The execution of Jerome, amid the clashing schemes and conflicting interests which marked the progress of the council, was passed lightly by. A gallant ship had gone down upon a stormy sea, and the wild waves of passion rolled on as madly and fiercely as if there had been no human victim of their murderous play. No expression of regret or remorse bubbles up visibly to the surface, to speak, in the actors, any bitter memory of the deed. No doubt it was remembered—no doubt, in later years, minds like Gerson’s recurred to it sadly—but the death of Jerome, at the time, produced scarcely a pause in the struggle of conflicting parties and interests.

On the next day after the execution (May 31), a decree of the council was issued, summoning its absent members to return, under penalty, in case of disobedience, of incurring the indignation of Almighty God, and St. Peter and St. Paul, his apostles. The council felt that it was now incumbent upon it to prosecute with energy the matter of the union of the church. This was manifest in the congregations held upon the following days. In spite of a letter of Sigismund, urging upon them the business of reform, the members showed themselves more inclined to remove the difficulties that stood in the way of the deposition of Benedict and the election of a new pope.

The case of the Bohemians, moreover, called for the notice of the council. The execution of Jerome was not calculated to soothe the feelings or repress the indignation of his countrymen. Their letter of remonstrance had reached the council at the close of the previous year. Their citation for their presumption and suspicion of heretical pravity in adhering to Huss had been demanded by the prosecuting officers of the council, in its name, on the twentieth of February, 1416. This citation was issued on the fifth of May, and was publicly affixed to the church doors and gates of Constance. A commission to attend to the process of trial—which was to be summary in the case of those cited—was appointed on the third of June. It was now, upon the non-appearance of the Bohemians summoned to answer before the council, that they were to be declared guilty of contumacy. The number of these is variously stated from four hundred and fifty to five hundred and fifty. They embraced, as we have already seen, some of the most powerful and distinguished members of the Bohemian nobility. To them the threats of the council were a mere brutum fulmen. They treated them with contempt. Secure in their distance from Constance and the consciousness of their own strength, they were driven into a more defiant attitude by the steps taken to awe them into submission. The execution of Jerome, following upon that of Huss, was in their eyes a new outrage, tending to destroy the last vestige of respect which they could ever have entertained for the body by whose order the deed was done.

A different course from theirs was the one pursued by one of their countrymen at Constance, the Knight De Latzembock. He had gradually risen till he stood high in the emperor’s favor. He it was who bore the news of the emperor’s coronation at Aix la Chapelle to Constance, on the opening of the council. Since that time he had been employed in high positions, and had had charge of important matters. But still, in spite of all this, the stain of heretical leprosy clung to him. It was not forgotten that he was one of those whom the Bohemian king had commissioned to escort Huss to Constance. Although he had since had but little to do with him, and showed in his character and life more of the courtier than the friend, he yet fell under suspicion. The council felt that it was at least dangerous that such a man should not be committed with themselves to the guilt of their own deed. There was something ominous in his silence. It could not be tolerated. He must speak out. He must seem at least to endorse the condemnation of his countrymen, or he could not be trusted about the person of the emperor. He was cited—according to a historian hostile to Huss—and required to abjure the doctrine and approve the condemnation of Huss and Jerome. With this requisition he complied. Doubtless his conscience excused him for the crime under the plea of necessity, but the suspicion of his sincerity which was still entertained, while it commends his intellectual convictions, suggests the policy and pliability of the courtier. To this man, this new convert, letters were given by the council to be carried into Bohemia and delivered to his countrymen, but we hear no more of them, and it is doubtful whether he who would abjure his convictions for fear of the council, would be forward to thrust before the eyes of his own countrymen the provocation of his infamy not unattended by danger.

