The Quest for Compromise: Peacemakers in Counter-Reformation Vienna

by Howard Louthan

• ISBN13: 9780521580823
• ISBN10: 052158082X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1997-10-13
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

The Quest for Compromise is an interdisciplinary study of the imperial court in late sixteenth-century Vienna, and a detailed examination of a fascinating moment of religious moderation. Against a backdrop of rising religious and confessional dogmatism, the Emperor Maximilian II (1564-1576) assembled a remarkable cast of courtiers who resisted extremes of both Reformation and Counter-Reformation. This book investigates the rise and fall of an irenic movement through four individuals whose work at the imperial court reflected the ideals of religious compromise and moderation. An Italian artist (Jacopo Strada), a Silesian physician (Johannes Crato), a Dutch librarian (Hugo Blotius) and a German soldier (Lazarus von Schwendi) sought peace and accommodation through a wide range of cultural, intellectual and political activity.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations	xi	(2)
Acknowledgments	xiii	(2)
A political and cultural chronology	xv	(1)
List of abbreviations	xvi
Introduction	1	(12)
PART I: THE EMERGENCE OF AN IRENIC COURT	13	(36)
1 From confrontation to conciliation: the conversion of Lazarus von Schwendi	13	(11)
2 Jacopo Strada and the transformation of the imperial court	24	(25)
PART II: MAXIMILIAN II AND THE HIGH POINT OF IRENICISM	49	(74)
Introduction	49	(4)
3 Hugo Blotius and the intellectual foundation of Austrian irenicism	53	(14)
4 Ordering a chaotic world: the reformation of the imperial library	67	(18)
5 Protestant ecumenism and Catholic reform: the case of Johannes Crato	85	(21)
6 Finding a via media: Lazarus von Schwendi and the climax of Austrian irenicism	106	(17)
PART III: THE FAILURE OF IRENICISM	123	(32)
Introduction	123	(1)
7 Confessional ambiguity and unambiguous critics: religion and the Austrian middle way	124	(10)
8 The funeral of Maximilian II: struggling for the soul of central Europe	134	(9)
9 Matthias in the Netherlands: the political failure of irenicism	143	(12)
Conclusion Storm clouds on the horizon: from the great milk war to the Thirty Years War	155	(8)
Epilogue The wider circle of irenicism	163	(4)
Select bibliography	167	(13)
Index	180