John Hus: the commencement of resistance to papal authority on the part of the inferior clergy

Front matter

A. H. WRATISLAW, M.A.

THE HOME LIBRARY

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Preface

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No biography of the celebrated John Hus can reasonably be considered complete without an outline of the recent investigations and publications in Bohemia, which have at length rendered it possible to place this extraordinary man in the full light of day before the British reader.

After the destruction of the liberty, both religious and political, of Bohemia in the Thirty Years’ War, the chronicle of Hajek (1541) was universally accepted as the basis of Bohemian history. This chronicle has been incontrovertibly proved by documentary evidence, and is now generally acknowledged, to have been the work of one who might more justly be regarded as the falsifier than the recorder of the history of his country. No uncorroborated statement of Hajek’s is now considered to be of the slightest historical value, or to possess the slightest weight as historical evidence. But in 1831, the estates of the kingdom of Bohemia were allowed to appoint a historio- grapher of their own. The choice fell upon one, than whom none worthier could have been selected, the late Dr. Francis Palacký. The result of his labours has been a magnificent History of Bohemia in five large octavo volumes, “mainly from documents and manuscripts,” from the earliest times to the year 1526. The first volume was published in German in 1836, and in 1845 appeared the first part of the third volume, which deals with the “floruit” of Hus. This was both interpolated and mutilated by the censorship of the press at Vienna, which was not abolished till the year of revolutions, 1848. Still this partially garbled account of Hus produced such a sensation, that Baron Helfert was commissioned to write in Bohemian an account of Hus and Jerome, which should in some wise counteract the effect produced by Palacký’s narrative. Baron Helfert’s work appeared at Prague in 1857 (287 pp., large 8vo).

In 1842, Palacký read before the Bohemian Society of Sciences, and afterwards submitted to the censorship of the press with a view to publication, an account in Bohemian of the “Precursors of Husitism in Bohemia.” This remained so long under the consideration of the censor, that Palacký withdrew it altogether, in order to avoid the anticipated “damnatur.” It was, however, translated into German by Dr. J. P. Jordan, and published in 1846 under his name at Leipsic, without attracting any attention. But in 1869, the remain- ing copies were reissued with a new title-page at Prague by the original author, and the value of the work was immediately acknowledged.

In 1849, Professor W. W. Tomek published the first volume of his “History of the University of Prague,” in the Bohemian language, in which he carried the narrative down to the year 1436.

Between 1865 and 1868, the late K. J. Erben, Archivarius of the Old Town of Prague, published in three carefully edited octavo volumes (containing respectively 478, 440, and 346 pages), John Hus’s collected writings in the Bohemian, or Czeskish, language (“Mistra Jana Husi sebrané spisy Czeské”), many of which were then printed for the first time. Until the appearance of these volumes, almost all knowledge of Hus had been derived from incorrect editions and translations of his ‘Postilla,’ and from the account given of him in the edition of his Latin works published at Nuremberg in 1558, and again in 1715 (two folio vols. bound in one).

In 1869, Palacký issued a large octavo volume of 768 pages, containing all extant documents, Latin or Bohemian, relating to the life and case of Hus, and to the religious controversies in Bohemia between 1403 and 1418.

In 1870, Palacký published the second Bohemian edition of the first part of his third volume, restoring the portions struck out, and rejecting the passages interpolated, by the censorship, and generally enlarging and revising the whole.

In 1875, Professor W. W. Tomek published in Bohemian the third volume of his “History of the City of Prague,” (“Dejepis Mesta Prahy”), which goes over the same ground as Palacký’s vol. iii. pt. 1., but enters into far greater detail with regard to matters that occurred at Prague, where Hus spent the greater part of his life. I have also corresponded with Professor Tomek with respect to points of difference between himself and Palacký, and take this opportunity of acknowledging both his personal kindness and the merit of his writings, which are models of research, care, and clearness.

I have given this account of the above works in chronological order, with the view of exhibiting at once both the facts themselves and also the difficulties which the Bohemians have had to contend with in investigating and writing the history of their country and nation. Such difficulties have for some time been completely at an end, and the press is now as free in Bohemia as in Britain.

