Saint John Capistran and despot George Branković: an impossible compromise

Author(s): Stanko Andrić / Language(s): English Issue: 1-2/2016

The article deals primarily with the failed attempt of Saint John Capistran to win over the Serbian Despot George Branković to the Catholic faith on the eve of the planned crusade against the Ottomans that resulted in the defense of Belgrade in 1456. This episode, which took place during the meeting of the two at the diet of the Hungarian Kingdom in Győr in June 1455, is studied here through the protagonists’ correspon dence as well as through contemporary chronicles and other relevant sources. The subsequent indirect relationship between Capistran and Branković is followed until the time of the Franciscan’s death. The author also considers the broader context of historical relations between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches in the middle Danube region at that time.

„Consilium itinerarii“ benátskeho lekára pre vyslancov k cisárovi Žigmundovi do Uhorska v rokoch 1434–1435

Author(s): Daniela Dvořáková / Language(s): Slovak Issue: 1/2017

The topic of the contribution is travel and the regimen of travellers in the medieval period, drawing on examples of several fifteenth-century missions from Italy to Austria and Hungary. The core of interest lies with the mission of Venetian envoys Andre Donato and Geronimo Contarini who travelled to Hungary in 1434 to meet emperor Sigismund of Luxemburg. The work will analyse a unique source that survived their diplomatic mission: the so-called travel plan (consilium itinerarii); a kind of guide and travel regimen for the long and arduous journey through the Alpine passes written by the notable Venetian physician Pietro Tomasii.

Moc a bezmoc šlechtičen v husitských Čechách

Author(s): Zdeněk Beran / Language(s): Czech Issue: 1/2017

The study analyses the roles of noble women in the public sphere and their specific share of power in Hussite Bohemia. It is based on theological literature and normative sources contrasted with reports from chronicles, diplomatic materials, and correspondence between nobles.The study covers the period up to the end of the 15th century and the role of women in the beginning of the formation of the Unity of the Brethren. The main focus is on the activities of noble women (in the reformation, revolution, wars, and during the years of confessional peace), while analysing the mutual relationship between the genders and the late medieval social networks in Bohemia while closely examining the characteristic phenomenon of religiously mixed marriages.

Martin Wihoda, První česká království

Author(s): Andrzej Pleszczyński / Language(s): Czech Issue: 1/2017

Lukáš Reitinger, Vratislav II. První král Čechů

Author(s): Jan Zelenka / Language(s): Czech Issue: 1/2017

Jiří Fajt, Dlouhý stín císaře Karla IV. K recepci lucemburské panovnické reprezentace v severovýchodních teritoriích Svaté říše římské

Author(s): František Šmahel / Language(s): Czech Issue: 1/2017

Václav Mencl, 5 městských reservací Jihomoravského kraje. Znojmo, Jihlava, Telč, Mikulov, Kroměříž. Komentované vydání

Author(s): Dalibor Prix / Language(s): Czech Issue: 1/2017

Zprávy a referáty

Author(s): Author Not Specified / Language(s): English,Czech Issue: 1/2017

Monasticism and Activity Patterns: Evaluating Osteoarthritis Distribution and Entheseal Changes in a Feminine Monastic Community (Santa Maria de Vallsanta, Spain)

Author(s): Núria MONTES,Maria Eulàlia SUBIRÀ / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2018

During the 12-13th AD, a feminine monastic expansion occurred in the northeast of the Iberian Peninsula, related to the Cisterian Reform. According to the literature, the daily activity of these communities was mainly based on farming and liturgical practice. Santa Maria de Vallsanta appears as an example of this event. The aim of this study is to evaluate the osteoarthritic prevalence and its distribution in this group, as well as entheseal changes, in order to reconstruct their activity pattern.The presence of osteoarthritis has been recorded in a sample of 14 female individuals corresponding to burials of abbesses and prioresses of Santa Maria de Vallsanta by two different scoring methods. Moreover, entheseal changes (from both upper and lower limb) have been analysed following the already contrasted method of Mariotti and colleagues, in order to assess the adequacy of osteoarthritis as a marker of occupational stress. Severe osteoarthritis has been observed even in individuals under the age of 40 in the group of abbesses and prioresses from Santa Maria de Vallsanta. The joints most severely affected are usually the elbows, wrists and knees. The entheses of the gluteus maximus muscle in the femur, soleus in the tibia, pectoralis major in the humerus and deltoideus in the clavicle are those that are most developed in the group. Farming and the liturgical practice may explain the prevalence and specific patterning of osteoarthritis and entheseal changes in this community. Despite the complexity of its aetiology, the systematic evaluation of osteoarthritis provides information on differences between individuals in the response to a stressful environment. A standardized method of registering the disease is strongly needed in order to enable comparisons between populations.

