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very frankly the reason why so many of his works are He writes : " Milic wrote much, and because he, lost. perhaps too audaciously, attacked the vices of the clergy, and those of the mendicant friars in particular, the Hussites (as it is the custom of heretics) praised him as if he had been a friend of their sect, and used his^ statements as arguments for their own doctrines. Therefore Archbishop Zbynek of Hasenburg caused the writings of Milic to, be publicly burnt on a pile, together with those I of other heretics. It is certainly principally through the example of Milic that the better known Thomas of Stitny received the first impulse towards writing his now celebrated works. Stitny, indeed, himself writes : " Had it not been for the priest Milic, perhaps all these books which I have written would not have existed." Thomas of Stitny was born in 1330 or 1331 at Stitny, " tower," to use the Bohemian designaa small castle or tion, in Southern Bohemia, which appears to have been in the possession of his family for some time. At a very early age, probably shortly after its foundation in 1348, Stitny visited the University of Prague, where he remained for some years devoting his time to the study He did not, however, seek of theology and philosophy. academic honours, and thus incurred the enmity of the "magisters" of the University, who considered him as Their indignation was inan intruder on their domain. creased by the circumstance that Stitny wrote in Bohemian at a time when Latin only was considered to be the fitting language for those who treated the subjects on which Stitny virrote. His theological and philosophical studies did not, however, so completely engross the interest of Stitny