A History of The Inquisition of The Middle Ages Volume II Part 15

he said, "I will still worship him and be a Christian," to which von Elten retorted, "So say all heretics, even when at the stake." Finally it was resolved that three doctors should be deputed, piously to exhort him to abandon his errors. As in the case of Huss, it was not his death that was wanted, but his humiliation.

On the 10th the deputies labored with him. "If Christ were here," he told them, "and were treated like me, you would condemn him as a heretic--but he would get the better of you with his subtlety." At length he was persuaded to acknowledge that his views were erroneous, on the deputies agreeing to take the responsibility on their own consciences. He had long been sick when the trial was commenced, all a.s.sistance was withheld from him; age, weakness, and the dark and filthy dungeon from which he had vainly begged to be relieved broke down his powers of resistance, and he submitted. He publicly recanted and abjured, his books were burned before his face, and he was sentenced to imprisonment for life in the Augustinian monastery of Mainz. He did not long survive his mortification and misery, for he died in 1481. The trial excited great interest among all the scholars of Germany, who were shocked at this treatment of a man so eminent and distinguished.

Yet his writings survived him and proved greatly encouraging to the early Reformers. Melanchthon enumerates him among those who by their works kept up the continuity of the Church of Christ.[466]

It is evident from this case that the Inquisition, though not extinct in Germany, was not in working order, and that even where it existed nominally a special effort was requisite to make it function. Still we hear occasionally of the appointment of inquisitors, and from the career of Sprenger we know that their labors could be fruitfully directed to the extirpation of witchcraft. Sorcery, indeed, had become the most threatening heresy of the time, and other spiritual aberrations were attracting little attention. In the elaborate statutes issued by the Synod of Bamberg, in 1491, the section devoted to heresy dwells at much length on the details of witchcraft and magic, and mentions only one other doctrinal error--the vitiation of sacraments in polluted hands--and it directs that all who neglect to denounce heretics are to be themselves treated as accomplices, but it makes no allusion to the Inquisition. Still there is an occasional manifestation showing that inquisitors existed and sometimes exercised their powers. I shall hereafter have occasion to refer to the case of Herman of Ryswick, who was condemned and abjured in 1499, escaped from prison, and was burned as a relapsed by the inquisitor at The Hague, in 1512, and only allude to it here as an evidence of continued inquisitorial activity.[467]

The persecution of John Reuchlin, like that of John of Wesel, sprang from scholastic antagonisms, but its development shows how completely, during the interval, the inquisitorial power had wasted away. Reuchlin was a pupil of John Wessel of Groningen; as the leader of the Humanists, and the foremost representative in Germany of the new learning, he was involved in bitter controversy with the Dominicans, who, as traditional Thomists, were ready to do battle to the death for scholasticism. The ferocious jocularity with which Sebastian Brandt dilates, in his most finished Latinity, upon the torture and burning of four Dominicans at Berne, in 1509, for frauds committed in the controversy over the Immaculate Conception, indicates the temper which animated the hostile parties, even as its lighter aspect is seen in the unsparing satire of Erasmus and of the _Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum_. When, therefore, Reuchlin stood forward to protect Jews and Jewish literature against the a.s.saults of the renegade Pfefferkorn, the opportunity to destroy him was eagerly seized. In 1513 a Dominican inquisitor, the Prior Jacob von Hochstraten, came from Cologne to Mainz on an errand precisely similar to that of his predecessor von Elten. Unlike John of Wesel, however, Reuchlin felt that he could safely appeal to Rome, where Leo X. was himself a man of culture and a Humanist. Leo was well disposed, and commissioned the Bishop of Speier to decide the question, which was in itself a direct blow at the inquisitorial power. Still more contemptuously damaging was the bishop's judgment. Reuchlin was declared free of all suspicion of heresy, the prosecution was p.r.o.nounced frivolous, and the costs were put upon Hochstraten, with a threat of excommunication for disobedience. This was confirmed at Rome, in 1415, where silence was imposed on Reuchlin's accusers under a penalty of three thousand marks. The Humanists celebrated their victory with savage rejoicing. Eleutherius Bizenus printed a tract summoning, in rugged hexameters, all Germany to a.s.sist in the triumph of Reuchlin, in which Hochstraten--that thief, who as accuser and judge persecutes the innocent--marches in chains, with his hands tied behind his back, while Pfefferkorn, with ears and nose cut off, is dragged by a hook through his heels, face downwards, until his features lose the semblance of humanity. The Dominicans are characterized as worse than Turks, and more worthy to be resisted, and the author wonders what unjust pope and cowardly emperor had enabled them to impose their yoke on the land.

These were brave words, but premature. The quarrel had attracted the attention of all Europe, the Dominican Order itself and all it represented were on trial, and it could not afford to submit to defeat.

Hochstraten hastened to Rome; the Dominicans of the great University of Cologne did not hesitate to say that if the pope maintained the sentence they would appeal to the future council, they would refuse to abide by his decision, they would p.r.o.nounce him to be no pope and organize a schism, and much more, which shows upon what a slender tenure the papacy held the allegiance of its Janissaries. Leo cowered before the storm which he had provoked, and in 1416 he issued a mandate superseding the sentence, but the spirit of insubordination was growing strong in Germany, and Franz von Sickingen, the free-lance, compelled its observance. As the Lutheran revolt grew more threatening, however, the support of the Dominicans became more and more indispensable, and in 1420 Leo settled the matter by setting aside the decision of the Bishop of Speier, imposing silence on Reuchlin, and laying all the costs on him. Hochstraten, moreover, was restored to his office.[468]

The reparation came too late to render the Inquisition of any service, now that its efficiency was more sorely needed than ever before. Had it existed in Germany in good working order, Luther's career would have been short. When, October 31, 1517, he nailed his propositions concerning indulgences on the church-door of Wittenberg, and publicly defended them, an inquisitor such as Bernard Gui would have speedily silenced him, either destroying his influence by forcing him to a public recantation, or handing him over to be burned if he proved obstinate.

