early modern period

Honour was a universally present theme in the social interactions of pre-modern European societies. The current paper aims to analyse this concept through the urban community of Bardejov between approximately 1550 and 1750, focusing on verbal offences against honour. The topic is approached from two perspectives. Firstly, an emphasis is placed on the Reformation and humanist discourse in urban communities, the roles placed on preserving one’s own and one’s neighbours’ good reputation, and appropriate reactions to becoming the object of slander.

Counties in the early modern Hungarian kingdom despite of their particularities fulfilled much the same functions. However, research had shown that there were some counties that functioned on different principles, such as the special counties occupied by the Ottomans.

After the battle of Mohács, political elite of the Hungarian kingdom was apart from the prelates formed predominantly by aristocracy. They were represented by about fifty families who in the middle of the century owned 45-50 % of the country's land. Their members would hold the highest administrative and military offices, occupy prominent positions at the Diet, become leaders of the Estates Confederated against the Habsburgs, controll majority of the comes posts in the counties and with the help of their familiares practically govern the whole regions.

It was in the beginning of the 16th century that fashion to publish about proper behaviour and improvement of manners from childhood to adulthood reached its peak. Court instructions and codes of conduct aimed to discipline a court society and depict to a great extent life at the aristocratic court. On the one hand, they represented an ideal of proper manners, on the other, they are also a reflection of certain conventions, traditions and common practice of the given time and place.

People in the Middle Ages and in the early modern period suffered from various diseases, injuries, pandemics and older age consequences to a considerably greater extent than nowadays. Many publicists were intrigued by physical and mental health problems of well-known historical figures, though frequently these problems were just unfounded and fabricated tales.

Perspectives of what is corruption have been changing with the development of the society and according to the shifts of its values. The study examines not only activities that were considered morally wrong and corrupted in the middle ages and early modern period, but also those forms of behaviour that started to be generally considered corrupted only later. Anachronistic as this approach might seem, it gives us better insight into the slow process of changing attitudes towards some forms of corruption.