The author deals with Baroque pilgrimages to Styrian Mariazell where people searched for help and solace, or they came there with gratitude for grace received from heaven. The information is drawn from surviving archival sources of both printed and written nature; these include pilgrim handbooks, books of miracles, and the direct testimony of a participant (celfotr) from the South Moravian town of Znojmo. The study focusses on the pilgrim and his or her duties associated with the preparation for the pilgrimage, such as providing for the farm and arranging money for the journey, but spiritual preparation was also important. The journey itself and the activities associated with the pilgrimage practice are also reflected. The main purpose of the journey was to see the object of reverence, the marvellous statue of the Virgin Mary; this was accompanied by ritualised acts, but the pilgrimage also had a completely secular aspect, such as purchase of various devotionals related to the pilgrimage site. The return journey did not have as strict rules as the journey to the pilgrimage site, but there are also interesting elements, e. g. the regular visit to Maria Taferl, another important Marian pilgrimage site in Lower Austria. Pilgrimages of Moravian inhabitants to Mariazell are observed in the period of the greatest flowering of this phenomenon in the first two thirds of the 18th century, but for capacity reasons the author does not take into account essential changes concerning Baroque religiosity that took place in the last third of the 18th century.
The article analyzes set of normative sources which regulated the exercise of the profession of painters and sculptors in Brno in the 18th century (guilds’ statutes, government’s decrees, civic regulations, judicial sources etc.). The study interprets the decline of the artists’ guild organization in Brno in the 1750s in a wider perspective of economic and administrative reforms in the Habsburg monarchy. These reforms were marked by several particular initiatives made by the artist’s corporation in Brno, who came up with own unsuccessful proposals of various changes of the traditional city’s guild system. The study states that such initiatives should not be explained simply as symptoms of a changing urban society in Central Europe during the Enlightenment era, or as a consequence of the dynamics of proto-industrialization and the establishment of new economic as well educational institutions, but also as a result of the new product market and the demand shifted towards less expensive and more fashionable goods.