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that he had been unjustly condemned, that his enemies had been unable to convict him of any error. When he came within sight of the stake, he knelt down and said several of the penitential Psalms, and constantly repeated the words, “Lord Jesus, have mercy upon me. Into Thy hands I commend my spirit.” “What this man may have done before,” said some of the bystanders, “we know not; we only know that he hath made excellent prayers to God.” A confessor was allowed him, in spite of the protest of a “priest on horse-back, in a green jacket lined with red,” who said that heretics must not be allowed confessors: but as he would not recant, absolution was refused. Huss replied that he had no need of a confessor, for he was not conscious of any mortal sin. As the fire was kindled, an old woman was seen busily engaged in heaping up the wood round the heretic. “What holy simplicity!” said Huss: and then, as the flames leapt up, he again commended his soul to God, and prayed for the forgiveness of his enemies. As he spoke, the hideous cap fell off his head. Later tradition said that the flames had no power over it.[1] A soldier picked it up and replaced it, saying, “He shall be burned with all his devils.” Long after the flames had choked his utterance, his lips were seen to move as if in prayer. His ashes were thrown into the Rhine, lest his disciples should make relics of them. But their pious devotion was not to be so thwarted; they carried away the very earth on which he had suffered, to the land which was already preparing to avenge the patriot’s death in arms.
That the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church, is sound doctrine, though liable to exaggeration. But it was not merely as one of that noble army that Huss prepared the way for the Reformation of the sixteenth century. Hundreds of men and women whose names have perished, had testified against the corrupt doctrine and the more corrupt lives of the mediæval Priesthood; and had sealed their testimony with their deaths. And the death of the most obscure Waldensian who suffered at Toulouse was in itself not less heroic than than the death of John Huss. They did not perish in vain. But the circumstances which attended the condemnation of Huss were such to appeal with peculiar force to the conscience of Christendom. A great Council had assembled for the Reformation of the Church: all the Churchmen of the age most eminent for their piety or their learning were among its members; it enjoyed the hearty support of the Emperor and all the great Potentates of Europe. Yet neither the piety of its members nor the strength of its supporters effected the smallest improvement even in the external morality of the Clergy of that or of the succeeding age. Simony never flourished more vigorously
- ↑ Perhaps the most interesting circumstance connected with this tradition is that Luther seems to have implicitly believed it. (See his Preface to Huss’ Works.) According to his account, the cap was not replaced, but torn away by a soldier when it would not burn on the martyr’s head, and thrown into the fire separately.
