John Tulloch · 4 of 27

Introduction. · Part 2

It was not to be supposed that sentiments such as these should long pass unnoticed. The hierarchy were watching their opportunity against the Reformer; and, at a meeting of Convocation in the beginning of 1377, he was summoned to be examined as to his opinions. Courtenay, Bishop of London, now, as afterwards when raised to the primacy, distinguished himself as his chief opponent. Wicliffe obeyed the summons, and on the 19th February attended at St Paul’s, the place of citation—but not alone. His friend John of Gaunt and Lord Percy, earl marshal, accompanied him. An immense and excited crowd had collected, whose sympathies appear to have been by no means in favour of reform. The popular feeling at the time ran high against the great Duke, who was supposed to cherish sinister designs against the young Richard, son of the Black Prince, who had been the idol of the nation, and whose death, during the previous year, was still deeply mourned. It was the outbreak of this feeling, no doubt, that Wicliffe now experienced. With difficulty could he and his friends get admittance to the chapel; and the wild scene which ensued, when at length they forced their entrance, is graphically narrated by the historians. Courtenay and John of Gaunt broke out into a violent altercation. As the fierce words of the Duke that he would drag the bishop out of the church by the hair of the head circulated, an irresistible tumult rose among the multitude outside. The assembly was broken up, and Wicliffe escaped under the protection of his friends. The popular excitement, however, vented itself against the Duke’s palace; it was attacked, the arms on it reversed, and the palace itself would have been burnt to the ground but for the intervention of the bishop.

Foiled for the time in their aims, the bishops resolved to call in the papal authority to their help. Information of Wicliffe’s opinions was despatched to Avignon, and their condemnation solicited. The Pope, Gregory VI., eagerly responded to the call, and replied by five bulls, three addressed to the Archbishop of Canterbury and other bishops, one to the King, and one to the University of Oxford, commanding an inquest into the erroneous doctrines attributed to the Reformer. As the consequence of these proceedings, Wicliffe was summoned before the prelates at Lambeth. The meeting took place in the spring of 1378, and no fewer than eighteen articles were exhibited against him, but none of them, as yet, touching any point of doctrine. They mainly concerned his principles as to Church property and the validity of Church censures. On this occasion he was no longer backed by his noble friends. The accession of Richard II. in the interval had changed the tactics of John of Gaunt, and withdrawn him at least from open connection with the Reformer. He had now, however, a more powerful backing. The popular feeling had turned toward him with enthusiasm, and its impatient and threatening manifestation awed the Assembly. When it had scarcely commenced, it was hurriedly closed by the entrance of Sir John Clifford, who, in the name of the Dowager Princess of Wales, commanded the bishops to desist from further proceedings. They barely had time to lay upon Wicliffe an injunction to refrain from preaching the obnoxious doctrines when they dispersed. The Catholic historian, Walsingham, contemplates their easy conduct with indignation. “As reeds shaken by the wind,” he says, “their speech became soft as oil, to their own discredit and the degradation of the Church: they were panic-stricken as men that hear not, and in whose mouth there is no reproof.”

Wicliffe was now the recognised head of an extensive reaction against the hierarchy. His own views became enlarged, and his untiring energies sought additional means of influence, and more familiar channels for diffusing his opinions. He entered upon his great work of translating the Scriptures, and as he progressed in it, he began to question the doctrines, as well as the external powers and prerogatives, of the Church. He especially attacked the doctrine of transubstantiation, He denied that the substance of the bread after consecration was destroyed, according to the current view; it was only exalted to a nobler substance. It did not cease to be bread although it became the body of Christ. The Duke of Lancaster and others warned him that they could not follow him in the perilous path on which he had now entered. But Wicliffe no longer sought for such encouragement: he was firm in his own strong and brightening convictions. By his indefatigable exertions the Scriptures were widely circulated, and his opinions spread abroad. He had a numerous retinue of poor preachers, who itinerated from village to village, carrying copies of parts of the Scriptures with them. The common people heard them gladly, and the silly sermons of the monks were neglected. Many of the burghers and middle class adhered to his views, and lent their countenance in the diffusion of the Bible. His influence seemed likely to grow into a great schism, which might have alienated the greater part of the nation from Rome.

