Early Modern Period

Shorter English Version: https://www.academia.edu/966274/The_Kingdom_of_Hungary_and_the_Habsburg_Monarchy_in_the_Sixteenth_Century._Translated_from_the_Hungarian_by_Thomas_J._and_Helen_D._DeKornfeld_Boulder_Colorado_Social_Science_Monographs_Wayne_New_Jersey_Center_for_Hungarian_Studies_and_Publications_Inc._New_York_Distributed_by_Columbia_University_Press_2009._East_European_Monographs_DCCXXXV._CHSP_Hungarian_Studies_Series_18._xviii_410_p

This article provides an overview of economic inequality in Germany from the fourteenth to the nineteenth century. It builds upon data produced by the German Historical School, which from the late nineteenth century pioneered inequality studies, and adds new archival information for selected areas. Inequality tended to grow during the early modern period, with an exception: the Thirty Years’ War (1618-48), together with the 1627-29 plague, seem to have caused a temporary but significant phase of inequality reduction. This is in contrast to other European areas, from Italy to the Low Countries, where during 1500-1800 inequality growth was monotonic. Some evidence of a drop in inequality is also found after the Black Death of 1348-49. Our findings contribute to deepen and nuance our knowledge of long-term inequality trends in preindustrial Europe, and offer new material to current debates on the determinants of inequality change in western societies, past and present.

The fire caused a lot of damages in cities and towns of the region of
Liptov. And since the majority of fires was caused by human, magistrates were trying to avoid it by various regulations. Usual
punishment for carelessness in the handling of fire was 12 guldens.
From all cases of arson the highest number is unintentional arson.
Usually magistrates were punishing it by mulct or whipping.
Punishments for intentional arson were more stritc. If court found
person guilty, he was facing the death penalty. Smoking was
widespread during modern times, which has been behind many of the
fires. Magistrates were fighting against this by using the regulations.

The existing historiography primarily discusses the early Philippine experience of Roman Catholic conversion in terms of (a) conversion’s success or failure, or (b) local resistance against colonial hegemony. This article, meanwhile, approaches the confrontation generated by conversion as a process of colonial knowledge production. The concept of “idolatry” was central to this confrontation. I ask: in what ways did indigenous agents help create this concept as it was used locally? This essay examines two late-seventeenth century missionary investigations into indigenous animism. They took place in and around Bolinao, Pangasinan and Santo Tomas, Batangas, both communities in the northern Philippine island of Luzon. Together, these investigations generated interviews with indigenous respondents, whose transcriptions are housed at the Archivo General de Indias in Seville, Spain. Initially, neither the missionaries nor the missionized had a clear idea of what local words, actions, and objects counted as “idolatrous.” Indigenous agents constructed generalizations about their religious beliefs to advance their own interests, to protect themselves from persecution, and to understand indigenous deities within their increasingly colonial reality. The indigenous were not passive gatherers of raw data for missionary ethnographers. They were, in their own right, producers of colonial knowledge.

Im deutschen Roman um 1700 prägen weibliche Hauptfiguren ein galantes Erzählen, das in einer Textform stattfindet, die erst im 18. Jahrhundert zur ‚literarischen Gattung' avanciert. Die Studie analysiert erstmals Konstruktionsprinzipien galanter Weiblichkeit im Roman (1690–1720) und beschreibt deren Spezifik im Hinblick auf Gattungs-und Genderfragen unter poetischen, sozialen und ökonomischen Aspekten der Buch-und Medienlandschaft um 1700.

Between 1998 and 2001 and in 2010, two mass finds from the first half oft the 16th century were excavated in Augsburg. They are thought to consist of waste material from all over the imperial city. Although cleaning oft he ceramic finds is not yet complete, the special importance oft the two find complexes is already clear.

