We kindly inform you that, as long as the subject affiliation of our 300.000+ articles is in progress, you might get unsufficient or no results on your third level or second level search. In this case, please broaden your search criteria.
Próba ujęcia zagadnienia
The article constitutes the attempt to formulate remarks and hypotheses referring to the mentality of the elite of Toruń’s burghers in the 17th and the first half of the 18th century, mainly on the basis of the research concerning the history of the culture of Toruń in this period. Toruń’s elite consisted of the few rich members of the proud patriciate and the group of the so called “Scholars” (Gelehrte) – people of various backgrounds, who, having acquired the university education, made a political career in the town and representatives of professions requiring a much better education” priests, teachers, doctors, pharmacists, lawyers and officials of the city authorities. The factors which united all those people in one group was the Protestant religious community (Lutherans), family, social and economic connections. The mentality of Toruń’s inhabitants was affected greatly by the life in a big city where goods were exchanged and people travelled from the north to the south and the east, and from the west to the north and east. Toruń was traditionally connected with Gdańsk and the Baltic Sea, Germany, the Netherlands, England and the Scandinavian countries. The mentality of the patriciate and burghers was imbued with religiousness in the Lutheran or Calvinist sense. The Protestant model of personal life filled with science and work prevailed. At the same time the mentality of Toruń’s burghers, in the first place those who spoke Polish and had direct contacts with noblemen and Catholics, was affected by the Baroque-Sarmatian models promoting the joy of life, the pursuit of luxury and presenting oneself from the best side. A case in point is Jakub Kazimierz Rubinkowski (1668-1749) – a nobleman and burgher of Toruń. This postmaster and burgrave of Toruń combined the features typical of the mentality of the noblemen and burghers. Toruń’s patriciate adopted many customs from noblemen and magnates, which was reflected in fashion, ceremonies, funerals, weddings, etc. Like noblemen, patricians purchased land, set up small “folwarks” and erected summer mansions in the countryside. Inhabitants of Toruń were mentally connected with inhabitants of Gdańsk. Yet, the mentality of Gdańsk’s inhabitants was mainly affected by the fact of living in a harbor open to the sea. Toruń was more closely connected with the Polish-Sarmatian background. What should be underlined is the ability to adapt and co-exist of various groups along with the ability to create a coherent whole. Toruń’s burghers were capable of reconciliating the material (the sphere of business and economy) with the spiritual (the sphere of belief and existential fear).
More...
The representation of Silesian cities during the late Middle Ages and early modern times combines illustrative and textual elements. Both of these elements are subject to certain rules typical of the poetics of the so-called laudation. The representation (imagery) of each of the analyzed cities (the analysis in this case concerns mainly the capital of Lower Silesia – Wrocław) has a corona muralis, along with significant dominant profiles, which are naturally the church towers and the town hall. The towers of Nysa in the image of Hartmann Schedel are associated with the idea of Flemish belfries. Since the time of Hartmann Schedel’s Chronicle of 1493 the vedutas have also been provided with a commentary, fulfilling the functions of a classical laudation that praises the city’s good natural location, the beautiful shape and power of its founder. The image and text from Hartmann Schedel’s Chronicle may be compared with the famous description of the city of Wroclaw by Barthel Stein of 1512. The least-known, if one of the oldest, image of Wroclaw is the panorama with John of Capistrano in the background of 1503; it refers to the view from Weltchronik of 1493 only to some extent, though presenting a more symbolic, sacred character. On the other hand, the picture of Wrocław made in 1537 during the trip of the Palatine Ottheinrich from Neuburg on the Danube to Cracow is more impressive, although symbolic elements also appear here. The view of the city of 1562 should be described as a picture of the ideal town, made for specific political reasons. In turn, the first measurement plan of Wroclaw by Frederick Groβ of 1579 and the view of Wroclaw from the volume of Braun and Hogenberg of 1572–1618 should be considered the typical Renaissance plan of the consciously inventory-like character. The plan of Frederick Groβ expresses the idea of the modularity of the city consisting of sacral buildings and rectangular building blocks. It can be compared with Legnica’s plans from the beginning of the 18th century. The text of Braun and Hogenberg’s volume can be regarded as an early example of comparative urban planning. The veduta of Lwówek, created in the 17th century, should be considered to be close to the medieval paintings of a perfectly protected city.
