“O quam sanctus panis iste,Tu es solus Jesu Christe,Caro, cibus, sacramentum,Quo non majus est inventum!”
“O quam sanctus panis iste,Tu es solus Jesu Christe,Caro, cibus, sacramentum,Quo non majus est inventum!”
In vain during his public audience of June 8 he disputed earnestly in favor of the same belief. The witnesses swore to the contrary. He had no right to call rebutting testimony, and could only appeal to God and his conscience. He was proved a heretic who must confess and abjure or be burned.[517]
His only possible line of defence, as has been shown above (Vol. I. p. 446) would have lain in disabling the witnesses for mortal enmity—for enmity such as would lead them to seek his life—and even this would not have been available against the errors which the commissioners had extracted, falsely, as he asserted, from his writings. As regards the witnesses, the commissioners made an unusual concession to him when, during his sickness in December, some fifteen of them were taken to his cell that he might see them sworn. Some of them, it is said, declared that they knew nothing; others were bitterly hostile to him. To this extent he knew some of the names, and others he was acquainted with because they were attached to depositions taken in advance at Prague for Michael de Causis, which by some means had fallen into the hands of Huss before he started for Constance. Some of these names, probably on this account, were attached to the article on the subject of remanence presented in the hearing of June 7, but in the final sentence no names are mentioned; the witnesses to each article are designated simply by titles, such as a canon of Prague, a priest of Litomysl, a master of arts, a doctor of theology, etc., and when Huss asked the name of one of them it was refused. This was strictly in accordance with rule.[518]
Yet the hostility of those who testified against him was notorious. At the place of execution he declared that he was convicted of errors which he did not entertain, on the evidence of false witnesses. The Bohemians in Constance, in their memorial of May 31, 1415, to the council, declared that the testimony against him was given by those who were his mortal enemies. At one time he or his friends thought of disabling them on this account, but when he asked the commissioners to permit him to employ an advocate who could take the necessary exceptions to the evidence, although they at first assented they finally refused, saying that it was against the law for any one to defend a suspected heretic. This, as we have seen, was strictly true, and if the maintenance of the rule may seem harsh, we must remember on the other hand that the friends of Huss were allowed unexampled liberty in working in his behalf. Their repeated memorials to the council and their efforts with Sigismund made them guilty of the crime of fautorship, and if there had been any disposition to enforce the law they could have been reduced to instant silence and have been grievously punished.[519]
It had not taken long to secure evidence more than ample for Huss’s conviction, and if his burning had been the object desired it might have been speedily accomplished. We have seen, however, how much the Inquisition preferred a penitent convert to a cremated heretic, and in this case, perhaps more than in any other on record, confession and submission were supremely desirable. Huss, as a self-confessed heresiarch, would be deprived of all importance, and his disciples might be expected to follow his example: as a martyr, there was no predicting whether the result would be terror or exasperation. The milder customary methods of the Inquisition were therefore brought to bear to break down his stubborn obstinacy by procrastination, solitude, and despair. Had his judges desired to be harsh they could have had recourse to torture, which was the ordinary mode of dealing with similar cases. In this they would have been fully justified by law and custom. The less violent but equally efficient device of prolonged starvation could likewise have been employed, but was mercifully forborne.Yet the slower but not less wearing torture of indefinite imprisonment was not spared him. He was kept in the Dominican convent until March 24. Although his petition to be allowed to see his friends was refused, they were permitted to furnish him with writing materials, and he employed his enforced leisure in composing a number of tracts which, written without the aid of books, show his extensive and accurate acquaintance with Scripture and the Fathers. His sweet temper won the good-will of all who were brought in contact with him, and he gratefully alludes to the kindness with which he was treated both by his guards and by the clerks of the papal chamber. The winning nature of the man, as well as the gold of his friends, probably explains the correspondence which at this period he was able to maintain with them, though all communication with him was forbidden. Letters were conveyed back and forth clandestinely, sometimes carried in food, in spite of the vigilance of his enemies. Michael de Causis hovered around the gate, saying, “By the grace of God we shall burn that heretic who has cost me so many florins,” and procuring that the wives of the guards, whom he suspected as letter-carriers, should be excluded. All this ceased when the quarrel between pope and council culminated. On March 20 John XXIII. secretly fled from Constance, when the guards placed over Huss delivered the keys to Sigismund and followed their master. The council then handed Huss over to the custody of the Bishop of Constance, who carried him in chains by night to the castle of Gottlieben, some miles from the city across the Rhine. His friends had requested that he should have a more airy prison, and the request was more than granted, for he was now confined in a room at the top of a tall tower. Though his feet were fettered he was able to move about during the day, but at night his arm was chained to the wall. As escape was impossible, the confinement was evidently intended to be punitive. Here he was completely isolated from all intercourse with his fellow-beings and left to his own dreary introspection. Disease added to the harshness of his prison. From the foul Dominican cell to the windy turret-room of Gottlieben, he was exposed to every variety of unwholesome conditions. Stone, an affection hitherto unknown to him, tormented him greatly. Toothache and headache combined to increase his sufferings. On one occasiona severe attack of fever, accompanied by excessive vomiting, so prostrated him that his guards carried him out of his cell thinking him about to die. Yet throughout all his letters from prison the beautiful patience of the man shines forth. For the enemies who were pursuing him to the death there is only forgiveness; for the trials with which God has seen fit to test his servant there is only submission. He overflows with gratitude for the steadfast affection of his friends, and sends touching requests of remembrance to them all; he teaches charity and gently points out the way to moral and spiritual improvement. There is neither the pride of martyrdom nor the desire for retribution; all is pious resignation and love and humility. Since Christ, no man has left behind him a more affecting example of the true Christian spirit than John Huss, while fearlessly awaiting the time when he should suffer for what he believed to be truth. He was one of the chosen few who exalt and glorify humanity. Yet he was but human, and the final victory was not won without the agony of self-conquest; while at times he comforted himself with dreams that God would not suffer him to perish, but that like Daniel and Jonah and Susannah he would be rescued when all help seemed vain.[520]
