literature, that while non-Bohemian writers regard Hus as a religious
reformer only and treat the reformation inaugurated by him wholly in the
light of a religious upheaval, the Bohemians insist on taking a broader
view of Hus and of Hussites. To them Hus reveals himself not only as
a religious reformer, but likewise as a champion and purifier of the
native tongue. In the Hussite Wars they recognize a political-spiritual
revolution, having for its purpose the liberation of the Bohemian nation
alike from papal trammels and from German domination.
The Bohemian Church, Unity, Unitas Fratrum, Unity of Bohemian Brethren,
Brethren’s Unity, are the names given to a church which originated in the
second half of the fifteenth century. In the severely strict notions as
to what is proper in the practice of religious duties, the Unity bore a
striking resemblance to the Puritans.
Its doctrine and discipline are admirably set forth in the articles
passed in 1616 at the Synod of Žeravice. These articles, provided with
annotations by Komenský have been translated into English, under the
title _Ratio disciplinae, or the Constitution of the Congregational
Churches_. Thus one is able to trace the influence of the Unity upon the
Church of England. When the Bohemian Revolution broke out (1618) the
nobility belonging to the Unity were powerful enough to influence the
selection of a new King in the place of Ferdinand II., who was dethroned
by the Estates. The choice, as we know, fell upon Frederick of the
Palatinate. The Patent of Tolerance, (1781) allowing Protestant worship
in Austria, purposely excluded the Unity. To the Government the church
was objectionable, first because of its Bohemian national traditions,
and secondly because of the leading part its members had taken in the
revolution against Ferdinand.
[Illustration: Protest
Dated Sept. 2, 1415, by 100 Bohemian Lords against the burning of John
Hus. Since 1657 property of the University of Edinburgh]
Some of the greatest writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
were members of the Unity: John Augusta (1500-1572, Bishop and writer),
John Blahoslav (1523-1571), collaborator on the _Kralice Bible_, author
of _Grammatika Česká_, Charles, Lord of Žerotín (1564-1636), John Amos
Komenský. The Unity reformed schools and promoted literature by setting up
printing shops in Bohemia and Moravia. Toward the close of the fifteenth
century a printing shop was opened in Mladá Boleslav; in the first part of
the sixteenth century another was established at Bělá, near Bezděz, and
still another at Litomyšl. The last named town was, up to 1547, looked
upon as the chief seat of the administration of the church. Because of
persecution, the Unity transferred its centre to Přerov in Moravia. Here
too, it set up printing establishments, the one at Ivančice becoming
in time far-famed. In 1578 the Ivančice concern was moved to Kralice
(Moravia).
By common consent, the _Kralice Bible_, so called from Kralice, where it
was printed, is regarded as the most enduring literary work of the Unity.
For fourteen years eight eminent scholars worked on this Bible, rendering
the translation into a language idiomatic, and pure beyond that of any
other book. It was published between the years 1579-93, and Lord Žerotín
bore the expense of it. The British Bible Society in publishing a Bohemian
Bible followed exactly the edition of 1613.
The New York Lenox Library, which is now a part of the New York Public
Library, owns: 1. A complete set of the _Kralice Bible_; the sixth volume,
however, is of a later edition. 2. Two copies of the _Prague Bible_. 3.
One copy of the _Paul Severín of Kapí Hora Bible_ of the edition of 1537.
The _Kralice Bible_ was bought by Lenox, the founder of the Lenox Library,
from the collection of the Duke of Sussex.[8]
[8] See article _Moravští Bratři v Americe_ by Thomas Čapek, _Osvěta_,
Prague. 19:565-72. 1889.
JOHN AMOS KOMENSKÝ. John Amos Komenský (or Comenius, which is the
Latinized form of the name), one of the great figures in Bohemian history,
was born in 1592 in Moravia, (hence the suffix “Moravus” seen on some of
his works) and died as an exile in 1670 in Holland.
Though he was a churchman of prominence, being the last Bishop of
the Unity, his reputation is founded not on his ecclesiastical and
philosophical writings, but on his pedagogical studies. As a school
reformer he was the first to carry out the principle, long since
recognized as sound by all teachers, of appealing to the senses; so he
called the artist to his aid. The result was the _Orbis Sensualium Pictus_
or the _Visible World_. “The circumstances of his life were as unfavorable
as possible to his career as a writer,” remarks Lützow. “Traveling
from Moravia to Bohemia, thence to Poland, Germany, England, Sweden,
Hungary, Holland, ever unable to obtain tranquillity, often in financial
difficulties, twice deprived of his library by fire, forced to write
school-books, when he was planning metaphysical works that he believed
to be of the greatest value, he always undauntedly continued his vast
literary undertakings.”
