Curtea domnească de la Vaslui din vremea lui Ștefan cel Mare
The archaeological excavations of Vaslui resulted in the discovery of important vestiges dating back to the time of Stephen the Great, reigning prince of Ια Moldavia (1457-1504).
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The archaeological excavations of Vaslui resulted in the discovery of important vestiges dating back to the time of Stephen the Great, reigning prince of Ια Moldavia (1457-1504).
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During 1429-1432 Emperor Sigismund of Luxemburg tried to establish definitively the Teutonic Order in Banat. Their presence displeased the Romanian population which will organize a vast action of resistance. As a result of these actions the Teutonic Order is obliged to withdraw and the Rumanians of the Banal consolidate their rights
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After the outbreak of the Thirteen Years‘ War there was created a certain kind of the Pomesan chancellery landscape. Its creation resulted from the tendency of various chancelleries to cooperate. The central point of the landscape was Marienburg’s [Polish: Malbork] chancellery of the Grand Master under the supervision of the clergyman and chancellor Andreas Santberg. He organized the manner of administering the written documentation with the help of public notaries, who had prepared the earliest files. The personal relations between the city chancelleries of the Monastic State and the Teutonic chancelleries may be noticed. The situation of the work of the chancellery during the Thirteen Years’ War was determined by extraordinary conditions. Preparing the registers of documents in the chancellery of the Grand Master was stopped. Instead of this, the number of drafts of documents increased. In the cities and towns which were most affected by the war events, it was hard to maintain the continuity in the production of documents. After the Grand Master moved to Königsberg, the preparations to set up a new registry office of the territorial ruler commenced. The chancellery’s personnel organized the administration of the documentations according to old models of the Sambian chancellery. One of the characteristic features of the German writing used during the war was the introduction of double sounds „nn” in the initial syllable and sometimes in the final syllable. After the conclusion of the Peace Treaty the process of the gradual secularization of the Grand Master’s chancellery could be observed. In the times of Friedrich von Sachsen educated lawyers were responsible for chancelleries following the models taken over from the Meissen motherland of the Grand Master. Under the rule of the margrave Albrecht people from Francophonie became trustworthy cooperators. They led to the gradual francisation of the language of the chancellery. Writing registers again became part of chancellery production. A new administration was created. Similar phenomena took place in case of writing production of the city chancelleries and other lay and church chancelleries at the end of the Teutonic period, which requires further research.
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The poem Capystranus, devoted to the 1456 Siege of Belgrade by the Ottoman Turks, was printed three times between 1515 and 1530 by Wynkyn de Worde. It survives in a fragmentary form, testifying to its popularity with the audience. Studies of the poem have tended to concentrate on its literary qualities, discrediting its historical value as an account of the siege. In this essay, I build on the work of scholars who view the narrative of Capystranus as a work of fiction, informed by the conventions of crusading romance, rather than as an eyewitness account. However, I reassess the value of Capystranus for the study of war history: I argue that, in its description of the siege, the author pictures accurately the spirit of contemporary warfare. The present essay explores, for the first time, the experiences, images and memories of war as represented in Capystranus, comparing the depiction of warfare to contemporary discourses on the law and ethics of war.
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The article deals with the construction of the narrative of the battle of Krbava Field, where many Croatian noblemen perished in 1493. The accounts of the battle began to spread immediately after the fighting had come to an end, giving rise to various versions of the events. The second part of the article is devoted to the rhetoric of the various retellings with which the memory of the calamity was preserved from the sixteenth century to the eighteenth century. The article then examines the circumstances leading to the increase in the political and social importance of the narrative in the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century. The final part of the article focuses on the history of the narrative of the battle within the framework of the various Croatian state formations of the twentieth century.
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This essay will attempt to offer a glimpse into the situations and considerations that played a role in the decisions of Christians, primarily women, who voluntarily stood among the Turks in the Hungarian–Ottoman contact zone. This insight will highlight marriages that spanned the Christian–Muslim borders. On the one hand because the letters of papal pardon which abandoned Christian spouses submitted to the Apostolic Penitentiary in order to gain permission to remarry serve as the basis for analysis; and on the other hand because marriage typically served as the gateway through which people entered the opposite culture. This essay places emphasis on those individual and group experiences that made voluntary movement between cultures possible and the situative character of individual and religious identity at the time.
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Articolul prezintă o discuție asupra localizării mormântului lui Bogdan al II-lea.