Hope seemed justified when the rupture occurred between the pope and the council. No sooner was Huss made aware of the flight of John XXIII. than he begged his friends to see Sigismund instantly and procure his liberation. The answer was his transfer to the tower of Gottlieben. When the pope was brought back a prisoner to the same castle of Gottlieben, and the council proceeded to try and condemn him as a simonist and dilapidator who was ruining the Church, while his personal vices and crimes, unfit for description, were a scandal to Christendom, such confirmation of all that the Wickliffites had urged might well seem to justifiy the expectation that Huss would be released with honor. John XXIII., however, with the wisdom of the children of the world, essayed no defence; he confessed all that was laid to hischarge, submitted to the council, and was eventually, after a few years of imprisonment, rewarded by Martin V. with the lofty post of Dean of the Sacred College. Huss, with the constancy of the children of light, refused to perjure himself by confession, and there could be no escape for him.[521]
The council had been assembled to reform the Church, and was performing its duty in its own way, but nothing could be further from the thoughts of its most zealous members than the revolutionary reform of Wickliff and Huss, which would reduce the Church to apostolic poverty and deprive it of all temporal power. Besides the doctrinal errors, attested by abundant witnesses, there was ample material in Huss’s writings to prove him a most dangerous enemy of the whole ecclesiastical system. He had written his tract “De Ablatione Bonorum” in defence of one of the forty-five condemned Wickliffite articles which asserted that the temporal lord could at will deprive of their temporalities ecclesiastics who were habitual delinquents. His tract “De Decimis” defended another of the articles, contending that no one in mortal sin could be a temporal lord, a prelate, or a bishop. John Gerson, one of the leading members of the council, had, as Chancellor of the University of Paris, before coming to Constance, drawn up a series of twenty such dangerous errors, extracted from Huss’s treatise “De Ecclesia,” and had urged Archbishop Conrad of Prague to extirpate the Wickliffite heresy by calling in the secular arm. Huss, in his deductions from the Wickliffite doctrines of predestination, had overthrown the very foundations of the hierarchical system. Among the cardinals in the council, Ottone Colonna had fulminated the papal excommunication which Huss had disregarded; Zabarella and Brancazio had been actively concerned in the proceedings against him before the curia—all of these and many others were thoroughly familiar with his revolutionary doctrines. What was to become of the theocracy founded by Hildebrand if such teachings were to pass unreproved, if their assertor was to be allowed to defend them and was only to be adjudged a heretic when overcome in scholastic disputation? The whole structure of sacerdotalism would be undermined and the whole body of canon lawwould be disregarded if so monstrous a proposition should be conceded. To the fathers of the council nothing could well seem more preposterous. Then Michael de Causis had intercepted a letter, written by Huss from prison, in which the ministers of the council were alluded to as the servants of Antichrist, and when this was brought to him by the commissioners he acknowledged its authenticity. Besides all this, he had remained under excommunication for suspicion of heresy during long years, during which he had constantly performed divine service, and he had called the pope an Antichrist whose anathema was to be disregarded. This of itself, as we have seen, constituted him a self-convicted heretic.[522]
It thus was idle to suppose that the council, because it had deposed John XXIII., would set free so contumacious a heretic, whose very virtues only rendered him the more dangerous. The inquisitorial process must go on to the end. Even during the bitterest and most doubtful portion of the contest, before the pope had been brought back to Constance, the successive steps of the trial received due attention. On April 17 four new commissioners were appointed to replace the previous ones, whose commissions from the pope were held to have expired, and the new commission was expressly granted power to proceed to final sentence. The only doubt arising was whether the condemnation of Wickliff, with which the case of Huss was inextricably related, should be uttered in the name of the pope or in that of the council, and its publication, May 4, in the latter form, showed that the assembly had no hesitation as to its duty in stamping out the heresy of the master and of the disciple. The active measures also, which during this period were taken against Jerome of Prague, were an indication not to be mistaken of the purposes of the council. Yet how little the friends of Huss understood the real position of affairs, and how false hopes had been excited by the rupture with the pope, is seen in their efforts at this juncture to press the trial to a conclusion. Under the procrastinating policy of the Inquisition it is quite possible that Huss would have been left to his solitary musings for a time indefinitely longer, in hopes that his resolutionwould at last give way, but for the efforts of his friends, who hoped to secure his release. On May 13 they presented a memorial complaining of his treatment, imprisoned in irons and perishing of hunger and thirst, without trial or conviction, in violation of the safe-conduct and of the pledged faith of the empire. They also remonstrated against the stories which were circulated to prejudice the case, that in Bohemia the blood of Christ was carried around in bottles, and that cobblers heard confession and celebrated mass. On May 16 the council replied to the effect that as far back as 1411 Huss had had a hearing before the Holy See and had been excommunicated, and had since then not only proved himself a heretic, but a heresiarch, by remaining under excommunication and preaching forbidden doctrines, even in Constance itself. As for the safe-conduct, we have seen how it was pretended to have been procured after the arrest. This elusive answer might have shown how the case was already prejudged by those who were to decide it; yet again, on May 18, the Bohemians presented a rejoinder urging promptitude. It was fully expected in Constance that a session would be held on the 22d, at which Huss would be condemned; but about this time attention was engrossed by the trial of John XXIII., who was at length deposed, May 29, and notified of his deposition on the 31st. Sigismund was now preparing for the voyage to Spain, which was expected to take place in June, and if anything was to be done with Huss before his departure further delay was inadmissible. Probably the Bohemians imagined that in some indefinable way he would yet save their leader. On May 31, therefore, they presented another memorial, reiterating their complaints about the safe-conduct and asking for a speedy public hearing. Sigismund entered during the discussion and strenuously urged the public audience, which was finally promised. Huss’s friends further urged that he should be brought from his prison and be allowed a few days to recover from his harsh incarceration, and a show was made of complying with the request. On the same day John of Chlum had the satisfaction of forwarding to Gottlieben an order for the transmission of Huss to Constance. The next day, June 1, a special deputation from the council followed and presented to him the thirty articles which had been proved against him. They reported that he submitted himself to the council; buthe maintained that he only agreed to do so on such points as he could be proved to have taught erroneously. At last he was brought to Constance in chains and confined in the Franciscan convent.[523]
