The Silver Sword

by Angela Elwell Hunt

  As the congregation sang on around her, Anika took a deep breath and forced herself to calm her feelings. Her father had not commented; maybe he had not noticed. The couple seated in front of her had not turned around in surprise or revulsion; perhaps they had not seen. Perhaps no one had noted it. If Anika could ignore the forward youth surely nothing else would happen.

  She lifted her eyes to the preacher, the image of the young man blurring her peripheral vision. She could feel heat in her face, and she knew he was still looking in her direction—probably grinning. Mocking her. Why? What on earth had she ever done to him?

  The song ended, and Master Hus bowed his head for prayer. Anika followed suit, but the top of her head burned with the touch of the man’s eyes upon her. She bit down hard on her lower lip. Surely she was imagining things! A perfect stranger had no cause to smile at her; perhaps he was smiling at someone seated in the pew beyond. Perhaps his betrothed, or even his mother or a dear aunt sat right behind Anika, and she had misinterpreted his affectionate greeting.

  She sighed in relief. What a fool she was, how overwrought her imagination! She had spent too much time reading The Art of Courtly Love; all that prattle about stolen glances and displays of public affection had addled her brain. She had imagined everything, including the young man’s continued glances in her direction. After all, she hadn’t actually looked up at him again, and he probably wasn’t looking toward her at all. She could check now, just to be sure.

  In the midst of her pastor’s prayer, she sneaked one disobedient look upward. The young man was still staring at her, openly flouting everything right and holy. His blue eyes glinted with mischief as he grinned and gave her a conspiratorial wink.

  No. She had to be mistaken. Quickly, quietly, she lowered her head and turned slightly so she could look behind her. Surely another young woman sat there, the object of this man’s unseemly affection—but no one sat behind her but the miller and his wife, a blowzy woman with many chins and many children.

  Anika lowered her head, her stomach churning in disgust. She leaned closer to her father’s protecting arm and closed her eyes tightly, blocking out all thoughts and sights of the froward youth who had no business behaving so rudely in God’s own church.

  “Papa,” she whispered when the preacher’s prayer had concluded, “who are the men seated in the pews next to the pulpit?”

  Her father’s face hardened into a marble effigy of contempt as he looked up. “That, Daughter,” he answered, barely troubling to lower his voice, “is the Cardinal D’Ailly and Lord Laco of Lidice. I don’t know who the younger man is, but I’d guess we’re looking at Lord Laco’s son.”

  Anika looked down again, her flush deepening to crimson. A nobleman’s son! At least her worries were unfounded. Once he learned she was only a merchant’s daughter, he would take his attentions elsewhere. Even The Art of Courtly Love admitted that love between upper- and middle-class folk was a poor idea.

  Jan Hus stepped slowly to the lectern, well aware of the forbidding presence on the front pew at his right hand. Cardinal D’Ailly had not wandered into Prague and into this church by mere happenstance, but Jan could not say with a clear conscience that God had led the cardinal to this church for spiritual edification. No, D’Ailly’s presence had less to do with the plans of God than the plots of men, and those plots were yet to be revealed.

  “Friends,” Hus began, placing his copy of the Scriptures on the lectern before him. “I would like to read to you from the gospel according to Saint Matthew.”

  “Stop.”

  Like an echo from an empty tomb, the cardinal’s voice echoed through the large sanctuary.

  “Your Eminence?” Jan obediently turned and lifted an eyebrow. “Do you wish to address the congregation?”

  Slowly, as if weighted down by his own self-importance, Cardinal D’Ailly rose to his feet. A short, plump polyp of a man, the cardinal gave Hus a fixed and meaningless smile, then took a deep breath, swelled his chest, and faced the startled congregation. “Pope John has sent his representative, bearing the sacred pallium as a token of authority, to publish a bull throughout the kingdom of Christ. Yet I have heard that the bull has not been published or posted upon the doors of this church.”

