The Bohemian life

Well, dear readers, another reimmersion in academia at a seminar at St John's House, home of the University of St Andrews Reformation Studies Institute. The speaker was Dr Phillip Haberkern of Boston University, and his subject, or rather his question, was "Was the Bohemian Reformation a failure?" Now, I freely confess that my knowledge of Czech history in this period is severely limited, essentially to naughty Jan Hus and his downfall after the Council of Constance, but Dr Haberkern took in nearly three centuries of history over his 45 minutes, and rather wittily and, as it turned out, insightfully, presented the sweep in five acts, as a tragedy.

You are probably wondering, if you are wondering anything at all, what his answer to the question was. Well, he didn't really give one, nor, I think, was that his intention. The question was to provoke debate. It is interesting (to me anyway) that a modern single-volume history of the Reformation in Bohemia does not exist, not even in Czech, though there is apparently a five-volume history. This is odd, as Bohemia and the Czech lands were so obviously key to the development of religious radicalism from as far back as the 14th century. Dr Haberkern hopes to plug this gap in the historiography over the next two years.

I recognised some landmarks in his tour d'horizon: Hus, as I say; Matthias Corvinus; Ferdinand II; the Battle of White Mountain. But there was a vast amount of material which was new to me, which I suppose was why I went along, as well as to see some old faces. The idea that leapt out of the talk for me was the idea Haberkern presented of looking at the Czech lands as a laboratory for evangelical ideas, a testing ground for how, in late mediaeval and early modern Europe, you create a non-Catholic church. Clearly, the reformers of the 16th century, with whom I am more familiar, were acutely aware of what had happened in Bohemia from the first appearances of Wycliffite influences in the University of Prague in the 1390s through to the political struggles of the 1520s.

We (I say "we"; as an interloper, I kept my trap shut) talked about concepts of success and failure, and of how they can be measured. One interesting approach was looking at the influences of Czech reformism on the rest of Europe, what Haberkern called Reformation genealogy. In an absolutist sense, clearly the Bohemian Reformation was a failure; after the Battle of White Mountain, the Habsburgs unleashed an extraordinarily thorough campaign of re-Catholicisation, which, by the time of the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, had largely succeeded. Think about that; changing hearts and minds in the space of a generation. Of course it was underpinned by coercion, and the Czech clergy in particular were faced with the harsh choice between conversion or exile. Many chose the latter.

The reformers themselves certainly saw it as a failure. Jan Komensky (or John Amos Comenius, as the West better knows him), the greatest historiographer of the Bohemian Reformation, in his numerous works over a long life, painted a picture of not only disaster but, in a sense, inevitable disaster: for him, as Haberkern argued very persuasively, the best of times was necessarily the worst of times, because as soon as the reformed church gained any kind of established status, its eye was off the ball, and it became concerned with politics rather than the maintenance of discipline and doctrinal purity.

I am an historian of the English church if I am anything, so this was an interesting parallel (especially given, as I mentioned above, one of the driving forces behind the Bohemian Reformation was the influence of John Wycliffe). I am particularly fascinated by the idea of re-Catholicisation, as it was exactly that project which my beloved Queen Mary was pursuing in the 1550s, with some of the same motive forces which were seen in the Czech lands after White Mountain (with the notable exception of the Jesuits, who established only a toehold in England, if that, before Mary's death in 1558). Speaking almost counter-factually, which I know is anathema to many proper historians, what happened in Bohemia demonstrates that pushing back the Protestant tide was perfectly possible, and it is tempting to wonder what would have happened in England if Mary had had the longevity of her half-sister. My old history master from school will curl his lip at this, but I look forward to reading Eamon Duffy's new book, Reformation Divided: Catholics, Protestants and the Conversion of England; Dr Brian Mains, my most formative influence and a great scholar, converted me to Tudor history, a genuinely life-changing experience, but he admits to an almost visceral aversion to Duffy.

Another observation, if I may. The Reformation Studies Institute holds seminars like this on a more-or-less weekly basis (I think), sometimes with guest speakers, and sometimes with research students giving the talk. Certainly that was the case in my day, more than a decade ago now. They are a great thing, because they mix accomplished academics, like Dr Haberkern, for example, with the slightly-less-formed ideas of young researchers (I can't now remember what I gave my talk on, and shudder to think). What heartened me today, as an observer slouching at the back and feeling slightly fraudulent, was the bright interest of the students, and their engagement with the subject, even if it was slightly outwith their own field. I was particularly interested by the idea that a student (I'm afraid I don't know her name) raised that the Habsburgs had developed a playbook, if you will, of re-Catholicisation which they has used in the Netherlands, and which was replicated in Bohemia. Haberkern seemed intrigued by that notion, and that's everything that these seminars, and academia in general, should be.

My tiny patch of scholarly endeavour is Catholic England, and I am sure I have not tilled it very diligently or well. I confess (and I hope my supervisor, Professor Andrew Pettegree, a man with the patience of a saint, will forgive me for saying this) that I always felt a bit of an outlier in the Reformation Studies Institute, among a group of scholars of the Protestant Reformation. My colleagues knew all that there is to know about Calvin's Geneva, or books in Lyon, or the reformed church of the Low Countries, and I battled away with my English monks. But, and it is a very big but, I learned so much from the community at St John's House, and relished my time there. As I have written before, 2017 is the year of finishing the thesis. I was delighted today to see that the flame still burns, safe in the hands of the very gracious Dr Bridget Heal, who allowed me to sit it for today's seminar.

I would not claim that there are any life lessons to be learned from my afternoon. What I will say is that it was lovely to be back in the company of fellow Reformation historians. Some waypoints, if that is the word I want, were familiar, and some were new. That is, surely, the stuff of history, and of learning in a more general sense. I now know about the Letter of Majesty, for example. (Such a great phrase.) What do all these musings mean? Everything and nothing, I suppose. I have two more conferences this summer for which I must start preparing papers, both in London. But I suppose it comes down to this.

A few weeks ago, I had lunch with the aforementioned Dr Mains, my history master at RGS. I hadn't seen him in 20 years, but it didn't seem to matter. The years rolled back. We talked of everything, almost of cabbages and kings (and his hatred of Eamon Duffy), but one of the things I said to him, based on my experience of teaching in St Andrews back in the early 2000s, was that my motive force as a tutor, the thing which brought me joy and fulfilment (and a tiny amount of money), was getting students who had no real knowledge of the early modern period to engage with the times, and, ideally, to understand the 16th century. I wasn't universally successful, but I didn't expect to be. But if I had two or three students per seminar group who lit up and got it, and I flatter myself that I did, I think my work was done.

What do I mean by that? I suppose what I mean is that there were a precious few students whom I persuaded to understand that the average Joe of the 16th century was just a person, like you or me, but was also fundamentally different. The religious furies of the Reformation were not, I would argue, a cover for socio-economic disputes or a way of playing out political controversies under another guise. These things mattered, to a degree we have to struggle to understand. It was real. The idea that the body of Christ was or was not literally and actually present in the Eucharist was a huge matter.

Anyway. That was long-winded and self-referential. What I meant to say was that I had a great day re-engaging with the Reformation part of my brain. Nostalgia and intellectual stimulation: what more can you ask for?