In the routine of the inquisitorial process there was no necessity for further parley with the accused. The articles of heresy were proved against him, and if he continued obstinately to deny them delivery to the secular arm was a matter of course. There had been no intention of permitting such an innovation on the regular procedure as a public audience, but Sigismund could see, if the council could not, that its denial would have a most unfortunate influence on public opinion in Bohemia, where, in the prevailing ignorance as to the inquisitorial rules, it would be claimed that the council was afraid to face their champion and was forced to condemn him unheard. It could, in reality, have no influence on the result, for the case was already virtually decided, but Huss’s friends could not recognize this, and an attempt was made, without success, to speculate on their eagerness, by a demand for two thousand florins to defray the alleged expenses. The audiences which followed were thus wholly irregular, and may be briefly dismissed as in no sense entitled to the importance which has commonly been ascribed to them.[524]
On June 5 a congregation of the council was held in the Franciscan convent. At first the intention was to carry out the ordinary inquisitorial procedure by considering, in the absence of Huss, the articles proved against him, but Peter Mladenowic hastened to John of Chlum and Wenceslas of Duba, who forthwith appealed to Sigismund. The latter at once sent the Palsgrave Louis and Frederic Burggrave of Nuremberg to the council, with orders that nothing should be done until Huss was present and his books were before them for verification. At length, therefore, he had the long-desired opportunity of meeting his adversaries, and defending himself in public debate. The books from which his errors had been extracted were laid before him—his treatise“De Ecclesia” and his tracts against Stephen Palecz and Stanislaus of Znaim—and he acknowledged them to be his. The articles were taken up in succession. He was required to answer to each a simple yea or nay, and when he desired to explain anything a scene of indescribable confusion arose. When he asked to be taught wherein he had erred he was told that he must first recant his heresies, which was strictly in accordance with the law. The day wore away in the discussion, and it had to be renewed on the 7th, and again on the 8th—Sigismund being present on these latter occasions. Huss defended himself gallantly, with wonderful quickness of thought and dialectical skill, but nothing could be more unlike the free debate which he had deluded himself into anticipating when he left Prague. Although the Cardinal of Ostia, who presided, endeavored to show fairness, the assembly at times became a howling mob with shouts of “Burn him! Burn him!” Interruptions were incessant, he was baited on all sides with questions, and frequently his replies were drowned in clamor. As a judicial act it was a mockery, but it served the purpose desired by Sigismund, and the Church had shown itself not afraid of public discussion with the heresiarch. At the end of the third day of this tumultuous wrangling Huss was exhausted almost to fainting. The night before toothache had deprived him of sleep, an attack of fever supervened, and six months of harsh imprisonment had left him little physical endurance. The proceedings terminated with the cardinals urging him to recant and promising him merciful treatment if he would throw himself upon the mercy of the council. He asked for another hearing, saying that he would submit if his arguments and authorities were insufficient. To this Cardinal Peter d’Ailly replied that the unanimous decision of the doctors was that he must confess his error in publishing the articles ascribed to him, he must swear never in future to believe or teach them, and must recant them publicly. Huss begged the council for the love of God not to force him to wrong his conscience, for abjuration meant the renunciation of an error previously entertained, and many of those brought against him he had never held. Sigismund asked him why he could not renounce errors which he said had been ascribed to him through perjury, and Huss had to explain to him the technical meaning of abjuration. One member of the council even objected to the accused being admitted to recantation,because he was not to be trusted, but this would have been wholly illegal. Even in the case of relapse the heretic always had a right to confess and recant, and the council was not to be betrayed into so manifest a denial of justice. It was impossible, in such a crowd of eager persecutors, to maintain the legal forms in all strictness, and there followed a number of volunteer accusations by individuals, on which an irregular discussion could not be repressed. Finally, as Huss was withdrawn, John of Chlum succeeded in giving him a friendly grasp of the hand and a word of sympathy. To the forlorn and despised heretic that touch and voice were a solace which nerved him for the yet harder trials of the succeeding weeks.[525]
His conscientious endurance was now to be tested to the uttermost. The wise general policy of the Inquisition, which preferred a confessed penitent to a martyr, was specially applicable in this case, for though Sigismund and the council underestimated the Bohemian fervor and obstinacy, the dullest could see that Huss confessing to having taught heresy and humbly seeking reconciliation would dispirit his followers, while no one could guess the extent of the conflagration which might spread from his pyre. Accordingly efforts were redoubled to induce him to confess and recant. Sigismund had prepared the way by assuring him during the public audience that no mercy would be shown him and that persistent denial would bring him to the stake, while he was not notified that behind the bland promises of mercy for submission there lay a sentence, which, while expressing joy at his humbly seeking absolution, pronounced him to be pernicious, scandalous, and seditious, and condemned him to degradation from the priesthood and to perpetual imprisonment. The council could do no otherwise, for this, as we have seen, was the punishment provided by the canons for repentant heretics, and yet in estimating thenoble firmness of Huss we must bear in mind that no intimation of it seems to have been made to him.[526]
The obstacle in the way of Huss’s abjuration lay not so much in the heresies which he had taught, as in those which he had not taught. On legal testimony his judges had found him guilty of all, but the worst of them, such as the remanence of the substance and the vitiation of the sacraments in polluted hands, he denied energetically ever to have held or expressed. Many of the errors extracted from his works, moreover, he repudiated, asserting that the passages had been garbled and perverted. In the eye of the law this denial was mere contumacy which only aggravated his guilt. The first condition of reconciliation was confessing under oath that he was guilty of having held these errors and then abjuring them. This was committing perjury to God in the most solemn fashion, and to a tender conscience like that of Huss it was worse than death. From this dilemma there was no escape. On the one hand lay the legal system, contrived with Satanic ingenuity and unalterable; on the other lay the purity of character which led Huss to reject without hesitation all the specious subterfuges suggested to beguile him.[527]
