Page:John Huss, his life, teachings and death, after five hundred years.pdf/120

 the cardinals, the king and queen were interceding for Huss. They protested against the archbishop’s decree burning Wyclif’s books and the closing of Bethlehem chapel to preaching. The king pronounced Alexander’s bull precipitate, and asked that the edict against free preaching in the chapels might be withdrawn. It was based on the unfounded suspicion that the hearts of the people of Prague were infected with heresy. “How,” he wrote, “could the vine of Engedi be expected to flourish if the stalk of the Word of God were cut off at the root,” that is, if preaching were stopped? In three letters to the pope the queen spoke with warm affection of Bethlehem chapel and the profit it had been to her and members of her court as the centre where the Word of God was preached. The decree prohibiting preaching would impede the flow of salvation for the people and herself. She begged the pope for freedom of preaching—libertatio prædicationis evangelicæ. Helfert speaks of the undue interference of Sophia in the affairs of Huss. He says rightly that she had a considerable influence in promoting the growth of Hussitism.

Other members of the court also addressed the pope in Huss’s interest. Thousands had heard Huss at the Bethlehem chapel, so wrote Baron Lacek of Krawar to the pope. The people were confounded and indignant at the silencing of Huss’s voice and of being deprived of the Word of God—verbum Domini privari.

To these intercessions and others like them the magistrates of Prague added their petition, begging John XXIII that he might grant relief from the inhibition of preaching in the chapels, declaring at the same time that it would be the salvation “of our community for the Word of God to be preached more freely and copiously” as they had had proof in the good influence of a single preacher at Bethlehem chapel.

In order to secure a withdrawal of the citation to appear personally before the papal court, Huss despatched a cele-