John Huss: his life, teachings and death, after five hundred years/Chapter 10

by David Schley Schaff

CHAPTER X

CONDEMNED AND BURNED AT THE STAKE

Melius est bene mori quam male vivere; propter mortis supplicium non est peccandum; præsentem vitam finire in gratia est exire de miseria.

—Huss’s letter to Christian of Prachaticz. Ap., 1413.

Better is it to die well than to live ill. To avoid death we must not sin. To end the present life in grace is to pass out of misery.

The council’s session being over, and while Huss was on the way to his prison for the last time, John of Chlum pressed through the crowd and took his hand. The recognition was like a cup of water from a far country. What a joy it was, Huss wrote, to have John of Chlum stretch forth his hand, not ashamed to hold it out to him, an abject heretic bound in chains and hooted at by all.^[1]

While the bolts of the prison were being fastened upon him, a confidential address was being made by the king to the council before it scattered. It betrays how completely he had put himself on its side and how ready he was to proceed to the ultimate verdict demanded for obstinate heretics, and which the inquisition was accustomed to pronounce. Although the address was intended only for the prelates, who still lingered in the refectory but had risen to retire, some of the Bohemians—John of Chlum, Wenzel of Duba and Peter Mladenowicz—after taking leave of Huss, had returned without the king’s knowledge and overheard what he was about to say. Of the many charges brought against the prisoner, so spoke the king, any one of them was sufficient for his condemnation. In case he did not abjure, he was to be burned or otherwise treated as the ecclesiastical laws called for. But, even if Huss abjured, he was not to be trusted, for, if allowed to go back to Bohemia, he and his sympathizers would disseminate the same errors and also new errors, and the new errors would be worse than the old. He should be forbidden altogether to preach or to go to his sympathizers. In Poland, the errors had a large following as well as in Bohemia, and the council should direct his brother, the king of Bohemia, and the princes and prelates to destroy them branch and root, wherever they might be found. In the mouth of two or three witnesses, as it is written, is a thing established. The council should make a clean sweep of all his disciples and especially of the one detained at Constance. “Who do you call him?” The king’s defective memory being supplied by members of the council, the king went on to say: “Yes, Jerome—he is the pupil and Huss is the master.” If you have done with that one—Huss—in a single day, you will have little trouble in dealing with the other. “I was a young man,” he concluded, “when this sect arose and started in Bohemia, and see how it has grown and multiplied.” As Palacky says, these words of Sigismund spoken in a corner of the Franciscan refectory soon resounded throughout all Bohemia and cost the speaker little less than the crown of a kingdom.^[2] Sigismund was soon to take leave of the council and what was done he wanted done quickly. He referred to his approaching journey to Spain, whose purpose was to induce Benedict XIII to resign. According to Mladenowicz, the members left the refectory in high spirits over the king’s words.

During the remaining four weeks of his life spent in the Grayfriars prison, Huss wrote a number of letters to his friends in Constance and Bohemia, now in Czech, now in Latin. All the while he was suffering from physical weakness and pain. The wonder is that the prisoner had any spirit left. On June 8, the last day of public hearing, he looked exceedingly pale—valde pallidus. He was worn out not only with the anxiety of prolonged imprisonment, but with aggravated ailments—hemorrhages and vomiting, the stone, headache and toothache—so that, as he himself wrote, his nights were spent without sleep.^[3] What snatches of sleep he caught were disturbed by dreams. Among many others was the vision of hosts of serpents with heads at their tails, but not one able to harm him.

The comfort of receiving communications from his friends was not entirely withdrawn. Letters found their way to him, and he asked that they be not written on large sheets lest they arouse suspicion and fail to reach his cell. Toward the end of the period, perhaps with reference to Paul’s letters written from his captivity in Rome, he closed letter after letter with the words, “written in prison in chains,” or “bound in prison in chains, expecting death,” or “written in chains in expectation of the flames.“^[4]

The respite before his auto-da-fe was evidently prolonged in order that no effort might be spared to induce Huss to abjure. He was interviewed by many persons, sent to persuade him to that act. Baskets, as he called them, were held out to him, by which, if he chose to put himself in them, he might escape. Threats and persuasions were employed, let us hope, more from the sentiment of mercy than from the ambition to break up a heretic’s obduracy.

Among those who visited him were Zabarella, d’Ailly and Palecz. One doctor, who urged him to submit, declared that if the council should tell him he had but one eye, he was bound to agree that it was so. To this suggestion Huss replied that if the whole world told him he had but one eye, yet he could not, so long as he had reason, say so without doing violence to his conscience. After some further remarks the doctor left, saying that Huss was right and that the illustration was not a good one.

For one of the visitors, whom Huss called “the father,” Huss had cordial words of regard. He was one of the leaders of the council and it has been conjectured that he was Zabarella or the cardinal archbishop of Ostia, but his identity is not known.^[5] It seems evident that his sympathy for the prisoner was unfeigned. He left with Huss the following form of abjuration, which, while it committed Huss to submission to the council and to penance, yet distinctly states that much charged against him had never entered his mind. The paper runs as follows:

 

Over and above the declarations made by me, which I desire to be understood as repeating, I declare anew that although much is laid to my charge which never entered my mind, nevertheless, in the matter of all the charges brought forward I hereby submit myself humbly to the merciful appointment, decision, and correction of the most holy general council, to abjure, to revoke, to recant, to undergo merciful penance, and to do all things and in several that the said most holy council in its mercy and grace shall deem fit to ordain for my salvation, commending myself to the same with the utmost devotion.^[6]

 

Two letters written by Huss to “the father” are extant. After expressing his debt for the good man’s loving and paternal grace. Huss announced he could not submit to the council on the terms proposed. Many things accounted scandalous he regarded as truth. In abjuring he would be perjuring himself and, more, would be doing injury to the cause of religion among God’s people to whom he had preached. He had appealed to Christ, the most mighty and just Judge, and it was better that he should die than secure a temporary escape and finally fall into hell-fire.

In reply “the father” reminded Huss that there were many eminent men in the council and bade him listen to his mother, leaning not on his own understanding. It was he who likened Huss’s proposed abjuration to the basket in which Paul was let down from Damascus and escaped. He attempted to set Huss’s scruples aside as invalid and declared that, in submitting to the council, he would not necessarily be condemning views he held, but be doing nothing more than acknowledging the authority of the tribunal which condemned him. The responsibility would rest upon the council. And as for perjury, the opprobrium, if any, would fall not upon Huss, but upon that body and its learned men who pronounced the sentence. Augustine, Origen and Peter the Lombard had yielded to authority, as he himself on one occasion also had done when he was accused of being in error and accepted admonition. The final Judge had appointed the Apostles and their successors in council as the court of decision.

