Truth Unites - The Real Reason Jan Hus Was Burned (When Church History Gets Dark)

Episode Date: April 28, 2026

Gavin Ortlund examines the historical, theological, and political forces behind Jan Hus’s execution in 1415, showing how medieval views on heresy and church–state authority made his death possible.Truth Unites (https://truthunites.org) exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites, Visiting Professor of Historical Theology at Phoenix Seminary, and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville.SUPPORT:Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunitesFOLLOW:Website: https://truthunites.org/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/truth.unites/X: https://x.com/gavinortlundFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/

On July 6th, 1415, Jan Husse was burned at the stake as a condemned heretic. Let's do a video asking one simple question, how did this happen? Who's responsible for this? This episode is very important because it's a window into a larger world that we've largely forgotten today, specifically how heresy was treated and regarded in the medieval church. This would be a controversial video and a weighty one simply because the subject matter is so brutal, but it's worth knowing these historical facts. I've been studying this for several years and planning on this video for about a year, so I'm finally ready to release it, put a lot of work into it. What we're going to see is that the Roman Catholic Church condemned Huss as a

heretic and then handed him over to the civil powers to perform the execution. So we should not say that the church herself executed Huss. However, the Roman Catholic Church also taught that heretics should be killed and claimed authority over those civil powers that performed the execution. So it's also wrong to deny institutional responsibility for the execution of Hoos and many others like him. What I want to document in this video is just the interplay of these two things that make it possible for something like this to happen. This particular theology of heresy and then the relation of church and state there in the

late medieval West. Before we dive in, a preliminary remark, this is a painful subject. For Catholic viewers, the last thing that I want, honestly, is for you to feel like a finger is pointing in your face or something like that. Modern Christians are not personally responsible for events that happened 600 years ago. We can all look back with grief. I do so in the case of the horrific sins that have happened from Protestants in church history. So I want you to feel seen and cared for. But I would ask you for an open heart to really look at the facts, because facing history honestly here is one way we can.

can function better as the body of Christ today. More on that at the end of the video. So let's start honed in on Huss himself. Let's get granular. Looking at July, what's going on July 6th, what's the broader context? We'll look back on June 8th. We'll lay out the facts. And then in the second half of this video, will widen outwards to the broader medieval context of about 250 years and look at the larger theology of heretic extermination that is at play. I know those words are shocking. We have to use them. That's what we're talking about here. As much as I wanted to have a loving heart toward people, I don't want to shy away from the facts. So let's dive in. I'll put up a famous picture. This is of Hoos before the Council of Constance, the 16th Ecumenical Council of the Roman Catholic Church. It was

this council that condemned him as a heretic. On July 6th, the day of his execution, Huss is brought into the cathedral where the council is meeting. And the proceedings begin with a sermon from the Archbishop of Lodi, Jacob Barlotti, Aragoni. We don't have verbatim text from this sermon, but we do have several summaries that come down to us in the historical records. Let's give a flavor of this, because I want you to think about these underlined verbs here, and the verbs I underlined in this quote, and the theology of heresy that's at play here.

Quote, the proceedings were opened with an address by the Bishop of Lodi on Romans 6.6, that the body of sin might be done away. prelate represented that the extermination of heretics was a work most pleasing to God. He dwelt upon the familiar illustrations for heresy, a rotten piece of flesh, the little spark, which unless checked turns into a great flame and burns up the house, the creeping cancer, the scabby member of the flock. The more virulent the poison, the swifter should be the application of the cauterizing iron. Not less bad was the prisoner than Arias, who was a spark in Alexandria. But because the spark was not immediately put out, it depopulated almost the whole world with its flame, and much worse than he was Sibelius.

Heretics should be coerced and damned that the body of sin may be destroyed. The Bishop of Lodi pressed upon the king the obligation to bind up the lacerated wounds of the church to heal the gaping schism and to extirpate heresy. Now, you can see some of the verbs there, done away, exterminate, destroy, extirpate. I'll put up a definition of extirpate if you don't know that word. It just means to completely destroy. So it's very clear. The idea here is heresy must be destroyed, and the rationale for that can be gleaned from the metaphors.

Heresy is like a rotting piece of flesh that you have to eliminate so it doesn't infect the rest of the body. It's like a spark that must be put out so the rest of the house does not catch on fire. It's like a scabby sheep. That's a diseased sheep. They have to send away from the rest of the flock, so the rest of the flock doesn't catch this infectious disease and so forth. You have to kill the heresy so it doesn't spread.

