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Until the beginning of the 18th century in Royal Prussia and the Duchy of Prussia there existed a shared consciousness of belonging to one country. This feeling is also present in the regional historical works. The common country “Preußenland” was founded on the territory of the former Teutonic state. Political changes taking place after the Thirteen Years’ War were not taken into account in this narration. Functioning as part of the Kingdom of Poland guaranteed certain regional freedoms. The characteristic feature of the Prussian historiography was the description of pagan times in a negative way comparing them with the Christian times. The rebellion of the Prussian towns was depicted as the result of the arrogance of the Teutonic Order starting from the times of the rule of Konrad von Wallenrode. The outbreak and development of the Reformation hindered the process of the creation of the rival regional identities. Historiographers did not use the sources to create one general narration, but they entwined various, sometimes contradictory, narratives in their works.
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The loss of the significant part of the territory by the Monastic State of the Teutonic Order after 1466 entailed structural changes in the state. Inspections constituted an important scrutinizing factor in various fields of life. They were a permanent element of the reforms undertaken in the Teutonic Order. The expertise of the inspectors originally was not precisely defined. However, with time they became more and precise. In the times of the rule of Grand Master Heinrich Reuß von Plauen we know only about one inspection from the Austrian bailiff in 1469. During the rule of the subsequent Grand Master Heinrich Reffle von Richtenberg (1470-1477) no inspection was recorded. During the times of Martin Truchsess von Wetzhausen (1477-1489) problems connected with the reform of the monastic life in Prussia were addressed. The discussion concerned the problem of poverty among Teutonic brothers. The great inspection was planned to take place in 1481 prior to the General Chapter. However, the General Chapter did not take place. The inspection of Livonia was postponed for 1488. In the times of Johann von Tiefen (1489-1497) the forms of inspection applied so far were discussed. One of the evidences of this discussion was a letter written by the secretary of the Grand Master’s chancery Dr Michale Sculteti, which included forms intended for the inspection. Friedrich von Sachsen-Meißen (1498-1510) at the turn of 1498/1499 issued a regulation concerning inspections and appointed inspectors. In 1502 a detailed catalogue of questions was compiled in the Teutonic chancellery as it had been earlier done by Sculteti. In the times when the Grand Commander was Simon von Drahe (1507-1510) inspections became an important tool of the internal policy of the Grand Master Friedrich von Sachsen. The decision of the General Chapter saying that an inspection should take place every year in the Teutonic Order was enforced. However, in the times of the Grand Master Albrecht von Brandenburg0Ansbach (1511-1525) inspections ceased to play an essential role in the internal policy. Only one inspection from this period is recorded – in 1519.
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Titles, seals and coats of arms of Lithuanian dukes have not been hitherto the subject of interest of historians as this issue was mainly addressed marginally in the studies on the symbols of power of Grand Dukes of Lithuania, particularly Jagiellons. Owing to the considerable number and diversification of dukes living in the territory of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania prior to the Union of Lublin, the article focuses on the analysis of titles, seals and coats of arms used by the Gediminas family and their descendants. In the period under discussion the dukes played a major social and political role, particularly at the end of the 14th century and at the beginning of the 15th century since they ruled their own feudal duchies and cooperated (or competed) closely with the Grand Duke. Although in the 15th century they lost their political sovereignty and became part of the class of landowners, they continued to keep many privileges and still played a major role in political and social life, particularly in their provinces. Enjoying the authority and extensive influence, the dukes generated the set of symbols of power and importance, which is worth examining. The analysis of the most representative monuments shows that titles, seals and coats of arms constituted a kind of indicator reflecting the social status and the position of the Gediminas family in the country: different symbols defined the rank of the Gediminas family as feudal dukes, and different symbols referred to their position as wealthy landowners. Both in the first and second situation, the dukes were capable of using the symbols in such a way so as to create their propaganda image and express far-reaching political aspirations. The symbolism of grand dukes, in particular one of the Jagiellons, was available to the dukes and they willingly used it. The fact of being inspired by the monarch’s symbols seems to differentiate Lithuanian dukes from other branches of the ruling European dynasties. It may mean that dukes considered the fact of being related to grand dukes rather than their wealth to be the source of their power and importance.