More...Między szczerą ciekawością Anglika a wczesnonowożytną teorią ekfrazy
Peter Mundy (1596 – ca. 1667), one of the most representative English travellers of his period, visited Gdańsk (Danzig) and Toruń (Thorn) in 1640 and 1642 and described these cities in his Relations. The article includes deliberations concerning Mundy’s descriptions of the two most important cities in Royal Prussia in the context of early modern theory of ekphrasis and the eulogy of the city, represented especially by manuals of preliminary exercises in rhetoric (progymnasmata) and chapters from De inventione et amplificatione oratoria by Gerard Bucoldianus included in Reinhard Lorich’s Scholia attached to his edition of Aphthonius’ Progymnasmata, one of the most popular rhetoric books in the second half of 16th and in 17th centuries. The analysis of the structure and contents of Mundy’s “relations” leads to the conclusion that the English traveller was aware of the early modern theory of description and eulogy of cities but, at the same time, his curiosity made him free to leave the theoretical rules aside and focus himself on interesting technical constructions (“The great Organs in the Pfarrekerke” in Gdańsk or the Toruń bridge) or customs of burghers (“execution of Justice” and “Recreations” in Gdańsk and “A greatt faire” in Toruń).
More...Warszawski triumf Stanisława Żółkiewskiego (1611) na tle uroczystości z 1583 roku
The article discusses the military triumph of the Crown Field Hetman Stanisław Żółkiewski, which took place in November 1611 in Warsaw during the General Sejm, as against a similar ceremony in 1583. Both of those events crowned the war struggle with the Muscovite state and were closely associated with the Polish-Lithuanian triumphs over the eastern neighbour. In both cases, those spectacles constituted the crowning achievement of long-standing fights. Triumphs were organized in Cracow and Warsaw, and its spectators were the country’s political elites gathered at the wedding of Jan Zamoyski with Gryzelda Batory (1583) and participants of the Sejm. One can also indicate a wider audience, which was the noble society, because the propaganda activities undertaken by Stefan Batory and Sigismund III Vasa were to bring not only desired short-term results, e.g. introducing taxes for the continuation of the war with Muscovy, but also long-term effects by shaping political attitudes desired in a given moment. In both cases, the originators of the triumphal marches could obtain information from one of the chapters of Hetman’s Books of Stanisław Sarnicki. The author collected there the most important comments related to the organization of such marches. Żółkiewski’s triumph was closely related to the capture of the Smolensk fortress and the defeat of the Muscovite army near Kłuszyn in 1610. Those events gave rise to the organization of another triumph, but this time not of the king himself, but of the hetman. It was to be used primarily as an argument for the nobility sitting in parliament to pass the taxes necessary for further warfare. The analysis and comparison of both celebrations show that much greater effort was put into organizing the Cracow events of 1583. Their artistic and ideological setting was given great attention to detail. Twenty-eight years later, participants and observers of the Warsaw triumph did not experience similar impressions. Neither the king nor his entourage took care of preparing the scenario of the ceremony, music or elements of occasional architecture, etc. Many people took part in the Cracow events: dancers, musicians, actors, soldiers and exotic animals. In 1611, the triumph in Warsaw was extremely simple. Not much attention was paid to the preparations. The course of events shows the animosities between Sigismund III and Stanisław Żółkiewski along with the lack of a unified position towards the Muscovite state. The article was supplemented with a critical source edition of one of the descriptions of the events of 1611. The text is stored in a collection of manuscript documents – the so called “miscellanea” in the Czartoryski Library in Cracow. The author of this account is unknown, although he probably witnessed the Warsaw triumph, which is indicated, for example, by detailed descriptions of the appearance of Muscovite prisoners of war.
