A History of The Inquisition of The Middle Ages Volume II Part 18

It is not our province to follow in detail this b.l.o.o.d.y struggle, in which for ten years the Hussites successfully defied all the forces that Martin and Sigismund could raise against them. When the crusaders came they presented a united front, but within the line of common defence they were torn with dissensions, bitter in proportion to their exaltation of religious feeling. The right of private judgment when once established, by admitting the doctrines of Wickliff and Huss, was not easily restrained, nor could it be expected that those who were persecuted would learn from persecution the lesson of tolerance. In the wild tumult, intellectual, moral, and social, which convulsed Bohemia, no doctrines were too extravagant to lack believers.

In 1418 it is related that forty Pikardi with their wives and children came to Prague, where they were hospitably received and cared for by Queen Sophia and other persons of rank. They had no priest, but one of their number used to read to them out of certain little books, and they took communion in one element. They vanish from view without leaving a trace of their influence, and were doubtless Beghards driven from their homes and seeking a refuge beyond the reach of orthodoxy. Yet their name remained, and was long used in Bohemia as a term of the bitterest contempt for those who denied transubstantiation. Subsequently, however, there was a more portentous demonstration of the Brethren of the Free Spirit. A stranger, said to come from Flanders, whose name, "Pichardus," shows evidently that he was a Beghard, disseminated the doctrine of the Brethren, and among other things that nakedness was essential to purity, which we have seen was one of the extravagances of the sect. The practice was one which in a more settled state of society could not have been ventured on, but in Bohemia he found little difficulty in obtaining quite a large following of both s.e.xes, with whom he settled on an island in the river Luznic, and dignified them with the name of Adamites. Perhaps they might have flourished undisturbed had not fanaticism, or possibly retaliation for aggression, led them to make a foray on the mainland and slay some two hundred peasants, whom they styled children of the devil. Ziska's attention being thus drawn to them, he captured the island and exterminated them. Fifty of them, men and women, were burned at Klokot, and those who escaped were hunted down and gradually shared the same fate, which they met with undaunted cheerfulness, laughing and singing as they went to the stake.[558]

In the sudden removal of ecclesiastical repression of free thought it was inevitable that unbalanced minds should riot in extravagant speculation. Among the zealots who subsequently developed into the sect of the Taborites there was at first a strong tendency to apocalyptic prophecy suited to the times. First, there was to be a period of unsparing vengeance, during which safety could be found only in five specified cities of refuge, after which would follow the second advent of Christ, and the reign of peace and love among the elect, and earth would become a paradise. At first, the destruction of the wicked was to be the work of G.o.d, but as pa.s.sions became fiercer it was held to be the duty of the righteous to cut them off without sparing. These Chiliasts or Millenarians had for their leader Martin Huska, surnamed Loquis, on account of his eloquence, and numbered among them Coranda and other prominent Taborite priests. Waldensian influence is visible in some features of their faith, and they rendered themselves peculiarly obnoxious by the denial of transubstantiation. For this they were exposed to pitiless persecution wherever their adversaries could exercise it. One of their leading members, a cobbler of Prague, named Wenceslas, was burned in a hogshead, July 23, 1421, for refusing to rise at the elevation of the host, and soon afterwards three priests shared the same fate because they refused to light candles before the sacrament. Martin Loquis himself was arrested in February of the same year, but was released at the intercession of the Taborites, and set out with a companion to seek Procopius in Moravia. At Chrudim, however, the travellers were arrested, and were burned at Hradisch after two months of torture vainly inflicted to wean them from their errors and force them to reveal the names of their a.s.sociates. As a distinct sect the Chiliasts speedily disappear from view, but their members remained a portion of the Taborites, the development of whose opinions they profoundly influenced. In the delegation sent to Basle, in 1433, Peter of Zatce, who represented the Orphans, had been a Chiliast.[559]

Thus these minor sects vanished as parties organized themselves in a permanent form, and the Bohemian reformers are found divided into two camps--the moderates, known as Calixtins or Utraquists, from their chief characteristic, the administration of the cup to the laity, and the extremists, or Taborites.

The Calixtins virtually regarded the teachings of Huss and Jacobel of Mies, as a finality. When, after the death of Wenceslas, the necessity of some definite declaration of principles was felt, the University of Prague, on August 1, 1420, adopted, with but one dissenting voice, four articles which became for more than a century the distinguis.h.i.+ng platform of their sect. As concisely enunciated by the University they appeared simple enough: I. Free preaching of the Word of G.o.d; II.

Communion in both elements for the laity; III. The clergy to be deprived of all dominion over temporal possessions, and to be reduced to the evangelical life of Christ and the apostles; IV. All offences against divine law to be punished without exception of person or condition.

These four articles were speedily accepted by the strongly Calixtin community of Prague, and were proclaimed to the world in various forms which added to their completeness and rendered their purport definite.

Any one was declared a heretic who did not accept the Apostles', Athanasian, and Nicene creeds, the seven sacraments of the Church, and the existence of purgatory. Offences against the law of G.o.d were declared to be worthy of death, both of the offender and those who connived at them, and were defined to be, among the people, fornication, banqueting, theft, homicide, perjury, lying, arts superfluous, deceitful, and superst.i.tious, avarice, usury, etc.: among the clergy, simoniacal exactions, such as fees for administering the sacraments, for preaching, burying, bell-ringing, consecration of churches and altars, as well as the sale of preferment; also concubinage and fornication, quarrels, vexing and spoiling the people with frivolous citations, greedy exactions of tribute, etc.[560]

Upon this basis the Calixtin Church proceeded to organize itself in a council held at Prague in 1421. Four leading doctors, John of Przibram, Procopius of Pilsen, Jacobel of Mies, and John of Neuberg, were made supreme governors of the clergy throughout the kingdom, with absolute power of punishment. No one was to teach any new doctrine without first submitting it to them or to a provincial synod. Transubstantiation was emphatically affirmed as well as the seven sacraments. The daily use of the Eucharist was recommended to all, including infants and the sick.

The canon of the ma.s.s was simplified and restored to primitive usage.

