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A HISTORY OF BOHEMIAN

LITERATURE

I.,

of the citizens. His talents and learning — we are told that he studied for some time in foreign lands for the purpose of acquiring a thorough knowledge of the Greek language — raised him to a prominent position among the citizens of Prague. As early as in 1537 we hear of him as town-clerk of the old city of Prague, and he was chancellor of the town in the momentous year His political career as well as his writings prove 1546. him to have been a zealous partisan of the ancient privileges of the Bohemian " Estates." Ferdinand I. of Habsburg had in 1526 succeeded the weak sovereigns of the Jagellonic dynasty as ruler of Bohemia. His constant though often occult purpose was to strengthen the royal prerogative and to limit the power of the Bohemian Diet or Parliament. It seemed indeed at one time probable that Ferdinand I. would accomplish this task, which his grandson finally successfully achieved after the battle of the White Mountain. In this struggle between the king and the "Estates" Sixt took an active part, and an episode of this struggle (which lasted intermittently from 1526 to 1620) is the subject of his memorable work, entitled the History of the Troubled Years in Bohemia, 154.6 and 154.7. To no literature is the sentence " Habent sua fata " libelli more truly applicable than to that of Bohemia. While the writings of Bartos and Sixt, and indeed those of the other historians also with whom I shall deal in this chapter, remained almost unnoticed up to the beginning of the present century, Hajek of LibocAn's Bohemian Chronicles were widely known and circulated from the moment that the book appeared. Hajek's work and produced under was dedicated to Ferdinand the auspices of that sovereign, who, indeed, appointed