That's the thinking here. And you see the comparisons to patristic heresy, specifically Aryanism and then Sebelius. And you have to heal the church by extirpating the heresies. Now this rhetoric of heresy does not come in a vacuum in the second half of this video. We'll trace out where this theology of heresy, extirpation, heretic extermination, this is the language. I'm just reporting this language. I'm not making this up. And we want to trace out where that can. came from. And I'll cite Thomas Aquinas' famous assertion that heretics must deserve to be severed from the world by death. And I'll cite medieval manuals of Inquisition that describe how to deal with heretics. And we'll come back and trace all that out, ladder and two, ladder in three, ladder and four.

Papal Bowls, everything that's going on, 12th century, 13th century, 14th century that's leading up to this, we'll lay out that out. But I'm starting with the Council of Constance, the very day of his death, to show the thinking there. So we're starting granular, then we'll zoom out. Let me give Thomas Fudge summary. I'll say more about Fudge and his great scholarship in a moment of this same sermon, which highlights some of the same imagery. Quote, the sermon delivered by the Bishop of Lodi took its theme from a phrase extracted out of context from Romans 6.6, the sinful body should be destroyed. That Pauline's sentence was made to act as a proof text for arguing that heretics and heresies must be suppressed. Drawing upon patristic sources,

the bishop pointed out that diseased sheep must be expelled from the fold to prevent the entire flock from becoming infected. Moreover, a small fire must be immediately extinguished to save the entire house from destruction. By implication, heretics were infected animals and uncontrollable fires. So he's drawing out the imagery there as well. Now, no one should come along and say, well, that was just a general sermon about heresy, not about Hoos specifically. Because during this sermon, Huss is placed on an elevated seat in the cathedral so that everyone can see him. And the bishop is referencing him as this obstinate heretic here present, as you can see on the screen. So Huss is being personally targeted by this sermon, hence the elevated chair, and remember,

this is literally hours before his condemnation and death. Now, since I anticipate at various points of the video that one of the responses that will come about, I see this often in comments, is, well, this wasn't infallible. Let me just be clear up front, so in case someone's mind is going there, that is absolutely true. I am not making in this video claims about infallibility or a technical falsification of Roman Catholic ecclesiology. My conclusion at the end, where I give four summative questions and responses, will be much more modest. This sermon that I'm referencing is not part of the formal acts of the council. The acts of the council are its official documentary record, materials produced by the administrative machinery of the council. That would be formal decrees,

judicial sentences, administrative decisions, official minutes when they are kept. We have to distinguish that from the just general proceedings, which would include debates and speeches and sermons and other informal discussions and so forth. Nonetheless, although this sermon is not part of the formal acts, it still provides us with a good window into the theology of heresy that is present at the Council of Constance. After this sermon, what happens next is various theses of Huss and Wycliffe are read. There's a report of his trial that is read. He faces his ceremony of ministerial degradation, which I've just brutal and utterly humiliating. I've described that in previous videos. This is where seven Catholic prelates offer solemn curses against him, put a tall mitre or hat on his head,

strip him of his priestly garments, call him Judas, formally curse him. They're understood, they're committing a soul to the devil because the end of the theology at this time, his heretics are damned to hell unless they repent. And then he's handed over to the secular authorities who process him outside the city gates, past a pile of his burning books, and they carry out the burning of whose many of the bishops and clergy accompany the procession and witness the execution, and all of this happens immediately. When the civil authorities he's received the verdict of guilty, there's no deliberation to figure out what they do. The only thing we can find in the records is Emperor Sigismund instructing the Count Palatine

go burn him as a heretic. It's just that's the decision to do. The Count Palatine, referenced there by his Germanic name, in that quote Ludwig, he's often called Louis the third. He's Sigisman's representative at the Council of Constance. There's no discussion about what to do because everybody knew what the outcome would be. At this time in history, burning was the standard punishment for condemned heretics. this outcome was well known by all in advance of the sentence. We can see that if we zoom out from July 6th and see a few weeks prior and just the broader, well, really from about a year prior, what leads up to that point. Part of the goal of the Council of Constance was the removal of

heresy. The Council of Constance took place between 1414 and 1418. So you're here just about a century before the Reformation begins with Luther. And Huss was invited to the council with a promise of safe conduct from Emperor Sigismund. We'll talk about him a fair amount in this video, his picture you can see on screen. But shortly before arriving, he was arrested in the fall of 1414, and he was imprisoned by church authorities associated with the council. And Sigismund initially objected to that, and then eventually he caves in and sides with the council and he becomes one of Huss's enemies as well. Now, why was Huss's promise of safe conduct from Sigismund not honored? He was intercepted by Roman Catholic clergy. Several of the clergy at the Council of Constance really hated Huss,

