John Hus: A brief story of the life of a martyr

The Prelates felt the thrust. "You mean to condemn the dignitaries of the Church!" For this they would burn Hus.

Hus said an evil nature cannot do good. In a state of grace, however, the man, whether he eat or drink or sleep, does everything to the glory of God. This plain truth of God was damned as heresy!

Hus was charged with calling an unjust excommunication a benediction. "In truth, I say the same thing now, according to that Scripture, 'They shall curse, but Thou shalt bless'."

Another heresy ran thus: "If pope, bishop or prelate be in mortal sin, then is he no longer pope, bishop or prelate." Hus defended it by asking pointedly: "If John XXIII was a true pope, why did you depose him from his office?"

Hus said the Church did not need an earthly head, a pope; Christ, the true head, can rule His church better without the popes, who were often monsters of iniquity. Shouts of derision!

Hus calmly added the telling point: "Surely the Church in the times of the Apostles was infinitely better ruled than now. At present we have no such head at all."

He could not be answered, and so he was derided.

An Englishman correctly pointed out that this was the teaching of Wiclif. That was ample to damn Hus as a heretic.

Pierre d'Ailly said to the Emperor Sigismund: "Almost all the articles are based on Wiclif, so that the Englishman John Stokes was right in saying Hus had no right to boast of these teachings as his property, since they all demonstrably belonged to Wiclif."

In order to embitter the Emperor against Hus, they tried to show his teachings to be dangerous to the civil government. Finally d'Ailly advised Hus to submit to the Council. Hus again said he was open to conviction. He only asked for a hearing to explain and prove his doctrines. If his reasons and Bible proofs were not sufficient, he would be ready to be taught better.

The Cardinal said: "You have only to perform the three conditions required of you—to confess your errors, to promise not to teach them hereafter, and to renounce all the articles charged against you."

Sigismund also again urged Hus to submit, and said, in effect: "Recant now, or die."

Hus humbly but firmly refused to do anything against his conscience; he asked for proof from God's word, then he would submit.

"I stand before the judgment of God; He will judge me and you in righteousness, as we deserve it."

As Hus was led back to prison, John of Chlum, a Bohemian nobleman, shook hands with him, just as Frundsberg comforted Luther at Worms.

Sigismund hounded on the prelates to make an end of Hus, even if he recanted. This lost him the Bohemian crown for ever.

XVI.

Hus had about a month after the trial to await the end. He remembered his and his friends' forebodings, and wrote bitterly: "Put not your trust in princes. I thought the Emperor had some regard for law and truth; now I perceive that these weigh little with him. Truly did they say that Sigismund would deliver me up to my adversaries: he has condemned me before they did. Would that he could have shown me as much moderation as the heathen Pilate."

He wrote a touching farewell letter to his beloved flock in the Bethlehem Chapel and another to the University at Prag.

After Hus had left Prag, Jacobellus of Mies began to give the cup as well as the bread to the lay communicants. The General Council on June 15, admitted Christ had instituted the Lord's Supper in the two species of bread and wine, yet it decreed to burn as heretics all who did as Christ commanded.

Hus on June 21, writes to Gallus (Havlik), preacher at the Bethlehem Chapel: "What wickedness! Behold, they condemn Christ's institutions as heresy!"

Till the end of June they made many efforts to get Hus to recant; he firmly refused: "I cannot recant; in the first place, I would thereby recant many truths, and in the second place, I would commit perjury and give offence to pious souls. I stand at the judgment-seat of Christ, to whom I have appealed, knowing that He will judge every man, not according to false witness, but according to the truth and each one's deserts." Against the authority of men Hus asserted the authority of his conscience enlightened by the Holy Scriptures.

On July 1, Hus was brought out again to recant his heresies. He replied in writing: "I, John Hus, fearing to sin against God, and fearing to commit perjury, am not willing to abjure ... any of them."

