This essay is firstly a study of the early modern period in Sweden regarding questions of religion. Secondly the essay intents to interpret these religious questions with the help of theories surrounding Norbert Elias civilizing process. The main purpose of this essay is to examine the religious transformation-event that took place in Sweden during the the late 16th century where the archbishop of Uppsala Abraham Angermannus through an inquisitional inspection journey – or so called “räfst” – sought to punish the sinners of the kingdom. Furthermore the aim is to analyze and discuss this religious happening through what has been said in the Swedish historical field of research. The source material of the study is the court journal that compiles almost every case of the inspection journey in some some detail. Here demarcations are made where the study tend to focus on cases pertaining religious questions, Catholicism, magic and witchcraft. In conclusion I here argue that the purpose of the inspection journey, that was instigated on the behest of duke Charles, was the cessation of the apocalypse. Therfore all crimes that had any connection with Catholicism and non-Lutheran creeds, manners and faiths were looked upon with harshness and were further on bundled together and labled as witchcraft or black art. From the civilizing perspective I moreover claim that the inspection journey sometimes could have had the support of the people and that it was not only a project designed by and for the authorities needs. Therfore the study tend to lean more against a supporting of the development theory rather than that of the intervention theory. This in spite of the later criticism that was aimed against the archbishop and his inspection journey.

This study examines German illustrated broadsheets that were manufactured and published in the Holy Roman Empire between 1630-1633. They were part of a pro-Swedish media campaign launched soon after the arrival of the Swedish king Gustav II Adolf and the Swedish army in the Holy Roman Empire in June 1630 with the intention to legitimate the Swedish king’s presence in the Holy Roman Empire.  Inspired by Jan Glete’s notion about the early fiscal-military states as protection-selling enterprises, this study uses pro-Swedish illustrated broadsheets as a source material in order to examine how they were used to encourage German Protestants to buy Swedish protection. By looking for protection-selling arguments, this study wants to find out how Swedish protection was portrayed in the illustrated broadsheets. This study also makes a distinction between confessional and non-confessional protection-selling arguments, making it possible to distinguish which aspects of the protection-selling arguments that had a more religious character and vice versa. After the analysis of the source material, the protection-selling arguments are organised into various categories of representation, which enables the study to establish how Sweden and Gustav II Adolf were portrayed, and what they were claimed to represent in terms of protection.  The study concludes that the illustrated broadsheets portrayed Sweden and Gustav II Adolf as competent seller of protection who had the ability to protect its allies and co-religionists against aggression, religious oppression, plundering, murdering, destruction, the Devil and his collaborators, and consequences of the Edict of Restitution. Gustav II Adolf represents the Swedish state, and the illustrated broadsheets highlight his courage, competence as a political and military leader, and his Protestant devotion.  Their enemies are portrayed as dissident aggressors who represented religious oppression, plundering, murdering, destruction, heresy, devil-worshiping, and witchcraft. They were said to possess the negative qualities of hypocrisy and mortal sin, as well as an incapable military leadership.

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The aim of this thesis is to explore work as an idea and a practice for the construction and maintenance of differences and power relations, and to examine what the consequences were for the individual and society in early modern Sweden. The period saw an expansion of the state apparatus which created numerous new opportunities for employment. There also exists a body of literature from this period, in the form of instructions relating to work and households. The thesis draws both on these instructions and descriptions and on sources produced by the crown. The thesis shows that gender was a crucial factor for the organisation of work. Operating The service of the crown was characterised by two principal organisational forms: the household, and a precursor of a bureaucratic system. The household had its basis in the couple, and had a clear gendered division of power, the couple together constituted the management of the household, at the same time there was an element of male superordination. The other form was exclusively male and based on delegation of power within the organisation and on an attempt to formalise relations by written instructions. The majority of the jobs created were held by men. In crafts and administration, men took over a number of female areas of competence. In this process was occupational positions created for these men. Women’s opportunities to work were heavily affected by an idea of a female area of expertise, ‘womenfolk’s work’ which never become specialiced, but the investigation also shows that work created in the crowns households in positions of leadership created livelihoods for married adult women. Among employees that were young and unmarried the similarities between the genders were often more striking than the differences. Greater differences emerge from a comparison of the entire workforce of the crown, which shows women’s annual wages to be 75 per cent of those of men. Overall women had few opportunities to make careers and get well paid employments.