The time, however, was not yet ripe. A series of popular commotions, which, in their origin, had no connection with the dissemination of Wicliffe’s opinions, but which were easily identified with them in the minds of the timid and the prudent, broke forth throughout England. The sack of London, the murder of the archbishop, the wild levelling doctrines proclaimed by the leaders of the movement, alarmed all the friends of order. Now, as in later times, the supporters of religious reform were discredited by the apostles of anarchy: all innovation was confounded with disorder; and in the minds of many the name of Wicliffe became scarcely less opprobrious than that of Wat Tyler or John Ball.

Under the influence of such suspicions, and with Courtenay elevated to the primacy in place of the murdered Sudbury, the clergy resolved to proceed more resolutely than they had yet done against the Reformer. He was summoned to a synod at the Grey friars in London. As the synod convened, an earthquake shook the city, and many were disposed to regard it as an unhappy omen; but Courtenay, with great presence of mind, said, “It is the earth throwing off its noxious vapours, that the Church might appear in her perfect purity.” Twenty-four articles were exhibited against Wicliffe. After three days’ debate ten were condemned as heretical, the rest as erroneous. Among the heretical articles, prominence was given to his denial of transubstantiation; and many who were otherwise inclined to follow him, shrank from his views on this head. Every solemnity was given to the promulgation of the decrees of this synod, and a preacher sent down to Oxford, the great seat of Wicliffe’s influence, to uphold the cause of the Church. The Reformer himself was prostrated with illness, but nothing daunted in spirit. When supposed near to death, he raised himself in his bed, and said, “I shall not die but live, and declare the work of the friars.”

In a few months his voice was again heard in reply to the Council of the Greyfriars, and in a petition addressed to the King and Parliament, in which he claims that he may be allowed to defend the articles contained in his writings, as proved by authority or reason to be the Christian faith. The Parliament was convened in autumn (1382) at Oxford. The Convocation met along with it. The latter body, less confident than the synod at the Greyfriars, hesitated to stir the question as to the temporal privileges of the hierarchy, while Parliament declined to interpose in the matter of doctrine: it had no wish to defend any heresy as to transubstantiation. The result was that the Reformer was summoned to answer on this single point. He appeared, and debated it before his auditory with a profound and perplexing subtlety. Master of a homely and rugged speech in addressing the common people, he was at the same time a most skilfully trained disputant, possessed of the highest scholastic attainments, which he did not hesitate to employ to confound and puzzle his adversaries. But though confounded, they were resolved. Lancaster strongly counselled him to submission; but he would not yield. He was condemned, and his condemnation publicly promulgated in the very place where he was holding his lecture. No extreme measures, however, followed this step. He was permitted to retire to Lutterworth, where, in the quiet labours of his parish, and in unremitting zeal for the truth, he spent the two remaining years of his life. Worn out by labours and anxieties, the paralysis from which he had formerly suffered again attacked him. On the last Sunday of the year 1384, while engaged in conducting public worship, he was struck down, and, two days afterwards, expired.

The high character of Wicliffe, the ardour of his faith, the spiritual energy of his life, had made a strong impression. He himself asserts that a third of the clergy had adopted his views. Knyghton, the chronicler, regretfully declares that, “of two persons met on the road, one of them was sure to be a Wicliffite.” His disciples, known as Lollards, abounded everywhere—in the Church, in the castle, on the throne—among the poor, the wealthy burghers, and the nobles. The widow of the Black Prince was favourable to them, and the good Queen Anne was almost an active partisan. To what height Lollardism might have grown in England, save for the political mischances which had in some degree overtaken it before its founder’s death, and which continued to pursue it, it is difficult to say. The accession of the Lancasterian family to the throne, the support which they gave to the hierarchy, and which the hierarchy in return rendered to them, the revolutionary designs attributed to the Lollards, and for which their leader, Sir John Oldcastle (Lord Cobham), suffered in 1417, all contributed to crush the party; while the long wars of the Roses which followed, still further served to obscure the light of truth which had been kindled in England. As we shall see, however, this light was never entirely extinguished. It lived on in faint streaks here and there, until it was swallowed up in the dawning glory of the sixteenth century.

