The Historians' History of the World 08

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.

After these and some other transactions the council proceeded avowedly to the subject of a reformation of the church, in its “head and members,” as the language of that age was. For all Europe saw the need of such a reformation, and most ardently wished for it. Nor did the council deny that chiefly for this important object it had been called together. But the cardinals and principal men of the Romish court, for whose interest it was, especially, that the disorders of the church should remain untouched, craftily urged and brought the majority to believe that a business of such magnitude could not be managed advantageously, until after the election of a new pontiff. The new head of the church, however, Martin V, abused his power to elude the design of reformation; and manifested by his commands and edicts that he did not wish the church to be purged and restored to a sound state. The council, accordingly, after deliberating three years and six months, broke up on the 22nd of April, 1418, leaving the matter unaccomplished, and putting off that reformation, which all good men devoutly wished, to a council which should be called five years afterwards.

A Priest in his Mantle of Office, 1400

[1431-1439 A.D.]