Page:The letters of John Hus.djvu/64

 secure of his own position, Zbinek accused the Wyclifists of being the source of all the mischief. He had his reward on December 20. Alexander quashed the citation, and conferred upon Zbinek a commission to take strong steps against the heretics, forbidding also all preaching ‘in chapels, even those which had privileges granted by the Apostolic See.’ This last was an attack upon the BethehemBethlehem [sic], whose rights had been ratified by Gregory XII. (May 15, 1408). Alexander further ordered that all books of Wyclif should be delivered up to the Archbishop, ‘that they might be removed from the eyes of the faithful.’

On the publication of this bull in Prague (March 9, 1410), Hus and his friends handed over to the Archbishop certain works of Wyclif: ‘When,’ they added, ‘you have found any errors in them, be pleased to point them out to us, and we shall be glad to denounce them publicly.’ Zbinek’s sole reply was an order that seventeen books of Wyclif, whose names are given, should be burnt, ‘the remaining books of the said John, heresiarch, to await’ fuller examination. Notice of this decision, endowed by a synod in Prague, was served upon Hus and his associates (June 16). The fact that several of the condemned works were purely philosophical shows that the Nominalist faction had not been altogether silenced by the expulsion of the Germans.

Against this attack on its freedom the University at once protested (June 21). Hus, who especially resented the prohibition of further preaching in the Bethlehem, had already appealed on his own account ‘to Alexander himself that he might be better informed.’ On his decease, Hus and others (among whom we notice Zdislaw of Wartenberg and Peter of Zepekow, a student who owned the copy of the De Ecclesia of Wyclif now in the University Library at Prague) further appealed to John XXIII. (June 25), urging that with the death of Alexander the commission had become null and void. They had obtained, they pleaded, the books of Wyclif ‘at great trouble and cost.’ Only a fool ‘would condemn to be burnt treatises, logical, philosophical, mathematical, moral, which contain many noble truths, but no errors. By the same reasoning we must burn the books of Aristotle, the commentaries of Averrhoes, or the works of Origen.’ They further protested against the charge that Bohemia was full of heretics, quoting against Zbinek his own declaration. Alexander’s bull, they concluded, was obtained by fraud and forgery, in which last the friars had borne a hand.