VATICAN II AND CZECHOSLOVAKIA 117Mass, such as intercessory prayers and lay reading of the scrip-
tures.
As implementation of liturgical change proceeded, there was
considerable controversy over what proportion of the Mass to
leave in Latin. This subject bred a stormy discussion at the No-
vember 9, 1967, meeting of the Czech Liturgical Commission. A
small group of enthusiastic priests and laity did the actual work
of preparing and implementing the reforms, which were received
for the most part by congregations without controversy and even
with a certain interest. Liturgical reform thus proceeded apace
right from 1965. The Prague Spring seems to have had little bear-
ing on it, though “normalization” brought more priests into the
process from Pacem in Terris, a group not known for its eager-
ness for reform.
The issue of language also proved crucial. First, vernacular lit-
urgy had a special place in Czech historical memory. In the ninth
century, the Church in the Moravian state, to which the “Apostles
to the Slavs” saints Cyril and Methodius ministered, adopted the
Slavonic liturgy for a time.38 That liturgy was later abandoned for
an exclusively Latin liturgy.39 In the fifteenth century, the Hus-
site movement promoted worship, preaching, and singing in the
Czech language, which carried on in Czech Protestantism through
the sixteenth century, until its suppression after Bohemia’s defeat
at the Battle of White Mountain in 1620.40 Given these precedents,
the postconciliar reforms could be seen as a continuation, or even
- For a discussion of Church Slavonic in medieval Moravia, see Jean W. Sed-
lar, East Central Europe in the Middle Ages, 1000–1500 (Seattle: University of Wash-
ington Press, 1994), 144–45. - At the meeting of the Czech Liturgical Commission on April 22, 1965,
Tomášek advocated the Czech-language liturgy, stating, “Let us recall the great bat-
tle in our land for the Slavonic liturgy in the past; therefore we must be in the front
lines of those who want the implementation of the vernacular”; Tomášek, Koncil a
česká společnost, 156. - On the Hussite promotion of the Czech language, see Sedlar, East Central
Europe in the Middle Ages, 444–46.