The article examines the everyday practices of the early modern gentry society of Volhynia, where the concept of honor as the main value of a nobleman most often came to light. Sensitivity to the slightest signs of disrespect that could raise honor in the eyes of the community, and the need to increase it, led to daily competition, and often conflict between formally equal members of the gentry class. At the same time, honor and its derivative (and sometimes synonymous) good fame were at the heart of the deterrent mechanisms by which the armed community managed to maintain a relative balance, because honor set the boundaries of the behavior characteristic of the gentry. Therefore, we analyze the strategies used by the gentry to demonstrate their own and play along with other people's honor.
The gentry society of Volhynia was a community of settled people, that is, who owned real estate, the unity of which was formally supported by administrative, judicial and political institutions. The inclusion of its representative in a wide network of connections - kinship, neighborly, friendly, client-created a system of interdependencies, allowed the community to control its members and keep their behavior within certain manufactured patterns. The idea of an ideal member of the community was cultivated as always acting openly and not concealing intentions, focusing without unnecessary reflection on law, custom and collective experience, and not on personal desires ("svovolnost").1. the basis of restraining mechanisms was honor and its derivative (and sometimes synonymous) good fame-leaders among the ethical concepts of the Rechpospolitan gentry society. At the same time, it was honor that pushed formally equal members of the gentry community to fierce competition
Natalia Starchenko-Candidate of Historical Sciences, Researcher at the Hrushevsky Institute of Ukrainian Archeography and Source Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (Department of Monuments ...
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