Inside the cathedral in Constance, Germany, the choices presented to John Huss were clear: either repent of all his “heresies” or face condemnation. Outside, the stake waited.

Seven months earlier the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund had invited Huss to a council in Constance aimed at settling the claims of three rival popes and reconciling the Bohemian dissi-dents with the church. Sigismund guaranteed Huss safe passage. One week after he arrived, the council reneged on Sigismund’s promise and threw Huss in a damp cell for seven months awaiting a trial.

His crimes? From the church’s perspective, Huss had adopted the heresies of John Wycliffe and denied the authority of the church. The council trumped up thirty charges against him, including one stating that Huss believed he was the fourth member of the godhead.1 Huss recognized the futility of defending himself and confided to a friend that he preferred public burning rather than private banning “in order that all Christendom might know what I said in the end.”2

From Huss’s perspective, he was simply following Scripture. He ranted against the clergy’s immoral abuses, which included obtaining priestly offices with money and selling indulgences (spiritual favors for money). He preached in the native Czech language, encouraged his congregants to participate in the worship service by singing hymns, and claimed that Christ, not the pope, was head of the church. Huss affirmed, “To rebel against an erring pope is to obey Christ.”3

As the trial droned on to its inevitable conclusion, Huss entreated the council to disprove his claims with Scripture. They simply responded: “Recant or die.” Huss turned his head in silent denial. Seven bishops dressed him in his priestly vestments and then one by one tore off each vestment saying, “O cursed Judas . . . we take from you the cup of redemption . . . we commit your soul to the Devil.”4

Mocking him, the council crowned Huss’s head with a paper miter (bishop’s headdress). On it, a trinity of demons danced. Crowds lined the streets to curse and insult him until he arrived at his Golgotha.

They bound him to the stake with a sooty chain and piled wood to his chin. They offered him one last chance to repent. Staring beyond the flaming torch to the crowds, Huss replied:

“God is my witness that . . . the principal intention of my preaching and of all my other acts or writings was solely that I might turn men from sin. And in that truth of the Gospel that I wrote, taught, and preached in accordance with the saying and expositions of the holy doctors, I am willing gladly to die today.”5

As flames shot up into the sky on July 6, 1415, the crowds heard singing come from the pyre, “Jesus, son of the living God, have mercy on me.”6