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The Great Schism, and we're talking about the Papal Schism, where you had not one, not two, but three popes, all three of them excommunicating each other, and it's a huge, huge mess. And of course, you had this incredible materialism, worldiness, corruption within the church, selling of church offices.

And not too surprisingly, some sincere Christians within the church got very quickly fed up with this. And we talked about two, well, we talked about one reformer last time who's almost like a proto-pre-Protestant, and that is Wycliffe. And of course, Wycliffe is an England Oxford professor, incredibly intelligent.

And he, of course, came up with what was considered to be a radical notion. That is, folks should be able to read the Bible for themselves. And he comes up with the first English translation of the Bible. We looked at that last time and we saw, real quickly, it'd be kind of difficult to read today.

English was quite different back then. We're talking Middle English. And then, of course, Wycliffe, however, happily for him, we're going to get the PowerPoints up. Happily for him, he dies of old age. There's such division within the Catholic Church with the three popes. Actually, at that point, it's still really just the Great Schism.

No, not the schism, it's the Avignon papacy, the Babylonian captivity. During the time period of Wycliffe, and then as things are going to get worse, you have the rise of Hus. Alright, so of course, Wycliffe is going to, of course, die. And of course, I told you last time they drag out his body, put it on trial, then they're going to hang the body, burn the body, scatter the ashes in the River Swift, which was ridiculous because his followers didn't believe in religious relics.

That's one of the things, you know, he started the Lollard movement, which was a very powerful movement. Okay, so we are past Wycliffe, and we want to start off today with some scripture. We're going to be talking about Jan Hus, you know, Anglicide John Hus is what we say in English.

And I think the passage that we're going to look at starting off today really can be applied to him. And so if I could have Micah, maybe you read the first passage and hand it off to somebody else next time we get to the next passage. But let's start.

Very famous verse, verses in the Bible from the Gospel of Luke. I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing in his kingdom, preach the word, be ready in season and out of season.

Reprove, rebuke, and exhort with complete patience and teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears, they will accumulate. And he strictly charged and commanded them to tell this to no one, saying, The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed, and on the third day be raised.

And he said to all, If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself?

For whoever is ashamed of me and my words, of him will the Son of Man be ashamed when he comes in his glory and the glory of the Father and of the Holy Angels. Okay, those scriptures are really tough if you're in a land. How tough will those scriptures be if you applied them literally if you're in Saudi Arabia today?

Or how about China, which is getting pretty red again? Have y'all been keeping aware of the news? And they're coming in churches and tearing out their crosses and they're really on a tear of this new dictator they got. So that's some pretty tough verses. Who's lived at a time where it was tough to live out those?

Verses, but he does live them out. And so let's take a brief look at this life, a very remarkable man. Now, his setting was beautiful, Prague. Okay, he wasn't born there, but that is where he's going to spend much of his young manhood. He, of course, is going to prove also, like Wycliffe, to be a brilliant college student.

He, of course, will then become rector of the University of Prague. And that's really amazing because the University of Prague was, although, you know, Prague is a center of what's today Czech Republic, and Bohemia back then is what they called it. And most of the faculty at the University of Prague were German.

The Germans, even back then, were kind of dominating over the Czechs. And it's kind of amazing they got that position, even though he's Czech. Now, if you take a look at this picture, you see the cathedral there, and you look there, you got this great square, and there's a mammoth monument there.

And that monument is Jan Hus. It's kind of funny that this particular photo I picked because it's got a bird on top of his head. Does anybody know what Hus's name in Czech really means? Goose. Yeah, yeah. And there's, you know, he was always making fun of himself that he was basically named Goose.

And later on, his followers would affectionately call him God's little goose. And he, you know, so anyway, this he becomes a symbol of Czech nationalism as well, because he is going to stand up for the rights of the Czech people. But anyway, so Jan Hus is strongly, strongly influenced by John Wycliffe.