For a month the struggle continued, and no human soul ever bore itself with loftier fortitude or sweeter or humbler charity. He asked for a confessor, and intimated that he would prefer Stephen Palecz, the enemy who had hounded him to the death. Palecz came and heard his confession, and then urged him to abjure, saying that he ought not to mind the humiliation. “The humiliation of condemnation and burning is greater,” replied Huss, “how then can I fear humiliation? But advise me: what would you do if you knew for certain that you did not hold the errors imputed to you? Would you abjure?” Palecz burst into tears and could only stammer, “It is difficult.” He wept again freely when Huss begged his pardon for harsh words used in the heat of strife, and especially for calling him a falsifier. Another confessor was sentto him, who listened to him kindly and gave him absolution without insisting on preliminary abjuration, which was a most irregular concession—indeed, almost incredible. Many others were allowed to visit him in the hope of persuading him to confess and recant. One learned doctor urged his submission, saying, “If the council told me I had but one eye, I would confess it to be so, though I know I have two,” but Huss was impervious to such example. An Englishman adduced the precedent of the English doctors who had, without exception, abjured the heresies of Wickliff when required to do so; but when Huss offered to swear that he had never held or taught the heresies imputed to him, and that he would never hold or teach them, his baffled advisers withdrew.[528]
The most formidable effort, however, was of an official character. At the final hearing of June 8, Cardinal Zabarella had promised him that a recantation in a form strictly limited would be submitted to him, and the promise was fulfilled in a paper skilfully drawn up, so as to satisfy his scruples. It represented him as protesting anew that much had been imputed to him which he had never believed, but that nevertheless he submitted himself in everything to the correction and orders of the council in abjuring, revoking, and retracting, and in accepting whatever merciful penance the council might prescribe for his salvation. Carefully as this was phrased to elude the difficulty, Huss rejected it without hesitation. In some matters, he said, he would be denying the truth, in others he would be perjuring himself. It were better to die than to fall into the hands of the Lord in the effort to escape momentary suffering. Then one of the fathers of the council—supposed to be the Cardinal of Ostia, the highest in rank of the Sacred College—addressed him as his “dearest and most cherished brother,” with the most honeyed persuasiveness, begging him not to confide too absolutely in his own judgment. In making the abjuration it will not be he that condemns truth, but the council; as for perjury, if perjury there be, it will fall on the heads of those who exact it. Yet Huss was not to be enticed with such allurements; he could not quiet his conscience with casuistry such as this, and he deliberately chose death. In daily expectation of the dreadful sentence, he quietly put his simple affairs in order. PeterMladenowic, the notary, had rendered him zealous service and should be paid out of his sixty grossi. His little debts were to be settled, and his books, apparently his only other property, were to be distributed. Kind remembrances were sent to his numerous friends, and they were told if they had learned any good of him to hold fast to it; if they had seen in him aught reprehensible to cast it aside. It was not that he was insensible, for he describes in moving terms the mental conflicts and agony which he endured in his hopeless prison, expecting each day to be led forth to an agonizing death, but the spirit rose superior to the flesh and remained victor in the struggle. Solicitous to retain the good opinion of his disciples, he managed to transmit to them, on June 18, a copy of the articles proved against him, together with a report of what his defence had been. Of those drawn from his writings he retracted none, although many he declared to be false and garbled. Those alleged against him by witnesses he mostly asserted to be lies, and he pathetically concluded, “It only remains for me to abjure and revoke and undergo fearful penance or to burn. May the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost grant me the spirit of wisdom and fortitude to persevere to the end and to escape the snares of Satan!”[529]
In hope of his weakening, the end was postponed until the approaching departure of Sigismund rendered further delay impossible. Yet effort was not abandoned till the last. On July 1 a deputation of prelates endeavored to persuade him that he could reasonably recant, but he handed them a written confession calling God to witness that he had never taught many of the articles; as for the rest, if there were error in them he detested it, but he could not abjure any of them. Puzzled by his unexpected tenacity of purpose, and earnestly desirous of avoiding the catastrophe, a final and unprecedented concession was agreed upon. On July 5 Zabarella and Peter d’Ailly sent for him and offered to let him deny the heresies proved by witnesses if he would abjure those extracted from his books. This was, in fact, an abandonment of all inquisitorial precedent, but Huss had persistently declared thatmost of the latter were fraudulently drawn, so as to attribute to him errors which he had never held, and he was immovable. As a last resource, later in the same day, Sigismund sent his friends John of Chlum and Wenceslas of Duba, with four bishops, to ask him whether he would persevere or recant, but his answer was as firm as ever. To the friendly adjuration of John of Chlum he replied with tears that he would willingly revoke anything in which he could be proved to have erred. The bishops pronounced him obstinate in error and left him.[530]
Thus the extraordinary efforts of the council to save itself and him were vain, and nothing remained but the inevitable final act of the tragedy. The next day, July 6, saw the most gorgeousauto de féon record. The cathedral of Constance was crowded with Sigismund and his nobles, the great officers of the empire with their insignia, the prelates in their splendid robes. While mass was sung, Huss, as an excommunicate, was kept waiting at the door; when brought in he was placed on an elevated bench by a table on which stood a coffer containing priestly vestments. After some preliminaries, including a sermon by the Bishop of Lodi, in which he assured Sigismund that the events of that day would confer on him immortal glory, the articles of which Huss was convicted were recited. In vain he protested that he believed in transubstantiation and in the validity of the sacrament in polluted hands. He was ordered to hold his tongue, and on his persisting the beadles were told to silence him, but in spite of this he continued to utter protests. The sentence was then read in the name of the council, condemning him both for his written errors and those which had been proved by witnesses. He was declared a pertinacious and incorrigible heretic who did not desire to return to the Church; his books were ordered to be burned, and himself to be degraded from the priesthood and abandoned to the secularcourt. Seven bishops arrayed him in priestly garb and warned him to recant while yet there was time. He turned to the crowd, and with broken voice declared that he could not confess the errors which he had never entertained, lest he should lie to God, when the bishops interrupted him, crying that they had waited long enough, for he was obstinate in his heresy. He was degraded in the usual manner, stripped of his sacerdotal vestments, his fingers scraped; but when the tonsure was to be disposed of an absurd quarrel arose among the bishops as to whether the head should be shaved with a razor or the tonsure be destroyed with scissors. Scissors won the day, and a cross was cut in his hair. Then on his head was placed a conical paper cap, a cubit in height, adorned with painted devils and the inscription, “This is the heresiarch.” In accordance with the universal custom no proceedings by the secular authorities were regarded as necessary. As soon as the ecclesiastical court had pronounced him a heretic and handed him over, the laws against heresy operated of themselves. Sigismund, it is true, might have delayed the execution for six days, but this would have been so unusual as to have excited most unfavorable comment. There had already been afforded ample opportunity for resipiscence, and the convict could always still recant up to the lighting of the fagots. Nothing could reasonably be hoped from further postponement, and Sigismund’s approaching departure counselled promptitude. He therefore briefly ordered the Palsgrave Louis to take charge of the culprit and to do to him as to a heretic. Louis called to Hans Hazen, the imperial vogt of Constance, “Vogt, take him as judged of both of us and burn him as a heretic.” Then he was led forth, and the council calmly turned to other business, unconscious that it had performed the most momentous act of the century.[531]