This dissertation investigates what the early modern donation system in Sweden reveals about the Crown’s expectations of the social group that served the state, and what these individuals expected from the Crown. The author shows how the Crown used donations of land rents to remunerate and reward individuals in its service. In 1680 the donation system was abolished and the Crown reclaimed everything that had been alienated. It was not until 1723 that the proprietors could address a specially appointed parliamentary commission (which ended in 1748) and challenge the Crown’s repossession. The deeds of donation and ratification, most issued during the period 1604 to 1680, as well as petitions submitted to the commission constitute the sources used in the investigation. A petition from the recipient usually preceded remunerations and the deeds drawn up by the Crown often refer to these letters. Petitioners accordingly referred to arguments used by the administration in Stockholm. This makes it possible, by direct and indirect methods, to study how both parties sought to change and influence the imagined compact between Crown and families in its service. The negotiation between the parties, studied over such a lengthy period, helps identify tendencies in the way the relation between state and its servants was changing. The thesis shows that there was a clear gender aspect to the process through which state formation happened. Even though most recipients were male, the deeds included his wife and children. Service and fidelity to the Crown was expected also from the descendants of the recipient. Accordingly, the Crown had both liabilities and duties to fulfil to the recipients family. We could say that in the eye of the Crown its servants were a family. The author also argues that the Crown used the donations to create and favour an informal fifth estate and how this policy influenced the shared ideas in society on merits versus ancestry. In the end of the period, however, the imagined compact was changing. The emerging state came with new claims to authority and the need to separate the Crown from its subjects at various levels (legal, political). As the compact became less personal family members were no longer included and women could no longer negotiate from their position within the family.

The thesis discusses a category of cultural heritage that has been labelled "Sami circular offering sites", aiming to establish some basic facts about their origin, distribution and use, as well as their cultural and socio-political context and influence. The stone enclosures in question have been interpreted as Sami offering sites since the mid-19th century, but a discourse analysis of the research history indicates that this may have been based on a scholarly hypothesis rather than ethnographic or archaeological evidence. Furthermore it is questioned if all the structures that are currently included in this category are in fact remains of the same cultural practice. This is investigated through surveys of 81 suggested circular offering sites in Norway, two excavations and analyses of the find material. The large stone enclosures in counties Finnmark and Troms that were first categorised in this way prove to have quite consistent builds and measurements and a find material mainly dating between the 13th and 17th centuries. These structures are here labelled type 1. In contrast, constructions that have later been added to the category, particularly in other areas, have other and less consistent characteristics and seem to include remains of a range of different activities. They are here divided into two generic types 2 and 3. The thesis further discusses alternative interpretations for the type 1 structures, concluding that their materiality, construction, location, topography and finds are consistent with archaeological, historical and ethnographic evidence for wolf traps. Their distribution indicates a regional Sami cultural practice related to inland winter habitation and travel routes, while also apparently coinciding with the Russian/Karelian taxation area in northern Norway in the Middle Ages. Thus the builds may have been inspired by the fur trade or other activities of the latter groups. It is uncertain when exactly the installations fell into disuse, as datings are calibrated to AD 1450-1650. The abandonment could be related to the decline of Novgorod as a fur trade centre, Russian loss of taxation rights in northern Norway, increased Swedish impact in the inland areas and Norwegian activity along the coasts, which all led to changes in administration, taxation, trade patterns and demand for furs. The contemporary decimation of the wild reindeer population, increased reindeer herding and introduction of new weapons like crossbows, guns and foothold traps, may all have made permanent trapping installations less useful. The sites may, however, have gone out of use at different times. Certain finds of marrow split bones, very recent coins and other objects suggest a later reconceptualisation of some structures as offering sites, whether as a local explanation or inspired by the later scholarly definition. Throughout the thesis, the construction and distribution of the archaeological category and the preference for the ritual or religious interpretation are discussed as results of specific socio-political contexts, where stereotypical notions about Sami identity and culture have had a strong impact. The thesis explores how academic and other narratives influence each other within certain discourses of power and indigenous "rights and rites", and the continuous mutual impact on individual actions and emotions through networks of people, power and things. The present reinterpretation challenges existing academic and local narratives. It is based on the materiality of the structures, but the offering site explanation is not positively refuted. Yet, as part of an authorised heritage discourse, the present statement is more likely to impact future categorisation and practices than other narratives within other discourses, expressing a persistent and inherent power inequality. This may be ethically problematic in the context of an indigenous minority, but it may also be argued that the role of the archaeologist expert is precisely to expose the insisting materiality of the past and the power/knowledge networks that promote specific narratives about it.

