Hofzeremoniell und Gebärstuhl. Zur Bedeutung von Ritualen bei den Entbindungen Maria Theresias (1717–1780)

Summary The purpose of this paper is to study the oldest observations on the Spanish language in America which are made in a book of linguistics. They are found in the first history of Spanish, the Origen y principio de la lengua castellana (Rome, 1606) by Bernardo de Aldrete (1560–1641). This work arises from the Renaissance discussions on the vernacular languages, and it is in this connection that appear the references to the Spanish language in America. In Spain the ‘language question’ presents a peculiarity that is inevitably lacking in Italy and France: Spanish, through the explorations and conquests of the modern age, had been converted into a language spoken all over the world, the language of the Spanish Empire. This ‘imperial dimension’ of Spanish is employed by the supporters of the vernacular as opposed to Latin. As compared with the great Roman Empire of ancient times, in modern times a new language has risen that has really extended throughout the globe, not only in the small corner of what was known to the ancients; it is justified and, even more, it is incumbant upon the Spaniards to ennoble the language spoken in an empire without equal in history. We can document how throughout the 16th century the Spaniards bear in mind the imperial character of their language; this motive is expressed in the frequent image of the language that accompanies the ‘victorious Spanish banners’ that extend to the furthest corners of the earth. Continuing this line of thought, Aldrete introduced his observations on the Spanish language in America in his history of the language. Of course, the work of Aldrete, inspired in the ideas of the Renaissance, is devoted to showing the Latin origin of Spanish; the references to America are found in the examples of modern Spanish life that Aldrete uses to explain cases of Spain’s past that he reconstructs. Gathering the examples referring to the Spanish language in America, one obtains the view that Aldrete had on the subject. These examples appear in the discussion of particular problems of the study of language: linguistic innovations and loans; the relationship between dialects and the standard language; the question of the center of a linguistic area and the representative variety of a language of culture; the problem of diffusion and contact of languages, typical of the modern age, and the specific form they have acquired in America. From these examples cited by Aldrete, we can see that his conception of the Spanish language was no longer reduced to that of the Peninsula, but that as a matter of course he considered the Spanish language domain as jointly embracing its European and American territories. Aldrete, as a matter of fact is the first linguist who takes into account the overseas expansion of Spanish; moreover, he is the first linguist who registers the life of a European language beyond its original area of the Old World. We have before us an instance in which, as in so many others, Renaissance linguistics initiates typical directions of study of the Modern Age. In the study of the influence of the geographical discoveries in the history of linguistics, it has been the tendency to pay attention to the discovery of new, unknown languages and to grammars and vocabularies written about them. This is the linguistic aspect that corresponds to the discovery of cultural variety in nations different from the Europeans. The Spain of the 16th and 17th centuries, with a mentality different from the present on this point, in the context of her colonizing action proceded through assimilation: her manner of recognizing the human dignity of the newly discovered peoples consisted in transforming them into Christians and Spaniards. It is this assimilating attitude that permits Aldrete to observe the reverse of the historical phenomenon that brought the dicovery of cultural diversity, that is to say, the expansion of European culture throughout the world and the creation of a new human space on an intercontinental scale. It is worth noting Aldrete’s acuteness with which he provides for the expansion of the geographical and human horizon that took place in the 16th century in his linguistic argument. The discovery of America and the surrounding events had little repercussion in Europe; this true even for Spain, where the interest in the New World tended to be limited to those who had professional ties with it, and this was not Aldretes’s case. In order to get him to deal with American matters neither his feeling of the superiority of the moderns over the ancients nor his national pride as a Spaniard would have sufficed; as it happened with so many of his contemporaries, these sentiments only would have obliged him to mention the discovery of a new continent. Actually, the root of Aldrete’s interest in America lies in his religious views, and in this sense he is representative of the peculiar kind of humanism developed in Spain: the so-called ‘Christian Humanism’. In the last instance, he conceives the geographical discoveries as the occasion to propagate the message of Christ to all peoples on earth, and he sees the Spanish Empire extended throughout all of it as the historical creation bound to carry out this mission. This interpretation, reflecting the Weltpolitik that the Church and the House of Austria already maintained in the 16th century, gets Aldrete interested in what happens in the world and, particularly, in America. This new world is not only the place of the Hispanization of millions of men, but it has been converted into the reservoir of Catholicism facing a Europe torn up by the Reformation, not to mention its riches which make it possible for Spain to maintain the armies with which she defends the faith. Aldrete arrives at a world vision of the events of his time by means of this Christian universalism that permits him to take into account the far-away events that hardly interested the majority of Spaniards of his age. As regards the history of Spanish linguistics, the reflections concerning the Spanish language in America have begun with Aldrete. He doesn’t discover, however, what we call today the ‘Spanish of America’, namely the area of studies of Spanish linguistics devoted to the language of the Spanish American republics. What Aldrete observes is the diffusion of Spanish (from Spain) that accompanies the ‘victorious Spanish banners’ on their course through the world. Even though he is familiar with American varieties of Spanish, they do not interest him mofe than as manifestations of the geographical variation of language. In effect, the only valuable thing for him is the cultured speech whose model is found at the court of Madrid. Moreover, he of course lacks the notion of historical development and conceives the changes as approximations to a perfect form (in our case, the ‘pure and elegant’ language of the court) or as departures from it. The idea of ‘Spanish of America’ appears in Spanish linguistics only in the 19th century, when Spain’s former possessions in the New World became autonomous. Their independance doesn’t change the language, but it does profoundly modify the human reality in which it will function henceforth: Spanish has become the language of the Americans, not (as before) of the Spaniards transplanted to America. Nevertheless, only the advances of 19th century linguistics will permit to develop intelectually the new historical situation created by independence. This is what Rufino José Cuervo, the founder of Spanish American linguistics, will do towards the end of the past century. Dialectology will show him the interest of the American language for itself, and a historical consciousness will reveal to him a Spanish that evolves in America according to its own laws. Therefore, even though Aldrete and Cuervo speak of the same facts, these facts appear in totally different universes of discourse: not in vain are both scholars separated by almost three centuries. A history of linguistics that does not take into account this difference of conception in the works of Aldrete and Cuervo could not understand the growth that the study of Spanish in America has undergone throughout the course of history.

