Constantine – Garrett's Polished Diamonds

Chapter 3: The Great Diaspora

Behold Thy God, Oh Jerusalem: Judah’s Journey from Exile to Redemption

The dispersal of Jews from their promised land was the result of two different circumstances.
1/ Failed armed resistance to the Roman occupation.
2/ Voluntary relocation for economic reasons.

The last armed resistance of the Jews against the Romans (known as the Bar-Kochba Revolt) took place in 132 A.D. The rebels were put down and wiped out. The Jewish population was reduced by 50%, most having been killed, deported as slaves or escaped into Egypt and Galilee. The countryside was laid to waste, towns flattened or abandoned. Of the 75 known towns none were left with a single soul to walk their empty streets. The Romans erased the name of Judah from its usage on maps and replaced it with the name “Aelia Capitolina”. In Jerusalem, all that was left standing was the retaining wall of the temple. Everything else was seeded with salt to prevent vegetation from growing. The intellectual and religious life of the community was gone. Any study of Jewish history or culture was punishable by death.

Fortunately, new, more lenient governments followed Hadrian’s rule and, over time, most anti-Jewish laws were repealed. A revival of Jewish spiritual life was begun and flourished. Many of the exiles returned.

Learning was the essence by which the Jews survived, and spiritual strength became the priority of generations to come. The centre of their activities shifted from Jerusalem to Galilee. The old institutes were replaced with an imbued loyalty to the past glories of Israel, the memory of the temple and to their core survival.

The Romans, in an attempt to pacify the country, collaborated with the Rabbis in their peaceful ambitions. Soon the cities began to transform into centres of study attracting teachers and students from all lands. The loss of the temple, as can be imagined, caused a major traumatic shifting of worship and focus. Rabbis introduced a custom of marking all events as they related to the day of the destruction of the temple. All Jews continued to pay tithing. Pilgrims to the temple were encouraged. Prayer became a substitute for service, and rituals were adopted to link the Synagogue to the temple. Migration from Palestine had reached such a level as to be a serious threat to the survival of the community. The Rabbis encouraged people to remain as a symbolic sign of their faith. Most of the people spoke Greek or Aramaic but Hebrew was revived to become the National language. Speaking Hebrew was put on the same spiritual level as residence in the Holy Land.

This centralizing of educators also made possible the forming a consolidation and codification of the Oral Laws. Alongside the Torah (or Written Law), Oral Laws had been handed down for centuries by memory to many generations in an accumulation of chaotic mass writings. They had no order whatsoever. A work began, which lasted over half a century and resulted in what was called the “Mishnah”, a great literary and legal document drawn from 13 collections of case histories from 150 scholars. After passing Biblical justification, the traditions were supplemented, scrutinized and rearranged into subject divisions. The whole was arranged into six orders, Seeds, Feasts, Women, Damages, Hallowed affairs, Cleanliness and Sacred things. Each of the divisions were further divided into Tractates, Chapters, and Clauses.

These factors led to a more cohesive and united community of Jewishness, its culture and its self confidence. The Romans had left them alone with no interference or religious persecution for just sufficient time for this restoration to firmly set before conditions once more began to change.

With the decline of the economic and social fabric of the Empire, coupled with the constant rise of taxation, the Jews began to realize they could not flourish as a segregated society. This was further exacerbated by the adoption of Christianity as the Religion of the Roman Empire. This expanded the Christian Church Fathers throughout the Empire. Now, there was no room for both the Jewish Patriarc h in Palestine and the Christian Bishop in Jerusalem. Jewish communities had already expanded into Babylon, Syria, Persia and Armenia and as the situation deteriorated, the pressure mounted for the Palestinian Jews to migrate to those centres. The effect was that the influence of the Palestinian Rabbis declined while the influence of the Rabbis in Babylon grew in importance.

For some time, the two schools in Palestine and Babylon worked together on the Mishnah, but then a disharmony began to grow. The teachers came to the conclusion that the Mishnah as it was then constituted, did not include all the Laws or legal materials. Most certainly not the additional laws that had been implemented since the work had begun. They also felt that many of the explanations referred exclusively to the Palestinian traditions and too little consideration had been given to the Babylonian traditions. The Palestinian scholars continued to become enfeebled by the widespread adoption of Christianity, so the rift widened. Babylonian and Palestinian academics eventually chose their own ways. The additional legal entries and codified additions were combined with the original Mishnah thus forming the Talmud. But, as the two groups worked separately, it resulted in the creation of two Talmuds, the Palestinian Talmud and the Babylonian Talmud.

