16th and 17th c.

Almost everyone has heard the legend of cruel Elisabeth Báthory who bathed in the blood of young virgins to preserve eternal youth. The countess is also known as one of the bloodiest women in Europe. She is registered on the world list of Guinness records as the biggest serial killer of all time. However, there is a doubt whether she committed all crimes attributed to her. Thus, the article presents two alternative biographies of the Hungarian aristocrat: one that derives from legends, and the other that is based on historical facts recently determined by contemporary researchers of the topic.

We propose to read Francis Bacon's doctrine of the idols of the mind as an investigation firmly entrenched in his mental-medicinal concerns and we argue that an important role therein is played by the imagination. Looking at the ways in which the imagination serves to pinpoint several crucial aspects of the idolic mind permits us to signal the explicit or implicit cross-references between what in Bacon's tree of knowledge appear as distinct branches: the various faculties and their arts; the mind, the body, and their league; natural philosophy, moral philosophy, and the philosophy of man. The consequence of this rich picture of the diagnosis of the mind is an equally rich conception of the cure, which comprises both epistemic and physiological aspects. We extract the features of this integrated view out of Bacon's epistemological and medical natural historical writings, which we propose to read in tandem. We also propose a number of sources for Bacon's views on the imagination, whose variety accounts for the multivalent, sometimes elusive, but surely pervasive role of the imagination in the Baconian diagnosis and cure of the mind.

Niemal każdy słyszał legendę o okrutnej Elżbiecie Batory, która kąpała się we krwi młodych dziewic, by zachować wieczną młodość. Hrabina zapisała się na trwałe w historii jako jedna z najkrwawszych kobiet Europy. Została też wpisana na światową listę rekordów Guinnessa jako największa seryjna morderczyni wszechczasów. Jednak czy aby na pewno dopuściła się wszystkich zarzucanych jej czynów? W artykule przedstawione zostaną dwie wersje historii życia węgierskiej arystokratki: jedna, wywodząca się z legend, oraz druga, oparta na faktach, do których udało się dotrzeć współczesnym badaczom tematu.

À partir du règne de Philippe III (r. 1598-1621), en Espagne la conception du statut des reines devint ambiguë. La figure de la reine arbora, à la fois, le statut royal et la sujétion au roi, détenteur de l'auctoritas. Déjà au haut Moyen Âge, comme l'expliqua Jo Ann Mac Namara, les reines avaient collaboré avec les hagiographes cléricaux pour établir la sainteté comme un attribut de leur fonction. Ayant pour dessein de convertir leurs sujets au christianisme, leur exemplarité était indispensable au bon fonctionnement de la monarchie. Les reines jouaient le rôle de pacificatrices face aux rois qui incarnaient la vertu guerrière. Elles avaient la charge de leur demander la clémence dans le traitement de ses ennemis. Elles occupaient la fonction d'intermédiaires entre le pouvoir temporel du roi et le pouvoir spirituel des clercs en construisant des églises, en recueillant des reliques, en effectuant des pèlerinages, en fondant des monastères.

The article provides biographical data on two heads of the Zrinski family that were not sufficiently researched in historiography, Juraj Zrinski IV (1549-1603) and Juraj Zrinski V (1599-1626). Authoress compares their methods of running a family, their strategies and choices regarding promotion and survival at the contested imperial borderland, their political and military careers, their patronage, economic and religious policies and patterns of everyday life. Since Zrinski properties at the time stretched from the Adriatic Sea to the Royal Hungary, comprising vast lands in Croatian-Slavonian Kingdom, the study is set in wider regional context of Hungarian Kingdom, and Habsburg-Ottoman-Venetian imperial borderland.

Sir Matthew Hale (1609-1676) is one of the most celebrated jurists of English common law. This essay introduces the importance of Matthew Hale’s Christian faith for his life in general, as well as his legal thought. It surveys Hale's theological writings and examines his theory of natural law.

In the XVIIth century, the Portuguese architecture received a great contribution from a self-taught group of experimented professionals. In this context, some books from de library of the architect Fr. João Turriano are a considerable document to clarify the importance of the artistic literature in the learning process of building at time. Considering it, this paper is the result of a recent study into how hand-notes taken down by Fr. João were on the basis of his project for Santa Clara-a-Nova monastery (1647) in Coimbra. We hope these pages may suggest further research on those minor architects who, as Turriano, greatly contributed to the Portuguese artistic scene after 1640's.

