he devested himself of his garments, and knelt down in prayer. Logs of wood were then piled about round his body, which they covered up to the breast. When they were lighted, he began to sing a hymn, which was interrupted by the smoke and the flames. This, however, is the greatest proof of the constancy of his mind, that when the lictor (town official or beadle) wished to light the stake behind his back, that he might not see it, he said: Come here and light the stake before my eyes, for if I had feared it I should never have come to this spot, as it was in my power to fly. Thus perished a man eminent beyond belief. I saw his end, I contemplated every one of his acts. Be it that he acted thus from faithlessness or from obstinacy, you could perceive that it was a man of the philosophic school who had perished. . . . Mutius did not allow his hand to be burnt with more brave a mind than this man his whole body. Socrates did not drink the poison as willingly as this man submitted himself to the flames.”[1]
Though Jerome perished by the same terrible death as Hus, nothing can be more different than the circumstances which preceded the deaths of the two men. Hus, inspired here as everywhere by a truly Christian feeling, was ready to render up his life should his duty as a Christian oblige him to do so. Meanwhile, he “guarded it as God’s high gift from scathe and wrong.” Thus he refused to go to Rome, where certain death awaited him, because he believed that his conscience then ordered him to live. He very clearly expressed his views on this subject in a passage in the treatise De Ecclesia, which I have previously quoted. He did not heed the accusation of cowardice, which was in consequence raised against him by his enemies, and which has been repeated by some of his modern detractors. Similarly, he did not hesitate to leave
- ↑ Though Poggio Bracciolini’s account of the death of Jerome, of which he was an eye-witness, is somewhat rhetorical, yet it can on the whole be considered as trustworthy. Other writers describe the event similarly, though they lay less stress on the heroism of Jerome. Only Richenthal, not a very reliable authority, states that Jerome “screamed lowdly” while in the flames.
