The dream of bliss became a nightmare. As the tide of Protestantism ebbed and flowed in various parts of the Holy Roman Empire, so the fortunes of the Brethren ebbed and flowed in the old home of their fathers. We have seen how the Brethren rose to prosperity and power. We have now to see what brought about their ruin. It was nothing in the moral character of the Brethren themselves. It was purely and simply their geographical position. If Bohemia had only been an island, as Shakespeare seems to have thought it was, it is more than likely that the Church of the Brethren would have flourished there down to the present day. But Bohemia lay in the very heart of European politics; the King was always a member of the House of Austria; the House of Austria was the champion of the Catholic faith, and the Brethren now were crushed to powder in the midst of that mighty European conflict known as the Thirty Years' War. We note briefly the main stages of the process.
The first cause was the rising power of the Jesuits. For the last fifty years these zealous men had been quietly extending their influence in the country. They had built a magnificent college in Prague. They had established a number of schools for the common people. They had obtained positions as tutors in noble families. They went about from village to village, preaching, sometimes in the village churches and sometimes in the open air; and one of their number, Wenzel Sturm, had written an exhaustive treatise denouncing the doctrines of the Brethren. But now these Jesuits used more violent measures. They attacked the Brethren in hot, abusive language. They declared that the wives of Protestant ministers were whores. They denounced their children as bastards. They declared that it was better to have the devil in the house than a Protestant woman. And the more they preached, and the more they wrote, the keener the party feeling in Bohemia grew.
The next cause was the Letter of Majesty itself. As soon as that Letter was closely examined, a flaw was found in the crystal. We come to what has been called the "Church Building Difficulty." It was clearly provided in one clause of the Letter of Majesty that the Protestants should have perfect liberty to build churches on all Royal estates. But now arose the difficult question, what were Royal estates? What about Roman Catholic Church estates? What about estates held by Catholic officials as tenants of the King? Were these Royal estates or were they not? There were two opinions on the subject. According to the Protestants they were; according to the Jesuits they were not; and now the Jesuits used this argument to influence the action of Matthias, the next King of Bohemia. The dispute soon came to blows. At Klostergrab the land belonged to the Catholic Archbishop of Prague; at Brunau it belonged to the Abbot of Brunau; and yet, on each of these estates, the Protestants had churches. They believed, of course, that they were in the right. They regarded those estates as Royal estates. They had no desire to break the law of the land. But now the Catholics began to force the pace. At Brunau the Abbot interfered and turned the Protestants out of the church. At Klostergrab the church was pulled down, and the wood of which it was built was used as firewood; and in each case the new King, Matthias, took the Catholic side. The truth is, Matthias openly broke the Letter. He broke it on unquestioned Royal estates. He expelled Protestant ministers from their pulpits, and put Catholics in their place. His officers burst into Protestant churches and interrupted the services; and, in open defiance of the law of the land, the priests drove Protestants with dogs and scourges to the Mass, and thrust the wafer down their mouths. What right, said the Protestants, had the Catholics to do these things? The Jesuits had an amazing answer ready. For two reasons, they held, the Letter of Majesty was invalid. It was invalid because it had been obtained by force, and invalid because it had not been sanctioned by the Pope. What peace could there be with these conflicting views? It is clear that a storm was brewing.
The third cause was the famous dispute about the Kingship. As Matthias was growing old and feeble, it was time to choose his successor; and Matthias, therefore, summoned a Diet, and informed the Estates, to their great surprise, that all they had to do now was to accept as King his adopted son, Ferdinand Archduke of Styria. At first the Diet was thunderstruck. They had met to choose their own King. They intended to choose a Protestant, and now they were commanded to choose this Ferdinand, the most zealous Catholic in Europe. And yet, for some mysterious reason, the Diet actually yielded. They surrendered their elective rights; they accepted Ferdinand as King, and thus, at the most critical and dangerous point in the whole history of the country, they allowed a Catholic devotee to become the ruler of a Protestant people. For that fatal mistake they had soon to pay in full. Some say they were frightened by threats; some say that the Diet was summoned in a hurry, and that only a few attended. The truth is, they were completely outwitted. At this point the Protestant nobles of Bohemia showed that fatal lack of prompt and united action which was soon to fill the whole land with all the horrors of war. In vain Budowa raised a vehement protest. He found but few to support him. If the Protestants desired peace and good order in Bohemia, they ought to have insisted upon their rights and elected a Protestant King; and now, in Ferdinand, they had accepted a man who was pledged to fight for the Church of Rome with every breath of his body. He was a man of fervent piety. He was a pupil of the Jesuits. He regarded himself as the divinely appointed champion of the Catholic faith. He had already stamped out the Protestants in Styria. He had a strong will and a clear conception of what he regarded as his duty. He would rather, he declared, beg his bread from door to door, with his family clinging affectionately around him, than allow a single Protestant in his dominions. "I would rather," he said, "rule over a wilderness than over heretics." But what about his oath to observe the Letter of Majesty? Should he take the oath or not? If he took it he would be untrue to his conscience; if he refused he could never be crowned King of Bohemia. He consulted his friends the Jesuits. They soon eased his conscience. It was wicked, they said, of Rudolph II. to sign such a monstrous document; but it was not wicked for the new King to take the oath to keep it. And, therefore, Ferdinand took the oath, and was crowned King of Bohemia. "We shall now see," said a lady at the ceremony, "whether the Protestants are to rule the Catholics or the Catholics the Protestants."
