Parergon

This book is the first to extensively study the visual culture stemming from Bohemia during two centuries of denominational pluralism, when the majority of the population participated in non-Catholic sects (with at least five Protestant groups active by the sixteenth century). The sixteen essays that are featured consider the extent to which the reformers valued images (or not), and overall bring much needed attention to a fascinating and lesser-known context of pluralism and shifting alliances.

The chronology encompasses the activities of Czech theologian Jan Hus (1369–1415) and his Hussite followers—which preceded Martin Luther's Reformation by over a hundred years—through to the defeat of the Bohemian uprising at White Mountain by the Habsburg coalition (1620). This latter event brought to an end a remarkable period of denominational coexistence and experimentation. The contributions in this volume invoke the activities not only of the Hussites, but also the Utraquists, the Unity of the Brethren, and Lutherans. Clearly Bohemia was a region in which the traditionally articulated binary of Catholic vs non-Catholic was far more complex and nuanced than elsewhere in Europe, a pluralist history that in and of itself deserves to be better known.

How this history is manifest in art is of course a complex question, acknowledged by the editors Kateřina Horníčková and Michal Šroněk to often evade a satisfactory answer. As noted in the excellent introduction, the Hussite distrust of images and the iconoclasms perpetrated by extremists are perhaps the facets that the Bohemian Reformation remains most infamous for. There is an acknowledged problem of preservation, and the material culture that does exist is often accompanied by the challenge of determining denominational significance. Still, the forty-eight figures and the eight colour plates included certainly elucidate and counter what the editors describe as 'the myth that all non-Catholic denominations in Bohemia held a strictly negative attitude towards images', and the fact that all these denominations 'just like the catholic church—acknowledged the importance of visual communication and the effect of, and response to, works of art' (p. 3).

This is an erudite volume that positions itself as forward thinking and generative of new lines of questioning, rather than as a definitive and comprehensive summation. The relationship between the Reformation and visual culture as it pertains to Germany and England has long been a topic of rich discourse and it is high time that the Bohemian example be added to the mix. [End Page 303]