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The study provides an overview of the themes and forms of epic poetry in the Czech Lands in the period before the Battle of White Mountain (1620) on the basis of a large amount of extant material. In the introduction, it outlines the problems of understanding epic poetry in antiquity and the Early Modern period, combining insights from modern neo-Latinist handbooks and experience with a corpus of Bohemical (i.e., Bohemiarelated) material to create a basic division of epic poetry applicable to poems from the Czech Lands. It divides epic poetry into secular, religious and animal poetry, with religious epic outnumbering secular poetry. Both of these include many types of poetic compositions, not all of which are typical examples of epic poetry, often straddling several genres. Classical heroic epics, as we know them from antiquity, occur little in the Bohemical material; when they do, they deal with battles with the Turks, or are genealogical epics or have biblical themes. This is related to the state of patronage and the social status of poets, which in Bohemia rarely allowed them to devote enough time to demanding epic work. Shorter epic compositions, for which the term epyllion is now also used, were more popular and more widely published, responding to a current event. The practical solution was a cycle of shorter poems, most often in chronological order – this was usually how the popular series of rulers were composed, the type of composition for which poets received the laurel wreath of poeta laureatus from the emperor. The theme of the Neo-Latin epyllia used to be descriptions of historical events, battles or natural disasters, often depicted in so-called recapitulatory strenae. Religious epic concentrates on the depiction of Christ’s life and its most important phases (birth, passion and ascension), associated at the same time with important Christian feasts. Old Testament themes, often parallel to New Testament themes or to current events, or the lives of saints, conceived differently by Catholic and non-Catholic authors, or poems about angels and their duties, are also treated. A special kind is the animal epic, represented by Jan Dubravius’s Theriobulia, a work variously interpreted as an animal epic, allegory, or mirror for princes. The presented outline of the types of epic based on the Bohemical material is not intended as a codification, but rather as a call for a discussion on the categorization of the Neo-Latin epic in the Czech Lands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The edition makes available a recently discovered manuscript of an invitation by the Utraquist humanist Matthias Korambus to his lecture on Quintilian at the University of Basel in 1507. This short prosaic text, with an accompanying poem in elegiac couplets, is preserved in a manuscript of the University Library of Basel in the Amerbach estate (shelf mark F VIII 21, fol. 10v). It is the first commendation of the University of Basel written in verse by an author from Bohemia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Star Summer Palace, built by Archduke Ferdinand II of Tyrol in the years 1555–1560, was an exceptional building at its time, which was also reflected in Latin language poetry of the day. Two longer poems were written in the sixteenth century describing the building and the surrounding game reserve. The Ferdinandopyrgum by Laurentius Span, preserved in manuscript and written at the time when the building of the summer palace was not yet completed (ca. autumn 1556), was influenced by Italian architecture poems. A later poem, Stella Bohaemica, was published in 1597 in Olomouc under the name Iulius Torzarrellianus, and was reissued in 1617 in Prague under the name Jan Sixti of Lerchenfels. At the time of Rudolf II, the Star Summer Palace also became the subject of shorter poems by Heinrich Clingerius and Frederick Kropilius. Jan Sixti of Lerchenfels praised it in 1621 in his occasional print Stella stellae as a symbol of the victory of the Catholic party in the Battle of White Mountain. While Ferdinandopyrgum became an important source of art historical research, Stella Bohaemica has been largely neglected by researchers. The present article therefore draws more attention to this poem, focusing on its disputed authorship, which may have been the joint work of Jan Sixti and his Olomouc professor of poetry Johann Clingerius, a personality whose significance has not yet been fully appreciated. A detailed analysis of the poem demonstrates the connection with Sixti’s activities as a singer in the imperial court choir and a musician. Finally, the basic features of the image of the Star Summer Palace in Latin poetry of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries are summarised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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