Josef Vratislav Monse

Josef Vít Monse was the eighth of nine children born into the family of a municipal legal official in the Vysočina Region.

The family lived at house number eight on the main square at Nové Město na Moravě (German: Neustadtl in Mähren).

[2] By this time Monse was becoming interested in the history of his own nation, which, since the Battle of White Mountain back in 1620, had been subjected to Catholicisation and Germanisation, while the Czech language had become no more than a means of communication between the peasants.

[2] 1774 was also the year in which he changed his middle name from Vít to Vratislav,[1] a determined reflection of his "motto": "Return the Old Glory to the Homeland!"

[3] The theologians' fury peaked when Monse published the work of an anonymous 13th century French author entitled in Latin: Dialogus inter clericum et militem supra dignitate papali et regia, a dialogue between a priest and a soldier discussing the relative status of popes and of kings.

Well aware that the ideas in the thesis were still controversial even 500 years after they had first been written, he added at the end of the book that it was published with the best of intentions, and "not to irritate".

[2] In the same year Monse started the lectures about Moravian history according to Czech: Kniha Tovačovská (English: The Book of Tovačov) written by Ctibor Tovačovský z Cimburka in the 1490s.

The persisting issues with the catholic reaction as well as his health problems led to a reduction in Monse's publishing activity.

[1] Through his interest in both Moravian humanism and Benedictine historiography Monse linked the earlier Societas eruditorum incognitorum in terris Austriacis in Olomouc with the Société patriotique in Brno.

This reveals the influence both of a critical historical perception and of the judicial theory of the renowned jurist, Joseph von Sonnenfels.

Monse also saw the need for an ideological basis capable of uniting the new educated middle class with the Enlightened intelligentsia's interest in the arts and sciences.

He found such a basis in critical historiography, and eventually created the platform for a Moravian patriotic revival, enriched by historical Renaissance humanism.