How She Was Laid to Rest. Theoretical Perspective on Bioarchaeology of Gender and Identity in Medieval and Modern Portugal

Author(s): Ana Lema Seabra / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2018

The proposed paper aims to present a preliminary framework for an ongoing research within the scope of a Doctoral Thesis regarding the mortuary practices in Mediaeval/Modern Portugal. The assumption that Christian burial practices are completely standardized has often been contradicted by bioarcheologists on-field, however, most observations and results are kept on site-specific level and confined to grey literature. Differences have been observed in other areas such as Art History and History. They can pertain to differences in the representation of deceased women in funerary art – with different positions and goods, while expressions of piety have been noted for both genders. Historical documentary sources show women as active members, financing the construction of religious buildings, and carefully stipulating their own funeral rites with astounding detail, from what will be worn, the offerings to be bestowed and the number of days of mourning. Some scholars studying testaments and pious donations have already pointed out differences related to gender: in the choice of the burial place – beside the husband or back with their own family line, and the increase likelihood to wish to be buried wearing religious attire, often from mendicant orders. The bodies themselves have been mostly kept out of the discussion where Christian Portuguese Medieval and Modern burials are concerned. As such, we aim to explore a bioarcheological perspective based on anthropological field reports, to outline differences in mortuary practice between female and male adults, and children in Portugal from burial sites instituted after 1297. In the present paper we aim to present the preliminary framework of our ongoing study, a theoretical state of the art and the methodology to be employed throughout our research. We believe that comprehensive statistical inter-site comparisons will underline possible trends not visible at intra-site level or highlight the geographical or chronological specificity of these trends.

Portuguese Women’s Activity in the Past: Comparing Entheseal Changes Through Time

Author(s): Charlotte Henderson,Soledad Salega,Ana Maria Silva / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2018

Entheseal changes (ECs), that is the visible appearance at the attachment sites of tendons to bones, have been widely used to infer activity in bioarchaeology. The majority of recent research on ECs, testing methodological approaches and the impact of age and occupation, has focussed on male lives. The primary reason for this is the wider range of documentary evidence about male lives, particularly with regard to occupation. In Portuguese identified skeletal collections males have a broad range of occupations from the generic labourer, to the more specific locksmith. In contrast, apart from seamstresses and waitresses, most females are listed as domestic workers. Testing whether there is an impact of occupation on the occurrence of ECs in females is therefore much harder. Past research has shown that, overall, ECs become more common in more recent human history, which may be an indication that EC reflect lifestyle changes. The aim of this paper is to study differences in ECs frequency through time to study changes in lifestyle. To achieve this, Portuguese skeletons from three time periods were used: mediaeval (400-1499 ACE), early modern (1500-1600 ACE), and twentieth century. Entheses were recorded using the new Coimbra method. Within body asymmetries, bilateral and between entheses of muscles that interact, along with the frequencies of changes were compared through time. While differences in frequencies do exist through time, the effect sizes are generally small. Where bilateral asymmetries do exist, these are most common on the left than the right side: this is the opposite of most findings including those in the males in these collections. These results cannot identify specific activities, but these differences may reflect lifestyle changes.

An Idle Mind is the Devilʼs Workshop: A Study of Skeletal Markers of Activity in Female Monastic Populations from Belmonte (Spain, 16th-20th centuries) and Alcácer do Sal (Portugal, 16th-19th centuries)

Author(s): Nataša Šarkić,Lucia MUÑOZ,Ana Maria Silva,Jesús HERRERÍN / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2018

Over the course of history, female monastic populations were the only community of women that were free to make their own decisions regarding administration and finances. Many nunneries produced their own food, wine and olive oil, making income out of that and being self-sustaining. The Constitution of the Nuns gives very detailed rules about every aspect of the life in a monastery. The main tasks were praying, contemplation and manual labour. The importance and the necessity of work were emphasized, although it is not specified what kind of work it had to be. On the contrary, according to Rey, Spanish monasteries were more centres of consumption than of production. This claim was established on the basis of her study of monasteries expense books, as well as on the fact that nuns were of noble status and probably not used to work. In Rey’s opinion, most of the work was performed by lay sisters, who were employed in the external service of the convent and belonged to lower social status. In order to test this claim skeletal markers of activity and repetitive traumas, such as entheseal changes, Schmorl's nodes, Charles’ facet, squatting facets, spinal disc hernias, jumper knee, os acromiale and markers of occupational stress on teeth were analysed and compared between three monastic and three female secular populations, geographically and chronologically close to each other. The obtained results proved that occupational markers were mainly equally presented in monastic and secular populations (or in some cases even more presented in the monastic populations), which can lead to the conclusion that nuns did perform physical labour, probably starting in the non-adult period.

Zprávy a referáty

Author(s): Author Not Specified / Language(s): Czech Issue: 1/2018

“In a Desolate and Foreign Land:” Byzantine Cross-Cultural Attitudes on the Road to Nemanjić Serbia (Thirteenth – Fourteenth Centuries)

Author(s): Thompson Wells / Language(s): English Issue: 1-2/2020

This article examines a sample of Byzantine travelers journeying in the Balkans to the Serbian court during the later Middle Ages, namely, the Byzantine diplomats John Bekkos, Theodore Metochites, and Nikephoros Gregoras. Through an analysis of the environmental trials these travelers faced en route such as climate and terrain, as well as the perceptions they held for the locals they encountered, this study will argue that Byzantines often formulated their attitudes toward Serbia and Serbians through certain well-worn tropes and stereotypes in addition to their own preconceived notions of their civilization. To contextualize the origins of such perceptions of Serbians and eastern Europeans more generally, we must first trace the development of these stereotypes in Greek literature from the Classical era to the later Middle Ages. This approach will effectively illustrate the underlying reasons for the various Byzantine attitudes towards Serbians in the later Middle Ages and how they often established their understanding of Serbian culture through geographic cultural determinism with origins rooted in classical Greek literature.

