, and exposed to innumerable hazards.

The denunciations of the bishop could not be passed over in silence. They excited a deep feeling of indignation on the part of the Bohemians in Constance, who regarded the charge as utterly unwarranted, and slanderous to their nation. It did not escape their notice that its natural effect would be to aggravate the difficulties of Huss’ position, and excite a stronger prejudice against him in the minds of his judges. They were aware of the severity and hardships to which he was subjected in his prison at Gottlieben. They knew that the process against him was already commenced, and was urged forward by the bitterest malice. It was therefore with affectionate solicitude for his welfare, as well as indignation at his unjust treatment and apprehension excited by the denunciation of the bishop, that, in the afterpart of the day (May 14, 1415) on which the latter had made his charges, they insisted that Huss should at once be set free, or at least that his imprisonment should be lightened, and a public audience be allowed him. They also manifested their dissatisfaction at the defamatory reports to which the bishop had given utterance to such a degree that he felt called upon to make some reply.

On the sixteenth of the month, two days later, the opportunity was given. The bishop presented a written answer. The substance of it is the expression of his zeal against the followers of Wickliffe and Huss. This, he declares, and no wish to defame the Bohemian nation, is the motive by which he is impelled. Of the abuses which he declares had prevailed in connection with the communion of the cup, all is narrowed down to one or two specifications, and these narrated to him on the authority of others, in all probability with gross exaggerations. At the worst, they could fairly be regarded only as exceptional cases, noticeable for their very singularity. But besides the reply of the bishop, an apology for the council, drawn up by its order, was also read. To its false statements, as well as the misrepresentations of the bishop, the Bohemians felt constrained to reply. The apology denied that Huss had received his safe-conduct until fifteen days after reaching Constance, and expressed astonishment that the Bohemians should speak of Huss as innocent when he had already been condemned and excommunicated by the pope on the ground of contumacy, became, his life endangered, Huss chose to appear at Rome only by his procurators! For this cause, and for venturing to "harangue" after his arrival at Constance, he was to be considered an arch-heretic, in utter violation of the principle that a man is to be accounted innocent until tried and found guilty. The Bohemians asked a delay of two days to prepare their answer. The request was granted, although the council refused to set Huss at liberty. This confirmed their apprehensions in his behalf, and the question in regard to the cup at once subsided, in their view, into one of secondary importance. They were wise enough, moreover, not to wish to entangle the main subject in new difficulties, and their reply turns, therefore, chiefly upon this alone. They declare first, in regard to the assertion that they had been ill-informed as to several matters which had been made grounds of complaint, that they wish to make a more full and clear statement of the case; not to retort the charge upon the members of the council, but to enable them to discern and judge the real state of things. The Bohemians first propose to correct the error of the council in saying that they had been ill-informed in regard to the safe-conduct, and that it had been secured for Huss by his friends and partisans fifteen days after his arrival in Constance. To this the Bohemian nobles answer specially John de Chlum, whom this point principally concerned—that on the very day of Huss’ arrest, the pope had asked, in the presence of a great number of his cardinals, whether Huss was provided with a safe-conduct from the emperor. To this Chlum had replied, "Most holy father, know that he has one." And when the question was repeated, the same answer was given. No one, however, asked to have the safe-conduct exhibited. On each of the two following days, Chlum had complained to the pope that Huss was detained in violation of the safe-conduct, at the same time exhibiting it to the view of many persons. And, in confirmation of his statement, he refers to the testimony of many lords, bishops, soldiers, officials, and eminent persons of the city of Constance, who themselves, on that occasion, saw the document and heard it read. John de Chlum, therefore, was prepared, under any penalty whatsoever, and against all denial from any source, to prove and manifest, in the clearest manner, the truth of his assertions. The Bohemian nobles, moreover, refer, in confirmation of their statement, to the many princes and nobles attendant upon Sigismund’s court, who were present when and where the safe-conduct was given by the royal mandate. Hence the fathers of the council might perceive that not the Bohemian nobles had been ill-informed, but rather those persons who had carried to the fathers such false reports, and who really do injustice to Sigismund and his chancellors as well as the Bohemian nobility, as if the safe-conduct had been surreptitiously obtained. They therefore urge that the fathers of the council would no more give ear to such unfounded reports, undeserving of credit, but hear both sides, and let the truth be manifest.

They then proceed to consider the assertion that Huss was already condemned. The mockery of all the forms of justice, by which the court appointed for his trial had proceeded to sentence him unheard, is exposed to a just reprehension. The facts of the case are simply and clearly stated. As to the citation, the Bohemian nobles profess to know nothing except by common fame. But as to his non-appearance personally, they declare that it was solely owing to the danger which he thereby incurred. His procurators, who had appeared for him at Rome, had been shamefully treated. As to his excommunication, they knew from his own lips that he did not meet it in a spirit of contumacy, but endured it under appeal. The evidence in regard to this, which they are prepared to exhibit, is perfectly conclusive. As to Huss having preached in Constance after his arrival in the city, as his enemies had reported of him, the Bohemians answer—and especially John de Chlum, here present with Huss, and who resided with him from the time of his first arrival in Constance—that he never had preached, or, from the time of his arrival up to the day of his imprisonment, had even set foot beyond his own lodgings.

The fathers of the council had professed not to understand what the Bohemians meant by the toleration and courtesy shown to heretics condemned by the Pisan council. They were in doubt whether reference was had to the contending or schismatic popes, or to others, but asserted that even heretics, coming to the council on the business of union, were to be tolerated and respected. The Bohemians reply, that whichever was meant, all they ask is that Master John Huss may enjoy the same freedom which they enjoyed. Coming to the council as he did, of his own accord, and no way compelled, only to declare his faith, and in whatsoever respect he might be shown to have strayed from the word of God and the unity of the church, to be reconciled and restored; and that this was not only his motive, but that of his favorers and adherents, who composed, in fact, a majority of the Bohemian nation. He had desired also to purge the realm from the infamy attached to it by false reports.

The Bohemians close their reply by thanks to the council for their favorable answer to their principal request, that the matters concerning Huss should be expedited—a request in which the whole kingdom of Bohemia is united with them.

But the papal question was one which seemed to the council most important at the present juncture, and it was to this that their attention was now directed. 

The judicial deposition of a pope by the assembled representatives of Christendom stands upon the page of history as a recorded fact. Yet a large number of those assembled at Constance had regarded the proposal to sit in judgment upon John XXIII as something sacrilegious. To them he was the Lord’s anointed, and the theory of papal infallibility was exalted by them into a doctrine of faith. But the force of circumstances was too strong for any theory which would absolutely block the progress of the council. The interests of Christendom, or at least of the bishops and prelates, absolutely required that the scandal of schism should no longer be endured. It was a nuisance to be abated. It was a standing text for heresy. It was a grievance to the nations; and, what was more perhaps in the eyes of the emperor, so long as it continued, Europe had reason to tremble for fear of Moslem invasion.

It was on the sixteenth of May, at two o’clock in the afternoon, that the commission for procuring testimony against the pontiff, in order to his deposition, held their first session. They met in the episcopal palace, attended by the proper officers of their court. Nearly forty witnesses were summoned before them, and sworn to give true evidence. John XXIII was, moreover, cited to see and bear the testimony which should convict him of the crimes with which he stood charged. These crimes were recited in language shockingly plain. His profligate course in the alienation and plunder of ecclesiastical property, and his scandalous life and morals, stained with simony and almost every vice, were to be the subject of investigation. And yet even this statement of his crimes was too lenient. Truth, however, would not consent to anything less, and decency could tolerate no more.

But John XXIII had no disposition to hear or see the testimony to be produced against him. The commission for examining witnesses therefore proceeded in his absence. The testimony of thirty-seven persons was taken, some of them holding distinguished places in the church, and all of them men of note. Ten of the number were bishops. One was the grand master of Rhodes, and several were officers of the apostolic chamber, and even secretaries of John XXIII.

The list of accusations was composed of sixty-six articles, all attested and proved. The conclusion of all was that John XXIII was stiff-necked, stubborn, a hardened and incorrigible sinner, and a favorer of schism, and as such, as well as on other accounts, was entirely unworthy to hold the office of the pontificate. The Vienna manuscript list of the articles closes with the just reflection, "What judgment must be formed of the cardinals who elected John XXIII, acquainted as they were with his simony and his infamy in other respects! After having sworn to elect the best man among them, what must they themselves have been, if they have judged that among them all there was none better than he who has been proved by so many witnesses to have been simoniacal, a traitor, a homicide, guilty of rape, arson, and incest, the debaucher of members of religious orders, and a man guilty of a sin more grievous still than these!" Who can deny the justness of the inference? What invectives of Huss could be so severe as a simple statement of the facts attested before the commission?

