[24] The Bohemian versions made from
the original languages belong to the following period.
Although religion filled the minds of the learned during this period
more than in any other, it did not absorb their interest so entirely
as to occupy them exclusively. It could not, however, be expected,
that in the midst of such struggles, both political and religious, the
minds of men could elevate themselves so far above their
circumstances, as to look at any science or art in the light of its
independent value. Poetry, at least, with a few exceptions, was only
regarded as the handmaid of religion. We find many books of legends,
biographies of the fathers and saints, both prose and rhyme, written
partly by Romish, partly by Hussite writers. The doctrines of Huss did
not, like those of Luther a century later, shake the belief in saints.
Dobrovsky mentions a very ancient printed work of 1480, in which the
letters of Huss, his life by Mladionowicz, and the letter of Poggio on
the execution of Jerome, are annexed to a _Passional_, as such
collections of the lives and sufferings of the saints are called.
There is also an abundance of Taboritic war-songs; many of them
replete with life and fire. These appear to have been partly founded
on ancient Bohemian popular songs; for there are passages in them
which are also to be found in the old chronicles.
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