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The geography of the world presented in Spanish chivalric romances combines real spaces or areas inspired by them with others, completely made-up, purely born in the author’s imagination. As a rule, toponyms used in the chronicles of adventures of knights-errant are not meant to inform the reader about the characteristics of the place in which the action unfolds. Wherever the adventure happens: a sinking ship, a battlefield, a duel location or a magical trial, the focus point is the protagonist, not the place. However, authors of chivalric romances use numerous toponyms and do not refrain from mentioning countries that are less familiar to their readers in order to introduce a certain diversity and make their work stand out in the swarm of other publications. In this way, the toponym “Poland” appears in the stories of knights-errant, sometimes as the location of the adventure, but most often as the homeland of warriors who are frequently becoming friends with the main character. This article analyses the image of Poland and Poles as outlined by the authors of chivalric romances, both where the area performs a purely episodic function and when it becomes one of the most important places in the geography of the fictional world. The author also hypothesises about the possible sources of inspiration for describing the territory of Poland and her inhabitants.
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The Church history of Moldavia in the last quarter of the 16th-century is complex in terms of the effects of political instability on the ecclesiastical plan. One of the hierarchs of which little is known is Nicanor, considered founder and abbot of the “Agapia Veche” (Old Agapia) monastery, who became bishop of Roman, locum tenens metropolitan of Moldavia, then metropolitan, being a special case for that period, provoking historiographical debates, due to the fact that he was demoted from the position of metropolitan to that of bishop of Roman by prince Aron Vodă “the Tyrant”. He had retired several times to the Agapia monastery, and played an important role in the Synod of Iași, organised in 1600 by Michael the Brave, which decided to nominate new hierarchs to the vacant episcopal sees left by those who had fled from Moldavia with Ieremia Movilă. In this article, I provide some contributions concerning Nicanor՚s connections with princes of Moldavia, on his beginnings in ecclesiastical life, about his cursus honorum, and his activity as a hierarch and retired bishop, by analysing some less researched and contextualised sources, in particular a dedicatory annotation on a manuscript preserved in the National Library in Sofia.
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Review of: Balthasar Russow. Liivimaa provintsi kroonika. Tõlkinud ja kommenteerinud Jüri Kivimäe. Tallinn: Tänapäev, 2022. 472 lk.
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The article discusses the use of the category of ‘everyday life’ in historical works by Maria Bogucka as well as her theoretical contributions on the subject. Her pioneering role in adapting the mode of popular writing advanced by the French cycle Histoire de la vie quotidienne to Polish historiography in the 1960s established a high-quality standard on Polish scholars by combining original research into economic and social history with references to the history of material culture and mentalities. A quarter of a century after the publication of her exemplary study entitled Życie codzienne w Gdańsku: wiek XVI–XVII [Everyday Life in Gdańsk: Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, 1967], Bogucka involved herself in contemporary debates within the international community of historians over the German All- tagsgeschichte, perceiving it as a methodological framework for innovative research and an opportunity to expand the theoretical side of cultural history. Though she would not produce another ‘history of everyday life’ – in a refreshed perspective and with more robust theoretical foundations – her studies into old Polish customs betray an inspiration with the German research current of Alltagsgeschichte, which blossomed in the early 1990s.
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Funeral ceremonies of the Hungarian nobility in the late medieval Kingdom of Hungary are the central focus of this study. Due to the relative lack of reports preserved from the Hungarian environment, the current paper is centred on three specific noble funerals that took place in late medieval Hungary. The funeral ceremonies of John Pongrác of Dengeleg, Ulrich of Cilli and Hedwig of Cieszyn were duly reported by contemporary authors and therefore comprise the knowledge base for this text. The aim of this study is to investigate the course of funeral ceremonies, the symbolic level of mourning towards the nobility and observe any common and varying elements. The current paper also discusses the purpose of several customary features of the burials (processions, clothes, colours etc.), as well as how they were prepared and organised. Moreover, the idea of what a proper nobleman’s funeral should look like according to contemporaries as well as the intentions of the scribes as to how to inform about the death or burial of the members of Hungarian nobility are also presented.
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This article explores the adventure of bread, one of the essential substances of human nutrition, in Istanbul during Suleiman I's reign. It follows the primary sources about the production, supply, grinding, and distribution of wheat, the raw material of bread. In addition, it addresses the situation of the mills and bakeries supplying flour and bread and the quality, weight, and varieties of bread. It focuses on the production of wheat and its transportation to Istanbul, grinding and distribution, difficulties caused by disruptions in the supply-demand balance, and the arrangements of wheat-related procedures. It determines that the bread problem in the capital during the period was primarily concerned with wheat and had a strong relationship with mills. A central finding is that the low wheat yield and the inadequacy of mills grinding qualified flour were the most significant obstacles to adequately supplying the highly populated city. The city's supply, which was at the level of a knife-edge in terms of wheat, caused a severe shortage of bread in 1530. On the other hand, the bread varieties explicitly produced in this period show that the Turks carried some of their Central Asian habits to Istanbul and kept them alive until this period.
