A kézdivásárhelyi oktatási intézmények rövid története a 17. századtól a 20. század első feléig

Author(s): Attila Dimény / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 01/2017

One of the fundamental pillars of the guild system formed in Kézdivásárhely from the 16th century was the wide spread of literacy. Later this process was significantly helped by the development and institutionalization of the educational life. The educational system in Kézdivásárhely developed due the start of confessional education. The Protestant particula and the Roman Catholic school from Kanta established in the 17th century initially had an important role in the acquisition of basic literacy, but later they contributed to the creation of schools that provided professional training and a higher level of theoretical knowledge. The educational institutions created by the Szekler Border Guard Regiment also had a positive effect on the intellectual growth of the city and the surrounding villages, even if for a short time. As a result of the civil transformations in the second half of the 19th century, the urban middle class demand created the civil boys and girls schools, where students received theoretical knowledge and practical training, in order to be able to stand in their place in life without a higher education qualification. Some talented students of the city’s educational institutions continued their studies in various upper secondary schools, which facilitated the awareness and dissemination of bourgeois ideas and cultural patterns of the new era.

A lutheránus egyház alapítóinak emlékezete a 17. századi szlávajkú magyarországi evangélikus polgárság körében

Author(s): Ingrid Papp / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 02/2017

After the Battle of White Mountain (1620), Czech and Moravian refugees settled down in Lower and Upper Hungary and found their way mostly to the Hungarian Lutheran Church. The intellectual élite of the Protestant immigrants introduced a lot of cultural traditions in Hungary. One of these is the very printing of funeral sermons in the so-called Biblical Czech language, that is, the language of Kralice Bible. Twenty-one titles, containing forty-one funeral sermons, were printed in Hungary in Biblical Czech in the period of 1637–1711. Quoting of and telling stories about the emblematic-iconic founders of the Lutheran Church play an important role in shaping the Lutheran identity as fashioned in the sermons of these prints. The present paper’s aim is to discuss the usage of citations from and exempla about the protagonists of the German Lutheranism in this corpus of funeral sermons, and to examine the common and personal features of denominational identity tightly related to these elements.

A man for all seasons: Exile, suffering and martyrdom in the autobiography of Miklós Bethlen

Author(s): Zsombor Tóth / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2012

This paper attempts to evaluate the historical anthropological process of self-fashioning performed by count Miklós Bethlen. In doing so, the aim of my interpretation is to delineate those cultural and historical contexts that influenced Bethlen’s habit of constituting and fashioning a self in his ego-documents. Taking as a point of departure Bethlen’s twofold liminality, I argue that he identified himself with the prototype of the early modern Calvinist martyr, so that he could provide an account of his life imitating the so called récit martyrologique as a narrative genre. Bethlen’s self-fashioning displayed in his memoirs, letters and political projects, reveals his special commitment to Puritan theology and devotional culture as well.

A memorandum presented by the merchants living in Vienna regarding east-west trade (1615)

Author(s): Lajos Gecsényi / Language(s): English / Issue: 1-2/2008

The peace treaty concluded between the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires at Zsitvatorok in 1606 was renewed by the pact made in Vienna on July 1, 1615. The 9th and 10th articles of the agreement laid down general guidelines for direct trade between the two empires. The Court Chamber in Prague required the Viennese and the German merchants living in Vienna to set forth their views about the possibilities of implementing the pact’s provisions. Headed by Lazarus Henckel, a most renown Viennese merchant, altogether 78 merchants from Nürnberg, Augsburg, Frankfurt, Sankt-Gallen, Prague, Breslau (Wrocław) defined their position. In their memorials, they laid special emphasis on the necessity of re-establishing the export-import trade between Vienna and the Ottoman territories by relying on the mediating activity of Hungarian traders. They did not deem it necessary to set up direct contacts with territories under Ottoman rule and they took a stand against Turkish merchants to be allowed to establish a market in Hainburg (Lower Austria).

A művészettörténész nyomoz

Author(s): Dorottya Piroska B. Székely / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 2/2019

Bubryák Orsolya: Fantomkép egy 17. századi bécsi műgyűjtőről. MTA Bölcsészettudományi Kutatóközpont Művészettörténeti Intézet, Budapest, 2017. 343 oldal

A nagybányai önkormányzati testület szerkezete a 16–18. században

Author(s): Kálmán Zsolt Sütő / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 1/2018

The aim of the study is to present the structure of the local government of Baia Mare. During the 16th–18th centuries the free royal mining town of Baia Mare was led by an inner and an outer council. The outer council was made up of sixty members. They elected the judge and the twelve jurors of the inner council. The first and the second juror were called consul jurors, they acted as the judge’s substitutes. From the end of the 17th century the central power was trying to narrow the self-government of the town.

