Huss and Jerome
83
expose himself to certain death. The king and queen of Bohemia, the
university, members of the nobility, and officers of the government,
united in an appeal to the pontiff that Huss be permitted to remain at
Prague, and to answer at Rome by deputy. Instead of granting this
request, the pope proceeded to the trial and condemnation of Huss,
and then declared the city of Prague to be under interdict.
In that age this sentence, whenever pronounced, created
widespread alarm. The ceremonies by which it was accompanied
[101]
were well adapted to strike terror to a people who looked upon the
pope as the representative of God himself, holding the keys of Heaven
and hell, and possessing power to invoke temporal as well as spiri-
tual judgments. It was believed that the gates of Heaven were closed
against the region smitten with interdict; that until it should please the
pope to remove the ban, the dead were shut out from the abodes of
bliss. In token of this terrible calamity, all the services of religion were
suspended. The churches were closed. Marriages were solemnized
in the church-yard. The dead, denied burial in consecrated ground,
were interred, without the rites of sepulture, in the ditches or the fields.
Thus by measures which appealed to the imagination, Rome essayed
to control the consciences of men.
The city of Prague was filled with tumult. A large class denounced
Huss as the cause of all their calamities, and demanded that he be
given up to the vengeance of Rome. To quiet the storm, the reformer
withdrew for a time to his native village. Writing to the friends whom
he had left at Prague, he said: “If I have withdrawn from the midst of
you, it is to follow the precept and example of Jesus Christ, in order
not to give room to the ill-minded to draw on themselves eternal con-
demnation, and in order not to be to the pious a cause of affliction and
persecution. I have retired also through an apprehension that impious
priests might continue for a longer time to prohibit the preaching of
the Word of God amongst you; but I have not quitted you to deny the
divine truth, for which, with God’s assistance, I am willing to die.”
Huss did not cease his labors, but traveled through the surrounding
country, preaching to eager crowds. Thus the measures to which the
pope resorted to suppress the gospel, were causing it to be the more
widely extended. “We can do nothing against the truth, but for the
truth.” [
2 Corinthians 13:8
.]