A. H. WRATISLAW.

Chapter 1

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CHAPTER I.

HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION.

The duty of the historian of the latter portion of the fourteenth and the early portion of the fifteenth centuries in Europe is a very sad one. Almost everywhere it is his to write of decline and decadence, of goodness unable to raise its head from the ground into which it was trampled by unblushing shamelessness, and of iniquity sitting enthroned in the highest places. And this he finds especially true of the Church and the professing ministers of the gospel, with whom religion was, to a great extent, a mere source of gain, and the clerical condition a mere means of ensuring immunity in crime. The clergy were for the most part emancipated from the control of the laws and the jurisdiction of the secular magistrates; and their corruption was pre-eminent in the general corruption of the age. Was no one to arise in righteous indignation, and to call for the suppression of evil and the encouragement and development of good? Was there none of Christ’s ministers who would dare to testify against his evil and degraded brethren, and cry aloud for a real and not a seeming and hypocritical reform in the Church of Christ? Yes! there was one man who ventured so to do—one man who ventured to quit his own country and home, where he was comparatively safe and protected by powerful friends, and to place himself dauntlessly in the hands of the very people whose wickedness he was exposing, and against whose licentiousness and selfishness his purity and morality of life were a living protest.

But it must not be supposed, that John Hus, like Luther or Calvin, was a great doctrinal reformer, assailing positions deliberately taken up and maintained by the Church of Rome, and in that point of view a direct precursor and herald of the Reformation. He was a better and truer Catholic, aye, Roman Catholic, than those who condemned him. He was a true son of his Church; and while he raised his voice against the sin and evil that defiled her, and the practical setting up of the traditions of men above the Word of God, he stood second to none in his reverence for her doctrines, her creeds, and her formularies. Still it is true, that but the slightest traces of Mariolatry and saint-worship are to be found in his writings; it is true also, that the doctrinal abuses and ex- travagancies, against which he specially protested, have to a great extent disappeared from the Church of Rome herself. It is on the one hand, as a reformer of life and morals, especially among the clergy, and on the other, as a dauntless champion for the rights of conscience and the supremacy of Scripture, that we must contemplate John Hus; and it was as such, that he was foully murdered by one of the most wicked assemblies that ever disgraced the name of council.

But how was it that such a man should have arisen in Bohemia, and not in some other country, speaking some other language, and possessing a literature of world-wide renown—the study of which is an education in itself? The answer to the question is easy, though scarcely credible, save to those whose studies have placed them in full and certain possession of the facts. The state of education and average general culture in Bohemia was higher than that of any other country, and the Czesko-slavonic language had reached a pitch of flexibility and cultivation which had not been attained by any other European tongue save that of Italy, where it was rather poetry than prose that was in the ascendant.

First and foremost among the causes which led to the general spread of education and culture in Bohemia, was the foundation of the University of Prague, in 1348, by the Emperor Charles IV., son of the blind king of Bohemia, John of Luxemburg, who fell in the battle of Creçy in 1346. A noble layman, educated at that university, Thomas of Stitný, a prose writer of the highest class, may be said to have formed the Bohemian as a literary language, and thus to have rendered Hus, and the widespread movement which he inaugurated, possible.

“A sermon of St. Augustine’s,” says Stitný, in his work Of General Christian Matters, “has encouraged me to be bolder in writing Bohemian books, which relate to the Holy Scriptures; for from it every one can see how good a thing it is to read the Holy Scriptures. And those who condemn books in the Bohemian language, even if good ones, wishing perhaps to be the only persons who appear wise, might well dread the vengeance of God, when they reflect how guilty those are who would wish to stop the letters and necessary messages therein, and to prevent the Lord God, the Eternal Bridegroom, from teaching His Bride His will, and comforting her in her distress thereby. Yea, justly would he be in terror, who should stop the letters of a king addressed to his queen, if he knew that the king was aware of it. And how much greater is the Lord God than any king! How much dearer to Him is His Bride—that is every soul that longeth for Him—than was any queen dear to any king! Wiser men understand this and know that a Bohemian is as precious to Him as a Latinist.”

