Benedict Kišdy (Kisdy, Kisdi, Kischdy), bishop of Eger and an important fi gure in the recatholicization of north-eastern Hungary, is one of the most important fi gures in the history of Košice in the early modern period. Kišdy’s most memorable activity was the founding of the University of Košice, which had a longterm impact on the cultural and intellectual development of the city beyond the fi rst intention of its founder, i.e. recatholicization. The present study analyses the place of Kišdy in historiography from the time of the Jesuits and the possibilities of using the biographical method in the case of Benedict Kišdy. An important role in Kišdy’s life was played by his attitude towards Peter Pázmaň, Jesuits and Franciscans. The theoretical question of Kišdy’s place among the most important personalities in the history of Košice is raised, which is partly answered by the still vivid commemoration and places of remembrance connected with Kišdy.

The text concentrates on the interpretation of “free time” during the initial years of the twentieth century, and the role of motor vehicles as a “means of its consumption” within leisure activities is signifi cant. However, the use of cars and motorcycles in leisure time was strictly determined by the specifi c economic and cultural conditions of interwar Czechoslovakia, particularly in the territory of Slovakia. Socio-economic barriers limited such activities to the upper and, in the case of motorcycles, middle classes. At the same time, leisure motoring was strongly linked with a novel form of tourism that was highly organized in interwar Czechoslovakia (particularly in Slovakia). Within this context, the association emerges as a recreational entity, fostering distinct connections and a collective identity. However, the process was signifi cantly infl uenced by the politicization of organised free-time activities. Examining the role of cars and motorcycles in leisure activities during the researched period, the analysis will consider the defi nitions of free time and how these vehicles were utilized in their social and cultural context, specifi cally through the example of the activities of the Autoclub Košice. The presented text draws on previously published studies and the author’s monograph, as well as recent works and additional sources. Positioning this within the context of the historical-sociological discourse on leisure activities alongside the “consumption” of goods and experiences off ers novel insights into the functioning of motoring associations in Slovakia, particularly in Košice. The Autoclub Košice is identifi ed as a prominent organization that signifi cantly impacted the local rise of motor tourism, sports and general recreational tourism in the observed period.

A particularly understudied topic concerning the medieval city of Košice in the Hungarian kingdom is the development and size of its suburbs. Only a few historians have dealt with this issue so far, as most of the research attention has focused on the walled area. In the course of the current preparatory work on the Historical Atlas of Košice, it has therefore become necessary to explore this issue much more comprehensively than hitherto. The author of this study re-identifi es the location of individual suburban streets and adjacent religious buildings and defi nes their legal relationship to the city. Based on fragmentary tax registers, he also attempts to determine the number of taxpayers and inhabitants outside the city walls.v

Using the example of Nuremberg, the study follows the attempt to use imperial cities for the purpose of the pope and the Roman Curia to unseat the Utraquist George of Poděbrady from the Bohemian throne and launch a new crusade against the Czechs. It analyses their position as military powers and, to a lesser extent, intelligence centres, and shows the composition of city councils and their eff orts to maintain independent political progress. URL: https://www.upjs.sk/filozoficka-fakulta/katedra-historie/10984/

The article focuses on the specifi c legal status of statutory towns in Austria from the restoration of constitutionalism in 1860 to the end of the monarchy and on the peculiarities of their administration. Special attention is paid to their method of selecting representatives since the mayors of the statutory towns were subject to the approval of the government and the emperor. The article examines the impact of the confi rmation process on the selection of mayors, and to what extent and in what manner the government exercised its option to exclude certain elected individuals from the leadership of the statutory cities. It shows the changes in the approach of the government after the 1870s and concludes in stating the ineffi ciency of this tool. URL: https://www.upjs.sk/filozoficka-fakulta/katedra-historie/10984/

Before the establishment of Czechoslovakia, a small community of Greek Catholics lived in Prague. Mostly they were soldiers, but after the First World War, Greek Catholic believers from the east of the republic began to move to the new metropolis and their numbers grew both in the city and in the Czech lands. Belonging to a religious denomination motivated them to associate and form a Greek Catholic parish as an offi cial branch of the church. The small community added to the colourful mosaic of the religious and cultural life of the town. This study examines the eff orts to formalize the parish and presents the involvement of local church members in religious, cultural and charitable areas. The positive development taking place between 1918 and 1938 was disrupted by political changes in the Central European area. The consequences of the rise of Nazism and Communism, which marked the lives of both priests and individual believers, are illustrated through the example of a small community. Their fates are intertwined with those of the Czechoslovak Republic and the Greek Catholic Church.

