Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 2.djvu/510

Ac,A BOHEMIA. 494 Great was the disgust of the orthodox when they learned that this pious Yiew of the matter was not entertained m Prague, and t required the most positive assurances of eye-witnesses t. make them beheve the incredible fact that, from king to peasant m Bo- ht^a tire was practical unammity .n tl.e ^ehef that he who had been condemned and executed as a heretic was a martyr, that the popular songs sung in the streets represented him as one who had shed his blood for Christ, and that he was mserted in i calendar of saints, with his feast on July 6, the day of his ex- ecution The good fathers, however, were not long m finding, from indubitable evidence, that they had made a grave mistake as to the Bohemian temper, and that they had only succeeded in inflaming the disease which they had sought to eradicate As soonTthe defiance excited in Bohemia could be learned in Con- stance the council made haste to write, July 26, to thej^uthoritie. her: protesting th.t Huss and ^^^.^^^f/^^^^lXX:':tl with all tenderness, that the persistent heresy of the former had forced his delivery to the secular court for judgment and that aU similar heretics would be treated in the same manner. The Bohe rans were exhorted to justify, by similar persecution the good "iTon of their orthodoxy which the council had formed fro- ^^ Xort of the Bishop of Litomysl, whose popular name of Iron John sufficiently indicates his inflexibility. This good opinion tt n "tstaine'd when a protest was received fromjh^^--^^ If Bohemia and Moravia, hastily drawn up as soon a the new o fhe execution had reached them-a protest -h-h ^he counc^^^ nromDtlv ordered to be burned. Its letter of July 26 led to the Zcln of a national assembly in -^f ^-j/^^^^ framed and received the signatures of nearly five hundred barons knShts and gentlemen. In this they asserted their behef n S purity and orthodoxy; that he had unjustly been pu to Jeir. i™out confession or lawful conviction ; that Jerome they Ipl d had shared the same fate; that the defamation of the SSm for heresy^a^Jheworkon^rs^d that any one who ,„,™aence of t.e Mm. Ages ^-^^ZZl^:^::^^ Huss and Jerome as exceptional. Even so well mtorme ler does not hesitate to say "Hussens «"™^,7';^;;~i-Encyklop, damaligen Rechts gemesseu, ein warer Jushzmord (He.zogs Keal y VI. 392).