(The Story of Bohemia)
IT has been said on a former occasion that the Reformed Church of Bohemia was one of the two Protestant Churches that existed before the Reformation. It is the oldest Reformed Church, though not the oldest Protestant Church. I have recently had a letter from an eminent pastor of that Church. He had gone to Worms to attend an Evangelical Conference. On coming to the town. the first thing he thought of was the Luther monument, and the first thing he did was to go, with a loving, reverent heart, to see it. But it was not to the grand figure on the apex that he looked up with the deepest love and reverence. Far dearer to his heart was one of the four which are grouped around the pedestal — Waldo, Wickliffe, Hus, and Savonarola. It was before the figure of Hus that he stood long to gaze — and it is a very beautiful one. The face — sad, yet calm and full of peace — is bent with devoutest adoration and love upon the crucifix which the sculptor has put into his hand as the symbol of Christ. My friend the pastor wrote to me, “The sculptor who designed John Hus on the Luther monument has written our Church’s history in that figure. See the history of our Church — the face furrowed by pain and sorrow, but the eyes fixed with an unalterable devotion on the Crucified One — ‘Though He kill me, yet will I not let Him go.’” That was indeed the root and principle of Hus’s own life, and nobly was it acted on in the two Churches of which, though he was not the founder, he was certainly the father — the present Reformed Church of Bohemia, and that “fruitful bough” whose “branches hang over the wall,” the Church of the United Brethren of Bohemia and Moravia. Love to Christ and trust in Him was what John Hus lived in, and what he died for. He might have said, with Tholuck’s hero in “Guido and Julius,” “I have but one passion, and that is He — He alone.” Joined with this passion for Christ was its result — a passion for truth; to find the truth and to be true to the truth. “Faithful Christian,” said he, “seek the truth, hearken to the truth, learn the truth, hold the truth, and defend the truth, even unto death.” That might have been the motto of his own life.
But he had fallen upon evil days — very evil indeed, both for the world that called itself the world, and perhaps still more for the world that called itself the Church. We must remember there is another side to love. If we love, our hearts must rise in indignation against that which would injure or destroy the object of love. It was the apostle of love who became also the “son of thunder.” And well does Browning say of the great Florentine—
“Dante, who loved well because he hated,
Hated wickedness that hinders loving.”
John Hus “hated wickedness that hinders loving”; and he came into a world and a Church that were steeped in wickedness. He lived in the latter end of the fourteenth century and the beginning of the fifteenth, about a generation before the great revival of art and learning called the Renaissance, and more than a century before the Reformation. The Renaissance did not bring moral purity or renovation in its train; but undoubtedly it gilded wickedness with a superficial grace and beauty. If you read that striking poem of Browning’s, “The Bishop Orders his Tomb in St. Praxed’s Cathedral,” you will have a wonderful picture of the Renaissance — with its art, its learning, its luxury, and also its impurity, its greed, its dishonesty. Before the Renaissance there was much of the sin, but it was for the most part without the gilding. The disorders of the time were aggravated by the great schism in the Papacy, in which at first two Popes, then actually three, contended for the tiara, each one calling himself the Vicar of Christ, and claiming “ the obedience of the faithful.” Happily, that is a story we have no need to tell, since we undertook to tell of the Romance of Protestantism, and we do not see that either Romance or Protestantism have much to do with it.
It was against the moral evils of the time — the “wickedness that hinders loving” — that Hus mainly contended. He was not, at first, greatly occupied with doctrine, nor indeed did he ever come to hold definitely most of the distinctive doctrines we call Protestant. He did not get so far — he had not time. But he held Christ, the center of them all; he held also the supremacy of the Word of God, and the duty of every one to seek truth for himself, and when he has found it to hold it — which is what we now call the right of private judgment — right, on its other side, always meaning duty. Still, his message to the Church of his day was not so much, “You are preaching error: stop that in God’s name,” as “You are doing iniquity: stop that in God’s name.”
Just one story has come down to us of the early life of the widow’s son of Hussenitz, the poor scholar at the University of Prague, who very probably earned his bread either by singing in the streets, as Luther did afterwards, or by hard manual labor. One winter evening the young students were sitting round the fire (in those days boys went to a university almost as early as they go now to a public school), and no doubt they were talking and laughing together as boys will do. But one sat silent, absorbed in his book, which told of the martyrdom of St. Lawrence. Presently he stretched out his hand, put it into the fire, and held it there. The others stared in amazement, till one of them had the presence of mind to seize his arm and pull it away.
