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1. DefinitionA  Postzeitung is a printed periodical newspaper published by the holder of a postal office (post-master). After the first untitled newspapers, the term appears for the first time around 1621 in the title of the  Unvergreiffliche continuierende Post Zeittungen of the Frankfurt imperial postmaster Johann von den Birghden. In the  Postzeitung we have for the first time in the history of the periodical press a separation of publisher and printer: postmasters came by information more easily and had the structural advantage of being …

1. DefinitionThe challenge was a ritualized (Ritual) form of private “declaration of war,” to test the readiness of competitors in everyday life (Everyday world) to defend their honor. In early modern Europe it was a basic form for the settling of interpersonal conflicts and social control. Documentation is found in the huge number of trial procedures before the lower territorial courts of law.In local Weistum[7. 58–60], village orders and Police the challenge was subsumed either under “crimes, acts of violence, and injuries” (High Court of Augsburg 1534) [1. Bd. 1, 199f.] or under…

1. News market of the RenaissanceThere were no news agencies in the institutional sense in the early modern period, but there were key figures in the news business who grew into the role of professional agent. They were based at places where news often arrived in the form of the reports characteristic of the early modern period (Port, Capital city), or where events that became news actually took place (Rome, courts, residences, theaters of war, etc.). The demand for information grew throughout the pe…

The word aviso (plural: avisos) is a communications term that was introduced into several European languages in the 16th century from Italian ( avviso: news, warning, advice). It soon came to play a key part in the postal system (Mail) in the sense of a “cover letter” and became the usual term for “news” in the new medium of periodically printed newspapers, until it was supplanted by more recent terms. Since the postal system was introduced by the de Tassis family (from 1651 on, Thurn und Taxis) to Austria, Germany, t…

1. Terminology The term “aeronautics” means literally “traveling by ship [Latin  nautare] through the air [Latin  aer].” Possibly inspired by mythological accounts, 14th-century proponents of Aristotelian physics (Albert of Saxony and Nicole d’Oresme) had already suggested the possibility that the accepted theory of the elements implied that a ship filled with a fiery substance could sail upon the sea of the air. The discussions of flying in the 15th and 16th centuries were focused entirely on the principle of …

1. Definition Animal metamorphosis was not only widespread in fairy tales and myths, but also had a role to play in popular European belief and Christian theology until some way into the early modern period. From the Renaissance on, the idea of a physical transformation of men or women into animals, effected by magic, divine power, or divine imposition, was reinforced by the reception of ancient texts, such as the respective Metamorphoses of Ovid and Apuleius. Although these may be fictional texts, they were cited until the 17th century as evidence of the possibili…

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…

1. Definition and originThe  Messrelation was a new 16th-century literary genre that contributed to the emergence of a political public sphere: news books (News book) that were produced for the fall session of the Frankfurt book fair and a bit later for the Easter session as well – that is, twice a year. The  Messrelationen did not take on the genre of the  Newe Zeitung but promoted the printing of newspapers (Aviso) written by serious correspondents and agents (News agency). Like the  Fuggerzeitung, they were noted for their elevated style and the geographical and …

1. An age of dissimulationAnyone setting out to compare discourses of the early modern period in the postmodern manner, i.e. on the basis of texts, is doomed to failure [1]. In a period riven with religious violence, absolutist pressure of conformity, and later the rationalist ideology (Reason) of the Enlightenment, it was often imperative to conceal one’s true opinion. Guidance in the interpretation of early modern texts should therefore be sought in the words written by Niccolò Machiavelli to Francesco Guicciardini on …

In the first centuries of the early modern period, postal regulations were an important instrument of standardization; beside standardizing distances and units of time, they also regulated their fares and conduct in the communication space – of both the functionaries of the mail and their customers. The uppermost goal of the postal regulations was the smooth functioning of the highly specialized mounted messengers and mail coaches on which the European communication system was based before the advent of the railway.While an alleged body of French postal regulations f…

1. Concept and derivation“Mercuries” was the name given in the 17th century to political newspapers, because in England in particular such publications were generally named after the Roman messenger of the gods, Mercurius. The name  coranto (“Courant”) was commonplace in the 1620s, but from 1641, “Mercury” titles were so dominant that the name became genericized to refer to periodicals in general. Only after 1660, following the Stuart Restoration, did “Gazettes” also become established, then from the 1690s newspaper titles maki…

