Middle Ages
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages lasted from the 5th to the 15th century. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and merged into the Renaissance and the Age of Discovery; the Middle Ages is the middle period of the three traditional divisions of Western history: classical antiquity, the medieval period, the modern period. The medieval period is itself subdivided into the Early and Late Middle Ages. Population decline, counterurbanisation, collapse of centralized authority and mass migrations of tribes, which had begun in Late Antiquity, continued in the Early Middle Ages; the large-scale movements of the Migration Period, including various Germanic peoples, formed new kingdoms in what remained of the Western Roman Empire. In the 7th century, North Africa and the Middle East—once part of the Byzantine Empire—came under the rule of the Umayyad Caliphate, an Islamic empire, after conquest by Muhammad's successors. Although there were substantial changes in society and political structures, the break with classical antiquity was not complete.
The still-sizeable Byzantine Empire, Rome's direct continuation, survived in the Eastern Mediterranean and remained a major power. The empire's law code, the Corpus Juris Civilis or "Code of Justinian", was rediscovered in Northern Italy in 1070 and became admired in the Middle Ages. In the West, most kingdoms incorporated the few extant Roman institutions. Monasteries were founded; the Franks, under the Carolingian dynasty established the Carolingian Empire during the 8th and early 9th century. It covered much of Western Europe but succumbed to the pressures of internal civil wars combined with external invasions: Vikings from the north, Magyars from the east, Saracens from the south. During the High Middle Ages, which began after 1000, the population of Europe increased as technological and agricultural innovations allowed trade to flourish and the Medieval Warm Period climate change allowed crop yields to increase. Manorialism, the organisation of peasants into villages that owed rent and labour services to the nobles, feudalism, the political structure whereby knights and lower-status nobles owed military service to their overlords in return for the right to rent from lands and manors, were two of the ways society was organised in the High Middle Ages.
The Crusades, first preached in 1095, were military attempts by Western European Christians to regain control of the Holy Land from Muslims. Kings became the heads of centralised nation-states, reducing crime and violence but making the ideal of a unified Christendom more distant. Intellectual life was marked by scholasticism, a philosophy that emphasised joining faith to reason, by the founding of universities; the theology of Thomas Aquinas, the paintings of Giotto, the poetry of Dante and Chaucer, the travels of Marco Polo, the Gothic architecture of cathedrals such as Chartres are among the outstanding achievements toward the end of this period and into the Late Middle Ages. The Late Middle Ages was marked by difficulties and calamities including famine and war, which diminished the population of Europe. Controversy and the Western Schism within the Catholic Church paralleled the interstate conflict, civil strife, peasant revolts that occurred in the kingdoms. Cultural and technological developments transformed European society, concluding the Late Middle Ages and beginning the early modern period.
The Middle Ages is one of the three major periods in the most enduring scheme for analysing European history: classical civilisation, or Antiquity. The "Middle Ages" first appears in Latin in 1469 as media tempestas or "middle season". In early usage, there were many variants, including medium aevum, or "middle age", first recorded in 1604, media saecula, or "middle ages", first recorded in 1625; the alternative term "medieval" derives from medium aevum. Medieval writers divided history into periods such as the "Six Ages" or the "Four Empires", considered their time to be the last before the end of the world; when referring to their own times, they spoke of them as being "modern". In the 1330s, the humanist and poet Petrarch referred to pre-Christian times as antiqua and to the Christian period as nova. Leonardo Bruni was the first historian to use tripartite periodisation in his History of the Florentine People, with a middle period "between the fall of the Roman Empire and the revival of city life sometime in late eleventh and twelfth centuries".