“Dost want to kill thyself, John of Hussenitz?” he asked.
“I was only trying if I could bear anything of what that holy man suffered for Christ’s sake,” was the answer.
The eager, warm-hearted boy, so ready to prove his faith and love, grew to manhood. He became a priest, and very soon a celebrated preacher.
There are several things that we must notice, if we would understand his life-work. We have to consider his nationality, his forerunners, his instructors, his friends and his enemies. In the first place, John Hus was a Bohemian of the Bohemians. People who have not thought much about it probably suppose that Bohemia is just a province of Germany. I should like to have seen the face of John Hus if you had called him a German! The people of Bohemia are of a different race; they are not Teutons, but Slays. They are akin to the Russians and the Poles, not to the Germans or ourselves. They had, and have to this day, a very interesting and strongly pronounced nationality. You will sometimes see in the newspapers a mention of the Czech — or “the young Czech” party (but it should be written Cech); these are the Bohemians who wish to gain, or to regain, their national rights and privileges. In the days of Hus Bohemia was a free nation, and a strong and prosperous one. It had given Emperors to Germany. The people had not received their Christianity from Rome, but from the East, so it was rather of the Greek than of the Latin type. In the Greek Church, to the present day, the laity receive in the Lord’s Supper the Cup as well as the Bread; and so the Bohemians continued to do, even long after they had submitted to the authority of the Pope. Rome crushed out that with other indications of spiritual freedom — but the love of liberty burned on. The Bohemians had also the beginnings of an interesting national literature. Their University of Prague had become celebrated, and was much resorted to by foreigners. Hus was its rector at one time: he did a great deal for the language and the literature of his country; indeed, he might almost be called their father.
Looking upon Hus, as we are used to do, as one of the forerunners of Luther, we may be surprised to hear that he had forerunners himself. In the comparative freedom of the Bohemian Church there had sprung up, just before his time, a group of good men and women who seem to have brought about a sort of revival in religion. Without any conscious departure from the dominant Church, they stirred up the embers of spiritual life that were left in it, and strove to recall men to a real faith in Christ and fear of God. One of them, a merchant and a very rich man, built a large church in Prague, which he called Bethlehem Chapel, after our Lord’s birthplace. This became Hus’s church, in which, while in Prague, he always preached, and where attentive crowds thronged to listen — not to any new doctrines that he taught, but to the message of the gospel. His preaching and teaching became a great force in the country, whether he thundered against prevailing iniquity, or told men lovingly of the love and tenderness of Christ.
Where did he get the knowledge that he thus ministered to others? Chiefly from the Word of God, which, illumined by the Divine Spirit, was his constant study; in part also, no doubt, from some of his good countrymen who had preceded him; in part from the writings of our first English reformer. John Wickliffe went to his rest in 1384, when Hus was almost a child. But though he never knew him personally, he knew his writings. They were brought to Bohemia, it is said, by a scholar and a friend of his of whom we shall hear again, Jerome of Prague. Hus studied them eagerly; loved them, learned from them, reverenced them. He did not agree with Wickliffe in all things, but he felt the power of his words, and knew that they were good words. He himself acknowledges his debt in a letter which has been preserved to us, addressed to an Englishman, a follower of Wickliffe. The superscription is one which, at the present time, would strike us as a little vague — “To Richard of England” — but it evidently reached its destination. We will quote his own words, because they are a direct message from John Hus to the Christians of England: “I am thankful that Bohemia has, under the power of Jesus Christ, received so much good from the blessed land of England through your labors” — meaning through the labors of Wickliffe and of his followers. So there is a word of benediction for us of England from John Hus himself. When Afterward, before the Council of Constance, he was accused of having said that the soul of the heretic Wickliffe was saved, not lost, his answer was, “I said not whether the soul of John Wickliffe was saved or lost. This I said, that I would willingly have my soul where his is.”
The Latin writings of Hus are said to be largely borrowed from those of Wickliffe, both in thought and in expression. But his Bohemian works are truly original, and it was through them, as well as through his preaching, that he swayed the hearts of his countrymen.
