Ecclesiastical Monuments of Brașov/Kronstadt/Brassó and the (Imagined) Topography of a Transylvanian City in Late Medieval and Early Modern Times

Transilvania ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 59-64
Author(s):  
Liviu Cîmpeanu

By definition, a monument has extraordinary features that mark landscape and human minds alike. Without any doubt, the Medieval and Early Modern World of Europe was marked by ecclesiastical monuments, from great cathedrals and abbeys to simple chapels and altars at crossroads. A very interesting case study offers Braşov/ Kronstadt/Brassó, in the south-eastern corner of Transylvania, where historical sources attest several ecclesiastic monuments, in and around the city. Late medieval and early modern documents and chronicles reveal not only interesting data on the monasteries, churches and chapels of Braşov/Kronstadt/Brassó, but also on the way in which citizens and outsiders imagined those monuments in their mental topography of the city. The inhabitants of Braşov/ Kronstadt/Brassó and foreign visitors saw the monasteries, churches and chapels of the city, kept them in mind and referred to them in their (written) accounts, when they wanted to locate certain facts or events. The present paper aims in offering an overview of the late medieval and early modern sources regarding the ecclesiastical monuments of Braşov/Kronstadt/Brassó, as well as an insight into the imagined topography of a Transylvanian city.

Sederi ◽  
2016 ◽  
pp. 159-174
Author(s):  
Susana Oliveira

Within the scope of foreign affairs between Portugal and England during Elizabeth’s rule, numerous events indicate the challenges faced by the Portuguese ambassadors on their missions. Regrettably, little is known about these envoys and one rarely finds any reference to their names or their diplomatic accomplishments in Early Modern studies. This paper focuses on a diplomatic incident which involved Francisco Giraldes, a Portuguese resident ambassador in England, aiming to shed some light on “the intolerable business” that led to a confrontation with the Bishop of London, Edwin Sandys. Attending a Catholic Mass in the context of the Elizabethan Religious Settlement involved certain challenges that should be considered. Diplomats, however, enjoyed certain immunities, including the droit de chappelle, and were allowed to hold Catholic services in their ambassadorial residences. But in March 1573, while Mass was being held, Francisco Giraldes’s residence was raided by the Sheriff of London’s men, working under the Bishop of London’s instructions. The ongoing tension between the religious and the political areas of power was, thus, exposed. Two letters, written by the Bishop of London, included in the Lansdowne Manuscripts Collection of the British Library, registered the event. As Sandy’s correspondence appears to be the single piece of surviving evidence regarding this diplomatic incident, it stands to reason that its analysis will provide significant insight into the coexistence, as well as the clash, of oppositional forces, while further contributing to an interpretation of Anglo-Portuguese affairs in Early Modern times.


2003 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 146-149
Author(s):  
Charles E. Butterworth

This is an appealing and clearly written account of how European thinkersfrom late medieval to early modern times reflected upon and explored thequestion of what to do about people of different religions and cultures. Inother words, how should their divergent opinions be understood and, eventually,what practical dispositions should be taken toward them? CaryNederman devotes the introduction and first chapter to an excellent,detailed explanation of the book’s focus and goals. Simply put, he is intentupon challenging two currently dominant views: that toleration emerged inEurope only at the time of the Reformation, and that it is ineluctably linkedwith the kind of political liberalism usually associated with John Locke. Tothis end, he calls the reader’s attention to expressions of religious, and evensomewhat political, toleration that appear early in the twelfth century andcontinue well into the sixteenth century. Unfortunately, he does not succeedin this ambitious, even appealing, stratagem as fully as he would havewished, for he admits in passing that he is content to “offer illustrations,”instead of a “comprehensive account,” of this phenomenon ...