and they were raising agitations against him. Mikael de Kousis was perhaps his chief opponent. He was a Roman Catholic priest who served as the prosecutor of the papal Curia. Huss knows, notes in his letters that Decauses, when visiting him in prison, along with other deputies from the Council of Constance, is stating his aim of, we shall soon burn this heretic by the grace of God. And Huss' other chief opponent also had terrible invectives against him. Stapen Pahletsch was, I'll put up these names on the screen, because they're going to come up a fair amount. Pollich was a Czech theologian at the University of Prague, who started out as an ally of Huss,

and later turned on him and became one of his chief critics at the Council of Constance along with DeCausis, and leading Czech scholar on Huss notes in him the same desire to see Huss burn. These perceptions of the character and aims of Huss's opponents at the Council of Constance accord with both ancient historians and modern scholarship. For example, Lawrence of Brizova, an ancient historian, singled out these two clergy members in particular as leading the charge in assassinating Huss's character and inventing various lies and false accusations about him, as you can see on screen.

Now, Lawrence was sympathetic to Huss, so someone could argue that that's a biased account, but modern scholarship typically agrees with this assessment of the malicious nature of several of these opponents opposing Huss. Thomas Fudge may be the world-leading expert in Huss and the Hussites. He's published almost a dozen academic books in this area, which is great because there's not much written on it. It's amazing. I mean, I was thinking the other day, maybe there's no, my dad asked me,

what's a book I could read on Jan Hus, and I was having to say, there is no popular level book. And I was thinking maybe I should write something like that, because his story needs to be told. But there is some scholarship on it, and Fudge has done some great work. He, no one can accuse him of an anti-Catholic bias. He talks about in his books being sometimes accused as being a right-wing Catholic, which is unfair to him, but that's because he defends the legality of Hoos's trial, which is not to say he thinks it was moral, but even Fudge notes the portrayal of the men of the counsel in some of the more fulsome accounts of the Hoose trial in its final stages, where they appear as bitter and hateful men, quite unconcerned with issues of truth and

justice, is a portrait accepted by leading scholars as altogether accurate. Hoos was condemned not by the worst men at Constance, but by the best, the picture is sobering. This is brutal. All throughout this video, I'm just, you know, my mindset is, Lord, give me the right way to say this that won't unnecessarily alienate or provoke, but also be true to the history because we've got to look at these facts. It is debated in the scholarship whether the trial of Huss was legal by the standards of the day, but it's hard to deny that it was just viciously unjust. Here's how one older scholar and one of the more significant texts in this field summarizes,

quote, Huss had no chance of receiving a fair trial because he stood from beginning to end before a biased tribunal determined in advance to condemn him no matter what he adduced in his defense. The procedure was further unfair and unjust because the validity of Sigismund's safe conduct was not honored, even by him, because Huss was not allowed to state his own views and prove the falsity of the trumped-up charges, because some of the witnesses, as Cardinal Zabarella himself admitted, testified only from common hearsay and others, being his enemies, bore false witness against him, and because the then current provision of law did not allow him legal representation or advice. Heretics could be, if someone was suspected of heresy, it's amazing the prejudice

and persecution that could come against them at this time. Even where Huss did deny charges against him, some of the things he said, no, I don't believe that, but he was often not believed. In his survey of medieval heresy, Matthew Lambert, notes that a key factor here is that Hoos's past association with Wichlophyte views just condemned him out of the gate. because Wycliffe is extraordinarily unpopular at this time in the Catholic hierarchy. Quote, in part, the feeling of the council was comparable to that of inquisitors facing a simple heretic who took the accused denials for cunning evasions. Repeated members of the council expressed the view that, though, Huss might make sophisticated denials,

he continued to believe heresy with his heart. End quote. So they really set against him. I hope you can understand that's historically accurate here. This was brutal. Remember, it's the church authorities, not the civil authorities, that put him in jail. Sigismund was the one who offered him safe conduct, and that was intercepted. By the way, the same thing would happen a year later, a little less.

With Huss's disciple, Jerome of Prague, Jerome also was apprehended by church authorities and imprisoned. And during his time in prison, he's tortured, his hands are suspended over his head for many days. He's fed only bread and water. he is terrible, horrific conditions, and then he is burned at the stake as well in the exact location as Huss, about 10 months after him. And you can see Emperor Sigismund and the leadership of the Council of Constance planning for Jerome's death even prior to Huss's death. So, for example, on June 8th at the deliberations here about a month prior to Huss's condemnation and execution, Huss has been interrogated, he's excused from the room, and Sigismund is talking with some of the leading

bishops at Constance. And he says, therefore, if he will not recant of his errors and abjure, that means deny, means give in, and teach the contrary, let him be burned or deal with him according to your knowledge or your laws. By this point, Sigismint has totally turned on Hoos. And then he says, don't forget about Jerome. Quote, also make an end of others of his secret disciples and supporters. And they said, Jerome? And he, yes, Jerome. They, that's the leadership of the Council of Constance responded, of him we shall make an end within one day. That will be easier because this one is the master, denoting Master Huss, and that Jerome is his disciple. So it's very clear that the outcome of death, and particularly death by burning, is the envisioned and expected

