Jerome Of Prague
JEROME OF PRAGUE
Upset by the unjust treatment of John Huss, Jerome of Prague arrived in Constance on April 4, 1415, volunteering to appear before the council if promised safe conduct. This was denied him, so Jerome wrote out his thoughts on the council’s treatment of Huss and had them hung on the gates and porches of Constance’s churches and public buildings. Then he returned to Bohemia, where he was captured and brought back to face the council.
Jerome denied that he had done anything against the church, answering his accusers firmly and calmly, and was imprisoned for eleven days, hung by his heels with chains the whole time. Brought back before the council, he eventually gave in to their threats to save his life and agreed that John Huss had been fairly condemned as a heretic. Even then, he wasn’t freed but returned to prison under slightly better conditions. It soon became obvious that Jerome had given in to save his life, not because he had truly changed his mind about the council, and new articles of heresy were drawn up against him.
On May 25, 1416, after 340 days of imprisonment, Jerome was brought before the Council of Constance and charged with 107 offenses, all of which he denied or disproved in short order, silencing his interrogators with his strength and knowledge of God’s law. However, the outcome of the hearing was never really in doubt, no matter what Jerome said.
The Saturday before Ascension Day, Jerome was brought to hear judgment passed on him. He was given one more chance to take back his support of John Wycliffe and John Huss but refused. The council condemned him as a heretic, excommunicated him, and turned him over to the secular authorities.
Jerome went to his death bravely, singing hymns, canticles, and the doxology, then embracing a drawing of John Huss that he was bound to. Before the fire was lit, he said to the assembled crowd, “What I have just sung, I believe. This creed is my whole faith, but I’m dying today because I refuse to deny that John Huss was a true preacher of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”
As the fire flared up around him, Jerome continued his singing; and even when no more sound could be heard from him, his lips continued to move and his head to shake for fifteen minutes. Finally dead in the fire, all his possessions from prison were burned, and his ashes were thrown into the Rhône River. Henry Chicesley succeeded Thomas Arundel as archbishop of Canterbury, continuing the persecutions. Under him, King Henry VI commissioned John Exeter and Jacolet Germain, the keeper of Colchester Castle, to apprehend William White and others suspected of heresies. Soon after, John Exeter attacked six people in the town of Burgay, Norwich, and sent them to the castle of Norwich.
The old records also show that a great number of people from the towns of Beccles, Ersham, and Ludney were thrown into prison and openly shamed after they recanted. From 1428–1431, about 120 men and women were taken, some only for eating meat on vigil days. Others were handled more cruelly, and some were burned; 78 were forced to recant. Many of the charges against these people were untrue or reported incorrectly by the notaries. Often the simple, uneducated people did not understand the charges brought against them or know how to answer them. Most of them seemed to have been instructed in their faith by William White, a follower of John Wycliffe.