all the documents concerning the Bohemian controversy to Cardinal Odone Colonna (afterwards Pope Martin V.) and empowered him to decide the question. The cardinal, showing evidence here already of that hatred of Bohemia which was to be a prominent feature in his later life, immediately gave his decision in a sense entirely favourable to Archbishop Zbynek. A bull was forwarded to the archbishop, which in its purport was identical with that formerly sent by Pope Alexander. According to the wishes of the archbishop, Hus was summoned to appear immediately before the papal tribunal.
The Bohemian court was, not unnaturally, very indignant. Both the king and the queen again addressed letters of remonstrance to the pope and to the college of cardinals.[1] Though the king writes here in a very manly manner, and his letters convey a favourable impression, which is always the case when he writes under the influence of Queen Sophia, yet the queen’s letters are more to the purpose, and, it may be added, more peremptory. The queen, being a friend of Hus, grasped more clearly than her husband what was the moral value of the man for whom she was interceding, and what that of Baldassare Cossa and his cardinals. In her letter to John XXIII. the queen complained of the legal proceedings at the papal courts which had caused disgust in the kingdom, of the incessant excommunications, of the prohibition of the preaching of the word of God. She specially interceded for the Bethlehem chapel, “in which she had frequently heard God’s word,” and begged that “John Hus, her faithful, devoted, beloved chaplain might, because of his many enemies, be relieved from the obligation of appearing in person before the pope.” In her letter to the college of cardinals the queen begged the college “for the honour of God, for the salvation and quiet of the people, and for her own pleasure “to maintain in the possession of the Bethlehem chapel” her devoted
- ↑ The four letters are printed by Palacky, Documenta, pp. 422–425.
