Page:Guide to the Bohemian section and to the Kingdom of Bohemia - 1906.djvu/91

71 Three books are of striking importance and significance in the spiritual and moral development of the Bohemians: The Bible, The Postilla, and the Hymnbook.

The Bible appears nowhere else to have been such a mine of instruction, from which the nation derived not only knowledge of letters in general, but also the spiritual wisdom in particular, as in Bohemia, and from which later on, in the great and glorious struggle on behalf of liberty of conscience, it drew both inspiration and vigour. The confession of the probable compiler of the separate, but long ago by different and unknown authors translated, portions of the Scriptures into one whole and complete Bible, the magister Parisiensis, Mathew of Janov, became both a bequest and a directive to writers of a long period afterwards. He says in his work De regulis veteris et novi Testamenti: „I made a profuse use of the Bible in my writings, because it instantly and copiously thronged itself into all my ponderings and matters, I wished to write upon; because out of it and by its most divine truths, which are in themselves so lucid and manifest, all ideas are more solidly strengthened, more firmly grounded, and more profitably digested; because I loved it since my youth and called it my friend, my bride, yea, mother of beauteous delight, learning, fear and holy hope. Wherever I moved, since my youth untill my high age, it did never forsake me, on no my way, nor in my home, never when I was occupied and never when I took to rest.“

The Bible influenced directly and indirectly a vast portion of the Bohemian literature. In the Scriptures are rooting the writings of the precursor of John Huss, the moral philosopher knight Thomas of Štítné; John Milič, the contemporary of Mathew of Janov, lived and practizedpractised [sic] the Bible; John Huss, the pupil of Mathew of Janov, revised the Bible, and became the first painter in words and deeds of Jesus, the only Saviour of men, as he writes in his touching letter to his friend and companion on his way to Constance, the knight John of Chlum, regarding his dream of the Chapel Betlehem; Peter Chelčický is actually revelling in the Bible, and a great host of more or less acute thinkers, including the last and brightest star among them,