The Problem of Religious Liberty in Early Modern Bohemia

Abstract

The whale and the elephant. Two animals so different they cannot possibly live together. Politics and religious liberty in early modern Europe were strange bedfellows. The lands of the Czech Crown were no exception. From the dawn of the Hussite movement to the dusk over Bila Hora the theory of religious liberty and the practical reality of politics seldom followed parallel tracks. Toleration and persecution were patterns in an all too predictable cycle. Even though the Renaissance and nascent modernity had replaced the Middle Ages the tentacles of the dying age only slowly released their grip on a world which churned ever onward.