John Hus was hot with anger. What vulgar traffic in holy things
was this? He believed neither in Pope John nor in his indulgences.

"Let who will," he thundered, "proclaim the contrary; let the Pope,
or a Bishop, or a Priest say, 'I forgive thee thy sins; I free thee
from the pains of Hell.' It is all vain, and helps thee nothing.
God alone, I repeat, can forgive sins through Christ."

The excitement in Prague was furious. From this moment onwards Hus
became the leader of a national religious movement. The preachers
went on selling indulgences {1409.}. At one and the same time, in
three different churches, three young artisans sang out: "Priest,
thou liest! The indulgences are a fraud." For this crime the three
young men were beheaded in a corner near Green Street. Fond
women--sentimental, as usual--dipped their handkerchiefs in the
blood of the martyrs, and a noble lady spread fine linen over their
corpses. The University students picked up the gauntlet. They
seized the bodies of the three young men, and carried them to be
buried in the Bethlehem Chapel. At the head of the procession was
Hus himself, and Hus conducted the funeral. The whole city was in
an uproar.

As the life of Hus was now in danger, and his presence in the city
might lead to riots, he retired for a while from Prague to the
castle of Kradonec, in the country; and there, besides preaching to
vast crowds in the fields, he wrote the two books which did the most
to bring him to the stake. The first was his treatise "On Traffic
in Holy Things"; the second his great, elaborate work, "The
Church."1 In the first he denounced the sale of indulgences, and
declared that even the Pope himself could be guilty of the sin of