Culture & History Digital Journal

Dancing in the Streets of Byzantine Constantinople

Leslie Brubaker — mié, 16 nov 2022 00:00:00 +0100

This article evaluates the significance of processions in Byzantine Constantinople and the role of dancing within them. Evidence is drawn from literary sources concerning imperial, church-sponsored, guild, hippodrome and more spontaneous urban processions, as well as from material culture. Medieval Constantinople saw a large number of processions, perhaps two a week, and they traversed all areas of the city. They were noisy affairs, accompanied by chanting, acclamations and, often, musical noise, so that even when they were not directly visible, they were audible more or less everywhere in the city. Dancing was incorporated in all but liturgical processions (though it may also have been part of these, on occasion). Processions could create a sense of urban unity, or become expressions of conflict: audience participation was normal and sometimes violent. Hence one key-though unofficial-the role played by processions in the Byzantine capital was to give voice to the urban population.

Processions in Byzantine Constantinople: the evidence from the Dresden A104

Vicky Manolopoulou — mié, 16 nov 2022 00:00:00 +0100

This paper discusses supplicatory liturgical processions (litae) and their routes in eleventh-century Constantinople by examining a hitherto neglected source; the eleventh-century Praxapostolos Dresden A104. References to supplicatory processions found in this source are examined in comparison with one of the most important sources on Byzantine ceremonial: the tenth-century kanonarion-synaxarion known as the Typikon of the Great Church. By comparing the evidence relating to the use of sites within the city during commemorations that included a procession in these two sources it is possible to draw some conclusions in terms of the way the litanic landscape changed between the tenth and eleventh centuries. The paper aims to present new evidence relating to the way annually commemorative processions were performed in Byzantine Constantinople.

Royal Entries in Conquered Towns. Mosques, Cathedrals and the Power of Buildings (Castile-Leon, 11th-13th Centuries)

Ana Rodríguez — mié, 16 nov 2022 00:00:00 +0100

Written sources of the kingdoms of Castile-Leon describing processions and royal entries in the 11^th-13^th Centuries are not commonly found. The absence of such ceremonies makes it difficult to recognize the topography of power through remarkable buildings as well as the hierarchies among their ecclesiastical and secular participants. This absence prevented the kings of Castile and Leon from being seen publicly and visiting some iconic processional spots which provided the right atmosphere for the most solemn rituals in a medieval monarch’s life. King Alfonso VI’s entry into Toledo in 1085 set a new precedent put into practice by his successors during the Christian conquests of al-Andalus cities, which took place until the mid-13^th Century. The transformation of the congregational mosques in the conquered cities provided a unique opportunity for victorious monarchs to display their power through the appropriation of urban spaces. The king’s central role in the ecclesiastical rituals of purification and the subsequent control over the fate of the most representative buildings allow these processions to be considered as spatial and ritual phenomena.

When the town becomes a stage: royal entries and municipal power in medieval Montpellier (14th-15th Centuries)

Vincent Challet — mié, 16 nov 2022 00:00:00 +0100

The urban chronicle of Montpellier known under the nickname of the “Petit Thalamus” (1204-1423) is the oldest one written in a vernacular language all over Western Europe; it contains the narrations of many princely, royal and even pontifical and imperial entries in the town. It allows us to question the emergence and the evolution of a ritual, not so much from the point of view of the monarchy but of the urban authorities. More than the ritual itself, the study of these narrations, compared when possible to other urban sources, reveals the process of memory selection by the consulate of Montpellier, magnifying some of the entries-especially the pontifical one made by Urbain V in 1367-and leaving some others into oblivion. It also highlights the flexibility of a civic ceremony-which can, sometimes, be turned into a mere performance deprived of political meaning-used by the magistrates to reinforce their own power on urban spaces and to inscribe their domination into the streets, the minds of the inhabitants and the memory of the community.

Public Celebrations, the Other, and Emotional Responses. New approaches to the Iberian Royal entries in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period

Borja Franco Llopis, Francesc Orts-Ruiz — mié, 16 nov 2022 00:00:00 +0100

Traditionally, when dealing with the study of urban celebrations in the Middle and Early Modern periods, historiography has accepted the concept of Gesamtkunstwerk to point out the magnificence and diversity of artistic expressions that were part of these ephemeral events. Without totally opposing this idea, reinforced by methodological currents such as the history of emotions, this paper aims to reflect on the concept of urban celebrations. We will provide new perspectives in the study of these performances, especially their short-lived nature, which prevented the people from having access to all the acts and messages that involved these events. To this end, we propose a new approach to documentary and literary sources, from the point of view of the analysis of the Muslim other. We study its visual representation as well as its role as a spectator and active participant, especially as a dancer or musician. This allows us to present a new methodological framework using Valencia as a case study.

