Bohemian Section at the Austrian Exhibition, Earl's Court London 1906/The Country of the Book and the Cup
THE COUNTRY OF THE BOOK AND THE CUP.
It was a scottish promineent divine, who thus characterized Bohemia, and she is indeed most deservedly entitled to it. The Law of God and the Cup were her ideals for two hundred years, the most glorious epoch of her history (1415–1620), and her loyalty to them placed her in the van of the Reformation and made her the cradle of the most beautiful of chrisitan churches, the Unity of the Brethern, and is shedding still a somber lustre on the catastrophe, that befell her. Her tragic sin, says a historian, is her being too small againts the formidable powers, that opposed her, and finally crushed her.
„The Cup“, says E. Denis in his marvellous work Fin de l'independence bohême, „was the symbol of the mercenaries driven from the Temple, the Saviour reinstalled upon his throne, the liberty of God's truth regained, paradise re-opened, crimes eradicated, commonwealth purified, enemies defeated, victory of the national tongue achieved, and all these mingled together with the firm resolve not to forsake the Cup, though it be but for the sake of sufferings undergone for it. This is the clew to the Hussite reformation in Bohemia. And the source of inspiration and energy displayed in those unparalleled struggles, the torch lighting on the way towards that ideal goal, was the Book, which the meanest hussite woman knew better than any roman priest (Pius II.).
The ancient Bohemians were very fond of discussing religious and philosophic questions. It was the disputation about 46 articles, drawn from the writings of John Wycliffe, that set on fire the minds in the University of Prague and led to the subsequent events. This inclination was fostered during the succeeding periods. How many times did the fighting parties meet to wipe out their differences! And what their men were able to perform is shown during the council at Basle in 1433, where John Rokycana required 8 days for his discussion on the Cup, and the English Hussite Petr Payne 2 and 3 days for his argumentation against the hierarchy in the church. Tracts, written during the hussite wars (1419–1468) were innumerable, and there are still hundreds of them existing, which nobody has read and searched trough as yet (Historiographer Palacký), and the invention of the printing art rather enhanced than diminished the productiveness of the authors of the following age. The smallest of the cummunities, the Unity of the Brethern, alone has had 3 printing offices, and printed a great deal of books in Germany besides. Peter Chelčický, the spiritual father of the Unity, is said to have written 60, and the great Senior of the Unity Lukas of Prague, 80 tracts and books, and this amidst perils of a fierce persecution, some years spent in prison, and repeated visits to Greece, Italy and France. The working power of John Amos Komenský is simply prodigious. And the works are not merely numerous; they; they are of an intrinsic merit and value. John Blahoslav’s translation of the New Testament is reputed to be the most beautiful rendering, beside the Dutch, of the holy narrative. Peter Chelčický is abreast with the best pulpit orators in the church of all ages, and is one of the most trenchant sociologist. The authors of the Commentaries to the Králice Bible are first-rate theologians, and John Amos Comenius’ works are of worlds renown. The Bohemians proudly call this era their golden age.
The Antireformation put a cruel stop to it, and stunned that spirited nation for centuries.
The books exhibited are specimens of the sad remnant, saved from the wreckage after the storm of persecution, the bohemian „Killing-time“ (1620—1781). The nation crushed in the battle on the White Mountain (1620) lost its political independence and had to conform to the religion of the victorious king-emperor (cujus regio, hujus religio). Of the means, by which that end was accomplished, tells Fox's Book of Martyrs. With the conversion of the nation were entrusted the orders of the Jesuits and the Capuchins, but the resistance they met with in their work, made necessary the issue of 64 edicts against the heretics within the period mentioned above. The „predicant“ was exiled and made dumb, but there was the book with its pernicious teachings, that thwarted all the painstaking of the missionary. One of them, the illfamed Konias, boasted to have destroyed more than 60.000 books. Very interesting are the „manuductions“, instructions and guidebooks given to the missionaries, for instance the „Clavis haeresim claudens et aperiens“, published in 1749 and dedicated to: „Divo Antonio Paduano clavigero, quia clavis David baiulo, saeculorum thaumaturgo, perpetuo haereticorum malleo, vaticani oraculi voce: Arcae testamenti; in aperienda et claudenda haeresi, seu in exploranda et delenda librorum peste duci, magistro expertissimo, advocato fidelissimo clavis praesens in anathema“.
