In darkness, in hunger, in pain,
Which the haughtiest spirit will break,
lie was linked to the wall with the riveted chain-
And he looked for the torturing stake.'
Song of the Hussites.
By the Hon. and Rev. BAPTIST NOEL.
THE brilliant Easter festivities drew on apace. Queen Barbe had taken a fancy to the young ‘squire of the falcons,' as she called Armand, and he was invited to share the pleasures of her festive little court at Petershausen. Nothing loath, he entered into all with the careless enjoyment of his age and his character. But his great attraction was in the presence of Jocelyne. In spite of the secret which lay between them, and the pain its recollection never ceased to give him, he could not keep away from her. Every day found him more thoroughly fascinated, more ardent, not to say extravagant in his devotion. At last he gave himself up without restraint or afterthought to the sweet and potent charm. Everyone about the Court came to know him as the loyal knight and humble adorer (according to all the rules of chivalry) of the pale-faced, dark-eyed French demoiselle who waited upon the queen.
Thus it happened that in some 'degree he drifted apart from his brother. The desire to confide to Hubert the story of his past grew fainter and fainter, partly for lack of opportunity, but still more because it had now become his wish to bury that past altogether.
Nor did he even care to talk much with him about Jocelyne. Upon such subjects Hubert was decidedly unsympathetic. His own time for the softer feelings had not come yet; and nothing in his training had taught him to reverence them in another. Singularly pure-hearted and high-toned, he had already trodden under foot, or passed by on the other side, those gross temptations which in a horribly vicious age could not fail to assail him. But, like most very young moralists, he was apt to be a little hard and intolerant; and he was also endeavoring, though that was decidedly against the grain, to regard all things from the churchman's point of view. Such love as Armand's for Jocelyne belonged to the lower,' the worldly' life; and, as Armand at least imagined, Hubert would look down scornfully upon it from the cold and lofty heights of his superior learning and sanctity.
Nevertheless, there was no lack of cordiality between the brothers; nor did Hubert intentionally neglect Armand or forsake his company. There was, in fact, but one subject from which at this time he resolutely and determinedly turned away. One affair,' which was before the Council, he banished as much as possible from his mind; or rather he drove it down, and buried it in a deep grave beneath the region of conscious thought. This was not because it gave him pain, but because it stirred within him doubt and perplexity. From pain, whether of mind or body, he did not greatly shrink. But doubt he abhorred with all the abhorrence of a strong, determined nature—a nature which must express itself in action, and which instinctively recognizes in doubt the paralyzing foe of action. What would become of him if he were forced to doubt the infallibility of the Council? Hubert talked a great deal, even to himself, of the infallibility of the Council; but what in truth he believed in, though he could not have put it so, was the infallibility of the Chancellor of. Paris. Whenever it became his duty—as it did upon more than one occasion-to write, or copy, anything about what he called ‘the affair of Jean Hus,' he was haunted by a sort of double feeling, which he did not like. The Council, influenced by the great chancellor, was surely doing all that was right, even towards a reputed heretic. Yet Hubert could not quite forget Robert's story, and its impression was deepened by one of the papers which it fell to his lot to copy; a simple, manly, pathetic letter, from a Bohemian knight, named Chlum, complaining of the cruelty and injustice with which his friend was treated.
One evening, about the middle of May, Robert himself made his appearance. Hubert, when he heard that an archer from the Dominican Abbey wished to see him, knew it could be no one else. He went to the door, greeted him kindly, and asked him to come in. 'No, sir,' said Robert, looking with no friendly eye at the dwelling of the chancellor. ‘Rather, if you will be so good, speak with me a moment out here.'
Hubert stepped out into the street.
‘No doubt thou hast come to redeem thy promise, and tell me of the wedding-day,' he said. ‘But I thought it was to have been at Easter.'
‘Your memory is good, sir; and for the affairs of a poor man, which does you honor. So I said, and so truly it should have been. But when Easter came we were in sore trouble. One most dear to us was very ill. The trouble has not passed—but that is not what I came to tell you, sir.' Nänchen and I go to the altar together next Sunday, after matins, in St. Stefan's Church. If it will please you, and the noble esquire your brother, to honor us with your presence there, you will do us much grace and favor.'
