Page:The Church, by John Huss.pdf/21

Rh Huss went still further, in declaring that popes may be præsciti, reprobates, though legitimately elected to their office. Without definitely assigning by name this or that pontiff to hell, as did Dante, yet Huss declared that popes there have been who had conferred ample indulgences by word— verbaliter—and are damned. Christ chose a thief as an Apostle: so may the cardinals choose an antichrist as Roman pontiff. The only standard by which it can be judged whether a pope is a vicar of Christ or antichrist is by his conformity to the law of Christ in daily life and ministries.

The outward display assumed by popes, the kissing of their feet, the name most holy—sanctissimus—by which they allowed themselves to be addressed, Huss stigmatized, as Luther did a hundred years later, as incompatible with their holy office.

The origin of all this false pomp Huss found, as Wyclif did before him, in the donation of Constantine, the fictitious gift assed off upon credulous Europe by the pseudo-Isidorian Decretals in the ninth century and to which appeal continued to be made down to Alexander VI in his bull distributing America between Spain and Portugal "forever," and later. As a compensation for being healed of leprosy by Sylvester, Constantine bequeathed to that pontiff and his successors civil rule over Rome and all the regions of the West and conferred upon them the crown and the other insignia of temporal lordship and glory. This imperial gift, Wyclif and Huss contended, was the beginning of the decline of the church from its pristine purity, and modern—moderni—popes and cardinals who protruded their feet to be kissed and gloried in the address "most holy" did not possess a scintilla of sanctity and utterly lacked the power