Bohdan Chudoba: the Tragic Story of a Talented Man

Abstract

The article deals with the historian, publicist, translator, editor and fiction author Bohdan Chudoba (1909–1982) who spent his life in a constant fight. He fought both with a traditional conception of the academic historiography which, in his point of view, did not take into account present and national or religious accents, and the mainstream ruling in the Československá strana lidová (Czechoslovak people’s party) and not least with the modernization of the Roman Catholic Church that came into being within the second Vatican council (1962–1965). The last struggle was fought by B. Chudoba as late as in an exile that he spent in the USA and first and foremost in Spain being it the country that became his second home. The author tries to bring forth basic principles of Chudoba’s standings by means of two publications: collection of essays O dějinách a pokroku (1939) and exile philosophical-religious pamphlets Vím, v koho jsem uvěřil (2009). His journey led in fact to a refusal of historic knowledge and to an original attitude as of elementary Christian texts — including the canonical ones. Chudoba’s life story is to a great extent a tragic one: only few shared his opinions and after his decease most of his work has been left in English and Spanish, i.e. for a wider public difficult to access.