Tripartite periodisation became standard after the 17th-century German historian Christoph Cellarius divided history into three periods: ancient and modern. The most given starting point for the Middle Ages is around 500, with the date of 476 first used by Bruni. Starting dates are sometimes used in the outer parts of Europe. For Europe as a whole, 1500 is considered to be the end of the Middle Ages, but there is no universally agreed upon end date. Depending on the context, events such as the conquest of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453, Christopher Columbus's first voyage to the Americas in 1492, or the Protestant Reformation in 1517 are sometimes used. English historians use the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 to mark the end of the period. For Spain, dates used are the death of King Ferdinand II in 1516, the death of Queen Isabella I of Castile in 1504, or the conquest of Granada in 1492. Historians from Romance-speaking countries tend to divide the Middle Ages into two parts: an earlier "High" and late
Borčany
Borčany is a village and municipality in Bánovce nad Bebravou District in the Trenčín Region of north-western Slovakia. In historical records the village was first mentioned in 1113; the municipality lies at an altitude of 195 metres and covers an area of 3.11 km². It has a population of about 260 people; the records for genealogical research are available at the state archive "Statny Archiv in Nitra, Slovakia" List of municipalities and towns in Slovakia https://web.archive.org/web/20071116010355/http://www.statistics.sk/mosmis/eng/run.html Surnames of living people in Borcany
Census
A census is the procedure of systematically acquiring and recording information about the members of a given population. The term is used in connection with national population and housing censuses; the United Nations defines the essential features of population and housing censuses as "individual enumeration, universality within a defined territory and defined periodicity", recommends that population censuses be taken at least every 10 years. United Nations recommendations cover census topics to be collected, official definitions and other useful information to co-ordinate international practice; the word is of Latin origin: during the Roman Republic, the census was a list that kept track of all adult males fit for military service. The modern census is essential to international comparisons of any kind of statistics, censuses collect data on many attributes of a population, not just how many people there are. Censuses began as the only method of collecting national demographic data, are now part of a larger system of different surveys.
Although population estimates remain an important function of a census, including the geographic distribution of the population, statistics can be produced about combinations of attributes e.g. education by age and sex in different regions. Current administrative data systems allow for other approaches to enumeration with the same level of detail but raise concerns about privacy and the possibility of biasing estimates. A census can be contrasted with sampling in which information is obtained only from a subset of a population. Modern census data are used for research, business marketing, planning, as a baseline for designing sample surveys by providing a sampling frame such as an address register. Census counts are necessary to adjust samples to be representative of a population by weighting them as is common in opinion polling. Stratification requires knowledge of the relative sizes of different population strata which can be derived from census enumerations. In some countries, the census provides the official counts used to apportion the number of elected representatives to regions.
In many cases, a chosen random sample can provide more accurate information than attempts to get a population census. A census is construed as the opposite of a sample as its intent is to count everyone in a population rather than a fraction. However, population censuses rely on a sampling frame to count the population; this is the only way to be sure that everyone has been included as otherwise those not responding would not be followed up on and individuals could be missed. The fundamental premise of a census is that the population is not known and a new estimate is to be made by the analysis of primary data; the use of a sampling frame is counterintuitive as it suggests that the population size is known. However, a census is used to collect attribute data on the individuals in the nation; this process of sampling marks the difference between historical census, a house to house process or the product of an imperial decree, the modern statistical project. The sampling frame used by census is always an address register.
Thus it is not known how many people there are in each household. Depending on the mode of enumeration, a form is sent to the householder, an enumerator calls, or administrative records for the dwelling are accessed; as a preliminary to the dispatch of forms, census workers will check any address problems on the ground. While it may seem straightforward to use the postal service file for this purpose, this can be out of date and some dwellings may contain a number of independent households. A particular problem is what are termed'communal establishments' which category includes student residences, religious orders, homes for the elderly, people in prisons etc; as these are not enumerated by a single householder, they are treated differently and visited by special teams of census workers to ensure they are classified appropriately. Individuals are counted within households and information is collected about the household structure and the housing. For this reason international documents refer to censuses of housing.
The census response is made by a household, indicating details of individuals resident there. An important aspect of census enumerations is determining which individuals can be counted from which cannot be counted. Broadly, three definitions can be used: de facto residence; this is important to consider individuals who have temporary addresses. Every person should be identified uniquely as resident in one place but where they happen to be on Census Day, their de facto residence, may not be the best place to count them. Where an individual uses services may be more useful and this is at their usual, or de jure, residence. An individual may be represented at a permanent address a family home for students or long term migrants, it is necessary to have a precise definition of residence to decide whether visitors to a country should be included in the population count. This is becoming more important as students travel abroad for education for a period of several years. Other groups causing problems of enumeration are new born babies, people away on holiday, people moving home around census day, people without a fixed address.
