Page:John Huss by Hastings Rashdall (1879).pdf/25

 added to it one of Interdict against the place of his abode. Huss’ proctors, still remonstrating against the sentence, were imprisoned. One of them, however, the learned civilian and canonist Jesenic of Prague, managed to escape, and returned to Bohemia. There he published a treatise in which he attempted to demonstrate the canonical nullity of all the proceedings hitherto taken against Huss. But it was in vain to show that rules had been disregarded which owed their validity to the same authority which now set them aside; and Huss saw no reason to hope that he should obtain from an assembly of Cardinals and Bishops that justice which individual Cardinals and Bishops denied him. Accordingly, towards the close of 1412, he appealed not to a General Council, but to “the only just Judge, Jesus Christ.” This appeal curiously illustrates a very marked characteristic of Huss’ mind, the combination of great moral fearlessness with great intellectual or theological caution. The document by which he really declares his revolt from the whole system of Sacerdotal Christianity, is worded with all the precision and formality of a legal instrument. Great moral principles and the merest technicalities appear side by side. He enumerates the causes which prevented his personal appearance at Rome, shows that the principles of Canon Law and of natural justice had alike been violated in the proceedings of the Papal Courts, and in justification of his conduct appeals to our Lord’s disobedience to the Jewish Sanhedrim, and to the authority of Chrysostom, of Bishop Andrew of Prague, and Robert Grostête, Bishop of Lincoln, whom he imagines to have made similar appeals under similar circumstances.

There is one part of this document which must not be passed over. Huss states that his proctors had declared themselves “willing to oppose themselves with any one who should be willing to the punishment of fire and make themselves parties in the Roman Court:” L’Enfant sees in these words a proposal to submit the questions at issue to the decision of the Ordeal of Fire. But Huss nowhere shows any disposition to countenance popular superstitions: he believed that recent miracles were either impostures or due to the agency of evil spirits. Moreover, trials by Ordeal had long been condemned by the Church, and it is probable that they had by this time fallen into general disuse. It is far more probable that the offer of his proctors was only a repetition of the challenge which he had already made in person to the eight Doctors. At all events, it is quite inconceivable that one who on all other occasions showed himself rash only when others were in danger, should seriously have proposed to remain at home while his representatives offered to be burnt on his behalf. Both Huss and his proctors must have known perfectly well that the proposal