ever, at a later period, was accounted against him as a crime, in his criminal prosecution.

The troubles had reached their maximum when the Kings Ladislaus II and Sigismond, invited him to Poland and Hungary. He seems to have been active at Cracow, in the management of the University, which had been only a short time established, and in Hungary to have excited great enthusiasm as a preacher, especially at Sigismond's court. But his bold discourses directed towards the reformation of the clergy, soon involved him in the charge of heresy. He fled to Vienna, was seized in accordance with the wishes of several anti-reform associate members of its University, and would have been condemnod as "an author and propagator of heresies." Only the intercession of the University of Prague rescued him from the hands of the Inquisitor; he was released from his imprisonment and escaped. The Episcopal official, Andrew Grillenperk, being enraged that his prey had escaped, pronounced the ban against him, and the Archbishop of Prague, Sbynek, as well as the Bishop of Cracow, promulgated within their dioceses this ban against Jerome. Still it seems that the same did him no harm after his return to Bohemia.

In Prague the excitement was continually increasing, and, when Jerome arrived (1411), Huss had become the central figure of the reform movement. A legate from Pope John XXIII, arrived in Prague, May, 1412, with a bull, in which a crusade against King Ladislaus, of Naples, was enjoined. The bull granted plenary absolution to every one who seized the sword in opposition to Ladislaus, the protector of the deposed Pope Gregory XII, at Pisa. Even before this, Jerome had become closely attached to Huss, and in this matter went heartily hand in hand with him. Whilst Huss operated on the people through his sermons, which in spite of the prohibition he had not discontinued, Jerome made animated speeches to the students, and showed them that the bull was in opposition to the doctrine of the gospel. The students accompanied him in triumph through the streets from the lecture-room. When the rector of the university summoned Huss and Jerome before him in order to exhort them to preserve peace, the latter exclaimed, "that it was a difficult matter to silence truth." Gentle measures were no longer of any account. Stormy scenes followed, with capital trials for the prime movers. That, in the excitement of those times, the bull against the heretics was suspended from the necks of unchaste women, in order that it might be exposed to public scorn, and was finally burned at the pillory, is not to be commended; how far Jerome was concerned in this, cannot now be ascertained. His fiery spirit showering flames over every error might have led him in those days sometimes to pass beyond the lines of moderation and prudence.

After these tumults and the capital trials and a royal decree, which threatened with death every abuse of the Pope, and every act of opposition to the bull against the hereties, there was no rest for Huss in Bohemia, and Jerome also retired from the arena of

public activity. Only for a moment again do we get a glimpse of these two friends and champions for the gospel, when Huss, under the protection of the imperial safe-guard, went to make his defence at Constance. Jerome accompanied Huss as far as Cracowitz, where he took leave of him (October 15, 1414) with these words: "Stand fast in whatever you have taught or written, out of the Holy Scriptures, against the sins of the clergy." He promised further that he would hasten to his help under all circumstances, and stand by his side.

In the meantime the case of Huss at Constance soon became worse. The kindly treatment at the first was only a snare; they wished to make sure of him. November 28, 1414, he was seized as a prisoner; after some days he was thrown into a damp dungeon, where he became sick. There was no human help for him; the words of the Lord, "I am with you always, even unto the end of the world," alone supported him. Jerome remembered the promise made on parting with his friend. In vain Huss endeavored, through letters, to dissuade him from coming to Constance, where like peril awaited all champions of his cause. He entrusted his property to the protection of the magistrate of the old town (Prague), his soul to God, and arrived at Constance in the beginning of April, 1415.

Recognized by the Lords of Chulmec and Duba, he was ordered in the most urgent manner to avoid the danger impending over him by a speedy flight. After he had unsuccessfully applied for a safe-guard from the King and Council, he went off indeed for a few days. The Council styled him, in its answer, a fox who had come to destroy the vineyard of the Lord of Sabaoth, and cited him to his defense within fifteen days. A safe-guard was assured him as far "as orthodoxy would justify." Jerome had already perceived before the decision of the Church assembly, that nothing was to be hoped for in Constance, everything to be feared and that he could do much more for Huss and his cause in Bohemia than in the den of the lion.

