Page:The letters of John Hus.djvu/241

 has been preserved for us. So far as news from Hus is concerned, the months of his second imprisonment are a sheer blank.

The months of silence were, however, big with momentous issues both for Hus and the Church. But at these great issues we may only lightly glance. The course of the fugitive Pope was soon run. Within a few weeks John was deposed ‘as unworthy, useless, and harmful, a chosen vessel of all sins.’ The papal arms were removed from his dwelling, and he himself, after solemnly agreeing to his own deposition, was sent ‘with only a cook’ to Gottlieben, and confined in the east tower. So for two days Pope John, convicted, according to the Council, on fifty-four charges, was a fellow prisoner with John Hus. History contains few instances of greater contrast, certainly none more ironical in its final issue. The Council had condemned the Pope for the foulest of crimes. According to their own showing, whatever be its worth, John XXIII. was a monster scarcely fit to live. His punishment was a trifling term of imprisonment and a later reward. Hus, on the contrary, was acknowledged even by his enemies to be a man illustrious for his purity of life. But he had dared to follow one who thought for himself. His very virtues but made it the more needful that he should be burnt. Revolt against its system was the one crime for which the mediæval Church had no pardons to sell.

With the outbreak of the struggle between John and the Council, the trial of Hus, as we have seen, had been suspended. But after the deposition of the Pope there was once more leisure for the heretic. In fact, as soon as it was plain that the Pope’s flight would prove his undoing, the Council returned to its task. On April 6 a new Commission was appointed, with D’Ailli at the head, to examine the heresies of Wyclif and Hus. But D’Ailli was too busy to give the needed attention, so on the 17th the matter was transferred to another committee of four, one from each of the four nations. On May 4 they brought in an interim report. Wyclif was condemned on no less than two hundred and sixty different counts, though the main stress was laid on the famous forty-five articles. Wyclif’s writings were ordered to be burnt, ‘his bones to be dug up and cast out of the consecrated ground, provided they could be identified from those of Christians buried near’ (Hardt iv. 142–57).

The greater involves the less, and the condemnation of Wyclif practically sealed the fate of Hus, though for technical reasons