Page:John Huss, his life, teachings and death, after five hundred years.pdf/134

 jurer, blasphemer, schismatic and relapsed heretic, the friend of heretics, a conspirator against the papal see and the church and the supporter of that son of malediction, Angelo Correr—Gregory XII—heretic and schismatic. Men of every class and station, from the king and cardinals down, were adjured to gird on the sword against the refractory prince. “By the grace of God and the authority of the Apostles Peter and Paul” John promised to all who took the cross, being penitent, pardon and augmentation of eternal salvation, and also to those unable to go on the campaign who provided for substitutes or contributed to the cost of the sacred undertaking. The participants in this new crusade were to have the same indulgence as those who went across the sea to rescue the Holy Land. The crusade was pronounced a campaign “to protect the church, the mother and teacher of all the faithful, and to defend the city in which Divinity wished to dwell—seeing God had made it the foundation for the militant church even through the shed blood of the saints and also the seat of Peter.”

The crusade was the well-tried instrument employed by popes against heretics and disobedient princes—war by the sword for spiritual offenses. So Innocent III summoned Christendom against the Albigenses of Southern France and called upon the king of France to bring the refractory John of England to submission. So Innocent IV spread the flames of sedition against Frederick II and summoned Germany and Sicily to revolt against him, their sovereign. So Urban IV appealed to Charles of Anjou to proceed against Conradin, the last of the Hohenstaufen, the young scion of “the poisonous brood of a dragon of poisonous race.” And so, after Huss’s death, popes were to invoke bloody wars against the Hussites themselves. In resisting John XXIII’s appeal, Huss had before him the example of Wyclif, who resisted the crusade of Christian in conflict with Christian proclaimed by Urban VI against