Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume II.djvu/807

 BOHEMIAN BRETHREN BOHEMIAN LANGUAGE 787 of the Brethren was held at Liticz, which sev- ered their connection with the Calixtines and adopted the doctrine of the merely spiritual presence of Christ in the eucharist. Hence- forth Rokitzana and Podiebrad, who had been raised to the throne, were outspoken enemies of the Brethren, who sought refuge from per- secution in the caves, and thus received the name of cave-dwellers (Grubenheimer). The' Brethren themselves adopted for their organi- zation the name of the Unity of Brethren ( Unitas Fratrum). The organization increased rapidly amid persecution ; at the beginning of the Lutheran reformation it numbered 400 congregations with 200,000 members. The great persecution under Ferdinand I., in 1547, drove a number of the Brethren into Poland and Prussia. In Poland the organization be- came so flourishing that the Polish congrega- tions were received into the communion of the Brethren as a separate province. These con- gregations united with the Lutherans and Re- formed in the Consensus Sandomiriensis (1570), while in Bohemia and Moravia they presented conjointly with these two Protestant denomina- tions the Confessio Bohemica to the emperor Maximilian II. (1575). After Rudolph II. had granted religious toleration, the Brethren were represented in the evangelical consistory of Prague by one of their bishops. Under Ferdi- nand II. they were compelled either to join out- wardly the Roman Catholic church or go into exile (1620). By those who preferred exile a number of congregations were established in Prussia, Poland, and Hungary, which main- tained themselves until the death of their bishop Amos Comenius (1671), when they became merged in the Lutheran and Reformed congre- gations. The Brethren in Poland ultimately united with the Reformed church, and contin- ued the consecration of bishops in the hope of the restoration of the Unitas Fratrum. The same hope was entertained by the remainder of the Brethren in Bohemia and Moravia, who kept up secret meetings. Their hopes were fulfilled by the new organization which owes its origin to Count Zinzendorf. (See MORAVIANS.) The relation of the Bohemian Brethren to the Waldenses has not yet been fully cleared up by historical investigators. At the head of the church were bishops, priests, and deacons as assistants of the priests. The bishops had the exclusive right to ordain. Each of the bishops had a diocese ; conjointly they formed the supreme church council, which was presided over by the primate. This council, which also embraced from six to eight assistant bishops, appointed all the preachers, but was itself re- sponsible to the synod, which met every third or fourth year. The church was divided into three provinces, the Bohemian, Moravian, and Polish. The discipline of the church consisted of three degrees : first, private admonition and censure; secondly, public censure and exclu- sion from the Lord's supper ; lastly, exclusion from the communion of the church. The Brethren were noted for their literary activity and their schools ; their most celebrated work was the Kralitz translation of the Bible in the Bohemian language. The knowledge of the history of the Brethren was greatly promoted by the discovery in 1862 at Lissa of a part of the old archives of the church, and a number of able historical works have since been written on the subject. The most important sources of information are: Gindely, Geschichte der Buhmischen Bruder (Prague, 1857) ; Croger, Geachichte der alten Britderkirche (Gnadau, 1865); De Schweinitz, "The Moravian Epis- copate" (Bethlehem, Penn., 1865); Benham, "Origin and Episcopate of the Bohemian Breth- ren" (London, 1867). liollKlim LiKGtiGE M) LITERATI RE. The word Bohemian is improperly applied to the principal nation of the western Slavs. The true name of the people is Czechs (ftechi, pro- nounced Tchekhi), from eeti, to begin, as they believe themselves to be the first of the family. The language is the harshest, strongest, most abounding in consonants, and at the same time the richest and most developed of the many dialects of the Slavic family, which itself is the northernmost relative of the Sanskrit, the cul- minating tongue of the Aryan stock. Nearest to the Czech are the Moravian and the Slovak of N. W. Hungary, both sub-dialects, and the Sorabo-Wendic of Lusatia, a cognate dialect. The southern and southwestern Slavs had ob- tained letters from CyriUus who modified the Greek alphabet, and the Glagolitic characters, wrongly ascribed to St. Jerome, before the Latin mode of writing was adopted by the other branches of the family, in the form of the black letter, and recently in the Italian shape. In this language there are the five Italian vowels (both short and long when long, marked by an accent), with an additional y (short and long), which is duller and heavier than i; one diphthong, ou (pronounced as in our) ; the pseudo-diphthongs of all the vowels with a closing y, and the diphthong <f, pronounced ye. B, d, f, i, I, m, n, -p, D, sound as in English ; but c is pronounced as if written ts in English ; g before, i, y, like y in yes; h harsher than in hen ; r trembling and rolling, and not slurred over as in the English marsh, park; s always as in sap ; t always as in tin; w like the Eng- lish v; z always as in zeal. The following let- ters with the diacritic sign (") are pronounced c like English ch in chat ; s like sh in shall; z like the French j, or the English zi in gla- zier ; r like the Polish rz, almost like rzh, as much as possible in one utterance ; d like the Magyar ay (dy in one utterance); t like the Magyar ty ; n like the Italian gn in tignore, or Magyar ny. There is also a peculiar letter I, with a cross bar as in Polish, having a heavy and dull sound unknown to the English. The letter x occurs only in foreign words. The combination ch is pronounced as in German, being the most strongly aspirated guttural sound; the trigranima sch represents two