gathered from the words of Matthias of Janow, cited on a former page, how certainly such castigatory preachers exposed themselves to persecutions and to defamation as heretics; and it lay in the very nature of the case that, as the excited feelings between the two parties, that of the dominant clergy and of the friends of reform, increased in intensity, so the persecutions against the castigatory preachers would increase in violence. Now as it concerns Huss, his connection with Wickliffitism, and the complication of his cause with many other matters which we have pointed out, contributed no doubt to aggravate his case. And as he cultivated the growth of that which had been sown by his predecessors, so he was under the necessity also of reaping, in the bad as well as the good sense, what they had but sown.

The clergy of Prague, who had already, near the end of the year 1408, entered a complaint against Huss, before the archbishop, renewed their complaint in still stronger terms during the year in which, for the reasons already mentioned, the breach grew more violent. The charges which they brought against Huss were as follows: that he stirred up the people against the clergy, the Bohemians against the Germans; preached disrespect to the church and disregard to her power of punishing; styled Rome the seat of Antichrist, and declared every clergyman who demanded a fee for distributing the sacrament a heretic; that he openly praised Wickliff, and had expressed the wish that his soul might finally arrive where Wickliff's soul was. In reference to the charge relating to his opinion of Wickliff, Huss in his trial at Prague, in the year 1414, remarked: "I say, and have said, that Wickliff was, as I hope, a good Christian; and I hope he is in the kingdom of heaven; and so too have I expressed myself in my sermons. Hence I hope also to-day, though I never affirmed it as a fact, that Wickliff belonged to the number of the saved; because I do not choose to condemn any man, respecting whom I have no testimony of Scripture and no revelation no spiritual knowledge, that he belongs to the number of the reprobate; for our Saviour says, Judge not, that ye be not judged."t

*

* Palacky, III. 1, p. 246. + Depos. Test. 1. c. pp. 129 and 130.

On the presentation of these complaints, archbishop Zbynek charged his inquisitor, Master Mauritius of Prague, to inquire into them, and at the same time to examine by virtue of what authority it was that sermons and divine worship were held in Bethlehem Chapel. We perceive here, already, a wish in the archbishop to find some reason for putting a stop to those labours of Huss in Bethlehem Chapel which exerted so great an influence on the people. It is much to be questioned whether Huss, under the existing circumstances, when the bonds of the diocese were relaxed by discordant opinions respecting the recognition of the council of Pisa, would have acknowledged the competency of that spiritual court. He himself, however, addressed to Rome a complaint against the archbishop, and the latter was cited to Rome on the 14th of December of the year 1409. Yet in the meanwhile the more general commotions in the church brought about a change in the whole situation of the affair.

After the council of Pisa had successfully asserted itself as the supreme tribunal of the church, the archbishop dared no longer resist. He acknowledged Alexander V. the pope appointed by the council. But when the cause of the council had made good its way through Bohemia, Huss received no thanks for what he had done in the struggle with the dominant church party for the furtherance of the cause of the council. Zbynek was able to obtain more from the pope for giving up his opposition. His complaints, laid before the latter, respecting the dissemination of the Wickliffite heresy in these districts, met with the more ready acceptance because of his submission; and Alexander V. was induced by the archbishop to put forth, soon afterwards and as early as December of the year 1409, a bull in which he declares he had heard that the heresies of Wickliff, and especially his denial of the doctrine of transubstantiation, were spreading far and wide in Bohemia. He called upon the archbishop to employ vigorous measures for the suppression of these heresies. He should cause all the writings of Wickliff to be delivered up into his hands, appoint a committee of four doctors of theology and two doctors of canon law to examine the same, and proceed in conformity with the judgment they should give. All clergymen who

refused to deliver up those writings, or who should defend Wickliffite heresies, he should cause to be arrested and deprived of their benefices, and in case of necessity the aid of the secular power should be called in. As private chapels served to spread errors among the people, sermons for the future should be preached, in Bohemia, only in cathedrals, parish and conventual churches, and prohibited in all private churches.* This papal bull did not arrive in Bohemia until ten weeks after it had been put forth, and was proclaimed on the 9th of March, 1410. It was the first in the series of great convulsions, which the Bohemian church was destined thenceforth to suffer, the beginning of the great commotions in the midst of which Huss was borne on, from one step in advance to another. Zbynek had probably been the more confident that by means of this expression of the supreme authority of the church he should be able to crush the party at a blow, because King Wenceslaus had not only recognised Alexander V. as a pope elected by the council favoured by himself, but in addition to this had, in earlier times, been on terms of personal friendship with the new pope. For the latter, when Cardinal Villargi, had decidedly supported the cause of the king in his competition for the imperial dignity; and it might therefore be expected that the king would be ready to evince his gratitude by obedience to all his ordinances. But the bull, which bore evidence on its face of being a work of Zbynek, aimed particularly against Huss and his friends, was received with great indignation by important men in Bohemia and about the king's person. In the present excited state of feeling, men easily foresaw that great disturbances must necessarily arise if the archbishop carried the bull into execution, The cause of Huss was espoused by the most eminent of the nobility around the person of the king.† By their influence the king's preju* For Alexander's bull, see Raynaldi Annales Ecclesiastic. tom. XVII.

p. 396.

