Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 2.djvu/509

Rh struggle. Palsgrave Louis, seeing Huss's mantle on the arm of one of the executioners, ordered it thrown into the flames lest it should be reverenced as a relic, and promised the man to compen- sate him. With the same view the body was carefully reduced to ashes and thrown into the Rhine, and even the earth around the stake was dug up and carted off; yet the Bohemians long hovered around the spot and carried home fragments of the neigh- boring clay, which they reverenced as relics of their martyr. The next day thanks were returned to God, in a solemn procession in which figured Sigismund and his queen, the princes and nobles, nineteen cardinals, two patriarchs, seventy-seven bishops, and all the clergy of the council. A few days later Sigismund, who had delayed his departure for Spain to see the matter concluded, left Constance, feeling that his work was done.

The long-continued teaching of the Church, that persistent her- esy was the one crime for which there could be no pardon or ex- cuse, seemed to deprive even the wisest and purest of all power of reasoning where it was concerned. There was no hesitation in admitting that the pestilent heresy of the Hussites was caused by the simoniacal corruptions of the Roman curia, whereby many Christian souls were led to eternal perdition, and that it could not be eradicated until a thorough reformation was effected. Yet in place of drawing from this the necessary deduction, the feeling of the council is reflected by its historian in the blasphemous represen- tation of Christ as recording with satisfaction the hideous details of the execution, and as saying that the wicked soul of the heretic commenced in temporal flame the torment which it would suffer through eternity in hell. The trial, in fact, had been conducted in accordance with the universally received practice in such cases, the only exceptions being in favor of the accused. If the result was inevitable, it was the fault of the system and not of the judges, and their consciences might well feel satisfied.