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Recollection of long-standing contacts with Alena Pazderová, archivist at the National Archives
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Laudatio to Alena Pazderová, archivist at the National Archives in Prague
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The author inquires into the memoria phenomenon and its distortion and use in Charles IV’s propaganda, especially in official historiography. As King of the Romans and King of Bohemia, and crowned as Holy Roman Emperor on Easter Sunday, 7 April 1355, Charles IV was aware of the price of ‘historical memory’ for politics and law and he knew how to use it. To legitimate his status in the empire and Bohemia, he primarily used the genealogical ‘memory’, expanded by many fictions and stretching back to the dawn of humans. Furthermore, he used fictitious historical memory to substantiate the status of Bohemia and its sovereign within the Holy Roman Empire, the ruler’s royal title, the elector’s office, and the Prague Archdiocese. Yet, Charles IV put special emphasis on the territorial scope of Bohemia and confirmation of its legitimacy, as well as the possibilities for its further expansion, justifying it by the long tradition and historical ‘memory’. They primarily appeared in the Chronicle of Bohemia by Přibík Pulkava of Radenín who in the spirit of Charles IV showed that all the countries that were part of the Bohemian Crown under Charles IV – including Bohemia, Moravia, Lusatia, most of the duchies in Silesia, and Brandenburg – were settled by Slavs of forefather Čech’s descent, and the Bohemian ruler is fully eligible to rule in these lands. Yet, the Slavs, descendants of forefather Čech, also cultivated and settled other lands – Poland, Russia, Pomerania, and Cassubia – all the way to the Baltic Sea. This concept corresponded with Charles’s political intentions when, by marriage to Elisabeth, daughter of Duke of Pomerania Bogislaw and granddaughter of King Casimir III of Poland, he expanded his political and business interests up to the Baltic coast. But above all, through this historical ‘memory’, he legitimated his claims to Poland, as King Casimir III had no male descendants, and Sigismund, the son of Elisabeth of Pomerania and Charles IV, could be a prime candidate for the Polish throne. Hence, by including Poland and the neighbouring lands in the Bohemian historical memoria, the official propaganda of Charles IV’s court also legitimated Charles’s ambitions to acquire Poland and possibly other territories. The fictitious memoria was thus one of the main tools to justify the territorial interests of Charles IV.
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The article concentrates on the activities of the papal nuncios in Bohemia in the early stage of Rudolf II’s rule. It involves five personalities, varying in profiles and characters, who represented the pope and the curia at the imperial court and whose correspondence has recently been published (Giovanni Delfino, Bartolomeo Porcia, Orazio Malaspina, Ottavio Santacroce) or is currently being edited (Giovanni Francesco Bonomi). In expert literature, Giovanni Francesco Bonomi is repeatedly identified as the first nuncio permanently settled in Prague. Based on the latest published nunciature correspondence, this axiom can no longer be confirmed. It can therefore be assumed that regular nuncios at the imperial court had a permanent residence in Prague as of the end of 1576 (the final stage of Delfino’s nunciature). The study further asks the question of how papal diplomats perceived the Czech lands, lists the most significant ecclesiastical and secular contacts, and looks into the official confessional and ecclesiastical issues in relation to the fight against heterodox movements, the protection of ecclesiastical immunities, and the implementation of the Catholic Reformation programme from the Council of Trent. Some final notes refer to the nuncios’ activities in politics and society.
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The papal nuncios at Rudolf II’s imperial court in Prague were prominent diplomatic and religious functionaries. The Society of Jesus provided them with significant support in the predominantly Protestant metropolis, as markedly documented by Filippo Spinelli, a nuncio active from 1599 to 1603. Not only did he consecrate the recently built Jesuit church, but shortly before the end of his diplomatic mission he also dedicated to the Jesuits a painting featuring Saint Ignatius, which has remained in the church ever since. Moreover, two of Spinelli’s close relatives, who died because of an epidemic that broke out in the Prague residence of the nuncio, were interred in the church.
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The Society of Jesus, a strongly centralised monastic community, had a sophisticated personal policy whose fundamental principles were driven by the effort to maximise individual capabilities and to precisely stipulate the tasks and responsibilities within the community that worked on a hierarchical principle that put the greatest responsibilities in the hands of the superiors. The individual merits and activities usually resulted from the person’s function within the order’s mechanism. A thorough prosopographical analysis of the historical record of the Jesuits, processed at several levels of detail, will help us to reconstruct the careers of the Jesuit procurators – economic administrators, both with respect to the hierarchy of order functions and from the viewpoint of the individual careers of the members of a monastic institution. The study, however, does not seek to fully evaluate the procurator’s role in the hierarchy of the order’s functions, as it would require a wider heuristic basis, but rather, through a probe, it highlights the possibilities to study how the operation and economic background of the Jesuit houses functioned.