More...Z doświadczeń odtwarzania układu urbanistycznego Dolska z przełomu XVI i XVII wieku
The article concerns the presence of nature in pre-industrial towns. I address here the problems I encountered when recreating the urban layout of Dolsk, an averagesized town in Greater Poland belonging to the bishops of Poznan in the Old Polish period, at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries. This problem concerned showing the socio-economic character of the city. The reproduction constitutes part of Greater Poland’s volume of the series of the Historical Atlas of Poland. The search for the presence of nature in cities was based on a query in written sources from the first half of the 17th century and on the basis of the oldest known and preserved city map from the end of the 18th century. The reference to natural elements in Dolsk is associated with the presence of home gardens, which constitute a kind of natural arrangement. Most often they appear when describing a real estate that was the subject of purchase/sale transactions between burghers of Dolsk or when loans were secured on a real estate. Gardens were located on plots, which constituted the basic unit of the ownership division of the urban space. However, they were not always mentioned in the descriptions of transactions. Most often they appeared at the houses that were built on plots limited from the back by the lakes surrounding Dolsk or passed into suburban areas. However, also in the case of plots that bordered with other plots from the back, one may find information about the presence of a garden on such a plot. The presence of gardens at the back of the plots in Dolsk was also registered on the oldest preserved city map of 1794–1796. Both this fact and the forwarding of elements of nature inside town walls on plans of perspective towns from the early modern period means that marking gardens on the reconstruction of the spatial arrangement seems necessary, especially in the case of towns of the size and character of Dolsk. This makes it necessary to reflect upon the methodology of creating historical maps of old towns. The simplest solution would be to create a generalized, simplified visualization of the urban space based on data taken from the oldest town plan, but not merely from a simple redrawing of the border between the residential-economic zone and the garden zone. However, not being able to mark these borders precisely on the basis of data from written sources from the 17th century, one should adopt a conventional method of marking these zones. However, this requires further reflection on the methodological concepts of modern cartography and their use to create historical maps showing the reconstruction of spatial systems of towns in the pre-industrial period. It seems that further work on a similar way of marking the space of urban plots in average-size and small towns will allow to develop a model of cartographic presentation that will better reflect the character of the space of towns such as Dolsk.
More...
Built at the end of the 13th or the beginning of the 14th century, the royal fortress/castle at Jdioara, located on the road from Caransebeş to Lugoj, was part of the defensive chain in the Banat highlands against the Turkish penetration, as well as a checkpoint on the road to Transylvania. During that time the fortress/castle at Jdioara changed several owners, from voyvods of Transylvania (John Pongrácz of Dindeleag), princes of Hungary (John Corvinus, natural son of king Mathias Corvinus) or leaders (ban) of the so-called Banat of Caransebeş and Lugoj(Steven Tompa, Paul Keresztesi) to some members of local high ranking noble families (Macskási/Măcicaş ofTincova, Fiat of Armeniş/Caransebeş, Jósika of Caransebeş/Brănişca). %e last known owner of Jdioara before the Turkish seize of the banat of Caransebeş and Lugoj in 1658 was Sigismund Jósika, son of the former Transylvanian chancellor Steven Jósika. During the war between Austria and the Ottoman Empire the former Banat, as well as the fortress/castle at Jdioara, passed in the years from 1688 to 1699, for longer or shorter periods of time, from one hand to the other. Gabriel Jósika, a descendent of Sigismund Jósika, along with many noble-fellows fleeing from Caransebeş in 1658, returned with the Austrian army, seizing the opportunity to request the restitution of the lost real estates, among them the fortress/castle of Jdioara. General Federico Veterani, the commander in chief of Transylvania, granted to Gabriel Jósika (a man having a consistent political career in the autonomous Principality of Transylvania and thereafter under Habsburg rule) the possession of Jdioara and the surrounding villages by a donation-deed from January 24th, 1693. At the suggestion of the Imperial Court-Chamber (kaiserliche Hofkammer), Emperor Leopold Ist has decided that Jósika, as well as his other fellow-nobles, is to be considered only as a user and in no case as a full owner of the acquired estates, on the principle of uti possidetis. A final decision on the real possession was postponed after the conclusion of a peace with the Porte. During a journey to Vienna in the spring of 1697, Gabriel Jósika tried to obtain, by means of a petition filed to the Emperor, the acknowledgment of his full possession on Jdioara, but with no chance to succeed. Meanwhile, the treaty of peace concluded at Karlowitz (January 26th, 1699) granted the whole province of Banat to the Ottoman Empire, compelling Austria to demolish all occupied fortresses/castles, including Jdioara, before leaving the territory. The final Austro-Turkish convention from December 2nd, 1700 on the border-delimitation had put an end to all hopes of Gabriel Jósika. On January 19th, 1701, from his camp on the river Bistra, major general count Luigi Ferdinando Marsili, imperial commissioner in the region, ordered major Leopold Friedrich Ungar de Merana, commander in Caransebeş and of the military border in the Banatic highlands, to proceed without any delay to the demolition of the fortress/castle at Jdioara. The demolition works were entrusted to lieutenant-colonel Giovanni Morando Visconti, an imperial military engineer. On March 17th, 1701 he wrote to general Marsili, that on the previous day, at 16:00 hours, the fortress/castle at Jdioara was completely destroyed by successive gunpowder explosions.
More...
