Page:John Huss by Hastings Rashdall (1879).pdf/18

 before the Archbishop’s Court with seditious words, and unless the Archbishop had taken care to have them removed, he (Huss) would perchance have brought it about that some one should have been maltreated.” Another charge is that the accused had ventured some years back, in private conversation, to question the propriety of laying a whole town under interdict because the Archbishop of Prague had been ducked and his Dean “detained.” There are two Articles of a more serious character, which show that during this year the germs of those strangely expressed anti-sacerdotal doctrines which were elaborated in the books condemned at Constance, had already taken shape in their author’s mind. Huss is reported to have said, “What is the Roman Church? There it is that Anti-Christ has fixed his foot which cannot easily be moved:”—and again, “No prelate can excommunicate any one unless God excommunicate him first.” Moreover now began a long series of unfounded attacks upon the orthodoxy of his Sacramental teaching. He is charged with having maintained that “a priest in mortal sin cannot make the true body of Christ.” The important qualification “worthily” had been omitted: the fact that the unworthy priest effected the miraculous transformation was never, either now or at any later period, denied by John Huss.

From the Court of the Archbishop Huss appealed to the Pope, apparently before any trial had taken place: and before the close of the year (Dec. 1409) Zbynek was cited to Rome. Pending the appeal, proceedings were stayed. But events had now taken place which gave the Archbishop a fresh pretext for silencing the dangerous preacher.

The long Schism was gradually sapping the foundations of the Papal supremacy. For thirty years it had been uncertain which half of Christendom was ruled by the Vicar of Christ: nor was the spiritual vitality of either such as to warrant an experimental determination of the question. Under these circumstances there was no small ground for fearing that men might begin to ask themselves whether after all an earthly Head was necessary to the Church’s well-being. But in the meantime all the abuses of the Roman Court flourished in two places at once: Christendom was preyed upon by two Pontiffs instead of one. The Schism was injurious alike to the material interests of Churchmen, and to the spiritual efficiency of the Church. On all hands it began to be felt that some amendment were required in a theory of Church Unity which unchurched one half—no man could say which half—of the Western commonwealth of nations. Under such circumstances the eyes of Europe were naturally turned to the theologians of that University which had long been known as the sworn foe of the sworn champions of the Papacy, the Mendicant Friars, if not