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BOHEMIA

BOHEMIA. The crown lands of early modern Bohemia stretched across a significant portion of central Europe. Though centered on the kingdom of Bohemia proper and oriented administratively around its capital, Prague, they also included Upper and Lower Lusatia, the margravate of Moravia, and the assorted duchies of Silesia. There was little institutional cohesion among these territories; Saxony absorbed Lusatia in 1635, while Prussia seized nearly all of Silesia in 1742. Before the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648), Bohemia boasted a population of three million, more than that of contemporary England. The region was also blessed with an array of natural resources that supported a thriving economy. The Elbe River valley and the southern Moravian plain were fertile agricultural regions while the silver mines of Jihlava (Iglau), KutnáHora (Kuttenberg) and the German settlement of Joachimsthal (Jáchymov) were known throughout Europe. Also important to the economy were the traditional Bohemian trades of brewing and fish farming combined with a textile industry that had a particularly strong base in Silesia with the commercial center of Breslau (Wrocław) as its most important hub.

RULERS AND RELIGIOUS REFORM

The crown of St. Wenceslas was elective, and power within the kingdom was divided between the royal court and the three Estates: the lords, the knights, and the burghers. Constitutionally, Bohemia's political status was solidified by Emperor Charles IV (ruled 1355–1378). In 1356 he established the kingdom as one of the empire's seven electoral principalities. Charles founded central Europe's first university in Prague, began an ambitious building program in the city, raised the bishopric to an archbishopric, and initiated a lively cultural exchange with Italy. Both Petrarch and Cola di Rienzo visited Bohemia.

Scholars traditionally date Bohemia's early modern period to the accession of the Habsburgs in 1526. The two most pressing problems the new dynasty faced, however, had their origins in the previous century. Most serious was the issue of religion. Jan Hus (c. 1372/1373–1415) headed a reform movement that accelerated after his execution at the Council of Constance in 1415. Opposition to Rome crystallized around the Four Articles of Prague, which called for a general reform of clerical life and insisted upon the administration of the Eucharist in the form of both bread and wine. The Hussites successfully resisted five crusades and eventually won significant concessions that were negotiated at the Council of Basel in 1437. There were fissures, however, within the original reform movement. The radical contingent of the Hussite revolution would be crushed at the battle of Lipany in 1434. The Utraquists, representing a more conservative ecclesial tradition, would carry on Hus's legacy under the leadership of Jan Rokycana, a former master of the university. The Unity of Czech Brethren, a smaller group with a more biblicist orientation, would emerge as an independent body in the 1450s. The coming of the Reformation in the sixteenth century added further complexity to an already complex religious landscape. Lutheranism gained ground especially in German communities and among the nobility whereas Calvinism had a significant influence on the Czech Brethren. By the time Ferdinand I von Habsburg had ascended the throne, Bohemia had a well-established reputation as a homeland of heresy. The second problem from the Habsburg perspective was political. Their predecessors, the Jagiellonian kings, Władysław II and Ludvík (ruled 1471–1526), were relatively weak rulers. During their tenure the power of the Estates had grown at the expense of the crown.

Ferdinand's approach to these problems was initially gradual and indirect. In terms of politics, he worked around the Estates with his powers of patronage and appointment. He was able to select allies to staff such important positions as grand burgrave and chancellor. This gave him a freer hand at the conclusion of the Schmalkaldic War (1546–1547) to discipline the nobility who had joined the revolt. His response to the towns that had been allied with the rebels was even harsher. He deprived them of many of their traditional liberties and privileges. With regard to religion, Ferdinand, a devout Catholic, had even less room to maneuver. As Bohemia's king, he was constitutionally obligated to uphold the Compactata, those concessions the Utraquists had won at Basel, but he did provide the Catholic Church with an institutional framework upon which they could build. In 1561 he appointed Antonín Brus of Mohelnice as archbishop, a seat that had remained vacant ever since the defection of Konrad von Vechta to the Utraquists in 1421. Even more significantly, he invited the Jesuits to the Bohemian lands. Among their number was the young Edmund Campion (1540–1581), whose confessional rhetoric intensified divisions between the kingdom's various religious communities. The work of the Society of Jesus, especially in education, yielded handsome dividends within a generation.

