they had commended their souls to God and His grace, whatever might befall them; they knew that they were acting rightly, and had therefore little fear for their own persons; rather did they rejoice that God had granted these things to them, and they accepted them with gratitude and thanksgiving, and praised their Lord God for this." The fact that so large a part of the historical as well as of the theological writings of the brethren has been destroyed enhances the value of Bilek's book. The passages quoted above give a true insight into the inner life of the Brotherhood; they give evidence of their invincible courage and absolute reliance on God, which gave them great strength, as well as of their exaggerated subserviency to even unjust temporal authorities, which sometimes made them poor politicians. Of Bilek little is known but what he himself tells us in his book. He was a clergyman of the Brotherhood, and acted for a considerable time as secretary to Augusta, the head of the community. He died at Napajedl in Moravia in 1581, at the age of sixty-five. As already mentioned, his book was formerly attributed to Blahoslav, and only recent researches have awarded the authorship to Bilek.[126] Very noteworthy among the historians of the Brotherhood is WENCESLAS BŘEZAN. To him Palacký's remark, that the Bohemians cared more for their history than for the biographies of their historians, is particularly applicable. Neither the year of the birth nor that of the death of Březan can be accurately ascertained; it has been conjectured that he was born about the year 1560, and died about the year 1619. Peter Vok, Lord of Rosenberg, the greatest of the Bohemian nobles, and a strenuous friend and protector of the Brotherhood, appointed Březan "archivarian, librarian, and historiographer of the House of Rosenberg." Most of his works deal with the annals of that great House, which for centuries figured so prominently in Bohemian history. The writings of Březan, like those of so many other Bohemian writers, have been only partially preserved. Besides minor works referring to the annals and the genealogy of noble Bohemian families, Březan wrote a large _History of the House of Rosenberg_, which is said to have consisted of five volumes. Of this work only portions, containing the biographies of William of Rosenberg and of his brother, Lord Peter, the last of the Rosenbergs, have reached us. From recent researches it, however, appears probable that the German _Rosenbergische Chronica_ of Heerman, a monk of the monastery of Wittingau (Třeboň), is an abridged translation of the lost parts of Březan's book. In any case, the parts of Březan's work that have been preserved in Bohemian are sufficient to prove that the work was far more than a mere family record, and that it is of great value for the social as well as for the political history of Bohemia.