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 CHAPTER VII

THE REVIVAL OF BOHEMIAN LITERATURE

The misery and degradation of Bohemia that were the result of the battle of the White Mountain are beyond all description. Perhaps no country has, in comparatively modern times, suffered as Bohemia did at that period. Gindely, than whom no historian is less given to exaggeration, has written: "The misery under which the land (Bohemia) groaned can, as regards its extent and its depth, be compared only to that which, at the time of the migration of nations (Völkerwanderung), was inflicted on the inhabitants of Gaul and Northern Italy by their Frank and Lombard conquerors." From the battle of the White Mountain, Bohemian literature becomes, and continues for many years, an almost complete blank.

It was at this time that the great destruction of Bohemian books, so frequently alluded to in these pages, began, though it continued far into the eighteenth century. Catholic priests, generally Jesuits, accompanied by soldiers, visited the houses of the Bohemians; even the cottages of the peasants were not exempt. As these priests were generally unacquainted with the Bohemian language, it was thought best to destroy all books written in that language. The famous, or rather infamous, destroyer of Bohemian books, the Jesuit Konias, continued his bonfires—he boasted of having burnt 60,000 Bohe-