You see, when Wycliffe taught at Oxford, they had something back then we still have today, and that is exchange students. There apparently were some Czech students in England, and they were quite influenced by Wycliffe. And they bring the writings of, you know, remember, they tried to repress the writings of Wycliffe, tried to burn them all.

Well, that only made them more attractive. Forbidden fruit is always attractive, but this is good forbidden fruit. And his writings make their way into Europe. And Jan Hus apparently read some of the writings of Wycliffe. As a young man, he had a very radical conversion experience and becomes something of a famous preacher very early on.

Ultimately, he's going to not only be rector of the university, but he's going to be made the pastor of the Church of Bethlehem there in Prague, which Still stands today. And he was a very famous preacher. And what was so particularly attractive about him, remember, everybody's still Roman Catholic at this time, including him.

He's a priest. But what's so remarkable is he insisted on preaching sermons in Czech. And that is a radical thing to do back then. You know, everything's supposed to be in Latin. And so huge crowds come out. It said some of the crowds were as many as 2,000 people.

I don't know how you could hear him, but just huge crowds. And he, of course, was horrified by the abuses of the church, which had only gotten worse. You know, under Wycliffe, it was a Babylonian captivity, Avignon, and a lot of corruption. Now you've got the schism in full bloom.

You know, these two popes each excommunicating each other, and priests are going to be three popes. And so he is going to attack corruption in the church. He's going to attack the sale of indulgences. Way, 100 years before Luther, he is whamming on this thing of selling indulgences.

And he also comes to this radical conclusion: you know, this doctrine that's very precious to Baptists, which is the priesthood of the believer. That we don't have to go through a pope. We don't have to go through a priest. You know, we can go directly in prayer to Jesus.

And that Jesus is. Respect of persons, that all are equal before God. This was a very, very radical notion for back then. Now, he didn't quite make it as far as Wycliffe on the Lord's Supper, though. He pretty much stuck with transubstantiation, but in many other ways, he was very, very, almost you could say, Protestant.

And there he is, Jan Hus. And so let's go on. So, as I said before, he opposed to sell indulgences. He wanted to make scripture and his message understandable to the people. He preached and translated portions of the liturgy and Latin hymns into Czech. And he even took and transformed an empty wall space in the church there.

I believe this is the Bethlehem church. And he had these paintings painted, which contrasted pictures of Jesus showing examples of his humility and his simplicity, and then contrasted that with rich and greedy churchmen, which I'm sure didn't go over too well with the church authorities. And he also preached to thousands, and there's a church, huge church, and there it is, the church in Bethlehem and Prague.

Now, talking about some of his ideas that anticipated Protestantism, let's check through these. Of course, like later Protestants, he was very horrified at what. He felt was becoming an idolterous veneration of Mary and the saints. He also criticized the practice of withholding the wine. You know, they would call it Eucharistic service, or we call it Lord's Supper.

You know, we pass out the little crackers, and then we pass out the welches. And, of course, they would pass out the real thing, wine. But no, they wouldn't. They would only pass out the bread. Only the priests and the clergy were allowed to take of the wine.

And so he is going to say, no, that's not right. You know, that's not what Scripture teaches. And so that was something that he gets in a lot of trouble about. He also insisted that, well, later on, I'm getting off here. Later on, by the way, that little thing, you know, serving the people both the bread and wine, you're going to have, tragically, after his death, his followers are going to, of course, rise up and fight against the Holy Roman Emperor at the time and the Pope at the time.

And they have two real famous symbols, usually in their flag. One would be, of course, a goose, which was a symbol for a hoose. And the other, of course, would be a chalice, which, you know, they'd have a common wine cup, and everybody's drinking from the same cup.

And, of course, that is. The symbol that the gospel is and the Lord suffers for all believers. And that would be on their coat of arms. He also anticipated the reformers by identifying the true church as the invisible body of all believers who have been eternally elected by God for salvation and incorporated into Christ as their head.

And he recognized that just because someone is a cleric, just because he holds a church title, and I'm sure this is true for some Baptist preachers, some elders, and deacons as well, just because you hold the title, that doesn't alone make you a Christian, right? And so, you know, only Christ knows for who, sure, who are.

