Page:The life & times of Master John Hus by Count Lützow.djvu/148

 and he did not hesitate to use it. In accordance with the papal bull he appointed six councillors. They were all men strongly opposed to Wycliffe’s doctrinal teaching and to church-reform — totally different matters, which it was the archbishop’s policy to consider identical. In direct contradiction to the wording of the papal bull, Hus immediately appealed to the pope, stating that he (the pope) had been wrongly informed, as it had not yet been proved that any one in Bohemia had obstinately (i.e., in opposition to the ecclesiastical authorities) defended the teaching of Wycliffe and, as Archbishop Zbynek had himself declared in 1408, that Bohemia was free from heresy. The councillors, undoubtedly formally in the right, ignored this appeal. It soon became known in Prague that their decision would be in accordance with the papal bull, that they would express themselves in favour of the destruction of Wycliffe’s writings and of the suppression of preaching in the Bethlehem chapel. The university was, however, still on the side of Hus. At a general meeting on June 15, under the presidency of John Sindler, who had succeeded Hus as rector, the members of the university protested against the intention of burning Wycliffe’s writings and appealed to the king, begging him to forbid this destruction, which would give great offence both to the kingdom and to the university.

Zbynek, now entirely in accordance with the papal see, was not to be deterred by protests of scholars whom as a true mediæval warrior he probably held in great contempt. He took immediate action. On June 16, the day after the meeting of the university, the customary summer convocation of the clergy took place at St. Vitus’s cathedral. The papal bull, as well as the result of the deliberations of the theologians consulted by Zbynek, were read to the assembly. The decree of the councillors stated that eighteen of Wycliffe’s works, among them the Dialogus and Trialogus, were heretical, and that all who possessed copies of these works were to bring