Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 2.djvu/550

 534 THE HUSSITES. legate that if the bishops came from the apostles, and priests from the seventy-two disciples, the others could have had no other source but the devil. This saUy raised a general laugh, which was in- creased when Kokyzana called to the inquisitor, " Doctor, make Dom Procopius provincial of your order." These trifles have their significance when compared with the shouts of " Burn him ! Burn him !" which assailed Huss at Constance. In fact the Hussites were urged to incorporate themselves with the council, but they were too shrewd to fall into the snare.* By unbending firmness the Bohemians carried their point, and secured the recognition of the four articles, which became cele- brated in history as the Compactata — the Magna Charta of the Bohemian Church until swept away by the counter-Eeformation. This was agreed to in Prague, November 26, 1433, and confirmed by mutual clasp of hands between the legates of the council and the deputies of the three Bohemian sects, but matters were by no means settled. The four articles were brief and simple declara- tions which admitted of unlimited diversity of construction. The dialecticians of the council had no difficulty in explaining them away, until they practically amounted to nothing ; the Hussites, on the other side, with equal facility, expanded them to cover all that they could possibly wish to claim. Hardly was the handclasping over when it was found that the Bohemians asserted that the per- mission of communion in both elements meant that they were to continue to administer it to infants, and to force it proscriptively on every one — positions to which the council could by no means assent. This Avill serve as an illustration of the innumerable ques- tions which kept the negotiators busy during yet thirty dreary months. So far, indeed, was the matter as yet from being settled, that, in April, 1434, the council levied a half-tithe on Christendom for a crusade against the Hussites, which enabled it to stimulate with liberal payments the zeal of the' Bohemian Catholic nobles. f • Gen. Ssec. XV. T. I. p. 304-5, 324, 328-31, 348).— Naucleri Chron. ann. 1434. t^gid. Carlerii Lib. de Legation (Ibid. T. L pp. 447-71, 495-7).-Martene Ampl. Coll. Vm. 305-40, 356-415, 698-704.— Hartzheim V. 768-9.-Kukuljevic, Jura Regni Croatise, Zagrabiae, 1862, I. 192.— Batthyani Legg. Eccles. Hung. III. 419. The question of infantile communion affords an illustration of the skilM casuistry of the orthodox. After the reconciliation, when Sigismund was ruling
 * Martene Ampl. Coll. VHI. 131-33.— Pet. Zatecens. Lib. Diurn. (Mon. Cone.