Many a work is now known only by its name standing in the pages of such an Index or Clavis. The books are therein minutely described, pages containing heresy are pointed out and dangerous passages are quoted and corrections advised![1]), and yet the people led the missionaries very often off the scent by tearing out the title page and the preface to the book. The advises, how to deal with heretics, to frighten them in their conscience, and how to beguile them of their treasures, are scarcely surpassed by any new method and logical fallacy of nowadays. The hiding and reading the forbidden books was equal to forfeiture of life. The last victim of these execrable laws in Bohemia was the forrester Thomas Svoboda, sentenced to death on the stake in 1755 for reading the Bible, who by way of mercy was strangled ere he was burnt. The books seized upon were publicly burnt, the missionaries addressing the people on heresy and on infernal punishment and teaching them to sing satiric puns. Most of the books, that escaped the spying eyes of the missionaries, have their own story to tell. There does exist a Bible, that was baked in a loaf of bread, other books were burried in coffins, or hidden in wells, in hollow trees, in sheets of mothers lying in child’s bed. The loss of them was counted the heaviest affliction, they were the only teachers and comforters of the oppressed and groaning people. Wherever the missionary succeeded, there he met also with a vengeful retribution; there started up sects with objectionable tennets and the fury of the people sought an outlet in massacres of priests and the landed proprietors. Then was „boot and spur“ called in to aid the mission, and the sword and the gibet helped to subdue the refractory flock.
Some of the confiscated books were supplied by the Emigrants, who found a shelter either in Saxony or in Prussia, and smuggled the books across the frontiers. The colporteurs, who dared it, did it in the very teeth of death, and their memory is kept alive by their martyrdom. Foremost among them stands Martin Litochleb, who having been several times seized and tried was finally poisoned in his jail and burried in a carrion pit. To these dauntless men ows the recent protestant church in Bohemia and Moravia great thanks. They have fed in the deep night the flickering lamps of faith, they have upraised the sinking hearts untile the day, on which the streaks of religious toleration shot above the horizon and announced the approach of religious liberty. But alas! how sad and desolate was the country, once so flourishing, and what amends could have been made for the irretrievable losses of the past! Cui proderat?
Three books are of striking importance and significance in the spiritual and moral development of the Bohemians: The Bible, The Postilla, and the Hymnbook.
The Bible appears nowhere else to have been such a mine of instruction, from which the nation derived not only knowledge of letters in general, but also the spiritual wisdom in particular, as in Bohemia, and from which later on, in the great and glorious struggle on behalf of liberty of conscience, it drew both inspiration and vigour. The confession of the probable compiler of the separate, but long ago by different and unknown authors translated, portions of the Scriptures into one whole and complete Bible, the magister Parisiensis, Mathew of Janov, became both a bequest and a directive to writers of a long period afterwards. He says in his work De regulis veteris et novi Testamenti: „I made a profuse use of the Bible in my writings, because it instantly and copiously thronged itself into all my ponderings and matters, I wished to write upon; because out of it and by its most divine truths, which are in themselves so lucid and manifest, all ideas are more solidly strengthened, more firmly grounded, and more profitably digested; because I loved it since my youth and called it my friend, my bride, yea, mother of beauteous delight, learning, fear and holy hope. Wherever I moved, since my youth untill my high age, it did never forsake me, on no my way, nor in my home, never when I was occupied and never when I took to rest.“
The Bible influenced directly and indirectly a vast portion of the Bohemian literature. In the Scriptures are rooting the writings of the precursor of John Huss, the moral philosopher knight Thomas of Štítné; John Milič, the contemporary of Mathew of Janov, lived and practized the Bible; John Huss, the pupil of Mathew of Janov, revised the Bible, and became the first painter in words and deeds of Jesus, the only Saviour of men, as he writes in his touching letter to his friend and companion on his way to Constance, the knight John of Chlum, regarding his dream of the Chapel Betlehem; Peter Chelčický is actually revelling in the Bible, and a great host of more or less acute thinkers, including the last and brightest star among them, John Amos Comenius, are pressing its words upon the soul of the nation.
