Encyclopedia of Early Modern History Online

1. Concept and history prior to the early modern periodThe Hebrew term  rabbi (my master) is derived from the root  rav (great, many, important). Although it does not occur in the Hebrew Bible as a title or form of address, it does appear in Greek transliteration in the Gospels of the New Testament and in rabbinical literature (e.g. Mishna, Talmud; Judaic law). Following the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem (70 CE), the rabbis assumed spiritual leadership of Judaism as Torah teachers and judges. Palestinian scholars received the title of rabbi, while Babylonians were called ra…

The roots of the term “race” can be traced back to the Middle Ages, although the etymology is disputed. The earliest attestations are found in Italian ( razza), French ( race), and Spanish ( raza) texts of the early 15th century, and refer initially to domesticated animals (Animal breeding), and later to agnatic (i.e. recognizing only legitimate male descendants) lineages of the nobility. While some trace the word back to the Latin ratio (reckoning, cause), others suggest the MHG reiƺ (line) or the Arabic râz (origin, leading, head) [1]. The term acquired increasing scientific …

1. Concept Race in anthropology is far more of a socially imagined category than a biological reality [12. 71]. “Races are the result, not the premises of racialist arguments” [8. 10]; [12]. They thus arise from imagined human worlds and are ultimately topical constructs of meaning. Racism is both a social practice and a discursive construction that is freighted with power [18. 176]. It is polymorphic and flexible to the point that scholars offer different definitions of it, hence the plea to operate with the plural “racisms” [2]. In terms of history, it is suggested that rac…

1. General Rails are long, thin pieces of wood, and later (late 18th century on) cast or wrought iron, that were laid longitudinally along roadways to facilitate the movement of vehicles like carts by reducing friction on their wheels. A horse pulling a wagon full of coal on wooden rails could replace 24 packhorses or two or three four-horse wains (Cart).The first wooden rails were used in the German and Austrian territories of central Europe in the 15th century to transport metal ores in small hand-propelled carts inside mines (see Railway, fig. 1).…

1. Introduction The technical forerunners of the railways were the early modern pit railways installed from the 15th and 16th centuries onwards in Central European mines (Mining). Railways began developing into a widespread means of transporting goods and people only in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, initially in Britain. Even before the construction of the first long-distance lines for passenger traffic operated by steam locomotive, Britain already had a dense network of packhorse lines,…

1. Introduction Railway stations began to be built along tracks and at their termini to accompany the introduction of steam railways for passenger transportation (1830 in Britain, 1835 in Germany). In the first years, simple wooden buildings sufficed to fulfill their main purpose, the processing of passengers. However, stations soon developed into prestigious reception buildings at the heart of urban public life and communication. They offered a shining example of order and discipline, and communicated a precise concept of modern, industrial timekeeping (Chronometry).Klaus …

1. Definition Raison d’état (French “reason of state”; German  Staatsräson) was the maxim that arose in conjunction with the emergence of the early modern state and that made the securing of the state’s existence the priority, especially in critical situations (Necessitas). This applied not only to politics  per se, but also to norms of religion and law and ethics. State interests, then, were whatever the state declared them to be. The maxim can also be applied by extension to other institutions, such as the church ( raison d’église).Where “state” is understood not as an ins…

The term Ramism is derived from the name of the French philosopher Petrus Ramus (Pierre de la Ramée, 1515-1572). It was originally an epithet wielded by Ramus’ contemporary opponents to decry his scholarly disciples. In modern-day philosophical usage, the word is used with a neutral connotation. Sometimes, early modern scholars who invoked Ramus along with other scholarly traditions are called Semi-Ramists.Petrus Ramus was one of the most influential logicians of the 16th century. The Picard philosopher saw logic in the Humanist tradition as an  ars disserendi (art of argume…

1. ConceptThe word “rape” is derived from the Latin  rapere, meaning “to seize by force,” and until well into the early modern period, it referred to the kidnapping of a woman with or without a sexual element, but with violence. Physical violence was also the connotation of equivalent terms in other European languages until the 20th century (e.g. French  rapt, after 1791  viol; Spanish  violación, from Latin  violentia, “violence”; German  Vergewaltigung, from  Gewalt, “violence”) [12]. From the early Germanic law codes on, the sexual crime denoted by these words to…

