“The Living Help the Living, the Living the Dead, the Dead the Living and the Dead the Dead.”
P. Ribeira Concern for the Soul Expressed in the Testaments of Peasants from the Countryside around Trieste
In order to alleviate the suffering awaiting their souls in purgatory, it was customary in the l7th and l8th centuries for testators and testatrixes from Breg near Trieste to will part of their property to the Church. The testament was a corporeal instrument which allowed the peasant men and women to provide for their souls. At the beginning of the l9th century the testators and testatrixes from Breg still made out their last will with the aim of dying as good Christians, while in the middle of the l9th century, a gradual laicisation of the testamentary act occurs. The concern to lessen and shorten the suffering of the deceased’s soul in Purgatory gave way to the need for better management of the peasant economy among the impoverished peasants as well as the upper strata of the villagers. At the end of the l9th century, the testators and testatrixes decided to pay only for as many requiems as they could afford without putting a strain on their family budgets. Thus, the move away from the traditional patterns of behaviour in the villages of Breg occurs together with the gradual and steady advance of secularisation, which, in its first phase, relegated religious sentiments from public life to the sphere of intimate perception.
I Drink, Therefore I Am A Slovene
Or: Alcoholism as a Slovene Phenomenon and Taboo
It is a well known fact that each year, alcohol causes the deaths of about 2,000 Slovenes. Therefore it stands to reason that alcoholism is one of the most serious social illnesses of the Slovene nation; a nation of which the politician Fran Šuklje wrote long ago that it has an “inherent thirst”. In fact, an exaggerated tendency to indulge in drink is a part of Slovenian folklore, the foundation of a clearly misguided national identity which persistently attempts to find (and has found ?!) proof of its Sloveneness in alcohol: I drink, therefore I am a Slovene; I am a Slovene, therefore I drink. An almost uncountable number of different case histories and stories kept safely on the periphery of the collective memory, together with “ancestral records” allowed to slip strangely into oblivion, show that this is a virtually unfathomable phenomenon, which should be subjected to a more thorough and comprehensive scientific analysis. Yet the actual state of affairs is just the opposite and the issue rarely touched upon. Could the cause be embarrassment? A childish attempt to escape the truth? Is it an idealised auto-stereotype, which does not bear serious criticism, or a taboo?
“I Emphatically Deny Ever Having Been a Democrat!”
The Revolution of 1848/49 as Depicted by the Destiny of Ignac Guzelj, the Local Judge in Radovljica
The author describes the course of the Revolution of 1848/49 in the small town in Carniola, Radovljica. The events are described with the help of the activities of the local clerks who were at the heart of the political developments of the time. The clerks were led by the local judge, I. Guzelj, against whom an official inquiry was launched in the years after the Revolution, preventing him permanently from furthering his career.
Priests Shall Not Follow In My Wake … and Music Shall Follow My Passing
The Political Infighting and Religious Life in the Carniolan Countryside at the Beginning of the Century
The political situation in which political parties in the rural areas of Carniola were formed at the end of the previous century was characterised to a great degree by personal conflicts of a local nature. During the process of division into the Catholic and the Liberal bloc, such personal disputes and antipathies also exerted a strong influence on the religious lives of individual local communities, while the intensive nature of religious life, in its turn, influenced the political situation within these communities.
“Of the Things for which People, Particularly Rulers, are Praised or Rebuked.” N. Machiavelli
On the Ljubljana Municipal Government’s Traditional Prodigality
The article deals with Ljubljana and its former inhabitants, i.e. the “city fathers” in the first centuries of the Modern Age, with particular emphasis on the thrift (lessness) of their financial transactions.
The History of Cities Between Environment and Lifestyle
Trends in Modern Research on Urbanisation in Germany
In his article, the author gives a comprehensive presentation of contemporary historical research on cities and urbanisation in Germany. He states that the field has seen much development, but that the scientific research of urbanisation is still dominated by “old models” and lacks a satisfactory approach to researching the “psycho-topics” (A. Mitscherlich) of modern cities.