And therefore, that is one of the reasons why he would be willing to stand up against some of the clerics who are obviously going against Scripture, even the point that, like Luther later after him, would reject papal bulls. You know, the papal bulls are these commandments by the Pope that everybody's supposed to obey and take.

And he didn't go with that. He also rejected any claim that the visible church exercised an infallibility in its rulings. Now, you know, we talked several Sundays about the fact that ultimately the Catholic Church under the Pope would come up with this doctrine. The Pope would say when he speaks ex cathedra that he's infallible.

Well, that's really pretty late in the development of the Roman Catholic theology. That's like, I think, the 1870s. But they were already heading that direction, and some were teaching. Remember, we talked about last time that there's a teaching within the Catholic Church that they had given the world the Scripture.

All right, well, and they implied that they wrote it, therefore they can decide what it says. Well, remember, that's not the correct view. The church received the scripture. The scripture is written by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, right? And, you know, they do not have final authority. The scripture itself is final authority.

And he pretty much had already come to that view. He just didn't use the catchword of the Reformation, which is sola scriptura, right? But he had pretty much come to that view as well. And needless to say, that got him in a lot of trouble with the Catholic authorities, that he held that scripture was the final authority, not church clergy, not the pope, and not even church councils.

The scripture was final authority. Now, needless to say, all this was getting him in trouble. He's eventually going to have to step down from the pastorate there at Bethlehem. He's going to have to step down from being the rector of the university. And for a while, he wanders through what is today the Czech Republic, back then Bohemia, preaching almost itinerantly.

And yet, he had huge numbers that are converted through this traveling preaching ministry of his. All the time, the authorities are after him. At one point, he's going to be excommunicated. He has a protector, though, and not one, but two holy emperors. The first is what's the famous Christmas Carol, Wenceslaus, I can't even say his name.

Wenceslaus. Wenceslaus, or something like that. Yeah, Holy Roman Emperor Wenceslaus was actually a living person, and he was actually the person that the carol is written for. And he starts out protecting Luther, but then later on he kind of turns against him. And then, and the reason he turned against him was over the issue of indulgences.

When Hus comes out and says these things are, you know, basically bogus, Wenceslaus turns against him because it turns out he was getting a cut of the money from the indulgences. But fortunately for Hus, Wenceslaus, by the way, three of Hus's students went to Prague and publicly said indulgences are bogus, and Wenceslaus had their heads chopped off.

That's how serious. They took that. Okay, so anyway, he's not such a good King Wenceslaus, as the Carol says. But anyway, he dies. He's succeeded by his brother Sisiman, and I'm mispronouncing that, I'm sure, but anyway. And for a while, he is favorable towards Luther. But the Catholic authorities are at this point trying to end the great schism, the Great Papal Schism.

And they're at the Council of Constance. The Council of Constance is going on. And they're wanting to end these different religious disputes throughout Europe to smooth the path for getting back to one Pope again. And he's one of the little irritations there, bothering them. So they demand that he come to answer charges.

He, of course, realizes I'm burnt toast literally if I do that. But then they suggest to the Holy Roman Emperor, why don't you give him a safe passage? Remember with Luther, he got safe passage. And so the Holy Roman Emperor not only proclaimed he'd give him safe passage, he also provided an armed guard for him.

And so he decides to go ahead and go to the Council of Constance because he wanted the opportunity to defend Scripture and defend his position. And so here he is. At the Council of Constance, but it doesn't go the way everyone thought it would. Because as soon as he gets to the Council of Constance, the guards are supposed to guard him.

They then arrest him. And he's thrown in a dungeon, which was purposefully picked because they knew it was filled with all sorts of fleas, lice, and bed bugs. I'm not sure all three, but that seems to be the case. Filled with vermin, barely enough food to survive upon.

They were purposely trying to physically break him down in order to get him to recant. Okay? And this goes on for eight months. For eight months. His health is completely ruined, and he's in filthy clothing. And they drag him out. Apparently, they temporarily redressed him, you know, in his clerical garments, so in front of everybody, they could then rip him back off again.

