Abstract » Kostlán
Budapest 2010
Encyclopaedism, Pansophia, and Universal Communication, 1560–1670
Antonín KOSTLÁN
European Calvinist Intellectual Networks and Czech Lands: A Case Study of Jan Opsimathes
Moravian-born Jan Opsimathes (c.1568–after 1620) was famous for his Calvinist prints (e. g. prints of the first Czech translation of John Calvin’s Institutiones religionis Christianae, 1612–17). His incessant journeying was only partially connected with his duties as preceptor, accompanying young Moravian nobles on travels from their homeland for education and learning, or members of ennobled Prague burgher families. A significant number of these journeys were related to the role Opsimathes played throughout his life as a staunch Calvinist activist; this is demonstrated in perhaps his most ambitious and best-known act of propaganda, which aimed at winning the support of the English King James I for the Bohemian Calvinist cause (1616). His book of friends (album amicorum) contains roughly 590 entries spanning the years 1598–1620 and represents a valuable source for the study of the contacts between the Czech lands and intellectual and political Calvinism across Europe. A significant portion of the entries in this album were made by Calvinists or radical Protestants in the most diverse places through which Opsimathes passed; the book includes not only entries by the highest Calvinist authority of the time, the Genevan preacher Theodore Beza, and his collaborator Simon Goulart of Senlis, but also by dozens of others Calvinist preachers and followers from Switzerland, Holland, Germany, France, Poland, and other countires. Further entries were made by representatives of the diplomatic and political sphere; the inscribers include a number of notable imperial princes, who actively supported the Calvinist interpretation of the Reformation.
Join 