Page:The life & times of Master John Hus by Count Lützow.djvu/274

 They maintained that none of the outrages mentioned by Bishop John had actually occurred. It is a fact that, though matters changed after the treacherous murder of Hus, no act of sacrilege had at that time been committed in Bohemia. The Bohemians also again appealed to the Emperor Sigismund, an act that does more credit to their ingenuousness than to their sagacity. Sigismund, who, by a decree of April 8, had revoked all letters of safe-conduct previously granted by him, now shielded himself entirely under the authority of the council and did not reply to the appeal of the Bohemians.

None the less the Bohemians, encouraged by the news that their countrymen at Prague and Brno had protested against the imprisonment of Hus, attempted to appeal again to the council. Mladenovic, again acting as spokesman, delivered a lengthy speech before the members of the council assembled, in the refectory of the minorite monastery. After again referring to Sigismund’s letter of safe-conduct, he made the important suggestion that Hus, who had been neither convicted nor condemned, should be delivered from the fetters and chains in which he was now cruelly imprisoned, and should be placed in the custody of some bishops, or worthy men, appointed by the council, who would examine him and confer with him, when he had recovered his health. The nobles of Bohemia were meanwhile prepared to provide sureties—men who would not break their faith for anything in the world, and who would guarantee that Hus would make no attempt whatever to escape from Constance before his case was judged.

To this new proposal the council returned an immediate answer. On the very day of the speech of Mladenovic—May 31—the patriarch of Antioch, in the name of the delegates of the council, declared that with regard to the alleged misrepresentation of Hus’s statements, those acquainted with his language would decide. As the men thus referred to were the Bishop of Litomysl, Palec, and Michael de causis, his bitterest enemies