The paper quantitatively analyses a sample of 300 Czech prayer books and other popular religious handwritten material (not including songbooks) from the 18th and 19th centuries. The author maintains that most of the material consisted of (partial) transcriptions of popular printed books and their widespread popularity was influenced by the growth of literacy and the individualization of piety. Their use was by no means limited to the milieu of the secret non-Catholics which were proscribed until 1781; indeed the majority of Catholic writings were not fully orthodox. The character and decoration of the writings in question were not directly related to the confessional nature of their originators and/or users; in fact the general rules of early modern popular culture played a much more important role and in many cases it is difficult to determine whether the source is catholic, protestant or sectarian. Prayer books fully reflected official forms of religion relatively late i.e. from the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries as a result of church domination over popular piety. However, even at this time the process did not result in absolutes: religious writings substituted the non-existence of baroque literature the printing of which was prohibited by the enlightened censorship prevalent at the time. Only a change in religious forms and new opportunities for the printing of pre-enlightenment books in the mid-19th century led to a decline in handwritten prayer books.
This paper deals the problem of secret non-catholicism in the northeast Bohemia at the end of the first third of the 18th century and its connection with the religions movement of local serfs. It points out the role of reading religious literature like the Bible, prager-books and hymn-books on secret non-catholics meetings. That was an irreplaceable part of their speeches as well as the role of religious legates from the milieu of Sorbian pietistical communities. A sudden abnormal concentration of religious emissaries in a small part of Opocno's manor, the spectre of newly smuggled books sold by emigrants even their apparent help with the formulation of requests of serfs to autorities and maybe the autorships of the creed of the religion gives evidence of a strong influence of emigration. In the Memorial's formal dogmatics we can find marked symptoms of the pietistical influence on the formulation of official request. We can assume that the text of the creed of the religion is not a local non-catholics production. It evidently grew out of a remarkably vague awareness of former faith of ancestors influenced by Lutheran pietism in the 18th century. The fading influence of the ideas of Czech reformations of 16th century can be seen even in the structure of non/catholic books. There prevails contraband books at the end of the first third of the 18th century. These books have a great influence on formalization of dogmatic that necessary to refer to the leading local figures of. Opocno events that happened in the September of 1732. It is not exceptional a use of catholics production. The reading of secret non/catholics in private and meetings and its structure deals ill-definated dogmatics positions of this rural community.
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