‘I will tell my brother, who will be sure to go, as I shall also,' said Hubert. ‘And I wish thee joy, and all good luck with thy bride, friend Robert.'
Robert thanked him, but lingered still, looking wistfully at Hubert, with something in his honest eyes that seemed to say, ‘Have you nothing to ask me? I, at least, have something to tell you.'
Hubert, however, did not speak; and Robert at last drew near and whispered, ‘About him, sir, for whom you offered me that gold—'
‘I would have done the same for anyone who suffered,' said Hubert, rather shortly. ‘Perhaps he was ashamed of his impulse of compassion for the heretic. Certainly he did not want to be troubled about him now. But thou hast no longer anything to do with him. I hear he has been taken elsewhere,' he added.
I have to do with him, sir, and he with me, as long as my life lasts, and beyond it—forever and ever. But it is nigh upon two months now since I have seen his face. God knows if I shall ever see it again. And, perhaps, I should not wish it. They took him from us, sir, not too soon for him, for the foul air of that horrible dungeon was killing him—but it was a dark day for us. He was very ill with fever and ague—first in our own house; afterward in that of the Franciscans, where was the pope himself. There the pope's own physician attended him, and the pope's own guard had charge of him. Those outlandish men, who knew no Christian tongue, proved nevertheless that they had Christian hearts. God Himself—or else His grace shown in His servant—touched and won them. But when the pope fled from the city his guard had to follow. That was on Palm Sunday. They did the best thing, as they thought, for their prisoner. They brought the prison key straight to the Kaiser himself.' Here he paused, as if struggling with some strong feeling.
‘Well?’ asked Hubert.
‘Sir, the Kaiser and his people forgot him. After three days, the Bohemian lords, his friends, not being able to hear anything of him, grew disquieted, and, coming to the Kaiser, begged leave to see him. They were led to his dungeon, which for those three days and nights had been unopened. All that time, sick and weak as he was, just recovering from fever, he had been wholly without food. When they came he looked like a dying man. Few words were spoken, as I have been told, for he could scarce speak for weakness, nor they for weeping. He raised himself with pain and difficulty, trying to embrace them, but sank back again, fainting, in his chains. But for all that,' Robert went on, and his voice, which had been low and sad, grew strong again, his faith and patience have never failed. All he can be got to say of his sufferings is just this: "They are only so many proofs of God's love to me." '
Hubert bit his lip, and was silent. He felt the wrong and the cruelty, but he would not allow himself to own it.
Robert presently continued ‘And now the Kaiser, who ought to have done him justice, has yielded to the Council, broken his solemn safe-conduct .’
‘You should not say that,' Hubert interrupted, glad of something he could contradict. ‘No safe-conduct can prevent a heretic being judged after his deserts. If the Kaiser had not yielded, the Council would have broken up.'
‘Well, sir, be it so. There is One who will judge both Kaiser and Council. When He does, He will not forget that, instead of opening the prison door and letting the oppressed go free, the Kaiser gave the key into the cruel hands of the Archbishop of Riga. God forgive him—I try to pray God forgive him—else how could I say the "Our Father," which Master John taught me himself? But it goes hard with me.'
‘The Archbishop of Riga is keeper of the seals of the Council, therefore it is his business to take charge of offenders against the Council,' said Hubert.
‘The Archbishop of Riga is—' A bitter German word, too bitter for rendering here, completed the sentence. ‘He has brought him to Gottlieben Castle, and God only knows what he is suffering there. Nay, we do know something about it.'
Hubert knew something, too, from that letter of De Chlum's, which had in it certain terrible details. The words came back to him now. ‘Grievously tormented with heavy fetters, and with hunger and thirst.' He said uneasily, ‘I am sorry, since he is your friend.'
