Page:John Huss, his life, teachings and death, after five hundred years.pdf/345

 instance of certain Carmelites who had recently reached Constance. It is possible they were moved by the recollection of Jerome’s sacrilege in overthrowing the reliquary in the Carmelite church of Maria Schnee in Prague and his abuse of the monks at that time. Jerome had written no tracts from which charges could be drawn. One hundred and seven charges based on the testimony of witnesses recited how, as a young man, he had sucked in the poison of Wyclifism at Oxford and had carried Wyclif’s writings to Bohemia, where he had circulated them. He had placed on the walls of his room a portrait of the Englishman with his head surrounded with the aureole, the mark of sainthood. He was a close friend of Huss. As a chief actor, he had taken part in the Hussite tumults in Prague and at the university. He had also expressly declared that the Greeks and Ruthenians were good Christians.

May 23, 1416, had been appointed as the day when Jerome should do final penance at a public session of the council. In the meantime, as was to be the case with archbishop Cranmer, one hundred and forty years later, the prisoner’s courage revived, and, instead of doing penance, he laid down a testimony to his highest regard for Wyclif and Huss and to the injury which had been done in condemning them. Huss was a pure man and a righteous preacher of the Gospel. He was ready to assert until death all the articles against the offenses and pomp of the prelates which Wyclif and Huss had stated. In his previous profession against them he had been guilty of falsehood.

The council, meeting in the cathedral, May 30, for its twenty-first session, pronounced sentence upon the heretic. The sermon was again preached by the bishop of Lodi. The text, Mark 16: 14, ran: “The Lord upbraided them with their unbelief and hardness of heart.” Unless heretics recanted, he said, they were to be rooted up. Jerome, after he had abjured, had returned like a dog to his vomit. Ascend-