and not otherwise, do I believe. This is the symbol of my faith. Yet for this I die, because I would not assent to and approve the decision of the council, and hold and assert with them that John Huss was holily and justly condemned by the council. For I knew him well, and I knew him as a true preacher of the gospel of Jesus Christ." He saw among his executioners a poor man, bringing a fagot to heap upon the pile. It did not excite him to anger. He smiled and said, "O holy simplicity! a thousand times more guilty is he who abuses thee." When the fagots had been piled to a level with his head, his garments were thrown upon them, and fire was applied by a lighted torch. But the executioner who bore the torch approached from behind, unwilling to be seen. "Come forward boldly," said Jerome; "apply the fire before my face. Had I been afraid, I should not have been here." As the flames began to spread, he exclaimed aloud, "Into thy hands, O Lord, I commit my spirit." When the fire began to penetrate to his flesh, he prayed again, “O Lord God, Almighty Father, have compassion on me, and forgive my sins. Thou knowest that I have ever delighted in thy truth." His voice was now lost, for the smoke and flame had become suffocating; but though no words were heard, all could see by the motion of the lips that he was still engaged in prayer. The agony of his martyrdom was protracted; it was unusually long before life was extinct. Blisters of water of the size of an egg might be seen over his whole body. "One might have gone," says a spec CH. VIII.] THE CLOSING SCENE. 257 tator, "from the St. Clement Church at Prague to the bridge over the Moldau, before he ceased to breathe." 99 1 At last, all that belonged to him, his bed, cap, clothing, shoes, and whatever he had had with him in prison, was brought and thrown upon the blazing pile, to be consumed with him. His ashes, like those of Huss, were carefully gathered up, borne away, and cast into the Rhine. The council were apprehensive lest some fragment or relic of their victim should find its way back to Prague, and be cherished as the memorial of a condemned heretic. The least particle that could be associated with the names of either of the sufferers was sought out and carefully burned, lest it should become an object of veneration. But all their precautions were vain. The soil which their dying feet had pressed-in lack of other objects-became the prized memorial, and was borne to Prague to be guarded with religious care. But more than the portraits even of the departed, was the image of themselves which these men had enstamped upon the minds and hearts of their countrymen. When the last surviving member of the council that sentenced them to execution should have been laid in his grave, the memory of these two Bohemian martyrs would still bloom fresh and green upon their natal soil. 'Mon. Hus., ii, 354. VOL. II. 2 Æneas Sylvius. 17 CHAPTER IX. INEFFICIENCY AND TUMULTS OF THE COUNCIL. ILL-SUCCESS THE CITATION OF THE BOHEMIANS ABSENT MEMBERS OF THE COUNCIL SUMMONED. -- MAY 31, 1416-JAN. 27, 1417. THE execution of Jerome, amid the clashing schemes and conflicting interests which marked the progress of the council, was passed lightly by. A gallant ship had gone down upon a stormy sea, and the wild waves of passion rolled on as madly and fiercely as if there had been no human victim of their murderous play. No expression of regret or remorse bubbles up visibly to the surface, to speak, in the actors, any bitter memory of the deed. No doubt it was remembered, no doubt, in later years, minds like Gerson's recurred to it sadly, but the death of Jerome, at the time, produced scarcely a pause in the struggle of conflicting parties and interests. CH. IX.] CITATION OF THE BOHEMIANS. 259 On the next day after the execution, (May 31,) a decree of the council was issued, summoning its absent members to return, under penalty, in case of disobedience, of incurring the indignation of Almighty God, and St. Peter and St. Paul, his apostles. The council felt that it was now incumbent upon it to prosecute with energy the matter of the union of the church. This was manifest in the congregations held upon the following days. In spite of a letter of Sigismund, urging upon them the business of reform, the members showed themselves more inclined to remove the difficulties that stood in the way of the deposition of Benedict and the election of a new pope. The case of the Bohemians, moreover, called for the notice of the council. The execution of Jerome was not calculated to soothe the feelings or repress the indignation of his countrymen. Their letter of remonstrance had reached the council at the close of the previous year. Their citation for their presumption and suspicion of heretical pravity in adhering to Huss, had been demanded by the prosecuting officers of the council, in its name, on the twentieth of February, 1416. This citation was issued on the fifth of May, and was publicly affixed to the church doors and gates of Constance. A commission to attend to the process of trial-which was to be summary in the case of those cited-was appointed on the third of June. It was now, upon the non-appearance of the Bohemians summoned to answer before the council, that they were to be de Van der Hardt, iv. 775. clared guilty of contumacy. The number of these is variously stated from four hundred and fifty to five hundred and fifty. They embraced, as we have already seen, some of the most powerful and distin-. guished members of the Bohemian nobility. To them the threats of the council were a mere brutum fulmen. They treated them with contempt. Secure in their distance from Constance and the consciousness of their own strength, they were driven into a more defiant attitude by the steps taken to awe them into submission. The execution of Jerome, following upon that of Huss, was in their eyes a new outrage, tending to destroy the last vestige of respect which they could ever have entertained for the body by whose order the deed was done. A different course from theirs was the one pursued by one of their countrymen at Constance, the Knight De Latzembock. He had gradually risen till he stood high in the emperor's favor. He it was who bore the news of the emperor's coronation at Aix la Chapelle to Constance, on the opening of the council. Since that time he had been employed in high positions, and had had charge of important matters. But still, in spite of all this, the stain of heretical leprosy clung to him. It was not forgotten that he was one of those whom the Bohemian king had commissioned to escort Huss to Constance. Although he had since had but little to do with him, and showed in his character and life more of the courtier than the friend, he yet fell under suspicion. The 'Probably all who had signed the * L'Enfant, 406. Van der Hardt, letters of remonstrance to the council. iv. 795–6. |