Miquel Beltrán

God’s Essence and Attributes according to Some Jewish Thinkers in Renaissance Mantua

The aim of this paper is to give an account of some arguments used by Judah Moscato and other Mantuan Jewish thinkers of the Renaissance to equate God’s essence with the Supernal Torah, and to argue that nature can be considered as a realm in which God’s signs are ubiquitously stamped. According to Moscato’s Sermons, God transmits His spiritual energy to nature in such a way that He is in some manner all of the existents. Given so, man is required to search for the evidence of God in nature by means of his intellect, to decode the signs through which God unveils the eternal intelligible truths contained in the Supernal Torah. The Neoplatonic bias perceptible in the Kabbalistic works of Yohanan Alemanno and Abraham Yagel is also examined.

Jana Černá

(Non) plus ultra per Britannia: The Influence of Spanish Scholarship on Bacon’s Idea of the Restoration and Classification of the Sciences

This paper analyses the impact of Spanish Renaissance science (particularly natural history and cosmography) – or rather, its methodology – on the scientific thought of Francis Bacon. The aim of this study is to identify the features of Baconian thought that are similar to some of the concepts and practices of Spanish scholars (Francisco Hernandez, Juan Huarte de San Juan and cosmographers of the House of Trade in Seville). Specifically, the text tries to demonstrate the hypothetic influence of Spanish thought on Bacon's concepts of the institutionalisation of knowledge, empirical and experimental methods of scientific research, the idea that "power is knowledge" and the ways of classification of sciences. Some simplifications and misinterpretations of the Spanish roots of Baconian science (Cañizares-Esguerra, A. Barrera-Osorio, T. J. Reiss, D. Goodman and J. Pimentel) are also reappraised or refuted in this paper.

Petr Dvořák

Self-evident Propositions in Late Scholasticism: The Case of "God exists"

The paper explores the status of the proposition "God exists" in late scholastic debates of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in some key authors of the era. A proposition is said to be self-evident if its truth is known solely from the meaning of the terms and is not inferred from other propositions. It does not appear to be immediately evident from the terms that God exists, for the concept expressed by "God" is based on the relation to creatures and negation of imperfection and does not reach to the divine essence. Thomas Aquinas maintains that there are two types of self-evident propositions: those self-evident in themselves (secundum se) but not to us (non quoad nos) and those self-evident in themselves as well as to us. "God exists" is of the first type.
For Scotus a self-evident proposition is such that if its terms are conceived by any intellect, the truth of the proposition becomes known from the terms, non-inferentially. In his view there is no distinction between a self-evident proposition in itself and that in relation to us, because any proposition self-evident in itself is known to be such to any intellect, even though it might not be actually known; it would be known, provided that the terms are conceived. So for Scotus the sentence "God exists" expresses different propositions for the blessed in heaven, the angels and God on the one hand and humans on the other. The former is self-evident, the latter is not.
While later scholastics accept either the solution of Thomas or that of Scotus, according to which "God exists" is not self-evident for humans, Thomas de Argentina (also known as Thomas of Strasbourg, 1275-1357) differs in that for him "God exists" is self-evident for humans too. The position of Thomas Aquinas was defended by Domingo Bañez (1528–1604), Francisco Zumel (1540–1607) and Gregorio de Valentia (1549–1603). In contrast, Johannes Poncius (John Punch or Ponce, 1603–1661, also 1599–1672) was a famous adherent of Scotus. There is a fair number of scholastics harmonizing the doctrine of Thomas and Scotus: Bernard Sannig (1638–1704), Luis de Molina (1536–1600), Gabriel Vázquez (c. 1549–1604), Rodrigo de Arriaga (1592–1667) and Jean Lalemandet (1595–1647). According to these authors, when Thomas says that "God exists" is self-evident in itself, he speaks about the extensional proposition, i.e. the state of affairs being conceptualized, which does not contradict Scotus's teaching.

Jan Malura

The Reception of German Contemplative Literature in Protestant Circles of Late Humanist Bohemia

