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Edited by
Kateřina Horníčková
LEXINGTON BOOKS
Lanham • Boulder • New York • London
Published by Lexington Books
An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706
www.rowman.com
This book (except the chapters by Szeghyová and Jakubec) is the product of research
undertaken with the financial support of the Czech Science Foundation grant Tváře
komunity. Obrazy, symboly a performance pozdně středověkého a raně novověkého
města (1400-1700) [Faces of Community in Central European Towns: Images, Symbols,
and Performances, 1400–1700], GAČR grant no. 14-25417S (PI Kateřina Horníčková).
The later phase of the work was inspired by and conducted within Special Research
Programme (SFB) 42 Visions of Community (VISCOM): Comparative Approaches
to Ethnicity, Region and Empire in Christianity, Islam and Buddhism (400-1600 CE),
funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF)(Project speaker: Walter Pohl). The editor
is particularly grateful to the members of the VISCOM sub-project “Social and Cultural
Communities across Medieval Monastic, Civic, and Courtly Cultures in High and Late
Medieval Central Europe” (PI Christina Lutter, University of Vienna) for inspiration,
feedback, and support.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any
electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems,
without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote
passages in a review.
v
vi Contents
Bibliography355
Index415
About the Contributors 427
List of Abbreviations
Archiv
Akademie
věd ČR Archiv Akademie věd České republiky
AV ČR Akademie věd České republiky
ČAV Česká Akademie věd
ČSAV Československá akademie věd
ICHT International Commission for the History of Towns
IMAREAL Institut für Realienkunde des Mittelalters und der
frühen Neuzeit, Krems
KLP Koniasch Latin Press
NLN or LN Nakladatelství Lidové Noviny
NPU Národní památkový ústav
SNKLHU Státní nakladatelství krásné literatury, hudby a umění
SPN Státní pedagogické nakladatelství
SÚRPMO Státní ústav pro rekonstrukci památkových měst a objektů
VEGA Vedecká grantová agentúra Ministerstva školstva,
vedy, výskumu a športu Slovenskej Republiky a
Slovenskej Akadémie Vied
vii
Introduction
To Be Seen: The Visual Aspect in
Urban Symbolic Communication
Kateřina Horníčková
symbolic communication, in spite of the fact that in many cases they can be
studied on objects still located in situ. Urban visual, material, and performa-
tive culture and the question of its functions in urban communication, social
identification, and representation has not figured prominently in research as
a main focus of study compared to text-based research, in spite of a growing
source base treated in microstudies of individual events or objects. Notable
exceptions to this situation are studies on the city imagination, panoramic
representation of towns (vedutas), and the structuring of public places with
“speaking architecture” (that is, architecture that explains its own function).2
It is no exaggeration to say that late medieval and early modern urban artis-
tic production in the towns of Central Europe has been underestimated until
recently by both historians, who were less interested in towns for their alleg-
edly limited real political impact, and by art historians, who often perceived
urban art as a weak and unoriginal reflection of more internationalized courtly
culture. The visual and material media of urban communication have there-
fore been little studied as independent phenomena or as sources of informa-
tion on urban life in its own right.
There is now general agreement among cultural historians and anthro-
pologists that images and objects each functioned as media in past societies.3
Architecture, sculpture, and images commissioned for urban contexts had
aesthetic value for the community, which is confirmed in texts of praise or
a lord’s regulations on the form and decoration of houses. The communica-
tive value of images and objects in bridging the past, present, and future was
important, binding the community together by articulating who belonged to it
and who did not and what the community’s standards or morals were. The late
medieval and early modern town can be seen as a sociocultural and concep-
tual entity formed by a system of political, sociocultural, and spatial relations
that were expressed and perpetually reassessed through symbolic communi-
cation. It thus becomes clear that such objects were of crucial importance in
reassessing visions of the communal notion of self.4 These material manifes-
tations had the symbolic potential to reiterate an ideal vision of an urban com-
munity, thus contributing to the social and cultural structuring of urban life,
internal cohesion, and collective identity, articulated by their public presence
in the urban space.5 Nowadays, this historical function6 is often effaced by
the objects’ museum contextualization and national heritage reinterpretations,
which respond more to the needs of contemporary local society and mass
tourism than the original contexts of urban communication.7
In the communicative processes constructing an urban community, seeing
played an important role. Families, corporate groups, and individuals—their
values and interests and relations—were made visible through monuments,
images, objects, symbols, and rituals, making medieval and early modern city
culture one of presence and visibility. Seeing and being seen were integral
Introduction xi
Map 0.1 Central European towns discussed in this book, map by Jiří K. Jurečka.
quantity of source material than is normally available for small towns. While
more weight in focus is given to towns in the Bohemian Lands, Bohemia
and Moravia, which are the subject of nine out of the thirteen studies (five
on Bohemia, four on Moravia), important contributions on various aspects of
visual communication come from Upper Hungary (one study) and the border
towns of Upper and Lower Austria (two studies).
