Chapter 6 turns to ritual processions or parades (pompai) which formed part of ancient Greek religious festivals. On the evidence of the Great Dionysia of 309/308 BCE organised by Demetrius of Phalerum, Ptolemy II’s ‘Grand Procession’ shortly thereafter, and Herodes Atticus’ Panathenaea of 143 CE, large, self-animated machines, known as automata, became a feature of Hellenistic processions. Automata were effective as processional equipment because they enhanced existing features of religious procession: narrative, synaesthesia, and the call–response relation between worshippers and the deity. Automata in procession attest to the new technological capabilities of the Hellenistic period and are harnessed within new religious and political realities including the development of ruler cult, but their effective deployment was based on existing theological structures. The chapter also looks in detail at the only extant technical text dedicated to the construction of automata: Hero of Alexandria’s On Automata.

Numerous unpublished Greek manuscripts contain the rituals of marriage as performed in diverse regions of the Byzantine world. This chapter both discusses the universal practices of weddings known across Christian communities of the Eastern Mediterranean and discerns unique traditions local to specific regions, like Byzantine Southern Italy or Palestine. The prayers of the marriage rite are analyzed, and attention is given to such gestures as crowning and veiling couples and to traditions previously unknown to Byzantinists, like the practice of breaking a glass at weddings, popularly understood today as a Jewish custom, as well as specific aspects of ritualized bridal costume and the roles of witnesses, or paranymphs.

This chapter engages the earliest Christian references to marriage ceremony across a variety of early texts, including late antique homilies, hagiography, and letter correspondence, as well as theological discussions that ensued among early Christian authors about the proper forms of marriage and the church’s role within wedding ceremony. In addition to Greek authors, this chapter also examines early Latin and Syriac writings on the topic of marriage.

The bridal chamber has a rich history in ancient and medieval marriage practices. For some Byzantine communities, rites for inaugurating a couple’s sexual life in the bridal chamber were the most important ceremonies of the wedding process. This chapter traces the history of bridal chamber rituals and the church’s involvement in them through liturgical blessings performed by priests at the bed of consummation.

A series of unique ordines discussing particular ceremonies are compared. It is shown how the texts were most likely redacted and spread by Arn of Salzburg, the first archbishop of that city and of Bavaria. Arn made use of the texts to shore up, define and defend his legitimacy as metropolitan. The ordines all assumed a stational framework, showing how the appropriation of this system legitimised Frankish episcopal power over the city. The role of Arn of Salzburg in the confection of a new ordo for the ordination of a bishop is established via a manuscript in Vienna. This was the first detailed account of Frankish ordination practices. In the manuscript, it is revealed as part of Arn’s programme to establish himself.

The subject is the key and dramatic ritual of the stational Mass. This was undertaken in Rome through the year, involving a lavish procession to a given church in the city, where Mass was performed by the Pope. Many ordines address the stational system, showing it to be a subject of keen interest to the Frankish redactors of such texts. It is revealed how the Franks carefully and thoughtfully distinguished the rituals that were special to the Pope, as they appropriated and refashioned papal rites. A discussion of several Carolingian reworkings of the stational system is discussed, and the ubiquity of this form of appropriation, not only in cities but also monasteries that became the image of the city of Rome during this ritual, is firmly established.

Already by the late thirteenth century, the laudes ceremony had become a weekly feature of civic life on the island, performed each Tuesday in the capital city of Candia in a ritual that symbolized interfaith relations on the island. It was folded into the veneration of icons and encounters with the miraculous, became a site for resolving personal disputes, and was referenced and represented deep within the rugged interior of the island in the decorative programs of rural chapels. Each of these configurations, explored in Chapter 2, reveals a different facet of a political imagination that gave music the power to represent the state in all its members, local and far-flung, visible and invisible, human and divine. Studying the performance of laudes in all its variety gives us glimpses into the chaotic reality out of which Venice’s project of empire was forged in the early years. Both Latin and Greek populations on the island adopted the laudes as a space to negotiate and contest colonial identity. Far from expressing unanimous agreement, the laudes had, by the fourteenth century, become a spectacular arena of dispute on the island.

This essay examines medieval women dramatists, from Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim in tenth-century Germany, through Hildegard of Bingen and her Ordo Virtutum (Play of the Virtues) in the twelfth century, to Katherine Sutton, Abbess of Barking in the late fourteenth century, who composed liturgical dramas for Holy Week. The essay locates these women dramatists within the wider context of medieval convent performances in England and Europe, and shows that religious women were not only authors but also actors, directors, and costume makers; their convents provided the play space, while laywomen sometimes also contributed. Niebrzydowski also explores the often speculative or conjectural evidence for womenߣs participation in drama outside the convents. Although there is only one definitive English example of women as associated with a Corpus Christi production, a lost Chester pageant of ߢour Lady thassumpcionߣ, other fragmentary evidence suggests lay womenߣs involvement in a range of dramatic forms from saintsߣ lives, interludes, and morality plays to processions and pageants.

Excavations conducted by the University of Pennsylvania at Phrygian Gordion have so far only revealed wall paintings from one small building. This structure was prominently located between two large Middle Phrygian megara at the outer court of the citadel and dates to the beginning of the Achaemenid period (ca. 500–490 BCE). The building was unique regarding both its decoration and architectural features. It was a semi-subterranean structure that consisted of one main chamber measuring about 3.50 × 4.75 m with a narrow antechamber in front. The mudbrick walls, once decorated with painted plaster, had collapsed during the Persian period, probably because the walls had been robbed of their supporting timber beams. Thousands of painted plaster fragments were recovered during the excavations of the late 1950s. This paper discusses the artistic style, techniques, and iconography of these paintings from an Anatolian perspective, and takes into account contemporary Etruscan wall paintings.

