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Introduction to a Discussion Forum
The introductory essay explains the motivation for this discussion forum. After the success of Samuel Moyn’s slim book on Utopian human rights, the American historians of human rights began to turn a blind eye to the whole period before the 1970s, including the Age of Enlightenment. The focus is now more on persons and events of the Utopian decade, and not on the history of human rights. „On the Spirit of Rights“ is a recent monograph by an influential American historian, which may help reverse the tide. There follows a brief summary of the argument of the book and an introduction to the participants in the discussion. In his discussion of enlightenment authors, Edelstein focuses on the question whether they recognized natural rights after the social contract. He calls such an approach the „preservation regime“ and identifies the physiocrats as authors of such a solution.
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Dan Edelstein responds to the comments by Thérence Carvalho, Olivier Grenouilleau, Emmanuelle de Champs and Ivo Cerman. He sums up the argument of his book and stresses that it was not only about 18th century and physiocracy. He explains that the book was motivated by his efforts to bridge the gap which appeared in US historiography, where an older trend stressed natural law, while a second newer trend focuses only on natural rights and the twentieth century. Edelstein follows the view that natural rights and natural law are two sides of the same coin. He defends the importance of Roman Law and Montesquieu for the critique of slavery. In the responses Edelstein underscores the religious grounding of natural law, the importance of medieval thinkers and the merits of the Catholic Church for renewing the interest in natural law at the end of the nineteenth century. Even though we like the result of this religious thinking, we do not like the metaphysical foundation on which it stands.
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The article discusses the recent movement initiated by the NYT to „reframe“ American history, as if the United States was established in 1619 and its main aim was to preserve slavery at any price. We sum up the timeline of the discussion from 2019 till the present. Since an East European historian sees the striking similarities with the Communist anti-American propaganda, we ask here, to what extent is this present approach dependent on the propagandist image of the past. In the first part, we explore the way history of Black Americans had been exploited by the propaganda from 1951 to 1990, then we examine the arguments put forward by the present-day 1619 Project. Whereas the Communist propaganda put emphasis on the principle that Black and white workers should unite against capitalism (or „fascism“), the present-day approach sees Black Americans as the only exploited class in the US. It has racialized also many other elements of the Marxist historiography (e.g. primary accumulation, class struggles).
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Our study aims to analyze the religious representations of the memory and recollection in Hesiod’s work, following their transposition from the cosmology plan onto the eschatology one, starting from their deification and reaching out to their power and sacred message. The Hesiodic concepts or themes, along with the Homeric ones, represented sources of works for later writers. On the other hand, the outstanding work of this great and ancient epic author depicts a broad genesis in a systematic and comprehensive way, approaching various themes that are placed at the boundaries between myth and philosophy. In The Theogony, the past is part of the cosmos, exploring it means discovering what hides deep inside a being; the past is shown as a dimension of the world beyond, and the history that Mnemosyne sings is a decoding of the invisible. In return, Anamnesis, the Recollection, is presented in the poetry of moral and religious inspiration as a form of initiation. In Hesiod’s work, Mnemosyne is the one who brings the memory, but also the one who helps forgetting the concerns. Remembering the past compensates for forgetting the present. Memory is shown as a source of immortality, of which the funerary inscriptions speak about, assuring the deceased the survival in the otherworld. The memory of invisible times belongs to the world beyond. The memory and recollection are linked to folk mythical history in Hesiod’s writings, accompanied by the meditation upon Time and Soul problems.
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The article explores Moravian manuscripts as a source of literary and social history, focusing on the Latvian part of Livland with the aim of providing an overview of Latvian manuscript literature and highlighting the most significant research perspectives. Written and rewritten in the eighteenth century and early nineteenth century, Moravian manuscripts build a heterogenous body of texts, including religious speeches, hymns, biographical writings, historical treatises, letters, and devotional literature. The development of the tradition of Moravian handwritten literature has been viewed in the article from the point of view of literary history by focusing special attention on historical texts and life stories. The effects of Moravian manuscripts have been analysed within the context of social change and emancipating trends brought about by the Moravian movement.