The study deals with early modern literary works whose purpose was to improve the private devotion of the laity. In German-speaking lands, the term used for this genre is Erbauungsliteratur; in Czech-speaking lands it is called nábožensky vzdělavatelná literature (religious educational literature). There was a real boom of this type of literature in the German-speaking Protestant countries from the 1580s. This paper analyses how printed production in the Czech language coped with this phenomenon. It focuses primarily on books in which the genre of mediation dominates, and explores the prompt reaction to two authors active between approximately 1580–1620 who found intensive response in the Bohemian Lands. One was the non-conformist writer Martin Moller (1547–1606), whose activity was connected primarily with Lower Silesia. His two books written in German were published in Czech as early as 1593. One was the První díl Meditationes (First Part of Meditationes), compiled predominantly from the meditations of medieval mystics (translated by Tobiáš Mouřenín of Litomyšl); the other a volume of Passiontide meditations, Soliloqvia de Passione Iesu Christi (translated by Daniel Adam of Veleslavín). Our second author is the influential theologian of Lutheran orthodoxy Johann Gerhard (1582–1637), who worked mainly at the university in Jena and wrote in Latin. Gerhard's contemplative work was issued in a Czech version for the first time in 1616, under the title Padesátero přemyšlování duchovní (Fifty spiritual meditations). It was translated by the otherwise unknown burgher Pavel Lykaon Kostelecký from the Old Town of Prague. Gerhard uses impact of affects and elaborate rhetoric, and understands meditation as the comfort and healing of the sick soul. The dominant aim of the books analysed was not denominational influence, but the deepening of the burgher's private spiritual life and his self-improvement. The translations at the same time raise Czech religious prose to a new stylistic level, founded on linguistic expressiveness. The impulses of German contemplative literature later bore fruit in the work of Comenius, especially in his so called consolation writings of the 1620s and 1630s. From the 1710s, further interest in the more sophisticated writings on meditation can be traced in the Czech and Slovak environment, that is, among the Protestant exiles and Lutherans in Upper Hungary.

Markéta Klosová

School Theatre after Comenius: Šebestián Macer and the Leszno Plays (1641–1652)

The article is devoted to dramas performed at the school in Leszno in the 17th century, especially in the 1640s and 1650s – that is, during the rectorate of Šebestián Macer of Letošice. According to surviving sources, the number of plays produced then, in comparison with the preceding era when Comenius was rector, definitely did not decrease. The tendencies established by Comenius's play Diogenes of 1640 continued in the next period. In the Macer era, first, a number of secular elements (e.g. in the play Hercules monstrorum domitor) were introduced in plays performed on the Leszno stage; secondly, at that time too, factual teaching material was adapted into a play (Macer's dramatisation of Comenius's Janua). That was in harmony with the practice of a number of Polish and Silesian schools at the time, which presented actus oratorii, in principal composed rhetorical productions that in some cases adapted the teaching material.

Josef Kadeřábek

Esteemed Friends, Heretics, Traitors:
Changes in the Perception of Post-White Mountain Émigrés from Slaný

This study addresses a previously unexamined aspect of post-White Mountain exile: the way the image of those who had left the Bohemian lands gradually changed in their original social environment. The author carries out an analytical probe into the particular social environment of the Royal Town of Slaný, from which one of the largest waves of refugees from the Kingdom of Bohemia left for Saxony in the 1620s. Drawing on provincial, municipal and church sources, he endeavours to show how the picture of the local exiles gradually changed from a thoroughly tolerant attitude to one of unequivocally negative rejection. Several factors lay behind this change. Heavy pressure from above, at provincial and patrimonial level, was put to bear on the Slaný burghers, spreading a negative image of the exiles. After 1635, in connection with the alliance concluded between the Emperor and the Saxon Elector, this pressure differentiated. From below, it first took the form of an attempt by individual townspeople to acquire – by circulating a negative image of the exiles – social and financial benefits in the newly forming post-White Mountain society. This shift was later supported by a wave of popular religiosity evoked by the events of the Thirty Years War, by generational change, and by a complete transformation of local denominational identification and collective identity. The author would like in his further work to compare this local probe into the urban environment with research into urban communities with a different social dynamic and geography, and later to undertake similar research in the context of the lower and upper nobility.

Eva Hajdinová

Bohemian Non- Catholics and Languedoc nouveaux convertis: Prophetic and Sectarian Movements in a Comparative Perspective

The culminating confessional rivalries in the early 17^th century provided fertile ground in much of Europe, especially Central Europe, for visions of the imminent End of the World and Christ's Second Coming. This paper offers a new perspective for the well-known topic and compares the eschatological visions in the 17^th and 18^th centuries of the Bohemian non-Catholics and emigrants on the one hand and the secret Huguenots on the other. While the belligerent apocalyptic visions in the Bohemian environment saw a turning point and an opportunity to overthrow the Antichrist in the imminent coming of an allied Protestant ruler destined by God and this continued until the end of the 18^th century, the French Protestant prophecies appealed almost exclusively to the glory of Christ and his rule on Earth. Despite significant differences in the religious practice and historical contexts of the two cases, we observe not only very similar physical manifestations in the prophets' behaviour but also, thanks to these ideas, a renewal of the declining piety of the believers and the reactivation of the underground religious movement. In both environments the apocalyptic visions have been heavily criticized by legal ecclesiastical authorities in exile. Disciplinary interventions against these heterodox ideas had however a completely different result, playing a significant role in the process of legalization of Protestant worship at the end of the period in question.