Never was the difference between preaching and practice better illustrated than in the history and proceeding; of the council. We have seen how loud had been the cry of remonstrance and the complaint of corruption. It was notorious that the most simoniacal arts had raised many of the prelates of the council to the position they occupied. The channels of promotion were not through merit, but money. Again and again this crying infamy of the church had been exposed. Except the deposition of John XXIII, no noticeable steps had been taken in the direction of reform. Two men had been put to death, upon whose characters there rested not a stain of corruption or impurity, and who were angels by the side of their judges. At last a victim was found—a poor insignificant copyist—of prelatical and pontifical simony. A scapegoat was wanted, and John Creith of Liege was the one selected. He had, unfortunately for himself, though to his great pecuniary advantage, been one of the minions of John XXIII. Acting as his secretary, be had employed his knowledge and skill to his own emolument, counterfeiting, to this end, apostolic letters and documents. He was accused of having sold thirty benefices, and of having reserved in his own hands others, which were incompatible in the hands of one man. Upon this victim, punishment, therefore, must alight. He, at least, will be made a signal example. But what is his sentence? Suspension from office! No wonder the preacher of two or three days later (June 7), should remark—when speaking on the text, "They were filled with the Holy Ghost"—that instead of the seven graces which were bestowed on the apostles at the day of Pentecost, he feared that the devil had had his Pentecost in the hearts of most of the clergy, and had inspired them with vices directly contrary to the graces of the apostles.

But little, however, was accomplished by the council after Jerome’s death, for several months. They were reluctant to enter upon any measures of reform. The emperor was absent, and private interests and party purposes acknowledged no supreme authority to overawe them. The council assumed the character for the most part of a great debating club, except as party policy mingled with the intrigues of the caucus. The affair of Petit was still warmly controverted, yet little if any progress was made toward its settlement. The Cardinal of Cambray issued his treatise on ecclesiastical power, some portions of which contain sentiments in advance of his age, and strongly savoring of a protestant character. Yet this very treatise gave rise, by the doubts which he threw out in its concluding chapter, to some of the most agitating and angry controversies. Should the English, or the union of Spain with the council, be recognized still as a separate and independent nation composing it? It was a firebrand thrown in among a mass of inflammable materials, and the conflagration at once burst forth. The pride of England, fresh from the glorious field of Agincourt, resented the doubt as an insult. Yet the French could not look with complacency upon the exaltation of their great rival. The Spaniard, who had now arrived with a view to join the council, found their place preoccupied by the English, who had always heretofore been recognized as an integral portion of the German nation in the councils of the church. The controversy kindled to a flame. Fierce passions were indulged, and fierce words spoken. The Cardinal of Cambray was not allowed to touch upon the subject, as he had proposed, in a public discourse. He complained of this restriction upon his liberty. It was but a poor satisfaction to be informed that he must be careful how he appeared in the streets, for armed Englishmen sought his life. More than once the matter threatened to proceed to open violence, but by the intervention of the prince, and a mass of national protests against present privileges being allowed as precedents, passion was cooled and the danger deferred.

The council meanwhile had received new and large accessions to its numbers. England was more numerously represented. Among others came Robert Clifford, bishop of London, the two chancellors of Oxford and Cambridge, and twelve doctors, ostensibly to maintain the rights of the English nation.

The kingdoms of Portugal, Aragon, Castile, Navarre, and Scotland sent delegates to Constance, who were, most of them, successively received with similar formalities to those upon which the representatives of Gregory XII had insisted. Some of them were quite leisurely in making their appearance. Months passed, bringing from them to the council only letters and promises. Nothing could be done, meanwhile, that could be regarded as final and conclusive in regard to Benedict XIII. His trial and deposition, in order to be acknowledged legitimate, must be anticipated in by all the nations.

