THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
trial on June 8, several other attempts were made to induce him to recant, but he resisted all of them. The attitude of Sigismund was due to political considerations— he looked upon the return of Huss to his country as dangerous, and thought the terror of execution would not be without effect. Huss no longer hoped for life, indeed martyrdom responded to an inner desire of his being.
The condemnation took place on July 6 in the presence of the solemn assembly of the council in the cathedral. After the performance 8. Condem- of high mass and liturgy, Huss was led nation and into the church. The bishop of Lodi Execution, delivered an oration on the duty of eradicating heresy; then some theses of Huss and Wyclif and a report of his trial were read. He protested loudly several times, and when his appeal to Christ was rejected as a condemnable heresy, he exclaimed, " O God and Lord, now the council condemns even thine own act and thine own law as heresy, since thou thyself didst lay thy cause before thy Father as the just judge, as an example for us, whenever we are sorely oppressed." An Italian prelate pronounced the sentence of condemnation upon Huss and his writings. Again he protested loudly, saying that even at this hour he did not wish anything but to be convinced from Holy Scripture. He fell upon his knees and asked God with a low voice to forgive all his enemies. Then followed his degradation — he was enrobed in priestly vestments and again asked to recant; again he refused. With curses his ornaments were taken from him, his priestly tonsure was destroyed, and the sentence was pronounced that the Church had deprived him of all rights and delivered him to the secular powers. Then a high paper hat was put upon his head, with the inscription Haeresiarcha. Thus Huss was led away to the stake under a strong guard of armed men. At the place of execution he knelt down, spread out his hands, and prayed aloud. Some of the people asked that a confessor should be given him, but a bigoted priest exclaimed, a heretic should neither be heard nor given a confessor. The executioners undressed Huss and tied his hands behind his back with ropes, and his neck with a chain to a stake around which wood and straw had been piled up so that it covered him to the neck. Still at the last moment, the imperial marshal, Von Pappenheim, in the presence of the Count Palatine, asked him to save his life by a recantation, but Huss declined with the words " God is my witness that I have never taught that of which I have been accused by false witnesses. In the truth of the Gospel which I have written, taught, and preached I will die to-day with gladness." Thereupon the fire was kindled. With uplifted voice Huss sang, " Christ, thou Son of the living God, have mercy upon me." When he started this for the third time and continued " who art born of Mary the virgin," the wind blew the flame into his face; he still moved lips and head, and then died of suffocation. His clothes were thrown into the fire, his ashes gathered and cast into the near-by Rhine.
The Czech people, who in his lifetime had loved Huss as their prophet and apostle, now adored him
as their saint and martyr. He possessed high virtues, but in his struggles with the University of Prague and his ecclesiastical opponents he can not
be freed altogether from the reproach
g. Huss' of slander and abuse. His learning
Character, was not of a universal range; wherever
Writings, he goes beyond Wyclif, he falters and
and becomes dull or verbose. He left only
Teachings, a few reformatory writings in the proper
sense of the word, most of his works being polemical treatises against Stanislaus and Polecz. It is doubtful whether he knew all the works of Wyclif. He translated the Trialogus, and was very familiar with his works on the body of the Lord on the Church, on the power of the pope, and especially with his sermons. The book on the Church and on the power of the pope contains the essence of the doctrine of Huss. According to it, the Church is not that hierarchy which is generally designated as Church; the Church is the entire body of those who from eternity have been predestined for salvation. Christ, not the pope, is its head. It is no article of faith that one must obey the pope to be saved. Neither external membership in the Church nor churchly offices and dignities are a surety that the persons in question are members of the true Church. What he says in his sermons on the corruption of the Church, clergy, and monks, on the duties of secular powers, etc., he has taken almost literally from Wyclif. His three great sermons, De sufficientia legis Christi, De fidei sum elucidatione, and De pace, with which he thought to carry away the whole council at Constance, are exact reproductions of Wyclif's sermons. He claims not to have shared Wyclif's views regarding the sacraments, but this is not certain. The soil had been well prepared for this very doctrine in Bohemia. There are reasons to suppose that Wyclif's doctrine of the Lords' Supper had spread to Prague as early as 1399. It gained an even wider circulation after it had been prohibited in 1403, and Huss preached and taught it, although it is possible that he simply repeated it without advocating it. But the doctrine was seized eagerly by the radical party, the Taborites, who made it the central point of their system.
The great success of Huss in his native country was due mainly to his unsurpassed pastoral activity,
which far excelled that of the famous
io. Source old preachers of Bohemia. But even
of His here Huss was the docile pupil of the
Influence. Englishman. Huss himself put the
highest value on the sermon and knew how to awaken the enthusiasm of the masses. His sermons are often inflammatory as regards their contents; he introduces his quarrels with his spiritual superiors, criticizes contemporaneous events, or appeals to his congregation as witness or judge. It was this bearing which multiplied his adherents. and thus he became the true apostle of his English master without being himself a theorist in theological questions. In the art of governing and leading masses he was unexcelled. Huss' warm friend and devoted follower, Jerome of Prague (q.v.), shared his fate, although he did not suffer death till nearly a year later.