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LETTERS WRITTEN FROM

that the Pope is God on earth and cannot sin or be guilty of sinning (as the Canonists assert);[1] that the Pope is the head of the Holy Church Universal, ruling it with an all-sufficient power: is the heart of the Church, giving to it spiritual life: is the fountain from which all power and goodness permeates: is the sun of the Holy Church, and the unfailing refuge to which every Christian should flee. But lo! your head is now cut off, God on earth is bound, his sins are openly declared, the fountain has run dry, the sun is darkened, the heart is torn out, the refuge is a fugitive from Constance and is rejected, so that none can flee to him![2] The Council condemned him for heresy because he sold indulgences, bishoprics, and benefices; and he was condemned by these very men, many of whom bought these things from him, while others did good trade by selling them over again. John, Bishop of Leitomischl,[3] was there, who twice attempted to buy the see of Prague, but he was outbid by others. Oh! why have they not first cast the beam out of their own eye? Indeed, their own law hath the provision: Whoso hath gained an office by money, let him be deprived of it.[4] Therefore, let seller and buyer and money-lender and broker be condemned

  1. Most definitely asserted in Augustin Trionfo of Ancona, De Potestate Ecclesiastica, dedicated to John XXII., and in Alvaro Pelayo’s De Planctu Ecclesiæ (1332). But Hus, who was no canonist, was probably thinking of Palecz and Stanislaus (see p. 123). Niem (De Schismate, ed. Erler, p. 178) tells us that at this time it was publicly debated whether the Pope could not without simony sell benefices. Compare also Albert Engelschalk of Prague, Aureum Speculum Papæ (in Brown’s edition of Ortiun Gratius’s Fasciculus, ii. 63–101).
  2. Cf. pp. 203, 244.
  3. P. 83
  4. See Gratian, II. C. 1, q. 1, c. 3, where, however, it is wrongly ascribed.