CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2011
| Author | Mutlova, Petra |
|---|---|
| Title | Radicals and Heretics: The Dresden School in Prague |
| Summary | The main objective of the PhD dissertation is a history of the so-called Dresden School, named due to its alleged place of origin and active in Prague at the beginning of the 15th century. During the early and formative years of the Hussite movement in Bohemia, a group of Germans from Dresden who presumably ran a “School” located at the Black Rose House in Prague played an important role in the scholarly disputes of that time. The activity of the School proved to be a stimulating element in religious developments in Prague up until the year 1417, and maintained strong influence on the radical Hussite parties thereafter. Nevertheless, what can be understood under the concept of this particular School remains unclear. The dissertation examines available written sources and scrutinizes the information they contain in order to find out whether the Dresden School existed as a well defined group. As a first step it analyzes the contemporary period when the Dresden School was allegedly in existence. This comprises three stages: firstly, compiling references to the group or its members made by external contemporary sources, be it well-known narrative sources or un-researched manuscript material; subsequently combining these with biographical data of the people and the information they provided about themselves; and lastly, looking for indirect evidence for the existence of the group. The next set of questions is centered around the later stages of the School’s existence and analyzes its “afterlife”. The existence of the School is considered through the prism of its possible influence, namely whether there are signs of its ideological influence on anyone, whether its disciples or supporters markedly shared or promoted identical ideas, or whether there existed any kind of activities that could be generally linked with the consequences of the existence the Dresden School. Several 15th-century manuscript sources that attest to a promotion of teachings of certain members of the School on a theoretical level are scrutinized and edited for this purpose. The dissertation discusses the possible bonds between the members of the Dresden School from various angles. Its main goal is to find out whether the Dresden School existed as a clearly defined group and if so, what kind of group it was or where did its concept originate from. The thorough examination of the above mentioned problems aims at facilitating better understanding of the phenomenon of the Dresden School which has been puzzling many generations of historians up to this date. |
| Supervisor | Klaniczay, Gábor |
| Department | Medieval Studies PhD |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2011/mphmup01.pdf |
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