Author(s):  
Edmund Burke

This essay examines several world historical events from an unfamiliar perspective, that of sixteenth-century Morocco. It seeks to provide a new way of conceptualizing empires, one that builds upon recent work, while imagining them differently. As a key player in the struggle over the western Mediterranean, Morocco’s neglected history has much to tell us about both the power and the limits of the military revolution of early modern times. Moreover, Morocco’s success in withstanding Iberian efforts to extend the reconquista to Northwest Africa served to deflect the expansionary energies across the Atlantic and around Africa. More generally, Morocco provides a useful vantage point for thinking about the emergence of the international structures of power that define the early modern world.


1986 ◽  
Vol 45 (5) ◽  
pp. 1037-1049 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Perlin

Precious Metals in the Later Medieval and Early Modern Worlds, edited by J. F. Richards, is a courageous attempt to survey late medieval and early modern monetary history on an appropriately global scale, while simultaneously representing the fragmentation of the present state of knowledge on the subject. Asian history has been particularly subject to an a priori compartmentalization that has hindered comparison and prevented appreciation of the elaborate connections and dependencies developing among different regions during this period; Moreover, the various ways in which flows of precious metals have been explained merely confirm this compartmentalization, both by neglecting other, central aspects of monetary history and by ignoring the wider historical questions to which it is inseparably linked. By supplementing the approach to precious metals with a parallel focus on the vigorous trades in less precious monetary media, it becomes possible to rephrase the problem in terms of infrastructural societal conditions in different regions, which in the first place permitted trade flows to take place. In this respect, we need to dissolve the hard frontiers separating the conventional units of discussion and to see international commerce, and a wide range of different regional developments, as part and parcel of an increasingly complex, many-levelled web of interactive stimuli, which now needs to be reconstructed, debated, and researched.


1982 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 333-349 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivor Wilks

In late medieval and early modern times West Africa was one of the principal suppliers of gold to the world bullion market. In this context the Matter of Bitu is one of much importance. Bitu lay on the frontiers of the Malian world and was one of its most flourishing gold marts. So much is clear from sixteenth- and seventeenth-century writings, both African and European. A review of this body of evidence indicates that the gold trade at Bitu was controlled by the Wangara, who played a central role in organizing trade between the Akan goldfields and the towns of the Western Sudan. It is shown that Bitu cannot be other than Bighu (Begho, Bew, etc.), the abandoned Wangara town lying on the northwestern fringes of the Akan forest country, which is known (from excavation) to have flourished in the relevant period. In the late fifteenth century the Portuguese established posts on the southern shores of the Akan country, so challenging the monopolistic position which the Wangara had hitherto enjoyed in the gold trade. The Portuguese sent envoys to Mali, presumably to negotiate trade agreements. The bid was apparently unsuccessful. The struggle for the Akan trade in the sixteenth century between Portuguese and Malian interests will be treated in the second part of this paper.


2021 ◽  
Vol 84 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-66
Author(s):  
Mikhail Pelevin

AbstractThis article offers a comparative examination of the literary responses of four leading early modern Pashtun authors to an armed clash in the Momand tribe in 1711. The responses include a chronicle record in prose (Afżal Khān Khaṫak) and three poems – an elegy (ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Momand), a satire (ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd Momand), and a war ode (ʿAbd al-Qādir Khaṫak). Discussed as both authentic historical documents and creative writings linked to a local social discourse, these Pashto texts enable us to reassess the intensity of everyday literary communications in Pashtun tribal areas in early modern times and append new factual material to the study of ethno-cultural processes within the Persophone oecumene. The salient stylistic and rhetoric diversity of the texts not only highlights the authors’ individual mindsets and literary techniques, but also provides an insight into a variety of social moods, political attitudes and ethics in the Pashtun traditional society.


Queeste ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 217-245
Author(s):  
Dirk Schoenaers ◽  
Alisa van de Haar

Abstract In late medieval and early modern times, books, as well as the people who produced and read (or listened to) them, moved between regions, social circles, and languages with relative ease. Yet, in the multilingual Low Countries, francophone literature was both internationally mobile and firmly rooted in local soil. The five contributions collected in this volume demonstrate that while in general issues of ‘otherness’ were resolved without difficulty, at other times (linguistic) differences were perceived as a heartfelt reality.


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