In 1648, on the death of Bishop Justinus, the members of the Unity assembled at Lissa chose Komenský as one of their bishops. He outlived all his colleagues, and eventually became the last bishop of the Bohemian Brethren. On receipt of the news of his election, Komenský started for Lissa, but not until he had forwarded to Sweden some of the school-books which he had been commissioned to write. The year 1648 brought a great blow to the members of the Unity and to the Bohemian Protestants generally. The Treaty of Westphalia was signed in that year, and no stipulations in favour of the Bohemian exiles were contained in it. At the risk of prolonging the war, the Austrian Government maintained its principle that no one who did not profess the creed of Rome should be allowed to reside in Bohemia or Moravia; to Silesia slight concessions were granted. All the hopes of the exiles that they might once be able to return to their beloved Bohemia were now destroyed for ever. Oxenstiern had to the last defended the cause of the exiles, and did not deserve the severe reproaches that Komenský addressed to him.
All hopes of worldly aid having vanished, Komenský relied more than ever on the intervention of God, and on the visions and prophecies which announced that such an intervention would shortly take place. "If there is no aid from man," he wrote to Oxenstiern, "there will be from God, whose aid is wont to commence when that of men ceases." Komenský's relations with Kotter and Ponatovská prove sufficiently that it was not now that mysticism and credulity first obscured his generally clear brain; but it is evident that Komenský never quite recovered from the blow inflicted by the
