On this date in 1547, the anti-Catholic publisher Jan Olivetsky was beheaded in the town square of Olomouc. Links in this post are predominantly Czech.
Part of a whole family of pioneers in early Bohemian and Moravian printing — his father Pavel stamped out the first printed editions of Jan Hus‘s writings in Czech — Jan skirted even closer to the lines proscribing subversive and heretical propaganda. Too close.
Jan set up shop a couple miles down the road from Olomouc in Drozdovice where — in addition to ponderous legal compendiums and popular folk stories that comprised his daily bread — he dared to run the presses for a variety of Lutheran sermons and manifestos against the pope.
The outbreak of, and the decisive Catholic triumph in, the Schmalkaldic War of 1546-1547 came a sharp imperial crackdown on this sects trafficking.
He’s regarded as the protomartyr among Moravian publishers, a professional distinction rather than a confessional one.
On this day..
- 1878: John Speer
- 1821: Corporal Chaguinha, Brazil's saint of freedom
- 1917: Herbet Morris, British West Indies Regiment deserter
- 1937: Lev Karakhan, Marina Semyonova's husband
- 1889: Thomas Brown, Fargo-Moorhead outlaw
- 1246: Mikhail of Chernigov, Miracle-Worker
- 1631: Anna Katharina Spee
- 1763: Gabriela Silang
- 2006: Clarence Hill, former last-minute reprieve beneficiary
- 1586: Anthony Babington and fellow plotters, Walsingham'd
- 1918: The 26 Baku Commissars
- Themed Set: Counterrevolution
- 1803: Robert Emmet, "let no man write my epitaph"