In fact, several of the articles in the list of impeachment were suppressed by the council. At least fourteen of the most odious and scandalous charges which had been reported as proved, in the assembly held on the twenty-fourth of May, were not produced in the public session subsequent. These suppressed articles were mostly specifications of fact, in regard to which witnesses could not be mistaken. They recited the reckless, undutiful, lying, and licentious conduct of this pontiff’s youth, precocious in almost every kind of depravity; his course as the principal minister and agent of simony for Boniface IX, by means of which he amassed the immense wealth that secured him a cardinalate; his proceedings as legate of Bologna, in subjecting that city and church to tyrannical extortions and violence, as well as unheard-of cruelties, massacring, torturing, and driving into exile many of its citizens; his actual sale of several parochial churches and many ecclesiastical benefices to lay persons, who took possession of them, and placed priests over them according to their own caprice; his conferring an important office upon a bastard son of the king of Cyprus, aged only five years, revoking the grant only on condition that the king should be reimbursed the amount of the purchase-money he had paid, that he should himself receive six thousand florins, and the son of the king an annual pension of two thousand, besides an office that brought in a revenue of ten thousand more; his poisoning his predecessor, Alexander V, as well as his physician, in order to open the way to his own election as pontiff; his acts of fornication, adultery, incest, and sins of the most abominable impurity, that cried to heaven for vengeance; his sale of unlawful dispensations for enormous sums; his bargaining away, alienating, and spending the revenues and tribute due to the Roman church; his sale of the sacred relics of John the Baptist, in the convent of St. Sylvester, for fifteen thousand ducats, and which he would have given up if he had not been miraculously detected, while those who complained of the proceeding had been banished or imprisoned; and his maintaining. stubbornly, before reputable persons, that there was no future life or resurrection, and that the souls of men perish with their bodies, like brutes.

Such were, in substance—as decently expressed as possible—some of the suppressed articles. Of those not suppressed, and which were made the ground of his deposition, there were, in all, fifty-four; but of these it must suffice to give a few as specimens. In these his course is recited mainly from his elevation to the pontificate. It was maintained that "he is universally regarded as an oppressor of the poor, a perverter of justice, the supporter of iniquity, the defender of simonists, the bond of vice, the enemy of all virtue, the mirror of infamy as well as a slave of lasciviousness; that he pays no heed to the public consistories, is always plunged in sleep or in his pleasures, and that all who know him speak of him as a "devil incarnate"; that from the date of his pontificate he has been guilty of the most scandalous and reckless simony, disposing at his caprice of the property of the church, selling the same, benefice to several persons at once, and forbidding the courts to hear parties complaining, or to render them justice; that he had spurned the fraternal exhortations of the cardinals, and the remonstrances of others, urging him to desist from his course; that he had sent a layman, a merchant of Florence, into the dioceses of Cambray, Tournay, Liege, and Utrecht, empowered to collect tithes, and excommunicate such as refused to obey him, thus amassing prodigious sums of money; that after having exhausted the revenue of the patrimony of St. Peter, he had invented new impost, or increased those already established, in a most oppressive manner, and had finally given up the capital, in spite of his own promise, to plunder and pillage, filling city and country with robbery, murder, and sacrilege, leaving the women exposed to a brutal soldiery, and many persons of the court to assassination, plunder, the gallies, or perpetual imprisonment; that his criminal and hateful life had provoked universal complaint, yet when the emperor Sigismund had remonstrated with him and secured the promise of reform, he had violated that promise, falling back into all his former excesses. The list of charges then recites the duplicity and falsehood of which he had been guilty after his arrival at Constance, and the utter disregard which he had shown to his own engagements. On such grounds as these, evidently sufficient without including the suppressed articles, the council resolved to proceed with the steps necessary to the final sentence—the solemn deposition of John XXIII.

The eleventh session was opened in solemn form on the twenty-fifth of May. The Cardinal de Vivieres presided; and the emperor, with all the cardinals then in the city, the princes, envoys, and ambassadors; was present. The commission for hearing witnesses on the subjects of accusation against the pontiff were called upon for their report. It was read seriatim, each charge accompanied by a mention of the number and quality of the witnesses by whom it was proved. The report was approved by the council, and five cardinals were named to notify the pope of what had been done by the council in its present session.

The cardinals departed at once for Ratolfcell, where the pope was residing. As he had already been suspended, and had laid aside the insignia of his dignity, their greeting was not as usual with the kissing of his feet, but only of his mouth and hands. Some authorities intimate that, but for the presence of other members of the council, the cardinals would have rendered him the usual homage. He received the proceedings of the council with every mark of profound submission. He saw himself in their hands, and knew all further resistance was hopeless and could but aggravate the conditions of his treatment. Undoubtedly he hoped, by an assumed contrition and acquiescence, to soften the resentments which his conduct had excited. To the communication of the cardinals he did not trust himself—whether from fear or prudence or exhaustion—to reply orally. He sent in to them a document drawn up by his own hand, and which the cardinals bore back with them to the council. In this reply he assumes the most penitent and submissive airs, showing himself still, in this most desperate condition of his affairs, the consummate actor that he was. He declares "his purpose to submit himself absolutely to the orders and decisions of the council;" expresses his readiness to cede his office, whether at Constance or any other place which the fathers shall be pleased to appoint; far from opposing the sentence which the council should pronounce against him, promises that he will ratify it by all means in his power, and in whatever form should be prescribed; but yet prays the council, "by the bowels of divine mercy, to spare his honor, his person and estates, as far as may be, without prejudice to the union of the church."

It was on the twenty-sixth of May that the cardinals, who had returned from Ratolfcell, reported to the council the success of their mission, and the favorable answer of the pontiff. A new commission was then appointed, consisting of two bishops and two abbots accompanied by notaries, to lay before him the articles and grounds of his deposition, in order that he might reply to them if he saw fit. They were also to inform him that the sentence of his deposition would be read on the day following, which he might be privileged to hear if he chose. But John XXIII had heard enough already. Manifesting toward the commission the same spirit of resignation as upon a former occasion, he declined even the reading of the articles of accusation which had been presented for reply, declaring that he did not need to see them, inasmuch as he held the council to be infallible, and would not recede from the act of submission which he had put into the hands of the cardinals. He only begged them to spare his honor and his fortune, and present the emperor with a letter which he had written him containing the same request.

This letter is valuable as another illustration of the character of its author. He wears the mask to the last, with the same easy and well assumed impudence. He calls the emperor, in his address, his dear son, assuming still the authority of pope. After passing an eulogy upon his prudence and other virtues, especially the clemency and generosity with which he had pardoned the most grievous offences, he reminds him of their former friendship, and urges the claims upon the emperor which his devoted service and fidelity had imposed.

But Sigismund was not the dupe of this artful and tardy humiliation. It was the result of the extreme measures which had overtaken its author, and had been preceded by a course of conduct on his part which exposed it only to contempt. He had spread his accusations of the bad faith of the emperor all over Europe. He had employed all his resources to defeat the cherished purpose of Sigismund in giving peace to the church. Yet, with a kind of scrupulous honesty, the council resolved to pay him back a fair price for his submission. He was informed that, in consideration of it, the sentence of his deposition, which was to have taken place on the twenty-seventh of Maya would be deferred until the twenty-ninth, and that its severity would be somewhat relaxed. John XXIII received the announcement with the best possible grace, but his condition now was anything but enviable. He was a prisoner at Ratolfcell, under the charge of four guards appointed by the council, each of these a member of it and representing one of the four nations. Frederic, the duke of Austria, had been forced, as the price of his restoration to favor, to take the pontiff into custody and deliver him over to the council. Accompanied by members whose fidelity could be relied upon, and who were to see that the task was faithfully executed, be had arrested the pontiff, and brought him as far as Ratolfcell. Unwilling himself probably to appear in Constance with his prisoner, he sent word to the council that John XXIII refused to proceed further, and would only submit to the necessity of force. The council, therefore, averse to harsh measures which might possibly react against themselves, permitted him to remain at Ratolfcell. It was here that the deputations of the council had met him, and it was from this place, under the custody of his guards, that his letters of submission were dated. Their true value was probably accurately appreciated by the council, when, in consideration of them, they deferred for two days the sentence of his deposition.

In his imprisonment, John XXIII seems to have sunk into almost abject despair. Those were gloomy days to him in which he awaited the pronouncing of his sentence. He was carefully guarded by day and by night. His old servants, with the exception of his cook, were all removed, and new ones appointed. Eight members of the council, two from each nation, were appointed, by their presence and society, to relieve the tedium and solitude of his imprisonment, a humane regard which was not shown in the case of Huss; yet the trembling pontiff could have scarcely appreciated such consideration, as be gave up into their hands "the ring of the fisherman" and the insignia of his office.

On the twenty-ninth of May the twelfth session of the council was held. The emperor, with all the cardinals, princes, and ambassadors, was present. The passage of scripture read was one appropriately significant: "Now is the judgment of this world, and the prince of this world is cast out." After the usual preparatory ceremonies, the late deputies to the pope made their report. They stated that the articles of his indictment had been presented to him, and he had been informed that if he had any opposition to offer he might be at liberty to do so; to which he made reply, that he had done much for the union and welfare of the church, even offering to cede his office. He readily acknowledged that he had basely abandoned the council, and now he would rather—saving the welfare of his soul—have died on the very day of his flight, than have done a thing so reprehensible. Against the sentence of the council he had nothing to offer in his own defense; but, according to the tenor of a writing which he bad drawn up, and now placed in the hands of the cardinals deputed to visit him, desired and promised, standing in their presence, to conform himself to every ordinance, deliberation, and decision of the said holy council, ratifying every process issued by it against himself, and asserting that to the articles against him be had no other answer to make. The council he declared to be most holy, infallible, and a continuation of the Pisan, promising that neither at Bologna, nor at any other place where he might be present in person, would he speak a word against it. Let the sentence, he said, when pronounced, be presented to him, and he would receive it with head bared, and with all respect, and would, as far as lay in his power, ratify, confirm, approve, and acknowledge it. In fact, all that had been done by the council against him he did at once and from that moment ratify, approve, and confirm, promising never at any period to oppose it.