The late medieval Weißhafnerware (whiteware), produced
in the Styrian Mürz valley, and the early modern Schwarzhafnerware (blackware), produced in the Carinthian Lavant valley, have been found in various places within the Mur-Mürz-gorge. Both are important in dating archaeological features. Nevertheless, although they may appear at the same archaeological sites, they are seldom if ever found within contemporary contexts. The sequential relationship between Weißhafnerware and Schwarzhafnerware in the Mur-Mürz gorge region can be proven by archaeological finds and primary sources.

This paper explores the didactic meanings behind Dutch Mannerist artist Cornelis van Haarlem's 1592 painting The Fall of Man. It deals with three main aspects of the work: the figure of the serpent-woman who tempts Eve with fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, the various animals and their symbolic meanings, and the idealized figures of Adam and Eve. Each of these figures and animals presents the viewer with a particular moral lesson. Throughout the early modern period, fear of temptation and sin were daily realities for many Christians. The didacticism present in this work is largely a manifestation of these anxieties. By using the perfect bodies of the first couple and depicting the exact moment that sin enters the world, van Haarlem reminds the viewer of his or her own morality while simultaneously warning that foolishness and pride can, at any time, lead to one's personal downfall.

Wooden buildings housed the majority of Swedish urban populations during the early modern era. However, the crucial data around which discussions on urban housing pivot is missing and largely forgotten. The buildings have disappeared due to fire, demolition, and modernity. They were built during turbulent periods of urban transformation; disdained for their sometimes-rural look and for the fire hazard they represented, simultaneously appreciated for being warm, affordable and movable.
The contextualisations of this study reveal how the wooden house played a fundamental part in forming what it is to be urban in Sweden, and in forming Swedish history. The wooden building stock was particularly apt for mass-production and moving, which helped realise the idea of the ideal town plan in the comprehensive transformation of Swedish urban space.
The early modern wooden house is becoming more widespread as archaeological remains and less prominent as preserved buildings every year, thus examination and comparison of the two distinct datasets combined with historical records is important in this study. The author establishes how log timber, timber-framing and post and plank buildings were used for a wide range of functions in both central and peripheral locations and within all strata of society.
New strategies for creating warm housing were developed, clearly affordable to the populace. Changes in, and continuity of layouts, featured simultaneously within the building stock, while the storeyed house attributed to evolution of the multi-unit structure. Surprisingly, this study discloses that timber-framing was more prevalent geographically and functionally than previous research indicated.

Complete version of my dissertation thesis from 2006 about medieval an early modern period ceramic in Leipzig from the pottery centre Augustusplatz (eastern suburb) and from the city's consumer context. With special focus on use of ceramic, production technology, alchemist ceramics, vessels with special functions and so on.

The article discusses the differences between history and archaeology and especially differences in approaching space as a category of analysis. The authors are advocating better mutual understandings from both disciplines and refer to an ongoing project on artisan households and workshops and the relationship between physical space and household as well the connection between residence and workshop. The case-studies comes from Early modern Kalmar and Jönköping, where large scale archaeological excavations recently have taken place, and where historical records about the inhabitants and the plot owners have been scrutinized.
When historical and archaeological observations are combined, household, residence, and work appear as a much more complicated and diverse matter than often assumed. It also stands clear that materiality and space are necessary dimensions of household and work analyses. The combination of historical and archaeological evidence also provokes new questions and promotes new types of conclusions.

Together with Martin Kügler. This is a publication belonging to an exhibition in the Ostpreussisches Landesmusem Lüneburg in 2004 about the history of pipes and tobacco in the Baltic Sea region and in Silesia with objects from Germany, Poland, Lithuania and Estonia.

