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- Title
JAN VETTER: Příspěvek k tématu zahraničních učeneckých kontaktů jednoty bratrské na počátku 17. století.
- Authors
JUST, JIŘÍ
- Abstract
Jan Vetter († 1617), son of Bohemian Brethren Consenior Jan Strejc, tutor, priest, and apparently only a slightly older contemporary of John Amos Comenius, has not until recently been a particularly well-known figure to the Czech historiography. This was due to two factors. Vetter died relatively young, and documentary material was relatively scarce to allow a detailed study of his life. The accidental discovery of some documents about Jan Vetter in the archives of Matouš Konečný, the last bishop of Bohemian Brethren in Mladá Boleslav, during construction work there in 2006 improved somewhat this unfavourable situation. The discovery brought to light eighteen of Vetter's letters and a number of other documents that allow a greater insight into approximately six last years of his life. They tell us about Vetter's stay in Bremen, where, between 1611 - 1613, as a tutor of young men from Bohemian Brethren families and preceptor for the counts of Hodice, he maintained close relations with Matthias Martini, the rector of the local grammar school, but, on the decision of bishops, he had to turn down an offer of a teaching career at a foreign educational institution (it is probably the first known case of a Brethren scholar to whom such an opportunity presented itself at the beginning of his career). The letters found also allow us to sketch the last period of Jan Vetters life, when he served as a priest and rector at a Bohemian Brethren school. After preaching practice in Mladá Boleslav under Matouš Konečný, he was entrusted with the administration of the Brethren community and school in Tuchoměřice near Prague, before Rudolf's Imperial Charter on Religious Freedom was issued. It was an important Bohemian Brethren centre, whose fame began to noticeably decline in the second decade of the 16th century. Vetter's letters and letters of his contemporaries allow us not only to reconstruct his professional career but give us a glimpse of some aspects of his personal life. For instance, humanly touching are the letters from which we learn about Vetter's efforts to gain his superiors' consent with his intention to ask Prague Senior Matěj Cyrus Sr. for his daughter' hand in marriage. The analyzed correspondence also sheds some light on certain sore points in the relationship between ordinary priests with significant intellectual interests and Bohemian Brethren bishops who prioritized ecclesiastical and administrative goals, and were willing to sanction interests of their subordinates only as far as they contributed to the positive strengthening of confessional identity. Interests that departed from those goals were likely to bring their proponents into conflict with the Church leaders, mainly bishops. The attempt to depict the life story of John Vetter has also demonstrated how prosopographical analysis can enrich research of collections of old prints in those Central European libraries that have substantial holdings of printed literary production of Bohemian Brethren and books from the estates of Brethren exiles.
- Subjects
VETTER, Jan; BOHEMIAN Brethren; TUTORS &; tutoring; SEVENTEENTH century; HISTORY
- Publication
Studia Comeniana et Historica, 2014, Vol 44, Issue 91/92, p156
- ISSN
0323-2220
- Publication type
Article