Hundreds of hardy thinkers had been thus served, and the few who had been found stout enough to withstand the methods of the Holy Office had perished. Fortunately, as we have seen, the Inquisition never had struck root in German soil, and now it was thoroughly discredited and useless.

Hochstraten's hands were tied; Doctor John Eck, inquisitor for Bavaria and Franconia, was himself a Humanist, who could argue and threaten, but could not act.

In France the University had taken the place of the almost forgotten Inquisition, repressing all aberrations of faith, while a centralized monarchy had rendered--at least until the Concordat of Francis I.--the national Church in a great degree independent of the papacy. In Germany there was no national Church; there was subjection to Rome which was growing unendurable for financial reasons, but there was nothing to take the place of the Inquisition, and a lat.i.tude of speech had become customary which was tolerated so long as the revenues of St. Peter were not interfered with. This perhaps explains why the significance of Luther's revolt was better appreciated at Rome than on the spot. After he had been formally declared a heretic by the Auditor-general of the Apostolic Chamber at the instance of the promoter fiscal, the legate, Cardinal Caietano, wrote that he could terminate the matter himself, and that it was rather a trifling affair to be brought before the pope. He did not fulfil his instructions to arrest Luther and tell him that if he would appear before the Holy See, to excuse himself, he would be treated with undeserved clemency. After the scandal had been growing for a twelvemonth, Leo again wrote to Caietano to summon Doctor Martin before him, and, after diligent examination, to condemn or absolve him as might prove requisite. It was now too late. Insubordination had spread, and rebellion was organizing itself. Before these last instructions reached Caietano, Luther came in answer to a previous summons, but, though he professed himself in all things an obedient son of the Church, he practically manifested an ominous independence, and was conveyed away unharmed. The legate trusted to his powers as a disputant rather than to force; and had he attempted the latter, he had no machinery at hand to frustrate the instructions given by the Augsburg magistrates for Luther's protection. In the paralysis of persecution the inevitable revolution went forward.[469]

CHAPTER VII.

BOHEMIA.

There is no historical foundation for the legend that Peter Waldo's missionary labors carried him into Bohemia, where he died, but there can be no question that the Waldensian heresy found a foothold among the Czechs at a comparatively early date. Bohemia formed part of the great archiepiscopal province of Mainz, whose metropolitan could exercise but an ineffective supervision over a district so distant. The supremacy of Rome pressed lightly on its turbulent ecclesiastics. In the last decade of the twelfth century a papal legate, Cardinal Pietro, sent thither to levy a t.i.the for the recovery of the Holy Land, was scandalized to find that the law of celibacy was unknown to the secular priesthood; he did not venture to force it on those already in orders, and his efforts to make postulants take the vow of continence provoked a tumult which required severe measures of suppression. In a Church thus partially independent the abuses which stimulated revolt elsewhere might perhaps be absent, but the field for missionary labor lay open and unguarded.[470]

We have seen how the Inquisitor of Pa.s.sau, about the middle of the thirteenth century, describes the flourishing condition of the Waldensian churches in Austria, along the borders of Bohemia and Moravia, and the intense zeal of propagandism which animated their members. Close to the west, moreover, they were to be found in the diocese of Ratisbon. That the heresy should cross the boundary line was inevitable, and it ran little risk of detection and persecution by a worldly and slothful priesthood, until it gained strength enough to declare itself openly. The alarm was first sounded by Innocent IV. in 1245, who summoned the prelates of Hungary to intervene, as those of Bohemia apparently were not to be depended upon, and there was evidently no inquisitorial machinery which could be employed. Innocent describes the heresy as established so firmly and widely that it embraced not only the simple folk, but also princes and magnates, and it was so elaborately organized that it had a chief who was reverenced as pope.

These are all declared excommunicate, their lands confiscated for the benefit of the first occupant, and any who shall relapse after recantation are to be abandoned to the secular arm without a hearing, in accordance with the canons.[471]

We have no means of knowing whether any action was taken in consequence of this decree, but if efforts were made they did not succeed in eradicating the heresy. In 1257 King Premysl Otokar II. applied to Alexander IV. for aid in its suppression, as it continued to spread, and to this request was due the first introduction of the Inquisition in Bohemia. Two Franciscans, Lambert the German and Bartholomew lector in Brunn, received the papal commission as inquisitors throughout Bohemia and Moravia. It is fair to a.s.sume that they did their duty, but no traces of their activity have reached us, nor is there any evidence that their places were filled when they died or retired. The Inquisition may be considered as non-existent, and when, after a long interval, we again hear of persecution, it is in a shape that shows that the Bishop of Prague, like his metropolitan of Mainz, was not disposed to invite papal encroachments on his jurisdiction. In 1301 a synod of Prague deplored the spread of heresy and ordered every one cognizant of it to give information to the episcopal inquisitors, from which we may infer that heretics were active, that they had been little disturbed, and that the elaborate legislation elsewhere in force for the detection and punishment of heresy was virtually unknown in Bohemia.[472]

In 1318 John of Drasic, the Bishop of Prague, was summoned to Avignon by John XXII. to answer accusations brought against him by Frederic of Schonberg, Canon of Wyschehrad, as a fautor of heresy. The complaint set forth that heretics were so numerous that they had an archbishop and seven bishops, each of whom had three hundred disciples. The description of their faith would seem to indicate that there were both Waldenses and Luciferans--the latter forming part of the sect which we have seen described about this time as flourishing in Austria, where they are said to have been introduced by missionaries from Bohemia--and that their doctrines have been commingled. They are described as considering oaths unlawful; confession and absolution could be administered indifferently by layman or priest; rebaptism was allowed; the divine unity and the resurrection of the dead were denied; Jesus had only a phantasmic body; and Lucifer was expected finally to reign. Of course there were also the customary accusations of s.e.xual excesses committed in nocturnal a.s.semblies held in caverns, which only proves that there was sufficient dread of persecution to prevent the congregations from meeting openly.