During the Thirty Years War the life of the inhabitants of Central Bohemian Town Slaný was (like the life in other central European towns in this period) mainly influenced by soldiers and various war events. Nevertheless, many changes in their lives were brought by the pawn and subsequent sale of the town to nobleman Jaroslav Bořita z Martinic. This thesis is mainly focused on the municipal administration, especially on war events impacts on the town government and also on the new elements in municipal administration related to the change of its legal status, respectively on encroachment of the new manorial lords on the municipal administration. It also deals with mechanisms used by municipal officials (authorities) to protect the lives and property of town's inhabitant against the rampage soldiery. It is not omitted the interactions occurred between the townspeople and soldiers including self-preserving mechanisms and adaptation strategies that allow them cope with soldiers presence as well.

Keywords: ars moriendi, castrum doloris, early modern period, epitaphs, funeral essentials, funeral procession, funeral sermons, Prague, sepulcher essentials, tomb stones The thesis introduces a specific part of the cultural history of the early modern period - the funeral culture. Considering the extensiveness of thematter, the scope has been limited to the area of Prague, to the cultural sphere of secular nobility and to the time period between the years 1500 and 1700. Naturally, the timeframe is not and cannot be absolute given the nature of this subject matter, which is culture. In the introductory chapter, the paper seeks to clarify eschatology and religious conditions in the early modern period, depicting death and its grip in the 16th and 17th centuries. Each chapter is devoted to a specific phenomenon of the funeral culture, in the same order in which the succession should logically follow shortly before and after the death of an important person. As such, the thesis specifically discusses the doctrine of "good death" - so called ars moriendi, exhibitions of the body, the funeral procession, construction of the Castrum Doloris, funeral sermons, and provision of funeral monuments. At the conclusion, the thesis ventures into the geographically and religiously distant Duchy of Finland, which...

Ce travail de thèse a pour objet l’historicité conflictuelle d’un objet qui n’a jamais vraiment été étudié d’un point de vue littéraire : la littérature hagiographique de l’époque moderne. En nous séparant de la lecture institutionnelle qui est souvent celle de la critique, nous voulons la dégager de son utilisation comme moyen de contextualisations historiques ou anthropologiques. Au sein des écrits de la période moderne, l’hagiographie n’est pas simplement l’ « autre discours » de l’historiographie, comme le disait Michel de Certeau. Au lendemain du concile de Trente, les biographies d’une candidate à la sainteté comme Jeanne de Chantal (1572-1641, canonisée en 1767) sont l’occasion de réfléchir sur ces nouveaux écrits, qui présentent des structures qui se stabilisent et des éléments topiques qui renvoient à une tradition d’écriture préexistante. Qui sont les auteurs de ces textes ? Dans quelles conditions les rédigent-ils et pour quel public ? Quels en sont les enjeux ? En pleine crise moderniste, la condamnation par la Congrégation de l’Index de la dernière Vie importante de la figure, la Sainte Chantal de Bremond (1912), sera notre point de vue : Bremond revendique paradoxalement une forme de nouveauté par un retour au XVIIe siècle, visible dans la filiation exhibée de son propre texte à celui de la première biographie, les Mémoires de Françoise-Madeleine de Chaugy (1642). Ce geste construit alors, comme malgré lui, une histoire diachronique des Vies de Jeanne de Chantal, dont les mutations en font un « cas » de la littérature hagiographique française et permettent de voir qu’écrire la Vie d’un saint, c'est à chaque fois rejouer ce qu’est la sainteté. / The hagiographic literature from the Early Modern Period has never been studied as a plain literary issue. Departing from the institutional reading of a major part of the critics about hagiography, the hagiographic literature must be considered apart from its historical and anthropological contextualisations. Hagiography is not only the “other one” of historiography, as Michel de Certeau said. In the wake of the Trent Council, the biographies of a candidate to sanctity like Jeanne de Chantal (1572-1641, canonized in 1767) allow us to consider these new writings which show newly built structures and topical elements of a former writing tradition. Who wrote these texts? How have there been written? For whom? What were there main issues? Our point of view will be the last major Life of Jeanne de Chantal (1912), convicted by the Congregation of the Index, in the middle of the Modernist Crisis. The return to the first biography of the heroine, the Mémoires of Françoise-Madeleine de Chaugy (1642), is a paradoxical way for Bremond to claim the originality of his approach. A diachronic history of Jeanne de Chantal’s Lives can be seen through this operation. Their mutations make them a “case” of French hagiographical Literature: writing the Life of a saint is always defining what is sanctity again.