A nagyszombati kalmárcéh szabályzata 1547/1604-ben

Author(s): László Fülöp / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 2/2020

The linguist's recent paper examines a merchant guild in Nagyszombat (Trnava), specifically its 16th-century statutes. He mentions by name the merchants of the town and the guild master in charge of the guild. It explains the order of the daily operation of the guild.

A Német-római Birodalom és a politikai nyilvánosság a 17. században

Author(s): Nóra G. Etényi / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 2/2014

The article is based on the author’s latest research results on the explosion of information in the 17th century and tries to answer the question how the media-system was formed in the German-Roman Empire. The German-speaking political publicity was special in the early modern Europe, for several political and economic centres, courts had effective influence on it. Its receptive audience was very wide-range, well-structured including regal courts and imperial cities as well. During wartime newspapers, weekly publications, printed reports and broadsheets illustrated with engravings were able to publish a great number of international news, transmit political norms, encourage cohesion by forming a virtual international publicity in Europe. The collections of the 17th century aristocrats and rich town-dwellers prove that the printed information had a great value and high prestige (beside the handwritten forms of information). The well-structured genre system of the 17th century media published a detailed and substantive image of Hungarian Kingdom with its real political, economic and military situation. Though this system was influenced by several political interests (e.g. interest of the Emperor, the electors, the prince), the Hungarian political and cultural elite was able to build legal and informal pathways of communication to represent the interest of the Hungarian aristocracy

A palócokról

Gondolatok, megjegyzések

Author(s): István Majoros / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 1/2016

The author writes a monograph (Palóc Land) about a strange people, the Palóc, living in the northern part of Hungary and in southern Slovakia. Material poverty and spiritual riches are the main characteristics of the Palóc. They speak a special and interesting dialect. This study is a part of the mentioned monograph. In this study the author presents the meaning of the Palóc and he presents the regions where they live. And he presents also different opinions of these questions.

A picture of the Duchy of Szczecin during the Thirty Years’ War in light of the chronicle by Peter Rudolphy between 1627 and 1637

Author(s): Monika Ogiewa-Sejnota / Language(s): English / Issue: 04/2019

The article discusses the course of the Thirty Years’ War in the Duchy of Szczecin from the moment of signing the capitulation in Franzburg by Duke Bogislaw XIV in 1627 until the death of this ruler ten years later. This description is based on information from the second part of the manuscript Chronicle of Pastor Peter Rudolphy from 1696. From its text, the events that were breakthrough in the history of Pomerania were selected, such as the accommodation of imperial soldiers or the entry into war of the Swedish King Gustav II Adolph. Mechanisms used by soldiers of both armies to occupy city centres, e.g. Gryfice, Kołobrzeg, Pyrzyce, Stargard and Szczecin, were also presented. The article does not exhaust the whole subject, but is only a contribution to the knowledge not only of the history of the conflict in Pomerania, but also the chronicle itself.

A Polyphony of Stories from 17th and 18th-century Southeastern Europe

Author(s): Jelena Mrgić / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2015

The aim of this paper is to present a selected ensemble of narrative and documentary sources – diaries, memoirs, chronicles, travelogues, business letters, and one confidential report – in order to pursue a sort of polyphonic path in historical research. Connecting these histories, i.e. personal stories from different, at times confronting, yet overlapping Kulturkreisen, shows a less visible web of liaisons between people. They belonged to different social strata – bellatores, oratores, nobility and the emerging third class of entrepreneurs, and stemmed from Catholic, Orthodox and Muslim religious and cultural environments. Differences in their educational, professional or cultural backgrounds seem to diminish while their interconnectedness, in the space of Southeastern Europe, comes to the fore.

