Head of the Academic Platform: doc. PhDr. ThLic. Drahomír Suchánek, Th.D., Ph.D.
The platform focuses on broadly themed research in the field of church and religious history. It seeks to coordinate and connect educational and research projects in the field of church history across institutional and faculty levels, while also serving as a center for joint research between similarly profiled domestic and foreign institutions. In terms of time, the platform deals with selected topics from the early Middle Ages to modern times, always with an emphasis on the areas of interest of individual platform staff members.
The platform is not limited thematically or methodologically to its field of church and religious history, but also seeks to bring elements of church-historical interpretation into the broader historical discourse, across the entire spectrum of related aspects. In addition to its unique conceptual and methodological approaches, it emphasizes the expansion of interpretive perspectives focused on religious approaches, which must be considered to understand the overall context of European society’s development.
The thematic areas developed within the platform include, in particular:
• Church organization and administration
– the development and organization of parish administration (especially in the Czech late Middle Ages and early modern period), the economic background of church institutions, monastic and diocesan networks (especially the Upper Palatinate and the Bishopric of Wrocław)
• Theoretical and methodological approaches to church history
– interdisciplinary approaches, church and religious history as a theological discipline
• History of the papacy
– relations between spiritual and secular power in a broader historical and thematic context, papal elections, church historiography
• Christianization and the early medieval church
– aspects of Christianization in Central Europe, the imperial and princely (royal) church, the cult of saints, monastic life
• Religious life between the Reformation, Confessionalization, and the Enlightenment
– European Reformation and Counter-Reformation, popular piety and everyday life, the influence of the Enlightenment on church life (especially in relation to forms of piety and the life of the lower clergy)
• History of the Jews and Christian-Jewish coexistence
– especially the late Middle Ages and early modern period, urban society, economic ties, and everyday life
Members: