Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 12.djvu/422

406 406 H U S S was compelled to bring his speech to an abrupt close, which he did with the calm remark ; &quot;In such a council as this I had expected to find more propriety, piety, and order.&quot; It j was found necessary to adjourn the sitting until June 7, on which occasion the outward decencies were better observed, partly no doubt from the circumstance that the emperor was present in person. The propositions which had been extracted from the De Ecdesia were again brought up, and the relations between Wickliffe and Huss were discussed, the object of the prosecution being to fasten upon the latter the charge of having entirely adopted the doctrinal system of the former, including especially a denial of the doctrine of transubstantiation. The accused defended himself by repudiating the charge of having abandoned the Catholic doctrine, while at the same time he give expression to his hearty admiration and respect for the memory of Wickliffe. Being next asked to make an unqualified submission to the council, he expressed himself as unable to do so, while at the same time stating Jus willingness in all humility to amend his teaching wherever it had been shown to be false. With this the proceedings of the day were brought to a close. On June 8 the propositions extracted from the De Ecdesia were once more taken up with some fulness of detail ; some of these he repudiated as incorrectly given, others he defended ; but when asked to make a general recantation he steadfastly declined on the ground that to do so would be a dishonest admission of previous guilt. Among the propositions he could heartily abjure was that relating to transubstantiation ; among those he felt constrained un flinchingly to maintain was one which had given great offence, to the effect that Christ, not Peter, is the head of ths church to whom ultimate appeal must be made. The council, however, showed itself inaccessible to all his arguments and explanations, and its final resolution, as announced by D Ailly, was threefold : first, that Huss should humbly declare that he had erred in all the articles cited against him ; secondly, that he should promise on oath neither to hold nor teach them in the future ; thirdly, that he should publicly recant them. On his declining to make this submission he was removed from the bar, and it was obvious that the end could not be far off. The em peror himself gave it as his opinion that it had been clearly proved by many witnesses that the accused had taught many pernicious heresies, and that even should he recant hs ought never to be allowed to preach or teach again or to return to Bohemia, but that should he refuse recantation there was n j remedy but the stake. During the next four weeks no effort was spared to shake the determination of Huss; but the spirit of the martyr rose within him as he saw his end approaching, and he steadfastly refused to swerve from the path which conscience had once made clear. &quot;I write this,&quot; says he, in a letter to his friends at Prague, &quot; in prison and in chains, expecting tomorrow to receive sentence of death, full of hope in God that I shall not swerve from the truth, nor abjure errors imputed to me by false witnesses.&quot; The sentence he expected was pronounced on July 6 in the presence of the emperor and a full sitting of the council ; once and again he attempted to remonstrate, but in vain, and finally he betook himself to silent prayer. After he had undergone the ceremony of degradation with all the childish formalities which are usual on such occasions, his soul was formally consigned by all those present to the devil, while he himself with clasped hands and uplifted eyes reverently committed it to Christ. He was then handed over to the secular arm, and immediately led off to the place of execution, the council meanwhile ! proceeding unconcernedly with the rest of its business for the day. Many touching incidents recorded in the histories make manifest the meekness, fortitude, and even cheerful- ; ness with which he went to his dreadful death. After he had been tied to the stake and the faggots had been piled, he was for the last time urged to recant, but his only reply was : &quot; God is my witness that I have never taught or preached that which false witnesses have testified against me. He knows that the great object of all my preaching and writing was to convert men from sin. In the truth of that gospel which hitherto I have written, taught, and preached, I now joyfully die. The fire was then kindled, and his voice as it audibly prayed in the words of ihe &quot; Kyrie Eleison &quot; was soon stifled in the smoke. When the flames had done their office, the ashes that were left and even the soil on which they lay were carefully removed and thrown into the Rhine. Not many words are needed to convey a tolerably adequate estimate of the character and work of the &quot;pale thin man in mean attire,&quot; who in sickness and poverty thus completed the forty-sixth year of a busy life at the stake. Huss was much less remarkable fur the amount of his mental endowments and acquirements than for the candour with which he formed his convictions, the tenacity with which he held them, the unselfish enthusiasm with which he spoke them. He cannot be said to have added a single new item to the intellectual wealth of the world, but his contribution to its moral capital was immense. It might not be easy to formulate very precisely the doctrines for which he died, and certainly some of them, as, for example, that regarding the church, were such as many Protestants even would regard as unguarded and difficult to harmonize with the maintenance of external church order ; but his is undoubtedly the honour of having been the chief intermediary in handing on from Wickliffe to Luther the torch which kindled the Reformation, and of having been one of the bravest of the martyrs who have died in the cause of honesty and freedom, of progress and of growth towards the light. The works of Huss are usually classed under four heads : the dogmatical and polemical, the homiletical, the exegetical. and the epistolary. Of those belonging to the iirst category, the earliest was that De Omni Sanguine Christi Glorificato, already referred to ; others, besides the De Ecdesia, are a Quastio dc Jndulgcntiis, relating to the bull of Pope John XX 111. against Ladislaus, Responsio ad Scripta M. S. Palctz, Rcsponsio ad Scripta M. S. de Znoyma, and a Refutation of the Writing of the Eight Doctors of Prague. The sermons include several discourses relating to Anti christ. It is worthy of note, in connexion with these, that by means of them and his other public teaching Huss exercised a con siderable influence, not only on the religious life of his time, but on the literary development of his native tongue. His exegetical writings include A History of Jesus Christ according to the Four Gospels, A History of the Passion, An Exposition of I Cor. i.-vii., Commentaries on the epistles of James, Peter, John, and Jude, and an Enarratio on Psalms cx.-cxviii. The Letters are arranged in two series, one of which, numbering fifteen, relates to the period of his exile under the interdict, while the other, fifty-six in all, belongs to the time when he lived in Constance. The De Ecdesia was printed by Ulrica von Hutten as early as 15 20, others of the, controversial writings by Otto Brunnfels in 1524 ; and Luther wrote an interesting preface to Epistolcc Quccdam published in 1537. The earliest collected edition of the Latin works was that of Nuremberg (Historia et Monumenta Joh. Huss atque Hieron. Pragcnsis), pub lished in 1558 in 2 vols. folio; this was reprinted with a consider able quantity of new matter in 1715. The Bohemian works have recently been edited by K. J. Erben (3 vols., Prague, 1866). On Huss the best and most easily accessible information for the English readers is to be found in the Church Histories, especially in that of Neander (voL ix., Engl. trans. 1858), and pre-eminently in Lecliler s Wielef (1873), tianslntcd by Lorimer (1878). Among the earlier authorities is jEnens Sylvius. De lio/ie- morum Origins ac Ges/is Historia(l47o). The Acta of the council of Constance (Labbe Cone., vol. xvi., 1731, or Von der Ilardt, Concilium Conftaiitiense, lfi!&amp;gt;7-1700), as also Lcnfant s Histoire, must of course be consulted. Palacky s GefeliMite fid/linens (1836-65) contains much valuable material carefully sifted. The earliest biography is that of Zitte. Lebenxbeschreibmg &amp;lt;te Mac/liters Joh. ffus (1789-05). Monographs have in recent years been very numerous; among others may be mentioned Helfert, Xtudien tiber ffus u. Hieroninuvs (1853; this work is ultra montane in its sympathies); Becker, f/u.i u. Hieronmmis von Prag (Nordlingen, 1858); Friedrich, JoMnn Hits (1863); Krummel, Joh. If us. eine Kirclienhist. Sturiie (1863); Id., Geschichte der bohm. Reformation (1866); Ilofler, ffus u. der Abztiti der Deutsc/ien (1804); Id., Die. Gesehichttefireiber der ttusitischen Revet/ting (1856-65); Id., Fonte* Re.rum fhisiticarum ; IJerger. Joh. ffus u Konig Sigisvnind (1872); Denis, Huss et la Guerre des Hussites (Paris, 1878). (J. S. BL.)