Recepce šachového traktátu Paulina z Benátek v pozdně středověkých Čechách

Author(s): Václav Žůrek / Language(s): Czech Issue: 1/2019

This study deals with a short chess treatise entitled Tractatus de ludo scachorum written bythe Franciscan Paulinus of Venice (around 1270–1344). The treatise is apparently inspired by thebest-selling chess treatise of the same name, written by the Dominican Jacobus de Cessolis. Theevaluation of the reception of Paulinus’s work from a pan-European perspective clearly showsthat after initial interest in 14th century Italy, the second wave of its reception was in CentralEurope at the beginning of the 15th century, which can be connected mainly with the court ofWenceslas IV and Prague ecclesiastic dignitaries. This applies both to Paulinus’s work as a whole,as well as to the treatise on the game of chess itself. This branch of the tradition also includesthe richly illuminated Madrid manuscript, the only one containing the chess treatise alone. Thestyle of its decoration, as well as some of its details, suggests a commissioner among the Czechnobility close to King Wenceslas IV. The most likely candidate is Petr Zmrzlík the Elder, a richnobleman and bibliophile.

Husitství a umění – inventura v jubilejním roce 2015

Author(s): Jan Klípa / Language(s): Czech Issue: 1/2019

Umění české reformace (1380–1620), edd. Kateřina Horníčková – Michal Šroněk; Husovské unikáty ze sbírek Národního muzea (1415–2015), ed. Martin Musílek; Jan Hus 1415/2015, ed. Zdeněk Vybíral; Praha Husova a husitská 1415–2015, edd. Petr Čornej – Václ

Zprávy a referáty

Author(s): Not Specified Author / Language(s): English,Czech,German Issue: 1/2019

K otázce kostelů se dvěma faráři v předhusitských Čechách

Author(s): Václav Nečada / Language(s): Czech Issue: 2/2019

This study deals with cases in which two priests worked at the same church at the same time. Each of these parish priests had his own benefice, patrons, and parishioners. These were in fact two parishes united by a common church. In one case, the sources directly document that the parish priests were to take turns in the administration of the church after a week and hand over the tools needed for the office. At the same time, however, the parish priest whose week was in progress was not to prevent the other parish priest from reading Mass, hearing confessions, administering the sacraments, or preaching. For the second half of the 14th and the beginning of the 15th century, five such churches with two parish priests are documented in the Prague diocese (Česká Skalice, Cítov, Nesvačily, Onšov, Načeradec). In one case, after the agreement of the patrons in 1414, the two benefices were reunited and only one parish priest was appointed.

The Compactata of Basel in Enea Silvio Piccolomini’s Letters, Speeches and Official Documents

Author(s): Adam Pálka / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2019

The famous Compacts of Basel, treaties between the Hussites and representatives of the Council of Basel in 1436, became an important feature of several late medieval Catholic writings, often aimed at Bohemian Utraquists. That can be easily demonstrated with the example of Enea Silvio Piccolomini’s crucial treatises and speeches from 1451, 1455, 1462, and 1464. This study provides a detailed analysis of these works with respect to Piccolomini’s perception of the Compacts. In the majority of the analysed works, Piccolomini appears to be rather critical of the Hussite Conciliar treaties, often complaining about alleged violations of the Compacts by the Utraquists. In one case, however, the Compacts are presented in a positive way as a document that ought to be confirmed by the Holy See. Despite obvious similarities to other Catholic authors, certain aspects of Piccolomini’s argumentation against or in support of the Compacts seem to be original.

„Na pranýř jej namalovati dali“.

Author(s): Martin Čapský / Language(s): Czech Issue: 2/2019

The study analyses the riots in Jihlava against the town council in the years 1520–1524. In October 1520, a second disaster struck the plague-ridden city when the dykes of the suburban ponds broke and water swept away several houses, drowning more than three dozen people. The townspeople blamed the flood on the town councillors. During the funeral of one of the victims, they openly rejected obedience to the town council, and established a municipality constituted by oath. The municipality claimed a share of power in the town, and demanded influence over the selection of the next councillors, along with compensation for the flood victims and changes to the town’s economic management. The monarch and the Moravian sub-chamberlain, Kuna of Kunštát, gradually became involved in the crisis. While the sub-chamberlain’s decision was in favour of the municipality, the monarch clearly sided with the town council. This study analyses how the composition of the town councils changed during the course of the riots, and what tools and strategies of political communication were used by both sides in their internal relations and with the arbiters of the dispute.