Page:The life & times of Master John Hus by Count Lützow.djvu/209

 those of the “disputations” in which he had so often taken part in Prague. He did not think that the council would proceed almost exactly on the lines of the trials instituted by the inquisition, that he would merely be summoned to recant all statements attributed to him by his enemies—whether he had ever made them or not—and that in case of his refusal he would be delivered over to the civic authorities to suffer death at the stake.

Meanwhile the negotiations between Venceslas’s treacherous brother Sigismund and Pope John XXIII., which were to lead to the meeting of the council at Constance, had already begun. The diavolo cardinale was strongly opposed to a general council of the church, and particularly to one held outside the frontiers of Italy. He still had in that country a large military force by means of which he could, should a council meet in Italy, exercise over it the same dictatorial power which he had previously exercised at Pisa and Rome. On the other hand, the pope was obliged to consider the wishes of King Sigismund, for the two rival popes still had many adherents. Another difficulty that confronted the pope was that, even at that unscrupulous and unspeakably corrupt period, his evil life caused much scandal. At the recent “private council,” if we may call it so, Baldassare Cossa was said to have stopped on their way to Rome and ordered back all prelates whom he believed to be hostile to his cause. Sigismund, whose help against his old enemy, the King of Naples, Cossa then desired, was intent on furthering the meeting of a general council of the church, which was to assemble under his control in an imperial free city. He rightly thought that nothing would contribute more to the restoration of the somewhat faded prestige of the empire. The fact that war was then about to break out between England and France also made the moment appear a favourable one for reviving the glories of the Holy Roman Empire. It is probable that to the humble priest John of Husinec Sigismund also assigned a