In his second letter Huss repeated the reasons he had given in the first for declining to abjure, for abjuration would necessitate his giving up many truths and incurring final punishment, unless, perchance, he should repent of his abjuration before death. He closed by expressing the assurance that Christ would give him strength to hold out to the end. These attempts to move Huss were continued almost to the last moment of his imprisonment, but the many exhorters—multiplices exhortatores—using “many words,” failed to change his mind.^[7] He was not willing to act on the principle that it was a merit to confess guilt even where the party was innocent and the tribunal confessed to was august and, as supposed, divinely appointed. One of his exhorters told him of the following case: A book was placed at the side of a saint’s bed. He was accused of having stolen it and keeping it hid away. On denying the charge, they showed him the book hid away in his bed. The saint at once admitted his guilt. Another exhorter told of a certain nun who lived in a cloister in man’s clothes and was accused of bearing a son. The nun confessed to the charge and kept the child, but later she was proved to be innocent. An Englishman, come on a like errand, reminded Huss that in England many Wyclifites had signed papers of abjuration prepared by the archbishops. He went on to say that if he were in Huss’s place he would abjure for his conscience’ sake.

The underlying idea in these efforts to bring Huss to an abjuration while he continued to hold to the things abjured was that there is merit in obedience.

At Huss’s request Palecz came to see him yet once again,^[8] in his very last hours, and, for the very reason that he had been a most determined enemy, Huss asked, though in vain, that Palecz might be appointed as his confessor. Palecz proved to be like one of Job’s friends. “Every one,” he had said, “that heard you preach was infected with the heresy of the remanence of the bread in the sacrament of the altar.” He now rejoined that he had not said every one, but many who heard him preach. Huss reaffirmed his statement, and went on: “Oh, master, how dreadful is your greeting and how dreadfully you are sinning! You know I shall die here, or perhaps, if I rise from my bed, I shall be burned. What reward will then be given you in Bohemia!” At this last interview, the aforetime friends shed tears together and Huss begged Palecz’s pardon for any opprobrious word he had uttered and especially for the epithet “fiction-monger” which he had used in his tract addressed against him.^[9] Huss also reminded Palecz of what he had said about him to the commissioners, that since Christ’s birth no heretic had written imore dangerous things against the church, with the exception of Wyclif, than he himself. Michael de Causis also was several times at Huss’s prison and said to the jailers aside that by God’s grace Huss who was a heretic should burn. In reporting these few words, Huss wrote that he had no feelings of bitterness and was praying for Michael.^[10]

Had the prisoner still a flickering hope that Sigismund might exercise a veto power, it was quickly snuffed out. He recalled that at the session, June 8, the king had given him assurance of an opportunity to reply in writing, an assurance confirmed by d’Ailly, and also a promise of a final hearing.^[11] He appealed to the nobles of Bohemia to join in petitioning Sigismund to keep his promise. Great would be the king’s confusion, he thought, if he failed to keep it. He almost allowed himself to think that Sigismund from the beginning had no intention of treating him fairly. Against warnings, he had left Bohemia. Jerome of Prague, the good cobbler, Andrew the Pole, and others had told him before he left Prague that he would not return.^[12] Huss went so far as to write that Sigismund had condemned him before his enemies did. The king might, at least, have imitated Pilate and declared, “I find no fault in this man” or, in view of the safe-conduct, sent him back to Bohemia to be judged there by the king and clergy. He had communicated to him through Lord Henry Lefl that, in case the king did not approve of the council’s judgment, he would be sent back in safety. At a later date, June 21, apparently lest he should sin in not returning good for evil, he wrote that he thanked Sigismund for all the kindness he had shown, but, in spite of himself, a week later he expressed the opinion that Sigismund had acted deceitfully throughout the whole proceeding.^[13]

His thoughts were much upon Jerome, “his beloved associate.” He had no word from him except that, like himself, he was also languishing in a foul prison, expecting death on account of the faith to which he had borne such noble witness to the Bohemians.

As for the council, he drew, in his letters, from his own experiences as well as upon what he heard. He contrasted the spiritual leaders gathered at Constance, who called themselves Christ’s vicars, with the Apostles. They announced themselves to be “the holy church and the most holy council, which cannot err.” By its own decree the council had declared itself the highest authority on earth. Nevertheless, Huss continues, it did err by falling at the knees of John and kissing his feet—the recent pope, who, according to the council’s own declaration, was a base murderer and sodomite, simoniac and heretic. In regard to himself, the council had erred at least in three ways—by making up false articles from his books, by putting false interpretations upon some of them and by its curtailed quotations, which misrepresented him. He, therefore, had good reason for believing that the council was not infallible, and happy were those who rejected the pomp, avarice and hypocrisy of antichrist and held to Christ as the head of the church.

As for the pope, how mistaken the opinion was which Stanislaus and Palecz had set forth, that he is the head of the church, its sufficient ruler, its vivifying heart, its neverfailing fountain of authority and the all-sufficient refuge to which Christians should flee-seeing that at the time he was writing there was no pope at all; but the church abides without a pope, having Christ for its all-sufficient head, its lifegiving fountain, its unfailing refuge. Again he returned to the fallibility of the council and of the pope, whom the council had sentenced for the “crime of heresy.”^[14] Let the preachers take note that the head is cut off, he whom once the councillors pronounced God on earth, incapable of doing sin or practising simony—even the pope who is the heart of the church, its spiritual life-giver, the fountain from whom proceed all goodness and power, the sun of the holy church, the unfailing refuge to whom Christians should run. He, the head, is cut off. God on earth is bound. His sins are openly declared, the fountain dried up, the sun obscured, the heart torn out, the refuge fled from Constance. The very men who voted to condemn him for heresy because he sold indulgences, bishoprics and benefices—they themselves bought these things from him and did a good business in selling them over again. John of Leitomysl sought twice to purchase the see of Prague for money. Why did the cardinals elect him pope when they knew well that he was a homicide and killed the most holy father? Here Huss was referring to Alexander V, whom it was charged John had murdered. Why did prelates on bended knee adore him, kiss his feet and call him holy father—sanctissimus pater—when they knew he was a heretic and a sodomite? Why did they suffer him to practise simony at the very moment he was exercising the functions of supreme pontiff?

