A Hive for Pious Souls – an exhibition at the Olomouc Archdiocese Museum

This exhibition at the Olomouc Archdiocese Museum showcases the religious brotherhoods in the culture of early medieval Moravia.

The exhibition is made up of unique artefacts intended for liturgical, educational, disciplinarily and representative purposes of these associations. These include altar paintings, processional statues, liturgical objects, richly decorated member registers, printed material, membership documents, seals, certificates of incorporation and medals. The display provides both a detailed and engaging overview of this ancient organisation.

Religious Societies are almost unknown term today, even if they made an integral part of Christian culture from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment. The English historian John Bossy called it communities of miracle. The exhibition continues to the recently launched research of this phenomenon and its dominant role in shaping of European early modern period culture. It is an attempt to reconstruct the lost world of religious brotherhoods in Moravia in the 17th and 18th century. Repeal of these communities in the Joseph reforms did not only mean a loss of tangible property of fraternities, which can be seen as art objects today, but also the disappearance of autonomous and nearly ubiquitous community of believers.

Date of the event: till Apr 25, 2010