Topic 3 Christianity in Czechia

Topic goal: The aim of this thematic chapter is to introduce the development of Christianity in 19th century Czechia. We will interpret the development of Christian denominations in the context of the National Revival process and the coexistence of Czechs and Germans in the country. The goal of this topic is for the students to understand the influence Christianity had on the development of nationalism for both these nationalities and the role different denominations played in making the national models more open or closed. We will also interpret the role Christian denominations played in the struggle for social and civil liberties and a more just social system. Our interpretation of each subtopic will focus on the elements of continuity and discontinuity in the development of the church and we will apply comparative methods. Students will gain the ability to reflect on the diversity and mutual dependency of the different forms and dynamics of the changes in the historical development of the Church. The course will provide students with a basic overview of the topic and a common point of reference for future study.

Other goals of studying this topic include:

(a) to understand the religious identity in Bohemia and Moravia;

(b) to identify Christianity at the intersection of Czech and German political and social life;

(c) to focus on pre-ecumenical activities in the Czech and German denominational space.

Chapters:

 Chapter 1: The roots of the situation of Christianity in the Czech lands at the beginning of the 19th century

 Chapter 2: Nationalism as part of the history of 19th century Christianity in the Czech lands

 Chapter 3: Nationalism and the Czech and German forms of Christianity

 Chapter 4: Jan Hus and the Hussite movement in the Czech national consciousness during the 19th century

 Chapter 5: The two motives of the development of Czech national identity at the end of the 19th century

 Chapter 6: The Roman Catholic Church

 Chapter 7: The end of the 19th century and Catholic modernism

 Chapter 8: Germans in the Roman Catholic Church in Czechia

 Chapter 9: Lutherans and Reformists

Chapter 1: The roots of the situation of Christianity in the Czech lands at the beginning of the 19th century

For many historians, the long 19th century starts in 1789, with the French Revolution. The statesmen and politicians who were active in it gradually reset the religious and denominational situation in France. We may ask whether, from the point of view of denominational structure, the long 19th century in the Czech lands had not already started in 1781, when Emperor Joseph II issued his Patent of Toleration. Whether we accept this or not, this Patent was a very important cause for the situation Christianity found itself in in the Czech lands at the beginning of the 19th century. The Patent of Toleration is an inseparable part of a longer chain of other patents and decrees, which enacted the religious, political, and cultural goals of Josephinism. It overcame the anti-reformation model where only one denomination was legal. The Roman Catholic Church retained its position as a state, public religion, while the tolerated churches (the Augsburg and Helvetic-Reformed churches) were still marginalized.  In the January of 1782, regulations on how to register with the tolerated denominations were issued. In 1784, an independent reformed church organization was permitted in Bohemia. It was led by a superintendent and divided into three administration districts (Prague, Chrudim, Poděbrady). The organisation was supervised by a consistory in Vienna. The Augsburg church was also granted a system with an independent superintendent and two administration districts – one German and the other Czech. The Viennese Consistory of the Augsburg Confession supervised the organization. In 1781, the Roman Catholic Church judicial system in the country was also significantly limited. The clergy lost its special legal standing in societal life and family law was partially exempted from the Church jurisdiction. In the same year, a new code of procedure ensured equality before the law to all groups of citizens. Despite the Emperor’s and the government’s centralization efforts, the extension of civil rights in the country prepared the ground for a rise in national self-determination within the empire.

During Bach’s neo-absolutism (1851–1859), laws encompassing all spheres of social life in the empire were passed, with the goal to strengthen the centralized state. In 1855, the Danubian Monarchy signed a Concordat with the Roman Papal Curia, which ensured many rights and liberties to the Roman Catholic Church. However, these did not limit the liberties of non-Catholics, which had been enshrined in the law since 1851. The Concordat ensured a number of liberties to the monarchy’s Roman Catholics and limited state supervision over the Church.

After A. Bach’s fall, the religious freedom for the tolerated non-Catholics was ensured by a special Protestant law from 8th April 1861, RGBI. no. 41/1861. It made evangelical churches equal to the Roman Catholic Church in the Austrian part of the monarchy and guaranteed freedom of cult for both the Protestant churches. This law changed the system of denomination tolerance from the enlightened-absolutist state (with the Roman Catholic Church as a state religion) into a system of legal recognition for churches.

In the December of 1867, the Austrian constitution was issued as the Basic Law on the General Rights of Nationals RGBI. no. 142, from 21 December 1867. Its Article 15 states that ‘every Church and religious society recognized by the law has the right to joint public religious practice, arranges and administers its internal affairs autonomously (...) but is like every society subject to the general laws of the land.’  The denominational system was replaced with a more modern and period-appropriate legal model, which saw churches and religious societies recognized by the law as public service corporations under state protection and supervision. Churches and religious societies were obliged to present their organization code and catechism principles to the Ministry for Cultus and Education. When they were recognized by the law, their power only extended to their members.

In 1870, after the Dogmatic Constitution Pastor Aeternus was issued at the First Vatican Council, the monarchy’s government, with Franz Joseph I’s permission, decided to terminate the 1855 Concordat with Rome. The legal reasoning for the termination was that the contracting party underwent a substantial change because of the results of the First Vatican Council, which constituted serious grounds for termination. The relationship between Roman Catholics and the state was to be regulated by new laws. The Pope did not accept the unilateral termination of the Concordat. In the spring of 1874, three new laws entered into force in the empire, to regulate the relationship between the state and churches (no. 50, 51, 68). They remained in force until the end of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918. They placed the Roman Catholic Church under stricter state supervision and created the conditions for the formation of Austro-Catholicism. This complicated legislative development in the monarchy created the legal framework for the development of the national approach to the region’s denominations. 

Chapter 2: Nationalism as part of the history of 19^th century Christianity in Czechia

The term ‘nation’ became common in Europe at the end of the Middle Ages. At first it referred to a group of people connected by birth (not only blood ties) with a specific space in Europe. Examples include the university nations or merchant nations in big European trade centres. Writing and the use of Europe’s national languages as cultural languages became important for the development of European national cultures.

Nations gained more political significance in the 18^th century. The thinkers of early modern nationalism include Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) or Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778). Herder became aware of the relationship between the people (Volk) and the nation (Nation). He understood the basic principles of ethnogenesis and its result – the political emancipation of specific nations – and influenced the Czech National Revival.

The French Revolution helped the establishment of 19^th century nations, mostly by connecting it to the formation of modern society. The revolution had a major impact on political and ideological life in the 19^th century – monarchist, democratic, and totalitarian. That, in turn, influenced European nationalism in this century.

For many decades, a prominent theory on the origin of nationalism was the contrast theory. It saw enlightenment and the revolution that came from it as a rationalist movement which promoted individual civil liberties and strict equality of all nations and races. Based on this theory, 19^th century nationalism was born as a reaction to the revolutionary unification of Europe, which aimed to secure national life with its continuity with the past and political, cultural, and religious traditions of the previous centuries. The proponents of contrast theory pointed out that the different forms of resistance against the French exhibited by Europeans were more influenced by their loyalty to the Church and their ruling dynasties than by abstract nationalist ideals.

However, contrast theory did not consider the fact that modern nationalism was one of the results and consequences of this revolution, which primarily emphasized collective civil rights embodied in the everyday lives of citizens. This inevitably meant they would be embodied in the politics and societies of European nations (which was later proven by the European conquests of Napoleon Bonaparte). Nineteenth century nationalism identified this collective embodiment, introduced into political life by the revolution, with the will of specific nations. 

Despite that, the nationalist principle played no major role at the Congress of Vienna after the Napoleonic wars. However, some of the rulers who congregated there were already aware that nationalism would be a more significant topic in the internal and international politics of European states in the future.

