Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 8.djvu/535

 JOHN

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JOHN

Archbishop of Cambrai, 11 June, 157C. He was sent on the mission on 7 November following, and appears to have laboured in London. His apprehension took place 1 December, 1577, "late in the evening as he was saying the Nocturne of the Matins for the next day following", and he was committed to Newgate as a suspected Papist. His arrest and its issue had been foretold by a demon he had exorcised a week before. The High Commissioners in a few days by cross- examination induced liim to say that the queen was a schismatic. This constituted high treason under the legislation of 1571. He was providentially en- abled to say Mass in Newgate, 30 January, 1577-8, and two days later he was brought to the l)ar and condemned. Thenceforward he was confined "in a most filthy underground dungeon", doubtless the Pit of the tower, preparing by prayer and fasting for his end. He was cut down alive, and liis last words, when the hangman plucked out his heart, are reported to have been: "I forgive the queen and all the authors of my death." The date and place of his admission to the Society of Jesus are unknown. C.\MM. Lives of the English Martyrs, II (London, 1904-5). 223; .\llen, .4 Briefe Historic (Pollen's edition, London, 1908). Ill; GiLLow, Bibliographical Dictionary of the English Catholics. V (London and New York, 1SS5-1902), 160.

John B. VVainewkight.

John Nepomucene, iiAisr, b. at Xepomuk about 1340; d. 20 March, 1393. The controversy concerning the identity of John of Pomuk or Nepomuk (a small town in the district of Pilsen, Bohemia), started in the eighteenth century, is not yet decided. The principal question at issue is whether there was only one John of Nepomuk, or whether two persons of that name lived at Prague in the .second half of the fourteenth century and met with precisely the same fate. This inquiry leads naturally to the further question, as to the true cause of John's violent death. In a controversy of this character it is of primary importance to set down clearly the information given in the original sources. Extant documents, ecclesiastical records, and contemporaneous accounts of the second half of the fourteenth century relate in unmistakable fashion that in 1393 a certain John of Nepomuk was Vicar- General of the .\rchdiocese of Prague, and that on 20 March of the same year by command of King W'en- ceslaus IV of Bohemia he was thrown into the Moldau and drowned. This John was the son of WcWin (or Wolflin), a burger of Pomuk (Nepomuk), and studied theology and jurisprudence at the University of Prague. In 1373 he took orders and became pubUc notary in the archiepLscopal chancery, and in 1374 was made prothonotarj' and first secretarj- of Archbishop John of Jenzen.stein (Jenstein). In 13S0 he received the parish of St. Callus in Prague, and, continuing meanwhile his studies of jurisprudence at the univer- sity, was promoted in 1387 to the doctorate of canon law. He was also a canon in the church of St. .Egi- dius in Prague, and became in 13S9 canon of the cathe- dral in Wyschehrad. In 1390 he gave up the parish of St. Gallus to become .\rchdeacon of Saaz. and at the same time canon of the Cathedral of St. Vitus, without receiving however any cathedral benefice. Shortly afterwards the archbishop named him president of the ecclesiastical court, and in 1393 his vicar-general. King Wenceslaus IV of Bohemia, wishing to found a new bishopric for one of his favourites, ordered that at the death of Abbot Racek of Kladrau no new abbot should be elected, and that the abbey church should be turned into a cathedral. The archbishop's vicar-gen- eral, however, interposed energetically on this occasion in defence of canon law. When .\bbot Racek died in 1393. the monks of Kladrau immediately held a new election, the choice falling on the monk Odolenus, and John, as vicar-general, promptly confirmed this elec- tion without referring to the wishes of the king. Upon iiearing this Wenceslaus fell into a violent rage, and

had the vicar-general, the catliedral official. Provost Wenceslaus of Meissen, the archbishop's steward, and later the dean of the cathedral thrown into prison. The first four were even tortured on 4 March, but, although the others were thus brought to acquiesce in the wishes of the king and the official even proposed everlasting secrecy concerning all that had occurred, John of Nepomuk resisted to the last. He was made to undergo all manner of tortiire, including the burn- ing of his sides with torches, but even this could not move him. Finally, the king ordered him to be put in chains, to be led through the city with a block of wood in his mouth, and to be thrown from the Karlsbriicke into the river Moldau. This cruel order was executed on 20 March, 1393.

We possess four contemporaneous accounts con- cerning tliese proceedings. First of all, the extant bill of indictment again,st the king, presented to Bene- dict IX by -Vrchbishop John of Jenzenstein, who went to Rome with the new .\bbot of Kladrau on 23 April, 1393 (Pubitschka, Gesch., IV, app.; ed. Pelzel, "Ge- schichte Konig Wenzels', I: " Urkundenbuch ", 14.3- 63). Some years later Abbot Ludolf of Sagan gives an account of it in a somewhat aljbreviated form in the catalogue of the Abbots of Sagan completed in 139S (ed. Stenzel in "Script, rerum Silesiacarum ", I, 1835, pp. 213 sqq.), as well as in the treatise "De longaevo schismate ", hb. VII, c. xix (Archiv fur osterreichische Geschichte, LX, 1880, pp. 418 sq.). A fourth reference is to be found in the "Chronik des Deutschordens", a chronicle of the Teutonic Knights which was compiled by John of Posilge who died in 1405 ("Scriptores rerum Prus.sicarum", III, Leipzig, 1861 —, 1S7). For the discussion of the question it is important to remark that Archbishop John of Jenzenstein in his above- mentioned indictment (art. 26) calls John of Nepomuk "martyr sanctus ", and that, in the biography of John of Jenzenstein by his chaplain. John of Nepomuk is described as "gloriosum Christi martjTem miracvilis- que coruscum". It is thus clear that his contem- poraries had alreadj' begun to honour as a mart}T and a saint the vicar-general put to death by the cruel and licentious tyrant for his defence of the law of the Church. The body of John of Nepomuk was drawn out of the Moldau and entombed in the cathedral of Prague, where in fact, as is proved by later documents, his grave was honoured.

In his "Chronica regum Romanonim", finished in 14.59, Thomas Ebendorfer (d. 1464) relates that King Wenceslaus had Magister John, the father confessor of his wife, drowned in the Moldau, not only because he had said that "only he who rules well is worthy of the name of king", but also because he had refused to violate the seal of the confessional. The refusal to violate the seal of the confessional is here for the first time given as the reason for John's violent death. The chronicler, who speaks of only the one John drowned by order of King Wenceslaus, evidently re- fers to the John of Pomuk put to death in 1393. In the other chronicles written in the second half of the fifteenth centun,-, we find the reason regularly assigned for the execution of John, that he had refused to tell the king what the queen had confes.sed to him.

Paul Zidek's "Instructions for the King" (sc. George of Podiebrad), completed in 1471, contains still more details (cf. Schmude in "Zeitschrift fur kathol. Theologie", 1SS3, 90 sqq.). He says that King Wenceslaus suspected his wife, who was accus- tomed to confess to Magister John, and called upon the latter to declare the name of her paramour. On John's refusal to say anything, the king ordered him to be drowned. In this old accoimt we do not find the name of the queen or any date a.ssigned to this occur- rence: a little later the year 13S3 is given, when Wen- ceslaus's first wife, Johanna (d. 13S9). still lived.

In his "Annales Bohemonim" ("Kronika cesk:i", first printed in Bohemian, Prague, 1541; translated