People having second homes because of working in another part of the country or retaining a holiday cottage are dif
Trenčín
Trenčín is a city in western Slovakia of the central Váh River valley near the Czech border, around 120 km from Bratislava. It has a population of more than 55,000, which makes it the eighth largest municipality of the country and is the seat of the Trenčín Region and the Trenčín District, it has Trenčín Castle, situated on a rock above the city. Trenčín was first mentioned under the Greek name Leukaristos, depicted on the Ptolemy world map around 150 CE. During the course of the Marcomannic Wars between the Roman Empire and Germanic Quadi, the Romans carved an inscription on the rock under the present-day castle in 179 CE and the place was mentioned as Laugaricio. For a long time it was considered the northernmost known presence of the Romans in Central Europe; the first written mentions in the Middle Ages are from 1111 and 1113. The name is derived from a personal name Trnka/Trenka with a possessive suffix -ín; the German and Polish forms are Trentschin, Trencsén and Trenczyn, respectively. The site of Trenčín has been inhabited since time immemorial.
Trenčín Castle, a typical medieval fortified castle is situated high on a rock above the city. Trenčín is best known for a Roman inscription on the rock below the Trenčín Castle dating from 179 AD, the era of the Marcomannic Wars, a series of wars between the Roman Empire and the Germanic Quadi and Marcomanni, it denotes the site as Laugaricio and for long time it was the most northern known evidence of the presence of Roman soldiers in central Europe. Trenčín is one of the suggested locations for the capital of Samo's Empire in the 7th century. Wogastisburg was located somewhere on the Vah river and was the site of a decisive battle between the Slavic and Frankish armies in 631, it is plausible. In the beginning of the 11th century, the region was controlled by king Bolesław I the Brave of Poland. In 1017, Stephen I of Hungary conquered the region which remained part of Hungary until 1918. By the end of the 11th century, the castle became the administrative centre of Trencsén county in the Kingdom of Hungary.
As one of the few stone castles in the country it resisted the disastrous invasion of Mongols in 1241. In 1263 Trenčín was in the possession of Jakab Cseszneky royal swordbearer, but in 1302 King Wenceslas I took it away from the Cseszneky brothers because they were supporting his rival Charles Robert, donated it to Matthew III Csák. Between 1302 and 1321 the castle was the seat of the powerful magnate Matthew Csák who controlled most of what is now Slovakia. Challenging the authority of king Charles Robert, Matthew Csák maintained a large court and pursued his own foreign policy; the Treaty of Trentschin between Bohemia and Poland was signed in the city in 1335. Trenčín gained a number of privileges during the Middle Ages: In 1324 the inhabitants were freed from paying tolls and the city received free royal town privileges in 1412 from King Sigismund. However, during the following decades and centuries there were catastrophes and wars which lasted until the end of the 18th century. During the conflict between the Habsburgs and the supporters of the rival king, János Szapolyai, the town was captured in 1528 by imperial troops.
In the 17th century the Ottomans were another threat from the south but they failed to conquer the city. The town suffered from the Kuruc uprising against the Habsburgs and on 3 August 1708 the Battle of Trenčín took place close to the city. Two years a plague killed 1,600 inhabitants of the city. In 1790 the town, along with the castle, was burned down and the castle has been in ruins since. In the 19th century Trenčín flourished, as the railways to Žilina and Bratislava were built and many new enterprises were established in the textile and machine industries; the town became the hub of the middle Považie region. In 1867 Trenčín was downgraded from a "free royal town" to a "town with municipal government" and came under the direct control of the chief of Trenčín county. Trenčín flourished again during the era of the first Czechoslovak republic and became the capital of the Trenčín county again between 1940–1945 when the Slovak Republic was in existence. Shortly after the Slovak National Uprising began, Trenčín was occupied by Nazi Germany and it became the headquarters of the Sicherheitsdienst and the Gestapo.
Trenčín was captured by the Romanian and Soviet troops on 10 April 1945. Since 1990, the historical centre of the city has been restored and since 1996 it has been the seat of Trenčín Region and Trenčín District; the castle and its Roman inscription have attracted tourism since. Trenčín lies at an altitude of 262 metres above sea level and covers an area of 82.0 square kilometres. It lies in the Trenčín Basin of north-western Slovakia, surrounded by the Strážov Mountains, Považský Inovec and White Carpathians, with the last mentioned being a protected area; the Váh River flows in the north-south axis. Trenčín has a continental climate with four distinct seasons, it is characterized by a significant variation between cold, snowy winters. The city is dominated by Trenčín Castle, the third-largest castle in Slovakia. Trenčín Castle is divided with extensive fortifications; the upper castle has several palace buildings which surround the central medieval tower, which remains the highest point of the city.