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The article presents Nicolaus Copernicus as a clergyman against the background of the momentous epoch in the history of Europe – the transition period from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. It depicts the great astronomer, lawyer and economist against the background of the substantial cultural and religious event which took place in connection with the Reformation. In the text the author justifies why Copernicus, as a canon of Ermland, had a lower ordination, even when he took over the canonry of Ermland. The author also presents the context of Copernicus’ origin in Toruń and Royal Prussia.
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The wergild as a financial punishment for husband killing survived in Prussia until the mid-18th century, but the general rule was that the perpetrators of husband killing were sentenced to death. The reason why the wergild survived for such a long time in Prussia was the fact that courts applied the Chelmno law, according to which the wergild was recognized by tradition and also found in subsequent registers of the Chelmno law. At the beginning of the early modern period the wergild could apply only in case of assassinations committed in self-defense or by accident; deliberate crimes were subject to the law of retaliation. Yet, the law of retaliation could not be applied in relation to groups. With time the wergild could not be used out of court and the law of retaliation was abolished. The next step restricting the use of the wergild was the fact that it was to be applied in case of unintentional or accidental homicides; moreover, in case of killing in self-defense the perpetrator was exempt from the wergild.It was the court that passed a sentence of the wergild, but in cases of reconciliation the sentence was passed by other arbitration bodies. The wergild was allowed mainly among noblemen, which was in accordance with the Polish law of the time. The circle of people entitled to the wergild was reduced to the closest agnate, while in case of husband killing it applied only to the perpetrator. The wergild was no longer shared with the authorities; it was only the judge who received the fee referred to as multa. The value of the wergild was determined by the rank of the office held by the assassinated person. Moreover, the wergild constituted a kind of financial unit used to establish the value of fines and compensatory damages. Apart from the compensation in the form of financial gratification, the wergild constituted the indemnification for physical injury or damage to honor. The latter could also entail some additional punishment e.g. the act of submission.Until the mid-17th century the tradition of bloody retaliation (vendetta) was practiced at least among the nobility. It was illegal and punished by death sentence. Its alternative continued to be the possibility of settlement. The retaliation was limited only to the perpetrator of the homicide.
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The article deals with the issue of the perception of small Polish towns by authors of literary works from the Renaissance and Baroque periods. Due to the fact that this type of settlements prevailed in the urban landscape of our country, it is interesting whether the authors gave them any attention and, if so, what problems of the towns were raised. The analysis shows that this topic was marginally discussed. Towns in general, even the largest ones, did not enjoy any particular interest of artists. Small towns, however, most often appear as a collective entity. What drew artists’ attention were wooden buildings, which often constitute the towns’ weakness. The authors devote a little more attention to urban craftsmen, having the worst opinion about them. However, these are essentially the views of the nobility, thus show its negative attitude towards towns and townspeople.
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A Romanian nobiliary elite grew up in the medieval mountainous and piedmontainous Banat, integrated with its specific shapes in the country nobility due to the interest the central power had in enabling those local nobles to take part in the military frequent campaigns that that border territory of the Magyar kingdom was involved in the 14th – 17th centuries. A series of noble families took shape there, well individualized both by their members’ identity and the ensemble of their possessions; given an uninterrupted line of generations, they were familial nuclei that impress in many of the cases by their longevity, from the first documentary records in the second half of the 14th century up to the end of the 17th century. Certainly, we might to stand out the great Romanian noble families in the Banat, with tens of villages or parts of them, with members frequently named egresius, but also some more modest families, rarely possessing more than their native village (by donation and acquisitions) that set as autonomous units given the public services they developed. The members of the first category appointed for counts, vice-counts, or bans and vice-bans of Severin County or Jaica, as well as knights, courtiers or clerks around the Royal Court, so to say functions of a great responsibility, representing the central authority first of all, the other local public men, appointed as nobiliary judges, prime-judges, town criers, or jury men, arbitrators or men of the king, were rather exponents of the noble community in the area. The case of the family of Marga is different somehow, a sample of a contradictory state of things: on the one hand, two of the family’s members came near the most important local dignities – Jacob of Marga, a vice-ban and castellan of Severin between 1459 and 1478, the other one, George Marga (Jacob’s son), a deputy ban of Severin, in 1515. Their power and influence or their welfare, on the other hand, seem fragile and random if seen through what the papers let us know for 150 years about, from the first attestations around 1470 up to the middle of the 17th century. I have thought that this is a case to be brought to the researchers’ attention as “another” way to turn to what a statute of noble meant at that time. Consequently, I have focused on the structure and genealogical lines of the Mărgans in spite of questions and inconsistency resulting from lacunar documentary data.
