Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 2.djvu/472

456 When, therefore, the imperial and royal wishes for his presence at Constance were signified to him, with a promise of safe-conduct and full security, he willingly assented, and so anxious was he to be present at the opening of the council that he did not even wait for the promised safe-conduct, which reached him only after his arrival there. That some discussion took place among his friends as to the danger to be incurred there can be no doubt. Jerome of Prague, when on his trial, asserted that he had persuaded Huss to go, and Huss in one of his letters from prison alludes to the warn- ings which he had received. He himself was evidently not wholly without misgivings. A sealed letter left with his disciple, Master Martin, not to be opened till news should be received of his death, alludes to the persecution which he had suffered for restraining the inordinate lives of the clergy, and his expectation that it would soon reach its consummation. He makes disposition of his slender effects his gray gown, his white gown, and sixty grossi, which comprise the whole of his worldly gear--and expresses his remorse for the time wasted before his ordination, when he used to play chess to the loss of his own temper and that of others. The unaf- fected simplicity and pure-heartedness of the man shine like a divine light through the brief words of his last request. A letter in the vernacular to his disciples also announces his fear that his enemies may seek in the council to take his life by false testimony. He asks the prayers of his friends that he may have eloquence to uphold the truth and constancy to endure to the last. Still, he did not wholly neglect precautions. Not only did he procure from the inquisitor Nicholas, Bishop of Nazareth, the certificate of his orthodoxy already alluded to, but he posted, August 26, through- out Prague a notice in Latin and Bohemian that he would appear before the archbishop, then holding a convocation of the Bohemian clergy, and challenged all who impugned his faith to come forward and accuse him either there or at Constance, asserting his readi- ness to submit to the punishment of heresy in case he was con- victed, but that accusers who failed should be subjected to the talio. When John of Jessinetz, his representative, presented him- self the next day at the door of the convocation, he was refused ad- mission on the pretext that the body was deliberating on national affairs, and he was told to come back another time. In the as- sembly of nobles, however, Huss obtained an audience of the arch-