dicted and aliens from the holy priesthood. The reason is because those simoniacs buy and: sell excommunications, suspensions and interdicts, and with these as their weapons they feed and defend their simony most powerfully. And a proof is not necessary, for this simoniacal trafficking is patent even to the eye of rustics, who are bound, vexed, oppressed and plundered by these selfsame simoniacs. For to such proportions has this heresy of Simon Magus and Gehazi grown that men without compunction in season and out of season, and even the unwilling, are impelled on to this sort of criminal offence. And all trafficking of this sort arises from the method in vogue with the Roman curia, which practises it in turn with the curias of the bishops after the manner of Simon Magus and Gehazi. This appears in the dimissorial letters for confirmings, pardonings, admissions, and also in other things invented to get pecuniary plunders.[1]
Now, as to the condemnation of the XLV Articles,[2] it should be said—but I speak briefly—that up to this day the
- ↑ Literæ dimissoriales is the name given to licenses by ecclesiastical superiors, setting aside the usual ecclesiastical practices, whatever they may be, from pope down to priest, as, for example, when a bishop grants permission to ordain a candidate of his diocese to a bishop of another diocese. Huss is referring to licenses given by popes or bishops to agents to perform acts presumably for temporal favors. See Hergenröther, K.-recht, 236, 239, etc.
- ↑ The XLV Articles of Wyclif, action upon which was first taken at Prague by the university, 1403, and more recently and drastically, 1412, forbidding any to hold or teach them, they being heretical, seditious, scandalous and erroneous, Doc., 451 sq. At the city hall of the Old Town King Wenzel had the prohibition of the articles publicly announced, Doc., 456. It seems strange that Huss has not before mentioned these XLV Articles by name, which were the first cause of his troubles in Prague. In his Reply to Stanislaus, Mon., 1: 331 sq., he starts out with a prolonged reference to them and reminds Stanislaus that he was one of the doctors of the theological faculty, all of whom now condemned the articles as heretical, etc., 1412, who originally had taken most positive ground on the other side and strenuously defended them. Likewise in his Reply to Palecz, Huss brings out into prominence the discussions over the XLV Articles and makes the statement that Palecz, who was one of the eight doctors who declared the articles heretical, at one time had defended them, and in a meeting at the university, throwing down one of Wyclif's writings on the table, had said that he was ready to defend it against any one who might attack even a single word extracted from it.