Nicolette Mout

Consolation at Night: Jan Patočka and his Correspondence with Comeniologists

Jan Patočka (1907–1977) approached Johannes Amos Comenius as a fellow-philosopher, while admiring him also for his intellectual and moral steadfastness. He studied Comenius as a philosopher from the thirties onwards, stressing the latter's unique position in the history of Czech and European thought. Patočka's many Comeniological publications were analysed and highly appreciated by fellow-Comeniologists.
In the first volume, containing correspondence with Czech friends and colleagues, letters start in the early thirties, but Comeniology, including the vicissitudes surrounding the edition of Comenius's complete works, come to the fore from the late fifties onwards. Correspondents include friends and colleagues such as Josef Brambora and Antonín Škarka and a few older colleagues. A large number of letters was exchanged with Comenius's biographer Milada Blekastad and with the young philosopher Stanislav Sousedík.
The second volume comprises letters exchanged with only a few foreign correspondents: next to the Ukrainian scholar Dmytro Čyževskyj and the French colleague Marcelle Denis, a personal friend of Patočka's, the greater part of the volume is filled with letters to and from the German scholar and personal friend Klaus Schaller.
These two volumes add much to our understanding of Patočka's nearly lifelong and profound interest in Comenius's thought. The intellectual acumen and constant engagement reflected in these letters must have meant much to Patočka and his Comeniological correspondents in and outside Czechoslovakia. Maybe these exchanges of letters brought some light and consolation even in the darkest of times.

Radmila Pavlíčková

Confessional Polemics in Funeral Homilies: Five Funeral Sermons by the Controversial Preacher Georg Scherer from 1583–1603

Of the extensive literary work of the Jesuit and the controversial preacher Georg Scherer (1540–1605), a collection of five funeral sermons delivered and printed in 1583–1603 has up to now escaped attention. The first thing that marks the set as exceptional is the “earliness” of its origin, for it dates from the early period of Roman Catholic funeral homilies of which only a few examples are known. A second point is that they represent one of the most extensive sets from the pen of one author known from this period. Thirdly, like Scherer’s polemical works, the funeral sermons reached a wide public and were repeatedly published, often in translation, sometimes as independent publications, sometimes as part of larger compendiums and collections. Fourthly, two of the funeral sermons, by the standards of Catholic funeral homilies, contain abundant graphic detail. Finally, two of the sermons were delivered over members of the Habsburg line (Archduke Ernest in 1585 and the Emperor’s widow Maria in 1603) and are closely connected with Scherer’s career as a Viennese court preacher.
This study first assesses the set of five funeral sermons in their connection with Scherer’s other literary work, and puts them in the context of the development of Catholic funeral homilies. It then analyses each sermon from the point of view of its themes, of key importance for the celebration of the deceased individual, and devotes especial attention to the varied and variously intense confessional argumentation (references to the confessional identity of the deceased, to passages of the catechism, to theological polemics – for example, about purgatory – and to celebrations of conversion to Roman Catholicism). The presence of explicit statements and arguments of a confessional colouring is certainly connected with the general nature of Scherer’s religious polemical literature; it is at the same time, however, connected with the confessionally distinctive expression of funera homiletics in the last decades of the sixteenth and first decades of the seventeenth century.

Martin Holý

The Schools of the Unitas Fratrum in Bohemia and Moravia as the Subject of Interest for the Studies of the Nobility in the Period before the Battle of the White Mountain

This paper is an attempt, on the basis of an analysis of different kinds of sources (diplomatic, personal, literary and so on), to comprehend the role of the Bohemian Brethren schools in the upbringing and education of the upper classes of the Kingdom of Bohemia and the Margravate of Moravia and, to a lesser extent, of the foreign nobility. After a general introduction, in which the author establishes the growing interest of domestic aristocracy about this denominationally specific type of school in Bohemia and Moravia in the context of the inner development of the Brethren schools, he tracks specific educational institutes of the Unitas Fratrum for which there are records of students from the aristocracy during the sixteenth and first decade of the seventeenth century. Other issues are also dealt with: the content of the study in the schools, the reasons for the choice of a specific school, the composition in terms of the nationality, language, society and confession of the noble pupils, and so on. Last but not least, the study aims to answer the question of how the education of the domestic nobility in the schools of the Unitas Fratrum contributed towards their denominational orientation. In the conclusion of the contribution the author points out some possibilities for further research into this issue.