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Review of: Yaşar, Murat. The North Caucasus Borderland: Between Muscovy and the Ottoman Empire, 1555-1605. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2022. 272 Page, ISBN: 9781474498692 Based on a comparative analysis of the Ottoman and Muscovite diplomatic correspondence, this book presents a historical account of the North Caucasus peoples from 1555 to 1605, when Russia expanded into the region. The North Caucasus becomes a contested borderland, with the Ottomans, Safavids, Crimean Khanate, and Muscovy competing for influence externally, and the Nogays, Cossacks, Dagestanis, and Circassians internally. This elaborate interplay of cooptation, persuasion, loyalty, and betrayal eventually led to the Ottomans and Dagestani allies expelling the Muscovites from the region.
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The mounted courtiers of Sigismund I the Old, in addition to their representative function, were a small, trained reserve formation remaining permanently at the side of the king, who could issue them an order at any time. During the so-called Prussian war of 1519–1521, the size of this group reached its peak in the summer of 1520 in Toruń (539 horses in 121 court detachments – pocztach dworskich). During the fights with the Teutonic Knights, the courtiers were constantly responsible for the safety of the monarch in his place of residence, but smaller groups took part in military actions. The analysis of a short fragment of source material included in the manuscript no. 49 (Main Archive of Old Files, Crown Treasury Archive, Section 1: Royal Accounts) allowed to make a detailed description of a small banner, consisting of 69 horses in 15 retinues, taking part in the fight against the Teutonic Knights’ plundering raids to northern Mazovia at the turn of July and August 1520. The composition of the unit and the nature and size of the retinues were discussed, as well as the issue of commanding the group, the costs incurred for its action and, based on Marian Biskup’s research, the battle route was presented. The presented example can be taken as a starting point for a discussion on the military organization of the court. It can be assumed that the king or the marshal, as the court’s superior, would decide which of the individual retinues of mounted courtiers would form one or more court banners that functioned simultaneously and independently. Their number and composition were probably determined by the tasks envisaged for the units.
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The article presents the results of research on miniatures of manuscripts and engravings of printed books of the 13th—16th centuries — important pictorial sources on material culture, including costume and household items related to the life of a child, as well as their games, toys and dolls. The medieval miniatures have been massively studied by students of historic costumes, seldom toys, while this article addresses the miniatures and engravings as the most important pictorial source on the Middle Ages and early Modern times. References are provided to specific images from books and their digitized copies and some replicas.The identified sources show that the book illustration of the studied period is able to provide what is necessary for understanding how medieval children grew up and developed, how they were dressed, slept, what and how they played. Gospel stories about Jesus Christ’s infancy were most important in this matter. Among the secular subjects, quite informative are illustrations with the births of princely children and the lives of historical figures, known and anonymous characters of miniatures and engravings.
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The authors present a paleoanthropological study of the necropolises from several 16th—18th century towns and villages in the western part of Russia. In this area and time period, the average life expectancy was very low. The lowest, 14.5 years, is observed in the population of the borderline fortress Blokhino-1 in Saransk County. The higher the infant mortality in the groups, the lower the average life expectancy. The infant mortality rate in different localities was different.The peak of infant mortality falls on 0—5 age group in all studied groups from the western part of Russia of the 16th—18th centuries. The representativeness of this cohort often depends on the mortality rate of children in the first year of life. The high mortality rate of young children was associated with a low level of medical development, lack of antibiotics, and sometimes with historical situations.Mortality in the first year of life, especially newborns, was the highest in the borderline fortress Blokhino-1 of Saransk County. The reason for such a dangerous demographic situation here was the historical purpose of the fortress and the task of the population to defend their homeland. Much less attention was paid to everything else. In general, the most prosperous demographic situation was in the village of Isupovo, Kostroma region, in the city of Kazan and on the territory of Nizhny Novgorod Posad near the Kremlin (necropolis on the Verkhnevolzhskaya embankment) in the 16th—18th centuries.
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The article discusses the strength and functioning of the quarter army (pol. wojsko kwarciane) between 1589–1591. At the time in question a large Tatar invasion was in progress, which resulted in the rapid enlargement of the entire Crown army. Huge tax increases were introduced due to the prospect of an offensive war against the Ottoman Empire. The rapidly expanding army did not receive its due pay, leading to the first army confederation (pol. konfederacja wojskowa) in history of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Consequently, there was a reduction of the quarter army.
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Starting Long Wars which could occupy the state for a long time on the western front and the emergence of the Romanian nationalist Michael the Brave on the same dates changed politic balances in Wallachia turned against Ottoman. Taking advantage of the wars with the Habsburgs, Michael rebelled against Ottomans in Bucharest on 13 November 1594, he turned his direction to the towns and villages along the Danube and he inflicted great damages to the Muslim people living this region. After the danger of security along the Danube, Ottoman authorities decided to produce more permanent solutions in Wallachia. In this context, the Wallachian voivodeship was directly transformed into an Ottoman province and Satırcı Mehmed Pasha was appointed as a governor. Also, ulufe soldiers were appointed to the castles which about to be built in Bucharest and Târgoviste. The task of implementing decision taken by the Porte was given to Ferhad Pasha. As a matter of fact, Ferhad Pasha came to Ruse after providing the ammunition and soldiers etc. necessary for Wallachian campaign. For a while, he supervised the bridge works that would facilitate Ottoman army’s crossing to Wallachia and later he was dismissed from his duty due to the pressure of his rivals in Istanbul.