After this report was given in, Martin Porrée, bishop of Arras, arose and read the sentence of deposition. Three bishops and the patriarch of Antioch ascended the platform with him, and took their places by his side. The sentence of a deposed pope deserves to be given entire. It was as follows: "In the name of the holy and indivisible Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen. The most holy general council of Constance, in the Holy Spirit lawfully convened, invoking the name of Christ, and having the fear of God only before their eyes, having examined the articles drawn up and presented in this case against the lord pope, John XXIII, together with the evidence sustaining them, his voluntary submission, with the entire process of this cause, doth, after mature deliberation upon the same, pronounce, decree, and declare, by this definitive sentence, produced in writing, that the clandestine withdrawal of the aforesaid lord pope, John XXIII, from Constance, and from this sacred council—his departing by night, at a suspicious hour, in an unbecoming and disguised garb—was unlawful, and to the church of God and to the said council notoriously scandalous, tending to disturb and obstruct the peace and union of the church itself, an encouragement to its protracted schism, inconsistent with the vow, promise, and oath given by Pope John to God, the church, and this holy council; that Pope John himself is a notorious simonist, squandering the goods and disregarding the rights, not only of the Roman, but of other churches—a perverse administrator of the spiritualities as well as temporalities of the church by his shameful life and detestable conduct, grossly scandalizing Christian people, both before and since his accession to the papacy, even down to the present time; that, after proper and kindly admonitions again and frequently repeated, he has pertinaciously persevered in his aforesaid wickedness, thereby rendering himself notoriously incorrigible; and that he, on account of the aforesaid and other crimes set forth in the process of the said cause against him, ought, as unworthy, useless, injurious, to be deprived and deposed from the papacy, and its entire administration, both spiritual and temporal; and the said holy council doth remove, deprive, and depose him, declaring all Christians, of what state, condition, or dignity soever, absolved from all obedience, fidelity, or oath of allegiance; forbidding all the faithful from receiving naming, adhering to, or obeying him, thus deposed, any longer as pope. The said holy council also makes good, from certain knowledge and plenitude of power, each and every defect in this preceding sentence; and condemns him by this same sentence to stay and remain in some good and fitting place, under the safe custody of the emperor Sigismund, the most devoted champion and defender of the Catholic church, as long as in the view of the said holy general council the welfare and the union of the church of God shall require. Other fitting penalties to be inflicted for the said crimes and enormities, according to canonical sanction, the said council reserves, to be declared and inflicted at its own good pleasure, as the rigor of justice or the measure of mercy shall require."

Such was the sentence that invaded the sanctuary of infallibility, and dragged down "the Lord’s anointed" from his throne. It was the deliberate and well-weighed act of representative Christendom, urged on by the most catholic emperor Sigismund, and sanctioned by the ablest, wisest, and best men whom the council could boast among its members. When the sentence had been read, the president of the council, Cardinal John, bishop of Ostia, arose and asked if anyone then present, great or small, rich or poor, had anything to say against the aforesaid definitive sentence, or against its being pronounced. If any such were present, he invited them to arise and declare their views in the name of the council, allowing them full liberty of expression: and in case no one arose, each was to be considered as consenting to the sentence. Not a voice was heard. If any still felt an attachment to the unfortunate pontiff, they were unwilling to testify it before the council in this hour of his desperate fortunes. John XXIII had not a John de Chlum to stand by him to the last, and, at the risk of all things earthly, vindicate his innocence. He, at least, fell unpitied and unwept. No prayers like those which commended the imprisoned Huss to the care of Heaven, were breathed forth with sighs and tears in his behalf. He fell as a criminal, Huss as a martyr.

After the momentary silence—more eloquent than words—which ratified the judgment of the council by a tacit but unanimous consent, the several presidents of the nations arose, and in their behalf responded their placet to the sentence that had been read. The presiding cardinal answered in behalf of the college of cardinals. The vote was taken thus by the whole council. At this moment the cardinal of Florence arose. He was the youngest member of the college of cardinals, a man of great ability and daring. He had ventured on a previous occasion to set himself as the organ of the will of the college, against the whole council, omitting the reading of a portion of one of the decrees of that body—a portion exceedingly important as bearing upon the pope and cardinals—on his own authority. The council had resented the proceeding, and now, when Zabarella arose with a written document in his hand, and asked permission to read it, their former jealousies and suspicions were reawakened. He was greeted from every side by an almost unanimous shout "Non placeret." He was thus forced to resume his seat, and silently acquiesce in what had been done. Doubtless his purpose was to present in some form a protest, but such was the state of feeling in the council that he was not allowed to proceed. Whatever it might have been, it could scarcely, from such a source, have had any influence to change the result.

It now only remained to carry the sentence into execution. So far as the council itself was concerned, there was no delay. The archbishop of Riga, the keeper of the seal and arms of John XXIII, presented them to the council. It was then demanded by Henry de Piro, the procurator of the council, that the seal should be broken and the armorial bearings effaced. This was done on the instant, with unanimous consent, by the hands of Arnold, the goldsmith of the pope. Five cardinals were at the same time appointed to notify John of his deposition. They were instructed to urge him to acquiesce in his sentence with a good grace, and to threaten him with more severe treatment if he offered any resistance. The council knew how to manage their prisoner. They could take the measure of his hopes and fears, but Huss, they were soon to find, was not a man of the same stamp.

Nothing more was done at this session except to take some precautionary measures in regard to the election of a new pope. The council resolved and decreed that no steps should be taken towards such an election without their advice and consent, or, in case they should be, they were to be accounted null and void. It was forbidden to recognize as pope any person who might be elected in such a case, under the severest penalties. All customs, statutes, or privileges interfering with this decision, were pronounced invalid. Thus the democratic principle in the council, under the lead of men like Gentian and Gerson, triumphed. The monarch of the church was deposed, and the oligarchy of the cardinals at the same time suspended from the exercise of their authority as electors of the ecclesiastical sovereign.

A decree also was passed forbidding the reelection of either of the three contendents for the papacy, and a commission appointed to summon and secure the attendance of the absent prelates. The last was a wise and necessary measure. The council was in danger of dissolution, and coercion was necessary to keep it together after the deposition of the pope, and in the expected absence of the emperor on his journey to Spain, where he was to take steps for reducing Benedict, the most refractory of the popes.

John XXIII awaited in his prison at Ratolfcell the announcement of his sentence. On the thirty-first of May, the cardinals deputed to make it discharged their commission. They presented his sentence to him in writing, and asked whether it met with his approval, or whether he had anything to say against it. He took the, to him, dismal document from their hands, and read it in silence. He promised them a reply within the space of a few hours. Early in the afternoon he sent for them to receive his answer. It was the answer of one reduced to submit to the mast humiliating terms, yet true to his habitual hypocrisy, striving to gloss his answer with the fairest show of repentance and sincerity. "The tyrant of Bologna," "the poisoner of Alexander V," "the incarnate devil," gave his full confirmation to the sentence, acknowledged himself deposed from the papacy, and ratified his expressed purpose to submit to the council’s decisions, by a long and tedious document subscribed by his own hand. The most overbearing of tyrants had become the most abject of slaves. 

The case of John XXIII was now disposed of, and the council was ready to proceed with the trial of Huss. In his prison at Gottlieben the Bohemian reformer, conscious of his innocence, had somewhat impatiently awaited the hour when he might declare and vindicate his faith before the assembled council. For more than two months he had been removed from nearly all communication with his friends at Constance. He was closely confined, and his treatment was such as might have been expected from the harsh, stern character of the man to whom he was given in custody. During the day he was only allowed to move the length of the chain attached to his feet. By night, his arms were made fast to the wall. Well might his Bohemian friends earnestly remonstrate, and seek to have his trial expedited.

But even in his prison, Huss was a watchful observer of the remarkable events that were transpiring around him. He investigated and approved the doctrine of Jacobel in regard to the cup, and exhorted his friends to acquiesce in the seeming innovation, which only restored to its simple completeness a sacrament which had been mutilated during the corrupt ages of the church. He did not neglect, moreover, to make use of the sentence against John XXIII to confirm, in this hour of trial, the faith and devotion of his disciples at Prague. The unveiled crimes of that wretch whose excommunications had been launched against him, were a more than sufficient justification for his own course and language. "Courage," says he, "you can now give an answer to those preachers who declare that the pope is God on earth; that he can sell the sacraments, as the Canonists assert; that he is the head and heart of the church by vivifying it spiritually; that he is the fountain from which all virtue and excellence issue; that he is the sun of the Holy Ghost, and sure asylum where all Christians ought to find refuge! Behold! already is this head severed as it were with the sword; already is this terrestrial God bound in chains; already are his sins unveiled, the gushing fountain is dried up, the heavenly sun is dimmed, the heart is torn out, that no one may again seek an asylum there."

