III. bishop of Prague opposed the intruding ideas, and CHAP. burnt such of Wickliffe's manuscripts as he could meet with. But as new opinions which have any foundation in truth are diffused by persecution, so most of those of the English reformer became nationalized in Bohemia.32 They were so far welcomed in Saxony, that Luther read a copy of the sermons of John Huss in his convent's library at Erfurd.33 Thus the seeds and spirit of a new mind against the hierarchy, on all the four topics we have mentioned, were planted in three commanding positions in Europe, as the fifteenth century opened, in England, in Saxony, and in Bohemia; while a branch of the Waldenses were cherishing similar ones in Hungary, and their parent body also, amid the Alps of Switzerland and Savoy. They declined in England as to their publicity, while they were vegetating on the Germanic continent. The house of Lancaster wrenched the crown from Richard II. by the invitation and the aid of the English hierarchy, avowedly for his personal misconduct, which had been most culpable; but apparently on the secret compact, with the church for suppressing its Lollard opponents. Henry IV. 35 34 For the principal opinions of the Bohemians, which chiefly offended their pontifical historian, see Mid. Ages, v. 5. p. 200. The pope Pius II. who was Æneas Sylvius when he wrote, refers them to Wickliffe, and calls them also the impiam Waldensium sectam et insaniam.' Hist. Boh. 33 Ib. 200. 34 Ib. v. 2. p. 305. 35 This is inferred from the facts, that the archbishop of Canterbury went in disguise to Paris to invite Henry IV., and seconded it by declaring a remission of sins to all who would assent to his invasion, Mid. Ages, v. 2. p. 306, 7; and also, that he and his line became a persecuting dynasty. II. 36 BOOK performed his part of this nefarious engagement, by pledging himself to destroy all heresies and heretics, and by assenting to that disgraceful statute of murder and impiety, which ordered heretics to be burnt. He promised also in parliament to punish all who should preach, teach, or write against the faith or determinations of the church, or have conventicles or schools, where such opinions were encouraged. Henry V. became a still more cruel persecutor; for he personally witnessed the burning of a poor man who disbelieved transubstantiation, after failing in a kindly meant endeavor to procure his recantation. He enforced severe prosecutions; and after personally upbraiding the gallant soldier and sincere Christian, sir John Oldcastle, for his religious sentiments, allowed him at last to be consumed at the stake.37 Yet altho he supported the clergy in their system and doctrines, that is, in all which lay between them and the people; he desired to abridge that power which they maintained and exercised against the crown and aristocracy of the country, and those habits which most offended the public judgment: He therefore instructed his ambassadors at the council of Basle to obtain some important modifications in this respect, and to recommend a general reformation of the most obnoxious corruptions.36 38 The pope John complained in 1414 to the king of Bohemia, that persons in his dominions were follow 36 Hist. Mid. Ages, v. 2. p. 353. W. Sautre, a chaplain, was immediately burnt. ib. "Mid. Ages, v. 2. p. 448-53. Oldcastle's, or Lord Cobham's den's Fasciculus, who may be sufferer. 1. p. 513-520, Foxe has preserved a full detail of opinions and examinations from Walconsidered as a contemporary of the 38 Hist. Mid. Ages, v. 3. p. 118. III. ing the errors of that arch heretic Wickliffe, whose CHAP. books had been condemned; and exhorted him to root out this blot.29 At the Council of Constance, the doctrines of Huss were condemned as those of the English reformer.40 This council has made its name repulsively memorable, by causing Huss to be burnt, tho he came to explain his opinions under the safe-conduct of the emperor; and afterwards Jerome of Prague: a species of human sacrifice, which, being aggravated by the wilful and tyrannical perfidy of violating the legal protection to which Huss had trusted, in order to make him a victim, had its natural results of fixing an indelible stain on the hierarchy, of whose chief members that synod consisted, and which still vindicates the deed;" Foxe, 1. p. 544. 40 The council's sententia damnationis calls Wickliffe the Dux et princeps' of the Bohemian heretics, and condemned 44 of his opinions, and Huss as his disciple, and classes Jerome with them. See the Sententia, printed by Orthuinus, and reprinted by Browne in his Fasciculus, v. 1. p. 299, 303. The 44 opinions, with their reprobations, are in p. 280-295. A larger quantity of Wickliffe's opinions, between two and three hundred, condemned at this council, occupy 14 folio pages. 266–280. "I regret that, being one of the heads of the existing Roman Church in France, and possessing an enlightened mind, M. Frayssinous should in 1825 extenuate this abominable deed. He says the council' ne viola pas la foi publique.' Why? because le sauf conduit n'etoit que pour garantir la personne de Jean Huss sur la route.' That Huss had sought and obtained it as his protection at the council, and that he stood before the prelates there with his own and the public belief that he had his personal safeguard in his pocket, and that the emperor, when he gave it, meant it to be so, there can be no doubt. 