One thing which strikes us particularly in the history of Hus is that he was a man of many friends. One is constantly tempted to say, “How that man was loved!” or to call him what Daniel was called long ago, “A man greatly beloved.” This runs through his whole career. At the time of his death, the University of Prague sent a letter to the Council of Constance, the words of which deserve to be remembered, no less for their beauty and their pathos than for their testimony to his character. “His life glided on before our eyes from his very infancy, and was so holy and pure that no man could find in him a single fault. O man truly pious, truly humble — thou who wast conspicuous with the luster of such great virtues — who wast accustomed to despise riches and to succor the poor, even to the suffering of want thyself, whose place was by the bedside of the unfortunate, who movedst by thy tears the most hardened hearts to repentance, and soothedst rebellious spirits by the inexhaustible mildness of the Word— ” So the noble panegyric flows on — much farther than we can follow it.
He was one of those good men for whom “some would even dare to die.” One actually did so— that Jerome of Prague already mentioned, whose name has gone down linked with his to posterity. Jerome has been called, not inaptly, “the stormy petrel of the Reformation.” We find him first a rich young noble — brilliant, gifted, eloquent, impetuous — possibly very proud of himself — hurrying over Europe from university to university, “starring it,” as we should call it now. He invites learned men to dispute with him on all sorts of subjects, he puts up theses on the doors of churches and colleges, and offers to defend them, and so forth. He is enthusiastic, ardent, lovable, but wayward and fitful, and deficient in balance and self-control. This was the man who attached himself to Hus with the ardour of a young and generous nature, and learned to love and reverence him profoundly. In the end, it was not so much for any so-called heresy or error in doctrine that he died — his real heresy was that he refused to acknowledge the justice of the condemnation of Hus. He came to Constance of his own free will, in the generous hope of defending him. Hus had written entreating him not to come, but he would not heed him. When he came, however, and saw how things were, he took alarm, and ran away. But he was soon arrested, brought back, and thrown into prison.
Amongst the friends of Hus we may also mention his Queen, a good woman, whose confessor he was. The King, Wenceslaus, was weak and worthless, a bad man and a bad king. Swayed by passion and self-interest, he vacillated in his conduct, but may be reckoned on the whole amongst the enemies of Hus. So assuredly may the Pope, who excommunicated him and put the city of Prague under an interdict on his account. “Which of the Popes?” it may well be asked, seeing that at this time there were three — John XXIII., Benedict XIII., and Gregory XII. Of the three, John XXIII., had the best title, but the worst character. Most people acknowledged the validity of his title, while his character has been well summed up in the phrase, “He was a moral monster.” He was indeed one of the worst of the Popes, and that is a great deal to say. Bad as were the times, and bad as was the condition of the Church, there were those who shuddered at this state of things. Right-thinking men began to say, “We must somehow make an end of this, or all morals will be upset, and all religion too.”
So a great Council was summoned — a General Council — and Constance was appointed as its place of meeting. Its first object was to end the schism, and to elect a true and lawful Pope, whom all Christians might obey with a good conscience. Another object, and a most important one, was the reformation of morals, and the removal of scandals and abuses in the Church which all honest men acknowledged and deplored. There were other things too, amongst which was the desire to end the commotions that had arisen in Bohemia, where a priest named John Hus was setting everyone by the ears, and preaching sedition and heresy. There were two things — the Evangelical character of his preaching, and his uncompromising denunciations of vice, especially of the vices of the Hierarchy — which drew upon John Hus the deadly hatred of the powers that then were, both in Church and State.
In the month of November, and the year 1414, there was a mighty stir and concourse in the little city by the lake of Constance, and in its neighborhood. From all Europe the most illustrious people — princes, dukes, cardinals, archbishops, bishops, doctors of divinity — were flocking thither, to make this General Council as splendid and as representative as it could possibly be. The modest precincts of the town of Constance — though it must have been overcrowded to a degree that would have horrified a modern philanthropist — were quite unable to accommodate them and their attendants; so tents had to be pitched for them in the country around. Sigismund, the Emperor of Germany, was to preside over the magnificent assembly.
A magnificent assembly indeed! And yet it has been called, and we fear truly, “one of the most infamous assemblies that ever met on this earth.” Amongst these great people, vice and wickedness, greed and treachery, ran rampant. Little justice indeed could be expected for any man who stood alone against that Council as a preacher of truth and righteousness! Yet we are glad to think that even that “infamous” Council had in it a few men who were not wicked, a few men who had come thither honestly anxious to do their duty. There were even men who gave their voices there against God’s servant, and were yet sincerely desirous of serving God themselves. At least we know of one, Jean Gerson, Chancellor of the University of Paris. He was strongly opposed to Hus, and drew up certain Articles of Accusation against him. Hus said, on seeing them, “If God spares my life, I will answer the Chancellor of Paris; if I die, God will answer for me at the Day of Judgment.” God did answer for him, and He did not wait until the Day of Judgment.