outcome of a heresy verdict. Everyone knows that's the outcome at this time in history. Again, second half of the video, we'll see where that came about and where that is expressed. But that doesn't mean there could never be exceptions. The church at this time could make exceptional cases. They could act differently in particular cases. Fudge talks about this saying the counsel could have chosen a different form of punishment other than death. But the point for us to see is that that is their choice as a counsel. The counsel is not condemning Hoos and then saying, well, we're not sure what's going to happen next or the civil authorities can now just do whatever they want. Rather, the council is working through the civil authorities for the outcome that accords with their theology of heretic extermination.

And so it's not the case that the civil authorities can just do whatever they want. One of the reasons you see that is if the civil authority does not comply and carry out the sentence, the church puts pressure on them because, and this is one of the things I'll document here again, starting with the council and then widening out to see where it comes from. at this time in history, the church claimed authority over the civil power and says, if you don't comply, if you become a protector of heretics, we're going to put pressure on you. And you can see this at the council in a treatise written called On the Church by Stapen Pollich. Remember, Pollich is one of the fierce opponents of Hoos that we just met a moment ago. Pollich claimed that the authority of the Roman Catholic

Church extended not only over ecclesiastical matters, but over civil matters as well. You can see his words, this is my own translation from the Latin here on screen, and I want you to see those final emboldened words because this is what is the thinking at this time, that though the church doesn't herself perform the execution, she has authority over the civil power that does. And that is essentially the hierocratic medieval position, namely the idea that the papacy has universal jurisdiction, including authority to judge civil matters when appropriate, like cases of heresy. Again, second half of the video, we'll see where that comes from. I'm just showing that that's present among the clerics at Constance, like Pollich, for example.

So the point is, we shouldn't say, well, the Council of Constance offers the guilty verdict, and then they just take their hands off the steering wheel. No, the Council claimed authority over the civil powers that conducts the execution in line with the Church's authority of what should happen to heretics. And poignantly, everybody, everybody knew this, and poignantly, Hoos knew this as well. You can read through his letters during the final nine months or so of his life. And you see the humanity of his situation. You know, you realize this is just a regular guy.

You know, you find him lamenting that he might have sinned by losing his temper in a chess match earlier in his life. And he's thinking about this. You find him complaining about having a toothache like Tom Hanks and Castaway. You find him, you know, just random days, you know, he enjoys a visit from some Polish nobles one day and so forth, it's just very, very human and real. One of the things you see very clearly comes up over and over, at least every couple of letters,

is Hus knows it's likely that he will be burned at the stake because that's a standardized consequence for a heresy verdict at this time in history. So, for example, even prior to his departure from Bohemia to Constance, several years earlier, he writes a letter to a friend and he says, don't open this till I'm dead.

And in it he references persecution, which will soon be extinguished by my death. In the very next letter, also written before he ever gets to Constance, he's requesting prayer from his fellow Bohemians because he knows the cruel death that awaits him. Husse knows he is walking into the lion's den before he ever gets to Constance. Fast forward a few years during that final stretch of time in prison leading up to the council's verdict. And in those final weeks and months, early 1415, Huss is visited by a, a friend seeking to encourage him to abjure, meaning to denounce his positions. And the claim is the approprium of being condemned and burned is greater than that of sincerely abjuring. And so, you know,

it's very clear. The options on the table of what they're facing, it's either give in or be burned. And in this letter, who says responding saying, I can't abjure because they're attributing to me so many false positions that I don't believe. So I'd be lying if I assented to this. And his friend realizes that and they weep together. That is what is going on at the Council of Constance. Now, what I want to do, this is where it gets interesting. What I want to do now is zoom out. And for the second half of this video, say, where did this theology come from?

And let's get a little bit of historical context. Where did we get this idea that condemnation as a heretic meant getting burned at the stake? To answer that, a good starting point is actually to consider the third heretical figure targeted by Constance. And that's not just Huss and Jerome, but John Wickliff. He's already dead by this time. But he was extremely unpopular, and session eight of the Council of Constance has these orders to dig up the remains of Wycliffe and basically exhume his body and cast it out of the consecrated ground.

