disregarding excommunication, of granting the cup to the laity, of defending the forty-five condemned articles of Wickliff, of exciting the people against the clergy, so that if he were allowed to return to Prague there would be a persecution such as had not been seen since the days of Constantine, and of other errors and offences. This was more than sufficient to justify his trial, and the process was commenced without delay by the appointment, December 1, of commissioners to examine him. These commissioners were, in fact, inquisitors, and the council at large served as the assembly of experts in which, as it will be remembered, final assent was given to the judgment. One of the commissioners at least, Bernardo, Bishop of Città di Castello, was already familiar with the matter, for, only the year before, as papal nuncio in Poland, he had assisted in driving away Jerome of Prague. In addition to the articles of Michael de Causis there was a kind of indictment against Huss presented to the commissioners by the procurators and promoters of the council, reciting the troubles at Prague, his excommunication, and his teaching of Wickliffite heresies.[1]
At first the proceedings were pushed with a vigor which seemed to promise a speedy termination of the case. recovered from his first sickness there was submitted to him a As soon as Huss series of forty-two errors extracted from his writings by Palecz. To these he replied seriatim in writing, explaining the false constructions which he asserted had been placed on some passages, defending some, and limiting and conditioning others. As he was denied the use of books, even of the treatises which were the source of the charges, these answers manifest a wonderful retentiveness of memory and quickness and clearness of intellect. Sometimes he was visited in his prison by the commissioners and personally interrogated. A Carthusian, writing from Constance, May 19, relates that the day before he had been present at such an examination and had never seen so bold and audacious a scoundrel or one who could so cautiously conceal the truth. On the
- ↑ Palacky Documenta, pp. 194–204, 506.—Mladenowic Relatio (Palacky, p. 252). The council itself recognized that its proceedings were inquisitorial. In the sentence of Jerome of Prague it uses the phrase "Hæc sancta synodus Constantiensis in causa inquisitionis hæretica pravitatis per eamdem sanctam synodem mota."—Von der Hardt IV. 766.
