From the battle at the White Mountain, A.D. 1620, to the Revival of Literature in A.D. 1774-80.
Of this melancholy period we have but little to say. A dull pressure lay upon the nation; it was as if the heavy strokes inflicted on them had paralyzed their very limbs. Innumerable monks came to Bohemia from Italy, Spain, and the south of Germany, who condemned and sacrificed to the flames every Bohemian book as necessarily heretical. There were individuals who boasted having burned with their own hands 60,000 literary works. They broke into private houses, and took away whatever Bohemian books they could find. Those which they did not burn, were deposited in separate chambers in the convents, provided with iron grates, bolts, and chains, drawn before the door, on which was written. The Hell. They distributed pamphlets respecting hell and purgatory, the reading of which produced derangement of mind in many weak persons; until, at last, the government was wise enough to lay a severe prohibition upon these measures. The Bohemian emigrants indeed continued to have their religious books printed in their foreign homes; but they wrote comparatively few new works. These however they contrived to introduce into Bohemia, where they were answered by the Jesuits and Capuchins in thick folio volumes, written in a language hardly intelligible. There were however some honourable exceptions among these fathers; some persons, who, independent of religious prejudices; continued to labour for the benefit of a beloved mother tongue. The Jesuits Konstanz, Steyer, and Drachovsky, wrote grammatical works, and the two first attempted to translate the Bible anew. Plachy, ob. 1650, Libertin, and[pg.197] Taborsky, were distinguished preachers; Peshina, ob. 1680, Hammerschmidt, ob. 1731, and Beckowsky, ob. 1725, wrote meritorious historical works; Rosa, ob. 1689, composed another grammar and a dictionary. Others wrote in Latin; and among these must be named the Jesuit Balbin, ob. 1688, who prepared several historical and bibliographical works of importance, part of which, however, were not published until long after his death.[[188]]
We turn once more to the unfortunate emigrants, and in the midst of the distress, privations, and sacrifices, which were the natural accompaniments of their exiled condition, we rejoice to meet with a name, which owes its splendour not alone to the general poverty of the period; but which outshines even the most distinguished of the former age, and is indeed the only one in the literary history of Bohemia, which has acquired a European fame. This is Comenius, the last bishop of the Bohemian Brethren. Although he belongs partly to the former period, and, in respect to his style, decidedly to the golden age of the Bohemian. literature, the time of his principal activity falls within this melancholy interval. A few words may be devoted to the life of this remarkable individual. He was born A.D. 1592, in the village of Komna in Moravia. His baptismal names were John Amos; his father had probably no family name, as was frequently the case at that time among the lower classes throughout all Europe. According to the custom of the time, he was called Komnensky from his native place, the Latin form of which is Comnenius, or more commonly Comenius. His parents, who belonged to the community of the Brethren, sent him to school at Herborn. He[pg.198] distinguished himself so much as to be made rector at Prerow, when only twenty-two years old; and two years later was transferred to Fulnck. In 1618 this latter city was plundered by the Spaniards, and Comenius lost all his books and other property. When the great persecution of the Protestants broke out, he fled to Poland. Here he found many of his countrymen, of the sect of the Brethren, whom the persecutions of the former century had already driven hither, and who had here gathered themselves into communities essentially of the same constitution; although in some measure they were amalgamated with the dissenters in Poland. In 1632 they elected him their bishop. In 1631 he published his Janua linguarum reserrata, a work which spread his fame over all the world, and which was translated into twelve European languages, and also into Persian, Arabic, and Mongolian. His object in this work was to point out a new method of teaching languages, by which they were to be used as keys for acquiring other useful knowledge. In 1641 he was invited to England to prepare a new arrangement of the schools; but the civil war having prevented the execution of this project, he went from England to Sweden, whither the chancellor Oxenstiern had invited him for a similar purpose. After protracted journeys through half Europe, he returned to Lissa, the principal seat of his activity. In 1659 be published his Orbis pictus, the first picture-book for children which ever appeared, and which acquired the same reputation as the work above-mentioned. The war and the destruction of Lissa compelled him some years later to leave Poland; he sought another asylum in Germany, and settled at length at Amsterdam, where be died in 1671, occupied with literary pursuits until his last hour. According to Adelung, he wrote not less than ninety-two works, of which only fifty-four have come down to us; and among these, twenty are in the Bohemian language. His style has a classical perfection; the contents of his works are manifold, and have mostly lost[pg.199] their interest for the present age.[[189]] In the last years of his life Comenius is said to have devoted himself to a mystical interpretation of the prophetic Scriptures; he discovered in the Revelation of St. John the state of Europe, as it then was; awaited the millennium in the year 1672; and believed in the far-famed Bourignon, as an inspired prophetess.
A few names only among the emigrants require to be mentioned as writers, after Comenius. They may find their place here: Paul Stransky, who was exiled in 1626 and found an asylum as professor at Thorn, wrote a history of Bohemia in Latin in 1643, which was translated and accompanied with supplements and corrections by Cornova, in 1792. Elsner, pastor of the Bohemian Brethren at Berlin, and Kleich at Zittau, printed works for religious instruction and devotional exercises for Protestants.
The greater part of what was written during this period proceeded from the Slovaks in Hungary, a nation related to the Bohemians in race and language, who after the Reformation had adopted the Bohemian dialect as their literary language.[[190]] Although also constantly struggling against oppression and persecution, the Protestants in Hungary were not formally annihilated, as in Bohemia; but belonged rather to the tolerated sects, so called. A certain degree of activity in behalf of their brethren in faith was consequently allowed to them; especially later under Maria Theresa. We meet among them, with hardly any other than theological productions, or works for religious edification.
The two pastors Krman and Bel, who both died towards the middle of the eighteenth century, men of no inconsiderable merit as Christians and as scholars, prepared a new edition of the Bohemian Bible, and also translated several works of Luther, Arndt, etc. Ambrosius, their cotemporary, wrote a commentary on Luther's catechism, and several other useful religious works. G. Bahyl published an introduction to the Bible, a history of the symbolical books, and assisted Comenius in his
Orbus pictus
. Matthias Bahyl became the object of a cruel persecution, on account of a translation of Meissner's
Consultatio orthod. de fide Lutherana.