Page:John Huss, his life, teachings and death, after five hundred years.pdf/228

 and supplemented by Huss’s letters written at the close of the day.

Two articles had been stricken out from the list of the charges of June 5,—a gain of less importance than Huss fancied it to be. Witnesses—doctors, prelates, parish priests and others—were called upon to bear witness to the accusation that since 1410 Huss had been preaching the doctrines of Wyclif and other erroncous doctrines of his own invention. The XIV Wyclifite Articles were brought in evidence, as also Huss’s attitude to the burning of Wyclif’s books, and the trouble at the university with the Germans. A charge on which great stress was laid was the remanence of the material bread. This charge Huss denied, calling God and his conscience to witness; but in explanation of his use of the term panis, bread, he said that he had used it against the archbishop’s prohibition but in conformity with John 6, where the Lord spoke of himself again and again as bread and the bread of angels. However, he did not use the expression material bread. Here a question was interjected concerning Universals and their bearing on the substance of consecrated bread. This was intended to be a trap, the object being to show that if Huss were a Realist he could not believe in the transubstantiation of the clements. In being a Realist, Huss followed Wyclif and deposed that he accepted Universals in the sense used by St. Anselm and others. By the order of the French king, Realism had been pronounced erroneous, and all other views except Nominalism expatriated from France.

The introduction of a question, philosophical and scholastic in its import, did not appeal to all the members. D’Ailly, who was a Nominalist, and seemed to be in hot temper, had said that if Huss followed Anselm, then after the consecration of the elements the material bread remained. Three