Seldom has there been a more terrific characterization of the papacy as committed to bad hands. Though nowadays John XXIII is seldom, if ever, given a place by Roman Catholic historians in the list of legitimate popes; nevertheless, he was elected by cardinals, an œcumenical council was convened by his call and he was accepted by the council of Constance as pope and deposed by it as a true pope. Other popes had been as bad, some of whom Huss points out in his writings on the church. John XII, 954–964, an illegitimate son, made pope at sixteen, was charged by a Roman synod with every crime of which depraved human nature was capable—murder, fornication, perjury. He was killed in the very act of committing adultery and was said to have drunk the health of the devil. Of some of the popes of the tenth century even a Catholic historian, Möhler, has said that they were horrible popes, whose crimes alone secured for them the papal dignity. Benedict IX, 1033–1046, elected as a mere boy, is pronounced by Gregorovius more boyish than Caligula and more criminal than Heliogabalus. It seems, he says, as if a demon from hell, in the guise of a priest, were occupying St. Peter’s chair.^[15] Alexander VI, 1492–1503, was yet to come, a pontiff, during whose reign tragedy after tragedy occurred in the papal household, his children married in the Vatican, courtesans openly flaunted, himself a voluptuary, a man of untamed sensuality, leading, as Pastor says, a vicious life to the very end.^[16]

In his last characterization of the council, June 26, 1416, Huss called it proud, avaricious and iniquitous with every crime. It had done more harm than good. The councillors, he wrote, will be scattered abroad like butterflies, and their decrees last as long as spiders’ webs. The words were biting, but there was some truth in them, notably in the matter of the decision by which the ecumenical council was pronounced the supreme tribunal in the church. Huss felt that the council had striven to frighten or coerce him to submission, and that the resistance he was able to offer was a direct gift from above.

In these prison hours, his thoughts went out often to his “fatherland,” Bohemia, and he bewailed the contumely which had been heaped upon it on his account. As the end of his life drew nearer, his references to his faithful Bohemian friends became more and more tender. As a result of the council’s dealing with him and the opinions he represented, he looked forward to times of dire persecution in Bohemia, in which the lords temporal should make their influence felt, for they were more enlightened, he wrote, in the things of the Gospel than the lords spiritual. He urged them to avoid all unworthy priests and to love good priests, according to their works, and to prevent other lords from oppressing good priests. Of the fidelity of his friends in Constance, John of Chlum and Wenzel of Duba, he could not say too much. He expressed his warmest obligations to the Bohemian and Moravian noblemen and also the Polish nobles whose appeals to Sigismund had interceded for the fair treatment the royal safe-conduct implied. He requested them to give heed to the reports that Chlum and others would carry back with them to Bohemia. It must have been with the deepest pang of homesickness that he expressed the hope that John of Chlum and other friends, so true to him in Constance, might arrive safe in their native land; and he called upon them, when they got back to Bohemia, to follow the king who never dies, a man of sorrows, and the king of glory, who giveth life eternal.^[17]

He sent messages of affection and greeting to the wives and children of Bohemian nobles. In urging Wenzel of Duba, “that noble lord,” to put away the vanities of the world and live in holy matrimony, he represented him as a man who had been a soldier in many countries to the hurt of body and soul. Just before his death he heard of Duba’s purpose to marry, and he wrote him a letter of congratulation.^[18]

His references to Wenzel and his queen, Sophia, show his warm attachment to those sovereigns and his obligations for their constant kindness and for their zeal in seeking to secure his release. He called for prayers that the Lord might keep them in his grace and at last give them eternal joy. In conveying a greeting, a week before his death, he expressed the hope that the queen might be loyal to the truth and not take offense at him as though he had been a heretic, and in his very last letter he mentions the name of “his gracious mistress, the queen,” and begs again to express to her his thanks for all the favors which she had shown to him.^[19] His recollection of this lady, who had attended the services at the Bethlehem chapel, is as honorable to him as it was to her. It is a tender note when he expressed the fear that she, to whom he was so much indebted, might be led by false reports to change her mind toward him and regard him as a heretic.

Nor did he forget his other friends, not so lofty in position. To Jesenicz he sent a message urging him to marry. Writing to Master Martin, he sent greetings to people of humble station, mentioning some of them by name, women and men, shoemakers and tailors—“all his beloved brethren in Christ.” No wonder that a man of such warm sympathies should have drawn the people of Bohemia strongly to him.

Martin, with whom Huss had left his will before leaving Prague, he now urged to live according to Christ’s law and preach the Gospel, to cast out the love for rich garments which, alas, he himself had loved and worn. He bade him take delight in reading the Scriptures, especially the New Testament and, when he did not understand what he read, to refer at once to the commentators he had at hand. He bade him hold fast whatever he had heard of good from him and to cast aside anything he had seen which was unseemly, praying to God for him that God might deign to spare him. Lament, Huss wrote, the past, amend the present, be on your guard for the future. He was referring to sins. Do not be afraid to die for Christ, if thou wouldst live with Christ. Fear not them which kill the body but are not able to kill the soul, and, if they should attack him for his adhesion to himself, reply: “I hope the master was a good Christian. As for the things which he wrote and taught in the schools and which were attacked, I do not understand them all nor have I read them through.“^[20]

Nor, in these solemn hours, did he forget the university to which he owed his education and which, through him in large part, had become the scene of contention the place where he had made warm friendships, some of which were, alas, broken. To its teachers and students, “dearly beloved in Christ Jesus,” one of his very last letters was addressed. He expressed regret that his course had been the occasion of division when he hoped it would make for union. He had not abjured his books or their teachings, which he regarded as truly Scriptural. He sent them a solemn profession in these words:

 

I, Master John Huss, in chains and in prison, now standing on the shore of this present life and expecting on the morrow a dreadful death—which will, I hope, purge away my sin—find no heresy in myself and accept with all my heart any truth whatsoever that is worthy to be believed.^[21]

 

The last words of this letter express a wish that the university men might love Bethlehem chapel, and commended to their consideration “his most faithful and constant supporter and comforter,” Peter Mladenowicz.

Huss’s affection for Bethlehem chapel was expressed in tender messages. In a letter addressed to “all the Bohemian people,” he begged the Praguers to support the chapel—sacellum—so far as God might permit his Word to be preached there. On account of it, he said, the devil burned with great rage and he had excited the priests against it when he saw that his kingdom was in danger of being overthrown by the activity in that place. He expressed the hope that it might please God to preserve that chapel and that it might become more useful through the ministry of others than it had been through his own. The prayer was not destined to have a permanent answer. Bethlehem chapel was destroyed by the Jesuits in 1786, so that it is doubtful if a single vestige of it remains.