Huss then adverts to the cruelty of his persecutors, as well as to the corruption of his judges. In a tone of indignant invective, he exclaims, "The council has condemned its chief—its proper head—for having sold indulgences, bishopricks, in fact, everything; and yet among those who have condemned him are many bishops who are themselves guilty of the shameful traffic! ... O profligate men! why did you not first pull out the beam from your own eye... They have declared the seller to be accursed, and have condemned him, and yet themselves are the purchasers. They are the other party in the compact, and yet they remain unpunished."

This language of Huss is fully sustained, nay, is far exceeded in keenness and sting of invective, by men who were members of the council, or who carefully and anxiously observed it from a distance. Gerson himself, in his treatise written at a later period, handles the council if possible more severely. Clemengis describes those assembled, but "not truly in Christ’s name," to seek the peace and unity of the church, as "carnal, for the most part bent on their pleasures, not to say their lusts." "These carnal sons of the church do not only have no care or apprehension of spiritual things, but they even persecute those who walk after the Spirit, as has been the case from the days of just Abel, and will be to the end of time. These are the men who fly together to the church merely to seize upon temporalities, who lead in the church a secular life; conspire, covet, plunder, rejoice in preeminence, not in profiting others; oppress and rob their subjects; glory in the honor of promotion; riot in pomp, pride, and luxury; who count gain godliness, sneer at such as wish to live holily, chastely, innocently, spiritually, calling them hypocrites... Of such men the church is full this day, and scarcely, in whole chapters or universities, can you find any others... Are men like these, the ones to exert themselves for a reformation of the church—men who would account such a reformation the greatest calamity to themselves?" Such was the language of one of the ablest and best men of his day. And yet even this scarcely equals in severity that of Niem, former secretary of John XXIII, and present as a personal attendant upon the sessions of the council. He speaks of the prelates as pastors that feed themselves and scatter the flock. He lays bare the rottenness of the church, from the sole of the foot to the crown of the head, from the plain tonsure of the priest to the tiara of the pope. Well might Huss, supported by such testimony, and with a keener sense of spiritual parity and corruption than even these men possessed, declare, "Such are those spiritual princes, who declare themselves, forsooth, to be the true vicars and apostles of Christ, who give themselves the appellation of ‘holy church, and the most sacred and infallible council’; which, however, proved itself fallible enough when they adored John XXIII, and bent the knee before him, kissing his feet and calling him the ‘Most Holy,’ whereas, all the time they knew him to be a homicide, a man of most flagitious life, stained with simony, and a heretic, as their judgment declares... May God forgive them, for with such knowledge of the man, they named him pope! ... And now Christendom is without a head on earth—possesses Jesus Christ alone as chief to direct it, as the heart to give it life, as the fountain to water it with the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, as the always sufficient refuge, to which I have recourse in my misfortunes, firmly believing that there I shall always find direction, assistance, and plenteous vivification, and that God will fill me with an ineffable joy in delivering me from my sins and from a wretched existence. Happy then are they who, in observing his law, perceive and detest the vain pomp, avarice, and hypocrisy of the Savior’s enemies, and patiently wait for the coming of the Sovereign Judge and his angels."

It is difficult for us to withhold our sympathies from this prisoner at Gottlieben, calm in conscious innocence, and firm in an integrity of purpose which all his misfortunes were insufficient to crash. There he is, within those cold, damp walls, a helpless victim in the hands of his foes, and his doom predetermined. Sharing now, as he had not at first, the well-grounded fears of his friends, his mind is fully made up to meet the worst. Not a word, implying doubt or fear, escapes his lips. Not a sentence of bravado drops from his pen. He is at peace with himself and God. Not even the harshness of his treatment provokes a single utterance inconsistent with his habitual gentleness and charity. He cherishes no resentments. Without a single trace of obstinacy—willing ever to listen to argument, inviting correction if he has erred—he is yet true to his convictions, resolved sooner to perish himself than sacrifice one iota of the truth. All his letters from this Patmos of his exile breathe a noble Christian spirit. Christ is his "sufficient refuge," to which he has recourse in his misfortunes. He cannot expose the iniquity of his persecutors, but, like his Master, he at the same time exclaims, "May God forgive them." If, in some of his previous acts and writings, violent or bitter expressions had been provoked by the zeal of his indignation, no trace of them is any longer to be found. Barely has even a martyr faith won more signal triumph than when, in the castle of Gottlieben, a patient endurance was crowned with grateful hope and even joy. "This declaration of our Savior," says he, "is to me a great source of consolation; ‘Blessed are ye when men shall hate you, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil for the Son of man’s sake. Rejoice ye in that day, for behold, your reward is great in heaven.’"

It would be difficult to find anywhere more clear and decisive evidences of a simple love of truth for its own sake than were exhibited by Huss. His was not the self-importance of a leader, or the pride of a champion. He possessed, indeed, a clear and strong intellect, a fearless spirit, a fervid and powerful eloquence, but his estimate of himself was always humble. His own life, in his esteem, was nothing by the side of that cause to which he was willing to devote it.

Such was the man who, the moment John XXIII was deposed, claimed the attention of the council. Scarcely was the sentence pronounced, when his case was brought before them. His bitter enemy, Michael De Causis, had not been idle. While Huss was in prison, new grounds of accusation against him were sought out. The former list, however it may have been modified, was now prefaced with the charge of heresy in the use of the cup. It was inferred that, inasmuch as the adherents of Huss at Prague had adopted this innovation, he was therefore its author. Many of the council may have supposed the inference just, and perfectly conclusive. Causis himself, however, must have known its falsehood. But the deign of the measure was manifest. It was intended to prejudice the council, and poison the minds of his judges against the prisoner. Undoubtedly it did have this effect, although its falseness was subsequently detected. The other articles, the character of which will soon be noticed, were drawn up with great care and skill, and betray the malice in which they originated.

The friends of Huss were aware of what was going on. They saw the skilful web of accusation which the cunning art of his enemies was weaving to entrap him. Nor on their part were they idle. Again and again they had remonstrated against the injustice of Huss’ imprisonment. On this day (May 31) they again appeared, still more solicitous in their petitions that Huss might be enlarged, and a hearing be granted him. The emperor was absent at the opening of the congregation, when their petition was read, and consequently did not hear it. The Bohemians, therefore, as the assembly broke up, gave a copy of it into his hands for his private inspection. It was the production of the Bohemian nobility present in Constance, and was signed by them in behalf of their countrymen. It was a candid and manly plea for the reformer. It sets forth, first, the fact that their former communications had been treated with neglect; that in vain they had requested the fathers of the council to consider the lame and impotent charges against Huss the productions of malice and envy on the part of his jealous rivals; that the reformer himself, in all his acts, scholastic and ecclesiastical, and especially in his preaching, had made, and was wont to make, protestations of his readiness to yield to the truth whenever convinced of it. It was hence fair to be inferred, in regard to his intentions, that he neither would nor did wish, in his books, treatises, instructions, and public preaching, to write, speak, or maintain anything which he clearly knew to be erroneous, scandalous, seditious, offensive to pious ears, or heretical, as the malice of his enemies had charged; but that his grand aim and purpose had been, in all respects, to conform himself to the teaching of gospel truth, and the holy doctors who had commented on the Sacred Scriptures. And if, in any respect, he should be found in fault, or by others ill-understood, he wished from these sources to be corrected, directed, informed, and enlightened, and by no means to defend or sustain any article contrary to the most holy Roman church and to Catholic faith.

"Wherefore," the Bohemian nobles proceed, "since, Right Reverend Fathers, notwithstanding all this, his bitter foes, impelled by great hatred, extract isolated and disconnected passages from his books, rejecting the qualifications or the intent of them, or at least overlooking them, not adverting to the distinctions proper to be observed, and then put together against him articles which are false and framed artfully to this end, that, despite all charity, they may depose him from his office and put him to death, in violation of the safe-conduct openly granted him by the emperor to secure him against all these intrusions of his enemies which produce in Bohemia these disquietudes and contentions which the emperor so greatly desires to see composed; therefore the said nobles and barons do petition that the preceding matters, and the dishonor from them resulting to the said kingdom and its people being considered, you would on your part interfere, and appoint method and process by which the said Master John Huss may, by men enlightened and masters of Holy Scripture, who are here present and shall be deputed for this purpose, be carefully heard upon all the articles charged against him, so that his own meaning and that of the doctors may be declared along with the distinctions proper to be made, in which matters his accusers are inconsistent with themselves. Thus, also, let the deposition of witnesses be heard, many of whom are, and long have been, his most bitter enemies, whose wanton instigation would lead to his condemnation, though held a captive and unheard; since from such methods your majesty may be more clearly informed in regard to the truth, while he is ever ready to submit himself to the decision of the most holy council. For you have been informed, through the plausible lies and tricks of his slanderers, that Master John Huss has obstinately persisted for a long time in articles of a most dangerous character, which representation you will then be able to understand clearly the falsehood of."

