The Teutonic votes were thus as three to one and the Bohemians, in their own land and in their own university, on every important matter hopelessly outvoted.
Continuing The Trial and Burning of Jan Huss,
our selection from Richard Chenevix Trench. The selection is presented in four easy 5 minute installments.
Previously in The Trial and Burning of Jan Huss.
Time: 1415
Place: Konstanz, Germany
While matters were in this strained condition, events took place at Prague which are too closely connected with the story that we are telling, exercised too great an influence in bringing about the issues that lie before us, to allow us to pass them by, even though they may prove somewhat long to relate. The University of Prague, though recently founded — it only dated back to the year 1348 — was now, next after those of Paris and Oxford, the most illustrious in Europe. Saying this I say much; for we must not measure the influence and authority of a university at that day by the influence and authority, great as these are, which it may now possess. This university, like that of Paris, on the pattern of which it had been modelled, was divided into four “nations” — four groups, that is or families of scholars — each of these having in academical affairs a single collective vote. These nations were the Bavarian, the Saxon, the Polish and the Bohemian. This does not appear at first an unfair division — two German and two Slavonic; but in practical working the Polish was so largely recruited from Silesia and other German or half-German lands that its vote was in fact German also.
The Teutonic votes were thus as three to one and the Bohemians, in their own land and in their own university, on every important matter hopelessly outvoted. When, by aid of this preponderance, the university was made to condemn the teaching of Wycliffe in those forty-five points, matters came to a crisis. Urged by Huss — who as a stout patriot and an earnest lover of the Bohemian language and literature, had more than a theological interest in the matter — by Jerome, by a large number of the Bohemian nobility, King Wenceslaus published an edict whereby the relations of natives and foreigners were completely reversed. There should be henceforth three votes for the Bohemian nation and only one for the three others. Such a shifting of the weight certainly appears as a redressing of one inequality by creating another. At all events it was so earnestly resented by the Germans, by professors and students alike, that they quitted the university in a body, some say of five thousand and some of thirty thousand and founded the rival University of Leipsic, leaving no more than two thousand students at Prague. Full of indignation against Huss, whom they regarded as the prime author of this affront and wrong, they spread throughout Germany the most unfavorable reports of him and of his teaching.
This exodus of the foreigners had left Huss, who was now rector of the university, with a freer field than before. But church matters at Prague did not mend; they became more confused and threatening every day, until presently Huss stood in open opposition with the hierarchy of his time. Pope John XXIII, having a quarrel with the King of Naples, proclaimed a crusade against him, with what had become a constant accompaniment of this — indulgences to the crusaders. But to denounce indulgences, as Huss with fierce indignation did now, was to wound Pope John in a most sensitive part. He was excommunicated at once and every place which should harbor him stricken with an interdict. While matters were in this frame the Council of Constance was opened, which should appease all the troubles of Christendom and correct whatever was amiss. The Bohemian difficulty could not be omitted and Huss was summoned to make answer at Constance for himself.
He had not been there four weeks when he was required to appear before the Pope and cardinals, November 18, 1414. After a brief informal hearing he was committed to harsh durance, from which he never issued as a free man again. Sigismund, the German King and Emperor-elect, who had furnished Huss with a safe-conduct which should protect him, “going to the Council, tarrying at the Council, returning from the Council,” was absent from Constance at the time and heard with real displeasure how lightly regarded this promise and pledge of his had been.
Some big words, too, he spoke, threatening to come himself and release the prisoner by force; but, being waited on by a deputation from the council, who represented to him that he, as a layman, in giving such a safe-conduct had exceeded his powers and intruded into a region which was not his, Sigismund was convinced or affected to be convinced. Doubtless the temptations to be convinced were strong. Had he insisted on the liberation of Huss, the danger was imminent that the council, for which he had labored so earnestly, would be broken up on the plea that its rightful freedom was denied it. He did not choose to run this risk, preferring to leave an everlasting blot upon his name.
Some modern sophists assure us that this safe-conduct — or free pass, as they prefer to call it — engaged the imperial word for Huss’ safety in going to the council but for nothing more — a most perfidious document, if this is all which it undertook; for the words — I quote the more important of them in the original Latin — are as follows: “ut ei transire, stare, morari, redire permittatis.” But the treachery was not in the document and nobody at the time attempted to find it there. If this had not engaged the honor of the Emperor, what cause of complaint would he have had against the cardinals as having entangled him in a breach of his word? what need of their solemn ambassage to him? Untrue also is the assertion that this was so little regarded by Huss himself as a safe-conduct covering the whole period during which he should be exposed to the malice of his enemies that he never appealed to it or claimed protection from it. He did so appeal at this second formal hearing, June 7th, the first at which Sigismund was present. “I am here,” he there said, “under the King’s promise that I should return to Bohemia in safety”; while at his last, by a look and by a few like words, he brought the royal word-breaker to a blush, evident to all present, July 6th.
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