“Into thine hand I commit my spirit: thou hast redeemed me, O LORD God of truth.” (Psalm 31:6)
Jan Huss or anglicized John Huss was born to peasant parents in “Goosetown,” that is, Husinec, in the south of today’s Czech Republic. (In his twenties, he shortened his name to Huss—pronounced “goose,” and he and his friends delighted in making puns on his name; it was a tradition that continued, especially with Luther, who reminded his followers of the “goose” who had been “cooked” for defying the pope). From John Huss’s martyrdom we have derived the expression: “His goose is cooked!”
At his burning bishop pronounced upon John Huss these words: “And now we commit thy soul to the devil.” John Huss replied in great calmness, “I commit my spirit into Thy hands, Lord Jesus Christ. Unto I commend my spirit whom Thou has redeemed.”
The executioners undressed Hus and tied his hands behind his back with ropes, and his neck with a chain to a stake around which wood and straw had been piled up so that it covered him to the neck. Still at the last moment, the imperial marshal, Von Pappenheim, in the presence of the Count Palatine, asked him to save his life by a recantation, but Hus declined with the words “God is my witness that I have never taught that of which I have been accused by false witnesses. In the truth of the Gospel which I have written, taught, and preached I will die to-day with gladness.” There upon the fire was kindled with John Wycliffe’s own manuscripts used as kindling for the fire. With uplifted voice Hus sang, “Christ, thou Son of the living God, have mercy upon me.” Among his dying words he proclaimed, “In 100 years, God will raise up a man whose calls for reform cannot be suppressed.” John Huss’s ashes were gathered and cast into the nearby Rhine River and one hundred and two years after his death, Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to a church door in Wittenberg fulfilling the final words of “The Goose.”