In proof of this the Bohemians adduce the public testimonial of the bishop of Nazareth, inquisitor at Prague, which we have already seen. They then petition the fathers of the council, that inasmuch as Huss had not been condemned or even convicted, he might be released from the chains and fetters by which he was grievously deprived of his freedom, and placed in the hands of bishops or commissioners of the council specially deputed for the purpose, that he might have opportunity to recover strength, and might more carefully be examined by the said commissioners. And, for greater security, the barons and nobles pledged themselves that Huss should not be allowed to escape from the hands of the commissioners until the final issue of the affair.

The paper of the Bohemians was read and discussed by the fathers of the council. Yet, moderate and even humble as the request was, there was no disposition to grant it. But in Sigismund’s bosom there was found the policy of a ruler, if not the justice. Such a request from such a source was entitled to respect, and doubtless the emperor felt more than suspicious of the interested motives of the enemies of Huss. It was not without a strenuous effort on his part that the portion of the request which asked for a public audience of the reformer was granted. John de Chlum at once hastened to announce the welcome intelligence to the prisoner. "Today," be writes, "the king, assembled with the deputies of all the nations, spoke of your case, and contended for a public audience. It was finally and definitely resolved that it should be allowed you. Your friends are also insisting on your removal to some more airy place, that you may be refreshed and restored to strength."

The answer of the council, as read by the patriarch of Antioch, deserves to be given. It was, that as to the first point, the protestation of Huss, the future would show whether it was true and reliable. As to the assertion that the adversaries of Huss had improperly and wickedly cited isolated passages from his books, this was to be shown in the issue of the cause. If it was found that Huss had been unjustly accused, then his enemies would be overwhelmed with lasting disgrace. But in regard to sureties, the deputies of the council could not, with a safe conscience, receive them, even though a thousand were given in behalf of a man in whom, on no condition, faith was to be reposed; but to this they would attend, that on the fifth of the next month (June) Huss should be brought to Constance, that he should have full and free opportunity of speaking before the council itself, and that they would hear him affectionately and kindly. How well their promise was kept will be manifest in the sequel.

Meanwhile Huss patiently endured the martyrdom of his cruel imprisonment. Oppressed with chains, and his health giving way under the severity of his prison life, his purpose was still unshaken to witness, if occasion should demand it, a good confession. In the weakness of the flesh, the spirit triumphed. His noble friend Chlum did not forget to exhort him, "In God’s name, and for the sake of the truth, take good care not to desert the holy cause through any fear of losing this wretched life; for it is for your great benefit that God visits you by this trial." But a mightier than man was his counselor. The greatness of the cause in which he was engaged filled his thoughts. He ardently anticipated his trial, in the hope of an opportunity to vindicate the claims of truth. Though at times disheartened by the malice of his enemies that threatened to crush him unheard, he seems yet to have cherished the hope that some, at least, would be found in the council to respond in approval of his views. In default of this, he could not believe that the assembled representatives of Christendom would unite in opposing the testimony of scripture, or rejecting it as the test and standard of doctrine. How sadly he was to be disappointed in all this, we shall soon have occasion to observe.

All the anxieties of Huss for his own person were lost in his deeper anxiety for the interests of a pure and scriptural Christianity. His musings by day and even his dreams by night constantly presented to his view that Savior whose example, unworthy as he was, he gloried to imitate. It is not surprising that in his prison he should have been visited by visions and dreams which one might easily be led to regard as prophetic. One of these, that which concerned the vain attempts of the priests to efface the paintings and inscriptions on the walls of Bethlehem chapel, has been already referred to. There were others of which he makes mention in his letters, but to which he declares, himself, that he attached slight importance.

"Occupy your thoughts with your defense, rather than with visions," said John de Chlum, in a gentle reproof, which attested his own good sense and his anxiety for his friend. He deeply and sadly felt the danger which impended over Huss, and could not bear the thought that such a life should be risked by any neglect of preparation, or any over-confidence of the final result. Jerome was already in prison, and of his deliverance there was little prospect. It was too much that Huss also should be lost to future service, in the cause of which he and Jerome were the ablest champions.

Huss did not altogether neglect preparation for his own defense, but how oppressively discouraging were the circumstances in which it was to be made! His imprisonment, his harsh treatment, his failing health, his severe pain in his teeth, as well as other bodily ailments, which cost him so many sleepless nights, his exclusion from the society of his friends, his ignorance of the various methods of his enemies to prejudice his cause, his inability to divine what new changes would be made in the articles of his accusation, or what new articles might be framed, and the depressing conviction that his prosecutors, who had free access to the minds of the members of the council, would spare no effort to secure his condemnation; all conspired to dishearten him, and overwhelm him with foreboding. From time to time his trial had been deferred, and even in his prison Paletz and Causis, who accompanied the judicial committee appointed to visit him, had insulted even his helplessness and misfortunes. They were bent, moreover, on depriving him of the privilege of a public audience. They knew the power of his eloquence, and they did not wish to have the experiment of it tried upon the council. He had been denied an advocate. They would also have him condemned unheard. But here they were defeated by the more just, if not manly and honorable, policy of Sigismund.

By one of those strange series of events which characterize the processes of this world, even as providential retributions, Huss was not to leave his prison at Gottlieben until his great antagonist, John XXIII, now deposed from the papacy, was immured in the same walls. The ex-pontiff had received, with every mark of contrite submission, the announcement of his deposition. For this well-played farce the Jesuit Maimbourg does not hesitate to enroll him among the noblest martyrs of the church, and for his self-sacrificing spirit place him in merit by the side of St. Peter himself. How much he deserves such eulogy, the hypocrisy, simony, and corruptions of his life might enable anyone unversed in Jesuit casuistry to judge. He merely cried "quarter" when the knife was at his throat. The threat of the council, that further obstinacy should be met with severer penalties, was hung in terrorem over his head. The report of his submission reached the council on the first day of June, and, in considerate appreciation of his ostentatious humility, the holy fathers determined on placing him in closer and safer custody. On the third day of June, therefore, he was removed by their order from Ratolfcell to Gottlieben, occupying a cell in the same prison where Huss was confined. It is doubtful whether the two men met. It is enough that they now found themselves in this strange juxtaposition. The last time that they had stood face to face, the proud, tyrannical, and hypocritical pontiff had seemed to occupy a position superior to any earthly tribunal. Soon his selfish policy marked Huss as a scapegoat for his own sin. Denied the luxury of exulting over his victim, he spread his complaint of the emperor over Europe, and howled forth his rage that the policy rather than the justice of Sigismund had snatched the victim from his tiger claws. Now the tiger himself was caged, and Huss might, if he had chosen, have enjoyed the disgrace of his foe. His own turn for exultation had come. But he chose rather to see in this event the demonstration of the futility of his own excommunication, a demonstration which was not to lose its effect upon the Bohemian nation.

Moralists might discover an important lesson in the contrast presented by these two men confined in the same fortress. One was the coward tyrant of Christendom, taking counsel of his fears, and adopting in regard to himself language, if true, as degrading as it was submissive. The other, weak and exposed as he was to the inveterate malice of his foes, had no terms to offer but those of submission to the supremacy of truth alone, a supremacy which his foes also must finally acknowledge. One had alienated all the friends he ever had. The other had not only bound his former friends closer to him by his steadfast integrity, but had won the hearts of his jailers to sympathy, compassion, and admiration. There, in one cell, might be seen the ex-pontiff, on whose head rested a weight of crime that could scarce have found its parallel in the lives of the Herods and the Neros, crushed by infamy as well as by chains, a whining supplicant, cringing to lick the hand that inflicted his blows, stripped of all his honors, and his name made the by-word of reproach. Here, in another, was the victim of bigoted and jealous malice, and yet, with an integrity and purity of character on which his bitterest enemies could not fix a stain, awaiting in the calm consciousness of his innocence the assaults of calumny, sustained by strength and grace imparted from above, turning his prison-cell into a Bethel, and, with faith in God exultant in every prospect, whether of acquittal or of death. One of these prisoners humbles himself before men; the other before God only. One represents Barabbas, the other, in his patient endurance of injustice, calumny, and scorn, reminds us of the example of his divine Master.

The ex-pontiff had few if any to commiserate his fate. The name of Huss will be respected and honored while truth has honors for her martyrs.

The spectacle of the dethroned tyrant of Christendom excited wonder, but not pity. A chronicle of the time introduces him uttering the lament: 

"I who but late was seated on a throne,
Must now in bitterness lament my fall;
In my high place of power I ruled alone,
My feet the kiss of homage had from all.
Now to the lowest deep of shame I’m hurled,
A victim to the penalty of crime,
The laughing-stock and scandal of the world,
Gazed at in scorn, the wonder of my time.
Once every land its gold laid at my feet,
Now wealth delights not, not a friend remains.
From me, cast down so low from my high seat,
Let those be warned whom glory false sustains."