She was right. Forthwith the Protestants realised their blunder, and made desperate efforts to recover the ground they had lost. Now was the time for the Twenty-four Defenders to arise and do their duty; now was the time, now or never, to make the Letter no longer a grinning mockery. They began by acting strictly according to law. They had been empowered to summon representatives of the Protestant Estates. They summoned their assembly, prepared a petition, and sent it off to Matthias. He replied that their assembly was illegal. He refused to remedy their grievances. The Defenders were goaded to fury. At their head was a violent man, Henry Thurn. He resolved on open rebellion. He would have the new King Ferdinand dethroned and have his two councillors, Martinic and Slawata, put to death. It was the 23rd of May, 1618. At an early hour on that fatal day, the Protestant Convention met in the Hradschin, and then, a little later, the fiery Thurn sallied out with a body of armed supporters, arrived at the Royal Castle, and forced his way into the Regent's Chamber, where the King's Councillors were assembled. There, in a corner, by the stove sat Martinic and Slawata. There, in that Regent's Chamber, began the cause of all the woe that followed. There was struck the first blow of the Thirty Years' War. As Thurn and his henchmen stood in the presence of the two men, who, in their opinion, had done the most to poison the mind of Matthias, they felt that the decisive moment had come. The interview was stormy. Voices rang in wild confusion. The Protestant spokesman was Paul von Rican. He accused Martinic and Slawata of two great crimes. They had openly broken the Letter of Majesty, and had dictated King Matthias's last reply. He appealed to his supporters crowded into the corridor outside.
"Aye, aye," shouted the crowd.
"Into the Black Tower with them," said some.
"Nay, nay," said Rupow, a member of the Brethren's Church, "out of the window with them, in the good old Bohemian fashion."
At this signal, agreed upon before, Martinic was dragged to the window. He begged for a father confessor.
"Commend thy soul to God," said someone. "Are we to allow any Jesuit scoundrels here?"
"Jesus! Mary!" he screamed.
He was flung headlong from the window. He clutched at the window-sill. A blow came down on his hands. He had to leave go, and down he fell, seventy feet, into the moat below.
"Let us see," said someone, "whether his Mary will help him."
He fell on a heap of soft rubbish. He scrambled away with only a wound in the head.
"By God," said one of the speakers, "his Mary has helped him."
At this point the conspirators appear to have lost their heads. As Martinic had not been killed by his fall, it was absurd to treat Slawata in the same way; and yet they now flung him out of the window, and his secretary Fabricius after him. Not one of the three was killed, not one was even maimed for life, and through the country the rumour spread that all three had been delivered by the Virgin Mary.
>From that moment war was inevitable. As the details of the struggle do not concern us, it will be enough to state here that the Defenders now, in slipshod fashion, began to take a variety of measures to maintain the Protestant cause. They formed a national Board of Thirty Directors. They assessed new taxes to maintain the war, but never took the trouble to collect them. They relied more on outside help than on their own united action. They deposed Ferdinand II.; they elected Frederick, Elector Palatine, and son-in-law of James I. of England, as King of Bohemia; and they ordered the Jesuits out of the kingdom. There was a strange scene in Prague when these Jesuits departed. They formed in procession in the streets, and, clad in black, marched off with bowed heads and loud wailings; and when their houses were examined they were found full of gunpowder and arms. For the moment the Protestants of Prague were wild with joy. In the great Cathedral they pulled off the ornaments and destroyed costly pictures. What part did the Brethren play in these abominations? We do not know. At this tragic point in their fateful story our evidence is so lamentably scanty that it is absolutely impossible to say what part they played in the revolution. But one thing at least we know without a doubt. We know that the Catholics were now united and the Protestants quarrelling with each other; we know that Ferdinand was prompt and vigorous, and the new King Frederick stupid and slack; and we know, finally, that the Catholic army, commanded by the famous general Tilly, was far superior to the Protestant army under Christian of Anhalt. At last the Catholic army appeared before the walls of Prague. The battle of the White Hill was fought (November 8th, 1620). The new King, in the city, was entertaining some ambassadors to dinner. The Protestant army was routed, the new King fled from the country, and once again Bohemia lay crushed under the heel of the conqueror.
At this time the heel of the conqueror consisted in a certain Prince Lichtenstein. He was made regent of Prague, and was entrusted with the duty of restoring the country to order. He set about his work in a cool and methodical manner. He cleared the rabble out of the streets. He recalled the Jesuits. He ordered the Brethren out of the kingdom. He put a Roman Catholic Priest into every church in Prague; and then he made the strange announcement that all the rebels, as they were called, would be freely pardoned, and invited the leading Protestant nobles to appear before him at Prague. They walked into the trap like flies into a cobweb. If the nobles had only cared to do so, they might all have escaped after the battle of the White Hill; for Tilly, the victorious general, had purposely given them time to do so. But for some reason they nearly all preferred to stay. And now Lichtenstein had them in his grasp. He had forty-seven leaders arrested in one night. He imprisoned them in the castle tower, had them tried and condemned, obtained the approval of Ferdinand, and then, while some were pardoned, informed the remaining twenty-seven that they had two days in which to prepare for death. They were to die on June 21st. Among those leaders about a dozen were Brethren. We have arrived at the last act of the tragedy. We have seen the grim drama develop, and when the curtain falls the stage will be covered with corpses and blood.
The City of Prague was divided into two parts, the Old Town and the New Town. In the middle of the Old Town was a large open space, called the Great Square. On the west side of the Great Square stood the Council House, on the east the old Thein Church. The condemned prisoners, half of whom were Brethren, were in the Council House: in front of their window was the scaffold, draped in black cloth, twenty feet high, and twenty-two yards square; from the window they stepped out on to a balcony, and from the balcony to the scaffold ran a short flight of steps. In that Great Square, and on that scaffold, we find the scene of our story.
