Czech Language Reflected in the Production of the Sixteenth-Century Printing Houses

The study offers a synthetic view on the production of printed grammars of the Czech language in the 16th century and its relations to other activities of Bohemian and Moravian printing houses. In each chapter the authors discuss the publishers’ possible motivations for printing these particular books, starting from the first Czech grammar (1533) written in Czech with a number of Latin elements and ending with Laurentius Benedictus Nudozierinus’s Latin treatise on Czech (1603). The authors seek the possible reasons for the printers’ respective decisions in the cultural context of the era and the central or peripheral position of both grammarian and printer from both a linguistic and social perspective. This is particularly important for Matouš Benešovský-Philonomus’s innovative Czech grammar (1577) and his book of etymologies (1587).