‘That Feckless Bohemomastix’: The Life and Work of Melchior Goldast of Haiminsfeld

• Authors: Hrbek Jiří
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

For a long time after White Mountain, Baroque scholars, including Bohuslav Balbín, levelled arguments in their writings against the theories of the German humanist Melchior Goldast of Haiminsfeld, who lived at the turn of the 17th century. In 1619, the emperor ordered him – probably through the intermediary of the president of the Aulic Council, Johann Georg of Hohenzollern – to carry out a legal analysis of the heredity nature of the Bohemian and Hungarian kingdom. The request was repeated following the Battle of White Mountain and the thesis of the hereditary nance of the Bohemians to the Empire, he became increasingly more vexing to the Habsburgs themselves, who, following the Peace of Westphalia, had gone down a path toward building the Habsburg monarchy which did not include the territories of the Holy Roman Empire. This fact manifested itself vividly in 1711 during a dispute concerning the imperial vicarage over the Czech Lands; attempts to revise the Renewed Constitution brought on another wave of disfavour against Goldast. Goldast’s theories were reinterpreted by German nationalists in the 19th century, when they served as ammunition in a struggle quite different from that in which they arose. succession in both the male and female lines of the Habsburg dynasty was subsequently included in the extensive frescos of Bohemian history titled De Bohemiae Regni … juribus ac privilegiis, which first saw print the year the Renewed Constitution was published; it may thus be taken to be its theoretical counterpart or perhaps its legitimation as well. Although Goldast was to become quite a controversial figure, he was then a leading expert on imperial legal documents (he had worked on editions of such documents all his life); he developed a model of Bohemian history in which the relationship between the Holy Roman Empire and the neighbouring, vassal state of the Bohemians was fraught with incessant revolts on the part of the weaker partner against the empire. At the same time, he elaborated the idea that the first peoples of Central Europe were Marobuduus’ Marcomanni, which underscored even further the appurtenance of Bohemian kingdom to the Holy Roman Empire. For there was a long tradition of Germanic law in both lands: Goldast was thus concerned with the Bohemians’ legal appurtenance, not their ethnic or linguistic appurtenance. He also defined the Empire itself in a similar manner; law was a binding element which could even overcome religious differences. Goldast – a Swiss Calvinist working for both the Lutheran Saxons and the Catholic emperor – was fully persuaded of this view, even though it led him into numerous conflicts. Nonetheless, thanks to his theory of the appurtenance of the Bohemians to the Empire, he became increasingly more vexing to the Habsburgs themselves, who, following the Peace of Westphalia, had gone down a path toward building the Habsburg monarchy which did not include the territories of the Holy Roman Empire. This fact manifested itself vividly in 1711 during a dispute concerning the imperial vicarage over the Czech Lands; attempts to revise the Renewed Constitution brought on another wave of disfavour against Goldast. Goldast’s theories were reinterpreted by German nationalists in the 19th century, when they served as ammunition in a struggle quite different from that in which they arose.

Keywords

EN

Melchior Goldast; biography; imperial law; Renewed Constitution

Discipline

• HISTORY: HISTORY

• Publisher: Institute of Philosophy, Czech Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Acta Comeniana (International review of Comenius studies and early modern intellectual history)
• Year: 2009
• Volume: 22-23
• Pages: 99-131

Contributors

author

Hrbek Jiří

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