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1. Terminology Gelehrte Räte (learned counselors) in the early modern period were academically (mostly legally) trained royal civil servants and officeholders (Office) working in central bureaucracies (not so much in local administration) and collegial committees as legal and governmental specialists (Government). Most were of non-noble background. Their individual and collective position as members of the ruling elite was rooted in their scholarly expertise (Bildung) and the view of their professi…

1. DefinitionThe term rationalism (from Latin  ratio, “reason”) denotes an early modern school of epistemology. It holds that pure reason is the best means for knowledge acquisition, whether of facts or norms, and that sensations and feelings (Emotion) are inferior to it as sources of information. In its extreme form, rationalism postulated that rational inquiry can reveal the true nature of all that really exists and that in principle all knowledge can be expressed in a coherent and logically consis…

See Theological tendencies

See Reason

1. General remarks The terms  rational religion and  natural religion refer to the notion of a knowledge of God and consequent worship of God given to every human being solely by virtue of his or her intellectual capacity (Reason). Its substance is identified with a general commandment of obedience to God’s will realized concretely in an obligation to lead a moral life (Ethics). The roots of this idea go back to antiquity via the natural law of the Middle Ages (Natural theology); in Christianity, it has…

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1. To 1800In the first centuries after Gutenberg’s invention of printing with movable metal type (c. 1450), we can assume that only in the cities and towns was there a European color::Lesenreading public that read regularly or even habitually, other than the small circle of scholars and clerics who read for professional or contemplative reasons (Literacy and illiteracy). The reading habits of scholars and the “illiterate” (as people who did not know Latin were called in the Middle Ages and early modern period) differed …

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See Literacy and illiteracy | Literacy and orality | Reader | Reading society

See Prayer | Sermon | Worship

See Reader | Reading society

1. Definition and history of scholarshipScholars view reading as an understanding appropriation of texts. With Paul Ricœur, we assign an active role to the reader, since every reader gives the text a unique new meaning each time it is read [5. 406 f.]. Anthropological studies treat reading as a form of social praxis, tied into a complex interplay of forms of human communication [2].The study of European social reading began with the history of the book [1]; [4]. Since the 1970s, scholars have used the study of reading materials and analysis of the composition of…

1. Definition On an aggregated level, real earnings can be thought of as real national income per capita (see Economic growth), and on a disaggregated level usually as real annual household income. In contrast to nominal income, real income is adjusted for changes in the level of prices over time (Value, monetary; Inflation). As a rule, it is represented by an index. Real income is one of the most important statistics for describing material well-being.Real income includes income from all sources – from work as well as from capital and land ownership. Real wages,…

See Land ownership | Land rights

The term  realism is associated with complex layers of meaning. In general usage, it denotes objectivity, a matter-of-fact sense of reality, a pragmatic attitude focused on immediate benefit, and representations of empirical reality as it manifests itself directly. It has been a philosophical term since the Middle Ages, that is, in the Scholastic debate between realists and nominalists, the latter of whom viewed (conceptual) universals not as real existing things ( realia) but only as names of things ( nomina). In the early modern period it also became a category in aest…

1. Origins Realschulen were originally, at the beginning of the 18th century, special schools – primarily in the Old Empire – established for the most part on private initiative, with emphasis on conveying practical economic knowledge. Their origin should be viewed in the context of the emphasis on new secular instructional content, documented since the early 17th century – initially in educational theory, and here and there in practice as well. This content went beyond the elementary and religious…

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1. SurveyIn the first centuries of the early modern period, reason (Greek  diánoia, Latin  ratio, French  raison, German Vernunft) was a fundamental philosophical concept of broad compass. It concerned both thinking and speaking as well as acting, to the extent that they were argumentatively justifiable and comprehensible. The theme had been discussed since antiquity in a poorly delimited conceptual field. The terms  reason and  understanding, which in the Scholastic tradition were hierarchically related, were translated into German by Meister Eckhart and …

See Metaphysics | Revelation | Theology

See Public debate

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See Protest | Resistance | Revolt | Revolution

