Part 2: From Apostates to Apostles
Prior to Constantine, the various fractions of the church rarely agreed with each other. After Constantine became Emperor, he was determined to wipe out this dangerous practice and unite the factions under a single banner.
The faction that Constantine favoured to carry the banner wanted assurance that the deal that would allow it to banish all of its opposition from the Empire. This included the rights to the other factions’ properties as well. This favoured Church was thereby able to gain complete control over the masses by the support of the Empire, and also by its unique claim to be able to act as the intermediary power between mankind and God. By this power they could forgive sins or condemn to “the fires of hell” any and all who dared to oppose them.
But power has its price. Like Dante’s Inferno, a deal with the Devil always means, in the end, you lose your soul, even if you think you won. In this case, the Popes and Bishops sold their souls and they were now owned by the devil who owned the Empire. This became even more obvious as time went on.
After the separation of Rome in the West and Constantinople in the East, even when the Bishops and Popes were grossly immoral and owned by powerful Italian families, the masses clung to the idea that somehow the Church Leaders were still the representatives of God. All this common folk had left was their lives and to not accept the current belief of what God was, would rob them of even that. No faith, no hope, no life.
The Emperor Constantine forced unity through his military power. When he needed help to ensure his orthodoxy and to stamp out opposition, Constantine first called upon the Frankish Kings, then the French Kings, followed by the Kings of Spain. Terrible abuses followed in the wake of this overwhelming military might and power. Bribes to obtain offices, torture to force compliance, cronyism to gain revenue, selling of indulgences to sweeten obedience, Mafia like tyranny from powerful Italian families who bought the office of the Pope, the redirecting of two of the crusades to capture the Christian City of Constantinople and the crushing of the Albigensians in Southern France, all led to the growing conviction that the Church was as black as bile and had to be gutted – starting with its head and reaching into all vile extremities.
Only a person of sufficient bold, cold courage, willing to risk torture worse than death, would attempt to raise a voice of opposition against that sort of deeply established regime. One such was Peter of Bruys, a priest in a parish in the High Alps. He began preaching vehemently against the Church basing his outbursts on the Gospels in the New Testament. He had gathered a stack of wooden crosses to burn when a furious mob tied him to one of the crosses and burned him with them.
Henry of Blois, Dean and Monk of Cluny in France, was next. He began preaching against the immorality and vice of the clergy. His license to preach was revoked and he was imprisoned by the Archbishop.
Then Arnoldo of Brescia began to preach of the separation of Church and State. He accused the Pope of living a life unlike the apostles and preaching nothing they taught. He said the Pope should be given no obedience or respect. Pope Adrian III had Arnaldo strangled, then burned and threw his ashes into the Tiber River.
Peter Waldo, a converted rich Merchant, paid two of his friends who were Priests, to translate the Latin Bible into the French provincial language and set out to preach from it. Quickly, the Archbishop demanded he stop. Waldo appealed to Pope Alexander III. Unfortunately, the Pope was dealing with many dissenters and in a desperate move, had them all banned, including Waldo and his followers. They were expelled, persecuted and banished from Lyon, their stronghold. The dissenters moved into other parts of France, Italy and the valleys of Piedmont where they are still found today.
During the inquisition, many were sought out and slaughtered. Later, during the crusades, an army headed for Jerusalem was redirected to Beziers in the South of France where they slaughtered men women and children. More were slaughtered at Carcasonne. At a later day, Pope Innocent III offered feudal Lords a remission of their sins if they would take part in the extermination of the Waldenese. As a result, over 100,000 heretics were reported killed.
Another group of dissenters called the Albigensians, who were considered the most numerous of the groups of heretics, was totally annihilated.
In England, the country was exhausted from a long and bitter war. King John had indebted England to pay tribute to the Pope, but they had been unable to do so for 35 years.
John Wycliffe (Wyclif), a leader of a strong reform movement, saw the difference of what was taught in the Bible and what was being taught by the Roman Church. He contended that no foreign power, especially if it was religious, should have authority over governments and States. Parliament declared than neither King nor citizen had the right to subject England to any foreign power without its consent. Wycliffe was invited to give his opinion as to whether King John’s action was null and void from the civil and cannon laws. He confirmed it was and assailed the practice of the confession, the doctrine of transubstantiation and the self-seeking clergy for their subservience to the Pope. He supported the literal interpretation of the Bible and of Priests teaching in the language of the people. He was equally critical of the selling of indulgences, the squandering of charities by unfit priests, the misuse of properties, and the evils of the papal courts. In his judgment, the King had authority over the Pope in temporal matters.
