Page:The life & times of Master John Hus by Count Lützow.djvu/319

 held, preached, or taught the tenets which had been ascribed to him by false witnesses. He was then stripped of his clothes and tied with cords to a stake, and his arms were turned backward to the stake. When his face was at first turned to the east, some of the spectators said: ‘Let him not be turned to the east, for he is a heretic, but to the west;’ and it was done thus. When a rusty chain was placed round his neck, he said, smiling, to the lictors: ‘Our Lord Jesus Christ, my Redeemer, was bound with a harder and heavier chain, and I, poor wretch, fear not to be fettered with this chain for His sake.’ Now the stake consisted of a thick pole, which they had sharpened at one end and driven into the ground in this field; under the feet of the master they placed two faggots and some loads of wood. When attached to the stake he retained one of his boots, and a fetter on one of his feet. They then heaped up round his body wooden faggots mixed with straw so that they reached up to his chin.” Mladenovic then refers to the last attempt—it was little more than a formality—made by the imperial marshal, Pappenheim, to induce Hus to recant, and then describes the martyrdom. “When the lictors,” he writes, “lighted the pile, the master first sang with a loud voice, ‘Christ, son of the living God, have mercy on us,’ and then again, ‘Christ, son of the living God, have mercy on us.’ When a third time he began singing, ‘Who art born of the virgin Mary,’ the wind soon blew the flames into his face; then, still silently praying and moving his lips, he expired in the Lord. The space of time during which, after having become silent, he still moved before dying was that required to recite two, or at most three paternosters.” Mladenovic then describes the detestable outrages that were committed on the remains of the body of Hus to prevent their being preserved as relics by his countrymen.

That the execution of Hus would have world-wide conse-