Martin ŽEMLA, Theologia Deutsch: brisante Ideen zwischen ´deutscher Mystik´ und Reformation

Theologia Deutsch: Disquieting Conceptions between ‘German Mysticism’ and the Reformation

This study aims to provide a detailed intellectual analysis of Theologia Deutsch, an anonymous work of ‘German mysticism’ dating to the turn of the 15th century which had a fundamental impacted on the development of theological and philosophical thought in the German lands during the 16th century. The author lays particular emphasis on the work’s neo-Platonic roots, outlines its most important philosophical underpinnings, situates the work in its contemporary intellectual context and fi nally establishes links to certain strands of 16th- and 17th-century thought evident particularly in the works of Valentin Weigel (1533–1588), Sebastian Franck (1499–1542) and Jacob Böhme (1575–1624).
The intention the author of Theologia Deutsch had of coming to terms with the teachings of ‘free spirits’, which he understood as representing a sort of non-religious intellectualism, is considered to be decisive for the overall conception of the work and for the formulation of its component answers. Theologia Deutsch attempts to define this intellectual trend more precisely, as against the views and dealings of true ‘Friends of God’. This is especially important because the neo-Platonic bases of Theologia Deutsch come quite close at times to the ideas of the ‘free spirits’. The study pays particular attention to emphasising the role of affectivity in Theologia Deutsch and its thorough consideration of the relationship between intellect (knowledge) and will (love). Here Theologia Deutsch tries to establish a connection between Thomistic and voluntaristic motifs and, at the same time, draw from the views of Tauler and Eckhart. The study then devotes itself to significant considerations of the concepts of freedom and order: the measure of their proper proportions in Theologia Deutsch became the ‘life of Christ’ (Christus-Leben) as an insuperable model which was at the very least potentially imitable, though it most probably remained somehow singular in actuality; its fulfilment was the ‘Godly or Godlike man’. In answer to the question as to why the term ‘Godlike man’ (or Godly man) does not entail the overcoming and relinquishment of the virtues, the commandments and all order in the name of freedom, we find in Theologia Deutsch a far-ranging metaphysical reflection on the relationship between an inert ‘Godliness’ and a voluntaristically understood ‘God’. A condition for the actualisation of the ‘eternal will’, which is in God in potentia, is His creation, man. The ‘Godly or Godlike man’ is the medium through which the self-cognition of God is achieved. From man’s perspective, however, this cognition is an act which is not purely theoretical, but rather theoretical-practical, for it is based on the conformity of the will of the created being with the will of God. At the same time, it is – in a certain sense – only by means of this cognition that God is constituted as God as opposed to Godliness. The closing section of the article briefly outlines the reception of the new God-man relationship discussed in Theologia Deutsch among certain thinkers of the Reformed period.

Antonín KOSTLÁN, 'Kto Bogu wiernie służy, temu wiek szczęśnie płuzy': Czech-Polish Relations in Light of the Album Amicorum of the Moravian Calvinist Jan Opsimathes

This study is based on an analysis of Moravian Calvinist Jan Opsimathes’s book of friends (cca. 1568–after 1620), housed today at the British Library in London at the shelf mark Eg. 1220. The album contains roughly 590 entries spanning the years 1598–1620 and represents a valuable source for the study of the contacts between the Czech Lands and intellectual and political Calvinism across Europe. At the core of the study is an analysis of the album’s entries authored by individuals originating from Greater Poland, Lesser Poland, Lithuania, Livonia and other lands falling within the Polish king’s sphere of influence. The author was able to find a total of 21 such individuals. They encountered Opsimathes at Swiss, Dutch and German academies and universities, during his travels in France and, exceptionally, in Prague and Moravia. Although most of them were of noble origins, they differed considerably with regard to aristocratic descent, economic status, ranks attained and political sway. At one end was a group of lesser nobles and intellectuals; in the middle a group of relatively wealthy regional aristocrats; and at the other end a group of Polish, Lithuanian and Livonian notables (Andrzej and Rafał Leszczyński, Jan Radzimiński, Mikołaj Abramowicz and Magnus Ernest Denhoff ). Their common unifying trait was their close adhesion to the Calvinist confession and, in certain instances, the Polish branch of the Unity of the Brethren. The study also offers new information on the life of Jan Opsimathes based on freshly unearthed sources.