You know, sort of like, you know, when they drum you out of the military, they pull off all your patches and everything. Well, sort of the same concept, to publicly humiliate him. Then they put a dunce cap on him, which had demons decorated on him, to say this guy is of the devil.

And they don't allow him to say anything in his own defense. Just make all kinds of wild accusations, many of which were just totally not even true. And then they condemned him to death by burning at the stake. And this is Council of Constance. And there's a famous legend that springs up after this: that supposedly he says, You may burn this goose, but God will then send an eagle.

Now, I had always believed that, but I did some checking. In fact, I was up a little late last night doing checking on this. And turns out there's no real documentation that he ever really said that. However, he would make jokes about himself. So it sounds just totally like something Hoos would do, but I think at the moment where he's being burned at the stake, you might not want to do comedy at that point.

But he did, while he was in prison, managed to write a letter. And basically, any letter, he did say that he had great hope and faith that God would raise up another bird, you know, he's a goose, who would be stronger than him. And so Hoos is betrayed, and he's going to be burned.

Death there at Constance. And everyone thought at the time that, you know, this is no big deal. At least his persecutors, his executors, thought this would be it. And really, they didn't even think that Hus was all that important. They really did not understand the hold he had on the people back in Bohemia.

And, you know, they now turned their attention to ending this schism. Meantime, though, oh, I forgot to say that what we do know from eyewitnesses when he was burned, he said he simply sang a hymn as loud as he could to Christ as the flames engulfed him. All right.

So, and they also ground up his remains, ashes, and scattered them in the Danube. What? Did I have the wrong river? Rhine River. Yeah, the Rhine River. Big difference. In the Rhine River. And once again, just like, you know, they threw woodcliffs in the River Swift, they were so scared that his followers would try to make relics of their remains.

When if they knew anything about what Hus was teaching, they would have known. That was the very sort of thing that he was against, you know. But anyway, they thought once again that you know this was going to be the end of everything, but turns out it's not.

All right, so just to further illustrate what this man of God went through, could we have another reader? Just pass it to somebody. Themselves teachers to suit. Oh, excuse me, this is the Apostle Paul, just in case anybody doesn't know. Themselves teachers to suit their own passions and will turn away from listening to truth and wander off into myths.

As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do not work, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry. For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, for I have kept the faith.

Henceforth, there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which is the Lord, the righteous judge, will award me on that day, and not only to me, but also to all who have loved his appearing. I thought those verses really are appropriate when we consider the life of Hus.

He really did live that out. Okay, now, when the news of his execution reached Prague. There was just an incredible reaction. I don't have time to go through all the many, many events that happened. I know at one point, some Catholic authorities came in there trying to tell the people what they had to do, and they grabbed them and they took them over to a window.

They're several stories up and threw them out the window. The people were very upset, and I must say, they did not react in a very Christ-like manner. But they did feel like that this has gone too far and they're going to stand up against it. So the Czech people all over Czechoslovakia rise up, they kick out the Catholic authorities, which in many cases, also the officers of the Holy Roman Emperor, they're really upset with the Holy Roman Emperor because he's, you know, betrayed Hus.

And there's this resentment against the Germans in the first place. So this is also a rebellion, not only against the Pope and the Church, but against the Germans. They rise up and it's also religious as well. Now, the reaction, and this was shocking to the Holy Roman Emperor, shocking to the Pope, because this is a lower class movement.

These are the townspeople and the peasantry out in the countryside. They rise up against their betters. Remember, they don't believe in betters anymore. Priest of the believer, all men are equal before God. You're no better than I am. And they rise up and they run out the authorities.

Of the Holy Roman Emperor, they run out. They even attacked some of the Catholic churches and burned them down. They attacked the monasteries, they shut down the monasteries and the convents. They no longer believe that those are valid institutions. And the reaction, of course, is the Pope calls a crusade against the Hussites.

