The Light in the Empty Cathedral

In the year 1619, on 22 November, the night before Saint Clement's day, a light so bright was seen in the cathedral of Saint Vitus that all the windows were lit by it, as though the whole church were burning within. Again on 29 November, the night before Saint Andrew's day, not only were those windows lit with a like brightness, but singing was heard in the church as well. The servants of Abraham Scultetus, court preacher to the Winter King, who became ill-famed for iconoclasm in the cathedral, saw those lights and heard the singing, woke their master from sleep and told him what was happening in the church. Scultetus supposed that perhaps the banished Catholic clergy were secretly assembling there by night; he sent for the watch and hurried to the church. He ordered the doors to be opened — and when his servant began to open them, so mighty and terrible a gale sprang up that it greatly alarmed all present; they thought nothing else than that the porch under which they stood at those doors would fall upon them at once. That gale also put out all their lights at a single stroke, without warning. Whoever could leap aside and flee anywhere did so without delay, fearing that the porch would bury him. Scultetus himself was so terrified that he remained standing on the spot more dead than alive, and without helpers could not get from those doors to his lodging at the deanery. Nevertheless he did not give up his purpose, and on 21 December he had the altars pulled down, the graves opened, the stone images smashed and the wooden ones burned. But on the night before 21 December too a great light appeared again in the church and lit all its windows in such a way that a great dread came over everyone who so much as looked at them.