Prislowi Czeska…Adagia Bohemica and Moralia Catonis.

A scarce collection of Bohemian proverbs with Latin explanations or equivalents is followed by Moralia Catonis, a collection of proverbial wisdom and morality by an unknown author named Dionysius Cato. This latter work was originally composed in the III or IV century AD, but here appears in Czech in a format first printed in Prague in 1672. Moralia Catonis was translated into several languages in the Middle Ages, when it proved to be a highly popular 'textbook' of morality for students. In fact, Chaucer refers to the work in the following description of an uncivilised character in his Canterbury Tales 'He knew nat Catoun, for his wit was rude.'

The present work comes from the collection of the Scottish writer and Baronet William Stirling-Maxwell, whose family owned the Keir House estate from the XV to the XX century. Its other known previous owners are the former American military attaché to the and collector of proverbs Lieutenant Colonel Victor de Guinzbourg; the Dutch nobleman François Xavier de Borluut de Noortdonck; and the American actor Robert Easton. This work was apparently unknown to Duplessis and is very rare. We can locate no copies of either work in the OCLC.