Demographic development and migration played an important role in Central Europe in the 18th century, during the period of building state institutions. The Central European history of that period was marked by the role of the Habsburg dynasty. After the anti-Ottoman wars in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, Slavonia and Srijem, along with parts of Hungary, Bačka, Transylvania, Banat, and other territories, came under Habsburg rule. Considering the border position of Slavonia and Srijem relative to the Ottoman Empire, especially in the years after the Vienna War, the military government played a significant role in those areas in addition to the civil one. During the 18th century, parts of the estates in Slavonia under the jurisdiction of the Royal Chamber were sold or given away to private secular or church owners, and large estates with dependent serfs were created. The belt along the Sava River was organised as the Military Frontier, which, in the mid-18th century, was divided into regiments and maintained by free peasants and soldiers, following the model of other military frontier regions in Croatia. Using original archival materials, published sources, primarily the edition of Quellenbuch zur Donauschwäbischen Geschichte by Anton Tafferner, and historiographical research, the article presents the most important governmental and other legal acts on which the demographic and migration policy of the Habsburg Monarchy in the newly acquired regions was based. The paper aims to reveal the most important guidelines of the Habsburg settlement policy in the eastern and southeastern areas of the Monarchy and show the change that occurred in that practice through state policy and the prevailing economic doctrine. To gain insight into the demographic and economic situation in the newly conquered provinces, the Habsburg authorities conducted various types of censuses. Since depopulation and economic devastation in Slavonia and the entire newly acquired eastern part of the Monarchy were huge, the state, having a cameralistic economic orientation, sought to solve this problem by encouraging migration and organised settlement of these regions. According to the cameralists, the success of the state, the exploitation of natural resources, the circulation of goods, and the amount of taxes collected depended, among other things, on the number of inhabitants. A systematic demographic policy began only under Maria Theresa. Before that period, demographic measures were mostly spontaneous and unsystematic, primarily relying on the settlement of population groups that sought protection or better living conditions, such as the Orthodox and Catholic populations from the Ottoman-ruled regions. The first in a series of royal acts concerning population settlement was the Patent of Settlement. It was based on the Instructions on the Organisation of the Kingdom of Hungary (Einrichtungswerk) by Cardinal Count L. Kollonich, issued in 1689. It explicitly stated that all people of any class, nationality, or religious affiliation who were willing to settle in the Kingdom of Hungary and its adjacent lands should be accepted. The condition for emigration was obtaining permission from the previous authorities, the so-called Los-Brief. The patent intended to attract the rural population, given the large uncultivated areas, as well as members of various professions and craftsmen. Settlers were promised a range of privileges. Kolonić’s 1689 plan for the organisation of Hungary remained unrealised. At the Hungarian Parliament in Bratislava during the session of 1722/1723, the Hungarian estates placed demographic policy, closely related to mercantilist principles, at the centre of the discussion. Several parliamentary conclusions from that session are important in the context of immigration and settlement, especially Article 103, which emphasised “impopulation” as a state need, thereby providing a legal basis for all future settlements. Although Catholic populations were preferred for settling the eastern regions of the Monarchy, Emperor Charles VI sent a letter in 1722 to the rulers of Protestant lands within the Holy Roman Empire, urging them to facilitate emigration from those lands to the Kingdom of Hungary. He addressed the Protestant princes, as he was related to some of them, and they had supported him in the Empire during times of dispute. In the first half of the 18th century, the state sought to meet the need for a systematic increase in population by attracting immigrants from abroad, primarily from the