The Bible was the dearest treasure in every family, and the most precious bequest a father could leave to his son. Interesting are the passages in the last deeds of dying parents, when referring to the Bible and to their heirs. It remains always an object of wonder, how it was possible, that the Unity of the Brethern undertook to publish an edition of the Bible in six big volumes, when there were so many excellent editions, as that of Melantrich and Severin, already in circúlation. And not merely because of that, but because the same work had three times to be republished within a few years, in a nation numbering then no more than about 5 millions.
This task was accomplished by nine scholars, Coepolla, Helič (a Jewish convert from Posen), Jesenius, Strejc, Mikuláš, Efraim, Capito, Štěpán, and John Blahoslav (The New Testament), and by the support of the mecaenas lord John of Žerotin. It was printed in Králice (Moravia) under the supervision of brother Šolín. The six volumes appeared within the years 1579—1593. The translators abandoned the Vulgata and turned to the original Hebrew and Greek and commented upon the text. The second edition, a smaller volume, without notes, in 1613. The Bibles, used at present by the Protestants of the bohemian tongue, are reprints of this last edition of the Unity. It is a standard of the Bohemian and a monument of the purest refinement of that language, and still a source of study in linguistic regard.
During the persecution (1620-1781) all the Bibles, that were clandestinely colported into Bohemia and Moravia, were reprints printed abroad by the Emigrants. There are editions printed in Halle (Saxony) in 1722, 1748, 1766, and in Berlin 1787. The text of these being somewhat corrected and somewhat spoiled. The Toleration Church (1781—1861) was supplied with Bibles printed chiefly in Hungary, Presburg 1787, Kysek 1807, 1808, and others. A very beautiful and the first again in Bohemia printed edition, in a large volume, is that of Prague 1863, and the New Testament edition, with commentaries, published by the Comenius Society, Prague 1875, a reprint of an edition from 1601 and the Old Testament, published by the rom. cath. firm J. Otto, Prague 1880, a reprint of the edition from 1613, without commentaries.
The British Bible Society sells in Prague about 13.000 copies of the whole Bible, and about 25.000 separate portions of the Scriptures a year; the Rom. Catholic church published several beautiful editions of the Bible during the last 50 years, and those who have learnt to know the seasons, declare, that: „Nobody dares to deny the existence of a religious question in Bohemia. The attempts of an answer or explanations may vary, but the fact leaves no doubt, that every day reveals the connex of religion with every day questions of the life. Religion demands attention and the interest in it is growing.“ (Přehled 4. May 1906.)
The Bible has not spoken as yet its last word in Bohemia. „Sad was the fate of the bodily tabernacles of our once great minds,“ says a historian. „The ashes of John Huss and Jerome were cast by the enemies into the Rhine. The tomb of Žižka was broken up and smashed in 1622, and in the same year the bones of Rokycana, and the heart of king George were burned in the cemetery of the Týn church by the Jesuits. The bones and dust of Žerotín suffered a barbarous desacration in 1722. But there is no power, that could annihilate the spirit of these our heroes. As soon as the doleful time, that shut our nation into darkness of ignorance, has passed away, this spirit began to act creatively at the resurrection and moral renewal of our people.“ May it continue to do it. The present spiritual state of the nation is felt to be awkward and contradictory to the past, and the national mind is groping after the thread, that would lead it out of the dismal labyrinth of inward inconsistency.
The Postilla, sermons and expositions on the pericopes, read on Sabbaths and festivals in the churches, became very early the indispensable companion of the Bible. The best preachers condensed their ideas into them, and they were the food par excellence of the flock. There are still existing the Postilla of Jacobellus, Huss, Rokycana, Peter Chelčický. Huss wrote his Postilla during the interdict on and his exile from Prague in 1413. Many copies, both in manuscript and in print, were destroyed, but there are still about 10 of them preserved in manuscript, the most valuable of them a copy in the Museum and another in the University-library in Prague. The first known print is dated Norumberg 1563, and then 1592, a third one in Prague 1564.
