Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 2.djvu/475

Rh on the church-doors that he would accuse him to the council as an excommunicate and suspect of heresy, but Huss treated the matter very lightly, and adopted the advice of his friends to take no notice of it until the arrival of Sigismund, who was not expected until Christmas. Meanwhile Huss himself gave ample cause for adverse comment. So perfect was his sense of innocence and security that he could not be content with prudent obscurity. Almost immediately on his arrival he began to celebrate mass in his lodgings. This attracted the people in crowds, and was necessarily a cause of scandal. Otto, Bishop of Constance, sent John Tenger, his vicar, and Conrad Helye, his official, to request Huss to cease, as he had long been under papal excommunication; but he refused, saying that he did not consider himself excommunicated, and that he would celebrate mass as often as he pleased. Although thus defied, the bishop, to avoid disturbance, contented himself with forbidding the people from attendance. Soon after this Huss placed himself, with some provisions, in a covered forage-wagon which was to be sent for hay. When the knights who were responsible for him could not find him, Henry of Lastenbock (Chlum) rushed to the burgomaster and demanded that he be searched for. The city was in an uproar; the gates were closed, horse and foot were sent in every direction to find him, and the circumstance was easily magnified into an attempt to escape.

The sturdy Bohemian was evidently a troublesome subject to deal with. In the eyes of the faithful it was quite scandal enough to see at liberty a priest who had openly defied a papal excommunication, and had defended the recognized errors of Wickliff; there was, moreover, every probability that he would carry out his audacious design of preaching to the clergy a sermon in which the vices of the papal court and the shortcomings of the whole ecclesiastical body would be pitilessly and eloquently exposed, and it would be proved from Scripture that the whole system had no warrant in the law of Christ. The path which the pope and his cardinals had to tread in managing the council was likely to