The Palestinian Talmud also known as the Jerusalem Talmud was not finished until the middle of the fourth century because of very extremely adverse political conditions. It has some serious short comings. It was incomplete and lacked continuity. Its greatest contribution was to the history and as a source of information of Jewry in Palestine.

The Babylonian Talmud also has short comings. While it reflects 10 centuries of customs and history of Jewry in Palestine as well as Babylonia, it includes a plethora of fables, sagas, legends, tales, poems, allegories, ethical reflections and historical reflections. The Bible is its starting point, but somewhere in its 2 1/2 million words, more than a third became devoted to the nonlegal part of the Mishnah. Much of the teachings are reflections and personal opinions of the teachers and scholars who wrote them.

As the Bible became the core of Christian living, so did the Talmud become the daily companion of the Jewish culture including the very existence of the entity. As hostility and forced expulsion from society pressed in on them, the Jews became dependent on their traditions and customs honoured by their forefathers. The Talmud also provided an identity which gave them purpose and cohesion.

The next major force that impacted the life of Jewry occurred in the early fourth century. Constantine converted to Christianity and brought the religion to the Roman Empire by force. In an attempt to save his crumbling Empire, he shifted the Capital to Constantinople which was to become a new centre of power. No doubt his thinking for such a move was to leave the corruption and immorality of the old system behind. However, this scheme was stillborn. What was born in its place, was the Byzantine Empire. Just before the lights went out in the East, the Papacy was established. Arguments and contentions caused the world of the Roman Church to split in two parts, East and West. These shifting tectonic plates caused new waves of persecution and intolerance to come crashing down upon the Jews.

Constantine unleashed Christianity with Empirical edict and might. Singled out for degradation were the Jews because, as a whole, they would not submit to compulsory baptism. They suffered greatly under the Persian and Byzantium Empires.

Meanwhile, the new European states that were the outcome of the disintegrated Roman Empire, began to collate. Originally, the Edict of Caracalla in 212 A.D. had given Jews the right to citizenship. Now under the Theodosius Code of 438 A.D., an enforced, sustained policy of intolerance began to demand strict regulations regarding their freedoms. The Jews were not permitted to marry Christians, could not have Christian slaves, could build no synagogues, and were restricted in their occupation choices. For the next 1½ centuries, and the continuing during the rise of Islam, the Jews were harassed in and banished from one location after another. With the collapse of the Empire, the various states remaining were free to impose whatever conditions they wanted upon the nation-less Jews. All relics from the Christian period were removed from the Holy lands, as well as any evidences from Biblical prophets. Churches were built over original historical holy sites. Jews were banned from entering such places as Jerusalem.

When the Babylonians, Cyrus and Alexander the Great conquered the Holy Land, they were mostly tolerant of the Jews and allowed them to practice their religion. This was not the case when the Jews fell into the hands of the Christians. Now they were forced to be baptized as Christians or be deported as Jews.

These were desperate times. Thousands were baptized while the rest of the Jews migrated to Italy, Franco/ Germany, and Spain. The Jews who settled in Spain (who became known as Sephardic Jews) endured particularly harsh treatment because they were labelled “Christ Killers”. Regardless of where they sought shelter, they tended to live in urban communities, isolating themselves in Ghettos. Almost without exception, they remained as aliens in their new surroundings, permitted to work only in the humblest of occupations.

Like a football between competing teams, both the Jews in Europe and the Jews in Palestine were kicked back and forth between the East Orthodox Church, West Roman Catholics, the Christian Kings, the Persians, the Arabs and the Muslims. As a result, Jews were forced to abandon the pursuit of agriculture and relinquish any ties to the land. Excluded from the economy of all nations they resorted to trades where they eventually achieved a universal prominence. This unfortunately made them a natural target for all kinds of abuse as well.

