Heilige, Helden, Wüteriche

This volume, edited by Martin Bauch, Julia Burkhardt, Tomáš Gaudek and Václav Žůrek, brings together an array of chapters focused on the ‘Herrschaftsstile’ of the Luxemburg dynasty, a house that reigned over swathes of central Europe in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and which produced no fewer than three Holy Roman Emperors. The meaning of the term ‘Herrschaftsstile’ (roughly translated as ‘ruling styles’) is discussed in the introduction, and is defined as the ‘personally formed behaviour and actions of a ruler ... meant to mould the image of the ruler (transmitted as much through performance as artistic representation) in the eyes of his subjects’ (p. 27). The use of ‘his subjects’ (‘seiner Untertanen’) is a striking choice, implying an exclusive focus on male rule, but this is thankfully not the case as several chapters in the volume rightly discuss some of the powerful women of the dynasty. The introductory section consists of the aforementioned introduction written by the editors and an insightful chapter by Gerald Schwedler on the issues raised when studying and comparing rulers in the period. He emphasises the importance of combining historical and art-historical approaches when studying the Luxemburgs (pp. 37–40): a real strength of the volume is to exploit the rich artistic patronage of the dynasty. The first section is composed of four chapters concerned with ritual and ceremony. Nils Bock’s chapter is particularly useful, and frames the dynasty’s use of heralds against a close reading of the documents produced by Luxemburg dynasts delineating their responsibilities as they developed through the period. With a comparative framework encompassing Burgundy, France and England, Bock reinforces how many of the supposed innovations in heraldic practice driven by the Habsburg Emperor Maximilian (r. 1486–1519) drew upon Luxemburg models. Martin Bauch’s contribution maintains a similarly broad geographic focus, exploring how the funeral ceremony of Charles IV (r. 1436–1378) drew upon precedents in Hungary, France, Aragon and Savoy. Ewa Wóɫkiewicz examines the nuances accompanying the ceremonial entries of the Bishop of Wrocław into the city, while Jan Hrdina and Hartmut Kühne draw innovatively upon some recently discovered pilgrim badges from the archdioceses of Prague and Magdeburg to come to some thought-provoking conclusions. With the help of thirteen images and illustrations, they demonstrate how the badges shed light on the relationship between Wenceslaus IV (r. 1378–1419) and the Archbishop of Magdeburg in the 1390s, raising in the process important questions regarding the uses that rulers could make of badges in pursuit of dynastic aims

Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Ceremony · Epistemology · Fifteenth · Meaning (existential · Period (music · Politics · Representation (politics · Ruler · Section (typography · Theology · Classics · Computer Science · Historical and Archaeological Studies · History · Law · Medieval European History and Architecture · Philosophy