The Social Function of the Cult of Isidore ‘the Ploughman’ in Seventeenth-century Poland
prefaced by Tomasz Wiślicz
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prefaced by Tomasz Wiślicz
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Dugogodišnja mletačka i turska osvajanja doprinijela su da se Hrvatska sve više razjedinjuje, kako u teritorijalno-političkom, tako i u društveno-kulturnom smislu. Zaostalost krajeva pod Mlecima i Turcima i teritorijalna nepovezanost hrvatskih krajeva uopće koče razvoj hrvatske nacionalne svijesti. Negativne posljedice su brojne. Nešto bolja situacija u pogledu kulturnoga razvoja bila je u banskoj Hrvatskoj gdje su se javljali značajniji literarni pokušaji. U kulturnom je razvoju prednjačio Dubrovnik koji je zahvaljujući svojoj neovisnosti i jakim trgovačkim vezama imao otvorenu vezu sa Italijom iz koje su dolazili najnoviji književni trendovi.
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As a universal European Christain phenomenon, pilgrimages focused particularly on three main destinations: Jerusalem, Rome, and Compostela. In the period from the late 14th until the early 17th century, several dozens of identified pilgrims from Poland and Lithuania travelled on ships along the Croatian Adriatic Coast, heading for Jerusalem. However, within this overall picture there are several common traits and differences. As for their motives, they were similar in all countries and consisted of elements related to their religious or estate identity. Owing to its early Christianization and an elaborate network of Franciscan monasteries, Poland was more advanced in terms of pilgrimage than Lithuania. On the other hand, among the Lithuanian pilgrims one fi nds many Orthodox Christians, which reflects the country’s ethnical structure. As for the estates, it can be observed that there were not many commoners among the Polish pilgrims, while the nobility and clergy are present in almost equal numbers. It is especially among the nobility of both countries that gaining the title of miles Sepulchri Domini played an important role in terms of motivation. Pilgrims from Poland and Lithuania used exclusively the route through Austria and Hungary, their destination being Venice as the place of embarkment on ships.
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Around 2,500 cases of naming (both the anthroponyms of different people and various versions of their personal name forms) were collected for the analysis from 24 Kėdainiai registry books of the 17–18th century, Kėdainiai inventories of 1604, 1624 and 1666, Kėdainiai rectory land rent inventory of 1622 and other old city manuscripts. Their analysis led to the distinction of the major tendencies in the formation and spelling of surnames designating Kėdainiai residents (Lithuanians, Poles) in the 17th–18th century. In fact, in the second half of the 17th century all residents of Kėdainiai belonging to the abovementioned ethnic groups had surnames. It only took longer for the surnames of lower social classes (servants, etc.) to originate. The forms of their surnames finally settled in the 18th century. The conclusions are compared with the findings of the research on residents in larger Lithuanian cities (16th–18th century Kaunas, 16th–17th century Vilnius).
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The paper discusses the questions of seeking new ways of defending the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the close of the 16th century and the first three decades of the 17th century. The author’s objective was to demonstrate the plans of the socalled measuring expedition presented in political-military treatises, writings and journals published during the rule of Sigismund III Vasa (1587–1632). The expedition was supposed to engage infantry or cavalry soldiers appointed in a number proportionate to the acreage of arable land (in the Polish units of łany or włóki), the number of houses, inhabitants of a country, or even the income. The promoters of these concepts presented them as less burdensome for the gentry than the traditional mass mobilization (Pol. pospolite ruszenie), which forced noblemen to embark on a war in person. They were also supposed to be cheaper than the hitherto practiced enlistment funded from taxes paid mainly by the subjects, and more effective, that is ensuring a numerous army able face even the most powerful enemies. They appeared particularly often in the periods of the Turkish threat and rough wars fought with Sweden, but were never carried into effect. There was no such need, since the conflicts were reconciled and during the rule of Władysław IV Vasa long-awaited peace prevailed. In 1648, however, new long-lasting and costly wars broke out.
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This paper presents an analysis of cartographic works made in connection with the siege and capture of the Polatsk fortress by the army of Stephen Báthory in 1579. The aim of the study is to recompare the content of cartographic sources concerning the siege of Polatsk with the preserved plans from the middle 16th and early 17th centuries. The most accurate and credible plan of Polatsk from 1579 is a print made by Stanisław Pachołowiecki. The outline of the fortifications was presented in a fine way, fundamentally consistent with a plan of the same fortress from the mid-17th century. In comparison, a drawing by Paweł Thurn (Czumthurn) is littered with significant mistakes. It is, therefore, most probable that the drawing was not based on the same model as the print; it might have been patterned after sketches made by an Italian engineer, Petrus Francus. The analysis conducted indicates that the print of Georg Mack the younger cannot be treated as a cartographic source but only as its author’s imagination about the events that took place at the influx of the Palata river to Daugava.