Neither of the prisoners was to remain at Gottlieben. Even within stone walls and carefully guarded, the ex-pontiff was in too immediate proximity to the council. He was soon detected in his old business of intrigue. There was some danger lest the party in his favor might be revived. At least it was not to be doubted that, inspirited by his countenance, his partisans might be ready at the first opportunity to obstruct its further proceedings. He was accordingly committed by the emperor to the charge of the elector, and by him conveyed first to Heidelberg, and afterward to Manheim, to be kept in closer custody.

Before the removal of Huss to Constance, his friends sought the opportunity of obtaining his views in regard to the doctrine of the communion of the cup. On the very day (May 31), therefore, on which it was determined that a public trial should be granted him, the Bohemians requested him, through their common friend John de Chlum, to give a clear and full statement of his views on this disputed question, together with the reasons by which they were supported. "We have to ask," writes the Bohemian nobleman, "of you, most beloved, that you will give us in writing your deliberate and argumentative opinion on the subject of the communion of the cup, if such shall seem good to you, that it may be shown at the proper time to our friends. For on this subject the minds of the brethren have been somewhat divided, and many have been disturbed."

Huss at once complied with this request of the Bohemians. In his reply to Chlum, he says, "As to the sacrament of the cup, you have in writing what I wrote when in Constance, with the reasons that led me to adopt the views there presented. And I know not that I can say anything more in regard to this sacrament, except that it is sustained by the gospel and by Paul’s epistles, and was observed in the primitive church. If it may be, seek at least permission to have it administered to those who ask for it in a devotional spirit."

The friends and the enemies of Huss now felt alike that the critical moment was at hand. On the first day of June, the former presented to the council a document which they had drawn up, showing that Huss had come to Constance, provided with a safe-conduct, in order to render reasons of his faith on every point upon which he should be called in question, and by no means with the intent obstinately to defend everything, but, if he should be better informed, resolved, in such case, to recant and change his views.

It was on this same day that the commission of the council visited Huss in his prison at Gottlieben. Notwithstanding the engagement of the council and the emperor that Huss should be heard, there were those who persisted in opposing the audience that had been promised him, and to further their plans, the calumnious report was spread abroad that a sedition was to burst forth upon his. arrival. Nothing could be more improbable, although the idea may possibly have entered the heads of some of the more hot-headed partisans of the reformer. Paletz and Causis accompanied the commission. In the secret interrogatories that took place, all means were tried, even to insult and threats, to shake the constancy of Huss. His friends, who knew of what materials the deputation was composed, were not without disquietude in their apprehension of the result. But Huss, debilitated and weakened as he was by sickness and severe imprisonment, was not to be awed by terror any more than seduced by promises. It was the wish of his friends that he should refuse to answer any question put to him thus in private. They saw no security for him but in a prudent reserve, or even absolute silence. They knew the violence of his adversaries, and were fearful of its effect upon a frame already so enfeebled by a long and harsh imprisonment. But, worn and enfeebled as Huss was, the spirit within him that was to brave the fires of martyrdom, was still unsubdued. True to the calm constancy of his life, he did not suffer himself to be intimidated, nor to use, as he justly might have done, any severe language. In one of his letters he depicts the troublesome and annoying nature of the inquisition to which he was subjected, a harshness of proceeding which might well have provoked angry retort. "Let my friends," said he, "be under no alarm on the score of my answers. I firmly hope that what I have said under the roof will yet be preached upon the house-tops. Every one of the articles has been presented to me separately, and the question has been asked whether I persisted in desiring to defend it. My answer was, that I would not do so, but would await the decision of the council. God is my witness that no reply has seemed to me more suitable, since I had already given it under my own hand that I did not wish to maintain anything obstinately, but was willing to receive instruction of any one. Michael de Causis stood, by, with a paper in his hand, urging the patriarch to use force to make me reply to his questions. The bishops then came in and interrogated in their turn... God has permitted Causis and Paletz to rise up against me for my sins. The one examined and remarked upon all my letters, and the other brought up conversations that had taken place between us many years back... The patriarch would insist upon it that I was exceedingly rich, and an archbishop even named the very sum I possess, namely, 70,000 florins... Oh! certainly my sufferings today were great! One of the bishops said to me ‘You have established a new law’; and another, ‘You have preached up all these articles.’ My answer simply was, ‘Why do you overwhelm me with outrage?’"

Berthold Wildungen, one of the deputation who visited Huss, has himself given an account of this interview, which, in the main, agrees with that of Huss, omitting, however, its most odious features. The number of articles submitted to Huss was thirty. His declining to defend them, and offering to submit to the correction of the council, was afterward used against him in the public audience. It is evident that he saw the futility of any private defense which he might offer, and preferred that the council, instead of the deputation, should be the judge of his views. Certainly no intention to submit his convictions, without argument or instruction of his error, could ever have entered his mind. He was not disposed to allow the council, any more than the pope, to usurp to themselves the authority of the word of God. He merely referred himself, as he felt in duty bound, to the decisions of the council, based, as he had the right to demand that they should be, upon the plain doctrine of the sacred Scriptures. His friends were disquieted at the report perversely spread abroad by his enemies, in regard to his submission. They feared that he had already offered some sort of retraction. But this was not the case. "I never promised," he says, in a letter written a few days later, "to submit myself to the council except conditionally; and at several different audiences—as already previously in public—I have protested that, as to the demand that I should retract, I desired to submit myself to the instruction, direction, and justice of the council, whenever I could be made to see that I had written, taught, or maintained anything opposed to truth." This protestation was repeatedly made by Huss, from the time when he left Prague for Constance up to the conclusion of his trial. As the articles were now read to him, he gave the sense in which they were held, sometimes denying the one presented to be the expression of his views, or pointing out the perversion to which another had been subjected. To prevent any misstatements or alterations, Huss reduced his replies to writing.

Among the most influential opponents of Huss were those members of the council who represented in its sessions the university of Paris and the royal court of France. Of these men, Gerson was the acknowledged leader. Cardinal D’Ailly, his former instructor, sympathized with him on most of the controverted questions of the day, and from their position, as well as the remark which the former of these men afterward made—namely, that had Huss been properly defended he would have escaped—it is to be presumed that their influence against the reformer was decisive of his fate. And yet, to the observer of passing events, not initiated into a full knowledge of the secret currents of influence combining with, or counterworking one another beneath the surface, such violent hostility as those men manifested toward Huss is quite inexplicable. In many points they agreed with the Bohemian reformer. They had no more respect for the papal power, and. would have paid no more regard to its excommunication, than Huss himself. Their exposures of the iniquity and corruption of the Roman court are as horrid and startling as any that were ever heard within the walls of Bethlehem chapel at Prague. It might have been supposed that these men, alike able, learned, and indignant at the gross corruptions of the church, sanctioned and exemplified in the lives of her own dignitaries, would have welcomed in Huss a brother reformer. But calumny had already poisoned their minds against him. Rivals and enemies had represented him to them as a heretic. His partial endorsement of the views of Wickliffe had in their eyes identified him with that hated Englishman. A strong party, resolved to glut their vengeance upon the latter, even at the price of robbing his grave and insulting his bones, thirsted for some living victim, and swept strong minds around them along in the tide of their own sympathies. To all this, however, must be added the fact, the weight of which at this day we are scarcely able to appreciate, that scholastic differences aggravated the animosity of the Paris deputation against Huss. The latter belonged to the school of the Realists, while the former were the avowed and leading champions of the school of the Nominalists. For full two centuries from the days of Roscelin and Abelard, France had been a battlefield for these contending parties. At times the result of the conflict seemed doubtful. Abelard, who was a Nominalist, with all his noted ability, fell before the unrelenting assaults of his powerful adversary, Bernard, and was branded as a heretic. But his views survived, and continued to spread until they had made the university of Paris their strongest fortress. In vain had popes and councils attempted to stay the tide of opinion. Abelard’s bones rested quietly in their grave, but over his helpless dust the battle was fought which more than avenged him. The Nominalists gained at last the supremacy, but the hard-fought battle had left behind it deep scars, and bleeding wounds that refused to be healed. Alienation and bitter hostility still were cherished in the minds of the opposing parties. They who triumphed—and Gerson among them—doubtless remembered the humiliation of past defeats, and it was no unimportant object in their esteem that a general council for the reformation of the church should lend its sanction. to the views which they maintained. Several of them, therefore, reproved in Huss the Realist as much at least as the heterodox preacher. Scholastic feuds were carried into the theological arena, and even men whose general integrity we are bound to respect were blinded, in the heat and strife of party feelings, to the nature of their acts. In the person of Huss, Realism was virtually triumphant at Prague; and when he stood before his judges, their prejudices were already aroused, and his case was really prejudged.

In regard to Huss, we have no evidence that he reciprocated the strong antipathies or party feelings of his antagonists. His philosophy was never made prominent, while his course was shaped simply by his sense of duty and his theological convictions. The cause of a pure Christianity excited in him a deeper interest than the dialectics or disputations of the schools. His philosophy did not obstruct—it may perhaps have promoted—the practical bearing of his words. His soul was too full of the great truths of scripture to have room left there for the play of passions which are roused by scholastic partisanship.