6 It was only the more atrocious to find out a verbal distinction after he was in their power, which, in order to put a fellow-creature to a cruel death, would evade its general purpose. M. F. adds, that he was punished less as heresiarch,' than as perturbateur.' The burning disproves this. Mary beheaded Wyatt as perturbateur, but she burnt Latimer as heresiarch. So her father on this express difference hung the traitorous priests, while he burnt Ann Askew. Huss was burnt in July 1415: as John Clayton was in our Smithfield in the same year for analogous opinions. 1 Foxe, 588. II. BOOK and of rousing the Bohemian nation into a vindictive. and sturdy war, which lasted, with great calamities and vicissitudes, till they obtained in 1436 a general amnesty, and a confirmation of some of their most important privileges. 42 While this struggle was fiercely raging, the new Pope, Martin V., emulous of imitating the precedent and horrors of the Albigensian crusade, having in the first year of his pontificate issued his bull denouncing Wickliffe, with Huss and Jerome, as an arch heretic,43 called also on the sovereigns of Europe to march their armies to reconvert or extirpate the formidable reformers. A great English prelate, of the house of Lancaster, disgraced himself, his order and his country, by leading out of the land which had given Wickliffe birth, a military force to assist in executing this unchristian mandate. But no persecution suppressed the advancing spirit of religious reformation, which this rural rector had so strongly excited, not only in his own country, but in Europe. The house of York arose in political Their most distinguished commander was the celebrated Zisca, who, after several times defeating the imperial force, remained master of Bohemia till he died, in 1424. But his successor, Procopius, ably supported his patriotic cause. An interesting account of the actions of Zisca, out of Æneas Sylvius, will be found in Foxe, p. 593-6; who also narrates the actions of his successor. 43 See this in Foxe, 596-600; ordering inquiries on the 26 articles which it enumerates, and whether the arrested party knew John Wickliffe of England,' or the others, or ever prayed for them. Procopius and the other captains of the Bohemians in 1430 circulated an animated exhortation against this papal mandate. Foxe, 600-2. This pontiff's bull declares it to be necessary vel ipsi heretici reducantur in rectam semitam vel de terra radicitus extirpentur.' See it in Brown's Fas. App. 611. 45 Hist. England, Mid. Ages, 2. p. 487. It was one of the articles for which a priest was condemned to perpetual prison, that he affirmed it to be unlawful to make war against the Bohemians. Foxe, 590. III. competition against that of Lancaster, and received CHAP. the support of all who wished a better system, until it was seated on the throne of England; to be succeeded, on the downfal of Richard III. by the House of Tudor, which again allied itself with the papal church; especially after Henry VIII. had made Wolsey, a cardinal aspiring to be pope, his prime minister, with a power that no directing counsellor of the state had exerted in England before. 46 The progress of altering mind in its religious belief continued to advance in the English public: and new inventions and new pretensions of state by the prelates, only multiplied the criticisms against them, altho the church had several stout defenders." From the examinations of Thorpe, in 1407, and of Dr. Purvey, in 1421,49 and from the occasional burning and persecutions of other persons during the rest of the century,50 we learn that the spirit and 48 46 Thus the archbishop Arundel granted 40 days pardon to those who would repeat their Aves on the sounding of the morning curfew; and laid on a church in London an interdict against using its organ, because its bells had not rung in honor to him as he passed with his cross. While we pass, every parish church in their turns ought in token of special reverence to us to ring their bells.' See his order taken from the Reg. Arund. in Foxe, 510, 511. The prelates were then exacting this new appendage of their state, for the bishop of Worcester complained against the prior and convent for not ringing the bells at his coming to the church. So Arundel's successor, Chicheley, quarrelled with the abbot of Canterbury in 1425, for not ringing the bells, and meeting us with processions when we passed.' Foxe, 511. Reg. Chich. 365. The answer of W. Wodford, or Wydfford, in 1396, to 18 of Wickliffe's articles, was printed by Orthuinus in his Fasciculus, and in his Brown, v. 1. p. 191. On others, see Mid. Ages, v. 3. p. 149, 150. 48 Foxe gives it at length, 485-500. 9 See this in Foxe, from Walden, 500-3. See also Hist. Mid. Ages, v. 3. p. 137-57. So For William Tailor's apprehension, a priest, in 1421, and his abjuration and burning in 1422; for the persecution of numerous others, in Norfolk and Suffolk, in 1424-1428; for the burning of Hoveden in 1430 |