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An icon of All Saints produced in 1771 was recently published in Bulgaria. It is owned by the National Archaeological museum in Sofia and comes from the region of Samokov. Its composition is not unknown to Orthodox iconography, but the signature of Zograph is of particular interest: α΄ ψ΄ α΄ Διά χειρός Κωνσταντίνου αμαρτωλού του Βυζαντίου.What could Byzantium be for a Greek artist from the end of the eighteenth century, when researchers call this period Post-Byzantine? Certainly Βυζάντιο in combination with the image of St Constantine the Great marks eighteenth-century Constantinople or Konstantinyie as the capital of the Ottoman Empire. even more puzzling is why the artist did not use the Greek name of the city or its Ottoman version. Arguably, the answer is to be sought in the sociopolitical situation in the empire and the eternal City in 1771. After a brief and critical presentation of the development of Christian Orthodox art between fifteenth and twentieth century the author notes another possible explanation of the icon’s appearance exactly in the region of Samokov. Prior to 1766-67, this ethnic Bulgarian territory belonged to the diocese of the Serbian church, or of the Patriarchate of Pec, and after the destruction of the latter, Samokov came under the jurisdiction of Constantinople. Thus, it cannot be ruled out that the icon had been brought over from the Ottoman capital as a symbol of the transition of the local metropolis to the rule of the Greek Patriarchate, which still considered itself as Byzantine, or more precisely, as a Byzantine institution functioning in the Ottoman Empire. The first arch-shepherd of Samokov ordained by Constantinople was Philotheos, who was elected in Kurucesme in April 1778. Despite his Bulgarian origin, he became a monk at Mount Athos, studied in Istanbul and served as a deacon at the Patriarchate. Before Philotheos took over, the Bishopric of Samokov had been ruled by Neophitos Joanovich, exiled in Silivria, who was elected by Ipek. Upon his arrival in Samokov, the new metropolitan Philotheos, probably as a political act, brought with him the icon painted by Constantine in 1771. More importantly, the artist who created the icon of All Saints believed that he still worked in the Orthodox tradition established in the Middle Ages and designated by western European scholars as Byzantine; he did not see himself as a satellite of a parallel visual world lost after the Fall of the multinational Eastern Orthodox Empire. Relying on a religious term, Christian Orthodox, to talk about a type of art with hardly any secular manifestations, instead of using an artificial political and economic designation such as Post-Byzantine art, would in addition prevent misunderstandings during contacts with experts from other fields.
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In this article Szewczyk-Haake contextualizes Tadeusz Różewicz’s poem “Róża” [“Rose”], from his collected poems [Poezje zebrane] of 1971, with the German Renaissance painter Matthias Grünewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece. The retable in Różewicz’s poem is read in two ways. On the one hand, being characteristic of German art, the poem is interpreted in a broadly German context. On the other hand, Różewicz’s return in “Róża” to the “German thread” – a major theme in his oeuvre – does not cancel out the existential significance of his confrontation with the medieval masterpiece. Szewczyk-Haake consequently suggests that Różewicz juxtaposes two ways of understanding the relationship between the work of art and its audience. According to the first, interpretation hinges on a range of key reception experiences; according to the second, interpretation is based on aesthetic experience, beyond time.
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The creation and economic rise of certain civil settlements in Slovenia in the pre-industrial era is inextricably related to the exploitation of water resources and mineral wealth. Two villages became marketplaces thanks to water resources: in the 16th century, Vrhnika mostly because of Ljubljanica river navigation and river traffic; at the turn of the 17th and 18th century Dolenjske Toplice acquired the position of a marketplace, soon to lose it. River transport on Sava in the 18th and early 19th century significantly changed the economic and social profile of the medieval market called Litija; after it ceased due to the railway, a reversal occurred again. However, the exploitation of mineral wealth had even greater impact on formation of urban settlements than river transport. At the end of the Middle Ages, there was a marketplace Bela Peč (now in Italy), the only mining settlement that managed to acquire all the attributes of a marketplace with a developed autonomy. The place Idrija is certainly the biggest phenomenon of them all, with its mercury mining. Getting its marketplace status in late 17th century, Idrija was referred to as a mining town from mid-18th century onwards, and later a city (the second biggest one in Carniola); although on an overall level it lacked institutions of a city administration.
