engleski

Neighbours, Friends and Communal Sentiment in Late Medieval Zagreb

In the Late Middle Ages Zagreb was a regional urban centre where various social layers resided. Inside the city walls the houses of the dwellers were made from brick, wood or the combination of both. Today there are no houses still standing from the medieval period, but topographical situation and spatial organization is well known on the basis of the analysis of extant written sources. In the paper, these two features will be looked upon in connection to social structures in order to investigate the relations between neighbours, starting with the city regulations on building of the houses to their reflection in practice (property and disciplinary matters). Two second topics – friendship and communal sentiment are closely connected, but they cannot be traced directly from the sources and have to be found by means of the examination of various types of documents dealing with completely different matters. Although sometimes members of the extended family (particularly those associated by marriage) were called friends, the category of friends that shall be primarily discussed here is that of the people whose relations were based on different types of spiritual kinship (in the first place baptismal sponsorships). In other cases friends shall be traced through the institution of the executors of the last wills and testaments and cases where “friendship” is explicitly expressed. On the other hand, communal sentiment of medieval city-dwellers in Zagreb shall be studied through the examination of charitable actions towards hospitals by individual and joint activities (e.g. last wills and communal support to the poor and charitable institutions through gifts in kind – oil or wood).

neighbourliness ; friendship ; community ; urban history ; the Middle Ages

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