Markéta Růčková

Textbooks at the Academy of Bremen at the Beginning of the 17th Century: New Evidence from the Bohemian Brethren Archives in Mladá Boleslav

Even though after 1555 there was religious freedom within the Holy Roman Empire, such liberties could not be enjoyed by the Reformed higher aristocracy in instances when they wanted to found a university. This could only be done once an ‘Emperor’s Prerogative’ was granted. The question for the Reformed higher aristocracy was how to ensure that the academic level of education in their own institutions was similar to universities. The solution was found in the creation of a system of regional academies (so called gymnasium illustre). The model for such academies is considered to be the Strasbourg Academy, which was further refined in the Herborn Academy. The Herborn Academy inspired the rise of other educational centres, one of which was the gymnasium illustre in Bremen, which was reorganized in 1610 by Matthias Martinius, the school’s most significant rector. The Bremen Academy had two parts, the pedagogeum and the gymnasium illustre. The teaching at the pedagogeum followed established teaching syllabuses, which, unfortunately, are not available to us from Rector Martinius’s period. However, there are certain references to the content of the teaching materials and textbooks used at that time, which can be found in correspondence and the accounting records of the academy’s students, the priests-to-be of the Unity of Brethren, who due to the lack of suitable educational centres in the Czech lands, studied at foreign schools. From the accounting records of Daniel Němčanský, who studied at the Bremen Academy at this time, we know of several books that were used. The listing of these books is located at the end of this work.
 

Mariola Jarczykowa

Christian Ambrosius Cochlevius – a Polish Disciple of Jan Amos Comenius

The paper presents Christian Ambroży Kochlewski (1627–1647), a student of the educationalist Jan Amos Comenius, to whom the teacher dedicated his work Regulae vitae, in 1645. Christian and his cousin were sent to a school in Elbląg to study under the tutelage of the well-known teacher. This was prevented by some regulations of the school and town council, but after the intervention of Ambroży’s father – who had met Comenius and admired his work – the boys were allowed to become his students. The crowning achievement of the teaching and learning process was a work in which Comenius presents his views on life and gives some important advice and rules for a young man to follow. These concerned studying, travelling and leading an honest and noble life. Sadly, the young student died at the age of twenty. After his death a funeral sermon and a paper full of praise were written to commemorate the young and very promising nobleman. They were printed, and the text has been preserved and kept in the Wrocław University Library. The author of the sermon, Michał Matysewicz, who was the rector of the school in Kiejdany, described Christian as an intelligent, pious young man with great interest in studying. The text includes not only the tomb inscription and the epitaph for Christian, but also the epitaph for his father Piotr Kochlewski.
 

Leigh T. I. Penman

Prophecy, Alchemy and Strategies of Dissident Communication: A 1630 Letter from the Bohemian Chiliast Paul Felgenhauer (1593–c. 1677) to the Leipzig Physician Arnold Kerner

This article concerns a short but significant letter of April 1630 from the Bohemian prophet, alchemist and theosopher Paul Felgenhauer (1593–c. 1677) to the Leipzig alchemist and physician Arnold Kerner. The letter is presented in transcription, with an annotated English translation. It is prefaced by an introduction incorporating a new biographical account of Felgenhauer, which draws on overlooked or unknown manuscript material preserved in Germany and England. The letter itself shines a rare light on a variety of different areas of interest concerning Felgenhauer’s life and activities in the years prior to 1630. These areas include his immediate contacts and associates (such as with the Silesian prophet Christoph Kotter), interest and undertakings in alchemical experimentation, publishing and bibliographical activities, methods of communication, his circle of wider contacts and the nature and extent of broader interpersonal and epistolary networks in which he participated. However, it also illuminates tangential issues, such as the scale of social and informational economy in a heterodox correspondence network, the intricacies of dissident book production in the United Provinces, the history of trade in Leipzig, the role of commercial agents in facilitating contact between dissident personalities throughout the Holy Roman Empire, and the postal history of Bremen.
 

Petr Glombíček

Cartesian Common Sense?

The paper considers the question of what role the notion of common sense plays in Descartes’ philosophy. What I’d like to draw attention to is not the Aristotelian concept of koiné aisthésis or the sceptical method applied in Meditations, but Descartes’ usage of the concept of good sense (le bon sens or bona mens) as we can find it e.g. at the beginning of Descartes’ first published work, Discourse on the method. The paper presents an overview of occurences of the term in Descartes’ works since the remains of his youthful writing, known under the title Studium bonae mentis to the preface to the French edition of the Principles. The paper states some reasons for interpreting Cartesian mind in the vein of this le bon sens. Distinguishing between mens and anima, we can come to an interpretation of Descartes’ writings on first philosophy more as writings in logical semantics. And in the end possible source of the concept is located in Seneca’s writings.

Jan Herůfek

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola's Encounter with Jewish Intellectuals

The article deals with the religious and philosophical concept of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and focuses primarily on the Jewish-Arabian sources of Mirandola's thinking. Since Pico did not have a very good knowledge of Hebrew or even Arabic, it was often almost impossible for him to deal on his own with the language of extremely challenging original medieval texts, whether on themes of Jewish and Arabian philosophy or on themes of Jewish mysticism, known as Kabbalah. Pico therefore made use of his colleagues, and to some extent was reliant on them. In this connection attention has to be drawn fi rst to Elia del Medigo, adherent of Averroist Aristotelianism, and to Jochanan Alemanno, representative of the Jewish concept of ancient theology (prisca theologia) connected with elements of Neo-Platonism. In the fi nal place the article discusses Pico's principal translator Flavius Mithridates. Through his vision of the Christian Kabbalah Flavius Mithridates inspired not only the "prince of concord" himself, but also many followers in the 16th and 17th centuries (Johannes Reuchlin, Francesco Zorzi, Gilliaume Postel, Caspar Knittel, and others).

