Schmidl Notes

Notes on Johannes Schmidl on Jacobus Horcziczky de Tepenec

This, the latest item in the corpus of evidence, concerns the earliest known owner of the manuscript, Jacobus Horcziczky de Tepenec, also called Sinapius.

Johannes Schmidl published his Historia Societatis Jesu Provinciae Bohemiae in 1754 but was presumably using material from archives. He is interested in Horcziczky purely as a benefactor of the Jesuit order. His account is a near hagiography but the bare facts need not be untrue. There is no mention of the manuscript in what he writes, nor should we expect one as it had been gathering dust in Rome for a hundred years. The references to the Bohemian revolt are told from the imperial (Catholic) point of view and the losing side might well have told a different story. Count Slavata was one of the victims of the Defenestration of Prague in 1618 and later chancellor of Bohemia.

It is noteworthy that Horcziczky left his goods to the Prague Jesuits. If the bequest included the manuscript, why did they not recognise it when Barschius showed it to them again?

‘Afterwards known as Sinapius’: horcice is Czech for mustard, sinapis is the Latin.