‘My friend, sir? It is not fitting you should call him that, I being but a poor, simple man. There at Gottlieben none of us who love him can come near him, but his enemies come when they will. It is said they examine him in secret, to try and get something for which they may condemn him. That they will not; for he is no heretic, but a good Christian and a good Catholic, the best I ever knew. Already while with us he was denied an advocate; denied leave to call a witness in his favor, or to object to the witnesses who were brought against him. And now, do they mean to condemn him unheard? Will they not let him speak at all before the Council?’ Robert’s voice had risen; and he looked eagerly, almost fiercely, at Hubert, expecting an answer.
But Hubert had none to give.
‘I know,' he said, that the Bohemian lords have been beseeching the Holy Council to grant him a public hearing. ‘I do not know the result.'
‘The Holy Council, sir? Well, no use in hard words. They only hurt the tongue that speaks them.'
‘True,' said Hubert. ‘And in this case they might do serious hurt. Your Master John's disciple, he whom they call Jeronymus or Jerome, lie; in fetters yonder in the tower of St. Paul, for coming here to take his master's part, and for railing against the Council.'
‘Ay, sir. Master John wrote from his prison to entreat him not to come. Yet he came, as it may be you, sir, would have done in his place. But I did not think of the hurting of one's feet with irons, I thought of the hurting of one's soul with sin.'
‘Robert, what did you mean when you said just now that perhaps you should not wish to see his face again? '
Robert gave him a look full of significance, and also full of sadness. Presently he said: 'Prison bars cannot shut God out—nor God's angel, Death, who has been near him more than once.'
‘I cannot think of this man as you do,' said Hubert, ‘for I know him to be a heretic, and I think him a dangerous one. Yet I do not wish him so ill as that.'
‘So ill, sir? Heretic he is not—that I say and swear; and if they killed me for it, I would say it still with my dying breath. Yet if the Council condemn him, what then? You, a scholar—you, learned, I suppose, in the Canon Law—you know it. But you ought not to make me speak the word.'
He turned away, and something like a shudder shook his strong frame.
For the first time the thought occurred to Hubert that this affair of Jean Hus 'might have a termination very different from the affair of Jean Petit.' Jean Petit was dead and safe, even if he had been a heretic, which he was not. But here was a living man, whose process might end in a horror, such as had once made Hubert run from the Place de Greve, veiling his face that he might not see, and stopping his ears that he might not hear, careless of the jests and laughter his softness of heart brought upon him from his comrades. But he dismissed the idea in a moment. ‘How could one think of such things in bright, joyous, festive Constance, where all was going forward so prosperously, so triumphantly? Oh, you need not fear anything of the kind in this case,' he said lightly, the matter will be arranged; even if all he is accused of can be proved upon him (and I fear much of it can, and will), there will be penance imposed, and satisfaction made. Learned doctors, such as the chancellor, will argue with him, and get him to retract, and to promise not to hold or teach his heresies any more. So everything will come well to an end, with an Absolvo te, and a Pax vobiscum. And every man will go to his own home.'
‘Yes,' said Robert slowly and sadly, every man will go to his own home—and he to his. ‘Good night, sir, and thank you for your promise about Sunday.'
Robert moved away, thinking sorrowfully that the scholar's warm young heart had grown chill since he spoke with him on the Rhine-Thor-Thurm. Hubert, who was just then in some danger of becoming a fanatic, thought the archer of the abbot's guard was expressing opinions upon subjects on which he, and such as he, ought not to have any opinions at all. So each was rather out of humor with the other.
Nevertheless, the brothers went to St. Stefan's Church the next Sunday morning. They both, but particularly Armand, duly admired the pretty, modest-looking bride, who indeed appeared to great advantage in her crimson bodice and petticoat of English cloth. Her head was adorned with a wreath of roses, which had been carefully preserved since the previous summer by a process in use amongst the Germans of that day. Hubert and Armand even graced the marriage festivities by drinking a cup of wine to the health of the bride; and Hubert made the acquaintance of the priest who had performed the ceremony, Master Ulrich Schorand, a learned man, especially versed in the Canon Law, and full of eager interest in the doings of the Council.