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Caransebeș is an urban centre in the highland area of Banat, a town that developed around the royal fortress mentioned in the Timiș river valley since the fourteenth century. In the 16th century, the town went through several perambulations, some of which were not known until now. The documents issued following the agreements on the boundaries of the locality, given as annexes to this study, allow us to know the geography of the urban centre and its boundaries but, at the same time, provide an insight into how the nobility of the district of Caransebeș refers to the urban community on the Timiș valley. It is about capturing some social and legal attitudes, but also a fragment of the ethos of the Banat elite category in the early medieval and modern era.
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Two thematic lines: the omnipresence of the theme of the maritime voyage in Portuguese culture – which António Quadros calls the ‘myth of Henry’, – and its inflections in literature, more specifically, in Camões’s The Lusiads (Os Lusíadas) and Fernão Mendes Pinto’s Pilgrimage (Peregrinação) were examined. Thus, we focus on the state of the art about the topic of Henryism/the maritime voyage, taking into account the perspective of today’s Portuguese scholars, and we look at how this theme is expressed in The Lusiads and Pilgrimage, thereby proving that these Renaissance works remain vital for the actual imaginary of the Portuguese people.
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The article supplements our earlier knowledge of the incunables from the Szczecin Marian Gymnasium in the University Library in Poznań (BUP). The article describes three unknown so far exemplars from this collection (GW 1754, GW 8478, GW M35433), bound together with 11 other 16th century prints. The initial results are also presented of the study on the printed bookbinding waste paper used in the bindings of the old prints of Szczecin provenience in the BUP collection. Fragments of five incunables were identified, among which particularly remarkable are the editions unrecorded in the IBP – fragments of a work by Piotr Berchorius Liber Bibliae Moralis (Deventer: R. Paffraet, 1477 = GW 3864) and the remnants of Missale Sverinense(?) (Rostock: Fratres Domus Viridis Horti, post 1500(?) = GW M23994). The discovered incunables and the 16th century prints are presented in the form of the catalogue records consisting of the bibliographic description completed with the individual features of each of the exemplars.
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The Dominican and Augustinian missionary orders penetrating into the Safavid lands, got special privileges from the Safavid kings and managed to build churches and monasteries here. These priests played an important role in translating the Bible and compiling dictionaries. Bartholomew of Podio and John of Florence who came to Azerbaijan in the 14th century, learned Turkish and Persian while in Italy. Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, who visited Nakhchivan in 1650, describes in his travelogue that Latinization had so thoroughly penetrated this remote corner of Christianity that the Eastern Community of the Safavid Empire chanted the Dominican songs in Latin and offered the Latin Mass. Relacao Verdadeira (True Connection), a valuable source on the activities of the Augustinians in the territory of the Safavid Empire of Azerbaijan describes the visit of Shah Abbas I to the Church of St.Augustine in December 1608 together with the courtiers: “The beautifully decorated floor is covered with carpets and various aromatic substances (incenses) are burnt in church. The church is equipped with organs and other musical instruments. There are various divine paintings depicted on the altar of the Church: Paintings of the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ – Our Savior. The choir plays local Portuguese music.” The main purpose of this research is to study the role of the Dominican and Augustinian Churches in intercultural and interreligious relations. On the other hand, the presence of Catholics among the Muslim population changed the attitude of Shah Abbas I to the churches. The Shia clerics complained about missionaries that the Augustinians sent about 5,000-7,000 people to Hormuz to become Catholic. The Englishman Thomas Herbert visited the Safavid lands in 1627. His travelogue describes the churches and the espionage activities of the clergy. It is important to note that there were also priests who converted to Islam among Augustinians. One of the purposes of our study is to shed light on the causes of the conflict between Catholic missionaries and the Safavid population based on the sources of the period.