The Czechian nation or “language” received a thorough scientific as well as theological training, through the philosophical as well as theological writings of Stitný, and was as well prepared to enter into controversy with the pen as with the sword. That Wycliffe, though a greater thinker and reasoner, produced, comparatively speaking, so much smaller immediate results in England than Hus in Bohemia, appears due to the fact, that the English language was not yet sufficiently matured for a great national and intellectual movement to be carried on in it. Had Chaucer, that “well of English undefiled,” who is generally considered to have made our language what it is, preceded instead of following Wycliffe, the history of England might possibly have told a very different story as regards the reformation of religion.

But leaving the special circumstances which evoked and rendered possible such a person as Hus and such a movement as the Hussite movement, let us cast our eyes over the condition of Europe generally, a little after the commencement of the last quarter of the fourteenth century. The year 1378 was one of the most fatal epochs known to history. The popedom and the empire were during the middle ages the principal forces in central and western Europe; and the spiritual and temporal heads of Christendom, Pope Gregory XI. and the Emperor Charles IV., were both of them swept away within a brief interval of each other during the course of that unfortunate year. And after their deaths, partly through discord, and partly through the absence of morality, steadfastness, uprightness, and capacity in their successors, both the Papal see and the Imperial throne fell into such decay and discredit, that the rise and development of a third power opposed and adverse to them became almost a matter of necessity. This came to pass first in Bohemia with irresistible energy, and later with varying vigour and success in almost all other European nations.

The first and most important circumstance that gave the turn to the scale for evil at this epoch was unquestionably the outbreak of the great schism in the Church of Rome. The College of Cardinals was at the time of the death of Gregory XI. mainly composed of Frenchmen, most, though not all, of whom had reluctantly followed Gregory from quiet Avignon, where the papal court had resided for sixty years, to troublous and malarious Rome. There were strong reasons for expecting that the future pope would return to Avignon and leave to decay and ruin old Rome, once the glorious mistress of the world, but now almost dependent upon the presence cf the papal curia, if not for actual subsistence, at any rate for some small shadow of material prosperity. The Romans, therefore, at the meeting of the conclave on April 7th, 1378, left no means untried to obtain the election of a Roman; or at any rate of an Italian, who would be likely to take up his residence permanently at Rome. On the day of election, April 8th, they assembled in large numbers, came in arms before the conclave, and threatened the cardinals with death, if they did not make their choice in accordance with the feelings of the people. The Roman cardinals, especially those of the Orsini family, were afterwards accused of not being altogether strangers to these tumultuous proceedings, and that with the view of causing the choice to fall upon one of their own number. But, whatever truth there may be in the accusation, they were at any rate utterly unsuccessful as regards their alleged aim and object, and a temporary cessation of party spirit and strife in the conclave brought about the unanimous election of one who was not a cardinal at all, Bartholomew of Prignano, Archbishop of Bari. The tumult without, while the election was going on, might well be cited as evidence that the choice of the cardinals was not altogether free; but the fact that they did not venture to publish the name of the person elected at once to the populace, but put them off by evasions and subterfuges, till the violence of the storm had passed, is also good evidence that it was not altogether compulsory. Had they been perfectly free they would probably not have selected an Italian at all; had they really acted under compulsion, their choice would probably not have fallen upon the Archbishop of Bari. But for the full validity of the election the following facts may well be considered decisive: (1) That, when order was restored, no voice of protest was lifted up against the new pope, who assumed the name of Urban VI.; and (2) That all the cardinals, without excepting even those who had remained behind at Avignon, recognized and did homage to him, and announced his election and coronation in bulls subscribed with their own hands to the emperor and to collective Christendom.