NOTES
1. “Es gehörte zum Selbstverständnis dieser Städte und ihrer Bürger ihre Bedeu-
tung und politische Stellung nicht nur in Texten zu dokumentieren, sondern sich
auch in Bildern zu repräsentieren.” Quote taken from Lucas Burkart, “Die Stadt der
Bilder,” in Bild und Wahrnehmung der Stadt, ed. Peter Johanek (Vienna: Böhlau,
2012), 25 (written in 2005); Lucas Burkart, Die Stadt der Bilder. Familiale und
kommunale Bildinvestition im spätmittelalterlichen Verona (Munich: Wilhelm Fink,
2000).
2. Peter Johanek, ed., Bild und Wahrnehmung der Stadt, with his useful intro-
duction, 1–23, and with Burkart’s study from 2005; Jeffrey Chipps Smith, “Imag-
ing and Imagining Nuremberg,” in Topographies of the Early Modern City, eds.
Arthur Groos, Hans-Jochen Schiewer, and Markus Stock (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck
& Ruprecht, 2008), 17–41, distinguishing among “depiction,” “representation,” and
“imagination.” City views, public architecture, and literary representations of towns
Introduction xv
are among the few established fields in urban history studies where the study of visu-
ality is pursued substantially, see Peter Johanek, “Bild und Wahrnehmung der Stadt,”
in Bild und Wahrnehmung der Stadt, ed. Johanek, 15; Gerhard Jaritz, “Das Image
der spätmittelalterlichen Stadt. Zur Konstruktion und Vermittlung ihres äußeren
Erscheinungsbildes,” in Die Stadt als Kommunikationsraum, eds. Helmut Brenner
and Elke Schleukirch (Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2001), 471–479; for
Austria, Bohemia, and Hungary, see the contributions in Ferdinand Opll, ed., Bild und
Wahrnehmung der Stadt (Linz: Österreichische Arbeitskreis für Stadtgeschichtsforsc-
hung, 2004) (in particular contributions by Ferdinand Opll, Katalin Szende, Bernd
Roeck, Ralph Andraschek-Holzer, and Josef Žemlička). Studies in English have con-
tributed to the knowledge of architecture in late medieval Central European capitals
of the fourteenth century from the perspective of late medieval piety and religious
ritual, see, for example, Paul Crossley and Zoë Opačić, “Prague as a New Capital,” in
Prague: The Crown of Bohemia, 1347–1437, eds. Barbara Drake Boehm and Jiří Fajt
(New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art and New Haven: Yale University Press,
2005), 59–73.
3. Steffen Arndt and Andreas Hedwig, eds., Visualisierte Kommunikation im Mit-
telalter—Legitimation und Repräsentation (Marburg: Hessisches Staatsarchiv, 2010).
4. Anthony Cohen, The Symbolic Constructions of Identity (London: Routledge,
2001), available at Taylor & Francis e-Library, accessed July 17, 2017. On community,
see Christina Lutter, “Comparative Approaches to Visions of Community,” History
and Anthropology 26, no. 1 (2015): 129–143. DOI: 10.1080/02757206.2014.930738,
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02757206.2014.930738, accessed July
17, 2017.
5. The authors of the chapters here are using the open concept of the premodern
“public” as it was developed in relation to communication and media theories. Criti-
cal historiographic evaluation of Habermas’ concept of a “representative public” can
be found mainly in German historiography on the early modern era, which is, how-
ever, heavily politically and textually oriented (and also sociological), and omits the
role of visual culture, see Susanne Rau and Gerd Schwerhoff, “Öffentliche Räume
in der frühen Neuzeit,” in Zwischen Gotteshaus und Taverne. Öffentliche Räume in
Spätmittelalter und Früher Neuzeit (Cologne: Böhlau, 2004), 17–19, 20–23; Gerd
Schwerhoff, “Stadt und Öffentlichkeit in der frühen Neuzeit—Perspektiven der
Forschung,” in Stadt und Öffentlichkeit in der frühen Neuzeit, ed. Gerd Schwerhoff
(Cologne: Böhlau, 2011), 1–28, esp. 9–15, presence and social space (although too
political and text-oriented) 18, performative self-staging (Selbst-Inszenierung), 25.
