Page:Bohemia; a brief evaluation of Bohemia's contribution to civilization (1917).pdf/15

 tion was quite common in this period, and the least peasant knew the Bible better than many a priest and scholar. It was on this account that the Bohemian Brethren were called “Písmáci” (“The Scripturists”) by all who knew them. However, this Golden Age which, besides being itself great, held such wonderful promise for the future, was doomed to sudden ruthless termination.

On November 8, 1620, the Bohemian Revolt, which aimed at complete independence from the tyranny of the Hapsburgs, who were inveterate and sworn enemies of the protestant majority of the nation, was crushed, and the fury of Ferdinand’s hatred and revenge was unloosed upon the luckless land. What was left by the brutal persecutors who stopped at nothing, was destroyed by hordes of soldiery passing and repassing over the gory battlefield Bohemia had become.

These were the times in which that Great Apostle of Universal Peace, Jan Amos Komenský (Comenius) lived. His chief aim was to bring about lasting peace and happiness by bringing up a generation of enlightened Christians. That was the motive that led him to write his Great Didactic (Didactica Magna). His other works the Janua Linguarum, Orbis Pictus, and the Labyrinth of the World and Paradise of the Heart are sufficiently known to all. The last named work surpasses in imagery, force and beauty even the justly famous Pilgrim’s Progress of Bunyan.

There is one interesting particular about Comenius that I must mention even at the risk of wandering from the subject of Literature, namely, his activity in behalf of Bohemian Freedom at the courts of Europe. We know that he was disappointed and died a broken-hearted exile. His successor in the present world war is Thomas G. Massaryk who made the hopes of Comenius his own. May God grant that he shall be successful! For two hundred years the Bohemian Nation lay devastated-wounded, dying. The tortures suffered are equalled only by those of Belgium and Serbia today. The world thought it was indeed dead.

But as soon as the first faint ray of religious freedom appeared on the blackened sky, the dead arose from the