Theology of Glory in the Bohemian Hagiography of the 17th Century : A Remarque (not only) to Balbín's Work "Gloria Sanctissimi ducis et martyris Wenceslai" (1669)
Abstract
The word "glory" ("sláva" in Czech, "gloria" in Latin) is to be found on the titles of the preserved hagiography written and published from the 1630s to the 1670s in Prague archbishopric considerably frequently. The aim of the paper is not only to present the genesis of this key term of the seventeenth-century Bohemian hagiography, but also to analyse meanings of the term.
Bohemian hagiographers'emphasis on saints'glory can be especially read as a part of contemporary polemical theology, as a part of Catholic response to Luther's ciritic of the scholastic theology called by him as theology of glory and also as a part of contemporary controversy over the (in)visibility of sanctity. Thus, some Bohemian writers of hagiography did not hesitate to present their works about saints' lives and miracles as treatises about the epiphany of God's glory.