Encyclopedia of Early Modern History Online

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1. Origins and scope The legal system of Baden, which became a grand duchy upon joining the Confederation of the Rhine in 1806, was highly fragmented on account of successive expansions of its original territory since 1803 (see also  Reichsdeputationshauptschluss). New efforts to construct a unified state were complemented by the goal of creating a “general” national law for Baden - a Badisches Landrecht - which would both be a modern summary of existing civil law and promote the new national identity of Baden. Badisches Landrecht was originally the name for the reforms of the  Landre…

A bailiff (German: Gerichtsvollzieher) in his capacity as a court official is responsible for  enforcing the decisions and writs of execution of a court of law. The existence of the office depends on two fundamental decisions of the legal order. On the one hand, the office of the bailiff is an expression of the state’s monopoly on violence. Private individuals, in particular the victorious party in litigation, may not enforce their rights personally; only the state power - personified by the bailif…

1. Occupation The key elements of the baking trade were already in place by the 15th century: the occupational and social corporations, the form of business and organization of work, access to and qualification for the trade, production techniques, and official quality control [5]. Some of these structures spread to smaller communities and villages on the model of the larger towns, through official policey orders, and via itinerant traders (Tramping, journeymen). The crucial function of the baking trade in distributing the staple foods…

1. Terminology and method The balance of payments is a measure of the financial and commercial transactions between one country and others; it is an important tool for identifying and assessing global interrelations and interactions. It is subdivided into sub-balances for commodities trade; the services provided by banks, dispatches and payment transactions; and asset transfers and capital flow. In modern national economies, the balance of payments also includes changes in the balance of the central bank. While the balance of payments must always be balanced per definition…

1. Definition Concepts of powers or forces in balance were found in the early modern period in many spheres of life, e.g. economics (balance of trade), medicine (balance of humors), philosophy (balance of passions), physiology (nutritional balance, kinematics), astronomy (balance of attraction and repulsion), and politics (balance of power). This wide range is reflected in the German terminological history. The German Gleichgewicht (“balanceˮ, “equilibriumˮ) as a translation of the Latin  aequilibritas and similar terms, did not appear before the 16th century, …

The ballad is a genre of relatively short narrative verse texts, usually rhymed and often strophic, sometimes with refrains. A narrative generally presents an unusual occurrence in a teleological structure. This presentation may be serious, humorous, or ironic, and this superficial mode of presentation may contrast with the implicit purpose of the account. Although there are specific generic schemata of interpretation (e.g. moral instruction) that may encourage the reader to analyse the narrativ…

1. Concept Ballet is the general term for the form of display dance, or stage dance, that was typical of early modern Europe from the late 16th century, as distinct from non-theatrical forms of dance, such as cultic, social, or popular dance. The historical development of ballet unfolded in the context of the history of European musical theater (primarily courtly). In terms of the history of material, form, and style alike, it was closely connected with the key genre of the musical theater, opera,…

1. Educational ideal From the Renaissance on, Humanist pedagogues attempted to associate the love of ball games with ancient traditions (e.g. Galen), but the modern term derives not from the Latin pila but from the Germanic  ball (Italian  palla). Humanist teachers and princes’ tutors of the 15th century, like Vittorino da Feltre and Guarino da Verona, ennobled the ball game by placing it alongside equestrian exercises. Baldassare Castiglione’s Courtier ( Cortegiano, 1528) admitted it to the Olympus of noble education. Ball games went to the heart of the ed…

Ballistics (the science of the behavior of projectiles) was one of the disciplines that played a key role in the emergence of the new science of the 16th and 17th centuries. It provided both a motivation and one of the trickiest applications for mechanics as a mathematical science of motion. It was also related, not always straightforwardly, with early modern weaponry and artillery.Two concepts of the motion of a projectile were in competition. First, it was possible to see the phenomenon as the motion of a body through a continuous medium. Alternativel…

The invention of balloon flight and experimentation with it caused a worldwide sensation at the end of the 18th century; it broke with attempts to imitate the flight of birds (Aviatics) and relied instead on new scientific knowledge of Aeronautics based on a gas “lighter than air.” Besides demonstrating the physical principle, the the first hot-air balloon ascent by the brothers Joseph and Etienne Montgolfier on June 5, 1783, in Annonay, near Lyon, produced extraordinary fascination with the ost…

