Echoes of the Thirty Years’ War in the Annual of the Ljubljana’s College of Society of Jesus

Vanja Kočevar

Echoes of the Thirty Years’ War in the Annual of the Ljubljana’s College of Society of Jesus

Key words: Society of Jesus, Thirty Years’ War, Duchy of Carniola, Ljubljana, annual Historia annua, emperor Ferdinand II.

Abstract:
The purpose of the paper is to find out which phases of the Thirty Years’ War made the greatest impact on the life in the duchy of Carniola and especially in its capital city. This research is based on the accounts from the Annual of the College of Society of Jesus (Historia annua) in Ljubljana. Judging by the reports of anonymous Jesuit chroniclers, the land experienced the strongest impact of the proximity of the battlefield during the so-called second Venetian war in the years between 1615 and 1618, that represented a sort of an introduction to the upcoming conflict in the Holy Roman Empire, and the last phase of the Thirty Years’ War, the so-called French and Swedish war in the years between 1635 and 1648. The first two stages of the Thirty Years’ War, the Czech and the Danish wars, left only scarce traces in the Annual, the latter even remained unmentioned by the Jesuits. The reports on war events start to reemerge after the beginning of the Swedish war in 1630 and especially after 1635 when France entered the war on the side of the emperor’s opponents.

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