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Conversion into Islam in general is anyway an important historical question, sufficiently illuminated so far. From the studies that had been published by now, and which dealt only with Bosnia and Hercegovina, one could notice several view points. These have to do with the begining, intensity, motives and circumstances under which this process developed, as well as ethnical and confesional structure of the population, that was converted to Islam. To illuminate the question in its entirety it was necessary in our oppinion to do some research into the individual narrow areas, which are also limited terms of time. Therefore, this study deals only with this problem in the region of the North - East Bosnia and a part of the Bosnian Posavina, including the period till the end of 16ct. Examining turkish inventory defters which are the most important source and have not been utilized so far in the papers at all, one can say that from our view point the Moslems of Bosnia and Hercegovina accepted Islam from the Bogumils, as well as some stand points after which mainly Catholics accepted Islam, should be corrected.
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This list of hercegovinian sanđakbeys in 16. ct, was done basecily on the informatian from the Archives of Dubrovnik. The Government of Dubrovnik lied under an obligation towards its neighbours from Hercegovina. This obligation consisted the following procedure which was to send a legation to every new sanđakbey, to pay a bow and to present him with gifts. This obligation the Government of the Dubrovnik Republic did dutifully, so that on the basis of its decisions about sending the legations; it is possible to make up the list of the Hercegovinian sanđaklbeys and approximately determine the time of their rule in Hercegovina.
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In the 16th century the town of Senj was under the great threat of Turkish forces, and with the suggestion of Senj’s captain I. Lenković, King Ferdinand I would, for defensive reasons, along with the approval of the church and military-political authorities, adopt the decision about the destruction of all the buildings outside the town’s walls so that enemy could not occupy them and threaten the town. I. Lenković put his decision into action, during which amongst the remaining buildings he also destroyed in 1540 was the Franciscan church with the monastery in the area of St Peters, however with the obligation that he builds the Franciscans a new church and monastery within the town’s walls. This new church within the town’s walls would be razed to the ground in the Second World War in 1943.From the very beginning the Church of St Francis was specified to be the lasting resting place for Senj’s nobles – famous and renowned Uskok inheritors, captains, dukes and archdukes who were buried in the church during the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries.This church with its architecture and inventory became a valuable cultural monument for the town of Senj. Unfortunately, the church was destroyed in 1943 when a great part of its monumental inventory was also damaged, inside which were also the tombstones of Senj’s Uskoks, which were largely broken and turned into fragments that are stored in many locations in the town of Senj.In 1995, the town of Senj and the committee for the protection and restoration of the historical heart of the town of Senj decided, for possible future use, to determine a site for its placement and contents plus the condition in which the preserved monumental material – the inventory of the Church of St Francis, would be situated. It was decided that the monumental material would be processed and catalogued, in other words an inventory would be made. That task was entrusted to the author of this paper.After the cataloguing the processed inventory of the church was prepared for the further scientific processing of conservators, restorers and architects, after which it would also be possible to propose the revitalisation of the area of the former Church of St Francis in which the preserved and scientifically processed inventory of the church could be placed. With the cataloguing it was established that within the material of the Church of St Francis there was also a part of the material which did not belong to this church, about which will also be discussed in the continuation of the paper.
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Prikazujući zemlje Rumelije, Katiib Celebi (Hadži Kalfa) u svojoj kosmografiji Džihanniima (Kosmorama) dijeli Rumsku klimu (Iklim-i Rüm = područje Vizantije) na dva dijela, i to na Romaniju i Anadoliju i kaže da je područje koje leži zapadno i sjeverno od Carigradskog moreuza, koji on naziva Carigradski zaliv (Halic-i Konstanitiniyye = Zlatni rog) za vrijeme (turskog) osvajanja toga područja postalo poznato pod nazivom Rumelija (Rum-ili). Kao što se taj naziv od početka (turskog osvajanja) upotrebljavao kao naziv jednog geografskog područja, on je isto tako u administrativnoj podijeli označavao jednu upravnu jedinicu koja je tokom širenja (turske vlasti) sve više rasla.
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A syllogism (Greek: συλλογισμός – “conclusion, inference”) is a kind of logical argument that applies deductive reasoning to arrive at a conclusion based on two or more propositions that are asserted or assumed to be true. Aristotle defines the syllogism as “a discourse in which certain (specific) things having been supposed, something different from the things supposed results of necessity because these things are so”. The Aristotelian syllogism dominated Western philosophical thought for many centuries in the Middle Ages. But the history of syllogistic thinking does not end with the Middle Ages. It continued to be used even by the church reformers of the 16th century. Thus, alongside a dialectic way of thinking, it contributed to the development of the new dogmatics coined by the church reformers in the 16th century.
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