Pope Urban VI. was learned, frank and upright, a man of rigid morality, vigorous and unbending in his zeal for religion and God’s service, and withal a declared enemy to everything in the shape of simony. But he was proud, domineering, harsh and hard even to cruelty, self-willed and obstinate, although not altogether inaccessible to the flatterer, and given over to the most unbounded nepotism. The zeal that he undoubtedly possessed for the extirpation of the countless and deeply rooted abuses that were existing and flourishing, was far too deficient in the requisite prudence and kindliness to attain its desired end. He wanted to commence reform with the cardinals and highest dignitaries of his court; but public expostulations, reproofs and threats were scarcely, under the circumstances, the most eligible means to begin with. The variously aggrieved and mortified cardinals quitted Rome during the heat of summer under pretext of the malaria, met together at Anagni, and there found leisure to compare notes and communicate to each other their discontent at the election that they had made. Were courtly French gentlemen to be put to scorn and shame by a rude and overbearing Italian? Were not the discomforts of Rome sufficient, without perpetual inquiry into little peccadilloes, to which long custom had all but given a quasi-sanction? Return to Avignon was proposed to Urban, who rejected the proposal briefly and decidedly, but was withal unwise enough to make by uncourteous and disrespectful treatment an enemy of Duke Otto of Brunswick, husband of Joanna, Queen of Naples, who was sent to him on the mission. Thus the malcontent cardinals obtained protection and encouragement, not only from the King of France, who was only too happy to enjoy the éclat of the residence of the pope in his territories and as it were under his protection, but also from the Queen of Naples. Finally, four months after the election and coronation of Urban VI., the cardinals formed the resolution of declaring the act of the conclave extorted by tumult, and therefore canonically invalid.

No sooner did knowledge of the threatening schism reach the ears of the Emperor Charles IV., than he sent his commissioners to the cardinals, urging and adjuring them to stop in what they had so unhappily begun, to return from their evil way, to reconcile themselves with Urban VI., and thus to prevent the ruin that was impending over the Church.

“It becomes the imperial majesty of the world,” wrote he, “to promote the welfare of the state, and wholesomely to provide against the baneful perils of discords, especially those by which the condition and desired tranquillity of the Holy Church of God are injured, so far as the Most High deigns to allow it. Verily the flecting loquacity of Fame hath greatly disturbed men’s ears with a horrible matter, how that certain lord cardinals are setting about opposing themselves to Pope Urban VI, and have separated from him under certain colourable pretexts… Whereas, from the letters of the major part of the aforesaid lord cardinals, transmitted to us successively after the election and coronation of our aforesaid lord the pope, which we have commanded to be kept in careful custody, it is most clear and evident, that the aforesaid our lord the pope, unanimously and canonically elected and solemnly crowned, hath, with you present and consenting to him, performed several, yea, manifold acts, and has with just title made them papal acts, in assemblies both public and private, we wonder greatly, and with good reason, whether a separation of this kind—a thing which nevertheless we do not believe—rests on a basis of truth. Who among you, most reverend cardinals, can have stood forth as a seducer, and not ag a cardinal, malevolently sowing tares so scandalous in the fields of the Holy Church of God?”

Hearing soon afterwards, that the cardinals had betaken themselves from Anagni to Fondi, in the territory of Naples, Charles called also upon the Queen of Naples, in a letter of similar tenour, to prevent her vassal, the Count of Fondi, from giving any assistance to them in their apostasy. But, being in full understanding, not only with the Queen of Naples, but also with the powerful King of France, they considered their position completely secure, and on September 28th, 1378, elected, at Fondi, one of their own number, Cardinal Robert of Geneva, anti-pope, in opposition to Urban, under the name of Clement VII. The selection was made far more in accordance with the dictates of worldly policy than from any motives connected with religion or the spiritual welfare of the Church. Near akin to the royal family of France, and more distantly connected with the House of Luxemburg, and thus with the present wearer of the Imperial Crown, it was hoped that he would without difficulty obtain general recognition. But the Emperor Charles IV. refused to entertain the idea of a second pope for a moment, and became, unsought the most faithful, active, and energetic supporter of Urban VI. His emissaries hastened with letters, not only to the princes of the empire, but to almost every court in Europe, exhorting all to steadfast adherence to Urban, and refuting the manifesto of the apostate cardinals. Charles was Roman emperor, and, as such, chief protector of the Christian Church; he felt himself, therefore, bound in conscience to make head against the mighty evil that was commencing. Long, too, had he striven to obtain, and had at length succeeded in obtaining, the return of the papal court from Avignon to Rome, and had thus rescued it from the overwhelming ascendancy of France. But now the success of his policy was rendered doubtful by the prospect of Clement VII.’s return to Avignon.

