JEROME OF PRAG
Even Aeneas Sylvius, later Pope Pius II, afterwards said with admiration: "No one of the ancient Stoics ever met his death more bravely."
A year later, on May 30, on the same spot in the same clover field they burned Jerome of Prag. He went to his death with a smiling face. "You condemn me, though innocent. But after my death I will leave a sting in you. I call on you to answer me before Almighty God within a hundred years."
When the fagots were lighted, he sang the Easter hymn, "Hail, Festal Day," and protested his innocence to the bystanders. His last words were in Bohemian, "God Father, forgive me my sins."
A great stone marks the spot where the two Bohemian saints ascended to heaven in chariots of fire.
The words of Erasmus might well have been his epitaph—"John Hus, burned, not convicted." Lechler says: "To inflict defeat by meeting defeat, that was his lot."
Wiclif and Hus are the constellation "Gemini," or Twins, shining in the papal night till their dim twinkling is swallowed up in the glorious sun bursting from Wittenberg in Luther.
THE BRUEHL, PLACE OF BURNING