Auricular confession was prescribed, as well as the use of the chrism and of holy water in baptism. Clerks were to be distinguished by tonsure, vestments, and conduct. Every priest was to possess a copy of the Scriptures, or at least of the New Testament, and stringent regulations were adopted for the preservation of priestly morality, including the prohibition of their protection by any layman after conviction.[561]

Thus the Calixtin Church kept as close as possible to the old lines. It accepted all Catholic dogmas, even the power of the keys in sacramental penance, and only was a protest and revolt against the abuses which had grown out of the worldly aspirations of the clergy. It was a Puritan reform, and it founded a Puritan society. When, after the reconciliation effected at Basle, on the basis of the four articles, Sigismund, in 1436, held his court in Prague, the Bohemians speedily complained that the city was becoming a Sodom with dicing, tavern-haunting, and public women. It must have sounded strange to them to be coolly told by a Christian prelate, the Bishop of Coutances, who was the legate of the council empowered to enforce the settlement, that it would be well if public sins could be eradicated, but that strumpets must be tolerated to prevent greater evils.[562]

The Calixtins thus sought to keep themselves strictly within the pale of orthodoxy, and deemed themselves greatly injured and insulted by the appellation of heretic. After the reconciliation of 1436 one of their most constant causes of complaint was that they were still stigmatized as heretics, and that the Council of Basle would not issue letters proclaiming to Christendom that they were regarded as faithful sons of the Church. In 1464, after successive popes had repeatedly refused to ratify the pacification of Basle and had excommunicated as hardened heretics George Podiebrad and all who acknowledged him as king, when George sent an emba.s.sy to Louis XI. of France, Kostka of Postubitz, the envoy, and his attendants were more than once surprised and annoyed to find that the people of the towns through which they pa.s.sed were disposed to regard them as heretics. The position of the Bohemian Calixtins was an anomalous one which has no parallel in the history of mediaeval Christendom.[563]

In the intellectual and spiritual excitement which stirred Bohemia to the depths, it was impossible that all earnest souls should thus pause on the threshold. The old Waldensian heretics, who had hailed the progress of Wickliffite and Hussite doctrines, would naturally seek to prevent the arrested development of the Calixtins from prevailing, and, as we have seen, there were plenty of zealots who were ready to throw aside all the theology of sacerdotalism. Under the energetic leaders.h.i.+p of Ziska, Coranda, Nicholas of Pilgram, and other resolute men, the progressive elements were rapidly moulded into a powerful party, which after sloughing off impracticable enthusiasts presented itself with a definite creed and purpose, and became known as the Taborites. Of late years there has been an active controversy as to whether the Waldenses were the teachers or the disciples of the Taborites. Without denying that the fearless vigor of the latter lent added strength to the development of the former, I cannot but think that the secret Waldensianism of Bohemia had much to do both with the revolt of Huss and with the carrying out of that revolt to its logical consequences.

Certain it is that there were close and friendly relations between Waldensian and Taborite, while the very name of the former was regarded by all other Bohemians as a term of reproach--in fact there was so much in common between Wickliffite and Waldensian doctrine that this could scarce be otherwise. I have already alluded to the contributions made to the Hussites in 1432 by the Waldensian churches of Dauphine, and to the virtual coalescence of Hussitism and Waldensianism throughout Germany.

When Procopius the Great, in 1433, was taking leave of the Council of Basle, he had the hardihood to inject into his address a good word for the Waldenses, saying that he had heard them well spoken of for chast.i.ty, modesty, and similar virtues. Persecution in 1430 so thinned them out that they had neither bishop nor priests; Nicholas of Pilgram, the Taborite bishop, had enjoyed consecration in the Roman Church, and thus had the right to transmit the apostolic succession, and he, in 1433, in Prague consecrated for the Waldenses as bishops two of their number, Frederic the German, and John the Italian. When, in 1451, aeneas Sylvius pa.s.sed a night in Mount Tabor, and wrote a picturesque description of what he observed, he states that while all heresies had a refuge there, the Waldenses were held in chief honor as the vicars of Christ and enemies of the Holy See.[564]

When the Calixtins, in 1421, defined their position, the Taborites did the same. Various special Waldensian errors were attracting attention and obtaining currency among the people--the denial of purgatory, the vitiation of the sacrament in sinful hands, the absolute rejection of the death-punishment and of the oath--showing the influences at work.

The position a.s.sumed by the Taborites was so strikingly similar to the beliefs ascribed in 1395 to the Waldenses in Austria by the Celestinian inquisitor, Peter, that it is impossible not to recognize the connection between them. While the Taborites accepted the four articles of the Calixtins they reduced the Church to a state of the utmost apostolic simplicity. Tradition was wholly thrown aside; all images were to be burned; there was no outward sign of distinction between layman and priest, the latter wearing beards, rejecting the tonsure, and using ordinary garments; all priests, moreover, were bishops, and could perform the rite of consecration; they baptized in running water, without the chrism, celebrated ma.s.s anywhere, reciting the simple words of consecration and the Paternoster in a loud voice and in the vernacular, administering the body in fragments of bread and the blood in any vessel which might be handy; all consecrations of sacred vessels, oil, and water was forbidden; purgatory, which Huss had accepted, was denied, and to manifest their contempt for the suffrages of the saints they ate more than usual on fast-days and saints'-days; auricular confession was derided--for venial sins confession to G.o.d sufficed, for mortal ones, public confession before the brethren, when the priest would a.s.sign a penalty commensurate with the offence. At the same time the rude and uncultured vigor of the Taborites led them to regard all human learning as a snare. Those who studied the liberal arts were regarded as heathen and as sinning against the Gospel, and all writings of the doctors, save what were expressly contained in the Bible, were to be destroyed.[565]

What were their views with respect to the Lord's Supper cannot be stated with precision. Laurence of Brezowa, a Calixtin bitterly hostile to them, says that they consecrated the elements in a loud voice and in the vulgar tongue, that the people might be a.s.sured that they were receiving the real body and the real blood, which infers belief in transubstantiation. In 1431 Procopius the Great and other leaders of the Taborites issued a proclamation defining their position, in which they a.s.serted their disbelief in purgatory, in the intercessory power of the Virgin and saints, in ma.s.ses for the dead, in absolution through indulgences, etc., but said nothing against transubstantiation. When, in 1436, the legates of the Council of Basle complained of the non-observance of the Compactata, one of their grievances was that Bohemia still sheltered Wickliffites who believed in the remanence of the substance of the bread, but they said nothing about the existence of any worse form of belief. On the other hand, the Taborite Bishop, Nicholas of Pilgram, strongly a.s.serted that Christ was only present spiritually, that no veneration was due to the consecrated elements, and that there was less idolatry in those who of old adored moles and bats and snakes than in Christians who wors.h.i.+pped the host, for those things at least had life. During the negotiations, in January, 1433, the legates of the council presented a series of twenty-eight articles, attributed to the Bohemians, and asked for definite answers, yea or nay.

