disappeared and in part are extant in not more copies than if they were manuscripts—this is so remarkable a fact that it becomes credible only because it cannot possibly be denied.”[1]
It is, therefore, not surprising that a partial obscurity rests upon the first era of the history of the Brethren, including the period in which they received the episcopacy. It is, rather, surprizing that at this late day we can, in spite of the disasters and persecutions of former times, give so clear a view of their origin, and bring forward so many and such solid authorities.
After the burning of Leitomischl, the Brethren began (about 1550) to gather materials for new archives. This important labor was intrusted to various Bishops, of whom the most active were Nigranus and Blahoslav. By their exertions there were brought together fourteen folio volumes of manuscripts relating to the history of the Church and her correspondence with the Reformers, and containing duplicates of some of the lost records.[2] Until the year 1620, these second archives were preserved at different places in Bohemia and Moravia. Then, amidst the storms of the Anti-reformation, pious hands conveyed them for safe-keeping to Lissa, a town of what is now Prussian Poland, not far from the Silesian frontier,[3] where they remained for two hundred and twenty-two years,[4] and were, at length, entirely forgotten, in as much as Jablonsky and Sitkovius, the last Bishops of the Ancient Church, passed away without informing the Renewed Church of their existence. Perhaps they were themselves not aware of it.
The principal writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries who treated of the history of the Brethren, and, either directly or indirectly, drew their information from these archives, are the following:
1. John Lasitius, a Polish nobleman of the Reformed Church. Traveling in Bohemia and Moravia, he became an ardent admirer of the Brethren, examined their records and produced their history,
- ↑ Gindely’s Quellen zur Geschichte d. Bob. Brueder, Preface, p. vi.
- ↑ Gindely’s Quellen, Preface, p, ix and x.
- ↑ Lissa lies about forty-two miles S. W. of Posen, and is one of the stations on the railroad from that city to Breslau. It was the original seat of the Leczinski family, ancestors of Stanislaus, King of Poland.
- ↑ Gindely’s Quellen zur Gesch. d. Böh. Brueder, Preface p. x.
