edness, so that I
have been told by Suabians that Constance could not in thirty years be
purged of the sins which the Council has committed in the city."

These men of sin, who kissed the toe of Pope John XXIII, a man of sin,
burned the saintly Hus; no wonder he likened them to the scarlet whore
of the Revelation. At one stage of the holy and infallible Council these
learned fathers used arguments that strike us as rather striking: a
cardinal assaulted an archbishop; a patriarch hit a protonotary; a
Spanish prelate hurled an Englishman into the mud; the English were
caught in arms to assault Pierre d'Ailly, the Cardinal of Cambray. As
members of the Church militant they were certainly fighting a good
fight.

Sigismund burnt Hus as a Wiclifite, the next year the Council called the
Emperor a Wiclifite and Hussite and heretic. Pope John XXIII condemned
Hus as a heretic, soon after he was a prisoner in the same prison with
Hus. Dramatic!

[Illustration: PIERRE D'AILLY]

John Gerson, the celebrated Chancellor of the great University of Paris
and "Doctor Christianissimus," and Pierre d'Ailly, the great Cardinal of
Cambray, accused Hus of heresy; later on themselves were accused of
heresy by the same Council. Gerson declared Hus had never been sentenced
had not an attorney been denied him, and himself would rather be tried
by Jews and infidels than before the commission. Such were the men
that were to try a man such as Hus.

As Paul preached in his own hired house under the very palace of Nero,
so Hus preached Christ to all who came to his humble house and with a
few friends maintained daily worship, close to the Pope's palace.
Greater than emperors and popes, princes and prelates from all Europe
that crowded Constance, was the humble Bohemian Hus; they are seen today
mainly in the light shed from his shining name.

XII.

Hus in Prison.

Despite the royal safe-conduct and the promised papal protection, Hus
was flung into prison in a prelate's palace on Nov. 28.

John of Chlum forced his way into the papal apartments and charged the
holy ex-pirate Pope John XXIII to his infallible face with having broken
his sacred papal promise, and then fixed on the doors of the Cathedral a
solemn protest against the papal perfidy and the shameless violation of
the royal safe-conduct.

[Illustration: HUS TOWER]

On Dec. 6, Hus was dragged to the Dominican convent on an island in
Lake Constance, and stuck into a dark hol