The study presents a comprehensive overview of the literary work of the Czech humanist, pedagogue and jurist, Racek Dubravus of Doubrava (c. 1474–1547). It traces the origins of his publishing activity, shaped by his studies in Leipzig and Bologna, and the way he introduced his expertise in Latin humanist grammar, stylistics and the art of letter-writing to the Bohemian environment. The study places particular emphasis on Dubravus’ two anti-Lutheran polemics of 1525, which he wrote as a Catholic response to the increasing influence of Lutheranism in Bohemia. Both texts are analysed in detail and Dubravus’ anti-Lutheran argumentation is illustrated by numerous examples.
The study presents an editio princeps of two Old Czech translations of Matthew of Cracow’s Dialogue on Frequent Communion between Reason and Conscience (Dialogus rationis et conscientiae de crebra communione). Only one of them, preserved in the National Museum Library’s manuscript IV H 30, has been known of up until now, but has not met with any scholarly attention. As a result of recent cataloguing of manuscript fragments in the National Museum Library, a second (albeit fragmentary) witness of the same translation has been discovered (shelfmark 1 K 189). This study identifies yet another translation of the Dialogue, namely two Old Czech excerpts from the work that are contained in three well-known Old Czech prayer books (National Library manuscripts XVII E 7, XVII E 8, and XVII F 30). In order to demonstrate the completely different nature of the two translations as well as to put them into historical context, the critical edition is preceded by a thorough analysis of the manuscripts and the texts of the translations. In addition, a hypothesis of two separate redactions of the newly discovered translation is formulated on the basis of the many textual variants found in the manuscript XVII E 8.
Ivan Bureš, when translating Latin authors into Czech, aimed at making classical texts more accessible to modern readers. He was criticized for his translation methods by other classical philologists such as Ferdinand Stiebitz and since his death the re-editions of his translations have been revised in a way that did not respect his authorial intentions. The article focuses on two posthumously revised editions of his translations, Ovid’s Ars amatoria (1947, revised in 1963) and Metamorphoses (1935, revised in 1974), which were extensively edited by Rudolf Mertlík. It reconstructs the circumstances of the revisions and assesses the extent to which they fulfilled their intended purpose: to eliminate alleged datedness and faults. The quantitative analysis demonstrates that the revised translation of Ars amatoria is more similar to Mertlík’s own translation (published only later in 1969) than to the original text by Bureš and that the revised translation of Metamorphoses is a rather careless compilation containing verses from Stiebitz’s alternative translation (also from 1935) with further modifications. The article argues that the nature and extent of the revisions, along with the absence of relevant information about them in the editions, result in a misleading notion of the original work by Ivan Bureš in scholarly literature. This extreme case of disrespecting the original translation and its author is placed in the broader context of studies on reprocessed translations.
The study examines competition between reflexive and non-reflexive possessive pronouns in Jan Blahoslav’s translation of the New Testament. It was published for the first time in 1564 and was developed further in pre-White-Mountain Brethren New Testament versions. Blahoslav’s translation came about in a period when two rather systematic but opposing solutions, with respect to possessive pronouns related to the first and second persons, existed. There was the distribution of reflexive pronouns described in the Náměšť Grammar (1533), on the one hand, which is in fact in correspondence with the present-day rules, and, on the other hand, the approach applied by the Melantrich Bible of 1556/1557, which introduced the replacement of reflexive pronouns with non-reflexive ones. The study demonstrates that Blahoslav chose the middle way, using reflexive pronouns in about half of the possible cases. The subsequent New Testaments of the Unity of the Brethren changed, however, the distribution in favour of reflexives. The first and less systematic step was taken by the Six-Volume Kralice Bible (1579–1593/1594) and the decisive one by the New Testament of 1601. As a result, the distribution in the latter edition as well as the following Kralice Bible of 1613 virtually concurs with Modern Czech.
The article explores the rise of lay piety in the 14th-century Lands of the Bohemian Crown through vernacular manuscripts, focusing on the first Czech translation of the Seven Penitential Psalms, found in the late 14th-century Poděbrady Psalter, a richly decorated manuscript commissioned by a noblewoman. This source features a revised first Czech Psalter translation that reflects contemporary language trends and a deliberate archaization. The manuscript also indicates the gender of its commissioner through the frequent use of feminine grammatical forms within the prayers, while the Psalms predominantly retain masculine forms. This pattern is consistent with other Czech manuscripts from the period, where grammatical gender inflection varies significantly. The findings suggest that while feminine adaptations are more common in personalised prayer books, they are less frequent in the psalters, which may reflect their status as sacred texts. Overall, this study underscores the need for further research into other surviving Czech manuscripts of Old Czech prayer books in order to better understand the preservation of archaisms and the role of women in the creation and adaptation of religious texts during the Late Middle Ages.