Holy Roman Empire, and by increasing the natural growth rate of the domestic population. The main carriers of settlement in Hungary during that period were domestic and, to some extent, foreign landowners. The organised settlement of the German population in Slavonia during that period was not of significant proportions, the exceptions being cities and sporadic settlement on some estates such as Vukovar and Valpovo. In addition to settlements organised by estates, Christian populations from areas under Ottoman rule also migrated to Slavonia and parts of Hungary. This population most often moved on their own initiative and settled in areas under military or civil administration. The main actors in the colonisation of the Hungarian part of the Monarchy during the late 17th and first half of the 18th centuries, under the reigns of Emperors Leopold I and Charles VI, were the estates of ecclesiastical and secular landowners. However, under the reigns of Maria Theresa and Joseph II, colonisation was carried out mostly by the state. In the latter period, efforts were made to attract migrants from beyond the borders of the Habsburg hereditary lands, especially from the Holy Roman Empire. The religious affiliation of the migrants played an important role in the colonisation process, with Catholic migrants being given priority. The paper analyses the most important decisions regarding the settlement of the eastern and southeastern regions of the Monarchy made by Maria Theresa and Joseph II. During the earlier phase of the reign of Maria Theresa, the colonisation activity of state authorities and private estates was directed towards well-off emigrants who were able to establish economies in the place of settlement with their own resources. Special focus is placed on patents issued by Maria Theresa that introduced certain innovations in settlement policy. These are primarily the Colonisation patents from 1759 and 1763, and the main instruction on the settlement of Banat from 1772. The Patent of 1763 was issued on a statewide basis and was intended to gain support from military personnel discharged after the Seven Years’ War for the Monarchy’s demographic policy. The goal was to move the demobilised population, which lacked a secure existence in the Austrian part of the Monarchy, to the Hungarian part, especially Banat and Bačka. Protestants could also settle, but not in Banat. During this period, settlement from the Holy Roman Empire or Habsburg lands was significantly less prevalent in Croatia than in Banat and Bačka. Furthermore, the paper analyses two emigration patents (Auswanderungspatent) issued by Joseph II. The 1782 patent concerned the settlement of Hungary and Galicia and introduced two innovations in the Habsburg settlement policy. First, complete religious freedom was declared, allowing members of any religion to settle in these countries. Second, emigrants to Hungary and Galicia were generously subsidised, encouraging even the less desirable poor population to move to the eastern regions. The 1784 patent aimed at promoting immigration to Hungary and Transylvania, but it also provided for the settlement of Protestants, mainly craftsmen, in Bačka. The largest wave of emigration from the Empire to Hungary occurred around 1785. At that time, Slavonia was also settled by people from the northern regions but still remained much less populated than parts of Hungary, Banat, and Bačka. The paper also provides an overview of various announcements of provisions prohibiting emigration from the Habsburg hereditary lands, which became more frequent in the 1750s and 1760s. The aforementioned ruler acts aimed at punishing those who encouraged the population to emigrate, as well as those caught or denounced as intending to emigrate without permission. The ban on emigration to foreign countries was in line with the principles of the “populationist” and cameralist policies of the Habsburg rulers. The recruitment of colonists to settle the sparsely populated eastern parts of the Monarchy was specifically targeted at German lands that were not under Habsburg rule. The presented analysis of published royal decrees on the settlement of the newly acquired eastern regions of the Monarchy and archival sources shows that, during the 18th century, the Habsburg state sought to meet its population needs through immigration and planned settlement. By providing a normative framework for these activities, the Monarchy sought to achieve its demographic, economic, and state goals, considering the current geopolitical circumstances.

