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This dissertation explores how alabaster funerary sculptures and tapestries created complex and multifarious alliances between the Habsburgs and members of the high nobility. It proposes that the Habsburgs and the nobility negotiated their relationships with one another through commissioning and displaying works of art that used particular materials, iconographies and styles referencing the politically potent and culturally significant heritage of the Burgundian dukes and the ancient Roman emperors. The alabaster sculptures and tapestries discussed in this two-part study were instrumental in defining and redefining, establishing and renewing these relationships. Part one is devoted to alabaster funerary sculpture in the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Habsburg domain. The origin of great interest in alabaster, together with black marble (black limestone), was the Carthusian monastery, the Chartreuse de Champmol, near Dijon, which had housed the tombs of Philip the Bold, and of John the Fearless and his wife, Margaret of Bavaria. The tombs of the Burgundian dukes became a model for funerary monuments in alabaster of other members of the family and later also for the Habsburgs, including Margaret of Austria, who governed the Low Countries as regent after the death of her husband, Philibert II of Savoy (1480-1504). The tombs of Margaret of Austria, Philibert of Savoy, and his mother, Margaret of Bourbon in a monastery in Brou were intended to assert Habsburg-Savoyard alliance in a region equally desirable to the French for fulfilling their royal ambitions. Following the alabaster and black marble examples in Dijon and Brou, the tombs of Guillaume I de Croÿ and Marie de Hamal, and of Cardinal Guillaume II de Croÿ, originally in Heverlee, near Leuven, were located in a Celestine monastery church that served as a dynastic mausoleum for the noble family. The tombs of the Croÿs offer insight into the extent to which the nobles historically exercised power in the courts of Burgundy and Habsburg, even influencing Margaret of Austria to include all’antica elements in the alabaster funerary monuments and altarpiece in Brou that are otherwise designed in late flamboyant Gothic style. Part two is devoted to exploring tapestries in the Burgundian and Habsburg collections from the late-fourteenth to mid-sixteenth century. Members of the Burgundian and Habsburg families were key players in the development of the tapestry industry in the Low Countries, regulating tapestry production and trade. As an important part of the rulers’ self-fashioning, tapestries were collected, used as gifts, or hung during important occasions. To demonstrate how tapestries were used in a particular setting, I discuss the Seven Deadly Sins set and one tapestry from the History of Scipio Africanus series, both in the Habsburgs' collection, that were displayed during the imperial festivities at Binche and Mariemont in 1549. I examine how these tapestries as well as the specific activities that occurred in front of them and the particular viewers who witnessed and participated in these activities effectively and affectively communicated Habsburg propaganda to the elite local audience, and thereby helped to encourage their loyalty and support.

Maid or companion: Austrocatolicism as a model of the Catholic state or state Catholicism? The presented work is from the field of legal history, but due to the topic, it also extends into other branches of law, especially religion law. This topic is the relationship between the state and the Catholic Church in the Habsburg Monarchy (including the period of the Austrian Empire and the Cisleithania). That is a relationship that is sometimes called the term austratolicism. The author's goal is to characterize this concept. To this goal, the religion law model of the Habsburg monarchy is first characterized, as well as the dynastic relationship of the Habsburgs to the Catholic Church and, in this context, the Ius exclusivae institute. Subsequently, the work turns into a historical interpretation of the changes in the mutual relations between the state and the church. It begins in the 18th century (with a small excursion into the deeper past), part of which is devoted to a situation where the church was ruled by an Enlightenment state called Josephineism. The author tries to understand its roots and place it in the broader context of the Enlightenment. Above all, however, he describes the methods that Josephineism applied to the Church. The interpretation continues into the 19th century, at the beginning of...

The presented diploma thesis deals with a Historiolinguistic analysis of 30 letters written in German and published by the office of Archduke Ferdinand II of Tyrol (1547-1567) in Prague Castle between 1547-1567. The thesis reflects the political and social attitudes in the Czech lands of the 16th century, the person of Archduke Ferdinand II of Tyrol and his relationship to the Czech lands as well as the role, thy typology and the text-production of offices of the late Middle Ages and the Early modern period. The thesis proffers a closer description of the German language and its characteristic features in the context of the language of offices of the 16th century. The core of the thesis consists in a Historiolinguistic analysis of the initial archival material from the textological and historio-pragmatical point of view. The aim of the thesis is - according to the linguistic analysis - to contribute to the research of the German language used in the offices in the Czech lands in the 16th century.

The thesis "The Wölfling Case. Resignation of Leopold Ferdinand of Tuscany from the Archduke's Position and His Life as an Ordinary Citizen" discusses the events associated with the departure of Archduke Leopold Ferdinand (1868-1935) from the Habsburg-Lorraine House. The thesis deals with the Imperial Austrian Family Statute, individual cases of resignation to the rank of Archduke, as well as the issue of violation of family norms in the Habsburg-Lorraine family. The focus is on events surrounding the escape of Archduke Leopold Ferdinand from the court and his subsequent resignation from the Archduke rank. Attention is paid to the cause of this, as well as the dramatic negotiations surrounding his final resignation from the imperial court and family. The thesis also charts the career of the former Archduke (since 1903 Leopold Wölfling) in the position of an ordinary citizen.