This book deals with various examples and aspects of rituals and ceremonies in the late medieval Bohemian lands. The individual contributions explore particular rituals (coronation, wedding, funeral) or environments (cities, nobility, court, church).

"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."--

This is an annotated source bibliography of over 2,800 European court festival works. It allows access to many rare accounts of court festivals. Extensive indexes provide ruler's name, court name, territory, type of entertainment performed, composers and artists. There are numerous cross-references.

Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan is a study of the history and folklore surrounding Christmas holidays in several countries. It is an amazing collection of Christmas-related traditions from the first introductions of Christianity to the early 20th century. The book covers the history of Christmas as a Christian feast day and how that developed. It also discusses pre-Christian festivals and observances and how a lot of them survived by being given a Christian veneer although the overt paganism disappeared. Clement A. Miles (1881-1918), an author and translator, was a member of the Folk-Lore Society. He had been for many years on T. Fisher Unwin's literary staff and he was the author of an important work: Christmas in Ritual and Tradition. Miles possessed a wide knowledge of European languages, and translated numerous works from French and Italian.

19 substantial chapters provide the first overview of research on rulership in theory and practice, with a particular emphasis on monarchies of Bohemia, Hungary and Poland in the High and Late Middle Ages.

Performance and Transformation is a volume of essays that pushes the frontiers of interpretation on mystical and ecstatic writings of the later Middle Ages to explore them as particular performances. The noteworthy contributors examine mysticism and spirituality from multiple performance perspectives: dramatic, kinesthetic, linguistic, and spatial. Emerging from recent work on ritual, performance, mysticism, and the body, the authors offer new ways of analyzing these performances and their construction through questioning the various modes through which they were conveyed. Performance perspectives reveal women’s public leadership roles within their communities, the nature of devotional reading and authoring in manuscript cultures, and women’s roles in developing and performing rituals and texts that would transform future generations. The emphasis on the agency of women in conveying and constructing ritual makes this work a rare find among studies of its kind.