This study deals with communications between the town of Bardejov and bishops in the Middle Ages. The author examines how the ecclesiastical power and authority of the bishops was demonstrated in their communications with the royal city of Bardejov. The bishops’ power toward medieval towns in the Kingdom of Hungary was primarily manifested in the tithes and exemptions granted in the rights of archdeacons. In the case of Bardejov, there can be found some areas where the power of bishops of Eger (frequently represented by episcopal vicars) was demonstrated. First of all, the episcopal tithe collection caused permanent disputes between the parish priest, town representatives and the bishop. The author describes how the problems were solved and the machinery of episcopal powers in these cases. Another area of communication and the manifestation of episcopal authority was that of judicial cases between burghers, which were occasionally brought before ecclesiastical court contrary to town law. A further, greatly signifi cant manifestation of episcopal power in the area of the city was that of ecclesiastical rituals and symbolic communication. The study mentions various examples of episcopal presence in the consecration of churches, chapels, altars and liturgical dress.

The study deals with the issue of commercial education in Austrian Silesia in the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It specifi cally focuses on schools oriented this way in the East Silesian centre of Cieszyn (Teschen), whose development is placed in the context of more general trends in the development of Silesian and pre-Austrian commercial education. It primarily focuses on the circumstances of the emergence of schools and their composition, organization, curriculum content and students. The study aims to assess to what extent Cieszyn fulfi lled the role of an alternative centre for commercial education in Silesia during the observed period alongside the provincial capital of Opava, and to what extent the signifi cance of local educational institutions crossed provincial borders and benefi ted the population of the southern regions of neighbouring Galicia.

Disciplination of the population in the medieval and early modern city may have been complicated by the presence of an alien element, which in the bourgeois environment was the nobility. In many cases, the nobility was able to acquire town houses and sometimes even managed to have them exempted from the jurisdiction of the municipal authorities and registered in the land tables. Be that as it may, these houses constituted legal enclaves of their kind. The study examines the legal conditions of these enclaves against the background of the legal developments in the Kingdom of Bohemia and Margraviate of Moravia in the fourteenth–seventeenth centuries and tries both to summarize the existing knowledge and to draw attention to some better though lesser-known sources that document this issue. URL: https://www.upjs.sk/filozoficka-fakulta/katedra-historie/10984/

The development of many settlements was not only determined by regional and economic factors, but could rely on a quite different motivation, when it was firmly tied to an important magnate family, for whom the town would become a residential and memorial environment. This was, of course, linked not only to the construction of a representative family residence, but also to the appertaining ecclesiastical centre, which usually functioned in the already existing, older local church. Therefore, in our study we will take a closer look not only at the settlement of Pezinok itself and its military guard, toll and market functions, but also at the formation of its ecclesiastical centre – the parish and the Parish Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary – because the factor of the magnate’s residence gave it a distinct position in the territory of the Bratislava Provostry. Pezinok was already of considerable importance in Great Moravian times, as it was a settlement situated in the immediate vicinity of a strategic pass through the Little Carpathians. It was this location that resulted in the fact that even after the establishment of the Kingdom of Hungary, its importance was preserved and by the eleventh century at the latest, a Hungarian guard garrison settled here, in the vicinity of an older Slavic settlement with a market and toll function. The settlement situation and archaeological findings make it possible to express the opinion that there must have been a sacral building here already at this time, which survived until the major rebuilding in the fourteenth century. From 1207 Pezinok became the property of the noble Hont-Poznan family, the ancestors of the local counts. After being settled by a German population, it developed towards urban agglomeration, as a result of which it has been called a town since the fifteenth century. Throughout the period, its parish church was an important centre of the settlement.