Communio Viatorum 2003/I. [antikvár]

COMMUNIO VIATORUM AND INTERNATIONAL SCHOLARSHIP ON THE BOHEMIAN REFORMATION From its very inception, Communio Viatorum has played an invalu-able role in promoting the study of the Bohemian reformation. Dur-ing their lifetime, articles by Professors Frantisek Michálek Bartos and Amedeo Molnár appeared in virtually every issue of this journal thereby opening up the study of the Bohemian reformation to foreign scholars whose facility with the Czech language was limited, taking them well beyond the generally received truths available in the older literature available in "western" languages. As a young scholar, I remember scanning the table of contents of each issue as it arrived to see what new and unheard of things it contained about the First Reformation. Given the restrictions placed on research and publishing in theological fields by the political regime of the time, it was this journal alone that was able to deal seriously with the profoundly religious nature of the reform movement. This stood in stark contrast with contemporary political correctness which saw religion as a veneer on a movement which was to be "properly" understood in terms of the struggle between social classes. A brief review of the annual indexes of this journal during the "Bartos-Molnár years" will remind the reader of the rich contribution to our knowledge of the Bohemian reformation made in these pages. Over the years, that contribution has born considerable fruit. While there is a long-standing academic interest among "western" scholars in the history of Lands of the Crown of St. Wenceslas, interest in the religious dimensions of that history was re-ignited by a generation of Czech émigrés (such as Otakar Odlozilík, Matthew Spinka, René Wellek and Jarold K. Zeman), who begot a generation of "academic progeny" (notably Peter Brock, Frederick Heymann, Howard Kamin-sky, and Jaroslav Pelikán) to carry on the study of the Bohemian reformation on foreign shores. While that generation of emigrés is now dead and their "progeny" have either departed this life or are retired from teaching, their legacy has continued to thrive and extend its roots deeper into the academic life of lands well to the west of the Bohemian frontier.