South East Asians in the early modern period (c.1450–1800) embraced technological innovations and novel ideas
that crossed their paths. The fifteenth century ushered in the collapse of large empires and the rise of local craft
industries; multi-ethnic diasporic communities developed in port cities; and standardized currencies structured
local economies. Europeans entered this world in search of luxury goods and precious metals—in two centuries
they would colonize most of the region. Although most historians explain the emergence of South East Asia’s ‘Age
of Commerce’ through external factors, indigenous documents and archaeological information from this period
offer insights on internal dynamics that contributed to region-wide transformations. Two objectives structure this
chapter: to assess the range of issues that archaeological research has raised, challenged, or refuted, and to
weave historical and archaeological threads into a series of themes that might guide future archaeological
research on the period 1450–1850.

In 2005–2016 a number of isolated metal finds of medieval and early modern date ended up in collections of various museums in eastern Bohemia and in the Bohemian-Moravian borderland. These especially include militaria, equestrian equipment, but other find categories are present as well. The objects have different evidential value, but in a number of cases, they represent valuable sources of knowledge about areas which are archaeologically still little known. Bohemian-Moravian borderland – Middle Ages – metal objects Úvod Od r. 2005 (po obsazení archeologického pracoviště v Regionálním muzeu ve Vysokém Mýtě) zde byla věnována značná pozornost problematice používání i zneužívání detekto-rů kovů. V této souvislosti tu byly přebírány náhodné nálezy učiněné s detektory kovů, později řadu nálezů poskytli spolupracovníci uvedené instituce, na řadě lokalit pak pro-váděl cílený detektorový průzkum archeolog Regionálního muzea ve Vysokém Mýtě za účasti spolupracovníků. Vedle kolekcí z nejrůznějších lokalit, které byly a jsou postupně předmětem prezentace v odborném tisku, docházelo rovněž k ojedinělým nálezům vrchol-ně středověkých artefaktů a artefaktů ze staršího novověku. I když jejich vypovídací hod-nota je značně nižší, protože nepochází z intaktních archeologických situací v rámci stan-dardních výzkumů či z větších nálezových kolekcí, které by usnadnily interpretaci, i tyto předměty si nepochybně zaslouží bližší pozornost. Jejich zveřejnění (mimo numismatické nálezy) je úkolem následujících řádků. 1 1 Příspěvek byl vypracován v rámci programu aplikovaného výzkumu a vývoje národní a kulturní identity (NAKI II) č. DG16P02R031 (Moravské křižovatky).

[ENGLISH:] In the town of São Torcato, in the municipality of Guimarães, an incorrupt body has been venerated since at least 1501, and local tradition attributes it to its patron saint, a bishop martyred at the source of the River Selho. Around the corpse (the object of popular worship in the monastery of São Torcato until 1852, when it was transferred to the sanctuary), the people of Guimarães built the narrative that presents him in the middle of the 16th century as an Apostolic Man, disciple of St. James the Greater, bishop of Citânia de Briteiros and martyr. However, through the dissemination of the "falsos cronicones", a new account emerged in Portugal in the twenties of the following century, which presents St. Torquatus of Guimarães as a bishop of Braga and Porto, martyred at the hands of Musa ibn Nusayr, in 719. This story gradually became established among Portuguese hagiographic works until the 19th century, when it was definitively accepted by the devotees of the "holy body". The resistance with which it is faced by 16th century authors, along with the existence of local narratives, makes it possible that in the mid 17th century we find four versions of the "vita" of St. Torquatus of Guimarães, disputing among themselves the historical veracity. Now, the causes of this unfolding and of the evolution suffered by the story, with dialogues between the legend and the hagiography, during the centuries of the 16th and 17th centuries, are the main issues addressed in this dissertation. For a better grounded analysis, previous glances at the origins of the Seven Apostolic Men tradition and the cult of St. Torquatus and of what was considered to be his body in the Guimarães region, as well as the historical path of the monastery dedicated to him, were relevant.
[PORTUGUÊS:] Na vila de São Torcato, no concelho de Guimarães, venera-se, pelo menos, desde 1501 um corpo incorrupto que a tradição local atribui ao seu orago, bispo martirizado junto à nascente do rio Selho. Em volta do cadáver (alvo de culto popular no mosteiro de São Torcato até 1852, ano da sua trasladação para o santuário), os vimaranenses construíram a narrativa que o apresenta em meados do século XVI como varão apostólico, discípulo de São Tiago Maior, bispo da Citânia de Briteiros e mártir. Porém, por meio da divulgação dos falsos cronicões, surge em Portugal na década de 20 da centúria seguinte um novo relato, que encara São Torcato de Guimarães como bispo de Braga e do Porto, martirizado às mãos de Musa ibn Nusair, em 719. Esta estória vai-se paulatinamente instalando entre as obras hagiográficas portuguesas até ao século XIX, quando é definitivamente acolhida pelos devotos do "corpo santo". A resistência com que é enfrentada por autores seiscentistas, a par da existência de narrativas locais, possibilita que em meados do século XVII nos deparemos com quatro versões da "vida" de São Torcato de Guimarães, a disputarem entre si a veracidade histórica. Ora, são as causas deste desdobramento e da evolução sofrida pela estória, com diálogos entre a lenda e a hagiografia, no decorrer das centúrias de Quinhentos e Seiscentos os principais assuntos abordados nesta dissertação. Para uma análise mais bem alicerçada, revelaram-se pertinentes olhares prévios sobre as origens da tradição dos Sete Varões Apostólicos e do culto de São Torcato e daquele que era tido como o seu corpo na região de Guimarães, assim como o percurso histórico do mosteiro que lhe foi dedicado.