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The Romanians of Transylvania, who were followers predominantly of the Orthodox rite, did not pay tithe to the Western Church in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. However, again according to the secondary literature, beginning in the fifteenth century, two groups of Transylvanian Romanians were obliged to pay this tax: those living on church properties and those who had moved to settlements formerly inhabited by Catholics (referred to as “terrae Christianorum”). This study deals with the issue of the first group, analyzing the only source that would support the thesis in question, namely a letter of King Sigismund of Luxembourg (which in some editions was dated to 1398 and in others to 1425 or 1426). Although the facts described in the document would correspond to realities from 1426, the contradictory dates, the confusing language, and the absence of the original (the earliest manuscript copies of the text are from the eighteenth century) arouse suspicions. Even if we accept it as authentic, the phrase “decima Volahorum,” which is used in the letter, cannot be interpreted as an ordinary tithe, but only as a royal tax. Neither the late medieval registers of revenues of the Alba Iulia chapter nor the urbaria of the estates of the Transylvanian bishopric offer any evidence in support the thesis according to which Romanians who lived on church properties paid the tithe.
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During his reign in Naples, between 1442 and 1458, King Alfonso V of Aragon exchanged a series of diplomatic communications with the Christian East, namely with Byzantine Emperors John VIII (1425–1448) and Constantine XI Dragases (1449–1453) and their close kin, but also with the most prominent feudal lords of the Balkan peninsula (Herzeg Stjepan Vukčić Kosača, George Castrioti Skanderbey, etc.). The basic historical details of these missions are largely known to modern scholarship, which usually regards them as part of the king’s attempt to secure individual allies in his planned anti-Ottoman crusade and expansion towards the imperial throne in Constantinople. Scholarship, however, is limited on the details of these relations, partly due to the fragmentary nature of the sources and partly because of the missions’ secret character. In this paper, I am attempting to learn more about King Alfonso’s attention to the Balkans by observing the human resources which sustained not just his missions, but also other forms of the kingdom’s exchange across the Adriatic. The inquiry, which is based on the study of the available prosopographic data concerning individuals who appear to have been prominent in this, indicates that the basic circle which sustained this process consisted of Catalan bankers and highly ranked notaries, all resident in Naples since Alfonso’s access to the throne of the kingdom in 1442, but this circle also received several local commoners loyal to the king, with Simone Caccetta as their leading figure. His networks show that the king’s diplomatic exchange with the Balkans was largely characterized by a specific form of corruption, by which the bankers who invested their money in the king’s diplomatic activities in the Balkans received lucrative positions in the royal customs and local administration of Puglia, which they further used to enhance their access to the kingdom’s economic exchange with the Balkans and, consequently, to augment their wealth. This process was heavily scrutinized by Simone Caccetta, who involved in it an entire circle of small traders and soldiers directly loyal to him, thus affirming their positions but also his own position in the Aragon service and Aragon courtly society.
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Artykuł omawia geograficzne aspekty wykorzystywania prowizji papieskich przez polskie duchowieństwo w późnym średniowieczu. Przeanalizowane zostało, jak często używano tych łask w staraniach o lokalne i odległe beneficja oraz w jakiej odległości od miejsca pochodzenia interesantów leżały przyznane prebendy. Omówiono też, w jakim stopniu papieskie łaski pozwalały przekroczyć karierom duchownych granice administracyjne województw, dzielnic i diecezji.
