Power and Ceremony in European History

Rituals, Practices and Representative Bodies since the Late Middle Ages

Anna Kalinowska, Jonathan Spangler

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781350268869
• eBook ISBN: 9781350152199
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

From oaths and hand-kissing to coronations and baptisms, Power and Ceremony in European History considers the governing practices, courtly rituals, and expressions of power prevalent in Europe and the Ottoman Empire from the medieval age to the modern era. Bringing together political and art historical approaches to the study of power, this book reveals how ceremonies and rituals - far from simply being ostentatious displays of wealth - served as a primary means of communication between different participants in political and courtly life. It explores how ceremonial culture changed over time and in different regions to provide readers with a nuanced comparative understanding of rituals and ceremonies since the middle ages, showing how such performances were integral to the evolution of the state in Europe. This collection of essays is of immense value to both historians and art historians interested in representations of power and the political culture of Europe from 1450 onwards.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle page
• Series page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Contributors
• Introduction
• Part One Coronation and Enthronement
• 1 Where exactly is the throne? Locating sovereignty in sixteenth-century ottoman succession rituals
• 2 Proclamations and coronations in Palermo (1700–1735): Performing kingship and celebrating civic power
• 3 The evolution of the British coronation rite, 1761–1953
• Part Two Ceremonial of Royal Courts
• 4 The daily court ceremonial of the French queen in the reign of Henry III
• 5 Courtly and ceremonial spaces in Spanish royal sites: An evolution from the renaissance to the baroque
• 6 Royal baptism in the Spanish court: Art and ritual from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century
• 7 From marshal to monarch: State ceremonies and Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte in post-napoleonic Sweden
• Part Three Ceremonial of Institutions and Representative Bodies
• 8 Not the ruler, but the land: Estates and ceremonial order at the diet of besztercebánya, 1620
• 9 Oath-taking and Hand-Kissing: Ceremonies of sovereignty in a ‘Monarchia composita’, the states of the house of savoy from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries
• Part Four Tangible and Intangible Elements in Staging Ceremonies
• 10 Jagiellonians and habsburgs: Heraldic dynastic representation in Central Europe from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century
• 11 Operas and masquerades: Court rituals and entertainments under Ernest Augustus and George I of Brunswick-L ü neburg (1660–1727) in the electorate of Hanover and Great Britain
• 12 Public staging, visualization and performance of eighteenth-century danish absolutism: Queen Caroline Mathilde’s journey across funen as ritual
• Select Bibliography
• Index