Page:Lectures on The Historians of Bohemia by Count Lutzow (1905).djvu/86

 always proving himself a firm adherent of the cause of Church reform. In the memorable year 1618, Skála proceeded to Prague, where he held office; first under the provisional government, and then under that of King Frederick. After the battle of the White Mountain he fled from Bohemia, and followed King Frederick into exile. He remained at his court up to the year 1622, and was employed by him on several diplomatic missions. In 1622 Frederick, on the advice of his father-in-law King James, endeavoured to come to terms with the House of Austria, and was prepared to renounce his claims to the Bohemian throne for that purpose. An exiled Bohemian was, therefore, no longer a welcome guest at Frederick’s court. Skála now retired to Freiberg in Saxony, where he lived in seclusion for a considerable time, dying probably not long after the year 1640, in which his name is mentioned for the last time.

It was at Freiberg that Skála devoted himself to historical study. Besides minor works, to which I have not time to refer, Skála wrote at Freiberg his Historie Církevní (History of the Church), the most extensive, as well as one of the most valuable historical works in the Bohemian language. The book, which consists of ten large folio volumes—the largest has 1,700 pages, the others not much fewer—has been preserved in manuscript in Count Waldstein’s library. In spite of its name, it deals as much with political as with ecclesiastical matters. It begins with ‘The conversion of the heathens to the Christian faith, and the terrible subjection of that faith to the yoke of Antichrist,’ and ends with the year 1623.

Some years ago, the learned Professor Tieftrunk published, in two large volumes, a considerable portion