Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 12.djvu/420

404 404 H U S H U S difficulty in inducing the cabinet to agree to a compro mise on the corn laws, Huskisson finally resigned office in May 1829 on account of a difference with his col- leawues in regard to the disfranchisement of East Retford. On the 15th September of the following year he was accidentally killed by a locomotive engine while present at the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. HUSS, JOHN (1369-1415), the Bohemian reformer and martyr, was born at Hussinecz, 1 a market village at the foot of the Bohmerwald, and not far from the Bavarian frontier, most probably in 1369, and, according to some accounts, on July 6. His parents appear to have been well-to-do Czechs of the peasant class. Of his early life nothing is recorded except that, notwithstanding the early loss of his father, he obtained a good elementary education, first at Hussinecz, and afterwards at the neighbouring town of Prachaticz. At, or only a very little beyond, the usual age he entered the recently (1348) founded university of Prague, where he became bachelor of arts in 1393, bachelor of theology in 1394, and master of arts in 1396. In 1398 he was chosen by the Bohemian &quot; nation &quot; of the university to an examinership for the bachelor s degree ; in the same year he began to lecture also, and there is reason to believe that the philosophical writings of Wickliffe, with which he had been for some years acquainted, were his text-books. In October 1401 he was made dean of the philosophical faculty, and for the half-yearly period from October 1402 to April 1 403 he held the office of rector of the university. In 1402 also he was made rector or curate (capellarius) of the Bethlehem Chapel, which had in 1391 been erected and endowed by some zealous citizens of Prague for the purpose of providing good popular preaching in the Bohemian tongue. This appointment, which, so far as the aims of the pious founders were concerned, proved a singularly suc cessful one, had a deep influence on the already vigorous religious life of Huss himself; and one of the effects of the earnest and independent study of Scripture into which it soon led him was a profound conviction of the great value not only of the philosophical but also of the theological writings of Wickliffe. This newly-formed sympathy with the English reformer did not, however, in the first instance at least, involve Huss in any conscious opposition to the established doctrines of Catholicism, or in any direct conflict with the authorities of the church; and for several years he continued to act in full accord with his archbishop (Sbynjek, or Sbynko, of H vsenburg). Thus in 1 405 he, along with other two masters, was commissioned to examine into certain reputed miracles at Wilsnack, near Wittenbsrg, which had caused that church to be made a resort of pilgrims from all parts of Europe. The result of their report was that all pilgrimage thither from the province of Bohemia was prohibited by the archbishop on pain of excommunication, while Huss, with the full sanction of his superior, gave to the world his first published writing, entitled De Omni Sanguine Christi Glorificato, in which he declaimed in no measured terms against forged miracles and ecclesiastical greed, urging Christians at the same time to desist from looking for sensible signs of Christ s presence, but rather to seek Him in His enduring word. More than once also Huss, along with his friend Stanislaus of Znaitn, was appointed to be synod preacher, and in this capacity he delivered at the provincial councils of Bohemia many faithful admonitions. As early as May 28, 1403, it is true, there had been held a university disputation about the new doctrines of Wickliffe, which had resulted in the condemnation of certain propositions presumed to be his ; 1 From which the name Huss, or more properly Hus, an abbrevia tion adopted by himself about 1396, is derived. Prior to that date he was invariably known as Johann Hussynecz, Hussinecz, Hussenicz, or De Hussynecz. five years later (May 20, 1408) this decision had been refined into a declaration that these, forty-five in number, were not to be taught in any heretical, erroneous, or offensive sense. But it was only slowly that the growing sympathy of Huss with Wickliffe unfavourably affected his relations with his colleagues in the priesthood. In 1408, however, the clergy of the city and arcluepiscopal diocese of Prague laid before the archbishop a formal complaint against Huss, arising out of strong expressions with regard to clerical abuses of which he had made use in his public discourses ; and the result was that, having first been deprived of his appointment as synodal preacher, he was, after a vain attempt to defend himself in writing, publicly forbidden the exercise of any priestly function throughout the diocese. Simultaneously with these proceedings in Bohemia, inter national negotiations had been going on which had for their object the removal of the long-continued papal schism, and it had in the interval become apparent that a satisfactory solution of the difficulties involved could only be secured if, as seemed not impossible, the supporters of the rival popes, Benedict XIII. and Gregory XII, could be induced, in view of the approaching council of Pisa, to pledge them selves to a strict neutrality. With this end King Wenceslaus of Bohemia had requested the co-operation of the archbishop and his clergy, and also the support of the university, in both instances unsuccessful!}^ although in the case of the latter the Bohemian &quot; nation,&quot; with Huss at its head, had only been overborne by the votes of the Bavarians, Saxons, and Poles. There followed an expression of nationalist and particularistic as opposed to ultramontane and also to German feeling, which undoubtedly was of supreme im portance for the whole of the subsequent career of Huss. In compliance with this feeling a royal edict (January 18, 1409) was issued, by which, in alleged conformity with Paris usnge, and with the original charter of the university, the Bohemian &quot; nation &quot; received three votes, while only one was allotted to the other three &quot; nations &quot; combined ; whereupon all the foreigners, to the number of several thousands, almost immediately withdrew 7 from Prague, an occurrence which led to the formation shortly afterwards of the university of Leipsic. It was a dangerous triumph for Huss; for his popu larity at court and in the general community had been secured only at the price of clerical antipathy every where and of much German ill-will. Among the first results of the changed order of things were on the one hand the election of Huss (October 1409) to be again rector of the university, but on the other hand the appointment by the archbishop of an inquisitor to inquire into charges of heretical teaching and inflammatory preach ing which had been brought against him. He had spoken disrespectfully of the church, it was said, had even hinted that Antichrist might be found to be in Rome, had fomented in his preaching the quarrel between Bohemians and Germans, and had, notwithstanding all that had passed, continued to speak of Wickliffe as both a pious man and an orthodox teacher. The direct result of this investigation is not known, but it is impossible to disconnect from it the promulgation by Pope Alexander V., on December 20, 1409, of a bull which ordered the abjuration of all Wickliffite heresies and the surrender of all his books, while at the same time a measure specially levelled at the pulpit of Bethlehem Chapel all preaching was prohibited except in localities which had been by long usage set apart for that use. This decree, as soon as it was published in Prague (March 9, 1410), led to much popular agitation, and provoked an appeal by Huss to the pope s better informed judgment ; the archbishop, however, resolutely insisted on carrying out his instructions, and in the following July caused to be publicly burned, in the courtyard of his own