lessen still further that solemn veneration with which men had once
looked up to the accepted vicegerent of God on earth. Hitherto the
revolt against the popes had only assailed their political supremacy;
but now heresies that included complete denial of the religious
authority of the Church began everywhere to arise. In England Wycliffe's
preachings and pamphlets grew more and more opposed to Roman doctrine.
In Bohemia John Huss not only said, as all men did, that the Church
needed reform, but, going further, he refused obedience to papal
commands.[27] In short, the reformers, finding themselves unable to
purify the Roman Church according to their views, began to deny its
sacredness and defy its power.

At length an unusually energetic though not oversuccessful emperor,
Sigismund, the same whom the Turks had defeated at Nicopolis, persuaded
the leaders of the Church to unite with him in calling a grand council
at Constance.[28] This council ended the great schism and restored order
to the Church by securing the rule of a single pope. It also burned John
Huss as a heretic, and thereby left on Sigismund's hands a fierce
rebellion among the reformer's Bohemian followers. The war lasted for a
generation, and during its course all the armies of Germany were
repeatedly defeated by the fanatic Hussites.[29]

Another interesting performance of the Emperor Sigismund was that, being
deep in debt, he sold his "electorate" of Brandenburg to a friend, a
Hohenzollern, and thus established as one of the four chief families of
the empire those Hohenzollerns who rose to be kings of Prussia and have
in our own day supplanted the Hapsburgs as emperors of Germany.[30] Also
worth noting of Sigismund is the fact that during the sitting of his
Council of Constance he made a tour of Europe to persuade all the
princes and various potentates to join it. When he reached England he
was met by a band of Englishmen who waded into the sea to demand whether
by his imperial visit he meant to assert any supremacy over England.
Sigismund assured them he did not, and was allowed to land. We may look
to this English parade of independence as our last reminder of the old
mediaeval conception of the Emperor as being at least in theory the
overlord of the whole of Europe.

LATTER HALF OF THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR

By this time England had in fact recovered from her period of temporary
disorder and depression. King Richard II, the feeble son of the Black
P