The existence of the ancient Bohemian constitution, similar in many ways to that of mediaeval England, is a fact so little known that I have thought it interesting to give this quotation from Professor Kalousek’s valuable book.
The next historian whom I shall mention is Professor Jaroslav Goll, born in 1846—one of the most distinguished Bohemian historians and professors of the Bohemian University of Prague. Many of his earlier works deal with the interesting community of the Bohemian Brethren. These writings are mostly Bohemian, but some have appeared in German also under the title of Quellen und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der böhmischen Brüder, and they open a new world to the reader. It is only by reading these books that the student can conceive this strange community. Dr. Gindely had, indeed, written of the Bohemian Brethren, but in Professor Goll’s books they live. When preparing, some years ago, my works on the history and literature of Bohemia, I carefully studied Professor Goll’s books, and their fascination has for me always remained. His portraits of Chelčický, the originator of the Brotherhood, and of Brother Gregory its founder—‘the patriarch of the Brotherhood,’ as he was called in his later days—are masterpieces. I will extract from my History of Bohemian Literature Professor Goll’s account of Brother Gregory, which I have there translated; he writes: ‘Gregory had created for himself the ideal conception of a true Christian, an abstemious, kindly, patient, gracious, merciful, pure, humble-minded, peaceful, worthy, zealous, yielding, compliant man, qualified and ready to do all good works. But this ideal was for Gregory not an