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Huguenots and Jews were both minorities in the United Provinces of the Netherlands. When the majority of the Huguenots arrived to the country, Jews had already resided there and had become part of Dutch society. The French newcomers, contrary to the Dutch, had little contact with the Jews and it was probably their first encounter with them. The majority of the Huguenots arrived there after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. Among the Huguenot refugees we find a certain number of intellectuals who established gazettes and journals. Those periodicals, published in French, open us a window in the perception that the Huguenots and the local Dutchmen had on the Jewish community and individual Jews, as well as on the Jewish nation as such. While journals refer to more scientific periodicals, the gazettes were collections of news and gossip both from the United Provinces and from other parts of Europe. The article focuses on the distinction between the different categories of Jews that appear in these periodicals and places them in the appropriate historical and scientific context.
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The subject of the analysis are attempts to organize territorial self-defence force undertaken by the dietines of Kiev, Bracłav, and Chernihów palatinates in 1649– 1650. The nobility of the Ukrainian palatinates engulfed by the Cossack uprising, took shelter in the territory of Volhynia, Ruthenia, and the Lublin region. They hoped, however, that after a ceasefire with Khmelnytsky they would return to Ukraine, and thanks to their own self-defence armed forces they would be able to restore order and peace.
More...Илюстрираните славянски сборници, съдържащи „Съкровище“ на Дамаскин Студит – нов контекст за евангелските илюстрации през ХVІІ век
Looking at the older tradition of illustrating the South Slavonic Gospel manuscripts, which was rather poor with regard to themes and iconography, one becomes aware of the late adoption of a common narrative cycle, representing Christ’s life, miracles and parables in the so called damaskini. These seventeenthcentury books with their miniatures, however simplified and naïve, went a long way towards extending the limited range of Gospel illustrations that had dominated the artistic representations of the preceding decades and centuries.
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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.
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The article presents a church in the area of Northern Epirus, today’s Southern Albania that is little known in the literature. The church was built in several stages as the year of 1582/3 written on the western façade should be accepted as the final date of its erection. The ktetor’s inscription in the naos witnesses the year when the murals were laid, the year of 1605/6, as all residents of the village contributed to the paintings. The frescoes in both the naos and the narthex were made then. The two icon-painters, Mihail and Nikola, left their names in the inscription. Today there are no icons preserved in the church because they were stolen in 2010. We draw information about them from photographs in several publications. On almost all images there are partial upper layers of painting which were not removed upon the restoration of the frescoes. The program of the mural ensemble is preserved in its entirety and presents an extremely rich iconographic repertory. There are numerous scenes from different cycles: of the Great Feasts, the Passion, the Post-Resurrection appearances of Christ, the Acts and the Miracles of Christ, scenes dedicated to the Holy Mother of God, Old Testament episodes, and others. The murals have been attributed by a number of Greek authors to the famous icon-painter Mihail of Linotopi. The identity of the second icon-painter, Nikola, has not been commented on save for the study of T. Tsambouras. The author thinks his paintings are close to the Linotopi studio and attributes to him several icons originating from the church itself and from other churches in Northern Greece. Getting familiar with the murals on the site allowed us to make some important observations, which give a new meaning to the suggestions made so far. Probably the frescoes were laid in two stages. The work was assigned to two icon-painting teams led by two masters. One of them worked in the entire altar section, the eastern transept and the eastern section of the central aisle. The other one painted the central and the western parts of the three aisles as well as all murals in the narthex. The boundary between the two areas of work is easily noticeable and can be traced out in the bottom two registers of the naos. The differences in the two parts are both stylistic and paleographic. The participation of Mihail of Linotopi as the chief icon-painter as suggested by some researchers, is not confirmed. Probably he participated as an assistant to the chief master who worked in the western part of the naos and in the narthex. The person who led the mural painting work in the altar and in the eastern part of the naos may be identified as one of the masters who did the frescoes in Dobarsko and in the Seslavtsi Monastery.
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Review of: Francesco Testaferri, "Galilea al tempo di Gesù. Nuove scoperte archeologiche e prospettive" (Assisi: Cittadella Editrice 2018). 96 s; by: Andrzej Paweł Cekiera
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The question of the unity of the metaphysics was among the outstanding and most discussed in the XVIth and XVIIth century both by scholastic philosophers and philologists-humanists interested primarily to the historical vicissitudes of the Aristotelian text and its reception. The paper highlights the Suarezian attitude towards this topics as a conservative one (in opposition to tendencies splitting metaphysics into ontology and theology), since the Spaniard elaborates a quite complex formula, confirming the unity of the object of metaphysics.