Not in England, but in a country which would seem at first to have little connection with it, is the movement of Wicliffe found renewing itself, and rising into European prominence. Bohemia stood in many respects isolated from. the German states: a Sclavonian kingdom, surrounded by Teutonic neighbours, with interests of its own, and a population inquiring, earnest, and independent. The University of Prague was a centre of attraction to thousands of students from Germany and Poland: its halls were as thronged as those of Paris and Oxford, and its scholastic reputation scarcely inferior. A spirit of freedom in the Church had raised up a succession of men distinguished by reforming zeal and practical earnestness—Militz, Conrad of Waldhausen, and Matthias of Janow. By the pastoral labours of the first, the most wonderful moral change had been wrought among certain classes of the brilliant but dissolute city. Conrad was even more distinguished as a preacher; the very Jews flocked in crowds to hear him. He inveighed against the worldly practices of the Church, and especially the taking of money in exchange for spiritual blessings, which he denounced as the worst of heresies. He exposed the hypocrisy and pretended poverty of the monks. He tried to elevate the popular mind above its idolatry of relics, and held forth the supremacy of the spiritual life. “They only,” he said, “who are led by the Spirit of God are the sons of God.” Dominicans and Franciscans combined against him, and tried to silence him. They drew up twenty-nine articles of heresy, drawn from his sermons, but at length shrunk from prosecuting them, and he was allowed to continue his work in peace till his death in 1369. Matthias of Janow was rather a theologian than a preacher. By his writings, however, he contributed to a spirit of inquiry even more than Conrad by his sermons; and his influence is very visibly impressed upon the movement which followed.

John Huss entered into the religious inheritance of these men. First a student, and then a teacher in the University of Prague, of deep seriousness of character and unaffected piety, he was naturally drawn towards the small but earnest party which, for nearly half a century, had been labouring to advance the cause of truth in Bohemia. He became, about the close of the fourteenth century, confessor to the queen, and preacher in what was called the Bethlehem Chapel, attached to the university. At first his denunciations were of a general character, and the clergy were among his warm admirers; but he soon began to direct his most unsparing attacks against the luxury and licentiousness of the Church, and gradually advanced to deeper and more fundamental views of reform. The writings of Wicliffe are said to have been mainly instrumental in producing this advance in Huss’s opinions. They had at this time been largely introduced into Bohemia. The marriage of Richard II. with Anne, the sister of the King (Wenzel), had established a peculiar connection between the two countries. The scholastic renown of their great seats of learning helped to strengthen this connection. Bohemian students found their way to Oxford, and Oxford scholars to Bohemia. In this manner Wicliffe’s writings became subjects of lively interest in the University of Prague—an interest owing to their philosophical no less than to their religious character.

The long-standing feud between Nominalist and Realist raged in the university,—the Germans on the former side, the Bohemians on the latter. Wicliffe was known as a distinguished Realist one of his earliest writings by which his scholastic reputation had been acquired having been on the “Reality of Universal Conceptions.” Both in his case and in that of Huss, the philosophical bias of reform had entirely and “somewhat singularly changed. The Nominalism of Abelard and Occam—the philosophy of the turbulent reforming spirits of the Church—had found refuge and defence within its bosom; while the traditionary philosophy of orthodoxy of Lanfranc, of Anselm, and of Aquinas—was now become the watchword of the movement party.

Wicliffe’s Realism greatly contributed to his influence in Prague. It was not without its effect upon Huss, but it was the deeper Christian spirit of the Englishman’s writings that chiefly moved him. “I am drawn to them,” he said, “by the manner in which they strive to lead all men back to Christ.” The Bohemian, however, never seems to have clearly adopted the advanced views of the English reformer on transubstantiation. The bent of Huss’s mind was practical rather than doctrinal or speculative; and the reform which he courted was, above all, a reform of the Christian life. He did not aim, like Wicliffe, to reconstruct the whole edifice of the Church.