When early in the morning of Monday, June 21st, the assembled prisoners looked out of the windows of their rooms to take their last view of earth, they saw a splendid, a brilliant, a gorgeous, but to them a terrible scene {1621.}. They saw God's sun just rising in the east and reddening the sky and shining in each other's faces; they saw the dark black scaffold bathed in light, and the squares of infantry and cavalry ranged around it; they saw the eager, excited throng, surging and swaying in the Square below and crowding on the house-tops to right and left; and they saw on the further side of the square the lovely twin towers of the old Thein Church, where Gregory had knelt and Rockycana had preached in the brave days of old. As the church clocks chimed the hour of five a gun was fired from the castle; the prisoners were informed that their hour had come, and were ordered to prepare for their doom; and Lichtenstein and the magistrates stepped out on to the balcony, an awning above them to screen them from the rising sun. The last act of the tragedy opened.
As there was now a long morning's work to be done, that work was begun at once; and as the heads of the martyrs fell off the block in quick succession the trumpets brayed and the drums beat an accompaniment. Grim and ghastly was the scene in that Great Square in Prague, on that bright June morning well nigh three hundred years ago. There fell the flower of the Bohemian nobility; and there was heard the swan song of the Bohemian Brethren. As the sun rose higher in the eastern sky and shone on the windows of the Council House, the sun of the Brethren's pride and power was setting in a sea of blood; and clear athwart the lingering light stood out, for all mankind to see, the figures of the last defenders of their freedom and their faith. Among the number not one had shown the white feather in prospect of death. Not a cheek was blanched, not a voice faltered as the dread hour drew near. One and all they had fortified themselves to look the waiting angel of death in the face. As they sat in their rooms the evening before—a sabbath evening it was—they had all, in one way or another, drawn nigh to God in prayer. In one room the prisoners had taken the Communion together, in another they joined in singing psalms and hymns; in another they had feasted in a last feast of love. Among these were various shades of faith—Lutherans, Calvinists, Utraquists, Brethren; but now all differences were laid aside, for all was nearly over now. One laid the cloth, and another the plates; a third brought water and a fourth said the simple grace. As the night wore on they lay down on tables and benches to snatch a few hours of that troubled sleep which gives no rest. At two they were all broad awake again, and again the sound of psalms and hymns was heard; and as the first gleams of light appeared each dressed himself as though for a wedding, and carefully turned down the ruffle of his collar so as to give the executioner no extra trouble.
Swiftly, in order, and without much cruelty the gory work was done. The morning's programme had all been carefully arranged. At each corner of the square was a squad of soldiers to hold the people in awe, and to prevent an attempt at rescue. One man, named Mydlar, was the executioner; and, being a Protestant, he performed his duties with as much decency and humanity as possible. He used four different swords, and was paid about £100 for his morning's work. With his first sword he beheaded eleven; with his second, five; with his two last, eight. The first of these swords is still to be seen at Prague, and has the names of its eleven victims engraven upon it. Among these names is the name of Wenzel von Budowa. In every instance Mydlar seems to have done his duty at one blow. At his side stood an assistant, and six masked men in black. As soon as Mydlar had severed the neck, the assistant placed the dead man's right hand on the block; the sword fell again; the hand dropped at the wrist; and the men in black, as silent as night, gathered up the bleeding members, wrapped them in clean black cloth, and swiftly bore them away.
The name of Budowa was second on the list. As many of the records of the time were destroyed by fire, we are not able to tell in full what part Budowa had played in the great revolt. He had, however, been a leader on the conquered side. He had fought, as we know, for the Letter of Majesty; he had bearded Rudolph II. in his den; he had openly opposed the election of Ferdinand II.; he had welcomed Frederick, the Protestant Winter King, at the city gates; and, therefore, he was justly regarded by Ferdinand as a champion of the Protestant national faith and an enemy of the Catholic Church and throne. As he was now over seventy years of age it is hardly likely that he had fought on the field of battle. After the battle of the White Mountain he had retired with his family to his country estate. He had then, strange to say, been one of those entrapped into Prague by Lichtenstein, and had been imprisoned in the White Tower. There he was tried and condemned as a rebel, and there, as even Gindely admits, he bore himself like a hero to the last. At first, along with some other nobles, he signed a petition to the Elector of Saxony, imploring him to intercede with the Emperor on their behalf. The petition received no answer. He resigned himself to his fate. He was asked why he had walked into the lion's den. For some reason that I fail to understand Gindely says that what we are told about the conduct of the prisoners has only a literary interest. To my mind the last words of Wenzel of Budowa are of the highest historical importance. They show how the fate of the Brethren's Church was involved in the fate of Bohemia. He had come to Prague as a patriot and as a Brother. He was dying both for his country and for his Church.
"My heart impelled me to come," he said; "to forsake my country and its cause would have been sinning against my conscience. Here am I, my God, do unto Thy servant as seemeth good unto Thee. I would rather die myself than see my country die."
As he sat in his room on the Saturday evening—two days before the execution—he was visited by two Capuchin monks. He was amazed at their boldness. As they did not understand Bohemian, the conversation was conducted in Latin. They informed him that their visit was one of pity.
"Of pity?" asked the white-haired old Baron, "How so?"
"We wish to show your lordship the way to heaven." He assured them that he knew the way and stood on firm ground.
"My Lord only imagines," they rejoined, "that he knows the way of salvation. He is mistaken. Not being a member of the Holy Church, he has no share in the Church's salvation."
But Budowa placed his trust in Christ alone.
"I have this excellent promise," he said, "Whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life. Therefore, until my last moment, will I abide by our true Church."
Thus did Budowa declare the faith of the Brethren. The Capuchin monks were horrified. They smote their breasts, declared that so hardened a heretic they had never seen, crossed themselves repeatedly, and left him sadly to his fate.
For the last time, on the Monday morning, he was given another chance to deny his faith. Two Jesuits came to see him.
"We have come to save my lord's soul," they said, "and to perform a work of mercy."
