Encyclopedia of Early Modern History Online

1. Concept and terms The modern German term for abandoned settlements, Wüstungen (from 14th century wustunge), relates to both abandoned settlements and abandoned agricultural areas [8. 113]. In order to cover the variety of instances of abandonment, the concept has been refined and broadened since the early days of scholarly research in the mid-19th century. Cases of abandonment are thus distinguished into abandoned villages and abandoned cadastral areas villages and abandoned cadastral areas, according to the element…

See Foundling hospital

See Forced migration | Serfdom | Slave abduction

See Allgemeines Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch

See Private sphere

1. Concept and origins of the movement Abolition (from Latin abolitio) refers to the process that brought modern slavery to an end, and the initiatives and movements associated with it. The term was first used in this specific sense around the mid-18th century in Britain and North America, and at first it primarily referred to the abolition of the slave trade. In general, it was Britain that gave the lead in abolition, having dominated the transatlantic slave trade for centuries and profited the most from…

During the Enlightenment, the concepts of freedom and equality, rooted in natural law together with the conviction that slavery was contrary to Christian teaching, led to increasing criticism of the slave trade in Western Europe. In  North America,  Quaker groups founded abolitionist societies in Philadelphia, New York, and other cities beginning in 1775. The 1780s saw the establishment of the first such societies in Great Britain. There, too, the central role of nonconformist Protestant movemen…

See Pregnancy, termination of

The expression “absolute music,” which was probably first used in 1846, has been as successful as it is vague. The term seems succinct, but from what the music is actually to be “detached” (i.e. “absolute”) is generally not specified. While it may be argued that the primary intent was to establish the independence of music from everything incidental to the notes – for instance functional contexts in liturgie (see also Worship), courtly representation and dance, the depiction of particular affect…

1. Term The term “absolutismˮ denotes firstly the form of government of the increasingly centralized early modern princely state, and secondly the epoch from the early 17th to the late 18th century (Age of Absolutism) that was dominated by such princely states, a constitutive foundation of modern Europe. Like the term Ancien Régime (“Former Regimeˮ), it originated in journalistic discourse of the French Revolution (1789) and indicates, likewise with a delimitative and pejorative bias, “absoluteˮ sovereign monarchy as despotic rule. The slogan gai…

See Degree, academic

See Disciplines, academic

See Discipline, academic

In its original sense, academic freedom meant the rights of a university as a corporation and the privileges its members derived from them. It was based on an imperial privilege from 1158 ( Authentica habita) that granted scholars free choice of legal venue at their place of study ( libertas scholastica). Initially limited to students in Bologna, because these measures were adopted in papal and imperial university privileges, they came to exert lasting influence on the development of the status of all university members. In 1540, on the basis of ius commune and the customary law of…

1. Introduction Academic prizes were important discursive instruments of the Enlightenment. With their association with publicity, authority, and the systematic organization of knowledge (Knowledge, organization of) in the service of public information (Knowledge), they represent (even more than knowledge media such as the periodical and encyclopedia, vital then as now) the most typical hallmark of the Enlightenment public sphere.Taking up the Humanist tradition in which learned societies crowned poets (e.g. the Viennese Collegium poetarum atque …

See Degree, academic | Knowledge systems beyond Europe

See Degree, academic

The development of formative public institutions was a central element in the history of the modern period. Next to the university, the academy as an institution played a fundamental role in the organization of knowledge and culture.  1. Concept In 387 BC, Plato had acquired a house in a cultural complex north-west of Athens, named after the Attic hero Akademos, for his philosophical school, to which the sanctuary with gymnasium, gardens, and cult sites gave its name, Akadḗmeia. Although a structured establishment with scholarch, “elders”, and “disciples”, it had no cu…

1. Introduction The emergence of the Academy of Arts is closely connected with the development of art theory and of artists’ view of themselves in the Renaissance [10]. Art, which had been merely an artisanal skill, now became, as it was enriched with knowledge through the study of nature and the formative principles of art in proportion theory, perspective, anatomical studies, and the rediscovery of Antiquity in writings, images, and architecture, a scholarly discipline. This process had its roots in Humanism and 16th-c…

See Social acceleration

1. Concept and terms The German term for accident,  Unfall (Middle High German unval, ungeval; compare chance; French  accident) means an unforeseen event or misadventure, generally relating to personal injury or material damage, and also military defeats as well as the special life and death circumstances of “famous men,” as for instance in the 1570 German translation of Giovanni Boccaccio’s De casibus virorum illustrium (orig. 1356-1373) by Hieronymus Ziegler as merckliche und erschröckliche unfahl . verderben unnd Sterben großmächtiger Kayser (“noteworthy and shockin…