See Baltic trade | Dominium maris Baltici

1. Overview In the early modern period, several of the most traveled maritime routes passed through the Baltic (Trade territory). The Baltic rim provided goods that were inherently scarce in Western Europe: grain, construction timber (wood), and building materials like tar and pitch, flax, potash, iron and copper (see also Eastern European economy). Most of the grain was shipped from Danzig (Gdansk) and other ports on the southern Baltic coast, while copper and iron came primarily from Sweden; tim…

See Constitutio Criminalis Carolina

The word “ban” (German Bann) has a wide range of meanings in both ecclesiastical and secular usage; here we exclude the ecclesiastical sense of Anathema. Essentially the word means a “command” or “order” in general. A ban was a command reinforced by a sanction: if it was not obeyed, the ban penalty (frequently called simply a ban) would be imposed.  1. Middle Ages The ban as an authoritative command first appears in early medieval sources as a royal ban, and that was the focus of earlier studies [4. 121]. The structure and substance of feudal authority below the level of the ki…

See Robber band

1. Terminology and origins The term banishment describes forms of coercion that force individuals or groups to leave their present abode; their destination may be prescribed or not (Forced migration). Unlike exile, in the early modern period the term referred not only to expulsion from one’s homeland but also to geographical exclusion that in principle could end up anywhere. Usually—though not always—banishment was associated with violation of sovereign boundaries. Over the course of early modern hist…

1. Early modern period The term bank goes back to Middle Latin bancus, which is the term for a money-changer’s table ( bancherii). Key features of bank activity are the granting of credit (with the help of property and investment capital), payment on behalf of creditors, and exchange. It was only in the course of the late Middle Ages that various categories of banking formed in Italy: international merchant-bankers, local exchangers and bankers as well as pawnlenders (Middle class). Out of these there developed such institutions as public exchange banks and the pawnbrokers ( monti di …

The term Bänkelsäng, first encountered in the 1730 work of Johann Christoph Gottsched, refers to a form of public singing performance which (as “street-ballad”) spread throughout Europe from the early 17th century onwards, flourished in the 19th century and continues to be performed in a number of European countries, such as Italy [3], to the present day. The German term derives from the small bench ( Bänkel) on which the street singers stood, so as to be better seen and heard, during their appearances at annual markets and fairs, in public houses and in front…

See Bank | Middle class | Private banker

Banknotes in the form of slips of paper or bank slips were not means of payment in the Early Modern period but simply a promise of payment by the bank that had brought them into circulation. They became popular in the mid-17th century when the London goldsmiths first offered a wide range of modern banking services. Merchants and aristocratic landowners maintained an account with the goldsmith, which they used both for overdraft credit and for transfers.The so-called goldsmith bankers discounted bills of exchange, IOUs and state papers (Discount), i.e. they cashed cred…

All credit institutions that issue banknotes are called banks of issue. A special form of bank of issue is the central bank or central bank of issue, which, as protector of the currency in a currency realm, possesses a monopoly on the issuing of bank notes and functions as a reserve bank (banks’ bank).The earliest banks of issue were run in the 17th century by the London goldsmith bankers, who issued deposit certificates and later “goldsmith notes” for their customers’ deposits. Since in general fewer notes were redeemed than issued, the goldsmit…

1. Concept Bankruptcy is a special form of compulsory execution (Legal enforcement) which takes place when several creditors have financial claims against a debtor. A feature of bankruptcy is that the creditors form an association and are given satisfaction by receiving a share in the debtor’s assets. When the assets are over-committed, each creditor receives only a partial amount of his or her original claim. This type of procedure developed gradually in Europe, starting in the 13th century, in t…

See Bannmeile

The Bannmeile was an area surrounding a town or city in which trade or commerce was forbidden or regulated through local laws. As opposed to the Europe-wide concept of the staple, the Bannmeile in the German lands (and the equivalent  banlieue in France) was primarily designed to secure local supply. The institution of the  Bannmeile reached its zenith between the 15th and 17th centuries, before waning in importance as territorial mercantilism took hold. From the Late Middle Ages, Bannmeilen increasingly regulated exercise of the market right, permission to conduct…