On July 5, a deputation of some of the most eminent members of the Council made a final effort to get Hus to recant. Wenzel of Duba said: "Behold Master John, I am a layman and cannot give advice. Consider then if thou feelest thyself guilty of any of the things of which thou art accused. If so, do not hesitate to accept instruction and recant. But if thou dost not feel guilty of these things that are brought forward against thee, be guided by thy conscience, do nothing against thy conscience, nor lie before the face of God; rather hold unto death to the truth as thou hast understood it."

Hus answered in tears: "Be it known to you that if I knew I had written or preached anything against the law and holy Mother Church, I would humbly recant; may God be my witness to this; but I always desired that they should show me doctrines better and more credible than those I have written and taught. If such be shown me, I will gladly recant."

A bishop sneered: "Wilt thou then be wiser than the whole Council?"

Master Hus replied: "I do not claim to be wiser than the whole Council, but, I beg you, give me the least man at the Council that he may instruct me out of the word of God, and I am ready to recant at once."

"Behold, how obstinate he is in his heresy!"

XVII.

"Dressed in black with a handsome silver girdle, and wore his robes as a Magister"—Hus was led after Mass before the whole Council in the cathedral. He kneeled and prayed fervently for several minutes. James Arigoni, Bishop of Lodi, preached from Rom. 6:6—"That the body of sin might be destroyed." Henry de Piro proposed that Hus be delivered to the civil power for burning.

Sixteen charges from Wiclif's writings were read. When Hus tried to explain, he was brutally refused. Thirty articles from Hus' own works were then read. He attempted to speak, but was stopped by loud cries, despite the admonition of the Bishop of Constance.

Hus knelt down and cried: "I beg you, in the name of God, to grant me a hearing, that those who are present may not think I am a heretic. After that deal with me as you see fit."

They threatened to silence him forcibly by the soldiers. He continued to kneel and pray with uplifted face to God, the just Judge.

Hus was next charged with saying, "that he was and would be a Fourth Person in the Trinity."

Even the Roman Catholic Hefele admits the absolute falsehood of this infamous accusation.

When his appeal to Christ was condemned as a damnable heresy, Hus cried out: "O God and Lord, now the Council condemns even Thine own act and Thy law as heresy, for Thou Thyself didst commend Thy case into the hands of Thy Father as the righteous judge."

Charged with treating the papal excommunication with contempt, Hus replied he had three times sent representatives to the papal court and had never had a hearing. "For this reason I came freely to this Council, relying upon the public faith of the Emperor, who is here present, assuring me that I should be safe from all violence, so that I might attest my innocence and give a reason of my faith to the whole Council."

As he spoke of the safe-conduct, the prisoner looked straight at the Emperor; the Emperor blushed. That blush was never forgotten. Urged to betray Luther at Worms, the Emperor Charles V said: "I should not like to blush like Sigismund."

"A bald and old Italian priest" then read the two decrees of the Council that all the writings of Hus, both Latin and Bohemian, should be destroyed, and that Hus as a true and manifest heretic was to be burned.

Hus loudly protested: "Up to now you have not proved that my books contain any heresies. As to my Bohemian writings, which you have never seen, why do you condemn them?"

Hus again knelt and prayed with a loud voice: "Lord Jesus Christ, forgive all my enemies, I entreat Thee, because of Thy great mercy. Thou knowest that they have falsely accused me, brought forth false witnesses against me, devised false articles against me. Forgive them because of Thy boundless mercy."

This touching prayer was greeted with derisive laughter by the foremost ecclesiastical dignitaries.

XVIII.

He was once more urged to swear off his errors. Turning to the people with tears in his eyes and emotion in his trembling voice—"How could I thus sin against my conscience and divine truth alike?"

As they took off his priestly robes, the Archbishop of Milan said: "O cursed Judas, who hast left the realms of peace and allied thyself with the Jews, we today take from thee the chalice of salvation."

"I hope to drink of the chalice in the heavenly kingdom this day."