Jiří HRBEK, 'That Feckless Bohemomastix': The Life and Work of Melchior Goldast of Haiminsfeld

For a long time after White Mountain, Baroque scholars, including Bohuslav Balbín, levelled arguments in their writings against the theories of the German humanist Melchior Goldast of Haiminsfeld, who lived at the turn of the 17th century. In 1619, the emperor ordered him – probably through the intermediary of the president of the Aulic Council, Johann Georg of Hohenzollern – to carry out a legal analysis of the heredity nature of the Bohemian and Hungarian kingdom. The request was repeated following the Battle of White Mountain and the thesis of the hereditary nance of the Bohemians to the Empire, he became increasingly more vexing to the Habsburgs themselves, who, following the Peace of Westphalia, had gone down a path toward building the Habsburg monarchy which did not include the territories of the Holy Roman Empire. This fact manifested itself vividly in 1711 during a dispute concerning the imperial vicarage over the Czech Lands; attempts to revise the Renewed Constitution brought on another wave of disfavour against Goldast. Goldast’s theories were reinterpreted by German nationalists in the 19th century, when they served as ammunition in a struggle quite different from that in which they arose. succession in both the male and female lines of the Habsburg dynasty was subsequently included in the extensive frescos of Bohemian history titled De Bohemiae Regni … juribus ac privilegiis, which first saw print the year the Renewed Constitution was published; it may thus be taken to be its theoretical counterpart or perhaps its legitimation as well. Although Goldast was to become quite a controversial figure, he was then a leading expert on imperial legal documents (he had worked on editions of such documents all his life); he developed a model of Bohemian history in which the relationship between the Holy Roman Empire and the neighbouring, vassal state of the Bohemians was fraught with incessant revolts on the part of the weaker partner against the empire. At the same time, he elaborated the idea that the first peoples of Central Europe were Marobuduus’ Marcomanni, which underscored even further the appurtenance of Bohemian kingdom to the Holy Roman Empire. For there was a long tradition of Germanic law in both lands: Goldast was thus concerned with the Bohemians’ legal appurtenance, not their ethnic or linguistic appurtenance. He also defined the Empire itself in a similar manner; law was a binding element which could even overcome religious differences. Goldast – a Swiss Calvinist working for both the Lutheran Saxons and the Catholic emperor – was fully persuaded of this view, even though it led him into numerous conflicts. Nonetheless, thanks to his theory of the appurtenance of the Bohemians to the Empire, he became increasingly more vexing to the Habsburgs themselves, who, following the Peace of Westphalia, had gone down a path toward building the Habsburg monarchy which did not include the territories of the Holy Roman Empire. This fact manifested itself vividly in 1711 during a dispute concerning the imperial vicarage over the Czech Lands; attempts to revise the Renewed Constitution brought on another wave of disfavour against Goldast. Goldast’s theories were reinterpreted by German nationalists in the 19th century, when they served as ammunition in a struggle quite different from that in which they arose.

Klaus SCHALLER, Panharmonia und Panchresia. J. A. Komenskýs Antwort auf die alte Frage nach der Lehrbarkeit der Tugend

Panharmonia and Panchresia: J. A. Comenius’ Answer to the Age-Old Question of Whether Virtue Can Be Taught

The question of whether virtue can be taught had already been posed in antiquity and remains of interest to this day. Comenius’ pansophia, with its component elements of panharmonia and panchresia, answers the question in a way which combines antiquity and modernity. This essay breaks down Comenius’ solution, which has not yet received sufficient attention, into four steps: I. a comparison of Comenius and Francis Bacon; II. an analysis of Comenius’ Via lucis, Pampaedia, Pansophia Christiana and Pansophiae diatyposis; III. an interpretation of the revived classical Greek ideal of kalokagathia in the works of Comenius and later of Kant and J. F. Herbart; and IV. a reflection on the present-day significance of Comenius’ universalistic educational principle of omnes omnia omnino.

Lucie STORCHOVÁ, A Late Humanist Treatise on the Origin of the Bohemians, the Academic Polemics and Their Potential to Perform the Other: De origine Bohemorum et Slavorum by Johannes Matthias a Sudetis

Beside an editorial note and the edition itself, the article includes a study focusing on three analytical levels. The first of them presents the Latin humanist tract textually, i.e. how it was determined by a formalized narrative mode (so-called ‘writing in excerpts’ derived from ancient authorities which were shared in the community of scholars). The second level investigates the argumentation developed in the text – in this concrete instance, a historical account of the origins of the Slavs and the Bohemian tribe from Transcarpathian region, along with its ideological background that is treated according to the recent concept of humanist ‘fight for honour’ by C. Hirschi. Finally, the author concentrates on the level of further texts which appeared thanks to interpretations of Matthias treatise and provoked – in close connection with the abovementioned formal and content-based levels – an outstanding and unique humanist polemic. It draws attention not only to performative techniques of invective, but also to period discourses of nation as well as strategies for institutionally defining the very possibility of writing that were linked to the categories of ‘order’ and symbolic capital (here with a discussion of academic titles).