  Jan bit his lip, resisting the urge to rebel. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God …

  The cardinal extended a hand toward a cowled priest seated in the front row. As the man stood to his feet, D’Ailly made a simple introduction: “This man, Master Hus, is the holy father’s legate.”

  Conscious that two thousand pairs of curious eyes watched from the pews, Jan bowed in respect. “Grace and peace unto you, from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”

  The emissary’s eyes gleamed like glassy volcanic rock, his emotions and intents impossible to read. “Will you, Jan Hus,” the priest called, his thin voice cutting through the silence of the chamber, “obey the apostolic mandates?”

  Hus did not hesitate to fill his role in what was obviously a scripted drama. “I am ready with all my heart to obey the apostolic mandates.”

  The surprised messenger’s shoulders dropped slightly, then he smiled. “Did you hear?” he said, glancing up at D’Ailly in what looked like relief. “The master is quite ready to obey the apostolic mandates.”

  Jan resisted the impulse to shake his head in utter disbelief. Another trap—this one sprung in his own church. Well, the hunter could be snared as easily as the prey if God so willed.

  “Your Eminence,” Jan stepped forward a half-step and turned toward the cardinal, “understand me well. I said I am ready with all my heart to obey the doctrines of the apostles of Christ. If the papal mandates agree with these, I will obey them most willingly. But if I see any papal mandate at variance with the doctrines of Christ, I shall not obey, even though the executioner’s stake were staring me in the face.”

  The roar of absolute silence filled the church. The papal legate gaped at Hus; D’Ailly’s displeasure was palpable. But from the people in the pews, his people, Hus felt silent support.

  Standing before the congregation of Bethlehem Chapel, Jan Hus felt his heart swell with holy pride. His church had been founded by two laymen who desired to provide a house of worship suited for the preaching of God’s Word in the people’s language. In all other churches of Prague, the encumbrance of Roman rites and ceremonies left no opportunity for preaching the gospel, yet the charter of Bethlehem Chapel required its preacher to reside in the city and preach in the Bohemian tongue twice a day on all Sundays and feast days. The job was a duty and honor Jan Hus was pleased to fulfill.

  Now he glanced down at the stunned papal legate and decided to speak plainly. “Many of our people are farmers, my brother; we know the value of grain. What is the law of God? Good grain. What is the command of men? Mere chaff.”

  Leaning over the pulpit, Jan looked Pope John’s emissary directly in the eye: “Note that down, cowled monk, and carry it to the other side.”

  He straightened and returned to his lectern in silence. His words still vibrated in the air, as if hanging overhead for inspection, and in the resonating silence Jan felt a new sensation descend upon him, the eerie sense of detachment that accompanied an awareness of impending disaster.

  In one breath, in the space of a few seconds, he had questioned papal authority and refuted papal direction. If given an opportunity, he would expose papal corruption and the personal sin of the one who called himself Pope John. In the past Jan had appealed to this pope, shown him the reverence due his position, and tried to address him in respectful language. But he could no longer pay homage to a corrupt system led and managed by the most corrupt of men.

  He gripped the edges of the pulpit and stared out across his congregation. These people were the reason he entered the fray and kept up the fight. They were starving for spiritual truth, and there were too few priests willing to provide it.

  Pope John, who promised heavenly immortality for a price, could n
ot be allowed to toy with immortal souls in order to broaden his personal power base in Italy. Jan Hus could not and would not sit idly by while thousands of men paid an eternal price to slake one man’s ambition.

  For weeks Prague’s dinner tables buzzed with various versions of Master Hus’s encounter with the cardinal. Anika, her father, and Petrov had a most spirited discussion; Ernan declared that the growing movement toward nationalism would eventually lead to war; the old knight insisted that war would never come to Bohemia.

  “Sure, and don’t I know there will be war?” Ernan said, his eyes shining like cobalt. “Patriotism is a kind of religion—’tis the egg from which wars are hatched. All this talk about Bohemia this and Bohemia that—’tis certain to come to fighting. Men will carry swords until they learn to carry the cross, and that day is not yet come.”