Associated with Huss was a young knight, Jerome of Prague, distinguished by his intellectual culture and restless ardour. He had studied in Oxford and Paris. He had visited Jerusalem, Hungary, and even Russia, and everywhere attracted notice by his accomplishments, his energy and eloquence. He became an enthusiastic disciple of Wicliffitism. “Until now,” he said, “we had nothing but the shell of science: Wicliffe first laid open the kernel.” Huss and Jerome were fast friends, and laboured in zealous co-operation; the latter more impulsive and enterprising—the former more moderate, self-possessed, and gentle in his manners.

In 1403 the contest in Prague regarding the opinions of Wicliffe came to a head. Certain propositions ascribed to the English reformer were brought before a meeting of the university. The Bohemians and Germans were divided; but the great majority of the German students gave them an easy victory. This, far from allaying, only served to increase the feeling of bitterness between the two parties. Two years later Pope Innocent III. issued a bull, addressed to Archbishop Sbynko, urging him to suppress and condemn the Wicliffite heresies spreading in Bohemia. Hitherto the archbishop, if not cordial in favour of the Reform movement, had not been hostile to it; and even for some time still there was no disturbance of the good understanding subsisting between him and Huss. A rupture, however, could not in the nature of things be long postponed. A royal edict regarding the manner of voting in the university, designed to secure the Bohemian students against the preponderance in numbers of the Germans and other foreigners, became a sort of turning-point in the controversy. Indignant at the edict, the German students left Prague in a body. The Bohemian party were left in undivided possession of power; and, as a sign of this, Huss was immediately elected rector of the university. The rejected students spread everywhere abroad the report of heresy against the Bohemians. Not merely high-churchmen, but those addicted to the more liberal theology and ecclesiasticism of Paris, represented by Gerson and D’Ailly, took alarm at the rise of a system that seemed to aim at the overthrow of the hierarchy altogether. The archbishop and a majority of the clergy began to realise the nature of the crisis, and to place themselves in vigorous opposition to the Hussite party.

Through various alternations this opposition ran its course during the next ten years. The writings of Wicliffe were burned by order of the archbishop. Huss appealed to the Pope, and was summoned to appear at Rome; but the King refused him permission to obey the summons, and sent an embassy in his stead. Sentence of excommunication was passed upon the Reformer, and an interdict laid upon the city. The popular excitement against the clergy became extreme. The archbishop began to feel that he had carried matters too far, and showed an eagerness for some settlement. A commission was appointed to negotiate the matter, and the result was that Huss made a confession of faith designed to vindicate his orthodoxy, which the archbishop saw reason to accept; while he, on his part, reported to the Pope that his diocese was at length purged of heresy.

But this compromise, which took place in 1411, was too hollow to last, even if Rome had not immediately provoked the renewal of the struggle. While the embassy from Bohemia still remained in Rome, the vendors of the papal indulgences were sent forth into the country—everywhere excited by a spirit of reform—and began, with their usual arts, their nefarious traffic. Huss was moved to irrepressible indignation, and raised his eloquent voice against them. They were subjected to popular outrage. The unguarded zeal of Jerome fanned the flame, and the most violent commotions ensued. In their attempts to maintain order, the magistrates seized some of the rioters, and three young men were executed. The populace looked upon them as martyrs. Their dead bodies were protected, and, amid songs and prayers, conveyed to the Bethlehem Chapel, and interred there. The anti-Hussite party, however, had in the interval gathered strength; and, aided in their designs at Rome by a crafty priest, Michael de Causis, who had formerly been in the employment of the King of Bohemia, they were violently determined to uphold their ascendancy. At his instance the Bohemian ambassadors were imprisoned; the ban of excommunication launched forth anew against Huss; and Prague laid again under an interdict. King Wenzel hesitated amid the elements of disorder that raged around him, and Huss withdrew from the city—but only by his eloquence and zeal to spread his opinions more extensively throughout the country.