In Bohemia, nationalism first became relevant in the cultural and ideological spheres, but later spread to political issues and the civic activities of local nations – especially Czechs and Germans. For millennia, Czech statehood and culture was built in a territory surrounded by German (Bavaria, Saxony, Austria) or Germanized (Silesia) countries. The Czech nation had a very close connection to the German culture and language. In the first decades of the 19^th century, Czechs lived in a linguistic reality where German was the language of the aristocracy, the educated and the urban elite and their salons. German was spoken in high society, at state offices, in economic institutions and higher culture (theatre), as well as in higher and university education. Czech nationalism first went through a cultural and linguistic stage, and later a political one.

The national conflicts between Czechs and Germans kept growing throughout the 19^th century and formed a set of social and religious relations created by nationalist strife and enmity. The Hapsburg Monarchy, a state that had developed for centuries, gradually started regulating the coexistence of its nations by constitutions and legislation. Its rulers and bureaucracy strived to tame the growing nationalist conflicts in the state and turn them into a bearable rivalry. However, national conflicts brought a number of social crises into the monarchy. The conflict between Germans and Czechs in Bohemia was amongst the most difficult ones, as it was based on deep-rooted nationalist stereotypes.

Most Czechs started seeing their nationalist demands as a way to criticise class privileges and to promote civil rights. Both the right and the left wing used nationalism in the process of the transformation of the absolutist state. The nationalization of politics was connected to the modernization of society in Bohemia. The politicization of religion helped open up the sphere of influence for different denominations. The political influence of these issues grew throughout the 19^th century and mostly impacted party ideologies, which used the nation to realize specific nationalist policies. 

In an empire ruled by a specific dynasty and a specific religion, this also had an effect on the denominational structures. Nationalism became important for the history of Christianity in Bohemia in the 19^th century and it became part of specific denominational discourse. It is impossible to study Christianity in this period and this area without knowing the genesis and exodus of nationalism.

The roots of nationalism and Christianity in 19^th century Bohemia are connected to the country’s past political, social, cultural, and religious development and the transformations of its national and religious identity. While 19^th century Czech society was undergoing the process of secularisation, the separation of society into autonomous religious and secular parts was not finalized. Nationalism as part of 19^th century modernity did not become a tool and manifestation of secularisation, as was the case with the 20^th century anti-religious national secularism. Quite to the contrary, it had a complex effect on the growing influence of religion in society and it helped the creation of new groups and activities in churches. In Christianity, nationalism influenced the catechism, ethics, the approach to mass and sacrament, folk spirituality, the development of church structures, and social work. It must be noted that secularization came about earlier than the social changes in modern Europe. It had travelled alongside Christianity since the Middle Ages, brought about mostly by the tensions between secular and papal power in the West. It is therefore a completely legitimate manifestation of Western Christianity. The French Revolution was a breakthrough for secularisation of Europe, because it partly transferred the power to deal with religious issues from the church to the state. 

In the first half of the 19^th century, the important Roman Catholic reformist theologian, philosopher, and mathematician Bernard Bolzano (1781–1848) formed many important reflections on Czech-German relations. He saw the Czech nation (in the meaning of böhmische Nation) as composed of two linguistic groups: Czechs and Germans. He saw the growing social and cultural division and mutual hatred between them as dangerous for their future societal and denominational coexistence in the Czech lands.

In the 1830s and the early 1840s, the government and the Roman Catholic Church continued in their conservative interventions into the monarchy’s social life – including the life in Bohemia and Moravia. This caused a backlash from liberals and radicals who were aware that these interventions only served to strengthen nationalist movements in the monarchy and could cause a major state crisis. They also realized that the number of people supporting folk nationalism in the empire’s society was growing – which included Bohemia and Moravia. Liberal and radical politicians were becoming more and more attentive to the fact that the government’s attempts to use the authority of the Roman Catholic Church as a shield did not have a strong effect in society. Their concerns were revealed to be true in the revolutionary year of 1848, with its political attempts to change the position of different denominations and churches in the monarchy.

The Czech intellectual and political environment became aware of the revolutionary attempts in 1848–1849 to establish a German national state and saw them as a major change in the political organization of Germans in Europe, which had major effects on their societal position in the Czech lands. The Czech historian and politician František Palacký (1798–1876) rejected the Grossdeutsch unification vision of the Frankfurt national parliament, since he believed it went against the historical relationship between the Czech states and the Empire and the political orientation of Czechs in the Danubian Monarchy. He did so as a historian, whose historiography was focused predominantly on the Czech nation and who supplied his readers with great figures, events, and deeds and presented the friends and foes of the nation’s history to them. His work on Czech history up to the year 1526 appealed to the nation’s morals and to the future development and perspective of the nation.

After the 1848–1849 revolution, political events divided Czechs and Germans in the Czech lands even more. Between 1848–1914, the national problem was reopened time and again. The political situation in the heart of Europe developed new facets after a united German national state was founded. The Czech-German relations in Bohemia and Moravia gradually worsened in the second half of the 19^th century. Czechs constituted roughly two thirds of the population in Bohemia, while Germans were about one third; in Moravia it was three quarters and one quarter respectively (Bohemia 1846: Czechs 2.6 million, Germans 1.7 million; 1900: Czechs 4.0 mil., Germans 2.3 mil.; Moravia 1846: Czechs 1.3 mil., Germans 0.5 mil.; 1900: Czechs 1.7 mil., Germans 0.7 mil.).

At the end of the 1850s, the growing national division between Czechs and Germans was also visible in their participation in the 1859 anniversary celebrations of the German poet Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805). The German celebrations in Bohemia were clearly full of vivid memories the revolutionary years 1848–1849 and turned into a proclamation of German linguistic and cultural unity, while the Czech world felt strong anti-Schiller tensions and honoured the author Josef Jungmann (1773–1847) instead. Jungmann was in turn celebrated as a promoter of Czech linguistic and cultural unity. 

Czechs were gradually catching up with the Germans in the industrialization of the Czech lands and the capital and turned out to be very economically and culturally competitive. Between 1861–1888, the German influence over the governance of Prague declined considerably. In the fall of 1882, the last five German members of the city council resigned from their posts, which contributed to the marginalization of the German face of the city. All this helped fan the national fears of the German population in Prague and the Czech lands.

The growing power of the Czech national democratic movement showed in the 1860s, when Czechs called dozens of meetings as a reaction to the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867. The historian Jaroslav Goll coined their name ‘People’s camps’, connected to the Czech Hussite tradition.

The concerns of the German population in the Czech lands were also exacerbated by the rapid development of Czech associations and magazines after 1860. From this year onwards, an increasingly complex network of Czech associations started forming in predominantly Czech towns. Prominent examples included the Měšťanská beseda (Municipal Association) in Prague, aimed at the urban and intellectual elites, and the Občansko-řemeslnická beseda (Civic Crafts Association), aimed at craftsmen and small businessmen. The biggest and most politically influential Czech national organization was Sokol, an association founded in 1862 and focused on physical education and tourism. In 1871, there were 49 Sokol units in Bohemia and Moravia; in 1897 it was 460. Successful magazines and newspapers included Národní listy (The National Newspaper) and Národní politika (National Politics), as well as the Old Czech magazines Národ (Nation) and Pokrok (Progress) and the German-language Politik.

In 1896, a leading German historian, Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) commented on the significance of Czechs in the cultural development of Europe by calling them the apostles of barbarism. He was refuted by the Czech historian Josef Pekař (1870–1937). At this time, the differences between both nations in the Czech lands had already become insurmountable.

