Professors and students of his own race supported him, but the Germans at the university took offence and a long struggle ensued, culminating in the secession of the Germans in a body in 1409 to found a new university at Leipsic.

The quarrel, having started over a philosophic question,--Wyclif and Huss being realists and the Germans nominalists,--took a more serious turn when it came to a definition of the church {39} and of the respective spheres of the civil and ecclesiastical authorities.

Defining the church as the body of the predestinate, and starting a campaign against indulgences, Huss soon fell under the ban of his superiors.

After burning the bulls of John XXIII Huss withdrew from Prague.

Summoned to the Council of Constance, he went thither, under safe-conduct from the Emperor Sigismund, and was immediately cast into a noisome dungeon.