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242
A HISTORY OF BOHEMIAN LITERATURE

death. When his burial-place, the former Minorite monastery of Horaždovic, was in 1621 returned to the monks of that order, the remains of Brother Jaffet and of three other Bohemian brethren were disinterred and burnt in the churchyard.

It would be very easy to continue this account of the theologians of the Unity. All their writings still have an intense interest for Bohemians. Writing for other readers, I shall limit myself to the authors already mentioned, who are indeed the most prominent and representative members of the Unity.

It would, however, be impossible to pass in silence the name of Wenceslas Budovec of Budova. He was a prominent leader of the Brethren, a very striking figure in Bohemian political life, and belongs to literature also, as the author of several Bohemian works, mostly of a theological character. He was born in 1547 as a member of a noble but not opulent family, and was educated in accordance with the doctrine of the Unity. When eighteen years of age, Budova, as was then customary for young Bohemian nobles, undertook extensive travels, visiting Germany, the Netherlands, England, France, and Italy; that he visited Rome also is specially recorded by his biographers. Shortly after his return to Bohemia in 1577, he was attached to the embassy which Rudolph II., German emperor and King of Bohemia, despatched to Constantinople. A man of studious nature, and, like most Bohemians of his time, intensely interested in theological research, Budova employed his spare time — always granted amply to an able man who is member of an embassy but not the ambassador — in endeavouring to obtain information on the Mohammedan religion. The result of these