Freedom of Conscience. Superintendent Michael Blažek and the Protestant Society of the late Enlightenment
Author:
Sixtus Bolom-Kotari
Year of publication:
2016
Publisher:
Historický ústav / Matice moravská
ISBN:
978-80-7286-286-3; 978-80-87709-14-6
The aim of the book is Reformed Church as a living organism in a period context. Its highest representative in Moravia becomes, in seven chapters of the book, a new Evangelical communities guide. In his office, he secured efforts to not only declared, but also experienced freedom of conscience. Freedom of Conscience was not just about services of worship and church buildings, but also about the cottage and farmyard, it was a topic of urban middle class and upper class discussions, a reading society and a Masonic lodge. In its relations, the Church represents such differing aspects as kinship networks, evangelical art and secret Illuminati correspondence. A detailed look at events in society, grouped around the Church, encompasses a whole range of individual and group interests across confessional, social and even national borders. Protestants, legalized in the early eighties of the 18th century by Emperor Joseph II’s Patent of Toleration, contributed – despite numerous obstacles – to the economic and cultural ascendancy of the Czech Lands.