The place of execution was a meadow near the river, to which he was conducted by two thousand armed men, with Palsgrave Louisat their head, and a vast crowd, including many nobles, prelates, and cardinals. The route followed was circuitous, in order that he might be carried past the episcopal palace, in front of which his books were burning, whereat he smiled. Pity from man there was none to look for, but he sought comfort on high, repeating to himself, “Christ Jesus, Son of the living God, have mercy upon me!” and when he came in sight of the stake he fell on his knees and prayed. He was asked if he wished to confess, and said that he would gladly do so if there were space. A wide circle was formed, and Ulrich Schorand, who, according to custom, had been providently empowered to take advantage of any final weakening, came forward, saying, “Dear sir and master, if you will recant your unbelief of heresy, for which you must suffer, I will willingly hear your confession; but if you will not, you know right well that, according to canon law, no one can administer the sacrament to a heretic.” To this Huss answered, “It is not necessary: I am no mortal sinner.” His paper crown fell off and he smiled as his guards replaced it. He desired to take leave of his keepers, and when they were brought to him he thanked them for their kindness, saying that they had been to him rather brothers than jailers. Then he commenced to address the crowd in German, telling them that he suffered for errors which he did not hold, sworn to by perjured witnesses; but this could not be permitted, and he was cut short. When bound to the stake and two cartloads of fagots and straw were piled up around him the palsgrave and vogt for the last time adjured him to abjure. Even yet he could have saved himself, but he only repeated that he had been convicted by false witnesses of errors never entertained by him. They clapped their hands and then withdrew, and the executioners applied the fire. Twice Huss was heard to exclaim, “Christ Jesus, Son of the living God, have mercy upon me!” then a wind springing up and blowing the flames and smoke into his face checked further utterance, but his head was seen to shake and his lips to move while one might twice or thrice recite a paternoster. The tragedy was over; the sorely-tried soul had escaped from its tormentors, and the bitterest enemies of the reformer could not refuse to him the praise that no philosopher of old had faced death with more composure than he had shown in his dreadful extremity. No faltering of the voice had betrayed an internalstruggle. Palsgrave Louis, seeing Huss’s mantle on the arm of one of the executioners, ordered it thrown into the flames lest it should be reverenced as a relic, and promised the man to compensate him. With the same view the body was carefully reduced to ashes and thrown into the Rhine, and even the earth around the stake was dug up and carted off; yet the Bohemians long hovered around the spot and carried home fragments of the neighboring clay, which they reverenced as relics of their martyr. The next day thanks were returned to God, in a solemn procession in which figured Sigismund and his queen, the princes and nobles, nineteen cardinals, two patriarchs, seventy-seven bishops, and all the clergy of the council. A few days later Sigismund, who had delayed his departure for Spain to see the matter concluded, left Constance, feeling that his work was done.[532]
The long-continued teaching of the Church, that persistent heresy was the one crime for which there could be no pardon or excuse, seemed to deprive even the wisest and purest of all power of reasoning where it was concerned. There was no hesitation in admitting that the pestilent heresy of the Hussites was caused by the simoniacal corruptions of the Roman curia, whereby many Christian souls were led to eternal perdition, and that it could not be eradicated until a thorough reformation was effected. Yet in place of drawing from this the necessary deduction, the feeling of the council is reflected by its historian in the blasphemous representation of Christ as recording with satisfaction the hideous details of the execution, and as saying that the wicked soul of the heretic commenced in temporal flame the torment which it would suffer through eternity in hell. The trial, in fact, had been conducted in accordance with the universally received practice in such cases, the only exceptions being in favor of the accused. If the result was inevitable, it was the fault of the system and not of the judges, and their consciences might well feel satisfied.[533]
Great was the disgust of the orthodox when they learned that this pious view of the matter was not entertained in Prague, and it required the most positive assurances of eye-witnesses to make them believe the incredible fact that, from king to peasant in Bohemia, there was practical unanimity in the belief that he who had been condemned and executed as a heretic was a martyr; that the popular songs sung in the streets represented him as one who had shed his blood for Christ, and that he was inserted in the calendar of saints, with his feast on July 6, the day of his execution. The good fathers, however, were not long in finding, from indubitable evidence, that they had made a grave mistake as to the Bohemian temper, and that they had only succeeded in inflaming the disease which they had sought to eradicate. As soon as the defiance excited in Bohemia could be learned in Constance, the council made haste to write, July 26, to the authorities there, protesting that Huss and Jerome of Prague had been treated with all tenderness, that the persistent heresy of the former had forced his delivery to the secular court for judgment, and that all similar heretics would be treated in the same manner. The Bohemians were exhorted to justify, by similar persecution, the good opinion of their orthodoxy which the council had formed from the report of the Bishop of Litomysl, whose popular name of Iron John sufficiently indicates his inflexibility. This good opinion was not sustained when a protest was received from the barons of Bohemia and Moravia, hastily drawn up as soon as the news of the execution had reached them—a protest which the council promptly ordered to be burned. Its letter of July 26 led to the convocation of a national assembly, in which an address was framed and received the signatures of nearly five hundred barons, knights, and gentlemen. In this they asserted their belief in Huss’s purity and orthodoxy; that he had unjustly been put to death without confession or lawful conviction; that Jerome they supposed had shared the same fate; that the defamation of the kingdom for heresy was the work of liars, and that any one whoasserted it, saving Sigismund, lied in his throat, was the vilest of traitors and the worst of heretics, and as such they would prosecute him before the future pope. A more dangerous symptom of rebellion was a pledge signed by the magnates, agreeing that all priests should be allowed to preach freely the truths of Scripture, that no bishop should be permitted to interfere with them unless they taught errors, and that no excommunications or interdicts from abroad should be received or observed.[534]
This was firing at long range with no result but mutual exacerbation, and it was probably the stimulus of Bohemian disaffection which led the council about this time to act vigorously in the case of Jerome of Prague, whom the Bohemian nobles had erroneously believed to have shared the fate of Huss.
