Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 2.djvu/460

 AAA BOHEMIA. 444 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 suo-gestive of his commanding influence is the fidehty with which Huss followed his reasoning, and oftentimes the arrangement, and even the words, of his treatises.* John of Husineo, commonly known as Huss, who became .he leading exponent and protomartyr of Wickhffitism 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 deo-ree of bachelor of arts ; in 1394 that of bachelor of theol- oo-v • in 1396 that of master of arts ; but the doctorate he never attained, though in 1398 he was already lecturing in the univer- sity • in 1401 he was dean of the philosophical faculty, and rec- tor in 1402 Curiously enough, he embraced the Eealist philoso- phy 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 1393, he spent his last four groschen for an indulgence when he had only dry crusts for food. In 1400 he was ordamed as priest, and two years later he was appointed preacher to the Bethlehem chapel, where his earnest eloquence «o^n rendered him the spiritual leader of the people. The study of AVickhff s writ- ings, begun shortly after this, quickened his appreciation of the ells of a corrupted Church, and when Archbishop Zbinco of Ha- senburg, shortly after his consecration in 1403, appointed him as preach^; to the annual synods, Huss improved the opportunity to address to the assembled clergy a series of terrible invectives a!ainst their worldliness and filthiness of living which excited General popular hatred and contempt for them. After one of pe- culiar vigor, in October, 1407, the clamor among the ecclesiastics .rew so strong that they presented a formal complaint agamst him to Archbishop Zbinco, and he was deprived of the position. . Losertl,, op. cit. pp. 79, 114, 161 sq,.-Mitth^lu„gen d^s Vereines flir GescK d. Deutschen iu Bohmen, 1886, 395 sqq.-Jo Hus Monume.vL I- ^-^ «8- Nider Formicar. Lib. in. c. 9. fol. 50«..-Von der Hardt IV. ft^lt sonse Cosmodrom. iEtat. vi. c. 86-7 (Meibom. Rcr. German. I. 319-21).