The good bishop, it appears, only permitted these wretches to be arraigned by his inquisitors after repeated pressure from John of Luxembourg, the king. Fourteen of them were convicted and handed over to the secular arm, but the bishop interfered, to the great disgust of the king, and forcibly released them, except a physician named Richard, who was imprisoned; the bishop, moreover, discharged the inquisitors, who evidently were his own officials and not papal appointees. These were serious offences on the part of a prelate, and he expiated his lenity by a confinement of several years in Avignon. Possibly his hostility to the Franciscans may have rendered him an object of attack.[473]

Papal attention being thus called to the existence of heresy in the east of Europe, and to the inefficiency of the local machinery for its extermination, steps were immediately taken for the introduction of the Inquisition. In 1318 John XXII. commissioned the Dominican Peregrine of Oppolza and the Franciscan Nicholas of Cracow as inquisitors in the dioceses of Cracow and Breslau, while Bohemia and Poland were intrusted to the Dominican Colda and the Franciscan Hartmann. As usual, the secular and ecclesiastical powers were commanded to afford them a.s.sistance whenever called upon. Poland, doubtless, was as much in need as Bohemia of inquisitorial supervision, for John Muscata, the Bishop of Cracow, was as negligent as his brother of Prague, and drew upon himself in 1319 severe reprehension from John XXII. for the sloth and neglect which had rendered heresy bold and aggressive in his diocese. This does not seem to have accomplished much, for in 1327 John found himself obliged to order the Dominican Provincial of Poland to appoint inquisitors to stem the flood of heresy which was infecting the people from regions farther west. Germany and Bohemia apparently were sending missionaries, whose labors met with much acceptance among the people.

King Ladislas was especially asked to lend his aid to the inquisitors; he promptly responded by ordering the governors of his cities to support them with the civil power, and their vigorous action was rewarded with abundant success.[474]

Among these heretics there may have been Brethren of the Free Spirit, but they were probably for the most part Waldenses, who at this time had a thoroughly organized Church in Bohemia, whence emissaries were sent to Moravia, Saxony, Silesia, and Poland. They regarded Lombardy as their headquarters, to which they sent their youth for instruction, together with moneys collected for the support of the parent Church. All this could not be concealed from the vigilance of the inquisitors appointed by John XXII. No doubt active measures of repression were carried out with little intermission, though chance has only preserved an indication of inquisitorial proceedings about the year 1330. Saaz and Laun are mentioned as the cities in which heresy was most prevalent. With the open rupture between the papacy and Louis of Bavaria its repression became more difficult, although Bohemia under John of Luxembourg remained faithful to the Holy See. Heretics increased in Prague and its neighborhood; after a brief period of activity the Inquisition seems to have disappeared; John of Drasic, whose tolerance we have seen, was still Bishop of Prague, and fresh efforts were necessary. In 1335 Benedict XII. accordingly appointed the Franciscan Peter Naczeracz as inquisitor in the diocese of Olmutz and the Dominican Gall of Neuburg for that of Prague. As usual, all prelates were commanded to lend their aid, and King John was specially reminded that he held the temporal sword for the purpose of subduing the enemies of the faith. His son, the future Emperor Charles IV., at that time in charge of the kingdom, was similarly appealed to.[475]

In the subject province of Silesia, about the same period, a bold heresiarch known as John of Pirna made a deep impression. He was probably a Fraticello, as he taught that the pope was Antichrist and Rome the Wh.o.r.e of Babylon and a synagogue of Satan. In Breslau the magistrates and people espoused his doctrines, which were openly preached in the streets. Breslau was ecclesiastically subject to Poland, and in 1341 John of Schweidnitz was commissioned from Cracow as inquisitor to suppress the growing heresy. The people, however, arose, drove out their bishop and slew the inquisitor, for which they were subsequently subjected to humiliating penance, and John of Pirna's bones were exhumed and burned. The unsatisfied vengeance of Heaven added to their punishment by a conflagration which destroyed nearly the whole city, during which a pious woman saw an angel with a drawn sword casting fiery coals among the houses.[476]

Bohemia and its subject provinces were thus thoroughly infected with heresy, mostly Waldensian, when several changes took place which increased the prominence of the kingdom and stimulated vastly its intellectual activity. In 1344 Prague was separated from its far-off metropolis of Mainz and was erected into an archbishopric, for which the piety of Charles, then Margrave of Bohemia, provided a zealous and enlightened prelate in the person of Arnest of Pardubitz. Two years later, in 1346, Charles was elected King of the Romans by the Electors of Treves and Cologne in opposition to Louis of Bavaria, as the supporter of the papacy; and a month later he succeeded to the throne of Bohemia through the knightly death of the blind King John at Crecy.

Still more influential and far-reaching in its results was the founding in 1347 of the University of Prague, to which the combined favor of pope and emperor gave immediate l.u.s.tre. Archbishop Arnest a.s.sumed its chancellorship, learned schoolmen filled its chairs; students flocked to it from every quarter, and it soon rivalled in numbers and reputation its elder sisters of Oxford, Paris, and Bologna.[477]