Theater became one of the most important cultural forces in 18thcentury German life. At the beginning of the century, there were ever-changing, disorganized conglomerations of wandering players who performed various kinds of amusing, folksy, and risque pieces. They roamed the countryside in their costumes, making funny faces, dancing jigs, extemporizing, and doing whatever pleased them, in order to eke out a living, which, more often than not, meant prostituting themselves, stealing, or fast-talking their way into shelters that would provide warmth, food, and drink. Their behavior was such that solid bourgeois Christians not only eschewed social contact with them while they were alive, but also applauded the fact that they would be treated differently after death. Until the end of the century, such performers were simply denied legal burial in consecrated ground. As religious views, social mores, political affiliations, and artistic tastes changed during the course of the 18th century, so too did the status of the performing artist, whether master of ceremonies, musician, juggler, actor, dancer, or opera singer. Permanent theaters were founded, and increasing concern was given to mounting dramas of some artistic quality. Little by little, those who had been certified as social abominations developed, strangely enough, into role models of exemplary human behavior.' Poets

This article uncovers links to pagan Irish rites which can be deduced from excerpts in the form of lists from medieval literature. There are three presented here: from Aidedh Ferghusa Maic Léti (Death of Fergus Mac Leide, c. 1100 A.D.), from Buile Shuibhne (Frenzy of Suibhne, 17th century manuscrits), and from the Book of Leinster (Lebar na Núachongbála, 11th century). It is seen in all cases that, when list items are rendered in a language ancestral to Irish (henceforth termed Goidelic) and recited in order, poems result which describe pagan rituals. This Goidelic is reconstructed on the basis of Indo-European linguistics and well-known sound laws governing the evolution of the Irish tongue. It will be seen that the Goidelic language used herein has much the same grammatical structure demonstrated by early ogam inscriptions in Ireland and even by Gaulish itself. Furthermore, the prosody and scansion of these Goidelic poems match features seen in a Gaulish inscription datable to c. 0-300 A.D. discovered at Chamalières, France in 1971. We will also notice some recurring features in these poems: (a) The desired outcome is stated only in the vaguest terms, if at all. (b) Each poem constitutes a recitation addressed to the god or goddess by a “witness” or “master of ceremonies” acting on behalf of other participants. (c) Duality in the ritual is readily apparent; e.g., a sacred double fire, or rites and recitations at two sites, etc. (d) A sacred locale is emphasized before the deity where the wishes of the performers ought not to be refused.

