A History of The Inquisition of The Middle Ages Volume II Part 39

[508] Von der Hardt IV. 11-12, 22.--Mladenowic Relatio (Palacky, p.

251).

[509] Palacky Doc.u.menta, p. 238.--Von der Hardt IV. 12, 28.--Richentals Chronik p. 76.--Jo. Hus Epist. lvii. (Monument. I. 75).--Mladenowic Relatio (Palacky, p. 253).

[510] Von der Hardt IV. 189, 209.

Berger's labored collection of safe-conducts and their comparison with the one given to Huss (Johann Hus u. Konig Sigmund pp. 180-208) prove nothing but his own industry. Huss went to Constance as an excommunicate to defend himself and his faith. Sigismund. knowing this, gave him a safe-conduct without limitation or condition. The only contemporaneous doc.u.ments with which this can fairly be compared are those offered by the council and by Sigismund to John XXIII. when they summoned him back to Constance, May 2, 1415, and the one offered by the council to Jerome of Prague, April 17. Of these the first was limited by the clause "_just.i.tia tamen semper salva_," the second by "_in quantum idem dominus rex tenetur sibi dare de jure et servare alios salros conductus sibi datos_," the third by "_quantum in n.o.bis est et fides exegit orthodoxa_" (V. d. Hardt IV. 119, 143, 145). No ingenious reasoning can explain this away. The allusion in Sigismund's safe-conduct to other letters already given by him to the pope refers to those which John had required of him and of the city of Constance before he would trust himself there (Raynald. ann. 1413, No. 22-3). These the council set aside as coolly as it did that of Huss.

Sigismund, as we shall see, had no power to give a safe conduct that would protect a heretic, but Berger's argument that he therefore could not have designedly issued an unlimited one to Huss (Berger, op. cit.

92-3, 109) is worthless in view of his readiness, which Berger freely concedes (p. 85), to enter into engagements which he knew he could not fulfil. From his indignation it is evident that he was unacquainted with the niceties of the canon law; but even if he were, his giving the letters is easily explicable by the fact, which Berger has well pointed out (pp. 100-1), that Huss's certificates of orthodoxy, obtained in August, were laid before him (Palacky Doc.u.ment, p. 70). He could thus easily persuade himself that there was no risk of his pledge causing him trouble. It was of the greatest moment to him that Huss should be reconciled to the Church, and to a man of his temperament it was inconceivable that Huss's delicate conscientiousness would in the end render martyrdom inevitable.

Hefele (Conciliengeschichte VII. 234), following Palacky, calls attention to the absence, in the letter of the Bohemian magnates to the council, September 2, 1415, of any reproach for violating the safe-conduct, and he argues thence that they admitted that it could not protect Huss from judgment as a heretic. So little is this the case that they emphatically declare that Huss was not a heretic, and if there is no allusion to the safe-conduct this is evidently attributable to their referring to certain previous letters to Sigismund which the council had ordered burned, and which they defiantly desired to be considered as embodied and repeated in the present one (Monument I. 78). Anything they might have to say on the subject must have been said in those letters, which presumably were the occasion of the projected decree of September 23, 1415, punishing as fautors of heresy all who vilified Sigismund for permitting the violation of his safe-conduct.

[511] Martene Thesaur. II. 1611.--Von der Hardt II. x. 255; IV.

26.--Palacky Doc.u.menta, p. 612.--Berger, Johann Hus u. Konig Sigmund, pp. 133, 136.--Fistenport. Chron. ann. 1419 (Hahn Collect. Monument. I .404).--aegid. Carlerii Lib. de Legationibus (Monument. Conc. General.

Saec. XV. T. I. pp. 531, 536-7, 595-6, 612-13, 662-73, 680-4, 688-93, 695-7).--Thomae Ebendorferi Diar. (Ib. p. 767).--Jo. de Turonis Regestr.

(Ib. pp. 834-5).

Even in France Sigismund was reproached for surrendering Huss after giving him a safe-conduct, and was accused of disregarding other engagements of the same kind.--(Martene Ampl. Coll. II. 1444-5.) Yet had he persisted he would have been liable to excommunication and heavy penalties as an impeder of the Inquisition; and had he carried out his threat of forcibly liberating Huss, under the bull _Ad extirpanda_ he would have been punishable by perpetual relegation and the forfeiture of all his dominions (Mag. Bull. Rom. Ed. Luxemb. 1742, I. 92, 149).