Poverty is a multi-faceted phenomenon. Of its many sides, the economic one is obviously among the most prominent, because the condition of poverty intuitively references inadequate access to resources. It is not surprising, then, that many economic historians have dedicated at least some attention to poverty and the poor – although rarely with a systematic, let alone a comparative, approach. This is because the economic side of poverty remains one among many, and when we intend to explore those aspects that could be expected to be dearest to economic historians, for example measuring the intensity and the prevalence of poverty across time and in different societies, the subject matter immediately becomes very complicated and somewhat disconcerting. This chapter provides an overview of economic-historical research on poverty, and highlights some new approaches that might prove helpful in overcoming some of the limitations of the erlier literature.

From the 6th century onwards, plague caused recurring mortality crises in the Western world. Such epidemics had profound biological, cultural, economic and political impacts on European societies. Some aspects of the history of plague epidemics are currently well known, but many questions remain unanswered, such as the precise epidemiological pattern of the disease in ancient times. It is unclear whether plague killed people indiscriminately or whether this disease was selective with respect to age, sex and health. This research contributes to this debate. It consists of an anthropological and paleopathological study of skeletal remains of 1090 individuals, including plague victims from four medieval and post-medieval burial grounds, and individuals from two parochial cemeteries in use during periods of normal mortality. Results from the four plague-related assemblages reveal a peculiar demographic signature. Age and sex distribution differs clearly from what is expected in non-epidemic periods, when it is shown to correspond closely to the demographic structure of the living population. Moreover, the study of various non-specific skeletal stress markers shows that plague victims were in a better health before they passed away than people who died in non-epidemic periods. The results demonstrate that individuals who suffered stress and disease had a reduced chance of survival in non-epidemic periods, whereas they were not at a higher risk to die during plague epidemics. This study provides evidence that plague was not selective, and that it killed regardless of sex, age, and preexisting health.

