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The article describes the history of Polish relations with China, starting from the end of the 13th century to the end of the 18th century. It focuses mainly on political and economic relations, but it refers to the civilizational and cultural relations as well. The Author omits, already quite well analyzed, issues concerning the Jesuit and Franciscan missionaries in China. The Author mentions the Battle of Legnica on Dobre Pole on 9th April 1241, which should be considered as the first contact between the Poles and the Mongols. The Author mentions diplomatic mission of the Franciscan Benedict the Pole who on 22th July 1246, as the first Pole, reached Karakorum in Mongolia. However, the most part of the article concerns the attempts to find a simpler way to China through the lands of Moscow, which has failed, and even in the 12th century, the Poles used the sea route or traveled through Persia. The article highlights the efforts of missionaries and diplomats in that matter. As the most interesting issue in Polish-Chinese relations in the period until the end of the 18th century, the Author indicates an attempt to establish direct relations between the king Jan III Sobieski and the Chinese emperor Kangxi. Jan III Sobieski after the victory over the Turks at Vienna has sent one of his portraits to the emperor’s court, who accepted the gift and has responded writing him a letter. Moreover, in the 18th century, not only the king Jan III Sobieski, but also merchants, middle-class bourgeois and landowners possessed Chinese products, especially Chinese porcelain.
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This article discusses an observable revival of the interest in the Middle Ages in Germany. This phenomenon—sometimes called medieval renaissance—manifests itself particularly in various areas of popular culture. To prove the thesis posed, the author analyses a handful of these areas, that is: exhibitions, historical reconstructions and imitations of medieval fortresses and settlements, social and computer games as well as reconstructed medieval fairs and chivalry contests. The article presents a survey of the past and present cultural events serving as evidence in favour of the main thesis. At the same time, the author asks about the reasons for this increased interest in the Middle Ages. Representative opinions of historians and other specialists, as well as fans of the Middle Ages seem to suggest one clear answer: the 21st-century man yearns for an alternative reality, dissimilar to the fast and noisy contemporaneity. The Middle Ages offer a shelter based on the strong foundations of the fixed medieval reality and the stable system of values.
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The article reveals certain language peculiarities of one of the unexplored manuscripts, Zakhariinskii Parimeinik of 1271. On the one hand, the manuscript reflects the Pskov-Novgorod dialect features: the mixing of affricates w and Ÿ as well as sibilant and hushing sounds, a particular type of the reflexivity of TъrT groups, the use of ;u along with ;l, etc. On the other hand, there are many spellings of South Slavic origin in the manuscript. All this makes it possible to state the appearance of obsolete orthography in Zakhariinskii Parimeinik and to specify information about the number and territorial belonging of the scribes, who worked on the text.
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The paper reconstructs the place and role of solar and lunar optical phenomena in the sacral picture of the universe by the Eastern Slavic society during the pre-Mongol period. The written and folk interpretation of halo traditions, solar and lunar shine is analyzed. The views on atmospheric diffraction phenomena as weather signs and omens of political changes are also investigated. The people of Old Rus’ believed that simple halos defined weather changes. At the same time, complex halos predicted victory or political crises and signified holiness of the deceased person. The common mind connected the sacred solar and lunar halos with the figure of prince and (in the Christian era) saint pretenders. The folklore also associated the phenomenon of halo with the special solar and lunar sacred activities. The literary presentations of complex halos could reflect the biblical semantics of light and glow as heavenly fire and evidence of the glory of God.
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This paper deals with the different images of one key event in Bulgarian history – the conquest of the capital city of Tarnovo by Ottomans (1393). Some of the main texts about it could be traced in hagiography, in folklore, in historiography and textbooks, and in literature are discussed. The focus is on the interpretations from the 19th century and on examining them as a network and in the context of some other similar events (e.g. the conquest of Constantinople, 1453, the Battle of Kosovo, some local military clashes, etc.), in the quest of a common mythical base beneath them presenting the conquest of an important city by foreign infidel barbarians. Some characteristics, typical for Bulgarian culture are discussed. Among them, the absence of reports for a great battle, the important role of the Patriarch and relatively small role of the last King, etc. The counter-discourse about the decline of the kingdom is also noticed in the context of the creation of the canonic image of the event that appeared relatively lately. The most prominent author in this counter-discourse was the poet Hristo Botev.
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This paper analyses the right of inheritance on the feminine line in medieval Transylvania, through the history of a noble family residing in Sântioana, in the Târnava county. The aim of this study is to highlight the practice of inheritance by girls from this noble family with increased attention on the category of goods they acquired, the right to own them, the importance of feminine inheritance for the girls and their descendants and the courts before which the inheritance disputes have been tried.