While the Czech and German parts of society were economically, culturally, and religiously disconnected, they never became completely separate.

The sciences and political activities of the 19^th century were becoming more and more influenced by information about the two nations’ specific lives in the context of territorial, linguistic, economic, historical, cultural, and religious issues. Various models of what a nation is were formed and it became obvious that the successive generations of each nation store in their memories the collective consciousness of generational continuity: a shared past and an ideal future with national goals. Primordialism, which became very influential, saw the nation as a community that lasts millennia, maintains an unchangeable basic national identity, and undergoes different stages of national advancement and decline. A nation could be activated and woken by revivalist and nationalist activity. 

On the other side of the spectrum of models was the instrumentalist approach, which connected the nation and its meaning in society with the vibrant social life of the end of the 18^th century and of the 19^th century. This approach saw nationalism as a product of modern thinking; a reflection of societal interests, impacted both by ideologization, but also by civic responsibility; potentially heading toward the nation as a multi-ethnic and multi-religious community.

As nationalism became more differentiated and its different branches intersected, the scholarly understanding of its connection to specific political and ideological forces in society grew, as did the understanding of the historical memory of the different branches. The 19^th century in Central Europe was inseparably tied to the growing faith in science and social progress. People believed progress would overcome any social and religious limits and create opportunities for empowered education for both sexes. The faith in science and its growing influence affected Christianity, fuelled the religious insecurity of many believers, and even weakened the faith of many Christians.

19^th century churches were therefore not immune to national tensions. From the beginning of the century, nationalism gradually became more powerful within them. Churches reacted to the secularisation processes in society by defending traditional values, questioning the power the state had over the church, and attempting to control the social dialogue about church-state relations and the problems of modern society. Nationalism became one of the tools that allowed them take part in the processes of modern development. Nationalism influenced several generations of Czech and German Christians in the form of specific battles for every school and school child; for every civil servant and language-based process in state and legal offices; for the language of religious services; and for the structure of denominational family life. Christianity could not be exempt from the structure of ideological, political, and economic relations in society.

Churches reacted to the formation of civil society by creating more opportunities for layman activity and by fostering more understanding for political organizations. In the second half of the 19^th century, Czech churches became more accepting of political and awareness-raising activities and many organizations focusing on it were established. Churches strived to connect the religious, social, and political dimensions of civic life, in order to maintain their mission, even in the secularizing society and culture of the 19^th century: to be a space of congregation for believers; to mythologize their historical memories; to bring mercy and  justification to them; to interpret truth. Church hierarchy could only guarantee that as long as they retained their authority over the interpretation of religious tradition (from conservative to liberal). 

Nationalism in Czech 19^th century Christianity was connected to the activities of many church and social groups and individuals connected to national movements. These groups saw the nation as a body striving for political self-determination, inseparable from modern society. The Czech national movement underwent complex political development in the 19^th century, with several twists. Nationalism was accompanied with the liberalization and democratization of Czech cultural and political life and impacted the development of the Czech national identity. At the end of the century, it was also affected by the movement for universal suffrage and the women’s and workers’ movements, which also had an effect on the country’s denominational environment. The process of nation formation was therefore inseparable from contemporary Christianity.

Chapter 3: Nationalism and the Czech and German forms of Christianity

As mentioned above, nationalism was not a matter of accident in the 19^th century Czech lands. Czech territory was connected to the social, denominational, and national coexistence of Czechs and Germans. A non-negligible part of the population was made up of Jews. In the second half of the century, these nations, with different degrees of development, gained an ever-stronger political life. Between 1780–1840, the number of people in Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia grew by 60%, up to six million. Bohemia also advanced thanks to industrialization, the development of industry, and agriculture.

Politically, Czechs were one of the many nations within the Hapsburg Monarchy, but economically, Czech society progressed from undeveloped to advanced throughout the 19^th century. Many Czechs abandoned small agricultural businesses and focused on industrial small- and large-scale production, trade, transport, insurance, and banking. Many also helped develop modern forms of agriculture. For most of the century, the economic power of the Czechs lay in growing agricultural, industrial and trade entrepreneurship. As the nation grew stronger, it accumulated capital and Czech enterprises tried to gain influence both within the monarchy and outside of it. At the end of the 19^th century, the progress of Czech society had influenced all its social classes, bringing them closer to the developed states and nations of Europe. Psychologically, Czechs gradually became a modern nation, increasingly hostile towards the Hapsburg Monarchy and the ruling dynasty; they expected a political push for a Czech national state. They were abandoning the German lifestyle and trying to create their own. Their Christianity was also a part of this process.

Czech and German Christianity in the 19^th century were based in differing political and social contexts and connected to the structure of powers in both these nations. Nation-forming processes are connected to territorial social and economic forces and they can take centuries to unfold. They also include the development of national regions, ideals, symbols, and slogans. 19^th century nationalism, liberalism, and socialism considerably sped up this process. The stories of Czech and German Christianity in the country illustrate this as well. The aristocracy in the Czech lands generally underestimated the significance of Czech nationalism in the pre-revolutionary period, with some exceptions (Count Leopold Thun).

 The revolutionary year of 1848 was a milestone in the coexistence of Czechs and Germans in the Czech lands. At first, the fall of Metternich’s absolutism and the prospect of a constitution in the monarchy and the abolishment of censorship prompted attempts (mainly from the German side) to harmonize the political and cultural goals of the two nations. In the end, these were in vain – mainly because of differing political and national interests. In the revolutionary years, the Czech side strongly demanded linguistic and civic equality of both nationalities in the civil services and in schools. This imbued the national differences between Czechs and Germans with passionate hatred.

To conclude: The revolutionary years caused a final separation between the two nations in the Czech lands and brought about the question of the Czech-German coexistence. It affected many of the two nations’ politicians, intellectuals and church figures for years to come. The political activities and ideological growth of both nations in the Czech lands in the late 19^th century were affected by the Greater and Lesser Germany solutions to Central Europe, the different approaches to the Slavic question, and the political models of federalization and centralization of the monarchy.  After the end of Bach’s neo-absolutism (1851–1859), political parties gained power and social legislation was passed, which meant political parties of both nations could start dealing with the Czech-German question. The denominational lives of both nations took place in the context of this social modernization.

Chapter 4: Jan Hus and the Hussite movement in the Czech national consciousness in the 19^th century

      Hus and the Czech reformation had a major impact on the Czech national consciousness in the 19^th century. Even Czech Enlightenment scholars and educated Czech non-Catholics were interested in Hus and the Hussite movement. The former included for example the historian František Martin Pelcl (1734–1801) and theologians Kašpar Royko (1744–1819) and Augustin Zitte (1752–1785). Representatives of the latter are for example the preacher of the Bohemian Bethlehem Church in Berlin Jan Teofil Elsner (1717–1782) and his successors. Czech reformists in this period primarily saw Hus as a martyr and the founder of the Reformation tradition in the country.

     Enlightenment historiography, guided by the ideal of tolerance, also saw Hus as an inspirational figure, with his ethics and his spirituality, and believed that his struggle initiated the emancipation of individual, society, and church on the path to the age of reason.

     Late 18^th century historiography revised the study of Hus, which was in an unsatisfactory state. It refuted myth with source-based facts. As the knowledge of Hus’s life, teachings, and the thoughts of his followers grew, it became a testing ground for the newly formed and rising Czech nationalism and reformist tendencies in the church in the early 19^th century.

