Pro refrigerio animae: Death and Memory in East-Central Europe

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.

1. Amila Buturovic, Death and Dying in Ottoman Bosnia: Cultural Responses, Before and After (1463-1878) / 2. Petronel Zahariuc, The Cult of the Dead in Moldavia (Seventeenth-Early Nineteenth Centuries): Between Liturgical Norm and Social Practice / 3. Gheorghe Lazăr, “The Last Passage”: Commemorative Discourse and Practices in the Testaments of Merchants (Wallachia, Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries) / 4. Zoran Ladić, From Fear of Death to the Salvation of the Soul and Eternal Life: Reasons for Composing Last Wills in the East Adriatic (Thirteenth-Fifteenth Centuries) / 5. Penka Danova and Elena Kostova, Demise Far from Home: Testaments of Ragusans Who Died in Bulgarian Lands in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries / 6. Konstantinos Giakoumis, "For a Christian Ending to Our Life": Church Endowments, Commemoration, and Tomb Purchases in the West Balkans (Fourteenth-Nineteenth Centuries) / 7. Elena Bedreag and Mihai Mîrza, Families without Children: Testamentary Norms and Practices among Moldavian Boyars (Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries) / 8. Mariana Lazăr, Strategies of Succession in the Testaments of the Cantacuzino Family (Wallachia, Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries) / 9. Mária Lupescu Makó, Between Material and Spiritual Memoria: Last Wills and Testaments in Late Medieval Transylvania (Fifteenth–Mid-Sixteenth Centuries) / 10. J.J. Łabno, Dead but not Departed: The Consolation of the Dangerous Gaze: Funerary Portraits in Early Modern Poland and Roman Egypt / 11. Aleksandra Koutny-Jones, Portraying the Dead in Early Modern Hungarian and Polish Funerary Traditions / 12. Maria Crăciun, “The Death of the Righteous”: Agency, Memory, Self-Representation, and Identity in Transylvanian Medieval Altarpieces / 13. Mihai-Bogdan Atanasiu, Moldavian Eighteenth-Century Diptychs: Prosopographic Sources for Social History / 14. Maria Magdalena Székely, Princely Necropoles of Moldavia (Fifteen-Sixteen Centuries) / 15. Ştefan S. Gorovei, Lost Monuments: The ‘Death’ of Family Necropoles in Medieval Moldavia