Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 2.djvu/498

 ^g2 BOHEMIA. would be disregarded if so monstrous a proposition should be con- ceded. To the fathers of the council nothing could well seem more preposterous. Then Michael de Causis had intercepted a let- ter, written by Huss from prison, in which the ministers of the council were alluded to as the servants of Antichrist, and when this was brought to him by the commissioners he acknowledged its authenticity. Besides aU this, he had remained under excom- munication for suspicion of heresy during long years, during which he had constantly performed divine service, and he had called the pope an Antichrist whose anathema was to be disre- garded. This of itself, as we have seen, constituted him a self- convicted heretic* It thus was idle to suppose that the council, because it had de- posed John XXIIL, would set free so contumacious a heretic, whose very virtues only rendered him the more dangerous. The inquis- itorial process must go on to the end. Even during the bitterest and most doubtful portion of the contest, before the pope had been brought back to Constance, the successive steps of the trial received due attention. On April 17 four new commissioners were appointed to replace the previous ones, whose commissions from the pope were held to have expired, and the new commission was expressly granted power to proceed to final sentence. The only doubt arising was whether the condemnation of Wickliff, with which the case of Huss was inextricably related, should be uttered in the name of the pope or in that of the council, and its publication. May 4, in the latter form, showed that the assembly had no hesitation as to its duty in stamping out the heresy of the master and of the disciple. The active measures also, which dur- ing this period were taken against Jerome of Prague, were an in- dication not to be mistaken of the purposes of the council. Yet how little the friends of Huss understood the real position of af- fairs, and how false hopes had been excited by the rupture mth the pope, is seen in their efforts at this juncture to press the trial to a conclusion. Under the procrastinating policy of the Inquisi- tion it is quite possible that Huss would have been left to his soli- tary musings for a time indefinitely longer, in hopes that his resolu- - Jo. Hus Monument. 1. 118,128.-Epist. xliii. (Ib.71 ^).-Palacky Documenta, pp. 60, 185, 523-8.— Mladenowic Relatio (Palacky, p. 301).