declared that their wives would be allowed to continue to live with them, if they agreed to accept the name of cooks, a word that under the circumstances of course veiled an opprobrious designation. Most of the priests indignantly rejected this insulting suggestion, but, forced by extreme poverty, some were obliged to agree to it. This measure which forced honest women, who had been married according to the rights of their Church, to choose between starvation and disgrace is one of the darkest pages of the very black records of the Bohemian Catholic Reformation.
Though from the moment that the battle of the White Mountain had been fought, many Bohemian nobles and citizens had been driven into exile, priests only had in the first years after the battle been expelled from Bohemia solely because they did not conform to the Church of Rome. In 1623, Bethlen Gabor, prince of Transylvania, again rose in arms against the house of Habsburg, and after defeating the Austrian troops, invaded Moravia. Moderation therefore for a time became necessary. In 1624, however, a treaty of peace was concluded with the Prince of Transylvania, and the Vienna official now considered the moment opportune to continue the persecutions in Bohemia. The nuncio, Caraffa, about this time obtained a powerful ally in the Jesuit father, Lamormain, who had just become the Emperor's confessor. Caraffa and Lamormain declared it to be an absolute necessity that all who did not conform to the Roman Church should be expelled from Bohemia. An exception was to be made only in favour of the Bohemian peasants whom serfdom attached to the soil, to the cultivation of which they were necessary. It was stated that by means of imprisonment and corporal punishment they could be forced to become at least nominal Romanists, and that in the course of time they, or at least their children, would become true members of the Roman Church. These suggestions appeared extreme even to such a religious enthusiast as the Emperor Ferdinand was. Lamormain advised him to meditate deeply on this weighty matter, and to prepare for this meditation by receiving communion. Lamormain then, leaving the court for a few days, retired to the Jesuit monastery in Vienna to offer up incessant prayers that his counsels might be favourably received. When he returned to court the Emperor declared to him that after receiving communion the Holy