A pozsonyi jezsuita kollégium diáklétszám-változásai a 17–18. században

Author(s): Zsolt Kökényesi / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 02/2018

The Jesuit Gymnasium of Pressburg [Bratislava/Pozsony], founded in 1626, was one of the first members in the Jesuit school network of the Kingdom of Hungary. The catholic Gymnasium in the capital of Hungary soon assumed not only regional but national importance, which was reflected by its catchment area and in the numbers of matriculations. Moreover, in the second third of the 18th century the Jesuit school of Pressburg (with its often more than 700 matriculation numbers a year) became the most attended Hungarian school, surpassing even the Gymnasium of Tyrnau [Trnava/Nagyszombat], which functioned near the only university in the Kingdom of Hungary. The purpose of this paper is to survey the changes in student numbers between 1650 and 1773. The paper approaches the subject from two perspectives: at first, it analysises the complete numbers of matriculations decade by decade, and then the changes in the scales of school grades.

A pozsonyi jezsuita kollégium mint összetett intézmény a 17. században

Author(s): Zsófia Kádár / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 02/2018

The Jesuit College of Pressburg [Bratislava/Pozsony], founded on 11 September 1626 by Archbishop Péter Pázmány of Esztergom, is made doubly remarkable by the early date and the location of its establishment. The study explores the first period in the history of the convent and college, until 1671, mainly on the basis of Jesuit sources. It analyses the process of foundation, burdened with conflicts with both the Lutheran urban government and the local chapter, and the two phases of the college’s construction (1628–1635). Based on a prosopographical reseach, the author presents the 341 members who served in the college until 1671, most of them doing pastoral work, the rest laymen and students. She also surveys the functioning of the college and the alumni (class structure, numbers, age, nationality, social status, confession) with the help of the surviving registers, and examines the ways of preaching, catechesis, administering the sacraments, religious retreat, social discipline, missionary work and popular religion, thereby emphasising the importance of pastoral work for the Jesuits.

A prímás, a bán és a bécsi udvar (1663–1664)

Author(s): Péter Tusor / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 02/2015

The aim of the study was to examine and analyse in detail, in the framework of a research on the political role of the ecclesiastical estate (status ecclesiasticus), especially in the early modern era, and on the basis of newly discovered sources, the measures taken by its leader, György Lippay, primate of Hungary (1642–1666) in the interest of Miklós Zrínyi, ban (banus) of Croatia (1647–1664) in the court of Vienna during 1663–1664. After 1608, the Hungarian political establishment was characterized by the so-called „dualism of estates”. In practice it meant that the ruler and the estates, or rather their leaders, the palatine and the archbishop of Esztergom, primate of Hungary, exerted political power together. Until the period examined here, primate Lippay was regarded as the main exponent of Habsburg authority in Hungary. From 1663 Lippay, who had previously treated Miklós Zrínyi with mistrust and even as a political opponent, became his determined protector in the court. In the summer of 1663 he not only tried to get reinforcements for Zrínyi-Újvár, but also labored for the dispatch of eight thousand German soldiers under the command of Zrínyi to make him able, together with his own troops and the soldiers of the local Hungarian lords, to start military operations against the Ottomans. While trying to convince in long letters duke Johann Ferdinand Porzia, president of the Secret Council, he also sent to the imperial court his Jesuit confessor, Zakariás Trinkell, provided with detailed instructions, and giving him new information all the time. He also put to work his extensive network of Jesuit connections. The mission of Trinkell was repeated in the middle of August 1664. According to the new instructions of Lippay, which dwelt on the merits and grievances of the ban, Trinkell was given the task of achieving that Zrínyi should be given a convenient commanding post and an independent army in the war against the Ottomans. Yet the imperial court concluded an armistice with the Ottomans already on 10 August 1664 at Vasvár, news of which only reached the Hungarian political leaders late in September. Probably after informally consulting the main representatives of the estates, among them Zrínyi himself, Lippay turned through Trinkell to bishop Christoph Bernard von Galen of Münster, one of the leaders of the Rhenish Alliance, then staying in Vienna, to protest against the peace, which had been made in complete secrecy, and was utterly unfavorable to Hungary. He drew attention to the fact that the agreement was equally injurious to the Empire, and proposed instead the immediate recuperation of Érsekújvár, which had been lost in 1663. It was in the wake of the failure of this hitherto unknown diplomatic mission that the idea of an anti-Habsburg conspiration (the so-called Wesselényi conspiration) came to the fore. 1663, and especially 1664 are turning points in the history of the dualism of estates which had been functioning since 1608. While also shedding light on the relationship between Lippay and Zrínyi, the newly found sources analysed in this study mainly enlighten this turn and, in connection with the approach of the imperial estates in October, its special international aspects.