[512] Von der Hardt IV. 32, 311-13, 329.--Martene Thesaur. II.

1611.--Berger, Johann Hus u. Konig Sigmund, p. 138.--Palacky Doc.u.menta, 541, 543, 546-53.--Jo. Hus Epistt. x.x.xiii., liv., lix., lx.(Monument. I.

68-9, 74-77).--Mladenowic Relat. (Palacky, p. 314-15).--Narr. Hist, de Condemnatione (Monument. II. 346 _a_; Von der Hardt IV. 393).--aegid.

Carlerii Lib. de Legat. (Monument. Concil. Gen. Saec. XV. Tom. I. p.

435).--Martene Ampl. Coll. VII. 174-6, 179-83.--Jo. de Turonis Regestrum (Monument. Con. Gen. Saec. XV. T. I. p. 860).

The incident of Sigismund's blush has been disputed by some recent writers. It is a matter not worth controversy, but as the only evidence to his credit in the whole affair it may be hoped to be true.

[513] Richentals Chronik p. 78.--Von der Hardt IV. 313, 521-22.--Chron.

Gla.s.sberger ann. 1415.--Martene Ampl. Collect. VIII. 131-33. Cf. Noel Alexander's justification of the decree of September 23 (Hist. Eccles.

Ed. Paris, 1699. T. VIII. p. 496).

It is customary with modern Catholic writers to stigmatize as a Protestant calumny the a.s.sertion that the Church held the doctrine that faith is not to be kept with heretics. See, for instance, Van Ranst, Regent of the College of Antwerp, in his "Historia Haereticorum" (4th.

Ed. Venet. 1759, p. 263), together with his ingenious endeavor to argue away the case of Huss. I have already alluded to this subject (Vol. I.

p. 228), and have shown that it was a recognized principle of the Church that faith and oaths pledged to heretics were void. It has also been seen how the efforts of the popes procured the insertion in the public law of Europe of the principle that suspicion of heresy in the lord released the va.s.sal from the most binding engagement known to the Middle Ages--the oath of allegiance (Lib. V. Extra, VII. xiii. -- 3). When thus the basis on which society itself was founded was destroyed by heresy all minor pledges were necessarily invalidated. The Church did not allow this to become obsolete. When, in 1327, John XXII. sentenced the Emperor Louis of Bavaria as a heretic, he not only released all his va.s.sals from their oaths of allegiance, but declared void all compacts and agreements made with him (Martene Thesaur. II. 702, 775-6, 791). So, in 1463, when it pleased Pius II. to declare George Podiebrad a heretic, he released the communities of Breslau and Namslau from their allegiance, and excommunicated all who should lend their aid or service to their monarch (aen. Sylvii Epist. 401); and when Frederic III. asked him to compel Breslau to submit to George, he replied by arguing that heresy dissolved compacts as effectually as death (Martene Ampl. Coll. I. 1598-99). When, in 1469, Paul II. again declared George a heretic he p.r.o.nounced that each and every obligation, promise, and oath made to that heretic was null and void, for faith was not to be kept with him who kept not faith with G.o.d. Acting under this, when George released from prison Wenceslas of Biberstein, on bail of six thousand florins furnished by John and Ulric of Hazemburg, the papal legate Rudolph incontinently ordered the bailors neither to surrender the accused nor to pay the forfeit (Ludewig Reliq. MSS. VI. 77).

The play upon the double meaning of the word faith by which this was epigrammatically justified was seriously accepted by Christendom. In April, 1415, Fernando of Aragon wrote to Sigismund earnestly remonstrating with him for the delay in judging Huss, and expressing the hope that the safe-conduct would not be allowed to protect him "_quoniam non est frangere fidem in eo qui Deo fidem frangit_."--Andreae Ratisponens Chron. ann. 1414 (Pez Thesaur. Anecd.

IV. III. 626.--Palacky Doc.u.menta, p. 540).

All statutes and laws impeding the free action of the Inquisition, directly or indirectly, were null and void _ipso jure_, as we have repeatedly seen above (see also Farinaccii de Haeresi Quaest. 182 No. 76); and what Sigismund could not have done at the head of the Imperial Diet, he certainly could not do by a simple safe-conduct, and no ecclesiastical jurisdiction was bound to respect it.

