Page:John Huss by Hastings Rashdall (1879).pdf/23

 pallium of the new Primate, was also the bearer of a bull proclaiming a crusade against the Pope’s rebellious vassal, Ladislaus King of Naples, who was now ravaging the Papal territories. Plenary indulgence was promised as the reward of assistance, personal or pecuniary, against the enemy of the Church. From every pulpit the virtues of the parchments were extolled. Much was said of the potency and certainty of the charm: little of the “true penitence and confession” which were formally announced as the conditions upon which its benefits were to be obtained. Huss announced that he would hold a public disputation against the Indulgences. This was perhaps a more direct defiance of ecclesiastical authority than any of which he had hitherto been guilty. Yet the difference between this step and his former proceedings is not sufficiently marked to account for a change so sudden and so complete as that which now took place in the relations between Huss and his former friends. From the time of Huss’ opposition to the Pope’s indulgences, the reforming Doctors became zealous champions of the Papacy, and bitter enemies of Huss; and the bitterest of all was his old friend Palecz. It is reasonable to suppose that Huss must now have begun in the pulpit and in private conversation to enunciate the doctrines afterwards defended in the “Quaestio de Indulgentiis.” In that case the alarm of the most liberal Catholic is easily accounted for: for those doctrines amount to a virtual negation of the value of all Indulgences and priestly absolutions whatsoever.

Stanislaus and the rest of the Doctors of the Theological Faculty prohibited the disputation. But on the day appointed, the 17th of June, 1412, Huss appeared in his “Cathedra” in the Schools, and there boldly attacked the whole fabric of Sacerdotalism. At the conclusion of the lecture, Jerome of Prague, a far more brilliant orator than Huss, harangued the crowd of students and others who were assembled in the School, and awakened in his hearers an enthusiasm which showed that public feeling in Bohemia was already ripe for a revolt against Rome. In the evening the two Reformers were escorted home in triumph by their excited supporters.

The proceedings of this day seem to anticipate that open declaration of war against the Papacy which was inaugurated with more success a century afterwards by the burning of Leo X.’s bulls at Wittemberg. But there is a coarseness about the Bohemian demonstration which does not augur well for the future of the movement. A loose woman was placed in a chariot and carried round the town with the Papal bulls hung round her neck; a mob of armed townsmen and students followed the car and afterwards burned the lying parchments in revenge for the destruction of Wyclif ’s books.

Wenzel had consented to the publication of the bull, probably from fear of Sigismund. He now enjoined the magistrates to prohibit all insults to the Pope or resistance to his bulls under 4em