Despite fragmentation, heterogeneity and the continuous pressure of the Ottoman Empire, early modern “divided Hungary” witnessed a surprising cultural flourishing in the sixteenth century, and maintained its common cultural identity in the seventeenth century. This could hardly have been possible without intense exchange with the rest of Europe. This three-volume series about early modern Hungary divided by Ottoman presence approaches themes of exchange of information and knowledge from two perspectives, namely, exchange through traditional channels provided by religious/educational institutions and the system of European study tours (Volume 1 – Study Tours and Intellectual-Religious Relationships), and the less regular channels and improvised networks of political diplomacy (Volume 2 – Diplomacy, Information Flow and Cultural Exchange). A by-product of this exchange of information was the changing image of early modern Hungary and Transylvania, which is presented in the third and in some aspects concluding volume of essays (Volume 3 – The Making and Uses of the Image of Hungary and Transylvania). Unlike earlier approaches to the same questions, these volumes draw an alternative map of early modern Hungary. On this map, the centre-periphery conceptions of European early modern culture are replaced by new narratives written from the perspective of historical actors, and the dominance of Western-Hungarian relationships is kept in balance due to the significance of Hungary’s direct neighbours, most importantly the Ottoman Empire.

The editors of the volumes—Gábor Almási, Szymon Brzeziński, Ildikó Horn, Kees Teszelszky and Áron Zarnóczki—are based at Hungarian, Polish and Dutch institutions of historical research. Their collaboration is the result of a joint research programme generously financed by the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund and carried out at the Eötvös Loránd University of Budapest.

In this third volume of Pierre de l’Estoile’s journal, the author experiences France’s slow emergence out of war, and a quickening of the country’s political renewal under Henry IV. While the king continues to negotiate for peace with individual cities and forces, famine, epidemics, and strife rack the capital. A glimmer of light shines, however, as negotiations lead to the Edict of Nantes and a peaceful coexistence for French Protestants and Catholics.
Depuis le ralliement de la capitale au roi au debut de l’année 1594, Pierre de L’Estoile est le temoin inquiet des etapes de la pacification du royaume. La reconciliation civile, acquise aussi par les armes, est fragile face aux violences populaires et legales, mais en raison egalement de la disette et des épidémies. Le retour àla paix dans Paris, marqué par la difficile réconciliation des communautés déchirees, contraste avec la poursuite des conflits armes dans les provinces du royaume. Devant l’incapacité de parvenir à une paix générale, Henri IV continue de négocier avec chaque ville tout en combattant ceux qui lui résistent. Alors que s’engage la guerre contre l’Espagne, cette période est aussi celle des lentes négociations menant à l’édit de Nantes et à la coexistence pacifique des deux confessions catholique et protestante. Ces années sont donc marquées par la lenteur de la sortie de guerre et par la préparation d’une sorte de refondation politique du royaume.

This contribution examines the Italian state system over the 'long' eighteenth century, beginning with the long period of stability and gradual administrative reform after 1660, then the quickening of these reforms in the Enlightenment era after 1750.

By examining the representation of popular and inquisitorial forms of punishment in the works of Cervantes, this essay seeks to recover shame as an emotional register of lived experience in the early modern Mediterranean, an affect which has hitherto remained overshadowed by the abundance of critical literature on honor as well as by large-scale Mediterraneanizing studies.  The identification of an inquisitorial discourse of shaming in the episodes of Don Quijote’s encagement suggests the need, on the one hand, to reevaluate what twentieth-century anthropology denominated the “values” of Mediterranean society and, on the other, to rehabilitate local (hi)stories that are all marked by blood: the blood of shame’s blush; that which was shed through violent conflicts; and that which governed the politics of blood purity.

The effervescence of Humanism during the 16th and 17th centuries was also notable in Andalucía, where a group of persons mostly grammarians but also some poets, contributed to the study and spread of Classical culture. This was mainly developed from the University, by those who held the Chair of grammar and by others who published versions or adaptations of the classicals poets. Cuando se habla de humanismo o, en este caso, de humanistas, inme-diatamente se piensa en las grandes figuras como Nebrija, Mal-Lara, Luís Vives..., sin embargo, otros, impregnados también de este espíritu se dedicaron al estudio y divulgación de la cultura clásica. Estos últimos no fueron figuras que disfrutaron del reconocimiento europeo, algunos ni siquiera fueron conocidos más allá de los límites de su ciudad o región, pero no por ello deben dejarse olvidados, pues en su momento desempe-ñaron su papel en la formación de la vida cultural de su entorno. Estos hombres de los siglos XVI y XVII serán objeto de nuestro estudio en el presente trabajo. Es necesario precisar que en esta época ni en las Universidades de Gra-nada y Baeza ni en los diversos colegios existentes se impartían clases de