And so they actually send in five crusading armies in different years trying to repress the Hussites. Now, we're talking armed knights in their armor on horseback and all this. And they are fighting peasants who do not have any armor. It was thought when they initially began this, the authorities thought, you know, we'll just massacre these peasants, teach them a lesson, and that'll be the end of this.

Well, in conflict after conflict, these peasant armies not only stand up to these knights, but they win time after time after time. And it is totally shocking to all of Europe. And this is really one of the first big shocks to medieval higher authorities, where the little people will rise up, stand up to them.

And actually win. It was a very shocking thing. And these are called the Hussite Wars. And these peasants weren't dumb. They figured out how to defend themselves. Now, the problem is, though, you're going to have a split occur within the Hussites. One group goes really, really radical, and another group, the Ultraquists, were sort of the moderates.

And the Taborites, they're sort of the wild guys. But they were able, at least for part of this, to unify in common defense against the Holy Roman Emperor and the Catholic authorities who are trying to repress them. And here's one of the reasons why they succeed. They came up with this idea of war wagons, kind of like medieval tanks, if you will.

And they got a hold of some of the first firearms. And they had these shoulder cannons, sort of like massive shotguns, is what they were. And they, of course, had the crossbows and they had these flails, which they're really kind of a nifty weapon. Notice the flag there?

You see the symbols on it? You got the chalice and the goose. All right, and so, and they would circle the wagons, you know. And when the Holy Roman armies would come up against these formations, they would. Usually win, you know, the Hussites would. They just slaughter the cavalry when they come up against them.

So they, you know, they're going to be pretty successful. Now, ultimately, what happens is the Ultraquists are going to continue having conflict with the Taborites. They have a fight between themselves, and finally, the Ultraquists decide to make a deal with the Holy Roman Emperor and the Catholic Church.

And I'm getting ahead of myself here. The reason was the Great Schism has come to an end. We're going to talk about that, how they did that in a moment. But basically, with the end of the Great Schism, all these Catholic authorities throughout Europe are now unified again.

And tiny little Bohemia, the Ultraquists, knew that they couldn't stand up alone, continued to. And so what they did was they cut a deal, and basically they agreed to say we're back under the authority of the Catholic Church, but not really. And the Catholic Church was willing to go along with that because they had been embarrassed so many times by these peasant armies.

And so what happens is they get to have their own form of worship, but in name they say they're still Roman Catholics. And this continues down into the outbreak of the Protestant Reformation. And guess what happens with these guys? One group of them joined the Lutherans, another group joined the Calvinists, and another group joins the Moravians.

Moravians famously came to America, and that's where one of the Wesley brothers was saved with the Moravians. That starts the whole Methodist church, you know, way down the road. All kinds of side channels happen when somebody stands up for the Lord. You know, other movements spring up. And so, anyway, meantime, let's back up and see how this great schism is going to come to an end.

You got, you know, sincere reformers within the Catholic Church are horrified by the schism. They've been trying to end it since it began, and they start what is called the conciliar movement, conciliar movement. And that comes from the fact that they thought the only way we can end this is go back to the ancient church practice of holding a church council.

Only a church council, they thought, would have enough authority to tell a pope what to do. And so that was the idea they came up with. And you had quite a few sincere reformers get on this idea. And so, well, oh gone it, I left something out. But I'll just tell you.

Some of these people come together and they call the Council of Pisa, Council of Pisa, you know, city where you've got the Leaning Tower of Pisa, okay. That's where this is going to take place. The trouble is, the Council of Pisa was made up almost purely of reformers.

And they were a little bit too idealistic. They only wanted the true believers to be there. And so they rejected any politicians being there at the Council of Pisa. And, of course, the problem with that was they declare both the popes at the time, schismatic popes, to be illegitimate, and they elect a third pope.

We're going to leave the names out at this point, so you'll forget them anyway. And so they elect this third pope, and they thought this is going to end it. But the trouble about it is the politicians, it didn't have their blessing. And, you know, these politicians are a little more powerful in that they're kings, you know, or emperors.

