Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 2.djvu/517

 JEROME OF PRAGUE. 50;^ Gerson, whose hostility seems to have been insatiable, readily made himself their mouthpiece, and in a learned dissertation on the essentials of revocations called the attention of the council, October 29, to the unsatisfactory character of that of Jerome! Some Carmelites, apparently arriving from Prague, furnished new accusations, and demands were made that he be required to an- swer additional articles. Some of the Cardinals, ZabareUa, Pierre d'Ailly, Giordano Orsini, Antonio da Aquileia, on the other hand, labored with the council to procure his liberation, but on bein^ actively opposed by the Germans and Bohemians and accused ol receivmg bribes from the heretics and King Wenceslas, they aban- doned the hopeless defence. Accordingly, February 24, 1416 a new commission was appointed to hold an inquisition on him The whole ground was gone over again in examining him, from the Wickliffite heresies to his exciting rebellion in Prague and contumaciously enduring the excommunication incurred in Vienna April 27 the commissioners made their report, and the Promotor JfcBretiGCB Pravitatis, or prosecutor for heresy, accompanied it with a long indictment enumerating his offences. Jerome, re- solved on death, had recovered his audacity; he not only, in spite of his recantation, denied that he was a heretic, but complained of unjust imprisonment and claimed to be indemnified for ex- penses and damages. His marvellous dialectical dexterity had evidently nonplussed the slower intellects of his examiners, who had found themselves unable to cope with his subtlety, for the council was asked, in conclusion, to diminish the diet on which he was described as feasting gluttonously, and by judicious starva- tion, the proper torment of heretics, to bring him to submission Moreover, authority was asked to use torture and to force him to answer definitely yes or no to all questions as to his behef. If then he continues contumaciously to deny what has been or may be proved against him, he is to be handed over to the secular arm m accordance with the canon law^,as a pertinacious and incorrio-i- ble heretic. Thus with Jerome, as with Huss, the invariable prhi- ciple of inquisitorial procedure w^as applied, that the denial of heret- ical opinions w^as simply an evidence and an aggravation of guilt.*
 * ^«^ ^^' Hardt III. IV. 39; IV. 634-91.-Laur. Byzyn Diar. Bell. Hussit

(Ludewig VI. 137-8).