Page:Guide to the Bohemian section and to the Kingdom of Bohemia - 1906.djvu/90

70 the preface to the book. The advises, how to deal with heretics, to frighten them in their conscience, and how to beguile them of their treasures, are scarcely surpassed by any new method and logical fallacy of nowadays. The hiding and reading the forbidden books was equal to forfeiture of life. The last victim of these execrable laws in Bohemia was the forrester Thomas Svoboda, sentenced to death on the stake in 1755 for reading the Bible, who by way of mercy was strangled ere he was burnt. The books seized upon were publicly burnt, the missionaries addressing the people on heresy and on infernal punishment and teaching them to sing satiric puns. Most of the books, that escaped the spying eyes of the missionaries, have their own story to tell. There does exist a Bible, that was baked in a loaf of bread, other books were burried in coffins, or hidden in wells, in hollow trees, in sheets of mothers lying in child’s bed. The loss of them was counted the heaviest affliction, they were the only teachers and comforters of the oppressed and groaning people. Wherever the missionary succeeded, there he met also with a vengeful retribution; there started up sects with objectionable tennets and the fury of the people sought an outlet in massacres of priests and the landed proprietors. Then was „boot and spur“ called in to aid the mission, and the sword and the gibet helped to subdue the refractory flock.

Some of the confiscated books were supplied by the Emigrants, who found a shelter either in Saxony or in Prussia, and smuggled the books across the frontiers. The colporteurs, who dared it, did it in the very teeth of death, and their memory is kept alive by their martyrdom. Foremost among them stands Martin Litochleb, who having been several times seized and tried was finally poisoned in his jail and burried in a carrion pit. To these dauntless men ows the recent protestant church in Bohemia and Moravia great thanks. They have fed in the deep night the flickering lamps of faith, they have upraised the sinking hearts untile the day, on which the streaks of religious toleration shot above the horizon and announced the approach of religious liberty. But alas! how sad and desolate was the country, once so flourishing, and what amends could have been made for the irretrievable losses of the past! Cui proderat?