Sketches of Church History Part 21

Huss made many enemies among the clergy by attacking their faults from the pulpit of a chapel called Bethlehem, where he was preacher. He was, however, still so far in favour with the archbishop of Prague, that he was employed by him, together with some others, to inquire into a pretended miracle, which drew crowds of pilgrims to seek for cures at a place called Wilsnack, in the north of Germany. But he afterwards fell out of favour with the archbishop who had appointed him to this work, and he was still less liked by later archbishops.

From time to time some doctrines which were said to be Wyclif's were condemned at Prague. Huss usually declared that Wyclif had been wrongly understood, and that his real meaning was true and innocent. But at length a decree was pa.s.sed that all Wyclif's books should be burnt (A.D.

1410), and thereupon a grand bonfire was made in the courtyard of the archbishop's palace, while all the church bells of the city were tolled as at a funeral. But as some copies of the books escaped the flames, it was easy to make new copies from these.

Huss was excommunicated, but he still went on teaching. In 1412, Pope John XXIII. proclaimed a crusade against Ladislaus, king of Naples, with whom he had quarrelled, and ordered that it should be preached, and that money should be collected for it all through Latin Christendom. Huss and his chief friend, whose name was Jerome, set themselves against this with all their might. They declared it to be unchristian that a crusade should be proclaimed against a Christian prince, and that the favours of the Church should be held out as a reward for paying money or for shedding of blood. One day, as a preacher was inviting people to buy his indulgences (as they were called) for the forgiveness of sins, he was interrupted by three young men, who told him that what he said was untrue, and that Master Huss had taught them better. The three were seized, and were condemned to die; and, although it would seem that a promise was afterwards given that their lives should be spared, the sentence of death was carried into effect. The people were greatly provoked by this, and when the executioner, after having cut off the heads of the three, proclaimed (as was usual), "Whosoever shall do the like, let him look for the like!" a cry burst forth from the mult.i.tude around, "We are ready to do and to suffer the like." Women dipped their handkerchiefs in the blood of the victims, and treasured it up as a precious relic. Some of the crowd even licked the blood. The bodies were carried off by the people, and were buried in Bethlehem chapel; and Huss and others spoke of the three as martyrs.

By this affair his enemies were greatly provoked. Fresh orders were sent from Rome for the destruction of Wyclif's books, and for uttering all the heaviest sentences of the Church against Huss himself. He therefore left Prague for a time, and lived chiefly in the castles of Bohemian n.o.blemen who were friendly to him, writing busily as well as preaching against what he supposed to be the errors of the Roman Church.

We shall hear more of Huss by-and-by.

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE.

A.D. 1414-1418.

PART I.

The division of the Church between three popes cried aloud for settlement in some way; and besides this there were general complaints as to the need of reform in the Church. The emperor Sigismund urged Pope John to call a general council for the consideration of these subjects; and, although John hated the notion of such a meeting, he could not help consenting. He wished that the council should be held in Italy, as he might hope to manage it more easily there than in any country north of the Alps; and he was very angry when Constance, a town on a large lake in Switzerland, was chosen as the place. It seemed like a token of bad luck when, as he was pa.s.sing over a mountain on his way to the council, his carriage was upset, and he lay for a while in the snow, using bad words as to his folly in undertaking the journey; and when he came in sight of Constance at the foot of the hill, he said that it looked like a trap for foxes. In that trap Pope John was caught.

The other popes, Gregory XII. and Benedict XIII., did not attend, although both had been invited; but some time after the opening of the council (which was on the 5th of November, 1414), the emperor Sigismund arrived. He reached Constance in a boat which had brought him across the lake very early on Christmas morning, and at the first service of the festival, which was held before daybreak, he read the Gospel which tells of the decree of Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed. For it was considered that the emperor was ent.i.tled to take this part in the Christmas service of the Church.

