nor obeyed. The fact that Hus included the pope among the saints was no coincidence: he was alluding to the recent papal bull banning preaching in private places. Throughout the treatise, Hus repeatedly reminded the reader of the ultimate fallibility of the ecclesiastical authorities, especially those with whom he was in conflict.79
After exhorting the laity to question even the most exalted of church authorities, Hus disputed the clerical power to forgive sins and the control that this allowed the priests to exert over the laity. Evidently, Hus had encountered priests who argued that they held the power to decide which sins God would forgive, an opinion that Hus was eager to refute. Hus explained that “forgiveness depended on the will and power of God and Christ and on the penitence or hardness of heart of each man in his soul, if anyone suffers grief on account of his sins and is sorry that he angered God, then God forgives his sins through Christ.” For forgiveness to take place, the collaboration of only two parties was needed: God and the penitent. Hus expressed ideas that would surface again during the sixteenth-century Reformation, with the priest’s role as a conduit of God’s power contributing very little to the act of forgiveness itself. He was clear on this point: “And so it is written on the walls of the Bethlehem chapel so that people would be forewarned and know that priests do not have the power to forgive sins.”80 Priests possessed no power of their own to grant forgiveness and could do nothing to prevent it from taking place. Hus concluded with a sharp criticism of those clerics who exaggerated their powers of forgiveness or, even worse, used them for profit or control. He implored the faithful not to be manipulated by clerics who refuse them absolution.
Given his recent track record with the papal curia, Hus was personally most affected by the fourth error, the idea that all faithful—including himself—owed unconditional obedience to all authorities. Hus listed bishops, lords, and fathers as examples of such authorities but his main target was the papacy.81 Drawing on his own recent experience in the ecclesiastical courts, Hus argued that unconditional obedience was owed to no one human or institution. In fact, all needed to obey God even if it meant defying ecclesiastical authorities. He used Saints Catherine and Dorothy as examples, to make the point that God is to be obeyed over any other authority. Hus praised the two women, who both refused to take a husband, insisting that they had been called by the Holy Spirit to pursue a life of virginity. He argued that they were right to persevere in their calling, despite the protests of their mothers and fathers, adding that they would have been right to persevere even if the pope himself had tried to dissuade them. This was a hypothetical scenario; of course the pope did not interfere with Catherine’s and Dorothy’s decision to take the veil. But this scenario introduced the possibility that the pope could be mistaken and oppose something unquestionably good and authentic, in this case a saintly life of virginity.
Hus then transitioned to a more controversial example: the pope’s recent ban on preaching in the capital, which Hus understood to be a personal attack. He argued that this ban was not to be obeyed, as it countered the judgment, will, and glory of God: “And so it is written in Bethlehem that people ought not to obey their prelates unless they command what is right to do.”82 He wrote: “the pope also bans priests from preaching God’s word in chapels, he bans priests from celebrating mass, priests who preach well and whose heart is in the right place. In that case, the priests ought to disobey the pope’s order, because it is contrary to God’s commandments. And so it is sometimes beneficial to disobey prelates and one’s superiors.”83 Hus insisted that no ban on preaching (or on celebrating the mass), regardless of the authority behind it, should ever be obeyed. This was a highly polemical move. Unauthorized preaching had been a thorn in the church’s side since the times of Peter Valdes in the twelfth century, and never quite went away in spite of repeated legislation and persecution against offenders. Hus’s hypothetical example of a pope who opposed the saintly life of virginity established a conjectural possibility that even the pope might err in judgment. Thus, Hus could suggest that the pope made an error in his ban on preaching. In a court of law, a vague suggestion is worth very little. But in the court of public opinion, it was enough to sow doubt and dissatisfaction among Hus’s lay supporters.
In the fifth error, Hus took up a discussion of ecclesiastical condemnation. Once again, this was in direct response to his recent experiences with the curia and served to undermine, however implicitly, the authority of ecclesiastical authorities.
Hus allowed that sometimes condemnation was an appropriate punishment but argued that a distinction needed to be made between just and unjust condemnation, depending on whether or not it was issued in accordance with God’s commandment of love. Hus did not address the question of how to determine this or who could do so. He simply implied that the decisions of clerical authorities are not automatically valid or trustworthy; one has to review and judge them for oneself. Hus presented a hypothetical scenario: if a man, innocent of mortal sin, was punished with unjust condemnation, yet continued to stand firm and endured the shame humbly, he would not be harmed by the condemnation. Quite the opposite: his soul would profit. Of course, this situation was hardly hypothetical. Hus was, of course, this man. The legal case against him, beginning with his appeal against the burning of Wyclif’s books, dragged on with new and stricter injunctions.84 Hus wrote: “And, for this reason, false condemnation abounds and it is clear that such condemnation harms those who issue it rather than those who suffer it. Because if one is innocent of mortal sin and if they use said condemnation in order to separate him from God’s truth and if he stands firm suffering in humility, the condemnation does not harm him but instead benefits his soul.”85 Hus’s voice resounded clearly here, insisting that he had been unjustly condemned, yet incurred no spiritual harm from it, and even encouraging the faithful not to shy away from contact with him as they would have been instructed to do.
But Hus openly stated that if he was not guilty of wrongdoing, his accusers were. With this statement he moved the discussion away from the question of his own guilt or innocence and toward the use of condemnation and excommunication by those in authority in the church. Hus insisted that ecclesiastical excommunication and condemnation ought to be used to ensure the overall health of the body of the church, by amputating diseased members rather than punishing or crushing opposition: “Condemnation and excommunication ought to be like medicine, which can heal rather than destroy a person.”86 Condemnation had become a weapon in contemporary church disputes, and it was also widely used for a variety of nonspiritual purposes, even to punish secular offenses or to extract debts. Accusations of heresy had been bandied about for the same reasons.87 But Hus quickly zeroed in on the problem closest to his own heart, moving on the offensive and putting the church authorities on trial. He wrote, “Whoever condemns [another] except in the case of mortal sin, condemns himself, the same holds true for when he condemns for his own vengeance or out of greed or anger or pride.”88 In other words, ecclesiastical condemnation issued out of any sort of personal reasons, private vendettas, or attempts to squelch or control opposition, according to Hus, not only is invalid but also condemns the person issuing it. And since Hus was very vocal about his belief that he had been condemned unjustly, his discussion of the fifth error turns into an open accusation of his accusers. It is no wonder that both the king and the archbishop, who had previously supported and even admired Hus, began to regard the Bethlehem preacher as a disruptive troublemaker.
Hus ended his treatise about clerical malfeasance and corruption by addressing the problem of simony as the sixth error,89 but the discussion seems more like an afterthought. His treatment is very brief as Hus directs his readers to his earlier treatise, entirely dedicated to the subject.90 Hus explains the rudiments of simony, insisting that “no spiritual goods were to be exchanged for temporal rewards, money, or services”91 and that “everyone who wished to trade a material thing, such as money, service, gifts, in exchange for ordination as a priest or bishop was guilty of simony.”92 However, it would have been difficult to find anyone who had received an ecclesiastical office without greasing a hand or two. Also, payments for weddings, baptisms, funerals, and other services abounded, so it is not clear whether Hus really meant to indict the entire clergy or only a select few. (His views on the subject would become more pronounced in his vernacular Expositions,
