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A HISTORY OF BOHEMIAN
LITERATURE
As a true Bohemian of his time, Piseck^, while in Italy, engaged in a theological controversy with a monk at Bologna on the subject of communion in two kinds. The Latin treatise which he published on this subject was afterwards translated into Bohemian by Gregory Gelenius. Wenceslas Pisecky was indeed not influenced in his religious opinions by his stay in Italy, and always In one of remained faithful to the Utraquist Church. his letters he complains that his country is little known in foreign lands — a complaint that a Bohemian of the present is unfortunately still entitled to echo — and writes bitterly of .^Enaeas Sylvius, whose book on Bohemia was then and long afterwards considered the standard authority on the subject. He writes : " JEmeas Sylvius, who was ignorant of the laws of historical writing as they have been transmitted to us by the Greek writers, deals in the manner of a gladiator (gladiatorio prorsus animo) with the Bohemians." The most important result of Pisecky's Greek studies was a Bohemian translation of Isocrates's oration to Demonikos, which his protector, Gregory Gelenius, published in 15 1 2, a year after the premature death of Pisecky', who died suddenly at Venice from the plague, or, according to other accounts, from poison. Pisecki^'s version, in which for the first time a Greek work was translated directly into Bohemian, still has great value, and has by a recent critic been described as a model of Bohemian diction. As a proof of the importance that was attached to the translation, we may quote the very " which Gregory Gelenius simple Bohemian " Epitaph prefixed to the work of Piseckjr. It runs as follows : — " TAe town of Pisek
-was my birthplace; The University of Prague gave me learning;