It was during this period, previous to taking further and more decisive measures against Benedict, that the council presented a most singular scene of turmoil and recrimination. Questions of national precedence and representation; the complaints of the cardinals that they were not notified previously of the subjects of discussion; the affair of John Petit still dragging its slow length along, vain and futile attempts to draw up plans on the subject of reform, which the emperor still urged upon the attention of the council, all conspired to render that body the scene of angry and bitter controversy. It was during this period, also, that Gerson signalized himself, not only by his zeal in controverted matters, but by peculiar manifestations of what at the present day might be regarded as ultra orthodoxy. We have recently seen the doctrine of "The immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary" solemnly adopted by the Roman Catholic church as one of the integral elements of its creed. Gerson, on this subject, was in advance of his times. At Paris he had manfully contended in behalf of the doctrine, and had classed its principal opponent with Huss himself. But now his devotion went still further. He urged publicly upon the council the immaculate conception of St. Joseph, and, opposed as he was to the multiplication of saints’ days, went so far as to insist that to this rule of restriction St. Joseph should be excepted. But the council were not ready to endorse the suggestion. More than four hundred years more were destined to pass away, before the question in regard to the Virgin Mary could be put at rest. Another century may yet honor the logical consistency of Gerson, that ranks Mary and Joseph together as to their claim on this point.

It was near the close of the year (1416) that the council replied to a letter of Sigismund, informing him of the state of affairs at Constance. He had ever a horror for all that tended to civil commotion. His hostility to the doctrines of Petit was aggravated by what he saw in the anarchy and violence of France—results as he regarded them of his incendiary principles. His prejudice against Huss had been skillfully aggravated by the enemies of the reformer, when they imputed to his views and preaching similar tendencies. For this reason, he was urgent that the council should prosecute the Bohemian heresy to its extinction. But this was a task beyond their power. They wrote to the emperor now to implore his aid.

There was good reason for doing so. The council found themselves contemned by heretics. Their threats were despised; their authority was disregarded; their own conduct was arraigned, and the Bohemian nation boldly declared its purpose to persist in the course upon which it had entered. In these circumstances their only hope of help was in the emperor. He must enforce the authority of the council by his imperial power. The letter which the council wrote him is important for the picture which it gives of the state of things in Bohemia, as well as on other accounts. It commences with a statement of the daily complaints made to the council of evils that prevailed in Bohemia; the scandalous dangers and dangerous scandals, through errors, heresies, seditions, and persecutions, which had given disturbance to the clergy, and which were spread over a country inflamed by "more than material fire." It speaks of the disciples of Wickliffe, Huss, and Jerome as the followers of Belial, and abounding in impiety and perfidy. The two former, condemned by the council, were represented as saints in the churches, were spoken of as such in sermons, were honored in the divine offices, and had masses celebrated for them as martyrs. Their followers sought to disseminate and perpetuate their errors, drawing off to themselves all classes of persons, learned and ignorant, and of both sexes. They are spoken of as treating lightly holy mother church, and holding sentences and censures in contempt. The evil was rising to an alarming height. The intelligence of the council’s proceedings had only urged them to new and more detestable excesses.

The council then sets forth in a more specific form the evils of which they complain; members of the university, and other priests infected by them, continued to preach the errors of Wickliffe and Huss, which the council had condemned. They had been cherished, defended, and protected by certain barons and nobles of the kingdom, who, in letters to the council with their seals affixed, had avowed their acts. The communion of the cup was preached and practiced in the cities and villages, notwithstanding the decision of the council upon the subject, and the threatened penalty of eternal damnation. The clergy were ill treated and abused, and even the Jews enjoyed a greater liberty than was allowed to them. The interdict was still continued in many monasteries and churches, on account of the presence among them of that wretch, John Jessenitz, by which means many hundreds of masses are every day omitted. The metropolitan church had been long unoccupied, both on account of the interdict, and the robbery of its revenues, out of which three hundred ecclesiastics had formerly been sustained. The relics which had been deposited there, which the people had peen accustomed to visit daily, had been plundered for years. Some of the barons were defaming the holy council, and preventing the clergy from complying with its commands. Such as had obeyed had been plundered and expelled from their posts.