For a closer definition see also the concepts of “fragmented public” (Teilöffentlich-
keiten), “thematically bound communication processes,” the “situative public,” and
broadly and topographically understood “networks” and “constellations” in this vol-
ume. For a more helpful concept of a spatial notion of “public,” see Pierre Monnet,
“Die Stadt, ein Ort der politischen Öffentlichkeit im Spätmittelalter?” in Politische
Öffentlichkeit im Spätmittelalter, eds. Martin Kitzinger and Bernd Schneidmüller
(Ostfildern: Jan Thorbecke, 2011), 329–359.
6. Any visual object is a source that points to a particular historical symbolic and
value system (for inspiration see the classic book by Michael Baxandall, Painting
xvi Introduction
and Experience in 15th Century Italy. A primer in the social history of pictorial style
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988). The relation between image and historical
meaning is complex (and manifested in iconology, cultural and social history, and
communication perspectives) and harks back to the specific nature of visual com-
munication in terms of historical documentation. An early reflection of this problem,
based on Panofsky’s method, can be found in Rainer Wohlfeil, “Methodische Reflex-
ionen zur Historischen Bildkunde,” in Historische Bildkunde. Probleme—Wege—
Beispiele, eds. Brigitte Tolkemit and Rainer Wohlfeil (Berlin: Duncker and Humblot,
1991), 17–35, esp. 27–31.
7. Critical assessment of the impact of modern care for monuments is rare in
urban centers in Central Europe. Socialist Czechoslovakia, for example, embarked
on selective projects to restore city centers from the 1950s through the 1980s. These
affected the visual faces of the town centers of the so-called Historical Urban Monu-
ment Reservations considerably. They received special legal status for the protection
of the urban cultural heritage, but, however, sometimes suffered from flamboyant and
picturesque façade and interior reconstructions inspired by modern aesthetic, idealis-
tic, and political visions of the past.
8. Klaus Schreiner, “Texte, Bilder, Rituale. Fragen und Erträge einer Sektion auf
dem Deutschen Historikertag (8.bis 11. September 1998),” in Bilder, Texte, Rituale.
Wirklichkeitbezug und Wirklichkeitskonstruktion politisch-rechtlicherKommunika-
tionsmedien in Stadt- und Adelgesellschaften des späten Mittelalters, eds. Klaus Sch-
reiner and Gabriella Signori (Berlin: Duncker und Humblot, 2000), 7.
9. The term is used by Susan Sonntag, “Against Interpretation,” in Against Inter-
pretation and Other Essays (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1966), 9 (quoted
here from Margaret Iversen and Stephen Melville, Writing Art History. Disciplinary
Departures (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 129).
10. Historians discovered urban ritual and its social implications earlier than other
forms of visual symbolic communication. It has been a well-established field since
the classical study by Edward Muir, Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1981). His early study on the locations of urban religious
images is particularly inspiring, see Edward Muir, “The Virgin on the Street Corner:
The Place of the Sacred in Italian Cities,” in Religion and Culture in Renaissance and
Reformation, ed. Stephen Ozment (Kirksville, MO: Sixteenth Century Journal Pub-
lishers, 1989), 25–40. On the staging aspect, see recently Iain Fenlon, The Ceremo-
nial City. History, Memory and Myth in Renaissance Venice (Yale: Yale University
Press, 2007).
11. Lucas Burkart, “Der visualisierte Code. Freunschaft, Verwandschaft und
kollektive Bildstiftung im spätmittelalterlichen Verona,” in Die Ästhetik des Unsi-
chbaren. Bildtheorie und Bildgebrauch in der Vormoderne, eds. David Ganz and
Thomas Lentes (Berlin: Reiner, 2004), 331–345.
12. Schreiner, “Texte, Bilder, Rituale,” 15. I conceive of the social body as an
entity constructed intentionally from memorial culture, see, e.g., Otto Gerhard Oexle,
Memoria als Kultur (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1995), and more recently
Michael Borgolte, Stiftung und Memoria (Berlin: Akademie, 2012), 78. For a dif-
ferent understanding of “medium” and “memory” from the perspective of image
Introduction xvii
anthropology, see Hans Belting, “Image, Medium and Body. A New Approach to
Iconology,” Critical Inquiry 31 (2005): 302–319, esp. 303–307.
13. On the spatial turn in urban studies, see Lukas Morscher, Martin Scheutz,
and Walter Schuster, “Der Ort in der Stadtgeschichte am Beispiel von Vergesell-
schaftung, Verkehr und Versorgung,” in Orte der Stadt im Wandel vom Mittelalter
zur Gegenwart: Treffpunkte, Verkehr und Fürsorge, eds. Lukas Morscher, Martin
Scheutz, and Walter Schuster (Innsbruck: Studien, 2013), 11–36, esp. 12–15. Topog-
raphy and the spatial layout of towns have meanwhile been studied extensively.