Jerome of Prague stands before us as one of those meteoric natures which would be dismissed by the student as half mythical, if the substantial facts which are on record did not fix the details of his career with an exactness leaving no room for doubt. Born at Prague, his early training was received at a time when men’s minds were beginning to waver in the confusion of the Great Schism, and under the impulsion of the Wickliffite writings. About the year 1400 he was brought under the influence of Huss, and thereafter he continued to be the steadfast adherent and supporter of the great protestant against the corruptions of the Church. Already, at Paris, Cologne, Heidelberg, and Cracow—at all of which he had been decorated with the honors of the universities—he had disturbed the philosophic calm of the schools with his subtleties on the theory of universals; at Paris, indeed, the disturbance had gone so far that John Gerson, the chancellor of the university, had driven him forth, perhaps retaining a grudge which explains his zeal in the prosecution of his old antagonist. His restless spirit left scarce a region of the known civilized world unvisited. At Oxford, attracted by the reputation of Wickliff, hehad copied with his own hand the Dialogus and the Trialogus, and had carried those outpourings of revolt to Prague, where they added fresh fuel to the rapidly rising fires of Bohemian insubordination. On a second visit he had been seized as a heretic, and had escaped through the intervention of the University of Prague. In Palestine he had trodden in the footsteps of the Saviour and had bent in reverence at the Holy Sepulchre. In Lithuania he had sought to convert the heathen. In Russia he had endeavored to win over the schismatic Greek. In Poland and Hungary he had scattered the doctrines of Wickliff and Huss. Driven out of Hungary, in 1410, he was arrested and thrown in prison in Vienna, by the papal inquisitor and episcopal official, for teaching Hussitism and infecting with it the university of that city. His trial was commenced and a day was set for its hearing, prior to which he was allowed his liberty on his oath not to leave the city, under pain of excommunication. Claiming that an extorted oath was of no force, he escaped, and from Olmütz wrote a free-and-easy letter to the Bishop of Passau, suggesting that the prosecutors and witnesses may be sent to Prague, where the trial can be finished. The excommunication, indeed, followed him to Prague, but in the tumultuous condition of Bohemia it gave him no trouble, though the University of Vienna wrote to the University of Prague that by remaining more than a year under the excommunication he had incurred the guilt of heresy, for which he ought to be condemned; and meanwhile the converts whom he had made in Vienna continued to give occupation to the Inquisition, and the university which interfered in their behalf incurred the suspicion of heresy. In the stirring events which followed, his restless and aggressive spirit would not allow him to be inactive, and the popular impression of his reckless audacity is shown in the story of his hanging the papal bulls of indulgence around the neck of a strumpet and carrying her to the place where they were to be burned. In 1413 he again visited Poland, where in a short time he succeeded in causing an unprecedented excitement, and was speedily sent back to Prague. His whole life had been spent in intellectual digladiation, from his youthful philosophic contests to the maturer struggles with the overwhelming forces of the hierarchy. A layman, not in holy orders and unfurnished with priestly gown and tonsure, he had preached to admiring crowdsof Majjars, Poles, and Czechs; nor was he wholly unskilled in the use of the arms of the flesh. On his trial he admitted that he had once been drawn into a quarrel with some monks in a monastery, when two of them attacked him with swords, and he defended himself successfully with a weapon hastily snatched from the hand of a bystander. His enemies, indeed, accused him of having, on another occasion, drawn a dagger on a Dominican friar, and of having been only prevented by force from stabbing him to the death. All of his contemporaries bear testimony to his wonderful powers. His commanding presence, his glittering eyes, his sable hair and flowing beard, his deep and impressive voice, his persuasive accents, enabled him to throw his influence over all with whom he came in contact; while his miraculous stores of learning, his unmatched readiness, and the subtlety of his intellect, rendered him an enemy of the Church only one degree less dangerous than the steadfast and irreproachable Huss.[535]
Jerome had watched from Prague the fate of his friend with daily increasing anxiety, and when the rupture between pope and council seemed to promise immunity for the opponents of hierarchical corruption he could not resist the temptation to aid in his rescue, and to assist in what appeared to be the approaching overthrow of the evils which he had so long combated. April 4, 1415, he came secretly to Constance, but speedily found how groundless were his hopes and how dangerous was the atmosphere of the place. Christann of Prachaticz, one of Huss’s chief disciples, had recently ventured to visit Constance, had been arrested, and articles of accusation had been presented against him, when on the intervention of the Bohemian ambassadors he had been liberated under oath to present himself when summoned—an oath which he had forfeited by promptly escaping to Bohemia. Jerome contented himself with posting a notice on the walls affirming the orthodoxy of Huss; he withdrew at once to Ueberlingen and asked for a safe-conduct. The response was ambiguous, but, like a moth hovering around the fatal candle-flame, he returned to Constance, where, April 7, he affixed another notice on the churchdoors addressed to Sigismund and the council. It stated that he had come of his own free will to answer all accusations of heresy, and if convicted he was ready to endure the penalty, but he asked a safe-conduct in coming and going, and if incarcerated or treated with violence during his stay the council would be committing injustice of which he could not suspect so many learned and wise men. This senseless bravado is only to be explained by his erratic temperament, and it did not prevent him from taking precautions as to his safety. He suddenly changed his mind, and on April 9, after obtaining from the Bohemians at Constance testimonial letters, he escaped from the city, none too soon, for the officials were in search of his lodgings, which they discovered a few days after at the Gutjar, in St. Paul Street, where in his haste he had left behind him the significant memento of a sword. This time he no longer trifled with fate, but travelled rapidly towards Bohemia. At Hirsau, however, his impetuous temper led him into a discussion in which he stigmatized the council as a synagogue of Satan. He was seized April 24, and the papers found upon him betrayed him. John of Bavaria threw him into the castle of Sulzbach, notified the council of his capture, and in obedience to its commands he was forthwith carried thither in chains.[536]