From Cotton Mather[9] we learn (a fact which is confirmed by other
sources) that Governor Winthrop offered to Komenský the Presidency of
Harvard College. “That brave old man Johannes Amos Comenius, the fame
of whose worth hath been Trumpetted as far as more than Three Languages
(Whereof everyone is endebted unto his Janua) could carry it, was agreed
withal by our Mr. Winthrop, in his travels through the Low Countries, to
come over into New England and Illuminate this Colledge and Country in the
Quality of President: But the Solicitations of the Swedish ambassador,
diverting him another way, that Incomparable Moravian became not an
American.”
[9] _Magnalia Christi Americana_; or, _The Ecclesiastical History of New
England_. Book IX., p. 128.
Biographers are not agreed as to the number of Komenský’s works. F. J.
Zoubek has enumerated 137 of them; Keatinge lists 127. Some were written
in Latin, others in Bohemian, though Komenský, having received his
theological training in Germany, was conversant with the language of that
country also.
As a master of Bohemian diction he had few, if any, peers. To the
revivalists Komenský’s writings were a safe and never-failing storehouse
of philologic material and even today, despite the circumstance that
Bohemian syntax and orthography like the English, have undergone an
essential change, his style is a source of delight to literary purists.
His chief writings that have been translated into English, and the main
facts of their publication, are as follows:
_The Gate of Tongues Unlocked_ first appeared in Latin in Leszno (Lissa),
Poland, in 1631; the same year in German. The Bohemian edition is dated
1633, the English 1633.
_The School of Infancy._ This manual was written primarily for the use of
Bohemian schools, but when the author realized that he could not return to
his fatherland, being a Protestant, the work was translated into German.
The English edition is dated 1641. The Bohemian manuscript was discovered
only in 1856 and put into print two years later.
_A Reformation of Schooles_ was printed for Michael Sparke, London, 1642.
_The History of the Bohemian Persecution_, which is one of the author’s
church works, was completed in Bohemian in 1632, but was not published
in that tongue until 1655. The date of the Latin version is 1647; of the
English, 1650.
Jeremy Collier’s rendering into English of the _Pansophiae_, or, as the
translator entitled it, _Patterne of Universall Knowledge_, is dated,
London, 1651. Published in 1643, in Danzig, it was printed two years later
in Amsterdam. The Bohemian translation is quite recent, dating from 1879.
“No one can impartially claim for Komenský a high rank as a philosopher,”
comments Count Lützow, “and it is certainly a mistake to speak of
Komenský’s system of philosophy. There is no philosophical system of
Komenský in the sense that there exists a philosophical system of Spinoza.”
_The Physicae_ or _Naturall Philosophie Reformed by Divine Light_ was
printed in Leipsic in 1633, in Amsterdam 1643, 1645, 1663, etc. The
Bohemian translation is recent. The English edition, in this catalogue,
is of 1651.
_The True and Readie Way to Learne the Latine Tongue_ appeared in Leszno,
1633. It was translated later into Dutch, English (our catalogue’s London
edition is of 1654), Magyar, Swedish and Polish. The Latin-Bohemian-German
edition is dated Trenčín, Hungary, 1649.
Komenský’s most popular book, the _Orbis Sensualium Pictus_, was printed
originally in Nuremberg, in 1658. The English translation by Charles Hoole
followed one year later. The Latin-German-Magyar-Bohemian edition was
issued in 1685; the first American edition, a reprint from Hoole’s twelfth
London edition, in New York, in 1810.
That the English translation of _The Great Didactic_, which Komenský wrote
between 1627-1632 in the Bohemian language and in 1640 in Latin (published
in Amsterdam, 1657), was not undertaken until our time (1896) is a matter
of great surprise. The same comment is pertinent to Komenský’s most
readable little volume, _The Labyrinth of the World and the Paradise of
the Heart_, which strikingly reminds one of Bunyan’s _Pilgrim’s Progress_.
It was only in 1905 that it found an able translator in the person of
Count Lützow. _The Praxis Pietatis_, an oft-quoted book which passed
through several editions in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries has
not been translated for the very good reason that it, in itself, was an
adaptation, from the _Practice of Piety_, a volume by an English divine.