In Jan 1377, Pope Gregory XI sent copies of a Bull against Wycliffe to the Bishop of London, Edward III, the Chancellor and the University of Oxford. Wyciffe was supported by the Mendicant Order, many of the Nobility and John of Gaunt. While most of his writings had formerly been written in Latin, he now began to write in English. Wycliffe was the first responsible for having the Bible printed in English.
The Roman Church retaliated and brought a charge that Wycliffe allowed even laymen to have the Bible.
Despite his reform measures and differences with it, Wycliffe remained a member of the Church until after the Great Schism. The Great Schism occurred when two Popes were elected by the same College of Cardinals. It strengthened Wycliffe’s position and intensified his protests. In 1384 Wycliffe suffered a stroke while hearing New Year’s Eve mass and died. At the council of Constance in 1414, Wycliffe was declared a heretic and the Church and State united to suppress Wyclifism. His remains were dug up, burned and thrown into the River Swift.
While his works were spurned in England, they found fertile soil in Bohemia and that is where it bore fruit. That fruit was John Huss.
John Huss was a lecturer at the University of Prague and was born to poor parents in the Bohemian town of Husinec in 1369. In 1401 Huss was chosen to be preacher over a Church called Bethlehem, or House of Bread. It had been founded by John of Milhiem, a member of the Royal Council of Bohemia.
Very early the writings of Wycliffe had found their way to Huss’s region through the sister of the King Wenceslaus. Coincidentally, she was also the wife of Richard II of England. Huss was attracted to the teachings of Wycliffe and as early as 1402 began to defend them. It was only a matter of time before this came to the attention of the Church authorities.
Sure enough, an order came to the Archbishop of Prague to seize all copies of Wycliffe’s writings and burn them. Two days later, Huss was excommunicated. When the edict prohibited any of Wycliffe’s teachings to be preached, Huss continued in spite of it. He was ordered to appear before the tribunal in Constance.
Huss wrote to Pope John XXIII citing he was in agreement with the Church and not a heretic. But in that same year the Pope proclaimed a crusade against Ladislaus of Naples and promised indulgences to all who made gifts or enlisted in the war. Huss fired off a denouncement against the right of the Pope to do this. The Pope’s bulls offering the indulgences were publicly dishonoured and burned. The King, aroused by the anger and contempt of the masses against the Pope, took three men who had been involved with publicly dishonoring the Pope and had them burned. Their bodies were taken to Huss’s Church of Bethlehem.
The King persuaded Huss to leave the city. While the Church turned against Huss, the populous supported him and prevented the Pope’s sentence from being carried out.
While exiled, Huss wrote “It is better to die well than to live badly. We dare not sin in order to avoid the punishment of death.”He denounced the Pope’s bulls as unchristian in spirit and not to be obeyed. He denounced the Pope’s right to declare war on a people and grant indulgences to another people to fight them. In fact, any Pope who did so was himself in mortal sin.
This was a dangerous proposition. If the Church was to admit to this, then they would have to admit that the authority of the Church had been in doubt many times.
Emperor Sigmund urged his brother King Wenceslaus of Bohemia to make certain Huss went to Constance. Promising Huss protection, safe passage there and back, and provision to be heard before the council, Huss complied with the Emperor. When Huss arrived, the council of course declared the Emperor had no such authority to give him protection.
The Chancellor, the presiding authority of the council, was in a difficult position. He, as well as many others, were in flavor of reformation. However, they could not allow Huss to assert his private authority over Church authority. This man, a heretic, living in sin and destined to damnation, surely could not have power over others of a Christian nature. Also, to admit that Huss was right in charging the Pope guilty and in mortal sin by his granting indulgences to members who donated or enlisted in an unjust war, was more perilous than he could handle. In other words, if you are saying it is inconceivable to have a man, a sinful man, even a priest, rule and have jurisdiction over others of the Christian faith, then how can any sinful man, even a Pope have rule and jurisdiction over other people of the Christian faith? To find Huss guilty would be to find the Pope guilty. To find the Pope guilty would find other Popes just as guilty.
There had been indeed many Popes much more guilty of living in sin than the current Pope. To find all these Popes guilty as well would be to admit the entire Church was apostate. While Huss made his point, he did not make any friends.
Other charges of heresy were brought against Huss. He was denied the right to defence, denied the right to reply and found guilty as charged. He was condemned to be burned at the stake.
Huss was chained by the neck to a stake and straw and wood piled up to his neck. As the flames arose, he sang. His voice was stilled by the fire and his ashes were thrown into the Rhine River. Pagans had disposed of the ashes of Polycarp, another Christian martyr, in the same fashion, in the 2nd century. Now it was the Christians who were behaving worse than the Pagans.
Bohemia was torn by civil war for 30 years because of the death of Huss. The hatred of Rome, and the disgust, dissatisfaction and disrespect for the Church by its members was building fuel throughout all of Europe. All that was needed now was something to ignite it.