LVII. To his Friends staying on in Constance
(Without date: June 7, 1415[1])
I, Master John Hus, in hope a servant of Jesus Christ, earnestly desiring that Christ’s faithful ones may take no occasion of scandal after my decease
through deeming me an obstinate heretic, as they call me, do hereby write these words as a memorial to the friends of the truth, calling Christ Jesus to witness, for Whose law I have been longing to die: First, in very many private hearings, and subsequently in public hearings before the Council, I declared that I was willing to submit myself to guidance and control, to recantation and to punishment, if I were convinced that I had written, taught, or in my reply stated aught that had been contrary to the truth. Furthermore, fifty doctors, commissioned, according to their own statement, by the Council, after being frequently censured by me for false extracts from the articles, and that too in a public hearing before the Council, declined to give me any instruction in private, nay, declined to confer with me, saying, “You have to abide by the Council’s decision”;[2] while the Council, on my quoting, in a public hearing, the words of Christ or of the holy doctors, either derided me or said they could not understand me, and the doctors stated that I was bringing in irrelevant arguments. However, one of the cardinals, prominent in the Council and a member of the Commission,[3] said in the public hearing of my case, holding a paper in his hands:
- ↑ Some historians have taken this letter to refer to the audience of June 5. But Sigismund was not present on that day (see p. 207).
- ↑ See p. 224.
- ↑ Peter D'Ailli of Cambray (Doc. 276).
