Abstrakt:
Opening part of this article presents the transformation and character of religious
milieu in Central and Western Europe in 19th and at the beginning of 20th century (especially
the processes of de-ethatization of religion, secularization and de-christianization,
respectively the so-called second confesionalization). With regard to the focus of this work,
the main attention is paid to the processes running inside the Catholic Church. It deals more
precisely also with the similar development in the western part of the Austro-Hungarian
monarchy. It views complex situation in Czech lands in a wider context of transformations
and creation of the modern European industrial society in the second half of the 19th
century, which also strongly mirrored in the activity of individual Churches and led, among
others, to the “religious renaissance” and to the search for new or renewed forms of religious
activities, as well as spiritual life and also to the formation of new regular communities
(men and especially women congregations) together with lay confraternities (Marian
communities, in the first place). Second part of the work demonstrates the processes on the
model example of the mostly agrarian and traditionally conservative South Bohemia.
Beginning of the new times is in the Budweiser diocese, the traditional catholic bulwark in
Bohemia, connected first of all with the episcopacy of Jan Valerian Jirsik. It is also thanks
to his commitment and work that the status of Catholicism in the whole region significantly
improved and that in the second half of the 19th and first half of 20th century, the South
Bohemian diocese became the place of foundation or activity of quite a number of regular
and lay religious communities.
