Jesus Christ that He Himself may be proctor, advocate, and judge.
Item, you should know that they have no count, as I imagine, against me, except that I hindered the bull proclaiming the crusade.[1] Yet they have my pamphlet which was read before me, and I duly certified it.[2]
Secondly, they charge me with having been so long under sentence of excommunication and with having administered the sacrament during the time, etc.[3]
Thirdly, that I appealed from the Pope.[4] For they read my appeal in my presence; and I admitted it was mine before them all with a joyous heart and a smile.
Fourthly, that I left behind me a letter, which was read in the Bethlehem, and which my enemies utterly mistranslated and misinterpreted,[5] containing the statement that I was leaving without a safe-conduct.
In answer to this last, assert that when I left I had not a safe-conduct from the Pope;[6] and secondly, that I was not aware that you were commissioned[7] to go with me, when I wrote that letter.
Item, ask if I could enter a protest on the question which I wish to make the main issue.[8] Moreover,
- ↑ Supra, pp. 67–9.
- ↑ Probably his Disputation against Indulgences delivered (Jane 7, 1412) before the University (see Mon. i. 173–89 and supra, p. 69).
- ↑ Cf. p. 163.
- ↑ Doc. 464–6; end of 1412. See p. 79.
- ↑ See supra, p. 147.
- ↑ See p. 160, n. 1.
- ↑ By Sigismund.
- ↑ Determinare, a University term which must not here be taken too literally, though compare infra, p. 184. Hus had already prepared before he left Prague three sermons, which he desired to deliver before the Council (Mon. i. 44–57). The first and most important, On the Sufficiency of the Law of Christ for the Government of the Church, a familiar theme with Wyclif, really cut at the very roots of the mediæval system. To this Hus here alludes as the ‘determination’ he desired to present (cf. pp. 160 and 184). Hus made a great mistake in not recognising from the first that the Council was not a University Debating Society.
