i8o sumas at once took rank as a prophet among his followers. Jerome of Prague was sentenced by the Council of Constance to be burned for his heresies. He appealed in loud tones : " To the sovereign Judge before whom you must all appear and answer for this judgment before a hundred years are passed." A great judicial crime was the condemna tion and burning of Urban Grandier. The story of the possessed girls of Loudun, in France, in 1625, is well known. The nuns were poor; they hired a house and received boarders. Some of these boarders were of a frolicsome disposition, and frightened the nuns with strange noises and freaks that made them suppose the house was haunted. At this time there was at Loudun an elo quent young priest named Urban Grandier, who was an object of jealousy to the canons of St. Croix, and they utilized the hauntings to effect his destruction. The nuns and girls became a prey to hysteria, and in con vulsions declared they were possessed by devils sent to them by Grandier. On this accusation the unfortunate priest was con demned and burned alive. Before his death he solemnly cited his persecutor, the insti gator of the whole infamous plot, to meet him before the throne of the Judge of all in the course of a month from that day; and ex actly a month afterwards the man died. Terence O'Brien was Bishop of Emly. When Limerick was besieged, Ireton, Crom well's commander in Ireland (1651), sent him word that he would give him forty thousand pounds sterling, and permission to retire in safety, if he would exhort the peo ple to surrender. This the Bishop refused, and Ireton excepted the Bishop from am nesty; he proposed to the besieged to bring him the head of the prelate, together with those of twenty men who had voted against surrender. If they would do this, he would spare the town. This was refused by the citizens. At length the city surrendered, and the Bishop fell into the hands of Ireton. The stern Puritan at once ordered the pre
late to death. Bishop O'Brien turned to the General and said : " I summon Ireton, the arch-persecutor, to appear in eight days to stand before the heavenly tribunal, to answer for his deeds of cruelty." On the eighth day Ireton, stricken with the plague, was a corpse. In Gothland a certain John Turson, who was innocent, was sentenced to death by a magistrate, off hand, seated on his horse. Turson protested his innocence, and sum moned the judge to attend with him before the highest Judge. As Turson's head was struck off, the judge fell from his horse and broke his neck. Meinwerk, Bishop of Paderborn, was abused by a certain monk with great vio lence and with many charges. The Bishop answered him : "Well, let us appear together before the Judge of both, and let Him decide between us." Singularly enough, the monk died on the same day Qune 5, 1039) as did the Bishop. One of the most horrible of the many crimes committed on both sides in the revolt of the Netherlands against Spanish rule was the execution of Nanning Koppezoon by the Dutch governor of Holland. " He bore," says Mr. Motley, "with perfect fortitude a series of incredible tortures, after which, with his body singed from head to heel, and his feet almost entirely flayed, he was left for six weeks to crawl about his dungeon on his knees. He was then brought back to the torture-room and again stretched on the rack, while a large vessel was placed inverted upon his naked body. A number of rats were introduced under this cover, and hot coals were heaped upon this vessel, till the rats, rendered furious by the heat, gnawed into the very bowels of the victim, in their agony to escape." When finally led to ex ecution, the Calvinist minister, Julian Epeszoon, endeavored by loud praying to drown his voice, that the people might not rise with indignation; and the dying prisoner with his last breath solemnly summoned this unwor thy pastor to meet him within three days