Pál Ács

Pro Turcis and contra Turcos: Curiosity, Scholarship and Spiritualism in Turkish Histories by Johannes Löwenklau (1541–1594)

It is still partially unexplained why, in 16th–17th-century Hungary – as opposed to Western countries – Ottoman history was not processed in an authentic and scholarly way. Why is it that intelligent Western reports of the Ottoman Empire and its history had no echo in Hungary, even though these reports wrote about, and were written to, Hungarians? This paper aims to answer the above questions when discussing Johannes Löwenklau, one of the most excellent 16th-century experts in the Ottomans. First we examine the three main sources used for his Ottoman Histories, all of them related to Hungary. Then we describe the intellectual background of Löwenklau's Chronicles. The two parts of the study off er two diff erent answers to the above question. (1) In the 16th century, Hungary fell apart, so it was impossible to conduct deep studies, although they would have served the country's interests. It is thus not surprising that the learned synthesis of sources of Hungarian origin was made by a German Humanist. (2) Löwenklau was a tolerant, gentle, intellectual member of the Bohemian Brethren. His books paint an alternative image of the Turks, one that does not match the commonplaces on the ancient enemy of Christianity, and one that is also distinct from the "the scourge of God" destined to revenge crimes according to the Wittenberg Reformation. A desire for universal peace clearly appeared in his works, in addition to the confrontation with the Turks and the idea of the Crusade. The ordinary Hungarian audience was averse to this combination of scholarly research and apocalypticism, so it is notsurprising that Hungarian historiography has been largely silent about this great historian of his age.

Howard Hotson

Arbor sanguinis, arbor disciplinarum: The Intellectual Genealogy of Johann Heinrich Alsted
Part I. Alsted's Intellectual Inheritance

Although by no means a genius, Comenius's teacher, Johann Heinrich Alsted (1558–1638), was in one sense a prodigy. His great Encyclopaedia of 1630 was fi rst sketched out in his Panacea 91 philosophica of 1610, when the young Herborner was only 22 years old; and in the larger Artium liberalium ac facultatum omnium systema mnemonicum, completed the previous year, its origins are traced back further still, to the outset of his studies in the Herborn academy in 1602, at the tender age of fourteen. More specifi cally, Alsted reveals that his encyclopaedic project began as a commonplace book collected in no small part from his father's table talk, his mother's precepts and practice, his grandfather's library, and the extraordinarily rich collection of pedagogical theorists in his immediate family circle. This paper traces Alsted's genealogy as a bibliographical as well as a biographical exercise: that is, as a means not merely of revealing his bloodlines, but of tracing the intellectual genealogy of an individual at once deeply rooted in the Reformed academic and clerical community of Hesse and the Wetterau and impatient to break free of established orthodoxies in pursuit of a fresh intellectual synthesis. Tracing the tangled roots of this genealogy back several generations reveals that Alsted's yearning for further reformation fed upon lengthy familial engagement with various strands of Renaissance humanism, Reformed theology, Ramist pedagogy, Paracelsian medicine, and perhaps even millenarianism.

Pierre-Olivier Léchot

Between Ramism, Socinianism and Enthusiasm: The Intellectual Context of John Dury's Analysis Demonstrativa Sacrae Scripturae

This article explores the issue around the confessional and intellectual implications of the hermeneutics of John Dury (c. 1600–1680). It is mainly devoted to recovering the elements of Dury's "methodus analytica" and to examining its intellectual context (namely the infl uence of Ramism on the exegetical commentary of Scripture). This contribution tries also to describe the paradoxical endeavour to off er an exegetical method capable of uniting diverse confessions which could be accepted by the Socinians and by enthusiasts alike.

