The Papacy, the Curia, and the Catholic Church in the Bohemian Lands 1820-1938. Relationships, Czech Specifics, and the Ultramontanism Phenomenon

Standard project supported by the Czech Science Foundation, Identification code: GA15-17092S

Contractor: Masarykův ústav a Archiv AV ČR, v. v. i.; Project participant : Filozofická fakulta Masarykovy univerzity

Project duration: 2015-2017

This project depicts the relationship of Catholics and of the society in the Bohemian lands overall to Rome and the Pope during the modern era. It analyses the sources of Ultramontanist ideas, and seeks regional/national specifics of its reception and parallels with developments in surrounding countries. It maps the diffusion of papal authority, Ultramontanist thought, and political Catholicism into chapters, seminaries and the clergy’s internal world. It covers Ultramontanism’s reception in the liberal, conservative, and socialist spheres. It examines this reception in various forms, including changes to the discourse on the Papacy and its authority, on the Church’s relationship to modernism, democracy, nationalism, and social issues, and on Ultramontanism’s role in forming local “cultural struggles”. It gives a timeline for Czech Ultramontanism’s development (which was asynchronous between ethnic Czechs and German Bohemians). Lastly, it broadly defines Ultramontanism, in a way encompassing its variations and instrumentalizations among different times, places, and ideologies.