A Unique Book from Vojvodina, Serbia

Manuscriptorium managed to acquire a unique remainder of the book culture of the Unity of the Brethren from the pre-White Mountain period. It is a partly printed and partly handwritten Czech translation of the work by the French reformer John Calvin Institutio christianae religionis (“Institutes of the Christian Religion“). This book is only the second known specimen whose manuscript parts include the prefaces for Calvin’s work as well as  the translation of the fourth book where the latter has been known only from the manuscript written by the Unity of the Brethren’s translator Jiří Strejc, today stored in the Moravian Land Archives in Brno. The publishing of the fourth book has only been speculated up to now; however, the formal execution of this specimen, although also handwritten in our case, indicates that the fourth book has most likely been published as well.

Most likely, shortly after its origin, the book had a troubled fate. At first, as a possession of the evangelic emigrants fleeing from the Czech lands after the Battle of White Mountain, it arrived in Upper Hungary (today’s Slovakia). Its owner, who took it to Upper Hungary, could have been the Unity of the Brethren’s priest Jiří Janovský († before 1650) who was recorded in Púchov at the post-White Mountain time. Later, it got to Vojvodina, Serbia, as the property of Slovak emigrants where the book has remained in the possession of a private owner, Mr Pavel Brtka, in whose family the book was inherited from generation to generation.

We warmly thank Mr Brtka for making photocopies and his permission to publish them in Manuscriptorium!