The Postilla of Chelčický is beside the „De regulis“ of Mathew Janovský, the most remarkable product the Bohemian mind has ever yielded. Its terse diction, the cutting brachiology, the deep insight into the human heart, the profound awe before God and his Word, the thorough submission to Jesus Christ, the stirring appeals to man and his need of regeneration, the scorn of oppression and the love of the oppressed, the buyant hope of the victory of Christ’s Kingdom, all this made it another Apokalypsis to the nation. It was printed in 1522 and 1532.
The bohemian evangelical Hymnbook of the XVI. and XVII. century is then the response of the nations soul to the Word of God, both an account and a proof of its envitalizing power.
The time prior to the reformation of John Huss knew no hymnsinging in the native tongue at the worship. John Huss was the first, who introduced it in the Bethlehem Chapel in Prague. The people welcomed this innovation with enthusiasm and since that time the hymns, sung by the whole congregation in the national tongue („cantus bohemicus“), became a part of the worship and the collections of hymns, called „Kancionály“ (hymnals) are next to the Bible the most important books in devotinal use. The Unity of the Bohemian Brethren especially took the utmost pains in the outfitting of its hymnbooks, which consequently belong to the most precious monuments not only of the literature, but also of the art of printing and book-ornamentation.
From the Hymnals („the evangelical Hymns“ is their title) of the Bohemian Unity of the Brethren are exhibited:
The Hymnal of Šamotuly from 1561, a folio-volume with tunes, with ornaments on each page and rich initials. It was printed in Šamotuly (Poland) and edited by a commission, which the Brethren appointed in 1555 to prepare a new (fifth) edition of their Hymnal. The most prominent member of that commission was brother Jan Blahoslav, afterwards Senior of the Unity, a great savant of the XVI century, the author of a greek grammar, an eloquent preacher, several times the ambassador of the Unity to the emperor Maxmillian II. and to the german Reformers, a man of fine tastes and the best musician of his time.
The Hymnal of Evančice, printed 1564, is a reprint of the Hymnal of Šamotuly, surpassing the first edition in every regard. Many pages are printed in red a black. The ornaments and engravings are new (one dated from 1563). Within the ornaments, embellishing all the pages of the book, are often seen the coats of arms of the noble members and protectors of the Unity. Another reprint of this hymnal was published in 1576, also in folio and was carried to a still higher degree of perfection, being a veritable edition de luxe. Equally splendid is the folio-edition of Králice 1581.
In the famous printing-office of Králice are printed the four following editions:
The Hymnal of Králice dating from 1594, in qu.; with an engraving of John Huss before the Index.
The Hymnal of Králice dating from 1598; in qu.
The Hymnal of Králice dating from 1615; in folio; this edition is rearranged both in text and in music. The last part of it contains „Psalms“, put in verse by brother Streyc to Goudimel’s tunes. Before the Index there is an old engraving ot Huss.
The Hymnal of Králice dating from 1618; in qu, a reprint of the preceding hymnbook.
The Psalms or songs of St. David by Jiří Streyc, is a separate edition of the above mentioned Psalms. It is a third edition with tunes since 1596. Streyc was the pastor of the Brethren-congregation in Židlochovice, Moravia, and put his helpful hand to many an important work of the Unity. He translated the Psalms from the Hebrew and followed Salzmann. The book was printed also in Králice.
The last Hymnbook of the Unity is Kancyonál of J. A. Komenský (Comenius), in small oct., published in 1659 in Amsterodam; it is entirely rearranged and revised; regarding the text it is one of the best bohemian hymnbooks. Remarkable is its preface, containing an essay on the hymnsinging. The small size of the book was undoubtedly chosen for the reason, that the book might be more easily and secretly brought to Bohemia and Moravia to adherents of the Unity, who were still cleaving to their faith in spite of persecution, but bereft of liberty and made from freeholders of the soil to serfs, could not or dared not to emigrate.
