Pernštejnové v evropských dějinách – Vorel Petr (2024)

The Lords of Pernštejn were among the oldest documented noble families in Moravia and Bohemia. However, they achieved their greatest political influence with the advent of the early modern period, when they secured a significant position at the courts of the Jagiellonians, Matthias Corvinus, and the Habsburgs, placing themselves among the elite of European nobility. This process was accompanied by a whole range of accompanying phenomena. We can observe it in the marriage policy of the Pernštejns, in the careers that often took the Pernštejns and their wives far from the family estates, and in their ability to perceive the internal problems of the lands of the Crown of Bohemia in the context of much broader European events. This was clearly manifested in the everyday life and character of the household of Vratislav of Pernštejn and his Spanish wife Maria Manrique de Lara. It is therefore to them and their descendants that most chapters of this book are dedicated. In it, the history of the Czech-Moravian family with the coat of arms of the bison's head is multifacetedly related to the transformations of Europe in the 15th to 17th centuries. Thus, the authors focus not only on the fates of the Pernštejns but also on the more general question of the connection between Czech and European history during the Renaissance and the beginning of the Baroque.