And so they said, okay, you elected a third pope. We're not going to recognize them. We're going to keep sending our money to these other two guys. And so you now have three popes. And remember, I told you all the shenanigans that were going on. You had some rulers were saying, well, we're not going to let the tithe go in because it'd be a great sin if I send the tithe to the wrong person.

And we had, you know, these countries, I support this pope and this country at war, this country, well, if you're going to support him, I'm going to support this one. And remember, for the Poor folks in the pew, which pope do I follow? Because remember, the pope's supposed to have the keys to heaven, and I follow the wrong, you know, pope, and I die, and I go up to those pearly gates, I'm going to find the gates are locked.

And so it was, and some, you know, I want to get out of the tomb, you know, you know, you know, when the Lord comes again. So this was a just incredible, divisive situation. And finally, a later Holy Roman Emperor decides this has got to end. And he sent letters, communications, all the other rulers, and say, let's all agree that this needs to end.

And the result of that is 1414, the Council of Constance, the same council that's going to burn Hus at the stake, although that was considered to be an unimportant event at the time. It turns out it wasn't. But their focus is not on Hus, it is on ending this great schism.

And so they declare all three schismatic popes to be illegitimate, and they elect one, Martin V, and they all agree they will withhold funding the other ones. You know, they'll only send the tithe to this guy. And so that does end the great schism in 1417. But needless to say, with all the results of Wycliffe and Hoos, seed had been planted across Europe.

That if the church doesn't get his act together, you can be sure something else is going to happen down the line. And we all know what that's going to be. 1417, 1517. What happens? The American Lutheran. Martin Luther. Isn't that pretty neat how the Lord worked out? Exactly.

He gave them 100 years to get their act straight. They didn't do it. And this little monk in Germany is going to nail those 95 theses on Wittenberg church door. And Lord willing, if y'all want to continue this next summer, we'll start somewhere around there. Okay? So do we have time remaining?

How much? 20 minutes. Huh? 20 minutes. Yeah, 20 minutes remaining? I got through that a whole lot faster than I thought I was. Did I miss anything? Is my thing working? Okay. But we already did all that, didn't we? Well, I'm done, folks. I'm embarrassed. Usually I'd never have enough time to finish.

Did y'all have any questions before we end it? Yes, sir. Was Martin V the good guy or bad guy? Well, that that's a matter of opinion, okay. Compared to the others, I'd say he was better. I wouldn't, all right, but and the schism does end. One of these schismatic popes, like the last one of the Avion papacy, he's one that orders the lawless.

Lawlers apparently spread from England to other parts of Europe, and he just ordered them all to be killed. Another one of these schismatic popes that was during the time of Hus, he decides to go to war. You know, the popes are also political officials. They rule central Italy.

They're actually the lord, feudal lord of central Italy, papal states. He got a dispute with the king of Naples, and so he calls a crusade against the king of Naples. I mean, there's no religious reason at all. It's just, you know, a little local war, and that so scandalized Europe that that's one of the things that really got Hus upset, you know, watching that.

You know, that he is using a crusade as an excuse to take care of his own little local problem, you know, politics. Yes, sir. You said that the Council of Pisa was made up of mostly the foreigners that happened before John Huss? No, that's going on. Hus is around, and he's active at that time, but he hasn't yet been called to account yet.

Yeah. Yeah. All right. Reformers, there, you're not talking about Reformation. Well, Catholic Reformers. You guys are saying, even during the Reformation, the Catholics have what they call the Counter-Reformation. And in the Counter-Reformation, is when the Catholic, the high point, Protestants would say the low point, of the Catholic Reform movement is the Council of Trent.

And if you go back and read the Council of Trent, it is very shocking what they say about Protestants. Quite frankly, according to the Council of Trent, a Muslim has a greater chance of salvation than a Protestant. There are something like, I think, some 90 or something anathemas, which is cursing processes to hell, within the Council of Trent.

