The Radiance That Struck Down the Iconoclast

Of the Lobkowicz tomb Beckovský relates this. Upon it is a marble image of the Passion of the Lord, and before it on that marble kneels the likeness of Jiří of Lobkowicz, of whom the chronicles bear trustworthy witness that he was a man of holy life; when he happily fell asleep in the Lord, the bells at the parish church on the Duchcov estate, which then belonged to him, rang by God's moving, or, as we commonly say, of themselves. And when, during the devastation of the cathedral on 21 December 1619, one of the iconoclasts meant to damage that image with an axe, the marble image of the Passion of the Lord gave out a great radiance and flash. The impious man was terrified by that radiance, fell helpless to the ground and, as though bereft of reason and sight, lay there more like a dead man than a living one; and so he lay until his fellows in that wickedness came to him, raised him from the ground and carried him out of the church. After a long while he came to himself again, told everyone what had befallen him, was made a Catholic and amended his life.