See Sacrament

1. England The Baptist movement emerged among English refugees (Refugees of conscience) who followed the Congregationalist constitutional model of the Puritan (Puritanism) Robert Browne (1550-1633) and had fled to Holland in 1607 on account of their “non-conformist” stance that diverged from the Church of England (Anglicanism). Here they met Mennonites (Anabaptists) under whose influence they introduced believers’ baptism. In 1609 the leader John Smyth baptized himself (which he later regretted) a…

1. Concept This term, already used by Homer, became a key term in cultural critique from the 14th century onwards. Used polemically, it meant anyone who ignored the values, demands and representatives of humanist education, or indeed opposed them ( Bildung; Humanism), or anyone whose social claims to power did not appear legitimated by a corresponding openness to Early Modern culture and to urban forms of social intercourse. There was special polemical force in the accusation of being a barbarian, precisely because of the variety of …

See Bathkeeper

The bardic poetry of the early modern period is viewed as part of a tradition which has its origins in the poetry of Celtic court singers (Old Irish: baird; Welsh: bardd). The term Bardendichtung is used for German poetic composition around 1765-1775 which sought to revive this poetry, understood as “Old Germanic,” generally in epic and lyrical forms. National cultural efforts were realized in bardic poetry, which tried to match the great poets of antiquity with an equally noble Nordic culture. In the German-speaking realm two …

1. Terminology Time in the context of music theory means the grouping of a defined, in principle either even or odd number of beats in a unit of time, which since the 17th century has been marked visually by a bar line. It is very closely connected with rhythm, providing the stable basic framework for its individual elaboration, and comprises at least one up-beat and one down-beat (Metrics). The grouping of beats in a bar thus forms a central element of division and structure in the pro…

See Knight

1. Introduction The term Baroque defines an era within the early modern period perceived by scholarly consensus in terms of its specific aesthetic and cultural characteristics in the spheres of art, literature, and music. It is therefore not a term drawn from the era itself (as were, for instance, Renaissance, Enlightenment, and Romanticism), but a retrospective chronological and thematic construction of scholars seeking to characterize works of art, literature, and music and their particular desi…

1. Definition Neither in general use nor among scholars is there any agreement on the meaning of the term Baroque achitecture. In one sense, it can refer to architecture of the period known as the Baroque (between approx. 1580/1600 and 1770). In this usage, it includes buildings differing greatly in style and displaying characteristics not only of the Baroque but also of phenomena of Late Gothic, Baroque Gothic, Palladianism (e.g. Inigo Jones, Jakob van Campen), French Classicism (Classicism, Neoc…

1. Term The Baroque Gothic is a phenomenon of 17th/18th-century European architecture, especially sacred architecture, that is also indicated by the ambiguous terms “Late Gothic” or “Neo-Gothic”. Essentially it comprises the quantitative and qualitative high-point of a more general tendency that is perhaps most accurately described as “Gothic in Vitruvianism,” i.e. the intentional use of building type, basic elements, and modes of design of Gothic architecture in the Renaissance and Baroque, often…

Barracks are areas of residential and other buildings used for military purposes and to a greater or lesser extent demarcated from their surroundings, with access usually regulated and monitored. The concept in most European languages is given by a loan word from the French caserne, which probably originally meant a guard room housing four soldiers (from Latin quaderna). Other possible derivations  include a corruption of the Italian casa d’arma (“house of armsˮ) or the Spanish  caserna (“spacious houseˮ). Besides barracks, English also used terms such as “campˮ and “fortˮ.In the…

1. Genesis and spread From the beginning, barricades functioned as an extreme tool of popular domestic political opposition to military coercion by the Supreme power. The concept and the name barricade originated in France in the late 16th century. On May 12th, 1588, when the Catholic League prevented the arrest of its leader Charles de Guise in by troops of King Henry III by kettling hostile cavalry between street obstacles made of iron chains, barrels, and paving stones, the day entered history (Pierre de l’Estoile) as the first journée des barricades (“Day of the Barricades”). Co…