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Marie Maximiliane von Sternberg (1583–1646) descended from the noble family of the Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen counts of Swabia but she spent most of her life in Bohemia. She first married Jáchym Oldřich of Hradec (Joachim Ulrich von Neuhaus, 1579–1604) in 1598 who died six years later. She remarried in 1605, this time to Adam II von Sternberg (1554–1623). They both hailed from significant Bohemian aristocratic families. After Adam’s death in 1623, the countess did not marry again and led an exemplary widow’s life for twenty-five long years.Marie Maximiliane von Sternberg paid special attention to the upbringing and education of young people. Perhaps it is the reason why she primarily supported the Society of Jesus. While living in Jindřichův Hradec, the residential town of her first husband, she dedicated a large amount of money to the Jesuit seminary. The countess further continued to support the Jesuits after her move to Prague. A great financial gift enabled her to found the Jesuit College in the New Town of Prague. In addition, Marie Maximiliane von Sternberg established a local gymnasium and earmarked a sum of money to found Saint Francis Xavier Seminary. She was instrumental in building the chapel of the dead (capella defunctorum) at the Jesuit church of Saint Nicholas in the Lesser Town of Prague where the members of the fraternity of the Loyal Dead assembled. After the premature death of her son Adalbert Ignatius Eusebius von Sternberg in 1633, she commissioned a tomb for him and herself in the Jesuit church of Saint Salvator in the Old Town of Prague. Since the countess lived up to the expectations of a widow’s virtuous life, the Jesuit historian Bohuslav Balbín mentioned her in his book Bohemia sancta as an archetype of a person with a spotless reputation.
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The many cases dealt with by the officials of the Bohemian Chamber and vicegerency in the second half of the 17th century exposed two attempts to falsify Liberec cloth quality brands. In the first case Jewish merchants from Prague and Mladá Boleslav were accused, in the second case, the defendant was a burgher from the Old Town of Prague. The documents in the National Archives, the New Manipulation Fonds, enable one to follow the unequal investigative approach of the officials who in the case of the Old Town’s burgher acted faster and more leniently than in the case of the Boleslav and Prague Jews.
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The process of ennoblement started by filing a supplica addressed to the emperor and processed by Bohemian Court Chancellery. The proceedings included a censorship of coats of arms-to-be. This was originally the duty of one of the officers of the Chancellery, but since the beginning of the 18th century, there was an especially appointed „Inspector of the arms“. The inspector made sure that the armorial achievements were according to the rules of heraldry. If there was a problem with the suggested achievement, the amendments could have been made by either changing the tinctures, correcting the charges or changing them. The colored pictures of armorial achievements are nowadays part of almost half of the cases of the Bohemian Court Chancellery. They are painted on smaller papers attached by small dots of red wax on the fourth or fifth page of the case, near the blason. In some cases, where these colored pictures were already missing when the cases were still part of the Chancellery archives, they are replaced by an ink-only drawing with just the letters replacing the colors.The most common variant is a quartered field, party per cross (or even with inescutcheon), the most popular charges are lions, eagles and griffins, ordinaries on the other hand are quite rare. The helms are almost always barred helms, no matter the exact rank of the supplicant. Torses are very rare, usually replaced by crest-coronets and in one case by a turban. The mantling is usually per pale both on the inside and outside, mostly red-gold and blue-silver, disregarding the colors of the shield.The crests usually repeat the charges of the escutcheon, but the most traditional ones like wings, horns and panaches of feathers were used as well.Unfortunately, cases where the documents mention anything about the reasons the armiger had for choosing the charges, are extremely rare and the only cases where we can be sure, are the canting arms.
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The article for an almanac published for the jubilee of Alena Pazderová pursued the formation of the fonds of Peter Leopold, Grand Duke of Tuscany, today constituting the first collection of the complex fonds of the Family Archives of the Tuscany Habsburgs that comprises sixty-one volumes of various types of documents from 1740–1790. After the separation of documents in 1859–1860, Leopold’s reports and manuscripts were placed in Villa Montughi in Florence, Tuscany. The study identified the individual volumes and monitored their complex journey, especially the individual stages of their long-lasting transport over nearly one century from Tuscany via Salzburg to Bohemia and their eventual placement in the Prague National Archives depository in 1996. Furthermore, the study describes an interest of the Italian party to surrender the Tuscany family archives to Italy; it ended by concluding a cultural agreement that enabled a mutual exchange of archivists, the study of the Family Archives of the Tuscany Habsburgs (RAT), and provided Czech researchers with a list of Bohemica documents in which Dr Alena Pazderová played a significant role.
