Page:The life & times of Master John Hus by Count Lützow.djvu/206

 strength of which he was believed to have been a tolerant and enlightened divine, Gerson’s violent attack on the Bohemian church-reformers no longer causes surprise. In a letter sent from Paris on May 27, 1414, to the new Archbishop Conrad, Gerson denounced the heretical views that were then being spread in Bohemia, and earnestly entreated the archbishop to extirpate at any price all doctrines and practices contrary to the Roman Church. Gerson laid great stress on the necessity of employing if necessary the secular arm. This, he continued, the archbishop should do at any price lest his sheep be infected with the poison of heresy; for St. Peter, who had confided them to him, had ordered him to feed them, not to allow them to be poisoned. Archbishop Conrad was to appeal to King Venceslas to advise, request, and, if necessary, order him to exterminate all heresies, if he wished to avoid the penalties that awaited all rulers who were lax in the persecution of heretics. Conrad’s answer was very short. He entirely joined in the reprobation of the “heresiarch” Wycliffe, and said that as far as it was his duty and circumstances permitted he would extirpate heresy, even at the risk of his soul or his body. Conrad, who had been a member of the royal court, knew how anxious the king was to re-establish peace among the Bohemian clergy, and how strongly he objected to the intervention of foreigners in what he considered the internal affairs of his country. Gerson was by no means deterred from further attempts to obtrude his unwelcome advice. He addressed another letter to the Archbishop of Prague, in which he laid great stress on the fact that it was rather by fire and sword than by argument that the prevalent heresies should be extirpated. Gerson sent with this letter a list of heretical statements which, as he said, had been made by Hus. We