And the Catholic Church officially has never repudiated the Council of Trent. Now, most Catholics are totally unaware of this, and they would be shocked to know that this is still, quote-unquote, official Catholic position. And that's also when they absolutely said priests cannot marry. Up until the Council of Trent, there was still priests marrying, actually, in the medieval period.

Although a lot of times the marriage wasn't what you call a full marriage. See, they had degrees of marriage back then. They had this thing called concubinage. For example, a Zwink. One of the Protestant reformers, he was the son of a priest. And it was perfectly okay. But Zwingli's mother was a concubine of a priest, and he got a special papal dispensation to have a concubine, but not a wife.

There's all kinds of weird arrangements in the medieval period that most people are not aware of. But the Council of Kant said, no way can priesties must be celibate. And I think we're seeing the repercussions of that today if you're keeping eye on what's going on in Pennsylvania.

All right. So, any other questions? Yes, sir? Regarding priestly celibacy, where is it in the Bible that says well, they take some passages from Paul, but I think I would argue they definitely take them out of context. From the best sources I have seen, the real drive source of celibacy in the Catholic Church really doesn't come from Scripture.

It comes from Greek philosophy, particularly Stoicism. Stoicism was really down on sex, just put that simple. And that seems to, the Stoic idea that sex ruins spirituality seems to have been. Penetrated the church, and I think that's more the driving force for it, you know, rather than scripture.

Then you see the Eastern Orthodox Church, the priests will continue to be allowed to marry. It's only the Roman Catholics that go that direction, and they don't firmly hardcore go that direction to the Council of Trent. Because Luther says it's okay to marry, it's sort of like a reaction.

Well, you say it's okay, we're going to definitely say it's not okay. You know, sort of a, I think it's sort of a knee-jerk reaction, you know. And they have, I think, repaid the price for that. Okay, yes, sir. So it seems like sometimes the Holy Roman Emperor is French, sometimes it's German, sometimes it's Spanish.

How did that work? Like, how did they elect the Holy Emperor? Well, for most of the medieval period, later medieval period, he's going to be German, mostly. But you've got to remember, the French are German. They're the Franks. Okay? And the first Holy Roman Emperors were Frankish. You know, Charlemagne, for example.

But Charlemagne, when he dies, the empire is divided three ways. That goes to a very long, extended thing. But ultimately, what eventually happens is the Hofsburg family in Austria gets a lock on it. Once they got a lock on it, I can't remember who the first Hausburg, you got me embarrassed here.

I can't remember who the first one was. But once he got that lock on it, it remains Hausburg from that point on, right down to World War I, you know, when it finally blows apart. But and the Hausburgs, and how they did, basically, they had a system where they bribed the electors.

See, most of the royalty of Europe are they inherit their kingship. But the Holy Roman Emperors, oddly enough, was elective. And what you have, certain princes through certain kingdoms had the right to cast a vote, and basically these different candidates would bribe the electors to vote for me, you know.

And that's how that worked. Okay? Yes, ma'am. The concept of purgatory in the Catholic Church, has that ended? At what point is that still a common as far as I understand? I'm not a real expert on all Catholic theologies. It is still very valid in Catholicism. Okay. Yes, ma'am.

Was there any evidence or documentation of Selia? What's that? Well, ma'am, you've had that since time immemorial. Yeah, I'll just leave that. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting, we have a plastic camera for outside snow. Well, there's a lot of Czechs over there. That makes sense. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, a lot of the Moravians, you know, they would carry the legacy of Hus.

And although the sad thing is, you know, during the Protestant wars, after the Battle of White Mountain, Bohemia goes back Catholic. I mean, basically, they killed or ran out all the cap the Protestant nobility. And basically, if you want to be a Protestant in Bohemia, you want an early grave.

And so ever since then, the majority of the country is Catholic. And so it's always kind of amazed me how the Czechs have this fine memory of Hus, and yet they're Catholic now. So that's kind of sad. But, you know, just sort of like the early Christians in Jerusalem were scattered.

The scattering of the Hussites would spread the gospel to all parts of the world, really. Okay.