I'll put up, this is, again, my translation here from session eight of Constance. And what I want you to see, I'll leave this on screen for a moment, I want you to see those emboldened words at the end there, as the canonical sanctions require. Okay? So this is a window into the broadening point of this video. The Council of Constance is appealing to existing legal penalties for condemned heretics. This is why when this decree would be carried out in 1428, Wycliffe's bones were burned and the ashes were scattered. So clearly, at the Council of Constance, there's awareness of prior legal requirements concerning heretics. And in fact, this very theology of executing heretics is itself one of the points of dispute at the council between Huss and his opponents. So the Roman Catholic authorities at the Council of Constance presented against Huss a series of articles drawn from Wycliffe and Huss's own writings and to pressure him to abjure. And if you read through these, you get a sense of how reasonable many of Huss's concerns were. You know, he was opposing indulgences and simony and

papal overreach and communion in one kind only, many things that a lot of us would be sympathetic to today. But also, one of the things that he's accosted for is his conviction that the church must not execute heretics. Huss was following the position of Wycliffe, and he's saying basically that the church should correct heretics with teaching and discipline. And, you know, he's a stronger view than many of people today. But he doesn't think they should be executed. And I'll put up this particular article on the screen. This is what the Council of Constance is extracting from his writings and attributing to Huss. No heretic should be handed over by the ecclesiastical power to the civil power to be punished by physical death. That is Huss's position. He's being confronted for this, okay, for his opposition

to heretic extermination. On June 8th, 1415, less than a month before his death, that article is read out by the counsel and Huss holds to this theology. And he's actually comparing this activity of religious authorities handing someone over to the civil power for the civil power to carry out the sentence of capital punishment, he compares that to the Pharisees coordinating with Pilate to crucify Jesus. And his reported response is, I say that a heretic, if he is such, ought first to be fairly, kindly and humbly instructed from the Holy Scriptures, and the reasons derived from them, as did St. Augustine and others while disputing with heretics. Huss loves Augustine, and he appeals to Augustine a lot.

Now, obviously, the Council of Constance would not have confronted him in his objection to this theology if they didn't hold that theology, which they clearly did, as you can see in Pollich's treatise and the sermon preached just hours before his death and so forth. So let's set that theology in context. It does not start with the Council of Constance. It does not start in the 15th century. Let's see where it does come from. Heresy became an increasing area of focus throughout the high and late Middle Ages. In an 1199 papal bull by Innocent the Third, heresy was equated with treason. And following that throughout the 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries, heresy becomes increasingly criminalized. And during this time, heresy is seen to be the worst evil. It's like the worst thing

on planet Earth. Fudge has a picture that shows heresy on the opposite side of orthodoxy, and it's even further out there than schism, apostasy, and other various evils. And the idea here is, you know, this is just the worst thing that exists on planet Earth. To be a heretic, there's nothing worse. It's like a toxin. It's like poisonous. And Fudge notes that Huss could be so demonized after his death as worse than Sodom and Gimorrah, worse than Pharaoh in the Bible, all this kind of rhetoric about Huss after he dies,

because heresy was regarded as a monstrous crime, surpassing all other crimes for its unspeakable enormity, impiety, shamefulness, and impurity, far exceeding all evil before God. And so this is the thinking, and we want to document that here. And on that basis, the reigning view came to be, heretics must be excommunicated from the church and delivered to the secular authorities specifically for death. You see this even in Thomas Aquinas, quote, heretics deserve not only to be separated from the church by excommunication, but also to be severed from the world by death. And this theology of heretic extermination, the church excommunicates and hands over to the secular authority to carry out the capital punishment, grew to be the prevailing

theological opinion of the Western late medieval church. Death by fire in particular, eventually came to be seen as the fitting mechanism for heretic extermination. Heretics were often described metaphorically as a kind of infection, a disease, a toxin, and so forth. You saw some of that rhetoric in the July 6th sermon that we began with. And so fire is seen as a particular appropriate kind of death because of its complete power of destruction. It doesn't leave something behind like a beheading wood.

And also because it's perceived as a foreshadowing of the fire of hell. because unrepentant heretics are understood to be damned. One famous manual of inquisitions from about 90 years prior to Huss provides insight into the legal mentality of medieval anti-heresy prosecution. This is by Bernard Ghee. This text is very influential. It's basically kind of lays out procedures for identifying, questioning, and prosecuting suspected heretics.

It's basically a practical guide for medieval inquisitorial. and it stipulates, heresy cannot be destroyed unless heretics are destroyed. Heretics are destroyed in two ways, either when they are converted from heresy to the true Catholic faith, or when they are abandoned to the secular arm to be physically burned. So this is, you know, as brutal as this is, we got to put up these quotes and know that this was going on. Because that backdrop can explain the Council of Constance, where you've got both deceased heretics, so called, like Wycliffe, having their bones exhumed to be burned,

and then, which you see in session eight, that is in the acts there, and then living heretics like Hus, burned to death. And the role of fire is not incidental. This is the outworking of a particular theology at play here. However, all of this took time to develop. And so we want to go backwards and see where this begins, especially starting around the late 12th century. If you remember, the treatise from Huss's opponent, Stapen Pollich, which I quoted from earlier, claiming authority over the secular power, Pollich was not innovating. This idea, he's actually quoting throughout this work from Boniface the 8th, and his papal bull unum sanctum. This papal bull had famously asserted, both therefore are in the power of the church,

