Page:The life & times of Master John Hus by Count Lützow.djvu/61

 the nobility and the smaller landowners of Bohemia, men who afterwards took so prominent a part in the Hussite wars. Stitny’s works also bear witness to the high degree of culture which Bohemia had already reached, as well to the great interest in matters of religion which at most periods of history we find among the people of Bohemia. I have elsewhere written extensively on the works of Stitny. It will here only be necessary to refer to his writings as far as they are connected with the cause of church-reform in Bohemia.

Thomas of Stitny, who belonged to the smaller nobility of Bohemia, was born at the castle—or “tower,” to use the Bohemian designation—of Stitny, in Southern Bohemia. As already mentioned, he visited the University of Prague shortly after its foundation, and being of a studious nature soon fell under the influence of the preaching of Waldhauser and Milic.

He viewed with great indignation the persecution on the part of the mendicant friars which these pious preachers then suffered. In the chapter of his work, Of General Christian Matters, which treats of monkery, Stitny writes, obviously alluding to these persecutions: “They (the monks) quarrel, hate one another, revile one another and, what is most terrible, every worthy preacher, every good man displeases them, for he sees their errors; gladly would they declare such a man a heretic that they might more freely practise their wiles.” Stitny writes yet more clearly in one of his yet unpublished works “Thus within my memory the devil incited them (the monks) against Conrad, a noble preacher of God’s truth, and they said that he was an apostate, because he exposed the wiles of false priesthood and taught that which is truth; thus also were they hostile to the good Milic; and the evil spoke evilly of him, but it was false. There are some also