Acclimatization is defined today as the introduction of non-native wild animals and plants, and the process by which they are habituated to new, climatically alien surroundings, enabling them to breed there. The term refers both to a technique used by humans for centuries and to a process that occurs in nature [4. VII]; [5. 71]. It has also come to be used of people in medicine, especially tropical and colonial medicine [3]. A theoretical foundation for acclimatization in biology was only established in the modern period, and the precise definition of terminology a…

See Living conditions, urban | Public house | Residential construction

See Coin of account

See Bookkeeping | Bookkeeping, double-entry | Trading book

See Cultural contact, global | Global interaction

See Capital market | Capital mobility | Capital, accumulation of

See Inquisition, trial by

1. Terminology and history As commonly understood, an acid is a substance, usually liquid, that has a sour taste and a caustic effect. The basis of the modern chemical definition of acids goes back to the Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius, who defined acids in 1887 as substances that produce protons or hydrogen ions (H+) when added to water and bases (alkalis) as substances that produce hydroxyl ions (OH--). The term alkali derives from the Arabic word for sodium carbonate (Na2CO3), called  nitron (Greek) or  nitrum (Latin) by classical authors. This name was later applied to…

This term was devised by Max Weber to define an urban typology already discernible in the Middle Ages on the basis of certain economic and social characteristics. An Ackerbürgerstadt was a town in the legal-historical sense, thus a settlement possessing urban rights; but its inhabitants, besides pursuing crafts and trades or earning their livelihood as suppliers of services, were engaged in agriculture to a considerable extent. Critical for inclusion in this category of town is the extent of that agricultural involvement. …

The Enzyklopädie der Neuzeit was published in full in 2012, complete with its 15th and final volume and the concluding index. Thanks to remarkable efforts on the part of all concerned, it has been possible, since the first editorial meetings in 2002 and the publication of the first volume in May 2005, to complete in an astonishingly short time a project that, as we hoped, illuminates the early modern period in a quite new way, and that will prove a lasting influence on future scholarship and teachi…

1. Introduction The development of acoustics (originally the science of sound and its perception) is closely related to music theory, philosophy, and the practical expertise of musicians, instrument makers, and experimentally-minded natural philosophies (Astronomy, cosmography). It represented a testing ground for the alliance of the free and mechanical arts (Artes liberales , Artes mechanicae), for new experimental arrangements and semiotic methods (pulse protocol, frequency diagram, logarithm ta…

1. Ancient tradition As in other areas of scholarship, Renaissance views of sound owed much to the works of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Aristotle, the Roman architect and engineer Vitruvius, and the Roman philosopher Boethius all postulated that the propagation of sound was analogous to waves undulating through water (Hydrodynamics). Early modern theories of sound were often linked to music theory (see also Acoustics). Scholars at universities therefore also sought to explain the phenomenon of sound and its perception.Myles Jackson 2. Music and theory o…

In 1682, Otto Mencke, professor of philosophy at Leipzig, published the first German scholarly journal under the title Acta eruditorum (Periodical). It contained notices, summaries, and reviews of new publications in all areas of science. Acta eruditorum appeared monthly, but was provided with an Index auctorum ac rerum at the end of each year and thus was bound into annual volumes. From 1689 on, supplement volumes were published to expand the coverage [8]. After Otto Mencke’s death, Acta eruditorum was first carried on by his son Johann Burkhard Mencke [10], and then by his grands…

1. Term From the 18th century on, the expression Schauspieler/in in German referred to professional theater performers. Older terms, such as Acteur or Comödiant (Comedian players), were subsequently systematically suppressed. The lexicographer of the day, Johann Christoph Adelung, for instance, denounced both as superfluous loan-words or as pejorative. Peter W. Marx 2. The first phase: 1450-1700 Performers in medieval plays were mostly amateurs or Latin scholars. The beginnings of professional acting in Europe can be observed in Italy from around t…

1. Concept The term addiction (from the Latin addictus, “dedicated/devoted [to a thing]”) was originally a neutral equivalent to “penchant” or “inclination,” before acquiring its modern sense of inner compulsion in the context of opium in the 19th century. The German equivalent, Sucht (from the Gothic  saühts, etymologically related to the English “sick”) is found in glossaries dating back to around the 8th century, and lexicographic evidence shows it to have two fundamental senses up to the 19th century. Originally, it referred to outward…

In modern and traditional societies, address is an important element of social interaction. “Address” in this context means the spoken reference to a conversational partner. Forms of address are the various linguistic expressions that serve the process of address. In German, these include pronouns, forenames, surnames, titles, and professional and kinship terms.Address in the early modern period and since has also included, as a practice associated with rules of convention, specific gestures, e.g. kissing a lady’s hand, bowing, the polite doffin…

