heaven. It is a curious irony of fate that Montanus, who was one of the
chief compilers of the _Index Expurgatorius_, should live to see his own
work placed on the condemned list.

The story of the martyrdom of John Huss is well known, and need not be
here related, but perhaps the books which caused his death are not so
frequently studied or their titles remembered. His most important work was
his _De Ecclesia_, in which he maintained the rigid doctrine of
predestination, denied to the Pope the title of Head of the Church,
declaring that the Pope is the vicar of St. Peter, if he walk in his
steps; but if he give in to covetousness, he is the vicar of Judas
Iscariot. He reprobates the flattery which was commonly used towards the
Pope, and denounces the luxury and other corruptions of the cardinals.
Besides this treatise we have many others--_Adv. Indulgentias, De
Erectione Crucis_, etc. He wrote in Latin, Bohemian, and German, and
recently his Bohemian writings have been edited by K. J. Erben, Prague
(1865). His plain speaking aroused the fury of his adversaries, and he
knew his danger. On one occasion he made a strange challenge, offering to
maintain his opinions in disputation, and consenting to be burnt if his
conclusions were proved to be wrong, on condition that his opponents
should submit to the same fate in case of defeat. But as they would only
sacrifice one out of the company of his foes, he declared that the
conditions were unequal, and the challenge was abandoned. When at last he
was granted a safe conduct by the Emperor Sigismund, and trusted himself
to the Council of Constance, his fate was sealed. Even in his noisome
prison his pen (when he could procure one) was not idle, and Huss composed
during his confinement several tracts on religious subjects. At length his
degradation was completed; a tall paper cap painted with hideous figures
of devils was placed upon his head, and a bishop said to him, "We commit
thy body to the secular arm, and thy soul to the devil." "And I," replied