for a long time I have been without it and still shall be, as long as God wills. And no wonder, since Christ’s apostles and many other saints in prisons and desert abodes were likewise without it.
I rejoice that you stand together and that Železný Brada[1] is in good health with you all. So am I too, trusting as I do in Jesus; but I shall be in better health after death, if I keep God’s commands to the end. Would that God would give me time to write against the lies of the Chancellor of Paris, who so presumptuously and unjustly before the world hath dared to charge his neighbour with heresy.[2] But perchance God will cut short his writing either by my death or his, and in His judgment will settle the matter better than any writing of mine could do.
If Hus’s first letter after the flight of John gives little indication of the excitement at Constance, his second letter, written three days later, throws a vivid side-light on the confusion. Hus himself ran some danger of starvation. Hitherto the Pope had paid ten florins a week for Hus’s support and the expenses of his imprisonment. Not only was this supply cut off, but, as
- ↑ These words mean “Ironbeard.” Palackẏ suggests that the person intended is therefore John Barbatus (for whom, see p. 44), who on p. 189 is called Železný Jan, “Bearded John,” and of whom Hus there says that he does not know where he is. Cf. p. 219, n. 1.
- ↑ P. 189, n. 3.
- ↑ For the date see App. M. p. 360 of my Age of Hus.