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Génératrice depuis le VIe siècle de notre ère de crises épidémiques récurrentes en Occident, la peste a profondément marqué l’histoire des sociétés européennes, tant sur le plan biologique que culturel, économique et politique. Si l’histoire des épidémies qu’elle a engendrées est aujourd’hui relativement bien connue, un certain nombre de questions sur ses caractéristiques épidémiologiques passées demeurent pour partie irrésolues. En particulier, le caractère sélectif ou non de la mortalité par peste à l’égard de l’âge, du sexe et de l’état de santé préexistant des individus fait actuellement débat. À partir d’une approche anthropobiologique, le présent travail se propose de contribuer à cette discussion. Il livre les résultats de l’étude d’un corpus de 1090 squelettes provenant, d’une part, de quatre sites d’inhumation de pestiférés de la fin du Moyen Âge et du début de l’époque moderne et, d’autre part, de deux cimetières paroissiaux médiévaux utilisés hors contexte épidémique. Cette étude révèle en premier lieu l’existence d’une signature démographique commune aux séries en lien avec la peste. Leur composition par âge et par sexe, distincte de celle caractérisant la mortalité naturelle, est au contraire en adéquation avec la structure théorique d’une population vivante préindustrielle. L’examen de divers indicateurs de stress suggère par ailleurs que les victimes de la peste jouissaient, à la veille de leur décès, d’un meilleur état de santé que les individus morts en temps normal. Les résultats obtenus concourent à démontrer que les facteurs causals de ces lésions squelettiques, d’accoutumé responsables d’une diminution des chances de survie, n’eurent au contraire qu’une influence mineure, si ce n’est nulle, sur le risque de mourir de l’infection à Yersinia pestis. Ce travail livre in fine un faisceau d’arguments convergents qui tendent à prouver que les épidémies de peste anciennes furent à l’origine d’une mortalité non sélective, la maladie frappant indistinctement les individus des deux sexes, de tous âges et de toutes conditions sanitaires.

The printed word deeply captivates with its ability to inform, educate, and impact the world. Literacy, in the traditional sense of reading printed letter forms upon a page and decoding the intended meaning, was gained by the masses of England through a variety of methods and diverse educational facilities. During the Tudor and Stuart periods, literacy education had a considerable role to play in defining society and producing a public that could stay abreast of topics ranging from religion to local happenings to political ideologies. An examination of historical data is here interlaced with a treatment of sociolinguistic theory, with reference to outstanding political decrees, noteworthy religious movements, and exceptional figures.

After the Ottoman conquest of the medieval Hungarian Kingdom in the mid-16th century, when Transylvania became an independent political entity, religious ideas were also transformed: Protestant Reformation reached Transylvania, and different denominations were embraced by various layers of the society. Reformation brought significant changes all over Europe in how the function of funeral monuments was seen, which impacted their appearance too. The aim of this paper is to analyze how religious ideas changing with the Protestant Reformation in 16th-17th century Transylvania influenced the commemoration of the dead as it is reflected by the production of funeral monuments.

The thesis is focused on the phenomena infanticide (murder of child by mother) and it explores the two different types of sources, moralizing literature produced by early modern humanists and sources of criminal law type of SK („Smolné knihy“). There is still missing the greater involvement of moralizing literature in the issue of infanticide in Czech historiography. The aim of the theses is based on an analysis of both types of sources to examine the status of women committing infanticide in early modern society. The thesis focuses on how fear could affect the behaviour of pregnant women, and what strategies these women used to defend themselves before the community in which they lived, even how they defend themselves before the early modern court of law.

Wooden buildings housed the majority of Swedish urban populations during the early modern era. However, the crucial data around which discussions on urban housing pivot is missing and largely forgotten. The buildings have disappeared due to fire, demolition, and modernity. They were built during turbulent periods of urban transformation; disdained for their sometimes-rural look and for the fire hazard they represented, simultaneously appreciated for being warm, affordable and movable. The contextualisations of this study reveal how the wooden house played a fundamental part in forming what it is to be urban in Sweden, and in forming Swedish history. The wooden building stock was particularly apt for mass-production and moving, which helped realise the idea of the ideal town plan in the comprehensive transformation of Swedish urban space. The early modern wooden house is becoming more widespread as archaeological remains and less prominent as preserved buildings every year, thus exam...