Below the castle
Slovaks
The Slovaks are a nation and West Slavic ethnic group native to Slovakia who share a common ancestry, culture and speak the Slovak language. In Slovakia, c. 4.4 million are ethnic Slovaks of 5.4 million total population. There are Slovak minorities in Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary and sizeable populations of immigrants and their descendants in the United States and the United Kingdom, collectively referred to as the Slovak diaspora; the name Slovak is derived from *Slověninъ, plural *Slověně, the old name of the Slavs. The original stem has been preserved in all Slovak words except the masculine noun; the first written mention of adjective slovenský is in 1294. The original name of Slovaks Slovenin/Slovene was still recorded in Pressburg Latin-Czech Dictionary, but it changed to Slovák under the influence of Czech and Polish language; the first written mention of new form in the territory of present-day Slovakia is from Bardejov. The mentions in Czech sources are older; the change is not related to the ethnogenesis of Slovaks, but to linguistic changes in the West Slavic languages.
The word Slovak was used later as a common name for all Slavs in Czech and Slovak language together with other forms. In Hungarian "Slovak" is Tót, an exonym, it was used to refer to all Slavs including Slovenes and Croats, but came to refer to Slovaks. Many place names in Hungary such as Tótszentgyörgy, Tótszentmárton, Tótkomlós still bear the name. Tóth is a common Hungarian surname; the Slovaks have historically been variously referred to as Slovyenyn, Sclavus, Slavus, Winde, Wende, or Wenden. The final three terms are variations of the Germanic term Wends, used to refer to any Slavs living close to Germanic settlements; the early Slavs came to the territory of Slovakia in several waves from the 5th and 6th centuries and were organized on a tribal level. Original tribal names are not known due to the lack of written sources before their integration into higher political units. Weakening of tribal consciousness was accelerated by Avars, who did not respect tribal differences in the controlled territory and motivated remaining Slavs to join together and to collaborate on their defense.
In the 7th century, Slavs founded larger tribal union: Samo's empire. Regardless of Samo's empire, the integration process continued in other territories with various intensities; the final fall of the Avar Khaganate allowed new political entities to arise. The first such political unit documented by written sources is the Principality of Nitra, one of the foundations of common ethnic consciousness. At this stage in history it is not yet possible to assume a common identity of all Slovak ancestors in the territory of eastern Slovakia if it was inhabited by related Slavs; the Principality of Nitra become a part of a common state of Moravians and Slovaks. The short existence of Great Moravia prevented it from suppressing differences which resulted from its creation from two separate entities, therefore a common "Slovak-Moravian" ethnic identity failed to develop; the early political integration in the territory of present-day Slovakia was however reflected in linguistic integration. While dialects of early Slovak ancestors were divided into West Slavic and non-West Slavic, between the 8th and 9th centuries both dialects merged, thus laying the foundations of a Slovak language.
The 10th century is a milestone in the Slovak ethnogenesis. The fall of Great Moravia and further political changes supported their formation into a separate nation. At the same time, with the extinction of the Proto-Slavic language, between the 10th and 13th centuries Slovak evolved into an independent language; the early existence of the Kingdom of Hungary positively influenced the development of common consciousness and companionship among Slavs in the Northern Hungary, not only within boundaries of present-day Slovakia. The clear difference between Slovaks and Hungarians made adoption of specific name unnecessary and Slovaks preserved their original name, used in communication with other Slavic peoples. In political terms, the medieval Slovaks were a part of the multi-ethnic political nation Natio Hungarica, together with Hungarians, Germans and other ethnic groups in the Kingdom of Hungary. Since a medieval political nation did not consist of ordinary people but nobility, membership of the privileged class was necessary for all these peoples.
Like other nations, the Slovaks began to transform into a modern nation from the 18th century under the idea of national romanticism. The modern Slovak nation is the result of radical processes of modernization within the Habsburg Empire which culminated in the middle of the 19th century; the transformation process was slowed down by conflict with Hungarian nationalism and the ethnogenesis of the Slovaks become a political question regarding their deprivation and preservation of their language and national rights. In 1722, Mich
Slovakia
Slovakia the Slovak Republic, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east, Hungary to the south, Austria to the west, the Czech Republic to the northwest. Slovakia's territory spans about 49,000 square kilometres and is mountainous; the population is over 5.4 million and consists of Slovaks. The capital and largest city is Bratislava, the second largest city is Košice; the official language is Slovak. The Slavs arrived in the territory of present-day Slovakia in the 6th centuries. In the 7th century, they played a significant role in the creation of Samo's Empire and in the 9th century established the Principality of Nitra, conquered by the Principality of Moravia to establish Great Moravia. In the 10th century, after the dissolution of Great Moravia, the territory was integrated into the Principality of Hungary, which would become the Kingdom of Hungary in 1000. In 1241 and 1242, much of the territory was destroyed by the Mongols during their invasion of Central and Eastern Europe.
