Page:John Huss by Hastings Rashdall (1879).pdf/24

 pain of death. But the popular excitement was not to be suppressed by threats. When one of the indulgence-hawkers was discoursing in the accustomed strain upon the value of his wares, three young artizans in the crowd shouted out, “Thou liest! Master Huss has taught us better than that. We know it is all a lie.” The culprits were seized, taken before the magistrates, and condemned to death. Huss immediately proceeded to the Council-chamber at the head of a crowd of two thousand students, and there demanded with all the eloquence of indignation the remission of the sentence. “I did it,” he exclaimed, “and I will bear the penalty. I and all who are with me are ready to receive the same sentence.” The Senate feared the people, and promised that the sentence should not be carried out. But no sooner had the mob dispersed, than the prisoners were hurried off to the place of execution. The affair got wind, and the officers were obliged to behead their prisoners on the road, just in time to anticipate a rescue. The criminals were treated as martyrs. Handkerchiefs were dipped in their blood; and their burial-place, the Chapel of Bethlehem, was named the Chapel of the Three Saints.

The dispute between Huss and the Doctors continued. The King, while he asserted his orthodoxy by prohibiting the teaching of the doctrines on the subject of Indulgences condemned by the Faculty, consulted his own inclinations and the safety of his throne by refusing to silence his Consort’s popular chaplain. When told to refute the heretic instead of trying to shut his mouth, the Doctors complained that Huss would not commit his opinions to writing. Huss offered to accept their challenge, on condition that whichever party should be vanquished in the disputation, should suffer death at the stake. The eight Doctors having seriously debated the proposal, submitted that the forfeit on their side should be the death of only one of their number. Huss refused to assent to the unequal terms. Who was to be the umpire in this strange contest, is a question which does not appear to have suggested itself to either side.

The Theologians now sought to obtain from the Holy Father that redress, rather vengeance, which their own sovereign refused them they sent a paid agent to Rome, one Michael de Causis, who having fled from Bohemia with a considerable amount of the King’s money in his pockets, had adopted the suitable profession of a “Proctor in matters of Faith " in the Papal Courts. It would be tedious to trace the history of the suit through all its mysterious transferences from one Cardinal to another. The upshot of the matter was that the Cardinal de S. Angelo refused to dispense with a personal appearance on the part of Huss, condemned him for contumacy, confirmed the sentence of excommucationexcommunication [sic] previously pronounced against him and his adherents, and