Page:John Huss, his life, teachings and death, after five hundred years.pdf/352

 the removal of priests with mortal sins. Between these two parties the nobles were divided, but, following the university, Cenek of Wartemberg, Lacek of Krawar and other nobles, ordered all clergymen on their domains to distribute the cup on pain of losing their places and induced the suffragan-bishop of Prague to give ordination to a number of Hussites.

The council of Constance was not slow in meeting this new rebellion by declaring the ordination invalid, and Gerson opposed to it his tract against the distribution of the cup, in which he called upon the church to depend less upon moral methods and more upon the secular authority in enforcing the council’s act.

Affairs entered into a new stage at the sudden death of that unfortunate monarch, Wenzel, August 16, 1419. A year before, he had resisted Martin V by forbidding heretics to appear in the court of the cardinal-inquisitor whom Martin had sent to Bohemia. The council had passed twenty-four articles calling upon the king to protect the church in all its regulations and to reinstate clergymen who had been deprived of their livings, to burn all Hussite writings and forbid all singing of Hussite songs, to deliver over to the council such leaders of heresy as Jacobellus, John of Reinstein, Jesenicz, Christian of Prachaticz, Simon of Tissnow and Simon of Rokyzan, and to treat all laymen taking the cup as heretics. Moved by these demands and the advice of Sigismund, Wenzel proceeded with some energy, banished John of Jesenicz from the city and ordered the old priests reinstated, but set apart three churches for the Utraquists. He lived long enough to see the interdict lifted from the city.

Wenzel’s death followed upon an armed disturbance in the streets of Prague. Many of his councillors had left the court rather than yield to the measures of repression. One of these, John of Ziska, led a procession to the old town hall