re massacred or driven out to death by the priestly castes of the
Middle Ages.

#The Holy Inquisition#

Let us have one glimpse of the conditions in those mediaeval times, so
that we may know what we ourselves have escaped. In the fifteenth
century there was established in Europe the cult of a three-headed
god, whose priests had won lordship over a continent. They were
enormously wealthy, and unthinkably corrupt; they sold to the
rich the license to commit every possible crime, and they held
the poor in ignorance and degradation. Among the comparatively
intelligent and freedom-loving people of Bohemia there arose a
great reformer, John Huss, himself a priest, protesting against
the corruptions of his order. They trapped him into their power
by means of a "safe-conduct"--which they repudiated because no
promise to a heretic could have validity. They found him guilty
of having taught the hateful doctrine that a priest who committed
crimes could not give absolution for the crimes of others; and they
held an auto de fe--which means a "sentence of faith." As we read
in Lea's "History of the Inquisition":

The cathedral of Constance was crowded with Sigismund (the
Emperor) and his nobles, the great officers of the empire
with their insignia, the prelates in their splendid robes.
While mass was sung, Huss, as an excommunicate, was kept
waiting at the door; when brought in he was placed on an
elevated bench by a table on which stood a coffer containing
priestly vestments. After some preliminaries, including a
sermon by the Bishop of Lodi, in which he assured Sigismund
that the events of that day would confer on him immortal
glory, the articles of which Huss was convicted were
recited. In vain he protested that he believed in
transubstantiation and in the validity of the sacrament in
polluted hands. He was ordered to hold his tongue, and on
his persisting the beadles were told to silence him, but in
spite of this he continued to utter protests. The sentence
was then read in the name of the council, condemning him
both for his written errors and those which had been proven
by witnesses. He was declared a pertinacious and
incorrigible heretic who did not desire to return to the
Church; his books were ordered to be burned, and himself to
be degraded from the priesthood and abandoned to the secular
court. Seven bishops