See Leges fundamentales | Reichsgrundgesetze

See Illegitimacy

1. Absolutist prison and political myth The French word bastille originally meant any fortification consisting of a circuit of several towers connected by walls. One such bastille was that built in Paris between 1370 and 1382. This generic term only became a significant and particular name, indeed a catchword, from the time when Richelieu started (ca. 1627) to use the Bastille in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine in Paris, not to guard the city, but as a prison in which the government could incarcerate suspects indefinitely without trial and without specifying why, with the authority of royal l…

Bathing in the early modern period belongs in the context of ideas about Health. People went to the bath-house to wash, but it was above all a place for social contact, and sometimes a practical venue for meeting prostitutes (Prostitution; Bathkeeper). People did swim, but this was rare and regarded as somewhat eccentric behavior. Continental courtesy books, such as Faret’s Honnête homme, honnête femme and Castiglione’s Cortegiano (see also Conduct literature) do list swimming as an acceptable leisure activity, but without particularly recommending it. Britis…

1. Bathkeepers as providers of an early “wellness culture” Bathing became popular in medieval Europe under the influence of cultural encounters (via Crusades and long-distance trade). Urbanization brought the establishment of public baths, at first in towns (e.g. Fulda, mid-12th century), then in the country (14th century). These establishments were run, either as leaseholder or proprietor, by a bathkeeper (German Bader, Badstover, Badstübner; Latin balneator; French étuviste, baigneur) [10]. To begin with, the profession was also open to women. The public bath [2], housed i…

1. From the bath-house to the thermal spring The decline of the medieval urban bathing culture and the souring of its reputation probably came about primarily because of the rapid spread of syphilis from the late 15th century In many places, this led to the closure of town bath-houses (Bathkeeper), which were held to be dangerous reservoirs of infection (Illness). As this was happening, however, rising timber prices stimulated by increasing construction in towns and the growth of mining, which consumed …

See Navy

See Historical painting

1. Early modern term and job description Originally, a beadle (Old English bydel  from beodan, 'to proclaim'; Old High German  poto, putil; Middle High German  Bütel; Middle Low German bodel, boddel, Modern German Büttel) was a herald, then a warrant officer in secular administration. As a translation of the German term "Büttel", a beadle was a court bailiff in the Holy Roman Empire. In English, the word "beadle" is also used for an officer in the church.Through the course of the Late Middle Ages and the transition to the Early Modern Period, beadle became a generic ter…

1. Term Beauty (Anglo-French beute, Old French biauté, Vulgar Latin bellitas from Latin bellus, “pretty, charming”; compare German Schönheit; Greek kállos; also Latin pulchritudo) denotes the quality of an object that elicits pleasure in the viewer. The phenomenon includes the natural beauty found, for instance, in landscapes and bodies, and the artificial beauty created in the fine arts. The question arose at a very early date whether beauty was a subjective function of the perception of the beholder or a quality inh…

The European honey bee, classified by Linnaeus in 1758 as Apis mellifera (Latin, “honey-producing bee”), is indigenous to Europe, Western Asia, and Africa. It cannot live in the wild in regions where either cold or drought makes the blossom season too short for the colony to reproduce through swarming and subsequently stockpile food for winter [10]. Other honey bee species live in South and East Asia. At the dawn of the early modern period, the keeping of bees was restricted to regions where the species occurred naturally. British settlers then took…

1. Consumption Whereas wine consumption dominated Southern Europe and France in the early modern period, the consumption of beer was a fundamental constant of everyday life in the north and east of the continent (Everyday world). In these regions, beer was a staple foodstuff and – when brewed to greater strength - Lenten fare [1]. From the Late Middle Ages, there was a profound shift in habits of consumption in Central Europe, with wine replaced by beer as an everyday beverage. The reason for this was a process of technological innovation as hop…