     This awakening of the slumbering Hussite movement happened in the same period in which national revivalism grew stronger. However, only František Palacký (1798–1876) managed to turn the Hussite movement into an important part of Czech and European history. Palacký, a historian and politician, built his historical philosophy around the Hussite movement. He saw it as the highest point of Czech national history; the embodiment of Czech democratism, anti-authoritarianism and open-mindedness. His interpretation of the history of the Czech nation was based on his work in archives located both in the Czech lands and abroad, connected to romanticism, and anchored in the Enlightenment.

   This father of Czech historiography depicted the nation’s history as a dramatic construct. Palacký presented contrasting periods of growth and catastrophe; eras that he evaluated positively and negative ones. In it, he centred Hus’s struggle and the following two centuries of Czech reformation as the most important period in the nation’s history, which imbued the entire subsequent development of Czech society with something that determined its course and remained highly influential.

    Palacký’s opinion of Master Jan Hus and the Hussite movement was largely predetermined by his stay in Bratislava in his youth. His work laid the foundations for the immense project of Czech Hussitology. His main contributions were publishing the documents from Paris and Basel on the history of the Council of Basel and his communication with Czech Hussites (1857).

     Palacký also published a selection of documents on the life and teachings of Master Jan Hus (1869), preparing the original sources for further study of Hus’s struggle for a more truthful Church. As a father of Czech historiography, he also collected a selection of extracts from documents and other sources on the history of the Hussite Wars and the rule of George of Poděbrady (1860).

     The third and fourth volume of Palacký’s monumental History are dedicated to Hus and the Hussite movement. They concentrate not only on describing events, but also on characterizing people and providing an innovative and clarifying analysis of the different streams of the Hussite movement.

    When it came to the historical meaning of the Czech reformation, Palacký did not shy away from conflicts with German and Austrian historians. In 1868, he published a German defence of his interpretation of Hus’s struggle and the Hussite movement titled Die Geschichte des Hussitenthums und Profesor Constantin Höfler, reacting to the theories of the Prague University professor Constantin Höfler.

      Palacký’s interpretation of the Hussite movement became an integral part of his political programme and reflected his own life story. It was rooted in the way the two previous Revivalist generations accepted Hus and the Hussite movement, and therefore connected with the path of Czech society in the early 19^th century.  Palacký offered this society an image of Hus and the Hussite movement which helped it in the fight for national emancipation. He provided a rich historical panorama, which gave his contemporaries an opportunity to understand how Hussite ideologies developed from their very beginnings, to their climax and their maturity. He presented the Hussite movement in three more or less equal stages: the pre-Hussite time which culminated in the figure of Hus; the Hussite revolution itself; and then the maturing of the movement under the rule of George of Poděbrady. This division of the Hussite movement also became typical for his successors and their work.

     Since Palacký was based in the Enlightenment and romanticism, he strived to find the deepest roots of the movement – though they later turned out to be largely made up. He believed the Hussite movement to be a huge, predominantly Czech national movement, based on the roots of eternal Slavic democratism; it was aimed against feudalism, which was genetically tied to Germanism; and it anticipated the great reformations of Europe and the ideals of modern revolutions.

     Palacký’s concept of history became an important part of the Czech political and national programme in 1848 and it was key for the work of his successors, such as Václav Vladivoj Tomek (1818–1905). He initiated a positivist phase in Czech historiography.

     After Palacký’s phase of modern Czech Hussitology, a phase represented by V. V. Tomek, Antonín Gindely (1829–1892), Josef Kalousek (1838–1915) and others followed This historiography represented by Tomek and Gindely was connected to contemporary European positivism, because it also emphasised a truthful representation of facts, a broad and innovative spectrum of sources, a rejection of metaphysical constructions’, and a preference to analytical work over the synthetic. 

  V. V. Tomek was the first professor of Austrian history at the Faculty of Arts of the Charles-Ferdinand University and from 1882 he also became the first rector of its Czech part. He was also inseparably tied to Czech Hussitologic scholarship. The cornerstones of his interpretation of Hus and the Hussite movement were laid even before he became a university professor. Like Palacký, he also believed the Hussite movement to be one of the greatest periods in Czech history – how the Czech nation truly impacted the history of Europe. He started studying it in 1835 and two years later, he published his first article ‘Bratrstva táborského zkáza’ (The Destruction of the Tábor Brotherhood) in the Květy (Blossoms) journal.

     This article was more of a popular history work, but later the young historian learned more about the works of František Palacký and many important original sources and went on to publish an excerpt from the Czech translation of Vavřinec z Březové’s chronicle in the Czech Museum’s journal. In 1848, he followed this by publishing an overview of Czech Utraquism from 1415 until after the Battle of White Mountain, once again in the Czech Museum’s journal. He also focused on Hus and the Hussite movement in works that spanned longer periods of Czech history. In 1842 it was his Krátký všeobecný dějepis (A Short General History); in 1843 he published Děje země české (Events of the Czech Lands). In these publications, he claimed that Hus’s fight and the Hussite movement itself stemmed from the moral decay of the contemporary Church. He also made a clear distinction between the people’s part of the movement and its leaders – especially Jan Žižka, whom he sets above all others, especially the Tábor camp, towards which Tomek is quite distant.

     After Hus, Tomek sees Žižka as the main figure of the Hussite movement. He interprets Žižka as a state-forming defendant of a constructive political order – whereas Palacký describes Žižka as the fanatical force of a young revolution.

     Tomek’s interpretation of Žižka can shed some light on the underlying reasons of his split with Palacký and his support towards the pro-government part of Czech society after 1848. Tomek’s defence of Žižka’s constructive state-forming traits found a concrete shape in the political context of the historian’s life. Tomek’s conservative political opinions in the period of Bach’s neo-absolutism helped him achieve his position as a professor of Austrian history at the Charles-Ferdinand University. 

     Žižka as a constructive symbol of the Hussite period was his answer to the development of Czech society in the 1860s and 70s. He was an example of someone whose thorough political and military work aimed to build the Czech national community against the strong and dynamic German pressure.

     While Czech society accepted Palacký’s interpretation of the Hussite movement, which emphasized the People’s Camps as a representation of Old Czech democratism, it rejected his depiction of Žižka. Instead, it preferred Tomek’s image of Žižka which was more suitable for the national emancipation work.

     Tomek only accepted Hus insofar as he could connect him to the reformatory (not reformative) potential of medieval Catholicism. Tomek favoured Žižka, George of Poděbrady, and Jan of Rokycany because they had statesman-like profiles and they harnessed the revolutionary dynamic in the land, turning it into a calmer development. The Hussite movement as such was often seen as negative by Tomek; as a movement which led the religious life in Czech church and society into decline.

     Other former 19^th century Czech historians of the Hussite movement include the first biographer of Palacký Josef Kalousek (1838–1915). He made his mark in the history of the Czech study of Hus and the Hussite movement in 1881, with his study O historii kalicha v dobách předhusitských (On the History of the Chalice in Pre-Hussite Times). In it, he was critical towards the Russian Slavophiles’ overly conclusive theories on the direct relation between the Hussite movement’s and the Cyril and Methodius tradition’s interpretations of the chalice. He provided evidence documenting that the Hussite communion under both kinds is not automatically equal to similar orthodox practices. As a liberal Catholic, Kalousek regretted that the cultural and spiritual unity of the medieval Church and society had been broken. He connected the major spiritual and political crisis of the late medieval Church and society with the struggle of the two denominations, which threatened to destroy the great cultural and spiritual legacy of the past. Like Tomek, he also believed that Hus’s secession and the following religious movement was negative in many ways. He did not conduct any broad political, spiritual, and cultural analyses of late medieval Europe, with its many social and religious crises and he therefore reduced Hus’s struggle against the traditional church to a conflict between different theological interpretations of the church and church-state relations.