The death, whose approach Huss had constantly before him in the Franciscan prison, he often referred to as “the dreadful death.” He was left in complete uncertainty as to its date, but he was expecting the summons at any moment; he expected it to be by fire.^[22] By this death, he hoped to be cleansed and purified, like the old martyrs, from his sins and made meet for admission to the presence of the holy Saviour. His sufferings in prison and the delay of his death had given him time, as he wrote, to think of the shame endured by Christ and to meditate on his cruel crucifixion. It had given him time to consider the many pangs endured by the saints, and that the way to heaven out of this world to the world to come is by sorrow and tears. So the martyrs had to learn. They were cut in pieces, buried and flayed alive, boiled in caldrons, quartered, burned and otherwise tortured until death gave relief. He comforted himself also by the example of John the Baptist, by the Maccabees, who were ready to be cut to pieces rather than to eat flesh—II Macc. 6: 18—and by Eliezer, who refused to deny having caten flesh as a means of escaping martyrdom. He trusted in Christ for patient endurance in the present and glory hereafter. He prayed he might not be allowed to recede from the divine truth nor to swear away the errors falsely charged against him. And, from time to time, he praised God for the help he had given to him in his many trials. Thinking of Jerome, he felt sure that that strong man would be of a braver spirit in suffering the ordeal of death than he would be, “a weak sinner.” But especially did he comfort himself by the examples of Paul and Peter, to whom, despised and put to death by men. Christ gave the crown of glory, receiving them into the heavenly fatherland.^[23]

Nor had Huss entirely broken loose from depending upon the merits of the saints. Several times, in his letters, he referred to their intercession and, in one of his very last, written to John of Chlum, June 29, he expressed the hope that the blessed Peter and Paul would intercede for him and render him strong by their help, to become a partaker of their glory. At one time he expressed the hope that God would give him deliverance “through the merits of the saints.”^[24]

It was, however, not without a great struggle that he submitted. It was an easy thing to quote and expound words of Scripture, but it was most difficult, as James counselled, to count it all joy to be in the midst of divers trials. Christ knew. Huss wrote, that he would rise on the third day, and on the eve of his death he said: “Let not your heart be troubled.” And yet he also said in the garden: “My soul is sorrowful, even unto death.”

In one of his letters to friends in Constance he offered up the petition:

 

Oh, loving Christ, draw us, weaklings, after thyself, for if thou drawest us not we cannot follow thee. Vouchsafe a brave spirit that it may be ready. If the flesh is weak, let thy grace go before, proceed in the middle, and follow. For without thee we can do nothing, but indeed for thy sake we can go to a cruel death. Vouchsafe a ready spirit, a fearless heart, a right faith, a firm hope and a perfect love, that for thy sake we may lay down our life with all patience and joy. Amen.^[25]

 

Christ’s mercy and safe-conduct could be relied on implicitly. To John of Chlum and Duba he wrote: “What God promises His servants He performs. What He pledges Himself to give, He fulfils. He deceives no one by a safe-conduct. No servant who is faithful to Him does He send away.”^[26]

The Scriptures were like springs of living water at which he drank deep drafts to satisfy his spiritual weariness. Again and again he stops at such passages as these: “Fear not them that kill the body and after that have no more that they can do.” “If any man will come after me, let him take up his cross and follow me.” “Where I am there shall my servant be also.” If the jail of Bedford was turned into a gate of heaven, the place where the guide-book to the heavenly country, The Pilgrim’s Progress, was written, so also in the prisons in the friaries of Constance a ladder was set up between heaven and earth up which the outgoings of the Bohemian prisoner’s soul ascended and down which descended messages of hope and strength.

While Huss was daily waiting in expectation of death, the council held on its way, making ready for that event. The protest of the two hundred and fifty Bohemian and Moravian nobles was read before it, June 12. Three days later the council was proceeding with the work of legislating against heresy and solemnly forbade the giving of the cup to the laity. This notorious edict set forth that the cup as well as the bread had been given by Christ to the disciples on the night of his betrayal and that it was the practice of the early church to dispense both elements to all believers. Nevertheless, in the course of time, the church had adopted the custom of withholding the cup from the laity on the ground that, as the Schoolmen had alleged, the whole Christ is in each of the elements. The refusal to follow the custom of the church and to withhold the cup from the laity was pronounced heresy. All bishops and inquisitors were commanded to proceed against those who held this view and distributed the cup and, in case they remained impenitent, they were to be turned over to the secular arm. The edict was ordered sent to Bohemia, where it called forth the nickname for the councillors at Constance, Doctors of Custom. According to Gerson, the church was to depend for the enforcement of the edict more upon the worldly arm than upon moral persuasion. The edict placed the church above the plain letter of Scripture.^[27]

The occasion of this legislation was the practice which had sprung up in Bohemia. There is no evidence that Huss had distributed the wine to laymen. After his departure for Constance, Jacob of Mies, called on account of his stature Jacobellus, made the matter the subject of dissertation at the university, where he had been a master since 1397. At least in three churches of Prague, St. Martin’s, St. Adelbert’s and St. Michael’s, the cup was distributed. The apostolic vicar sought to check the practice, but the sentence of excommunication pronounced upon those using the cup was not heeded.

When the news of the innovation reached Huss in the Dominican prison, he wrote to his friends in Constance,^[28] reminding them of a tract he had sent forth on the subjectwhether in Constance or not we cannot be certain—and stating he had nothing further to say in addition to what he had there said concerning the teachings of the gospels and Paul. He urged his friends to make an effort to secure from the council permission for the Bohemians to use the cup.

The council’s action, at its thirteenth session, June 15, was treated by Huss as a renunciation of the Gospel. “What madness,” he wrote, “to condemn as an error the Gospel of Christ and Paul’s epistles, wherein Paul said he had received the words of institution not from man but from Christ; ay, to condemn as an error Christ’s very act and example when he ordained the cup for all adult Christians! The council actually calls it an error that believing laymen should be allowed to drink of the cup of the Lord, and priests persisting in giving them to drink are heretics. Oh, St. Paul, thou sayest to all the faithful,’As oft as ye eat this bread and drink this cup ye do show forth the Lord’s death till he come,’ that is, till the day of judgment, and now it is said that the custom of the Roman Church is against it!”^[29]

Later, June 21, he wrote to Hawlik of the Bethlehem chapel not to refuse the cup of the Lord which the Apostles dispensed, for there is no Scripture against it, but only custom. Custom is not to be followed, but Christ’s example. The council, alleging custom, has denied the communion of the cup to laymen, and the priest who dispenses it is a heretic. What madness to damn Christ’s ordinance as an error! Huss urged Hawlik not to oppose Jacobellus longer, lest a schism be made among the faithful—an occurrence which would greatly delight the devil. Again, in a letter which is of doubtful authenticity, he urged the priest to whom it was written to distribute both elements at the Supper.

