A respublica litteraria és a császári udvar a 16. század második felében
The Republic of Letters and the Imperial Court in the Second Part of the 16th Century

Summary/Abstract: The aim of the article is to clarify why Vienna and Prague became so important centers of the Republic of Letters in the second half of the sixteenth century. It is argued that the cultural flourishing of the Habsburg imperial court cannot be satisfyingly explained by pointing to the characters of Ferdinand I, Maximilian II and Rudolf II, or by stressing the propaganda and representational goals of their “cultural politics”. Still it is admitted that the humanist education and the controversial but definitely not radical religious stance of these rulers was an important precondition of a cultural boom. However, analyzing some of the cultural fields to which humanists could directly contribute (collections, summer palaces, botany, imperial library, court feasts) it is demonstrated that Maximilian’s cultural initiatives are much exaggerated by the literature whereas those of Ferdinand are sometimes undervalued. Humanist presence was less dependent on imperial initiative than on the pressure and insistence of humanists and on the vigor of humanist cultural practices. The author claims that humanist identity as expressed by the Republic of Letters was a natural component of the emperors’ complex identity, hence it was rather the Republic of Letters that influenced and absorbed the emperors than vice versa. Finally, it is emphasized that the imperial court could not have become a center of the Republic of Letters without the participation and support of a great number of cultured courtiers and bureaucrats.

• Details
• Contents