Chapter 6: The Great Schism

Part 1: From Apostles to Apostates

The Western interpretation regarding the two natures of Christ, carved in stone, prevailed in the Christian world in the end, but not because of its merits Both sides were wrong. They had based their conclusions on the single false doctrine derived from a miss-translation, “God Created everything from nothing”. (EX NEHILO) Genesis 1:1

However, there was an other equally dangerous threat that arose that no one was anticipating. It began in 605 AD and its founder was called Mohamed. The threat was Islam. By the time the Catholic Church of the Western Roman Empire were able to call for another vote of its orthodoxy of the two natures of Christ, the Muslims had over run the Christian Church in the East including Constantinople and there was no one left standing to oppose them.

It is hard to imagine that the Leaders of the Roman Empire who were constantly and completely occupied with the running of State Affairs during a period of perpetual military wars, would allow themselves to become so deeply involved in the affairs of a religious nature.

From the time of the first Council, Constantine was clever enough to have figured out that a people divided over their allegiance to their God would only be a short step away from becoming divided over their allegiance to their Emperor. His main concern was his Empire and anything that threatened that, threatened him. He called a council and selected Christianity to become the State religion. That put an end to the persecution of Christians. The second council he called was to establish a common creed that everyone could agree upon to avoid future divisions and disagreements.

When Constantine built a New Rome in the East (Constantinople) it created many advantages but also exacerbated its one big disadvantage. You can shift a Capital relatively easily, but you cannot as easily shift a people’s loyalty. Rome had always been the center of the civilized world. There were many who felt it should stay that way. The Empire was slipping into chaos. With communications slow and unreliable, moving to a new, far away center of power was very challenging to say the least. However, if you could unite the people through their religion and have control over them as a result, the chances of survival of the Emperor would be multiplied many fold. To have power over a man’s life is a high level of control. To have power over a man’s religion means you have power over him even after he was dead. Now that is total control, and it was the kind of total control Constantine was desperate for.

The Chalcedon Creed was crafted to establish the doctrine of the two natures of Christ called in Greek, Dyophysite. The first nature being Divine, while the second being Human. According to such belief, it was the “man nature of Christ” that was born of Mary. She would be called Christostokos: giver of life to Christ’s body. However it was an unacceptable and impossible proposition. Such a concept did not take into account that she could not possibly bring life to a God, who already existed before she or for that matter all mankind had even been created. It must have been the “man nature of Christ” that was born to the woman called Mary. Likewise, it must have been the “man nature of Christ” that died on the cross because a God cannot die. When the “divine nature of Christ” retook the Body of Christ, he was resurrected as a God. Further, as God is pure intelligence surely he would have no need to have been born at all, or to require a resurrected physical body which was composed of lesser and opposite substance to himself.

The opposing group was a called the Monophysites. They believed that Christ had only one nature and that nature was divine. This school of thought originated in the Eastern Christianity. They saw Christ as a God who was Incarnate– born as a man. At the same time, he became a fusion of both man and God sometime later when he was adopted by God the Father and became his Son. Mary, as a woman, gave birth to him and is therefore deserving of the title Christostokos because she was the giver of life to God.

Nestorius was one of the Bishops with this view. We must not forget there were many other views and opinions. Arianism was still a problem. Arius, a Libyan and Priest from Egypt, was teaching that Christ the son, was a God also but that there was a time when only God existed. Therefore, the Son was not equal to the Father. This thought was not original with Arius but had been debated for decades before he was born. Nonetheless, the movement that he founded bore the name Arianism and was deemed by the Pope or senior Bishop of Rome to be heretical doctrine.

These issues may sound like micro-minor nitpicking to us today but at the time it was a black or white issue upon which everything hung. Attempting to put a creed together that appeased both opposing sides was impossible. Nonetheless, The Nicean Creed was a final attempt after much maneuvering through compromises, bickering and personal threats. It is understandable why many today dismiss this amazing Creed’s linguistic achievement as simply a smoke screen of political doublespeak.

Comparison between Creed of 325 and Creed of 381 AD

The following table which indicates by square brackets the portions of the 325 text that were omitted or removed in 381 A.D. and uses italics to indicate what phrases, absent in the 325 text, were added in 381, juxtaposes the earlier (325 AD) and later (381 AD) forms of this Creed in the English translation given in Schaff’s work, Creeds of Christendom.

