Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 2.djvu/512

 ^gg BOHEMIA. had copied with his own hand the Dialogus and the Trialogus, and had carried those outpourings of revolt to Prague, where they added fresh fuel to the rapidly rising fires of Bohemian insubordi- nation. On a second visit he had been seized as a heretic, and had escaped through the intervention of the University of Prague. In Palestine he had trodden in the footsteps of the Saviour and had bent in reverence at the Holy Sepulchre. In Lithuania he had sought to convert the heathen. In Kussia he had endeavored to win over the schismatic Greek. In Poland and Hungary he had scattered the doctrines of Wickliff and Huss. Driven out of Hun- gary, in 1410, he was arrested and thrown m prison in Vienna, by the papal inquisitor and episcopal official, for teaching Hussitism and infecting with it the university of that city. His trial was commenced and a day was set for its hearing, prior to which he was allowed his liberty on his oath not to leave the city, under pain of excommunication. Claiming that an extorted oath was of no force, he escaped, and from Olmiitz wrote a free-and-easy letter to the Bishop of Passau, suggesting that the prosecutors ajid witnesses may be sent to Prague, where the trial can be fin- ished. The excommunication, indeed, followed him to Prague, but in the tumultuous condition of Bohemia it gave him no trouble, though the University of Vienna wrote to the University of Prague that by remaining more than a year under the excommu- nication he had incurred the guilt of heresy, for which he ought to be condemned ; and meanwhile the converts whom he had made in Vienna continued to give occupation to the Inquisition, and the university which interfered in their. behalf incurred the suspicion of heresy. In the stirring events which followed, his restless and aggressive spirit would not allow him to be inactive, and the popular impression of his reckless audacity is shown in the story of his hanging the papal bulls of indulgence around the neck of a strumpet and carrying her to the place where they were to be burned. In 1413 he again visited Poland, where in a short •time he succeeded in causing an unprecedented excitement, and was speedily sent back to Prague. His whole life had been spent in inteUectual digladiation, from his youthful philosophic contests to the maturer struggles with the overwhelming forces of the hierarchy. A layman, not in holy orders and unfurnished with priestly gown and tonsure, he had preached to admiring crowds