St. John Nepomucen. By A. II. Wratislaw, MA. (Bell and
Daddy.) —The great Bohemian saint whom the Society of Jesus has elected its patron, under, of course, the Divine Person whose name it bears, has found biographers of the usual sort, growing the more fertile of marvels the further removed they are from the time of which they write. Mr. Wratislaw has iuvestigated his true history by the help of contemporany records. His conclusion is that the legend which attributes his death to the refusal to violate the seal of confession and reveal the secrets of the Bohemian Queen to her jealous husband is a fiction. St. John of Pomuc seems to have been a priest of an ordinary type, a pluralist and non-resi- dent, The Archbishop of Prague appointed him "General-Vicar in Spirit- ualities," and it was while attending on his superior in this capacity that he met his death. He took part in an angry scene when the Archbishop confronted King Wenceslas, seems to have told the King that he was "unworthy of the name of the King," was mortally wounded by the hand of the monarch himself, and then drowned. No authors writing at or near the time say anything about the seal of confession. Of this mention is made first by Thomas Ebendorfer (1387-1464), and then with the addi- tion ut fertur. But this passage is a recent discovery. The actual authority for the story dates from 1471. Nothing is more astonishing than the development which it got in the hands of the Jesuit biographers. Mr. Wratislaw does good service in destroying a delusion. Bat what an infinite number remain !
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