Page:The letters of John Hus.djvu/83

 worth a farthing. Even if none of these mentioned the matter, every monk is bound by his vow. Please send on to me anything you may discover elsewhere to the same effect. Pray remember me to my lord Abbot, and give a hearty welcome to Andrew, the bearer of these presents. If a convenient opportunity occurs, give him a berth for God’s sake, so that he may stay on with you. Farewell in Christ.

I write what has occurred to my mind. If I think of anything further I will write later on.

In the year of our Lord 1412 (sic) on the Lord’s day the feast of Prisca.

, alias Bradáček, or Železna Brada (“Iron Beard”) (infra, pp., 199, ), to whom this letter is addressed, was a close friend of Hus (infra, pp. , ). As his “beard” shows, he was a layman—‘a stout rustic,’ as an unknown hand has called him in the margin. From the above references we learn that he was at Constance during the trial and death of Hus, of the last scenes of which he has left us a vivid and tender account (Doc. 556). He would seem at this time to have been living in Chrumnaw.

Most of the quotations in this letter will be found repeated by Hus in his De Sex Erroribus, c. 4, ‘De Obedentia’ (Mon. i. 192b), as also in his De Ecclesia, c. 19 (Mon. i. 238-9). They are a fair specimen of that mediæval show of learning, so common in Hus, which represents little. For the most part, as our notes indicate, they are taken, in the order in which they stand, from one or two pages of Gratian’s Decretum, a work which Hus used as a quarry of Patristic references. The mediæval conscience in the matter of plagiarism was curiously lax.