     Similarly to Tomek, Kalousek also believed that White Mountain was a direct consequence of the Czech reformation and its rise. He interpreted the denominational battles of contemporary Christianity through his lenses as a liberal thinker, who saw faith as an example of individual religious convictions, rather than public political power.

    Both Tomek’s and Kalousek’s views on the conflict between the traditional church and the Czech reformation grew quite far apart from the views of their teacher František Palacký. The gradual shift of Kalousek’s view on the relations between the traditional church and the reformation were also inspired by the rise and development of contemporary Czech liberalism.

     In 1869 and 1902, J. Kalousek repeatedly called for a revision of Hus’s trial and wanted to include even the Roman Catholic Church. In 1869, this possibly also included the Prague Archbishop of the time, Friedrich Joseph Prince zu Schwarzenberg. However, the atmosphere of the time was focused on other political problems and overshadowed Kalousek’s initiatives. Despite that, a part of the 1870s and ‘80s Czech urban society accepted many of Tomek’s ideas about Hus and the Hussite movement. 

     Tomek’s and Kalousek’s work weakened the image of the great struggle led by Hus and the Hussite movement, as depicted by Palacký, and reduced it to a mundane political conflict in society and between the churches and nations of Bohemia and Moravia.

     At the end of the 19^th century, Professor Václav Novotný (1869–1932) became another influential historian in Czech Hussitology.  He centred his scholarly work around the Hussite movement and early Czech history. At university, he studied under Jaroslav Goll (1846–1929) and V. V. Tomek and his precision and emphasis on sober facts represent a type of historical study that developed from the 18^th century Enlightenment historiography towards positivism.

     In 1891, Novotný became Tomek’s assistant in his search for sources while Tomek was writing his life’s work Dějepis města Prahy (History of the City of Prague). In 1898 he was granted the degree of Docent of Czech History. He only started lecturing at the university in 1899, because he spent ten months on a scholarship, studying at the Vatican archives in Rome.

     The first part of Novotný’s work as a Hussitologist was finished after he published his Listy Husovy (Hus’s Documents) in the Royal Bohemian Society of Sciences in 1898. He then based his subsequent research and publication activities on this work for more than the next three decades. His work on Hus and the Hussite movement always avoided shortcuts in the effort to understand Hus’s life and work. Novotný saw Hus as an important Czech and European intellectual and politician; a figure who significantly contributed to the political, scientific, national, and spiritual formation of Europe, just like John Wycliffe, Martin Luther, and Jean Calvin.

Chapter 5: The two motives of the development of Czech national identity at the end of the 19^th century

    The formation of the Czech national identity was also influenced by the deepening relations between the Czech lands and France in the late 19^th century. In 1889, the Alliance Française mapped all translations from French to Czech, which clearly showed that French culture had influenced the Czech lands. Czech Francophiles expected that France would support the national movement and function as a counterweight for the strong German influence on politics, culture, and the economy in the country. At the turn of the century, a new generation of Francophiles came to the table.

     The development of the Czech national identity at the end of the 19^th century was also inspired by the idea of university extensions, quite popular in Europe. From 1894, professors T. G. Masaryk, O. Hostinský and F. Drtina promoted it at the university in Prague.  They shared their ideals with Czech society in the journal Naše doba (Our Time). František Drtina mainly studied philosophy and pedagogy and in 1894 he had a long exposé in the first volume of Naše doba about university extensions at English universities. He appealed on Czech scientific institutions, the National Museum, the Czech Academy of Science and Art, and most importantly the Prague university to start organising extensions.

     The university extension programme entered into force in 1898 after the ministry in Vienna passed the statutes of the University Committee for Organizing Popular Lectures. The courses started on 15^th April 1899. The lecture plan was organized by a special committee, which included scholars from many academic fields.

     The long 19^th century only ended with the First World War. Before its start, the university extensions had become an inherent part of the Czech national awareness-raising campaign. The goal of the lectures was to popularize the research of Prague university teachers in broader Czech society. The lectures therefore took place in the evening, both as individual talks and as cycles. Lists of lectures were always available beforehand in selected printed media. At first, only scholars, professors, and docents of the university in Prague led the lectures, but soon the activity was extended outside of Prague. In the beginning of the 20^th century, the professors and docents of the polytechnic colleges in Prague and Brno joined in, again with the aim to popularize their fields. One of the results of this broadly targeted activity was that it managed to address Czech denominations.

     It must also be said that the Deutsche Universität Prag and German polytechnic colleges in Prague and Brno also engaged in rich extension activities at the end of the 19^th century, as part of the programme of building the German national identity. These activities were not limited to Prague, but also took place in Bohemian and Moravian regions with German-speaking populations. The most important towns that hosted lectures outside of Prague and Brno included Liberec (Reichenberg), Jablonec nad Nisou (Gablonz an der Neiße), Opava (Troppau) and others.

Chapter 6: The Roman Catholic Church

The Czech denominational environment was traditionally dominated by the Roman Catholic Church, which was not united, but instead divided along national lines, to Czech and German branches, and subjected to regional religious specificities and changes over time. Different groups of Christians in the Church interpreted its teachings and its intersections with the political and social spheres of church life and expressed their political opinions on the religious reality of the lives of Czechs or Germans in the country. This cemented the ideological, liturgic, and sacral foundations of the differences in the lives of these groups. Both nations influenced each other in this one church, which presented a dynamic social environment. They each presented a specific religious, cultural and social dynamic to the outside and other national groups could then label it as successful or unsuccessful; positive or negative. This label was thus one of the results of the national interaction and conflicts between Czechs and Germans in Roman Catholic Christianity in the Czech lands.

Czech historical tradition: From the Middle Ages, Czechs worshipped St. Wenceslas and other Czech saints.  They saw St. Wenceslas as their patron and eternal political ruler. After the Battle of White Mountain, he also became the patron saint of the nation, its language, and its historical memory. Czech 17^th and 18^th century nationalism was influenced by the cult of St. Wenceslas. This Christianity saw national saints as a guarantee of God’s favour for the nation in times of hardship. As the 19^th century began, there was a marked change. In the process of secularisation, Czechs started paying respect not to the Czech heaven with its saints, but also the nation. National historical memory and tradition also became subject to this new perspective. Mainly thanks to writers and journalists, they started emphasizing the Hussite tradition and the rejection of the post-White Mountain period for being a time of national decline. Great figures of Czech history were respected and almost uncritically worshipped.

Society and churches also became more inclined toward the Hussite tradition after the Napoleonic Wars, which also affected Central Europe. The majority of Czechs supported the ruling dynasty and its wars. At that time, Vienna supported the discourse that emphasized Hus and Žižka as warriors, since it was seen as a manifestation of Czech national mobilization and determination to fight for the monarchy. Figures including the Premonstratensian author and scholar Jan Bohumír Dlabač (1758–1820) and priest and poet Antonín J. Puchmajer (1769–1820) found a way to celebrate the Hussite fighting spirit and Jan Žižka as a defender from foreign aggression in the Catholic environment – although they never forgot to mention the fallacy of the Utraquist theology. This laid the foundations for the growing influence of the Hussite tradition in pre-1848 Czech society. In that revolutionary year, this tradition tied into the dynamics of the national struggle and became very influential in society and the church for decades to come. In 1850–1851 the third, Hussite volume of František Palacký’s History was published, and the Hussite movement turned into a symbol of the struggle for Czech national emancipation within the monarchy. In the post-revolutionary monarchy (Bach’s neo-absolutism), the government rejected this interpretation of the Hussite tradition, because it was radically nationalist and potentially revolutionary. After the fall of A. Bach and the onset of dualism in the monarchy at the end of the 1860s (1868), many major Czech political and citizens’ meetings took place at Hussite memorial sites. It became clear that the Hussite tradition as the cornerstone of Czech history (Palacký) would become the main line of thinking in Czech national emancipation and nationalism. The 2^nd half of the 19^th century in the Czech lands was connected with a strong stereotype of the Hapsburgs as oppressors of the Czech national emancipation effort. 

