Page:A history of Bohemian literature.pdf/272

Rh acknowledgment of his services, he was not by the Catholics included in the general decree of exile, and the Austrian authorities at first even overlooked the fact that many members of Žerotin's Church, among whom was Komenský, sought refuge at Brandeis. Komenský's intense literary activity, that had already begun at Fulneck, continued at Brandeis. There, besides minor works, the Labyrinth of the World was written, though the book was afterwards enlarged.

All Komenský's writings while at Brandeis bear witness of an intense mental depression. Not only did he feel deeply the ruin and dispersion of the religious community which he had just begun to serve, but he also about this time lost his young wife, probably during the flight from Fulneck to Brandeis. Writing of this period about ten years later Komenský says: "God willed it that, not only through the lamentable war, but also through the plague that spread throughout the country, great slaughter took place. I thus lost miserably my wife and my children, relations, connections, and kind benefactors. I suffered anxiety on anxiety that filled my heart. But what was harder to bear than all else was that God appeared to have abandoned our country and Church and left us orphans, for all the churches of Bohemia and Moravia were deprived of their faithful spiritual guides, many subjects lost their evangelic lords, these again lost their beloved subjects, and the servants of God lost their churches."

The respite granted the brethren through the inter-