Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 2.djvu/488

472 Hist. Bohem. cap. 35.—Laur. Byzyn. Diar. Bell. Hussit. ann. 1414 (Ludewig Reliq. MSS. VI. 125, 128-9). Von der Hardt III. 335 sqq.; IV. 288–91, 334, 342.—Jo. Hus Monument. I. 42-44, 62, 72. The relentless obstinacy with which the Church of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries refused the use of the cup to the laity at the cost of Christian unity and unnumbered troubles is perhaps the most impressive example on record of the perversity of sacerdotalism in sacrificing essentials to non-essentials. No one denied that in the early Church communion in both elements was administered to all the faithful, as it continued to be without interruption in the Greek Church. The refusal of the cup to the laity was originally a Manichæan custom, in imitation of the corresponding ancient Izeshne rite of the Mazdeans. Communion in one element thus became a mark of heresy, and was condemned as such by Leo the Great (Leon. PP. I. Serm. XLII. cap. 5), about the middle of the fifth century, and again towards its end by Gelasius I., whose decretal on the subject is embodied, without comment or contradiction, by Gratian in the Decretum (P. II. Dist. ii. c. 12), showing that it was still good law in the twelfth century. When, however, in the tenth and eleventh centuries the belief in transub- stantiation became the accepted dogma of the Church, the supreme veneration felt for the consecrated elements naturally gave rise to the necessity of the ut- most care in handling them and to excessive dread as to any accidents which might occur to them; and the penitentials grew full of all manner of penalties inflicted on priests who, through carelessness, let fall a crumb of the body or a drop of the blood, for which, by forged decretals of the early popes, a false an- tiquity was claimed (Decreti 111. ii. 27). Of course the liquid was much more subject to these accidents, and to decomposition, than the solid, and the minis- tering priests were sorely tried to avert such profanation and its consequences to themselves. At first they adopted the ready expedient of dipping the host in the wine-and-water, and thus administering both elements together, which was conducive both to safety and comfort. This innovation was condemned by the Church, but was suppressed with great difficulty. Under Gregory VII. the author of the Micrologus devotes a chapter to its prohibition (Micrologi c. 19). In 1095 the great Council of Clermont forbade it, except in cases where it was demanded by prudence or necessity for the avoidance of accidents (Conc. Claro- mont. ann. 1095, c. 28); and some twenty years later Paschal II. laid down the rule that it was only admissible in the communion of infants and the sick who could not swallow the bread (Paschal PP. II. Epist. 535). In a Bohemian document dating about the close of the twelfth century the priest carrying the viaticum to the dying is directed to dip the wafer in the wine so as to avoid accidents and yet be able to administer both elements (Höfler, Prager Concilien, Einleitung, p. ix.). When this resource was denied, while the veneration of the sacrament as the flesh and blood of Christ continued to develop, the custom was gradually We have seen that Huss was arrested November 28, 1414. Michael de Causis, Stephen Palecz, and others of his enemies had