Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 2.djvu/520

 504 BOHEMIA. the council assembled early, and by ten o'clock Jerome was at the stake. After the mass, the Bishop of Lodi preached a sermon. He had been selected to perform the same office at the condemna- tion of Huss, and the brutality of his triumph over the unfortu- nate prisoner on this occasion even exceeded his former effort. The charity and tenderness with Avhich Jerome had been treated ought to have softened his heart, even had the recollection of his crimes failed to do so. A comparison was drawn between the favor shown him and the severity customary with suspected her- etics. ''You were not tortured — I wish you had been, for it would have forced you to vomit forth all your errors ; such treat- ment would have opened your eyes, which guilt had closed." The nobles present were called upon to mark how Huss and Jerome, two base-born men, plebeians of the lowest rank and unknown origin, had dared to trouble the noble kingdom of Bohemia, and what evils had sprung from the presumption of those two peas- ants. Then Jerome in a few dignified sentences replied, asserting his conscientiousness and deploring his condemnation of Wickhff and Huss. Cardinal Zabarella, he said, was winning him over when his judges were changed and he would not plead to new ones. His abjuration was read to him ; he acknowledged it ; he said it had been extorted by the dread of fire. Then the prose- cutor asked for a definite sentence in writing against him, and the head commissioner, John of Constantinople, read a long one con- demning him as a supporter of Wickliff and Huss, and ending with the declaration that he was a relapsed heretic and anathe- matized excommunicate. To this the council unanimously re- sponded Placet There was no pretence of asking mercy for him. He was handed over to the secular power with a command that it should do its duty under the sentence rendered. Not be- ing in orders, there was no ceremony of degradation to be per- formed, but a tall paper crown with painted devils was brought. He tossed his cap among the prelates and put on the crown, say- ing, " Our Lord Jesus Christ, when about to die for me, wore a crown of thorns. In place of that, I gladly bear this for his sake," and with this he was hurried off to execution on the same spot where Huss had suffered.* Lib. VII. Dist. 4.
 * Von der Hardt III. 55-60 ; IV. 763-71.— Theod. Vrie Hist. Cone. Constant