Though the Unity excells without a paragon in the zeal and noble ambition to give the best to her beloved children, other denominations followed staunchly in her footsteps. There were three of them: The original stock of the Calixtines, or Utraquits, and their offsprings, the Evangelicals (Lutherans) and the Reformed (Calvinists). With the progress of the Reformation the Calixtines melted gradually into these two bodies, and at the end of the XVI. century they became almost extinct; the remmant (some noblemen) vanished in the Roman church. This dissolving process went on under the very eyes of the Utraquist Consistory, but neither of these two denominations was permitted to constitute itself into an organized body. They were nominally and officially Utraquists, though they have long ago abandoned the principles of Utraquism: reunion with Rome, the headship of the pope in the church, the roman ordination of the priests etc. The establishment of Utraquism (1484) was a bulwark against the Reformation and though Rome left it to perish by starvation, the kings held it up, and were meanwhile, together with Rome and the Jesuits, building up the Catholic church, a fort, from which to attack the heresy.
In view of this danger the adherents of the Reformation, by this time the entire nation, and the Unity, demanded the disestablishment of the Utraquism and the liberty of their Confesions in 1543, 1567, 1575 and achieved it in 1609, and united into one Evangelical church, the Unity being allowed to govern herself by her own Ratio disciplinae, which was in a great part also accepted by the other two denominations. This Union was celebrated in 1611. The Common Board of administration was in Prague. This United Bohemian Church (Standard: Confessio bohemica) was but of a short life. It was crushed in 1620.
These denominations, especially the Lutherans, published in the XVI. century a respectable quantity of Hymnbooks. Dr. Jireček says, that the Calixtines (the official Board of administration) edited in the course of the XVI. and the first quarter of the XVII. century 15 diffirent Hymnals, and the Evangelical church (inofficially and previous to the Union, or officially after the Union in 1611) about a dozen of them. From the long series of these Hymnbooks there is exhibited the
Hymnbook of Prague ed. in 1620 (the year, the battle of White Mountain was fought), which is the last bohemian evengelical hymnal, printed in Bohemia before the catastrophe of White Mountain (8th November 1620) and before the Toleration edict of the emperor Joseph II. (1781) In this Hymnbook on the page F. VI. (eleventh line from above in the left column) there is a hymn containing entreaties in behalf of the king Frederick II. and his wife, the queen Elisabeth (an english princess, the daughter of King James I.). The verses are „purged“ by a rasure; it runs translated:
Our king and sovereign Frederick the Second
deign to protect, oh, Lord; and do protect
all his lands; deign also to bless Her
Grace the Queen, and to their whole house
give growth and prosperity.
From the period of exile of the bohemian Protestants (1621—1781) there is exhibited the
Hymnbook of Jiří Třanovský, called the Cithara sanctorum, in small oct. and with tunes, printed in Levoč (Hungary) in 1636. It was republished very often (it appeared untill the year 1874. in 67 editions and grew constantly in bulk) and secretly brought over into the bohemian countries; hence the small size of the book.
As a sample of the bohemian Evangelical MSS. Hymnals of the mentioned centuries is a facsimile of a
Page of the Gradual (Hymnal) of Prague from the year 1572, on which is written a hymn „About the St. Master John Huss“. The text of the hymn, translated, does read:
Rejoice all of us in the Lord Jesus Christ always,
and especially in this glorious day, which holy
day we piously and seriously celebrate to
the honour of the same Lord Jesus, etc.
- ↑ Books, like the Králice Bible, Postilla Chelčický’s etc. were mercilessly destroyed. Libri corrigibiles were purged of heresy by blackening the offensive passages. In the manuduction of the Clavis abound directions: dele, pone, erue, ne sapiant calvinismum; quia excluditur purgatorium; quia innuit imperatoribus et non pontificibus competere potestatem convocandi concilium; hic enim per idolatriam cultum imaginum et sanctorum intelligit. In the Almanac, Veleslavín, XX. linea 17 ad nomen Hussi adde: I. classis haeresiarcha.—In Buchholzer’s Historical Register. A. 1532, Num. 4. Thomas Cranmerus, adde: I. classis haereticus.—In Theatrum divinum Fol. 329, linea 17: Antikrysta učitelé (Antichrist’s teachers) dele: quia praesentes supponit et ad pontificios alludit. Etc.
This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
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