It was proposed that all the three popes should resign, and that a new pope should be chosen. In answer to this, John said that he was ready to resign if the others would do the same; but it soon became clear that he did not mean to keep his promise honestly. He tried by all manner of tricks to ward off the dangers which surrounded him; and, after he had more than once tried in vain to get away from Constance, he was able to escape one day when the members of the council were amusing themselves at a tournament given by a prince whom John had persuaded to take off their attention in this way. The council, however, in his absence went on to examine the charges against him, many of which were so shocking that they were kept secret, out of regard for his office. John, by letters and messengers, asked for delay, and did all that he could for that purpose; but, notwithstanding all his arts, he was sentenced to be deposed from the papacy for simony (that is, for trafficking in holy things),[89] and for other offences. On being informed of this, he at once put off his papal robes, saying, that since he had put them on he had never enjoyed a quiet day (May 31, 1415).

[89] See page 185.

PART II.

John Huss, the Bohemian reformer, had been summoned to Constance, that he might give an account of himself, and had been furnished with a safe-conduct (as it was called), in which the emperor a.s.sured him of protection on his way to the council and back. But, although at first he was treated as if he were free, it was pretended, soon after his arrival, that he wished to run away; and under this pretence he was shut up in a dark and filthy prison. Huss had no friends in the council; for the reforming part of the members would have nothing to do with him, lest it should be thought that they agreed with him in all his notions.

And when he was at length brought out from prison, where his health had suffered much, and when he was required to answer for himself, without having been allowed the use of books to prepare himself, all the parties in the council turned on him at once. His trial lasted three days. The charges against him were mostly about Wyclif's doctrines, which had been often condemned by councils at Rome and elsewhere, but which Huss was supposed to hold; and when he tried to explain that in some things he did not agree with Wyclif, n.o.body would believe him. Some of his bitterest persecutors were men who had once been his friends, and had gone with him in his reforming opinions.

After his trial, Huss was sent back to prison for a month, and all kinds of ways were tried to persuade him to give up the opinions which were blamed in him; but he stood firm in what he believed to be the truth. At length he was brought out to hear his sentence. He claimed the protection of the emperor, whose safe-conduct he had received (as we have seen). But Sigismund had been hard pressed by Huss's enemies, who told him that a promise made to one who is wrong in the faith is not to be kept; and the emperor had weakly and treacherously yielded, so that he could only blush for shame when Huss reminded him of the safe-conduct.

Huss was condemned to death, and was _degraded_ from his orders, as the custom was; that is to say, they first put into his hands the vessels used at the consecration of the Lord's Supper, which were the signs of his being a priest; and by taking away these from him, they reduced him from a priest to a deacon. Then they took away the tokens of his being a deacon, and so they stripped him of his other orders, one after another; and when at last they had turned him back into a layman, they led him away to be burnt. It is said that, as he saw an old woman carrying a f.a.ggot to the pile which was to burn him, he smiled and said, "O holy simplicity!" meaning that her intention was good, although the poor old creature was ignorant and misled. He bore his death with great patience and courage; and then his ashes and such scorched bits of his dress as remained were thrown into the Rhine, lest his followers should treasure them up as relics (July 6, 1415).

About ten months after the death of Huss, his old friend and companion, Jerome of Prague, was condemned by the council to be burnt, and suffered with a firmness which even those who were most strongly against him could not but admire (May 30, 1416).

PART III.

When Pope John had been got rid of, Gregory XII., the most respectable of the three rival popes, agreed to resign his claims. But the third pope, Benedict XIII., would hear of no proposals for his resignation, and shut himself up in a castle on the coast of Spain, where he not only continued to call himself pope, but after his death two popes of his line were set up in succession. The council of Constance, however, finding Benedict obstinate, did not trouble itself further about him, and went on to treat the papacy as vacant.

There was a great dispute whether the reform of the Church (which people had long asked for), or the choice of a new pope, should be first taken in hand; and at length it was resolved to elect a pope without further delay. The choice was to be made by the cardinals and some others who were joined with them; and these electors were all shut up in the Exchange of Constance--a building which is still to be seen there. While the election was going on, mult.i.tudes of all ranks, and even the emperor himself among them, went from time to time in slow procession round the Exchange, chanting in a low tone litanies, in which they prayed that the choice of the electors might be guided for the good of the Church. And when at last an opening was made in the wall from within, and through it a voice proclaimed, "We have a pope: Lord Otho of Colonna!" the news spread at once through all Constance. The people seemed to be wild with joy that the division of the Church, which had lasted so long, was now healed. All the bells of the town pealed forth joyfully, and it is said that a crowd of not less than 80,000 people hurried at once to the Exchange. The emperor in his delight threw himself at the new pope's feet; and for hours together vast numbers thronged the cathedral, where the pope was placed on the high altar, and gave them his blessing. It was on St. Martin's day, the 11th of November, 1417, that this election took place; and from this the pope styled himself Martin V. But the joy which had been shown at his election was more than the effect warranted.

