Sigismund has been arraigned as a monster of turpitude for allowing Hus to be tried, condemned and executed after he had granted him a safe-conduct. It is certain that Hus, while clearly apprehensive of what might ensue from his bold step of entering the stronghold of his enemies, had implicit confidence in Sigismund’s protection, and when despite the security promised by the man who was both Emperor and president of the Council, Hus was consigned to the stake, at first sight unmitigated baseness on the part of Sigismund would appear to be the only explanation.[180] If he cannot be entirely exonerated, on the other hand, it is quite clear he never had any idea of protecting a heretic, and that he was overruled by the Council, who, arguing from the customary rules regarding heretics, could legitimately maintain that no guarantee could have any validity whatever in the case of one suspected of heresy, that Sigismund’s safe-conduct might certainly apply to the empire and secular states, might be valid while Hus was on his journey, but had no validity as regards the Church. The heretic or a man suspect of heresy could enjoy neither rights nor privileges. This was good law, both ecclesiastical and civil; and once granted that the Council must regard Hus as suspect of heresy, it was legally unanswerable.[181] The trial resolved itself into a dialectical duel between Hus and Cardinal D’Ailly, with divers interruptions and at times uproar. Against the uproar, with which his statements were sometimes greeted, Hus strongly protested; and the proceedings would appear to have been more seemly subsequently.[182] He was accused of a large number of doctrinal errors and of such absurdities as that of claiming to be a person of the Trinity.[183] Generally speaking, the object of his prosecutors was to show that his opinions were identical with those of Wycliffe, which had already been condemned as heretical by the Council. It was easy enough to show that Hus had inveighed against the organization and practices of the Church as then existing; it was not so easy to convict him of heretical dogma. From the first Hus’s attitude was perfectly consistent. He wished to argue his thesis; but that not being allowed, he declared himself perfectly willing to abjure all tenets which he had at any time avowed if the Council proved them from Scripture to have been erroneous, but he strongly protested against the ascription to him of statements he had never made and interpretations that he had never intended.[184] The Council, on the other hand, contended that it was the duty of the suspect heretic to put himself unreservedly in the hands of the Council, making an entire submission to their ruling and a complete abjuration of all the heresies with which he was charged. One doctor told him that if the Council told him he had only one eye, though he knew he had two, he ought to agree that it was so. Hus replied: ‘If the whole world