Jiří Just

New reports about Jan Amos Comenius in the Archive of Matouš Konečný

Not many reports have survived which capture the pre-exile activity of Jan Amos Comenius, and his personal life in particular. A signifi cant number of them consist of brief retrospective communications preserved in some of Comenius's literary works and in his correspondence. The actual sources from the pre-White Mountain period make possible only a rough reconstruction of the basic milestones in his life, often only hypothetical (the question of his birthplace can be mentioned as an example). Somewhat more light is shed on this period by material from the Archive of Matouš Konečný, discovered in Mladá Boleslav in the summer of 2006. Included in it are letters from Jan Lanecký († 1626) to the Bishop of Mladá Boleslav, who was, between 1609–1620/1622, Matouš Konečný. As Bishop of the Přerov diocese, Lanecký was Comenius's immediate superior and at the same time his closest guide on the path to his priestly profession. An indivisible part of this process was the, at least partial, absolving of the theological study for which the novices of the Brethren's priesthood were sent to educational institutions abroad. Lanecký's letters supplement in interesting details the background to Comenius's stay in Herborn and Heidelberg, starting with the late departure of the Brethren students from Moravia and Bohemia because of the invasion of the Passau soldiers (1611). The letters capture in a very rounded way the chronic problems the students had with the fi nancial demands of the study, culminating in the indebtedness of several individuals, which became a heavy burden to them after their return to their native land. The letters also document the tension arising from the diff ering ideas of the students and the bishops about the content of the study itself, and its form. They provide valuable evidence for the motives of Comenius's journeys and his pleasure in the travel the students enjoyed in their free time. A number of new pieces of information relate to Comenius's activity in Moravia after 1614. Especially valuable are reports about Comenius's ordination as a deacon, which took place on 2 February 1616 in Prague, as well as Lanecký's communications about Comenius's literary beginnings: for example, clarifi cation about the authorship of the work Retuňk proti Antikristu [Warnings Against the Antichrist], and the reaction of the Brethren bishops to the origin of the work Theatrum universitatis rerum. Among the interesting matters which the new information about Comenius opportunely supplements are reports of two letters from the Ivančice Bishop Jiří Erast (from 1616 and 1618). They are evidence of a Brethren priest called Komenský, who was working in the Ivančice diocese in the time before the Uprising of the Bohemian Estates broke out. However, we know nothing more about his life or possible relationship to Jan Amos Comenius.

Mirjam de Baar

The Construction of a Spiritual Network: The Correspondence of Antoinette Bourignon (1616–1680)

This article focuses on the epistolary practice and strategies of Antoinette Bourignon (1616– 1680), a seventeenth-century Flemish mystic and prophetess, who was born in Lille and who moved to Amsterdam in 1667. From her base in Amsterdam (where she purchased her own press in 1669), Bourignon used a variety of textual media to disseminate the message that she was a spiritual leader chosen by God to restore true Christianity on earth, and to consolidate a following around this ecumenical identity. The author argues that Bourignon's letters were central to this programme; over 600 manuscript versions survive, eleven diff erent printed editions appeared during her lifetime, while nine further volumes were subsequently published posthumously. Her correspondents included scholars such as Jan Amos Comenius (1592–1670), Robert Boyle (1627–1691), Jan Swammerdam (1637–1680), and Pierre Poiret (1646–1719), as well as a wide range of socially diverse disciples who wrote to her seeking advice on a variety of spiritual and personal issues, and whose preoccupations and voices are anonymously reproduced in published responses. In consequence, her letters have a dialogic, polyphonous quality, while the same followers who wrote to her seeking guidance in turn represented an important market for the letters in their printed manifestations. Despite her failure to establish a long-term community on the island of Nordstrand, and the fact that in the later years of her life the suspicions of Lutheran clergy forced her into exile in Ostfriesland, Bourignon maintained a prolifi c output of letters, and continued to combine the roles of spiritual leader and publisher until her death in 1680.

Marie Ryantová

The Convert and Exile Jiří Holík and His Anti-Catholic Writings

The paper deals with the life and activities of Jiří František Holík, who came from a non-Roman Catholic Bohemian family. His education was nevertheless entrusted to the Jesuits and he eventually became a member of the Dominican Order, where he worked as a censor. In 1666 he escaped to Zittau, after which he tried to work as a Lutheran preacher, studied in Wittenberg and was granted the favour of Protestant theologians and nobility. His activity as a preacher and his eff orts to acquire a position was however unsuccessful, coming up against mistrust regarding his past. He therefore left for Prussian Königsberg and eventually settled in Riga, where he became known mainly as the author of books on fruit growing which were reprinted a number of times over the next fi fty years. However, while working in Saxony he also published several strongly anti-Catholic oriented works in German about the persecution of non-Catholics in Bohemia, and one in Swedish published in Uppsala. The last of these polemical works came out in 1679 in Amsterdam. The paper summarises all previously known information about these writings, which today survive only in single copies, and serves as an introduction to further detailed examination. It is clear that all the works are similar and moreover derive from Comenius' Historie o těžkých protivenstvích (The History of the Bohemian Persecution), in some cases appropriating not only information but even entire passages. In spite of the fact that Jiří Holík's anti-Catholic writings defi nitely do not qualify as impartial documentation of the situation after the Battle of the White Mountain and developments in Bohemia, they present unusually interesting evidence concerning the intellectual world of an exile and convert trying to fi nd a role and some support for himself in his new situation.