A Quest for Originality in Latin Poetry of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania Observed in Manuscripts of the Seventeenth-Eighteenth Centuries

Author(s): Živilė Nedzinskaitė / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2018

The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were the time when literature in Latin written by professors and students of Jesuit colleges flourished in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. This trend was the outcome of the Jesuit educational model. The main disciplines in colleges were poetics and rhetoric. The classes of these two disciplines not only aimed at teaching theoretical rules, acquainting the students with the prevailing literary canon, and pointing out the differences between genres, but also encouraged students’ individual creative work, as it was independent writing that was a proof of students’ ability to apply theory in practice. Student writing was strongly influenced by the theory of imitation, which was very popular at the time. Resorting to manuscript material from the colleges of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the article focuses on varying degrees of influence of the imitation theory on students’ individual creative work: it shows the relation between imitation and the literary tradition, the rules of rhetoric, and imitation of canonical authors; it also places emphasis on the quest for individual expression. The author observes that some texts composed by students are on a par with the best poetic works of the well-known poets of that time.

A short presentation of the history of legal education in Romania

Author(s): Laura Magdalena Trocan / Language(s): English / Issue: 2(1)/2014

In Romania, the history of legal education dates from ancient times. The historical records show that legal education had appeared on the territory of countries that have later entered into the composition of the Romanian State, after enactment of the first written laws (pravile – or codices), and long before the enactment of legal codes on branches of activity. Thus, the preliminary of legal education in the Romanian countries can be traced back to the practice of writing laws (pravila – or codex) that emerged in the 17th century: in Walachia this was the Govora Code of 1640 and the Matei Basarab’s Code (also known as the reshaping of laws) in 1652: in Moldavia it was the Vasile Lupu Code (also known as the Romanian book of learning) of 1646. However, there are historians who claim that since 1400, an Academy of law or, at least, a course in law, would have been organized at the School of Alexander the Good in Suceava. The first educational institutions were established in monasteries and churches and teachers had a western and Byzantine educational background. In Moldavia in 1648, during the reign of Vasili Lupu, the Great Princely School was founded at Trei Ierarhi Monastry in Iasi. In 1694, under the reign of Constantin Brancoveanu – in Walachia, the Princely Academy was founded in Bucharest. Thus were laid the bases of Romanian higher legal education. In 1777 in Transylvania, the Romanian territory which for a long time was under Austro-Hungarian domination, by an imperial document called Ratio educationis imperial, an Academy of law was established in Oradea together with another in Bratislava. Over the years, the study of juridical sciences in Romanian countries developed and received systematic organization – especially after the Union of the Romanian principalities in 1859 – being influenced as much by historical realities as by the political, economic and social conditions of the country. This paper aims to provide an overview of the development of legal education in Romania and the contributions to the development of the science of law of the most prestigious Romanian jurists.

A soldier and a townsman during the Thirty Years’ War. Coexistence – Confrontation – Cooperation

Author(s): Jan Kilián / Language(s): English / Issue: 04/2019

The article deals with the basic issues of the relationships between soldiers and the city population during the Thirty Years' War, primarily on the basis of German special literature, which is still authoritative in this respect and at the same time confirms and complements the author's own research. Although the notion of the insurmountable ambivalence of both these social components, generally supported by countless reports of murders, robberies, rapes, physical and psychological attacks, the reality was much more colorful, and city experience with soldiers may not always have been negative. Whether it was mutual cooperation, especially on a commercial basis, or establishing friendly and family relations.

A Suggested New Attribution of Seventeenth-Century Flemish "Portrait of a Lady" in York Art Gallery to Jan Cossiers

Author(s): Magdalena Łanuszka / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2017

Propozycja atrybuowania XVII-wiecznego flamandzkiego "Portretu kobiety" (York Art Gallery) Janowi Cossiersowi

A szakítások és kiegyezések évszázada: a Magyar Királyság 17. századi története új megvilágításban

Author(s): Géza Pálffy / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 01/2015

