Bohemian Church—the cause for which Hus lived and died—was to include a reform of church-song also. The part which the congregation was allowed to take in the singing at religious services had, through the influence of the priesthood—desirous here also to accentuate the difference between the clergy and the laity—become very insignificant. The singers—monks, or ecclesiastics who had only received the minor orders—showed a complete want of reverence, and mechanically accomplished their duties in a negligent manner that deeply offended so pious a Christian as was Hus. The priests, and particularly the friars, deacons, and acolytes who were paid for their services, behaved in a most unseemly manner, roving about the church and scoffing at the congregation. Some sang so falsely that they were derided by the congregation, and a Bohemian audience is always critical with regard to music. Their principal fault was, however, the indecent hurry with which they despatched their duties as singers. Hus blames this abuse in quaint words: “Such a (singer),” he writes,[1] “grinds his words without using his lips or teeth, and they seem as the sound of a millstone, which thunders out : tr, tr, tr!” It was Hus’s endeavour to remedy such abuses and to introduce in his chapel “quiet song and prayer that should be pleasing both to the learned and to the simple.”
It was a very important and by no means easy task that Hus undertook when he attempted to replace the Latin singing in his chapel by songs in the national language. With the exception of the one or two hymns that have already been mentioned, there then existed only secular songs in the Bohemian language, and these had frequently a frivolous and even obscene character. Hus, who thoroughly understood his countrymen, knew that singing of some sort is to them a necessity. He, therefore—like some more recent church-reformers—endeavoured to expel the objectionable songs that
- ↑ Vyklad modlitby pane (Exposition of the Lord’s Prayer), chap, lxxxiii.; Erben edition, i. p. 307.
