The Cult of Jesus as a Child and his Praise of a Child as Reflected in Selected Sources

THE CULT OF JESUS THE CHILD AND HIS PRAISE OF A CHILD IN REFLECTION OF SELECTED SOURCES Summary Jesus took a small child as an example of accepting the kingdom of God, since when people in all periods of Christian thinking have tried to have Jesus himself as an ideal of spiritual childhood. This has happened through literature, liturgical celebrations of feasts of the Child Jesus, paintings and popular traditions. This pursuit is the origin of the cult of the Child Jesus. This work takes its form mainly from manifestations of the cult of the Divine Infant in Czech poetry. The main inspiration are poets like Friedrich Bridel, Adam Michna z Otradovic, Jiří Karásek ze Lvovic and Jan Zahradníček. In their works these poets showed the childhood of Jesus and its cult in the most expressive way in the history of Czech literature. The content of this dissertation underlines their works and wants to highlight them. There were various attempts to give form to the childhood of Jesus and naturally they are of differing value. Since the early Christian times we have the gospels of Matthew and Luke which tell us about the childhood of Jesus. Apart from these gospels, there are two apocryphal accounts of the childhood of Jesus: the Proto-Gospel of James and the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. The Proto- Gospel of James deals..