First Council of Nicea (325)	*First Council of* *Constantinople (381*)
We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of the Father [the only-begotten; that is, of the essence of the Father, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father;	We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds (æons), Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father;
By whom all things were made [both in heaven and on earth];	by whom all things were made;
Who for us men, and for our salvation, came down and was incarnate and was made man;	Who for us men, and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man;
He suffered, and the third day he rose again, ascended into heaven;	He was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, and suffered, and was buried, and the third day he rose again, according to the Scriptures, and ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father;
From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.	From thence he shall come again, with glory, to judge the quick and the dead, whose kingdom shall have no end.
And in the Holy Ghost.	And in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of life, who proceedeth from the Father, who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified, who spake by the prophets.
	We Believe In one holy catholic and apostolic Church; we acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins; we look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.
[But those who say: There was a time when he was not and He was not before he was made;’ and ‘He was made out of nothing,’ or ‘He is of another substance’ or ‘essence,’ or ‘The Son of God is created,’ or changeable,’ or ‘alterable’— they are condemned by the holy Catholic and apostolic Church.]

We must remember that while these very fine, barely distinguishable differences, caused nonetheless, considerable trouble for the proud and influential participants of their day. They were not fringe radicals or eccentrics but scholars with credentials and reputations at stake. Others were Monks hardened by years of tortuous self-denial having achieved a mental fortitude that only comes from isolated solitude. Then there were the Bishops with large congregations and followers trying to influence the Ego-maniacal Emperors whose total political and religious powers allowed them to impose and enforce whatever they could be persuaded to believe.

Such were the main players in this very serious and dangerous game. They met, not to discover the nature of Christ, but to win. Each took to the conference a fanatical conviction of their own orthodoxy that was “poured and set in concrete.” Now, their agenda was to root out those who did not believe as they believed and pronounce their curses (anathemas) upon them. They were not willing to even compromise on the equally logical conclusions already reached by their opponents. Rather they simply asked, “Are you an orthodox believer or a heretic?” What did that mean? What was orthodox at one conference was heresy at the next. One had to be very astute and focused just to stay alive. The answer they gave could bring them a cherished appointment or cost them their head.

At each conference there were winners and losers. The winners however could never be assured their triumph at one conference would survive long enough to influence the next. The losers could be vilified, judged, condemned or beaten to death before the news reached their home supporters. In some cases, the judgments were reversed but that was of little use to those who had perished. Emperors died and were replaced by new ones. There were no guarantees as to where the new Emperor’s sympathies lay. The same was true for Popes. What the Emperor giveth to one Pope, another Emperor taketh away. Blessed be the names of the Emperor.

Although the Niacin Creed was accepted by all at the council while under the ever-watchful eye of Emperor Constantine, it was by no means a done deal. It still had to be implemented throughout the Empires, both East and West. But as soon as the members returned home, the bickering, squabbling and disagreements regarding both the words and the intents of the Creed, always began afresh. It continued to simmer and boil and smolder for decades.

Finally, another Council, 46 years later was called to meet at Constantinople. Again, the most important business was to refine the creed so as to make perfectly clear what was orthodoxy and what wasn’t. What would be deemed heretical and what deemed acceptable. As before, even this tinkering and rearranging did not “a meeting of minds” make.

Two additional councils were called at Ephesus to clarify the one nature verses the two natures problem. Unfortunately, the one nature or Arianism group were victorious this time and the representatives even got so carried away as to beat the Bishop of Constantinople, Flavian, so badly that he died of his injuries a few days later.

Incensed at the death of their Bishop, and at the outcome of the council’s actions, Pope Leo and Emperor Marcian, both supporting the two natures theory, called a fourth council to reverse all that had been done at Ephesus. Chalcedon was still considered a safe place for the moment. All areas were too dangerous due to the threat from the advances of the army of Attila the Hun, so it was decided to convene the conference there.

At Chalcedon in 451 A.D. then, with Marcian presiding and Leo leading, all conclusions reached, and all anathemas pronounced upon the opposing Bishops of the East at the former council at Ephesus, were reversed. It was labelled as a gangster Council and deleted from the list of council as non- existent. Those who were responsible were deposed as Bishops, exiled and anathematized. The new creed, the Chalcedon Creed was formulated and not only approved but made orthodoxy. Any deviant to this Creed would result in a charge of heresy which had now been raised to a crime equal to treason and thereby, punishable by death.