During the latter half of the century, Bohemia, under these auspices, was one of the most flourishing kingdoms of Europe. Its mines of the precious metals gave it wealth; the freedom enjoyed by its peasantry raised them mentally and morally above the level of the serfs of other lands; culture and enlightenment were diffused from its university. It was renowned throughout the Continent for the splendor of its churches, which in size and number were nowhere exceeded. At the monastery of Konigsaal, where the Bohemian kings lay buried, around the walls of the garden the whole of the Scriptures, from Genesis to Revelations, was engraved, with letters enlarging in size with their distance from the ground, so that all could be easily read. In the bitter struggles of after generations the reign of King Charles was fondly looked back upon as the golden age of Bohemia. Wealth and culture, however, were accompanied with corruption. Nowhere were the clergy more worldly and depraved. Concubinage was well-nigh universal, and simony pervaded the Church in all its ranks, the sacraments were sold and penitence compounded for. All the abuses for which clerical immunity furnished opportunity nourished, and the land was overrun by vagrants whose tonsure gave them charter to rob and brawl, and dice and drink. The influences from above which moulded the Bohemian Church may be estimated from a single instance. In 1344 Clement VI. wrote to Arnest, then simple Bishop of Prague, calling attention to the numerous cases in his diocese wherein preferment had been procured for minors either by force or simony. The horror which the good pope expresses at this abuse is significantly ill.u.s.trated by his having not long before issued dispensations to five members of one family in France, aged respectively seven, eight, nine, ten, and eleven years, to hold canonries and other benefices. Apparently the Bohemians had not taken the proper means to obtain the sanction of the curia for such infraction of the canons, so Clement ordered Arnest to dispossess the inc.u.mbents in all such cases, and to impose due penance on them. But he was also instructed, in conjunction with the papal collector, to force them to compound with the papal camera for all the revenues which they had thus illegally received, and after they had undergone this squeezing process he was authorized to reinstate them.[478]

Such unblushing exhibitions of rapacious simony did not tend either to the purity of the Bohemian Church, or to enhance its respect for the Holy See, especially as the frequently recurring papal exactions strained to the last degree the relations between the papacy and the German churches. When, in 1354, Innocent VI., to carry on his Italian wars, suddenly demanded a tenth of all the ecclesiastical revenues of the empire, it threw, for several years, the whole German Church into an uproar of rage and indignation. Some prelates refused to pay, and, when legal proceedings were commenced against them, formulated appeals which were contemptuously rejected as frivolous. The Bishops of Camin and Brandenburg were only compelled to yield by the direct threat of excommunication. Others pleaded poverty, and were mockingly reminded of the large sums which they had succeeded in exacting from their miserable subjects; others made the best bargain they could, and compounded for yearly payments; others banded together and formed a.s.sociations mutually pledged to resist to the last. Frederic, Bishop of Ratisbon, took the audacious step of seizing the papal collector and conveying him away to a convenient castle. An ambush was laid for the Bishop of Cavaillon, the papal nuncio charged with the business, and his life, and that of his a.s.sistant, Henry, Archdeacon of Liege, were only saved by the active interposition of William, Archbishop of Cologne. When, in 1372, the levy was repeated by Gregory XI., the same spirit of resistance was aroused.

The clergy of Mainz bound themselves to each other in a solemn engagement not to pay it, and Frederic, Archbishop of Cologne, promised his clergy to give them all the a.s.sistance he safely could in their refusal to submit. Trifling incidents such as these afford us a valuable insight into the complex relations between the Holy See and the churches of Christendom. On the one hand, there was the superst.i.tious awe generated by five centuries of unquestioned domination as the representative of Christ, and there was, moreover, the dread of the material consequences of unsuccessful revolt. On the other, there was the indignation born of lawless oppression ever exciting to rebellion, and the clear-sighted recognition of the venality and corruption which rendered the Roman curia a source of contagion for all Europe. There was ample inflammable material, which the increasing friction might at any moment kindle into flame.[479]

Bohemia was peculiarly dangerous soil, for it was thoroughly interpenetrated with the leaven of heresy. We hear nothing of papal inquisitors after those commissioned by Benedict XII. in 1335, and it is presumable that for a while the heretics had peace. Archbishop Arnest, however, soon after his accession, set resolutely to work to purify the morals of his Church and to uproot heresy. He held synods frequently, he inst.i.tuted a body of Correctors whose duty it was to visit all portions of the province and punish all transgressions, and he organized an episcopal Inquisition for the purpose of tracking out and suppressing heresy. In the fragmentary remains of his synodal acts, the frequency and earnestness with which this latter duty is insisted upon serve as a measure of its importance, and of the numbers of those who had forsaken the Church. In the earliest synod whose proceedings have reached us the first place is given to this subject; the archdeacons were directed to make diligent perquisition in their respective districts, both personally and through the deans and parish priests, without exciting suspicion, and all who were found guilty or suspect of heresy were to be forthwith denounced to the archbishop or the inquisitor. Similar instructions were issued in 1355; and after Arnest's death, in 1364, his successor, John Ocko, was equally vigilant, as appears from the acts of his synods in 1366 and 1371. The neighborhood of Pisek was especially contaminated, and from the acts of the Consistory of 1381 it appears that a priest named Johl, of Pisek, could not be ordained because both his father and grandfather had been heretics. What was this heresy that thus descended from generation to generation is not stated, but it was doubtless Waldensian. In this same year Archbishop John, as papal legate for his own province and for the dioceses of Ratisbon, Bamberg, and Misnia, held a council at Prague, in which he mournfully described the spread of the Waldenses and Sarabites--the latter probably Beghards. He sharply reproved the bishops who, through sloth or parsimony, had not appointed inquisitors, and threatened that if they did not do so forthwith, he would do it himself. When, ten years later, the Church took the alarm and acted vigorously, the Waldenses of Brandenburg, who were prosecuted, declared that their teachers came from Bohemia.[480]

In all this activity for the suppression of heresy it is worthy of note that the episcopal Inquisition alone is referred to. In fact there was no papal Inquisition in Bohemia. The bull of Gregory XI., in 1372, ordering the appointment of five inquisitors for Germany, confines their jurisdiction to the provinces of Cologne, Mainz, Utrecht, Magdeburg, Salzburg, and Bremen, and pointedly omits that of Prague, although the zeal of Charles IV. might have been expected to secure the blessings of the inst.i.tution for his hereditary realm.[481] This is the more curious, moreover, since the intellectual movement started by the University of Prague was producing a number of men distinguished not only for learning and piety, but for their bold attacks on the corruptions of the Church, and their questioning of some of its most profitable dogmas. The appearance of these precursors of Huss is one of the most remarkable indications of the tendencies of the age in Bohemia, and shows how the Waldensian spirit of revolt had unconsciously spread among the population.