Martina Lisá

Homo migrans in the Early Modern Period: Exiles from the Bohemian Lands and the Recent German Research into Migrations and Exile

The aim of this article is to present the results of the most recent German, i.e. German-language, research on the theme of Early Modern Period exile and migration, in which emphasis is placed on the Bohemian post-White Mountain exile. Specialist literature on the theme of the Bohemian post-White Mountain exile is discussed at the beginning of the study, with a short excursus on the concept itself of "exile", in which a concise overview of the state of research is submitted with the aim of drawing attention chiefl y to various instrumentalisations of this concept, as well as to the "success" of the whole research paradigm. Three dissertations have appeared very recently, devoting themselves in particular to the issue of Early Modern exile. A number of papers have also been published in specialist journals and conference proceedings. The study presents in addition the results and tendencies of research which deal on a more general level with themes of Early Modern Period denominational migration and religiously motivated exile. In recent years, research into the Early Modern Period has brought not only new approaches, concepts and methods, but also thematic expansion and several discussions devoted to terminology.

Martin Rothkegel

On the Career of the Anti-Trinitarian Jacobus Palaeologus up to 1561, Part 1: Frate Jacobo da Scio and His Followers in the Levante

This essay on Jacobus Palaeologus, born c. 1520 on the Island of Chios and executed as a heretic in Rome in 1585, explores the biographical experience of the Greek-Italian theologian in the Levant as a possible context for his journey towards a radical form of Unitarianism which went as far as rejecting the dogmatic boundaries between Christianity, Islam and Judaism. Based on documents from the Archivio della Congregazione per la Dottrina della Fede (Città del Vaticano) and the Archivio di Stato di Genova, section II of the article delineates the "itinerary", or the whereabouts and activities, of Palaeologus in Constantinople and Chios between 1554 and 1561. Reports sent to Rome by the inquisitors of Constantinople and Chios mention at least three circles of adherents of Palaeologus in the Levant which are studied in the following sections of the essay. Section III deals with Palaeologus's followers among the Dominican friars and the aristocracy of the island capital of Chios. Section IV explores another such circle in Pera (the traditional Latin Christian quarter of Constantinople) that was in close contact with the embassy of Ferdinand I in the Ottoman capital. Section V examines some references in the inquisitors' reports about supporters of Palaeologus among the Marrano (or converso) immigrants of Portuguese-Jewish descent in Salonica and Constantinople. The essay argues that Palaeologus's experience with the precarious situation of the Levantine Latin Christians in the realm of Islam and with the ambivalent religious situation of part of the Marrano migrants between Judaism and Christianity, contributed to the development of the radically Unitarian, inclusivist redraft of the Christian religion that he elaborated on in his later writings. Since no relevant theological writings of Palaeologus written prior to 1571 are preserved, however, this cannot be more than a hypothesis. In the second part of the essay, which will follow in one of the next issues of Acta Comeniana, the puzzling problem of Paleologus's theological development prior to 1561 will be re-examined in greater detail.

Jan Čížek

Johann Heinrich Alsted: A Mediator between Francesco Patrizi and J. A. Comenius?

This study follows the author's previous research that pointed out to signifi cant similarities between the philosophical conceptions of Francesco Patrizi and those of Jan Amos Comenius. If we admit that the contents of Patrizi's greatest work Nova de universis philosophia did infl uence Comenius's thought in some respect, it raises the question of when Jan Amos encountered Patrizi's views. The question is the more topical when we consider that an indirect reference to Patrizi's work can be found in Comenius's treatise Conatuum pansophicorum dilucidatio, written several years before he travelled to London where, according to the present opinion of historians of philosophy, he became familiar with the contents of Nova de universis philosophia. The most probable mediator of Patrizi's work is Comenius's Herborn teacher Johann Heinrich Alsted. On the basis of an analysis of Alsted's works we come to the conclusion that even though he knew Patrizi's philosophical views, he took over and presented in his writings completely diff erent ideas from those which later infl uenced Jan Amos Comenius.

Márton Szentpéteri

The Mystery of Piety Revealed and Defended: A Sequelto Johann Heinrich Bisterfeld´s De uno Deo?

It has always been a truly tantalizing question for the scholars of Herborn intelligentsia in Transylvania: as to why Bisterfeld did not complete his publication project that began with the famous De uno Deo which was designed to refute Johann Crellʼs ideas and was destined to be a companion to Johann Heinrich Alstedʼs Prodromus religionis triumphantis, which was in turn written against Johann Völkel. Although the essay cannot answer this question entirely, it draws attention to some fundamental facts which could shed more light on the issue stating that Bisterfeld did fi nish the sequel, but apparently never published it. In order to achieve this, the essay discusses briefl y a letter by Jean Mellet sent to Adrian Heereboord later published as dedication to Bisterfeldʼs very rare Isagoge encyclopaedica, and Melletʼs Theosophia naturalis which seems to be a treatise originally written by Bisterfeld. Having a look at these sources, the author formulates a hypothesis claiming that the continuation of the De uno Deo, that is the separate publication of the Mysterium pietatis ostensum, became rather obsolete in the eyes of Bisterfeld at a certain point, and consequently he incorporated it into his Sciagraphia symbioticae, one of the most ingenious works of the late Bisterfeld in Transylvania, posthumously published in 1661. In addition, it is highly presumable that a further posthumous version of the Mysterium pietatis ostensum saw the light in 1662, this time, under the name of Jean Mellet and entitled as Theosophia naturalis, sive mysterium pietatis ostensum.

