Procopius Divisch (Prokop Diwisch) was born on Aug. 1st, 1696, at Helkowitz-Senftenberg in Bohemia. He spent his youth at Znaim, where he studied the humanities and philosophy at the College conducted by the Jesuit fathers in that Moravian city. In 1719, when in his twenty-third year, he decided to quit the common ways of the world in order to lead the higher life in the Premonstratensian Order at Kloster-Bruck. At the ripe age of 30, Divisch was ordained priest, in 1726, after which he taught philosophy and theology to classes of young aspirants to the ecclesiastical state. In 1733 he went to the University of Salzburg and won his double Doctorate in theology and philosophy. Three years later, in 1736, he was appointed parish priest of Prenditz, a small Moravian town on the road to Austerlitz, since of Napoleonic fame. Here he remained for five years, returning in 1741 to Bruck as Prior of the Kloster or monastery situated there. At the end of the Seven Years' War of the Austrian succession, he quitted Bruck, in 1745, for his parish at Prenditz, where he spent the last twenty years of his life in the pastoral ministrations of his sacred office and in electrical experimentation, of which he was very fond. The curative property of the new agent was heralded throughout Europe about this time in terms of unmeasured praise. Some of Divisch's ailing parishioners, believing him to be an expert in electrical manipulation, applied to him for a little alleviation of their woes. The good-hearted priest did not turn them away, but thought it desirable to treat them to the therapeutic effect of such sparks as he could get from his homemade frictional machine. The results were various, depending probably on the confidence and imagination of the patient. Several remarkable cures seem to have been effected either by the electric spark or by the persuasive powers of the operator, or by both combined, with the result that people far and wide were divided in their opinion of the Pastor of Prenditz. Some physicians said that he was interfering with their practice, and even clergymen found fault with him for indulging in work which they thought unsuited to the cloth. A general impression, too, seems to have prevailed that his electrical experiments, especially those with his lightning conductor, were likely to prove harmful in more ways than one. On the other hand, Divisch had admirers in high places, among whom were the Emperor Francis I. of Germany and his imperial consort, Maria Theresa. Having been invited to Vienna, Divisch repaired to the Austrian capital, where, with the aid of Father Franz, another electrical devotee, he gave a demonstration of the wonderful capability of the new form of energy before the grandees of the empire.