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3 - Austria and Bohemia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2024

Henry A. Jefferies
Affiliation:
Ulster University
Richard Rex
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
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Summary

The religious world of late medieval and early modern Central Europe is complicated, convoluted and, above, all entangled. But despite the real and tangible connections that linked the various polities of this region together, scholars have tended to explore this landscape along anachronistic divisions defined narrowly by language and nation. This article, by contrast, examines connections that developed between the Bohemian and Austrian lands. It begins in the mid-fourteenth century by exploring rivalling efforts of Emperor Charles IV in Prague and his son-in-law, Duke Rudolf IV of Austria, to build the institutional foundations upon which critical ecclesiastical changes occurred in the following three centuries. The chapter traces parallel reform programmes in the fifteenth century that had very different outcomes. While Hussitism left Bohemia isolated, the efforts of Nicholas of Cusa and others helped to integrate the Austrian lands into the broader ecclesiastical culture of the West. The sixteenth century brought an Erasmian humanism to both regions as well as more radical expressions of reform. Protestantism reached its high point here in the late sixteenth century only to collapse dramatically a few decades later with the great crisis of the Thirty Years’ War. The chapter concludes with a comparison of the exiles who left this region after the Catholic victory.

Type
Chapter
Information
Reformations Compared
Religious Transformations across Early Modern Europe
, pp. 61 - 79
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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References

Further Reading

Eberhard, Winfried, ‘Bohemia, Moravia, and Austria’, in Pettegree, Andrew (ed.), The Early Reformation in Europe, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, 2348CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leeb, Rudolf, Liebmann, Maximilian, Scheiberlreiter, Georg and Tropper, Peter (eds.), Geschichte des Christentums in Österreich, Vienna: Ueberreuter, 2003Google Scholar
Leeb, Rudolf, Öhringer, Walter and Vocelka, Karl (eds.), Brennen für den Glauben. Wien nach Luther, Vienna: Residenz Verlag, 2017Google Scholar
Leeb, Rudolf, Scheutz, Martin and Weikl, Dietmar (eds.), Geheimprotestantismus und evangelische Kirchen in der Habsburgermonarchie und im Erzstift Salzburg, Vienna: Brill, 2009Google Scholar
Louthan, Howard and Murdock, Graeme (eds.), A Companion to the Reformation in Central Europe, Leiden: Brill, 2015CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Louthan, Howard, Converting Bohemia: Force and Persuasion in the Catholic Reformation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009Google Scholar
Shank, Michael, ‘Unless You Believe, You Shall Not Understand’: Logic, University and Society in Late Medieval Vienna, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Soukup, Pavel, Jan Hus: The Life and Death of a Preacher, West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 2019CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Traxler, Christine, Firmiter velitis resistere. Die Auseinandersetzung der Wiener Universität mit dem Hussitismus vom Konstanzer Konzil (1414–1418) bis zum Beginn des Basler Konzils (1431–1449), Vienna: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2019CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Dussen, Michael and Soukup, Pavel (eds.), A Companion to the Hussites, Leiden: Brill, 2020CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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