2

76

A HISTORY OF BOHEMIAN

LITERATURE

in whom Komensk^ obstinately continued to believe. De Gears was foolish enough to invite Drabik to Amsterdam, and it was through his financial aid that Komensk^ was enabled to publish in 1657 his Lux in Tenebris, a book in which all the prophecies of Kotter, Ponatovski, and Drabik were again brought before the public. The mystic and now openly professed chiliastic views of Komensky involved him during the last years of his life in numerous theological controversies. Detailed accounts of them have recently been pubHshed in Bohemian, perhaps rather because everything concerned with Komensky is valued by his countrymen than because these controversies now have much interest. Among Komensky's theological antagonists were Nicholas Arnold, Daniel Zwicker, and Samuel Des Marets, a professor at Groningen. The last-named attacked the aged bishop of the Unity with great violence, calling him " a fanatic, a He also accused visionary, and an enthusiast in folio." him of obtaining large sums from the De Geers family " by means of pansophic hope and chiliastic smoke." A polemical essay directed against Descartes also belongs to Komensk^'s last years. These years were very melancholy, though the old man, characteristically enough, found great relief in the society of an aged French prophetess and visionist named Antoinette Bourgignon. His old comrades died off one by one. Of the bishops of the community, Gertichius died in 1667, and Figulus (Komensk^'s son-in-law) in January 1670. In the same year, on November 15th, Komensky', the last bishop of the Bohemian Brethren, ended his long and troubled life. It would require a book larger than the whole of this