Board of administration) edited in the course of the XVI. and the first quarter of the XVII. century 15 diffirent Hymnals, and the Evangelical church (inofficially and previous to the Union, or officially after the Union in 1611) about a dozen of them. From the long series of these Hymnbooks there is exhibited the
Hymnbook of Prague ed. in 1620 (the year, the battle of White Mountain was fought), which is the last bohemian evengelical hymnal, printed in Bohemia before the catastrophe of White Mountain (8th November 1620) and before the Toleration edict of the emperor Joseph II. (1781) In this Hymnbook on the page F. VI. (eleventh line from above in the left column) there is a hymn containing entreaties in behalf of the king Frederick II. and his wife, the queen Elisabeth (an english princess, the daughter of King James I.). The verses are „purged“ by a rasure; it runs translated:
Our king and sovereign Frederick the Second
deign to protect, oh, Lord; and do protect
all his lands; deign also to bless Her
Grace the Queen, and to their whole house
give growth and prosperity.
From the period of exile of the bohemian Protestants (1621—1781) there is exhibited the
Hymnbook of Jiří Třanovský, called the Cithara sanctorum, in small oct. and with tunes, printed in Levoč (Hungary) in 1636. It was republished very often (it appeared untill the year 1874. in 67 editions and grew constantly in bulk) and secretly brought over into the bohemian countries; hence the small size of the book.
As a sample of the bohemian Evangelical MSS. Hymnals of the mentioned centuries is a facsimile of a
Page of the Gradual (Hymnal) of Prague from the year 1572, on which is written a hymn „About the St. Master John Huss“. The text of the hymn, translated, does read:
Rejoice all of us in the Lord Jesus Christ always,
and especially in this glorious day, which holy
day we piously and seriously celebrate to
the honour of the same Lord Jesus, etc.