The tract in which Huss had embodied his views was written apparently before he left Prague, for its numerous quotations^[30] from the Fathers seem to render it impossible for him to have written it in Constance. It is entitled The Reception by Laymen of Christ’s Blood under the Form of Wine. Nine-tenths of the tract is taken up with quotations from the accredited church authorities, from Cyprian, Jerome and Augustine down to Albertus Magnus and Lyra. Huss cited Gelasius, who declared that the use of one element cannot be separated from the other without great sacrilege. He cited Ambrose, who was followed by Thomas Aquinas,^[31] to show that Christ’s flesh is eaten for the welfare of the body and his blood for the well-being of the soul. He also cited the commentator, Lyra, as saying that in the primitive church both elements had been distributed in the sacrament. Huss concludes the tract by dwelling upon the accounts in Matthew and I Corinthians. He asserts that the consecrated layman should partake of both elements as much as the priest, for Paul said: “As oft as ye eat this bread and drink this cup ye do show forth the Lord’s death.”

The next action taken by the council bearing on Huss’s case and of which he heard in prison^[32] was the decree ordering his books burned—even his books written in Czech, which the councillors had not even seen, much less read—Frenchmen, Italians, Britons, Spaniards, Germans and persons of other countries. Lest his friends should be intimidated by the action, he reminded them that Jeremiah’s prophecies had been burned and yet, at God’s command and while the prophet was in prison, he had dictated them over again to Baruch, adding at the same time prophecies. He gave his authority as Jeremiah 35 or 45. Mladenowicz at this point added a note to the effect that Huss did not have the book of Jeremiah at hand and that the exact reference was chapter 36 [27].^[33] In the days of the Maccabees books were burned; and in the times of the New Testament they burned holy men who had books of the divine law in their possession. Cardinals had burned all the copies of Gregory’s Morals they could lay their hands^[34] on, and Chrysostom was condemned for heresy by two councils and yet he was afterward exonerated.

The same treatment, burning in the flames, continued long after Huss’s death to be prescribed by the authorities for unwelcome publications. The custom held on well. Even in New England, by the order of the Massachusetts legislature, one of the very first theological books produced on our soil, William Pynchon’s The Meritorious Price of Our Redemption, was burned, 1650.

To the charges brought against him by the council, Huss replied on July 1 in a formal confession written with his own hand, repeating that it was his purpose not to recant. It runs thus:^[35]

 

I, John Huss, in hope a priest of Jesus Christ, fearing to offend God and fearing to fall into perjury, do hereby profess my unwillingness to abjure all or any of the articles produced against me by false witnesses. For God is my witness that I did not preach, affirm or defend them, though they say that I did. Moreover, concerning the articles extracted from my books, I say that I detest any false interpretation which any of them bears, but inasmuch as I fear to offend against the truth or to gainsay the opinion of the doctors of the church, I cannot abjure any one of them. And, if it were possible that my voice could now reach the whole worldas at the day of judgment every lie and every sin that I have committed will be made manifest-then would I gladly abjure before all the world every falsehood and error which I had either thought of saying or actually said. I write this of my own free will and choice.

Writing to his friends, he had reiterated again and again that he had not recalled or recanted a single one of the articles. He pronounced them shameless and trumped up against him by false witnesses. Although some of them were called scandalous, yet were they in agreement with the Scriptures and the doctors of the church. If he were shown good reasons for so doing, he would correct them. But, as he wrote to the university of Prague, he refused to do so simply upon the bare authority of the council. They must be shown to be plainly out of accord with the Scriptures—nolui nisi scriptura ostenderet falsitatem. The council, as he wrote at another time, had not attempted to refute him by a single text taken from Scripture or by any other arguments. On the contrary, in its attempts to silence him, it had used threats and deception.^[36]

He stuck to the ground that he could not abjure errors he had never held. This was a matter of conscience, and he refused to accept the view presented by those sent to persuade him to abjure on the basis of the council’s supremacy. For him to abjure would have meant a renunciation of false doctrine, whether the charges against him were well taken or not. He denied that there was any merit in submitting to the church.^[37]

A final deputation visited Huss, July 5, including Cardinals d’Ailly and Zabarella, the patriarch of Antioch, the archbishop of Milan, the bishop of Riga, and the English bishops of Salisbury and Bath. This influential deputation came by Sigismund’s direction, and was accompanied by the two faithful Hussite nobles, Duba and John of Chlum. Huss was led out of prison to meet the deputies who sought to secure from him a recantation, but in vain. Addressing him, John of Chlum said:^[38] “Master, we are laymen and cannot advise you, but if you feel that you have written anything hurtful, do not shrink from being instructed in regard to the charges brought against you. If, however, you do not feel yourself guilty, follow your conscience and do not do anything against it. Do not lie in God’s sight, but stand firm till death in the truth as you have known it.” At these honest words Huss wept and said: “Doctor John, know well that if I felt that I had written or preached anything contrary to the law and to holy mother church which erroneous, I would recall it, God being my witness. But I have always desired and still desire that they show me out of the Scriptures things better and more close to the truth than the things I have written and taught. And, if they are shown me, I am most ready to recall them.”

At this point one of the bishops exclaimed: “So you want to be wiser than the whole council!” To this Huss replied that he did not want to be wiser than the whole council, but he asked that they give him even the least member sitting in the council to instruct him by Scriptures more weighty and cogent than those he had used, and he was ready forthwith to recant. This statement was met by the bishops with the exclamation: “See, how obstinate he is in his heresy!”

The last scenes were to occur on the following day, the 6th of July. After more than eight months of dismal imprisonment, Huss was taken and led to the cathedral, where the council held its fifteenth session. Sigismund was there, wearing his crown, and at his side Ludwig, count palatine, Frederick of Nürnberg, Henry, duke of Bavaria, and a magnate of Hungary, whose function it was to carry the insignia of empire—the imperial apple, the crown, the sceptre, and the sword.^[39] There was a full attendance. The cardinal-archbishop of Ostia presided. Huss, who was conducted to the cathedral by the bishop of Riga, remained outside the door while the mass was being sung. He was then taken inside, and, reaching a small platform in the middle of the church raised like a table,^[40] he knelt and prayed for some time. On the platform were placed the priestly robes used at the celebration of the mass.