The county of Poljice was included into the Otoman State 1540 and remined under its supreme soveregnity until the treaty of Karlovac in 1699. It had the status of the sultans Has property and during the entire time of the Otoman rule enjoyed internal government. Inhabitants of Poljice belonged to the category of vlahs filurđijas. That is why they were not burdened by any special feudal taxes, but they had only one (filurija), which included all other taxation. A number of the inhabitants of Poljice worked permanently in salt mines and the others only time to time. They burdened the population with different taxes and duties against which the inhabitants of Poljice kept complaining the central and local Turkish government often issued their orders (Ferman, Buyruldu) to stop with misdeeds.
More...
Les Slaves du Sud possédaient déjà depuis le milieu du 171<snc siècle plusieurs gros dictionnaires imprimés dont le plus ancien est celui de Micalia (Mikalja), intitulé »Thesaurus lingvae Ulyricae, 1649—1651. Mais ce qui est interéssant et étonnant, c’est qu’un Bosniaque musulman nommé Üskûfî Bosnevî avait écrit son »Makbul-i arif« 18 ans auparavant. Ce vocabulaire bosnaco-turc a été rédigé sur le modèle du dictionnaire persono-turc de Çihidî ce qui lui valut le surnom de »Potux-Sahidija«. Vu qu’il était écrit en vers et ordonné d’une manière logique en chapitres cohérents, il ne tarda pas d’acquérir une grande popularité. De passage en Bosnie, le célèbre voyageur turc Evliyâ Çelébi en a fait l’éloge dans son fameux »Itinéraire« (Seyâhatnâme) et H en a cité plusieurs passages.
More...
The problem of death in one of the largest reformation centres in Grand Duchy of Lithuania – Kėdainiai Evangelical Reformed church, focusing on Jonušava (“New Kėdainiai”) church and cemetery, from the 3rd decade of the 17th century to the mid-19th century, is analysed in this article. The elite of this denomination has mainly been studied in historiography, and it has made various controversial statements, the validity of which is also worth verifying. The aim of this article is to discuss the burial sites of Kėdainiai Evangelical Reformed – the cemetery and the cemetery church in Jonušava, the construction of burial sites, changes in infrastructure, and the dynamics of burials. The study uses several methodological approaches, narrative and statistical, palaeographic, historical cartography and epigraphic methods. It is emphasised that the results of the Kėdainiai study conflict with the statement expressed in historiography that “evangelicals did not value the place of the funeral, and their cemeteries were usually moved outside the city”. The study has shown that, at least in Kėdainiai, the emergence of the Jonušava cemetery was a forced act after the loss of St. George’s Church. Later, another cemetery was established in the very centre of the city. In conclusion, the burial sites were, however, immortalised with various burial monuments, albeit more modest compared with Catholics or Lutherans. In addition, much was determined by the social status of individuals and the economic opportunities of relatives. It is necessary to perform an analysis of the burial sites of other evangelical Reformed GDLs in order of more extensive generalisations.
More...
The author analyzed excerpts from the chronicles, travelogues and reports mentioning bura and its effects. This wind became ill reputed primarily because of its ferocity and the cold it carries with it, but on the other hand it purified the air and brought clear weather. According to descriptive sources, bura has a negative impact on a range of human activities: movement and farming, warfare (land and maritime), transport, and construction as well. In a number of cases, this wind aided the defenders by dispersing enemy naval forces. Due to geographical location, surroundings of Senj, Pag, Klis, Makarska, and Kvarner Bay, also the Velebit and Brač channels, as well the Field of Sinj in the interior are particularly exposed to the stormy blowing of bura.
More...
The research undertaken in the article is put in the context of the social, administrative and economic transformations undergone by Chełmno (Kulm), which had been a bishop’s town since 1505. These changes also had a significant impact on the organisation of the town’s chancery, which carried out tasks and duties entrusted by municipal authorities. This was reflected in an increase in the number of town officials working in the chancery, to which court secretaries belonged. They formed a professional group, which was characterised by their economic, political and cultural activity against the background of Chełmno community in the early modern period. The main research objective of the article is to create a comprehensive picture of the social environment of Chełmno town chancery from the sixteenth century until 1772, the personnel of which constituted the intellectual elite of the town, and to present the characteristic traits of this group. At the same time, the text presents the profiles of town secretaries and clerks previously unknown or rarely mentioned in the scholarly literature. Methods applied in the research involve critical analysis of the preserved town books and individual documents, both manuscript and edited. On the basis of data collected from the primary sources, a prosopographical analysis has also been conducted. The result of the studies is an overview picture of the professional group formed by the secretaries and clerks of early modern Chełmno, which includes their social origins, family ties, non-professional activity and wealth.
