Prazsky husita Jeronym Srol
The Prague Hussite Jeronym Srol

Summary/Abstract: Based on all of the known sources, the study reconstructs the life of the important Prague Hussite burgher Jeronym Srol and also deals with the image of this figure as he was described by the late historian Jaroslav Meznik in his famous essay. Jeronym Srol, mentioned first in 1414 as a student of the University of Prague, came from an ethnically German family (his father, the furrier Ludwig Schroll, came to Prague after 1380 from Cham), which did not stop him from a leaning towards the Hussite programme. Unlike his father who emigrated, he remained in the Old Town of Prague, kept and enlarged the family holdings, got into the town council and became famous as an adherent of the radical Hussite preacher Jan Zelivsky. After his fall, he appeared sporadically among the town councillors, usually in politically charged times, perhaps because in his actions in 1422 made enemies with Jacobellus of Mies and John of Rokycany, the spiritual leaders of the Prague Hussites. Even when Srol took part in the subjugation of the New Town of Prague in May 1434, it is not possible to confirm Meznik’s idea that he had fundamentally changed his political opinion. His life’s fates mirrored both the changes of the Prague situation and the rapid process of the Czechification of the originally German families as a result of the religious and social reversals and marriages with members of the Czech ethnic group.

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