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The Archbishop of Gniezno, Bodzanta of Kosowice, of the Szeliga coat of arms, is one of the most controversial figures of late fourteenth-century Poland. He began his career as the governor of Kraków-Sandomierz during the reign of Casimir the Great. He held this office for over 20 years, while also developing his career as a clergyman. His service as a canon in Kraków, a scholastic in Wiślica and finally as provost of the collegiate church of St. Florian in Kleparz were successful. In 1382, by the appointment of king Louis of Hungary, he became the archbishopric of Gniezno, where he remained until his death in 1388. The controversy surrounding Bodzanta stems from his unstable policy during the interregnum following the death of Louis of Hungary. In addition, Jan of Czarnków left in his chronicle an unfavourable opinion about the archbishop, representing him as incompetent and his actions as destructive for the Polish Church. The aim of this article is to highlight the conflict between Bodzanta of Kosowice and prince Władysław Opolczyk, which took place in 1387. The analysis is based on a newly discovered letter of the archbishop to parish priests in the Wieluń region, found in the collections of the Jagiellonian Library. The conflict was caused by the receipt by the prince’s officials of questionable benefits from villages belonging to the clergy of that region. The archbishop defended the local clergy, imposing an interdict on Wieluń and threatening the ruler with excommunication. This study fills a gap related to relations between the most important personages in the Kingdom of Poland at the end of the fourteenth century. In addition, it verifies the state of research on the history of such towns as Krzywarzeka. The attitude and determination of the archbishop in curbing the prince’s decisions and actions contradicts the opinion about Bodzanta’s weakness throughout his pontificate.
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The medieval heraldry of the town of Bistrița incorporates – in a very peculiar way when compared to other urban communities in Transylvania – symbols directly related to the Angevine royal dynasty of Hungary. Starting from the examination of the historical sources that record and use these specific attributes, both documentary (textual) and sigillographic (iconographic), the present paper pursues two main objectives: (1) to determine a more accurate chronology of the use of Bistrița’s urban seals, until around 1540, in relation to the relevant historiography of the subject; (2) to argue new hypotheses regarding the way Bistrița assumed the iconography of its first urban seal, particularly the way in which the crowned ostrich with a horseshoe in its beak came to be considered the main symbol of collective identity of this medieval Transylvanian town.
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The present paper focuses on the complex ties between the episcopal court of Alba Iulia and the elite of the Bistrița district in the half of century around 1500, based on several unpublished sources, rarely used by previous scholarship. These records highlight a collaboration between the episcopate and the local elite in various aspects, such as the ordination of priests, consecration of liturgical spaces, confirmation of parish priests, collection of church taxes, reinforcement of wills, resolution of disputes under canon law, defense of the kingdom boundaries, and management of relations with other political actors. On the other hand, attempts by the bishops to disregard the right of patronage owned by local communities or to increase the taxation were met with firm resistance, often supported by other members of the Saxon “spiritual university”. However, these conflicts, which were rather often in medieval Transylvania, did not worsen during the analyzed period and did not seem to indicate the imminent triumph of the Reformation in the Bistrița district.
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The aim of this study is, in first place, the reconstruction of the size of the Prague Jewish Town (Jewish Quarter of the Old Town of Prague) from the fifties to the eighties of the 14th century. Determining the size and number of houses in the Ghetto forms the basis for a more realistic estimate of the number of Jewish inhabitants in the period prior to the pogrom of 1389. To the extent needed to attain the main aim, this study touches on questions about the beginning of the Jewish Quarter.
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The authoress summarizes what we know about the earliest Jewish settlement in Prague and presents the building of the Old-New Synagogue in Prague from the point of view of history and architecture.
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This paper discusses how the Venetian chronicles written in the 14th–18th centuries represent the episode in which the ban on wearing beards in Venice under Doge Domenico Michiel is connected to the hostilities with the Byzantine Empire in the context of the expedition against Cephalonia in 1126. It is about a strange connection at the first glance; however, some Venetian chroniclers that inserted this event were tempted to consider this decision as an act of contempt against the Greeks that even made Emperor John II Comnenus decide to end the hostilities and demand peace. The paper also brings fragments that introduce this event in Venetian chronicles.
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The article deals with the prologue (synaxarion) Vitae of St. Nicholas in Slavonic Cyrillic literature from the 13th to the 17th century. These texts function within the hymnographic composition practice and can be found in two types of liturgical books – the Prologue and the Menaion. They are usually extracts from extensive narratives, which is why this paper also looks at texts from two other types of medieval books (the Panegyric and the Reading Menaion) that contain The Acts of St. Nicholas, The Miracles of St. Nicholas and the so-called „Another” Vita – St. Nicholas of Sion Vita. These texts also functioned as synaxarion vitae. The Vita of St. Nicholas in the Simple Prologue is the shortest and earliest version of a hagiographic narrative about the saint translated in Bulgaria during the First Bulgarian Empire, and it is very rarely found in the hymnographic composition of the Menaion. St. Nicholas’ Vita in the Turnovo translation of the Verse Prologue is the most popular and common after the sixth song of the canon in the hymnographic composition practice. That Vita is a more extensive version of the Acts of St. Nicholas, based on the Metaphrastian Vita, preceded by a verse and an added miracle of St. Nicholas. The article mentions two interesting cases in Serbian menaia of the 15th century, which present different traditions to place the synaxarion texts.
