JOHN OF NEronmf (more properly, PomuK), a popular Bohemian saint of the Catho lic church, and honored as it martyr al ; .nv.o.a......ty of the seal of confession. He was born at Pomult, a village in the district of Klatati, nbout the middle of the 14th century. Having entered into orders he rose rapidly to distinction, being created a canon of the cathedral of Prague, and eventually vicar general of the diocese. The queen Sophia, the second wife of Wenzel or Wenceslaus IV., having selected him for her confessor, Wenceslaus, himself a man of most dissolute life, conceiving suspicious of her virtue, required of John to reveal to him what lie knew of her life from the con fessionS which she had made to him. John steadfastly refused, and the king resolved to be revenged for the refusal. An opportunity occurred soon afterwards, when the monks of the Benedictine abbey of Kladran having elected an abbot, in opposition to the design of the king, who wished w bestow it upon one of Ida own dissolute favorites, John. as vicar-general, at once confirmed the election. Wenceslaus, having first put
him to the torture. at whin he himself personally presided. had biro tied hand and foot, and flung, already half dead front the rack, into the Moldati, Ma•., 1393. His body, according to the tradition, being discovered by a miraculous light which issued from it, was taken up, and buried with thegreatest honor. His memory was cherished with peculiar affection in his native conntry, and he was eventually canonized as a saint of the Roman Catholic church, his feast being fixed for Mar. 20. By some historians, two distinct personages of .the same name are enumerated: one, the martyr of the con fes siottal seal; the other, of his resistance to the simonincal tyranny of Wenceslaus; but the identity of tire two is well sustaiasd by Palacky, Geschichte to B6/tmen, iii. 62.