Ferdinand's successors, Maximilian II (ruled 1564–1576) and Rudolf II (ruled 1576–1612), were more ambiguous confessionally, and Bohemia's non-Catholics made substantial gains during their reigns. In 1575 the Utraquists and Brethren jointly issued a single confession, the Confessio Bohemica, to which Maximilian gave a verbal guarantee of acceptance. More substantial, however, was a written grant of toleration, the Letter of Majesty, that the estates were able to wring out of Rudolf in 1609 as a result of his famous quarrel with his brother and political rival, Matthias. Bohemia's Rudolfine era is far better known for the great flowering of Renaissance culture that developed under the emperor's aegis. Though Ferdinand had commissioned what is arguably Bohemia's most important Renaissance monument, the gracefully arcaded summer palace, Rudolf easily surpassed his predecessors as both patron and collector. The imperial court at Prague attracted artists from across the Continent, including the fascinating Italian Giuseppe Arcimboldo. Both Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler enjoyed Rudolf's patronage, while the emperor himself was deeply involved in the hermetic arts. Rudolf even showed an interest in Jewish learning, inviting Prague's most important Cabalist, Rabbi Loew, to an extended interview in the castle. Politically and confessionally, however, tensions were rising to a crisis level by the time Matthias officially ascended the throne.

In his feud with Rudolf, Matthias had supported the Protestants. He disappointed the Czech Estates as king, however, failing to address many of their grievances that had arisen from the growing political power of Bohemia's Catholics. The Estates eventually took matters into their own hands. Although the zealous Catholic, Ferdinand of Styria, had been elected Matthias's successor in 1617, matters quickly changed when, in the following year, leaders of the Estates announced their revolutionary intentions by throwing two imperial officials, along with their servant, from a high window of the Prague castle. Ferdinand II was quickly deposed and replaced by the Calvinist elector palatine, Frederick. As the estates appealed to the broader Protestant world for assistance, the Catholics rallied behind Ferdinand in this dramatic opening chapter of the Thirty Years' War. Bohemia's fate was quickly decided. On 9 November 1620, Catholic forces defeated Frederick's supporters on a chalky upland outside Prague.

The imperial victory at White Mountain, a great turning point in Czech history, afforded Emperor Ferdinand II the opportunity to resolve definitively both the political and religious problems of the stubborn kingdom. First, the elective status of the Bohemian crown was abolished in 1624. Then, in 1627 the Renewed Constitution redistributed power and privilege. The Chancellery was moved to Vienna, and the clergy were officially recognized as a new estate. Before 1620 the Catholic community had constituted approximately ten percent of the population. Now, the nobility and townspeople had the option to either convert or leave the kingdom in exile. Nearly a quarter chose the latter. Bohemia also suffered directly from war with a significant population loss and the destruction of its once thriving network of small towns. Before 1618 there were nearly eight hundred towns in the Bohemian kingdom. After the war there were hardly more than two hundred. Prague itself was occupied in 1631 by the Saxons, while the Swedes overran its left bank in 1648.

Stability slowly returned in the second half of the seventeenth century. The Peace of Westphalia (1648) ensured that Bohemia would remain firmly in the Habsburg orbit, while the suppression of a great peasant revolt in 1680 and the Turkish defeat of 1683 granted Bohemia a degree of security the kingdom had not known for many generations. It was also in this period that Bohemia's traditionally fractious nobility were more thoroughly domesticated. The Czech nobility came to play a substantial role in the governance of the empire. Although Albrecht von Wallenstein was an ambiguous Habsburg ally, there were others who exercised a quieter but important role in the imperial capital. The Lobkowitz, Liechtenstein, Černín, Kinsky, and Dietrichstein families served the Habsburgs faithfully in a variety of functions. Ironically, it was Kaspar Kaplíř, a grandson of one of the Czech rebels executed by Ferdinand in 1621, who would help lead the defense of Vienna some sixty years later against the Ottomans. Religious issues, too, were more effectively resolved in the two generations after Westphalia. A confessional identity that was thoroughly Catholic but authentically Czech was fashioned in this period. The cults of older but neglected saints were revived while newer ones were established. The old pilgrimage route from Prague to Stará Boleslav, the site of the martyrdom of St. Wenceslas, once more became popular, and newer forms of devotion, such as that to the Infant of Prague, quickly found their place in the religious life of the region. The exuberant art and architecture of the Bohemian baroque reflected the new self-confidence of the secular and clerical elites. This period culminated in 1729 with the canonization of the immensely popular John Nepomuk, who in the fourteenth century had supposedly been thrown into the Moldau for refusing to betray the secrets of the confessional.

THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

The death of Emperor Charles VI in 1740 precipitated another crisis in Bohemia as the Bavarian elector, Charles Albert, challenged the claims of Charles's daughter, Maria Theresa. Although he was accepted as king by a narrow majority of the Bohemian nobility, support for the Bavarian was tepid, and after the military victories of the Austrians in Moravia and Bohemia (though not in Silesia), Maria Theresa assumed the reins of government without a major outcry from the nobility. She continued the process of political centralization. The last institutional reminder of an independent Bohemian kingdom was lost when the Bohemian Chancellery was merged with the Austrian in 1749. She also reorganized local government by reducing the Estates' role in its administration. Czechs, however, would continue to exert considerable influence at the imperial court, as best exemplified in the career of the Moravian noble, Prince Kaunitz, who directed Habsburg foreign policy from the 1750s to the 1790s. Economically, the policies of cameralism benefited the kingdom significantly. The Habsburgs focused their efforts on developing important centers of textile production in northern Bohemia and southern Moravia. Financial prosperity would bring its own problems, for Bohemia bore 50 percent of the imperial tax burden, a figure that would increase even more by the 1730s.

Important intellectual and religious reforms came along with these economic changes. After White Mountain, the Jesuits held a virtual monopoly on education. Concerned that doctrinal error might slip back into the region, the Jesuits were cautious and frequently resistant to intellectual innovation. Ironically, reversing the pattern of the seventeenth century, it was the Habsburgs, beginning most notably with Joseph I (ruled 1705–1711), who would push for religious and educational reform within Bohemia. This process of liberalization would culminate with the enlightened policies of Maria Theresa's advisor, Gerhard van Swieten, and Joseph II (co-regent 1765–1780, ruled 1780–1790). Bohemia's first scientific society was founded in the 1770s. A chair of Czech language was established at the university in the 1790s. Most important, however, were the twin edicts of 1781 that abolished serfdom and granted religious toleration. Even the Jews won a series of new privileges. One of the oldest and largest settlements in central Europe, the Jewish community of Prague had experienced a wide range of conditions from Ferdinand I to Maria Theresa. With Joseph II they were allowed to move more freely in Christian society and even attend the university. Although the conservative Francis II (ruled 1792–1835) attempted to rescind many of the reforms of Joseph and his brother Leopold (ruled 1790–1792), the important changes they initiated survived and ultimately transformed Bohemia in the following century.

See also Habsburg Dynasty: Austria; Hussites; Maria Theresa (Holy Roman Empire); Prague, Defenestration of; Reformations in Eastern Europe: Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox; Schmalkaldic War (1546–1547); Thirty Years' War (1618–1648).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Brock, Peter. The Political and Social Doctrines of the Unity of Czech Brethren in the Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Centuries. The Hague, 1957.

Eberhard, Winfried. Konfessionsbildung und Stände in Böhmen. Munich, 1981.

Evans, R. J. W. "The Habsburg Monarchy and Bohemia, 1526–1848." In Conquest and Coalescence: The Shaping of the State in Early Modern Europe. Edited by Mark Greengrass. London, 1991. Most concise overview in English on early modern Bohemia (pp. 134–150).

——. The Making of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1550–1700: An Interpretation. Oxford, 1979.

Hassenpflug-Elzholz, Eila. Böhmen und die böhmischen Stände in der Zeit des beginnenden Zentralismus: Eine Strukturanalyse der böhmischen Adelsnation um die Mitte des 18. Jahrhunderts. Munich, 1982.

Heymann, Frederick. "The Impact of Martin Luther upon Bohemia." Central European History 1 (1968): 107–130.

Kaufmann, Thomas DaCosta. The School of Prague: Painting at the Court of Rudolf II. Chicago, 1988.

Kerner, Robert Joseph. Bohemia in the Eighteenth Century: A Study in Political, Economic, and Social History. New York, 1932.

Macek, Josef. "Bohemia and Moravia." In The Renaissance in National Context, edited by R. Porter and M. Teich, pp. 197–220. Cambridge, U.K., 1992.

Muneles, Otto, ed. The Prague Ghetto in the Renaissance Period. Prague, 1965.

Polišenský, Josef. The Thirty Years' War. London, 1971.

Teich, Mikuláš. "Bohemia: From Darkness into Light." In The Enlightenment in National Context, edited by R. Porter and M. Teich, pp. 141–163. Cambridge, U.K., 1981.

Teich, Mikuláš, ed. Bohemia in History. Cambridge, U.K., 1998. Chapters 5–8 cover the early modern period.

Zdeněk, David. "The Strange Fate of Czech Utraquism." Journal of Ecclesiastical History 46 (1995): 641–668. Important revisionist article on the religious culture of sixteenth-century Bohemia.

HOWARD LOUTHAN