Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 2.djvu/544

 523 THE HUSSITES. cation with them over his lands was pronounced subject to the punishments decreed against heresy. Bohemia was to be isolated and starved into submission by a material blockade enforced by spiritual censures.^ As for reformation, it was found that all efforts seriously to consider it were skilfully blocked by the legates. This is not sur- prising, as the Church was to be reformed in its head as well as in its members, and the head was recognized as the chief source of infection. A project presented by the Galilean deputies de- scribed in indignant bitterness the abuses of the curia— the sale of preferments and dignities to the highest bidder, irrespective of fitness, with the consequent destruction of benefices and plunder of the people ; the papal dispensations which enabled the most incongruous pluralities to be held by individuals, and the other devices whereby Rome was enriched at the cost of religion ; the centralizing of all jurisdiction in Rome to the spoliation of the in- digent who dwelt at a distance ; the papal decrees which set aside the salutary regulations of general councils— showing how nuga- tory had been the reformatory regulations wherewith Martin, when elected, had parried the attacks of the Council of Constance. The disappointment of the Council of Siena at the baffling of its efforts was leading to a tension of feeling that grew dangerous. A French friar, Cuillaume Joselme, preached a sermon m which he demonstrated that the pope was the servant and not the mas- ter of the Church. The legates denounced him as a heretic, and ordered the magistrates of Siena to arrest him, but they, unlike Sigismund, replied that they had given a safe-conduct to all the members of the council, and could not go behind it. Finally, find- ing that under the control of the papacy no reformatory action was possible, the attempt was made to shorten to two or three years the seven years' interval that was to elapse before the next council. All the several nations had agreed to it when its enact- ment was prevented by the legates suddenly dissolving the coun- cil, March 8, 1424, in spite of a protest intimating very plainly that they had prevented all reformatory legislation. The seven years' interval was preserved, and the next council was indicated for Basle, in 1431. The reformers consoled themselves by pointing
 * Concil. Senens. ann. 1423 (Harduin. VIH. 1015).