Back to conference page. This paper aims to rectify this oversight by offering fresh insights into the educational landscape of Geneva in the decade preceding the foundation of the Academy. Through an examination of neglected archival materials, this paper posits the existence of a functional educational establishment capable of fostering proficient students in the liberal arts.
These findings challenge prevailing narratives and enrich our understanding of early modern pedagogy in Geneva. The large-scale settlement in the s of the Unity of the Brethren to the Margraviate of Moravia, the eastern portion of the Lands of the Bohemian Crown, coincided with an increase in autonomy on the part of Moravian nobility in relation the center of royal power in Bohemia.
Amidst the Bohemian-Hungarian War β and the subsequent twelve-year period which saw Moravia transferred to Hungary before its return to the Bohemian crown in , the Moravian nobility were able to successfully consolidate their newfound freedom from royal oversight, including now their de facto protection of the heterodox Unity of the Brethren whom they had accepted as their subjects.
Through this, multiconfessionalism became a part of Moravian policy and identity. Following the only major expulsion of the Unity in at the orders of the Hungarian king Matthias Corvinus, the nobility of Moravia protested and secured their return in This paper argues that these developments, autonomy for the nobility and the implementation of multiconfessionalism, were intrinsically intertwined. The Moravian nobility saw their autonomy from the political centers of power, be it Prague or Buda, as their right, and protecting their heterodox subjects was part of that.
Through this, Moravia became the first multiconfessional society already by the end of the fifteenth century, setting the stage for its status as a religious haven following the beginning of the wider Reformation in the next century. In the archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, published the Book of Common Prayer , which was to become the fundamental book of the new religious order in the reformed English church.
