§ 45. HUSS AT CONSTANCE. 387
Luther had fairly entered upon his work. But he struck a hard blow at hierarchical assumption before Luther raised his stronger arm. Luther was moved by Huss' case, and at Leipzig, forced to the wall by Eck's thrusts, the Wittenberg monk made the open avowal that oecumenical councils also may err, as was done in putting Huss to death at Constance. Years before, at Erfurt, he had taken up a volume of the Bohemian sermons, and was amazed that a man who preached so evangelically should have been condemned to the stake. But for fear of the taint of heresy, he quickly put it down, i The accredited view in Luther's time was given by Dobneck in answer to Luther's good opinion, when he said that Huss was worse than a Turk, Jew, Tartar and Sodomite. In his edition of Huss' letters, printed 1537, Luther praised Huss' patience and humility under every indignity and his courage before an imposing assembly as a lamb in the midst of wolves and lions. If such a man, he wrote, " is to be regarded as a heretic, then no person under the sun can be looked upon as a true Christian."
A cantionale, dating from 1572, and preserved in the Prag library, contains a hymn to Huss' memory and three medallions which well set forth the relation in which Wyclif and Huss stand to the Reformation. The first represents Wyclif striking sparks from a stone. Below it is Huss, kindling a fire from the sparks. In the third medallion, Luther is holding aloft the flaming torch. This is the historic succession, although it is true Luther began his career as a Reformer before he was influenced by Huss, and continued his work, knowing little of Wyclif.
To the cause of religious toleration, and without intending it, John Huss made a more effectual contribution by his death than could have been made by many philosophical treatises, even as the deaths of Blandina and other martyrs of the early Church, who were slaves, did more towards the reduction of the evils of slavery than all the sentences of Pagan philosophers. Quite like his English teacher, he affirmed the sovereign rights
1 John Zacharias, one of the professors of the university at Erfurt, had taken a prominent part in the debates at Constance against Huss, and received as his reward the red rose from the pope. Kostlin, M. Luther, I. 53, 87.
388 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1294-1517.
of the truth. It was his habit, so he stated, to conform his views to the truth, whatever the truth might be. If any one, he said, " can instruct me by the sacred Scriptures or by good reasoning, I am willing to follow him. From the outset of my studies, I have made it a rule to joj^fully and humbly recede from a former opinion when in any matter I perceive a more rational opinion." ^
§ 46. Jerome of Prag.
A year after Huss' martyrdom, on May 30, 1416jjiis friend Jerome ofj^rag^wasjeoiidemned by the council and also suffered at the. stake*- He shared Huss' enthusiasnTror^WycTTf, was perhaps his equal in scholarship, but not in steadfast constancy. Huss' life was spent in Prag and its vicinity. Jerome travelled in Western Europe and was in Prag only occasionally. Huss left quite a body of writings, Jerome, none.
BoTjisd a good family at Prag, Jerome studied in his native city, and later at Oxford and Paris. At Oxford he became a student and admirer of Wyclif's writings, two of which, the Trialof/us and the Dialogus, he carried with him back to Bohemia not later than 1402. In Prag, he defended the English doctor as a holy man " whose doctrines were more worthy of acceptance than Augustine himself," stood with Huss in the contest over the rights of the Bohemian nation, and joined him in attacking the papal indulgences, 1412.
Soon after arriving in Constance, Huss wrote to John of Chlum not to allow Jerome on any account to go to join him. In spite of tliis warning, Jerome set out and reached Constance April 4th, 1415, but urged by friends he quit the city. He was seized at Hirschau, April 15, and taken back in chains. There is every reason for supposing he and Huss did not see one another, although Huss mentions him in a letter within a week
^ Si aliqua persona ecclesice me scrip, s. vel ralione valida, dociierit, paratissime consentire. Nam a primo studii mei tempore hoc mihi statuipro reguJa, ut quotiescunque saniorem sententiam in quacunqne materia perciperem, a priori sententia gaudenter et humiliter declinarem. Wyclif had expressed the same sentiment in his De universalibus, which Huss translated, 1398. See Loserth, p. 253.