Mining Festivals in the Nineteenth Century

That a distinct festive culture arose within the mining trade in the early decades of the modern era is due, to a greater extent than with other occupations, to the singularity of mining work, mining organizations in the communities attached to the mines. Pit-work is dangerous work carried out at unique sites; the place and pioneering character of the work more than lend themselves, at least in an environment governed by religious explanations of existence, to mystical-cum-religious transfigurations of the work process. Thus mining people often formed distinct groups of worshippers within local parish congregations;' as ritual professions of religious faith, with their different denominational accents, permeated the rhythm of the miner's year and life, so in return, by the High and Late Middle Ages, church ritual was already changing in mining areas to meet the needs of the local working people. The organizational form of mining work in the salt and mineral mines of Central Europe was always dictated by the legal authority vested in the sovereign by the royal mining prerogative. All right to mineral wealth was derived from these 'supreme overlords of the mines', either directly, where the mine was under the fisc's own control, or indirectly in those cases where entrepreneurs with capital held a mine in fee. The most notable consequence of mining's special legal status was the rise of a structured body of trained technical staff responsible for overseeing the mine and securing the sovereign's tax revenues. A second consequence was that there arose legal forms and laws

Ancient history · Cultural Identity and Heritage · Historical and Archaeological Studies · Historical and Cultural Archaeology Studies · History

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