A History of Bohemian LiteratureLützow, Francis, hrabe
History
A History of Bohemian Literature
Lützow, Francis, hrabe
Czech literature -- History and criticism
But even in Hajek's accounts of semi-mythical occurrences the
insincerity and dishonesty that characterise him are often apparent.
Cosmas and Dalimil related the legends and traditions of their land
just as they had reached them from the earliest available oral or
written depositions. Hajek, on the contrary, always assumes the part
of a conscientious and systematic historian. He indeed mentions
Tacitus, Ptolemy, Strabo, Orosius, and a limited number of mediæval
writers among the authorities whom, according to his statement, he
had consulted. Hajek's object was to join together various, often
contradictory, tales, and to give them the shape of a chronologically
consistent record of the lives of the Premyslide princes. Was it for
this purpose necessary to alter traditional dates? That appeared to
Hajek a matter of no great importance!
Writing as a fervent partisan of Rome, Hajek of course judges Hus and
Jerome of Prague severely. Of the latter he tells us: "In 1400 there
arrived in Prague, coming from England, a young man who had gone there
for the purposes of study, Jerome by name, a citizen of the new town
of Prague, the son of one Albert (Vojtěch).... This Jerome had brought
books with him from England, into which he had copied out some of the
writings of 'John the Englishman,' whom they call Wycliffe. This man
had by his teaching corrupted first a town in England called 'Oksa' or
'Oksonia,' and afterwards the whole English kingdom." Of Hus, Hajek
tells us that he was originally a good and pious man, but that he came
under the influence of two Englishmen, "Jacob the Bachelor" and "Conrad
of Kandelburgk" (=Canterbury). These men used to visit (according to
Hajek!) the young masters of the university, spreading Wycliffe's
teaching and perverting many from the true faith. At last "Master
John of Husinec, Master Jerome of Prague, Jacob of England, and
Conrad of 'Kandelburgk' were like one man." This account of the origin
of the Hussite movement--totally incorrect, as so many of Hajek's
statements--yet proves that the writer was indeed the "narrow-minded
slyboots" Palacký has called him. By greatly exaggerating the English
influence on the foundation of Hussitism, and stigmatising it as a
foreign movement, Hajek, as he well knew, greatly injured the Hussites;
for the intense national feeling that has always animated the Bohemians
has produced among them an often exaggerated distrust of foreign
interference.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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