"Dear fathers," replied Budowa, "I thank my God that His Holy Spirit has given me the assurance that I will be saved through the blood of the Lamb." He appealed to the words of St. Paul: "I know whom I have believed: henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day."
"But," said the Jesuits, "Paul there speaks of himself, not of others."
"You lie," said Budowa, "for does he not expressly add: 'and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing.'"
And after a little more argumentation, the Jesuits left in disgust.
The last moment in Budowa's life now arrived. The messenger came and told him it was his turn to die. He bade his friends farewell.
"I go," he declared, "in the garment of righteousness; thus arrayed shall I appear before God."
Alone, with firm step he strode to the scaffold, stroking proudly his silver hair and beard.
"Thou old grey head of mine," said he, "thou art highly honoured; thou shalt be adorned with the Martyr-Crown."
As he knelt and prayed he was watched by the pitying eyes of the two kind-hearted Jesuits who had come to see him that morning. He prayed for his country, for his Church, for his enemies, and committed his soul to Christ; the sword flashed brightly in the sun; and one strong blow closed the restless life of Wenzel von Budowa, the "Last of the Bohemians."
And with his death there came the death of the Ancient Church of the Brethren. From the moment when Budowa's hoary head fell from the block the destruction of the Church was only a question of time. As Budowa died, so died the others after him. We have no space to tell here in detail how his bright example was followed; how nearly all departed with the words upon their lips, "Into Thy hands I commend my spirit"; how the drums beat louder each time before the sword fell, that the people might not hear the last words of triumphant confidence in God; how Caspar Kaplir, an old man of eighty-six, staggered up to the scaffold arrayed in a white robe, which he called his wedding garment, but was so weak that he could not hold his head to the block; how Otto von Los looked up and said, "Behold I see the heavens opened"; how Dr. Jessen, the theologian, had his tongue seized with a pair of tongs, cut off at the roots with a knife, and died with the blood gushing from his mouth; how three others were hanged on a gallows in the Square; how the fearful work went steadily on till the last head had fallen, and the black scaffold sweated blood; and how the bodies of the chiefs were flung into unconsecrated ground, and their heads spitted on poles in the city, there to grin for full ten years as a warning to all who held the Protestant faith. In all the story of the Brethren's Church there has been no other day like that. It was the day when the furies seemed to ride triumphant in the air, when the God of their fathers seemed to mock at the trial of the innocent, and when the little Church that had battled so bravely and so long was at last stamped down by the heel of the conqueror, till the life-blood flowed no longer in her veins.
Not, indeed, till the last breath of Church life had gone did the fearful stamping cease. The zeal of Ferdinand knew no bounds. He was determined, not only to crush the Brethren, but to wipe their memory from off the face of the earth. He regarded the Brethren as a noisome pest. Not a stone did he and his servants leave unturned to destroy them. They began with the churches. Instead of razing them to the ground, which would, of course, have been wanton waste, they turned them into Roman Catholic Chapels by the customary methods of purification and rededication. They rubbed out the inscriptions on the walls, and put new ones in their places, lashed the pulpits with whips, beat the altars with sticks, sprinkled holy water to cleanse the buildings of heresy, opened the graves and dishonoured the bones of the dead. Where once was the cup for Communion was now the image of the Virgin. Where once the Brethren had sung their hymns and read their Bibles were now the Confessional and the Mass.
Meanwhile the Brethren had been expelled from Bohemia. It is a striking proof of the influence of the Brethren that Ferdinand turned his attention to them before he troubled about the other Protestants. They had been the first in moral power; they had done the most to spread the knowledge of the Bible; they had produced the greatest literary men of the country; and, therefore, now they must be the first to go. What actually happened to many of the Brethren during the next few years no tongue can tell. But we know enough. We know that Ferdinand cut the Letter of Majesty in two with his scissors. We know that thirty-six thousand families left Bohemia and Moravia, and that the population of Bohemia dwindled from three millions to one. We know that about one-half of the property—lands, houses, castles, churches—passed over into the hands of the King. We know that the University of Prague was handed over to the Jesuits. We know that the scandalous order was issued that all Protestant married ministers who consented to join the Church of Rome might keep their wives by passing them off as cooks. We know that villages were sacked; that Kralitz Bibles, Hymn-books, Confessions, Catechisms, and historical works of priceless value—among others Blahoslaw's "History of the Brethren"—were burned in thousand; and that thus nearly every trace of the Brethren was swept out of the land. We know that some of the Brethren were hacked in pieces, that some were tortured, that some were burned alive, that some swung on gibbets at the city gates and at the country cross-roads among the carrion crows. For six years Bohemia was a field of blood, and Spanish soldiers, drunk and raging, slashed and pillaged on every hand. "Oh, to what torments," says a clergyman of that day, "were the promoters of the Gospel exposed! How they were tortured and massacred! How many virgins were violated to death! How many respectable women abused! How many children torn from their mothers' breasts and cut in pieces in their presence! How many dragged from their beds and thrown naked from the windows! Good God! What cries of woe we were forced to hear from those who lay upon the rack, and what groans and terrible outcries from those who besought the robbers to spare them for God's sake." It was thus that the Brethren, at the point of the sword, were driven from hearth and home: thus that they fled before the blast and took refuge in foreign lands; thus, amid bloodshed, and crime, and cruelty, and nameless torture, that the Ancient Church of the Bohemian Brethren bade a sad farewell to the land of its birth, and disappeared from the eyes of mankind.
