Petr Chelčický: A Medieval Biblicist and Rustic Philosopher (Part 2)

Chelčický finds himself occupying an almost unique place in pre-Reformation Church History, representing views that would all but disappear by the 17^th century swallowed up by the profound political and cultural changes which reshaped the European map. And while we know that many works of reformers and critics of the Catholic social order were doomed to perish and be lost to time, Chelčický's works survived though many were not translated from Czech until modern times.

Petr Chelčický: A Medieval Biblicist and Rustic Philosopher (Part 1)

Petr Chelčický was born sometime around 1380 in Southern Bohemia, today's Czech Republic.* Associated with the village of Chelčice, he was probably from Vodňany or some other nearby village. There are debates as to his identity, some identifying him with one Peter of Zahorči, but this is not conclusive. Regardless of his background (of which there are many theories) it seems a yeoman farmer is the most likely which would have placed him above the serfs and peasants but a member of neither the gentry nor the emergent bourgeoisie. Apparently a self-educated man he wrote in Czech and though he had some Latin, he wasn't fluent.