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A HISTORY OF BOHEMIAN LITERATURE 1648, on the death of Bishop Justinus, the members

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of the Unity assembled at Lissa chose Komensk^ as one of their bishops. He outlived all his colleagues, and eventually became the last bishop of the Bohemian On receipt of the news of his election,

Brethren.

'Komensk^ started for Lissa, but not until he had forwarded to Sweden some of the school-books which he had been commissioned to write. The year 1648 brought a great blow to the members of the Unity and to the Bohemian Protestants generally. The Treaty of Westphalia was signed in that year, and no stipulations in favour of the Bohemian exiles were contained in At the risk of prolonging the war, the Austrian Government maintained its principle that no one who did not profess the creed of Rome should be allowed to reside in Bohemia or Moravia to Silesia slight concessions All the hopes of the exiles that they were granted. might once be able to return to their beloved Bohemia were now destroyed for ever. Oxenstiern had to the last defended the cause of the exiles, and did not deserve the severe reproaches that Komensk^ addressed to him. All hopes of worldly aid having vanished, Komensk^ relied more than ever on the intervention of God, and on the visions and prophecies which announced that " such an intervention would shortly take place. no aid from man," he wrote to Oxenstiern, there wont to com"there will be from God, whose aid mence when that of men ceases." Komensk^'s relations with Kotter and Ponatovskd prove sufficiently that was not now that mysticism and credulity first obscured his evident that Komensk^ generally clear brain but never quite recovered from the blow inflicted by the