Development of Relations for Education in the 17th century in the Context of Burghers' Testaments (Example of New Town Prague)

The Development of Relations to Education in the 17th Century in the Context of Burgher Testaments (the Example of New Prague Town) Abstract Early modern testaments represent a unique source of information about many areas of life at a given historical period. They are frequently used in various areas of historical research, including Czech historiography and its new cultural history. Although the cultural history covers many topics, surprisingly, the field of education has been somewhat forgotten. The testaments, which unite the official information and personal testimonies, provide a unique chance to see the attitude of the society towards education in a historical context of a certain era. The testaments might become important especially when researching those periods of the development of scholarly systems and education that have been overlooked by historians, e.g. the development of town schools; respectively, the development of urban education in the period after the Battle of White Mountain (1620). The limited interest of historians has been caused mainly by the lack of information sources that could explain the changes in the organization of the newly formed confessional educational system after the Battle of White Mountain. These changes launched the process of recatholization of the Czech lands..