Re-use and Reinvent: The Function of Processions in Late Medieval and Early Modern Bohemia
Re-use and Reinvent: The Function of Processions in Late Medieval and Early Modern Bohemia

Summary/Abstract: This article studies public processions in Bohemia between the fourteenth and early seventeenth centuries. It analyzes processional functions in the context of the kingdom’s tumultuous religious development, including the Hussite revolution and subsequent co-existence of Catholic and utraquist churches. Three case studies of processions in Prague (imperial relics for ostensio reliquiarum, post-Hussite processions of Corpus Christi), Tabor (which rejects traditional forms of devotion yet employs processions in its religious and social life) and the mining town of Kutná Hora (Corpus Christi processions) illustrate the great variability of processional function: religious (indoctrination, mobilization, subversion via parody), social (cohesion), political (representation, competition) and military.

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