Page:The life & times of Master John Hus by Count Lützow.djvu/349

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THE WRITINGS AND PORTRAITS OF HUS
315

denuo!” The editors of Hus’s writings had also up to 1848 to face the perils of a double censorship.[1] Of the two censors one investigated whether a book contained anything opposed to the policy of the government, while the other, an ecclesiastic, suppressed everything antagonistic to the Church of Rome. In spite of these obstacles Venceslas Hanka[2] published in 1825 an edition of the Dcerka (daughter), one of Hus’s best works. The edition is not, however, complete, as several passages were omitted by order of the censor. In the years 1864 to 1868 Karel Jaromir Erben published three large volumes containing the principal Bohemian works of Hus, such as the Postilla, the different expositions (Vyklady), the treatise on simony (Svatokupector) , the Dcerka, some of the Bohemian letters, and a large number of other treatises. This has remained and probably will long remain the standard edition of the Bohemian works of the master, and it is therefore to be all the more to be regretted that though censorship had then already been nominally suppressed, some passages in this work were altered, others suppressed by order of the government. Several Bohemian works of Hus have been newly edited and published within the last years. Thus Dr. Flajshans, the foremost authority on Hus at the present time, published in 1900 a very handsome illustrated edition of the Postilla. Dr. Flajshans has very skilfully modernised the language, thus rendering the valuable book more accessible to scholars unacquainted with the Bohemian of the fifteenth century. In 1907 Dr. Novotny published a small edition of the treatise on Simony, which has very useful notes. The Latin works of Hus have also not been entirely neglected within the last years. Under the patronage of the Bohemian Academy the publication of the Latin works in a new edition has been begun, and it is sincerely to be hoped that this undertaking will meet with the success which it fully deserves. The

  1. See my History of Bohemian Literature, pp. 366–367 and 396–398.
  2. Ibid. pp. 403–404.