The third edition of the Historical Dictionary of Croatia relates the history of this country through a detailed chronology, an introduction, a bibliography, and cross-referenced dictionary entries on significant persons, places, and events; institutions and organizations; and political, economic, social, cultural, and religious facets.

The medieval Republic of Ragusa (now Dubrovnik) was a prosperous small open economy, rivalling bigger competitors. This study collects together evidence on how Ragusa compared to other economies of the region, and addresses the difficult question of why it outperformed its Dalmatian rivals (Kotor, Split and Zadar).

Domestic devotion has become an increasingly important area of research in recent years, with the publication of a number of significant studies on the early modern period in particular. This Special Issue aims to build on these works and to expand their range, both geographically and chronologically. This collection focuses on lived religion and the devotional practices found in the domestic settings of late medieval and early modern Europe. More particularly, it investigates the degree to which the experience of personal or familial religious practice in the domestic realm intersected with the more public expression of faith in liturgical or communal settings. Its broad geographical range (spanning northern, southern, central and eastern Europe) includes practices related to Christianity, Judaism and Islam. This Special Issue will be of interest to historians, art historians, medievalists, early modernists, historians of religion, anthropologists and theologians, as well as those interested in the history of material religious culture. It also offers important insights into research areas such as gender studies, histories of the emotions and histories of the senses.

Natural Materials of the Holy Land and the Visual Translation of Place, 500-1500, focuses on the unique ways that natural materials carry the spirit of place. Since early Christianity, wood, earth, water and stone were taken from loca sancta to signify them elsewhere. Academic discourse has indiscriminately grouped material tokens from holy places and their containers with architectural and topographical emulations, two-dimensional images and bodily relics. However, unlike textual or visual representations, natural materials do not describe or interpret the Holy Land; they are part of it. Tangible and timeless, they realize the meaning of their place of origin in new locations. What makes earth, stones or bottled water transported from holy sites sacred? How do they become pars pro toto, signifying the whole from which they were taken? This book will examine natural media used for translating loca sancta, the processes of their sanctification and how, although inherently abstract, they become charged with meaning. It will address their metamorphosis, natural or induced; how they change the environment to which they are transported; their capacity to translate a static and distant site elsewhere; the effect of their relocation on users/viewers; and how their containers and staging are used to communicate their substance.

A vibrant city-state on the Adriatic sea, Dubrovnik, also known as Ragusa, was a hub for the international trade between Europe and the Ottoman Empire. As a result, the city suffered frequent outbreaks of plague. Through a comprehensive analysis of these epidemics in Dubrovnik, Expelling the Plague explores the increasingly sophisticated plague control regulations that were adopted by the city and implemented by its health officials. In 1377, Dubrovnik became the first city in the world to develop and implement quarantine legislation, and in 1390 it established the earliest recorded permanent Health Office. The city’s preoccupation with plague control and the powers granted to its Health Office led to a rich archival record chronicling the city’s experience of plague, its attempts to safeguard public health, and the social effects of its practices of quarantine, prosecution, and punishment. These sources form the foundation of the authors' analysis, in particular the manuscript Libro deli Signori Chazamorbi, 1500-30, a rare health record of the 1526-27 calamitous plague epidemic. Teeming with real people across the spectrum, including gravediggers, laundresses, and plague survivors, it contains the testimonies collected during trial proceedings conducted by health officials against violators of public health regulations. Outlining the contributions of Dubrovnik in conceiving and establishing early public health measures in Europe, Expelling the Plague reveals how health concerns of the past greatly resemble contemporary anxieties about battling epidemics such as SARS, avian flu, and the Ebola virus.

The European Tributary States of the Ottoman Empire is the first comprehensive overview of the empire’s relationship to its various European tributaries, Moldavia, Wallachia, Transylvania, Ragusa, the Crimean Khanate and the Cossack Hetmanate. The volume focuses on three fundamental aspects of the empire’s relationship with these polities: the various legal frameworks which determined their positions within the imperial system, the diplomatic contacts through which they sought to influence the imperial center, and the military cooperation between them and the Porte. Bringing together studies by eminent experts and presenting results of several less-known historiographical traditions, this volume contributes significantly to a deeper understanding of Ottoman power at the peripheries of the empire.

Exactly 450 years after the solemn closure of the Council of Trent on 4 December 1563, scholars from diverse regional, disciplinary and confessional backgrounds convened in Leuven to reflect upon the impact of this Council, not only in Europe but also beyond. Their conclusions are to be found in these three impressive volumes. Bridging different generations of scholarship, the authors reassess in a first volume Tridentine views on the Bible, theology and liturgy, as well as their reception by Protestants, deconstructing many myths surviving in scholarship and society alike. They also deal with the mechanisms 'Rome' developed to hold a grip on the Council's implementation. The second volume analyzes the changes in local ecclesiastical life, initiated by bishops, orders and congregations, and the political strife and confessionalisation accompanying this reform process. The third and final volume examines the afterlife of Trent in arts and music, as well as in the global impact of Trent through missions.

In recent years, much has been published on women, crime and justice in English history. However, for a variety of reasons, particularly the ready availability of source material for the capital, such research has tended to have an overwhelmingly Metropolitan focus. This book aims to redress the balance for the ‘long’ eighteenth century by concentrating on women from outside the London area. Although vitally important to the wider country, the Metropolis always contained a small minority of the country’s female offenders and defendants, albeit a significantly higher percentage of the latter than its share of the national population. The capital also had a rather different criminal justice and policing system to that found in the rest of the country at this time. The book focuses on women’s experiences in provincial England as both the perpetrators of various crimes and as suspects or defendants in the country’s criminal justice system. The areas considered range from the West Country to the Scottish Border, and the offences examined include all of the major crimes, such as murder and theft, as well as some more arcane forms of deviance, including arson and coining. The factors that prompted women to offend, their likelihood of exposure when they did so, and their treatment before the courts and in the penal system are all considered in detail. In particular, the book examines the gendered differences found in female crime when compared to that of their male counterparts, and how women’s experiences of the era’s justice system differed from those of men. It also compares provincial women to those found in the Metropolis in these respects. Extensive use is made of primary sources in portraying the lives of female criminals from Kent to Cumberland, while comparison is also made with women from other parts of the British Isles and beyond, so that the respective roles of structural determinants and national ‘culture’ in crime and justice can be considered.

This book aims to define comparative economics and to illustrate the breadth and depth of its contribution. It starts with an historiography of the field, arguing for a continued legacy of comparative economic systems, which compared socialism and capitalism, a field which some argued should have been replaced by institutional economics after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The process of transition to market capitalism is reviewed, and itself exemplifies a new combination of comparative analysis with a focus on institutional development. Going beyond, chapters broadening the application of comparative analysis and applying it to new issues and approaches, including the role and definition of institutions, subjective wellbeing, inequality, populism, demography, and novel methodologies. Overall, comparative economics has evolved in the past 30 years, and remains a powerful approach for analyzing important issues.