In the first centuries of the early modern period, sleighs (or sledges, slides, sleds; German Schlitten; MHG  slite; Italian  slitta; Swedish släde) on runners served less for sliding down hillsides (toboggans) than for the traffic and transport of persons or freight over level snow or ice. This did not rule out their use for sport, however. Sleighs were found all the way to northern Italy, because in the period of the Little Ice Age winters were often so long that other forms of travel were hardly possible outside …

1. ConceptDirt is matter in the wrong place at the wrong time, “something misplaced” [5. 52], undesirable remains (abundant synonyms including refuse, muck, rubbish, garbage, trash, detritus, feculence etc.), or pollution coming about through lack of hygiene and sanitation by mechanical, biological (e.g. menstruation), physical, or chemical processes (e.g. oxidation, rust) and capable of contaminating an organism or system with undesirable or harmful materials. The term is also used in metaphorical and symbolic senses.Wolfgang Behringer2. ReligionAccording to the B…

1. GeneralThe necessity for heating varies with geographical latitude; there were great regional and historical variations in its practical development. In the cold years of the Little Ice Age (ca. 1300-1900; especially 1560-1710), there was a pressing need for adequate heating. The hypothermia poor people suffered from when fuel (wood, peat, charcoal, in England also black coal) was too expensive made them more susceptible to illness [3. 430 f., 456f.]. Heating standards improved during the early modern era as part of a general cultural development. Wherea…

1. Development of the theoryBy the 14th century, several thinkers had independently concluded, based on Aristotelian physics, that the sublunar airspace must be navigable by vessels. During the 15th century, the principle of aeronautics was sometimes replaced by attempts to achieve flight by imitating birds (see Aviatics, with fig.). At the beginning of the 16th century, in his manuscript Sul volo degli uccelli (1505; “On the Flight of Birds”), Leonardo da Vinci observed that bird flight required great powers of propulsion in order to take to the air f…

1. Concept and origins English-language scholarship uses the term “news book” to refer to books that were systematically bound in order to present newspaper stories from the preceding year [4]. Although some authors assume that this text genre first appeared only in the 1640s [7. 5], others call the weekly London corantos of the 1620s “the first news books” [5]. Corresponding to the concept in German is the   Zeitungs-Buch (“News[paper] book”), a term used by the Hamburg publisher Georg Greflinger, imitating the English model, when he offered the first year of his Nordischer Merc…

Aviatics is the skill of using wings or other airfoils to stay up in the air, in other words the art of flying like a bird (Latin  avis). Medieval chronicles already contain many accounts of individuals who tried to imitate avian flight. Most such “flights” from high towers ended in disaster. Stories of attempted flights with a level of detail that enhances their credibility occur in increasing numbers from the second half of the 15th century, one example being the case of Giovanni Battista Danti (ca. 1477-1517), who mad…

The phrase  periodical press denotes the publication of news by means of the printing press at regular intervals. Apart from calendars, the phenomenon of periodicity emerged some time after the invention of printing with movable type c. 1450; it depended on the increasingly regular transmission of news due to advances in the organization of the postal system (Mail) after the mid-16th century. The term  periodical press covers various frequencies of newspaper publication, reflecting the fact that the daily newspaper, standard since the 19th century, dev…

1. Concept The concept of communication with the afterlife depends on a binary opposition between “this world” as the world of the living and the afterlife, the world of the dead, of spirits, and gods - or in the monotheistic religions, the one God. Death marks the boundary between these worlds. Death marks the boundary between these worlds. The Enlightenment relegated the existence of the “otherworld” to the realm of fantasy. In the Christian view, the dead rest until the Day of Judgem…

1. Prior history of the superstition discourse The project of a Bibliotheca Magica (“Magical Library”) belongs in the context of the struggle between science (Knowledge) and superstition. On the initiative of Christian Thomasius, who as an expert witness as late as 1696 would have endorsed the execution of a witch had colleagues not restrained him, past debates about witchcraft were revisited early in the 18th century for political purposes (abolition of witchcraft trial and torture). The jurist Johann Reiche, whom Thomasius supervised in his doctoral dissertation, De crimine mag…