Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 2.djvu/492

 ^^Q BOHEMIA. other hand, we have his own account of one of these interviews The commissioners were accompanied by Michael and Stephen to prompt them. Each article was read to him and he was asked if such was his belief ; he replied, explaining the sense in which he held it. Then he would be asked if he would defend it, and he would answer no, but that he would stand to the decision of the council. Nothing could well seem more submissive or more or- thodox, and under any other system of jurisprudence conviction might weU appear impossible. Heresy, however, as we have seen, was a crime ; once committed, even through ignorance, a simple return to the Church was not enough ; belief in the errors must be admitted and then abjured, before the criminal could be con- sidered as penitent and entitled to the substitution of perpetual im- prisonment for the death-penalty. Huss was condemned on here- sies which he had not held rather than those which he had taught.* Thousands of miserable wretches had been convicted on a tithe of the evidence now brought against him. Stephen Palecz, a man of the highest repute, swore before the commissioners that since the birth of Christ there had been no more dangerous here- tics than Wickhff and Huss, and that all who customarily at- tended the sermons of the latter believed in the remanence of the substance of bread in the Eucharist. What Palecz testified there were scores of others to substantiate and amplify. Witnesses were there in abundance to prove that he believed in the rema- nence of the bread, that the sacraments were vitiated m the hands of sinful priests, that indulgences were of no avail, that the Church of Kome was the synagogue of Satan, that heresy was to be overcome by disputation and not by force, that a papal excom- munication was to be disregarded. Many of these errors he in- dignantly denied having entertained, but it was m vam. In vam he wrote out in prison, as early as March 5, 1415, his tract -Be Sacramento Corporis et Sanguinis;^ in which he declared that fuU transubstantiation took place ; that God worked the miracle irrespective of the merits of the celebrant ; that the body and blood of Christ were both in the bread and m the wine, and that he had taught this doctrine since 1401, before he was a priest. In Thesaur. II. 1635.— Jo. Hus Epist. xlviii. (Monument. I. 72).
 * Palacky, pp. 204-24. — Mladenowic Relatio (Palacky, p. 254). - Martene