This book and accompanying video provide an ethnographic study of a Russian Eastern Orthodox sect, the Old Believers, who live in isolated areas of Alberta. Based on Sheffel's Ph.D. dissertation at McMaster University, they offer a detailed examination of in a community whose explicit goal is to be isolated from Canadian society. Instead of accessing the media, Old Believers learn about their place in the world predominantly through history, and the past serves as the preferred method for reducing the burden of voluntary isolation (p. 3). Consequently, the author's aim is to lift the cloak of obscurity to which the Old Believers seem to have been condemned by history and modern scholarship ... [and to] provide inspiration and perhaps justification for the study of other seemingly insignificant societies and communities (p. 9). To that end, Sheffel offers thick ethnographic description of the culture of this small community, and makes explicit the significance of ritual and adherence to the past, which form the basis for the Old Believers' world view.A historical synopsis outlines Old Believers' Byzantine and Russian origins; the Raskol, or schism of the Russian Orthodox church in the mid-17th century; their persecution in the 18th century; and their subsequent migration to China and then to North America. This is followed by five ethnographic chapters on the community, Berezovka, detailing beliefs, community organization, economy, foodways and the symbols of orthodoxy in home and community. The final chapter addresses the relevancy of this ethnography for the study of society and culture, puritanism, tradition and modernity.Sheffel provides the reader with a sense of the significance of material culture and belief to the Old Believers. Every aspect of their material culture is suffused with spiritual meaning connecting this people to its past. Their icons, their clothing and their food utensils are imbued with meaning. Whenever a meal is prepared and eaten, the food, drink, plates and spoons are sanctified by ritual. Outsiders to the community are not permitted to sit at table and share food, since they are considered pagan and unclean. Old Believers situate their homes close to the source of spiritual purity, the river. Their sacred images are washed in river water, which is returned to the river, charged with the power of the icons. Before drinking, Old Believers make a sign of the cross to drive evil spirits out of the drink and swallow it in one gulp, before the spirits have a chance to slip back into it. As the narrator in the video states, for Old Believers life is a perpetual act of worship.Both book and video lead us to a better understanding of the significance of ritual in the transmission of culture. The many rituals of this people function not only as communication devices, but as links between them and their past, providing a dialogue between past and present Christians, between those who cannot interact directly (p. …

The death of King Charles II, the Bewitched, ended two centuries of sovereignity of the Habsburg dynasty in Spain. Since his birth in 1661, he presented a peculiar set of physical, psychiatric and behavioral signs, such as respiratory and diarrheal diseases, recurrent seizures and deep developmental delay. It was not until his adulthood when his infertility became evident, being incapable of conceiving a heir, even though he married twice. Such a constellation of ominous signs motivated a curious investigation, which concluded that the king was hexed at the age of 14 years in order to take away his throne, his health and his capacity to procreate. Based on contemporary medical knowledge, it is possible that Charles IIhad a rare autosomal recessive inherited genopathy asa consequence of the frequent inbreeding among his ancestors. On the other hand, its is also possible that Charles II presented Klinefelter Syndrome, the most frequent sex chromosome disorder in humans and the most common cause of hypogonadism and infertility in males. The hypothesis that Charles II was bewitched reflects a deep belief in supernatural phenomena among the Castilian society at the beginning of the 18th century, an idea transmitted across generations, currently present in many societies worldwide.

The purpose of the study is to reveal the nature of the relationship between Hungary and Slavonia-Croatia basing on the resolutions of the Hungarian assemblies and Croatian-Slavonian sabor of the 16th — 17th centuries. The main question is: who did they obey — Vienna or Hungary? How did their estates perceive themselves in the new monarchy: as a part of the Kingdom of Hungary or not? How did Hungarian rulers understand Croatia’s belonging? Depending on the changes in Croatia and Slavonia, fluctuations in the title of their rulers from the Habsburg dynasty are traced, as well as the name and status of these state entities, which gradually merged into one political whole. An analysis of the close cooperation between Croatian-Slavonian and Hungarian state institutions and estate assemblies under the new conditions shows the continuity of institutional subordination of the former to the latter, which had developed back in the pre-Mohács period, i.e. the times of interstate union of 1102, known as the “pacta conventa”. Based on this reconstruction, the author verifies the conclusions made in the previous works.

U radu je analizirana rukopisna karta srednje i dijela sjeverne Dalmacije nepoznatog autora, nastala, po svoj prilici, u prvom desetljeću 16. stoljeća. Ta je karta najstariji sačuvani detaljni prikaz neke hrvatske regije, a pohranjena je u Državnom arhivu u Veneciji (Archivio di Stato di Venezia). Analizom geografskih i toponomastičkih podataka koji su u nju ugrađeni te korelacijom tih podataka s arhivskim vrelima i drugim ranonovovjekovnim kartama, utvrđeno je da je ona što se tiče kvantitete i kvalitete sadržaja činila značajan iskorak u vizualizaciji prostorne stvarnosti. Stoga je riječ o dragocjenom kartografskom spomeniku, nezaobilaznom za povijesno-geografska istraživanja Hrvatske i Jadrana kao arene višestoljetne vojnopolitičke konfrontacije Mletačke Republike, Ugarsko-Hrvatskoga Kraljevstva (od
 1527. pod vlašću habsburške dinastije) i Osmanskoga Carstva.

