Crown, Church and Estates

This book deals with a turning-point in European history: the dramatic struggle between the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation, and between princely rulers and landed nobles in sixteenth and seventeenth-century central and eastern Europe. It brings together the results of the latest research by leading scholars from North America and Europe and it throws new light on the victory of the Church and the rulers over Protestantism and the nobility which had such profound long-term consequences.

Inhalt
List of Abbreviations - Notes on the Contributors - Preface; T.V.Thomas - Introduction; R.J.W.Evans - The System of Estates in the Austrian Hereditary Lands and in the Holy Roman Empire: A Comparison; V.Press - The Political System and the Intellectual Traditions of the Bohemian St ndestaat from the Thirteenth to the Sixteenth Century; W.Eberhard - Ferdinand I and the Estates: Between Confrontation and Co-operation, 1521-64; A.Kohler - Protestantism and Defence of Liberties in the Austrian Lands under Ferdinand I; G.R.Burkert - Crown, Estates, and the Financing of Defence in Inner Austria, 1500-1630; S.Vilfan - The Crown and the Diets of Hungary and Transylvania in the Sixteenth Century; L.Makkai - Princes, Jesuits, and the Origins of Counter-Reformation in the Habsburg Lands; G.Heiss - The Collegium Germanicum Hungaricum in Rome and the Beginning of Counter-Reformation in Hungary; I.Bitskey - Habsburg Absolutism and the Resistance of the Hungarian Estates in the Sixteenth and Sevteenth Centuries; K.Benda - The Religious Question and the Political System of Bohemia before and after the Battle of the White Mountain; J.Panek - Moravia and the Crisis of the Estates' System in the Lands of the Bohemian Crown; J.Valka - Estates and the Problem of Resistance in Theory and Practice in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries; W.Schulze - Armed Conflict in East-Central Europe: Protestant Noble Opposition and Catholic Royalist Factions, 1604-20; G.Schramm - The Bohemian Opposition, Poland-Lithuania, and the Outbreak of the Thirty Years War; I.Auerbach - Ferdinand II: Founder of the Habsburg Monarchy; R.Bireley - The Austrian Nobility, 1600-50: Between Court and Estates; G.Heilingsetzer - The Struggle for Protestant Religious Liberty at the 1646-7 Diet in Hungary; K.Peter - Confessions, Freedoms, and the Unity of Poland-Lithuania; A.Maczak - The Contractual Principle and Right of Resistance in the Ukraine and Moldavia; O.Subtelny - Epilogue: Central and Western Europe; H.G.Koenigsberger - Index