Let us review the story of that wonderful Church. What a marvellous change had come upon it! It began in the quiet little valley of Kunwald: it ended in the noisy streets of Prague. It began in peace and brotherly love: it ended amid the tramp of horses, the clank of armour, the swish of swords, the growl of artillery, the whistle of bullets, the blare of trumpets, the roll of drums, and the moans of the wounded and the dying. It began in the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount: it ended amid the ghastly horrors of war. What was it that caused the destruction of that Church? At this point some historians, being short of facts, have thought fit to indulge in philosophical reflections; and, following the stale philosophy of Bildad—that all suffering is the punishment of sin—have informed us that the Brethren were now the victims of internal moral decay. They had lost, we are told, their sense of unity; they had relaxed their discipline; they had become morally weak; and the day of their external prosperity was the day of their internal decline. For this pious and utterly unfounded opinion the evidence usually summoned is the fact that Bishop Amos Comenius, in a sermon entitled "Haggai Redivivus," had some rather severe remarks to make about the sins of his Brethren. But Bishops' sermons are dangerous historical evidence. It is not the business of a preacher to tell the whole truth in one discourse. He is not a witness in the box; he is a prophet aiming at some special moral reform. If a Bishop is lecturing his Brethren for their failings he is sure to indulge, not exactly in exaggeration, but in one-sided statements of the facts. He will talk at length about the sins, and say nothing about the virtues. It is, of course, within the bounds of possibility that when the Brethren became more prosperous they were not so strict in some of their rules as they had been in earlier days; and it is also true that when Wenzel von Budowa summoned his followers to arms, the deed was enough, as one writer remarks, to make Gregory the Patriarch groan in his grave. But of any serious moral decline there is no solid proof. It is absurd to blame the Brethren for mixing in politics, and absurd to say that this mixing was the cause of their ruin. At that time in Bohemia religion and politics were inseparable. If a man took a definite stand in religion he took thereby a definite stand in politics. To be a Protestant was to be a rebel. If Budowa had never lifted a finger, the destruction of the Brethren would have been no less complete. The case of Baron Charles von Zerotin proves the point. He took no part in the rebellion; he sided, in the war, with the House of Hapsburg; he endeavoured, that is, to remain a Protestant and yet at the same time a staunch supporter of Ferdinand; and yet, loyal subject though he was, he was not allowed, except for a few years, to shelter Protestant ministers in his castle, and had finally to sell his estates and to leave the country. At heart, Comenius had a high opinion of his Brethren. For nearly fifty weary years—as we shall see in the next chapter—this genius and scholar longed and strove for the revival of the Brethren's Church, and in many of his books he described the Brethren, not as men who had disgraced their profession, but as heroes holding the faith in purity. He described his Brethren as broad-minded men, who took no part in religious quarrels, but looked towards heaven, and bore themselves affably to all; he said to the exiles in one of his letters, "You have endured to the end"; he described them again, in a touching appeal addressed to the Church of England, as a model of Christian simplicity; and he attributed their downfall in Bohemia, not to any moral weakness, but to their neglect of education. If the Brethren, he argued, had paid more attention to learning, they would have gained the support of powerful friends, who would not have allowed them to perish. I admit, of course, that Comenius was naturally partial, and that when he speaks in praise of the Brethren we must receive his evidence with caution; but, on the other hand, I hold that the theory of a serious moral decline, so popular with certain German historians, is not supported by evidence. If the Brethren had shown much sign of corruption we should expect to find full proof of the fact in the Catholic writers of the day. But such proof is not to hand. Not even the Jesuit historian, Balbin, had anything serious to say against the Brethren. The only Catholic writer, as far as I know, who attacked their character was the famous Papal Nuncio, Carlo Caraffa. He says that the Brethren in Moravia had become a little ambitious and avaricious, "with some degree of luxury in their habits of life";[53] but he has no remarks of a similar nature to make about the Brethren in Bohemia. The real cause of the fall of the Brethren was utterly different. They fell, not because they were morally weak, but because they were killed by the sword or forcibly robbed of their property. They fell because Bohemia fell; and Bohemia fell for a variety of reasons; partly because her peasants were serfs and had no fight left in them; partly because her nobles blundered in their choice of a Protestant King; and partly because, when all is said, she was only a little country in the grip of a mightier power. In some countries the Catholic reaction was due to genuine religious fervour; in Bohemia it was brought about by brute force; and even with all his money and his men King Ferdinand found the destruction of the Brethren no easy task. He had the whole house of Hapsburg on his side; he had thousands of mercenary soldiers from Spain; he was restrained by no scruples of conscience; and yet it took him six full years to drive the Brethren from the country. And even then he had not completed his work. In spite of his efforts, many thousands of the people still remained Brethren at heart; and as late as 1781, when Joseph II. issued his Edict of Toleration, 100,000 in Bohemia and Moravia declared themselves Brethren. We have here a genuine proof of the Brethren's vigour. It had been handed on from father to son through five generations. For the Brethren there was still no legal recognition in Bohemia and Moravia; the Edict applied to Lutherans and Calvinists only; and if the Brethren had been weak men they might now have called themselves Lutherans or Calvinists. But this, of course, carries us beyond the limits of this chapter. For the present King Ferdinand had triumphed; and word was sent to the Pope at Rome that the Church of the Brethren was no more.
But the cause of the Brethren's Church was not yet lost. As the Brethren fled before the blast, it befell, in the wonderful providence of God, that all their best and noblest qualities—their broadness of view, their care for the young, their patience in suffering, their undaunted faith—shone forth in undying splendour in the life and character of one great man; and that man was the famous John Amos Comenius, the pioneer of modern education and the last Bishop of the Bohemian Brethren. He was born on March 18th, 1592, at Trivnitz, a little market town in Moravia. He was only six years old when he lost his parents through the plague. He was taken in hand by his sister, and was educated at the Brethren's School at Ungarisch-Brod. As he soon resolved to become a minister, he was sent by the Brethren to study theology, first at the Calvinist University of Herborn in Nassau, and then at the Calvinist University of Heidelberg. For two years (1614-1616) he then acted as master in the Brethren's Higher School at Prerau, and then became minister of the congregation at Fulneck. There, too, the Brethren had a school; and there, both as minister and teacher, Comenius, with his young wife and family, was as happy as the livelong day. But his happiness was speedily turned to misery. The Thirty Years' War broke out. What part he took in the Bohemian Revolution we have no means of knowing. He certainly favoured the election of Frederick, and helped his cause in some way. "I contributed a nail or two," he says,[54] "to strengthen the new throne." What sort of nail he means we do not know. The new throne did not stand very long. The troops of Ferdinand appeared at Fulneck. The village was sacked. Comenius reeled with horror. He saw the weapons for stabbing, for chopping, for cutting, for pricking, for hacking, for tearing and for burning. He saw the savage hacking of limbs, the spurting of blood, the flash of fire.