Inspirational, but with less attention to visual sources, is the volume by Michel Pauly
and Martin Scheutz, Cities and their Spaces. Concepts and their Use in Europe
(Cologne: Böhlau, 2014), with a helpful introduction by Michel Pauly; in the same
volume see also Martin Schutz, “Space and History as Exemplified by Urban His-
tory Research,” 17. A more visual notion of the term is used in Arthur Groos, Hans-
Jochen Schiewer, and Markus Stock, eds., Topographies of the Early Modern City
(Göttingen: V & R Unipress, 2008) (for visual material see in particular the contribu-
tions by Jeffrey Chipps Smith, Markus Stock, and Stuart M. Blumin), and Katalin
Szende, “Stadtgestalt und Raumordnung in der Städten im lateinischen Westen,”
in Städte im lateinischen Westen und in griechischen Osten zwischen Spätantike
und früher Neuzeit. Topographie—Recht—Religion, eds. Elisabeth Gruber, Mihailo
Popović, Martin Scheutz, and Herwig Weigl (Vienna: Böhlau, 2016), 97–121. The
most inspirational view on the relation between space and images is Burkart, Die
Stadt der Bilder, 128 (town as Kulisse [the setting, as in the theater]), 191 (town as
Bilderaum [“space of images,” which includes communication through them]).
14. Elsewhere, attention is given to the delineation of towns, gates, and piaz-
zas—see, e.g., Ferdinand Opll, “Trennen und Verbinden. Zur praktischen und sym-
bolischen Bedeutung des Stadttores,” in Orte der Stadt, 59–89; Bärbel Brodt, “Die
Stadtmauer als Vermittler zwischen Stadt und Land,” in Die Stadt und ihr Rand, ed.
Peter Johanek (Cologne: Böhlau, 2008), 1–17 (cf. other contributions in this volume);
Burkart, Die Stadt der Bilder, 128–149; Werner Freitag, “Städtisch Märkte in der
mittelalterlichen undfrühneuzeitlichen Stadt. Topographie, Funktionalität und sym-
bolische Kommunikation,” in Orte der Stadt, eds. Morscher et al., 39–58.
15. Otto Gerhard Oexle and Andrea von Hülsen-Esch, eds., Die Repräsentation
der Gruppen. Texte—Bilder—Objekte (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998)
(esp. the articles by Werner Paravicini, Klaus Krüger, and Andrea von Hülsen-Esch);
Oliver Schmitt, “Adressing Community in Late Medieval Dalmatia,” The Meaning of
Community across Eurasia. Comparative Approaches, eds. Eirik Hovden, Christina
Lutter, and Walter Pohl (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 125–126.
16. See a typology of urban rituals by André Krischer, “Rituale und politischen
Öffentlichkeit in der alten Stadt,” in Stadt und Öffentlichkeit in der frühen Neuzeit,
ed. Gerd Schwerhoff (Cologne: Böhlau, 2011), 125, 156–157, in which he points out
that rituals not only represent but also constitute political decision making; Fenlon,
The Ceremonial City.
17. This term is used by Gerd Althoff, “Demonstration und Inszenierung. Spielregeln
der Kommunikation in mittelalterlichen Öffentlichkeit,” Frühmitetlalterliche Studien
27 (1993): 27–50, retrieved August 2, 2017, from doi:10.1515/9783110242256.27a.
xviii Introduction
Towns in Neighboring
Regions (1400–1700)
Austria, Bohemia, Moravia,
and the Carpathian Basin
Elisabeth Gruber
The contributions in this volume deal with questions about the role of mate-
rial culture and its visibility as a medium of communication in the urban envi-
ronment of selected territories in East Central Europe as they were changing
socially, politically, economically, and religiously from the fourteenth to
seventeenth century. Where the spheres of influence of the territorial lords
of Austria, Bohemia, Moravia, and Hungary met, close and competitive rela-
tionships, border areas, and communication spaces all existed in conjunction
and necessitated one another. The focus is thus on a region where power
relationships were in competition over long periods. Despite the complexity
of the interconnections and dependencies, this chapter must necessarily be
brief and thus offer merely a first introduction to the tightly intertwined urban
landscapes of this region.1
Researching the processes of urban municipalities draws on a considerable
tradition of studying urban history. In order to highlight the significance of
medieval urban growth for the development of modern self-determination,
town histories written in the nineteenth century drew on people’s interest in
how people lived together in towns, how a town community functioned, and
how public life could ideally be regulated.2 Critical editions of municipal
registers and collections of last wills and testaments, collections of urban
documents, the compilation of town historiographies, museum collections,
and catalogs dedicated to issues of urban history resulted from this research
interest.3 Since then, urban historians in East Central Europe have concen-
trated on numerous aspects of urban life with different foci and pursued
1
2 Elisabeth Gruber
German or Czech and German comments. All three languages can be found,
for example, in the town registers of České Budějovice, Brno, Jihlava, and
Znojmo. During the Hussite religious movement in the fifteenth century there
was a shift in the town chanceries of Bohemia toward the use of Czech. This
had less effect in the towns of southern Bohemia, which largely remained tied
to the Catholic faith and continued to use Latin and German, and in Moravia.