This paper is part of the doctoral research concerning the places of sites and church towers in the development of urban patterns in the city of Suceava. For this article, we will dwell on the 18th and 19th century, when, in 1755, Suceava became a Habsburg territory, being part of Bucovina, an area that included the North-East of Moldova. This situation was maintained for a century and a half, Suceava also fulfilling the role of an Austro- Hungarian border town. In this period we can also mention an urban development of the city, a period that left numerous institutional buildings representing the new power. This impressive buildings are, as they follow: the Suceava Prefecture and the Suceava County Council (City Administrative Palace, completed in 1903-1904 and which originally housed the city administration, the police, the fire brigade, a savings bank and the history museum), Bucovina Museum (which includes more buildings ) - initially the seat of the District Headquarters, dating from 1902- 1903, Ștefan cel Mare National College (The Greek-Oriental Gymnasium, built between 1893-1895 on the site of the old Wood Market), the Old Hospital (General public home for the sick from Suceava, built in the period 1891-1903), the old Suceava Water Plant and many others. Also in these years, the city is equipped with construction equipment (for example, in 1908, the Electric Plant is commissioned), modernizations specific to modern times. A major interest was the establishment of modern institutions, characteristic of the Habsburg administration.

The archaeozoological material discussed in this article came from one feature (Cpl. 2) located in the southern outer courtyard of the fortress investigated in the summer of 2020. The collected artefacts date mainly to the 18th and 19th centuries, therefore to the Austrian era, although some of them had been in use even earlier during the 17th century. The feature, most likely with the initial phase in the middle of the 17th century, has functioned as a latrine pit in which all sorts of remains were gradually thrown away, including faunal ones. Given that the faunal material analysed comes from a single archaeological feature, the conclusions are quite limited. Conclusions cannot be generalized, but they show a trend probably close to reality. We would like to make this clear because during the older or newer archaeological investigations, in various areas of the Făgăraș fortress, numerous animal bones were discovered, with or without a clear dating context, which could not be collected or analysed. The fauna studied in this article offers a glimpse on the diet of the human community that served the Făgăraș fortress, in general, during the Habsburg period. We observed that cattle hold an overwhelming ratio NR-wise, dominating the faunal spectrum. MNI-wise, although cattle hold second place after ovicaprids, they still have the highest importance in terms of the meat ratio, compared to other domestic animals. The game has an extremely low ratio, with medium-sized species (roe deer) and small species (hare) identified. The study of the slaughter ages and the distribution of the anatomical elements/ skeletal parts in the case of the domestic animals suggest the consumption of subadult and adult animals with less tender meat, some of the animals being at the age of reform (especially the old ones) suggesting that they were part of the daily food of the fortress staff (soldiers, civilians and administration). Although not very large in terms of quantity, the importance of the sample from the Făgăraș fortress is also given by the fact that such studies of archaeozoology dedicated to the Habsburg period are extremely rare in Romania. Future archaeozoological research will certainly help us to better understand the diet of the population in the Habsburg era.

The Imperial Propaganda and Medalistics. XVII-XVIII Centuries. The propaganda for official politics was an important issue. Literature and arts were used as propaganda means. Beyond the written word, the image succeeded in direct, strong transmission of the desired message. Thus art has become a very efficient propaganda tool. The propagandistic impact of the official painting caused the large numbers of medal issues dedicated to historical-celebrative themes by the House of Austria in the 17th – 18th Centuries.

Among the countries belonging to the Holy Crown of Saint Stephen in the 18th century, Hungary and Transylvania were governed as separate administrative units because Habsburg rulers did not unite the original state formation of integer Hungary that had been disintegrated in the 16th century. Therefore, the protestant churches had to cope with different situations in the Habsburg monarchy, among which this study focuses only on the Hungarian situation. In the Age of Enlightenment the Reformed Church had two centres of education in Hungary (Debrecen and Sárospatak), which achieved the college level, but did not reach the level of a university. Consequently, Western European universities had a highly significant role in the education of Calvinist intellectuals, as the Hungarian students could attain a university level education only at these institutions. The University of Basel was particularly important for Hungarian students in the 18th century because one third of the overall number of students consisted of only Hungarians at certain periods. Moreover, one could even observe a moderate competition among students arriving in Switzerland from the Debrecen and Sárospatak Colleges respectively, as the professors of both institutions lobbied for scholarships at Basel. This study pre-eminently investigates this process, while also examining the Hungarian relations of book publications in Basel.

