History of Wroclaw: Renaissance

This is the second edition of Wroclaw´s History and I am going to speak about Renaissance.

At the first part of XV century, Bohemia and Poland had a strife for control Silesia and Wroclaw. It was after the last Silesia´s duke was murdered who he didn´t have descendants. Finally, Wroclaw and as the majority of Silesia, took part of Bohemia and Holy Roman Empire German.

The Protestant Reform reached Breslau in 1518 and the city became protestant. However, from 1526 Silesia was ruled by the Catholic House of Habsburg . In 1618, Breslau supported the Bohrmisn Revolt  out of fear of losing the right to freedom of religious expression . During the ensuing Thirty Years´ War , the city was occupied by Saxon and Swedis troops, and lost 18,000 of 40,000 citizens to plague.

The Austrian emperor brought in the Counter-Reformation by encouraging Catholic orders to settle in Breslau, starting in 1610 with the Minorities, followed by Jesuits, Capuchins, Franciscans and finally Ursulines in 1687. These orders erected buildings which shaped the city's appearance until 1945. At the end of the Thirty Years' War, however, Breslau was one of only a few Silesian cities to stay Protestant.

The precise recordkeeping of births and deaths by the city of Breslau led to the use of their data for analysis of mortality, first by John Graunt, and then later by Edmond Halley. Halley's tables and analysis, published in 1693, are considered to be the first true actuarial tables, and thus the foundation of modern actuarial science.

During the Counter-Reformation, the intellectual life of the city — shaped by Protestantism and Humanism — flourished, even as the Protestant bourgeoisie lost its role to the Catholic orders as the patron of the arts. Breslau became the centre of German Baroque literature and was home to the First and Second Silesian School of poets.

Wroclaw and all Silesia remained as territory of Hapsburg’s House until the middle of XVII century when Federico of Prussia conquered it. Silesia was a province of Prussia´s Kingdom and Wroclaw was the capital.