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The author analyses the military and diplomatic interventions of John Hunyadi in the two Romanian Principalities, up to the year 1445. Hunyadi’s victories over the Ottoman raiding parties in Transylvania and in the Banate of Severin, in 1441 and 1442, resumed the Hungarian offensive against the Turks. Despite the Christian successes in Transylvania, Sultan Murad II arrested Vlad Dracul of Wallachia, and sent a pasha to take over the province, in the early summer of 1442. Rapid intervention was required, so John Hunyadi and Transylvanian army crossed the Carpathians and recovered Wallachia, enthroning Basarab II. In reaction, the sultan sent another army under the command of Şehabeddin, beğlerbeğ Rumelia, but he was defeated by allied armies of John Hunyadi and Basarab II, in the first days of September 1442. Furthermore, the new ruler of Wallachia joined the crusader army during the Long Campaign, in the winter of 1443-1444. In the following spring, Sultan Murad released Vlad Dracul from the dungeon and sent him, via Constantinople, to take the rule of Wallachia. Deserted by his boyars, Basarab II was defeated and killed by his rival. This change came in a very delicate moment for the Hungarian-Ottoman diplomacy, as both powers tried to gain time for the preparation of an imminent war, by signing the Peace Treaty of Adrianople, June 12, 1444, ratified by John Hunyadi in Oradea, on August 15, 1444. Thus, the voivode of Transylvania and King Wladislas had to accept the status quo of the new voivode of Wallachia, as a protegee of the sultan, but the Peace Treaty was soon broken, and Vlad Dracul was forced to join the Crusade of Varna. Only half-hearted, he sent his son ahead of a light cavalry squadron, who maintained an ambiguous stance throughout the campaign. Vlad Dracul proved himself a loyal subject of Sultan Murad when he arrested Hunyadi, after the defeat suffered by the Christian host at Varna, in November 10, 1444. Although released after the diplomatic intervention of palatine Lawrence Hederwary, John Hunyadi became Vlad Dracul’s foe for good, taking revenge in the eve of the Kossovo campaign, at the end of 1447. The situation in Moldavia was even worse, since a terrible civil war between Alexander the Good’s heirs had lasted since 1432. However, the sources record that John Hunyadi managed through diplomacy to regain Moldavia for the Hungarian Crown, in 1442. It is most likely that the voievode of Transylvania allied himself with Peter II, “true heir of Moldavia”, who was at odds with his brother Stephen II. Hunyadi’s Moldavian ally did not enjoy the support of his subjects, so he couldn’t send military aid to the crusaders of the Long Campaign, in the winter of 1443-1444. Moreover, it seems like Stephan II tried a rapprochement to Hungary,– where Hunyadi advised King Wladislas to accept the Moldavian’s allegiance, but just as king of Hungary. The Hungarian-Moldavian diplomacy seemed unsuccessful, since the sources do not record any Moldavians at the Varna Crusade, in the fall of 1444. Finaly, in 1445, Stephen II succeeded in overthrowing his brother Peter II, thus Hunyadi lost his Moldavian ally, being able to intervene east of the Carpathians only in 1447, in circumstances that will be discussed at length in an upcoming paper.
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From the 1420’ onwards five members of the Manini family came gradually over to Hungary to work in the Hungarian royal financial administration, more precisely in the management of the royal salt chambers of Maramureș and Transylvania. The study provides a detailed overview on their Hungarian business activity, settlement and integration by marrying into the Transylvanian nobility. It also explores their financial and social background back in Florence based on the surviving Florentine, Hungarian and Transylvanian sources.
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In the fall of 1494, King Vladislaus II of Hungary established his court in Sibiu (Hermannstadt / Nagyszeben) for about one month. The sovereign’s stay was recorded not only briefly, throughout the royal charters issued here in that particular time frame, but also in a more peculiar manner. Two accounting records, drawn up by the town’s authorities, illustrate the joint effort for a good hosting of its king. A constant concern, reflected in these two historical sources, was precisely the supply of food and the providing of related services, such as water transportation, food preparation, or animal slaughtering. Although published more than a century ago, these accounts have not been exploited so far to the full extent of their data and of their analytical perspectives. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to put into context the royal presence in Sibiu, but, more importantly, to highlight what this moment meant in terms of food, with its various features. These two accounting sources can be interrogated from the perspective of the consumed goods, the costs involved, the communal (from Sibiu’s hinterland and not only) or individual contribution, sometimes determined by gender. Given that the event articulated itself as a time of celebration, food itself had an exceptional character, an aspect suggested by these financial records, especially regarding the quantities they noted down. Thus, they outline the profile of a city capable of assuming and sustaining the presence of the Hungarian royal court, while also letting the specifics of the local economy to be seen – from acquiring oriental spices, to preparing vegetables and meats from local or regional households.
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The granting of honours and titles was far from alien to the medieval man. While the grantee could rejoice in the honour received, the grantor also had a reason to be satisfi ed in so far as he generally demanded a price for his grant. As the medieval rulers frequently struggled with grave fi nancial problems, the granting of honours understandably enjoyed high popularity among them. This was especially true in the case of Sigismund of Luxemburg, king of Hungary and of the Romans. The present study examines a brief section of the granting policies of Sigismund, namely the period of nine months which the king was forced to spend at Siena in the course of his Romzug in 1433. Alongside the Sienese burghers who benefi ted from the royal patronage, I have also collected those persons who arrived to the city from diverse parts of Europe but received their honours or titles there.