Meanwhile the council had responded to his appeal by publishing, April 18, a formal inquisitorial citation summoning him, as a suspected and defamed heretic, the suppression of whom was its chief duty, to appear for trial within fifteen days, in default of which he would be proceeded against in contumacy. A safe-conduct was offered him, but it was expressly declared subject to the exigencies of the faith. Unaware of his capture, on May 2 a new citation was published and his trial as contumacious was ordered, and this was repeated on the 4th. On May 24 his captors brought him to the city loaded with chains, and took him to the Franciscan convent, where a tumultuous congregation of the council greeted his arrival. Here Gerson gratified his rancor against his old opponent, loudly berating him for having taught falsely at Paris, Heidelberg, and Cologne, and the rectors of the two latteruniversities corroborated the accusations. His replies were sharp and ready, but were drowned in the roar of fresh charges, mingled with shouts of “Burn him! Burn him!” Thence he was carried to a dungeon in the Cemetery of St. Paul, where he was chained hand and foot to a bench too high for him to sit on, and for two days he was fed on bread and water, until his friends ascertained his place of imprisonment and made interest with the jailer to give him better food. He soon fell dangerously sick and asked for a confessor, after which he was less rigorously fettered, but he never left the prison except for audience and execution.[537]
Stephen Palecz, Michael de Causis, and the rest were ready with their accusations, nor could there be difficulty in accumulating a mass of testimony sufficient to convict twenty such men as Jerome. His trial proceeded according to the regular inquisitorial process, the commissioners finding him much more learned and skilful than Huss; but, brilliant as was his defence when under examination, his nervous temperament unfitted him to bear, like Huss, the long-protracted agony. Sometimes with dialectic subtlety he turned his examiners to ridicule, at others he vacillated between obduracy and submission. Finally he weakened under the strain, while the rebellious attitude of the Bohemians doubtless led the council to increase the pressure. On September 11 he was brought before the assembly, where he read a long and elaborate recantation. Huss’s sweetness of temper, he said, had attracted him, and his earnest exposition of Scripture truths had led him to believe that such a man could not teach heresy. He could not believe that the thirty articles condemned by the council were really Huss’s, until he had obtained a book in Huss’s own hand-writing, and on comparing them article by article he found them to be so. He therefore spontaneously and of free will condemned them, some of them as heretical, others as erroneous, others as scandalous. He also condemned the forty-five articles of Wickliff; he submitted himself wholly to the council, he condemned whatever it condemned, and he asked for fitting penance to be assigned him. He did not even shrink from a deeper degradation. He wrote to Bohemia that Huss had been justly executed, that hehad become convinced of his friend’s errors and could not defend them.[538]
This was not a strictly formal abjuration such as was customarily required of prisoners of the Inquisition, yet it might have sufficed. It was read before a private congregation of the council, and some more public humiliation was needed. At the next general session, therefore, September 23, Jerome was placed in the pulpit, where he repeated his recantation, with an explanation of an expression in it, adding a recantation of his theory of Universals, and winding up by a solemn oath of abjuration in which he invoked an eternal anathema on all who wandered from the faith and on himself if he should do so. He had been told that he would not be allowed to return to Bohemia, but might select some Swabian monastery in which to reside, on condition that he should write home, over his hand and seal, that his teaching and that of Huss were false and not to be followed. This he promised to do, as, indeed, he had already done, but he was remanded to his prison, though his treatment was somewhat less harsh than before.[539]
Had the council been wise, it would have treated him as leniently as possible. A dishonored apostate, his power of evil was gone, and generosity would have been policy. The canons, however, prescribed harsh prison for converted heretics, whose conversion was always regarded as doubtful, and the assembled fathers were too bigoted to be wise. The zealots converted the apostate to a martyr, whose steadfast constancy redeemed his temporary weakness, and regained for him the forfeited influence over the imagination of his disciples.
His remorse was not long in showing itself. Stephen Palecz, Michael de Causis, and his other enemies who were still hovering around his prison, soon got wind of his self-accusation. JohnGerson, whose hostility seems to have been insatiable, readily made himself their mouthpiece, and in a learned dissertation on the essentials of revocations called the attention of the council, October 29, to the unsatisfactory character of that of Jerome. Some Carmelites, apparently arriving from Prague, furnished new accusations, and demands were made that he be required to answer additional articles. Some of the Cardinals, Zabarella, Pierre d’Ailly, Giordano Orsini, Antonio da Aquileia, on the other hand, labored with the council to procure his liberation, but on being actively opposed by the Germans and Bohemians and accused of receiving bribes from the heretics and King Wenceslas, they abandoned the hopeless defence. Accordingly, February 24, 1416, a new commission was appointed to hold an inquisition on him. The whole ground was gone over again in examining him, from the Wickliffite heresies to his exciting rebellion in Prague and contumaciously enduring the excommunication incurred in Vienna. April 27 the commissioners made their report, and thePromotor Hæreticæ Pravitatis, or prosecutor for heresy, accompanied it with a long indictment enumerating his offences. Jerome, resolved on death, had recovered his audacity; he not only, in spite of his recantation, denied that he was a heretic, but complained of unjust imprisonment and claimed to be indemnified for expenses and damages. His marvellous dialectical dexterity had evidently nonplussed the slower intellects of his examiners, who had found themselves unable to cope with his subtlety, for the council was asked, in conclusion, to diminish the diet on which he was described as feasting gluttonously, and by judicious starvation, the proper torment of heretics, to bring him to submission. Moreover, authority was asked to use torture and to force him to answer definitely yes or no to all questions as to his belief. If then he continues contumaciously to deny what has been or may be proved against him, he is to be handed over to the secular arm, in accordance with the canon law, as a pertinacious and incorrigible heretic. Thus with Jerome, as with Huss, the invariable principle of inquisitorial procedure was applied, that the denial of heretical opinions was simply an evidence and an aggravation of guilt.[540]
