HUS
585
HUS
liffite tendencies and was reported to Rome, with the
result that Alexander V, in a Bull of 20 December,
1409, directed the archbishop to forbid any preaching
except in cathedral, collegiate, parish, and cloister
churches, and to see that Wyclif 's writings were with-
drawn from circulation. In accordance with the Bull
the archbishop at the June synod of 1410, ordered
Wyclif's writings to be burned and restricted preach-
ing to the churches named above. Against these
measures Hus declaimed from the pulpit and, with his
sympathizers in the university, sent a protest to John
XXIII. The archbishop, 16 July, 1410, excommuni-
cated Hus and his adherents. Secure of the royal
protection, Hus continued the agitation in favour of
Wyclif, but at the end of August he was summoned to
appear in person before the pope. He begged the
pope to dispense with the personal visit and sent in
his stead representatives to
plead his case. In February,
1411, sentence of excommuni-
cation was pronounced against
him and published on 15 March
in all the churches of Prague.
This led to further difficulties
between the king and the
archbishop, in consequence of
which the latter left Prague
to take refuge with the Hun-
garian King Sigismund, but
died on the journey, 23 Sep-
tember.
Hus meanwhile openly de- fended Wyclif, and this posi- tion he maintained especially against John Stokes, a licen- tiate of Cambridge, who had come to Prague and declared that in England Wyclif was regarded as a heretic. With no less vehemence Hus attacked the Bulls (9 Sept. and 2 Dec, 1411) in which John XXIII proclaimed indulgences to all who would supply funds for the crusade against Ladislaus of Naples. Both Hus and Jerome of Prague aroused theuniversity and the populace against the papal commission which had been sent to announce the indulgences, and its mem- bers in consequence were treated with every sort of indignity. The report of these doings led the Roman authorities to take more vigorous action. Not only was the former excommunication against Hus reit- erated, but his residence was placed under interdict. Finally the pope ordered Hus to be imprisoned and the Bethlehem chapel destroyed. The order was not obeyed, but Hus towards the end of 1412 left Prague and took refuge at .\usti in the south. Here he wrote his principal work, "De ecclesia". As the king took no steps to carry out the papal edict, Hus was back again at Prague by the end of April, 1414, and posted on the walls of the Bethlehem Chapel his treatise "De sex erroribus". Out of this and the "De ecclesia" Gerson extracted a number of propositions which he submitted to Archbishop Konrad von Vechta (for- merly Bishop of Olmutz) with a warning against their heretical character. In November following the Council of Constance assembled, and Hus, urged by King Sigismund, decided to appear before that body and give an account of his doctrine. At Constance he was tried, condemned, and burnt at the stake, 6 July, 1415. The same fate befell Jerome of Prague, 30 May, 1416. (For details see Constance, Council
OF.)
Hussites. — The followers of Hus did not of them- selves assume the name of Hussites. Like Hus, they
John
believed their creed to be truly Catholic; in papal and
conciliar documents they appear as WyclLffites, al-
though Hus and even Jerome of Prague are also named
as their leaders. They wisely objected to the appella-
tion of Hussites, which impUed separation from the
Universal Church; willing to venerate Hus as a holy
martyr of the old religion, they refused to see in him
the founder of a new one. Only about 1420, with the
beginning of the Hussite Wars, does the new name
occur, first in the neighbouring lands; then it gradu-
ally imposes itself as connoting both the original fol-
lowers of Hus and the subsequent smaller sects into
which they divided. The distinctive tenet of the
Hussites is the necessity, alike for priest and layman,
of Communion under both kinds, sub ulraque specie,
whence the term Utraguists. Hus himself never
preached Utraquism. During his presence at the
Council of Constance, his suc-
cessor in influence at the Uni-
versity of Prague, Jacobellus
von Mies, taking his stand on
the Bible as the supreme rule
of faith and practice in the
Church, persuaded the people
that partaking of the chalice
was of absolute necessity for
salvation, this being expressly
taught by Chris t : "Amen,
amen I say unto you: Except
you eat the flesh of the Son of
man, and drink his blood, you
shall not have life in you."
(John, vi, 54.)
Three parishes at once adopted the innovation. Former unauthorized sermons by Jacobellus, and trespasses on episcopal rights by the par- ish clergy, had prepared the ground m these particular places. The introduction of the lay chalice was regarded by many well-intentioned men as the outward sign of a nascent schism. These withdrew from the movement, but the people ^* at large eagerly j oined it as if the
chalice were a panacea for all the evils of the time. Their eagerness is partly accounted for by a kind of crusade in favour of frequent and even daily Communion, and by a huge mass of eucharistic literature in Bohemia during the fourteenth century. As far back as 1380 a priest in Prague (Altstadt) is said to have preached to his parishioners the necessity of Communion under both kinds. Jacobellus was excommunicated, and Andreas von Brod confuted his teaching in a treatise; but he continued preaching and answered Andreas's tract by one of his own. Hus, then in Constance, was consulted. In a letter to the Knight von Chlum, he said : "it would be wise not to introduce such an inno- vation without the approbation of the Church". Soon, however, seeing how the council upheld the existing practice, he inveighed against it and main- tained that Christ and the Apostle Paul should be obeyed by giving the chalice to the laity; he also entreated the Bohemian nobles to protect the lay chalice against the council. These last words of Hus, written in sight of his funeral pyre, aroused Bohemia. In Prague the priests faithful to the Church were driven out of their parishes and replaced by Utra- quists; in the country the nobles likewise filled all the parishes in their gift with men of the new discipline. The change caused many excesses. Bishop Johann of Leitoniischl had all his possessions devastated by the neighbouring nobles because of his strenuous opposition to Hus at Constance. King Wenceslaus (Wenzel) did not interfere. He had a grudge against
