Encyclopedia of Early Modern History Online

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The paddock-system (paddock, a piece of fenced-in land) is a variant of ley farming with individual fenced fields. Several years of grain production are followed by several years of pasturage (Pastoral economy). The system developed around 1600 in eastern Holstein or southeastern Schleswig [1. 308, 368, 407–409]. The dominant land use system in most of Schleswig and Holstein had traditionally been ley farming: grain and other field crops were grown for several years, followed by several years of pasturage. In the late Middle Ages, bes…

1. ConceptThe category of paganism, highly influential in religious history, emerged from a discourse of definition in anthropology and theology. The Latin  paganus may reflect the socioreligious conditions of late Greco-Roman antiquity, distinguishing “city-dwellers” ( urbani) who converted to Christianity at an early date from “country-dwellers” ( pagani) who held to the old religion.“Heathen,” synonymous with “pagan” but deriving from a Germanic root (German  Heide; OHG  heidan; OE hæðen), translated the sense of the Greek ethnikós (“belonging to a[nother] people”…

1. DefinitionPain (from Latin  poena via Old French  peine; German  Schmerz from OHG  smerza/ smerzo and MHG  smerze/ smerz; Greek  álgos; Latin  dolor, acerbitas) is a complex sensory perception; as an acute event, it serves as a warning sign and guidepost, but chronic pain has lost this element. An early modern synonym of  Schmerz is Pein (from OHG  pîna and MHG  pîne/ pîn, from Latin  poena, “penance, punishment”; cf. English  pain), usually associated with punishment, torture, torment, and so on (cf. German  peinliche Befragung, “painful inquiry,” i.e. torture). In an…

See Painting | Work, female

1. DefinitionPainting is applying an artistic design to a surface with a pigmented coating. The commonest substrates are specially prepared wooden panels (panel painting) and textiles (usually stretched), walls and ceilings in architectural spaces, occasionally also parchment and paper (especially in book illustration), more rarely metal or stone (Wall painting). Painting also plays an important part in many fields of crafts. Adding color to a sculpture by painting produces what is known as a col…

1. Tempera For tempera painting (from Latin  temperare, “to temper,” “to mix”), artists used pigments bound in an emulsion of aqueous (e.g. animal glue) and non-aqueous (e.g. drying oil) binders. An emulsifier ensures a lasting emulsion. Where the emulsion consists mostly of a drying oil, this is called a tempera grassa (“fat tempera”), while one comprising mostly the aqueous component is called  tempera magra (“thin tempera”). Tempera paints dry matt and consistent and are thus water-resistant. Tempera painting is one of the oldest painting techniques. T…

s. Magnate

1. Definition and terminological historyCurrent in almost all major European languages for many centuries (OF palais, MHG  palas, Spanish  palacio, Italian palazzo etc.), the word “palace” is usually taken to derive from the Palatine ( mons Palatinus), the hill of Rome on which the residences of the Roman emperors stood. Except in the case of the Italian  palazzo, however, its meaning remained vague. In the 16th century, for instance, a French palais was called an hôtel. The German use of  Palais and English “palace” often refers to a castle, even occurring in their off…

1. Introduction The palace eunuch was a long tradition in China, probably dating back as far as the 8th century BCE, even though castration was contrary to the religious principle intrinsic to ancestor worship - securing the succession of generations by producing heirs. Appointing palace eunuchs in the Chinese Empire was therefore a practice strictly confined to the imperial court. The eunuchs’ central task was serving the women of the imperial harem. Over the course of time, however, t…

s. Palace

s. Palace

See Fossil

1. ConceptPalingenesis (Greek palingenesía, Latin  renascentia, German  Wiedergeburt, literally “rebirth”) in the early modern period was mostly the Christian metaphor for the (singular) process of a spiritual birth of a person comparable to their physical birth, that is, second birth, a prerequisite for eternal life. The origins of the concept in Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus (Jo 3) were remembered, and like the Pauline formula of “new creation,” it was from the outset associated with the act of …