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.” The 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 to 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 Arius, who was a spark, a glimmer—scintilla—in Alexandria, but because the spark was not immediately put out it depopulated almost the whole world with its flame. And much worse was he than Sabellius.

With lurid strokes he pictured the evils that had grown out of the Prague heresies, even to the murder of priests, the daily contempt to which Christ’s bride, the mother of the faithful, was given over, and the mocking disregard of the keys of the church. The abomination of desolation was worse in that day than in the old days of the cruel persecution of the Christian martyrs. Then the body was oppressed; in church schisms the souls of men are destroyed. In the former case human blood was spilled; in schism the orthodox faith is put to shame. That persecution of the pagan world was to many as salt; this schism to many as death. Under fierce pagan tyrants the faith grew; in schism the faith perishes. Tyrants sinned in ignorance; in schism many sin in knowledge and in obstinacy. By schism ecclesiastical liberty suffers injury and the unity enjoined is set aside. All the laws of religion and sanctity are relaxed. Heretics should be coerced and damned, that the body of sin may be destroyed.

In the style of Bossuet, more than two centuries later, when he preached before Louis XIV and appealed to him to proceed against church dissenters and eulogized him as another Constantine, Theodosius and Justinian, 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. For that work the king was elected of God, deputed from heaven before he was chosen on earth. By executing it he would secure unending fame and unfading glory—perpetua fama et celebris gloria.

The sermon over, the council’s proctor, Henry of Piro, announced that the council would continue the prosecution of John Huss, and an admonition was made forbidding all demonstrations with hand or foot, all applause or words of disapproval or other interruption of any sort. The articles drawn from Wyclif’s writings and condemned by the university of Oxford were read. A bishop then read from the pulpit the thirty articles taken from Huss’s writings and the proceedings connected with his hearing. At the reading of the very first article, defining the church as the totality of the elect, Huss attempted to speak, but was interrupted by d’Ailly, who bade him keep silence and wait till the whole list had been read, when he might make a reply. To this method Huss objected on the ground that he would not be able to remember all the charges. Cardinal Zabarella exclaimed, “be silent. We have already heard you enough,” and bade the beadles keep Huss quiet. Then, with folded hands and in a loud voice, Huss cried out: “In the sight of God, I demand that you hear me lest I be believed to have held errors. Afterward do with me what you please.” When it was evident that the council was in no mood to listen, he bent on his knees and, lifting his eyes to heaven, prayed fervently.

When the charges were read that the accused held to the remanence of the bread and the invalidity of acts done by a priest in mortal sin, Huss again attempted to reply; and again Zabarella commanded him to be silent. But Huss persisted, saying that he had never held, taught or preached that the bread remains in the sacrament after the words of consecration. A new charge was introduced, that he had taught there were in the Godhead more persons than three, he himself being the fourth. This charge Huss emphatically denied, demanding the name of the witness; but he was answered by the announcement that it was not necessary to name him. Huss solemnly protested that such a blasphemy had not entered into his mind and that he had always asserted that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit were one God, one in essence and three in personality. It seems that on this point two priests had borne witness, the one having heard Huss in Prague and the other having gotten it by common rumor. Similarly Peter the Lombard had been charged at the fourth Lateran council with teaching a quaternity in the Deity, but he was not charged with regarding himself as a member of the Godhead, as was Huss.

The appeal Huss had made to God was also condemned. At this point, the prisoner exclaimed with a loud voice: “Oh. Lord God, see how this council condemns thy acts and thy law. I persist in saying that there is no appeal more sacred than the appeal to Jesus Christ, who is not moved by the low motive of reward or deceived by false testimony, but gives to every man what he deserves.”

When the charge was read that, while he was under the ban of excommunication, Huss had been guilty of contumacy, continuing to preach and to say mass, he again denied having been contumacious on the ground that he was under the protection of his appeal to the Higher Powers. He had sought a hearing, but his procurators had been imprisoned or otherwise treated ill. He repeated his formal protest that he had come to the council of his own free will and to give reasons for his faith. During the proceedings, when Huss referred to his having come to Constance under a royal passport—the salvus conductus—he is reported to have fixed his eyes on Sigismund, whose face was flushed with shame—ille statim vehementer erubuit. This incident is not given by Mladenowicz in his longer account, but it is found in his smaller account in the Bohemian language.^[41] A hundred years later Charles V, urged to seize Luther at Worms, is reported to have replied: “I will not blush like my predecessor, Sigismund.”

Two sentences were then pronounced by an Italian prelate, the bishop of Concordia, the one ordering his books burned and the other pronouncing Huss a heretic. The substance of the former is as follows: “The holy general council of Constance called of God . . . As a bad tree is known by its bad fruits, so John Wyclif of damned memory is known by his deadly teachings and the sons of perdition whom he hath begotten, against whom the holy council is bound to rise up, bastard and illegitimate as the offspring is, and to pull out the errors from the Lord’s field as noxious vipers and to provide proper culture that the cancer do not wind its way on to the destruction of others. In spite of the holy council’s recent condemnation of the evil teachings of John Wyclif, a man of damned memory, to the fire. John Huss, a disciple not of Christ but of John Wyclif, the heresiarch, has spread heresies through his books and by his preachings and has in the presence of a multitude of the people and the clergy pronounced John Wyclif a Catholic man and an evangelical doctor—vir catholicus et doctor evangelicus. And whereas these matters have been fully proved before the cardinals, patriarchs, the archbishops, the bishops, the other prelates, and doctors of the Scriptures and laws—this most holy council of Constance declares and decrees the thirty articles scandalous, erroneous, rash and seditious, and some notoriously heretical, and doth order the book entitled de Ecclesia and his other books written in Latin and Czech to be publicly burned and, wheresoever found, the ecclesiastical authorities shall publicly commit them to the flames, and all who disregard the decree shall be proceeded against by the inquisitors of heretical depravity.”^[42]

The sentence against Huss himself was in substance as follows: It declared that after full reports from the commission appointed by the council and from masters of theology and doctors of the law based upon the testimony of many witnesses worthy of credit, the council found that John Huss had for many years taught many things evil, scandalous, seditious and dangerously heretical. Having God only before its eyes, the most holy council of Constance pronounced, decreed and declared John Huss a true and manifest heretic, having taught errors and heresies, since long time condemned in the church of God, and preached them. He had stubbornly treated with contempt the keys and ecclesiastical censures and had interposed an appeal to the Lord Jesus Christ as Supreme Judge, in which he laid down positions scandalous to the apostolic see itself and belittling ecclesiastical censures and the keys. The council condemned him as a misleader of the people, who had seduced them from the faith in Bohemia by his teachings and writings. Inasmuch as he was incorrigible and unwilling to return to the bosom of holy mother church and abjure his heresies, it ordered him to be degraded from the priesthood. And, having in mind that the church of God had no other course open to it, the council relinquished him to the secular authority and decreed that he was to be turned over to it.^[43]

Not a dissenting voice was raised against the sentence.