This development also changed the perception and depiction of Catholic priests. The liturgic, preaching, sacral, and pastoral sphere of their activity receded into the background and emphasis was put mainly on their work as shepherds and educators of the nation. Czech literature and journalism coined the typical image of a patriotic revivalist priest. At first, the future poet and journalist Karel Havlíček Borovský (1821–1856) also decided to pursue this career and shortly studied theology.

While the majority of Czechs, including Czech intellectuals remained Catholic, formalized faith became an important part of contemporary religious life. Society also in part became critical towards the Catholic Church, its priests, monks, and its history (K. H. Borovský, later Josef S. Machar (1864–1942)) The criticism was directed against the clericalism of the institution, rather than its theology and ecclesiology and referred to some parts of the Czech history, especially the Hussite tradition. In the last decades of the 19^th century, Czech journalism found more and more voices which underestimated the importance of the clergy in the national emancipation process. These contributed to the genesis and exodus of political Catholicism and its attempts to influence the intellectuals of the nation and industrial and agricultural workers.

Catholic authors, journalists, and politicians reacted to this by trying to find ways to strengthen the authority of Catholicism in society. They warned of the national liberal modernization and believed it would strip the nation of some of its Christian roots and tradition. Many Catholic intellectuals actively strived to defend, revive and strengthen this tradition in society.

     In the late 19^th century, Central and Eastern Europe increasingly became the ground where Slavic national life unfolded. From the Enlightenment onwards, the dynamic potential of nationalist ideals became unquestionable, even in Slavic churches.  In Bohemia and Moravia, some Roman Catholic theologians and bishops tried to connect the progress of Czech nationalism with the Cyril and Methodius tradition and ideals of Slavic (Catholic) solidarity.

     Examples of this effort in the second half of the 19^th century include not only the rise of Catholic associations, but also Czech Roman Catholic magazines. For example, the Prague volumes of sermons from the Kazatelé slovanští (Slavic Preachers) collection, published by the provost of Vyšehrad Václav Štulec (1814–1887) and the priest Antonín Mužík (+1877), clearly allude to nationalism and the European nature of Slavs in the context of contemporary Catholic Cyril and Methodius solidarity.

     In the late 19^th century, the Czech Roman Catholic environment attempted to find new approaches to the Central European Cyril and Methodius tradition, as illustrated by the Vlasť (Homeland) journal published by Tomáš Škrdlo (1853–1913) or the Prague magazine Method. Method was focused on Christian art and published by Ferdinand J. Lehner (1837–1914) from 1875 onwards. Even the conservative Vlasť gradually made space for the theological and artistic creativity of Slavic nations, especially in its literary section. Moderate sermons celebrating Cyril and Methodius Day were regularly published in the Czechoslovak clergy journal Rádce duchovní (Spiritual Advisor), published by the Vyšehrad canon Josef Burian (1854–1922), as well as the abovementioned Kazatelé slovanští.

     In general, these revivalist programmes in the church did not strive for denominational confrontation with non-Catholics, but preferred determined pastoral, scholarly, and social work in Czech society. It aimed to focus the Christian life of clergymen and laymen primarily on Christ and the Holy Trinity, the Eucharist, mass, and sacraments. It emphasised nationalism connected with Czech history. The omnipresent nationalist and apologetic argumentation of the publisher of these magazines was connected with the development of political Catholicism in late 19^th century Bohemia and Moravia.

 Chapter 7: The end of the 19^th century and Catholic modernism

    In the beginning of the 20^th century, Freethought became an important force in the secularisation process in Bohemia and Europe. Between the world wars, it disrupted the connection between the church institutions and their standards and the traditional forms of Christianity. The reaction of churches to its activities varied. The Roman Catholic Church generally rejected it, while the Evangelical environment was divided between rejection and acceptance.

     In Bohemia, the conditions for the establishment of an institutional movement of the so-called Freethinkers were formed at the end of the 19^th century. In 1904, the movement was institutionalized – first in the Augustin Smetana association and then in the Czech part of the international organization of citizens without creed, Freethought. In 1907, Prague hosted the organization’s international congress.

     Freethought was never a fully ideologically unified organization. In the Czech environment, it included a number of different streams and diverse figures (František Krejčí (1858–1934), František Loskot (1870–1932), Otakar Kunstovný (1884–1945) etc.). For some members, it became a gateway into the radical left, radical nationalism, or atheism, while for others it opened the doors to non-denominational religiosity. In the Czech lands, it published a number of magazines, including Volná myšlenka (Freethought), Havlíček, Volná škola (Free School), etc.

      At the end of the 19^th century, Catholic modernists from the Bohemian and Moravian Roman Catholic Church began to focus on Christian revivalism. In the context of Roman Catholic theology in the Czech lands, their work presented a serious appeal to their denomination, which developed in modern Czech society and in the context of its national constants and variables.

   The work of Catholic modernists in the Czech lands was influenced by a very specific denominational and political context, which formed their nationalism, beyond the scope of contemporary national self-awareness.

     In the 19^th century, nation became one of the key concepts of historiography. Based on that, many historians tried to confront the nation with its great moments, figures, and deeds. Historiography became a matter of national experience and Christians of many denominations took part in it. The father of modern Czech historiography František Palacký saw the rise of national consciousness as a counterweight to the modern European scholarship. 

     As suggested above, 1848 was a major milestone for Czech nationalism. In this year, B. Bolzano’s student František S. Náhlovský (1807–1853) issued a reformist programme in the Roman Catholic Church, as a reaction to the changing perception of national issues and denominations.  Influenced by Náhlovský, Catholic modernism also took this change into account in its historical worldview focused on salvation. Apart from the abovementioned František Loskot, this movement was not represented by any truly significant historians who would be able to document and interpret the impulses of Palacký and his followers. At first, this great task was taken up by artists and theologians (Karel Dostál-Lutinov (1871–1923), Ludvík Sigismund Bouška (1867–1942) and others), not always for the better.

     The main Czech Catholic modernist focused on history was ThDr. PhDr. František Loskot (1870–1932). His life and work were markedly influenced by his understanding of Czech and European reformation. After he studied theology in Hradec Králové and Berlin, he continued on to history and philosophy at the Charles University Faculty of Arts, studying under J. Goll, J. Kalousek, V. Novotný, J. Pekař, J. Šusta, F. Drtina, and T. G. Masaryk. In 1909, J. Kalousek and J. Pekař accepted his thesis topic focused on Konrád Waldhauser. After his successful thesis defence and the rigorosum examination, he was awarded the degree of Doctor of Philosophy on 23 June 1911. He then studied in Paris from November 1911 until March 1912, visiting Alfred Loisy’s (1857–1940) lectures at the Collège de France. He also met Loisy (at that time he had already gained some distance from the Roman Catholic Church) for personal discussions on specific historical and theological topics.