The term “Palladianism” derives from the name of the Italian architect Andrea Palladio. In the second half of the 16th century, Palladio designed many villas for the Venetian elite, and together with his treatise  I quattro libri dell'architettura (“The Four Books on Architecture”), written in 1570, these exerted an influence without parallel in architectural history [5] (Architectural theory). The stylistic principles of Palladianism were: (1) rational geometric proportions in ground plan and elevation; (2) clearly defined building structure; (…

Pallamaglio was one of the most popular ball games of the early modern period, along with real tennis, the racquet game played with a small ball (French  jeu de paume; German  kaetsspiel; ancestor of modern tennis), the handball game pallone, played with a large, inflated ball, and soccer (Football). It was a game of striking a ball (Italian  palla) with a wooden mallet ( maglio). It required a very long, straight playing area, with an iron goal at the end. The aim was to hit the ball into the goal with as few strokes as possible. The Italian term was ad…

1. ConceptA pamphlet (French pamphlet) was a short tract that focused on a social, particularly political or religious issue and argued a position pro or contra, or that pursued a demagogic purpose in a polemical way. In some European languages, notably German ( Pamphlet), the word developed a pejorative connotation, arising from the “contempt or at least indifference” of such works to the persons named in them, and such a connotation was already present in the early modern period. On the whole, however, it was used in the late Middle …

See Printed ephemra

1. Concept and ideological basisPan-Americanism was a precursor of the worldwide “pan” movements, which arose in the European context towards the end of the 19th century as highly aggressive variants of popular nationalism [3]. Like the later “pan” movements in Africa and Asia, Pan-Americanism was already characterized by an anticolonialist direction and a geographical conception that went beyond the confines of the nation-state [2]; [13] (on Eastern Europe cf. Pan-Slavism).The origins of Pan-Americanism lay in the discussions of the character of the Americas…

1. Definition Pandectics or  pandectistics is a collective term for the 19th-century German study of Roman civil law based almost exclusively on the ancient Roman legal sources – the pandects or digests ( Corpus iuris civilis; see Ius commune) of Justinian (Roman law, studies of). The German Historical School prior to 1848, which is often included, had other philosophical and religious premises and a different methodological program.The differences are clearly expressed in R. von Jhering’s 1856 manifesto, in which he dismissed the central demand of the Hi…

1. DefinitionThe term panegyric has two senses, which causes a degree of confusion. On the one hand, it refers to certain rhetorical and literary traditions of Greek and Roman antiquity and their later reception. On the other, it operates retrospectively as a general term for rhetorical and poetic texts, works of art, and musical compositions of encomiastic (honorific) character.Martin Disselkamp2. LiteratureIn ancient Greece, the  panegyrikós was primarily a festival, celebratory address that offered the speaker an opportunity to demonstrate all registers o…

On June 19, 1787, the Irish portraitist and miniaturist Robert Barker patented an invention that he called “ la nature à coup d'oeil,” “nature at a glance” [2]. The patent describes a mimetic image, applied to the interior of a rotunda made for the purpose, which even when lit indirectly from above appears so true to life as to be taken for reality. Further heightening the illusionistic effect, Barker’s viewer would approach a roofed platform via a darkened passageway. This would enforce a specific distance from the pic…

1. Historical backgroundThe anti-Enlightenment philosopher of history Giambattista Vico declared in the first quarter of the 18th century that the mythopoetic cultural products dating from the beginnings of each nation’s history were the foundation of all cultures, which were subject by divine providence to cyclical processes of growth and decay. Johann Gottfried Herder added to this idea the analogy between peoples and individuals. Entire peoples too, he argued, possessed an individual nature, ex…

The term pansophism (from Greek  pan, “all,” “whole”; sophía, “wisdom,” “knowledge”), which essentially means universal wisdom or universal knowledge, was probably used for the first time in 1616 in a collection containing documents of the Rosicrucian movement. The word and the program of universal knowledge it stands for fit seamlessly into the terminological and intellectual movements of that historical period. First, in the flood of Greek and Latin neologisms coined, words with the prefix  pan- were very popular; the Humanist and critic of Aristotelianism Fran…

