before the world! St. Peter condemned and uttered a curse on Simon, because he had desired to purchase the virtue of the Holy Ghost with money.[1] These men have condemned and uttered a curse on the seller, while the buyers and money-lenders get off scot-free and carry on their sales privately. There is the Bishop of Constance,[2] who buys, and the other
person who has sold to him; and the Pope received money for absolving them! The same thing happens, as I know, in Bohemia and Moravia. Would that the Lord Jesus had said in the Council, ‘He that is without the sin of simony, let him condemn Pope John ’ Methinks they would have all gone out of doors one after another![3] Why did they adore him with bended knees, kiss his feet, and call him most holy Father, when they knew he was a ‘heretic, a homicide, and a Sodomite,’[4] all of which sins afterwards came to light? Why did the Cardinals elect him as Pope, when they knew he was so shameful a homicide as to have slain the most holy Father?[5] Why did they suffer him to practise simony while performing the duties of a pope, when they were appointed his advisers for the purpose of giving him good counsel? Are not those to blame who themselves as well as he practised simony? Before he escaped from Constance, why had no one the courage to address him except as the most holy Father?[6] To be sure, they were afraid of him then; but when the secular power
- ↑ Acts ix. 20.
- ↑ P. 162, n.
- ↑ John viii. 7–9.
- ↑ Cf. p. 130, n. 1, and p. 243, n. 3.
- ↑ John was commonly accused of having poisoned Alexander V.; but the charge was not in the final official articles (Hardt, iv. 296 ff.).
- ↑ Hus would not hear in prison of the famous retort of Hallum, Bishop of Salisbury: ‘I ask that Pope John act worthily of his office’ (Hardt, iv. 1418).