There were some Englishmen there; and the chief of them, Robert Hallam, Bishop of Salisbury, bears a good record. He was very anxious for the moral reformation of the Church, and pressed it earnestly upon the Emperor, with whom he had great influence. But he and those like him were in a small — a very small — minority.
Two men, known to us already, took their way to Constance, but with very different thoughts and feelings. John XXIII. detested the Council, and dreaded it. He went there sorely against his will, but he had to go; there was no escape for him. He was justly afraid of having his misdeeds looked into, set forth and exposed, and of being deprived of the Popedom because of them. Very reluctantly he set out on his journey from Bologna, where he was at the time. When he drew near Constance his carriage broke down, and he tumbled out on the ground. “Here I lie in the devil’s name,” said he. No doubt he thought it a bad omen. Then, looking down the hill to the town that lay beneath, he added, “There is a fine trap to catch foxes in.” And he himself, though a very wily fox, was caught in it.
John Hus had been invited by the Emperor himself to come and plead his cause before the Council. Ere he went, he wrote letters of farewell to his beloved congregation in Bethlehem Church and to his friends throughout Bohemia. In these he said that he knew not to what he was going, or whether he would see their faces again upon earth. But there was one thing which he asked them all to do — to pray for him, that he might be found “stainless.” That was his one request, and History bears witness that it was granted. Hus went to the Council at the Emperor’s invitation, but of his own accord. He need not have gone. With the nobles and people of Bohemia on his side he could not have been compelled. But he went willingly, for he wished to vindicate the course he had pursued and the truths he had preached. Nor did he go alone. At the express desire of his own king, Wenceslaus of Bohemia, three Bohemian nobles went with him, who were charged to look after “Master John,” as they called him, and to see that he was fairly and justly dealt with. He received from Sigismund a full and complete safe-conduct — which has become famous in history. The nobles who accompanied him were John of Chlum, Wenceslaus Duba, and Henry of Latzemboch. All held him in esteem, but Chlum, the most remarkable of them, really deserves a place amongst the celebrated friends of history. He was Hus’s Jonathan. Brave, devoted, unselfish, untiring, he was true to him to the very last. In the great picture of the condemnation of Hus, which is placed in the Town Hall in Prague, he stands before us, tall and stately, his face full of deep, silent, manly sorrow, and in his hand the historic hammer with which he nailed to the door of every church in Constance his protest against the deed of the Council.
Hus and his friends arrived in Constance on November 4, and lodged in the house of a widow named Fidelia, which has now a medallion on the front bearing his effigy. But after twenty-six days, he was summoned to the Franciscan Convent where the Pope was staying. Chlum and another friend went with him. They were kept for hours, Hus talking and disputing with certain persons sent to him for the purpose, and then at last Chlum was informed that he might go, but that Hus must remain a prisoner. Chlum’s indignant remonstrances being in vain, he went to the Emperor and complained. But all his efforts to save his friend were fruitless. The fact was, that the Council had already determined upon his destruction. His brave witness for righteousness as well as for truth had stirred their intense hostility. He must either die as a heretic, or retract his own words, and go back to Bohemia disgraced and powerless, unable to hurt them anymore. But how was this to be accomplished? Enemies of Hus, prepared to accuse him, had already come from Prague, sent by the Papal party there. About the weight or the quality of the accusations the Council was not very particular. True or false, honest or villainous, plausible or absurd, all seemed to come alike to them. The chief accuser, whom perhaps we should call the prosecutor, Michael de Causas, seems to have been a very truculent ruffian, a man to be despised as much as hated. Hus’s other great Bohemian enemy was, originally, a man of higher type. What lends pathos to the story is that Stephen Paletz had been the intimate friend of Hus. They had taken sweet counsel together and walked in the house of God as friends. Hus felt his treachery most bitterly.
He could not conceal his pain when Paletz brought up fragments of their old confidential talks, things they had said to each other in openhearted friendship, and turned them against him.
Hus was now lodged in the dungeon of the Dominican Convent, which is built on a little island close to the town. The building is now a hotel, and some of us who have stayed there have stood and looked down into the depths of the dark underground dungeon where God’s servant lay for months. It was a terrible place to be shut up in; the air was corrupt and noisome, for it was close to the great sewers of the monastery. The prisoner soon became very ill, but still he was left there to linger on; for it was the plan of his enemies not to have him brought to a public trial, or heard in his own defense, but to send agents to examine him secretly in prison. They hoped thus to entangle him in his talk and to make him contradict himself; and then, perhaps, they would get from him the recantation they so much desired. Yet even in that sad position the prisoner’s heart did not sink. For, as was said of him truly—
“The Saviour stood by him in pain,
Nor left him in sorrow forlorn.”
