of the Bohemian philologists of the present day believe the manuscript to be a forgery, that is to say, that it was written at the beginning of the present century. Its genuineness has been attacked from the palæographic point of view; it has been attempted to prove anachronisms in the manuscript; and it has been asserted that it contains verbal formations unknown to the early Bohemian language. A chemical examination of the manuscript has, however, proved that it differs in no way from authentic Bohemian manuscripts of the fourteenth century, and it can therefore now be affirmed that the Manuscript of Königinhof cannot be attacked from the point of view of palæography.[1]The defenders of the manuscript have been less successful in their endeavours to disprove the statement that it contains anachronisms, which could not have been committed by a writer of the thirteenth or fourteenth century. The almost complete darkness which surrounds the condition of the Slavonic race in very early times renders it very difficult to form a judgment on many of the disputed points. The defenders of the manuscript also lay stress on its similarity to undoubtedly genuine collections of early Bohemian writings, such as those known as the Manuscript of Königgrätz and that of St. Vitus. It is true that the contents of these collections differ somewhat from those of the manuscript, and are mainly of a religious character
As regards the philological test, it is certain that the manuscript contains some verbal formations of which no other example can be found in the scanty remains of
- ↑ My authority for this statement is Mr. Adolphus Patera, chief librarian of the Bohemian Museum at Prague, and one of the greatest living authorities on Bohemian palæography.