Conrad of Waldhausen, who died in 1369, is reckoned the earliest of these. He maintained strict orthodoxy, but his denunciation in his sermons of the vices of the clergy, and especially of the Mendicants, created a deep sensation. More prominent in every way was Milicz of Kremsier, who, in 1363, resigned the office of private secretary to the emperor, the function of Corrector intrusted to him by Archbishop Arnest, and several rich preferments, in order to devote himself exclusively to preaching. His sermons in Czech, German, and Latin were filled with audacious attacks on the sins and crimes of clergy and laity, and the evils of the time led him to prophesy the advent of Antichrist between 1365 and 1367. In the latter year he went to Rome in order to lay before Urban V. his views on the present and future of the Church. While awaiting Urban's advent from Avignon, he affixed on the portal of St. Peter's an announcement of a sermon on the subject, which led the Inquisition to throw him into prison, but in October, on the arrival of the pope, he was released and treated with distinction. On his return to Prague he preached with greater violence than ever. To get rid of him the priesthood accused him to the emperor and archbishop, but in vain. Then they formulated twelve articles of accusation against him to the pope, and obtained, in January, 1374, from Gregory XI., bulls denouncing him as a persistent heresiarch who had filled all Bohemia, Poland, Silesia, and the neighboring lands with his errors. According to them, he taught not only that Antichrist had come, that the Church was extinct, that pope, cardinals, bishops and prelates showed no light of truth, but he permitted to his followers the unlimited gratification of their pa.s.sions. Milicz undauntedly pursued his course until an inquisitorial prosecution was commenced against him, when he appealed to the pope. In Lent, 1374, he went to Avignon, where he readily proved his innocence, and on May 21 was admitted to preach before the cardinals, but he died June 29, before the formal decision of his case was published. It is highly probable that he was a Joachite--one of those who, as we shall see hereafter, reverenced the memory and believed in the apocalyptic prophecies of the Abbot Joachim of Flora.[482]

The spirit of indignation and disquiet did not confine itself to denunciations of clerical abuses. Men were growing bolder, and began to question some of the cherished dogmas which gave rise to those abuses.

In the synod of 1384 one of the subjects discussed was whether the saints were cognizant of the prayers addressed to them, and whether the worshipper was benefited by their suffrages--the mere raising of such a question showing how dangerously bold had become the spirit of inquiry.

The man who most fitly represented this tendency was Mathias of Janow, whom the Archbishop John of Jenzenstein utilized in his efforts to reform the incurable disorders of the clergy. Mathias was led to trace the troubles to their causes, and to teach heresies from the consequences of which even the protection of the archbishop could not wholly defend him. In the synod of 1389 he was forced to make public recantation of his errors in holding that the images of Christ and the saints gave rise to idolatry, and that they ought to be banished from the churches and burned; that relics were of no service, and the intercession of saints was useless; while his teaching that every one should be urged to take communion daily foreshadowed the eucharistic troubles which play so large a part in the Hussite excitement. Yet he was allowed to escape with six months' suspension from preaching and hearing confessions outside of his own parochial church, a mistaken lenity which he repaid by continuing to teach the same errors more audaciously than ever, and even urging that the laity be admitted to communion in both elements. Mathias was not alone in his heterodoxy, for in the same synod of 1389 a priest named Andreas was obliged to revoke the same heresy respecting images, and another named Jacob was suspended from preaching for ten years for a still more offensive expression of similar beliefs, with the addition that suffrages for the dead were useless, that the Virgin could not help her devotees, and that the archbishop had erred in granting an indulgence to those who adored her image, and that the utterances of the holy doctors of the Church are not to be received.[483]

Other earnest men who prepared the way for what was to follow were Henry of Oyta, Thomas of St.i.tny, John of Stekno, and Matthew of Cracow. Step by step the progress of free thought advanced, and when, in 1393, a papal indulgence was preached in Prague, Wenceslas Rohle, pastor of St.

Martin's in the Altstadt, ventured to denounce it as a fraud, though only under his breath, for fear of the Pharisees. All this, it is evident, could only be favorable to the growth of Waldensianism, as is seen in the activity of the sectaries. It was missionaries from Bohemia who founded the communities in Brandenburg and Pomerania; and, as we have seen, a well-informed writer, in 1395, a.s.serts that they were numbered by thousands in Thuringia, Misnia, Bohemia, Moravia, Austria, and Hungary, notwithstanding that a thousand of them had been converted within two years in the districts extending from Thuringia to Moravia.[484]

While Bohemia was thus the scene of an agitation the outcome of which no man could foretell, a similar movement was running a still more rapid course in England, which was destined to exercise a decisive influence on the result. The a.s.saults of John Wickliff were the most serious danger encountered by the hierarchy since the Hildebrandine theocracy had been established. For the first time a trained scholastic intellect of remarkable force and clearness, informed with all the philosophy and theology of the schools, was led to question the domination which the Church had acquired over the life, here and hereafter, of its members.