One of these was a denial of transubstantiation, and the Bohemians could never be induced to make the desired reply. Peter Chelcicky reproached the Taborites with concealing their belief on the subject, but it is probable that there was no absolute accord among them. The Chiliast leaven doubtless spread the denial of transubstantiation; others probably adopted the Wickliffite doctrine of remanence; others again may have preserved the orthodox faith, and all resented the appellation of Pikards, with which the Bohemians designated those who disbelieved in the absolute conversion of the elements. Certain it is that the question did not come up with any prominence in the negotiations with the Council of Basle; and in the description which aeneas Sylvius gives, in 1451, of the Taborites of Mount Tabor he simply says that some of them are so foolish that they hold the doctrine of Berenger, that the body of Christ is only figuratively in the sacrament.[566]

It was impossible that harmony could be preserved between Taborite and Calixtin when there was so marked a divergence of religious conviction.

They quarrelled and held conferences and persecuted each other, but they presented a united front to the levies of crusaders which Europe repeatedly sent against them, and Sigismund's hope of reconquering the throne of his fathers grew more and more remote. The death of Ziska, in 1424, made little difference, save that his immediate followers organized themselves into a separate party under the name of Orphans, but continued in all things to co-operate with the Taborites. He was succeeded in the leaders.h.i.+p by the warrior-priest Procopius Rasa, or the Great, whose military skill continued to hold banded Europe at bay.

Hussitism, moreover, was spreading into the neighboring lands, especially to the south and east, requiring, as we shall see hereafter, the strenuous efforts of the Inquisition to eradicate it from Hungary and the Danubian provinces. In Poland its missionary efforts called forth an edict from King Ladislas V., April 6, 1424, ordering all his subjects to join in exterminating heretics; every Pole who returned from a sojourn in Bohemia was subjected to examination by the inquisitors or episcopal officials, and all who should not return by June 1 were declared heretics, their estates confiscated, and their children subjected to the customary disabilities.[567] The Church was completely baffled. It had triumphed over a similar revolt in Languedoc, and had shown the world, in characters of blood and fire, how it utilized its triumphs. It now had a different problem to solve. Force having failed, it was obliged to discover some formula of reconciliation which should not too nearly peril its claim to infallibility.

To do it justice, it did not yield without compulsion. Tired of standing on the defensive against a.s.saults whose repet.i.tion seemed endless, Procopius, in 1427, adopted the policy of aggression. He would win peace by making the coterminous states feel the miseries of war, and in a series of relentlessly destructive raids, continued till 1432, he carried desolation into all the surrounding provinces. Thus in a foray of 1429, which cut a swath through Franconia, Saxony, and the Vogtland, over a hundred castles and fortified towns were captured, and an immense booty was carried back to Bohemia. Misnia, Lusatia, Silesia, Bavaria, Austria, and Hungary in turn felt the weight of the Hussite sword, while the prompt retirement of the invaders in every case showed that retaliation and not conquest was their object. It was no wonder that a general cry for peace went up among those who bore the brunt of the effort to rea.s.sert the papal supremacy.[568]

Meanwhile the Church was perplexed with another yet more vexatious question. Christendom never ceased to clamor for the reform of which it had been cheated at Constance. Skilful procrastination had wearied the reforming fathers, and they had consented, in 1418, to the dissolution of the council, hoping that the promises made in the election of Martin V. would be fulfilled. They took the precaution, however, to provide for an endless series of councils, which might be expected to resume and complete their unfinished work, and the plan which they laid out shows how deep-seated was the distrust entertained of the papacy. Another general council was ordered to be held in five years, then one in seven years thereafter, and finally a perpetual succession at intervals of ten years, with careful provisions to nullify the expected evasions of the popes.[569]

As far as relates to Germany, Martin endeavored to perform the two duties for which he had been elected--the suppression of heresy and the reformation of the Church--by sending, in 1422, Cardinal Branda thither as legate. To accomplish the former object the legate was directed to preach another crusade, that of 1421 having ended so disastrously. As regards the latter feature of his mission, the papal commission and the decree issued in conformity with it by Branda describe the vices of the German clergy in terms quite as severe as those employed by Huss and his followers, and furnish a complete justification of the Bohemian revolt.

The only wonder is that pope or kaiser could expect the populations to rest satisfied with the ministrations of men who a.s.sumed to be gifted with supernatural power and to speak in the name of the Redeemer, while steeped to the lips in every form of greed, uncleanness, and l.u.s.t. The const.i.tution which Branda issued to cure these evils only prescribed a repet.i.tion of remedies which had vainly been applied for centuries. It simply attacked the symptoms and not the cause of the disease, and it consequently remained inoperative.[570]

Five years had elapsed since the ending of the Council of Constance.

Nothing had been accomplished to suppress heresy or reform the Church, and when in due time the Council of Siena a.s.sembled, in 1423, it remained to be seen whether the unfinished work of Constance could be completed. Under the presidency of four papal legates it was held that the attendance of prelates and princes was too small to permit the work of reformation to be undertaken, but it was sufficient to justify the council in confirming the promises made by Martin of forgiveness of sins for all who should a.s.sist in exterminating the heretics. All Christian princes were summoned to lend their aid in the good work without delay if they wished to escape divine vengeance and the penalties provided by law. All commerce of every kind with the heretics was forbidden, especially in victuals, cloth, arms, gunpowder, and lead; every one trading with them, or any prince permitting communication with them over his lands was p.r.o.nounced subject to the punishments decreed against heresy. Bohemia was to be isolated and starved into submission by a material blockade enforced by spiritual censures.[571]

