Episode 178 – No Hill to Die On
The Bohemians had already protested against the treatment of Jan Hus when he was arrested and anger was brewing throughout his trial. Hus hadn’t come to Constance on his own. Several noblemen, including the brave knight John of Chlum had come along to support him. One these man, Petr Mladenovics returned to Prague shortly after the trial and recounted the proceedings in every little detail, complete with copies of letters and other documents. And from that the Bohemians concluded that there had been foul play. Lawrence of Brezowa summarized the view in Prague as follows: “Then on Saturday,[..], 6 July, Master Jan Hus, the scholarly bachelor of Holy Scripture, a man of shining virtue in life and morality and a faithful preacher of the gospel was sentenced to death and unjustly vilified by the Council of Constance. This was based upon the false testimony of the witnesses and the relentless instigations of master Štěpán z Pálče, doctor of Holy Scriptures and Michael de Causis, parish priest of St. Voijtech,[..] representing the Czech clergy and the influence of king Sigismund. This was done despite the fact that he was not given a proper hearing in which to prove his innocence”.
The villains were hence the “despicable clergy” of Bohemia, emperor Sigismund and the council as a whole that, as he wrote further down, had accepted bribes to bring about the conviction of this saintly man.
So on September 2, 1415, the nobles of Bohemia wrote the letter of protest to the Council of Constance….which sets off a sequence of events at the end of which 13 royal councillors fell out of windows
Episode 177 – The Day after the End of Days
The Bohemians had already protested against the treatment of Jan Hus when he was arrested and anger was brewing throughout his trial. Hus hadn’t come to Constance on his own. Several noblemen, including the brave knight John of Chlum had come along to support him. One these man, Petr Mladenovics returned to Prague shortly after the trial and recounted the proceedings in every little detail, complete with copies of letters and other documents. And from that the Bohemians concluded that there had been foul play. Lawrence of Brezowa summarized the view in Prague as follows: “Then on Saturday,[..], 6 July, Master Jan Hus, the scholarly bachelor of Holy Scripture, a man of shining virtue in life and morality and a faithful preacher of the gospel was sentenced to death and unjustly vilified by the Council of Constance. This was based upon the false testimony of the witnesses and the relentless instigations of master Štěpán z Pálče, doctor of Holy Scriptures and Michael de Causis, parish priest of St. Voijtech,[..] representing the Czech clergy and the influence of king Sigismund. This was done despite the fact that he was not given a proper hearing in which to prove his innocence”.
The villains were hence the “despicable clergy” of Bohemia, emperor Sigismund and the council as a whole that, as he wrote further down, had accepted bribes to bring about the conviction of this saintly man.
So on September 2, 1415, the nobles of Bohemia wrote the letter of protest to the Council of Constance….which sets off a sequence of events at the end of which 13 royal councillors fell out of windows
Episode 176 – A Great Idiot of History?
The Bohemians had already protested against the treatment of Jan Hus when he was arrested and anger was brewing throughout his trial. Hus hadn’t come to Constance on his own. Several noblemen, including the brave knight John of Chlum had come along to support him. One these man, Petr Mladenovics returned to Prague shortly after the trial and recounted the proceedings in every little detail, complete with copies of letters and other documents. And from that the Bohemians concluded that there had been foul play. Lawrence of Brezowa summarized the view in Prague as follows: “Then on Saturday,[..], 6 July, Master Jan Hus, the scholarly bachelor of Holy Scripture, a man of shining virtue in life and morality and a faithful preacher of the gospel was sentenced to death and unjustly vilified by the Council of Constance. This was based upon the false testimony of the witnesses and the relentless instigations of master Štěpán z Pálče, doctor of Holy Scriptures and Michael de Causis, parish priest of St. Voijtech,[..] representing the Czech clergy and the influence of king Sigismund. This was done despite the fact that he was not given a proper hearing in which to prove his innocence”.
The villains were hence the “despicable clergy” of Bohemia, emperor Sigismund and the council as a whole that, as he wrote further down, had accepted bribes to bring about the conviction of this saintly man.
So on September 2, 1415, the nobles of Bohemia wrote the letter of protest to the Council of Constance….which sets off a sequence of events at the end of which 13 royal councillors fell out of windows
Episode 175 – Death and Defenestration
The Bohemians had already protested against the treatment of Jan Hus when he was arrested and anger was brewing throughout his trial. Hus hadn’t come to Constance on his own. Several noblemen, including the brave knight John of Chlum had come along to support him. One these man, Petr Mladenovics returned to Prague shortly after the trial and recounted the proceedings in every little detail, complete with copies of letters and other documents. And from that the Bohemians concluded that there had been foul play. Lawrence of Brezowa summarized the view in Prague as follows: “Then on Saturday,[..], 6 July, Master Jan Hus, the scholarly bachelor of Holy Scripture, a man of shining virtue in life and morality and a faithful preacher of the gospel was sentenced to death and unjustly vilified by the Council of Constance. This was based upon the false testimony of the witnesses and the relentless instigations of master Štěpán z Pálče, doctor of Holy Scriptures and Michael de Causis, parish priest of St. Voijtech,[..] representing the Czech clergy and the influence of king Sigismund. This was done despite the fact that he was not given a proper hearing in which to prove his innocence”.