It was not the poor peasant or artisan who found the Scriptures in contradiction to the teaching of the pulpit and the confessional, and with the practical examples set by the sacerdotal cla.s.s; but it was a man who stood in learning and argumentative power on a level with the foremost schoolmen of the Middle Ages; who could quote not only Christ and the apostles, but the fathers and doctors of the Church, the decretals and the canons, Aristotle and his commentators; who could weave all these into the dialectics so dear to students and masters of theology, and who could frame a system of philosophy suited to the intellectual wants of the age. It is true that William of Ockham had been bold in his attacks on the overgrown papal system, but he was a partisan of Louis of Bavaria, and, with Marsiglio of Padua, his aim had merely been to set the State above the Church. With the subjection of the empire to the papacy the works of both had perished and their labors had been forgotten. The infidelity of the Averrhoists had never taken root among the people, and had been wisely treated by the Church with the leniency of contempt. It was the secret of Wickliff's influence that he had worked out his conclusions in single-hearted efforts to search for truth; his views developed gradually as he was led from one point to another; he spared neither prince nor prelate; he labored to instruct the poor more zealously perhaps than to influence the great, and men of all ranks, from the peasant to the schoolman, recognized in him a leader who sought to make them better, stronger, more valiant in the struggle with Apollyon. It is no wonder that his work proved not merely ephemeral; that his fame as a heresiarch filled all the schools and became everywhere synonymous with rebellion against the sacerdotal system; that simple Waldenses in Spain and Germany became thereafter known as Wickliffites. Yet the endurance of his teachings was due to his Bohemian disciples; at home, after a brief period of rapid development, they were virtually crushed out by the combined power of Church and State.

As the heresy of Huss was in nearly all details copied from his master, Wickliff, it is necessary, in order to understand the nature of the Hussite movement, to cast a brief glance at the views of the English reformer. About four years after his death, in 1388 and 1389, twenty-five articles of accusation were brought against his followers, whose reply gives, in the most vigorous English, a summary of his tenets. Few doc.u.ments of the period are more interesting as a picture of the worldliness and corruption of the Church, and of the wrathful indignation aroused by the hideous contrast between the teaching of Christ and the lives of those who claimed to represent him. It is observable that the only purely speculative error admitted is that concerning the Eucharist; all the others relate to the doctrines which gave to the Church control over the souls and purses of the faithful, or to the abuses arising from the worldly and sensual character of the clergy. It was an essentially practical reform, inspired for the most part with rare common-sense and with wonderfully little exaggeration, considering the magnitude of the evils which pressed so heavily upon Christendom.

The doc.u.ment in question shows the Wickliffite belief to be that the popes of the period were Antichrist; all the hierarchy, from the pope down, were accursed by reason of their greed, their simony, their cruelty, their l.u.s.t of power, and their evil lives. Unless they give satisfaction "thai schul be depper dampned then Judas Scarioth." The pope was not to be obeyed, his decretals were naught, and his excommunication and that of his bishops were to be disregarded. The indulgences so freely proffered in return for money or for the services of crusaders in slaying Christians were false and fraudulent. Yet the power of the keys in pious hands was not denied--"Certes, as holy prestis of lyvynge and cunnynge of holy writte han keyes of heven and bene vicaris of Jesus Crist, so viciouse prestis, unkonnynge of holy writte, ful of pride and covetise, han keyes of h.e.l.le and bene vicaris of Sathanas." Though auricular confession might be useful, it was not necessary, for men should trust in Christ. Image-worship was unlawful, and representations of the Trinity were forbidden--"Hit semes that this offrynge ymages is a sotile cast of Antichriste and his clerkis for to drawe almes fro pore men.... Certis, these ymages of hemselfe may do nouther G.o.de nor yvel to mennis soules, but thai myghtten warme a man's body in colde if thai were sette upon a fire." The invocation of saints was useless; the best of them could do nothing but what G.o.d ordained, and many of those customarily invoked were in h.e.l.l, for in modern times sinners stood a better chance of canonization than holy men. It was the same with their feast-days; those of the apostles and early saints might be observed, but not the rest. Song was not to be used in divine service, and prayer was as efficient anywhere as in church, for the churches were not holy--"all suche chirches bene gretely poluted and cursud of G.o.d, nomely for sellynge of leccherie and fals swering upon bokus. Sithen tho chirches bene dunnus of thefis and habitacionis of fendis." Ecclesiastics must not live in luxury and pomp, but as poor men "gyvynge ensaumple of holynes by ther conversacion." The Church must be deprived of all its temporalities, and whatever was necessary for the support of its members must be held in common. t.i.thes and offerings were not to be given to sinful priests; it was simony for a priest to receive payment for his spiritual ministrations, though he might sell his labor in honest vocations, such as teaching and the binding of books, and though no one was forbidden to make an oblation at ma.s.s, provided he did not seek to obtain more than his share in the sacrifice. All parish priests and vicars who did not perform their functions were to be removed, and especially all who were non-resident.

All priests and deacons, moreover, were to preach zealously, for which no special license or commission was required.

All these tenets of which they were accused the Wickliffites admitted and defended in the most incisive fashion, but there were two articles which they denied. Wickliff's teaching so closely resembled that of the Waldenses that it was natural that the orthodox should attribute to him the two Waldensian errors which regarded all oaths as unlawful, and held that priests in mortal sin could not administer the sacraments. To the former, his followers replied that, though they rejected all unnecessary swearing, they admitted that "If hit be nedeful for to swere for a spedful treuthe men mowe wele swere as G.o.d did in the olde lawe." As to the latter, they said that the sinful priest can give sacraments efficient to those who worthily receive them, though he receive d.a.m.nation unto himself. The prominence of the Fraticelli also suggested the imputation that the Wickliffites believed the entire renunciation of property to be essential to salvation; but this they denied, saying that a man might make lawful gains and hold them, but that he must use them well.[485]

All these antisacerdotal teachings flowed directly from the resoluteness with which Wickliff carried out to its logical conclusion the Augustinian doctrine of predestination, thus necessarily striking at the root of all human mediation, the suffrages of the saints, justification by works, and all the machinery of the Church for the purchase and sale of salvation. In this, as in the rest, Huss followed him, though the distinction between his principles and the orthodox ones of the Thomists and other schoolmen was too subtle to render this point one which the Church could easily condemn.[486]

The one serious speculative error of Wickliff lay in his effort to reconcile the mystery of the Eucharist with the stubborn fact that after consecration the bread remained bread and the wine continued to be wine.