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The article analyses the network of private documents (so-called egodocuments) characteristic of Leopold II, Grand Duke of Tuscany, a substantial part of which is in the Family Archives of the Tuscany Habsburgs in the National Archives in Prague. The network was a miscellany of diaries, journals, ‘travel journals’, notebooks, and folders with loose sheets containing notes, jottings, accounts, reflections, and testimonies of a personal and family nature as well as political and governmental issues. These documents formed an effective system of personal memory organisation that culminated with a long and varied text known as Il Governo di famiglia in Toscana (The Family Rule in Tuscany) which is Leopold’s autobiography of a kind. A brief reconstruction of the text’s complex preparation, as well as the events that followed the death of Leopold II, points out the confines of the publication written by Franz Pesendorfer several decades ago. The chapter about the judicial reform, missed out in the publication, gives a chance to verify some of Leopold’s ideas and intentions.
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On 6 April 1922, an archival agreement was signed in Rome between the seven successor states of the Habsburg monarchy (Austria, Hungary, Italy, Romania, Yugoslavia, Poland and Czechoslovakia). This so-called Rome Archival Convention was intended to set the rules for the restitution of archival records and files of the central authorities of the monarchy in the successor states, thus clarifying the general rules contained in the Peace Treaties of St.Germain-en-Laye and Trianon of 1919–1920. Negotiations on the Convention, which began in 1921, were complicated by the differing positions of the various countries. Some of them (such as Czechoslovakia) preferred mutual bilateral agreements rather than a general convention. Although the Convention was not ratified by all states (Hungary never ratified it), it is an interesting document of international archival law.
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After the First World War, the new Czechoslovakia quickly stabilized. It created an internal republican regime of parliamentary democracy and consolidated its international position. However, relations with Hungary remained a serious problem . Indeed Budapest still give up the hope of re great Hungary in headed ruler with habsbu r tion Dynasty. The overthrown emperor and king Charles in exile, his aristocratic adherents as well as various monarchist groups and movements in the territory of the former Habsburg Empire they still did not cope with its disintegration. At the same time, they also relied on monarchist and conservative circles in Germany, France and Great Britain, as well as other European countries. They began to make plans to restore the Habsburg monarchy and restore the ex-Emperor and ex-King Charles to the throne. Hungary, which did not accept the disintegration of historic Hungary and had a strong monarchist and especially nationalist movement, openly opposed the post-war constitutional order of Central and South-Eastern Europe and the existence of successor states, seemed most favorable. They first assumed the re-establishment of Charles as the king of Hungary. Then, under appropriate internal and especially international conditions, to restore the Habsburg Empire, perhaps in some reformed form of a constitutional and federal monarchy. Historically, the term "restauration of the Habsburgs" has been used for these efforts. Charles and his followers first tried to return to Hungary in March 1921, but failed due to the internal resistance of regent Horthy, who did not want to give up his position of power, and the international power pressure on Hungary, which was instigated by Czechoslovakia. Then again in October 1921 he tried again to return to Hungary. This time regent Horthy deployed an army against his supporters and Czechoslovakia mobilized part of its army. Karel was interned and transported to the Portuguese island of Madeira.
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The letter prepared for publication by the Hungarian Prime Minister Count Pal Teleki dates back to August 6, 1920. The author of the letter, using the reports of Hungarian civil servants who massively left the territory of Slovakia and Subcarpathian Rus, draws the attention of representatives of the Allied military mission of the Entente countries in Budapest to two key, from his point of view, questions. Firstly, the letter deals with the situation of the Hungarian population remaining in the territories that had ceded Czechoslovakia under the Trianon Peace Treaty. Secondly, the Hungarian Prime Minister draws the attention of representatives of the Entente countries and their allies to the growth of revolutionary sentiments in Slovakia and Subcarpathian Rus and to the strengthening of the “left wing” of the Socialist Party of Slovakia. All these processes are associated with events in Soviet Russia and the suppression of the Soviet Republic in Hungary.This document is interesting for everyone who is interested in the history of the first years of the Czechoslovak state.