Models of religious philosophy are called pantheistic (from Greek pan, “all”;  theós, “god”) when they posit the relationship between God and the world in terms of a unity of all things (Religion, philosophy of). A transcendental creator god (Transcendence/immanence) gives way to an immanent world principle, and the theistic view of God as a personal, sovereign counterpart to the world is abandoned in favor of that of a divine principle that pervades the world and is expressed in it. During the Enlightenm…

1. History 1.1. Antiquity and Middle Ages 1.1.1. Claim and characterCiting the quotation attributed to Christ, “Thou art Peter [Greek Pétros, “rock”], and upon this rock I will build my church” (Mt 16,18), the papacy saw itself as an institution founded by Jesus Christ, in which the implicit seniority of Peter among the group of the Apostles was perpetuated in the form of a hierarchical supreme head of the Roman Catholic Church, equipped with exclusive powers. Seen in terms of historical development, however, this …

See Papacy

1. OriginThe invention of paper is traditionally ascribed to the Chinese court official Cai Lun in the year 105 CE. Despite justified doubts regarding this account, the Chinese origin of paper is undisputed. With the unification of the Chinese kingdoms, the Qin Dynasty (221–207 BCE) had established extensive bureaucratic government and increased trade; the ancient writing materials (strips of wood or bamboo and silk) faced new challenges. Discoveries of paper-like materials dating from the period…

See Almanack

In the early modern period, besides banknotes, which are promissory notes of the bank of issue, there was another form of paper money, so-called government paper money. Either this was issued by the state and given a compulsory rate as legal tender, or the state obligated itself to accept the money at the treasury at face value for certain payments such as taxes. Since the states frequently used this means of funding – for instance for financing war (War, financing of) – there was a danger of pa…

1. Definition and formsToday a parable (from Greek  parabolḗ, “comparison,” “simile”; Latin  parabola/ e) is generally thought of as a short narrative that conveys metaphorically encoded insights into life. In biblical studies as well as literary studies and rhetoric, the term is also used for a second form type: a rhetorical and stylistic textual element embodying a graphic comparsion. This parable consists of an image and its interpretation; the latter can be presented explicity or concealed (a two-part or…

1. Concept and theory 1.1. IntroductionParacelsism on the one hand denotes the theories in natural history, hermetic alchemy/chemistry, medicine, philosophy, and theology of the physician and naturalist Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim (called Paracelsus, 1493-1541) [2], and on the other the reception of those theories from the late 16th to early 18th centuries (see below, 2. and 3.) by a group of authors in various disciplines, most of them physicians sympathetic to alchemy and followers of heterodox forms of Protestantism…

See Afterlife | Heaven

1. Concept Paragone (Italian; “comparison”, “contrast”; from the Greek  agṓn, “contest”) in art history is the term for the contest among the fine arts that was informed by Humanism. On the one hand, the term denotes the rivalry between art, literature (especially poetry), and music, and on the other the contest for primacy among the various forms of art themselves that took account of their differences, opportunities, and limitations.The  paragone was fought out primarily during the Renaissance in Italy, and thereafter until the 19th century on the level of l…

1. OriginsParchment is made by dehairing and drying the skins of various animals, and has since ancient times been used as a writing material. Ancient authors (e.g. Pliny the Elder, Naturalis historia 13,70) report that Eumenes II of Pergamum in the 2nd century BCE reacted to the lack of papyrus while he was assembling his library by “inventing” parchment. The earliest surviving documents written on parchment, however, date only from the 3rd century BCE, in the region of the Euphrates.From their introduction in the early 4th century CE, parchment codices (with sheets st…

The phrase  parental love can mean both the love of parents for their children and the love of children for their parents [3]. In all cultures, both meanings have powerful religious and moral overtones; in the European context, since antiquity they have been the object of religious and educational reflection. Like the term  parents, the term  parental love was initially little used in the first centuries of the early modern period. People spoke instead of the love of mother and father. It is clear, however, that both parents could and should equ…

