Martin Luther was not the first ‘heretic’ to stand before the collective might of church and state. He was just one of the few who lived to tell the tale. Already some one hundred years earlier, the Bohemian pre-reformer Jan Hus, who endearingly referred to himself as “the goose” (the meaning of “Hus” in Czech), was similarly summoned to the Council of Constance in Germany and condemned. Just before his burning on July 6, 1415, Hus made a stirring declaration: “Today you cook a goose, but in one hundred years you will hear a swan sing—and him you will have...
