Page:The life & times of Master John Hus by Count Lützow.djvu/107

 affirmed that those who invoked these remnants of the body and blood of Christ obtained miraculous results. A knight named Henry, who was to fight a duel with one Frederick, vowed before doing so that he would dedicate his armour to the Holy Blood of Wilsnack: he killed his adversary. One Peter, a robber and murderer, while confined in prison in fetters, also made a vow to the Holy Blood of Wilsnack. The result was that his fetters were miraculously broken and that he escaped. These and other similar tales were circulated widely all over Europe, and countless pilgrims from all countries—among them many Bohemians—flocked to Wilsnack. Hus and his colleagues questioned very diligently at Prague some of those who had visited the new place of pilgrimage. The evidence they collected is very curious as bearing witness not only to the superstition and credulity of the Middle Ages, but also to the unscrupulous dishonesty of the clergy of the period. Thus the evidence stated that a citizen of Prague, Peter of Ach, one of whose hands was maimed, had undertaken a pilgrimage to Wilsnack and dedicated a silver hand as an offering to the Holy Blood. Peter, however, failed to find relief. He remained three days at Wilsnack, wishing to hear what the priests would say of this. He then saw a priest who showed the silver hand from the pulpit, saying: “Listen, children, to this miracle. The hand of our neighbour from Prague has been healed by the Holy Blood, and he has offered this silver hand as a thanksgiving.” Peter then rose, showed his maimed hand, and exclaimed: “Priest, thou liest; here is my hand maimed as it always was!” The result of the investigation, in the course of which many similar frauds were exposed, was that an archiepiscopal decree enjoined on all preachers in Bohemia the duty of informing the laymen in their sermons that pilgrimages to Wilsnack were prohibited. This prohibition was to be repeated on one Sunday of every month.

The deplorable result of this investigation, in which Hus