Of these writers, far the most important was the learned Jesuit Balbinus. He was born in 1621 at Králové Hradec[1], of a family that belonged to the ancient nobility of that district. He was consecrated as a priest in 1650, and was sent as a missionary to his native district, that of Králové Hradec. The brutality and cruelty which these missionaries displayed in the execution of their task of conversion was naturally displeasing to a truly pious man such as was Balbinus. He also appears not to have won the approval of his superiors, for he was recalled, and henceforth employed as a teacher. He made great researches in the archives of various towns and castles, which he visited in his new capacity. The result of these studies was his Epitome Historica Rerum Bohemicarum, in which he has given an extensive account of events connected with Bohemia, laying great stress on the foundation of churches and monasteries, and ecclesiastical matters generally. Of course the writer, a Jesuit, writes of the Hussite wars in the only then permissible manner, and gives the then usual distorted accounts of the careers of Hus, Žižka, and the other great Bohemians. None the less, the book raised the suspicions of Count Martinic, then Governor of Bohemia. It indeed required the mind of an inquisitor to detect here and there a vestige of Bohemian national feeling. Yet the book was for a time suppressed, Balbinus fell into disgrace, and was sent to Klatov almost as an exile.
While at Klatov Balbinus wrote (also in Latin) an Apology for the Slavic and specially the Bohemian Tongue, which he dedicated to his friend Canon Pešina. Knowing the hostility that the Bohemian language
- ↑ In German, Königgrätz.