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National history is often opposed to transnational history and considered an outdated approach to studying the past. Yet it is unclear why this should be so, especially if national history is defined merely by a concern with what is perceived as national and not wedded to any particular methodology. The article sets out to analyse the various meanings of national history by exploring one of its manifestations in action: the ‘Estonian orientation’ that arose in the 19th century and came into conflict with existing Baltic German historiography. The ‘Estonian paradigm’, as Jaan Undusk has characterised it, is interesting not only as an example of national history (of which there are, of course, many) but also because of the way its exponents described their own intervention. They claimed to ‘write history from the point of view of Estonians’. It can thus be seen as a predecessor of later attempts to change the viewpoint from which history is written (for example ‘history from below’, animal or environmental history). In order to examine more closely the role of viewpoint in history writing, the article begins by setting out the differences between the Estonian and Baltic German orientations as they had developed by the 1930s. The Estonian historian Hans Kruus deserved particular attention since he was the first to offer a theoretical account of the effects of an historian’s social position upon the work produced. Whilst his analysis was a rather crude application of Marxism, it led him to distinguish between various forms of bias: a tendency to privilege certain subject matter and a tendency to treat it in a manner most favourable to one’s social group. The emergence of a rival body of work, strongly revisionist in character, also prompted a few Baltic Germans (for example Arved von Taube) to appreciate the importance of viewpoint in history writing. After following this parallel development (it can hardly be seen as an exchange, since Estonians and Baltic Germans never engaged with each other on such theoretical matters), the article moves on to ask if the two orientations were really as dissimilar as they were made out to be. I suggest that the two, although starkly contrasted in their depiction of historical events, were representative of a shared tradition of homeland history (Vaterlandsgeschichte).
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In the Christian world, the worship of relics dates back to the second century of the Christian era. The veneration of the earthly remains of the saints, considered lucky and having healing powers, came to occupy a very important place in the culture of saints’ worship. The relics retained all the prerogatives of the holy bodies of which they were a part, having the great power to heal the sick, to protect the communities from epidemics and invasions, to bring good fortune and prosperity. Moreover, people believed that the remains of the saints had unsuspected powers, including the power to secure the connection between the world of the living and the heavenly world, in which God reigns and judges. Relics were found to be the solution for almost every problem. As a form of popular devotion, the worship of relics has occupied an extremely important place in the history of Christianity, its evolution being long-lasting and allowing the analysis of the most intimate feelings of the members of the Christian community. One may state that this cult of relics is one of the most amazing and striking aspects of medieval religious life.
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The article has as subject the impact of the plague on the collective mentality in the Romanian space during the 16th and 17th centuries. Of all the calamities that befell people during the Middle Ages, and especially during the 16th and 17th centuries, the plague was undoubtedly one of the most frightening. The lack of logical explanations for the cause of its occurrence and its way of spreading, its devastating effect on those infected and the inability to apply effective treatment made this contagious disease have a profound impact on the collective mind. Thus, the sources that recounted the events related to this calamity, the periods in which it spread and deeply affected the population of Transylvania, Moldavia and Wallachia are highlighted. The way in which the people of those centuries tried to explain the causes of the plague, the measures of prophylaxis imposed, even sporadically, and the effort made by human communities, both in rural areas and especially in urban areas, to overcome this terrifying calamity are contained in the pages of this article. In the face of this threat, people were trying to take measures that mainly consisted in isolating the sick and fleeing the calamity. When they proved ineffective — that is, almost every time — the people tried to find the support of the divinity or resorted to ancient rituals, in which they placed their last hopes.
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The fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Soviet empire seemingly put aside the last obstacles to General de Gaulle’s dream about a united Europe from the Atlantic Ocean to the Ural Mountains. However, unlike Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary or Slovenia, countries like Rumania, Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, Macedonia and Bulgaria found it difficult to get rid of the communist legacy. Moreover, the wars and aggressions of National Communist Serbia in the 1990s gave new strength to the notion about the Balkans as the powder keg of Europe. Western authorities like Samuel Huntington hastened to proclaim that the Balkans, Greece included, belong to the Orthodox civilization and the West should leave that region to become an integral part of the Russian sphere. As a matter of fact, though, Balkan orthodoxy is substantially different from, its Russian counterpart. Under Ottoman rule the Patriarch of Constantinople became the supreme representative of the Orthodox community. Thus the Orthodox church in the Balkans was granted a degree of autonomy it had never enjoyed either under the Byzantine emperors and Bulgarian tsars or, still less, under the Russian autocrats. The Balkans belong to Europe and western civilization more or less to the same extent as the Iberian Peninsula or Sicily. Western European prejudices towards the Balkans are quite similar to the feelings the North Europeans have about the southern part of the continent. There is no doubt, however, that the European Union itself is interested in extending towards the Southeast. Otherwise the Balkans may become a constant source of refugees, driven out of the region by misery and by an ever more aggressive postcommunist Mafia.