The letter then sets forth the sad condition of the university, once foremost in rank among all of the German nation, now almost a deserted habitation, and driving from it those who are unwilling to be polluted by its errors. The nation, too, once submissive to its prelates, and religiously faithful to the divine worship, and to all things required by ecclesiastical obedience, is now disgraced throughout the world by perfidy and error.

Against these evils the council declares that it has done what it could. Convoked to exterminate heresy and reform the world, it has by the grace of God proceeded to the task assigned. One of the leaders of heresy it has given over by sentence to the secular court, the other remains in custody, while processes have been fulminated against their favorers and adherents. Yet, in the need of more ample resources of defense, the council invokes, and pressingly demands, through its venerable and eminent bishops, doctors, masters, and ambassadors, the arm of his imperial majesty. It calls upon him as the defender and advocate of the church, to destroy the perfidious, defend the holy church itself and its faithful members, no less than restrain the enemies of the Christian name. It incites him against the Bohemians as terrorists and persecutors of the church of God, urging him to expel the seditious and drive out intruders. It then sets forth the character of Wenzel, king of Bohemia, in language which his brother Sigismund could appreciate. These excesses never disturbed him. He dissembles in everything. He lets everything take its course. The evils which he should resist even to blood, and at the risk of his life, he tolerates in the heart of his kingdom, or even, as was more lamentably reported, cherishes and supports. "Proceed, therefore," the council say, "with all dispatch; all lingering is dangerous; all delay does mischief. Act for the salvation of all who are like to perish before the eyes of the council, before your own, and the eyes of all beholders. Act at once, while any hope of safety remains. If the disease continues, and the time to arrest it is neglected, there is fear that the evil will become irreparable. Faith and the church, spiritualities and temporalities, souls and bodies, are threatened with a like ruin. Act heartily, glorious in the triumph of virtue, noble worshipper of justice and merit, so as to reign for ever with the Savior of the world, of whom you are the type. Your exalted piety may aspire to such merit."

It was indeed time to call upon the emperor for aid. To calm the storm it had raised was beyond the power of the council. The letters of the Bohemian nobles already noticed, were not the only ones that reached them of the same tenor. Some less numerously signed, some written by individuals, attested the strength of the indignation excited by the provocations which had been offered. The absence of the emperor in Spain left them for a while to feel the bitterness of that contempt to which they were exposed by their own deeds, while unprotected by the imperial sword.

But the emperor’s method of quieting the insurrectionary spirit was by far the wisest. He sought to reform the clergy, and urged the subject with repeated importunity upon the attention of the council. Successive failures to secure any advance in this direction might have satisfied him that moral suasion is a poor and ineffectual motive to arrest a party like that with which he had to deal, in a course where their own interest is at stake. He employed, however, one of his ministers to draw up for the council a plan of reform, but all the reward of the servant for speaking out his master’s views, as he undoubtedly did, was to be called "a Hussite rather than a Christian." "There must first," said these grandees of the council, to put off the evil day and prevent their own exposure, "There must first be a pope to authorize the reform." There were those who urged Sigismund to take the matter into his own hand, to fix the yearly salary of the popes and bishops, reserving what remained of the treasures of the church to further his darling project of a crusade against the Turks. But from such a step as this even the emperor shrunk. It would be committing the unpardonable sin with which Luther stood charged a century later, of "attacking the monks’ bellies."