We know he was strengthened and comforted, for we have many letters of his, written either from that dungeon or from another to which he was afterwards transferred. These letters are very touching. They are remarkable chiefly for the faith, the hope, the love they display, but also for their great naturalness. They are thoroughly unaffected; there is no attempt in them, so far as we can see, to appear braver, stronger, more resigned, than he was — he records the fears that crossed his mind, the conflicts he had, the times when his heart sank within him; then again he tells of the times when God drew very near him, and was indeed his light and his salvation. But perhaps the greatest characteristic of these letters is the tenderness of heart they show. Standing face to face with a cruel death, the concerns of others still occupy his mind. He thinks of all his friends, considers their welfare, enters into their cares, their concerns, and even remembers their tastes; as, for instance, in parting amongst them his very slender possessions, he will not give one intimate friend his gray coat, recollecting that he “does not like that color.” He entreats too that no one for his sake shall involve himself in any danger or loss. Certainly he had, among his other good gifts, “a heart at leisure from itself.”
God gave him two comforts in his long captivity. He never seems to have had a doubt of the fidelity of Chlum and his other friends. He knew they were staunch and true, and that they were still working for him, however little they could do. And God gave him also what He gave Joseph — favor in the sight of his keepers. He won the hearts of these simple, rough, ignorant men, and they became his faithful, devoted friends. He prayed for them, he taught them, he wrote little treatises for them. The name of one, “Robert,” is specially recorded for the love he showed his prisoner.
After some months Hus was transferred from the prison of the Dominicans to that of the Franciscans — thence to the Castle of Gottlieben, a place about three miles from Constance, where he was brought by night in a boat, because it was feared his friends might make an attempt to rescue him. While he was there a strange thing happened. The Council had been giving its attention to the affairs of Pope John XXIII., and showing a disposition to come down upon him with a heavy hand for his sins and misdemeanors. He took alarm, and fled in dismay, dressed as a groom. But he was captured, brought back, and lodged as a prisoner in the Castle of Gottlieben. For three days John Hus and John XXIII. were fellow-prisoners under the same roof. But they did not meet.
After a month in Gottlieben, Hus was brought back to the Franciscan prison, because there was a gleam of hope that, at last, the Council would consent to hear him. On the 5th of June he appeared before them for the first time. They saw him as he stood there, in chains like a criminal, but it can scarcely be said that they heard him. There was no order, no arrangement, no regard either to justice or to dignity, in their proceedings. Accusation after accusation was hurled against the prisoner. Everyone who had anything to say, said it — it was simply a scene of violence and clamour. Whenever he tried to answer he was interrupted with jeers and mockery. One of the Articles of Accusation against him would be read, and he would be asked whether he had said or taught so and so. He would perhaps begin: “What I said was this” — or “That which I meant was”— but a dozen voices would cry out, “Say yes or no!” Not another word would they hear from him but yes or no — scarcely that even. And when he was silent they cried out, “He has got nothing to say for himself.” At last, raising his voice, he contrived to say, “I am silent, because when I speak I cannot be heard. I leave my cause to God.”
The Emperor had not been present that day, but Chlum went to him and represented what had happened. He promised that the next time Hus was to be heard he would preside himself, and maintain order. He did so; and Hus was allowed to make some, at least, of his answers without interruption. But the spirit of the Council was thoroughly hostile. The great majority of its members, while they were his judges, were at the same time his bitter enemies. The so-called trial resolved itself into a struggle between the whole Council and the solitary man who stood fettered before it, strong in nothing except the consciousness of his integrity and the presence of his God. His bearing was dignified; he even ventured to say to that tumultuous assembly, “I thought that in this Council there would have been more reverence, piety, and good order.” One is glad to think that the only member who put in a word in favor of the hapless prisoner was an honest Englishman. Hus was accused of denying the doctrine of Transubstantiation, which he had never done. But the Council, not choosing to accept his disclaimer, tried to entangle him in subtle questions of scholastic theology, until one of the English deputies interposed, “What is the use of all this irrelevant talk? The man believes aright concerning the Sacrament of the Altar.” In the end Hus was recommended to submit unconditionally to the Council, and the Emperor himself told him that, unless he did, he himself neither could nor would protect him from the consequences of his obstinacy.