It was in such circumstances as these that Huss appeared before the council—a combination of opposing influences arrayed against him, from the conspiring antagonism of which little was left him to hope. Prejudice had built up, as it were, between him and the conscience of the council, an impenetrable wall of granite, from which argument, appeal, and remonstrance alike recoiled. This was manifest in the first steps of the process taken by the council against the reformer. 

It was on the fifth of June, 1415, that Huss was removed from the prison at Gottlieben, where he had remained for more than two months, and brought to Constance. But even here he was not permitted to meet his friend, Jerome. The latter was confined in the tower of St. Paul’s Cemetery, while the former was placed in the monastery of the Franciscans, where he was to remain, for the greater part of the time loaded with irons, till the hour of his martyrdom. Well does the annalist add, as he notes the period of this the last imprisonment of Huss, that "he was to take leave of his cell, not of his constancy; of his life, but not of his faith."

The council, however, contemning even the forms of justice, did not wait for his appearance before they proceeded to take measures that were meant to be decisive of his fate. Several hours before his arrival at Constance, and not only in his absence but in that of the emperor, the fathers of the council, with the cardinals and bishops, assembled in public congregation. The place selected for the assembly was the monastery of the Franciscans, in which Huss was to be confined. Articles were produced and read, accompanied with the alleged proofs, which were said to have been selected from his books and treatises. The object of such a proceeding, so strangely at variance with the course which they were virtually pledged to pursue, was sufficiently obvious. If the council’s condemnation of Huss’ doctrines could not thus be secured, a full opportunity at least was allowed his enemies to ply their arts of slanderous invective and false crimination. But among those present at the council, there was one indignant spectator of this grossly unjust proceeding. The good notary, Peter Maldoniewitz, the one who, two weeks before, on the arrest of Jerome, had discovered the secret prison in which he was confined, and offered him consolation, sympathy, and kindness, was present in his official character, and gathered, from what he heard, that the doctrines of Huss would speedily be condemned, perhaps before his arrival. He therefore hastened to inform his friends and countrymen, Chlum and Duba, of what the council proposed to do. On receiving this intelligence, these men promptly communicated it to the emperor. Sigismund shared to some extent the indignation of the Bohemian nobles. He dispatched, on the instant, the elector Louis of Bavaria and Frederic burgrave of Nuremberg to the assembled members, seriously enjoining upon them not to determine anything in the cause of Huss until they had heard him, and heard him, moreover, with calmness and impartiality. He directed them also to send him whatever erroneous articles they might detect, giving them to understand that he on his part would submit them to the judgment of good and learned men.

Such a message was far from acceptable to the council. They bore it ill, that having deposed a pope, their own supremacy should not be fully acknowledged by the emperor. With the first part of his command they were forced to acquiesce, and gave orders to have Huss brought before them, but on the second point they met the emperor’s demand by an absolute refusal. They declined to send him the erroneous articles. To this they were impelled as well probably by their fear of the result if the matter was to be left in his hands, as by their restiveness under his assumed control. Meanwhile Duba and Chlum, taught by experience to distrust the fair dealing of the council, handed to the princes whom the emperor had sent, the several volumes of the writings of Huss, from which the articles objected against him had been extracted. By a reference to these, the bad faith of his adversaries might the more readily be detected, or, if the extracts were correct, they might be verified.

Huss, now removed from Gottlieben, was brought in the course of the day for the first time before the council. The elector and the burgrave, having handed in the volumes of his writings, withdrew, and left Huss alone in the midst of his enemies. Exasperated as they were by the obstacles thrown in their way by the emperor, they were not in the best mood for hearing a man whose case they had already prejudged. The books of Huss were presented to him. He was asked if he acknowledged them as his. He replied that he did, promising at the same time to correct whatever error could be pointed out in them. "I will rectify," said he, "any mistaken proposition which any man among you can point out, with the most hearty good-will."

The reading of the articles charged as erroneous was then commenced. After one had been read, and Huss had shown a disposition to reply to it, the true spirit of the assembly broke forth. He had scarcely uttered the first word, when there arose throughout the whole assembly such clamor and disturbance that the hearing of him was altogether out of the question. The scene was renewed as the council proceeded from article to article. If the notary Maldoniewitz is to be believed—and he was present at the scene, gazing upon it with anxious interest—the proceedings of the assembly were characterized rather by the ferocity of wild beasts than the grave deportment and thoughtful attention of Christian doctors, assembled to discuss and decide the gravest questions. At length, as the storm lulled somewhat, the voice of Huss was heard appealing to the Sacred Scriptures. This was too much for the patience of the council. "That is not the question," was the outcry which burst forth from every side. Some uttered accusations against the prisoner, while others laughed him to scorn. Any attempt which he could make to secure a hearing was perfectly futile. He ceased for a moment, and his enemies began to enjoy their triumph. "He is dumb," cried they, "it is evident that he has taught the heretical proposition contained in the article." "All," said Luther, in describing the scene in his own energetic language, "all worked themselves into rage like wild boars; the bristles of their back stood on end; they bent their brows and gnashed their teeth against John Huss."

But, in the midst of all the taunts and insults that were heaped upon him, Huss was not depressed or dismayed. "There were given to me," he says, "boldness and presence of mind." Two of the articles charged against him were stricken out. There was not evidence to sustain them. "The same fate," writes Huss, at the close of the day, "is augured for many of the others." One of those probably which were dropped was the one that concerned the doctrine of the cup. The council readily perceived that, whatever might be the views of Huss upon the subject, he was not the originator of the innovation at Prague, and if he was condemned for them, the sentence might strike further than they desired. Huss justly complained of the confusion and clamor of the occasion. Causis insisted that his books should be burned. Yet there were men more favorably inclined. Huss speaks well of the cardinal, Bishop of Ostia, who usually presided over the deliberations of the council. He was the son of a poor peasant of Brogni. A swineherd in his youth, he was never ashamed of his origin. By his merit he had risen to high station, and in his elevation preserved a sympathy for the poor and unfortunate. Huss speaks of him as father, and commends the kindness which he experienced at his hands. One of the Polish doctors also showed himself friendly. Even the Bishop of Leitomischel, who had denounced Jacobel, seemed somewhat softened in feeling toward Huss.

But his friends were few in number, and their voices were drowned in the clamors of this judicial mob. No order was preserved. The members of the council cried out against Huss, while they interrupted one another at the top of their voice. "I supposed," cried the prisoner, "that there had been more fairness, kindness, and order in the council." Upon this the Cardinal of Ostia addressed Huss: "When we saw you in the tower, you spoke in a more modest manner." "With good reason," replied Huss, "for there no one vociferated against me, and now all do." "They tried," says Huss, in speaking of the scene at a later period, "to frighten me from my constancy in the truth of Christ; but they could not vanquish the strength of God in me. They would not deal with me on the ground of the authority of the Sacred Scriptures, as those noble lords, Duba and Chlum, prepared as they were to incur infamy for the truth of God while they stood firmly by my side, can testify." These men had been authorized by the emperor to be present with Huss on his trial. With what indignation must they have heard the reply to Huss when he asked to be instructed in what respects he had erred. "As you ask to be informed," said the presiding cardinal, "you must first recant your doctrine, according to the prescript of the fifty masters in Sacred Scripture."

As the clamor continued and increased, and the eyes of Huss, gazing over the assembly, met only enemies where he had hoped to find impartial judges, he was forced to express his surprise. "I anticipated," said he, "a different reception, and had imagined that I should obtain a hearing. I am unable to make myself audible over so great a noise; and I am silent because I am forced to it. I would willingly speak were I listened to." The more moderate members of the council were disgusted. The agitation and confusion were too great for calm deliberation. A fair audience of Huss was utterly impossible in the circumstances. Those who were anxious for the reputation of the council urged an adjournment, insisting that the case should be deferred to another occasion. Their views prevailed, and the council stood adjourned to the seventh of June.

The next day upon which the council met (June 7) was ushered in by a solar eclipse. The sun’s disc was almost wholly obscured, and the superstition of the age regarded it as a strange omen. It was not till the eclipse had wholly passed away, and at about one o’clock in the afternoon, that the council reassembled in the hall of the Franciscan monastery, where they had met before. Sigismund took good care to be present. The Bohemian noblemen had given him an account of what had taken place at the first audience, and conjured him to be present at the second sitting, to preserve order.

Huss was led into the assembly loaded with chains, and attended by a numerous body of soldiers. He was placed directly in front of the emperor, whose imperial word had been pledged for his security. The feelings of Sigismund on such an occasion were scarcely to be envied. He came now, undoubtedly, in the hope of saving the prisoner from condemnation, and restraining the excessive zeal of his prosecutors. He persuaded himself, in all probability, that his influence with the council, and with the prisoner also, would be decisive. But he had failed rightly to estimate the strength of religious conviction on the part of one, or of prejudice and venomous hostility on the part of the other. Little did he realize, while he exulted over the deposition of a pope, that in the hands of the council he was himself to become the blind instrument of his own infamy.

