Project information
Local Reformers before the Global Reformation (REBELLION)

The course will discuss the manifold ways of reform that took place in Central and East Central Europe in the 15th century. The ideas of Jan Hus and his colleagues at Prague University proved to be key elements to Protestantism. The contribution of these masterminds of late medieval thinking to the shared European culture is a locally specific phenomenon which paved way to the Reformation of the 16th century. Yet this period is studied primarily from the modern national perspectives. By discussing a wide range of topics related to the Czech Reformation and the textual sources produced in this period, the course will offer a complex picture of the local reform with relation to the global Reformation. The course will cater for students in English programmes (in whose curricula this topic and/or region is under-represented) as well as for students of non-historical programmes (who often lack a more global view of this local phenomenon).