As for reformation, it was found that all efforts seriously to consider it were skilfully blocked by the legates. This is not surprising, as the Church was to be reformed in its head as well as in its members, and the head was recognized as the chief source of infection. A project presented by the Gallican deputies described in indignant bitterness the abuses of the curia--the sale of preferments and dignities to the highest bidder, irrespective of fitness, with the consequent destruction of benefices and plunder of the people; the papal dispensations which enabled the most incongruous pluralities to be held by individuals, and the other devices whereby Rome was enriched at the cost of religion; the centralizing of all jurisdiction in Rome to the spoliation of the indigent who dwelt at a distance; the papal decrees which set aside the salutary regulations of general councils--showing how nugatory had been the reformatory regulations wherewith Martin, when elected, had parried the attacks of the Council of Constance. The disappointment of the Council of Siena at the baffling of its efforts was leading to a tension of feeling that grew dangerous. A French friar, Guillaume Joselme, preached a sermon in which he demonstrated that the pope was the servant and not the master of the Church. The legates denounced him as a heretic, and ordered the magistrates of Siena to arrest him, but they, unlike Sigismund, replied that they had given a safe-conduct to all the members of the council, and could not go behind it. Finally, finding that under the control of the papacy no reformatory action was possible, the attempt was made to shorten to two or three years the seven years'

interval that was to elapse before the next council. All the several nations had agreed to it when its enactment was prevented by the legates suddenly dissolving the council, March 8, 1424, in spite of a protest intimating very plainly that they had prevented all reformatory legislation. The seven years' interval was preserved, and the next council was indicated for Basle, in 1431. The reformers consoled themselves by pointing out that, of the four papal representatives concerned in thus strangling the council, three died within a year, of terrible deaths, manifestly the divine vengeance on their wickedness.

Martin made a show of supplementing this lack of performance by appointing a commission of three cardinals to carry on the work of reform, and requested all complaints and suggestions to be sent to them--a measure which was as profitless in result as it was intended to be. Equally illusory was a const.i.tution issued shortly after, restraining the ostentation and extravagance of the cardinals, and prohibiting them from a.s.suming the "protection" of any prince or potentate, or asking favors except for the poor or for their own retainers and kindred, thus reducing the importance of the Sacred College as a factor of the Holy See and exalting his own.[572]

The time fixed for the a.s.sembling of the Council of Basle, March, 1431, was rapidly drawing nigh without any action on the part of Martin looking to its convocation. He who owed his election to a general council was notorious for abhorring the very name of council. At length, on November 8, 1430, there appeared on the doors of the papal palace, and in the most conspicuous places in Rome, an anonymous notice, purporting to be issued by two Christian kings, reciting the necessity of holding a council in obedience to the decrees of Constance, and appending some conclusions of a threatening character, to the effect that if the pope and cardinals impede it, or even evade promoting it, they are to be held as fautors of heresy; that if the pope does not open the council himself or by his deputies, those who may be present will be compelled by divine law to withdraw obedience from him, and Christendom will be bound to obey them, and that they will be forced to proceed summarily to his deposition and that of the cardinals as fautors of heresy. It was evident that Christendom was determined to have the council, with the pope or without him, and Martin, after holding out till the last moment, was compelled to yield. He had appointed, January 11, 1431, Cardinal Giuliano Cesarini as legate to preach another crusade with plenary indulgences against the Hussites, and to him he issued, February 1, a commission to open and preside at the council. One of those most earnest in bringing this about was the Cardinal of Siena. Had he been able to forecast the future he would have tempered his zeal.

Within three weeks Martin was dead, and on March 3 the Cardinal of Siena was elected his successor, taking the name of Eugenius IV.[573]

Cardinal Giuliano went on his double mission and preached the fifth crusade against the Hussites. The Bohemian forays had stimulated Germany to an earnest effort to crush the troublesome rebels, and he found himself at the head of an army variously estimated at from eighty thousand to one hundred and thirty thousand men. The Bohemians applied to the Emperor Sigismund for a safe-conduct to Basle, offering to submit the questions at issue to debate on the basis of Scripture. This was refused, and they were told that they must agree to stand to the decisions of the council without limitation. They preferred the arbitrament of arms, and issued a protest to the Christian world in which, with coa.r.s.e good sense, they defined their position, attacked the temporal power of the papacy, and ridiculed the indulgences issued for their subjugation. This doc.u.ment was received by the council on August 10, very nearly on the day on which, at Taas, the crusaders fled without striking a blow, on hearing the battle-hymn of the dreaded Hussite troops. As a military leader Cardinal Giuliano was evidently a failure, and it only remained for him to try peaceful measures. The German princes, alarmed and exhausted, showed evident signs of determination to come to terms with their unconquerable neighbors. It was a hard necessity, but there was no alternative, and on October 15 the council resolved to invite the Bohemians to a conference and to give them a safe-conduct, although the letters were not forwarded until November 26.[574]

Meanwhile the inevitable quarrels between pope and council had broken out with bitterness. But three weeks after the invitation to the Bohemians had been despatched, on December 18, Eugenius took the extreme step of dissolving the council and calling another to be held in eighteen months at Bologna, where he would preside in person. At this action Germany was aghast. Sigismund remonstrated energetically, and the council, a.s.sured of his support, refused to obey. Cardinal Giuliano was won over and made himself its mouthpiece. He had had an opportunity of observing the condition of men's minds north of the Alps, and he knew to what a storm the bark of St. Peter would be exposed. It may safely be said that since the papacy became dominant over the Church few popes have received from a subordinate so vigorous a reproof as that in which Giuliano gave his reasons for disobedience, and it contains so vivid a picture of the times that a brief abstract of it cannot well be spared.

Clerical wickedness, he says, in Germany is such that the laity are irritated to the last degree against the Church, wherefore it is greatly to be feared that if there is no reformation they will execute their public threats of rising, like the Hussites, against the clergy. This turpitude has given great audacity to the Bohemians and lends color to their heresy, and if the clergy cannot be reformed the suppression of this heresy would lead only to the breaking-out of another. The Bohemians have been invited to the council; they have replied and are expected to come. If the council is dissolved, what will the heretics say? Will not the Church confess herself defeated when she dares not await those whom she has invited? Will not the hand of G.o.d be seen in it? A host of warriors has fled before them, and now the Church universal flies! Behold, they cannot be overcome either by arms or arguments! Alas for the wretched clergy wherever they be! Will they not be deemed incorrigible and determined to live in their filth? So many councils have been held in our days from which no reformation has come!