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The phenomenon of building crosses in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the 16th–18th centuries was characteristic of the entire Catholic world. One can assert that already in the 16th century, crosses were built at waysides and homesteads in the entire territory of Lithuania. They were important landmarks of local topography and were used to mark the land boundaries.In the 16th century, the majority of crosses were mentioned as the landmarks of domains. In the 16th–17th centuries, the boundary between crosses as landmarks in towns and crosses at waysides were very delicate. Therefore, strict differentiation of functions and typology of crosses is not possible, except where crosses were built on piles of ground as landmarks in fields. Detailed descriptions of churches of the 16th century have not survived (or have not been found yet). Therefore, final conclusions cannot be drawn about erection or not erection of crosses in the cemeteries and churchyards which belong exclusively to the activity field of the parson of the parish church.In the first half of the 17th century, the spread of crosses in the landscape of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was related with the teaching of the Post-Trent Church. In that period, crosses began to be erected in large numbers at churchyards, cemeteries, homesteads, waysides as tokens of memory and on other occasions. In the second half of the 17th century, a cross became a customary attribute in a place of residence or on a trip. Today, we can already speak about the piety to the redemptive suffering of Christ that was established in the religious consciousness of all believers (Catholics). Like in the entire Catholic world, in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania crosses at cemeteries, homesteads, and waysides as well as commemorative, plague, and mission crosses began to be erected in the 16th–18th centuries.Sparse schematic markings of crosses on the maps of land domains and more extensive descriptions allow us to state that sacral monuments of different forms existed already in the 17th–18th century. Roofed pillar-type crosses (stogastulpiai), roofed crosses, shrines on the pillars, columns with statues of saints, and small wayside shrines (koplytėlės) in trees, etc. were built, but there are no data about the spread and distribution of concrete types of religious monuments. In the 18th century, crosses with sculptures of the Crucified with attached shrines containing figures of other holy persons were built in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. According to the 18th century descriptions from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, there was a widespread custom to build wayside shrines on the ground.A description of Samogitian crosses published by Aubrey de la Motraye in 1732 allows us to draw a conclusion about a deep-rooted folk piety. According to analogies of the 19th century, small wayside shrines and statues of saints mentioned by this Frenchman could be attributed to the sacral folk sculpture, about the existence of which we do not have any more reliable and comprehensive sources. The majority of the traditions related to the building, functions, and intentions of crosses formed and took root in the 17th century. The role and meaning of the custom of keeping crosses and images of holy persons in the daily living environment, recorded by ethnographers, ethnologists and researchers of folk art in the first half of the 20th century and even in the early 21st century, formed as early as in the 17th century and hardly changed in later times. From the first half of the 17th century, sculptures in churches of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania started to be dressed with fabric clothes. In the first half of the 18th century, this tradition took deep root in the folk culture. In the 18th century, a tradition characteristic of the catholic world to decorate the crosses with flowers and other plants became widely spread in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
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Die Stadtansicht von Bistritz wird von der Monumentalität der evangelischen Kirche und der ihr eigenen Silhouette geprägt. Ihr derzeitiges Äußeres ist größtenteils das Ergebnis der weitreichenden Bauarbeiten aus der Mitte des 16. Jahrhunderts unter der Leitung des Architekten Petrus Italus von Lugano; sie wurden 1563, vor 450 Jahren, abgeschlossen. Freilich hat das Bauwerk bis zu seiner (natürlich relativ) endgültigen Form verschiedene Bauphasen durchlaufen, die sich in seiner Bausubstanz wiederfinden. Die vorliegende Studie1 bezieht sich auf die Zeit vor dem Jahr 1563 und versucht, zwei künstlerische Momente aus der Perspektive des Stifters, in diesem Fall des Stadtpfarrers, zu klären. Im Mittelpunkt steht der bislang nicht vermerkte oder unzureichend untersuchte Beitrag zweier vorreformatorischer Stadtpfarrer der Stadt, verbunden mit ihrer Identifikation und damit der Ergänzung der Pfarrerliste der Stadt, die immer noch zahlreiche Lücken aufweist2.