The general observance of Salisbury customs throughout the islands of Britain and Ireland means that the occurrence of distinctive Insular Uses is somewhat restricted. The most widespread of the non-Sarum liturgies, observed throughout Europe, was that of the Benedictine monasteries, including in England the cathedral priories; these nevertheless often possessed their own individual customaries, as did other houses such as those of the Augustinian canons. The principal secular Uses, apart from that of Salisbury, were those of Hereford and York, although all dioceses had their local saints and minor differences. A full analysis of everything that was distinctive about diocesan usages in the provinces of Canterbury and York is beyond the scope of this chapter; instead, the focus is on a small range of comparable matter in the major Uses and in the variable customs of some other dioceses.

A tradition and practice dating back centuries by which a monarch was welcomed into a loyal city by its dignitaries, clerics, and citizenry, the typical entrée in the hands of the last Valois kings was a spectacular festival, calling on all the creative resources of a city – artists, poets, architects, set designers, composers, and musicians – to produce a visual and aural feast that is generally considered to have given expression to the king’s power. Yet the concluding ceremony that took place in the city’s cathedral, in which a Te Deum was sung, has received almost no attention from scholars. This chapter identifies the liturgy used at this event and considers the role of the psalm central to the ceremony, typically Psalm 19, Exaudiat te Dominus. At the same time, a corollary ceremony, the ‘Te Deum’ was also frequently performed in Paris, it too placing frequently placing Psalm 19 at its center. In contrast to Fogel’s reading of these events, both were as much prayers for the safekeeping of the king in a time of profound national turmoil as they were celebrations of his victories.

This chapter focuses on the Little Panathenaia, the version held in three years out of four, and an occasion neglected by the existing scholarship. It asks what we know about the so-called ‘annual’ celebration and how it created identities. The limited evidence shows that it was a much less complex occasion than the Great Panathenaia and it was focused on the procession and sacrifices to Athena in her sanctuary on the Akropolis. It also included a pannychis or all-night revel. The Little Panathenaia received additional elaboration in the late second century BC, when a peplos began to be offered to the goddess, while, in at least the later fifth and fourth centuries BC, a very limited set of competitions open only to Athenians was included. The identities created at the Little Panathenaia focused on Athenians and sub-groups of the city, rather than on displaying the city to external, non-Athenian visitors.

This chapter is the first of four chapters focused on the penteteric or Great Panathenaia, which took place every four years. It looks at how individuals participated in the procession, which conveyed the sacrificial animals, the peplos and other offerings to the Akropolis, and the sacrifices to Athena. The procession and attendant rituals included a multitude of different roles for various individuals and groups: Athenians, both male and female, were certainly represented, but so were other inhabitants, the metics and their daughters and delegations from the colonies and, in the later fifth century BC, the allies. Together, they made up the community of ‘all the Athenians’, who were celebrating the goddess and her deed against the Giants. These rituals repeated the festival’s stories and themes, which unified the rituals and linked them to the games.

This chapter focuses on the identities created for other residents (Athenian women and girls, male metics and their daughters and Athenian boys, beardless youths and ephebes) and non-residents (especially colonies and allies). In comparison to those of the male Athenians, the identities of other residents and non-residents of the city were not nearly as complex, in part because these other groups had limited opportunities for participation in the celebration. While the identities of Athenian boys, beardless youths and ephebes focused on their position as citizens-to-be or as the newest citizens who were prepared to fight for the city, the identities for the other groups focused on their service to the goddess. The participation of both non-residents and residents also marked them as members of the community of “all the Athenians” and allowed them to create identities as members of this group. International visitors had a significant role to play as excluded non-members who contrasted with members of the community. Thus, how one took part in the Great Panathenaia was instrumental in determining what it meant to be a member of “all the Athenians” who were celebrating the Great Panathenaia.

This concluding chapter discusses the similarities and differences between the Little Panathenaia and the Great Panathenaia and the consequences for the identities created at them. The Little Panathenaia was an inclusive, local event focused on the residents of the city, while the penteteric festivities were international and exclusive; consequently, creating the community of ‘all the Athenians’ played an important role only in the Great Panathenaia. At the annual festival, in contrast, the emphasis was on constructing identities for the residents within the context of the city and especially as members of various different groups and subgroups. The chapter then compares the Panathenaia to other festivals in Athens and Attica. It shows that the Panathenaia was not typical of the city’s festivities, but, in both forms, it was set apart from other celebrations by its size, its inclusivity and, in the case of the Great Panathenaia, its international character. The dynamics identified here cannot be used as a paradigm for understanding the politics of a major festival organised by the city. Each celebration must be understood on its own terms and situated within its larger context.

This chapter is the first of two chapters examining the identities created at the Great Panathenaia. It asks what identities were created for Athenian men. For these men, the processes were particularly complex, and they had to take part in a variety of different aspects of the festival. The more often a man participated, the more complex his identities became. A man could also have further identities as a member of specific subgroups of Athenian men: as a member of the cavalry, as benefactor of the city, as a member of a genos, a (Kleisthenic) deme and a (Kleisthenic) tribe. Different aspects of a man’s overall identity would have been salient at different moments in the festival and depended on how exactly any individual man participated. Especially in the games during the classical and Hellenistic periods, the definition of what it meant to be an Athenian male mapped quite closely on to a very political and Aristotelian understanding of citizenship. Consequently, the identities of Athenian men were particularly sensitive to political change in the city, and they quickly reflected developments in other areas of the city’s life.

The ancient Athenians held two major Panhellenic festivals: the Great Panathenaia in celebration of the goddess Athena and the Great Mysteries in honor of Demeter. This chapter compares and contrasts the rituals of these two festivals in relation to the topography and monuments of Athens, focusing on how the celebrations drew together different parts of the community of Athens.