From this one the nations have expected some fruit. If it be thus dissolved, we shall be said to laugh at G.o.d and man, and when there is no hope of our correction the laity will justly a.s.sail us, like the Hussites. Already there are reports of it, already they begin to spit forth the venom which is to destroy us. They will think to offer a welcome sacrifice to G.o.d when they slay or despoil us, who will then be odious both to G.o.d and man, and whereas now there is little respect for us, there will then be none. The council was some restraint upon them, but when they lose all hope they will persecute us publicly, and the whole blame will be thrown upon the Roman curia, which breaks up the a.s.sembly convened to effect reform. Latterly the city of Magdeburg has expelled her archbishop and clergy; the citizens march with wagons like the Bohemians, and are said to have sent for a Hussite captain, and they have, moreover, a league with many other communities of those parts. The people of Pa.s.sau have driven out their bishop and are besieging one of his castles. Both cities are near to Bohemia, and if, as is to be feared, they unite they will have a following of many other towns. At Bamberg there is fierce discord between the citizens on the one side and the bishop and chapter on the other, which is especially dangerous by reason of the neighborhood of the heretics. If the council is dissolved these quarrels will increase, and many other communities will be drawn in.[575]

Making due allowance for inevitable rhetorical exaggeration this picture is a true one. Hussite ideas were rapidly spreading through Germany, and finding a congenial soil in the aversion born of incurable clerical corruption. About this time Felix Hemmerlin complains of the countless souls seduced to heresy by the emissaries who, every year, come from Bohemia to Berne and Soleure. Numerous executions of heretics are recorded at this period in Flanders, where persecution had been for centuries almost unknown, and we may be sure that Hussite missionaries were busily carrying on an equally successful propaganda elsewhere. If the hopes which were built on the council were destroyed, the Church might well expect a general revolt. Sustained by the united support of Cismontane Christendom, the council resolutely went its way. Sigismund urged it to stand firm, and in November, 1432, he issued an imperial declaration that he would sustain it against all a.s.sailants. Eugenius held out until February, 1433, when he a.s.sented to its continuance, but in July he again dissolved it, and in September repeated the command.

Then the council commenced active proceedings to arraign and try him, and in December he revoked these bulls. In the subsequent quarrel the council decreed his suspension in January, 1439, and his deposition in June, while the election of Amedeo of Savoy as Felix V. was confirmed in November of the same year.[576]

Into the details of the interminable negotiations which followed between the council and the Hussites it is not worth while to enter. The latter carried their point, and, in a conference held at Eger, May 18, 1439, it was agreed that the questions should be debated on the basis of the Scriptures and the writings of the early fathers. The four articles which were the common ground of Calixtins and Taborites were put forward as their demands, and to these they steadily adhered through all the dreary discussions in Basle, Prague, Brunn, Stuhlweissenberg, to the final conference of Iglau in July, 1436. The discussions were ofttimes hot and angry, and the good fathers of Basle were sometimes scandalized at the freedom of speech of the Bohemian delegates. When John of Ragusa alluded to the Hussites as heretics, John Rokyzana, one of the Calixtin delegates, indignantly denied it, and demanded that if any one accused them of heresy he should offer the _talio_ and prove it. Procopius, who represented the Taborites, joined in and declared that he would not have come to Basle had he known that he would be thus insulted. Time and skill were required to pacify the Bohemians, and John of Ragusa and the Archbishop of Lyons were forced to apologize formally. On another occasion the Inquisitor Henry of Coblentz, a Dominican doctor, complained that Ulric of Znaim, a deputy of the Orphans, had said that monks were introduced by the devil. Ulric denied it, and Procopius intervened, saying that he had remarked to the legate that if the bishops came from the apostles, and priests from the seventy-two disciples, the others could have had no other source but the devil. This sally raised a general laugh, which was increased when Rokyzana called to the inquisitor, "Doctor, make Dom Procopius provincial of your order." These trifles have their significance when compared with the shouts of "Burn him! Burn him!" which a.s.sailed Huss at Constance. In fact the Hussites were urged to incorporate themselves with the council, but they were too shrewd to fall into the snare.[577]

By unbending firmness the Bohemians carried their point, and secured the recognition of the four articles, which became celebrated in history as the Compactata--the Magna Charta of the Bohemian Church until swept away by the counter-Reformation. This was agreed to in Prague, November 26, 1433, and confirmed by mutual clasp of hands between the legates of the council and the deputies of the three Bohemian sects, but matters were by no means settled. The four articles were brief and simple declarations which admitted of unlimited diversity of construction. The dialecticians of the council had no difficulty in explaining them away, until they practically amounted to nothing; the Hussites, on the other side, with equal facility, expanded them to cover all that they could possibly wish to claim. Hardly was the handclasping over when it was found that the Bohemians a.s.serted that the permission of communion in both elements meant that they were to continue to administer it to infants, and to force it proscriptively on every one--positions to which the council could by no means a.s.sent. This will serve as an ill.u.s.tration of the innumerable questions which kept the negotiators busy during yet thirty dreary months. So far, indeed, was the matter as yet from being settled, that, in April, 1434, the council levied a half-t.i.the on Christendom for a crusade against the Hussites, which enabled it to stimulate with liberal payments the zeal of the Bohemian Catholic n.o.bles.[578]

It is not likely that any results would have been reached but for events which at first seemed to threaten the continuance of the negotiations.

The Taborites could only have consented to treat on the basis, so inadequate to them, of the four articles, in the confidence that the practical application would cover a vastly wider sphere. After the preliminary agreement of November 26, the construction a.s.sumed by the legates of the council made them draw back. The affair was reaching a conclusion, and it was necessary to have a definite understanding of that to which they were binding themselves. After the departure of the legates from Prague, in January, 1434, hot discussions arose between them and the Calixtins as to the continuance of the negotiations. There were political as well as religious differences between them. The Taborites were mostly peasants and poor folk; they wanted no n.o.bles or gentlemen in their ranks, and seem to have had republican tendencies, as they desired to add to the four articles two others, providing for the independence of Bohemia and for the retention of all confiscated property. Both parties became exasperated, and flew to arms for a contest decisive as to their respective mastery. The Taborites had for some time been besieging Pilsen, a city which held out for Sigismund.

