Page:John Huss, his life, teachings and death, after five hundred years.pdf/217

 stance and a mile from the place where Huss died. The grounds are beautified with flowers and the walls overgrown with vines. Huss’s Tower, which was pointed out to me by the baron, is 25 feet square, its walls 5 feet thick, and the ascent within is made by 124 steps of stone or wood. The top story was Huss’s place of confinement.

A beautiful view is had through the narrow casement over the lake and to the mountains beyond. A tablet in Czech and German gives the date of Huss’s confinement. Here in this high and airy tower—turri aërosa—as he called it, Huss had freedom to walk about during the day, his feet fettered; and at night his hands were chained with iron manacles fastened to the wall near his bed. So rigorous was the imprisonment at Gottlieben, which lasted more than two months. March 24 to June 5, that not a single letter written by the prisoner’s hand is preserved. There was no jailer like Robert to mediate between him and the outside world. His case was put, April 6, into the hands of a new commission, with d’Ailly at its head, with full power to examine into Wyclif’s teachings and his own. On the 17th a change was again made, d’Ailly withdrew, and four commissioners were appointed, one from each of the four nations. While the inquisition in committee was being conducted, the case was also brought before the council as a whole through protests against Huss’s treatment emanating from Bohemians and Poles sojourning in Constance and nobles in the home country.

The first of these, signed by a number of Bohemian and Polish noblemen at the time in Constance, was presented May 13 to the four nations assembled in the refectory of the Franciscan convent. The document reasserted that Huss had come to Constance, under promise of safe-conduct from the king, to give public statement of his tenets. He had been incarcerated without a hearing and become so