The villains were hence the “despicable clergy” of Bohemia, emperor Sigismund and the council as a whole that, as he wrote further down, had accepted bribes to bring about the conviction of this saintly man.
So on September 2, 1415, the nobles of Bohemia wrote the letter of protest to the Council of Constance….which sets off a sequence of events at the end of which 13 royal councillors fell out of windows
Episode 174 – The Trial of Jan Hus
The Council of Constance – part 4 “They will roast a goose now, but after one hundred years they will hear a swan sing, and him they will have to endure.” These were allegedly the last words of a certain Jan Hus whose surname meant goose and who was burned at the stake on July […]
Episode 173 – Ending the Schism
The Council of Constance – part 3 We have talked about church reform for almost four years, the council of Constance talked about church reform for about the same amount of time and Luther will talk and write about church reform until he did no longer believe that the church could be reformed. But what […]
Episode 172 – A World Event
In November 1414 30,000 academics and aristocrats, bishops, blacksmiths and bakers, cardinals, counts and chefs, doctors, dancers and diplomats, princes, prelates and public girls descended on a town in Southern Germany built to house 6 to 8,000 people. They planned to stay a few weeks, 2-3 months max. But 3 and a half years later most of them were still there.
What did they get up to? The great tentpole events, the trial of John XXIII, the burning of Jan Hus and the election of Martin V is what the council of Constance is remembered for, but what about all that time in between?
When I began working on this episode, I had planned to move straight to the showstoppers. I think I said something to that effect at the end of the last episode. But when I dug deeper, I realised that this world event was so much more than a papal election and the trial of a dissenter. For 3 years Constance was at the same time a never-ending G20 summit, the greatest academic conference of the Middle Ages, a permanent imperial diet and the centre of the catholic church. Everybody who was anybody was there either in the flesh or had at least sent a delegation.
Issues and concerns were brought before the council that still plague people today. Is it ever right to kill a tyrant, and if so, when can it be justified? What rights should be guaranteed for indigenous groups, in this case Pagans, and how should their dignity be protected? Other attendees sought justice for crimes committed against them in a world where political murder had become commonplace. Others still demanded their reward for years of service or simply wanted their rights recognised.
Living cheek by jowl in tiny Constance the leading minds from across Europe, from the ancient universities of Paris, Oxford and Bologna as well as from the newly founded seats of learning in Krakow, Prague, Heidelberg and Vienna shared their ideas, opinions, books and discoveries, paving the way for the intellectual shift we call the Renaissance.
Enough, me thinks to provide 30 minutes of great historical entertainment….
Episode 171 – Cleaning House
The Council of Constance get srid of surplus popes making it a pivotal moment in the history of the Catholic Church and of Europe in general.
Episode 169 – Sigismund, not yet Emperor
The late 14th and early 15th century was a period of upheaval, the certainties of the Middle Ages, that the pope ruled the world and that knights were invincible were crumbling away, the long period of economic growth, of eastward expansion and conversion of the pagans made way for war, plague and famine. The church was split in half and the Ottomans were coming.
This was an age that called forth larger-than-life characters: Joan of Arc, fierce and holy; Henry Bolingbroke, seizing a throne; Jadwiga and Jogaila, uniting kingdoms; the audacious Gian Galeazzo Visconti and fiery Cola di Rienzo; the ever-scheming John the Fearless and Jacob van Artevelde; the tragic Ines de Castro and the unflinching Jan Žižka.
Into this glittering and turbulent lineup steps a man whose reputation has not exactly been polished by time. Despised in his kingdoms of Hungary and Bohemia and even Constance, the city that owes him so much, decided to remember him as a fat naked crowned guy with skinny arms and legs, worn-out face, forked beard and disproportionate genitalia balancing on the hand of a nine-meter-tall sex worker. No, I am not making this up.
Sigismund, because that was his name, was a true enigma of the late Middle Ages. He had inherited his father’s charm and ruthless cunning, his knack for negotiating compromise in impossible situations, and his unshakeable belief in his role as the head of Christendom. But what he hadn’t inherited was his father’s performative piety, his zeal for relics, his asceticism—or his wealth. Instead, Sigismund was left with a volatile mix of ambition, enormous self-confidence, a lust for life, and, crucially, a chronic shortage of funds.
Yet despite his flaws, he took on Christendom’s two greatest crises—the schism and the Ottoman threat—and in doing so, managed to create a third…This is his backstory.