Page:The life & times of Master John Hus by Count Lützow.djvu/108

 took a prominent part, and the equally repulsive facts that came to his knowledge in consequence of the supervision of the clergy with which the archbishop had entrusted him, rendered Hus yet more bitter when writing and speaking of the Bohemian priests. He thus drew on himself the undying hatred of many of the priests of Prague, particularly of those whose life was not irreproachable. It was, indeed, mainly on the testimony of such men that Hus was afterwards condemned at Constance.

Meanwhile the university and town of Prague had, partly in consequence of the revelations of Wilsnack, again become a hotbed of theological strife. The fact that the bleeding wafers had been misused in an obviously fraudulent manner led to a truly scholastic controversy on the substance of the blood of Christ. Hus took part in this controversy by means of two of his earliest Latin works, entitled respectively, De Corpore Christi and De Sanguine Christi. The last-named treatise refers directly to the investigation of the so-called miracles of Wilsnack, and was written by order of the archbishop. The older manuscripts mention that it was approved by the archbishop and the University of Prague, while the later ones, written after Hus had been cast off by the Roman Church, state that the treatise had been rejected by the archbishop and university.

As has been frequently pointed out, the question of the sacrament was in Bohemia very closely connected with the pretensions of the priests whose privilege it was to administer it. Hus’s attitude with regard to the pseudo-miracles of Wilsnack no doubt irritated yet further the clergy of Prague, already deeply offended by his outspokenness, and jealous of his success as a preacher. The contemporary chroniclers all attribute the troubles of Hus to the imprudence he showed in