Moravian Preservation Master Plan.indb - Society for College and ...

Figure 2-1. Detail of Map of Central Europe about 1547 (Shepherd 1926).
Years’ War, Protestantism in Bohemia and Moravia
was effectively quashed by the forces of the Catholic
Church, forcing adherents to either abandon their
faith or leave the country. Years of persecution,
capped by the executions of 27 Bohemian and
Moravian leaders on the Day of Blood, June 21,
1621, caused thousands of frightened Bohemian
and Moravian Protestants to flee from their home
regions. Beginning in 1624, the Protestants were
dispersed to safer regions, including Poland,
Silesia, Prussia, Saxony, and Upper Lusatia. Among
them was a Unity group led to safety in Poland by
their bishop, John Amos Comenius. The dispersion
created a loss of community identity as the refugees
assimilated to their various new homes, and due to
continued persecution, their faith was effectively
driven underground for much of the next century.
This time of underground belief was called the
Time of the Hidden Seed (Groenfeldt 1976:14-15;
Murtagh 1967:4-5).
Members of the Moravian Church were forced
to remain dormant into the early 1700s, and
the geographically fragmented denomination
struggled to continue. In 1722, Count Nicholas von
Zinzendorf of Saxony granted the Moravians and
other Protestants sanctuary on his estate, where the
groups collectively built a town called Herrnhut, and