At the conclusion of the reading of this verdict, Huss exclaimed in a loud voice that he had never been obstinate nor was he then, but that he had always desired more weighty information from the Scripture, and especially did he desire it that day. After the reading of the previous sentence against his books, he exclaimed that the council had not pointed out a single error in them, and begged that alleged errors might be pointed out and, as for his books in the vulgar Bohemian, he asked how the council could condemn what it had never looked upon with its own eyes. Huss fell upon his knees and prayed that out of his great mercy Christ might pardon his enemies—those who had falsely accused him and suborned false witnesses. The prayer was received by the council with indignation or ridicule.

The process of Huss’s degradation from the priesthood, as ordered in the sentence, followed at the hands of seven prelates, including the archbishop of Milan and the suffragan bishop of Constance.^[44] The white robe of the altar was placed on him. At this he said: “When my Lord Jesus Christ was led from Herod to Pilate, he was clad in a white robe.” Being asked to recant, he turned to the assembled throng and, with tears in his eyes, refused, saying: “I fear to do this thing lest I be found a liar in the eyes of the Lord and also lest I sin against my conscience and God’s truth—ne conscientiam et Dei veritatem offendam. I have not held the articles falsely ascribed to me, but rather have I taught and preached the opposite. I also refuse to abjure lest I give offense to the multitude to whom I have faithfully preached God’s Word.” At this, a priest sitting near him, cried out: “See, how hardened he is in his wickedness and obstinate in his heresy!”

Huss then stepped down from the platform and the bishops divested him of the priestly robe and took from him the chalice they had placed in his hands, accompanying the act with the objurgation: “O cursed Judas, who hast spurned the counsels of peace and hast taken counsel with the Jews, we take from thee this cup of redemption.” To this Huss replied: “My trust is in the Lord God Almighty, for whose name I patiently suffer this blasphemy, for He will not take away from me the cup of His redemption and I firmly hope that to-day I shall drink it in His kingdom.” When all the priestly garments had been removed, the bishops proceeded to cut the prisoner’s hair so as to disfigure the tonsure. Here discussion arose whether it should be cut off with razor or with scissors. The latter counsel prevailed and, looking at the king, Huss exclaimed: “See, how these bishops are not able to agree in their blasphemy!” After this ceremony they said in substance: the church had gone as far as it could; it had deprived him of his priestly authority; there was nothing left but to deliver him over to the secular arm. A paper cap was put upon his head about eighteen inches in height-a cubit-with three devils pictured on it plucking at a soul, and on it written: Heresiarch. The bishops then pronounced the formula committing his soul to the devil—committimus animam tuam diabolo. To this Huss, raising his hands to heaven, replied: “And I commit it to my most gracious Lord. Jesus Christ.” And referring to the cap, he said: “The crown my Saviour wore on his most sacred head was heavy and irksome. The one I wear is easy and light. He wore a crown of thorns even to the most awful death, and I will wear this much lighter one humbly for the sake of his name and the truth.“^[45]

The ecclesiastical ceremony of degradation being over and the church’s responsibility for the heretic at an end, the prisoner thenceforth was under the sole jurisdiction of the civil power, to which the council’s sentence had committed him. Sigismund turned Huss over to Ludwig, the count palatine, with the words: “Go, take him”—vade accipe eum—“burn him as a heretic.”^[46] Putting him under the guard of the city scldiery, they led him to the place of his death. While the council continued its sitting, the procession passed along on its dismal way. As Huss noticed the flames which were consuming his books in the churchyard, he said smiling to the bystanders, not to believe that he was about to die for errors, for they were falsely imputed to him. Almost all of the city was on the streets—women, as Richental is careful to say, as well as men—but the larger part of the throng was kept back from fear that the bridge at the Geltinger Gate might break down under the weight of so great a crowd. The place fixed for the execution was outside the city walls, in a meadow, as you go toward the castle of Gottlieben, and where a cardinal’s ass had recently been buried. Perhaps Huss looked on to the castle itself, where he had endured lonely imprisonment for two months.

Arrived at the spot appointedm Huss kneeled and sang psalms: Have mercy upon me, O God, and In Thee, O Lord, do I put my trust. Some of his friends remained with him to the end and heard his prayers. Some proposed that he have a confessor, but a friar on horseback dressed in a green mantle held by a red silken band replied that he was a heretic and deserved no confessor. Another account, that of Richental, states that he himself asked Huss whether he wanted a confessor and called the priest Ulrich Schorand. Ulrich asked Huss whether he would renounce his errors. To this he replied that “it is not necessary, I am no mortal sinner.” Huss had confessed in prison and been absolved by a “doctor monk,” who listened to him, as Huss himself writes, in a kindly and right beautiful spirit, absolved him and gave him advice, but did not enjoin him to do what the commissioners had advised him to do.^[47]

He was about to speak to the bystanders in German, but the count palatine would not allow it. While he was engaged in prayer, his paper cap fell off. Huss smiled, and the bystanders, picking it up, placed it again on his head with the wrong side, however, fore, remarking that its wearer should be burned up with his masters, the devils, whom he had served. Rising from prayer and so as to be heard by his friends near by, he said: “Lord Jesus Christ, I wish to bear most patiently and humbly for thy Gospel’s sake and the preaching of thy Word, this dire, ignominious and cruel death.” Once again he urged all not to credit the articles charged against him. His outer garments being removed, his hands were tied with ropes behind his back and bound to a stake. When they noticed that his face was toward the east, a position which did not befit him because he was a heretic, they turned his body so that it should face the west. His neck was then bound to the stake by a rusty chain.^[48] Two bundles of fagots were placed under his feet and, mixed with straw the pile was heaped up around his body to his chin. Addressing his executioners, he said: “The Lord Jesus Christ, my Redeemer, was bound with a harder chain, and I, a miserable sinner, am not afraid to bear this one, bound as I am for his name’s sake.”

Once more an opportunity was given him to recant, this time by the marshal of the empire. Happo of Poppenheim, and the count palatine. “God is my witness,” Huss replied, “that the things charged against me I never preached.” And then he repeated: “In the same truth of the Gospel which I have written, taught and preached, drawing upon the sayings and positions of the holy doctors, I am ready to die to-day.” At this the two nobles struck their hands together and left.

