he paper quantitatively analyses a sample of 300 Czech prayer books and other popular religious handwritten material (not including songbooks) from the 18th and 19th centuries. The author maintains that most of the material consisted of (partial) transcriptions of popular printed books and their widespread popularity was influenced by the growth of literacy and the individualization of piety. Their use was by no means limited to the milieu of the secret non-Catholics which were proscribed until 1781; indeed the majority of Catholic writings were not fully orthodox. The character and decoration of the writings in question were not directly related to the confessional nature of their originators and/or users; in fact the general rules of early modern popular culture played a much more important role and in many cases it is difficult to determine whether the source is catholic, protestant or sectarian. Prayer books fully reflected official forms of religion relatively late i.e. from the tum of the 18th and 19th centuries as a result of church domination over popular piety. However, even at this time the process did not result in absolutes: religious writings substituted the non-existence of baroque literature the printing of which was prohibited by the enlightened censorship prevalent at the time. Only a change in religious forms and new opportunities for the printing of pre-enlightenment books in the mid-19th century led to a decline in handwritten prayer books.
The almanacs represented an important source and constituent part of the popular culture in the „long“ nineteenth century. The text focuses on the by now slightly studied almanacs of Czech Protestants and, as a supplement, also contains its register. First Protestant calendars were published after the authorization of Protestant denominations at the end of the eighteenth century, but due to the economic weakness of these minorities soon ceased to exist. The next wave of their publishing was connected with liberalism of the middle of the nineteenth century and the social emancipation of Protestants. But the defeat of the revolution of 1848 again caused their demise. Systematic publishing of Protestant almanacs took place only in the last third of the nineteenth century, when their principal role was the gradual deepening of the confessional consciousness. From the beginning of the twentieth century these almanacs were used in the efforts for uniting of Czech Lutheran and Reformed Churches. This union was realized after the constitution of Czechoslovakia in the year 1918. Later Protestant almanacs were mostly regular ecclesiastical yearbooks without broader implications.