"Almighty God," he wrote in one of his books, "what is happening? Must the whole world perish?"
His house was pillaged and gutted; his books and his manuscripts were burned; and he himself, with his wife and children, had now to flee in hot haste from Fulneck and to take refuge for a while on the estate of Baron Charles von Zerotin at Brandeis-on-the-Adler. To the Brethren Brandeis had long been a sacred spot. There Gregory the Patriarch had breathed his last, and there his bones lay buried; there many an historic Brethren's Synod had been held; and there Comenius took up his abode in a little wood cottage outside the town which tradition said had been built by Gregory himself. He had lost his wife and one of his children on the way from Fulneck; he had lost his post as teacher and minister; and now, for the sake of his suffering Brethren, he wrote his beautiful classical allegory, "The Labyrinth of the World and the Paradise of the Heart."[55] For historical purposes this book is of surpassing value. It is a revelation. It is a picture both of the horrors of the time and of the deep religious life of the Brethren. As Comenius fled from Fulneck to Brandeis he saw sights that harrowed his soul, and now in his cottage at the foot of the hills he described what he had seen. The whole land, said Comenius, was now in a state of disorder. The reign of justice had ended. The reign of pillage had begun. The plot of the book is simple. From scene to scene the pilgrim goes, and everything fills him with disgust. The pilgrim, of course, is Comenius himself; the "Labyrinth" is Bohemia; and the time is the early years of the Thirty Years' War. He had studied the social conditions of Bohemia; he had seen men of all ranks and all occupations; and now, in witty, satirical language, he held the mirror up to nature. What sort of men were employed by Ferdinand to administer justice in Bohemia? Comenius gave them fine sarcastic names. He called the judges Nogod, Lovestrife, Hearsay, Partial, Loveself, Lovegold, Takegift, Ignorant, Knowlittle, Hasty and Slovenly; he called the witnesses Calumny, Lie and Suspicion; and, in obvious allusion to Ferdinand's seizure of property, he named the statute-book "The Rapacious Defraudment of the Land." He saw the lords oppressing the poor, sitting long at table, and discussing lewd and obscene matters. He saw the rich idlers with bloated faces, with bleary eyes, with swollen limbs, with bodies covered with sores. He saw the moral world turned upside down. No longer, said Comenius, did men in Bohemia call things by their right names. They called drunkenness, merriment; greed, economy; usury, interest; lust, love; pride, dignity; cruelty, severity; and laziness, good nature. He saw his Brethren maltreated in the vilest fashion. Some were cast into the fire; some were hanged, beheaded, crucified;[56] some were pierced, chopped, tortured with pincers, and roasted to death on grid-irons. He studied the lives of professing Christians, and found that those who claimed the greatest piety were the sorriest scoundrels in the land. "They drink and vomit," he said, "quarrel and fight, rob and pillage one another by cunning and by violence, neigh and skip from wantonness, shout and whistle, and commit fornication and adultery worse than any of the others." He watched the priests, and found them no better than the people. Some snored, wallowing in feather beds; some feasted till they became speechless; some performed dances and leaps; some passed their time in love-making and wantonness.
For these evils Comenius saw one remedy only, and that remedy was the cultivation of the simple and beautiful religion of the Brethren. The last part of his book, "The Paradise of the Heart," is delightful. Comenius was a marvellous writer. He combined the biting satire of Swift with the devotional tenderness of Thomas à Kempis. As we linger over the closing sections of his book, we can see that he then regarded the Brethren as almost ideal Christians. Among them he found no priests in gaudy attire, no flaunting wealth, no grinding poverty; and passing their time in peace and quietness, they cherished Christ in their hearts. "All," he says, "were in simple attire, and their ways were gentle and kind. I approached one of their preachers, wishing to speak to him. When, as is our custom, I wished to address him according to his rank, he permitted it not, calling such things worldly fooling." To them ceremonies were matters of little importance. "Thy religion," said the Master to the Pilgrim—i.e., to the Brethren's Church—"shall be to serve me in quiet, and not to bind thyself to any ceremonies, for I do not bind thee by them."
But Comenius did not stay long at Brandeis-on-the-Adler {1628.}. As Zerotin had sided with the House of Hapsburg, he had been allowed, for a few years, to give shelter to about forty Brethren's ministers; but now commissioners appeared at his Castle, and ordered him to send these ministers away. The last band of exiles now set out for Poland. The leader was Comenius himself. As they bade farewell to their native land they did so in the firm conviction that they themselves should see the day when the Church of the Brethren should stand once more in her ancient home; and as they stood on a spur of the Giant Mountains, and saw the old loved hills and dales, the towns and hamlets, the nestling churches, Comenius raised his eyes to heaven and uttered that historic prayer which was to have so marvellous an answer. He prayed that in the old home God would preserve a "Hidden Seed," which would one day grow to a tree; and then the whole band struck up a hymn and set out for Poland. Pathetic was the marching song they sang:—
Comenius led the Brethren to Lissa, in Poland, and Lissa became the metropolis of the exiles.
