Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 2.djvu/486

 ^YO BOHEMIA. process on record, and to those unacquainted with the system of procedure which had grown up in the development of the Holy Office, its practical denial of justice has seemed a wilful perversity on the part of the council, while the sublimely pathetic figure of the sufferer has necessarily awakened the w-armest sympathy. Yet, in fact, the only deviations of the council from the ordinary course of such affairs were special marks of lenity towards the ac- cused. He was not subjected to the torture, as in the customary practice in such cases he should have been, and, at the instance of Sigismund, he was thrice permitted to appear before the whole body and defend himself in public session. When, therefore, we see how inevitable was his condemnation, how he could have saved himself only at the cost of burdening his soul with perjury and converting his remaining years into a living lie, we obtain a meas- ure of the infamy of the system, and can in some degree estimate the innumerable wrongs inflicted on countless thousands of obscure and forgotten victims. In this aspect the trial is worthy of ex- amination, for though it presents no novel points of procedure, ex- cept the concessions made to Huss, it affords an instructive exam- ple of the manner in which the inquisitorial process described in preceding chapters was practically apphed. The case against Huss was rendered stronger, almost at the outset, by the action of his friends at home. It must have been shortly after his arrival in Constance that Jacobel of Mies, who had and wrong that the ordinary notions of morality were superseded. The power of the keys was such that a papal dispensation could release any one from an in- convenient vow or promise, no matter how binding might be its form. Sigis- mund's father, Charles, when Margrave of Moravia, was released, in 1346, by Clement VI. from a troublesome oath which he had taken (Werunsky Excerptt. ex Regist. Clem. VI. p. 44) ; and the sin of perjury was one for which the popes were accustomed to grant efficacious pardons when it was committed in their in- terest (Ludewig op. cit. VI. 14). It was deemed only a reasonable precaution in compacts for the parties to pledge tliemselves that they would not seek a re- lease by a papal dispensation (Hartzheim IV. 329 ; Preger, Der kirchenpolitische Kampf unter Ludwig dem Baier, p. 59). Sigismund, in the case of Huss. admitted that his pledge was dissolved by heresy and a dispensation was superfluous, but it could have been had for the asking. In view of these facts all attempts to argue away the betrayal of Huss are useless, nor is it possible to accuse the good fathers of Constance of conscious bad faith. They but accepted and enforced the principles in which they were trained.