The doctrine of adiaphora, developed primarily in early modern Protestantism, dealt which human conduct in the sphere of what is permitted – i.e. neither commanded nor prohibited by (divine) law; hence Greek  adiáphora, Latin  res indifferentes, English  things indifferent, German  Mitteldinge. The notion of adiaphora has its roots in Stoic ethics, where the sources happiness (eudaimonia) to be sought – for example riches or poverty, health or sickness – were considered indifferent. Medieval moral philosophy and theology examined …

See Local administration | Local authority | Military administration | Mining administration | Government | Urban administration

See County seat

An administrative judiciary ( Administrativjustiz) is the court-like review of measures taken by the police or the government outside the ordinary judiciary in the 19th century. Its roots lie in the  gute Policey (“good public order”) of the 18th century, whereby Policey cases were decided by Policey-Collegien, the so-called cameral judiciary (see Kameralprozess) After the administrative reforms at the beginning of the 19th century, the duties of gute Policey were assumed by the government. The administrative judiciary now consisted of court-like judicial i…

The term “administrative jurisdiction” ( Verwaltungsgerichtsbarkeit) does not appear in the sources until 1848. Although it is essentially only a Germanization of the Latinate expression  Administrativjustiz (administrative judiciary), common in the pre-1848 period, administrative jurisdiction describes something fundamentally different: while the former term indicates the oversight of the actions of administrative authorities by other administrative authorities, true administrative jurisdiction exists only when this co…

1. Definition and origins Administrative law encompasses the principles “that govern the actions of the public administration” but also regulates relations between the administration (Government) and citizens and thus establishes “the rights and duties of the citizen” with respect to the administration [9. 37].Modern administrative law “was shaped by the basic conditions of early constitutionalism” [14. 240]. Its fundamental concept is inseparably tied to the principle of the rule of law, i.e., the idea that the state is by all means bound to th…

1. Origin and development The term adoption derives from Lat. adoptio; it denotes the establishment of a parent-child relationship as a legal fiction: kinship (Family) is based not on biological descent but on a formal legal act between the adopter and the adoptee. Adoption in the Roman legal sense was taken up and studied in the European countries north of the Alps in the period when Roman law was borrowed (Reception of ius commune), but the legal institution of adoption was not universally incorporated into and implemented in the laws codified on the basis of Ro…

1. Basic principles Adoption is one of the oldest legal institutions and indicates the artificial creation of a parent-child relationship, which is described as Annahme an Kindesstatt (“accepting in the place of a child”) in the Prussian  Allgemeines Landrecht. The legal history of adoption is relatively well known, thanks to the sources available, but a social and cultural history of adoption remains to be written, although adoption has been deeply rooted in social life since Antiquity and has significantly influenced the social, …

1. The act Normally in the modern period, the act of adultery could be committed by both married women and married men. Under criminal (see below 2) and civil law (see below 3) alike, adultery had consequences that might vary both regionally and between men and women. The understanding of the act in the modern period was marked by Christian conceptions. Married men and women alike might commit adultery if they infringed their obligations of loyalty arising from the marriage sacrament (Marriage) by having sexual intercourse outside marriage [6]; [2]; [1]. This conception of adultery…

The term adventure novel was only coined in the 1870s, at around the same time in Romance medieval studies as the definition of 13th-15th century French “courtly romances,” and replacing the older term Abenteurerroman. A comparative study of the terminological history to examine subtleties and transformations in the terms used in the field of adventure literature remains to be made. In the strict sense, the term adventure today is understood above all to refer to the novel of the 19th century that belonged to the tradition of J…

1. Goods The purpose of advertising today is, as a rule, to communicate information about a specific product to a particular target group, with a view to motivating that group to purchase that product. The advertising message conveyed may depend on spoken, written, or graphic media. At the instrumental level, the term refers to the various considerations entered into and measures employed to communicate the supplier’s offer to potential consumers.Advertising in the pre-industrial age served only to deliver information about craftsmen or announcements of functions…

See Mimesis

1. General In the modern period, theoretical reflections and experiments devoted to flight were flanked by reports of supposed or actual aerial voyages, which could serve as a narrative framework for the presentation of scientific observations or a social utopia. They reflected the cosmological notions of the period and—especially in the era of the Scientific Revolution—the transition from the geocentric to the Copernican model of the world (Copernican Revolution) or from Aristotelian physics to the world view of Giordano Brunos and Isaac Newtons [3]. With the progress …