Conference programme: MILLENNIUM REGNI POLONIAE

Forum historiae, 2023

Death and dying were a ubiquitous reality of the world of medieval society, with lasting effects on the living from all social groups in equal measure. However, for the rulers of the day, the process of dying and the subsequent burial was an important social, political and cultural event. Over time, special funerary ceremonial complexes developed that included a variety of rituals and symbols which indicated the status and importance of the medieval monarchs. This paper compares the funerary rituals and symbols of power on display during the processions of three Central European kings: King Charles I Robert of Hungary (1342) in Visegrád, Buda and Szkésfehérvár, Polish King Casimir III the Great (1370) in Kraków and Bohemian King and Roman Emperor Charles IV (1378) in Prague. Each of these monumental events included a number of common motifs and ritual sequences, though at the same time, local flavour or innovations always came into play. The common denominator of these three ceremonies was that in the spirit of the political theology of the time, all referenced the immortality of the sovereign power and its timeless essence, which sprung from a sacred character sanctioned by God's grace.

Canadian Journal of History, 2022

The richness and abundance of ritual, ceremony, and performance in European history continue to fascinate historians after decades of description and analysis, and this collection introduces a new series of case studies that gives the reader much to chew on and to draw from in further work. Anna Kalinowska and Jonathan Spangler have brought together a group of papers for the most part devoted to Central and Eastern Europe, the Ottoman Empire, and Scandinavia. The book is valuable for that alone, as it helps to broaden the historiographical lens away from Western Europe and to introduce students to these important areas. The chapters deal primarily with the early modern period, with much of the book occupied with the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries. Taken as a whole, the collection will serve readers interested in elite ceremonials and courtly rituals well, and succeeds in its goal of broadening the comparative discussion of these important aspects of European history. The book is divided into four parts, plus an introduction by Kalinowska and Spangler. The introduction lays out the rationale and historiographical genealogy of the collection. As the study of political ritual and ceremony moved, over the last decades of the twentieth century, from description to analysis, from curiosity to significance, it became widely acknowledged that the elaborate ritual life of premodern Europeans could and should be read from sociological and anthropological perspectives. All of the essays are therefore indebted to Edward Muir, obviously, but with strong influence from Elias, Kantorowicz, Duindam, Cannadine, and Stollberg-Rillinger. One will not, however, find much in the way of theory in this collection. The editors specify in the introduction that their concern is to promote the analysis of primary sources as the foremost task of historians and history students. All of the essays are, therefore, documentary studies at their core, and the collection excels at bringing forward recent analyses of ritual documents and events. Part one looks specifically at rituals and ceremonies of coronation and enthronement. In sixteenth-century Istanbul (Yelçe), eighteenth-century

Środkowoeuropejskie Studia Polityczne

The text analyzes the mutual relations between the liturgy of sacraments and the most solemn state ceremony in the Republic of Poland, that of swearing-in of the Head of State. Although the latter ceremony is secular, its antecedence should be sought in the religious aspects of the enthronement of European rulers in the Middle Ages. These references make the swearing-in an object of study combining theology and political science. They invite questions about the relation between the religious imagination of a given national community and its political organization as embodied in state ceremonies. The candidate who wins the presidential elections becomes the President of the Polish Republic after their victory is announced by the National Electoral Commission, and after the Supreme Court confirms validity of this result. However, they remain President-Elect until they utter the words of the oath. Therefore, the swearing-in is a public ritual regulated by law which needs to be completed in order to formally commence exercise of the office. The oath, which is spelled out in the Constitution and delivered by the newly elected Head of State, has a performative nature, similar to liturgical formulas. Additionally, it comprises an optional reference to God as witness to the oath delivered. Therefore, the presidential oath is a historically conditioned testimony to public authority, referring to the realm of the sacred.

Published 2021 This book provides the first detailed overview of research on rulership in theory and practice, with a particular emphasis on the monarchies of Bohemia, Hungary and Poland in the High and Late Middle Ages. The contributions examine the legitimation of rule of the first local dynasties, the ritual practice of power, the ruling strategies and practices of power in the established monarchies, and the manifold influences on the rulership in East Central Europe from outside the region (such as from Byzantium, and the Holy Roman Empire). The collection shows that these ideas and practices enabled the new polities to become legitimate members of Latin Christendom.

2022

In this paper, I would like to venture beyond the predominant historiographical framework of the "monarchical Church" and focus on other areas of episcopal activity, usually omitted from examination, but which were at the core of bishops’ activities — namely, the leadership in Christian worship. I argue that the liturgical manuscripts from the Piast realms, usually overlooked or analyzed outside of their proper societal and political context, shed light on the polyvalent agency of various bishops, including in respect to the Piast rulers. The codices from medieval Poland used during ecclesiastical services, if analyzed properly, tell a different story than that usually encountered in the narratives on the "monarchical Church". This paper, although not examining the foundations on which the "monarchical Church" model was elevated, analyzes medieval Church in the Piast realms from another viewpoint, offering insights into concerns other than those usually present in recent historiography. To unfold this different perspective, I will first describe the significance of the liturgy for episcopal self-conceptualization in the late tenth to early eleventh centuries, including an example of a hierarch active in the Piast realm. Having laid these foundations, I will then move to the extant corpus of Polish manuscripts, offering a reconsideration of selected liturgical codices, which have been misinterpreted in previous scholarship primarily because they were analyzed within the framework of the "monarchical Church". Finally, I will briefly examine hitherto largely unknown pontificals, produced before 1200 and preserved in Poland, that provide insight into the manifold activities of bishops in one of the Central European dioceses but lack developed political liturgy, which would be expected if one subscribes to the "monarchical Church" vision.