On the following day, the 8th of June, he was heard again, for the last time. He was now very ill with ague brought on by the severity of his imprisonment, and with what we should doubtless call neuralgia, which had kept him awake the whole night. But his spirit was unbroken. Amidst the storm that raged against him he stood calm and undaunted, with no touch of defiance or of boastfulness, yet “firm as the storm-stricken rock.” He had nothing to retract. Some of the Articles alleged against him he could not retract, for he had never held them; others, which he had held, he would willingly retract, as soon as they were proved out of Holy Scripture to be erroneous, and not until then. At the end of that long and weary day he went forth a condemned man. He must abjure or die.
As he was being led back to prison, so exhausted that he could scarcely walk, someone pushed his way through the guards, took his hand in his, and pressed it. It was the good knight Chlum. “Oh, how sweet unto me,” wrote Hus Afterward, “ was the pressure of the hand of the good knight John de Chlum, who was not ashamed to stretch out his hand to me, the miserable heretic, in chains, and abandoned of all men.” Truly that “cup of cold water” given to Christ’s suffering servant did not lose its reward.
When he wrote those words, Hus was expecting to be led without delay to the stake. He had been condemned; he had refused to retract, though pressed to do so by the Emperor himself. What else was to follow? Yet, after that, he was left in prison for a whole month, much to his surprise. This was because nearly every one desired his recantation rather than his death. The Council desired it; some — we may hope many — because his courage, his patience, and his piety had really touched their hearts; others because they thought, and truly, that his defeat and dishonor would tend much more to the glory of the Council than his death. The Emperor desired it too; because, in spite of his declaration that he could not protect a heretic, he foresaw there would be trouble about that safe-conduct from more quarters than one, including his own conscience. So every possible effort was made to drive him from the position he had taken up, and seduce or terrify him into signing even a mild and easy form of recantation.
It must be remembered that all this time his position was not that of a modern Protestant; who having no belief at all in the sacredness or the authority of the Council, could have regarded its power to ban him with contempt, however justly he might have dreaded its power to burn him. Hus still believed that the Church of his time — though sorely defaced with iniquity and impiety, was yet the Church of Christ; and that the Council which mocked and insulted him, which thrust him forth and doomed him to infamy and death, was its authorized organ and representative. But he knew that the truths he had preached were the truths of God’s Word, and therefore he could not deny them. He knew too that the falsehoods he had been accused of preaching had been never held or preached by him, and therefore it would be a falsehood of another kind to abjure them. He was emphatically a witness for two of the great Protestant principles — the supreme authority of the Word of God and the paramount duty of being, in both senses, “true to truth.” He was not himself aware of the gulf that yawned between his own position and that of the only Church he knew. But Rome was wiser than he was. She knew he was not of her, so she cast him out and slew him. This is not the only case in which she knew her opponents better than they knew her.
But while he resisted steadfastly, though with unfailing gentleness, the attacks made upon him from without — and they were many — how was it with him in the depths of his heart, and in the solitude of his prison? It was with him, habitually, as with the man or the woman who knows God, loves God, lives in communion with God. “He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High” in communion “ shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty “ for protection. But even those who know and trust Him best have their hours of weakness; and who could always look forward without fear to the awful fate Hus was expecting? It will be found, I think, in the histories of almost all the martyrs of whom we know sufficient to trace the workings of their minds, that before the time of their suffering they passed through a struggle, a conflict — perhaps more than one—“fearfulness and trembling took hold “ of them and their hearts sank within them. But always afterwards, when the suffering actually came, they were quite calm. So with Hus. In his hour of anguish he found refuge — where we all find it — beneath the Cross of Christ. He had suffered — had said, “Now is my soul troubled,” had been “exceeding sorrowful even unto death.” “O most merciful Christ,” His poor servant prayed in the dungeon of Constance, “draw us weak creatures after Thee, for except Thou draw us we are not able to follow Thee. Give us a strong spirit that we may be ready, and although the flesh is weak, let Thy grace go before us, go with us, and follow us, for without Thee we can do nothing — much less encounter cruel death for Thy sake. Give us a bold heart, an upright faith, a pure hope, and a perfect love, that we give our lives joyfully and patiently for Thy Name’s sake.”
His prayer was heard. Ere long the cry of joy breaks from him, “The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life, of whom shall I be afraid?” And again, “The gracious Lord hath been, and is, and I trust will be with me even to the end.”
