The Historians' History of the World 08 [Parthians, Sassanids and Arabs; The Crusades and the Papacy]

This good man, who was in love with real piety, but perhaps had sometimes too much warmth and not sufficient prudence, being summoned to the Council of Constance, went thither on the faith of a safe-conduct given by the emperor Sigismund, with a view to demonstrate his innocence and prove them liars who talked of him as an apostate from the Roman church. And certainly he had not departed in things of any moment from the religion of his times; but had only inveighed severely against the pontiffs, the court of Rome, the more considerable clergy, and the monks; which in fact had the sanction of his times, and was daily done in the Council of Constance itself. Yet his enemies, who were numerous both in Bohemia and in the council, managed the procedure against him so artfully and successfully that, in violation of the public faith, he was cast into prison; and when he would not, according to the council’s order, confess himself guilty, he was adjudged a heretic, and burned alive, on the 6th day of July, 1415. Full of faith and the love of God, he sustained this punishment with admirable constancy. The same unhappy fate was borne with the same pious fortitude and constancy by Jerome of Prague, the companion of John Huss, who had come to Constance to support and aid his friend. He yielded at first through fear of death to the mandates of the council, and renounced those opinions which the council had condemned in him; but being retained still in prison, he resumed courage, again avowed those opinions, and was, therefore, committed to the flames on the 30th of May, 1416.

Before Huss and Jerome were condemned by the council, John Wycliffe, who was considered, and not altogether without reason, as their teacher, had been pronounced infamous, and condemned by a decree of the fathers. For on the fourth day of May, 1415, the council declared a number of opinions extracted from his writings to be abominable; and ordered all his books to be destroyed, and his bones to be burned. Not long after, on the 14th of June, they passed the famous decree that the sacred supper should be administered to the laity under one kind of bread only, forbidding communion under both kinds. For in the preceding year, 1414, Jacobellus (James) of Mies, incumbent of St. Michael’s church at Prague, by the instigation of a Parisian doctor, Peter of Dresden, had begun to celebrate the communion under both kinds, at Prague; which example many other churches followed. The subject being brought before the council by one of the Bohemian bishops, it considered a remedy to be required even for this heresy. By this decree at Constance, the communion of the laity under one kind obtained the force and authority of law in the Roman church.

[1407-1431 A.D.]

In the same year, the council placed among execrable errors, or heresies, an opinion of Jean Petit, a Parisian theologian, that tyrants might be lawfully slain by any private person. The party however, from whom this opinion came was not named, because he was supported by very powerful patrons. John duke of Burgundy employed assassins, in the year 1407, to murder Louis duke of Orleans. A great contest now arose, and Petit, an eloquent and ingenious man, pleaded the cause of John of Burgundy at Paris; and in order to justify his conduct he maintained that it is no sin to destroy a tyrant, without a trial of his cause, by force or fraud, or in any other manner, and even if the persons doing it are bound to him by an oath or covenant. By a tyrant, however, Petit did not understand the sovereign of a nation, but a powerful citizen, who abused his resources to the ruin of his king and country. The university of Paris passed a stern and severe sentence upon the author of so dangerous an opinion. The council, after several consultations, struck at the opinion, without naming its author. The new pontiff, however, Martin V, from fear of the Burgundian power, would not ratify even this mild sentence.