The council had chosen a pope before taking up the reform of the Church; and the new pope was no friend to reform. During the rest of the time that the council was a.s.sembled, he did all that he could to thwart attempts at reform; and when, at the end of it, he rode away from Constance, with the emperor holding his bridle on one side and one of the chief German princes on the other, while a crowd of princes, n.o.bles, clergy, and others, as many as 40,000, accompanied him, it seemed as if the pope had got above all the sovereigns of the world.

The great thing done by the council of Constance was, that it declared a general council to be above the pope, and ent.i.tled to depose popes if the good of the Church should require it.

CHAPTER XXV.

THE HUSSITES.

A.D. 1418-1431.

The news of Huss's death naturally raised a general feeling of anger in Bohemia, where his followers treated his memory as that of a saint, and kept a festival in his honour. And when the emperor Sigismund, in 1419, succeeded his brother Wenceslaus in the kingdom of Bohemia, he found that he was hated by his new subjects on account of his share in the death of Huss.

But, although most of the Bohemians might now be called Hussites, there were great divisions among the Hussites themselves. Some had lately begun to insist that in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper both the bread and the wine should be given to all the people, according to our Lord's own example, instead of allowing no one but the priest to receive the wine, according to the Roman practice. These people who insisted on the sacramental cup were called _Calixtines_, from the Latin _calix_, which means a _cup_ or _chalice_. But among those who agreed in this opinion there were serious differences as to some other points.

In the summer of 1419, the first public communion was celebrated at a place where the town of Tabor was afterwards built. It was a very different kind of ceremony from what had been usual. There were three hundred altars, but they were without any covering; the chalices were of wood, the clergy wore only their every-day dress; and a love-feast followed, at which the rich shared with their poorer brethren. The wilder party among the Hussites were called _Taborites_, from Tabor, which became the chief abode of this party. They now took to putting their opinions into practice. They declared churches and their ornaments, pictures, images, organs, and the like, to be abominable; and they went about in bands, destroying everything that they thought superst.i.tious. And thus Bohemia, which had been famous for the size and beauty of its churches, was so desolated that hardly a church was left in it; and those which are now standing have almost all been built since the time when the Hussites destroyed the older churches.

The chief leader of the Taborites was John Ziska, whose name is said by some to mean _one-eyed_; and at least he had lost an eye in early life.

Ziska had such a talent for war, that, although his men were only rough peasants, armed with nothing better than clubs, flails, and such like tools, which they had been accustomed to use in husbandry, he trained them to encounter regular armies, and always came off with victory. He taught his soldiers to make their flails very dangerous weapons by tipping them with iron; and to place their waggons together in such a way that each block of waggons made a sort of little fortress, against which the force of the enemy dashed in vain. But Ziska's bravery and skill were disgraced by his savage fierceness. He never spared an enemy; he took delight in putting clergy and monks to the sword, or in burning them in pitch, and in burning and pulling down churches and monasteries.

In the course of the war he lost his remaining eye; but he still continued to act as general with the same skill and success as before.

His cruelty became greater continually, and the last year of his life was the bloodiest.

Ziska died in October, 1424. It is said that he directed that his skin should be taken off his body, and made into the covering of a drum, at the sound of which he expected all enemies to flee in terror; but the story is probably not true. At his death, a part of his old companions called themselves _orphans_, as if they had lost their father, and could never find another. But other generals arose to carry on the same kind of war, while their wild followers were wrought up to a sort of fury which nothing could withstand.