The well-known views of the emperor contributed undoubtedly to secure for those who ventured to express them, freedom of speech in the council. The sermons preached abounded, as we have seen, with most unpalatable statements of the corruption of the clergy. These public discourses were the safety-valve by which the pent-up convictions of the necessity of reform were allowed harmlessly to escape. Yet sometimes the truth must have stung deeply. Just before the emperor’s return, at the beginning of the year 1417, a sermon was preached before the council, which gives a fearful picture of the state of the clergy. Their vices are coolly and philosophically classed. The first of these classifications represents the ostentation and luxury of the clergy grasping at the goods of the poor and the revenues of the church, for selfish indulgence. "In our pride," says the preacher, "we surpass the princes of the world; scorning the example and command of Jesus Christ, we would set up as kings; we march at the head of armies; we make ourselves terrible and inaccessible, especially to the poor." Other crimes recounted were the ill-disposal of benefices, by bestowing there on the incapable and vile the mal-administration of the sacrament, extended to the notoriously impure, unjust, and excommunicate, neglect of scripture study and gospel preaching, unjust decisions by ecclesiastical judges, who make them a matter of traffic, and similar charges in abundance. The picture of ecclesiastical manners or morals is too foul for the modern page. Yet it was presented in all its fearful colors in full council, and no one called it a slander. Each one knew only too well that it was drawn to the life.

The time was now drawing near for Sigismund’s return to Constance.. He had promised in one of his letters to the council to hasten his return, if in their judgment his presence should be deemed necessary. But it was a year and a half that his absence had been protracted. He left Constance on the twentieth of July, 1415, and entered its gates, upon his return, on the twenty-seventh of January, 1417. The success of his mission could not have been very flattering to his imperial pride. Benedict XIII had virtually defied him, and still assumed the full exercise of papal prerogative. His attempt to negotiate a peace between France and England would have been utterly futile, had not the policy of Henry V led him to adopt the purpose of leaving France to wear out its strength in intestine conflict. The Duke of Burgundy and the Constable d’Armagnac were sworn foes. Henry favored the duke, and even contracted with him a conditional alliance, while in a seeming compliance with the emperor’s persuasions he entered into a truce with France for the space of a few months.

Yet Sigismund must have solely felt that his influence would have been altogether in vain but fur other causes, more effective than his personal influence. As the vessel that bore him across the channel approached the English coast, several English lords, headed by the Duke of Gloucester, stepped into the water, with their drawn swords in their hands, and stopped the boat. The emperor, surprised at such a reception, asked the reason of it. The duke replied that if he came to challenge any authority in England, he had orders to forbid his landing, but if he came only as a mediator of peace, he should be treated with all the respect due to his imperial dignity. Henry V had the spirit of an independent sovereign. The proceedings of the emperor in France, in his assumption of authority, were not to be repeated on the shores of England. Sigismund showed his regard for the spirit of the English monarch, when, after months of useless negotiation to secure for France a short and worthless truce, he concluded himself, like the Duke of Burgundy, an alliance with Henry V.

The only result of his journey northward seems to have been the strengthening the hands of the ally of the Duke of Burgundy, and increasing the improbability that the doctrines of Petit would be condemned at the council. A slight which he offered to William of Bavaria, while in England, led that prince indignantly to withdraw from the English coast with all his ships. Sigismund was left a sort of state prisoner in London, unable, till he had signed the treaty with England, to reach the continent, and then only in English ships. On one occasion the mob rose against the emperor, and he was obliged to flee for refuge to Canterbury.

All this was humiliating enough. Undoubtedly English manliness, that spurned the perjury of Sigismund in giving up Huss to the flames, had something to do with the threatened violence. But there was still another dreg in his bitter cup. To defray the expenses of his journey he had sold the whole of Brandenburg, together with the electorate, to Frederic of Zollern for 300,000 ducats, and for a smaller sum created the Truchsesses of Waldburg governors of Swabia. Thus he had alienated instead of adding to his dominions, and in some respects his journey was a marked failure. He had indeed induced Spain to withdraw from Benedict, but the obstinate old pope was not to be cajoled or terrified even by an emperor. He still maintained his state, and fulminated his terrors in all the pride of his prerogative.