Only with the growing influence of the Habsburg dynasty on the Kingdom
of Bohemia did the German-speaking component of the population increase
again from the middle of the sixteenth century in the towns of the Kingdom
of Bohemia; for example, in Prague, up to one-third of the residents spoke
German.8
In the Austrian Danube region, first the Babenberg dukes and then, from the
thirteenth century on, the Habsburg dukes, decisively promoted the expansion
of towns along the Danube and brought a large number of already existing
towns and market places under their rule. Securing the border region strate-
gically among Austria, Bohemia, Moravia, and Hungary was an important
aim throughout the entire medieval period. Thus, for instance, Bratislava’s
privileges were confirmed in a period of conflict between the Bohemian king
and the Austrian dukes over control of the Danube Valley.9 From a structural
perspective, the aim of securing control is quite visible in the large number
of towns that were subject directly to territorial lords, the duke or the king.
For example, the towns of Freistadt and Vienna owed allegiance directly to
the dukes of Austria while České Budějovice, Brno, Jihlava, Most, Olomouc,
Plzeň and Prague Old Town all belonged to the king of Bohemia.10 In Bohe-
mia and Moravia, the first towns were established in the thirteenth century,
mainly on the basis of settlement structures that had grown up around the cen-
trally located castles of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Here, too, until the
middle of the thirteenth century, places like Brno, Znojmo, Hradec Králové,
and Opava were issued royal city privileges and probably served to secure
the border. Similar constellations can be identified in Hungary, where during
the reign of Charles I in the early fourteenth century in particular, a growing
number of locations on the periphery were granted privileges, and privileges
granted earlier merely had to be renewed for strategically important locations
such as the towns in the Zips region.11
The integration of merchants or skilled workers not from the place and
usually foreign played an important role in establishing an urban community
in many Central European towns. Although legally speaking someone could
only be recognized as a burgher who had attained burgher rights by proving
he owned real estate in the town, hospites (guests) were integrated into urban
society due to their economic importance and accorded rights that otherwise
were only granted to citizens resident there. The economic development of
towns thanks to regional and foreign trade, mining, and craft production
4 Elisabeth Gruber
strengthened the groups of people who were active in those fields. Merchants
and representatives of the luxury trades likewise were frequently found in the
town councils, working in the town court and administration, and represent-
ing the citizens of the town abroad.
Another significant factor in the urban development in this region was the
development of mining.12 In order to access the deposits of precious metals,
Bohemian, Moravian, and Hungarian towns recruited increased numbers of
skilled workers from the mining areas in Saxony from the mid-fourteenth
century on. This resulted in economic and political booms in towns like
Jihlava, Kutná Hora, Kremnica, and Levoča. The copper mines of Upper
Hungarian (today Slovakia) counted among the largest European mines of
the Middle Ages. Toward the end of the fourteenth century, great Augsburg
merchant dynasties (the Fuggers, the Welsers) took over the mining and trade
in precious metals. Gold was the most important; the amount of gold mined
in the Carpathian Basin exceeded all other European gold-mining areas.
The coining of Hungarian gold guilders from 1325 on had a material impact
on monetary transactions north of the Alps. Due to their role in the mining
and sale of Hungarian precious metals, the middle and east Slovakian towns
held a special position. Between the fourteenth and sixteenth century about
25 percent to 40 percent of European silver production and about 80 percent
of European gold production came from Hungarian mines. This economic
basis in turn had a substantial influence on urban development in the Carpath-
ian Basin. The political right of self-administration, the right to hold a market,
exemption from toll and customs’ duties, and the development of a separate
town law along the lines of Jihlava, the Bohemian mining center, were all
approved by the Hungarian king. In return, he was able to finance a large part
of his household from the income accrued from the mining towns.
In the dukedom of Austria, too, many towns, such as Enns, Freistadt, Linz,
Steyr, and Krems, had the mining industry to thank for their economic booms.
