On 21 June 1621 the twenty-seven Protestant and Utraquist nobles (the composer Kryštof Harant among them) who had led the rebellion against the Habsburgs stepped onto the executioner's platform on Prague's old town square. Looming over the square opposite the platform was the the imposing Týn Church, between whose towers sat a large golden chalice situated above a platform that held a statue of Jiří [George] of Poděbrady, the last Hussite king. The chalice had been the Hussite symbol adopted by the Utraquist cause which maintained that communion should be given to the laity in ‘both kinds’ [sub utraque specie]. By 1626 the statue and the chalice had been removed by the Roman Catholic victors, who then undertook a symbolic act intended to serve as a warning. In a move that echoed the Habsburg obsession with alchemy and the transformation of base materials, they melted down the golden chalice and recast it as a golden halo, crown and sceptre to adorn the newly installed statue of the Virgin Mary in the very place where the chalice had been. In short, the old materials that represented the Utraquist cause were reshaped into something new and something specifically Catholic. Other political, cultural and religious transformations soon followed—and so it would be with music as well.