nexorable verdict councils, and popes, and emperors
must submit--posterity. It asserted itself to be under the inspiration
of the Holy Ghost. It took profit by a shameful perfidy. It was a
conclave of murderers. It stifled the voice of an earnest man, solemnly
protesting against a doctrine now derided by all the intellect of
Europe. The revolution it was compassing it inaugurated in blood, not
alone that of John Huss, but also of Jerome of Prague. These martyrs
were no common men. [Sidenote: His singular eloquence.] Poggio
Bracciolini, an eye-witness, says, in a letter to Leonardo Aretino,
speaking of the eloquence of Jerome, "When I consider what his choice of
words was, what his elocution, what his reasoning, what his countenance,
his voice, his action I must affirm, however much we may admire the
ancients, that in such a cause no one could have approached nearer to
the model of their eloquence."

John XXIII. was compelled to abdicate. Gregory XII. died. Some time
after, Benedict XIII. followed him. The council had elected Martin V.,
and in him found a master who soon put an end to its doings. [Sidenote:
What the council did.] It had deposed one pope and elected another; it
had cemented the dominant creed with blood; it had authorized the
dreadful doctrine that a difference in religious opinion justifies the
breaking of plighted faith between man and man; it had attempted to
perpetuate its own power by enacting that councils should be held every
five years; but it had not accomplished its great object--ecclesiastical
reform.

[Sidenote: The Council of Basle.] In a room attached to the Cathedral of
Basle, with its roof of green and parti-coloured tiles, the modern
traveller reads on a piece of paper this inscription: "The room of the
council, where the famous Council of Basil was assembled. In this room
Pope Eugene IV. was dethroned, and replaced by Felix V., Duc of Savoie
and Cardinal of Repaile. The council began 1431, and lasted 1448." That
chamber, with its floor of little red earthen flags and its oaken
ceiling, witnessed great events.

The democratic influence pervading the Church showed no symptoms of
abatement. The fate of Huss had been avenged in blood and fire by the
Bohemian sword. Eugenius IV., now pontiff, was afraid that negotiations
would be entered upon with the Hussite chiefs. Such a treaty, he
affirmed, would be blasphemy against God and an insult to the pope. He
was therefore bent on the prorogati