The authoress of the study gives a profound portrait of Frantisek Hybl (1875-1929). He studied history at the Philosophical Faculty of Charles IV University of Prague, where, under such masters as J. Goll, he was trained in the exacting methods (positivism). During his study he interested in the history of central and South-eastern Europe from the Antiquity and Middle Ages till the Modern Ages. The diversity of Hybl's life and career provides an image of his scientific work, which is, for all the hardship and anxiety, impressive. After finishing his studies he was a teacher in Moravia (Olomouc, Boskovice) and after returning in Prague he continued in teaching and in studying of the medieval and modern history of Slavic peoples (Czechs, Moravians, Bulgarians) and the politico-cultural relations between Byzantium and the Slavs on the one hand, and of the ancient history of Greeks and Romans on the other hand. His textbooks in this matter were very popular. Hybl prepared also several articles on the Bulgarian history and his top work in the field of medieval and modern studies is History of the Bulgarian people (Dejiny naroda bulharskeho I-II, Praha 1930) that thematically continued the same named K. Jirecek's work and has the crucial importance in the development of Bulgarian historical studies in the Czech Republic.
After the First World War, Czechoslovakia became a refuge for some Russian emigrants who, due to the generous support that the Czechoslovak government and president Tomás Garrigue Masaryk granted to the refugees within the scope of the 'Russian Project', were able to study and develop their professional education in a range of Czechoslovak research, cultural and social institutions and organizations established throughout the country. In Prague, an important emigrant workplace for humanistic-oriented researchers in medieval history, art history and Byzantine studies was the 'Seminarum Kondakovianum' - the Archaeological Institute of N. P. Kondakov, named after the Russian art historian and emigrant N. P. Kondakov. Many of Kondakov's colleagues and students carried out their interwar research activities at 'Kondakovianum'; some of them worked as researchers at other Czech research workplaces. Their activities influenced the development of Czech interwar studies of medieval history and art history and contributed to the development and specialization of disciplines such as Balkan studies, Byzantine studies and art history.
Based on an analysis of the so-called topoi (loci communes) in the Latin milieu (meaning 'pagans sitting on the ground while eating') and Byzantine milieu (meaning 'drinking from the skull-goblet of a defeated enemy'), not all topoi should be regarded a mere literary constant, as the literary scholarship declares with regard to Curtius' definition. It is necessary to distinguish between really constant characteristics of the topos, i.e. a mere literary function ('literary topos') and reality, where the topos firstly records true historical reality and secondly, when this reality is used in a different historical context in order to outline a different, new historical reality, thus being the current time testimony - in both cases, the topos is a historical resource (i.e. 'historical topos').
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