The article focuses on the letter of Gustav Friedrich, the professor of auxiliary historical sciences at the Prague University, addressed in 1906 to Emil Ottenthal, the director of the Institute for the Austrian history (Institut für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung). In this letter Friedrich intervened in favour of Václav Hrubý, who later become the first professor of auxiliary historical sciences at the Masaryk University in Brno. This unique document further illustrates the relationship of Fridrich and his students and the interrelationships of the younger generation of historians, otherwise known mostly from inconsistent personal testimonies.
Canonic law of the late middle ages considered the participation of the clerics in killing rather strictly. The Lateran Council 1215 established that a cleric was neither allowed to issue or declare a sentence of death nor to draft or write papers in connnection with it. The edition of the Apostolic Penitentiary Supplications Registers enables people to judge the situation in Bohemia in the period from the 1430´s to the end of the same century. In the examined period a very specifi c case of „complicity in killing“ appeared four times – a phenomenon connected with reading and writing knowledge peculiar to clerics. They read written orders and wrote for the needs of fighting sides. The argumentation is similar in all cases. Th e matter was always activity on command, resulting moreover from the specific condition of the person in question (the only literate, servant). He never participated in the fight actually. With regard to the volume of analogous scribe activity which can be supposed in the period in question, these four cases were certainly just a small fragment of the actual participation of clerics. The situation in Bohemia is doubtlessly specific because of the fact that utraquist disciples and clerics who wrote in the hussite services of course didn´t appeal to the Penitentiary. Nevertheless it must be supposed that the Penitentiary solved similar cases even in the Czech catholic environment only exceptionally.
Canonic law of the late middle ages considered the participation of the clerics in killing rather strictly. The Lateran Council 1215 established that a cleric was neither allowed to issue or declare a sentence of death nor to draft or write papers in connnection with it. The edition of the Apostolic Penitentiary Supplications Registers enables people to judge the situation in Bohemia in the period from the 1430´s to the end of the same century. In the examined period a very specifi c case of „complicity in killing“ appeared four times – a phenomenon connected with reading and writing knowledge peculiar to clerics. They read written orders and wrote for the needs of fighting sides. The argumentation is similar in all cases. Th e matter was always activity on command, resulting moreover from the specific condition of the person in question (the only literate, servant). He never participated in the fight actually. With regard to the volume of analogous scribe activity which can be supposed in the period in question, these four cases were certainly just a small fragment of the actual participation of clerics. The situation in Bohemia is doubtlessly specific because of the fact that utraquist disciples and clerics who wrote in the hussite services of course didn´t appeal to the Penitentiary. Nevertheless it must be supposed that the Penitentiary solved similar cases even in the Czech catholic environment only exceptionally.
Canonic law of the late middle ages considered the participation of the clerics in killing rather strictly. The Lateran Council 1215 established that a cleric was neither allowed to issue or declare a sentence of death nor to draft or write papers in connnection with it. The edition of the Apostolic Penitentiary Supplications Registers enables people to judge the situation in Bohemia in the period from the 1430´s to the end of the same century. In the examined period a very specifi c case of „complicity in killing“ appeared four times – a phenomenon connected with reading and writing knowledge peculiar to clerics. They read written orders and wrote for the needs of fighting sides. The argumentation is similar in all cases. Th e matter was always activity on command, resulting moreover from the specific condition of the person in question (the only literate, servant). He never participated in the fight actually. With regard to the volume of analogous scribe activity which can be supposed in the period in question, these four cases were certainly just a small fragment of the actual participation of clerics. The situation in Bohemia is doubtlessly specific because of the fact that utraquist disciples and clerics who wrote in the hussite services of course didn´t appeal to the Penitentiary. Nevertheless it must be supposed that the Penitentiary solved similar cases even in the Czech catholic environment only exceptionally.
The fragment of the book of St. Barbara brotherhood in St. Nicholas Church dating back to 1504–1523 is deposited in the Brno city archive in the collection of furriers' guild with the signature E 24/11. It contains an introductory record, which characterizes the book and mentions important circumstances in the days of its formation, along with the lists of members and accounting entries. The book is written – with the exception of one Czech formula – in German and Latin. Its comparison with other similar books preserved in Bohemia does not show any significant differences in respect of external and internal features. The cult of St. Barbara appears in guilds more often in the late Middle Ages, however, in a quite heterogeneous mixture of trades, even though the metal-working crafts prevail. Thus, it is not possible to say without any doubt that Barbara was the patron saint of a particular craft at that time. St. Nicholas, now in ruins, existed already in the first third of the 13th century. It was a subsidiary church to St. James parish church; therefore it was not a significant church. Since the guild itself and its cult activities at the altar of St. Barbara in St. Nicholas church are documented significantly earlier than the origin of the book, it is obvious that the book is only a residue of a range of books that were kept by the guild. The study is accompanied by an edition of the preserved fragment.