The Rainbow above the Condemned

When twenty-seven men of standing who had been implicated in the Bohemian revolt were to be executed in Prague in June 1621, one of them, Ján Kutnauer, town captain of the Old Town, called urgently upon heaven that a sign of mercy be granted to him and to his fellow citizens — and with such confidence that he said he did not doubt in the least that he would receive it. And just as the executions were about to begin, there appeared after a light rain, above the hill known as Vavrinecký vrch, a rainbow running across itself, which stood for about an hour, to the consolation of the condemned.