Page:Adventures of Baron Wenceslas Wratislaw of Mitrowitz (1862).djvu/34

 Nevertheless, they are not all of one creed; in Tabor everybody may believe what he likes. There are there Nicolaitans, Arians, Manichæans, Armenians, Nestorians, Berengarians, and Poor Men of Lyons; but the Waldenses, the mortal foes of the see of Rome, are in especial estimation.’

“Æneas Sylvius stayed in Tabor with a very rich and respected citizen, from whose mouth he obtained the greater part of the above information. This man also showed his guest a valuable statue of the Virgin Mary and the crucified Redeemer, which he preserved reverentially among his treasures, but refused to be persuaded to proclaim in a more open manner his attachment to the Church of Rome. Nevertheless, Æneas Sylvius, on his return from Beneschau, whilst his colleagues remained at table in Tabor, again visited his former host, to whose house the most considerable citizens, priests, and deacons came immediately to salute him. All these spoke Latin, for, as he says, ‘this faithless people had this one good quality, that it loved the sciences.’ The conversation soon became a dispute, in which an especial share was taken by Nicholas, whom they called their bishop, ‘a man full of evil days;’ Wenzel Coranda, ‘an old slave of the devil;’ and John Galet, who had not long before fled thither for refuge from Poland, where he was to have been burnt. Æneas, though unwillingly, stood his ground, for fear of giving the Taborites, by his silence, occasion to boast that he, a bishop of the Romish faith, had either not ventured or not been able to withstand their arguments. Of course they parted on the same terms as they had met. But Æneas thanked God when he was again out of that ‘nest of heretics,’ that ‘synagogue of Satan,’ and found himself again in the open air; ‘I felt,’ said he, ‘as though I had escaped from hell.”

I cannot here omit Æneas Sylvius’s extraordinary testi-