Page:The letters of John Hus.djvu/65

 Before the appeal could be considered, Zbinek, who had at first consented to postpone execution until the Margrave Jobst could arrive in Prague, brought matters to a head by burning two hundred manuscripts of Wyclif’s works in the courtyard of his palace on the Hradschin, ‘in the presence of a number of prelates and clergy, who chanted the Te Deum with a loud voice, while the bells were tolled as if for the dead.’ ‘The better copies,’ some of them bound with gold knobs, ‘were, however, it is believed, kept over’ (July 16, 1410). Two days later, Zbinek, amid the angry cries of the people, excommunicated Hus and others for not yet delivering up their copies and ‘for opposing the Catholic faith’ by their frivolous processes. Wenzel retorted by ordering the Archbishop to refund the value of the burnt volumes to their owners, and on his refusal seized his revenues.

The excitement in Prague was intense. In the Bethlehem Hus denounced Alexander V. and Zbinek before an immense congregation. In the University Czech masters, following the lead of Hus, were not slack in their sarcasms upon the Archbishop and in their open defence of the books of Wyclif. In the streets Jerome and others taught the working men to sing satirical skits which Wenzel found it needful to prohibit:

The mob, in fact, stirred up by an incautious sermon of Hus, took matters into their own hand. On July 22 they burst into the cathedral and drove forty priests from the altars. In the church of St. Stephen’s ‘six men with drawn swords tried to slay a blaspheming preacher.’ The terror, we learn, ‘so overwhelmed all the vicars’ that they dared not give effect to the excommunication.

To this year of strife, probably before it had developed into the edict against the books of Wyclif, certainly before the burning and excommunication, we must ascribe the following undated letter, whose strong evangelical feeling will appeal to many. Laun, the Latin name for which is Luna, is a town about sixty kilometres N.W. of Prague. There is a picture of it, much as it was in the days of Hus, in Merian’s Topographia Provinciarum Austriacarum, (Frankfort, 1649).