Learning that their friends in the Neustadt of Prague had been slaughtered without distinction of age or s.e.x, to the number, it is said, of twenty-two thousand, they raised the siege, May 9, to take vengeance on the city, but after a demonstration before it, they withdrew towards Moravia. Meanwhile the Calixtins had formed an alliance with the Catholic barons, who had been liberally subsidized by the council, and followed them with a formidable force. The shock came at Lipan, on Sunday, May 30. All day and night the battle raged, and until the third hour of Monday morning. When it was over, Procopius, Lupus, and thirteen thousand of the bravest Taborites lay dead upon the field, and the murderous nature of the strife is seen in the fact that but seven hundred prisoners were taken, though we may question the claim of the victors that the battle cost them but two hundred men, and we may hope that there is exaggeration in the boast that they burned several thousand of those whom they subsequently captured. The power of the Taborites was utterly broken. It is true that they continued to hold Mount Tabor until finally crushed by George Podiebrad, in 1452; and that in the December following the battle their unconquerable spirit was again contemplating an appeal to arms, but after Lipan they were only a troublesome element of insubordination, and not a factor in the political situation. The congratulatory letters sent by some of the victors to Sigismund, and the effusive joy with which he communicated the news to the council, show that the victory was one for the Catholics.[579]

Even after the virtual elimination of the Taborites there were ample subjects of dispute, and at one time the prospect seemed so unpromising that preliminary arrangements were set on foot, in August, 1434, for organizing a new crusade on the proceeds of the half-t.i.the levied shortly before. One source of endless trouble sprang from the personal ambition of Rokyzana. Learned, able, a hardy disputant, and a skilled man of affairs, he had determined to be Archbishop of Prague, and this object he pursued with unalterable constancy. He bore a leading part in the negotiations, and made himself as conspicuous as possible, s.h.i.+fting his ground with dexterity, interposing objections and smoothing them as the interest of the moment might dictate. At first he endeavored to have a clause inserted that the people and the clergy should be empowered to elect an archbishop, who should be acknowledged and confirmed by the emperor and the pope. This being rejected, he procured of Sigismund a secret agreement that the election should be held, and that the emperor would do all in his power to secure the confirmation by the pope, without cost for pallium, confirmation, or notarial fees. Although this, when discovered, was protested against by the legates of the council and refused by the council itself, he proceeded, in 1435, to obtain an election by the national a.s.sembly of Bohemia, to the great disgust of the orthodox, who reasonably dreaded this example of a return of the primitive methods of selecting prelates. Again Sigismund secretly accepted this, while the legates declared it to be invalid, and that, as an infraction of the Compactata, it must be annulled. On this question the whole negotiation was nearly wrecked, and it was only settled by Sigismund and his son-in-law and heir, Albert of Austria, promising to issue letters recognizing Rokyzana as archbishop, and to compel obedience to him as such. After this it required but a fortnight more of quarrelling to bring the matter to a termination, and signatures to the Compactata were duly exchanged July 5, 1436, amid general rejoicings.

Sigismund, restored to the throne of his fathers, made a show of complying with his promise, by writing to the council a letter asking Rokyzana's confirmation, at the same time explaining to the legates that he considered the council ought to refuse, but that he did not wish to break with his new subjects too suddenly. Of course the confirmation never came, and although Rokyzana called G.o.d to witness that he did not wish the archbishopric, the policy of his long life was devoted to obtaining it. With all convenient speed Sigismund forgot the pledge to enforce obedience to him. His position became so dangerous that he secretly fled from Prague, June 16, 1437, and remained in exile until after the deaths of Sigismund and Albert, when he returned in 1440, and speedily became the most powerful man in Bohemia. This position he retained until his death, in 1471, administering the archbishopric, constantly seeking confirmation at the hands of successive popes, and subordinating the policy of the kingdom, internal and external, so far as he dared, to that object--not the least anomalous feature of the anomalous Calixtin Church.[580]

A peace in which all parties distrusted each other and placed radically different interpretations on its conditions was not likely to heal dissensions so profound. The very day after the solemn ratification of the Compactata an ominous disturbance showed how superficial was the reconciliation. In the presence of an immense crowd, at the high altar of the church of Iglau, where the final conferences were held, the Bishop of Coutances, chief of the legation of the council, celebrated ma.s.s and returned thanks to G.o.d. After this the letters of agreement were read in Bohemian, and Rokyzana commented upon them in the same language, much to the discomfort of the legates. He had been celebrating ma.s.s at a side altar, and when the reading was finished he called out, "If any one wishes communion in both elements let him come to this altar and it will be given to him." The legates rushed over to him and twice forbade him, but he quietly disregarded them and administered the sacrament to eight or ten persons. The incident excited intense feeling on both sides. The Bohemians demanded that a church be a.s.signed to them in Iglau where during their stay they could receive the sacrament in both kinds; the legates refused the request, although urged by the emperor, and finally, after threats of departure, the Bohemians were forced to content themselves with celebrating, as they had previously done, in private houses.[581]

When Sigismund was fairly seated on the throne, there followed an endless series of bickerings, as the rites and ceremonies and usages of the Roman Church were restored, supplanting the simpler wors.h.i.+p which had prevailed for twenty years. Consecrations, confirmations, images, relics, holy water, benedictions, were one by one introduced--even the hated religious orders were surrept.i.tiously smuggled in. The canonical hours and chants were renewed in the churches, and every effort was made to accustom the people to a resurrection of the old order of things. On Corpus Christi day, May 30, 1437, a gorgeous procession swept through the streets of Prague bearing the host on high; the legate, the Archbishop of Kalocsa, and the Bishop of Segnia headed it, and were dutifully followed by the emperor and empress, the n.o.bles and a ma.s.s of citizens. As a mute protest, Rokyzana met the splendid array, attended only by three priests, and bearing both host and cup. To the stern puritans who had so long struggled against the Scarlet Woman the imposing ceremony must have seemed a bitter mockery, for the Empress Barbara, who occupied a conspicuous position in the ranks, was a woman notorious for shameless licentiousness, and, moreover, was an avowed atheist, who disbelieved in the immortality of the soul.[582]

Within three weeks of this celebration, Rokyzana was a fugitive, seeking the protection of George Podiebrad at Hradecz, not without reason, if aeneas Sylvius is correct in saying that Sigismund was about to arrest him and punish him condignly. Then the process of reaction went on apace. Had Sigismund lived, he might have overcome all resistance, and reduced the land to obedience to Rome. His power was constantly growing.

In March the surrender of the Taborite stronghold of Konigingratz filled the Hussites with consternation. Not long after siege was laid to Zion, the fastness of John Rohacz, a powerful baron who had refused submission. He was finally captured in it, brought to Prague, and hanged in the presence of the emperor with sixty of his followers and a priest.