  “No war,” Petrov persisted, rapping his bony knuckles upon the table. “We are a nation of Christians, and Christians should not fight each other. In disarming Peter, Christ disarmed every warrior. Except for self-defense against evil, we should all hang up our swords.”

  “Well, naturally, it is not a bad thing to love peace,” Ernan countered.

  “But there comes a time when people can’t bear the burdens placed on them. Master Hus is helping people see those burdens, things they’ve never seen before. And if it isn’t right, it won’t be borne. Haven’t I said so before?”

  Anika rested her chin on her hand and let their words wash over her. If war did erupt, she felt certain Master Hus would have nothing to do with it. Despite his outspokenness from the pulpit, he was not foolishly reckless. He spoke the truth when pressed, defended the Scriptures, and attacked the papacy’s wrongs whenever confronted directly, but he seemed to realize that outright revolt would arouse a sleeping dragon. His comments to the cardinal had been his most blunt in a long time.

  “What will happen now?” she asked. She crossed her arms and looked from her father to Petrov. “Will the interdict be imposed again?”

  “No one can say,” Petrov admitted, “but I have heard that some of Hus’s younger followers have laid extreme plans. On the morrow they intend to visit every church and publicly contradict any priest who preaches the indulgences. The people will certainly join in their protests.”

  “I’ll be wanting to pray for them,” Ernan interrupted. “For their safety and that God would grant them wisdom. For this undertaking will not come easily, and I fear it may cost these brave souls a high price.”

  How high a price? Anika wondered, but something cautioned her not to ask.

  Jan Hus walked outside his small house, his hands behind his back, his head lifted to the star-thick sky above. Prague slept now; nearly every candle and lamp had been extinguished along the street. It was during these moments of silence that Jan was best able to think … and God was best able to penetrate the crowded confusion in Jan’s mind.

  “I’ve tried, Father,” he whispered, stopping to rest in the black velvet shadow of a stately spruce. “I’ve tried to warn Jerome and the others to go more softly, to advance cautiously for the sake of those who still carry your gospel in their hearts. I know there are priests and cardinals who have not been snared by the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life, but…”

  He paused, marshaling his memories. So many unfortunate things had happened over the past few months; he could not blame Jerome and his friends for growing impatient with the cardinals in Rome.

  He folded his arms and leaned back against the broad trunk of the tree, revisiting small memories clipped out of time and perfectly preserved in his mind. The most recent memory was also the most troubling. One week after the sermon in which Jan declared that he would not condone the pope’s selling of indulgences so that Christians might sin with a clear conscience, Jerome organized a group of university students in an open protest against the papal proclamation. In a mock procession one student dressed as a harlot and rode through the cobbled streets of Prague with a chain of silver bells around his neck. In his hands he held a large sheet of paper, clearly intended to represent the papal bull. A great crowd of students and townsfolk carrying sticks and swords followed the “harlot” as the chariot procession wound its way through Prague’s main streets. As they walked, the leaders of the parade proclaimed, “We are carrying the writings of a heretic to the stake.” In Charles Square, amid thunderous applause, the rebels placed the false document under a makeshift gallows and set it afire.

  “We did it,” Jerome gaily reported the next day, “to remind the people of the archbishop’s burning of books.”

  Jan saw fire in his disciple’s eye and felt himself shudder. During the previous year, in an effort to explain his positions on the church and scriptural truth, Jan and several other gospel preachers had loaned their precious copies of Wyclif’s writings and other theology books to the archbishop. In a bold countermove, Archbishop Zbynek, predecessor to the current archbishop, took advantage of King Wenceslas’s absence from the city and brought the valuable books out into the palace courtyard. Over two hundred volumes, many of them beautifully embossed and splendidly bound, crumbled to ashes in a fire fueled by spite, while bells tolled from the city tower and the priests sang the funeral chant “Te Deum.”