If the Church thus disregarded the pledges of laymen, it was equally unmindful of its own when heretics were concerned. Even late in the sixteenth century the bull _Multiplices inter_ of Pius V. annulled all letters of absolution and decrees of acquittal for heresy issued by inquisitors, bishops, popes, and even by the Council of Trent, showing how scant was the ceremony customarily used in such cases, and how completely suspicion of heresy deprived a man of all rights (Lib. V. in Septimo III. x.).

Even without this general principle, however, there would have been no difficulty in soothing Sigismund's scruples of conscience, if, perchance, he had any. The system of the mediaeval Church so completely confused the ideas of right and wrong that the ordinary notions of morality were superseded. The power of the keys was such that a papal dispensation could release any one from an inconvenient vow or promise, no matter how binding might be its form. Sigismund's father, Charles, when Margrave of Moravia, was released, in 1346, by Clement VI. from a troublesome oath which he had taken (Werunsky Excerptt. ex Regist. Clem.

VI. p. 44); and the sin of perjury was one for which the popes were accustomed to grant efficacious pardons when it was committed in their interest (Ludewig op. cit. VI. 14). It was deemed only a reasonable precaution in compacts for the parties to pledge themselves that they would not seek a release by a papal dispensation (Hartzheim IV. 329; Preger, Der kirchenpolitische Kampf unter Ludwig dem Baier, p. 59).

Sigismund, in the case of Huss, admitted that his pledge was dissolved by heresy and a dispensation was superfluous, but it could have been had for the asking. In view of these facts all attempts to argue away the betrayal of Huss are useless, nor is it possible to accuse the good fathers of Constance of conscious bad faith. They but accepted and enforced the principles in which they were trained.

[514] Mandata Synodalia ann. 1390 (Hofler, Prager Concilien, p.

40).--aen. Sylvii. Hist. Bohem. cap. 35.--Laur. Byzyn. Diar. Bell.

Hussit. ann. 1414 (Ludewig Reliq. MSS. VI. 125, 128-9).--Von der Hardt III. 335 sqq.; IV. 288-91, 334, 342.--Jo. Hus Monument. I. 42-44, 62, 72.

The relentless obstinacy with which the Church of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries refused the use of the cup to the laity at the cost of Christian unity and unnumbered troubles is perhaps the most impressive example on record of the perversity of sacerdotalism in sacrificing essentials to non-essentials. No one denied that in the early Church communion in both elements was administered to all the faithful, as it continued to be without interruption in the Greek Church. The refusal of the cup to the laity was originally a Manichaean custom, in imitation of the corresponding ancient Izeshne rite of the Mazdeans. Communion in one element thus became a mark of heresy, and was condemned as such by Leo the Great (Leon. PP. I. Serm. XLII. cap. 5), about the middle of the fifth century, and again towards its end by Gelasius I., whose decretal on the subject is embodied, without comment or contradiction, by Gratian in the Decretum (P. II. Dist. ii. c. 12), showing that it was still good law in the twelfth century.

When, however, in the tenth and eleventh centuries the belief in transubstantiation became the accepted dogma of the Church, the supreme veneration felt for the consecrated elements naturally gave rise to the necessity of the utmost care in handling them and to excessive dread as to any accidents which might occur to them; and the penitentials grew full of all manner of penalties inflicted on priests who, through carelessness, let fall a crumb of the body or a drop of the blood, for which, by forged decretals of the early popes, a false antiquity was claimed (Decreti III. ii. 27). Of course the liquid was much more subject to these accidents, and to decomposition, than the solid, and the ministering priests were sorely tried to avert such profanation and its consequences to themselves. At first they adopted the ready expedient of dipping the host in the wine-and-water, and thus administering both elements together, which was conducive both to safety and comfort. This innovation was condemned by the Church, but was suppressed with great difficulty. Under Gregory VII. the author of the Micrologus devotes a chapter to its prohibition (Micrologi c. 19). In 1095 the great Council of Clermont forbade it, except in cases where it was demanded by prudence or necessity for the avoidance of accidents (Conc. Claromont. ann. 1095, c. 28); and some twenty years later Paschal II. laid down the rule that it was only admissible in the communion of infants and the sick who could not swallow the bread (Paschal PP. II.