In his letter of farewell to his beloved flock of Bethlehem, he says, “When we meet again in the sweet peace of the future life, then shall you know how God has been with me through all my trials and temptations, and how He has sustained me.”
In all things God gave him the victory. He had been wounded to the heart by the treachery of his old friend, Stephen Paletz, and it was not easy to forgive him. But he did it, and found a unique way of showing it. The Council, rather inconsistently, allowed him to have a confessor, and to choose whom he would. He chose Stephen Paletz, who, however, very naturally refused the office. But he visited Hus in prison. The two men, the betrayer and the betrayed, looked in each other’s faces — with what feelings who can tell? Hus broke the silence. He might have said, “I die through you,” but he did not. He said, “I spoke some things before the Council calculated to offend you. Will you forgive me?” At this unexpected reversal of the position, Paletz, instead of answering, burst into tears, and they wept together. Some further conversation followed, in which Paletz, much moved, urged his old friend to recant and save himself. Hus as usual refused, and Paletz went away in tears.
It was a deep grief to Hus, as it must be to every true worker, to think that his work must fail — that he had “labored in vain, and wrought no deliverance in the earth.” It is doubtful whether he ever said the words attributed to him, playing upon his name, which, in Bohemian, means goose—
“Ye burn now a goose: there succeeds me a swan
Ye shall find quench your fire!”
But comfort came to him in another way. One night, in his prison, he dreamed of his Chapel of Bethlehem. He had had some pictures of the Life of Christ painted on the walls for the instruction of the poor who could not read; and he dreamed that the Council, in its malice, had sent men to deface and destroy all these pictures. The people watched them, weeping and wailing; and he too was sad of heart. But the next day he went again to the chapel, and saw many painters there, who were painting many more pictures, and far more beautiful ones, “which,” he adds, “I was very glad and joyful to behold. And the painters, with the people about them, said, ‘Let the bishops and priests come now and put us out these pictures.’ And I, awaking herewith, laughed for joy.” Afterward he thus expounds the vision: “I am no prophet, and yet I firmly hope that this image of Christ, which I engraved on men’s hearts at Bethlehem where I preached His Word, will not be effaced; and that, when I cease to live, it will be far better portrayed, and by far mightier preachers, to the great joy of the people. And I too, when I awake in the Resurrection, shall rejoice thereat with exceeding joy.”
On the 5th of July, the last whole day John Hus was to spend on earth, he was told that a deputation of bishops from the Council wished to see him, and brought up from his dungeon to the refectory to meet them. They came to make one more effort to induce him to recant. He faced them with his usual calm — but that calm was shaken utterly when he saw with them his dear friends Chlum and Duba. The Emperor himself had begged them to go to him, thinking they might move him. As they looked in each other’s faces, Chlum said to him, “Dear master, I am not learned; I cannot help you by my counsel. You know whether or not you are guilty of the things of which the Council accuses you. If you are conscious of any error, do not be ashamed to yield. But if not — do not leave the path of truth for any fear of death.”
Hus tried to answer him, but the look and the voice of his friend were too much, and
“He whom no terror on earth could bow”
broke down completely. He could only falter, “Noble lord! — oh, my beloved friend!” But, soon regaining his composure, he gave the answer he always did, both to his friends and to the bishops, and was led back to his dungeon.
Early the next morning — the morning of the 6th of July, a day remembered now in lands of which he never knew — he stood for the last time before the great Council, which was held for that occasion in the Cathedral of Constance. There they still show a white spot, which they say has remained always white and always dry since the feet of John Hus stood there, nearly five hundred years ago.
It was a splendid and imposing assembly. The Emperor sat in his chair of state, surrounded by the princes of the Empire, and by the cardinals, bishops, abbots, doctors — the deputies to the Council from all parts of Europe. All the powers, both of the Church and of the world, seemed to be arrayed to crush and destroy this one man, who, when they said to him, Do this!” dared to answer, “I will not.”
For some time, while the Mass was being sung, he was kept standing outside; then the door was opened and he was led in, chained, with his guards. After a sermon by the Bishop of Lodi, came the reading of the Articles produced against him, and for which he was condemned. He requested to be allowed to answer them, but the permission was refused. Nevertheless, he managed to throw in now and then a word of explanation or remonstrance. One of these words had a far-reaching effect. He was accused of despising the Papal excommunication. “I did not despise it,” he answered. “I sent my procurators to Rome, where they were ill-treated and thrown into prison. It was therefore I determined, of my own free will, to appear before this Council, under the public faith and protection of His Majesty the Emperor, here present.” So saying, he looked steadily in the face of Sigismund, and a deep blush mounted to the Imperial brow. That blush of Sigismund’s is thought to have saved the life of Martin Luther. “I should not like to blush as Sigismuud,” Charles V. said at Worms.
