While the nobles threw down their gauntlet to the Council in this formal manner, the main body of the people showed their feeling by fierce riots against the monks. Churches and monasteries were burnt; many monks were driven from Prague, and some priests were killed in the riots. The Archbishop of Prague determined to stand by his Order; and he too fixed on the Communion in both kinds as the dividing line between the two parties. Finding that he could neither prohibit this practice nor obtain compensation for the injuries done to the clergy, he laid Prague under an Interdict.
This Interdict became a new source of division. The Utraquists utterly disregarded it, and exposed themselves to the charge of rebellion against the Church. The Catholics, on the other hand, scrupulously recognised the archbishop’s decree, and therefore felt bound to celebrate their services only in the Vys̆ehrad, which was outside the prohibited area. The Catholic visits to that fortress were compared by the Utraquists to the more celebrated pilgrimages to Mecca; and hence the name of Mahometan was added to the other terms of abuse, which were being so freely scattered by the rival theologians.
The attitude of Wenceslaus was wavering and uncertain. He had, indeed, been disposed to accept the Council’s condemnation of the granting of the Cup to the laity; but he had used his best influence to save Hus, and he had resented his execution, as another proof of that faithlessness of Sigismund, of which he had already had such painful experience. He refused, however, to join the League which the nobles had formed to defend the liberties of Bohemia, partly, perhaps, because they connected it with a defence of the practice just condemned by the Council; and he even consented to support an Opposition League formed by the Catholic nobles in defence of the Church.
Sigismund, on his part, began to entertain hopes that he might contrive to sow division between these rival parties; and, feeling that his share in the death of Hus was the point which prevented his success in these intrigues, he wrote to the Bohemian nobles assuring them that he deeply regretted that death, that he had done his best to prevent it, and that, if Hus had only consented to come under the Emperor’s protection to Constance, instead of starting alone from Prague, all would have been well; but he added that he could not have saved Hus at the last, without breaking up the Council altogether. Whether these falsehoods deceived any one may be doubted. At any rate they did not accomplish Sigismund’s immediate purpose; for, when the Bishop of Litomys̆l arrived, with authority from the Council to suppress heresy in Bohemia, he received no encouragement either from king or from nobles, and, when he attempted violence, he was driven out by force.