Staging Oriental Delegations at the Habsburg Imperial Court in Prague (1600-1610)

Kateřina Horníčková, Michal Šroněk — mié, 16 nov 2022 00:00:00 +0100

Between 1600 and 1610-in the time when Prague was an imperial seat of Rudolph II of Habsburg -the city experienced an unusual viewing of several festive entries of foreigner legacies. In 1600, 1604 and 1609 three Persian delegations reached the Prague court in an attempt to coordinate military actions against the Ottomans. This gave an opportunity for a staged presentation of the court and city to the exotically-looking visitors. In return, Prague citizens, and particularly the nobles and the officials, had several opportunities to view, encounter and entertain the members of the legacies, who took an active part in Prague life. Their engagement sprung a number of textual and visual documents that testify to the interest of the European artists. The mixture of elements of the European festive culture merged with splendour, exotic garments and gifts of the oriental Islamic culture gave these meetings a particular character that reaffirmed the status of Prague as the imperial residence and capital city. The embassies’ adventi and receptions were an opportunity for festive trains moving through the urban and court space of Prague, with the routes and design of stops, landmarks, and architecture used as their symbolical framing.

Re-reading the acclamation of John IV of Portugal in Cochin 1641 as urban spectacle and literary text

Jeremy M. N. Roe — mié, 16 nov 2022 00:00:00 +0100

The primary focus of this study is Agostinho de Almeida Gato’s extensive account of the celebrations held for the acclamation of John IV of Portugal in 1641 in Cochin. Drawing on studies of the Iberian monarchies as polycentric spaces, intellectual culture in the Estado da Índia and the historiography of early modern Iberian festival culture Gato’s text is analysed as both a testimony to the spectacle that was staged in Cochin and a text addressed to John IV in Portugal. Concerning the history of Cochin, and Portuguese India more broadly, it is argued that the spectacle of kingship staged by the festivities sought to underscore the significance of the oath of loyalty sworn by the population of Portuguese Cochin and address the interweaving of the concerns of the imperial, colonial and indigenous elites. Furthermore, consideration is given to how Gato’s account served as a form of a petition to the king.

One story for two places: a comparative study on the making of Christian landscapes

Marco V. García Quintela — mié, 16 nov 2022 00:00:00 +0100

Alise-St.-Reine (Burgundy, France) and Santa Mariña de Augas Santas (Galicia, Spain) share a unique history. In both places, the hagiography of Santa Marina of Antioch in Pisidia (Anatolia), usually known in Europe as Margaret, was adopted as the hagiographic account of two local martyrs, Sainte-Reine and Santa Mariña, who were extensively worshipped for centuries and still receive cult. Since the sixteenth century, literary scholars have stressed the falsity of the hagiographic attribution established in both places. However, the close relationship with the local topography of both traditions immunizes them against the effects of erudite criticism. The fact is that the fusion of the story with the place served to construct a much stronger reality that we refer to as “topological”. Some non-exclusive ideas can explain this situation: the need for Christian universalism to occupy previously polytheistic territories, the operation of places as lieux de mémoire that are well attested by anthropological studies, and how the psychology of memory works using places as memory devices.

Territorial Fantasies, Sexual Nuances, and Savage Energy: Orientalism and Tropicality in Eugène Delacroix and Johann Moritz Rugendas

Miguel Ángel Gaete — mié, 16 nov 2022 00:00:00 +0100

In 1822, the German Romantic painter Johann Moritz Rugendas undertook his famed three-year journey across Brazil. Later, between 1831 and 1846, encouraged by Alexander von Humboldt and other Romantic artists, he would make a second trip through Mexico and South America. In 1832, Eugène Delacroix started a six-month journey to Spain and North Africa as a part of a diplomatic mission. Both artists profusely translated their travels into words and rich images of tropical America and the Orient. Their paintings and illustrations of remote lands and people became milestones in their respective careers while being prime examples of how Europe viewed and perceived the rest of the world in the nineteenth century. In hindsight, they were not only mere agents and promoters of two crucial aesthetic trends of that time: Orientalism and Tropicality but the embodiment of two ways of seeing and imagining the Others. This article places these two artists against each other, contrasting the set of ideas and cultural preconceptions resting behind a sizeable number of paintings, drawings, and illustrations of their Eastern and South American experiences. The central argument is that Tropicality and Orientalism were comparable phenomena based on similar tropes and assumptions. It brings forward recurring themes of Rugendas and Delacroix’s works, such as the eroticisation of female bodies and the linkage between South America and the East with everlasting ideas of violence, adventures, and savageness to prove such an equivalence.