La actividad de una asociación de laicos durante la Edad Moderna reviste el peso de una institución con calado social, altamente participativa y con un notable poder económico. Justamente esta noción es la que permite sostener el estudio de la documentación inédita relativa a la antigua Hermandad de la Aurora de Granada, extraída del archivo de los Clérigos Regulares Menores y que evidencia la evolución de dicha corporación como una entidad pujante en el ámbito social y del panorama histórico-artístico de Granada.

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The activity of a Catholic lay association during the Early Modern period has the weight of an institution with social depth, with a highly participative live and with a remarkable economic power. Precisely this notion is what allows to sustain the study of the unpublished documentation related to the former Brotherhood of the Aurora of Granada (Spain), extracted from the Adorno Fathers archive. These documents evidence the evolution of this brotherhood as a thriving entity in the social field and of the Heritage of Granada.

Chapitre 5 de la thèse de doctorat de Bruno Restif, soutenue en décembre 2004 à l'Université Rennes 2 Haute-Bretagne sous la direction d'Alain Croix : La Paroisse, cadre d'application de la Réforme catholique en Haute-Bretagne (diocèses de Rennes, Dol et Saint-Malo). Histoire d'un processus de transformation religieuse et culturelle (XVIe et XVIIe siècles). Titre du chapitre 5 : Christianiser la société.

The paper is a study in the financial management of a property of the Hospitaller Order of St John in Genoa in the 1600s. The backdrop to the events in question is the jurisdictional confrontation between the Order and the Papacy on the management of immovable assets. The paper analyses the attempts by members of the Orsini family to alienate Hospitaller property & increment the income of the benefice they were administrating through financial investments.

PUBLISHED IN: Riviera di Levante tra Emilia e Toscana. Un crocevia per l'Ordine di San Giovanni. Atti del Convegno Genova-Chiavari-Rapallo, 9-12 settembre 1999 a cura di Josepha Costa Restagno (GENOVA BORDIGHERA, 2001), pp. 155-169.

Published in: "Rocznik Łódzki", 65 (2016), s. 139-156

This article contains a source edition (in Latin) of descriptions of three archiepiscopal castles in Łowicz, Uniejów and Opatówek from inventory of years 1591-1592. Edition is preceded by preface, which presents a short story of these castles and inventory source itself, and also a brief characteristic of edition’s content.

Reformation ideas began to spread to into Trnava already in the 16th century, but it was only at the time of the anti-Habsburg rebellions in the 17th century when the Evangelicals and Calvinists strengthened their position within the city so firmly that they were able to build their own churches. This situation lasted only until the beginning of the 18th century, when the churches were definitely taken from them. Evidence of changes in the confessional composition of the population in the 17th century is provided by the originally Calvinist and to this day preserved church of St. Joseph, and also by the Evangelical cemetery mentioned in the literature. It was situated behind the Upper Gate on the way to Trstín and was identified during the archaeological research carried out in 2017 on today’s Šrobárova Street in Trnava.

Resum: Una particularitat romànica del català és la creació dels pronoms febles reforçats a partir del segle XVII a València i del XVIII a Barcelona. A pesar que el sistema pronominal ha estat molt descrit i estudiat i les teories existents mostren el funcionament dels pronoms en el context concret on viuen, no s'ha explicat fins ara perquè han triomfat les formes reforçades. Nosaltres en fem una aportació a partir d'una rica documentació i una bona bibliografia posant en relació el naixement de l'article reforçat el a mitjan XVI amb els pronoms reforçats el, es, em, et, ens, us, un segle després.

Abstract: A peculiarity found within the romance languages is given in Catalan. That is the emergence of reinforced weak pronoun forms since the 17th century in València and since the 18th century in Barcelona. Despite the fact that the pronoun system has been thoroughly studied and described, and that the current theories meticulously explain their mechanics within the linguistic context, the answer to why such reinforced pronoun forms predominate over others is not clear yet. In this article, a solid contribution is made from rich and large documentation as well as quality bibliography which relates the birth of the reinforced article el during the 16th century and the reinforced pronouns el, es, em, et, ens, us, a century later.