It was now time for the council to try their hand at a task which the emperor had left incomplete—the removal of Benedict as the lingering obstacle which obstructed the union of the church. At the twenty-third session, November 5, 1416, a commission was appointed to draw up charges and bear testimony against the "schismatic, heretical, and tyrant" pontiff. This commission proceeded to business, and were ready to report at the next session (November 28), when the citation of Benedict was decreed. He was summoned to appear at Constance within one hundred days from the present session, or within seventy days from the issuing of the citation. The citation was decreed by edict, through apprehension that the criminal could not be personally reached. But two monks were found bold enough to bear the summons to Peniscola, and into the presence of Benedict himself. These monks belonged to the Benedictine order, and their names were Lambert Stipiltz and Bernard Plancha. The recital which they gave of their mission, showed that the idea of its danger was scarcely exaggerated.

As they drew near to Peniscola, accompanied by two nobles and several notaries, they were met by a doctor dispatched by Benedict to request. them to defer their entrance till the next day, under the pretext that they might be greeted then by a more honorable reception. With this request they refused to comply. "These devils," said they, "imagine they have gained everything if they can postpone the union a single hour." As they entered the town, a nephew of Benedict, escorted by two hundred well-armed soldiers, came to meet them. Their reception had every appearance of a welcome, the value of which, however, they could well appreciate. They amused themselves at the fright which the presence of two unarmed monks had created in Benedict.

The next day they were admitted to an audience. Benedict had with him three cardinals, several bishops and other ecclesiastics, and about three hundred laymen. These monks then read the decree of citation, which Benedict heard with extreme impatience. When they came the passage which spoke of him as schismatic and heretical, he could contain himself no longer. "It is not true," he cried out at one time, and again, "They slander me." At length, in a more formal reply, he declared that the matter was one of great importance, and his answer should be given the next day, after deliberation with his cardinals. He improved the occasion, however, to go into a lengthened defense of his own course, more, probably, for the ears of his auditors, than the satisfaction or conviction of the monks. "The church," said he, "is not at Constance, but at Peniscola. Here," he exclaimed, striking his hand upon the chair he occupied, "Here is the Noah’s ark, the true church. These people of Constance call me schismatic and heretic, because I will not put the church into their hands; a thing I will take good care not to do. Already there would have been peace for six months but for them. On their heads rests the guilt of heresy and schism." The monks thought such an answer enough. They demanded a copy of it, which the pope was reluctant to grant. But leaving behind them a notary of the king to take charge of the document after it should be drawn up, they withdrew to Tortosa.

Serious as the business was, it is connected with some amusing incidents. It is said that as the monks approached, dressed in black, according to the statutes of their order, in order to cite Benedict, the latter said to those around him, "Let us hear the ravens of the council." But monkish repartee was equal to pontifical wit. "There is nothing surprising," said one of the monks boldly, "that ravens should come near a dead body!" One historian ludicrously represents the monks as dressed in black, the devil’s color, entering into hell to cite Beelzebub, the great devil, to come to judgment. Undoubtedly the sincerity was about equal on both sides. The monks themselves considered the whole affair, notwithstanding their indignation against Benedict, as a good joke.

The letter, in which they gave to the council an account of their expedition, is dated Tortosa, January 22, 1417. Five days later, on the 27th of the month, Sigismund returned to Constance.

The announcement of his approach was enthusiastically received. He was met several miles distant from Constance by an imposing procession of princes, nobles, and ecclesiastical dignitaries. He entered the city amid the discharge of cannon, the ringing of bells, and applauding shouts of welcome. The English saw with exultation that he proudly wore the decoration of the Order of the Garter, which he had received from the hands of Henry V. They were themselves treated with distinguished honor. The Bishop of Sarum greeted the emperor in the name of the council. Sacred comedies, previously acted in the presence of the authorities of the city, were repeated by the English in the presence of Sigismund, and to his great delight and satisfaction. A sermon was preached before him in the highest strain of eulogy. If anything could compensate the emperor for the hardships of his journey, it was the welcome he received, as well as the presence of the Spanish nation joining in the deliberations of the council.