Things were in this excited state when the Council of Constance met. It was a great event in the history of the Church. The abuses of monasticism, the scandal of a divided Papacy, the growth of heresy, had all called for an expression of the public opinion of Christendom, and this was at length to be given forth. The Council was to be a reforming one in the nature of the case. Its great work was to purify and reestablish the Church in undivided strength. Huss, therefore, did not require to be urged to attend it. To vindicate his preaching, and raise his voice against the prevailing corruptions, in presence of its representatives, assembled from every quarter, was, above all, what he desired to do. The Emperor Sigismund promised him, in the most solemn manner, a safe-conduct. He was to have the opportunity of fully explaining his sentiments before the Council; and if he did not accept its decision, his safe return to Bohemia was guaranteed.

Huss accordingly set out for Constance in October 1414. A spirit of heroic faith animated him, yet he was not without dark misgivings. He left a letter in the hands of one of his disciples, which was only to be opened on the certain intelligence of his death, and which contained his will, with many pious confessions and exhortations. He reached Constance on the 3d of November, a few days after Pope John, whose numerous and splendid escort had passed him on the way. All along his journey he had received many tokens of sympathy and approval. Like Luther, afterwards, in his famous journey to Worms, he travelled in a kind of state. Wherever he passed, he professed his willingness to explain his views, and to defend himself from the charge of heresy. The clergy in many places sought his counsel. The parish priest of Pernau, with his vicars, waited upon him at his lodgings, drank to his health in a large tankard of wine, and freely conversed with him on matters of Christian faith. At Nuremberg the “friends of God” welcomed him; and, while he was engaged in church in discussion with them, three Bohemian nobles arrived, bearing the Emperor’s safe-conduct; and to them was intrusted the particular duty of watching over and protecting their countryman in his mission.

All these arrangements, however, were only preliminaries to a base betrayal on the part of the Emperor, and a mock trial on the part of the Council. For about three weeks after his arrival he was left at liberty; and to all who visited him, he freely explained his opinions, while he continued to urge his claims to be publicly heard. His enemies, in the meantime, were quietly concocting his ruin. Even those who otherwise professed the reformation of abused, could only see in his aims the overthrow of the Church; and Gerson and D’Ailly joined no less rigorously than Pope John and Michael de Causis in his condemnation. He was seized and thrown into prison on the 28th of December. He and his friends had still a hope in the safe-conduct of the Emperor. The Bohemian nobles urgently remonstrated against the violation of the Emperor’s protection, and he himself, when he first heard of Huss’s imprisonment, threatened to break open the doors of his prison by force. Craft and bigotry, however, were destined to prevail. The Emperor, after his arrival, was wrought upon in such a manner as to abandon his safe-conduct and leave Huss to his fate. No excuse can be made for such an act of perfidy. But Sigismund plainly saw that he must either give up Huss or see the Council dissolved, which, after so many difficulties, had assembled at his summons. He chose the former alternative. Huss was summoned four several times before the assembled representatives of the Church, confronted with certain articles from his works, and urged to unconditional submission. Amid uproar and insult, and the meanest attempts to entangle him in logical subtleties on the subject of transubstantiation, he replied to his accusers with admirable confidence and self-possession. He would submit when convinced, but no other considerations moved him. “Let the lowest in the Council convince me, and I will humbly own my error,” he said—meek but brave words, the day for understanding which, however, had not yet come! He was condemned to be degraded from the priestly office, and then burned. The sentence was carried out with every circumstance of ignominy and cruelty. As they stripped him of his priestly robes, he said, “These mockeries I bear with equal mind, for the name and truth of Christ!” “We devote thy soul to the devils in hell!” cried his enemies. “And I commend my soul to the most merciful Lord Jesus!” he calmly replied. Thus perished John Huss, the Bohemian Reformer, like his great Master, amid the curses of a triumphant hierarchy.

Jerome of Prague, who had come with rash confidence to be near his friend, and who had also been seized and imprisoned, was next summoned before the Council. Worn out by his miserable imprisonment, his spirits broken and his health feeble, he was induced to make a recantation of his errors; but with time for reflection, he regained his vigour of mind, and professed his determination to maintain to the death the doctrines of Wicliffe and John Huss. His condemnation followed; and, as if to make up for his temporary weakness, he died with the most cheerful intrepidity. Bound naked to the stake, as the flames consumed him, he continued to sing hymns in a “clear, untrembling” voice.