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Review: Tomasz Nastulczyk, Piotr Oczko Homoseksualność staropolska. Przyczynek do badań [Old Polish Homosexuality: A Contribution to Research], Collegium Columbinum, Cracow 2012.
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Monastery of the Blessed Virgin Mary and All Saints, or Saint Helen in Šenkovec near Čakovec was originally built in late 14th Century. Over time the monastery complex was largely rebuilt and transformed, and today it is mostly preserved in the archeological layer. A few preserved historical images are important to get a better idea about its appearance. This images can’t be basis for presentation of the site, but they give us an insight to a better understanding of spatial correlations and volumes within this valuable monastery complex.
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Rus’ in the Sixteenth Century Beginning in the mid-fourteenth century, the East Slavic citizens of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (“Ruthenians,” the “Rutheni”) took active part in a process of multicultural integration. The increase of interests in the biblical text that took place in Europe in that period was not without influence on Ruthenians – both those who remained Orthodox and those who became followers of the Reformation. The article discusses two outstanding figures: Matvej Ioannovič Desjatyj (the biblical codex of Vilnius and Supraśl, 1502–1507) and Francisk Skorina (Prague edition of 23 Books of the Slavonic Bible – Bivlija ruska of 1517–1520, the Vilnius edition of Malaja podorožnaja knižka – The little traveller’s book, 1522, and the Apostolos of 1525). The article also examines how the circle of the Ostroh Academy approached the task of preparing a print edition of the Slavonic Bible (1580–1581) and investigates the viewpoint of those who were influenced by Reformation ideas as well as that of those promoting the usage of prosta/rus’ka mova. This biblical production, which is only a part of the literary activity undertaken in Rus’, testifies to the high level of Ruthenian culture in the Polish-Lithuanian state and shows how Ruthenians were able to match their traditional spirituality with the philologia sacra of the Renaissance.
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The Eulogy is an original Bulgarian work of an as of yet unidentified man of letters connected to the sixteenth-century Sofia Literary School. It is preserved in only one copy from the collection of Slavonic manuscripts of the Institute of Church History and Archives in Sofia. The work is dedicated to the martyrdom of three martyrs against Islam: George the New Martyr of Sofia, George the Newest Martyr of Sofia and Nicolas of Sofia. The article aims at analysing the whole inventory of composite words, their structural features and semantic profile, used to express the basic concepts of the Biblical paradigm, as well as holiness and martyrdom.
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The article presents the results of author's research of the origins of the general concept of contract in continental legal science in the Middle Ages and early Modern Times. This general concept marks one of the key features of the legal style in civil law countries, unknown to Roman jurisprudence, Muslim fiqh or Anglo-American common law. The formation of the general concept of contract proves to be the outcome of several generations of jurists archived through the combination of two models of contract in the medieval ius commune: agreement-based (in the commentaries on Roman law) and promise-based (in the church canons). It is argues that the synthesis of the two models in the 16th century is due to the efforts to reduce the Roman classical law to an art (as in the case of the French humanists) or to explain every rule of positive contract law through the ideal concepts of natural law and commutative justice (as in the case of Spanish legal thinkers). In arranging contract law the French jurists (such as François Connan and Ugo Donellus) followed the intended project of Cicero (ius in artem redigere) by means of the methodology of Petrus Ramus. The representatives of the Spanish late scholasticism (Domingo de Soto, Louis de Molina, Leonard Lessius) aimed at explaining all the provisions of the positive contract law in the sense of the higher moral and theological principles of natural law, as it was laid out in 'Summa Theologica' by Thomas Aquinas. The author looks into the relevant works of the French and the Spanish jurists to analyse the definition of contract, its criteria, and to trace their origins in the legal commentaries of the medieval civilians and canonists, as well as in the medieval and antique treatises on moral theology and philosophy. The analysis allows for critical assessment of the inconsistencies and contradictions of the general concept of contract in the doctrines at the beginning of Modernity.