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This paper discusses the medieval theological and political history, and the difference between blue and red blood. The popular phrase blue blood had a special significance during the Middle Ages, and its echo has been present in our culture ever since. One might think that such an abstract concept is only an insignificant legend that emerged from the oral folk tradition without any roots in theory and literature. The author’s intention is to present the concept of blue and red blood as a part of fictional genre theory. The fictional genre discourse becomes especially evident when the king’s simultaneously natural and supernatural bodies, or more simply, the notion that the king possesses a superbody, are discussed. In the given period the concept of blue blood, which referred to the king’s dignity, was coined. Thomas Hobbes, in his famous work Leviathan, develops the social contract theory, which is used to explain the development of the modern political community. Blue blood becomes red when an ordinary citizen becomes involved in politics, as this paper confirms.
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The article expresses an attitude to the controversy on the existence of a cult of the Bulgarian ruler and Christianizer Boris-Michael. A review is made of all the sources that are believed to provide some information on the question and all the sources that are believed to provide some information on the question and all the available historiography. Proceeding from the fact that some of the examined monuments: one of the letters of Patriarch Nicholas Mysticus to King Simeon, two lives by the Archbishop of Ohrid Theophylact – of the 15 martyrs of Tiberiupolis and the Detailed Life of Clement of Ohrid, as well as the well-known image of the Bulgarian Prince in a copy of the “Exegetic Homilies on the Gospel” by Constantine of Preslav, contain information that his cult was developed, it is assumed that very early, probably at the time of King Simeon, he was canonized as a saint. On the basis of other monuments, such as the Synodikon of the Bulgarian Church (“Boril’s Synodikon”) where, however, Boris-Michael is not mentioned as a saint, it is presumed that his cult was shortlived and faded soon. Assumption are made about the causes for that, both on an ideological and a formal level: the loss of Bulgaria’s state independence, the shifting of the state centre to the western parts of the Kingdom and some changes of the typikons. Among these causes a priority one emerges: the absorption of the cult of Boris-Michael by the greater and stronger cult of his Christian patron - Archangel Michael.
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In the present study we investigate the political practice of forced monastic tonsure of some royal family members of Moldavia and Wallachia in the 16th–17th centuries, a Byzantine-inherited custom by which political challengers were permanently removed from the circle of power and, through a symbolic mutilation of the nose and ears, were stigmatized visually and socially. We focus on the case of Elena Rareș, Petru Rareș’s wife, who antagonized Alexandru Lăpușneanu (1552–1561), seeking to impose her sons on the throne, which led to her forced monastic tonsure and seclusion in a monastery in the fall of 1552. She was executed by Lăpușneanu in 1553. Our research also reveals certain mentalities of the Moldavian society: the practice of forced monastic tonsure, although canonically questionable by the standards of the 21st century, was assumed at that time by clergy, bishops, boyars and the people as a legitimate way for the disgraced pretenders to atone for their political mistakes and to redeem their soul before God through monastic penance. It was widely regarded as a more humane and spiritual punishment than the death penalty, the decision being left to the clemency of the monarch, who ultimately had the right of life and death over his subjects.
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This article follows up the debate in progress of late in Western Europe of the question of the history of the national idea. Special attention is paid to the writings of Benedict Anderson, Ernest Gellner and Eric Hobsbawm, the authors who have played a principal role in the process of giving new meaning to the idea of the nation and its history. The author of the article claims that Anderson is write to see in the nation an “imaginary community”. The nations come in the world as part of the process of state development. Behind that, however, stands a still more global process – the development of capitalism. At the same time in the article are considered also the suggestions about the existence of the nation, the so-called by Anderson “imaginary community” and nationalism in the former Soviet Union in the context of the view that an invariable link exists between capitalism and nation in the process of their development.