He did not deny conversion into the body and blood of Christ; they were really present in the sacrifice, but his reason refused to acknowledge transubstantiation, and he invented a theory of the remanence of the substance coexisting with the divine elements. Into these dangerous subtleties Huss refused to follow his master. It was the one point on which he declined to accept the reasoning of the Englishman, and yet, as we shall see, it served as a princ.i.p.al excuse for hurrying him to the stake.

Wickliff's career as a heresiarch was unexampled, and its peculiarities serve to explain much that would otherwise be incomprehensible in the growth and tolerance of his doctrines in Bohemia, and in the simplicity with which Huss refused to believe that he could himself be regarded as a heretic. Although, as early as 1377, the a.s.sistance which Wickliff rendered to Edward III. in diminishing the papal revenues moved Gregory XI. to command his immediate prosecution as a heretic, yet the political situation was such as to render ineffectual all efforts to carry out these instructions; he was never even excommunicated, and was allowed to die peacefully in his rectory of Lutterworth on the last day of the year 1384. No further action was taken by Rome until the question of his heresy was raised in Prague. Although, in 1409, Alexander V. ordered Archbishop Zbinco not to permit his errors to be taught or his books to be read, yet when, in 1410, John XXIII. referred his writings to a commission of four cardinals, who convoked an a.s.sembly of theologians for their examination, a majority decided that Archbishop Zbinko had not been justified in burning them. It was not until the Council of Rome, in 1413, that there was a formal and authoritative condemnation p.r.o.nounced, and it was left for the Council of Constance, in 1415, to proclaim Wickliff as a heresiarch, to order his bones exhumed, and to define his errors with the authority of the Church Universal. Huss might well, to the last, believe in the authenticity of the spurious letters of the University of Oxford, brought to Prague about 1403, in which Wickliff was declared perfectly orthodox, and might conscientiously a.s.sert that his books continued to be read and taught there.[487]

The marriage of Anne of Luxembourg, sister of Wenceslas of Bohemia, to Richard II., in 1382, led to considerable intercourse between the kingdoms until her death, in 1394. Many Bohemians visited England during the excitement caused by Wickliff's controversies, and his writings were carried to Prague, where they found great acceptance. Huss tells us that about 1390 they commenced to be read in the University of Prague, and that they continued thenceforth to be studied. No orthodox Bohemian had hitherto ventured as far as the daring Englishman, but there were many who had entered on the same path, to say nothing of the secret Waldensian heretics, and the general feeling excited throughout Germany by the reckless simony and sale of indulgences which marked the later years of Boniface IX. Thus the movement which had been in progress since the middle of the century received a fresh impulsion from the circ.u.mstances under which the works of Wickliff were perused and scattered abroad in innumerable copies. All of his treatises were eagerly sought for. A MS. in the Hofbliothek of Vienna gives a catalogue of ninety of them which were known in Bohemia, and it is to those regions that we must look for the remains of his voluminous labors, the greater part of which were successfully suppressed at home. In time he came to be reverenced as the fifth Evangelist, and a fragment of stone from his tomb was venerated at Prague as a relic. Still more suggestive of his commanding influence is the fidelity with which Huss followed his reasoning, and oftentimes the arrangement, and even the words, of his treatises.[488]

John of Husinec, commonly known as Huss, who became the leading exponent and protomartyr of Wickliffitism in Bohemia, is supposed to have been born in 1369, of parents whose poverty forced him to earn his own livelihood. In 1393 he obtained the degree of bachelor of arts; in 1394 that of bachelor of theology; in 1396 that of master of arts; but the doctorate he never attained, though in 1398 he was already lecturing in the university; in 1401 he was dean of the philosophical faculty, and rector in 1402. Curiously enough, he embraced the Realist philosophy, and won great applause in his combats with the Nominalists. So little promise did his early years give of his career as a reformer that, in 1392, he spent his last four groschen for an indulgence, when he had only dry crusts for food. In 1400 he was ordained as priest, and two years later he was appointed preacher to the Bethlehem chapel, where his earnest eloquence soon rendered him the spiritual leader of the people.

The study of Wickliff's writings, begun shortly after this, quickened his appreciation of the evils of a corrupted Church, and when Archbishop Zbinco of Hasenburg, shortly after his consecration in 1403, appointed him as preacher to the annual synods, Huss improved the opportunity to address to the a.s.sembled clergy a series of terrible invectives against their worldliness and filthiness of living, which excited general popular hatred and contempt for them. After one of peculiar vigor, in October, 1407, the clamor among the ecclesiastics grew so strong that they presented a formal complaint against him to Archbishop Zbinco, and he was deprived of the position. By this time he was recognized as the leader in the effort to purify the Church, and to reduce it to its ancient simplicity, with such men as Stephen Palecz, Stanislas of Znaim, John of Jessinetz, Jerome of Prague, and many others eminent for learning and piety as his collaborators. To some of these he was inferior in intellectual gifts, but his fearless temper, his unbending rect.i.tude, his blameless life, and his kindly nature won for him the affectionate veneration of the people and rendered him its idol.[489]

Discussion grew hot and pa.s.sions became embittered. Old jealousies and hatreds between the Teutonic and Czech races contributed to render the religious quarrel unappeasable. The vices and oppression of the clergy had alienated from them popular respect, and the fiery diatribes of the Bethlehem chapel were listened to eagerly, while the Wickliffite doctrines, which taught the baselessness of the whole sacerdotal system, were welcomed as a revelation, and spread rapidly through all cla.s.ses.