Jakub Žytek

Daniel Vetter's Islandia: The Curious Encompassed within the Divine

This study examines the travelogue Islandia (1638) of Daniel Vetter. It argues that the references to God and his divine assistance throughout the narrative part of the travelogue create a subtle semantic net upon which the message of the text, that is to portray the magnifi cence of God's deeds, is based. A recurrent topic of danger, permeating the narration, serves as a medium for such a portrayal. The descriptive part of the travelogue is interpreted as another Vetter's way of portraying the magnifi cence of God's deeds. While depicting Iceland, which is seen as a curious Kunstkammer, every aspect of Icelandic reality is portrayed as being in some way curious and peculiar, contributing to the image of the land included within God's plan. At the closing of the travelogue, these two ways of portraying are linked together. The curious is not only connected with, but fi nally also encompassed within, the divine.

Iva Lelková

Philipp Jacob Sachs von Lewenheimb (1627–1672) and his Role within Intellectual Networks of the Czech Lands

The paper documents the situation of Early Modern scholarship in the Czech Lands through a study of the relatively unknown correspondence of the Breslau physician, member of the Academia naturae curiosorum and chief editor of its journal Miscellanea curiosa Philipp Jakob Sachs von Lewenheimb and the Jesuit polymath Athanasius Kircher with correspondents in the Czech Lands.
The intersections of the predominantly Catholic correspondence network of the Jesuit Athanasius Kircher with the mainly Protestant specialist correspondence network of the physician Philipp Jakob Sachs von Lewenheimb appear exceptionally interesting and provide information about often less well-known personalities and practices which facilitated the fl ow of information between individual parts of Europe, denominations and social groups around the middle of the seventeenth century.
The article also illustrates how the genre of "observationes" and the emergence of scientific journals generally propelled scholarly correspondence not only in the Central European area, and what role was played by professional groups, whether of physicians, printers or others, in mediating information between the Catholic and Protestant parts of Europe.

Jan Palkoska

Proto-Humean Strains in Leibniz's Analysis of Causal Relation

My aim in the present paper is to challenge an established doctrine according to which Leibniz conceives of causation – in sharp contrast to Hume – in terms of a sort of the so-called hypothetical necessity, to the eff ect that causation involves a hypothetical necessitation a parte rei explicable in terms of purely conceptual connections. I argue that as far as one can tell from the direct textual evidence, Leibniz's concept of causation can be interpreted as coming surprisingly close to an essentially Humean view according to which far from implying any necessities a parte rei, conceptual connections impose necessity only on our thought while in reality causation involves only regularities in the conjunction of contiguous objects. Then I try to reconcile this claim with the well-documented fact that within the larger framework of Leibniz's theory of truth and his principle of suffi cient reason, Leibniz was indeed committed to a 'necessitarian' position – in the sense that every item in the actual world is, after all, a matter of hypothetical necessity in rebus (or nearly so) – and that he was prepared to integrate causes into this larger picture. My point will be that the apparent confl ict between these two views is due to our failure to distinguish the analytic task concerning causation from various explanatory tasks in which causation is involved.

Lenka Řezníková

The Spatial Frontiers of Stagings of Exile and the Metaphorical Figurations of Jan Amos Comenius in Czech Literature of the Nineteenth Century

In the nineteenth century, as a result of number of sociocultural changes, the exile as a historically variable phenomenon experienced a signifi cant reconceptualization, while at the same time its literary representations also went through changes. In this period, models trying to implement the exile in the narrative of national history show symptomatic diff erences and specific limits in comparison with earlier models or with models formed in the course of the twentieth century. The spatial contexts of the national narrative, which coincided with the physical absences of émigrés from the national area, were in themselves limiting. (Literary) concepts of exile therefore concentrated primarily on the outlook of those who remained behind. As far as the representation of an émigré himself was concerned, literature created a number of main model situations which "returned" him to his nationally spatial context. A refl ection of the prominent post-White Mountain exile Jan Amos Comenius presented a specifi c possibility that overcame the limits of the spatially limited national narratives by reference to Comenius's writings which (unlike their author) were physically accessible in the Bohemian Lands – albeit to a limited degree. Distinctive cognitive metaphors (light in darkness, the labyrinth, depth of security, etc.) were also gathered from these writings, and around these an image of Comenius stabilised, in close conjunction with the topic of exile.