Page:The life & times of Master John Hus by Count Lützow.djvu/144

 with many of the views expressed in them, but he also always disclaimed the complete and exclusive dependence on Wycliffe which his detractors have attributed to him both during his lifetime and in more recent days.

The attempts of Archbishop Zbynek to enforce severer measures against Hus were not at first successful. As long as the archbishop opposed the cardinals assembled at Pisa, and the newly-elected pope Alexander V., he could expect no aid from the church. The adherents of Hus even brought complaints against Zbynek before Pope Alexander, who had indeed summoned Zbynek before his tribunal when the news of the submission of the Archbishop of Prague arrived. An immediate change took place. As Dr. Flajshans writes, the pope preferred as an ally the mighty archbishop to the humble preacher. The archbishop’s officials now attacked Hus not only as a defamer of the clergy of Prague, but also as an adherent of Wycliffe. Wycliffe, as noted above, was to serve as an arm against Hus; he and his friends were to be stigmatised as favourers of the heretical views of the English reformer, as restless and dangerous men; thus would a stain cling to all their attempts to reform the church—attempts which the archbishop himself had formerly favoured and forwarded.

Zbynek opened his new campaign by again referring to the accusations against Hus which the parish priest of Prague had already brought forward in the preceding year (1408). He demanded an explanation of the conduct of Hus, and stated that new complaints against him had been brought to his knowledge. The very curious document which contains these accusations throws a strong light on the vast system of espionage which surrounded Hus long before he had been declared an enemy of the church. The parochial clergy of Prague were bent on the ruin of Hus at a time when he was