Din distracţiile societăţii de curte. Vânători şi plimbările domneşti în secolele XVII şi XVIII
Court Entertainments. Hunting and Princely Rides in the 17th and 18th Centuries

Summary/Abstract: The study analyzes the forms of entertainment and diversions in the premodern Romanian society, from hunting and other warlike exercises – characteristic to the medieval world in the process of modernization – to more refined entertainment forms and modalities for spending the leisure time, such as princely rides to hermitages and monasteries, retirement to summer residences or participation at the grape harvest. These were the main amusements of a court society in the process of transformation in the 17th century. With the arrival of the Phanariotes and the Habsburgs to the Romanian countries, court life changed, and the warlike exercises and hunting regressed, their place gradually being taken by non-violent enjoyments: walks in the open air, rides to monasteries or to one’s estate, balls and court amusements. If hunting and warlike exercises declined, princely rides to monasteries and hermitages, to grape harvests – carriage rides on the highway, in the outskirts of the capitals under the Phanariote princes – or salon life, card-games, balls etc. remained favorite pastimes of the courts of Bucharest and Iaşi during all the modern age. As a way of entertainment, an opportunity for social contact and socialization, walks occupy a special place in the history of the modern leisure. These were therefore the entertainments and pastimes at the princely courts in this age, when, slowly, sensibilities were transformed, outlining that which was to become the modern leisure.

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