More...Przedmowa Samuela Schelwiga do „Grundliches und wolgesetztes Bedencken, Von der Pietisterey” (1693)
The article presents an analysis of the foreword by Samuel Schelwig (1643–1715), pastor of the Holy Trinity Church and rector of the Academic Gymnasium in Gdańsk (Danzig), to the opinion issued by the theological faculty of the University of Leipzig on Pietism and its founder Philipp Jakob Spener (1635–1705). The opinion was published in 1693 under the title ‘Gründliches und wolgesetztes Bedencken, Von der Pietisterey’. The author of the foreword made an assessment of the religious condition of the new movement and also pointed out that its supporters misunderstood the essence of piety, comparing them to medieval and early modern heretics. In this way, he anticipated the subsequent harsh criticism of Pietism and initiated a religious dispute on this issue that continued in Gdańsk from 1692/1693 to 1703. At the same time, he contributed to the dissemination of a debate on religious fanaticism and attempts to modernise pastoral activities of Lutheran preachers. The analysis of the source text is part of broader research into the history of the Pietistic movement in Gdańsk, which has incorporated research methods in the fields of philology and history, as well as biblical hermeneutics. This approach has made it possible to determine the origin of the conflict on Pietism in Gdańsk, to identify the related phenomena, events and key doctrinal issues, and to interpret and evaluate the theological value of the investigated polemic.
More...
Review of: Michaela Žáčková Rossi: The Musicians at the Court of Rudolf II. The Musical Entourage of Rudolf II (1576 – 1612). Reconstructed from the Imperial Accounting Ledgers, Praha : Koniasch Latin Press, 2017, 209 s. ISBN 978-80-87773-03-1.
More...
Review of: Dalia Jakulyte - Birutė Kabašinskaitė, XVI–XVIII amžiaus lietuviškų kalvinistų giesmynų kalba: redagavimo istorija, Vilnius: Vilniaus universiteto leidykla, 2019, 240 p. ISBN 978-609-07-0357-1
More...
The main subject of this discussion is relation between modernity and classical sociology. In this article is shown that sociology, as a specific science, is an answer to social crisis of modern society. Industrialization and political revolutions are two main forces responsible for constitution of modern society. Here is emphasized importance of social context in which sociological thought was born. In this article the authors also shows that sociology is founded under the influence of two contrary lines of thought. Although Enlightenment had significant impact on classical sociology, for early sociologists ideology of conservatism was the main source of ideas. Influence of these two contradictory perspectives is the main reason for ambiguity of classical sociological theories. In other words, classical sociology has a critical approach to different aspects of modern society, but, at the same time, this criticism does not mean rejection of modern society as a whole. Classical sociologists thought that the course of social process could not be changed. Thus the restoration of former social structures is neither possible nor desirable at all. Duality of traditional and modern values is a universal characteristic of all classical sociological theories. How this duality is expressed in the works of Comte, Spencer, Durkheim, Tönnies and Weber is examined further in the article. At the end the author places an emphasis on the relevance of classical sociology today.
More...
In spite of the relative scarcity of sources this study tries to shed some light on the murky history of the black (arap) slaves and ex-slaves who were once part of the human presence in the Bulgarian provinces of the Ottoman Empire. After an overview of some of the racially biased views connecting blackness and slavery, which emerged in the Islamic countries throughout the centuries, as well as of the origins of the black-slave trade in the Middle East, and of the peculiarities in the organization of black slaves and ex-slaves’ socio-religious life in the Ottoman domains, this study turns to tracking the footprints of the black slavery in what is nowadays Bulgaria and its’ border lands. On the basis mainly of documents recorded in the kadi sicils for the cities of Sofia, Ruschuk and Vidin from the 17th to the first half of 18th c., a conclusion was reached that the Sub-Saharan slaves there formed quite a small proportion of the slave population. Besides, no traces of sizable black slave and ex-slave communities led by their own elders (a phenomenon known from the Anatolian and Aegean parts of the Ottoman Empire) were detected in the region. Nevertheless, until the beginning of the 19th c. the documents studied show no apparent signs of any discrimination from the masters based on the slaves’ skin color. In the last Ottoman century however, due to various factors, racial prejudices became more and more evident. This article provides a number of examples of the negative, sometimes highly distorted image of the blacks as reflected in Bulgarian texts from that epoch and seeks an explanation for such stereotypes.
More...