The long 17th century, extending from the Peace of Vienna in 1606 to the Treaty of Szatmár in 1711, occupies a special place within the history of the Kingdom of Hungary. Its interpretation has traditionally been determined by the independentist approach of Hungarian romantic national historiography, which was born in the second half of the 19th century. Consequently, as late as the 1950s and 1970s the 17th century was still regarded as the most decisive period of the Hungarian struggles for independence, while in the 1980s and 1990s its most salient feature was identified in the alleged attempts launched from the Principality of Transylvania at the unification of the Hungarian Kingdom. On the basis of several years of archival research, and following in the footsteps of such historians as Robert Evans from Oxford, Thomas Winkelbauer from Vienna and Jean Bérenger from Paris, the author of the present study rather examines the history of the Hungarian Kingdom in the 17th century as part of a relationship between the Central European Habsburg Monarchy and the Kingdom of Hungary, the Habsburg court of Vienna and the Hungarian political elite. Within such a framework, the history of Hungary between 1606 and 1711 can be regarded as the century of ruptures and compromises. For the course of the century was determined by five important compromise-systems (1608: Pozsony/Pressburg, 1622: Sopron/Ödenburg, 1647: Pozsony, 1681: Sopron, 1711: Szatmár), practically all of which were elaborated at the Hungarian diet, and were accompanied by ruler coronations (1608: Hungarian King Matthias II, 1622: Queen Eleonora Gonzaga, 1647: King Ferdinand IV, 1681: Queen Eleonora Magdalena Theresia of Pfalz-Neuburg, 1712: King Charles III). Each of these compromises guaranteed the privileges and liberties of the Hungarian estates, and secured for the Hungarian political elite a decisive role in shaping the domestic politics, local administration and judicial system of Hungary. As a result, among all the constituents of the Habsburg Monarchy in the 17th and 18th centuries Hungary was one of the strongest in terms of sovereignty and estate state formation, and absolutism could not be introduced east of the Leitha river. In the light of recent research the topos which regards the Hungarians as “perennial rebels” should also be nuanced. With regard to the 17th century the term of “perennial compromise-seekers” could be applied to them as well. And, finally, the study draws attention to the fact that the history of the Kingdom of Hungary and that of the Principality of Transylvania in the 17th century, despite the manifold contacts between them, cannot be described within the framework of one and the same model or concept, for whereas the former was an important part of the Central European Habsburg Monarchy, the latter belonged to the sphere of interest of one of the strongest states of the contemporary world, namely the Ottoman Empire.

A szatmári bányavidék Bethlen Gábor uralkodásának első éveiben (1613–1620)

Author(s): Petra Mátyás-Rausch / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 04/2016

In the mid-16th century the mining region of Szatmár found itself squeezed to the borderland between the nascent Transylvanian Principality and the Hungarian Kingdom. Its belonging and position became doubtful once again after the death in 1613 of Gábor Báthory, the last Transylvanian prince from this family. As the area was crucially important to both sides from the perspective of both geopolitics and financial administration, the changes which took place over the mining region were profoundly influenced by contemporary politicomilitary events. Unwilling to give up the mining region on the borders, Matthias II, king of Hungary looked for a tenant to head the mining chamber and mining house of Nagybánya (today Baia Mare, Romania) whose loyalty to the dynasty would be in no doubt. It came quite conveniently for the Habsburgs, thus, that the faithful Herberstein family was restored to their estates in Szatmár at this critical juncture. Consequently, the Court Chamber (Camera Aulica) entrusted the direction of the mining chamber to the head of the family, Felician von Herberstein the Younger. Following in the footsteps of his father, the former lessee of Nagybánya, the younger Felician von Herberstein aimed to introduce several important changes into local mining, but these efforts ran counter to the interests of the urban leadership of Nagybánya. As the conflict between the urban magistracy and the tenant became increasingly envenomed, and the financial position of Herberstein had also catastrophically deteriorated by the late 1610s, his former supporters, among them the new captain of Upper Hungary, András Dóczy, abandoned him, and the count’s situation accordingly became untenable. Although the Court Chamber tried to find a new tenant, the first anti-Habsburg campaign of Gábor Bethlen, prince of Transylvania (1619–1621) decisively influenced the future of the mining region. In the winter of 1619 Bethlen conquered Nagybánya and the surrounding castles, and consequently removed Herberstein from his office. “Warfare” between Herberstein and the magistracy of Nagybánya was by no means a unique phenomenon; similar events were simultaneously acted out in other privileged mining towns as well. While not nationalized, Herberstein behaved in the same way as the contemporary urban nobility. He tried to exploit possibilities offered by urban privileges without submitting himself to the obligations and the jurisdictional consequences attached to urban existence. This obviously excited the magistracy of Nagybánya to act, and they defended the interests of the town with surprising determination.