research has only proved that the writer was a layman, and a Bohemian noble belonging probably to the northern districts of the country. From the contents of the chronicle it appears that the author began his work in 1308, and finished it in 1316; of the events from the year 1279 downwards he writes as an eye-witness.
The chronicle of Dalimil has been printed several times. The first edition appeared at Prague in 1620, but was suppressed in the same year, after the battle of the White Mountain, and the subsequent occupation of Prague by Austrian-Spanish troops. The keynote of the chronicle is intense hatred of the Germans, whose warfare with the Slavs has continued almost uninterruptedly from the arrival of the Čechs in Bohemia up to the present day. Dobrovsky, one of the forerunners of the Bohemian revival in the nineteenth century, very truly writes: ‘At no time was the Bohemian hatred of the Germans so intense as during the period described by Dalimil. His heroes, the Bohemian nobles and knights, are great and brave when they drive the Germans out of their country; weak and powerless are the kings who heed the word of German councillors.’
In the beginning of his chronicle, the writer states that it was his love for his nation that induced him to write, though he was a knight rather than a scholar. ‘Of one thing,’ he writes, ‘I am full sure, that I have my nation much at heart; that has encouraged me in this work; that has impelled me to work.’
I will only quote one passage from the chronicle; it is the one which tells of the marriage of Prince Ulrich to the peasant-maiden Božena. This passage also bears witness to the intense hatred of the Germans which is