     Loskot was the only Czech Catholic modernist to truly realize that historiography played an important national and political role in the development of Czech society in the 19^th century. He knew he was living his Christian life in a specific place, in the history of a specific nation. Czech history became a challenge for him and to answer it, he used his theological and philosophical education. He believed in the need to understand the changing position of the Church in history, but also, in a narrower sense, our own place in it. The development of Czech and European historiography in the 19^th and early 20^th century also influenced his understanding of Czech history. He especially drew from the works of František Palacký and his successors.  Loskot’s works on the predecessor of the Czech Reformation reflected on topics which were part of Palacký’s legacy, as well as the ‘school’ of Professor Jaroslav Goll and many of his students. His writings on the predecessors of Hus aimed to follow the ideal model of historical monographs of late 19^th century historiography. He was also influenced by his reformist work as a Catholic modernist in the church and inspired by some historians from Goll’s school. In his subsequent work as a journalist and scholar, Loskot also provided an historical perspective for a number of topics relevant for Catholic modernists in the church. He published his work on Hus’s predecessors through the Freethought publishing house, as he was an active Freethinker for many years and the movement helped him in some ways. Late in his life, during the Great Depression, Loskot drifted towards the radical left. Like many other Czech inter-war intellectuals, he expected it to provide more humane solutions to the social and societal problems of his time.

      Loskot and other Catholic modernists did not want human freedom to be directed toward the shallow, violent destruction of traditional Christianity. They believed that Catholic reformism was a great challenge for the institution of the Church, which lived and worked in modern society. They searched for new, functional ways for the Church to work, and new norms of service and order. This showed they, as priests, individuals, and often also scholars strived for constructive Christian freedom and mature citizenship in the Kingdom of God.

     Catholic modernists thought that Czech society could became one of the most secular societies in Europe and so they focused on the position of religion in Czech society at the end of the 19^th century. They wanted to document the change in the relationship Czech society had to mainly Roman Catholic Christianity, and the sources and processes of this change – though they often did so in an imperfect manner.

     In the Czech lands, Catholic modernism was a theologically, culturally, spiritually, and politically divided ideological current, which developed at an intersection with contemporary philosophy and historical research based on politics, which influenced a number of figures in the Church and beyond it, albeit with different intensity and at different times. It imbued the civic nationalism of many Czech Roman Catholics with apologetic features. They saw modernism as a specific contemporary expression of the constant reformative movement in the Roman Catholic Church. Nationalism, then, was an inherent part of the realization of this movement and it was supposed to be capable of spiritual, cultural, and political dialogue and multicultural and multireligious understanding. Their reformist work in the church was drastically limited in 1907, when the anti-modernist encyclical Pascendi Dominici gregis by Pope Pius X (1903–1914) was published.

     On 08 January 1920, the Czechoslovak Hussite Church was founded, reflecting the crisis of Roman Catholicism and the efforts to reform Czech Christianity in the 19^th century and to form the religiosity in inter-war Czechoslovak society. It developed as part of the radical wing of the Czechoslovak Catholic Clergy Union and it elaborated on some parts of its radical modernist and revivalist programme. Its foundation was fuelled not only by reformist theological and national features and the broadening secularisation process affecting Czech Catholic clergy and laymen, but also most importantly by the establishment of the new Czechoslovak state in 1918 as part of the new political order of Central Europe. The circumstances in which it was founded affected the church’s theology, social orientation, and orders.

     In January 1920, two former Czech university historians Josef Šusta (1874–1945) and Josef Pekař (1870–1937) commented on the foundation of this church in influential Czech media.  On the 11^th of January, Professor Šusta published his article ‘Nová církev’ (New Church) in the magazine Venkov (The Country), while Professor Pekař published his ‘O nové Církvi československé’ (On the New Czechoslovak Church) in Národní politika (National Politics). Both these historians believed that post-war political Catholicism and the Roman Catholic Church had an important place in contemporary Czechoslovak political and religious life. Neither of them thought that the establishment of the Czechoslovak Hussite Church was a very good step. In the following years, their reservations towards this church and its representatives and theologians continued.

     However, not all leading Czech historians were as harsh toward the Czechoslovak Hussite Church. The abovementioned Hussitologist, Professor Václav Novotný was more open to it, as illustrated by his lecture Hus a my (Hus and We), which was part of the ceremonial commemoration of Jan Hus at the Old Town Hall on 05 July 1923. He later allowed the church to publish it in its journal Český Zápas (Czech Struggle) and as a separate brochure.

Chapter 8: Germans in the Roman Catholic Church in Czechia

After a significant Catholic Enlightenment period, the early 19^th century brought conservative state absolutism and Church restoration (from Pope Leo XII to Pius IX). Despite that, Enlightenment had born its fruit in the pre-1848 Czech lands in the form of Bolzanism, which was well accepted by some Czech and German clergymen, laymen, and bishops. In 1848, it even brought a programme of Roman Catholic Church reform influenced by Bernard Bolzano’s thoughts [František Náhlovský (1807–1853)]. Enlightened local patriotism which connected Czechs and Germans was gradually limited, as clergy and laymen became more polarized along nationalist lines, and some of them also more hostile towards Bach’s centralist neo-absolutism in Vienna.

In 1849, the first Episcopal Conference of Austria took the side of neo-absolutism and rejected nationalism in the monarchy as a destructive force. That prepared the way for the Concordat between Vienna and Rome in 1855. While the Archbishop of Prague, Cardinal Friedrich Schwarzenberg (1850–1885) attempted restoration in his archdiocese, his efforts were in vain (in the context of decades of growing anti-clerical liberalism, combined with narrow-minded conservatism within the Church). Many Catholics also distanced themselves from the Church after the First Vatican Council (1870). In Northern Bohemia, it contributed to the expansion of the Old Catholic Church with a centre in Varnsdorf. Many German Roman Catholics also crossed over to atheism and pan-German nationalism. The Church lost many middle-class intellectuals, especially teachers and secondary school professors. The numbers of its believers in the rural environment also declined and so did its influence over part of society. At the same time, fewer secondary school students were becoming interested in careers in the Church. The situation in the Roman Catholic Church in the Czech lands also worsened because nationalist conflicts between its believers became more frequent.

In 1882, the formerly nationally unified university in Prague was divided into a Czech and a German part.  In 1891, the university’s theological faculty was divided as well. This made the education of priests nationality-based and the Roman Catholic Church in the Czech lands stopped being a space for dialogue of both nations, even in this sphere of social and church life.

Until 1848, Czech-German associations were active in the Roman Catholic Church, but after the revolutionary period they became divided based on nationality. By organizing these associations, the Church tried to offset the anti-clerical atmosphere in society. The People’s Association Movement (Volksbundbewegung) with its journeyman associations (Kolpingsvereine) became quite important. Its goal was to provide religious, social, political, and professional education to its members and focused also on the young generation. The division of the university also affected the development of Czech and German Catholic student associations. In 1885, the German Catholic student union Ferdinandea was founded. At the end of the 19^th century, a German Catholic teachers’ association in Austria was established as well. The Catholic German physical education movement was also growing. We must also mention German civic associations in the Czech lands, which strived to build historical memory and form school education. In 1862, the Association for German History in the Czech Lands was founded, followed by the German Education Association in 1880.

In the last decades of the 19^th century, the Bohemian and Moravian German Roman Catholic lower and middle classes started encountering the Christian social movement ideals, which emphasized a connection between social and national emancipation and the Roman Catholic Church. In Austria, this happened later than in Germany. In the Hapsburg Monarchy, this movement was mainly organized by the social reformer, politician, and journalists Karl von Vogelsang (1818–1890), who promoted the ideas of class-based social structure, which would ensure a stable social position to the middle class. As a Christian critic of capitalism, he rejected boundless political and economic liberalism and strived to reach a peaceful social settlement between employers and employees, pursuing legislative changes. He published his views in a number of magazines – especially in the Vaterland journal, which he founded. In Bohemia, his political programme influenced German Roman Catholic aristocrats, the clergy, the middle class, and some urban and agricultural workers. His views were spread even further by the North Bohemian priest and journalist Ambros Opitz (1846–1907, from Varnsdorf), who opposed liberalism, Marxism, and the Away from Rome movement, as well as the moral theologian Franz Schindler (1847–1922).