The high estamount of guilds in Liptov region grew in cities and towns as Nemecká Ľupča, Ružomberok, Svätý Mikuláš and Hybe, which guild regulations interfered with the privacy of its members. Single articles regulated working hours, determined the religious and funeral customs, demeanor or dress, prohibited participation in village dances and contacts with executioners or vagrants. Some regulations interfered in the married life of members. If someone violated article, he could be punished in different ways, for example by fines, imprisonment, lash or excluded fromt he guild.

Based on the question how women contributed to the music culture of 15th through 17th-century Germany, the book presents the three main sectors of Early Modern Society, the gentry, citizens, and the sphere of convents and other religious communities. While in traditional music history, women do not seem to play a role in official music life of this period, the book offers a broad panorama of numerous “inofficial” ways in which women participated in a rich musical culture as patrons, commissioners, singers, instrumentalists, song writers, composers, chapel masters, printers, teachers an in several other ways. It aims to give a basis for specialized research in the various fields it covers. The book was awarded the Cornelia Goethe Prize of Goethe University Frankfurt am Main in 2005.

In early modern Venice, wine and money were intrinsically linked through the pawnbroking service that innkeepers and bastioneri, the managers of wine warehouses (bastioni), offered their customers. The loans that they supplied were generally small, officially interest-free, and frequent. Moreover, at least one-third of each was paid in wine, at that time considered a staple. Hence, innkeepers and bastioneri were central figures in Venice’s urban context, especially for the poor. Those individuals, usually considered “voiceless” in history were, in fact, the main actors in what might be termed a “handkerchief” economy, named for one of its most pawned items.

Chapitre 4 de la thèse de doctorat de Bruno Restif, soutenue en décembre 2004 à l'Université Rennes 2 Haute-Bretagne sous la direction d'Alain Croix : La Paroisse, cadre d'application de la Réforme catholique en Haute-Bretagne (diocèses de Rennes, Dol et Saint-Malo). Histoire d'un processus de transformation religieuse et culturelle (XVIe et XVIIe siècles). Titre du chapitre 4 : Mettre en oeuvre la Réforme catholique dans les paroisses.

Recent research has explored the distributive consequences of major historical epidemics, and the current crisis triggered by Covid-19 prompts us to look at the past for insights about how pandemics can affect inequalities in income, wealth, and health. The fourteenth-century Black Death, which is usually believed to have led to a significant reduction in economic inequality, has attracted the greatest attention. However, the picture becomes much more complex if other epidemics are considered. This article covers the worst epidemics of preindustrial times, from Justinian's Plague of 540-41 to the last great European plagues of the seventeenth century, as well as the cholera waves of the nineteenth. It shows how the distributive outcomes of lethal epidemics do not only depend upon mortality rates, but are mediated by a range of factors, chief among them the institutional framework in place at the onset of each crisis. It then explores how past epidemics affected poverty, arguing that highly lethal epidemics could reduce its prevalence through two deeply different mechanisms: redistribution towards the poor, or extermination of the poor. It concludes by recalling the historical connection between the progressive weakening and spacing in time of lethal epidemics and improvements in life expectancy, and by discussing how epidemics affected inequality in health and living standards.

The article is devoted to the long-term project entitled 'Vedute in Czech and Slovak archives'. Forming the foundation of the project were records collected beginning in the 1990s as part of the 'Inventory of vedute created since 1850'. This inventory was compiled by Czech archivists and published by the Ministry of the Interior's Department of Archive Administration and File Services. A trilateral agreement was reached in 2009 between this department, the Prague City Archives and the company Bach Systems, s. r. o. to release the records and images of the vedute by means of a web application. The Slovak Archives also joined the project after an agreement reached on 21 March 2013. The article addresKlíčová slovses the genesis of the project, the resolution of methodological and practical problems encountered during the project and the possibilities for its further continuation in the areas of the development of the application and the information base.