See Riddle

1. Definition The term recatholicization is one of a group of terms including  Counter-Reformation, Catholic Reformation, Catholic confessionalization, and Catholic  social discipline that denote different facets of the same historical phenomenon: the development of the Roman Catholic Church after the Protestant Reformation. Even today, the historical situation referred to as recatholicization is called the Counter-Reformation in everyday usage (see Catholic Reformation 1.). Despite a certain unease, Catholic scholarship still uses the term recatholicization, …

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1. Concept and scopeThe concept of “reception” connotes the voluntary “adoption of cultural goods or individual cultural elements from elsewhere,” proceeding either in a deliberate way within a limited period of time, or in an unplanned, long-term social process [19. 116]; [25. 125–133]. The latter applies in the case of the reception of Roman canon law, which as a pan-European process took place over a period from the 12th to the 19th century (Antiquity, reception of).Medieval and early modern Southern, Central, and Western (continental) Europe regarded Roman canon …

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The term rechristianization denotes the goal of religio-political efforts beginning in the last third of the 19th century to counter the decline of lived and publicly present Christianity – that is, secularization and dechristianization of Europe and North America, together with criticism of religion (Religion, critique of) [1]; [3]. This religious development, however, was already shaped by religious reform movements beginning soon after the Reformation – which were based on the critical diagnosis that Christianity existed largely as …

1. IntroductionThe German term Rechtsstaat (literally “state [constituted by] law”) denotes a state that is founded on the just rule of law. Although it is unique to German, having been coined in the doctrines of German government law, similar concepts are found in all democratic western constitutions concerned with liberty, which bind the exercise of state authority to the law. The guiding idea, from Plato’s nomocracy to the American “government of law and not of men,” (Supreme Court, Marbury v. Madison 1803 [1]), has been that the law must guarantee its own calcula…

Reciprocity in the sense of “mutuality” (from Latin  reciprocare, “turn back”) is closely related to the concept of a gift. In all periods, we find the expectation that a gift requires a gift in return. But reciprocity need not mean a gift of objectively equal value. The value of the reciprocated gift is culturally relative and can also be defined differently in different historical periods. Reciprocity relationships of other cultures or periods therefore often appear asymmetrical but can definitely be…

See Literacy and orality | Reading society

1. Concept The Italian  recitativo is derived from the Latin recitare, a specialist term for reading out or reciting texts, such as a document during public proceedings. The concept was already used in a more general sense in ancient Rome to refer to readings of literary works, particularly dramatic works and especially comedy. The Italian verb recitare already began to occur sporadically in musical contexts in the 16th century (e.g. 1508, Baldassare Castiglione; 1558, Gioseffo Zarlino), even before the emergence of the monodic (Monody) style to which the term  stile recitativo (r…

The term reclamation denotes the process of reclaiming wetlands for agriculture and settling unused or little-used tracts of land, which began in large areas of Europe in the 17th century. Another aspect of reclamation was the resettlement of farmsteads and villages that had been abandoned over the course of the Thirty Years’ War (Abandoned settlement). This involved a kind of internal development policy, which was closely linked to the process of state formation. In accord with the views of merca…

See Protestant churches | Recatholicization

See Conquista | Refugees of conscience

See Archive

The term recreational mathematics denotes, on the one hand, all kinds of mathematical games (Play, game) that progress strictly according to fixed rules and that demand logical and strategic thinking; on the other hand, it refers to problems involving the use of logic or mathematics that are also accessible to non-specialists and that require no particular prior mathematical knowledge to solve. Alongside the element of determinacy arising from rules, many such games also involve eleme…

1. DefinitionRecreational stimulants are natural materials, commercially refined, that stimulate the nervous system, the circulation of the blood, and metabolism, and that make foods tastier and more palatable. They are consumed in food (sugar, spices), as hot beverages (coffee, tea, cocoa), or as “liquors” (beer, wine, spirits) or narcotics (tobacco, opiates; see Opium; Drug use). Many recreational stimulants increase feelings of strength in the short term. Long-term consumption, however, may diminish their effect.German refers to recreational stimulants as Genussmitt…