The holy fathers of the General Council of all Christendom then gravely and learnedly debated whether to use shears or a razor to remove the tonsure. Finally they decided for the shears, and his hair was cut to leave bare the form of a cross. Next his head was washed, to remove the oil of anointing, by which he had been consecrated to the priesthood.

A paper cap, two feet high, painted with three ghastly devils tormenting a soul, and with the words, "This is a heretic," was placed on his head; Hus remarked: "My Lord Jesus Christ wore for me a crown of thorns; why should I not for His sake wear this easier though shameful badge?"

XIX.

XX.

In the church-yard they were just burning the books of Hus; he smiled sadly. With a firm step, singing and praying, Hus went to the "Bruehl," a quarter of a mile north of the Schnetz gate. There he knelt, spread out his hands, lifted up his face, and prayed with a loud voice: "Into Thy hands I commit my spirit."

The paper cap, "the crown of blasphemy," as it was called, fell to the ground, and Hus noticed the three painted devils; smiling sadly, he said: "Lord Jesus Christ, I will bear patiently and humbly this horrible and shameful and cruel death for the sake of Thy Gospel and the preaching of Thy word."

He was stripped of his clothes, his hands roped behind his back, his neck chained to the stake, wood and straw were piled around him neck-high. They say as an old woman brought her few fagots to the funeral pile, Hus cried out: "O sancta simplicitas!"—O holy simplicity. Another story goes Hus said: "Today you are burning a goose (hus in Bohemian); in a hundred years will come a swan you will not burn." This came true in Luther.

In the last moment the Marshal of the realm, Pappenheim, called on Hus to recant and save his life. "God is my witness that I never taught of what false witnesses accuse me. In the truth of the Gospel, that I have written, taught, and preached, I will today joyfully die."

The fagots were lighted. With raised voice Hus sang: "O Christ, Thou Son of the living God, have mercy on me." When he sang that and continued, "Thou that art born of the Virgin Mary," the wind drove the flames into his face; his lips and head still moved; then he choked without a sound.

As the flames flickered down, the executioners knocked over the stake with the charred body still dangling by the neck, heaped on more wood, poked up the bones with sticks, broke in the skull, ran a sharp stake through the heart, and set the whole ablaze again. The jumbled embers were thrown into a wheelbarrow and tipped into the Rhine.

Like Luther later, Hus placed his conscience above the mighty Emperor, the infallible Pope, and the learning of the world; he would rather die than lie.

Even Aeneas Sylvius, later Pope Pius II, afterwards said with admiration: "No one of the ancient Stoics ever met his death more bravely."

A year later, on May 30, on the same spot in the same clover field they burned Jerome of Prag. He went to his death with a smiling face. "You condemn me, though innocent. But after my death I will leave a sting in you. I call on you to answer me before Almighty God within a hundred years."

When the fagots were lighted, he sang the Easter hymn, "Hail, Festal Day," and protested his innocence to the bystanders. His last words were in Bohemian, "God Father, forgive me my sins."

A great stone marks the spot where the two Bohemian saints ascended to heaven in chariots of fire.

The words of Erasmus might well have been his epitaph—"John Hus, burned, not convicted." Lechler says: "To inflict defeat by meeting defeat, that was his lot."

Wiclif and Hus are the constellation "Gemini," or Twins, shining in the papal night till their dim twinkling is swallowed up in the glorious sun bursting from Wittenberg in Luther.

The Synod of Pisa tried to reform the Church and failed. The Synod of Constance tried it and failed. The Synod of Basel and Ferrara tried it and failed. The Fifth General Lateran Synod from 1512-1517 tried it and failed. The great Roman Catholic scholar Von Doellinger says: "The last hope of a reformation of the Church was carried to the grave."

What could not be done by all Europe was done by Luther.

Luther's reformation brought liberty for Church and State, and to him we owe it that men like Hus can no longer be burned.

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

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TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:

Minor changes have been made to correct typesetters' errors; every effort has been made, otherwise, to remain true to the author's words and intent.