that is to say, the spiritual and the material sword, but the former is to be administered for the church, but the latter by the church, the former in the hands of the priest, the latter in the hands of kings and soldiers, but at the will and sufferance of the priest. However, one sword ought to be subjected, subordinated to the other, and temporal authority subjected to spiritual power. Now, I emboldened those words at the will and sufferance of the priest because this language is very significant. Pope Boniface VIII is asserting a hierarchical claim here. The spiritual authority, the church, is superior, and the temporal authority, the state, is inferior

and subordinate. That is explicit in the last sentence there I put on screen. The temporal authority is subjected to the spiritual power. And so the language at the will and sufferance of the priest is expressing. a vision in which the civil authority is accountable to the church. And in practice, that meant that when the church judged someone a heretic, secular authorities were expected to carry out the appropriate penalties. Again, we're not arguing that this is infallible Roman Catholic teaching. Most scholars don't think this portion of Unum-Songdom is infallible. We're just trying to lay out

the facts here. Now, this Two-Swords theology did not drop out of the sky in 1302 with Unum-Sankdom at the start of the 14th century there. This was the problem. of a developing, escalating theology of heresy and heresy brigation, starting especially in the late 12th and early 13th centuries. You have religious persecution of descending ideas all throughout human history, but scholars discuss how there's a particular concentration of this and a particular spike of this in late medieval Europe, and you can trace this out a bit, 1200s, 1300s, where you get to Hoos's Burning and a little beyond.

R.I. Moore opens his book. the war on heresy, faith, and power in medieval Europe by focusing on the burning of several cathars in 1163, and he argues that this episode represents a turning point in the increasing swell of religious violence in medieval Europe. The cathars were among the heretics persecuted in the late medieval era, along with the Waldensians, the Lollards, the Hussites, several other smaller groups like the spiritual Franciscans, the apostolic brethren, the Petro-Brusi, many others, I've done some videos on the proto-protestants, and more really traces out this developing theology during this 250 years or so. He puts more focus earlier on in that particular

book, but so think like late 12th century through early 15th century. So for example, at the second Lateran council in 1139, which is the 10th ecumenical council of the Roman Catholic Church, we find a command for heretics to be expelled from the church and condemned as heresinessesies. And then it says, and we prescribe that they be constrained by the secular powers. Now, what does that word constrained mean? At this time, in 1139, execution is not yet the standard result. So constrained could mean physical coercion, arrest, imprisonment, confiscation of property, exile, other penalties. This takes some time to develop. But as you're moving through the 12th century, 1140s, 1150s, 1160s, 1170s, you have escalation. So, for example, at various 12th century

local councils at Rance in 1148 and tour in 1163, and then climatically at the third Lateran council in 1179, which is regarded as the 11th ecumenical council of the Western Church, there is increasing pressure, not just against heretics, but against anyone who tolerates them. So canon 27 of Lateran 3 references several heretical groups, including the Cathars, and stipulates, we declare that they and their defenders and those who receive them are under anathema. And I'll leave this up. I know that's smaller font, so maybe you can't read it, but I'll leave it up for a moment here. What is significant is that those who are being targeted with anathema include the defenders and receivers of the heretics, not just the heretics themselves,

And the penalties here are spiritual and material and social. So it has to do with who you can trade with, how people are buried, et cetera. Just five years later, Pope Lucius III issued a bull very much in the same direction, but increasing the pressure to root out the heretics one more notch. Here's how this papal bull begins. Quote, to abolish the malignity of diverse heresies, which of late time are sprung up in most parts of the world, it is but fitting that the power committed to the church should be awakened, that by the concurring

assistance of the imperial strength, both the insolence and impertinence of the heretics and their false designs may be crushed. The words concurring assistance there fit with this hierocratic vision of Unum-Songdom. And then this particular papal bull lists seven different heretical groups, anathematizes them, and declares the same sentence for all who entertain them, all who defend them, all who show them any favor, give them any countenance, you can read this on screen if you want. Then it requires bishops and church leaders to go to the parish where there are reports of heretics and make everyone swear that if they know where they are, they know where there any of the heretics, they'll yield this information on pain of severe penalties.

