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The victory of the imperial army in the Battle of White Mountain and the suppression of the Bohemian estate revolt paved the way for the reigning Habsburg dynasty towards a controlled transformation of the noble society in the Kingdom of Bohemia. Property penalties awarded to those who took part in the already finished resistance, the increase of the sovereign?s nobilitation powers on the background of the newly introduced aristocratic form of address and the enactment of the only permitted confession of Christian faith also influenced the existing situation of the lesser nobility and had a considerable impact on the lives of its members in all respects. Especially during the first decades after the Battle of White Mountain, one of the privileged social strata underwent a transformation that consisted of several mutually conditioned elements. Apart from a decrease in the land property in their management, after 1620, the representatives of the ancient knight families faced a regulation of the personal composition and inner hierarchy of their estate, diverse career challenges and the necessity to deepen or defend the confessional values of bygone times. The Czech historiography dealt with the history of the lesser nobility of the Kingdom of Bohemia of the late 17th century remained more or less marginally. Except for achieving a deepened knowledge of the social and economic consequences of the changes after the Battle of White Mountain, neither the current nor older research has succeeded in establishing how the intersection of the suggested social, political and religious measures instigated by the sovereign was reflected in the position, public conduct and the way of thinking as well as the scale of values of the knights. The author focused on looking for the answers to corresponding questions. Drawing on written sources varied in terms of art and content and on a combination of sociologizing and historical-anthropological methodological approaches, the author examined a number of prevailingly unexplored areas establishing the resulting image of lesser nobility after the Battle of White Mountain. The submitted interpretation was concentrated in three main chapters that gradually exposed the social, political and religious activities of the knights under the variable conditions of the era after the Battle of White Mountain to a more detailed examination. As this set of questions has become a subject of targeted 6 research for the very first time, it offers potential for a further reflection and development, both in terms of the topic, heuristic and methodology. The author thinks that this treatise should be viewed as the initial investment for the purpose of achieving a higher awareness about the past of this weakened but not inactive and anonymous estate.

Supported by historical and anthropological approaches of methodology, the thesis submitted endeavoured to point out the life histories of two almost unknown knights of the period before the Battle of White Mountain, Přibík Bukovanský Pinta z Bukovan and his son Jan. Its principal part consists of a critical edition of rarely preserved family memoirs, written by both noblemen in the 16th and the early 17th centuries. The unique testimony of personal character, supplemented by the message of their personal and official correspondence and other kinds of historical sources, rendered the author the basic heuristic starting point to becoming acquainted with both everyday and unusual experiences, ideas and manners of thinking in concrete representatives of two different generations of lower nobility of the period before the Battle of White Mountain. I focused my research, gradually conducted in accordance with the biographical method, on presenting the family and public lives of both knights, their wives and offspring. Apart from this, the questions of transformation of complex networks of social relationships, formation of family memory, the effects of war and perception of various cultural models, were also given appropriate attention. The author's intention was to present one of the possible manners to approach the social history of lower nobility of the period before the Battle of White Mountain.

The author of the diploma thesis endeavoured, with the help of historic-anthropological methods, to depict a variety of forms of the war experience of the south Bohemian aristocracy in the period before the Battle of White Mountain. The subject of his interest focused on the fates of men and women of noble origin, on the background of three key military events of the second half of the 16th century and the early 17th century. Two expeditions of the Bohemian troops against the Turks in 1566 and 1594, and the invasion of Bohemia by the Passau army in 1611 had a very strong impact on the way south Bohemian knights thought, behaved and acted. Personal correspondence of selected aristocratic families served as the heuristic starting point in the search for the answer to the question which ways an aristocrat chose to defend values tested by centuries and to enforce his own or his family?s interests. The objective of the entire research was to amplify the knowledge about the history of lower aristocracy, by stressing the unique role of a historical participant in war. Treating the topic of war experience gave rise to a contribution on the borderline between the political, military, social and cultural areas of history of the early Modern Age.

This study deals with the life of utraquist clergyman Jiřík Tesák Mošovský in urban community of Bohemian countries in the 16th and 17th century. The main topic was especially his world of ideas and his opinion of local community. In the four following chapters will be present step by step the relations between clerical and secular patrons, administration of the city Český Brod as well the routine life of Jiřík Tesák Mošovský. There were used old prints writing by Jiřík Tesák Mošovský to understand his personality. Extending knowledges about activities in the utraquist parishes before the battle of White Mountain was the main purpose of this study. New discoveries should extend knowledge about importance of the utraquist Church in history of Bohemian countries.