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The Rule of the Community clearly shows that “the terminology of truth” played a significant role for the Qumran community. Its members referred to themselves as “the sons of truth” (1QS IV 5), committed to “the house of truth in Israel” (1QS V 6) and supposed to “practise truth” (1QS V 3). It is therefore legitimate to ask a few questions in order to understand better the qumranic concept of truth and its impact on the Qumranites’ lives. So: what was the character of the Qumran truth, what was its role in the daily life of the community member and what results in that life was it supposed to show? The answers to these questions will be based on 1QS XI 4-5, which is a part of a personal prayer of the maskil, a part carefully and logically planned and structured, which enables us to form reliable conclusions about truth in the life of the Qumranite.
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The topic of this paper is Tadija Smičiklas, his time of office as university rector and the award of an honorary doctorate. Tadija Smičiklas is a significant name in the history of the University of Zagreb. In 1882, he became a full professor at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. He was chosen on the basis of his book Poviest hrvatska, which represents the first comprehensive account of Croatian history up to 1848, written on the basis of archival material. He held the position of dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in the academic year 1886/1887, and in the following academic year, 1887/1888, he was elected rector magnificus of the University of Zagreb the fourteenth rector elected. At the inauguration ceremony, his speech featured Ivan Gundulić’s poem Osman written by Ivan. The following academic year, according to the established procedure, he was appointed vice-rector. Professor Smičiklas was the first honorary doctor of the University of Zagreb. The proposal for the award was made by the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, the Senate of the University accepted the proposal and, through the Royal Croatian Land Government, asked for permission from the Emperor and King Franz Joseph I, after whom the University of Zagreb was named. A royal decision of October 31, 1913, approved that Smičiklas being granted the title of honorary doctor of philosophy and being presented with a doctoral diploma. The award ceremony, due to the illness of Smičiklas, took place in his apartment in Mesnička Street on December 20, 1913.
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The contribution endeavours to shed light on one part of the private life of the Croatian ban, Nikola Tomašić – more precisely, his marriages to Marija Gluhak and Paula Gaj. Perhaps this topic would be irrelevant if Tomašić had not decided to convert to Orthodoxy due to his second marriage and to a much younger woman who at that time was known as one of Zagreb's beauties, which led to a significant reaction in the higher social circles of the time. Original archival sources and the available literature were used to create a narrative and, probably for the first time, the article presents to the general public pictures of the female actors in these events.
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The subject of this paper is the way the weekly Danas was treated by the Presidency of the Central Committee of the League of Communists of Croatia in the first year of its publication, during 1982 and 1983. Danas started being published in the second half of February 1982 and half a year later the periodical turned into a huge political issue. The newspaper appeared at a time of a general crisis; with its critical approach, at times even provocative, it frustrated the hardened and obsolete party elite which was determined to defend its hitherto inviolable position. Within a short period of time, the weekly attained a circulation of 120,000 copies, which testifies to its wide appeal as well as to its influence, which in fact distressed the party leadership. With the appearance of Danas, a critical public opinion started to come into being. The party leadership started to deal with the weekly in the summer of 1982 and temporarily discontinued it at the beginning of the following year. This was done by the replacement of the editor-in-chief with a new one, along with young associates who were willing to toe the party line. The result of the changes was a drop in circulation, which literally reduced the weekly to eking out an existence and having only marginal influence. The penalization of Danas was in fact an example of shutting down any public opinion unacceptable to the party leadership, through the principle of democratic centralism and its concrete implementation in practice. It was actually a conflict within the party in which lower-ranking communists lost out.
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Using the example of the statue of St John of Nepomuk outside Saint John the Baptist Church (Na Prádle) in Prague’s Lesser Town, the author presents a reflection on the wide range of ideas upon which the narrative of a historical monument located in the city’s landscape depends on. This sculpture is especially admired as an example of Baroque art. The location of this statue in front of Saint John the Baptist Church is one of the factors that creates the impression of a picturesque and visually attractive spot. At the same time, however, this statue is known to have been originally located on the opposite shore of the Vltava River. Until the beginning of the 20th century, it was part of a religious cult, and its presence in the Cattle Market (now Charles Square) was seen as part of a greater pilgrimage site in which St John of Nepomuk was revered. By studying sources and literature, the author gradually uncovers layers of meanings intertwined with this particular work. At the same time, the author reflects on the possible consequences of transferring (not only) religious monuments from their original locations, especially with regard to the city’s memory.
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