while praying within that church, and imprisoned in the monastery of Ara Coeli in the capital. It is probable that the mendicant friars in Bohemia had already denounced him in Rome, and when the news of his imprisonment reached Prague, they joyfully declared in their sermons that Milic would soon be burnt.[1] While in prison, Milic employed his time in formulating his views on the appearance of Antichrist—a subject in which he was then entirely absorbed. It was at this time that he wrote his Prophecia et Revelatio de Antichristo.[2] It was also while he was in prison that he wrote a long letter to Pope Urban V. The order of ideas in both writings is very similar; in both he denounces in burning and apocalyptic language the terrible depravity of the prelates, the monks, the nuns of his time. In both he also enlarges on the, to him, ever-present subject of the advent of Antichrist. Incidentally he also, in the Prophecia, explains the reasons that induced him to visit Rome. He writes that the inward spirit that guided him said, “Go and tell the supreme pontiff to bring back the church to the state of salvation.”[3] In his letter to the pope
- ↑ The author of the Life of Milic, published in the works of Balbinus, writes of the return of Milic and his companion to Prague: “Cum vero Pragam pervenissent quasi nova lux omnibus Christi fidelibus orta fuisset, ita gaudebant quia per Viros Religiosos mendicantes saepe in eorum praedicationibus undubant ubi dicebatur: Charissimi ecce jam Militius cremabitur. (Miscellanea Historica Regni Bohemiae, liber, iv.)
- ↑ This book must not be confounded with the treatise, De Anatomia Antichristi—printed in the Nuremberg edition of the works of Hus—which is not by Milic. The book has also been ascribed to Matthew of Janov. Recent research proves that it was written after the siege of Prague in 1420 by a Hussite who used the writings of Janov. (See Dr. Kybal, Matey z. Janova, and the same writer's study in the Cesky Casopis Historicky (Bohemian Historical Yearbook), vol. xi.)
- ↑ “Postremo incepi attendere, quomodo esset de statu et salute Christianorum. Et stans in hoc stupefactus audivi spiritum in me sic loquentem in corde. Vade et dic summo pontifici, qui ab hoc Spiritu sancto electus est,’ ut reducat ecclesiam in statum salutis, ut mittat angelos sive praedicatores cum tuba praedicationis et voce magna, ut tollant praedicta scandala de regno Dei sive de ecclesia, ut quia messis, id est consummatio saeculi venit jam eradicent zizania, id est haereticos et pseudoprophetas, ypocritas, beghardos et beginas et scismaticos, qui omnes per Gog et Magog significantur detegant. . . .” (Vestnik Kr. c. Spolecnosti Nauk (Journal of the Bohemian Learned Society), 1890. Mr. Mencik has here published for the first time Milic's prophecy and his letter to Pope Urban V.)