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This paper investigates the Franco–Hungarian contacts in the late medieval period. The most important points of these connections are the marriage negotiations of Ladislas the Posthumous with a Valois princess in 1457, the Hungarian and French attitudes toward the Crusading project of the Pope in 1463–1464, the activity of Matthias and Louis XI as peacemakers in the Florentine Pazzi conflict of the years of 1478–1480, or the attempts of the Hungarian king to obtain prince Cem, the Turkish rebel pretender from his French captivity in 1487. The author analyses how three great international questions of the contemporary Europe, i. e. the Crusading idea, the Italian inner problems or the growing influence of the Burgundian and later the Habsburg Houses determinate the attitudes of the above mentioned diplomatic affairs of the two monarchies.
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Das Konstanzer Konzil. Weltereignis des Mittelalters 1414–1418. A Badisches Landesmuseum kiállítása Konstanzban, 2014. április 21.–szeptember 24. Kiadványok: Das Konstanzer Konzil. Weltereignis
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In the following study the main point of discussion represents the roles of Manoil Grecul (the pârcălab of Hotin fortress between 1438-1455) and Teodoryk Buczacki (the castellan and starosta of Kamieniec between 1442-1455 and one of the most influent Polish nobles in Podolia) in the relationships between the Kingdom of Poland and the Moldavian Principality during the middle of 15th century. Both officials would become key-figures in the Polish-Moldavian contacts, because of the internal political struggle in Moldova and of the circumstances of Władysław III Warneńczyk‟s reign (1434-1444) and the following interregnum in Poland.The roles of the parkalab of Hotin and of the starosta of Kamieniec rose significantly during this phase of Polish-Moldavian relationships. In the case of Manoil Grecul, it happened after 1442, when he sided with Iliaș I and his sons, Roman II and Alexandru II (who secured their refuge in Podolia) and became one of the most important Moldavian officials of his time. He even managed to keep his new rank during the following reigns of Petru Aron and Ștefan cel Mare. In the case of Teodoryk Buczacki, the lowered interest of Polish Royalty towards the situation at the south-eastern borders of the Kingdom allowed the starosta of Kamieniec to become the main intermediary between the princes of Moldova and the Polish central authorities. This moment predetermined all interventions of Teodoryk Buczacki in the political fights for the Moldavian throne in the following years, collaborating with the pro-Polish factions and the pârcălab of Hotin.
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The aim of this paper is to examine the ideological background of and the motives for early Spanish exploratory journeys to the New World. It also focuses on the process that lead to Pope Alexander VI, born Rodrigo Borja of Valencia, former apostolic nuncio for the Spanish kingdoms, issuing the papal bull Inter caetera and resulted in establishing the first church for the indigenous peoples of the colonized Americas. The paper also undertakes a detailed exploration of the hardships that the first, temporarily assigned Christian missionaries had to face, with a particular focus on the conflict that arose as a result of the insurmountable obstacles caused by Columbus, leading to Vicar Apostolic Fr. Bernal Boyl abandoning the isle of Hispaniola. In addition, the paper is concerned with the royalist propaganda of the Spanish Monarchy, which accompanied the evangelization of pagan settlements in a land that had previously been unfamiliar with Christian teaching.
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Gruber, Elisabeth: „Raittung und außgab zum gepew.” Kommunale Rechnungspraxis im oberösterreichischen Freistadt. Edition und Kommentar der Stadtgrabenrechnung (1389–1392). Mit einem Beitrag von Thomas Kühtreiber, Gábor Tarcsay und Michaela Zorko. Wien–Köln–Weimar: Böhlau Verlag, 2015. (Quelleneditionen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung, 14.) 243 p.
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This study examines the various itineraries of king Sigismund, certain stations of his route and the concerning flow of information in Germany following the king’s stay in England in 1416. Based on German and Latin correspondences I seek the answer that certain German cities through which direct as well as indirect channels gained information on the ruler’s different intentions regarding his travel route and on the planned date of his return to the general council in Konstanz. Furthermore, based on the examined sources I could expand on the relevant sections of the existing German and Hungarian itinerary of Sigismund on many points. Knowing the actual route, I explain as far as possible the political background reasons of choosing certain locations.
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