It is somewhat difficult for us to say whether Hubert, who considered John Huss a dangerous heretic, or Robert, who thought him no heretic at all, was in the right, accepting, of course, the word heretic' in the mediaeval or Roman Catholic sense. His creed did not differ apparently from that of the Church of his day, from that of the Council itself. Confident of his innocence (though by no means assured of his safety—a very different matter), he had come of his own free will to the Council, and referred his cause, already prejudged by the wicked pope, to its decision. He came armed, not only with a good conscience, but with the strongest testimonies to his orthodoxy and piety that his own archbishop and other recognized authorities of the Church could give. Like other good men within her fold, he had attacked, not the doctrines of Rome, but their abuse. He accepted transubstantiation, but rebuked the blasphemous arrogance of the priests, who boasted that they could make God.' He believed in purgatory, but indignantly denounced indulgences. He was ready to honor a good pope as the successor of St. Peter, but maintained that Christ, not St. Peter, is the rock upon which His Church is founded. ‘A man must believe in God alone,' said he, ‘not in the Virgin, not in the saints, not in the Church, not in the pope, for none of these are God.' He vindicated, moreover, in the strongest terms, and with the most unswerving consistency, the authority of the Holy Scriptures as the supreme rule of faith.
‘It may be said that this creed contains in it the living germ of so-called heresy,' but neither Huss himself, nor his persecutors, knew it. Perhaps his greatest crime in their eyes was the dauntless courage with which he attacked and exposed the vices of the corrupt hierarchy of his day. But, it will be asked, did not others do the same, and yet live in peace and safety, and die in honor? Truly the words of John Gerson were almost as bitter as those of John Huss; both of them cried aloud and spared not: Woe be to the shepherds of Israel that do feed themselves! should not the shepherds feed the flock? Ye eat the fat, ye clothe yourselves with the wool, ye kill them that are fed, but ye feed not the flock.' How came it then that the one sat amongst the judges, whilst the other stood fettered at the bar?
The reasons were more and deeper than we can tell of here. One, the chief, may suffice. Gerson, and other good men of his type, expected the Church to reform herself; he looked for the remedy of the evils he felt so painfully to the action of the hierarchy, the heads and teachers of Christendom.
He might as well have expected the Ethiopian to change his skin, and the leopard his spots. Our great English reformer, Wickliffe, was the first to recognize this fact. Instead of plucking off the leaves and twigs, he laid his ax boldly to the root of the evil tree. He proposed to deprive corrupt and unworthy priests and monks of the wealth and power they had usurped. ‘Tithes,' said he, ‘are only alms, and may be withheld from those who misuse them.' Huss did not follow Wickliffe in everything, but he followed him in this, in the eyes of a covetous hierarchy, the unpardonable sin. It is on this account that he has been called, and truly, the martyr of Wickliffe.' He was, in a very real sense, ‘baptized for the dead,' with the baptism of fire. The hierarchy wreaked upon him the passionate hate and rage which the teaching of Wickliffe had aroused, but which Wickliffe himself escaped by that quiet death at Lutterworth.
One of the greatest of modern poets has drawn for us, in lines of undying force and fire, the picture of a great prelate of this, or a somewhat later age, on his deathbed. Let every reader of these pages study and ponder well how the bishop orders his tomb at St. Praxed's Church. Then let him imagine such a bishop, summoned from his brave Frascati villa and its bath,'his white grape vineyard,' his jasper, ‘green as a pistachio nut,' his other and more guilty delights of the flesh and of the mind, to sit in judgment upon a simple priest, a poor man's son, who dared to challenge his right to all these things, and to bid him go and follow in the footsteps of that Master who had not where to lay His head, and of His apostles—else was he no true successor of theirs. Many such bishops, only without the learning and the taste of the Renaissance, sat in the Council of Constance.
This may explain, at least in a measure, the conduct of the Council. But with their victim it would have fared ill indeed had he been laboring merely to east down and to destroy—even that which was evil and fit for destruction. What for him represented the everlasting ‘yes,' what was the eternal truth for which he was struggling, the solid rock upon which he was resting, will be seen hereafter.