More discusses that if the bishops are not sufficiently eager, then the execution of this duty, they can be suspended for three years. And what I'm trying to document here is this of escalation, whereas you're moving through the 12th century, you can feel the increasing sense of urgency and pressure to root out the heretics. The mentality is not. Well, if a heretic comes our way, then we'll deal with that. The mentality is increasingly, we're going after them. So this is the backdrop that then brings us to Canon 3 of the fourth letter in council, which codifies and reasserts these various prescriptions for the elimination of heresy and heresies. And in my book, I quote from this one, documenting the pressure placed on the civil authorities

that neglect to cleanse his territory of this heretical filth. So there's threats against the civil powers if they don't get in line and perform the execution of the heretics or other punishments against the heretics at this time still developing. And this reference to cleansing heretical filth is talking about people. That's why you've got even deceased heretics like Wycliffe have their bones exhumed and burned, and that's very clear from the preceding context where it's the heretics themselves who are handed over for punishment. So Canon 3 of Lateran 4 is a very clear example of where the civil authority is being pressured by the church to take action against the heretics.

Again, this is this vision, the hierarchy. The church is carrying out its actions through the state over which she claims jurisdiction in certain matters like heresy, elimination. And there's timeframes for this. More notes, the time frame of one year for this particular requirement. Now, what is this due punishment that is referenced by Canon 3? It does not specify. Within the legal and cultural framework of that time, that would include coercive penalties, sometimes execution, but not yet always like that.

That is not yet standardized. As you get later into the 13th century, practices get more standardized. Again, what I'm wanting you to see is the sense of escalation here. As you look, you go into the decades following the Fourth Lateran Council, the 1220s, the 1230s. You can see this canon being put to work as popes like Honorius III and Gregory the 9th are pressuring the emperor at this time, Frederick II, to crack down on the heretics. And sometimes because critics will try to discredit. me, when I'm just giving standard summaries of history, let me just quote from the Catholic

Encyclopedia's entry on Pope Gregory the 9th to document this point. Quote, in February 1231, therefore, the Pope enacted a law for Rome that heretics condemned by an ecclesiastical court should be delivered to the secular power to receive their due punishment. This due punishment was death by fire for the obstinate and imprisonment for life for the penitent. In pursuance of this law, a number of Patarini were arrested in Rome in 1231. The obstinate were burned at the stake. The others were imprisoned. Give some more details about that. And note this summative comment then. It must not be thought, however, that Gregory the 9th dealt more severely with heretics than other rulers did. Death by fire was the common punishment for

heretics and traders in those times. And this punishment remains the case moving into the late 13th century and continuing on up to the time of Huss. Now what is significant and what we have to come to terms with is that the church at this time is not merely permitting this. It is pressuring the secular rulers to carry out this sentence. Here's how Fudge puts it. He's drawing this from another decretal from Pope Innocent the 3rd. We haven't even looked at this. This is just prior to Lateran 4. quote, the penalty for impenitent heretics, according to canonical legislation, was capital punishment. Here's how Moore puts it, referencing papal pressure on Frederick II, in the late 1220s and early 1230s. Quote, the church thus offered for the first time its explicit endorsement of the death penalty for heresy.

Since the death was to be by fire, the ancient prohibition of the shedding of blood was not infringed. In 1231, Gregory laid down that condemned heresy. heretics remitted to the secular power should be punished by the debt of hatred that is put to death, and that the excommunication of their supporters and protectors should in itself incur permanent legal infamy. All of this is almost 200 years before Huss. And this theology then becomes standardized as you move closer to the time of Huss. So you get to the Bohemian Reformation, late 14th century, early 15th, and this theology is well established by that point. And it continues on and then begins to wane as you get toward the modern era. Now there is a lot more

about all of this to explore. We didn't really get into practices of inquisition here. But hopefully the main point is clear, both from the Council of Constance itself, which we explored in the first half of this video, and from the broader historical context of about 250 years surrounding, especially leading up to that, at this time in history, the Roman Catholic Church taught that heretics should be killed and exerted authority over those civil powers that performed their execution. As brutal as it is, that is true. What do we do with that? Let's ask four questions. Number one, does this falsify Christianity? And the answer is no. Horrific sins happen in Christian history among Protestants, among Catholics, among other groups, and that does not falsify

the truth of the Christian religion. By the way, this is an important point. One of the things we learned in the 20th century, and we learned it the hard way, is that the coercive use of power can be even more brutal in secular contexts. Like the Soviet Union, I have a whole video on that. This is not a problem with religion,

but it's not a problem that's unique to religion. You know, the verse in the Bible, let God be true and every man a liar. Sometimes we have to come back to that when we're faced with brutal realities. some of you know what it's like to be mistreated by the church. I do too. I see you. If you're a non-Christian watching and that's been your experience, just know some of us understand that. And we wouldn't even look down on you for feeling disillusioned. We get it. But I don't think this is a reason to reject

