The Exile Community in Pirna in the Thirty Years' War in the Perspective of the Chronicle of Václav Nosidlo from Geblice.

Pages

3-43

Citation

LISÁ, Martina. The Exile Community in Pirna in the Thirty Years' War in the Perspective of the Chronicle of Václav Nosidlo from Geblice. Acta Musei Nationalis Pragae – Historia litterarum Prague: National Museum, 2009, 54(1-4), 3-43. ISSN 0036-5351. Also available from: https://www.nm.cz/en/periodicals/amnphl/54-1-4/the-exile-community-in-pirna-in-the-thirty-years-war-in-the-perspective-of-the-chronicle-of-vaclav-nosidlo-from-geblice

Acta Musei Nationalis Pragae – Historia litterarum | 2009/54/1-4

Vaclav Nosidlo z Geblic (1592-1649) was a well-of burgher from the city of Litoměřice in northern Bohemia, an intellectual, and last but not least an exile. After the defeat of protestant forces in the battle of Bílá hora (1620) and the subsequent persecution of non-Catholics, he became one of the large number of emigrants who sought asylum in near-by Saxony. Between 1626 and 1639, whi le living in the city of Pirna, which was one of the most important centres for Bohemian exiles during the Thirty Years' War, Nosidlo wrote a little known chronicle. Nowadays there are three examples of Nosidlos work: the oldest manuscript written in the Historical Calender from Daniel Adam from Veleslavín from 1590, which could be in all probability attributed to Nosidlo himself and two other copies from the 18th century. This article presents this source as well as the author and discusses some aspects of the daily life of the Bohemian émigrés in Pirna based on the chronicle, which provides interesting insight into the exile mentality. The chronicle is a valuable source of information on many details and problems faced by religious émigrés: the daily life of the exile community; military and political events as well as their particular sensibility for prodigies and portents - a whole rang of divine signs, including prophetic visions. The belief in such portents could be seen as a typical of an urgent attitude shared by learned and popular cultures throughout Europe in those times. From his point of view Nosidlo refers in his chronicle about the problems ofthe cohabitation of two big communities, the hosting orthodox lutherian one and the religiously heterogenous exiles: lack of religious tolerance in the Lutherian environment; economic and social problems due to the enormous wave of émigrés; as well as frictions between the two „nations", which activated und intensified the classical patterns of thought by the perception ofstrangers and its utilization as an object of different projections. Nevertheless, inspite of all the problems, a kind of model society for the Exiles was developed, which through the unique allowance of the church services in Czech played a role in the establishment of the legitimisation of minorities as the czech exil es were. 

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