This study deals with a short but little researched episode in the life of Henry of Isernia, an Italian master of ars dictaminis, who came to the court of King Ottokar II of Bohemia in the early 1270s. Henry’s letter collection contains nine letters relating to his temporary stay at the Premonstratensian monastery in Strahov. These letters are impressive, but hardly interpretable, historical sources, and are also the only ones describing the circumstances of the election of a new Abbot of Strahov that probably took place in 1274. The reliability and credibility of Henry’s sometimes exaggerated and emotionally charged narratives were assessed by comparing their historical and biographical content with existing documents and memorial sources, such as monastery necrologies and annals.
The outbreak of Schism in 1378 introduced a shift in searching for a new source of authority which could legitimise the church reform. Since the early 1390s, the conciliar tradition preferring the canon law as the leading authority for determining the Schism has been constituted and supported among French or German theologians. Nevertheless, in the late 1370s, John Wyclif developed another solution for church reform favouring God’s law and the ideal of a top-down reformation led by righteous civil lords, which Jan Hus and his followers further adopted within the early 15th Century. Conciliarism and the English model for church reform proposed by Wyclif competed in politics after 1409. Recently, new sources treating the clashes over authority issues in the Middle Ages were published, which shed new light on the problem.
Kristina Uhlíková (ed.), Dita Homolová, Jitka Císařová, Petr Janák, Ivo Habán, Martin Bakeš, Jan Uhlík, Šárka Radostová, Kateřina Nora Nováková, Petra Šťovíčková, Marcela Strouhalová, Filip Suchomel, Jaroslav Kuntoš, Ivan Prokop Muchka, Petra Trnková ; překlad: Stefan Bartilla., Částečně přeloženo z češtiny?, Obsahuje bibliografii, bibliografické odkazy a rejstříky., Částečně souběžný německý text., and born digital