BROTHER LUCAS
219
is,
one of its results, seems to have rendered yet stronger the desire for a return to the primitive Church, which, sometimes more obvious, sometimes scarcely perceptible, can yet be traced in the writings of all Bohemian reformers. Some of the brethren maintained that in distant Eastern lands Christians yet existed who had retained the purity of the primitive Church, both as regards doctrine and the conduct of life. The Unity decided to send out several brethren, who were to discover these communities which entirely conformed with the primitive Church. Lucas, with two companions, started for this purpose for Constantinople, where Lucas himself appears to have visited they separated. Mount Athos and the communities of the Bulgarians, and of the Bohomils in Bosnia. Fertile writer though he was, Lucas has unfortunately left us no account of his travels, for which we could well have spared one or two of his sixty-eight theological works. The first of these works, entitled The Bark, was written shortly after his return from his journey. As already mentioned, it involved him in a controversy with Brother Prokop. After the assembly of Chlumec and the final victory of the more enlightened party among the brethren, it was resolved to reorganise the community, and to model their institutions to a certain extent on those of the Waldenses. The exact relations between the two communities will perhaps never be known, particularly as the history of the Waldenses or Vaudois is itself very obscure. It however, certain that the brethren were fully conscious of an affinity between themselves and the older community. Lucas was intrusted with the mission of visiting the Waldensian communities, and
