LireraturE.—Herzog, RH iii. 115 ff.; Schwicker, Geschichte der Ungarischen Litteratur; art. ‘Hongroises Versions’ in Vigouroux’s Dictionnaire de la Bible.
x. BOHEMIAN VERSIONS.—1. The oldest MSS of a Bohemian version of Scripture belong to the 14th century. There can be little doubt that the trans- lation of some parts of the Bible was made con- siderably earlier, possibly as early as the 10th or llth century, for the Eastern Slavs had many versions by that time (see vol. iv. p. 863 f. ‘Slavonic Version’), and the Western Slavs, to whom the Bohemians belong, would be sure to follow the Eastern branch before long, and certainly had a Slavonic liturgy very early. No MSS, however, have reached us, for the fragments of a Bohemian version of St. John’s Gospel, assigned to the 10th cent., are probably a forgery of Hanka.
2. Here, as elsewhere, the Psalter was one of the first books to be translated, and we have several early MSS of it, two of which are assigned to the 14th century. These are the Wittenberg Psalter, edited by Gebauer, which contains a Latin Psalter and an interlinear Bohemian version, and the rather later Clementine Psalter in the University Library
418 CONTINENTAL VERSIONS
CONTINENTAL VERSIONS
apm ge a ee es eS ee SS eee
at Prague. In all, four different early translations of the Psalter have been distinguished by Gebauer. Besides the Psalter, other books of the OT were translated in or before the 14th cent., including Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Daniel. The earliest parts of the NT to be translated were the parts used in Church services, and so it is not surprising that traces of Slavonic influence due to the use of a Slavonic liturgy should have been found in the Bohemian version. The translation was no doubt made from the Vulgate; but Vondrak, who has carefully examined the text with reference to any evidence of Slavonic influences, writes: ‘1t is true they took a Latin text for basis, but the translator, or rather ‘‘ glosser,” had also a Church Slavonic text before him.’ ‘Traces of similar influence Vondrak also finds in the Psalter, On the other hand, Dobrofsky maintains that there is not the slightest trace of Slavonic influence.
3. Besides translations of the parts of the Gospels used in Church services, complete Gospels in Bohemian were also extant in the 14th century. Wyclif mentions that Anne of Luxemburg, wife of Richard 11., had a Gospel in lingua triplici exar- atum scilicet in lingua Bohemica, Teutonica, et Latina, about the year 1380. To a slightly later date belong the MSS at Dresden (c. 1400), Leit- meritz (c. 1411), and Olmutz (1417). The text of these MSS is, according to Leskien, a ‘ conglomera- tion of the already extant older translations of single books of the Bible made by different persons at different times in different recensions.’
The important point is that the text of all these MSS is older than the time of Hus. He ‘did almost as much for his native tongue as Luther for German. He corrected the translation of the Bible, rearranged the Bohemian alphabet, and fixed the orthography.’ This revision had some reference to the Vulgate as the underlying text, but was directed mainly to removing obsolete words and expressions. During the interval which separated the death of Hus in 1415 from the first printed Bohemian Bible in 1488, many revisions of the text took place, and many MSS of this period, both of the whole Bible and of the NT, are men- tioned by Dobrofsky, all dependent on the Vulgate. Some of these are only copies of other MSS, while others contain independent translations.
4. In 1487 the first printing-press was established at Prague, and next year appeared the first edition of the Bohemian Bible, interesting as ‘the first instance on record of the application of the newly invented art of printing to the multiplication of the Scriptures in a living tongue.’ On this first edition, with only slight alterations and correc- tions, many later editions are based. The edition of the NT which appeared in 1518 is interesting as the first work of the ‘ United Brethren’ carried out by order of Lucas of Prague. But this and subsequent revisions were relatively unimportant when compared with the so-called ‘Kralitz or Brothers’ Bible,’ published in six volumes at Kralitz in Moravia (1579-1593). This work is described as ‘an eternal monument of the beauty of the Bohemian language,’ for which the United Brethren did so much. The work was superintended by John Blahoslay, ‘the first profound student of the Bohemian language,’ who himself translated the NT from the Greek (1564). In the translation of the OT thirteen scholars besides Blahoslav took part. The Hebrew text of the Antwerp Polyglott was used as a basis, but previous Bohemian versions are also quoted.
5. The disastrous battle of the White Mountain in 1620 was followed by the crushing out of the Bohemian nationality. ‘Books in the Chekh language were hunted up in all quarters and burned. The Jesuits were very active in these
labours: one especially, Andrew Konias, probably the greatest book-burner whom the world has ever seen, boasted that he had been instrumental in destroying 60,000 volumes.’ Owing to the pro- scription of the national language in 1621, and the activity of the Jesuits just mentioned, the circula- tion of the Bohemian version languished. But a demand on the part of Roman Catholics led to the publication of the so-called ‘Wenzel Bible,’ edited by Jesuits (1677-1715). The text of the Venice edition of 1506 was used as a basis, but the Brothers’ Bible was also used. Another Catholic edition, which is a revision of the Wenzel Bible, was the work of Durich and Prochaska (1778-1780), and this in turn was again revised by Prochaska, the NT appearing in 1786 and the whole Bible in 1804. In 1808 Palkovitch published a reprint of the text of the Kralitz Bible, with a list of words which had become obsolete, and this was circulated later by means of the British and Foreign Bible Society.