The schism being now complete, the principal ecclesiastical authorities, and withal, the three universities that held the highest rank in Europe, those of Paris, Oxford, and Prague, cried aloud for the convocation of a general council. It then became a question by which of the rival popes it was to be convoked, but the majority of contemporary authorities agreed in the opinion, that under such circumstances this duty appertained to the Roman emperor. Thus the opinion expressed by many of Charles’s contemporaries appears to have been not altogether groundless, that the personal esteem in which he was held, and the personal influence, as well as the acknowledged prudence, ability, and energy, which he possessed, would probably, ere long, have succeeded in suppressing the new-born schism, had he not been carried off by a fever on November 29th, 1378, in the 63rd year of his age.

Whom, then, did he leave as his successor in this difficult and delicate task? His eldest son, Wenceslas IV., surnamed the Lazy, whose election as king of the Romans Charles had procured by no very honourable means, and contrary to all precedent, during his own lifetime. Wenceslas IV. was a spoilt child from the first, and a spoilt child he remained throughout the whole of his life. Indolent and good-natured, though subject to violent fits of passion, he was never so happy as when, casting the cares of royalty on the shoulder of a brother or a cousin, he devoted himself to the pleasures of the chase in the vast woods and forests of Krivoklat or Zwikow. There was nothing that he loved and admired so much as a huge dog, and his agents were constantly employed abroad in seeking and procuring for him these objects of his affection. The largest of them all was an inmate of his bedroom, and slept at his feet; and it was commonly believed that the sudden death of his first wife, Queen Joanna, was due to this monster, who seized her by the throat when she rose from her bed in the dead of the night. Tall, and powerful in stature, Wenceslas was well read, and spoke Latin excellently, while a single anecdote is sufficient to prove his wit. Accustomed in the early part of his reign to go about at night incognito with a band of companions, partly for frolic, partly for the purpose of redressing wrongs, and observing the conduct of subordinate officials, he once found the words Wenceslaus alter Nero, written upon a wall. He immediately took a piece of chalk and wrote under them a rhymed completion of the couplet: Si non fui, adhuc ero. He endeavoured to rule by personal sway, like his father, but never, like him, attained to the power of ruling himself. That he was not a man of good and delicate taste, is shown by the obscene embellishments with which he caused his bible, which is still in existence, to be disfigured; and as he grew in years, he became more and more devoted to the pleasures of the table and the bottle. In a position to which he was unequal, with a better will and better intentions than any of his contemporaries, and never unpopular among the people of his realm, his name has gone down to posterity as that of the weakest and most unsuccessful monarch of his day. Nor was it one of his smallest difficulties, that his father by will partitioned his dominions amongst his sons, assigning Brandenburg to Sigismund, and the newly-created Dukedom of Gorlitz to John, while his nephews, Jost and Procop, inherited the Margravate of Moravia from their father. To Wenceslas fell Bohemia, Silesia, parts of Bavaria and Saxony, and the portion of Lusatia which was not included in the Dukedom of Görlitz.

How was it with the other states of Europe? There was but one ruler who ruled with success and ability, and that was a woman. Margaret of Denmark, the celebrated foundress of the Union of Calmar in 1397, governed with vigour and prudence in the north of Europe from 1376, first as guardian of her son, and afterwards in her own right. But, though Scandinavia prospered and flourished, she exercised but little influence on the course of events throughout the central and southern portions of the Continent. Edward III., of England, had been called away in 1377, leaving the crown to his grandson Richard II., who was but thirteen years old at his accession, and whose incapacity and dismal fate axe too well known to be worth dilating upon. France, too, three years later lost her Charles V., surnamed the Wise, who had greatly restored his country and raised the power of his crown after the terrible blows inflicted by the English, attaining his ends by measures which were always clever and prudent, if not altogether just and righteous. His son and successor was Charles VI., who was only twelve years old at the time of his father’s death, and the regency was made use of by his uncles for their own selfish ends, so that the land was desolated by misgovernment and misery. And when Charles became old enough to take the res of government into his own hands, it was not long before he sank into a melancholy condition of mental derangement, with lucid intervals but few and far between. King Louis of Hungary and Poland, a man of high and distinguished personal character, died in 1382, leaving only two daughters behind him, under the guardianship of an ambitious and unscrupulous mother, whose characteristics were rather vanity and cunning, than pride and prudence. Spain was divided into several kingdoms, and engaged in the death-struggle with the slowly receding Moor.

