pacy for simony (that is, for trafficking in holy
things),[89] and for other offences. On being informed of this, he at
once put off his papal robes, saying, that since he had put them on he
had never enjoyed a quiet day (May 31, 1415).

[89] See page 185.

PART II.

John Huss, the Bohemian reformer, had been summoned to Constance, that
he might give an account of himself, and had been furnished with a
safe-conduct (as it was called), in which the emperor assured him of
protection on his way to the council and back. But, although at first he
was treated as if he were free, it was pretended, soon after his
arrival, that he wished to run away; and under this pretence he was shut
up in a dark and filthy prison. Huss had no friends in the council; for
the reforming part of the members would have nothing to do with him,
lest it should be thought that they agreed with him in all his notions.
And when he was at length brought out from prison, where his health had
suffered much, and when he was required to answer for himself, without
having been allowed the use of books to prepare himself, all the parties
in the council turned on him at once. His trial lasted three days. The
charges against him were mostly about Wyclif's doctrines, which had been
often condemned by councils at Rome and elsewhere, but which Huss was
supposed to hold; and when he tried to explain that in some things he
did not agree with Wyclif, nobody would believe him. Some of his
bitterest persecutors were men who had once been his friends, and had
gone with him in his reforming opinions.

After his trial, Huss was sent back to prison for a month, and all kinds
of ways were tried to persuade him to give up the opinions which were
blamed in him; but he stood firm in what he believed to be the truth. At
length he was brought out to hear his sentence. He claimed the
protection of the emperor, whose safe-conduct he had received (as we
have seen). But Sigismund had been hard pressed by Huss's enemies, who
told him that a promise made to one who is wrong in the faith is not to
be kept; and the emperor had weakly and treacherously yielded, so that
he could only blush for shame when Huss reminded him of the
safe-conduct.

Huss was condemned to death, and was _degraded_ from his orders, as the
custom was; that is to say, they first put into his hands the vessels
used at the consecration of the Lord's Supper, which were the signs of
his being a priest; and by ta