A soproni fürdõk a kora újkorban
The baths of Sopron in the early modern age

Summary/Abstract: The paper surveys the history of the baths of Balf in the vicinity of Sopron, as therapeutic institutions, with a summary of the mediaeval antecedents until the end of the early modern age. Its sources belong to three groups: 1) the relevant passages in municipal statutes and in the minutes of the magistrate, which make examining the frame of operations possible; 2) documents in the Sopron Archives concerning leases, price lists, tax records and assorted accounts; 3) published descriptions of the Balf thermal springs, publications popularizing the baths, and scholarly analyses. In addition to describing the history of the baths and bathing, the author has intended to reconstruct the place, role, and function of the bath as a municipally owned institution, with a view to guild structures, contemporary economic forms, and the relevant decrees of the magistrate. Both baths operated continuously in the 16th to the 18th centuries, excepting the crisis at the end of the 17th century, due to the general deterioration of economic conditions. The town of Sopron profited from the baths by way of leases. The lesee had to be a citizen of the town with solid financial background and adequate professional expertise, the latter to be guaranteed by his guild membership and master’s examination. Proper standards were vouched for by the strict maintenance of hygienic and health requirements, from time to time supervised and, if necessary, renewed by the magistrate. The paper analyses bathing customs in detail, with a view to the medical effect of the cures, well-known for contemporary bathers. The methods of historical ecology have revealed an important detail in the history of mentality: people during these (16th to 18th) centuries were perfectly aware that their health was fundamentally affected by, besides bathing cures, a satisfactory, pleasant natural environment as well as by fair climatic conditions. The appendices contain lists of the operators of the baths as well as of various services along with prices.

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