Page:John Huss by Hastings Rashdall (1879).pdf/17

 strance to the Archbishop. The letter is characteristic. He declines altogether to enter into the merits of the theological question at issue, and confines himself to complaining that a good priest should be banished for preaching the gospel, while priests guilty of every imaginable crime went unpunished.

At a Synod held in June, 1408, decrees were published against persons propagating erroneous opinions touching the Sacrament of the Altar, against preaching “tending to the confusion of the Clergy,” and against the use of all new Bohemian hymns (Cantilence) with four specified exceptions. These last prohibitions were obviously directed against the vernacular preaching and the popular services of Bethlehem Chapel, which were emptying the parish churches and destroying the influence and the profits of the parochial clergy. This proceeding was followed by a direct attack upon the preacher. The articles of charge and Huss’ answers to them are preserved. They are three in number. The first alleges that he had taught that all “who received money from their parishioners, especially from the poor, for confession, by way of offertory, and for the sacraments of the Church, were guilty of heresy, not making any distinction whether the fees were taken before or after the administration of the said sacraments.” In justification of this language Huss triumphantly quotes, among other authorities, a Papal bull in which the words “before or after” are expressly added to the prohibition of this kind of Simony. The second article alleges that after the death of a certain well-beneficed Master Peter Wzerub, Huss had said in the pulpit, “I would not for all the world die in the possession of so many and such rich benefices,” and also that he had wished that his soul might be where Wyclif’s soul was. Both these charges are substantially admitted, although the words had, of course, been separated from their context. To the third charge of “excessive” preaching against the clergy, Huss pleaded that his preaching had been by no means excessive. It will be observed that the charges really brought home to the accused only amounted to breaches of ecclesiastical discipline, with the exception, perhaps, of the expression touching Wyclif’s soul. It is characteristic of the man that as yet his only heresy is sympathy with heretics.

The prosecution of 1408 appears to have been dropped, but in the year following other Articles were exhibited, to which Huss was required to make answer upon oath before the Archbishop’s Inquisitor. We find the old charges renewed and expanded. The accusation of stirring up the people is repeated in a variety of forms. One of the Articles on this head is amusingly hypothetical. It is alleged that on a certain occasion the people were so excited by Huss’ preachings against the Archbishop and his clergy, that they went straight from the chapel “with great tumult and noise