An English translation of the Chalcedonian Creed

“We, then, following the holy Fathers, all with one consent, teach men to confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect in Godhead and also perfect in manhood; truly God and truly man, of a reasonable soul and body; co-substantial with us according to the manhood; in all things like unto us, without sin; begotten before all ages of the Father according to the Godhead, and in these latter days, for us and for our salvation, born of the virgin Mary, the mother of God, according to the manhood; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, to be acknowledged in two natures, inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably; the distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved, and concurring in one Person and one Subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son, and only begotten, God the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ, as the prophets from the beginning have declared concerning him, and the Lord Jesus Christ himself taught us, and the Creed of the holy Fathers has handed down to us.”

Its purpose was:
1/ To exclude all those who still upheld the Monophonic theory of Arius or any other opposing view.
2/ To stop the destructive religious wars that were dividing the two Empires.
3/ To bring the polarized and fractured Empire together.

So much for the common creed which would bring peace and unite the Empire. What about the Biblical teachings of Christ? What about love, tolerance, good will to those that despise or use you? All that had been scrapped. The Hawks had won. The Church had lost. From hence forth, the decrees were to be backed up by sword.

By the fifth century, the knowledge that we are children of a Heavenly Father had been lost and this was the result of that loss. What greater example of the reliance on the spirit of the Holy Ghost to guide us could we have? Without that influence what other outcome could we have expected?

Everything that the convention at Chalcedon was expected to achieve, history reveals that it was denied. The Roman Empire imploded, with the Eastern Empire the first to go down. One half of the civilized Christian World was lost. Each side blamed the other. Eastern Christians thought it was God’s punishment against Rome because she had cast off the Eastern Empire through her heretical, compulsory teachings. They welcomed the Muslims and actually experienced greater freedom of religion under them than while under Roman rule.

When Rome fell, the survivors in the West thought it was a replay of the Fall of Jerusalem – God’s punishment because they did not rid themselves from the heretics of the east as they should have done.

East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet. Neither in thought nor in correcting their faults, it appears.

The latest of God’s attempt to establish a Zion society had failed miserably. He had tried with the freed Israelite slaves under Moses. Again, he tried with Lehi in the Promised Land. And now with the successors of Peter in the Covenanted Land, he tried and again another failure.

God has been reduced to:
1/ An abstract (having no material existence)
2/ Irrelevant (of no value)
3/ Incomprehensible (beyond understanding)
4/ Inconceivable (impossible to imagine)
5/ Inexplicable (impossible to explain)
This definition may have been a good excuse at the time when they were seeking conformity to avoid the church being extinguished. However, for the generation in which we live, the result has been a headlong rush to abandonment of all responsibility.

Today’s Christians have spiritually fallen asleep, so far as the “great division because of the two natures of God” are concerned. If you were to ask most Christians today about the one or two natures and which they accept, I would venture to predict they would say, “I don’t understand the question.” Or they may ask, “What difference does it make?” As far as religion goes, with its pained dark history, it has all now become totally irrelevant.

This definition may have been a good excuse at the time when they were seeking conformity to avoid the church being extinguished. However, for the generation in which we live, the effect of an impotent God is obvious. We are led to blindly believe there are no long-term consequences for our actions. We suffer only if we are foolish enough to be caught.

In the midst of all this blind wandering and wanton behavior, has come a still, soft voice of reason, a musical note in a cacophony of chaos, heard only by those who are tuned to its pitch.

The soft voice of Jesus Christ can be felt more than heard. He is coming as planned and “Every knee shall bow and every tongue confess” his name (Romans 14 : 11). God has restored the truth through Joseph Smith in these latter days. The struggle today is not between two untruths, but between ignorance and truth. Yet much like the days of ancient Rome, there will be a lot of challenges, cleansing, self-correcting and repenting before the night ends and the day dawn breaks.

The definition of ignorance is to “make fools out of madmen and madmen out of fools.” Truth restores knowledge and the truth is what ultimately really makes you free (John 8: 32), from both madmen and fools.

Will we of the final dispensation be able to achieve what others in history could not? We are about to find out.

CHAPTER 1: THE REFORMERS: Protestants and Martyrs

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.