What happened to many of the exiles no tongue can tell. We know that some Brethren went to Hungary and held together for thirty or forty years; that some were welcomed by the Elector of Saxony and became Lutherans; that some found their way to Holland and became Reformed Protestants; that some settled in Lusatia, Saxony; that a few, such as the Cennicks, crossed the silver streak and found a home in England; and that, finally, a number remained in Bohemia and Moravia, and gathered in the neighbourhood of Landskron, Leitomischl, Kunewalde and Fulneck. What became of these last, the "Hidden Seed," we shall see before very long. For the present they buried their Bibles in their gardens, held midnight meetings in garrets and stables, preserved their records in dovecotes and in the thatched roofs of their cottages, and, feasting on the glorious promises of the Book of Revelation—a book which many of them knew by heart—awaited the time when their troubles should blow by and the call to arise should sound.
Meanwhile Comenius had never abandoned hope. He was sure that the Brethren's Church would revive, and equally sure of the means of her revival. For some years there had flourished in the town of Lissa a famous Grammar School. It was founded by Count Raphael IV. Leszczynski; it had recently become a Higher School, or what Germans call a gymnasium, and now it was entirely in the hands of the Brethren. The patron, Count Raphael V. Leszczynski, was a Brother;[57] the director was John Rybinski, a Brethren's minister; the co-director was another Brethren's minister, Michael Henrici; and Comenius accepted the post of teacher, and entered on the greatest task of his life. He had two objects before him. He designed to revive the Church of the Brethren and to uplift the whole human race; and for each of these purposes he employed the very same method. The method was education. If the Brethren, said Comenius, were to flourish again, they must pay more attention to the training of the young than ever they had done in days gone by. He issued detailed instructions to his Brethren. They must begin, he said, by teaching the children the pure word of God in their homes. They must bring their children up in habits of piety. They must maintain the ancient discipline of the Brethren. They must live in peace with other Christians, and avoid theological bickerings. They must publish good books in the Bohemian language. They must build new schools wherever possible, and endeavour to obtain the assistance of godly nobles. We have here the key to the whole of Comenius's career. It is the fashion now with many scholars to divide his life into two distinct parts. On the one hand, they say, he was a Bishop of the Brethren's Church; on the other hand he was an educational reformer. The distinction is false and artificial. His whole life was of a piece. He never distinguished between his work as a Bishop and his work as an educational reformer. He drew no line between the secular and the sacred. He loved the Brethren's Church to the end of his days; he regarded her teaching as ideal; he laboured and longed for her revival; and he believed with all the sincerity of his noble and beautiful soul that God would surely enable him to revive that Church by means of education and uplift the world by means of that regenerated Church.
And now for thirteen years, in the Grammar School at Lissa, Comenius devoted the powers of his mind to this tremendous task. What was it, he asked, that had caused the downfall of the Brethren in Bohemia and Moravia? It was their cruel and senseless system of education. He had been to a Brethren's School himself, and had come to the conclusion that in point of method the schools of the Brethren were no better than the other schools of Europe. "They are," he declared, "the terror of boys and the slaughter-houses of minds; places where a hatred of literature and books is contracted, where two or more years are spent in learning what might be acquired in one, where what ought to be poured in gently is violently forced and beaten in, and where what ought to be put clearly is presented in a confused and intricate way as if it were a collection of puzzles." The poor boys, he declared, were almost frightened to death. They needed skins of tin; they were beaten with fists, with canes and with birch-rods till the blood streamed forth; they were covered with scars, stripes, spots and weals; and thus they had learned to hate the schools and all that was taught therein.
He had already tried to introduce a reform. He had learned his new ideas about education, not from the Brethren, but at the University of Herborn. He had studied there the theories of Wolfgang Ratich; he had tried to carry out these theories in the Brethren's schools at Prerau and Fulneck; and now at Lissa, where he soon became director, he introduced reforms which spread his fame throughout the civilized world. His scheme was grand and comprehensive. He held that if only right methods were employed all things might be taught to all men. "There is," he said, "nothing in heaven or earth or in the waters, nothing in the abyss under the earth, nothing in the human body, nothing in the soul, nothing in Holy Writ, nothing in the arts, nothing in politics, nothing in the Church, of which the little candidates for wisdom shall be wholly ignorant." His faith in the power of education was enormous. It was the road, he said, to knowledge, to character, to fellowship with God, to eternal life. He divided the educational course into four stages—the "mother school," the popular school, the Latin school and the University; and on each of these stages he had something original to say.
For mothers Comenius wrote a book, entitled the "School of Infancy." In England this book is scarcely known at all: in Bohemia it is a household treasure. Comenius regarded it as a work of first-rate importance. What use, he asked, were schemes of education if a good foundation were not first laid by the mother? For the first six years of his life, said Comenius, the child must be taught by his mother. If she did her work properly she could teach him many marvellous things. He would learn some physics by handling things; some optics by naming colours, light and darkness; some astronomy by studying the twinkling stars; some geography by trudging the neighbouring streets and hills; some chronology by learning the hours, the days and the months; some history by a chat on local events; some geometry by measuring things for himself; some statics by trying to balance his top; some mechanics by building his little toy-house; some dialectics by asking questions; some economics by observing his mother's skill as a housekeeper; and some music and poetry by singing psalms and hymns. As Comenius penned these ideal instructions, he must surely have known that nine mothers out of ten had neither the patience nor the skill to follow his method; and yet he insisted that, in some things, the mother had a clear course before her. His advice was remarkably sound. At what age, ask mothers, should the education of a child begin? It should begin, said Comenius, before the child is born. At that period in her life the expectant mother must be busy and cheerful, be moderate in her food, avoid all worry, and keep in constant touch with God by prayer; and thus the child will come into the world well equipped for the battle of life. She must, of course, nurse the child herself. She must feed him, when weaned, on plain and simple food. She must provide him with picture books; and, above all, she must teach him to be clean in his habits, to obey his superiors, to be truthful and polite, to bend the knee and fold his hands in prayer, and to remember that the God revealed in Christ was ever near at hand.