Slave and convict: José Rufino Parra’s double sentence in the Antilles and mainland Spain

Loles González-Ripoll — mié, 16 nov 2022 00:00:00 +0100

This paper addresses the adversities of a slave in 19^th century Cuba who was considered dangerous because of his education; the suspicious claim of the owner; the slave’s arrest between Cuba, Spain, and Puerto Rico, and the defence of the rights to which he was entitled. The scant but interesting documentation on the misfortune of José Rufino Parra raises many issues regarding the daily relationships between masters and slaves; the unheard-of relationship between a black man and a white woman; the conservation of family honour, and the importance of education and family for slaves within an unjust colonial system, which, despite injustices, did offer opportunities to defend themselves.

Anticomunism, the Early American Conservative Movement and the Liberal Consensus (1955-1964)

David Sarias Rodríguez — mié, 16 nov 2022 00:00:00 +0100

This article re-examines the role that anticommunism played during the emergence of the early American conservative movement. Through a detailed re-assessment of published and archival material it challenges the two main assumptions consistently reproduced by the literature, and according to which evangelical anticommunist played a doubly crucial role. According to the established view, anticommunism set apart conservative intellectuals and activists from their liberal counterparts and, secondly, acted as the element holding together different ideological strands within the conservative community. These pages demonstrate that anticommunism itself was, in fact, never as dividing an issue as both conservatives and liberal activists claimed. Instead, relatively marginal differences of opinion about the Cold War were blown out of all proportion and employed by both conservatives and progressives as a tool in the midst of intensely sectarian partisan struggles. Similarly, anticommunism was never an element of consensus within a wider conservative community that at this point included traditionalist intellectuals, libertarians and adherents to the populist radical right. In fact, anticommunism often acted as an element furthering already existing ideological tensions.

Beyond the borders. Ahmed Hassan Mattar and his activism between Africa and South America

Daniel Kersffeld — mié, 16 nov 2022 00:00:00 +0100

The biography of Ahmed Hassan Mattar expressed the multiple identity lines assumed by those revolutionary cadres of the first decades of the 20^th century, who emerged in a colonial and neocolonial world and developed their political activity in different settings and distant spheres of their own culture. The story of A. H. Mattar is, therefore, that of a militant and journalist of Sudanese origin who developed his political work in Africa, especially in Morocco, together with Abd el-Krim, the warlord of the Rif, as well as in European countries such as France and Germany, once incorporated into the Communist International. However, it would be in South America, in countries like Argentina, Brazil, and Chile, where he would stand out not only in anti-imperialist struggles but also as a chronicler and community leader of communities of Arab origin, even producing original empirical and statistical research. In sum, Mattar’s course can be seen as that of an activist who understood the social reality of a certain time and who assumed politics as a commitment to fight against colonialism and imperialism.

The image of Spain as a tourist destination through audiovisual productions. The case of Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (Zoya Akthar, 2011)

María Ramón Gabriel — mié, 16 nov 2022 00:00:00 +0100

This article studies the tourist image of Spain projected by the Bollywood film Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, directed by Zoya Akhtar. Released in 2011, the film is a paradigmatic example of tourism promotion of the Spanish territory by foreign audiovisual media, that identifies the country as a destination with a wide tourist offer characterized by important cultural, landscape, artistic, and gastronomic attractions. The text is divided into two sections. In the first, the tourist implications of audiovisual productions are analysed in general terms and, more specifically, the economic impact and marketing activities, as well as the shaping of geographical imaginaries, derived from film screenings. Later, this conceptual framework is applied to the specific case of Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, explaining the possible correlation between its premiere and the increase in Indian visitors to Spain within the framework of the I need Spain campaign (2010-2016). Next, the film is studied as a road movie that promotes experiential tourism and generates specific geo-touristic imaginaries through landscape beauty, neo-romantic exoticism, and gender stereotypes.

Introduction. Processions and Royal Entries in the Petrification of Space during the Medieval and Early Modern Periods

Ana Rodríguez, Mercedes García-Arenal — mié, 16 nov 2022 00:00:00 +0100