Page:The Hussite wars, by the Count Lützow.djvu/315

 regretted the wrong that had been done to the Bohemians for so long a time by calling them heretics. He described the condition of the primitive Church and regretted that men should have turned away from it at the present time. He then thanked the Council for the great efforts it had made to reconcile the Bohemians with the universal Church, and finally begged that the embassy be granted a public hearing, as had been agreed at Cheb. The first reception of the envoys being a purely formal one, it was necessary to enter into detailed discussions. In his answer Cardinal Cesarini, ignoring the other points in Rokycan’s speech, said that the Council was ready at any time to grant the Bohemians a hearing, and that he begged them to settle themselves the day when this should take place.

As was natural, both parties agreed that the principal subject of the discussions should be the famed articles of Prague. The Bohemians, on the request of Cardinal Cesarini, chose Friday, January 16, as the day on which the disputations should begin. On that day John of Maulbronn and several other ecclesiastics conducted the Bohemian embassy to the Dominican monastery, where the members of the Council had already assembled. Matthew Louda, in the name of the Bohemians, first addressed the assembly. He informed the Council that the Bohemians had long desired to be reconciled with the universal Church through the mediation of King Sigismund, but that their endeavours had always been fruitless. He then thanked the members of the Council for allowing him and his countrymen to appear before their august assembly. Immediately afterwards John of Rokycan opened his defence of the first article of Prague, concerning the necessity of Communion in the two kinds. In his lengthy dissertation, which was continued on the 17th and roth, he referred to the customs and traditions of the primitive Church and maintained the necessity of Communion in the form in which the Sacrament had been instituted by Jesus Christ. Though not able to agree