Since the turn of 12th century, gradual civilization transformations, which also had significant impacts on house living conditions were observed in the area of Polish grounds. Fire places and furnaces of hypocaustum type came into use from 13th century, and from 14th century – tile stoves. The last mentioned, except for heating functions, served also as typical element of interior decoration, particularly from the moment of introducing stoves with flat tiles. First designers of this type of stove may have been recruited from builders and architects in later periods. All its construction process involved work of wood-carvers – makers of patrixes and moulds and potters of course – tile makers and stove builders.Rich gothic tiles ornamentation from the territories of Polish grounds was presented to us thanks to archaeological explorations, among the others, in: Jankowo Dolne, Jarocin, Gniezno. Motifs, as a rule, repeat the same thematic groups; tiles presenting coat of arms, religious elements and symbols, court life scenes, illustrating literary subjects, architectonic motifs, animals and plants. Similar elements can also be found in single and fragmentarily preserved polychrome of that period. Both – stoves and painting may have been a part of common iconographical program for interiors in residences and patriciate houses, which was supposed to be a kind of territorial, group and cultural membership manifestation.In Renaissance period, ornamentation and subjects of tile images changed. Exceptional objects of that time include, e.g. the stove designed for Wawel castle interior made at order of Sigismund I, placed in the apartments of Queen Elisabeth. In the reconstructed stove we identify portrait tiles of the old and young king, to manufacturing of which images of the kings: Casimir the Jagiellon and John I Albert served as models. Erecting such a stove, additionally decorated in the crown frieze with angles holding shields with the Eagle – the national symbol, and placing it in apartments designed for the Queen, could have been the homage for Queen the Mother from Sigismund’s part.Another example of a Renaissance stove expressing in this case political and religious matters can be a stove erected in Gdańsk Artus Court at the turn of 1545. Placing on tiles portraits of Catholic and Lutheran rulers depicted the situation of not only Gdańsk, but also a huge part of Europe under Habsburg Dynasty reigning.Next stove presenting by its ornaments current problems of 17th century is the reconstructed stove from Tykocin castle. Tiles obtained during excavations, decorated with family coat of arms of the starost Krzysztof Wiesiołowski and symbols displaying bravery, wealth and Christianity, refer directly to spiritual and intellectual culture of gentry sarmatism of 17th century Polish Republic.These few stove instants presented herein create the base for rather positive answer to the question placed in the article’s title, although they still require further research.

The doctrine of phrenology was at least as influential in the first half of the 19th century as psychoanalysis was in the first half of the 20th (1). The movement started with Franz Joseph Gall (1758–1828), a German-born physician, anatomist, and physiologist who lived in Paris. Phrenology had a major influence on science and society, and it pervaded various areas of culture (1). The doctrine’s rapid dissemination, its popularization, and its use in specialized phrenologists’ offices quickly caused it to be regarded as a typical example of pseudoscience and its practice as a form of charlatanism (2). However, Gall’s work proved important for the biological study of the mind in three ways. First, it was the origin of modern brain localization (3). Second, it established psychology as a biological science (4). Many contemporary psychiatrists used the doctrine even though they did not completely accept it, much in the way that many people today accept Freudian ideas and terminology without totally embracing psychoanalysis (5). And third, on a more general level, Gall’s work favored the emergence of a naturalistic approach to the study of man and played an important part in the development of evolutionist theories, anthropology, and sociology (4). It would not be much of an exaggeration to say that today no one remembers Gall the sage and neuroanatomist, but everyone knows him as a master of ceremonies and a phrenologist.

This chapter explores the contribution of Richard (Beau) Nash to the development of Bath (UK) as a major tourist centre. After a brief outline of his life, the chapter assesses Nash's reputation at the hands of his contemporaries, popular writers and historians. The context for Bath's tourism development in the first half of the 18th century is discussed, followed by a consideration of what Nash did, how he accomplished it and how enduring was his legacy. Nash's greatest effect on Bath's development was his influence on wealthy visitors and fostering demand for visiting Bath.