Thus throughout the rest of Europe there was, as Palacký says, a kind of equilibrium of weakness, while in Germany not the smallest trace of patriotism was to be found among the greater or lesser possessors of power. All was sunk in the deepest selfishness, no one thinking of aught but the advancement of his own power or the increase of his own territory, and every one utterly careless as to the morality of the means to be employed for the purpose. In the cities alone appeared now and then a comforting exception, to show that there still remained a germ of goodness. The supremacy of the emperors had been broken down ever since the days of the Hohenstaufen, and was now rather ideal than real, depending entirely upon the personal qualities or military ascendency of the wearer of the crown. The emperor himself was practically looked upon by the great princes of the empire, as merely primus inter pares, and was little more than the head of an oligarchical republic. The great aim of the princes was to convert their fiefs into independent sovereignties, while the inferior nobility and the towns endeavoured to secure themselves against them, like the Swiss, by leagues and confederacies. Charles IV. had never seized the opportunity of allying himself with the people and inferior nobility, to break the ever-increasing power of the princes, but had merely endeavoured by adroit and skilful diplomacy to calm the troubled waters and prevent active encroachments and usurpations. He gained thereby no gratitude from any one, but left difficulties preparing for his son and successor, which none but a master-hand could have successfully encountered or disentangled.

So long as the experienced advisers of his father lived, Wenceslas exhibited zeal and energy towards putting an end to the great schism in the church, and towards the restoration of public peace and quiet in Germany. Not many weeks after his accession, he convoked a diet at Nuremberg, but it was an evil omen that very few of the princes of the empire appeared there, either in person or by their plenipotentiaries. At a second diet, at Frankfort-on-the-Main, he was more fortunate, and resolutions were passed, that Germany would maintain internal peace at home and unanimously join the king in espousing the cause of Urban VI. Neither the ambassadors of the anti-pope, nor those of the King of France, were allowed an audience, and it was plainly stated to the latter, that it was not their king, but the future emperor, that was the natural advocate and protector of the Holy Roman Church, whose duty it was of right to provide for the well-being of the pepe and the Holy Christian Faith. After this Clement VII. thought it no longer safe to remain in the territory of Naples, but placed himself under the more powerful protection of the King of France, at Avignon. He was followed by the great majority of the existing cardinals, so that Urban VI. was under the necessity of surrounding himself with a fresh body of those princes of the Church.

Wenceslas found little difficulty in suppressing the germs of schism in his own inherited crown lands; but in Germany, in spite of the resolutions of the diet, there were many powerful princes, who were only too ready to seize every opportunity of turning the contest between the rival popes to the furtherance of their own selfish ends and interests. And, to the great misfortune of both Wenceslas himself and the land of Bohemia, it came to pass, that all the principal councillors of Charles IV., by whom he had hitherto been guided, were swept away by the hand of death in 1380, whether by the plague, which then raged in Bohemia, or otherwise, we are uninformed. Thus far his reign had been merely a continuation of that of his father; he was now compelled to come into the foreground himself with all his personal failings and deficiencies. He was, however, able to settle the long dispute and warfare between the rival claimants to the archbishopric of Maintz, and by means of an exchange of bishoprics in Bohemia and Germany, to establish Adolphus of Nassau at Maintz, as a pronounced adherent of Urban VI. Here, however, all serious endeavours on the part of Wenceslas with regard to the schism came to an end. Finding that France was not to be induced to cease from supporting Clement VII., he renewed the ancient friendship and alliance between the houses of Luxemburg and Valois, without the slightest reference to the discord in the Church, a proceeding which produced a very painful impression on the mind of Urban.