THE LIFE AND TIMES OF MASTER JOHN HUS
CHAPTER I
EUROPE AND BOHEMIA AT THE TIME OF HUS
Hostility to the Church of Rome is almost as ancient as the prosperity of that church. The fabled “donation of Constantine,” the subject of the lamentations of Dante and so many other mediæval writers, certainly denotes a landmark in the history of the church. The suffering early church has, in the Christian martyrs, given to humanity some of its noblest types, and the comparison of Hus to these sufferers frequently recurs in the writings of the Bohemians. When Constantine granted to the church, not indeed sovereign power, but great authority and riches, a very sudden change took place. The contrast between the martyrs of the year 313 and the wealthy and worldly prelates who, under imperial presidency, discussed matters of dogma at Nicæa in 325 is very great. Henceforth the power and influence of the church constantly increase and the conception of the priest as an individual who, by virtue of his office, is superior to the layman, becomes more and more widely spread. As in many cases the life of the layman was simpler, more moral, more virtuous than that of the priest, this assumption caused great animosity against the clergy. Claims such as that of receiving communion more frequently, and of partaking of the sacrament in the two kinds—a favour not granted to laymen—were constantly brought forward by the priests, particularly in Bohemia. These pretentions, indeed, played a very great part in the Bohemian movement for church-reform, for the Bohemians considered them as