† His connection with those in power was an odious imputation brought against Huss by the above-mentioned abbot of Dola; Et popularis vulgi favor et sæculare bracium præstabat manifestum præsidium. Pez, Thes. IV. 2, p. 390. But Huss stood by no means in need of the secular power to promote the spread of his principles; but it was a consequence of the influence of his mind and of his principles on the min ls

dices were excited against the bull and against Zbynek the author of it. His suspicions may have been aroused against Zbynek as as enemy to the realm, the man who had brought it into the bad odour of heresy, though he himself had, as Huss asserted, very recently declared it, as the result of an investigation made under the sanction of the assembly in Prague already mentioned, that no Wickliffite heresy existed at present in Bohemia. The bull was declared to be in many ways a garbled and interpolated one, and therefore of no force. Huss himself excited suspicions against it on this ground, and employed at first every lawful means in his power, under the circumstances of those times, to withhold obedience while he showed all respect to the Roman Church. He appealed from the pope male informato to the pope melius informandum. The archbishop, however, was not to be disturbed by all this. He issued his prohibition against preaching in private chapels, and applying this also to Bethlehem Chapel, Huss thought this contrary to the right granted in the foundation charter; he thought he was secured from harm himself by his appeal; and at all events was determined to act on the principle that it was right to obey God rather than men, and that no man should be induced to desist from a divine vocation by the arbitrary will of an individual. Zbynek issued, moreover, a command that all the writings of Wickliff should be delivered up to him for examination within six days. Huss obeyed this injunction, declaring himself ready (which certainly was honestly meant on his part, and cannot justly be ascribed to any motive of pride) to condemn them himself, whenever an error could be pointed out in them. Zbynek now actually proceeded, after many writings of Wickliff had been delivered up, to appoint a committee of examination in the manner prescribed in the bull; and this committee pronounced sentence of condemnation on a certain number of Wickliff's writings: the Dialogue, the Trialogue, and also

of the people and of the knights, from which everything else resulted as a matter of course; just as in later times Luther acquired, without seeking it, his mighty influence over the minds of the people and the knights, through the power of the truths which he proclaimed. From the respectable knights and barons, however, the influence in Bohemia passed over to the king.

(a thing which was afterwards particularly noticed by the friends of Wickliff, and with good reason, and which would cause the whole affair to be regarded in a more unfavourable light) on writings of simply philosophical import, as, for example, his important work on the reality of general conceptions, and on works containing nothing but mathematical and physical disquisitions, as their titles sufficiently indicated. These books were all to be committed to the flames, and thus put out of the way of doing harm. The very announcement of this sentence produced disturbances. At a convocation of the university, it was resolved to send in a petition to the king, that he would prevent the execution of such a sentence, on account of the extreme peril to which it would expose the peace of the university and of all Bohemia. The king promised the delegates of the university that he would comply with their request. The archbishop, on hearing of this, hastened to get the start of the king; and on the next day, the 16th of June, repeated the proclamation of the above sentence on the writings of Wickliff. When the king learned of this, he caused the archbishop to be asked, whether it was really his intention to burn the books. Zbynek promised that he would do nothing against Wickliff's writings without the king's consent; and for this reason put off the execution of the sentence. But he was far from intending really to give up the execution of the sentence, in spite of all the remonstrances against such a proceeding, alleging, in excuse of his conduct, that the king had not expressly forbidden him to burn the books. On the 16th of July, 1410, having surrounded his palace with a watch, he actually caused two hundred volumes, among which were not only the writings of Wickliff, but also some of Militz and others, to be burned, without the slightest regard to rights of private property, as was afterwards remembered to his reproach. This step of the archbishop was the signal for great disturbances and violent controversies in Prague. Even blood was spilt. So great a movement in the minds of men could not be put down with force. The attempt to put it down by an act

* Ne exinde confusio toti regno, domino regi et universitati inferatur. See Pelzel's account of the life of king Winceslaus I. in Urkundsnbuch, No. 220, p. 130.