On the side of the Church a holy war was proclaimed, and vast armies, made up from all nations of Europe, were gathered for the invasion of Bohemia. One of these crusades was led by Cardinal Beaufort, bishop of Winchester, and great-uncle of King Henry VI. of England; another, by a famous Italian cardinal, Julian Cesarini. But the courage and fury of the Bohemians, with their savage appearance and their strange manner of fighting, drove back all a.s.saults, with immense loss, in one campaign after another; until Cesarini, the leader in the last crusade, was convinced that there was no hope of putting the Bohemians down by force, and that some other means must be tried.

CHAPTER XXVI.

COUNCILS OF BASEL AND FLORENCE.

A.D. 1431-9.

It had been settled at the council of Constance that regularly from time to time there should be held a general council, by which name was then meant a council gathered from the whole of the Western Church, but without any representatives of the Eastern Churches; and according to this decree a council was to meet at Basel, on the Rhine, in the year 1431. It was just before the time of its opening that Cardinal Cesarini was defeated by the Hussites of Bohemia, as we have seen. Being convinced that some gentler means ought to be tried with them, he begged the pope to allow them a hearing; and he invited them to send deputies to the council of Basel, of which he was president.

The Bohemians did as they were asked to do, and thirty of them appeared before the council,--rough, wild-looking men for the most part, headed by Procopius, who was at once a priest and a warrior, and was called the great, in order to distinguish him from another of the same name. A dispute, which lasted many weeks, was carried on between the leaders of these Bohemians and some members of the council; and, at length, four points were agreed on. The chief of these was, that the chalice at the Holy Communion should not be confined to the priest alone, but might be given to such grown-up persons as should desire it. This was one of the things which had been most desired by the Bohemian reformers. We need not go further into the history of the Hussites and of the parties into which they were divided; but it is worth while to remember that the use of the sacramental cup was allowed in Bohemia for two hundred years, while in all other churches under the Roman authority it was forbidden.

Soon after the meeting of the council of Basel, the pope, whose name was Eugenius IV., grew jealous lest it should get too much power, and sent orders that it should break up. But the members were not disposed to bear this. They declared that the council was the highest authority in the Church, and superior to the pope; and they asked Eugenius to join them at Basel, and threatened him in case of his refusal. Just at that time Eugenius was driven from Rome by his people, and therefore he found it convenient to try to smooth over differences, and to keep good terms with the council; but after a while the disagreement broke out again.

The pope had called a council to meet at Ferrara, in Italy, in order to consult with some Greeks (at the head of whom were the emperor and the patriarch of Constantinople) as to the union of the Greek and Latin Churches; and he desired the members of the Basel council to remove to Ferrara, that they might take part in the new a.s.sembly. But only a few obeyed; and those who remained at Basel were resolved to carry on their quarrel to the uttermost. First, they allowed Eugenius a certain time, within which they required him either to appear at Basel or to send some one in his stead; then, they lengthened out this time somewhat; and as he still did not appear, they first suspended him from his office, then declared him to be deposed, and at length went on to choose another pope in his stead (Nov. 17, 1439).

The person thus chosen was Amadeus, who for nearly thirty years had been duke of Savoy, but had lately given over his dukedom to his son, and had put himself at the head of twelve old knights, who had formed themselves into an order of hermits at Ripaille, near the lake of Geneva. The new pope bargained that he should not be required to part with the long white beard which he had worn as a hermit; but after a while, finding that it looked strange among the smooth chins of those around him, he, of his own accord, allowed it to be shaved off. But this attempt to set up an antipope came to very little. Felix V. (as the old duke called himself on being elected) was obliged to submit to Eugenius; and the council of Basel, after dwindling away by degrees, and being removed from one place to another, died out so obscurely that its end was unnoticed by any one.

Eugenius held his council at Ferrara, and afterwards removed it to Florence (A.D. 1438-9); and it seemed as if by his management the Greeks, who were very poor, and were greatly in need of help against the Turks, were brought to an agreement with the Latins as to the questions which had been so long disputed between the Churches. The union of the Churches was celebrated by a grand service in the cathedral of Florence.

But, as in former times,[90] the Greeks found, on their return home, that their countrymen would not agree to what had been done; and thus the breach between the two Churches continued, until a few years later Constantinople was taken by the Turks, and so the Greek Empire came to an end.