582 



BOHEMIAN BIIETHHEN BOHEMIAN' LANGUAGE. 



quality. The Bohemian glass (there are 78 glass- 

 houses) is tin- best in K.urope, anil is carried to Spain, 

 America, Russia, and the Levant, to tin- amount of 

 2,500,000 florins. Besides ih,-se, there arc eight, 

 mirror factories. At Turnaii there are manufactories 

 of composition stones. j>orcelain, and earthen ware, 

 &c. Of considerable importance, too, is the manu- 

 facture of hats of the finest sort, of paper, of silk 

 Mini's, polished garnets, musical instruments, and 

 many other articles. 



Bohemia contains, Iwsides the city of Prague, six- 

 tern circles, governed by officers appointed yiarly. 

 The most important places are the cities of Buntzlau, 

 M. In k, Tunmii, KeichenlxTg, Trautenau, Kutten- 

 KOj < ':;rlshad (q. v.), JoJichimstlial, 

 TepliU (q. v.), Eger; the fortresses of Konigingratz, 

 .lose|>!is!;i,lt. ThcresiciMadt ; the manufacturing town 

 >f Uiimhurg ; the villages of Aderlxich. Sedlitz, Seid- 

 schutz, Pullna. Konigswart, Franzensbrunnen (q. v.), 

 Marieiibad (q. v.), &c. For internal intercourse, there 

 are excellent highways, extending 1060 miles ; and, 

 in 1826, a rail-road was laid to connect the Danube 

 with the Molilan. 



The Bohemians of all ranks are distinguished for 

 their public spirit, exerting itself in the most noble 

 and useful plans. In 1822, they had 2996 public es- 

 tablishments for education, a university, three theolo- 

 gical academies, 26 gymnasiums, 2961 common 

 schools, and a conservatory for music, 6709 teachers, 

 410,463 pupils; among them, 2055 students in the 

 high schools. See prof. Schnabel's Statistical Ac- 

 count of Bohemia. 



BOHEMIAN BRETHREN ; the name of a Christian sect, 

 which arose in Bohemia, about the middle of the 15th 

 century, from the remains of the stricter sort of Hus- 

 sites, (q. v.) Dissatisfied with the advances towards 

 popery, by which the Calixtines (q. v.) had made 

 themselves the ruling party in Bohemia, they refused 

 to receive the compacts, as they were called, i. e. 

 the articles of agreement between that party and the 

 council at Basil (30th Nov. 1433), and began, about 

 1457, under the direction of a clergyman, Michael 

 Bradatz, to form themselves into separate parishes, to 

 hold meetings of their own, and to distinguish them- 

 selves from the rest of the Hussites by the name of 

 Druthers, or Brothers' Union ; but they were often 

 confounded by their opponents with the Waldenses 

 and Picards, and, on account of their seclusion, were 

 called Cavern-hunters (Grubenheimer). Amidst the 

 hardships and oppressions which they suffered from 

 the Calixtines and Catholics, without making any re- 

 sistance, their numbers increased so much, through 

 their constancy in their belief and the purity of their 

 morals, that, in 1500, their parishes amounted to two 

 hundred, most of which had chapels belonging to 

 them. The peculiarities of their religious belief are 

 seen in their confessions of faith, especially their 

 opinions with regard to the Lord's supper. They 

 rejected the idea of transubstantiation, and admitted 

 only a mystical spiritual presence of Christ in the 

 eucharist. In other points, they took the Scriptures 

 as the ground of their doctrines throughout, and for 

 this, but more especially for the constitution and dis- 

 cipline of their churches, received the approbation of 

 the reformers of the 16th century. This constitution 

 of theirs was framed according to the accounts which 

 remain of the oldest apostolic churches. They aimed 

 to restore the primitive purity of Christianity, by the 

 exclusion of the vicious from their communion, and 

 by making three degrees of excommunication, as well 

 as by the careful separation of the sexes, and the dis- 

 tribution of the members of their society into three 

 classes the beginners, the proficients, and the per- 

 fect. Their strict system of superintendence, extend- 

 ing even to the minute details of domestic life, did 



much towards promoting this object. To carry on 

 their system, they had a multitude of officers, ot 

 different degrees : \\i. ordaining bishops, seniors, and 

 conseiiiors, presbyters or preachers, deacons, nuliles, 

 and acolytes, among whom the management of the. 

