scholarly journals The Oath of a New Burgess from the Comparison Point of View

2021 ◽  
Vol 59 (3) ◽  
pp. 33-54
Author(s):  
Hana Komárková

The Oath of a New Burgess from the Comparison Point of ViewThe role of immigration in the life of the late medieval and early modern town was important. A key part of this process (and best captured in the sources of urban origin) was the integration of a new burgher into existing urban social and economic structures. Like most of the power-economic relations of this time, the individual-burgher relationship to the group was based on mutual guarantees confirmed by an oath taken by a newly-accepted member. The essay will focus on the relevance and usability of early modern and modern codifications of urban oaths to explore the development of urban structures in the late Middle Ages and Early Modernity. It will also focus on comparing the content of the oath of the new burgher both in the general context of the oaths used in the urban environment and in the context of the specific development of the urban community in the area under consideration (Silesian and north Moravian towns based on Magdeburg rights) compared to the situation in the Western part of Holy Roman Empire.

2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 102-136
Author(s):  
Mechthild Habermann

Abstract The article deals with formal and functional aspects of reported speech in printed natural history texts from the late Middle Ages to the early modern period from a pragmatic point of view. The topos of authority played a crucial role in medieval and early modern non-fictional literature and served to legitimize the knowledge offered by the author. Originally, direct or indirect citation proved knowledge of the authorities, a means by which the author claimed the truth for his statements. In the course of time, direct and indirect speech in scientific texts became more and more a formal and functional tool for positioning one’s own way of thinking in opposition to other opinions.


2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 139-181
Author(s):  
Jürg Gassmann

Abstract The article considers the importance of military service in social advancement, here understood as filling the role of “prince” in feudal law and thus participating in the government of an estate, in the transition from the Late Middle Ages to the Renaissance or Early Modern Age. In the context of a city burgher or a petty noble or knight advancing into a government role, did honour require that the individual have experience in fighting – in war, military organisation and leadership? How did mercenaries figure? What role, if any, did Fechtmeister, Fechtbücher, Fechtschulen or Kriegsbücher play?


2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jürg Gassmann

The article considers the importance of military service in social advancement, here understood as filling the role of “prince” in feudal law and thus participating in the government of an estate, in the transition from the Late Middle Ages to the Renaissance or Early Modern Age. In the context of a city burgher or a petty noble or knight advancing into a government role, did honour require that the individual have experience in fighting – in war, military organisation and leadership? How did mercenaries figure? What role, if any, did Fechtmeister, Fechtbücher, Fechtschulen or Kriegsbücher play?


2017 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-102
Author(s):  
Bert De Munck

Traditionally it is assumed that “modern” civil society originated in the associations, clubs, and public sphere of the eighteenth century as a result of the “liberation” of the individual from the “shackles” of absolutism, religious intolerance, and the patriarchal family. However, recent research goes further back in time. Scholars such as Robert Putnam (sociologist), Antony Black (political scientist), and Katherine Lynch (historian) associate the origins of civil society with the heyday of confraternities and guilds in the late Middle Ages. This has serious consequences for our understanding of the characteristics and functions of civil society. Given that confraternities were permeated by religious devotion and crafts were inextricably bound to the (often undemocratic) political establishment, fundamental questions arise about the importance of religion in civil society and the role of associations in the political participation of individuals. This article suggests that several long-term trends can be observed when broaching civil society from the perspective of guilds (or brotherhoods). In early modern guilds, the fraternal ideals related to mutual aid and equality appear to have gradually disappeared. Craft guilds stopped being “brotherhoods” and “substitute families” and transformed into formal and bureaucratic juridical institutions, while retreating into a sphere separate from household and family.


Author(s):  
Edmund Thomas

The quality of "monumentality" is attributed to the buildings of few historical epochs or cultures more frequently or consistently than to those of the Roman Empire. It is this quality that has helped to make them enduring models for builders of later periods. This extensively illustrated book, the first full-length study of the concept of monumentality in Classical Antiquity, asks what it is that the notion encompasses and how significant it was for the Romans themselves in molding their individual or collective aspirations and identities. Although no single word existed in antiquity for the qualities that modern authors regard as making up that term, its Latin derivation--from monumentum, "a monument"--attests plainly to the presence of the concept in the mentalities of ancient Romans, and the development of that notion through the Roman era laid the foundation for the classical ideal of monumentality, which reached a height in early modern Europe. This book is also the first full-length study of architecture in the Antonine Age--when it is generally agreed the Roman Empire was at its height. By exploring the public architecture of Roman Italy and both Western and Eastern provinces of the Roman Empire from the point of view of the benefactors who funded such buildings, the architects who designed them, and the public who used and experienced them, Edmund Thomas analyzes the reasons why Roman builders sought to construct monumental buildings and uncovers the close link between architectural monumentality and the identity and ideology of the Roman Empire itself.


2021 ◽  
Vol 101 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 167-174
Author(s):  
James M. Stayer

Abstract Among the common ways of portraying Reformation divides are the following categories: Magisterial vs Radical Reformations; or a “church type” vs a “sect type” of reform. This essay offers an alternative view. It underscores the differences between Lutherans and Anglicans on one side; and the Reformed, Anabaptists, and Schwenckfelders on the other. The Lutherans, like the Anglicans under Henry VIII, worshipped in altar-centered churches which were Roman Catholic in appearance. They presented themselves as reformers of Catholic errors of the late Middle Ages. By contrast, when the Reformed, Anabaptists, and Schwenckfelders met for worship, it was in unadorned Bible-centered meeting houses. The Anabaptists were targeted for martyrdom by the decree of the Holy Roman Empire of 1529 against Wiedertäufer (“rebaptists”). Contrary to the later memory that they practiced a theology of martyrdom, the preference of apprehended Anabaptists was to recant.


2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jay Rubenstein

Abstract The apocalyptic belief systems from early modernity discussed in this series of articles to varying degrees have precursors in the Middle Ages. The drive to map the globe for purposes both geographic and symbolic, finds expression in explicitly apocalyptic manuscripts produced throughout the Middle Ages. An apocalyptic political discourse, especially centered on themes of empire and Islam, developed in the seventh century and reached extraordinary popularity during the Crusades. Speculation about the end of world history among medieval intellectuals led them not to reject the natural world but to study it more closely, in ways that set the stage for the later Age of Discovery. These broad continuities between the medieval and early modern, and indeed into modernity, demonstrate the imperative of viewing apocalypticism not as an esoteric fringe movement but as a constructive force in cultural creation.


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