Der Gegenstand dieser Arbeit sind die physischen, bibliographischen und infrastrukturellen Dimensionen skandinavischer Buchdruckkultur im Spannungsfeld zwischen Spätmittelalter und früher Neuzeit, Scholastik und Humanismus, spätem Katholizismus und früher Reformation. Ihr theoretischer Ausgangspunkt ist die Erkenntnis, dass die vorreformatorische skandinavische Buchkultur nur im Zusammenhang und Wechselspiel mit der gleichzeitigen kontinentaleuropäischen Buchkultur verstanden werden kann. Der von Deutschland ausstrahlende Vertrieb von gedruckten Büchern erweiterte sich im Gefolge der Preiskrise der 1480er und dem Ausbau Export-orientierter kontinentaler Buchdruckzentren zu einem fest etablierten, zuverlässigen Buchhandel europäischen Ausmasses. Er stellte für skandinavische Drucker eine grosse Herausforderung dar, der sie erst nach 1525 mehr und mehr gewachsen zeigten. Auch wenn die (selbstverständlich nur ungenau zu schätzende) Zahl der gedruckten Bücher, die vor der Reformation in Skandinavien vorhanden waren, an sich klein war, stützt die weit höhere Zahl der Provenienzen eindeutig die Erkenntnis, dass wir es mit einer wesentlich grösseren Buchkultur zu tun haben als bislang angenommen. Die skandinavische vorreformatorische Buchkultur unterschied sich dabei grundsätzlich nicht von der zeitgenössischen kontinentalen oder westeuropäischen Buchkultur. Gegenüber der dynamischen zeitgenössischen kontinentalen Buchzentren entwickelte sich Skandinavien zwar langsamer, ebenso wie Auswirkungen der geographisch periphen Lage nicht ausser Acht gelassen werden dürfen. Gleichzeitig aber war es in vielerlei Hinsicht fest im Gefüge der Netzwerke des kirchlichen, akademischen, intellektuellen und buchhändlerischen Europas verankert. / The subject of this thesis are the infrastructural, bibliographical and physical dimensions of Scandinavian print culture between the contradictory contexts of the Late Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period, scholasticism and humanism, late Catholicism and the dawn of the Reformation. Its theoretical point of point of origin is the awareness of the importance of the connection and interplay of Scandinavian pre-Reformation book culture with its contemporary continental counterpart for a deeper understanding of its characteristics and development. The trade with printed books emanating from Germany expanded to a reliable, well-established trade of European dimensions. While being a challenge for Scandinavian printing, which they met successfully not before after 1525, for readers it meant an opportunity. Although the number of printed books available in Scandinavia before the Reformation was not large, the large number of provenances identified and presented in this thesis supports the assumption that this print culture was much larger than assumed up to now. The nature of the Scandinavian pre-Reformation print culture didn’t essentially differ from its continental or Western European siblings. In comparison, Scandinavia did evolve slower and we mustn’t disregard the effects of a position in the geographical periphery. But, at the same time, was Scandinavia firmly positioned in European ecclesiastical, academical, intellectual and book trade networks.