King Wenceslas was inclined to give them such support as his indolence and self-indulgence would permit, and his queen, Sophia, was even more favorably disposed. Yet the clergy and their friends could not submit quietly to the spoliation of their privileges and wealth, although the Great Schism, in weakening the influence of the Roman curia, rendered its support less efficient. Preachers who a.s.sailed their vices were thrown into prison as heretics and were exiled, and the writings of Wickliff, which formed the key of the position, were fiercely a.s.saulted and desperately defended. The weak point in them was the subst.i.tution of remanence for transubstantiation; and although this was discarded by Huss and his followers, it served as an unguarded point through which the whole position might be carried. The synod of 1405 a.s.serted the doctrine of transubstantiation in its most absolute shape; any one teaching otherwise was p.r.o.nounced a heretic, and was ordered to be reported to the archbishop for punishment. In 1406 this was repeated in a still more threatening form, showing that the Wickliffite views had obstinate defenders; as, indeed, is to be seen by a tract of Thomas of St.i.tny, written in 1400. Already, in 1403, a series of forty-five articles extracted from Wickliff's works was formally condemned by the university. Around these the battle raged with fury; the condemnation was repeated in 1408, and in 1410 Archbishop Zbinco solemnly burned in the courtyard of his palace two hundred of the forbidden books, while the populace revenged itself by singing through the streets rude rhymes, in which the prelate is said to have burned books which he could not read; for his ignorance was notorious, and he was reported to have first acquired the alphabet after his elevation.[490]

In the strife between rival popes it suited the policy of King Wenceslas, in 1408, to maintain neutrality, and he induced the university to send envoys to the cardinals who had renounced allegiance to both Benedict XIII. and Gregory XII. In this mission were included Stephen Palecz and Stanislas of Znaim, but the whole party fell, in Bologna, into the hands of Balthasar Cossa, the papal legate (afterwards John XXIII.), who threw them all in prison as suspect of heresy, and it required no little effort to secure their release. This adventure cooled the zeal of Stephen and Stanislas; they gradually changed sides, and from the warmest friends of Huss they became, as we shall see, his most dangerous and implacable enemies.[491]

In this affair the university had not seconded the wishes of the king with the alacrity which he had expected, and Huss took advantage of the royal displeasure to effect a revolution in that inst.i.tution, which had hitherto proved the chief obstacle in the progress of reform. It was divided, in the ordinary manner, into four "nations." As each of these nations had a vote, the Bohemians constantly found themselves outnumbered by the foreigners. It was now proposed to adopt the const.i.tution of the University of Paris, where the French nation had three votes, and all the foreign nations collectively but one. The vacillation of Wenceslas delayed decision, but in January, 1409, he signed the decree which ordered the change. The German students and professors bound themselves by a vow to procure the revocation of the decree or to leave the university. Failing in the former alternative, they abandoned the city in vast numbers, founding the University of Leipsic, and spreading throughout Europe the report that Bohemia was a nest of heretics. The d.y.k.e was broken down, and the flood of Wickliffitism poured over the land with little to check its progress. In vain did Alexander V. and John XXIII. command Archbishop Zbinco to suppress the heresy, and in vain did the struggling prelate hold a.s.semblies and issue comminatory decrees. The tide bore all before it, and Zbinco at last, in 1411, abandoned his ungrateful see to appeal to Wenceslas's brother Sigismund, then recently elected King of the Romans, but died on the journey.[492]

This removed the last obstacle. The new archbishop, Albik of Unicow, previously physician to Wenceslas, was old and weak, and more given to acc.u.mulating money than to defending the faith. He was said to carry the key of his wine-cellar himself, to have only a wretched old crone for a cook, and to sell habitually all presents made to him. Thoroughly unfitted for the crisis, he resigned in 1413, and was succeeded by Conrad of Vechta, who, after some hesitation, cast his lot with the followers of Huss. Yet, during these troubles, the papal Inquisition seems to have been established in Prague, and, strangely enough, to have seen nothing in the Hussite movement to call for its interference, though it could act against Waldenses and other recognized heretics.

When, in 1408, the king ordered Archbishop Zbinco to make a thorough perquisition after heresy, Nicholas of Vilemonic, known as Abraham, priest of the Church of the Holy Spirit in Prague, was tried before the inquisitors Moritz and Jaroslav for Waldensianism, and was thrown into prison for a.s.serting that he could preach under authority from Christ without that of the archbishop. Huss interposed in his favor, but his liberation was postponed through his refusal to repeat, on the Gospels, an oath which he had already sworn by G.o.d. One of the accusations brought against Huss at Constance was the favor which he showed to Waldensian and other heretics; and yet, when he was about to depart on his fateful journey to Constance, the papal inquisitor Nicholas, Bishop of Nazareth, gave him a formal certificate, attested by a notarial act, to the effect that he had long known him intimately, and had never heard an heretical expression from him, and that no one had ever accused him of heresy before the tribunal. The Hussite and Waldensian movements were too nearly akin for Huss not to sympathize with the acknowledged heretics, and in the virtual spiritual anarchy of these tumultuous years Waldensian influence must have made itself more and more felt, and the sectaries must have been emboldened to show themselves ever more openly.[493]

Everything thus conspired to accelerate the progress of the revolution.

Huss, who had hitherto, for the most part, confined himself to a.s.saults upon the local ecclesiastical establishment, began to direct his attacks at the papacy itself, and in the writings of Wickliff he found ample store of arguments, which he used with great effect. He also made use of another of Wickliff's methods by the employment of itinerant priests.

This was peculiarly well adapted to accomplish the object in view, for the Bohemians were given to listening to sermons, and the unlicensed preaching for which the negligence of the established clergy gave opportunity had been a frequent source of complaint since the year 1371.

The repet.i.tion of the prohibitions shows their ineffectiveness; the popular craving for spiritual instruction, which the Church could have turned to such good account, was abandoned to the agitators; the people flocked in crowds to hear them, in spite of priestly anathemas, and the great ma.s.s of the nation, from n.o.bles to peasants, eagerly adopted the new doctrines, and were prepared to support them to the death.[494]