Historica Olomucensia

Priest and politician PhDr. Isidor Zahradník

Monastic priest - Premonstratensian PhDr. Isidor Zahradník counts among the most interesting and controversial figures of the Czech clerical history at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. He began his career as a curate in Jihlava where he was an active preacher and vigorous organizer of national life. The German city administration, however, forced him to leave for Prague where he started working at the Strahov monastic library and very soon became an expert in Czech prints. However, he probably was not completely satisfied with his career as a scholarly researcher, and so he left the Strahov Monastery in order to become an inspector of the Church estate at Hradišťko. Prior to the imperial election of 1907, he joined the Agrarian Party and appeared as its candidate to the Imperial Council in Vienna. He was an active member of the Council until 1918. Furthermore he participated in the proclamation of the Czechoslovak Republic and was a member of the first government led by Karel Kramář, in which he held the post of the Minister of Railway. Beginning in the 1920's, he worked as a diplomat for the reparation committee in Vienna and, shortly before his death, he was appointed director of the Mortgage Bank in Prague. After the establishment of the republic he became involved in the Catholic priest reformist movement, withdrew from the Roman-Catholic Church, got married and, in 1920, became one of the founders of the Czechoslovak Church. Nevertheless, his disappointment at the developments within the Church compelled him leave and join the Orthodox Church.