Sylva DOBALOVÁ – Ivan P. MUCHKA, Ein unbekannter Text zum Prager Fest Phasma Dionysiacum Pragense (1617)

An Unknown Text About a Prague Theatre Performance Phasma Dionysiacum Pragense (1617)

The article deals with a newly discovered document describing the festivity Phasma Dionysiacum Pragense, which was found in the holdings of the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel. Phasma was played at Prague Castle in February 1617, opening a three days long carnival. The first evening performance with singing, music and ballet was organized on an elaborated architectonical stage. The recently found text brings several new pieces of information; of special interest is the identification of the so-called “lautenspielerin” who was singing in the role of Gloria, celebrating the Habsburgs. Included are also two further days of the carnival with knightly games, the detailed description of costumes and the names of “knights”. The interpretation of the text from Wolfenbüttel shows undoubtedly that Phasma was staged in the Old Land Diet’s Hall (Alter Landtagssaal), which is a smaller hall next to the Wladislaw Hall at the Prague Castle. The visual appearance of the event is documented by engravings which are analyzed in the context of contemporary European theatre. At the end of the article, hypothesis is formulated about the possible author of the theatre stage – the court architect Giovanni Maria Filippi. The appendix contains a complete transcription of the German text from Wolfenbüttel omitting just the parts containing the Italian arias that had been already published (Seifert 1998).

Jiří JUST, Neue Quellen zur Geschichte der Brüderunität in der Zeit vor der Schlacht am Weißen Berg. Der Fund des Archivs von Matouš Konečný in Mladá Boleslav

New Sources for Early Seventeenth-Century History of the Unity of Brethren: A Discovery of Matouš Konečný’s Archives in Mladá Boleslav

The archive of Matouš Konečný, discovered in August 2006 during construction work done in Mladá Boleslav, is one of the most significant discoveries in modern history of source materials relating to the history of the Bohemian Reformation. At its core is a set of 523 letters addressed in large part to Matouš Konečný († 1622), the last pre-White-Mountain bishop of the Unity of the Brethren in Mladá Boleslav. Among those who sent the letters – each, as a rule, with its own seal – were the senior of Prague’s Utraquist consistory, the bishops of the Unity of the Brethren in Moravia and Poland, regular priests of the Brethren, students, teachers and members of the Brethren from among the burghers and both aristocratic estates. Whereas the dominant theme in the correspondence is the administration of church aff airs, in the case of the letters from students and teachers, it is the progress of the studies of the future clergymen of the Brethren sent to academies abroad. Another, substantial portion of the materials discovered comprises lists of members of Bohemian Brethren groups and inventories of their possessions. To a considerable extent, they expand the range of sources dealing with the material furnishings of the buildings serving towards devotional ends or towards the accommodation of Brethren priests and other associated individuals. Among the most important items discovered is an agenda, kept for several years, providing an overview of church services held within the district of the Mladá Boleslav group; two library catalogues belonging to the Brethren priests B. Jafet and Š. Věrník; information regarding the distribution of titles published by the Unity of the Brethren in the early 17th century; a record of the convocation of Lutheran clergymen at Holešov which documents the organizational structure of Moravian Lutheran groups; and other documents relating to the administration of the properties of the Unity of the Brethren in the Mladá Boleslav district. The documents published in the adjoining publication illustrate the character of each individual portion of the abovementioned archive. The material in the archive considerably extends the scope of our knowledge concerning the complicated religious state of aff airs in Bohemia and Moravia during the period between the issuing of Rudolf’s Letter of Majesty (1609) and the start of the Estates Revolt (1618).

Martin STEINER, Die Zeugnisse der Herborner Professoren für Theologiestudenten aus böhmischen Landern von 1611

The Testimony of Czech Students of Divinity by the Professors of Herborn Academy in 1611

The edition presents the evaluation of Czech students Johannes Salmon, Matthaeus Titus, Johannes Litomilus, Johanes Amosus (= Comenius) and Johannes Stadius that was requested by Matouš Konečný, the senior priest of the Unity of Brethern, from the head of Herbon Academy J. Piscator and its other professors. The brief evaluations have been written by seven professors: J. Matthaeus, H. Gutberlet, H. Ravensperger, J. H. Alsted, H. Dauber, G. Pasor, J. J. Hermann, who all have expressed a predominantly positive opinion about the study and conduct of Czech students. The document has been discovered in 2006 in the town of Mladá Boleslav in the course of reconstruction work in the former monastery called Karmel that served as the residence of the seniors of the Unity in the 16th and the beginning of the 17th century.