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LETTERS WRITTEN DURING THE
life. ‘Alas, alas!’ cried Hawlik, the priest of the Bethlehem, as he read the following letter to the congregation, and pointed to the torn scrap on which it was written—‘alas, alas! Hus is running out of paper’ (’Doc.’ 255). Chlum also (p. 196) speaks of one of Hus’s letters as written on a ‘tattered three-cornered bit of paper.’ We understand this when we remember that Hus sometimes spent whole nights in writing letters or scribbling hexameters ‘to pass the time,’ to say nothing of formal answers to his enemies (infra, p. 206). These prison letters are generally undated, and contain few indications of time. The student will understand that the order in which they are arranged is therefore to a large extent conjecture, and indicates merely whether in our opinion the letters come early or late in this first imprisonment. With one or two exceptions, we have seen little reason to question in this matter the judgment of Palackẏ. That Letters XLII.–V. were written in February 1415 is clear from a statement of Fillastre in his Diary, that that month was filled up with Inquisition matters, only to be broken off towards the close by the issue of the abdication of John (see Fillastre in Finke, op. cit. 166). Of the value of the letters themselves we need say little. They will appeal to every reader by their tenderness and true piety.
XL. To the People of Prague[1]
(Blackfriars, January 19, 1415)
May it please God to be with you, that ye may persevere in resisting wickedness, the devil, the world, and the flesh.
Dear friends, I beseech you, as I sit here in my prison, of which I am not ashamed, seeing that I suffer in hope for God’s sake, Who visited me in His mercy even with a sore sickness, and hath brought me back again to health, and suffered those to be my most persistent foes whom I had treated with much kindness, and had sincerely loved.
- ↑ Written in Czech.
