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suitable man, I pray you for God’s sake.” A confessor was allowed him, but not Palecz; and from him he received absolution. Palecz afterwards “came,” says Huss in the letter already quoted, “and wept much with me, when I asked him to forgive me if I had spoken bitterly against him, and especially for calling him a fabricator[1] in my writings.” In spite of his tears, however, Palecz did not consider that he had any cause to ask for the forgiveness of his former friend.
On the 6th of July, a solemn Session of the Council was held in the Cathedral. While mass was being celebrated, the heretic was not suffered to enter the Church, lest the mysteries should be profaned by his presence. Then he was brought in, and a sermon was preached at him by the Bishop of Lodi. This discourse concluded with words very expressive of the spirit of the times. “Destroy,” said the Bishop, “all heresies and errors, but particularly (pointing at Huss) that obstin heretic.” Sixty Articles from Wyclif’s works were then read, and condemned; then thirty Articles from the works of his Bohemian follower. When the first Article was read, he attempted to explain himself, but was silenced. Some of the charges he apparently heard now for the first time. Among them was the ridiculous accusation of having asserted that he should himself become a fourth person of the Trinity. At various parts of the reading, he tried to get in a word of protest. When he was accused of slighting the Pope’s excommunication, he maintained that the treatment his proctors had received at Rome justified his disobedience; and it was that, he added, which had induced him to come to Constance “of his own accord under the public faith of the Emperor here present.” Here he looked Sigismund full in the face, and the Emperor was seen to blush deeply. Then the books were condemned to the flames, and their author to degradation. For the last time he was arrayed in the eucharistic vestments; and then, one by one, the insignia of the seven orders were taken from him, each with an appropriate malediction. Finally, a paper cap inscribed with the word “Heresiarcha” and painted with devils, was placed upon his head, with the Church’s parting curse, “We devote thy soul to the infernal devils.” It has been said that the logic of persecution is perfect, that the body is burned to save the soul: if so, the logic of persecution was not yet invented.
The degraded heretic was now delivered over to the secular arm. The Elector Palatine, Vicar of the Empire, and his officers conducted him to the place of execution between the city walls and the moat. A guard of eight hundred armed men was thought necessary for the security of the executioners or the dignity of the occasion: an immense crowd followed the procession. On the road he declared to the people that he had been guilty of no heresy,
- ↑ “Quod vocavi eum Fictorem in scripto.”