In 2013–2014 a collection of metal objects originating from various sites in Moravia and in the eastern half of Bohemia
was handed over to the Regional museum in Vysoké Mýto. The only artefact which can be securely da -
ted to prehistory is a club-shaped head of a bronze pin. The other objects date back to the Middle Ages and the
Modern Period. No certain information is available about the origin of this collection, but if we sum up the
available facts (exclusively metal objects, originating from fortified manors, castles, hillforts or their surroundings),
it is most probably a collection created with the help of a metal detector.
Some tools which are only rarely represented in museum collections (such as a scythe from Potštejn) may
be of more interest. The same is true for militaria – especially the finds of fragments of iron gun barrels and a
lead projectile from Velký Vřešťov are interesting. Although these objects were found in the immediate vicinity
of a prehistoric hillfort, it is beyond doubt that they are related to a siege camp established near the castle in
1467. In their majority, these are trivial objects which would only be of some indicative value if they were discovered
during a systematically led excavation including appropriate documentation.

Seeking childhood among the period theoretical treatises and educational texts on the one hand and source documents on the real life of children on the other hand has brought a wide range of new knowledge, but at the same time it has revealed the desiderata and limits of researches focused in this way. The chronological scope of the publication-from the Middle Ages, when, compared to the later period, we have to rely on a substantially more modest base of written, pictorial and material sources, until the 18th century, just before the onset and application of Enlightenment ideas-proved to be crucial in terms of its conception and methodological grasp but also its contribution. All of the transformations and progressions of the phenomenon of childhood were monitored in our study on the background of the advancement of the entire society, while taking into account the specificities of individual social classes. In Czech historiography, it is the first ever application of such a complex approach. It has made it possible not only to capture the continuity of the opinions on children and childhood, but at the same time to highlight the long-term constants of the monitored topic as well. The first chapter presented the opinions on the position of children in society. Precisely the intention to separate out the period observations related to childhood showed to be more than justified, because from the Middle Ages to the beginning of the 18 th century we can work with a number of texts of an educational character, which expressed themselves to a great extent on childhood. Considerations or targeted tractates can be found in many theoretical-educational sources, in legal summaries or codes, but also in historiography or literature. On the pages of these works, childhood corresponded to the period mentality of the so-called proper society (pro bonum commune), into which the ideal of education and respect for the discovered and gradually codified law fell. The education idea, at the same time, was adopted from Antiquity, and in the Middle Ages inspired the creation of typologically similar works, called princely mirrors. The texts were usually personalized, intended for an individual-the future ruler. This genre did not fully exhaust itself with the actual period of the Middle Ages, because for instance John Amos Comenius also wrote the first two educational texts forthrightly for noblemen. He subsequently turned his interest to school as such, including preschool education in the family. The emerging trend, which resulted in the modern conception of the treatises known as theatrum mundi, but it is already clear in the Late Middle Ages, when the first work appeared with a broader scope of the description of society, including children. Particularly, the opus Ykonomika by the priest in Regensburg Conrad of Megenberg from the middle of the 14 th century provided a view even of the children of the

In the 1520s, the Emperor Charles V visited the Palace of the Dukes of the Infantado in Guadalajara. According to a sixteenth-century manuscript, he was fascinated by the ceilings that adorned the palace and asked to be given a stair and a torch to study them in detail. Starting off with this anecdote, the aim of this paper is to investigate the ways in which decorated wooden ceilings were understood in the Iberian Peninsula in the centuries that marked the transition from the Middle Ages to the Early Modern Period.
Relying on archival sources, chronicles and artworks, this research will delve into the world of lavish palaces and religious buildings in an attempt to uncover what people thought when they saw, displayed or created these truly magnificent structures that lived in the borderline between sculpture, painting and architecture.
For more info visit: https://eu.eventscloud.com/website/5317/sessions-by-day/crafting-medieval-spain-the-torrijos-ceilings-in-context/