Vogelsang’s younger political colleagues and followers included for example Karl Lueger (1844–1910). They promoted changes to the country’s social legislation and limits to unrestrained limited and shaped Christian social party politics at the end of the 19^th century. The Christian Social Party (Christlichsoziale Partei) led by Lueger found its supporters in Bohemia and Moravia. This movement received a strong impulse in the form of the socially influential 1891 encyclical Rerum novarum by Leo XIII.  The first Christian social association was founded in Vienna in 1892, thanks to Leopold Kunschak (1871–1953), first a saddler and later a journalist and politician, and originally a German from Moravia. This example was later taken up by emerging associations in Bohemia. In 1897, A. Opits founded the Christian Social Association for German Bohemia (Christlichsozialer Verband für Deutschböhmen) in Northern Bohemia.

The Old Catholic Church: The Old Catholic Church was founded in the Hapsburg Monarchy by a government decree from 8 October 1877, which recognized its religious congregations in Varnsdorf, Vienna, and Ried. The Prague congregation was only founded by the Austrian Old Catholic synod in 1900, as a filial congregation for Bohemia. It became a founding point for the future Bohemian Old Catholic Church. In Northern Bohemia, Varnsdorf was the main meeting place for mainly German Old Catholics. The church’s clergy and laymen followed the tradition of the reformist Enlightenment Catholicism connected to the episcopal seminary in Litoměřice. The first Varnsdorf Old Catholic priest Anton Nittel (1826–1907) studied at secondary school under the dean of Česká Lípa Anton Krombholz (1790–1869), a follower of B. Bolzano.

Chapter 9: Lutherans and Reformists

After Protestants became tolerated (1781), the Lutheran church had 19 congregations in 1784 – 9 in Bohemia, 10 in Moravia. The Reformed church had 54 congregations – 36 in Bohemia, 18 in Moravia. Each had about 70,000 believers and they were part of the Austrian Lutheran and Reformed churches, respectively. The highest supervisory body in charge of these churches was the Viennese High Council for Churches, appointed by the Emperor. While German Protestants in the Czech lands were mainly Lutheran, the Czechs were predominantly Reformists. 

German Reformed congregations were quite scarce. The German Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession was more significant in Western Bohemia around the town of Aš. In other Czech regions, it mostly represented around 4-5% of the population. At the end of the 19^th century, it had almost 150 parishes, filial congregations, and centres for service. In the late 19^th century, the movement Away from Rome helped bring believers into this church, as it motivated believers to leave the Roman Catholic Church.

Czech evangelical churches, led by first and second-generation pastors, underwent a peaceful development until 1848. There were more or less no major conflicts between Lutheran and Reformed congregations. From 1813, the grammar school in Těšín (founded in 1810 as a Latin school) played a part in educating future clergymen of both nationalities from both denominations. Theology was also taught at Hungarian and German theological institutes (the university of Jena), which influenced a number of evangelical priests, teachers, and authors, most importantly Jan Blahoslav Benedikti (1796–1847), Jan Kollár (1793–1852), and Pavel Josef Šafařík (1795–1861). Their studies in Germany allowed them to understand the development and options of local nationalism and influenced their thinking. In 1821, an evangelical theological institute opened in Vienna and most students of evangelical theology from the Czech lands started going there instead. The revolutionary period of 1848 brought Protestant demands for equal rights with Roman Catholics, autonomy of their church structures, and a merger of both churches established by the Tolerance Patent. Protestants became more distrustful towards the hierarchical, politically restorationist, and pro-Hapsburg policy of Roman Catholic elites in the monarchy, and more interested in reformist Bolzanism. In 1868–1869, there was an unsuccessful attempt to connect both the abovementioned denominations. This was a time when they were developing dynamically, as nationalist politics were on the rise in the Czech lands after the Austro-Hungarian Compromise. In 1880, the 260,000 Lutherans in the western part of the monarchy included 32,000 Czechs, while the 120,000 Reformists comprised of 109,000 Czechs.

Czech evangelical churches also had to deal with a rise of nationalism throughout the century, especially after the Protestant Patent of 1861. This also influenced the life of individual congregations and the struggle for Protestant schooling. Some reactions then tried to limit the narrowly defined political and social Czech nationalism. For example, Jan Karafiát (1846–1929), a Czech Reformist priest, published his brochure on Master Jan Hus in 1872, speaking out against the nationalist understanding of the reformer’s life and work, and presenting him as a breakthrough theologian instead. He also reviewed the Biblical translations of the Unity of the Brethren. Reformed evangelicals gradually grew distant from the religious indifference of Young Czech liberalism, and some Lutheran theologians, such as Karel E. Lány (1838–1903), followed, supporting Old Czechs instead.

The School Law of May 1868 significantly changed school-church relations and limited the Protestant churches’ efforts to establish their own schools. The highest level of supervision and management of all schooling was transferred to the state and its institutions. Both the tolerated churches also issued new agendas – Reformists in 1877 and Lutherans in 1889 – and catechisms, and strived to rethink their church structures.

Both churches developed their ecumenical relations in Europe; Reformists formed connections with Swiss and Scottish Calvinists, while Lutherans focused on German Lutheran churches. They strengthened their exegetic Biblical and theological work in connection to contemporary theological currents. They connected Czech and European ideological influences and theologians, historians, clergymen, and laymen of both churches became more capable to link their development after 1781 to the Czech Reformation history of the 15th and 16th centuries. While Jan Karafiát and many of his peers prioritized the normative sources of European reformation over the ideological value of Czech reformation, the following generation managed to appreciate Czech reformation better. They did so in a situation when Czech Protestantism became more strongly connected with nationalism, felt an urgent need to limit its connection to Czech political liberalism, and welcomed Masaryk’s political party. At the end of the Hapsburg period, historian Ferdinand Hrejsa (1867–1953) gave this new struggle an ideological form, by understanding Confessio Bohemica (1575) as the ideological culmination of Czech reformation. This also prepared the ground for the unification of both Tolerance-based churches in the December of 1918.

Conclusion:

     Years ago, Professor Amedeo Molnár described the nature of the church as a confessional community (O České konfesi z roku 1575. Křesťanská revue, no. 40 2-1973, p. 34.) Churches always gave the best testimony of themselves when they were threatened by a specific danger, internal or external. In the 19^th century, European nations’ nationalism influenced the religiosity of European society in its confessional communities and its manifestations of church existence.

     The 19^th century was the so-called long century; a period in European history, which was completely transformed in 1914–1918, into a wholly different period of the continent’s development. It was carried by the accelerating process of social transformation, which impacted European denominations. It caused a rise of human intellectual capacity on many levels, and the complexity and differentiation of social and denominational structure increased. The modernization of societal development and the struggle for maintaining many social traditions was reflected in the lives of Christians of all European churches. Ideas on social processes in the 18^th and 19^th centuries were significantly influenced by thinkers from Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) to Henri Bergson (1859–1941), as well as many Christian philosophers.    

     The postmodern world was built on the idea of different cultures and historical structures coexisting. Compared to the 19^th and early 20^th centuries, this was a major change to our understanding of nationalism and its social and denominational significance. Our focus on the 19^th century in this course was therefore meaningful. The course dealt with the context of the social and denominational changes in the 19^th century and it should merely guide you in your further studies.