The Council of Constance and the Burning of Jan Hus

The council met at Constance on the summons of John XXIII, the pope of the line begun at Pisa (Council of Constance, session 1). When he fled in March 1415 it declared that his departure did not dissolve it (Council of Constance, session 3), and on 6 April, in the decree Haec sancta, it declared that it “has its authority directly from Christ” and that everyone, “including also the pope”, is bound to obey it in what concerns the faith, the ending of the schism and the reform of the church (Council of Constance, session 5 (6 April 1415)) (Council of Constance, session 5, in the translation of Thatcher and McNeal, no. 171). It then deposed two of the three claimants and accepted the resignation of the third (see the Great Western Schism). In October 1417, in the decree Frequens, it ordered that general councils be held in future at fixed intervals, in the end every ten years (Council of Constance, session 39). A month later Martin V was elected (Council of Constance, session 41 (editor’s summary)).

Jan Hus, a priest and master of Prague, came to give an account of his faith; Sigismund, king of the Romans, had issued him a safe-conduct, dated 18 October 1414, which took him under the protection of the empire and ordered that he be let pass, stay and return freely (Peter of Mladoňovice, Relatio pp. 237–238). Hus reached Constance on 3 November (Hus, Letters letter 37, p. 157). Within weeks he was a prisoner, and the Bohemian lord John of Chlum posted protests on the church doors that he had been seized under the king’s safe-conduct (Peter of Mladoňovice, Relatio pp. 253–254). He was heard in public on three days in June 1415 (Peter of Mladoňovice, Relatio pp. 275–315). Afterwards he wrote that Sigismund’s word was as little to be trusted as his safe-conduct (Hus, Letters letter 63, pp. 229–230), and on 1 July he declared that he would not abjure articles he had never held, nor those taken from his books, lest he offend against the truth (Hus, Letters Final Declaration, pp. 275–276).

On 6 July the council condemned thirty articles from his writings, declared him a heretic, degraded him from the priesthood and gave him up to the secular power (Council of Constance, session 15). Peter of Mladoňovice, who was there, reports that Hus told the assembly he had come freely, with the safe-conduct of the king then present (Peter of Mladoňovice, Relatio p. 319). A paper crown painted with devils was set on his head, Sigismund ordered him taken away, and he was led to a meadow outside the town. Chained to the stake, he refused a last offer of his life in return for recanting and died singing “Christ, Son of the living God, have mercy on me”. His ashes were thrown into the Rhine (Peter of Mladoňovice, Relatio pp. 320–323). In September the council decreed that a safe-conduct given by an emperor or king does not prevent a competent judge from trying a case of heresy (Council of Constance, session 19 (editor’s summary)).

The two decrees on councils remain contested. Martin V said at the last session that he approved what the council, acting as a council, had decided in matters of faith (Council of Constance, session 45, note quoting the pope’s reply). Pius II forbade appeals from a pope to a council (Pius II, Execrabilis), and the First Vatican Council rejected the idea that a council is an authority above the Roman pontiff (First Vatican Council, Pastor Aeternus chapter 3). The modern editor of the decrees notes that the standing of the sessions held before Martin’s election is still disputed (Council of Constance, editor’s introduction). In 1999 John Paul II praised the moral courage of Hus and expressed “deep regret” for the “cruel death” inflicted on him (John Paul II, Address on John Hus (1999)).