Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 2.djvu/487

Rh succeeded Michael de Causis in the Church of St. Adalbert, commenced to administer communion in both elements to the laity, and thus gave rise to the most distinguishing and obstinate feature of Bohemian heresy. Zeal for the Eucharist had long been a marked peculiarity of religious devotion in Bohemia. The synod of 1390 promised an indulgence of forty days to all who bent the knee on the elevation of the host; and the frequent partaking of the sacrament was repeatedly and strenuously urged by those who have been classed as the precursors of Huss. Mathias of Janow had even ventured to recommend that the cup should be restored to the laity, but the question had never reappeared during the stormy years in which Huss and his friends had been battling for the Wickliffite doctrines. According to Æneas Sylvius, a certain Peter of Dresden, infected with Waldensian errors, had left Prague with the other Germans in 1409, but was driven from home on account of his heresy and took refuge again in Prague, where he supported himself as a teacher of children. He it was who sug- gested to Jacobel the return to the ancient practice of the Church; the heretics, delighted to find a question in which they were clear- ly in the right, eagerly embraced it. The custom spread to the churches of St. Michael, St. Martin, the Bethlehem Chapel, and else- where, in spite of the opposition of King Wenceslas and Archbishop Conrad, who vainly threatened secular punishments and ecclesiastical interdicts. Huss was speedily communicated with. He approved of the custom, as indeed he could not well help doing, and his tract in its favor, when conveyed to the disciples, gave a fresh impetus to the movement. It was in vain that on June 15, 1415, the council condemned the use of the cup by the laity, pronounced heretics all priests so administering the sacrament, ordered them to be handed over to the secular arm, and commanded all prelates and inquisitors to prosecute as heretics those who denied the propriety of communion in one element. For more than a century the Utraquists, or Calixtins, as they called themselves, were the ruling party in Bohemia. The consciousness of being in the wrong and of having to justify itself by all manner of trivial excuses rendered the council additionally eager to crush the insubordination of which Huss was the representative.