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This volume seeks to address the doubts harboured by the West about the ability of East Central European states to build modern democracies and tolerant societies after the expansion of the European Union eastwards. The tradition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth is thereby often overlooked in favour of the nationalist romanticism and xenophobia of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, which arose from the specific context of the partitions of 1772-95. Yet citizenship in a multinational context was a central theme of the political debate in early modern Poland-Lithuania. For many contemporary religious and national conflicts, this Commonwealth cannot be a direct model for imitation, but may serve as a source of inspiration due to the creative solutions and compromises it negotiated while integrating many faiths and ethnicities. Contributors are James B. Collins, Karin Friedrich, Gershon David Hundert, Joanna Kostyło, Krzysztof Łazarski, Allan I. Macinnes, Barbara M. Pendzich, Felicia Roşu, Barbara Skinner, and Artūras Vasiliauskas.
Lived Religion and the Long Reformation in Northern Europe puts Reformation in a daily life context using lived religion as a conceptual and methodological tool: exploring how people "lived out" their religion in their mundane toils and how religion created a performative space for them. This collection reinvestigates the character of the Reformation in an area that later became the heartlands of Lutheranism. The way people lived their religion was intricately linked with questions of the value of individual experience, communal cohesion and interaction. During the late Middle Ages and Early Modern Era religious certainty was replaced by the experience of doubt and hesitation. Negotiations on and between various social levels manifest the needs, aspirations and resistance behind the religious change. Contributors include: Kaarlo Arffman, Jussi Hanska, Miia Ijäs, Sari Katajala-Peltomaa, Jenni Kuuliala, Marko Lamberg, Jason Lavery, Maija Ojala, Päivi Räisänen-Schröder, Raisa Maria Toivo
Which works and tenets of early modern natural law reached East-Central Europe, and how? How was it received, what influence did it have? And how did theorists and users of natural law in East- Central Europe enrich the pan-European discourse? This volume is pioneering in two ways; it draws the east of the Empire and its borderlands into the study of natural law, and it adds natural law to the practical discourse of this region. Drawing on a large amount of previously neglected printed or handwritten sources, the authors highlight the impact that Grotius, Pufendorf, Heineccius and others exerted on the teaching of politics and moral philosophy as well as on policies regarding public law, codification praxis, or religious toleration. Contributors are: Péter Balázs, Ivo Cerman, Karin Friedrich, Gábor Gángó, Anna Grześkowiak-Krwawicz, Knud Haakonssen, Steffen Huber, Borbála Lovas, Martin P. Schennach, and József Simon.
The book, based on memories of a native son and the research of a scholar, is an amalgam of descriptions and discussions, peppered with conversations, personal observations and an acute observer’s reflections, focused on the fabric of life in the city of Lodz and its vicinity. The author describes the “court” of the Hasidic Rabbis of Aleksander, with which his family was affiliated, the rival camps of Hasidim and Zionists, industrialists and laborers, struggles with the Polish authorities, and more. Detailed chapters are dedicated to a description of studies at a modern Jewish-Zionist high school (Gymnasium) – its exhilarating goals, directors and teachers, to the Lodz poet Yitzhak K...
Lord Acton (1834–1902) is often called a historian of liberty. A great historian and political thinker, he had a rare talent to reach beneath the surface and reveal the hidden springs that move the world. While endeavoring to understand the components of a truly free society, Acton attempted to see how the principles of self-determination and freedom worked in practice, from antiquity to his own time. But though he penned hundreds of papers, essays, reviews, letters and ephemera, the ultimate book of his findings and views on the history of liberty remained unwritten. Reading a book a day for years he still could not keep pace with the output of his time, and finally, dejected, he gave up....
• This book offers an engaging, well-researched introduction to the influential female figures who helped lay the foundations of Renaissance culture, making it easy for educators to integrate women’s history into the study of the past and for the general reader to gain a reliable, richly detailed overview. • Each chapter functions as a stand-alone study, combining an engaging narrative biography with an expert grasp of the cultural, political, and artistic context of this historical period to allow students and lecturers to either use parts or the whole of this book to support their studies and teaching. • Taken as a whole, students will be shown that these women were not isolated cases of female exceptionality, but rather a part of a larger and more complex tapestry of Renaissance achievement, one that connects them to one another as well as to the male writers, artists, and leaders whose names many readers will already know. • Interwoven within each chapter are primary sources (letters, poems, sketches) and portraits of each of the women discussed, providing students with a fuller picture of these women.
This work is an attempt to change thinking not only on the political practice and the role of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in a European context (both East and West), but to also connect the early modern past with present notions of citizenship and participatory political systems.
Established in 1965, the Journal of Belarusian Studies is the oldest English language periodical on Belarus. It covers Belarusian literature, linguistics, history and art as well as reviews of books and internet resources.
Examines the union of England and Scotland by weaving the navy into a political narrative of events between the regal union in 1603 and the parliamentary union in 1707.This book examines the union of England and Scotland by weaving the navy into a political narrative of events between the regal union in 1603 and the parliamentary union in 1707. For most of the century the Scottish crown had no separate naval force which made the Stuart monarchs' navy, seen by them as a personal not a state force, unusual in being an institution which had a relationship with both kingdoms. This did not necessarily make the navy a shared organisation, as it continued to be financed from and based in England an...
In Visual Cultures of Death in Central Europe, Aleksandra Koutny-Jones explores the emergence of a remarkable cultural preoccupation with death in Poland-Lithuania (1569-1795). Examining why such interests resonated so strongly in the Baroque art of this Commonwealth, she argues that the printing revolution, the impact of the Counter-Reformation, and multiple afflictions suffered by Poland-Lithuania all contributed to a deep cultural concern with mortality. Introducing readers to a range of art, architecture and material culture, this study considers various visual evocations of death including 'Dance of Death' imagery, funerary decorations, coffin portraiture, tomb chapels and religious landscapes. These, Koutny-Jones argues, engaged with wider European cultures of contemplation and commemoration, while also being critically adapted to the specific context of Poland-Lithuania.