But the spies of the Council were soon on his track. In Hirschau, a town of the Upper Palatinate, he was recognized and imprisoned. By command of the Council, he was dragged in chains as a common felon, to Constance, where he arrived on the 23d of May. A Commission of Investigation had assembled in the Cloister of the Franciscans. In reply to a question as to the cause of his flight, he answered, "that he had fled because he had not. desired to deliver himself frivolously into the hands of his enemies. Had he been cited to make his appearance, he would have appeared in spite of his enemies." Loud murmurs from the Assembly followed this remark, and after that, a wild cry was raised. When peace had been restored, the celebrated chancellor, Gerson of Paris, cast the bitterest reproaches at Jerome, on account of the errors spread through the University of Paris by him; the Rector of the University of Cologne, explained that that university also had been infected with errors through Jerome; another cried out that he

had propounded erroneous doctrines at Heidelberg, on the subject of the Holy Trinity, comparing the Father with the water, the Son with the snow, and the Holy Ghost with the ice. When Jerome demanded proof instead of groundless complaints, the enraged Assembly cried out: "To the stake with him, to the stake!" It is probable that the sentence of death against the heretic would. have been summarily pronounced, had not the Bishop of Salzburg exhorted to a more circumspect treatment of the affair, and reminded them of the words of Scripture, "I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and and live." Further procedure was then checked, and Jerome was delivered over to Bishop John of Wallenrodt from Riga.

This bishop treated Jerome very badly. Because some of his friends, like the Notary Peter of Mladonowicz, had endeavored to speak to him through the window bars of his prison, he was taken to a dark tower of the Cloister of St. Paul, bound hand and foot, supplied sparingly with food, and thus kept near starvation for eleven days. On the earnest remonstrance of the Bohemians resident in Constance, better food was supplied him, but the chains were not removed. When he became very sick in consequence of this ill-treatment, the Council even denied him the consolation of having a confessor. He must be humbled in body and spirit, and made to bow before the Church-Council at any price. An ordinary trial would not be granted him at all. They wished to await the end of the process urged against Huss.

Huss first learned exactly on the 8th of June, 1415, what was the accusation brought against him. His decided refusal to make a recantation had put his case in the worst possible condition. His writings were condemned to be burned on the 26th of June, and he himself was condemned to the stake on July 6. Even to his last moments he thought of his friend and fellow-sufferer Jerome, with heart felt love. After his death the process against Jerome was urged. On the 19th of July a preliminary examination was had in St. Paul's Church. The affair again rested for several weeks. In the meantime the news of the wicked condemnation of Huss, despite the free safe-guard solemnly promised him, occasioned the greatest excitement in Bohemia. The Bohemian and Moravian Estates issued a threatening letter to the Church Council, in which Huss was justified, and earnest complaint was made on account of the treatment which Jerome was receiving. This letter was read September 8, at a public session of the Council; the Fathers of the Council were as much enraged as horrified at it. Hatred toward Jerome was great, but they wished to take care of themselves for fear of the threats of the Bohemian Estates. On this account the proceeding against him was suddenly changed. Not his execution but his recantation was the end towards which all their efforts were directed. In this case he would be released. We have now reached a dark spot in the life of this noble witness for evangelical truth. Let us not rashly pass sentence. His body exhausted by the sufferings of a long-continued and cruel imprison

ment; disease crushed him down; the fiery man of energy in the dark, solitary dungeon, cut off from all intercourse with men, and nearly dead from starvation. His cunning enemies made use of this state of affairs in order to obtain a recantation from him. They threatened, they admonished, they flattered and entreated him. He was weak and he had to pay dear for his weakness; he declared himself ready to renounce his errors. When the first formula of abjuration was not sufficiently satisfactory to the Council, he agreed to a second; in open session, September 23, he pronounced it before the assembled fathers and compared his step to a modest heave-offering brought into the temple of the Lord, while on the other hand, the wisdom and virtue of the assembled fathers appeared as an offering of gold and silver and scarlet. In the formula itself the errors of Wickliffe and John Huss were rejected as heretical. Jerome declared himself in full harmony with the Catholic faith. He desired also to purge himself from his errors touching the doctrine of the Trinity. In everything he submitted unreservedly to the decision of the Church-Councils. The formula of abjuration was furthermore subscribed to with his own hand.