The two bitter enemies of Huss, Paletz and Causis, had neglected nothing which could contribute to secure his condemnation. The presence of the emperor only incited them to redouble their efforts. Apprehension of the shame of defeat, if their victim was suffered to escape them, aggravated the bitterness of their zeal. The audience opened with the reading of the articles of accusation. They were fitly presented, as they had been mainly drawn up by Causis. In the first of these he sought to identify the cause of Huss with that of Wickliffe, and thus overwhelm it in the same obloquy. "John Huss," said he, "has taught in the Bethlehem chapel, and in other places in the city of Prague, many errors among the people, some of them drawn from the books of Wickliffe, some of his own getting up, and he has diligently defended them, with extreme obstinacy. In the first place, he has taught that after the consecration and the pronunciation of the words in the Lord’s supper, the material bread still remains, and this is proved by the testimony of several witnesses." The names of four of them, Protiva, Pecklo, Benesius, and Broda, were specified.

To this charge Huss replied, with a solemn adjuration, that he had never taught such a doctrine. "Only this," he would confess, "that when the archbishop of Prague had wholly prohibited the use of that expression, bread, he could not approve this mandate of the archbishop, inasmuch as Christ in the sixth chapter of John had spoken of himself eleven times as the bread of angels that came down from heaven to give life to the world, but that he never had spoken of material bread."

Upon this Huss was addressed by the Cardinal of Cambray, who belonged to the school of the French theologians, and who like them was embittered against the Realism of Huss on philosophical grounds. Holding a paper in his hand, which he said he had received the day before, he addressed the prisoner: "John Huss, do you hold that universals are derived from particulars?" This was a test question of philosophy. Huss replied to it in the affirmative, strengthening himself with the remark, that thus St. Anselm and others had believed. "It follows, then," replied the cardinal, "that after the consecration, the material substance of the bread remains. And this point I thus prove: because after the consecration, while the bread is changed and substantiated into the body of Christ, as you now say, either the wonted substance of the material bread remains there, or it does not. If it remains, the charge is true; if not, then it follows that at the cessation of the particular the universal itself ceases."

By such reasoning this "hammer of heretics," as he was proud in his day to be called, attempted to smite down Huss, and force him either to renounce his philosophy, or admit that the material bread remained after consecration. His passions as a partisan had thrown him into the strange attitude of a champion of orthodoxy, contending as a philosophical polemic. The fate of Huss was made to hinge upon the syllogisms and the technicalities of the schools. It is scarcely possible to conceive the more than odium theologicum which, at that period, characterized the feelings mutually of the Nominalists and Realists. This bitterness had continued through centuries, the heirloom of successive generations. These contending sects carried their fury so far as to charge each other with the "sin against the Holy Ghost." It is worthy of note that the Nominalists, in their subsequent letter to Louis, king of France, do not pretend to deny that Huss fell a victim to the resentment of their sect. Undoubtedly this article of accusation which Causis had drawn up, and of the falsehood of which he could scarcely have failed to be aware, had been introduced by a malignant ingenuity, and with the purpose to array against Huss the philosophical prejudices of the whole French deputation. It gave an opportunity to bring to bear upon him all the arts of their scholasticism, and the rigor of an inflexible and pitiless logic. It placed him directly in conflict with the ablest and most disciplined intellects of Europe, and left him at the mercy of all the sophistical snares with which they might endeavor to entrap him.

But Huss, believing as he did in the doctrine of transubstantiation, was prepared by his own belief with an unanswerable reply. In this case, he admitted that the universal ceases, inasmuch as transubstantiation is a miracle, the substance disappearing in this case, though remaining in every other.

Upon this an English doctor interposed. He wished to present a new edition of the cardinal’s argument, and prove, from what Huss admitted, that material bread remains after consecration, thus condemning him by inference—a course of all others most unmanly and odious. But Huss treated it as a puerility with which even the boys in school were familiar, and at once answered it. Another English doctor now proposed to prove that material bread remains after consecration, inasmuch as it is not annihilated. To this Huss replied that, although not annihilated, it yet ceased to be bread in particular, by its transubstantiation into the body of Christ.

Here another Englishman interrupted him, by saying, "In my view, Huss seems to speak in the same subtle way that Wickliffe did. For the latter granted all that the former does, but held also that material bread remains after consecration, in the sacrament of the altar. Moreover, that whole chapter, Firmater credimus, he perverted so as to confirm his erroneous opinion." To this Huss replied, denying that he had spoken anything but with sincerity and from conviction. "Was then," asked the Englishman, "was that body of Christ, which was born of the Virgin Mary, suffered, died, rose again, and is seated at the right hand of God the Father, wholly and truly present in the sacrament of the altar?" This was the vital question, at least in the view of every Englishman. Wickliffe’s denial of the doctrine of transubstantiation was the head and front, theoretically at least, of his offending. But Huss candidly and manfully disavowed the views which the English reformer held upon this point. Upon this the minds of some of the English members of the council became somewhat softened toward him. They had, with their characteristic common sense, little sympathy with the subtle and scholastic distinctions of the French doctors. If Huss was to be proved guilty of rejecting the doctrine in question, they wished the proof to be such that a plain man could understand it. Probably few of them could fairly comprehend the technicalities of the Nominalist philosophy, or, if they did, some at least must have regarded it with aversion: "What use," exclaimed one, "of all this disputation about universals, which has nothing to do with faith? This man, as far as I can see, has correct views in regard to the sacrament of the altar."

All the English doctors did not share this opinion. The present charge was a vital one in their view, and the smoke of Huss’ funeral-pile would be far more grateful incense to their nostrils if he could be burned as a disciple of their old enemy, Wickliffe. Unwilling even yet to give up the point, Doctor John Stokes returned to the charge. "I saw," said he, "at Prague a certain treatise ascribed to this John Huss, in which it was distinctly stated that after consecration the material bread remains in the sacrament." "With all due respect," replied Huss, calmly conscious of his innocence of the charge brought against him, "With all due respect, this is not the case."

Unable by these methods to substantiate anything against the prisoner, on this charge at least, they returned to the various testimony which had been sworn against him. John Protiva, parish priest of St. Clement at Prague, added to his testimony that Huss had, when the authority of St. Gregory was adduced against him, spoken of that holy man as a jester or a wag. To this Huss replied, that in this matter injustice was done him. He had ever accounted Gregory a most holy doctor of the church.

Upon this the ardor of the prosecution somewhat abated. The course of his enemies was perhaps producing something of a recoil of feeling in favor of the prisoner. The false charge, and Cardinal D’Ailly’s absurd attempt to prove it upon Huss by inference, were enough upon reflection to excite sympathy among the more moderate members of the council.

At this moment, when the heat of the dispute had somewhat subsided, the cardinal of Florence came adroitly to the rescue of a bad cause. "You know," said he to Huss, "that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word must be established. But now, as you perceive, there are almost twenty men, of great credit and authority, some of whom heard you themselves, while others testify from common fame and the reports of persons who did hear you, whose testimony bears against you. All give such decisive evidence of the truth of what they testify, that we can not disbelieve them. How you can defend your cause against so many, and such eminent and reliable men, I can not see." The aim of the cardinal in this assumed tone of moderation was obvious. He wished to persuade Huss to an unconditional recantation, at once, probably, to dispose of the whole matter, and, out of regard for the emperor and the Bohemians, to save the prisoner’s life. But Huss was not to be thus entrapped into a violation of his convictions. "I call," replied he, "I call God and my own conscience to witness, that I never have taught, or even thought of teaching, as these men have dared to testify in regard to what they never heard. And even though there were many more arrayed against me, I make more account of the witness of the Lord my God, and of my own conscience, than I do of the judgments of all my adversaries, which I regard as nothing."

It was a noble reply, worthy of the man and of the occasion. But the fathers of the council could not appreciate the spirit in which it was uttered. Undoubtedly the cardinal of Florence spoke the feelings of the more moderate portion of the council, when he rejoined, "We cannot decide according to your conscience, but we must of necessity be satisfied with the most clear and reliable testimony of these witnesses. Nor do they assert these things against you as you say, impelled by some grudge or malice, but fortify their testimony with the reasons alleged for it, savoring in no respect of malice, and in regard to which there is no room left for doubt. As to your saying that Master Stephen Paletz is suspected of sinister designs by you, and that be has craftily selected those articles from your books, which will hereafter be brought forward, you seem to me in this matter to do him injustice. In my opinion, he has proceeded in this matter in such good faith, that he has presented the objectionable matter in milder language than you employed in your books. I hear moreover, that other excellent men are likewise suspected by you, and you have asserted as much in regard to the chancellor of Paris (Gerson), than whom there is not another person in Christendom more eminent in merit."

The reply of Huss is not given, but the language of the cardinal was obviously as much addressed to the assembly as it was to the prisoner. "Should I live," says Huss, in one of his letters, "I will reply to the chancellor of Paris; if I die, God will answer for me at the day of judgment."

The result as to the first article seems to have been, that it was, however reluctantly, abandoned.

The article was next read in which Huss was charged with obstinately teaching and defending the erroneous articles of Wickliffe, in Bohemia. The malice in the drawing up of this charge is manifest at a glance.