Konrad and Milicz was Matthias of Janow. The son of a Bohemian knight, he studied six years in Paris, so that he was known in Bohemia as the Parisian master. He spent some time in Rome and on his return to Prague was appointed to a canon’s stall in St. Vite’s and to the position of confessor there. At his death, 1394, he was buried in the cathedral. Janow exercised his influence as effectively outside the pulpit as in it. In a volume entitled The Rules of the Old and New Testament—De regulis veteris et novi teslamenti—he applied the precepts of Christianity to the conditions of his age.[1] His observations, based on the study of the Bible, were given to him, as he asserted, in answer to prayer. The Bible he emphasized as the sufficient text-book of religious conduct, and the twelve fundamental articles he drew from it concerned the imitation of Christ in daily life rather than ecclesiastical dogmas drawn from the Fathers. On every page the author shows his interest in the religious welfare of the laity.
His own religious awakening Janow compared to a religious fire which had entered his heart, and whose flames burned brighter as he lifted up his soul in prayer to God and to Jesus Christ, the crucified. The Bible had been his friend and bride from his youth up. It was to him the mother of love and knowledge. “I have used in my writings,” he says, “the Bible above all else and in less degree the sayings of the doctors, because the Scriptures occur to me quickly and copiously and because the most divine truths are there set forth most lucidly and self-evidently. . . . I have always found in and through them satisfactory explanations for every question and consolation for my soul in all my persecutions, trouble, and sadness. I always flee for refuge to the Bible,
- ↑ Palacky, Vorläufer, 58–80, gives excerpts. Neander, Ch. Hist., Engl. trs., 5: 191–235, gives large space to Matthias and advocates the view first presented in a paper read before the Academy of Sciences, Berlin, 1847, that Huss was strongly influenced by Matthias independently of Wyclif. This view has been made impossible by later studies.
