Early Modern Central Europe

The studies of this volume concern Polish-Hungarian and Polish-Transylvanian relations in the 16th and 17th centuries. In the first paper, with reference both to older scholarship and recent research on the history of borderlands, I analyze the character and role of the Polish-Hungarian borderland. I ask how it was influenced by the natural environment and how it shaped mutual relations between the countries on both sides of the Carpathian Mountains.  My conclusion is that this borderland was quite stable politically (despite the proximity to the turbulent Habsburg-Ottoman border) and remained a region of exchange, connected through numerous social, ethnic and economic ties. The western part of the borderland was a more easily accessible area (with more convenient mountain passes), cultivated and colonized earlier than the Eastern Carpathians. It influenced the number of trade routes and intensity of exchange. A special role was played by the Szepes (Spiš) region, which receives less attention here only due to the general character of the paper and many recent historical studies.
Three papers refer to two remarkable figures in Polish-Hungarian/Polish-Transylvanian relations in the early modern period: John Sigismund Zapolya (Szapolyai, 1540-1571), first Prince of Transylvania, and Stephen Báthory, his successor as a Prince of Transylvania, then King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania (1576-1586). I examine the way in which they were perceived by contemporaries. In the case of John Sigismund Zapolya, I describe how the image of the ruler, who died young, was shaped by his followers in the first years after his death, that is, in the 1570s and 1580s, and how the commemoration served the emerging political identity of Transylvania in the context of close Polish-Transylvanian ties during the reign of Báthory. An essential factor was the religious (Protestant, especially Unitarian) motivation of the apologists. This was accompanied by their religious and political goals together with moral issues (e.g. the commonly used notions of fortune and loss through which the reign of John Sigismund was interpreted). The paper is based on a survey of historiographical and literary works mainly by Christian Schesaeus (neolatin epic historiography), András Valkai (popular historiographical poems in Hungarian), Demeter Csanádi, Jan Gruszczyński (moralistic, commemorative texts) and Johannes Sommer with references to other authors as well.
Subsequently, in a paper on King Stephen Báthory I show the contemporary polemics on his rule, in particular the controversies that arose in the years 1584-1585 and in the first years after the king’s death. In this period, Báthory was faced with serious criticism due to his harsh conflict with the Zborowski family. I argue here mainly with evidence of contemporary political journalism. The fact of the foreign origin of the king and his support for Hungarian compatriots in Poland-Lithuania was also raised, just as in the first years following Báthory’s death in 1586. This image changed only gradually later. In the next paper I show this process, using the example of literary texts known as “kings’ catalogues” (icones, imagines), which shaped popular historical knowledge until the 18th century. It was much because of this sort of text why the representation of the king evolved to result in an image of a brave and wise ruler, almost overwhelming in the Polish historical memory of the subsequent centuries. This image also contained stereotypes of Hungarians (appearance, character), partly derived from the ‘Hunnic’ tradition and the parallel between Báthory and Attila. Decisive was the impact of contemporary events, primarily the Polish-Muscovite wars of the 17th century.
To sum up, the papers contribute to a more nuanced history of the Polish-Hungarian relations and stereotypes, but refer to more general questions about the commemoration of a ruler (Herrschermemoria) in early modern Europe.

"Missionaries of the Microcosmos. Religious Ideal in the Sermons over the Entry to Female Convents in Olomouc

Early modern female monasticism in the Czech lands has long been under-researched in comparison to the foreign scholarly interest in the topic. The article focuses on the celebratory orations that were pronounced at the occasions of taking the veil or religious vows in the female convents. In the course of the last third of the seventeenth century and in the first half of the eighteenth century it became increasingly popular to put these sermons to print. They constitute a distinct type of sources that has so far been largely disregarded.
Although the initiation rituals connected with the entry to a convent were quite precisely regulated by both the Canon law and the rules of the respective convents, we can suppose that the preachers´orations had an important role in the explanation of the ceremony to the wide audience. The spiritual orators mediated the idealized image of the monastic life. They could therefore attract the interest of the new potential candidates or their families and also gain the support of new patrons. The printed sermons can thus be regarded as part of the celebratory discourse on early modern nuns.
Framing the rites of passage the sermons publicized the change in social status of the individual women that were initiated into the convent life. The texts contributed to the public representation of the nunneries and of the families related to the entering sisters. The kin also usually took care of the sermons´release and at least partial distribution. It seems that the city of Olomouc provided conveniant conditions for the resonance of the printed sermons commemorating the entries to the female convents. In the town there were situated nunneries of three religious orders (Dominican Sisters, Poor Clares, Ursulines), however the overall network of ecclesiastical institutions was quite dense and besides the wide range of male monasteries it included the bishopric with the metropolitan chapter.
As the post-tridentine church reinforced the emphasis on the enclosure of female convents, most preachers made use of the festivities of nuns´ initiation in order to accentuate that the priviledged space of operation of the enclosed sisters was the landscape of their soul, where they could fight the vices, support the church militant and even act as imaginary missionaries by means of their prayers and ascetic practices.
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The aim of this contribution is to show that cultural anthropology of gift exchange offers a wide array of analytical instruments that can help us study socio-cultural phenomena in their complexity and dynamics, thereby aiding historians in their efforts to capture changes over time. After briefly addressing the potential contribution of various types of egodocuments to gift exchange research, the author focuses on three epistolographic collections from the seventeenth and first half of the eighteenth centuries. It is noted that correspondence in itself can be viewed as an exchange of texts, ideas, and often also other accompanying objects. Elabo rating on Irma Thoen's thesis that early modern gift exchange was shaped by a discourse of honour and obligation , the author distinguishes within the relevant correspondence collections between the discourse of service, that of orphanhood and widowhood, and the discourse of ascetic piety. By drawing attention to a wide range of gifting practices, the article moves beyond the long dominant preference for gifts as objects in the earlier Central European historiography.

