558 THE HUSSITES. who had been sent with a conmiission as papal orator, and de- tained him there for three months. Frederic III., whom George, by a stroke of happy audacity, had recently liberated from a siege by his rebellious subjects in the castle of Yienna, interposed, and delayed the explosion of the papal wrath; but to his earnest re- quest that George should be acknowledged as king Pius returned an absolute refusal. George was a heretic, incapable of the crown, and his subjects' oaths of allegiance were void ; only by returning to the Church could he hope to be fitted for the royal dignity. In June, 1464, Pius, in full consistory, published a buU reciting all the griefs of the Church against Bohemia, pronouncing the Compactata void, as never having been confirmed by the Holy See, and summoning George before him to stand trial for heresy within three terms of sixty days each. In two months Pius was dead, but his successor, Paul II., carried forward the proceedings with the old inquisitorial weapons. Three cardinals were ap- pointed in 1465 to try George as a relapsed heretic, and summoned him in August, as a private person, to appear before them within six months for judgment. Without waiting for the expiration of the term, early in December, Paul issued a bull absolving all George's subjects from their allegiance, alleging as a reason for haste that the sentence would grow more difficult by delay. The papal wrath increased with the obstinacy of the assumed heretic. In 1468 another summons was issued to him to appear before the cardinals for judgment; and in February, 1469, his name was placed as that son of perdition, the Hussite George Podiebrad, together with those of Kokyzana and Gregory of Heimburg, in the curse of the Coena Domini, to be anathematized thrice a year, in the solemnities of the mass, in all cathedrals, both in Latin and in the vernacular.* All this was not a mere hrutum fulmen. It was not difficult
- ^n. Sylvii Hist. Bohem. c. 69.— Ejusd. Epist. Ixxi. (0pp. inedd. pp. 461-
70)._Ejusd. Tractatus (lb. pp. 566, 581).— Raynald. ann. 1457, No. 69; ann. .1458, No. 20-8; ann. 1459, No. 18-23; ann. 1463, No. 96-102.— Cochlsei Hist Lib. XII.— Dubrav. Hist. Bohem. Lib. 30.— Wadding, ann. 1462, No. 87.— Pii PP. H. Bull. In min<?ri5i^s. — Sommersberg Silesiac. Rer. Scriptt. II. 1025-6, 1031. — Wadding, ann. 1456, No. 12; ann. 1469, No. 4, 6. — Ludewig Reliq. MSS. VI. 61. — Martene Ampl. Coll. L 1598-9. — D'Achery Spicileg. III. 830-4. — Ripoll III. 466.
