More than seven months elapsed before Huss could obtain a hearing before the council.
Continuing The Trial and Burning of John Huss,
our selection from Richard Chenevix Trench. The selection is presented in four easy 5 minute installments.
Previously in The Trial and Burning of John Huss.
Time: 1415
Place: Konstanz, Germany
But to return a little. More than seven months elapsed before Huss could obtain a hearing before the council. This was granted to him at last. Thrice heard, June 5, 7, 8, 1415 — if, indeed, such tumultuary sittings, where the man speaking for his life and for much more than his life, was continually interrupted and overborne by hostile voices, by loud cries of “Recant, recant!” may be reckoned as hearings at all — he bore himself, by the confession of all, with courage, meekness and dignity. The charges brought against him were various; some so far-fetched as that urged by a Nominalist from the University of Paris — for Paris was Nominalist now — namely, that as a Realist he could not be sound on the doctrine of the eucharist. Others were vague enough, as that he had sown discord between the church and the state. Nor were accusations wanting which touched a really weak point in his teaching, namely, the subjective aspect which undoubtedly some aspects of it wore; as when he taught that not the baptized but the predestinated to life, constituted the Church. Beset as he was by the most accomplished theologians of the age, the best or the worst advantage was sure to be made of any vulnerable side which he exposed.
But there were charges against him with more in them of danger than these. The point which was really at issue between him and his adversaries concerned the relative authority of the Church and of Scripture. What they demanded of him was a retraction of all the articles brought against him, with an unconditional submission to the council. Some of the articles, he replied, charged him with teaching things which he had never taught and he could not by this formal act of retraction admit that he had taught them. Let any doctrine of his be shown to be contrary to God’s holy Word and he would retract it; but such unconditional submission he could not yield.
His fate was now sealed — that is, unless he could be induced to recant; in which event, though he did not know it, his sentence would have been degradation from the priesthood and a lifelong imprisonment. Many efforts up to the last moment were made by friend and foe to persuade him to this but in vain. And now once more, July 6th, he is brought before the council but this time for sentence and for doom. The sentence passed, his suffering begins. The long list of his heresies, among which they are not ashamed to include many which he has distinctly repudiated, is read out in his hearing. He is clothed with priestly garments, that these, piece by piece and each with an appropriate insult malediction, may be stripped from him again. The sacred vessels are placed in his hands, that from him, “accursed Judas that he is,” they may be taken again. There is some difficulty in erasing his tonsure; but this difficulty with a little violence and cruelty is overcome. A tall paper cap, painted over with flames and devils and inscribed “Heresiarch,” is placed upon his head. This done and his soul having been duly delivered to Satan, his body is surrendered to the secular arm. One last touch is not wanting. As men bind him to the stake, attention is called to the fact that his face is turned to the east. This honor must not be his, upon whom no sun of righteousness shall ever rise. He is unfastened and refastened anew. All is borne with perfect meekness, in the thought and in the strength of Him who had borne so much more for sinners, the Just for the unjust; and so, in his fire-chariot of a painful martyrdom, Huss passes from our sight.
Some may wonder that he, a reformer, should have been so treated by a council, itself also reforming and with a man like Gerson — Doctor Christianissimus was the title he bore — virtually at its head. But a little consideration will dispel this surprise and lead us to the conclusion that a council less earnestly bent on reforms of its own would probably have dealt more mildly with him. His position and theirs, however we may ascribe alike to him and to them a desire to reform the Church, were fundamentally different. They, when they deposed a pope, where they proclaimed the general superiority of councils over popes, had no intention of diminishing one jot the Church’s authority in matters of faith but only of changing the seat of that authority, substituting an ecclesiastical aristocracy for an ecclesiastical monarchy — or despotism, as long since it had grown to be. And thus the more earnest the council was to carry out a reformation in discipline, the more eager was it also to make evident to all the world that it did not intend to touch doctrine but would uphold this as it had received it. It is not then uncharitable to suspect that the leading men of the council — like those reformers at Geneva who a century and a half later, 1553, sent Servetus to the stake — were not sorry to be able to give so signal an evidence of their zeal for the maintenance of the faith which they had received, as thus, in the condemnation of Huss, they had the opportunity of doing. Nor may we leave altogether out of account that the German element must of necessity have been strong in a council held on the shores of the Bodensee; while in his vindication of Bohemian nationality, perhaps an excessive vindication, Huss had offended and embittered the Germans to the uttermost.
If any had flattered themselves that with the death of Huss the Reformation in Bohemia had also received its death-blow, they had not long to wait for a painful undeception. Words fail to describe the tempest of passionate indignation with which the tidings of his execution, followed within a year by that of Jerome, were received there. Both were honored as martyrs and already, in the fierce exasperation of men’s spirits against the authors of their doom, there was a prophecy of the unutterable woes which were even at the door. Some watchword by which his followers could know and be known — this watchword, if possible, a spell of power like that which Luther had found in the doctrine of justification by faith — was still wanting. One, however, was soon found; which indeed had this drawback, that it concerned a matter disciplinary rather than doctrinal, yet having a real value as a visible witness for the rights of the laity in the Church of Christ.
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