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The question whether Eastern Europe is possible and necessary rarely arises among historians of idea. This problem does not play any significant role in various diagnoses related to the future of the world, either. Nevertheless, it seems that posing this question seems well-grounded. This article is an attempt to consider what created and determined the civilizational space of Eastern Europe in the period from the Middle Ages to the 19th century and what actions and ideas influenced the nature of this part of the Old Continent. Selected “polonica” have also been placed in the context of “easterness”.
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Celibat ili beženstvo klera – da li je po sebi apsolutno nužan – nije teološko, dogmatsko-moralno, nego prije svega u Katoličkoj crkvi disciplinsko-pravno i pastoralno pitanje.1 U prvim vremenima Crkve sveti red se podjeljivao kako neoženjenim tako i oženjenim muškarcima, koji su se odlučili posvetiti služenju Bogu i oltaru, pa je među klerom bilo neoženjenih i oženjenih biskupa, svećenika i đakona. Na ređenje su, dakle, pripuštani i oženjeni kandidati, ali su se vrlo rano u pojedinim krajevnim crk vama počele donositi odredbe da se oženjeni poslije ređenja trebaju suzdržavati od bračnih odnosa. S vremenom je, međutim, došlo i do uvođenja beženstva klera, ali je prošlo dosta vremena da se to u praksi posvuda i provede.
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The issues of creation and development of palace land ownership and formation of palace volosts in the Kazan district are studied in the article on the basis of cadastre descriptions. The paper defines the areas of preferable resettlement of peasants and compact nested localization of palace settlements, their population, number of yards as well as number and time frames of the stages of population migration to the Middle Volga Region from the central districts. An extensive factual material is given on the dynamics of population of peasant and solitary men’s yards and palace settlements.
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For centuries, the amanat (hostage-taking) institution was an important attribute of diplomatic relations between the Russian state and countries located to the south and east of it (Caucasus, Volga region, Siberia, etc.). This institution existed discretely during the period of 1553–1864 in Circassian–Russian relations, including Kabardian–Russian ones. By the year 1722, the amanat institution was renewed following the rupture of Kabardian–Russian relations that lasted for 25 years. The analysis of Kabardian–Russian relations on the eve and during the Persian Campaign undertaken by Peter I was carried out in this paper on the basis of the documents introduced for the first time into scientific circulation. The archival materials made it possible to reveal previously unknown aspects of the strategy and tactics used during the Persian Campaign of 1722. First of all, they concern the role of Kabarda in the Caucasian policy of the emperor and the amanat institution in bilateral relations during the 1720s, as well as the influence exerted on Kabardian–Russian relations by the renewal of the diplomatic amanat institution.
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Domenikos Theotokopoulos known as El Greco up until 1589 lived in the palace of Marquis de Villeny, where he returned in 1604 and stayed there until his death (1614). The items owned by the painter were listed in two inventories composed by his son Jorge Manuel in 1614 and 1621. In the light of those sources both the equipment of the painters’ house and his library appear very modest. The library of Theotokopoulos was carefully selected paying special attention on the humanistic works. There were twenty seven books in Greek; the majority of the library included works written in Italian while the Latin books were few indeed, except some Italian translations of some works of the ancient Roman culture. Also the Spanish editions were not much in comparison with the Italian ones. His library can testify to his special interests in humanism; perhaps it shows also the profile of his education. Unfortunately after his death and after the confiscation of his goods in 1622 the library was irretrievably lost.
