Condemnation and Execution of John Hus
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Since 1408 John Hus, an eloquent preacher of Prague, had openly taught the Wycliffite heresies. By his ardent zeal for ecclesiastical reforms on the basis of Wyclif's teachings, his patriotic insistence on the purity of Bohemian faith and his assertion of Bohemian nationalism, he had gone rapidly to the front as a leader of his nation, then deeply embittered against the Germans dominant in the political and academic life of Bohemia. Since 1412 he had been banished from Prague, but was only the more dangerous, by his fiery discourse and his writings, among the highly excited Bohemians, who mostly saw in him the flower of their national genius, and were otherwise embittered against a clergy which then offered too many elements of weakness to the attacks of such reformers as John Hus and his friend and admirer Jerome (Hieronymus) of Prague. The errors of Hus concerned chiefly the nature of the Church (only the predestined), the papal headship, the rule of faith (Scripture and the law of Christ), Communion under both kinds (q. v. also HUSSITES), auricular confession (unnecessary), civil authority (dependent among Christians on state of grace). More than once (e. g. 1411) Hus had appealed to a general council, and when at the opening of the Council of Constance Emperor Sigismund and King Wenceslaus of Bohemia urged him to present himself, he was not unwilling; it was made up, he knew, of ardent reformers, and he could hope by his eloquence to convert them to his own intense faith in the ideas of Wyclif. He left Prague, 11 October, 1414, in the company of three Bohemian nobles and assured of a safe-conduct (salvus conductus) from Emperor Sigismund. They entered Constance 3 November, where Hus took up his residence in a private house, and where (5 November) the safe-conduct was delivered to him. The day after his arrival he appeared before John XXIII, who treated him courteously, removed the censures of excommunication and interdict, but forbade him to say Mass or to preach, also to appear at public ecclesiastical functions (his thoroughly heretical and even revolutionary doctrines were long notorious and, as said above, had already been condemned at Rome). He appeared again before the pope and the cardinals, 28 November, declared himself innocent of a single error, and said he was ready to retract and do penance if convicted of any. He had continued, however, to violate the papal prohibition, said Mass daily and preached to the people present. Consequently he was the same day arrested, by order of the Bishop of Constance, and a little later (6 December) placed in the Dominican convent. On complaining of the unsanitary condition of his place of confinement he was transferred to the castle of Gottlieben, and later to the Franciscan convent at Constance (June, 1415). His examination went on during April and May, and was conducted by d'Ailly and Fillastre; in the meantime he carried on an extensive correspondence, wrote various treatises, and replied to the charges of his opponents. His Bohemian friends protested against the arrest of Hus, and exhibited the emperor's safe-conduct (but only after the arrest). Sigismund was at first wroth over the arrest, but later (1 Jan., 1415) declared that he would not prevent the council from dealing according to law with persons accused of heresy. The aforesaid condemnation (4 May) of the forty-five propositions of Wyclif fore-shadowed the fate of Hus, despite the protests of Bohemians and Poles against his severe incarceration, the slanders against Bohemian faith, the delay of justice, secrecy of the proceedings, and the violation of the imperial safe-conduct (Raynaldus, ad an. 1414, no. 10). The public trial took place on 5, 7, and 8 June, 1415; extracts from his works were read, witnesses were heard. He denied some of the teachings attributed to him, defended others, notably opinions of Wyclif, declared that no Bohemian was a heretic, etc. He refused all formulæ of submission, again declared himself conscious of no error, nor, as he said, had any been proved against him from the Scriptures. He declared that he would not condemn the truth, nor perjure himself. His books were burned by order of the council (24 June). New efforts to obtain a retractation proved fruitless. He was brought for final sentence before the fifteenth session (6 July, 1415), at which the emperor assisted, and on which occasion thirty propositions, taken mostly from the work of Hus "On the Church" (De Ecclesiâ), were read publicly. He refused to retract anything and so was condemned as a heretic, deposed, and degraded, and handed over to the secular arm, which in turn condemned him to perish at the stake, at that time the usual legal punishment of convicted heretics. He suffered that cruel death with self-possession and courage and when about to expire cried out, it is said: "Christ, Son of the living God, have mercy on us!" His ashes were thrown into the Rhine. Owing largely to the dramatic circumstances of his death, he became at once the hero of Bohemian patriotism and the martyr-saint of multitudes in Bohemia and elsewhere who shared his demagogic and revolutionary principles. They were surely incompatible with either the ecclesiastical or the civil order of the time, and would at any period have bred both religious and civil anarchy, had they been put into practice. As to the safe-conduct of the emperor, we must distinguish, says Dr. von Funk (Kirchengeschichte, 3d ed., Freiburg, 1902, p. 495, and the more recent literature there quoted; also "Der Katholik", 1898, LXXVIII, 186-90, and K. Müller, non-Catholic, in the "Hist. Vierteljahrschrift", 1898, 41-86) between the arrest of Hus at Constance and his execution. The former act was always accounted in Bohemia a violation of the safe-conduct and a breach of faith on the emperor's part; on the other hand they knew well, and so did Hus, that the safe-conduct was only a guarantee against illegal violence and could not protect him from the sentence of his legitimate judges. (On the death penalty for heresy, see Ficker, "Die gesetzliche Einführung der Todestrafe für Häresie" in "Mittheil. d. Inst. f. oest. Geschichtsforschung", 1888, 177 sqq., and Havet, "L'hérésie et le bras séculier au moyen âge jusqu'au XIIIe siècle", Paris, 1881; see also Gosselin, "Temporal Power of the Pope in the Middle Ages", I, 85-89). In the medieval German codes known as the Sachsenspiegel (about 1225) and the Schwabenspiegel (about 1275), heresy is already punishable with the stake. It is not true that the council declared that no faith should be kept with a heretic (see Pallavicino, "Hist. Conc. Trid.", XII, 15, 8; Höfler in "Hist. polit. Blätter", IV, 421, and Hefele, "Conciliengesch.", VII, 227, also Baudrillart, op. cit., II, 1217). In the following year Jerome (Hieronymus) of Prague, the friend of Hus, suffered the same fate at Constance. He had come voluntarily to the council in April, 1415, but soon fled the city; afterwards, mindful of the fate of Hus, he obtained from the council a safe-conduct to return for his defence. He did not appear, however, and was soon seized in Bavaria and brought in chains to Constance. In September, 1415, he abjured the forty-five propositions of Wyclif and the thirty of Hus, but did not regain his freedom, as his sincerity was suspected, and new charges were made against him. Finally, he was brought before the council, 23 May, 1416, one year after his arrest. This time he solemnly withdrew his abjuration as a sinful act and compelled by fear, and proclaimed Hus a holy and upright man. He was forthwith condemned as a heretic in the twenty-first session (30 May, 1416) and perished at the stake with no less courage than Hus. The humanist Poggio was an eyewitness of his death, and his letter to Leonardo of Arezzo, describing the scene, may be seen in Hefele, "Conciliengesch.", VII, 280 sqq. The death of both Hus and Jerome of Prague affected strongly other humanists of the time; Æneas Sylvius (later Pius II) said that they went to their deaths as men invited to a banquet. The immediate consequences were grave enough, i. e. the long Utraquist wars. For an equitable criticism of the defects in the trials of both Hus and Jerome see Baudrillart in "Dict. de théol. cath.", II, 1216-17. (See also HUSSITES.)
