At Konrad’s death a preacher of equal or greater fame was made his successor in the Teyn church, Milicz, of Kremsier, a town in Moravia.[1] For five years, until his death in 1374, he carried on Konrad’s work. In 1363 he suddenly gave up positions of honor and emolument in the imperial chancery and as canon of St. Vite and archdeacon of Prague to devote himself to poverty and preaching. After serving for a few months in the parish of Bishop Teinitz, he returned to Prague and preached successively in the churches of St. Nicholas and St. Ægidius before being transferred to the church of Teyn. Here his popularity was so great that, on occasion, he was forced to preach three times a day. Yea, we know of his preaching five sermons on a single day, once in Latin, once in German, and three times in Bohemian. The last was his vernacular and, by using it, he strengthened the national feeling of the Czechs. Milicz’s indictments against vice and corruption were directed against all classes, lay and cleric, even to the hierarchy. So effective were his appeals that the part of the city known for its houses of ill fame as Venice—Benatky, that is dedicated to Venus—underwent such a transformation that it came to be known as New Jerusalem. Scores of fallen women—Janow reported two hundred—did penance and renounced their former mode of life. New buildings were erected in the neighborhood under the patronage of Charles IV, where penitents were housed and a semi-monastic community maintained.
Milicz’s mind became fired with the prophecies of antichrist and the last days, and he dwelt frequently, as later did Huss, on “the abomination of desolation which was spoken of through Daniel the prophet standing in the holy place,” Matt. 24: 15. He announced the coming of antichrist in the period 1363–1367, wrote a special treatise on the subject, and explained as of antichrist every thought and act
- ↑ “Noch grösseren Namen und Ruhm als Konrad erwarb sich Milicz und hatte dafür auch noch viel grössere Anfechtungen zu ertragen als sein Vorgänger, Konrad.”—Palacky, Vorläufer, p. 18.
