CHRISTINA PONATOVSKA

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had died meanwhile, she decided to join Komensk^ and his wife — he had remarried very shortly after the death of his first wife — and a party of other exiles, who were on the point of leaving Bohemia, They set out in January 1628, and on crossing the frontier of their country in the direction of Silesia, " they all knelt down and prayed, with cries and many tears, to God, entreating Him not to exclude them for ever from their native land, and not to allow the seed of His word to perish within them." In February Koraensk^ arrived at Lissa, a small town in that part of Poland that is now known as the Prussian province of Posen. Ponatovskd for some time continued a member of Komensk^'s household, and the controversy concerning the true inspiration of her prophecies raged for a considerable time. A joint meeting of doctors and ministers of the Unity did not settle the question, as the opinion of the doctors was in direct opposition to that of the ecclesiastics, of whom Komensky- was one. The latter never wavered in his belief in Christina's prophecies.^ He maintained that it could nowhere be proved that the Church had been Before dismissing deprived of the gift of prophecy. Christina Ponatovskd it should be stated that some time after these events she married a young man employed at the printing-work of the Unity at Lissa, had two sons and " three daughters, and in later years disliked all reference to her prophecies." It would, however, be doing Komensky bitter wrong if we supposed that he was, while at Lissa, exclusively occupied with the prophecies of Kotter and Ponatovski. As late as in 1657 Komensky, in his Lux in Teneiris, republished the The last-named disreputable prophecies of Kotter, Ponatovsk4, and Drabik. •

prophet

will be mentioned later.