Salt and iron ore were mined in Styria; iron and salt as well as luxury goods
from the North Italian harbors were transported over the Alps and further
along the Danube to areas where they were traded in Bohemia, Moravia,
Poland, and Russia. Bohemia and Moravia as well as the rest of the Holy
Roman Empire up to the North Sea, Baltic Sea, and the eastern Danube lands,
as well as Venice, were also the most important sales markets for the Styr-
ian iron mined in the northern part of the Erzberg mine in Styria (Austria).13
The town of Steyr was the main location for the iron trade, with correspond-
ing trading privileges; the towns of Krems, Freistadt, and Vienna took on
the greatest importance in the area of Austria for intermediate trade.14 This
also resulted in economic growth for the area north of the Danube. Munici-
pal toll registers, insolvency procedures, and inventories of inherited estates
document intensive trade traffic among Austrian, Bohemian, Moravian, and
Towns in Neighboring Regions 5
Hungarian towns to cater to the regional and extra-regional demand for raw
materials such as iron, wood, salt, and wine in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries. The central transport vein was the Danube.15 Despite all the early
modern conflicts and crises, rough estimates of population numbers—insofar
as there is data available—indicate a slow increase in the urban population
for the entire Central European area. There was growth in the towns in par-
ticular, above all from the end of the seventeenth century. Linz, for example,
prospered increasingly from the end of the fifteenth century as the provincial
capital of the “ob der Enns” (the region above the Enns River), the popula-
tion grew from 2,500 around 1500 to 4,500 around 1750. In the same period,
towns like Brno and Kutná Hora saw growth from 5,000 to 12,000–15,000
inhabitants.16
Town enterprises were of great importance for local supplies in the towns
and their surroundings. What trades were established in towns can be deter-
mined in many cases from guild privileges, town privileges, town rules, and
last wills and testaments. For example, in Český Krumlov guild papers show
that butchers and linen weavers were present from the mid-fifteenth century;
in many other cases records are only available from the sixteenth century on.
In the regions north of the Danube and in Southern Bohemia the textile manu-
facturing trades such as weavers, linen weavers, tailors, and dyers were partic-
ularly widespread and specialized, as were also the leather-working industries
such as tanners and shoemakers. With the establishment of beer brewing in
Bohemia, the malting trade became an important branch of production.17
The economic aspect of urban life was not only visible in the trading prem-
ises and shops in the townscape, but also in the form of images, symbols,
and ceremonies in the urban space. Craftspeople and tradespeople were not
only visible in the light of their production and sales’ activity but also in the
organization and operations of their professional organizations, the guilds.
They were not only major elements in the economics of urban society, but
also in religious communication. By shared devotions and assemblies at cer-
tain altars, church processions (on Corpus Christi feast, for example), or to
celebrate the guild’s patron saint’s day or by the entries of their members in
so-called confraternity registers, the various trade associations were a mani-
fest presence in urban life. In particular, their affiliated identity was expressed
by symbolic and ritual acts, for example, at the funerals of members and
benefactors. This is attested by numerous confraternities in the Austrian,
Bohemian, Moravian, and Upper Hungarian towns of both the Middle Ages
and the early modern period.18
At the beginning of the fifteenth century, the teachings of theologian and
reformer Jan Hus exerted increasing influence on all areas of social, eco-
nomic, and political life in the Kingdom of Bohemia and consequently also
impacted the neighboring regions of Austria and Hungary.19 In his sermons,
6 Elisabeth Gruber
Jan Hus criticized, among other things, the material wealth of clerics,
demanded fundamental reform of the Roman Catholic Church, and objected to
the distribution of indulgences. The call to celebrate the Eucharist sub utraque
specie, that is, in both kinds, made administering wine from the chalice to
laypeople at communion the most important symbol of the movement. As a
recognized theologian and sometime rector of Charles University (founded in
Prague in 1348), Hus’s ideas found great resonance in large parts of Bohemia
and Moravia, but were completely rejected by the Church. At the Council of
Constance (1414–1418), where he was ultimately called on to state his posi-
tion, he did not retract his teachings. His execution in 1415 triggered a series of
riots and verbal and military conflicts which led to the so-called Hussite wars
(1419–1434). Chronicles proved to be an important medium to spread the new
ideas. The “Hussite Chronicle” of Laurentius von Březová (d. after 1437), for
example, describes the events of the years 1414 to 1421 from the moderate
Hussite perspective of a rich, university-educated citizen of Prague, a member
of the lesser aristocracy who worked in the administration of Prague. It is
assumed that he was a notary in the New Town of Prague chancery.20
It eventually took a compromise to end the conflict and the more moder-
ate Hussites (called Utraquists) found political recognition. Not only were
the ecclesiastical and aristocratic figures of Bohemia and Moravia materially
affected, but the towns particularly were affected. When towns adopted the
Hussite party some residents refused to join, creating political and religious
upheavals that resulted in the flight or expulsion of town citizens who refused
to convert to the new faith. Often these were wealthy German-speaking citi-
zens of the towns who were involved in international trade.21 In the border
regions, in contrast, the Catholic-oriented royal towns functioned as links
between the Hussite interior and Catholic countries abroad. In 1424, for
example, the town council of České Budějovice was granted the right to con-
centrate the wine trade under its control and thus to monopolize the import
of an important trade good in economic exchanges with Austria. The same
applied to the west Bohemian town of Plzeň, which likewise was able to build
on its position as a trading partner for precious metals.22 Nonetheless, the
towns of most affected regions suffered during the military conflicts, which
they had to finance, as well as being subject to numerous political and social
restrictions. Noticeable economic stabilization began only toward the end of
the fifteenth century. The regions surrounding Bohemia and Moravia also
suffered, sometimes substantially, as a result of these conflicts, and there,
too, it took until the end of the century for the political situation to stabilize.
