Page:John Huss, his life, teachings and death, after five hundred years.pdf/312

 That Sigismund, as a king and as emperor, could have asserted his royal word in resisting the council, there can be no doubt. So John of Gaunt, in the absence of any official promise of protection, protected Wyclif in the face of the Earthquake council. That, from the moment of his arrival in Constance, Sigismund became more and more subservient to the council has been shown. Little did he protect Huss after he reached the city, on Christmas Eve. John XXIII was a better friend to him than the king. John at least provided Huss with decent food and humane guards. Sigismund, it is true, affirmed on June 8 that he had fulfilled his pledge to see to it that Huss had a fair public hearing. He, no doubt, suppressed any scruples he may have felt on the ground that the council’s will, after all, was supreme and that it was no perjury to disregard a promise to a heretic when he was following the church’s behest. This was the very plea to which Huss steadfastly refused to give way when he was called upon to recant. Huss was governed by conscience. Sigismund by rules of prudence.

It is probable the council would have broken with the king, if he had kept the letter of his pledge. His imperial good faith probably was no more at stake than the council’s very existence. As it was, in yielding to the council Sigismund lost with the Bohemian people. They felt deeply that it was a national disgrace that he had yielded to the council’s sentence. When Sigismund wanted to drive away the envoy from Milan, who had come to Constance with a safe-conduct, the council put itself in the way, declaring that all having a safe-conduct had the right to stay and go; but the envoy was not a heretic. At the very least. Sigismund should have