Page:The life & times of Master John Hus by Count Lützow.djvu/199

he had resigned his dignity, still resided in the archiepiscopal palace. Albik, however, removed from his former residence before February 1, and the synod took place at the palace of the archbishops. Two statements were immediately laid before the assembly. One, which emanated from the party that favoured the existent state of affairs—it would be invidious to call it the conservative party—stated that the present discord had been caused by some priests who had disobeyed their superiors, and by those who spread the heresies of Wycliffe. They therefore recommended that Wycliffe’s heresies should be again denounced, and that the papal bull which decreed the destruction of the Bethlehem chapel should be carried out. They also demanded that Hus should be delivered up to the temporal authorities to receive condign punishment. An additional paper from the same source offered suggestions as to the steps to be taken to suppress all opposition to the Church of Rome, and also protested against Hus’s visits to Prague, “be they manifest or secret.” The church-reformers in their statement demanded that Hus should be allowed to appear before the synod in his own defence. If no one there was prepared to bring accusations against him, then those who had calumniated him should be called on to prove that, as they had previously stated, heresies were prevalent in Bohemia; should they be unable to do this, they were to be punished. Simultaneously the university also forwarded to the synod a document from the pen of the gifted Master Jacobellus which covered the same ground as the one mentioned before, but expressed more fully and more clearly the views of the Bohemian church-reformers. It began by stating the necessity of restoring peace in Bohemia and putting a stop to the disorders in the Bohemian Church. The king should therefore take determined measures to secure the re-establishment of peace and concord, to destroy the heresy of simony, adultery, fornication, concubinage, and the superfluity of worldly goods and temporal power among the clergy.