Various structural changes and their social, political, and cultural effects
between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, such as the Reformation
and Counter-Reformation, the influence of the Habsburg monarchy on the
Bohemian lands, and changing global conditions, such as the discovery of
Towns in Neighboring Regions 7
the Americas had a lasting impact on the towns of East Central Europe.23
Whereas the establishment of towns in the middle and late medieval period
served to secure dominion and stabilize political interests, this changed in
early modern times. Many towns lost their political influence and in many
cases their importance was reduced to supplying regional markets.24
Nonetheless, a large number of Bohemian towns were able to preserve
their multidenominational character and developed different models for
denominational coexistence within the town. The influence of the education
system should not be underestimated. Numerous schools established for the
various denominations meant there was active engagement with denomina-
tional diversity. Thus, in the towns of Prague at the end of the sixteenth cen-
tury there were seventeen Latin schools, one Utraquist university (Collegium
Carolinum), and one Jesuit third-level college (Collegium Clementinum).25
This not only helped to secure the organizational aspects of the denomina-
tions, but also to establish its position in the town and confirm this position
in relation to the ruler. How the respective denominations were able to assert
their positions depended heavily on control within the sphere of power asso-
ciated with the town administration.26 As denominational differences grew at
the turn of the seventeenth century, so did religious-political tensions within
town communities. In České Budějovice, South Bohemia, for example, the
majority of inhabitants belonged to the Catholic Church both during the
time of the Hussite conflicts and under the influence of the Reformation, but
members of the Utraquist denomination were accepted with equal rights.
With increasing anti-Reformation sentiments, the multidenominational coex-
istence that had been so easy-going for so long was restricted step by step.
The Catholic town administration of České Budějovice resolved to deny non-
Catholics full citizenship rights, including the right to participate actively in
the town council, to stop Utraquist christenings and weddings, and ultimately
to prohibit Utraquist burials in the town cemetery.27
The linguistic, cultural, political, and economic profile of the towns in
Central Europe changed considerably in the course of the early modern
period. Economic stagnation, the religious-political upheaval of the Counter-
Reformation, and the associated emigration of Protestant citizens weakened
the economy and in this context the opportunities for towns to influence
political events suffered. The greatest changes, however, were brought by the
Counter-Reformation itself and the accompanying military conflicts. While
at the end of the sixteenth century Emperor Maximilian II had approved free-
dom of religion in the lands of the Habsburg monarchy, including Upper and
Lower Austria and later also Bohemia, which made it possible for Protestant
churches and school systems to be set up, this policy ended with the traumatic
experience of the Battle of White Mountain in 1620, which the Catholics
won. Maximilian’s successors, first Matthias and then Ferdinand II (who had
8 Elisabeth Gruber
now served the expansion of the rulers’ power. The (Protestant) royal free cit-
ies of Upper Hungary were an exception; they were largely able to preserve
their status until the second half of the seventeenth century.32
During the late medieval and early modern period, urban communities in
the neighboring regions of Austria, Bohemia, Moravia, and the Carpathian
Basin were constantly challenged by external and internal forces—chang-
ing political, economic, and religious trends in the social environment. Each
town had to work out for itself a modus vivendi as a community in order to
achieve and maintain a sustainable communal coherence. It was important
to conceive, build, and represent the town as a stable and united community
that provided its citizens with a secure place to live and sufficient resources.
Urban communities promoted internal cohesion by applying varying ideal
models of communal life that were reiterated in various forms of symbolic
communication in urban space. Seen from this perspective, a wide range of
urban phenomena from the building of town halls, securing town privileges,
making political decisions, taking legal measures to protect and manage com-
munal foundations, fostering commemorative festivities and local memorial
practices, decorating public buildings, commissioning artworks and monu-
ments, and keeping archival records were all meaningful indications of the
process of building communities and adapting identities in towns of this
region in Central Europe.
