Two Thursdays: January 25 and February 1
9:30 a.m. – 12 noon
Bethany Congregational Church 556 N. Hope Avenue, Santa Barbara
Presented by Jim Hemmer
This course approaches history from a rather unusual perspective—that of a single family, the Hapsburgs, whose dynasty lasted 1,000 years (1020 to 1918). How did they do it? Genealogical endurance, for one thing: generation after generation they produced male heirs. They were fortunate too in their political alliances, but even more so in their marital alliances. They had enormous dynastic success in their arranged child marriages, as celebrated in the famous 17th century saying, “Let others wage war, you happy Austria, marry.” But there was a downside to this focus on arranged marriages: inbreeding. Consanguinity brought misshapenness as well mental and physical incapacity. The Hapsburgs believed that they were the principal defenders of the Catholic faith, which, during the Reformation, led to religious wars and persecutions.