Note 514 — Chapter VII · BOHEMIA.

Mandata Synodalia ann. 1390 (Höfler, Prager Concilien, p. 40).--Æn. Sylvii. Hist. Bohem. cap. 35.--Laur. Byzyn. Diar. Bell. Hussit. ann. 1414 (Ludewig Reliq. MSS. VI. 125, 128-9).--Von der Hardt III. 335 sqq.; IV. 288-91, 334, 342.--Jo. Hus Monument. I. 42-44, 62, 72. The relentless obstinacy with which the Church of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries refused the use of the cup to the laity at the cost of Christian unity and unnumbered troubles is perhaps the most impressive example on record of the perversity of sacerdotalism in sacrificing essentials to non-essentials. No one denied that in the early Church communion in both elements was administered to all the faithful, as it continued to be without interruption in the Greek Church. The refusal of the cup to the laity was originally a Manichæan custom, in imitation of the corresponding ancient Izeshne rite of the Mazdeans. Communion in one element thus became a mark of heresy, and was condemned as such by Leo the Great (Leon. PP. I. Serm. XLII. cap. 5), about the middle of the fifth century, and again towards its end by Gelasius I., whose decretal on the subject is embodied, without comment or contradiction, by Gratian in the Decretum (P. II. Dist. ii. c. 12), showing that it was still good law in the twelfth century. When, however, in the tenth and eleventh centuries the belief in transubstantiation became the accepted dogma of the Church, the supreme veneration felt for the consecrated elements naturally gave rise to the necessity of the utmost care in handling them and to excessive dread as to any accidents which might occur to them; and the penitentials grew full of all manner of penalties inflicted on priests who, through carelessness, let fall a crumb of the body or a drop of the blood, for which, by forged decretals of the early popes, a false antiquity was claimed (Decreti III. ii. 27). Of course the liquid was much more subject to these accidents, and to decomposition, than the solid, and the ministering priests were sorely tried to avert such profanation and its consequences to themselves. At first they adopted the ready expedient of dipping the host in the wine-and-water, and thus administering both elements together, which was conducive both to safety and comfort. This innovation was condemned by the Church, but was suppressed with great difficulty. Under Gregory VII. the author of the Micrologus devotes a chapter to its prohibition (Micrologi c. 19). In 1095 the great Council of Clermont forbade it, except in cases where it was demanded by prudence or necessity for the avoidance of accidents (Conc. Claromont. ann. 1095, c. 28); and some twenty years later Paschal II. laid down the rule that it was only admissible in the communion of infants and the sick who could not swallow the bread (Paschal PP. II. Epist. 535). In a Bohemian document dating about the close of the twelfth century the priest carrying the viaticum to the dying is directed to dip the wafer in the wine so as to avoid accidents and yet be able to administer both elements (Höfler, Prager Concilien, Einleitung, p. ix.). When this resource was denied, while the veneration of the sacrament as the flesh and blood of Christ continued to develop, the custom was gradually introduced of restricting the laity to the solid element, in administering which there was less liability to accident, while the priest continued to partake in both. About 1270 Thomas Aquinas tells us that in some churches the bread only is given to the laity, as a matter of prudence, to avoid spilling, and his dialectics are equal to the task of proving that both body and blood are contained in the wafer (Summa III. lxxx. 12). The convenience of the innovation led to its extension, but it was left to the individual churches, and no authoritative decree was issued withdrawing the cup from the laity until the Bohemian controversy led to the action of the Council of Constance. How universal the custom had become without authority of law is shown by the special privilege granted, about 1345, by Clement VI. to John, Duke of Normandy, son of Philip of Valois, to receive both elements (Martene Ampl. Coll. I. 1456-7). When the question was exhaustively debated before the Council of Basle, the orator of the council, John of Ragusa, freely admitted that the Hussite practice was in accordance with the traditions of the Church, but argued that it could be changed if convenience or other reasons demanded it (Harduin. Concil. VIII. 1712, 1740); and the Cardinal of St. Peter told William, Baron of Kostka, the Bohemian chief, that the cup was refused to children and common people simply as a precaution, adding. “If you were to ask of me I would give it, but not to the careless” (Petri