The Council had obtained its object; there was no further cause for detaining Jerome any longer in prison. But the impression had been made on the assembled fathers by his whole manner, that his lips had abjured, but not his heart. He was taken back to the dark dungeon; at no time was he entirely freed from chains. As fear of the Bohemians somewhat subsided, the treatment of Jerome become more severe. On the 29th of October, Gerson promulgated a treatise, in which he sought to establish that one accused of her. esy still stood, under certain circumstances, under suspicion of heresy even after a public recantation. The party inimical to reform made their arrangements immediately, and demanded that the trial for heresy be again opened up in his case, under pretext that some Carmelite monks of Prague, whose Order he had offended, had new facts for the existence of complaints against Jerome. This was even too strong for the commissioners then acting in his case. They refused a reopening of the investigation, and voted for the release of the accused from the confinement of the dungeon. When they obtained no hearing on this subject, and indeed were even charged with bribery, they dissolved the Commission. New commissioners, the titular Patriarch John of Constantinople, and Doctor Nicholas of Dinkelsbuhl, were then appointed; this selection itself gave the greatest cause for fear in the case of Jerome; they belonged to those associate members of the Council, who had not rested until Huss was brought to the funeral pile.

Soon the flames of fanaticism burned more violently than ever among the fathers of the Council. Neither the insurrection of the restless in Bohemia, nor a second and still more threatening letter from the Bohemian nobility restrained the enemies of reform from the extremest measures. On the 20th of February, 1416, all the signers of that letter were summoned, in a spirit of insolent derision, to defend their faith and lives before the bar of the Church Council.

2

In the mean time Jerome had again lingered nearly half a year in his dungeon. It was neither chains nor solitude, but hunger which mostly tormented him. He had come in his earnest internal meditation to a knowledge of his weakness and the offense committed therein against God and the truth, which he had confessed throughout his life. The pangs of remorse gnawed at his soul; still it was not remorse unto death, but remorse unto life. When the reopening of the trial was indeed determined upon, and the newlyappointed Commission was charged with a reinvestigation, Jerome declared to the same that he deeply regretted his recantation and considered it a serious offense. At a private session of the Council held April 27, 1416, a preliminary investigation was held. Fortyfive points of complaint were brought up against Jerome, and these the Procurator of the Council afterwards increased to one hundred and two. They consisted in part of well known facts, that he adhered to the heresy of Wickliffe, despised the disciplinary power of the Church, reviled the Pope and the Catholic Princes, was a follower of John Huss, had agitated the Bohemian nobility to an insurrection, delivered heretical doctrines at Paris, Cologne, and Heidelberg. In addition to this, it was mentioned as a reproach that he made religious subjects profane, and had laid violent hands on the clergy. The whole indictment was a cunning web of semitruths and whole-lies, perfectly fitted together so as to induce an assemblage prepossessed against the prisoner to be as malevolent as possible. The fact that Wickliffe's likeness, painted and decorated with a halo around it, hung in Jerome's chamber at Prague, was also seized as a point for complaint. He should have uttered the "wicked" assertion, that the veil of the Virgin Mary did not deserve any greater reverence than the skin of the ass on which Christ rode. The most ridiculous accusation, doubtless, was that in which the Procurator of the Council declared that Jerome, during his imprisonment, had indulged in drunkenness and debauchery, although it was known that prisoners in close custody wanted even the most indispensable necessaries of life. The closing sentence ran thus, that Jerome should be publicly examined on all these accusations, if necessary submitted to torture, and if he denied them or adhered to his errors, he should be judged by the statutes of the, Church.

The first hearing was arranged for the 23d of May, 1416, in the Cathedral. He was allowed to have a written defense, in which he refuted a host of untruths and errors. That he had ever employed force to secure a reception for his own convictions, he orally disclaimed with earnestness and solemnity. He also declared with the courage of a true Confessor, which God had given him again in consequence of his sincere repentance, that he considered the traffic in indulgences as a revolting misuse of the Church. On the 26th of May the public trial was continued. Jerome answered most of the questions propounded to him with a simple Yes or No; his sentence had been resolved upon in the hearts of his judges, and he had received from God grace to bear the severest with patience and