Books Fatal to Their Authors | Page 8

16th, 1536, he was chained to a stake with faggots piled around him.
"As he stood firmly among the wood, with the executioner ready to
strangle him, he lifted up his eyes to heaven and cried with a fervent
zeal and loud voice, 'Lord, open the King of England's eyes!' and then,

yielding himself to the executioner, he was strangled, and his body
immediately consumed." That same year, by the King's command, the
first edition of the Bible was published in London. If Tyndale had
confined himself to the great work of translating the Scriptures, and had
abandoned controversy and his Practice of Prelates, his fate might
have been different; but, as Mr. Froude says, "he was a man whose
history has been lost in his work, and whose epitaph is the
Reformation."
Another translator, whose fate was not so tragic, was the learned Arias
Montanus, a Spaniard, who produced at the command of King Philip II.
the famous Polyglot Bible printed at Antwerp in nine tomes. He
possessed a wonderful knowledge of several languages, and devoted
immense labour to his great work. But in spite of the royal approval of
his work his book met with much opposition on the part of the extreme
Roman party, who accused him to the Pope and made many false
charges against him. The Pope was enraged against Montanus, and he
was obliged to go to Rome to plead his cause. He at length obtained
pardon from the Pope, and escaped the "chariots of fire" which bore the
souls of so many martyred saints to 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 Ecclesiâ, 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 the martyr, "commit it
to my most merciful Lord, Jesus Christ." When on his way to execution
he saw his Fatal Books being burnt amidst an excited crowd, he smiled
and remarked on the folly of people burning what they could not read.
Another translator of the Bible was Antonio Bruccioli, who published
in Venice, in 1546, the following edition of the Holy Scriptures: Biblia
en lengua toscana, cioë, i tutti i santi libri del vecchio y Novo
Testamento, in lengua toscana, dalla hebraica verita, e fonte greco,
con commento da Antonio Bruccioli. Although a Roman Catholic, he
favoured Protestant views, and did not show much love for either the
monks or priests. His bold comments attracted the attention of the
Inquisition, who condemned his work and placed it on the Index. The
author was condemned to death by hanging, but happily for him
powerful friends interceded, and his punishment was modified to a two
years' banishment. He died in 1555, when Protestant burnings were in
vogue in England.
Enzinas, the author of a Spanish translation of the New Testament
entitled El Nuevo