Page:Lectures on The Historians of Bohemia by Count Lutzow (1905).djvu/18

 many grievous wounds, killed him at the door of the church. Then this saintly soul departed, victoriously and with the laurels of martyrdom from the prison-house of this world on the fourth day before the calends of October in the year of the incarnation 928, while the world mourned and the heavens rejoiced.’

As I have already mentioned, the exact date of Kristián’s chronicle is uncertain. We are on safer ground when dealing with Cosmas of Prague, the Bohemian Herodotus as he was formerly called. Writing in 1125, he tells us that he was then an octogenarian; we may therefore assume that he was born about the year 1045. He began writing late in life, after the death of his wife Božetěcha, and perhaps to solace the sorrow which her loss—to which he alludes in a very feeling manner in his book—caused him. I should here mention that the celibacy of the clergy was only introduced into Bohemia at a late period.

Cosmas, who appears to have been of noble birth, studied for some time at Luttich or Liège in Belgium, and then took holy orders. He became canon and afterwards dean of the chapter of Prague. In this capacity he accompanied the bishops of Prague on many political missions, and took a considerable part in the politics of his country. Thus he was present at the meeting of the German Diet at Mainz, at which Prince Vratislav of Bohemia received the royal crown. He was also employed on missions in Italy and Hungary. Cosmas writes as a warm Bohemian patriot, and it is curious to meet in the works of a writer of the twelfth century with allusions to the ‘arrogance innate in the Teutons, who with incensed haughtiness