The church’s high regard for poverty, for religious reasons, and the duty of Christians to help the undeservedly poor were queried for the first time around the middle of the 14th century. Although the notion of charity when dealing with beggars lived on throughout the entire early modern period, there was an increasingly critical way of looking at the associated problems. In the cities in particular from the 16th century there were enhanced efforts to deal with fraudulent begging [4. 49–52]. The sharpened criticism of “professional” and fraudulent collecting of alms led to…

Adherents to the teachings of the Silesian theosophist and mystic Jakob Böhme were already called “Behmenists” ( Böhmisten) in the polemical literature (Polemic, theological) of the 17th century. The Behmenists neither formed a special religious community of their own nor did they constitute a clearly definable philosophical school. From the very beginning, Böhme’s ideas merged with other traditions so that “Behmenism” represents a shifting phenomenon.Böhme’s impact came first through his theosophy. In the turmoil of the early modern period, many contemporar…

Any definition of the term Beigeordneter (“deputy mayor”) must on the one hand take account of different regional traditions of community constitution (especially mayor and magistrate constitution), and on the other had changes of meaning which the term has experienced in the past two centuries. From a historical perspective it must be noted that discrepancies occur between the Beigeordneter as analytical term and as source term. In the literature in modern administrative studies and also in a portion of the community constitutions in the Federal Repub…

1. Conceptualization The concept of the bel esprit (German  Schöngeist), which was developed in France in the 16th and 17th centuries, established itself as a powerfully effective social model promoting a specific ideal of cultured sociability. The bel esprit distinguished itself by extensive knowledge of all kinds of art and literature and in particular by a capacity for intellectually stimulating conversation as well as an impressive command of all questions of taste.The praise of the beautés d’esprit since the Renaissance, shaped paradigmatically by Joachim Du Bellay [11. 828…

1. Term The English word “bell” is onomatopoeic, like the Latin  tintinnabulum. The corresponding German term Glocke derives, like Irish cloch, Flemish klok, Swedish klocka, French cloche and presumably also Russian kolokal from MLat. clocca. Whether the latter goes back to a Celtic clocc is disputed. It too may be onomatopoeic.Wolfgang Behringer 2. Casting and suspension The casting of bells as the preferred form of manufacture extends back into the ancient Near Eastern Bronze Age. From the 6th century it spread through the whole of Europe, but not …

See War, just

1. Term Benediction is a performative act which seeks, by means of words or gestures, at least indirect contact to a supernatural being or power so as to bring about something good for persons or objects. The benediction or blessing (Lat. benedictio) is thus the opposite of the curse.In both the Protestant understanding and Catholic theology the effect of the benediction remains solely at God’s disposal. With the granting or refusal of the effect of the benediction he is following his plan of salvation, in which acknowledgment of human need i…

1. General The benefice (Latin  praebenda or beneficium) was the ecclesiastical office-related right of an incumbent member of the clergy to draw a regular income from a particular fund that was permanently dedicated to that office [2. 334 (§ I)]; [4. 188 (art. I/6]; [10. 577]. The benefice thus represented the material component of a church office. In accordance with Liber Extra of the Corpus Iuris Canonici (X,3,5,2), it was granted for the sake of, and regularly together with, the clerical office, so as to ensure the clergyman’s living (Clergy). From then on, with reference to Liber Sex…

See Common good | Interesse | Self-interest | Utilitarianism

See Inheritance law ;  Will (testament)

See Mineral rights, state appropriation of

1. Term and meaning Betrothal (or engagement) is the term for the promise between a man and a woman to enter into marriage with each other. This understanding only came into its own in the early modern period. Previously betrothal was part of the marriage contraction (Marriage, contraction of)  itself. The betrothal was distinguished from the wedding (originally the traditio puellae, the “handing over of the bride”), which followed as a necessary concrete act upon the marriage-justifying marriage promise [8. 31].  Characteristic of the early modern period was the statement of Gratian […

1. Definition and term Bets are contractual agreements between several parties who have contradictory opinions about something. The party whose assertion turns out to be correct receives from the other(s) a previously set payment. There has to be at least one choice but there cannot be more possible results than there are betting opponents. The outcome may not be previously known to the participants, and the result must be limited in time and certain. The stake can be of different amounts and comprise material, physical or ideal values.The German term wetten (from Gothic vadi, to place …