Page:The life & times of Master John Hus by Count Lützow.djvu/65

 Learned Entertainments. The book is an attempt to define, according to the scholastic system, the personality of God and His attributes. It is in strict accordance with the doctrine of Rome, as far as that doctrine had been developed at the time of Stitny. As already noted, Stitny, towards the end of his life, became much more moderate in his denunciations of the iniquities of his time, and the later manuscripts of his works are far more obsequious to the Roman Church than the earlier ones had been. While the reform movement continuously assumed a more advanced character, Stitny’s caution became ever greater, and he was at the end of his life no longer in touch with the leaders of a movement to the development of which he had largely contributed. Stitny’s merits as a Bohemian writer are very great; he was the first to employ the national language as a medium for the discussion of theological and philosophical questions. He was in this also a true forerunner of Hus, whose great merits for the development of the language of his country have only lately been recognised. In the last years of his life, Stitny returned to Prague, and lived there up to his death in 1401. At this period his constant companion was his daughter, Anna, or Anezka, as he called her. After his death she occupied part of a house near the Bethlehem chapel where Hus was shortly to begin to preach. It is known that several pious ladies lived in community in a house near Hus’s chapel. If, as is probable, Anezka of Stitny was one of these ladies, the fact forms an interesting link between Stitny and his greater successor.

In connection with Stitny and the other reformers previously mentioned, the name of Adolbert Ranco (known also as Ranconis, or Rankuv) cannot be omitted. The details of his life are very obscure, though we meet with his name