Trápení s Josefem Sebastianem aneb O knize, kterou jsem vůbec nechtěla psát
The trouble with Josef Sebastian: A book I never wanted to write

Author(s): Daniela Tinková
Subject(s): Christian Theology and Religion, History, Philosophy of History
Published by: Masarykova univerzita nakladatelství
Keywords: Josef Sebastian; history;
Summary/Abstract: I first met Josef Sebastian in 2008. Actually, that wasn’t the very first meeting. I had previously been drawn to a study from the mid-20th century by the Brno historian Michael Vaňáček dedicated to admirers of the French Revolution among the clergy in the Znojmo region. It is rare enough to find revolutionary sympathisers among the Catholic clergy, but the fact that this story was also set in my native region meant that I couldn’t ignore it. However, I’d never wanted to get involved in ecclesiastical history and in any case this was only of marginal interest. In the spring of 2009, my friend Jarda from the Catholic Theological Faculty and I were organizing the biennial for the Czech Society of 18th Century Studies, which we decided would focus on the Catholic Enlightenment. We were working with our friend Claire on a project about the dissemination of information on the French Revolution and so it occurred to me that I could have a closer look at these troublesome south-Moravian priests and thus connect the theme of the biennial with that of my own research. This would also satisfy the curiosity which is always awoken in me by such ‘red priests’. There was no doubting though that it would be in the form of a brief paper, as such a marginal issue was certainly not allowed to divert me from my central theme of the dissemination of information on the French Revolution, propaganda strategies and the formation of public opinion which I wanted my book to be about! Anyway, I said to myself, his ‘ideas’ will no doubt be naïve and predictable. What could a village priest at the other end of the world, as the Znojmo region was at the time, know about the French Revolution!

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