Tradition relates that on that very day Sigismund was attacked with an ulcer which grew constantly worse and ended his days in December. Almost simultaneous with this was the decision by the Council of Basle on the question of communion in both elements, in which it skilfully evaded the inconsistency of the prohibition of the cup, and p.r.o.nounced it to be the law of the Church, not to be modified without authority. As Albert of Austria, the son-in-law and successor of Sigismund, was a zealous Catholic prince, the council was emboldened in January, 1438, to issue an edict reciting and ordering the strict enforcement of the implacable bull of February 22, 1418, by Martin V., directed against the errors of Wickliff, Huss, and Jerome. This evidence of what they were to expect as the outcome of the Compactata gave the Taborites and the disaffected parties in Bohemia new energy. After a fruitless appeal to the council an alliance was made with Poland, whose boy-king, Casimir, was elected as a compet.i.tor. Thus strengthened they offered effective resistance to Albert, who up to his sudden death, October 27, 1439, was unable to occupy the whole of his kingdom. Four months later, Ladislas, his posthumous son, was born, and a long minority, with its accompanying turbulence, enabled the Calixtins again to get the upper hand, over both the Taborites and the Catholics. In 1441 a council held at Kuttenberg organized the national Church on a Calixtin basis. Several conferences were held with the Taborites, and the points at issue were referred to the national diet held in January, 1444. Its emphatic decision in favor of the Calixtin doctrine broke up the Taborite organization. The cities still held by them surrendered one by one, and the members were scattered, for the most part joining the Calixtins. As a separate sect they may be said to have disappeared when, in 1452, George Podiebrad captured Mount Tabor and dispersed their remains.[583]

After the death of Albert what central authority there was in Bohemia was lodged in the hands of two governors, Ptacek representing the Calixtins, and Mainhard of Rosenberg, the victor of Lipan, the Catholics. In October, 1443, we hear of the Emperor Frederic III. as about starting for Bohemia where he expected to receive the regency, but his hopes were frustrated. Ptacek died in 1445, when the choice for his succession fell upon George Podiebrad, a powerful baron, who, though only twenty-four, had acquired a high reputation for military ability and sagacity. He was largely under the influence of Rokyzana, to whom doubtless his election was due. After a long interval, Rome again appeared upon the scene. Nicholas V., who ascended the papal throne in 1447, sent, in 1448, John, Cardinal of Sant' Angelo, to Prague as legate. The Bohemians earnestly urged him to ratify the Compactata and confirm Rokyzana as archbishop. He promised an answer, but finding the situation embarra.s.sing, he secretly left Prague with Mainhard of Rosenberg. Popular indignation enabled George by a _coup d'etat_, in which there was considerable bloodshed, to render himself master of Prague and to cast Mainhard into prison, where he died soon after.

George thus became the undisputed master of Bohemia. When Ladislas, in 1452, was recognized as king, George secured the regency, and when the young monarch died towards the close of 1457, at the early age of eighteen, George's coronation as king soon followed. Under him, until just before his death in 1471, Rokyzana's influence was almost unbounded.[584]

The situation of Bohemia, as a member of the Latin Church, was unprecedented. After the first break between Eugenius IV. and the Council of Basle the name of the pope disappears in the negotiations for the restoration of unity. These were carried on by both sides as though the conciliar authority was supreme, and the papal a.s.sent or confirmation was a matter of no moment, although a papal legate was present in January, 1436, at the conference at Stuhlweissenberg, where the matter was virtually settled. As the council drew to its weary end, powerless and discredited, the triumphant Eugenius was not disposed to recognize the validity of its acts or to ratify them gratuitously. The Bohemians alleged that he had confirmed the Compactata, but no positive evidence was forthcoming. To purchase the submission of Germany, in 1447, he had ratified a portion of the acts of the council, but the Compactata could not be included in his carefully. guarded decrees. On the accession of Nicholas V., in 1447, the Bohemians sent to him a deputation offering him their allegiance, but we have seen how wary was the legate whom he despatched in return to Prague. It is true that to obtain the abdication of Felix V., Nicholas issued a bull, June 28, 1449, approving all the acts of the council which might strictly be held to confirm the Compactata, but the character of the bull shows that it had in view rather the material interests involved in benefices and preferment. Whatever doubt the Bohemians may have had as to the papal intentions towards them was speedily dissipated.[585]

Rome, in fact, had never proposed to recognize the compromise made by the council. While the latter was busy in endeavoring to win back the Hussites, Eugenius IV. was laboring for their extermination by the usual methods, in such regions as he could reach. The relations between Bohemia and Hungary had long been close, and Hussitism had spread widely throughout the latter kingdom as well as in the Slavic territories to the south. As early as 1413 we hear complaints of Wickliffite doctrines carried into Croatia by students returning from the University of Prague. As Sigismund was King of Hungary, the Compactata were supposed to cover the Hungarian Hussites, and were published in Hungarian as well as in Bohemian, German, and Latin. We have seen, however, how false he was to his Bohemian subjects, and those of Hungary he cheerfully abandoned to Rome. Six weeks after the signature of the Compactata at Iglau, on August 22, 1436, Eugenius commissioned the indefatigable persecutor, Fra Giacomo della Marca, as Inquisitor of Hungary and Austria. He was already on the ground, for in January of that year we catch a glimpse of him as present in the conference at Stuhlweissenberg.

Fra Giacomo lost no time. Before the close of the year he had traversed Hungary from end to end, with merciless severity. The Archbishop of Gran, the Chapter of Kalocsa, the Bishop of Waradein, were loud in his praises. Their dioceses, they said, had been infected with heretics so numerous that a rising was antic.i.p.ated which would have exceeded in horror the Bohemian wars, but this holy man had exterminated them. The numbers whom he put to death are not enumerated, but they must have been considerable from the expressions employed, and from the terror inspired, for his a.s.sociates declared that in this expedition he had received the submission of fifty-five thousand converts. As the Bishop of Waradein rapturously declared, had the Apostle Paul accompanied him he could not have effected more. Earnestly the Bishops of Csanad and Transylvania appealed to him to visit their dioceses, which abounded in heretics; and as the latter prelate speaks of the Hussites having penetrated to his bishopric from Moldavia, it shows how widely the heresy had been diffused through southeastern Europe.[586]