The execution of Huss and Jerome kindled the flames of war in Bohemia—a war distinguished alike for atrocity and heroism. Alienation of race mingled with bitterness of religious hatred; and Bohemians fought with Germans, not merely to vindicate the cause of their martyred countrymen, but to avenge their insulted patriotism. Crusading army after army, sent forth by the Emperor and blessed by the Church, were met and routed by the Hussites, under the proud leadership of Ziska and Procopius. The insurrectionary movement embraced the whole country, and strengthened itself by successive victories. The Council of Basle, which met in 1433, was fain to negotiate with the triumphant Hussites, and a temporary concordat was arranged between them and the Emperor. This did not long prevent the renewal of hostilities, but it served to give permanent effect to dissensions that had already begun to weaken the cause of the reformers. They separated into two great parties, known by the name of the Calixtines and the Taborites. These dissensions accomplished in course of time what the arms of the Empire had failed to effect. The opposition to Rome gradually languished. So many violent and merely secular feelings had mingled in it, that when the tension of active contest was relaxed, the religious attitude of resistance gave way. A small remnant, however, proving faithful to its principles, formed the seed of the famous Community of Bohemian or Moravian Brethren, whose zealous Christian life survived, not only to the time of the Reformation, but long beyond it.

The decaying issue of the Hussite movement brings us to the verge of the sixteenth century. Yet it cannot be said that we trace any direct links of connection between the German and the Bohemian reformer: Luther bears no such relation to Huss as Huss did to Wicliffe. The immediate effect of the Bohemian insurrection, on the contrary, was to strengthen the power of the Church in Germany. The Germans regarded with offence the opinions of a hostile people, whose arms had not only kept the imperial forces at bay, but invaded and laid waste their provinces and cities. The course of the reform movement seems, therefore, to run out at this point. The torch, if not extinguished, does not pass from hand to hand; yet it remained a grand beacon, at once of encouragement and warning. Luther did not spring in any historical connection from Huss, but the Bohemian reformer remained to him a noble example of heroic principle, and the Hussite struggle an affecting memory of the inefficacy of the sword to secure the great work of religious reformation.

In the meantime, throughout the fifteenth century, new seeds of preparation for the great revolt were everywhere ripening. The reforming efforts hitherto made had failed, not from any lack of heroism in the men that led them, nor from any deficiency of the truth that animated them, but above all, from the inadequate field prepared to receive the truth. The darkness of ignorance lay as yet, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, too heavy upon the popular mind. Intellectual as well as political power were too strongly centred in the Church to permit of a successful resistance either to the one or the other. A wider field of interest was necessary before individual resistance could rise into triumph; but such a field was now, in the course of the fifteenth century, rapidly preparing, especially in Germany. We can trace this wider movement of preparation in three several directions,—political, religious, and literary; and, with a brief glance at these combined preparatory influences, we shall find ourselves on the threshold of the great crisis of the sixteenth century.

The worldly and degraded spirit of the hierarchy, and the exactions which it everywhere made, continued to come always into more jarring conflict with the advancing interests of national pride and political freedom. Notwithstanding the disgraceful schisms which had so long rent it, its conflicts with successful Councils, and not least, its own profligacy and crimes—notorious to Christendom in the infamies of a Baldassare Cossa, and the tragic and appalling wickedness of a Borgia—the Papacy relaxed none of its pretensions. It spread its intrigues everywhere, aided by many of the most able and unscrupulous of the prelatic aristocracy, and the swarming herds of monks, sunk in ignorance and vice. The great end of its existence was to procure money to feed its insatiable avarice or prop its assailed power—in some instances, it must be confessed, to minister to great works of art and civilisation. For this purpose, the instrumentality of indulgences, the manufacture and the sale of pardons, had received an enormous extension, and reached a flagrant height of abuse. Huss, we have seen, had already been aroused by it. The tracts of Wicliffe and the poems of Chaucer, still earlier, testify to its popular notoriety. We shall see to what tremendous significance it was destined to grow in the life of Luther.