 ecclesiastical, moral, and civil atl'airs of the commu- 

 nity was judiciously distributed. Their first bishop 

 received his ordination from a Waldensian bishop, 

 though their churches held no communion with the 

 Waldenses in Bohemia. They were destined, how- 

 ever, to experience a like fate with that oppressed 

 sect. When, in conformity to their principle not to 

 perform military service, they refused to take up 

 arms in the Smalkaldic war against the Protest;) nls, 

 Ferdinand took their churches from them, and, in 

 1548, a thousand of their society retired into Poland 

 and Prussia, where they at first settled in Marienwer- 

 der. The agreement which they concluded at Sendo- 

 mir, 14th April, 1570, with the Polish Lutherans and 

 Calvinistic churches, and still more the Dissenters' 

 Peace Act of the Polish convention, 1572, obtained 

 toleration for them in Poland, where they united 

 more closely with the Calvinists under the persecu- 

 tions of the Swedish Sigismund, and have continued 

 in this connexion to the present day. 



Their brethren, who remained in Moravia find Bo- 

 hemia, recovered a certain degree of liberty under 

 Maximilian II., and had their chief residence at Ful- 

 neck, in Moravia, and hence have been called Mo- 

 ravian Brethren. The issue of the thirty years' war, 

 which terminated so unfortunately for the Protestants, 

 occasioned the entire destruction of their churches, 

 and their last bishop, Comenius (q. v.), who had ren- 

 dered important services in the education of youth, 

 was compelled to fly. From this time, they made 

 frequent emigrations, the most important of which 

 took place in 1722, and occasioned the establishment 

 of the new churches of the Brethren by count Zinaen- 

 dorf. (For the history of the old clmrrhes of this 

 sect, we refer the reader to Cranzen's History of the 

 Brethren, and to Schulz On the Origin and Ctonxtitu- 

 tion of the Evangelical Brethren's Church [Gotha, 

 1822,] a sensible and impartial work.) Although the 

 old Bohemian Brethren must be regarded as now 

 extinct, this society will ever deserve remembrance, 

 as a quiet guardian of Christian truth and piety, in 

 times just emerging from the barbarity of the middle 

 ages ; as a promoter of pure morals, such as the re- 

 formers of the 16th century were unable to establish 

 in their churches ; and as the parent of the esteemed 

 and widely extended association of the United Breth- 

 ren (q. Y.), whose constitution has been modelled 

 after theirs. 



BOHEMIAN AND BAVARIAN FOREST. From the Fich- 

 telgebirge, southward, towards the confluence of the 

 llz and the Danube, extends a ridge of mountains 

 covered with wood, called the Bohemian Forest, in 

 ancient times a part of the Silva hercynia, the high- 

 est peaks of which are the Arber (4320 feet high), 

 Rachel, and others. It separates Bavaria from Bo- 

 hemia. The great abundance of wood has occasion- 

 ed the establishment of many glass-houses, forges, 

 &c. in this region. The inhabitants have acquired, 

 in their seclusion from the world, many characteristic 

 virtues and vices. 



BOHEMIAN LANGUAGE. The Czechish (Bohemian) 

 dialect, was the first of the Sclavonic idioms which 

 was cultivated scientifically. This dialect is spoken 

 in Bohemia, Moravia, with slight variations in Aus- 

 trian Silesia, in half of Hungary, and in Sclavonia. 

 That the Czechish has been widely spread as a dia- 

 lect of the Sclavonian, is proved, as well by its anti- 

 quity and its degree of cultivation, as by the size of 

 the countries whose national language it is. We 

 shall consider first the richness of the vocabulary of 