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The paper analyzes how the Byzantine law influenced The Town Law of Novo Brdo, which represents the second part of Despot Stefan Lazarević’s Novo Brdo Legal Code of 1412. A possible connection between the town law of Novo Brdo and certain provisions of The Syntagma of Matthew Blastares and one of the privileges that the town of Ioannina received from the Byzantine Emperor Andronikos II in 1319 is suggested. Accordingly, it is assumed that certain provisions of the Town Law of Novo Brdo could have been formulated during the reign of Emperor Stefan Dušan.
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This article strives for a combined approach consisting of historical geography and art and church history in the research of Duklja and Raška in the times of Stefan Nemanja. The article’s first part addresses the circumstances of the birth of Stefan Nemanja and the question of Nemanja’s two baptisms. Moreover, data on the churches and monasteries, their patrocinia and the stećci (funeral monuments) in the area of research has been gathered and then analysed with digital tools to offer a map-based reconstruction of the “Sacred Landscape”. The second part focuses on the early medieval church of St. Stephen in Sušćepan, located near Herceg Novi in today’s Montenegro. Among its church furnishings and sculptural decorations, a parapet slab, most probably from the 11th century, stands out. Besides highlighting similar solutions on the parapet slabs of churches along the eastern coast of the Adriatic, the paper draws attention to iconographic solutions as well as floral and geometric motifs and their importance within the sacred space of the church. The third and final part of the article introduces an analysis of selected written sources illuminating the relationship of Duklja with the Latin Church, particularly with the Apostolic See in Rome, in the 12th and 13th centuries. It deals with the communication of the Papal Chancellery with the archbishops of Ragusa (Dubrovnik) and Antivari (Bar) from the backdrop of the ongoing disputes over the church hierarchy in Southern Dalmatia.
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The article scrutinizes the content of a chrysobull allegedly promulgated by the Serbian Despot of Serrhai, Jovan Uglješa (1360 – 1371), for the Athonite Monastery of Simonopetra. The original of this act is lost and its only surviving variant is a confirmed copy authenticated by the Constantinopolitan Patriarch Cyril I Loukaris in 1623. The patriarchal confirmative charter offers the reader a text presumably issued by John Uglješa 359 years earlier, i.e. 1264. Starting from this evident discrepancy, the article analyses the text of Loukaris’s corroborated copy and argues which elements of this counterfeit are plausible and could be accepted as genuine and which could not. For better understanding of the Greek original, the full text of Loukaris’s charter is diplomatically published at the end of the article.
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The search for the unexplained interactions of domestic medieval liturgical music and sacred architecture of the Moravian style has not been the subject of interdisciplinary study so far. А reflection on the potential relationg between church chanting and architecture is absent from the largest part of the existing literature on the development of medieval sacral art. Te scarcity of writen historical sources, and especially musical ones, made it particularly difcult to defne the connection between the chanting circumstances and the changes in the architectural form of the late Byzantine period, which is almost a standardized Moravian architectural form. The earliest preserved bilingual – Greek-Slavic neumatic manuscripts, mentioning both the names of the frst famous Serbian medieval composers, and the more or less well known late Byzantine musicians who had actively participated in the earliest religious services of the Serbian Church, confirm that the culmination of the chanting art in Serbia occured precisely at the turn of the 15th century and then until the fall of Serbia under Turkish rule. Comparing the available data, with a general insight into the migration fows that led to the Byzantinization of Serbian culture in that period, showed that afer the reconciliation of the Serbian Patriarchate and the Patriarchate of Constantinople, in 1374, the world-class building tradition was adopted, which until then was sporadically seen on the Serbian soil. Te architectural form of the Moravian style would become recognizable by the singing apses in the axis of the transept, in the middle of the already adopted form of the inscribed cross from the early 14th century. Within the framework of the overall church, political and cultural transformation that was visible in Serbian society, the chanting practice of the Serbian Church, or more precisely the greater affirmation of the liturgical art and the increase in the number of the chanters, certainly had a share both in acceptance and in the consistent implementation of the architectural solutions of the Moravian style. Future research should focus on the holistic analysis of the Moravian cultural heritage, in order to map the movement of the known and unknown Serbian Greek melods and determine the scope of their activity. Te existing knowledge of the architectural features of the Moravian sacred buildings will thus receive a signifcant addition, from the liturgical and religious service in which each form of church art is individually represented as part of a much more complex artistic ensemble with which the Kingdom of Heaven on the Earth is iconized.
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