Zaticensis Liber Diurnus; Mon. Concil. Gen. Sæc. XV. T. I. p. 315). The final decision of the Council of Basle, in December, 1437, admits that there is no precept on the subject, but lay communion in one element is a laudable custom, the law of the Church, and not to be modified without authority (Conc. Basiliens. Sess. XXX.; Harduin. VIII. 1234). How thoroughly indefensible the Church felt its position to be, yet how arbitrarily and despotically it was resolved to enforce that position, is most clearly shown by the inquisitor Capistrano, in 1452, when he heard that the cardinal legate, Nicholas of Cusa, was thinking of giving Rokyzana a hearing on the subject at Ratisbon. Capistrano expressed his mind freely to the legate: “If we excuse the heretics we condemn ourselves.... I have always avoided a debate with the Bohemians under the ordinary rules, for they study to justify their heresy from the ancient Scriptures and observances, and they have a perfect knowledge of the texts, which certainly are numerous, in favor of communion in both elements.” Capistrano then quotes to the legate the bulls of Nicholas V. sent to him, in which the Bohemians are denounced as schismatics, heretics, and disobedient to the Roman Church, pointedly adding that the disciple is not above the teacher, nor the servant superior to the master; he had never read in the law that heretics were to be rewarded, but were to be sharply punished with confiscation and the bitterest penalties (Wadding. Annal. ann. 1452, No. 12). So it had come to this, that those who admittedly followed the practices of the Church current until the thirteenth century were to be condemned and exterminated as heretics. Disobedience was heresy, and Rome, for a century, endeavored to convulse Europe on this simple punctilio. An episode of this question was the communion of infants. This was the practice of the early Church (Cyprian. de Lapsis c. 25), and St. Innocent I. and St. Gelasius I. had both declared that as soon as infants were baptized the sacrament was necessary to secure them eternal life (Innocent PP. I. Epist. XXX. c. 5; Gelasii PP. I. Ep. VII.). The epistle of Paschal II., quoted above, shows that this was still customary in the twelfth century, but the same causes which led to the withdrawal of the cup from the laity induced the withholding of the sacrament from infants, who were liable at any moment unconsciously to commit sacrilege with the body and blood of Christ. In their enthusiasm for the Eucharist the Bohemians naturally recurred to infantile communion, and their obstinacy in this gave the fathers of Basle infinite trouble. After the reconciliation of 1436 the question still remained disputed. The feeling about it is well defined by the Bishop of Coutances, legate of the Council of Basle in Prague, who was horror-stricken when, April 28, 1437, Rokyzana administered communion to a number of infants, and one of them ejected the wafer from its mouth, forcing Rokyzana quietly to replace it. This incident was evidently regarded as the most convincing argument, and the terms in which it is alluded to show how profound was the terror which it was expected to create (Jo. de Turonis Regestrum; Monument. Conc. Gen. Sæc. XV. T. I. p. 863). At the Council of Constance it was gravely argued that if a layman allowed the wine to moisten his beard he ought to be burned with his beard (Von der Hardt III. 369). Gerson was not quite so absurd, but he did not shrink from alleging such reasons as the expensiveness of wine and its liability to turn sour (ib. 771 sqq.). In 1391, when John Malkaw, in preaching against the concubinary priesthood, hotly declared that he would rather place reverently on the ground a consecrated wafer than violate his vow of chastity, Böckeler, the Strassburg inquisitor, in trying him, made this the ground of a charge of heresy with respect to the sacrament of the altar (Haupt, Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, 1883, pp. 366-7). In older times the Church had felt no such exaggerated reverence for the elements. In 646 Pope Theodore, when he excommunicated Pyrrhus, the refugee Patriarch of Constantinople, mingled consecrated wine from the cup with the ink with which he signed the sentence; and in 869 the Council of Constantinople adopted the same device in condemning Photius.--Chr. Lupi Dissert. de Sexta Synodo c. V. (Opp. III. 25). As a matter of course the vilest stories were circulated to inspire the faithful with abhorrence for the Bohemian innovations. It was said that the wine was consecrated in bottles and barrels; that the sectaries held conventicles in cellars, where they would partake of it to intoxication and then commit all manner of sexual abominations (Laur. Byzyn. Diar. Bell. Hussit,; Ludewig VI. 129-30).