„Pracujíce na této turnovské vinici Páně…“
“Working on this Turnov Vineyard Lord…”

The Re-Catholization of the Turnov Area in the Second Half of the Seventeenth Century

Summary/Abstract: One of the most well-known representatives of the Czech Franciscan province in the seventeenth century was the Turnov native P. Jindřich Labe (around 1650–1693, original name Jan). When he entered the novitiate of the newly founded convent at Saint Francis in Turnov at the age of eighteen, he symbolically culminated the conversion of his parents Jeremiáš and Zuzana Labe, who were listed under faith as being non-Catholics disallowing the possibility of conversion to the Catholic Church. On the basis of data from period sources, a list of faiths from June 1651, a list of members of the so-called Literate Brotherhood (1644 and 1662) and an overview of Turnov representatives in the seventeenth century, a range of the burghers and their confessional identities have been successfully identified. This demonstrated that the strict confessional definitions applied elsewhere were not necessarily the case in Turnov, in this small provincial town, where close cooperation between the inhabitants was a life necessity. The significant contribution of the Turnov Franciscans to the relatively smooth course of re-Catholicization of the entire region also seems to be very much apparent.

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