  The archbishop had meant to end his troubles by this gesture, but his book burning only poured fuel on the flames of strife. When King Wenceslas learned of the archbishop’s rash act, he stormed and cursed while Queen Sophia wept. The freedom-loving citizens of Prague were enraged. Riots broke out in churchyards. And then, sooner than Jan would have believed possible, fresh copies of Wyclif’s writings and his own sermons spread like gossip through the city, inscribed by hands as fast as Anika O’Connor’s. Copies of the Holy Scriptures, which the priests did not have the nerve to burn, began for the first time to appear in homes of the common folk.

  Jan smiled ruefully, recalling the way he had begun his sermon the next Sunday: “Fire does not consume truth. It is always a mark of a little mind to vent anger on inanimate and uninjurious objects.”

  Even that simple statement was reported to the church hierarchy. And in retaliation for Hus’s opposition, Pope John XXIII issued an order demanding that Jan appear in Rome and give an account of his actions.

  The memory of his own reaction to the pope’s summons passed through Jan like an unwelcome chill. Upon hearing the news, he had simply refused to go. He held little personal respect for a pope he knew to be the worst sort of scoundrel, and he did not wish to desert his congregation in a time of great unrest. Furthermore, Jan had little money and no desire to ask his wealthy friends to loan him funds to provision an extended journey.

  His refusal to appear in Rome was the beginning of troubles for Prague. When Jan refused the command, Pope John issued a decree excommunicating Jan and commanded that it be published in all the churches of Prague.

  His tight expression relaxed into a smile when he recalled Prague’s reaction to his excommunication. The severe maneuver, formally banishing Hus’s soul to hell, meant little to Jan personally, and shortly thereafter crowds filled Bethlehem Chapel to capacity whenever he spoke. People who would never have ventured out to hear Hus the scholar now crowded about the church doors to hear Hus the excommunicated heretic. Sir Petrov, a devoted doorkeeper and assistant at services, estimated one Sunday that at least ten thousand people had gathered to hear the hell-bound preacher proclaim Jesus Christ and God’s great salvation.

  Jan’s smile faded when he recalled what happened next. When excommunication only broadened Hus’s influence, Archbishop Zbynek proclaimed an interdict over the city of Prague and its neighboring villages. While the interdict lasted, no person other than a priest, beggar, or child under twelve could receive a Christian burial or be taken to another diocese for burial. There could be no public services in the churches, no weddings, no ringing of church bells. Mass could be said only behind closed doors, and communion could be administered only to the dying. As long as the interdict
remained in effect, the entire city’s population had to assume a general appearance of mourning and fasting.

  No matter how much he had secretly enjoyed goading the dour and selfish archbishop, Jan Hus sincerely regretted the interdict. The excommunication did not hurt, for it was useless and directed only at him, and he was certain of his salvation. But the interdict affected the entire city, particularly those who were deep in bondage to the Roman system and had not seen the light of true salvation.

  But God would not allow them to suffer more than they could bear, and relief came when Archbishop Zbynek died in September 1411. The new archbishop, not wanting to live in a cursed city, wisely lifted the interdict. And a few months of uneasy and fragile peace had existed between the pope and the Bohemian reformers until Pope John published his bull announcing the sale of indulgences. Now, to Jan’s horror, his position had led to open rebellion in the city streets. If Jerome and the other students were not more discreet, Archbishop Albik might be forced to take harsh action to underscore his authority.

  “Father God, you will look after them, no?” Hus asked, lifting his eyes to the sky again. The sky was still thick black, but the stars were less brilliant than before. Morning would soon dawn, and he had not yet slept.

  But there would be time for that later. Hus shook off his mantle of memories and vigorously rubbed his face, reminding himself of the tasks ahead. He had two sick parishioners, a dispute to settle among three laymen, and a lecture to prepare for his university students.

  “Sufficient to the day is the evil thereof,” he quipped, smiling at his own joke as he moved toward his house.

  Three