Epist. 535). In a Bohemian doc.u.ment dating about the close of the twelfth century the priest carrying the viatic.u.m to the dying is directed to dip the wafer in the wine so as to avoid accidents and yet be able to administer both elements (Hofler, Prager Concilien, Einleitung, p. ix.). When this resource was denied, while the veneration of the sacrament as the flesh and blood of Christ continued to develop, the custom was gradually introduced of restricting the laity to the solid element, in administering which there was less liability to accident, while the priest continued to partake in both. About 1270 Thomas Aquinas tells us that in some churches the bread only is given to the laity, as a matter of prudence, to avoid spilling, and his dialectics are equal to the task of proving that both body and blood are contained in the wafer (Summa III. lx.x.x. 12). The convenience of the innovation led to its extension, but it was left to the individual churches, and no authoritative decree was issued withdrawing the cup from the laity until the Bohemian controversy led to the action of the Council of Constance. How universal the custom had become without authority of law is shown by the special privilege granted, about 1345, by Clement VI. to John, Duke of Normandy, son of Philip of Valois, to receive both elements (Martene Ampl. Coll. I. 1456-7). When the question was exhaustively debated before the Council of Basle, the orator of the council, John of Ragusa, freely admitted that the Hussite practice was in accordance with the traditions of the Church, but argued that it could be changed if convenience or other reasons demanded it (Harduin.

Concil. VIII. 1712, 1740); and the Cardinal of St. Peter told William, Baron of Kostka, the Bohemian chief, that the cup was refused to children and common people simply as a precaution, adding. "If you were to ask of me I would give it, but not to the careless" (Petri Zaticensis Liber Diurnus; Mon. Concil. Gen. Saec. XV. T. I. p. 315). The final decision of the Council of Basle, in December, 1437, admits that there is no precept on the subject, but lay communion in one element is a laudable custom, the law of the Church, and not to be modified without authority (Conc. Basiliens. Sess. x.x.x.; Harduin. VIII. 1234). How thoroughly indefensible the Church felt its position to be, yet how arbitrarily and despotically it was resolved to enforce that position, is most clearly shown by the inquisitor Capistrano, in 1452, when he heard that the cardinal legate, Nicholas of Cusa, was thinking of giving Rokyzana a hearing on the subject at Ratisbon. Capistrano expressed his mind freely to the legate: "If we excuse the heretics we condemn ourselves.... I have always avoided a debate with the Bohemians under the ordinary rules, for they study to justify their heresy from the ancient Scriptures and observances, and they have a perfect knowledge of the texts, which certainly are numerous, in favor of communion in both elements." Capistrano then quotes to the legate the bulls of Nicholas V. sent to him, in which the Bohemians are denounced as schismatics, heretics, and disobedient to the Roman Church, pointedly adding that the disciple is not above the teacher, nor the servant superior to the master; he had never read in the law that heretics were to be rewarded, but were to be sharply punished with confiscation and the bitterest penalties (Wadding. Annal. ann. 1452, No. 12). So it had come to this, that those who admittedly followed the practices of the Church current until the thirteenth century were to be condemned and exterminated as heretics. Disobedience was heresy, and Rome, for a century, endeavored to convulse Europe on this simple punctilio.

An episode of this question was the communion of infants. This was the practice of the early Church (Cyprian. de Lapsis c. 25), and St.

Innocent I. and St. Gelasius I. had both declared that as soon as infants were baptized the sacrament was necessary to secure them eternal life (Innocent PP. I. Epist. x.x.x. c. 5; Gelasii PP. I. Ep. VII.). The epistle of Paschal II., quoted above, shows that this was still customary in the twelfth century, but the same causes which led to the withdrawal of the cup from the laity induced the withholding of the sacrament from infants, who were liable at any moment unconsciously to commit sacrilege with the body and blood of Christ. In their enthusiasm for the Eucharist the Bohemians naturally recurred to infantile communion, and their obstinacy in this gave the fathers of Basle infinite trouble. After the reconciliation of 1436 the question still remained disputed. The feeling about it is well defined by the Bishop of Coutances, legate of the Council of Basle in Prague, who was horror-stricken when, April 28, 1437, Rokyzana administered communion to a number of infants, and one of them ejected the wafer from its mouth, forcing Rokyzana quietly to replace it. This incident was evidently regarded as the most convincing argument, and the terms in which it is alluded to show how profound was the terror which it was expected to create (Jo. de Turonis Regestrum; Monument. Conc. Gen. Saec. XV. T. I. p.

