On May 29, the ELCA commemorates Jiří Třanovský on its Calendar of Saints. Třanovský was born in Těšín, Silesia, an area that is now along the border of Poland and Czechia. At about the same time, the Moravian Church published the first Czech translation of the Bible, the Bible of Kralice, in six volumes from 1579 to 1593.
The son of a relatively affluent smith, Třanovský studied Czech and Latin as he made his way through several levels of schooling. He ultimately entered the University of Wittenberg at age 16 in 1607. Sometime after graduating, Třanovský accepted a teaching position in Prague in 1612, and then another in Holešov, Moravia. Ordained in 1616, Třanovský served as pastor in the town of Valašské Meziříčí (now part of Czechia) for several years.
The Thirty Years War brought persecution of Lutherans to Bohemia, forcing Třanovský into exile. He moved several more times before landing in Liptovský Mikuláš (now part of Slovakia) in 1631. He served as a pastor at a church there until his death in 1637.
In the midst of the Thirty Years War, Třanovský managed to translate the Ausburg Confession into Czech in 1620, and published two significant collections of hymns. The first, 1929’s Odarum Sacrarum sive Hymnorum Libri III (“Three Books of Sacred Odes or Hymns”), he wrote in Latin. The second, 1636’s Cithara Sanctorum (“Lyre of the Saints”), was a Czech hymnal with 400 hymns, 95 written by Třanovský himself. More than 150 editions later, Cithara Sanctorum forms the basis of modern Czech and Slovak hymnary. It bears the nickname “the Tranoscius.” The English translation of his “Your Heart, O God, Is Grieved” is 602 in Evangelical Lutheran Worship.
Read more about Jiří Třanovský in Wikipedia.
Read more about Jiří Třanovský and the Cithara Sanctorum here.