Abstract
The study is based on an analysis of content and themes of the correspondence of the well‑known Enlightenment Era "provincial intellectual", a bank clerk from Čáslav Jan Ferdinand Opiz (1741-1812), with a country priest from the highlands on the border of Bohemia and Moravia, Karel Killar (1745-1806). Their correspondence - in most part hitherto unstudied - is deposited in the National Museum in Prague.
It consists of more than 300 letters, written over a long period of 16 years (1793-1806), and it is fascinating for several reasons: it is conducted in French, which represents one of the very rare testimonies of a good knowledge of French in some members of other classes than the nobility in the 18th and 19th centuries; in this case, the use of French can be read as an implicit adherence to (French) Enlightenment, and perhaps even to the principles of the French Revolution. And it is the Enlightenment, the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars around which the entire correspondence revolves.
Thanks to this we may not only form a deeper and more nuanced insight into Opitz, a well‑known sympathizer of the French Revolution, but also into the lesser known figure of Killar, a man of universal education and an Enlightenment era priest of Josephine stamp, who tried to integrate both the Enlightenment and the French Revolution within his firm Christian (Catholic) worldview.