_The Exhortation of the Churches of Bohemia to the Church of England_,
Englished by Joshua Tymarchus and printed for Thomas Parkhurst, in
Cheapside, 1661, was used eighty-seven years later as an argument and a
plea by a distinguished English American, Gen. Oglethorpe.
Addressing the English Parliament (1748) in favor of the passage of a
bill to relieve the United Brethren, or Moravians, from military duty and
oaths, General Oglethorpe explained that the “Brethren were received
in England under King Edward the Sixth, and countenanced under his
successors.... And to speak a few words of their further intercourse with
the Church of England. Their Bishop, Comenius, presented the history of
his church to King Charles the Second, in the year 1660, with a moving
account of their sufferings, addressed to the Church of England.... In
the year 1683, a most pathetic account of these Brethren was published by
order of Archbishop Sancroft and Bishop Compton. They also addressed the
Church of England, in the year 1715, being reduced to a very low ebb in
Poland; and his late Majesty, George I., by the recommendation of the late
Archbishop Wake, gave orders in Council for the relief of these reformed
episcopal churches, and Letters Patent for their support were issued soon
after.”
The prognostications made in _Revelation Revealed by two Apocalyptical
Treatises_, is a book which relates to prophecies and alleged visions by
Christopher Kotter, Christina Poniatovia and an unscrupulous impostor,
Nichols Drabík by name. Genuinely believing in the truth of the prophecies
of this trio, Komenský was ridiculed and criticized by contemporaries,
especially by the Frenchman, Pierre Bayle (1647-1706) in his _Dictionnaire
Historique et Critique_. Hallam’s belittling appraisal of the author of
_Orbis Sensualium Pictus_ (“this author, a man of much industry, some
ingenuity, and a little judgment, made himself a temporary reputation by
his _Orbis Sensualium Pictus_, etc.”) is no doubt traceable to Bayle’s
unfavorable estimate. Bayle’s writings, be it remarked, were held in high
regard by men of letters of his time.
In 1892 educators the world over observed the three hundredth anniversary
of Komenský’s birth. The March (1892) number of the _Educational Review_
was wholly devoted to him; it contained articles by the editor, Nicholas
Murray Butler (now President of Columbia University), S. S. Laurie, C. W.
Bardeen, Paul H. Hanus. The American Bohemians in several cities, Chicago,
New York, Omaha, Milwaukee and Cleveland, by appropriate ceremonies
also celebrated the anniversary of the birth of their distinguished
fellow-countryman.
LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE. _The Cheskian Anthology_ (1832) compiled by
Sir John Bowring (1792-1872) is the earliest known effort to acquaint
the English reading public with Bohemian literature which was just then
beginning to revive from the débâcle of the Thirty Years’ War. Before
this, Bowring had written a sympathetic review for the _Foreign Quarterly
Review_ (1828) of Joseph Jungmann’s _Historie literatury české_. For the
_Westminster Review_ (1830) he wrote a resumé of the _Manuscript of the
Queen’s Court_ (Rukopis Kralodvorský) since pronounced by philologists,
like Macpherson’s Songs of Ossian, spurious.
Another Englishman who formed a deep attachment for the youthful Bohemian
republic of letters was the Rev. Albert Henry Wratislaw (1821-1889). By
his several translations and original studies Wratislaw rendered valuable
service in England to the nation from which his ancestors had sprung.
Wratislaw claimed descent from the ancient and honorable family of the
Wratislaws of Mitrovic. Conceivably the relationship with the Wratislaws
of Bohemia prompted him to translate into English _The Adventures of Baron
Wenceslas Wratislaw of Mitrowitz_. Wratislaw’s _Bohemian Poems, Ancient
and Modern_, from the original Slavonic (Bohemian) is a skillful piece of
work.
Writing under the pen name Talvj, Mrs. Robinson, wife of the Rev.
Robinson, has devoted a chapter in her _Historical View of the Languages
and Literatures of the Slavonic Nations_ to the _History of the Czekhish
or Bohemian Languages and Literature_. Mrs. Robinson’s views on Bohemian
literature are by no means her own. Palacký and Šafařík have pointed
out that the chapter is nothing but an extract from Paul J. Šafařík’s
_Geschichte der slavischen Sprache und Literatur nach allen Mundarten_.
The pseudonym Talvj, by the way, she conceived by putting together the
initial letters of her maiden name, T. A. L. v. J., that is, Theresa
Albertina Louisa von Jacobi.
Flora P. Kopta’s _Bohemian Legends and Other Poems_ is not a satisfying
work. Far more felicitous than her poetry is her prose volume, _The
Forestman of Vimpek_.