In this case, more than in that of Huss, the council seems to have taken upon itself the part of an inquisitorial tribunal, with its commissioners simply as examiners to take testimony, possibly because Jerome had refused to accept them as judges on account of enmity towards him. There is no evidence that it consented to the superfluous infamy of torturing, or even of starving its victim. The commissioners were left to their own devices as to extracting a confession, and May 9 they made another report of the whole case from beginning to end, for what object is not apparent, unless to demonstrate their helplessness. Having thus wearied them out, Jerome finally promised to answer categorically before the council. Perhaps it was curiosity to hear him, perhaps the precedent set in the case of Huss weighed with the fathers. The concession was made to him, and at a general session held May 23 he was brought in and the oath was offered to him. He refused to take it, saying that he would do so if he would be allowed to speak freely, but if he was only to say yes or no he would not. As the articles were read over he remained silent as to a portion, while to the rest he answered affirmatively or negatively, occasionally making a distinction, and answering with admirable readiness the clamors and interruptions which assailed him from all sides. The day wore away in this, and the completion of the hearing was adjourned till the 26th. Again the same scene occurred till the series of articles was exhausted, when the chief of the commissioners, John, Patriarch of Constantinople, summed up, saying that Jerome was convicted of fourfold heresy; but as he had repeatedly asked to be heard he should be allowed to speak, in order to silence absurd reflections on the council; moreover, if he was prepared to confess and repent, he still would be received to mercy, but if obdurate, justice must take its course.[541]
Of the scene which followed we have a vivid account in a letter to Leonardo Aretino from Poggio Bracciolini, who attended the council as apostolic secretary. Poggio had already been profoundly impressed with the quickness and readiness of a man who for three hundred and forty days had lain in the filth and squalor of a noisome dungeon, but now he breaks forth in unqualified admiration--“He stood fearless, undaunted, not merely despising death, but longing for it, like another Cato. O man worthy of eternal remembrance among men! If he held beliefs contrary to the rules of the Church I do not praise him, but I admire his learning, his knowledge of so many things, his eloquence, and the subtlety of his answers.” In the midst of that turbulent and noisy crowd, his eloquence was so great that Poggio evidently thinks he would have been acquitted had he not courted death.[542]
His address was a most skilful vindication, gliding with seemingly careless negligence over the dangerous spots in his career—for his whole life had been made the subject of indictment—and giving most plausible explanations of that which could not be suppressed, as though the Bohemian troubles had been solely due to political differences. As for his recantation, his judges had promised him kindly treatment if he would throw himself on the mercy of the council. He was but a man, with a human dread of a dreadful death by fire; he had weakly yielded to persuasion, he had abjured, he had written to Bohemia as required, he had condemned the teaching of John Huss. Here he rose to the full height of his manly and self-devoted eloquence. Huss was a just and holy man, to whom he would cleave to the last; no sin that he had ever committed so weighed upon his conscience as his cowardly abjuration, which now he solemnly revoked. Wickliff had written with a profounder truth than any man before him, and dread of the stake alone could have induced him to condemn such a master, saving only the doctrine on the sacrament, of which he could not approve. Then he burst forth into a ringing invective on the vices of the clergy, and especially of the Roman curia, which had stimulated Wickliff and Huss to their efforts for reform. The good fathers of the council might be stunned for a moment by the fierce self-sacrifice of the man who thus deliberately threw away his life, but they soon recovered themselves, and quietly assigned the following Saturday for his definite sentence. Although, as a self-confessed relapsed, he was entitled to no further consideration, they proposed, with unusual mercy, to give him four days to reconsider and repent, but he had been addressing an audience far beyond the narrow walls of the Cathedral of Constance, and his words were seeds which sprouted forth in armed warriors.[543]
On May 30 the final acts of the tragedy were hurried through;the council assembled early, and by ten o’clock Jerome was at the stake. After the mass, the Bishop of Lodi preached a sermon. He had been selected to perform the same office at the condemnation of Huss, and the brutality of his triumph over the unfortunate prisoner on this occasion even exceeded his former effort. The charity and tenderness with which Jerome had been treated ought to have softened his heart, even had the recollection of his crimes failed to do so. A comparison was drawn between the favor shown him and the severity customary with suspected heretics. “You were not tortured—I wish you had been, for it would have forced you to vomit forth all your errors; such treatment would have opened your eyes, which guilt had closed.” The nobles present were called upon to mark how Huss and Jerome, two base-born men, plebeians of the lowest rank and unknown origin, had dared to trouble the noble kingdom of Bohemia, and what evils had sprung from the presumption of those two peasants. Then Jerome in a few dignified sentences replied, asserting his conscientiousness and deploring his condemnation of Wickliff and Huss. Cardinal Zabarella, he said, was winning him over when his judges were changed and he would not plead to new ones. His abjuration was read to him; he acknowledged it; he said it had been extorted by the dread of fire. Then the prosecutor asked for a definite sentence in writing against him, and the head commissioner, John of Constantinople, read a long one condemning him as a supporter of Wickliff and Huss, and ending with the declaration that he was a relapsed heretic and anathematized excommunicate. To this the council unanimously responded “Placet.” There was no pretence of asking mercy for him. He was handed over to the secular power with a command that it should do its duty under the sentence rendered. Not being in orders, there was no ceremony of degradation to be performed, but a tall paper crown with painted devils was brought. He tossed his cap among the prelates and put on the crown, saying, “Our Lord Jesus Christ, when about to die for me, wore a crown of thorns. In place of that, I gladly bear this for his sake,” and with this he was hurried off to execution on the same spot where Huss had suffered.[544]
The details of the execution were much the same, except that Jerome was stripped and a cloth tied around his loins. He sang the Creed and a litany, and when his voice could no longer be heard in the flames his lips were still seen to move as though praying to himself; after his beard was burned off, a blister the size of an egg was seen to form itself, showing that he still was alive, and his agony was unusually prolonged, through his extraordinary strength and vitality. One eye-witness says that he shrieked awfully, but other unfriendly witnesses declare that he continued praying till his voice was checked by the fire, and Poggio, who was present, was much impressed with his cheerful courage to the last. When bound to the stake, the executioner offered to light the fire from behind, where he could not see it, but he refused: “Come forward,” he said, “and light the fire where I can see it. Had I feared this, I would not have been here.” Æneas Sylvius likewise couples him with Huss for the unsurpassed constancy of his death. After it was over, his bedding, shoes, cap, and all his personal effects were brought from his dungeon and thrown upon the pile, that no relic of him might be left, and the ashes were cast into the Rhine.[545]
It only remained to secure the submission of John of Chlum, the courageous defender of Huss. He had remained in Constance and was in the power of the council. What means were adopted for his abasement do not appear, but, on July 1, he swore to maintain the faith, admitted that Huss and Jerome had suffered justly, and desired letters of his declaration to be made, that he might send them to Bohemia.[546]