A History of Bohemian LiteratureLützow, Francis, hrabe
History
A History of Bohemian Literature
Lützow, Francis, hrabe
Czech literature -- History and criticism
The Council of Constance had in March 1415 deposed Pope John XXIII.,
and the authority of the commissioners whom he had appointed to judge
Hus ceased, while the decree of imprisonment issued by the Pope also
became invalid. Sigismund, to whom the guardians of Hus applied for
orders, contented himself with handing the prisoner over to the custody
of the Bishop of Constance, by whose order he was now imprisoned in the
castle of Gottlieben, not far from Constance. He remained there from
March 24 to June 5, and was held in yet severer custody than in the
Dominican convent. His feet were fettered with chains, and at night
his hands were also fastened to the wall by a chain. All intercourse
with his friends was forbidden, and we have therefore no letters from
Hus written at Gottlieben, while he had been allowed to write when in
confinement in the Dominican monastery.
Having passed judgment on the Pope, the Council now devoted its
attention to questions of dogma. On May 5 the forty-five articles of
Wycliffe, that have been so often mentioned, were again condemned at
a plenary meeting of the Council. This may be said to have decided
the fate of Hus, for the identity of many opinions advanced in his
treatise _De Ecclesia_ with Wycliffe's views was known to all. No
agreement whatever was, indeed, possible between Hus and the members
of the Council; for while Hus maintained that he had been summoned to
the Council for the purpose of freely expounding his views, the Council
now held even more decidedly than at first that their mission as far
as Hus was concerned was limited to hearing his recantation of all the
opinions that had rightly or wrongly been attributed to him, and then
deciding what punishment he should receive.
It is probably mainly due to the energetic remonstrances of the
Bohemian nobles who were present at the Council that Hus was at least
allowed to appear before that assembly. His prison was again changed,
and he was now conducted to a Franciscan monastery at Constance, where
he spent the last weeks of his life. On June 5 he appeared for the
first time before the Council. "When Hus attempted to speak he was
interrupted, and when he was silent the cry arose, 'He has admitted his
guilt.'"[45] As Hus afterwards wrote: "They almost all screamed at me,
as did the Jews against Christ.... Many exclaimed, 'He must be burnt;'
among them I heard the voice of Michael de Causis."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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