The credit for worthily introducing Bohemian poetry belongs to an
Englishman, P. Selver. _The Anthology of Modern Bohemian Poetry_ is an
admirable achievement. Not only is Selver’s interpretation faithful, but
the selection of authors is representative.
Leo Wiener, a well-known Slavic scholar connected with Harvard University,
has presented to the public a fine rendition of J. S. Machar’s _Magdalen_.
Richard William Morfill (1835-1909), late Slavic Professor at Oxford,
has written voluminously on Slavic history and philology. Among his
philological studies are: a simplified grammar of the Polish language, a
grammar of the Russian language, a grammar of the Bulgarian language, _A
Grammar of the Bohemian or Čech language_. The last named is the only work
of its kind in English, Charles Jonáš’ _Bohemian Made Easy_ being really
an interpreter and not a scientific grammar. The Bohemian Literary Society
of Chicago, it is reported, has in preparation a new English grammar for
the study of the Čech language.
In Count Lützow’s _History of Bohemian Literature_, the student will find
an excellent manual. With his usual painstaking care, the author recounts
in a lucid manner the story of Bohemian literature, its glory and its
vicissitudes.
MISCELLANY. Attention is called to a meritorious volume under this
subtitle, by de Moleville, _The Costumes of the Hereditary (!) States of
the House of Austria_. Fifteen plates portray old Bohemian, Slovak and
Moravian costumes.
[Illustration: The Kralice Bible
Though not the oldest in point of date, the Kralice Bible (1st ed.
1579-93, 6 vs.) is the most renowned of all the Bohemian Bibles. Formerly
in the Lenox collection, it is now the property, with other rare Bohemian
Bibles, of the New York City Public Library]
MUSIC. Critics rate Bedřich Smetana (1824-1884) as the greatest Bohemian
composer, yet it is Dr. Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904) who is the most widely
known outside of his native country. The reason for this is that Dvořák
visited England and spent a number of years in New York as director of a
conservatory of music. “The forcefulness and freshness of Dvořák’s music,”
writes H. E. Krehbiel, the noted New York musical critic, “come primarily
from his use of dialects and idioms derived from the folk-music of the
Chekhs.... Dvořák is not a nationalist in the Lisztian sense; he borrows
not melodies but the characteristic elements from the folk-songs of his
people.”
Smetana’s renown was won on precisely the same ground which made Dvořák
famous, the only difference being that Smetana applied the principle of
the folk-song before Dvořák. Previous to Smetana’s time one could speak of
music in Bohemia, but not of Bohemian music. George Benda (1721-1795),
Joseph Mysliveček (1737-1781), John Ladislav Dusík (1761-1812--the name
of this “neglected composer” is also spelled Dussek), Václav John Tomášek
or Tomaschek (1774-1850), author of the usual method of fingering double
scales, were writers of music who belonged to the period when there was
music in Bohemia, when composers were content to imitate Beethoven, Bach,
Mozart and Wagner; when they strove to out-German the Germans in music.
Smetana was the first to strike the true chord of inspiration--the chord
touching the nation’s soul--the folk-song. It was the influence of the
folk-song which lent to his masterpiece, the _Bartered Bride_, (Prodaná
Nevěsta) its exquisite charm and enduring freshness. Apropos, the Bartered
Bride was introduced to the American public at the New York Metropolitan
Opera House on April 29, 1909, and the baton on this unforgettable
occasion was wielded by Gustav Mahler, also a native of Bohemia, though
not a Čech.
Of the several musical artists who have visited the United States, none
have won larger recognition from the critics and the public than Jan
Kubelík (born 1880), violinist, Emmy Destinn (born 1878), soprano.
PERIODICALS. The long cherished wish that there might be an English
language newspaper which should interpret to the Americans the ideals of
the Bohemian race was realized in September, 1892, when _The Bohemian
Voice_, a monthly printed in Omaha and published by the National
Committee, was issued. Through lack of funds _The Bohemian Voice_ was
forced to suspend publication in November, 1894. The first editor of this
“organ of the Bohemian-Americans in the United States” was Thomas Čapek;
upon his resignation, in April, 1894, J. J. Král took charge as editor.
The speculative _American Bi-Monthly_, launched in Chicago in 1914, failed
after publishing two numbers.
In February, 1917, the Bohemian National Alliance in America started a
monthly in Chicago, _The Bohemian Review_. In the initial number the
editor, Dr. J. F. Smetanka, argues as follows: “If some two hundred
thousand people[10] can support more than eighty publications in the
Bohemian language, why should not three hundred thousand of their
children, more used to the English language, establish and support just
one organ devoted to their interests as Americans of Czech descent?”
