Based on narrative, iconographical, and liturgical sources, this is the first systematic study to trace the story of the ritual of royal self-coronations from Ancient Persia to the present. Exposing as myth the idea that Napoleon's act of self-coronation in 1804 was the first extraordinary event to break the secular tradition of kings being crowned by bishops, Jaume Aurell vividly demonstrates that self-coronations were not as transgressive or unconventional as has been imagined. Drawing on numerous examples of royal self-coronations, with a particular focus on European Kings of the Middle Ages, including Frederic II of Germany (1229), Alphonse XI of Castile (1328), Peter IV of Aragon (1332) and Charles III of Navarra (1390), Aurell draws on history, anthropology, ritual studies, liturgy and art history to explore royal self-coronations as privileged sites at which the frontiers and limits between the temporal and spiritual, politics and religion, tradition and innovation are encountered.

Stevenson and her collaborators have opened new vistas for the historian of the heralds, pointing the way forward to an internationally focused approach to the significance of the part which heralds played in noble society and in the courtly politics of the late medieval age, and one which promises to enlarge our perception of its aristocratic culture. - ENGLISH HISTORICAL REVIEW First full-length assessment of the role of the herald in medieval Europe. The officers of arms [kings of arms, heralds and pursuivants] have often been overlooked by scholars of late medieval elite society. Yet as officers of the crown, ducal courts or noble families, they played important parts in a number of areas. They were crucial to foreign and domestic relations, and chivalric culture; and, of course, they were to become the powerbrokers of heraldic symbols and genealogy. However, despite the high levels at which they operated, their roles in these areas remain largely unexplored, with scholarship tending to focus on the science of heraldry rather than the heralds themselves. This collection aims to remedy that neglect. The contributions cover a range of European regions [particularly Florence, Scandinavia, Poland, the German Empire, the Burgundian Low Countries, Brittany, Scotland and England] and discuss the diverse roles and experiences of heralds in the late Middle Ages. Contributors: JACKSON W. ARMSTRONG, ADRIAN AILES, KATIE STEVENSON, MICHAEL JONES, FRANCK VILTART, HENRI SIMMONEAU, WIM VAN ANROOIJ, BOGDAN WOJCIECH BRZUSTOWICZ, ALEXIA GROSJEAN, LAURA CIRRI

In 1908 the author began collecting information for this work and includes genealogical records of names, dates of birth, marriages, and deaths of Peter Forney and his wife, Ann, daughter of John Smith. At time of publication the book contained information on the descendants of Peter and Ann Forney, a portion of the genealogy of John Forney, Cacalico Township, Lancaster County and Summerset County, Pennsylvania.

Emblems in the visual arts use motifs which have meanings, and in Emblems in Scotland Michael Bath, leading authority on Renaissance emblem books, shows how such symbolic motifs address major historical issues of Anglo-Scottish relations, the Reformation of the Church and the Union of the Crowns. Emblems are enigmas, and successive chapters ask for instance: Why does a late-medieval rood-screen show a jester at the Crucifixion? Why did Elizabeth I send Mary Queen of Scots tapestries showing the power of women to build a feminist City of God? Why did a presbyterian minister of Stirling decorate his manse with hieroglyphics? And why in the twentieth-century did Ian Hamilton Finlay publish a collection of Heroic Emblems?

This collection includes extracts from official archives, local histories, church records, churchyard inscriptions, and previous genealogical works.

In the decades before the World War I no British institution epitomized national identity more forcefully than the monarchy, and no other institution inspired such a universal feeling of loyalty and attachment. The crown reached this position in the half-century after 1861 by giving up its residual political power to a more powerful and more representative House of Commons and transforming itself into a powerfully symbolic institution, by concentrating its efforts on ceremony. The politicians who transformed the monarchy in an era of mass politics, mass movements and massive ceremonial displays constituted a cross-section of the political world. What were these men doing? What was in their minds as they planned enormous royal spectacles in London? This book focuses on the action of five different individuals who created the modern monarchy: Walter Bagehot, W.E. Gladstone, Lord Esher, Randall Davidson and the Duke of Norfolk.

This book combines the interdisciplinary insights of history, anthropology, and computing to examine the interrelationships between politics, kinship, and marriage in a late-medieval city-state. At the heart of the study is a reconsideration of `office' and the ways in which ties of kinship and marriage were mobilized to build electoral success. In fifteenth-century Ragusa (present-day Dubrovnik) membership of the Great Council, which nominated and elected office-holders, was restricted to the legitimate male offspring of patrician brides and grooms. The patrician class was highly endogamous, and the relationship between endogamy and electoral support is an important theme running through this book. A related theme concerns the age differences between spouses, which are shown to have important structural implications for the organization of the casata, kinship relations, and marriage ties. These implications are investigated using a variety of innovative methods, including cohort analysis and computer simulation.