NOTES
1. Detailed descriptions of the respective aspects and issues are available for
almost all the regional contexts mentioned. For a comparative approach, see, for
example, Jaroslav Miller, Urban Societies in East-Central-Europe 1500–1700
(Ashgate: Aldershot, 2008); for the historical regions of Bohemia and Moravia, see
Město v převratech konfesionalizace v 15. až 18. století, stati a rozšířené příspěvky
z 31. vědecké konference Archivu hlavního města Prahy, uspořádané ve spolupráci
s Historickým ústavem Akademie věd ČR, v. v. i., a Institutem mezinárodních studií
Fakulty sociálních věd Univerzity Karlovy ve dnech 9. a 10. října 2012 v Clam-
Gallasově paláci v Praze, ed. Olga Fejtová (Prague: Scriptorium, 2014), with English
abstracts; for an overview of the Hungarian towns, see Pál Engel, The Realm of St.
Stephen. A History of Medieval Hungary, 895–1526 (London: I. B. Tauris, 2001),
esp. 244–266, and for the Austrian Danube region, see Peter Csendes, “Urban Devel-
opment and Decline on the Central Danube, 100–1600,” in Towns in Decline, AD
100–1600, ed. Terry R. Salter (Ashgate: Aldershot, 2000), 137–153.
2. Klaus Schreiner, “Die Stadt des Mittelalters als Faktor bürgerlicher Identitäts-
bildung. Zur Gegenwärtigkeit des mittelalterlichen Stadtbürgertums im historisch-
politischen Bewußtsein des 18., 19. und beginnenden 20. Jahrhunderts,” in Stadt im
Wandel. Kunst und Kultur des Bürgertums in Norddeutschland 1150–1650, vol. 4, ed.
Cord Meckseper (Stuttgart: Cantz, 1985), 517.
10 Elisabeth Gruber
Kopautin rintaani.
»Niin että hän tietää nyt vihdoinkin», jatkoin kuten ennen, »että
hänen tilansa on paljon huolestuttavampi, ja aikoo viipyä sairaalassa
muutamia päiviä, kunnes on täysin tointunut. Voinhan sillä aikaa
ottaa toisessa kerroksessa pihan puolella olevan huoneen, joka oli
naisilla.»
Viimeiset sanat lausuin teeskennellyllä välinpitämättömyydellä,
ilman että olisin silmääkään räpäyttänyt, vaikka vapisin sisällisesti,
sillä panin niillä sanoilla kaikki peliin. Mutta jo seuraavana hetkenä
hengitin keveämmin. Huomasin, että olin osunut maaliin ja että
heidän epäluulonsa katosi.
Nyökkäsin miettiväisenä.
»Kun he ensin tulivat tänne, kuusi viikkoa sitten, niin oli hän aivan
terve. Mutta sitten hänen äitinsä sai jonkun paikan ja muutti pois; ja
sen perästä hän ei mennyt koskaan ulos, vaan istui täällä ja itki tai
ravisteli ovia ja ikkunoita. Hänen veljensä oli aivan epätoivoinen
hänen suhteensa — hän ei antanut kenenkään muun hoitaa häntä.
Mutta toivoakseni hän on nyt jo terve, lapsi raukka, sillä nyt hän on
äitinsä luona taas.
Nyökkäsin hänelle.
»Niin, sir.»
Matkalla
Viittasin hänelle, että kun kaikki kävi ympäri, niin menestykseni oli
vain sattuman tulos. Jos olisin todellakin ollut terävä-älyinen, niin
olisin heti ymmärtänyt tuon asemasillalla tapahtuneen äkillisen
sairastumisen merkityksen, kiiruhtanut takaisin paikalle ja seurannut
Martignya — kuten häntä vielä ajatuksissani kutsuin — sairaalaan
hankkiakseni mahdollisesti hänen alkuperäisen osoitteensa. Jos
sallimus ei olisi suosinut minua, niin olisin ollut yhtä kaukana
arvoituksen ratkaisusta kuin ennen. Minä ihan värisin ajatellessani,
miten heikosta langasta voittoni oli riippunut.
Kun nyt muistelen noita sanoja, tuntuu minusta siltä kuin en olisi
ollut aivan vähän narrimainen ja itseeni luottava; mutta kun katsoo
tulosta… No niin, missään tapauksessa ei päällikölläni ollut halua
nauraa, vaan hän istui muutamien silmänräpäysten ajan syviin
ajatuksiin vaipuneena.
Jenkinson hymyili.