The paper explores the baroque Marian devotion of the medicant order of Servite Friars from the gender perspective. It shows that friars Servants of Mary depicted the discipline of theology as mariology (cf. figure no. 2). It analyses the role of Marian veneration in the formation and self-understanding of members of the order and in the collective identity of this religious community. It also draws attention to the cult of st. Thomas of Orvieto who was promoted as a patron saint of pregnant women.

Early modern period was the era of increased differentiation and self-defining of religious communities in Europe. My doctoral thesis reacts on the developments in recent scholarship which emphasises departure from the monolithic understanding of the main early modern European confessions, including the post-tridentine Catholicism. In particular, the various religious orders represent the communities that were struggling for the favour and support of the donators, and the interests of various religious orders thus often ran contrary to one another. The Habsburg project of the confessional transformation of the monarchy offered new attractive space for many religious orders.
My doctoral thesis focuses on the mendicant order of Servites (Servants of Mary) that originated in 13th century Tuscany and underwent an exceptionally vital growth in the Habsburg monarchy in the course of the 17th and 18th centuries. Rather than conceiving of the Servite order as an institution I regard it as a sacred imagined community. Since the religious orders have traditionally placed more emphasis on the community as a whole than on its individuals I utilize the concept elaborated by the American social scientist Benedict Anderson which allows me to analyse the Servites as a group of people who often did not know one another personally but who shared their identity and objectives. I explore the ways the Servites shaped their imagination of themselves as a community and of their past for the sake of attaining the future. I analyse the rhetorical and visual strategies the order developed and employed in order to advance its role in the Habsburg project of re-establishing Catholicism in Central Europe.
The theatrical elements that are so pervasively present in the baroque culture lead me to employ the concept of self-representation of the Canadian sociologist Erving Goffman who conceived the self-representation as a model of everyday social life of all individuals. The expansion as well as material subsistence of religious orders in general, and mendicant orders in particular, was largely dependent on attaining potential members and benefactors and accordingly on the favourable presentation of their ideals.
The question of self-representation is closely connected with the issue of self-concept of the order. The notion of the contemporaries and the Servites themselves about the order differed profoundly from the later classical image of the order which is the result of the empirical historiography and in its concise version it is presented in the main encyclopaedia devoted to the religious orders (e.g. by M. Heimbucher, G. Rocca−G. Pellicia; D. Foltýn, M. Buben etc.). In the doctoral thesis I employ a wide range of previously disregarded sources (especially visual and narrative) and strive to eliminate the former disproportion between the schematic image provided by encyclopaedic handbooks and the period self-representation of the Servites themselves.
I regard the Servite narrative texts and images to be at the core of the community’s collective imagination. My interpretation of the Servite narrative texts is based on the typology of emplotment structuring developed by the Canadian literary theorist Northrop Frye and I explore the ways in which the Servites participated in the grand narrative of the triumphant Habsburg piety (Pietas Austriaca).
North of the Alps the Servites developed a very distinctive style of self-representation which closely intertwined the rhetoric of the Habsburg and Servite devotion. The order could demonstrate its special ties to the Habsburg dynasty also by visual means as it was awarded the privilege to use its own coat of arms in combination with the red-white-red shield of the Austrian archdukes. The rise of typographic techniques gave the religious orders an influential instrument of self-promotion of a more lasting quality than e.g. an oral sermon or pilgrimage festivity could have provided. Moreover the printed texts as well as devotional graphics could easily serve as gifts creating or strengthening social ties. However the upswing of new media also brought higher requirements for the elaborate programs of self-representation.
Unlike the newly emerged early modern religious orders, the Servite order could take advantage of its medieval heritage. One of the most ambitious expressions of Servite baroque historicism was the narrative construction of Philip Benizi, the 13th century patron saint of the order, as a counsellor and confessor of the founding father of the Habsburg dynasty, Rudolf I. of Habsburg. Saint Philip Benizi was thus presented as ‘the first teacher of the Habsburg virtue which overcomes the enemies’. The invention of the medieval connection between the order and the reigning dynasty was intended to prefigure the early modern Habsburg – Servite alliance and had a clear political connotation.
However the imagined past and the new forms of devotion also brought the Servite order into conflicts with other old mendicant orders of medieval origin, especially the Friars Minor, the Dominicans and the Carmelites who clearly viewed the Servites as increasingly active intruders in the domain of activity of mendicant religious.
Throughout the whole thesis I argue that the Servites employed the narrative schemes of romance to develop the idea of a knightly fight of the members of the order for the Habsburg „regnum marianum“ and conceived their participation in the project of the confessional homogenization of the monarchy in terms of the courtly service to Virgin Mary. The narrative structures provided the Servite interpretation of the Habsburg recatholization project with dynamics and corresponded with the triumphant tone of the master narrative of the victory of Habsburg virtue. The powerful system of the Servite self-representation played a vital role in gaining the favour of the loyal ascending nobility and enabled the order to build a network of thirty monasteries in East-Central Europe consisting mainly of houses at Marian shrines, thus imprinting the landscape with the traces of the early modern Habsburg project of confessional homogenization of the monarchy,