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Post-mortem facial reconstruction is a technique that uses anatomical knowledge of the human skull to flesh out the face of a deceased individual. Forensic artists work with law enforcement to identify victims of crime when skeletonized remains are found. Archaeologists use the same technique to learn what a person who lived and died long before photographs may have looked like. The skull of Michael the Brave (1558-1601), ruler of Romanian principalities in 1600, was photographed around 1918-1920, and the Manchester three-dimensional data were used for peg anthropological analysis. Based on these new technologies, a physical model of the skull was obtained and used for facial reconstruction according to forensic art methods. Finally, the reconstructed face was compared with contemporary portraits of Michael theBrave (like Aegidus Sadeler or Domenicos Custos portraits).
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The study discusses the cognitive benefits of a discourse-oriented reading of old texts whose confessional polemic discourse of the Reformation period becomes meaningful again. The object of research are the communicative aspects of language and the various dimensions of socio-cultural life. The aim of the analysis is not so much discussing the characteristics of the code, but the description of its users, seen as subjects of discourse, and of the relations among them, of their knowledge system, ways of thinking about the world, basic concepts, ideas and values (or rather their profiles) contained in discourse, the communication strategies used, as well as the cultural and social conditions and institutional framework in which the discourse takes place. While on the one hand, from the research perspective, all these parameters make up the characteristics of discourse, on the other, the category of discourse allows for a consistent inclusion of such diverse properties in its description.
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Review of: Cătălina Bălinișteanu-Furdu, Old and Middle English Literature. The Literature of the Renaissance, Bacău, Editura Alma Mater, 2021, 212 pages.
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The article uses an interdisciplinary approach to selected early modern poems of John Donne and aims to delineate the research area which still awaits systematic exploration. The textual analysis of his elegy: The Comparison, operating within the communicationoriented theory of genre blending, leads to the detection of its multigeneric and dialogic patterns. It reveals the intricate manner in which features and functions of various literary and non-literary forms are intertwined and harmonized in one poem. It is also argued that Donne’s elegy derives its imagery from an experimental trend toward caricatures (grotesquery) followed by the 15th/16th-century portraitists and genre painters. The general conclusion is that Donne utilizes various, then available, communication channels to ensure intermediality of his message and that his concept presupposes certain cognitive and creative processes on the addressee’s side.
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The article describes the composition of the Polish army from the period preceding the Battle of Lubieszów, as well as from several weeks later. The main source are two registers of this army that are contained in the marshal’s book from the time of Stefan Batory’s rule. In the author’s opinion there are many reasons to recognize that it was a court army – a permanent mercenary army of the king. One of the objectives of this article is to do wider and more detailed research on this issue. In the text itself the experience of the commanders of individual army units has been analyzed as well as their relations with the royal court and their background. The bulk of the article has been devoted to the comparison of the mounted cavalry units – their number, the size of the cavalry masters’ and comrades’ detachments – before and after the Battle of Lubieszów. The composition of the units supporting the cavalry, i.e. infantry and artillery, has also been described. At the very end, in the form of an appendix, editions of both registers of the court army have been featured.
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This paper presents the preliminary study of a cemetery, dated between the second half of the XVIth century and the beginning of the XVIIth century, uncovered in the northern part of the Vînători-La Jolică archaeological site area. The site was first excavated in 1972-1974 by archaeologists M. Florescu and M. Nicu, when, among other discoveries, they managed to identify a previously unknown “feudal” necropolis. Unfortunately, none of these findings have ever been rigorously published, only mentioned. The present article strives to continue the effort of publishing inedited materials and archaeological contexts that are part of the new excavations carried out in the Vînători-La Jolică dig site which refer, at this time, to the Late Mediaeval/premodern period.
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Mentioned since the ancient times in mythology and documents, the messengers formed the central component of the correspondence system. In the Principality of Moldavia of the 15th-17th century, the information was mostly passed by spoken word. A large part of merchants, travellers or priests practiced this activity, but they only could be regarded as simple transmitters. The official messengers and emissaries were mostly found in the Princely Courts and served only for the state official interests. As the Moldavian territory was situated on the border between Christian Europe and the Ottoman Empire, many of them acted as spies, too. Thus, choosing the right messengers was a pretty delicate job for the princes. Another important aspect was the instructions received by the messenger or emissary for successful accomplishing his mission. During the Medieval period, a large part of the dispatch riders or emissaries had an official job (correspondence carriers) as well as an unofficial one (spies), which made the instructions absolutely necessary in order for the delegate to safely accomplish his tasks. The last question involves the rights and privileges of the messengers in order to keep them as safe as possible. Because they often went through foreign territories, the princes made special deals in which they reciprocally permitted the messengers to cross their territories.
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