Page:The Hussite wars, by the Count Lützow.djvu/18

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PREFACE

discussions; but with regard to the details of warfare—so sadly neglected by the other writers of the time—his work is most valuable. A large collection of mostly contemporary records was published by Professor Höfler under the title of Geschichtsschreiber der hussitischen Bewegung in Böhmen. This collection was published under the auspices of the Government of Vienna, and Professor Höfler did not limit himself to the editing of these ancient records, but violently attacked in his commentary the leaders of the Hussite movement.[1] His collection, however, contains some very valuable documents that were previously almost unknown. Of these the Chronicle of Canon Andrew of Regensburg (“Andreas presbyter Ratisponensis”), written from a thoroughly German and anti-Hussite point of view, and the Chronicon continens causam sacerdotum Taboriensium, by the Táborite priest, Nicholas of Pelhřimov, one of the few writings by Táborite divines which have been preserved, require special mention. I have, in my notes to this work, referred to other writers contained in Professor Höfler's collection. Another chronicler who, like Andrew of Regensburg, writes with a strong Roman and anti-Hussite bias, was the Professor of Theology at the University of Vienna, Thomas Eschendorfer of Haselbach, who took part in the negotiations at Basel which preceded the agreement known as the “compacts.” His chronicle is printed in the second volume of Pez, Scriptores rerum Austria carum. I mention last the work of a contemporary writer which has been more largely quoted by later writers on the Hussite wars than all others, and has up to lately been the foundation of all accounts of the Bohemian religious warfare. I refer to the Historia Bohemica of Æneas Sylvius, afterwards Pope Pius II. Æneas Sylvius had as a young man been present at the arrival of the Bohemian ambassadors at Basel, and he was on terms of friendship with Cardinal Cesarini.

  1. On the controversy which arose on this subject between Palacký and Höfler, see my Lectures on Historians of Bohemia, pp. 102–105.