Pietas bohemica transformata. The transformation of Czech popular religiosity and its sources in the 18th and 19th centuries with special focus on the region of Eastern Bohemia

The thesis is concemed with the study of Czech popular religiosity during the transition from a "pre-modem", heteroreferential society, through enlightened modemisation transformations, to the beginnings of a modem, autoreferential society. It is because of this, together with the importance of extemal institutional changes, that the author has chosen the period from the so-called Rebellion of Opocno (1732) to the issue of the Protestant Decree (1861), which equalised Protestant churches with those of the Catholics. This period of interest includes the issue of the Tolerance Decree, the development of the Czech national movement, the revolution of 1848, and the issue of the so-called Protestant Provisory. The thesis focuses mainly on the region of Eastem Bohemia, since this contained the highest concentration of secret non-Catholics in the pre-Tolerance period, together with high concentrations of the allowed Protestant confessions (Augsburg and Reformed confessions) and unallowed sectarians later; moreover this area become the most important source of small Protestant churches and transformed the sectarian movement later on. The research has combined historico-sociological and historico-anthropological approaches in order to gain a deeper understanding of the religious ideas of unprivileged sections of the..