Page:The life & times of Master John Hus by Count Lützow.djvu/336

 were popular, and replace them by others that were of a pious character. He began by translating into Bohemian some of the Latin hymns which the people were in the habit of hearing, though of course without understanding them. As it had already proved to be possible to introduce the native language into the pulpit, Hus resolved to render the singing of Bohemian hymns in the churches general. Here, as in all his efforts to further church-reform, Hus was confronted by the violent hostility of the Bohemian prelacy. The fact that, as hymns were now sung in the national language, women were able to take part in the singing and were permitted to do so, met with great opposition and derision on the part of the enemies of church-reform. They were all the more exasperated because the Bohemian women from Queen Sophia downward had from the first been fervent adherents of Hus. The evil life of the priests was a cause of great resentment to the women of Bohemia. As on so many other occasions, the monk Stephen of Dolein is prominent among those who attacked the church-reformers. He accused them of having, contrary to the regulations of the church, sung masses and hymns together with women in the common Bohemian language.

Hus was very indignant at this opposition. “Ha, ha,” he writes, “where are those slanderers and babblers who endeavour to prevent the Bohemian language from being honoured?” To encourage singing in the native language Hus established at the Bethlehem chapel what Dr. Nejedly calls a “school” in which the people were taught the new devotional songs in their own language. There was, however, at first a great scarcity of such songs. Only four Bohemian