Page:The life & times of Master John Hus by Count Lützow.djvu/254

 about his ruin. They naturally considered it very favourable to their cause that Hus had through their influence been cast into prison. Mainly through the influence of the Bohemian enemies of Hus, who disposed of very large pecuniary means, the council on December 4 appointed three commissioners, John, (titular) patriarch of Constantinople, and the Bishops John of Lübeck and Bernard of Città di Castello, who were to report on the case of Hus. Michael de causis, the Judas of Bohemia, had drawn up a series of accusations against him. The heretical statements of which he was accused were principally derived from Hus’s treatise De Ecclesia. Some of these accusations were palpably and positively false; thus it was affirmed that Hus had said that the substance of bread remained in the sacrament after consecration and that unworthy priests could not validly administer communion. Much ingenuity was displayed also by Michael’s accomplice Palec, who described accusations made by Hus against Pope John XXIII.—far more moderate than those afterwards sanctioned by the council—as general accusations against papacy. It is difficult to imagine a greater amount of ignoble and mendacious sophistry than that which was produced by Michael de causis and Stephen Palec.

It is almost pitiful to imagine the position of a simple, truthful, and honest man as was Hus when attacked by such unscrupulous and mendacious adversaries. He seems himself to have felt the necessity of obtaining legal advice, and begged to be allowed to employ a lawyer for his defence. In distinction from a large number of priests of his day who were better jurists than theologians, Hus had devoted his time to preaching and writing in favour of the cause of church-reform, as well as to theological study. Michael de causis, on the other hand, was the type of the most unscrupulous and cunning