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LIV.: To his Friends staying on in Constance ( Without date: June 5, 1415) - Jan Huss, The Letters of John Hus [1904]

Edition used:

The Letters of John Hus. With Introductions and Explanatory Notes by Herbert B. Workman and R. Martin Pope (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1904).

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LIV.

To his Friends staying on in Constance

(Without date: June 5, 1415)

God Almighty gave me to-day a stout and courageous heart. Two articles are now struck out. I hope, by God’s grace, more will be struck out. They were all crying out against me like the Jews against Jesus. They have not yet reached the main point at issue—to wit, that I should confess that all the articles can be found in my little books.1 You made a mistake in putting in the tract Against a Secret Adversary, along with the treatise On the Church. Put in nothing except the Treatises against Stanislaus and Palecz. The nobles did well to demand that my manuscript should be restored to them; for some cried out, “Let it be burnt,” especially Michael the Pleader, whose voice I detected. I feel I have not in the whole company of the clergy a single friend except “the Father”2 and a Polish doctor with whom I am not acquainted. I am indebted to the Bishop of Leitomischl for a good turn, though he said no more than, “A co sem tobě učinil?” (“And what have I done for you?”). I am very pleased that you have collected the articles; it is well to publish and re-issue them in that form, etc. The leading men of the Council said that I should have another public hearing. They did not wish to hear my disquisition3 on the Church. Give my greetings to the faithful nobles and friends of the truth. Pray God for me; for there is much need. I fancy they will not admit in my favour the opinion of St. Augustine concerning the Church and its members, both predestined and foreknown, and concerning evil prelates.4 Oh, that a hearing might be granted to me in order to reply to the arguments with which they intend to attack the articles that appear in my little books! I imagine that many who cry me down would be put to silence. His will be done, as it is in heaven!

From the conclusion of the following letter to Chlum we see that Hus had heard before he left Gottlieben of the arrest and imprisonment of Jerome of Prague. On hearing at Prague of the rupture between John and the Council, Jerome had hastened to Constance, in spite of the wish of Hus to the contrary (p. 182). There, on April 4, he posted a notice on the gates affirming the orthodoxy of Hus. This done, he deemed it wiser to withdraw to Ueberlingen, whence he wrote to the Council asking for a safe-conduct. On April 7 he once more returned to Constance, and affixed another address to Sigismund and the Council on the doors of the Cathedral. He had come, he said, of his own free will to answer all accusations of heresy. But two days later he changed his mind, and slipped away from the city, in his haste leaving his sword behind him in his lodgings in the St. Paulgasse. He fled towards Bohemia, but at Hirsau was betrayed into an argument, in which he called the Council a synagogue of Satan. This led to his arrest (April 24). On the discovery from his papers of his identity he was forwarded to Constance loaded with chains. He arrived on May 23, and was taken at once to the Franciscan convent, ‘patiently carrying in his hand his iron fetters and long chain.’ There he was examined in a somewhat tumultuous congregation of the Council, and afterwards carried by night to a dungeon in the cemetery of St. Paul, and chained hand and foot ‘to a bench too high to sit on.’ For two days he was left to starve on a scanty supply of bread and water, until Peter Mladenowic found his prison and bribed the gaoler to give him better food. The darkness and foul surroundings soon brought on a sickness, from which with difficulty he recovered, only to find that in the interval his friend and leader, John Hus, had been burnt at the stake. The two men were destined never to meet.

[1 ]The real issue on which he was condemned. See infra, p. 224.

[2 ]See p. 237.

[3 ]Distinctionem.

[4 ]See Doc. 204, 226. In this latter passage Hus gives his references to Augustine, but very vaguely. They are really taken from Wyclif’s De Ecclesia, c. i.