1. IntroductionParental rights and obligations today are understood to be the rights and duties of a mother and father, who are equally entitled to take responsibility for the care and upbringing of their non-adult children, that is, to provide for their full physical, spiritual, ethical, and religious development and their property. Parental rights in this sense were still unknown in the early modern period.Developments of the early modern period primarily centered around the final detachment of parental rights from the concept of the comprehensive legal…

1. TerminologyHistorically the German word Eltern (“parents”) is a nominalized comparative of  alt (“old”); it appears in all West Germanic languages as a designation of an individual’s direct progenitors (cf. Eng. one’s “elders”). Eltern is related to Latin  alere (“nourish, raise”) and means roughly “adult” [15. 16 f., 164]. Another European term, which in English takes the form  parents, is derived from Latin  parere (“bear, give birth to”). In the course of time, however, the Latin noun  parentes acquired a broader semantic range, no longer meaning just par…

1. IntroductionParity indicates the equal treatment of interest groups under the law, in a historical context, specifically the treatment of different religious confessions in the states, countries, and communities. After beginnings in the Middle Ages – such as the coexistence of Christians, Muslims, and Jews in the Crusader States (ca. 1100 – ca. 1300) – parity became a current issue especially after the religious Reformation in the early 16th century: now it was about the co-existence of differ…

1. DefinitionThe word “park” (German Park, French  parc, etc.) derives from the Middle Latin  parricus (“enclosed area”). In its original sense, it denoted an enclosure for wild animals. Zedler’s lexicon expands the definition to include components characteristic of its period, such as avenues and open squares. The  Allgemeine deutsche Real-Encyclopädie für die gebildeten Stände defines it as “a large area of ground enclosed with walls or palisades in order to keep something within the space, e.g. requisite military equipment in a field camp. At…

1. TerminologyBefore the early modern period, the term parliament (medieval Latin parlamentum, from French  parler or Italian  parlare, “speak”) was in common use, but its meaning is hard to pin down. In the Middle Ages it could refer to a multiplicity of diverse assemblies convened to debate political and legal issues, with substantial regional differences. In the narrower sense,  parliament was used to denote the regular conversations between the ruler and the magnates of his kingdom or delegated representatives of political or religious bodies (im…

1. Literature 1.1. DefinitionEver since the term first arose, in Greek antiquity (Greek:  parōdίa, “parallel/side song”; French  parodie; German  Parodie), its meaning in the various European literatures has diverged, both in regard to the particular relationship of the parody to the original (affirmative, playful, critical) and in comparison with related writing strategies (travesty; burlesque; mock-epic; pastiche;  Kontrafaktur [contrafaction], etc.). Until the early modern period, the word tended to be used in the context of a non-polemical concept of  imitatio and …

See Rural inheritance practice

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1. Definition and proliferation Particular law is the name given to sources of law that were valid only in a specific thematic or geographic area ( ius patriae, i.e. native customary law), where they competed with  ius commune derived from Roman law. The designation of a source of law as “particular” became important as a means of differentiating such laws from ius commune. A plethora of particular laws were in force in early modern Europe, from long-established customs to municipal law and territorial law. Despite the reception of ius commune, “a scarcely conceivable pluralism…

1. Origin of the termIn the 18th century, the leader of a small-scale body of troops, a “party” (French  parti), was called a partisan. The term referred to military leaders of both regular troops and irregulars. The appearance of partisans was associated primarily with petty warfare. This covered a broad spectrum of activities apart from the closed formations of the standing army, including the employment of troops apart from the bulk of the army for surprise attacks, ambushes, and raids as well as to protect encampments and marches (Warfare; typical of the period [1]; [4. 79–93]). Fr…

See Poland, Partitions of

Territorial partition in the broad sense means partition of all territorial sovereignty; in the narrow sense, it means partition of the territorial sovereignty (Authority) of the type that was shared by the territorial sovereign (Territorial sovereignty [Holy Roman Empire]) and the territorial estates on the basis of territorial law. Both types are rooted in the view of sovereign rights inherited equally by multiple heirs, derived from medieval inheritance law. Absent other provisions, they cons…