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The article introduces the studies of the Russian scholar Boris Nikolaevich Bilunov, one of the most gifted and active historians and Bulgarian scholars who entered science in the early 70s of our century. Attracted by the problems of the Bulgarian National Revival as a student, B.N. Bilunov wrote his graduation paper on L.Karavelov’s Russian political journalism. This became also the theme of his doctoral dissertation which appeared during the lively discussion about Karavelov’s ideology and his publications in the Russian press in the 60s and 70s of the 19th century on connection with the publication “L.Karavelov’s Publicism” (in two volumes), selected and edited by M. Dimitrov, and a number of works by the same author on the ideology of the great Bulgarian revolutionary, publicist and writer. He was guided by his preconceived view that Karavelov had not been a revolutionary until his meeting with V. Levski in 1869, that in Russia he was under the influence of liberal and Slavophil views and on the basis of this selected materials from the Russian press which he attributed to Karavelov. This is disputed by most Bulgarian, Russian and other specialists. B.N. Bilunov’s merit rested in his through survey of the Russian press and objective establishment of Karavelov’s actual authorship whereby proving his revolutionary and democratic ideology, refuting the incorrect approach of M. Dimitrov. B.N. Bilunov’s work is the most important and well-reasoned study of this theme and was published in full for the first time together with some other pieces of research in the posthumously issued volume of his studies entitled “Rossia i Bulgaria” (Moscow, 1996) for which we are indebted to his wife R.I. Bilunova and the lecturers at Moscow University L. Zhila and A. V. Karassyov. Other important questions in B.N.Bilunov’s creative work concern Bulgarian-Russian political and cultural links and relations in the 19th century which he considered not only in one way, not only as Russian influence on the Bulgarians but in their bilateral aspects, as well as the history of Russian and Soviet Bulgarian studies as a component part of Slavonic studies. With his works written in a short period of time, the Russian historian after his untimely death left a lasting in Bulgarian studies abroad. His writings retain their scientific value and hold out bright prospects to new research into the themes of the Bulgarian National Revival and Bulgarian-Russian relations. B.N.Bilunov was assistant and later associate professor at the Chair of the History of Southern and Western Slavs in Moscow University whereby he contributed to the development of Balkan studies in Russia and the USSR on a high scientific level. Besides this he consistently presented in the scientific journals newly published Bulgarian and Soviet works on the National Revival and on Bulgaria’s modern and contemporary history.
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The aim of this study is to shed some light on one problem of the development of the ideas of the Bulgarian intellectual thought of XIX century that is not well researched. That is the formation and the intellectual evolution of the circle around the group of Bulgarians that studied during the period 1836–1837 on the Greek island of Andros in the school set up by the eminent representative of the Greek Enlightenment Theophilos Kairis. Special attention is paid to the atmosphere in the school where ideas born out of the Enlightenment circulated. An analysis of the philosophical views of the Bulgarian students of Kairis are attached, together with their views on the main problems of the age: the problem about the literary language, about the education, the social and the political problems, the problems of the church and the religion. Based on unutilized so far sources, it is shown to what extend those Bulgarian intellectuals later played central role in the cultural and the political life of the Bulgarian society. It is discussed how they preserved the ideas learnod from their teacher and how and under which influences their thoughts drifted towards ideological system renouncing the concepts of the Enlightenment. The presented data add new tinges to the picture that we have about the complex ideological development of the Bulgarian society during the Revival and at the same time the study helps us to construct a better notion for the spiritual communication between the Balkan nations during this critical era.
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U našoj istoriografiji još nije dovoljno ispitana uloga i mjesto radničke štampe u sirenju socijalističke misli i formiranju socijalističkog pogleda na svijet. Štampa kao faktor u društvu ima različite uloge, ali se uvijek pojavljuje u dvije osnovne forme: prvo, kao sredstvo za prosvjećivanje, za vršenje uticaja i usmjeravanje javnosti, i drugo, kao »ogledalo društva«, u kojem se odražavaju svakodnevni problemi naroda. Time štampa postaje produkt društva, predstavnik i instrument javnosti ili jednog njenog dijela.
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