The combustibles were then lighted, and while the flames were licking up around the helpless body, Huss sang: “Christe fili Dei vivi miserere mei”—Christ, thou Son of the living God, have mercy upon me. And as he reached the line, “qui natus es ex Maria Virgine”—who art born of the Virgin Mary—the flames were blown by the wind into his face. Almost stifled, he still was able to articulate, “Lord, into thy hands I commend my spirit”; and, moving his head as if bidding farewell and in prayer, he died, as the faithful Mladenowicz writes, in the Lord—exspiravit in Domino.

The tradition cannot be verified that to an old woman carrying wood to the stake Huss exclaimed: “Oh, simple piety!” Luther quotes the words in his Preface to some of Huss’s writings, 1537. The other tradition, that Huss said, “Today you are burning a Goose, but out of my ashes will be born a swan, whom you will not burn,“^[49] was not a prophecy spoken by him, but the invention of a later time. It occurs several times in Luther’s works and may have been made up in part from Huss’s own words and in part from those uttered by Jerome. “He hoped,” so he wrote in one of his letters, “that after his death God would raise up braver men to make bare the malice of antichrist and lose their lives for the truth of the Lord Jesus.” Jerome’s words were—referring to himself—that the council had condemned him falsely and unjustly, having found no evil in him, and that after his death he would return to trouble the consciences of its members with remorse. He cited them all to appear after one hundred years had passed, and in the presence of the most high God, the final Judge, to make reply to him.^[50]

When the executioners pushed down what remained of the body held by the chain, another load of wood was brought. The skull was broken with sticks, and the heart, which had been thrust through, was burned to ashes. At the palatine’s command the garments,^[51] held by executioners, were also thrown into the smouldering flames and burned, compensation being promised for them. The ashes were then gathered up and carried in a wheelbarrow to the Rhine and thrown into the river.

In accordance with the count palatine’s instructions, not a particle was left of the body or garments that could be preserved and taken back to Bohemia to be used as a relic. But they made a mistake. What was infinitely more precious, the martyr’s memory and example, all the fires of Constance could not burn up. Huss was in conflict with the church, says Flajshans in closing his Life of Huss, but did not know his differences. He was an apostle of Christ, who preached a pure life. His personality teaches us that in matters of conscience it is not only best to be obedient to God, but, what is still better, he lived according to his teachings, even to dying at the stake.

 

1. Doc., 110.
2. Gesch., III: 357.
3. Doc., 108, 312.
4. Doc., 127, 129, 140, etc.
5. Palacky, Gesch., p. 361; Workman, p. 237.
6. Doc., 121. The translation is from Workman, p. 238.
7. Doc., 135.
8. Doc., 136 sq.
9. Responsio ad Palecz, Mon., 1: 318.
10. Doc., 129.
11. The king’s exact words, according to Huss, were in futura audientia scriberetur tibi breviter et tu respondebis ad illud. Doc., 101, 108, 114.
12. Doc., 111.
13. Doc., 144.
14. Doc., 134. Mon., 1: 341, 351.
15. Hist, of the City of Rome, 4: 42, 47 sq.
16. Gesch. der Päpste, 3: vi, 501 sq.
17. Doc., 127.
18. Doc., 125, 146.
19. Doc., 119, 127, 145, 148.
20. Doc., 119 sq.
21. Doc., 143.
22. Doc., 117, 119, 129, 143, 144.
23. Doc., 117, 141, 143, 144.
24. Doc., 101, 131, 145.
25. Doc., 131.
26. Doc., 143
27. Hardt, 4: 334; Schwab, 604 sqq.; Hefele, 7: 173, takes the position that this decree was one of the measures intended by the council to make an impression on Huss.
28. Doc., 91.
29. Doc., 126.
30. Doc., 91, 128. The tract is found in Mon., 1: 52-55.
31. Corpus jur. can., de Consec., 2: 12. Friedberg’s ed., 1: 1318.
32. Doc., 134, 139.
33. Doc., 132.
34. Platina, Life of Savianus. Gregorovius, 2: 94, rejects the story in the form in which it is told by John the Deacon, Migne, vol. XXV. John the Deacon speaks of the people and not the cardinals having burned the books.
35. The text is in Hardt, 4: 389. Engl. transl. by Workman, 275. Palacky, Doc., does not give it, but his Gesch., III, 1: 363, speaks of it as genuine.
36. Doc., 117, 137, 140, 142.
37. Doc., 134.
38. Hardt, 4: 386. Mladenowicz’s account of the interview, Doc., 316–324.
39. Mladenowicz’s account, Doc., 316–324. The account of John Barbatus, Doc., 556–558. Richental, 78 sqq.; Hardt, 4: 407–500.
40. Sedes ad modum mensæ—Mlad., Doc., 217. Positus in medio scanno alto. Hardt, 4: 389. See also Mansi, 27: 747. Ubi erat levatus in altum scamnum pro eo.
41. Mon., 2: 518.
42. Mon., 1: 335 sq.; Hardt, 4: 436 sq., Eng, transl.; Gillett, 2: 58–60.
43. Attento quod ecclesia Dei non habeat ultra quod agere valeat judicio seculari relinquit et ipsum curiæ seculari relinquendum fore decernit. Hardt, 4: 437.
44. Richental, p. 80; Mon., 1: 36; Hardt, 4: 433, 437. The accounts differ in regard to the number of the prelates taking part in this ceremony.
45. Doc., 321, 557.
46. Verbrenn ihn als ein Kätzer. Richental, p. 80.
47. Doc., 136; Mlad., Doc., 322.
48. Uffrecht brett—upright board—as Richental puts it. He also speaks of pitch which had been thrown upon the straw and of the terrible odor given forth by the carcass of the burned ass after the fire was well begun.
49. Hodic anserem uritis sed ex meis cineribus nascetur cygnus quem non assare poteritis.
50. Et ego post mortem meam relinquam in conscientia vestra remorsum et cito vos omnes ad respondeatis mihi coram altissimo et justissimo judice, infra centum annos. See Gieseler, 2: 3, pp. 417 sq.; Hefele 7: 213; Doc., 135, also 39; Mon., 2: 526.
51. Richental states that they consisted of two good coats of black cloth, a girdle with a silver-gilt clasp, two knives in the sheath, and a leather scrip, in which “there was probably some money.” The principal accounts of the scenes at the stake are by this author, by Mladenowicz and Barbatus. Doc., 323 sq., 557 sq.