The most honored Prior of the Erfurt Monastery in its history was buried in a place of honor right in front of the main altar. His name was John Zacharias.. In 1415, so about 100 years before Martin Luther's 95 Theses in 1517, John Zacharias was influential in condemning John Huss, after a kangaroo trial, to be burned at the stake as a heretic at the Council of Constance. Before being burned John Huss announced to his judges, "Today you roast a goose [Huss means goose in Czech], but one hundred years from now, a swan will sing, and you will not be able to silence him." Even during Luther's lifetime people considered Luther to be the swan that Huss had foretold in the hour of his death. (Significantly, if you look up when the printing press was invented, you will find that it is smack dab in the middle of this 100-year period.
Luther took his monastic vows, lying face down, either just to the side of, or else right on top of John Zacharias's grave! RC Sproul says that using a little historical imagination, he likes to think that when John Huss spoke of the swan in 100 years at the Council of Constance, that John Zacharias spoke up and replied, "Over my dead body!"
Now leaving the Holy of Holies to go into the (lovely) inner courtyard of the monastery.
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