The area was recovered thanks to Béla IV of Hungary who settled Germans which became an important ethnic group in the area in what are today parts of central and eastern Slovakia. After World War I and the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Czechoslovak National Council established Czechoslovakia. A separate Slovak Republic existed during World War II as a totalitarian, clero-fascist one-party client state of Nazi Germany. At the end of World War II, Czechoslovakia was re-established as an independent country. A coup in 1948 ushered in a totalitarian one-party state under the Communist regime during whose rule the country existed as a satellite of the Soviet Union. Attempts for liberalization of communism in Czechoslovakia culminated in the Prague Spring, crushed by the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968. In 1989, the Velvet Revolution ended the Communist rule in Czechoslovakia peacefully. Slovakia became an independent state on 1 January 1993 after the peaceful dissolution of Czechoslovakia, sometimes known as the Velvet Divorce.
Slovakia is a developed country, with a high-income advanced economy and a high Human Development Index, a high standard of living and performs favourably in measurements of civil liberties, press freedom, internet freedom, democratic governance and peacefulness. The country maintains a combination of market economy with a comprehensive social security system. Citizens of Slovakia are provided with universal health care, free education and one of the longest paid parental leave in the OECD; the country joined the European Union on 1 May 2004 and joined the Eurozone on 1 January 2009. Slovakia is a member of the Schengen Area, NATO, the United Nations, the OECD, the WTO, CERN, the OSCE, the Council of Europe and the Visegrád Group. Although regional income inequality is high, 90% of citizens own their homes. In 2018, Slovak citizens had visa-free or visa-on-arrival access to 179 countries and territories, ranking the Slovak passport 10th in the world; as part of Eurozone, Slovak legal tender is the world's 2nd-most-traded currency.
Slovakia is the world's largest per-capita car producer with a total of 1,040,000 cars manufactured in the country in 2016 alone and the 7th largest car producer in the European Union. The car industry represents 43% of Slovakia's industrial output, a quarter of its exports; the first written mention of name Slovakia is in 1586. It derives from the Czech word Slováky; the native name Slovensko derives from an older name of Slovaks Sloven what may indicate its origin before the 15th century. The original meaning was geographic, since Slovakia was a part of the multiethnic Kingdom of Hungary and did not form a separate administrative unit in this period. Radiocarbon dating puts the oldest surviving archaeological artefacts from Slovakia – found near Nové Mesto nad Váhom – at 270,000 BCE, in the Early Paleolithic era; these ancient tools, made by the Clactonian technique, bear witness to the ancient habitation of Slovakia. Other stone tools from the Middle Paleolithic era come from the Prévôt cave in Bojnice and from other nearby sites.
The most important discovery from that era is a Neanderthal cranium, discovered near Gánovce, a village in northern Slovakia. Archaeologists have found prehistoric human skeletons in the region, as well as numerous objects and vestiges of the Gravettian culture, principally in the river valleys of Nitra, Ipeľ, Váh and as far as the city of Žilina, near the foot of the Vihorlat and Tribeč mountains, as well as in the Myjava Mountains; the most well-known finds include the oldest female statue made of mammoth-bone, the famous Venus of Moravany. The statue was found in the 1940s in Moravany nad Váhom near Piešťany. Numerous necklaces made of shells from Cypraca thermophile gastropods of the Tertiary period have come from the sites of Zákovská, Podkovice and Radošina; these findings provide the most ancient evidence of commercial exchanges carried out between the Mediterranean and central Europe. The Bronze Age in the geographical territory of modern-day Slovakia went through three stages of development, stretching from 2000 to 800 BCE.
Major cultural and political development can be attributed to the significant growth in production of copper in central Slovakia and northwe
Kšinná
Kšinná is a village and municipality in Bánovce nad Bebravou District in the Trenčín Region of north-western Slovakia. In historical records the village was first mentioned in 1352; the municipality lies at an altitude of 350 metres and covers an area of 41.249 km². It has a population of about 540 people. Https://web.archive.org/web/20070513023228/http://www.statistics.sk/mosmis/eng/run.html
Media related to Bánovce nad Bebravou at Wikimedia Commons