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The article attempts to reconstruct the Slavonic-Baltic border in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania from the end of the seventeenth to the mid-eighteenth century. It presents the basic methodological approaches to the problem: a linguistic analysis, studies of toponymical and anthroponomical data, and the use of archaeological evidence. The network of parishes of the ritus graeci, in their vast majority Uniate, but also Orthodox ones, was used as the most precise determinants for the research into the area of the Ruthenian ethnic and religious community in the region. To this end, protocols of general canonical visitations from the 1680s to 1760s were used. The documents made it possible for us to determine a clear linear border of the Ruthenian ethnic and religious settlement within the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the analysed period.
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In the late 16th and early 17th century, an attempt was made to codify the land law of the crown. One of the amendment drafts was made by Jan Januszowski. However, his Statuta prawa i constitucie was rejected by the Sejm in 1601. The reasons for its failure included political circumstances. Januszowski’s attempts at removing some faults of the project were however futile, as the amended version of the Statuses drafted around 1610 was not even discussed by the Parliament.
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During the evaluation of medieval manuscripts in the historical archives of Birta in Resita, Romania, a collection of papal bullas has been discovered, issued by the Catholic Church from the 11th to the 20th centuries. Within this collection, it was possible to identify and to extract documents that refer to different countries, in different periods and on different topics. Special attention of the researchers was attracted by the papal letters of marital dispensation concerning applications sent from various Italian cities during the 17th and 18th centuries. Prior to their analysis, an attempt was made to well describe the social context in which the letters were created, and then to determine an adequate theoretical framework for the study of the above mentioned letters, which will be applied to the concrete material in the next paper. In this paper, the main factors influencing the emergence of these letters, the general relation of the Catholic Church to marriage, the mechanisms of the Catholic Church to resolve the dispensation issue, as well as the main features of the medieval Italian society in the mentioned period, have been highlighted.
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The radical Paracelsian discourses of the late 16th and early 17th century evolved toward a kind of the speculative religion of nature which was a part of the wider spectrum of ideological tensions, attempts at renewing the Reformation impulse, and a birth of the proto-pietistic spirituality (Johann Arndt, Johann Valentin Andreae) coupled with mysticism of nature. It is claimed that what is most significant in them is not so much particular ideas but rather the “Paracelsian effect”: destabilisation and deep displacements of boundaries between theory, speculation, even theology, and the material practices as well as the social imagination of order and renovatio, which contributed to formation of the epistemological and political frame of the early modernity. In particular, the author construes Andreae’s Christianopolis as a dialectical product of Paracelsianism – an interesting example of an utopian-political reaction to the heterodox religion of nature, which illustrates an extent and dynamics of those displacements at work.
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The aim of the author ́s paper is the issue of the history of Jesuit school theatre, that was developing during the years 1673 to 1773 in the highly protestant environment in the one of the most important reformation centres in Upper Hungary, namely in the independent royal city Prešov. The paper is focus on the history of Jesuit school play in Prešov in background history of Lutheran college in Prešov, that mostly in its first historical stage (1666 – 1711) reflected stormy struggle between Hungarian Habsburg absolutism and the estates company, that is mainly the struggle between catholic and protestant church. Immanent part of the paper is differentiation of one hundred and twenty Jesuit school plays according to individual periods of development of baroque – dramatic theatre production of Jesuits in the city of Prešov and its characterization along the lines of historical records of Jesuit chroniclers as well.
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The Kamianets-Podilskyi architectural and archaeological expedition of the Institute of Archaeology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine conducted archaeological excavations on Polish market of the city of Kamianets-Podilskyi (Ukraine) in 2016. The eastern part of the dig contained remains of a building which, as it turned out, was used as a coffee house. This is confirmed by written sources — a detailed description of the city is given in “Defter-i mufassal”, made by the Ottomans in 1681. Also, this document mentions 10 coffee houses which existed in Kamianets-Podilskyi. Also, the fact is proved by archaeological finds — a large number of clay pipes (over 600 samples) and painted coffee cups made of porcelain, faience and clay (more than 100 samples). The bulk of the collection of cups are porcelain ones from Chinese provinces (50%) and faience products of Turkish ceramic centre of Kütahya (32%). A small number of cups (13%) are presumably attributed by the authors to the so-called “Persian faience”. Five cups (5%) are classified as clay glazed ware, probably of Minor Asia production. Prevalence of expensive eastern utensils among ceramics demonstrates prestige of the coffee house and, obviously, confirms a rather high social status of its visitors. The discovered archaeological object belongs among some rare “closed” contexts of the 17th century, which were discovered on the territory of the former Ottoman Empire. It is well-dated by coins and ceramic “markers”, as well as by certain types of Polish artillery shells.
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Conference-Report: Mikołaj Tomaszewski ̶ Konferencja naukowa „Społeczne, polityczne, gospodarcze i kulturowe skutki reformacji w państwie polsko-litewskim w XVI–XVIII wieku”, Toruń, 19–21 X 2017
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