Pro refrigerio animae: Death and Memory in East-Central Europe
The historiography of death, memory, and testamentary practices is already abundant in Western Europe and a fairly large number of extra-European regions. For East-Central Europe there are many short studies in various regional languages, mainly on anthropological/ethnographic aspects of the funeral rituals.
This is an edited collection of studies by international scholars on the interlocking themes of attitudes and discourses on death, commemorative practices, and inheritance/testamentary strategies in the Balkans and East-Central Europe. These and other related themes are addressed comparatively and cover areas including Albania, Bulgaria, Romania, Greece, and areas of the former Yugoslavia, Hungary, and Austria from the perspective of imperial – Ottoman and Habsburg – legacies.
Pro refrigerio animae: Death and Memory in East-Central Europe contributes to this subject by: linking anthropological/religious/cultural approaches to death to the legal/economic aspects of inheritance/commemoration; adding a still absent East-Central European and Habsburg, Balkan, and Ottoman dimension to the study of death, memorialization, and testaments; and presenting an abundant primary and secondary material in English translation and thus placing research on death and testaments by East-Central and Greek scholars within the international scholarly circuit.
Angela Jianu studied English and classics at the University of Bucharest in Romania and obtained a PhD in history from the University of York (UK) in 2004. She currently works as an independent historian, copy editor, and translator. Her publications include: "Women, Fashion and Europeanisation in the Romanian Principalities," in Women in the Ottoman Balkans, eds. Amila Buturović and Irvin C. Schick (2007) (trans. into Turkish as Osmanlı Dőneminde Balkan Kadinlari, 2009); Earthly Delights – Economies and Cultures of Food in Ottoman and Danubian Europe, c. 1500-1900, eds. Angela Jianu and Violeta Barbu (Brill, Leiden, 2018).
Gheorghe Lazăr is a senior research fellow at the "Nicolae Iorga" Institute of History (Bucharest, Romania), co-editor (with Violeta Barbu) and coordinator of the collection of mediaeval documents Documenta Romaniae Historica B. Wallachia, published by the Romanian Academy (10 volumes, 1998–2016). He obtained a PhD in history at Laval-Québec University in 2005. His doctoral dissertation was published in 2006 as: Naissance et ascension d’une catégorie sociale: Les marchands en Valachie (XVIIe–XVIIIe siècles) (Romanian Academy Award 2008). His published works include edited documents of social, economic, and family history: Mărturie pentru posteritate: Testamentul negustorului Ioan Băluţă din Craiova (2010); Documente privitoare la negustorii din Ţara Românească, vol. 1 (1656–1688), vol. 2 (1689–1714) (2013, 2014); Testamente de negustori şi meşteşugari din Ţara Românească (secolele XVII-XIX), 2021.