[10] The 1910 U. S. census has found in the country 539,392 people of
Bohemian stock, of whom 228,738 were foreign born, 310,654 native born.
In conclusion it may be added, that _The New Europe_, of London, though
by no means a Bohemian or a Slavic magazine, has paid generous attention
to Bohemian questions as affected by the war. Among the collaborators of
_The New Europe_ are such able students of Austrian politics as Thomas G.
Masaryk, late Professor at the Bohemian University of Prague, Dr. R. W.
Seton-Watson of King’s College and H. Wickham Steed of the London _Times_.
PLANS, MAPS. ETC. Of especial interest to the students of American
Colonial history is the _Map of Virginia and Maryland this present
Year 1670 Surveyed and Exactly Drawne by the Only Labour and Endeavour
of Augustin Herrman, Bohemiensis_. A copy of this rare map is on file
in the Library of Congress in Washington.[11] In addition to the Map of
Maryland, Herrman made a sketch of New Amsterdam (New York) as that city
looked in 1650. Herrman is reputed to be the first Bohemian immigrant to
America, coming here in 1633. On the site of the former Bohemia Manor
in Cecil County, Maryland, there is still preserved a tombstone bearing
this inscription: “Avgvstine Herrmen Bohemian The First Fovnder Seater of
Bohemea Manner Anno 1661.” Like Wenceslaus Hollar, John Amos Komenský,
Paul Skála ze Zhoře, (the historian) and thousands of other Protestants,
Herrman, the son of a minister of the gospel, was forced to flee from
Bohemia after the overthrow of the Protestants there.
[11] For Augustine Herrman’s life see _Památky Českých Emigrantů v
Americe_ (Data on Bohemian Immigration to America), by Thomas Čapek,
Omaha, 1907. J. V. Nigrin described Herrman’s map in the Chicago
_Svornost_, August 2-9, 1914.
POLITICS AND WAR PUBLICATIONS. Publication has received an unwonted
impetus from the war. Never since the Thirty Years’ War have the
grievances and political aspirations of the Bohemians been given more
widespread publicity. Woodrow Wilson stated the situation precisely in one
of his books when he declared that “no lapse of time, no defeat of hopes,
seems sufficient to reconcile the Czechs of Bohemia to incorporation with
Austria.” Since 1848, the year which saw the dawn of constitutionalism
in the Hapsburg monarchy, the Bohemians have been asking for home rule;
the lessons of war at once suggested a bolder program, a new orientation.
Presently their leaders demand a separation from Austria and the inclusion
in an independent Bohemian State of the Slovaks of Hungary. Under this
subtitle the reader will find indexed articles by opponents (Heilprin)
as well as by well-wishers. Of the new orientation, that is, of a
Bohemian-Slovak State, free and independent, the leading intellect outside
of Bohemia is Professor Masaryk, temporarily an exile in England.
Thomas Garrigue Masaryk (the middle name is assumed from that of his
American wife, Miss Charlotte Garrigue of New York) is writing his name
large in what posterity will joyfully call Bohemian Emancipation. Masaryk
was born of humble Moravian-Slovak parentage in 1850. From the time he
entered public life, he was always a rebel, though in the finest sense of
the term; rebel in politics, rebel in literature, rebel in the manner he
interpreted Bohemian nationalism. That he was not summarily removed from
the chair he occupied in the Prague University was due to fear of the man,
to fear of his large following, and not to the want of powerful accusers
or because of scruples on the part of the government. In native literature
and politics alike, Masaryk’s activities are bound to leave a deep mark.
Fortunately for the cause, he was able to effect his escape from Austria
in the early stages of the war.
An able writer and a forceful advocate of Bohemia’s cause in the United
States is Charles Pergler, vice-president of the Bohemian National
Alliance in America.
PRAGUE. Von Humboldt was not the only traveler who thought that the
capital of the Bohemian Kingdom was the most beautiful inland town of all
Europe. American and English tourists who have visited the city all concur
in the opinion of von Humboldt. “Prague to a Bohemian,” to quote Arthur
Symons (_Harper’s Magazine_, Sept., 1901), “is the epitome of the history
of his country; he sees it as the man sees the woman he loves, with her
first beauty.” Lützow’s _Story of Prague_ will fully repay the reader who
would like to know more of this beautiful mediæval city.