to Ueberlingen (June 25), returning on the 28th I am inclined to think that it is to this incident that Hus refers.[1]
The Reformer meanwhile, in his sweltering cell, prepared for the end. He requested a confessor, and desired Palecz. Face to face with death the hearts of both men softened. For some reason or other ithe request was refused, and a monk shrived him. According to Hus, this priest abstained from exacting formal proofs of penitence—i.e., in this case a confession of his heresy. Hus was so little acquainted with the methods of the Inquisition that he gives no indication in his letter of understanding how great an act of clemency, or neglect, was involved in a course so contrary to all the rules of the Inquisition. The letter is also interesting from its illustrations of the casuistry employed to induce Hus to recant or appear to recant. But the purpose of Hus was constant, and his remaining letters are in reality conscious farewells to his different circles of friends.
LXXV. To his Bohemian Friends
(Without date: June 24 or 25, 1415)
I have been interviewed by many exhorters. They have pleaded at great length that I ought to abjure, and can do so lawfully by submitting my will to the Holy Church, which is represented by the Holy Council. But not one of them can satisfactorily meet the objection, when I put him in my own position, ‘How can a man consistently abjure when he hath never preached, held, or stated the heresy whereof he is charged, and how would he save his conscience if he is not by abjuring to admit that he held the heresy wrongly? ‘Some said that to abjure did not carry with it this meaning, but only amounted to a renunciation of heresy, whether held or not;
- ↑ It is to be noted that Hardt (iv. 344) dates the confessor incident as taking place on June 30, and this letter as the last of all. But this is an inference only, and is hardly possible. If correct, the journey of Sigismund would be his expedition to Perpignan (infra, p. 275).
