The Road to Freedom? The Conversion of Members of Religious Orders to Protestantism

duties. He published a range of non-Catholic books and fi nally settled in Riga and achieved fame as the author of books dedicated to gardening. Departures across the border from Church orders, with consequent conversion, are also attested to for members of other orders, who can later be found among the authors of so-called revocation preaching (Revocations-Predigte, sometimes also Wiederrufs-Predigte), in other words, preaching in which the authors publicly renounced their Catholic faith and declared their conversion to the Evangelical confession. Th e study presents three of them: the former Prague Augustinian Gottfried (Godefridus) Rabe, the Franciscan and preacher in Plzeň Raimund(us) Rzimsky and the Český Krumlov functioning Franciscan Walther Busch. Th ese clergymen mostly later justifi ed their departure to the Protestant regions and the related abandonment of their relevant order and conversion by objections to the Catholic confession. A role could have undoubtedly been played, however, by attempts to avoid the rules of the order, understood as being of a binding nature. Conversion to Protestantism could therefore be not only a liberation from ‘incorrect’ confessions, but also a personal liberation, which of course had its limits under the new conditions. Th e actual motives for the departure and conversion of the original monastics and their actual experiences have remained, however, hidden.