Christianity. By the way, Jesus will never treat you like that, even if people claiming his name do. And I will simply say this, though it's not a reason to reject Christianity, it is a reason to be humble and to know that, again, actually the spirit in which we want to look back on this is not one of pride to say, how could anybody do that? Because all it takes is pride on our part, and we can fall into mistreating others in the name of religion as well. Second question, does this falsify Roman Catholic ecclesiology? That is not what I'm arguing in this video, as I've already made clear at the beginning. Some do argue for that, and I am sympathetic to the claim that there's a real tension between the more coercive practices and theology reflected

in the late medieval context and the church-state relation there versus modern Catholic teaching on religious freedom and the limits of religious coercion and things that come out at Vatican 2 and elsewhere. But that is a more nuanced question that is debated. This gets tricky. Basically, what you need to know of, not to settle this, but to kind of frame it for your further exploration, Roman Catholic theology distinguishes different levels of magisterial teaching. Not everything taught or practiced by church authorities is considered infallible. And for that reason, most of it isn't. And for that reason, many Catholic theologians argue that late medieval support for punishing heresy

reflects a historically conditioned teaching rather than an irreformable teaching. Now, that's debatable, because the medieval consensus arguably functioned like the ordinary and universal magisterium because of how widely taught it was across centuries. But that's the issue to debate. Now, even if it isn't infallible, it still would have been required to be submitted to. So religious submission of intellect and will is required for even fallible teachings of the Magisterium. So whether or not this is like a technical falsification, it still raises some moral questions.

But all of that is for the further debate. My focus in this video is much simpler and more preliminary to just say, this happened, we need to know about it, and it was wrong. And I want people to know about the story of Huss. Third question, how could people do this? And here is where I think it's important for us to try to understand the mentality at that time and not just demonize people in the past. Some of the people who were acting out this theology believed, sincerely believed, they were protecting souls. from eternal harm, they were preserving the social order, and they were acting under divine responsibility. That doesn't make it right, of course, but it helps explain how something that we see

rightly, I think, as morally outrageous, most of us, but to them it could feel very differently. And again, this highlights the main point I want to make, summing up all four of these points at the end here is the need for humility today. People can act cruelly in the name of God without realizing it. It is a form of moral blindness, and we should never have the pride to think, oh, I could never possibly fall into that error. Any of us can misuse Christianity. We can change it from, like, medicine into a club without even realizing it. The question is not, how could they do that? The question is, how do we make sure we never do? And that means we have to stay close to the heart of Christ, who never coerces, never crushes, never stomps on us. But rather, he calls, he summons, he invites,

and he lays down his life for his enemies. And that's the final question I want to ask here. What do we do with all this? And I will say, a basic lesson is, let us as the people of Christ never use coercive power to advance the kingdom of God. Now, as a Baptist who champions the separation of church and state, I obviously have my own convictions about what that looks like,

but all Christians can appreciate the danger of misusing power. I want you to think about Jesus, after Peter cuts off the ear of one of the soldiers coming to arrest him, and I want you to listen to his words. I put him in bold in here, Luke 2251, no more of this. What is the look on the face of Christ when he says those simple words? No more of this.

What's the look on the face of Christ when he heals the ear? What is happening in the heart of Christ when he does this? That is our model. That is our pathway. For those who claim the name of Christ, that is what we are to do. And by the way, that does not solve all the complicated questions. You know, I believe in there's a place for just war. I believe in there's a place for capital punishment. But that's a function of the state. And though the church must be the conscience of the state,

though individual Christians can be servants of the state, the power of the sword is not the business of the church as such. Rather, our calling as the church is to follow whose's example of courageous testimony. And the idea that if, oh, you don't take up the temporal sword yourself, then, then, you know, you're not going to need courage is the opposite of the truth. You're going to need all the courage you can muster up and stay close to the heart of Christ to follow Huss's example. There's an old, I'll leave you with this.

There's an old Hussite slogan, truth prevails. You can see it on screen here also in Czech as well as in English. This became a rallying cry among the Hussites. By the way, I have a whole video about. the Bohemian Reformation, if you are interested. And I find this slogan so poignant. In two words, it sums up so much that we need to organize our lives. Truth prevails. Huss versus the Council of Constance is a great example of a truth versus power moment. And guess who won? Truth. Truth prevails over the coercive use of power in the long run.

maybe not in the eyes of the world. That's why the sheep to be slaughtered of Romans 836 are the more than conquerors of Romans 837. And so, though it's cheesy, it might sound cheesy. You know what Hoos makes me think of, I know this is the most weird random turn at the end of the video here, but it makes, when I think of what it is like to follow the example of Hoos today, makes me think of the Tom Petty song, I won't back down. Because it really just, this sums it up in a simple way. Strip away all the complexity. This is what we are to do. I won't back down. No, I won't back down. You can stand me up at the gates of hell, but I won't back down. Some of the covers of that song on YouTube are great. Look them up. I love that song. That's what Jesus did

at the cross. May we do likewise.