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