saw the vanity and uselessness of such speculations. Since religion interested him above all other things, he now adopted it as a special theme of study; but his aims were practical, not speculative. He declared that it was his aim to bring the truth so vividly before the minds of his hearers that they might learn to shun evil and be inspired to follow the good. In direct opposition to the custom of those times, he wrote in Bohemian instead of Latin. He said that he did not wish to fence up Christian teaching by a Latin wall, but that his aim was to render it accessible to all the people. Stitný’s style was so simple, so direct, and clear, that the people were as eager to read his books as they had before been to hear the preaching of Milič.
The learned men of the University of Prague rose up against Stitný. They declared that, by making knowledge accessible to the people, he but made it vulgar, lowering it to the comprehension of the illiterate masses. But he was not to be baffled from his purpose by any such sophistry. He replied: “St. Paul wrote his epistles to the Jews in Hebrew; to the Greeks, in Greek; why, then, should I, being a Bohemian, hesitate to write to my countrymen in Bohemian? I will write in Bohemian, for God loves a Bohemian as well as he does a Latinist.”
Stitný’s works consisted of twenty-six small pamphlets, treating mostly of religious and ethical subjects. They were diligently copied, circulated, and eagerly read, and exerted a lasting influence upon the development of the native tongue.
Another pupil of Milič was the distinguished preacher, Matthias of Janov. After studying in Prague,