Again, Comenius has been justly called the "Father of the Elementary School." It was here that his ideas had the greatest practical value. His first fundamental principle was that in all elementary schools the scholars must learn in their native language only. He called these schools "Mother tongue schools." For six or eight years, said Comenius, the scholar must hear no language but his own; and his whole attention must be concentrated, not on learning words like a parrot, but on the direct study of nature. Comenius has been called the great Sense-Realist. He had no belief in learning second-hand. He illustrated his books with pictures. He gave his scholars object lessons. He taught them, not about words, but about things. "The foundation of all learning consists," he said, "in representing clearly to the senses sensible objects." He insisted that no boy or girl should ever have to learn by heart anything which he did not understand. He insisted that nature should be studied, not out of books, but by direct contact with nature herself. "Do we not dwell in the garden of nature," he asked, "as well as the ancients? Why should we not use our eyes, ears and noses as well as they? Why should we not lay open the living book of nature?" He applied these ideas to the teaching of religion and morals. In order to show his scholars the meaning of faith, he wrote a play entitled "Abraham the Patriarch," and then taught them to act it; and, in order to warn them against shallow views of life, he wrote a comedy, "Diogenes the Cynic, Revived." He was no vulgar materialist. His whole object was moral and religious. If Comenius had lived in the twentieth century, he would certainly have been disgusted and shocked by the modern demand for a purely secular education. He would have regarded the suggestion as an insult to human nature. All men, he said, were made in the image of God; all men had in them the roots of eternal wisdom; all men were capable of understanding something of the nature of God; and, therefore, the whole object of education was to develop, not only the physical and intellectual, but also the moral and spiritual powers, and thus fit men and women to be, first, useful citizens in the State, and then saints in the Kingdom of Heaven beyond the tomb. From court to court he would lead the students onward, from the first court dealing with nature to the last court dealing with God. "It is," he said, "our bounden duty to consider the means whereby the whole body of Christian youth may be stirred to vigour of mind and the love of heavenly things." He believed in caring for the body, because the body was the temple of the Holy Ghost; and, in order to keep the body fit, he laid down the rule that four hours of study a day was as much as any boy or girl could stand. For the same reason he objected to corporal punishment; it was a degrading insult to God's fair abode. For the same reason he held that at all severe punishment should be reserved for moral offences only. "The whole object of discipline," he said, "is to form in those committed to our charge a disposition worthy of the children of God." He believed, in a word, in the teaching of religion in day-schools; he believed in opening school with morning prayers, and he held that all scholars should be taught to say passages of Scripture by heart, to sing psalms, to learn a Catechism and to place their trust in the salvation offered through Jesus Christ. And yet Comenius did not insist on the teaching of any definite religious creed. He belonged himself to a Church that had no creed; he took a broader view of religion than either the Lutherans or the Calvinists; he believed that Christianity could be taught without a formal dogmatic statement; and thus, if I understand him aright, he suggested a solution of a difficult problem which baffles our cleverest politicians to-day.
Again Comenius introduced a new way of learning languages. His great work on this subject was entitled "Janua Linguarum Reserata"—i.e., The Gate of Languages Unlocked. Of all his works this was the most popular. It spread his fame all over Europe. It was translated into fifteen different languages. It became, next to the Bible, the most widely known book on the Continent. For one person who read his delightful "Labyrinth," there were thousands who nearly knew the "Janua" by heart. The reason was obvious. The "Labyrinth" was a religious book, and was suppressed as dangerous by Catholic authorities; but the "Janua" was only a harmless grammar, and could be admitted with safety anywhere. It is not the works of richest genius that have the largest sale; it is the books that enable men to get on in life; and the "Janua" was popular because, in truth, "it supplied a long-felt want." It was a Latin grammar of a novel and original kind. For all boys desiring to enter a profession a thorough knowledge of Latin was then an absolute necessity. It was the language in which the learned conversed, the language spoken at all Universities, the language of diplomatists and statesmen, the language of scientific treatises. If a man could make the learning of Latin easier, he was adored as a public benefactor. Comenius's Grammar was hailed with delight, as a boon and a blessing to men. For years all patient students of Latin had writhed in agonies untold. They had learned long lists of Latin words, with their meanings; they had wrestled in their teens with gerunds, supines, ablative absolutes and distracting rules about the subjunctive mood, and they had tried in vain to take an interest in stately authors far above their understanding. Comenius reversed the whole process. What is the use, he asked, of learning lists of words that have no connection with each other? What is the use of teaching a lad grammar before he has a working knowledge of the language? What is the use of expecting a boy to take an interest in the political arguments of Cicero or the dinner table wisdom of Horace? His method was the conversational. For beginners he prepared an elementary Latin Grammar, containing, besides a few necessary rules, a number of sentences dealing with events and scenes of everyday life. It was divided into seven parts. In the first were nouns and adjectives together; in the second nouns and verbs; in the third adverbs, pronouns, numerals and prepositions; in the fourth remarks about things in the school; in the fifth about things in the house; in the sixth about things in the town; in the seventh some moral maxims. And the scholar went through this book ten times before he passed on to the "Janua" proper. The result can be imagined. At the end of a year the boy's knowledge of Latin would be of a peculiar kind. Of grammar he would know but little; of words and phrases he would have a goodly store; and thus he was learning to talk the language before he had even heard of its perplexing rules. One example must suffice to illustrate the method. The beginner did not even learn the names of the cases. In a modern English Latin Grammar, the charming sight that meets our gaze is as follows:—