Jan Hus Burned at the Stake

July 6, 1415

Promised safe conduct by Sigismund, the Czech reformer was tried, condemned, and led in a paper miter painted with devils to a field outside Constance. He sang psalms as the flames took him. His ashes were thrown in the Rhine. Bohemia, when the news arrived, declared war. His martyrdom ignited the Hussite Wars, revolutionary conflicts that anticipated the Protestant Reformation by a full century.