Jan Hus was a Bohemian preacher who dared to say aloud what many were thinking: that the Church of his day was selling what was not hers to sell — forgiveness, salvation, truth. From the pulpit of Bethlehem Chapel in Prague he preached in Czech, not Latin, so that ordinary people would understand.
Summoned to the Council of Constance under an imperial promise of safe conduct, he was instead arrested, tried for heresy and, on 6 July 1415, led to the stake. He refused to recant to the very end. Tradition attributes to him a prophecy spoken amid the flames: "Today you roast a goose (Hus, in Czech), but in a hundred years a swan will come that you will not be able to burn."
The promised swan
A hundred and two years later, in 1517, Martin Luther nailed his theses to the church door in Wittenberg — and the Lutherans never forgot that prophecy. Whether genuine or crafted after the fact, it shows how even the history of faith is threaded with omens: words cast into the fire that time turns into truth.