863). At the Council of Constance it was gravely argued that if a layman allowed the wine to moisten his beard he ought to be burned with his beard (Von der Hardt III. 369). Gerson was not quite so absurd, but he did not shrink from alleging such reasons as the expensiveness of wine and its liability to turn sour (ib. 771 sqq.). In 1391, when John Malkaw, in preaching against the concubinary priesthood, hotly declared that he would rather place reverently on the ground a consecrated wafer than violate his vow of chast.i.ty, Bockeler, the Stra.s.sburg inquisitor, in trying him, made this the ground of a charge of heresy with respect to the sacrament of the altar (Haupt, Zeitschrift fur Kirchengeschichte, 1883, pp. 366-7).

In older times the Church had felt no such exaggerated reverence for the elements. In 646 Pope Theodore, when he excommunicated Pyrrhus, the refugee Patriarch of Constantinople, mingled consecrated wine from the cup with the ink with which he signed the sentence; and in 869 the Council of Constantinople adopted the same device in condemning Photius.--Chr. Lupi Dissert. de s.e.xta Synodo c. V. (Opp. III. 25).

As a matter of course the vilest stories were circulated to inspire the faithful with abhorrence for the Bohemian innovations. It was said that the wine was consecrated in bottles and barrels; that the sectaries held conventicles in cellars, where they would partake of it to intoxication and then commit all manner of s.e.xual abominations (Laur. Byzyn. Diar.

Bell. Hussit,; Ludewig VI. 129-30).

[515] Palacky Doc.u.menta, pp. 194-204, 506.--Mladenowic Relatio (Palacky, p. 252).

The council itself recognized that its proceedings were inquisitorial.

In the sentence of Jerome of Prague it uses the phrase "_Haec sancta synodus Constantiensis in causa inquisitionis haereticae pravitatis per eamdem sanctum synodem mota_."--Von der Hardt IV. 766.

[516] Palacky, pp. 204-24.--Mladenowic Relatio (Palacky, p.

254).--Martene Thesaur. II. 1635.--Jo. Hus Epist. xlviii. (Monument. I.

72).

[517] Epist. x.x.xii. (Monument. I. 68).--Von der Hardt IV. 20-8.--Jo. Hus Monument. I. 39-41.--Mladenowic Relatio (Palacky, pp. 276-8, 303, 318).

Already in 1411 Huss energetically disclaimed to John XXIII. belief in remanence and in the vitiation of sacraments (Palacky, p. 19. Cf. pp.

164-5, 170, 174-85).

[518] Mladenowic Relatio (Palacky, pp. 252-3).--Palacky, pp. 73, 174, 318, 560.--Von der Hardt IV. 308, 420-8.

[519] Mladenowic Relatio (Palacky. pp. 253, 323).--Von der Hardt IV.

188, 212, 289.--Epist. xlix. (Monument. I. 73 _a_).

[520] Von der Hardt IV. 47.--Mladenowic Relatio (Palacky, p.

255).--Palacby, p. 541.--Jo. Hus Monument. I. 7, 29-42.--Epistt. xi., xxvii., x.x.x., x.x.xi., x.x.xii., x.x.xvi., xlvii., li., lii., lvi. (Monument.

I. 60, 65-9, 72-5).--Laur. Byzyn. Diar. Bell. Hussit. (Ludewig Reliq.

MSS. VI. 128-9).

[521] Epist. lii. (Monument. I. 75).--Theod. a Niem de Vit. Joann.

XXIII. Lib. III. c. 5.--Raynald. ann. 1419, No. 5.

[522] Jo. Hus Monument. I. 118, 128.--Epist. xliii. (Ib. 71 _a_).--Palacky Doc.u.menta, pp. 60, 185, 523-8.--Mladenowic Relatio (Palacky, p. 301).

[523] Von der Hardt IV. 100, 118, 136, 153, 189, 209, 212-13, 288-90, 296, 306.--Martene Thesaur. II. 1635.--Harduin. VIII. 280.--Mladenowic Relatio (Palacky, pp. 256-72).

[524] Epistt. xliii., xlvii. (Monument. I. 71, 72).--Von der Hardt IV.