Page:Adventures of Baron Wenceslas Wratislaw of Mitrowitz (1862).djvu/20

 Of the four nations of which the University of Prague was composed, followers of Wycliffe were found only among the Bohemians. Indeed, as each separate nation possessed a vote, the Bohemians were regularly outvoted by the Germans in the university, the Polish nation having since the foundation of the University of Cracow consisted almost entirely of German Silesians, Pomeranians, and Prussians. An appeal upon university affairs was made to King Wenzel, who spoke with the greatest severity to Hus, who soon afterwards was seized with so serious an illness that his life was despaired of. But soon, through the influence of Nicholas of Lobkovitz, supported by the representatives of the King of France, and the University of Paris, King Wenzel, finding that the three votes of the foreigners rested on no statute, but only on custom, issued an edict, (Jan. 18, 1409,) that from thenceforth the Bohemian nation should have three votes, and the foreigners only one. The final result was that the German professors and students almost entirely left Prague, and the numbers of those who quitted the university must have been very large, from the fact that no less than two thousand were counted departing in a single day.

In 1409 the singular spectacle of three rival Popes was exhibited to the Christian world, and in 1410, that of three rival Kings of the Romans. On July 16, 1410, the prelates and clergy solemnly burned the books of Wycliffe at Prague, and on the 18th the archbishop formally excommunicated Hus and his friends. Hus was protected by the court and by a large party in the country, and refused to give up preaching, saying that it was his duty to obey God rather than man. His appeal was rejected, and the proceedings of the archbishop confirmed by Pope John XXIII, and he himself was cited to appear at the Court of Rome to defend himself within a given time. In 1411 the archbishop laid