Christianization in Early Medieval Transylvania

Christianization in Early Medieval Transylvania

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2022-06-20

Total Pages: 521

ISBN-13: 9004515860

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Little is known about the Christianization of east-central and eastern Europe, due to the fragmentary nature of the historical record. Yet occasionally, unexpected archaeological discoveries can offer fresh angles and new insights. This volume presents such an example: the discovery of a Byzantine-like church in Alba Iulia, Transylvania, dating from the 10th century - a unique find in terms of both age and function. Next to its ruins, another church was built at the end of the 11th century, following a Roman Catholic architectural model, soon to become the seat of the Latin bishopric of Transylvania. Who built the older, Byzantine-style church, and what was the political, religious and cultural context of the church? How does this new discovery affect our perception of the ecclesiastical history of Transylvania? A new reading of the archaeological and historical record prompted by these questions is presented here, thereby opening up new challenges for further research. Contributors are: Daniela Marcu Istrate, Florin Curta, Horia I. Ciugudean, Aurel Dragotă, Monica-Elena Popescu, Călin Cosma, Tudor Sălăgean, Jan Nicolae, Dan Ioan Mureșan, Alexandru Madgearu, Gábor Thoroczkay, Éva Tóth-Révész, Boris Stojkovski, Șerban Turcuș, Adinel C. Dincă, Mihai Kovács, Nicolae Călin Chifăr, Marius Mihail Păsculescu, and Ana Dumitran.


Constitutional History of Transylvania

Constitutional History of Transylvania

Author: Emőd Veress

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2023-04-13

Total Pages: 382

ISBN-13: 3031221664

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book examines the constitutional history of Transylvania, a region of Central Europe that has experienced a compelling series of historical events and been governed by a variety of ancient, medieval, and modern entities, as well as its own peoples, who from time to time have jointly or separately exercised their right to self-governance. The book’s main goal is to provide, for the first time in English, a comprehensive source for those interested in the variety of states, constitutional and public legal orders which have succeeded one another during Transylvania’s tumultuous history. It serves to underline the region’s uniqueness as a space where (for better or worse) several nationalities, multiple religions and varied cultures have had to find a way to get along, under the pressures of external state and constitutional orders. It seeks to show both the positive and the negative solutions found, which advanced or hindered this goal of organised coexistence.


Transylvanian Vampires

Transylvanian Vampires

Author: Adriana Groza

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2014-02-28

Total Pages: 193

ISBN-13: 147661492X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Authentic vampire tales exist in Transylvanian folklore--yet the Transylvanian vampire is nothing like the bloodthirsty count of Bram Stoker's imagination or the romantic hero of popular fiction. The Romanian tradition reflects the norms of peasant life and wisdom embedded in age-old communities. This book consists of 21 narratives developed from brief accounts recorded by local anthropologists and historians from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The goal is to capture the major themes found in the existing sources. The book also includes translations of 17 brief folk stories about Vlad Ţepeş, known as Dracula. Contrary to the prevailing fictive image, these stories portray Vlad as a wise although strict ruler and a proud defender of his country's autonomy. An introduction discusses the Transylvanian village and its rich folk traditions, making explicit the comparison to the historic and to the fictional Dracula.


The Roma in Romanian History

The Roma in Romanian History

Author: Viorel Achim

Publisher: Central European University Press

Published: 2004-08-01

Total Pages: 238

ISBN-13: 6155053936

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

One of the greatest challenges during the enlargement process of the European Union towards the east is how the issue of the Roma or Gypsies is tackled. This ethnic minority group represents a much higher share by numbers, too, in some regions going above 20% of the population. This enormous social and political problem cannot be solved without proper historical studies like this book, the most comprehensive history of Gypsies in Romania. It is based on academic research, synthesizing the entire historical Romanian and foreign literature concerning this topic, and using lot of information from the archives. The main focus is laid on the events of the greatest consequence. Special attention is devoted to aspects linked to the long history of the Gypsies, such as slavery, the process of integration and assimilation into the majority population, as well as the marginalization of Gypsies, which has historic roots. The process of emancipation of Gypsies in the mid-19th century receives due treatment. The deportation of Gypsies to Transnistria during the Antonescu regime, between 1942-1944, is reconstructed in a special chapter. The closing chapters elaborate on the policy toward Gypsies in the decades after the Second World War that explain for the latest developments and for the situation of this population in today's Romania.


History of the Literary Cultures of East-Central Europe

History of the Literary Cultures of East-Central Europe

Author: Marcel Cornis-Pope

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2006-09-13

Total Pages: 539

ISBN-13: 9027293406

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Continuing the work undertaken in Vol. 1 of the History of the Literary Cultures of East-Central Europe, Vol. 2 considers various topographic sites—multicultural cities, border areas, cross-cultural corridors, multiethnic regions—that cut across national boundaries, rendering them permeable to the flow of hybrid cultural messages. By focusing on the literary cultures of specific geographical locations, this volume intends to put into practice a new type of comparative study. Traditional comparative literary studies establish transnational comparisons and contrasts, but thereby reconfirm, however inadvertently, the very national borders they play down. This volume inverts the expansive momentum of comparative studies towards ever-broader regional, European, and world literary histories. While the theater of this volume is still the literary culture of East-Central Europe, the contributors focus on pinpointed local traditions and geographic nodal points. Their histories of Riga, Plovdiv, Timişoara or Budapest, of Transylvania or the Danube corridor – to take a few examples – reveal how each of these sites was during the last two-hundred years a home for a variety of foreign or ethnic literary traditions next to the one now dominant within the national borders. By foregrounding such non-national or hybrid traditions, this volume pleads for a diversification and pluralization of local and national histories. A genuine comparatist revival of literary history should involve the recognition that “treading on native grounds” means actually treading on grounds cultivated by diverse people.


Eclecticism in Late Medieval Visual Culture at the Crossroads of the Latin, Greek, and Slavic Traditions

Eclecticism in Late Medieval Visual Culture at the Crossroads of the Latin, Greek, and Slavic Traditions

Author: Maria Alessia Rossi

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2021-11-22

Total Pages: 452

ISBN-13: 3110695618

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This volume builds upon the new worldwide interest in the global Middle Ages. It investigates the prismatic heritage and eclectic artistic production of Eastern Europe between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries, while challenging the temporal and geographical parameters of the study of medieval, Byzantine, post-Byzantine, and early-modern art. Contact and interchange between primarily the Latin, Greek, and Slavic cultural spheres resulted in local assimilations of select elements that reshaped the artistic landscapes of regions of the Balkan Peninsula, the Carpathian Mountains, and further north. The specificities of each region, and, in modern times, politics and nationalistic approaches, have reinforced the tendency to treat them separately, preventing scholars from questioning whether the visual output could be considered as an expression of a shared history. The comparative and interdisciplinary framework of this volume provides a holistic view of the visual culture of these regions by addressing issues of transmission and appropriation, as well as notions of cross-cultural contact, while putting on the global map of art history the eclectic artistic production of Eastern Europe.