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
- ↑ 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.