Suddenly, in 1437, Fra Giacomo's career was interrupted. He had crushed the Fraticelli of Italy, the wild Cathari of Bosnia, and the fiercer Hussites of Hungary, but when he attacked the orthodox concubinary priests of Funfkirchen, and strove to force them to abandon the illicit partners who were universally kept, they proved too strong for even his iron will and seasoned nerves, backed though he was by the power of pope and kaiser and the awful authority of the Inquisition. They raised such a storm at this attempted invasion of their accustomed privileges that he was obliged to abandon his work and fly for his life. He appealed to Eugenius, and Eugenius to Sigismund. The latter wrote to Henry, the Bishop of Funfkirchen, peremptorily ordering him to recall Giacomo and give him every aid, and also to Giacomo, a.s.suring him of support. Thus a.s.sailed, Bishop Henry gave instructions that Giacomo should be supplied with all necessaries, but the attempt to enforce chast.i.ty on the priesthood seems to have been abandoned. The customary penalty in Hungary for such offences was five marks, and the synods of Gran in 1450 and 1480 complain that the archdeacons not only keep these fines for themselves, but encourage the criminals in order to derive profit from them; in fact, they issued in Hungary, as in many other places, licenses to sin, which may, perhaps, explain the indignation caused by Giacomo's interference and its lack of success.[587]

He appears to have meddled no longer with the private lives of the orthodox clergy, but to have devoted his energies to the easier work of exterminating heretics. Early in 1437 we hear of him south of the Danube, where the Bishop of Sreim praised his effective work; by putting to death all who could not be converted, he had saved the diocese from a rising of the Hussites, in which all the clergy would have been slain.

Eugenius rewarded him by describing him as "a vigorous and most ruthless extirpator of heresy," and granting him the power of appointing subordinate inquisitors, thus rendering him an inquisitor-general in all the wide region confided to him. It was probably a result of the quarrel over the priestly concubines that led, in 1438, Simon of Bacska, Archdeacon of Funfkirchen, to excommunicate him; but that official was speedily forced to withdraw the anathema by the Emperor Albert and the Archbishop of Gran. For a while his labors were interrupted by a call to attend the Council of Ferrara, held in 1438 by Eugenius IV., to offset the hostile a.s.semblage at Basle, but he speedily returned to Hungary. It was doubtless owing to his efforts that in Poland the barons and cities entered into a solemn league and covenant to suppress heresy, April 25, 1438--just before Poland intervened in Bohemia to protect the Hussites from the Emperor Albert.

In 1439 Giacomo's zeal received a check on the more immediate fields of his labors. In Sreim he delivered to the secular arm, as convicted heretics, a priest and three a.s.sociates; their friends a.s.sembled in force, broke open the prison and carried off the culprits, and, what is difficult to understand, unless the heresy was merely concubinage, the Archbishop of Kalocsa, when appealed to, protected the criminals.

Giacomo had recourse to the Emperor Albert, who wrote sharply to the archbishop in June; and this proving ineffectual, again in August. What was the result of the affair is not known, but Albert, as we have seen, died in October, to the great detriment of religion; and in 1440 Giacomo left Hungary on account of ill-health. He seems not to have been immediately replaced, and, in the absence of organized persecution, the tares speedily began to multiply again among the wheat. In January, 1444, Eugenius IV., deploring the spread of Hussitism throughout the Danubian regions, appointed the Observantine Vicar Fabiano of Bacs as inquisitor for the whole Slavonian vicariate, which included Hungary, with power to appoint inquisitors under him. These were authorized to act in complete independence of the local prelates; Holy Land indulgences were promised to all who would aid them, and excommunication, removable only by pope or inquisitor, against all withholding a.s.sistance. In July, 1446, Eugenius again alludes to the flouris.h.i.+ng condition of Hussitism in Hungary and Moldavia, in spite of the labors of the friars, and he recurs to the question which baffled Giacomo della Marca. Many parish priests, he says, in these regions not only keep concubines publicly, but teach that there is no sin in intercourse between unmarried persons; the question has been asked him whether this is heresy, justiciable by the Inquisition; this he answers in the affirmative, and authorizes Fabiano and his deputies to treat it as such. Apparently it was not the practice itself, but the justification of it, which was so heinous.[588]

If Rome was thus active in repressing Hussitism, and thus regardless of the Compactata while crippled by the quarrel with the fathers of Basle, it may readily be imagined that, after the abdication of Felix V. and the restoration of unquestioned supremacy, Nicholas V. was not disposed to respect the bargain made by the council or to regard the Calixtins in any light but that of heretics. It was in vain that the Bohemians proffered obedience if only the Compactata were confirmed, with a tacit condition that Rokyzana's claims to the archbishopric should be recognized. Ostensibly the sole difficulty in the way of reunion lay in the use of the cup by the laity and the communion of infants; save this there was by this time but little to distinguish the Calixtins from the rest of the Latin churches, although occasionally the question of the sequestrated church lands emerged into view. The papacy had taken its position, however, and it would have plunged all Christendom into war, as, in fact, it more than once attempted, rather than admit that the Council of Basle had been justified in purchasing peace by conceding communion in both elements. Behind this, however, was the question of Rokyzana's confirmation. aeneas Sylvius informs us that in 1451 he convinced George Podiebrad of the impossibility of effecting this, and secured a promise that the attempt should be abandoned, he pledging himself that if George would present the names of several suitable persons the pope would select one, and peace would then be established.

This treated the Compactata as of minor importance, and was doubtless wholly unauthorized. Neither George nor Rokyzana gave up their hopes; the effort was renewed again and again, now with the pope, now with the Emperor Frederic III., and now with the German Diet, but all to no purpose. Occasionally when there was an object to be gained hopes would be held out, only to be withdrawn. The papal emissaries represented Rokyzana to Rome as the most wicked and perfidious of heresiarchs, whose recognition would be the destruction of what remained of Catholicism in Bohemia, and there never was the slightest idea of confirming him.[589]

When the overthrow of Mainhard of Rosenberg and the concentration of power in the hands of George Podiebrad showed that no further hopes were to be built on the Catholic party in Bohemia, Nicholas V. fell back upon the old methods and resolved to try what could be done by a missionary inquisitor. He had at hand an instrument admirably fitted for the work.

Giovanni da Capistrano, vicar-general of the Observantine Franciscans, had commenced his career as an inquisitor in 1417; he was now in his sixty-sixth year, vigorous and implacable as ever. Small and insignificant in appearance, shrivelled by austerities until he seemed to consist only of skin and bone and nerves, he rarely tasted meat and allowed himself but four hours of sleep out of the twenty-four, the remainder being all too few for his restless and indefatigable activity.