2024-07-06 09:30:58
It is quite possible that if he lived today, Petr from Mladoňovice would be a very good reporter. A young scribe in the service of the knight Jan of Chlum was the guide of Master Jan Hus on his way to the Council of Kostnice. He recorded Hus’s last moments in great detail in his diary. And it’s really rough reading.
The tragic event from the summer of 1415 was recorded by Petr of Mladoňovice in the Latin treatise Relatio de magistri Joannis Hus causa in Constantiensi consilio acta. We started from the Czech translation from 1917, translated the narration into contemporary Czech, slightly shortened some passages and added subtitles. We tried to preserve the authentic style of Petr z Mladoňovice, reminiscent of contemporary reports. Here is his account describing the last moments of Hus’s life:
Mercenaries: May he be burned with the devils, his masters
When Master Jan Hus was brought to the place where he was to die, he knelt on his knees, clasped his hands, raised his eyes to heaven and prayed “Have mercy on me, God”, “In you, Lord God, I have hoped” and “In your hand “Lord God, I command my soul”. He repeated his prayers evenly and loudly, so that the bystanders could hear him well.
The place that awaited his execution is a large meadow on the outskirts of Constance. While Hus was praying there, a humiliating paper crown with devils painted on it fell from his head. He smiled at that. The mercenaries who stood around said: “Put it back on his head, let him be burned with the devils, his masters whom he served.”
Then Jan Hus stood up at the executioner’s command. He prayed again so that it could be heard well: “Lord Jesus Christ, I want to obediently and humbly undergo this terrible, humiliating and cruel death for your gospel and for the preaching of your word. Please forgive all my enemies!” He also tried to explain to the bystanders, around whom he was being led, that he had not committed anything of which he was falsely accused, and asked to be allowed to speak to his jailers. As they approached, he said: “I thank you, dear brothers, for all the good you have done for me, you have not only been my guardians, but also my dear brothers. I firmly believe in my dear Saviour, for whose holy law I am willing to suffer this death, that with him I will reign today.”
Tied to a board, a chain around his neck
Then they stripped him to his shirt and tied him with ropes to a thick board. He was tied in several places – above the instep, below the knees, above the knees, between the groins, on the hips, in the middle of the torso and under the arms. His hands were also tied. The board, which was sharpened at the bottom, was then planted in the ground.
He was facing the east, but someone standing by said, “Turn him to the west, for he is a heretic.” Which is what happened. Then they fastened him to the board with a black chain dirty with soot, tied around his neck.
When Jan Hus saw the chain, he laughed and said loudly to the executioners: “Lord Jesus Christ, my dear redeemer and savior, was bound for me with a crueler and heavier chain, and I, the wretch, am not ashamed to be bound with this for his holy name.”
They placed two bundles of wood under his feet and then built a border around him of wood and bundles of straw that reached up to his neck.
These are false allegations. God, have mercy
Before they set fire to the pyre, the Reich Marshal Hoppe of Pappenheim came to Hus together with Klem’s son (Duke Louis III, Palatinate of the Rhine) and urged him to retract his teaching and thus save his life.
The Master looked up to heaven and answered: “God is my witness that I have never preached or taught the things that false testimonies ascribe to me. The main object of my teaching, preaching and writing has been to lead people away from sin. And in that truth which I wrote, taught and preached from the law of God and from the interpretations of the holy doctors, today I want to die joyfully.”
When the executioners heard this, they set fire to the pyre. The master sang in a loud voice: “Christ, son of the living God, have mercy on us!” And then: “Christ, son of the living God, have mercy on me!” And when he wanted to repeat “You were born of the Virgin Mary” a third time, the wind rose and the flames began to blow right in his face.
Hus’s voice fell silent, he only prayed silently. He could be seen moving his lips and moving his head without a word, as if he were rapidly reciting two or three paternal prayers. Then he breathed his last.
Heart on a spit, ashes in the waters of the Rhine
When the warm straw with which Jan Hus was covered burned and fell, his body still stood by the board raised in the midst of the flames. It hung from a chain tied around his neck. The executioner’s board with the body was uprooted from the ground so that it fell into the fire, into which they then began to pour heavily. As they did so, they went around and beat Hus’s bones with clubs so that they would burn sooner. When they found the head, they crushed it. And when they found the heart among the entrails, they impaled it on a pointed piece of wood similar to a spit, roasted it in flames, and beat it with another piece of wood.
His robes and all other personal belongings that the executioner had with him, by order of Duke Louis III. they also threw into the fire. “The Czechs would consider them sacred and worship them,” he said, promising the executioner to pay him for it. Then all the ashes, including the deeply dug earth that was under the border, were loaded onto wagons and dumped into the nearby Rhine, so that Master Jan Hus fell into eternal oblivion.
(The text is based on a translation of the writings of Peter of Mladoňovice entitled Report on the Condemnation of Master Jan Hus in Constance. The used translation of the original medieval work from Latin into Czech was published in 1917 and edited by V. Flajšhans).