Next was read the sentence of condemnation, which he answered by an earnest prayer that God would forgive his judges. A solemn scene followed. There had been placed in readiness, upon a scaffold, all the paraphernalia of a priest of Rome. Hus had to ascend this scaffold, and assume these things. As thus arrayed he stood before the great assembly — a tall figure robed in priestly white and holding in his right hand the sacred chalice — he was once more adjured to recant, and accept the mercy offered him.
He answered, in a voice at first low and broken, but gathering strength as he went on, “I stand here in the presence of God, without whose reproach and that of my own conscience I could not do it. For how then could I ever lift up my face unto God? Or how could I look on the faces of that great multitude whom I have taught and instructed in His Word?”
Then came the imposing ceremony of the degradation of a priest. The insignia of his sacred office were taken from him, one by one, each with a separate curse or malediction. The last to be taken was the chalice, when these words were said, “Accursed Judas, we take from thee this cup of the Blood of the living God which thou hast profaned.”
“Yet shall I drink it with Him this day, through His grace, in His kingdom,” the martyr answered.
Next, the tonsure was “effaced” by cutting his hair in the form of a cross, and a hideous paper crown, covered with horrible pictures of demons, was placed upon his head.
“For the sake of my Lord Jesus Christ,” he said, “who wore for me the crown of thorns, I wear with joy this crown of infamy.”
At last came the words which sundered John Hus forever from that which called itself the Church of Christ. “And now the Church hath nothing more to do with thee. We give over thy body to the secular power, and thy soul to the devil.” Then the Emperor, who represented the “secular power,” turned to the Grand Marshall of the Empire, the Elector Palatine, and said, “Go, take him.” Thus he was led forth to the place of death.
Passing out from the Cathedral, he saw, before the bishop’s palace, the fire in which his books were being burned. He smiled at the sight, for he knew well they could never burn his words out of the hearts of men.
The place of death was in the Gottlieben meadow, outside the city. If you went there now, you would see the spot railed in, and marked by a great boulder all covered with ivy and other plants and flowers, bearing his name, and that of the faithful friend who suffered after him, engraved upon it. But on this day a considerable space was enclosed to keep off the people from the city, who had thronged thither in crowds.
On entering the enclosure he knelt down and prayed, “Lord Jesus, help me to bear this death of pain and shame, which for Thy Name and Word’s sake I willingly encounter; and forgive all my enemies this their sin.”
As the executioners led him round the space that all the people might see him, he noticed in the crowd the keepers of his prisons, the faithful Robert no doubt among them. He asked the executioners to allow him to speak to these men, and they did. He said to them, Dear brothers, I give you great thanks for the many kindnesses you have shown me. Not my keepers have you been, but my brothers. Know also that this very day, as I steadfastly believe, I shall rejoice in heaven with my blessed Saviour, for whose Name I suffer this death.”
During the long, slow, horrible preparations, he stood unmoved and calm, praying to God. At last the executioner was ready to put his torch to the fagots. Then came an interruption; two great princes riding in hot haste, sent by the Emperor to try once more if, even in the very face of death, the victim would recant and save himself. Torch in hand, the executioner paused while they pleaded with him. But with a glad voice he answered them, “I call God to witness that I have not taught anything contrary to His truth. And the truths I have taught in accordance with His Word I will now maintain, and willingly seal with my death.” So the princes wrung their hands and departed.
Loving eyes however watched him to the end. Maldonowitz, Chlum’s secretary, was there, and tells the story for us. As the flames rose about him the martyr prayed, “Jesus Christ, Thou Son of God, have mercy upon me!” This he said twice, and began the third time, “Jesus Christ — ” but had only uttered the Name he loved, when the suffocating smoke stopped his voice. For a little space, “while you might say two or three Paternosters,” his lips continued to move as if in quiet prayer. Then he bowed his head, and “departed in the Lord.”
And I think we may say, as John Bunyan says of “Valiant-for-truth,” that “all the trumpets sounded for him on the Other Side.”
“What is our failure here but a triumph’s evidence
For the fullness of the days?”
R. BROWNING.