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Caucasus can be considered as one of the most unique regions of the world in the number of peoples living there. This region, which plays a role as a bridge between Asia and Europe, from ancient times is an area of contact of different peoples with each other. The most numerous of the peoples in the Caucasus, are the Turks. Azeris, Karachays, Balkarians, Kumyks, Nogai, now living in the Caucasus, are descendants of the Cimmerians, Scythians, Huns, Bulgars, Khazars, Oguzs, Kipchaks and other tribes. Over the millennia, they left a big imprint on the history and fate of the region. Turkic peoples of the Caucasus are the heirs of the kingdom of the Scythians, the Huns state, the Khazar khanate, the Great Bulgar state, Alanya, Kumani, the Golden Horde and other states.
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The paper deals with the renewed muafiyet of ahali in the kasaba and of re-establishment of a market day as an important need by all of its inhabitants. In addition to being intensively credited by Krzlaraga Mustafa-aga, muafiyet was the second important factor of the development of the kasaba. According to the renewed muafname, as well as according to the manner in which authorities produced documents to solve the issues of tax exemptions and benefits to certain categories of persons, it can be concluded that muafiyet referred to the ahali of the kasaba. It also explains the term ahali that, as related to the mentioned muafiyet, referred to persons who were eligible for and capable of initiating and maintaining the agricultural development of a certain kasaba. The privileges of tax exemption awarded through the first muafname of 1591 to inhabitants of newly established kasaba referred to the inhabitants personally, providing they “revive and urbanize the place”, i.e. the kasaba. However, after the issuance of a renewed muafname, it can be seen that the authorities such as vali and kadi, based on the text of muafiyet, approved privileges to ahali of the kasaba not only for use of wakf land within the limits of stipulations of the first hududname of 1590, but also for their own land out of wakf. For urban development of the kasaba of that time, it was not enough to just establish the center of the town. Because of agriculture as a prevailing industry of the time, cultivation of land was essential regardless of the fact whether it belonged to wakf or not. Muafiyet awarded to the ahali at the time of the establishment of the kasaba, which after expiry of muafname in 1697 and its renewal in 1734, was valid all until 1844. The paper explains another significant decision of 1590 connected with Varcar Vakuf. Although it was determined that the regular market day be set, there was no market day after 1697. After the attack by Austrian army and after displacement of the kasaba population, the market day was not established before 1805 although it was not on Friday as before but on Sunday.
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This project deals with the times of Suleiman the Magnificent (1522–1566) and the doge Andrea Gritti (1523–1538). However, the basic problem it focuses on is information – the information that Venice collected through its diplomatic envoys in the capital on the Bosporus and which is preserved to this day in the Venetian archives. Of course, the gathering of information on the Turks, the appearance and development of the so-called genre “delle cose dei Turchi” certainly did not first arise at that time. Interest in the subject goes back to Byzantine times and naturally continued after the conquest of Constantinople. Venice was in a most advantageous situation in this respect, for it had knowledge about the territories and its population accumulated over centuries, as well as commercial and economic ties of centuries’ standing with various cities and ports. This knowledge and these skills were handed down over the years by its officials, merchants and diplomats and preserved through documents in its archives. Venice played a major role in collecting information and carrying it over from the East to the West. Merchants were the most active factors in this activity. Subsequently, especially in the 16th century, these processes achieved a completed form with the development of diplomatic practices and the functioning of the Venetian system of governance, developed into numerous offices and chancelleries of the Serenissima. Their most outstanding manifestations were the famous Venetian relazioni – the reports by diplomatic envoys of the Republic, ceremoniously presented to the Senate. The first preserved written texts of this kind date back to the late 15th century.
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