Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 2.djvu/463

Rh It was now proposed to adopt the constitution of the Uni- versity of Paris, where the French nation had three votes, and all the foreign nations collectively but one. The vacillation of Wen- ceslas 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 de- cree 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 Bo- hemia was a nest of heretics. The dyke 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. com- mand Archbishop Zbinco to suppress the heresy, and in vain did the struggling prelate hold assemblies 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.

This removed the last obstacle. The new archbishop, Albik of Unicow, previously physician to Wenceslas, was old and weak, and more given to accumulating 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 here- tics. 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 asserting that he could preach under authority from Christ without that of the archbishop.