f his
innocent little daughter, who for some months had been constantly kept
in a Christian lodging, and was unwarily admitted by her mother into
her concealed dwelling. On receiving this information, I sought out the
Imperial Judge of the _Altstadt_ of Prague, who, without delay,
despatched his clerk to the house, to demand the new-born child from
the woman, and (in case she refused) from the Elder of the Jewish
people, as belonging to the now baptized father. But as these crafty
Jews would not consent to deliver up the child, a Christian midwife was
ordered for the Jewish woman, that the same might, by some womanly,
pious contrivance, carry off the child from the mother. This midwife
was accompanied by certain prudent matrons. The conductress was to be
Ludmilla, well known for her greet godliness, wife of Wenzeslaus
Wymbrsky, who had gone through the baptism of water and blood. Her
husband Wenzeslaus was, with this his wife and five children, baptized
in our church by his Eminence the Cardinal and Archbishop of Prague in
1464. It was above all displeasing to the furious Jews, to see thirteen
men of other families, following the example of Wenzeslaus, abjuring
Judaism the same year. At last it became insupportable to them that
Wenzeslaus, by whose shop many Jews had daily to pass to their frippery
market, should publicly set up in it the image of the crucified
Saviour, and every Friday keep a burning lamp before it. Therefore he
was greatly hated by the Jewish rabble, and often assailed with
derision and scoffing. Now, once when he went, according to his daily
custom, to the Teynkirche, an hour before day, three armed Jews fell on
him, by whom he was mortally wounded with two poisoned pistol-balls, so
that on the fifth day thereafter, he devoutly departed this life,
without having been persuaded to name the murderers. The ringleader was
caught later, and condemned to the wheel, but acting as his own
executioner hanged himself with a rope. Now the widow of the deceased
man, Ludmilla, could not slip in, with the little troop of pious women,
unperceived, because the Hebrews with their sharp lynx-eyes watched
narrowly. At that moment, many of them combined together and pushed
their way into the room of the Jewish woman about to be confined. But
Ludmilla did not take alarm at their presence, nor at the possible
danger of death. She handed over the consecrated water she had brought
with her, to the midwife, calling upon her i