This book explores the remarkable flourishing of art and architecture in Bohemia, and Prague as it became the political centre of Charles IV's Holy Roman Empire. It focuses on cultural exchange and the links that can be traced through the artwork across Europe.

A groundbreaking comparative history of the formation of Bohemia, Hungary and Poland, from their origins in the eleventh century.

Traces the history of a magnificent landmark in the history of late medieval art and architecture. As the principal royal chapel in the medieval Palace of Westminster, St Stephen's was at the centre of worship for the Plantagenets, a major collegiate foundation of a new kind for the mid-fourteenth century, and a community of national significance in the development of sacred polyphony. During the Reformation, the Chapel was converted into a meeting place for the House of Commons, which it remained for 300 years, shaping the development of British political culture. Its influence continues to be felt today in the design of the Commons chamber. Following the disastrous Palace fire of 1834, the site of the upper chapel was rebuilt as St Stephen's Hall, a gallery of national history, leading to the Central Lobby of the Houses of Parliament. This book tells the story of St Stephen's Chapel, from the thirteenth century to the present day. Sixteen chapters explain the building and its religious life, its political significance, and the antiquarian rediscovery of its former magnificence. Contributors highlight the interaction between visual and political culture; the contexts of kingship and international rivalry that informed the foundation and construction of chapel and college; the effect of medieval St Stephen's on the development of the House of Commons; the adaptation and re-use of St Mary Undercroft; and the creation of St Stephen's Hall in the 1840s. The hall would become a site of Suffragette activism in the campaign for Votes for Women, marked today by a monumental artwork New Dawn, which is the focus of the final chapter.

The essays gathered in this volume present multifaceted considerations of the intersection of objects and gender within the cultural contexts of late medieval France and England. Some take a material view of objects, showing buildings, books, and pictures as sites of gender negotiation and resistance and as extensions of women’s bodies. Others reconsider the concept of objectification in the lives of fictional and historical medieval women by looking closely at their relation to gendered material objects, taken literally as women’s possessions and as figurative manifestations of their desires. The opening section looks at how medieval authors imagined fictional and legendary women using particular objects in ways that reinforce or challenge gender roles. These women bring objects into the orbit of gender identity, employing and relating to them in a literal sense, while also taking advantage of their symbolic meanings. The second section focuses on the use of texts both as objects in their own right and as mechanisms by which other objects are defined. The possessors of objects in these essays lived in the world, their lives documented by historical records, yet like their fictional and legendary counterparts, they too used objects for instrumental ends and with symbolic resonances. The final section considers the objectification of medieval women’s bodies as well as its limits. While this at times seems to allow for a trade in women, authorial attempts to give definitive shapes and boundaries to women’s bodies either complicate the gender boundaries they try to contain or reduce gender to an ideological abstraction. This volume contributes to the ongoing effort to calibrate female agency in the late Middle Ages, honoring the groundbreaking work of Carolyn P. Collette.

This volume provides a multidisciplinary view on the complexity of an emerging city, offering, for the first time in English, an overview of the current state of research on Vienna in the Middle Ages.

This book investigates the agency and influence of medieval queens in late fourteenth-century England, focusing on the patronage and intercessory activities of the queens Philippa of Hainault and Anne of Bohemia, as well as the princess Joan of Kent. It examines the ways in which royal women were able to participate in traditional queenly customs such as intercession, and whether it was motherhood that gave power to a queen. This study focuses particularly on types of patronage, and also considers the importance of coronation, especially for Joan of Kent, who was neither a queen consort nor a dowager, yet still fulfilled some queenly duties. Crucially, the author highlights the transactional nature of the queen’s role at court, as she accumulated wealth from land, rights and traditions, which in turn funded patronage activities.

"This volume explores one of the most creative periods in Central European history. At its core is the medieval city of Prague, which became the seat of the Luxembourg dynasty in the 14th century and was fashioned as the political and cultural capital of the Holy Roman Empire. That dramatic change in the fortunes of Prague and Bohemia - from Romanesque roots to Late Gothic heyday and the religious uncertainties of the Hussite era - is examined through fifteen essays written by scholars from Great Britain, the Czech Republic, Austria, Germany, Poland, Switzerland and the USA. An important place is given to the re-evaluation of Czech medieval heritage in the 19th century, much of it shaped by Josef Mocker's tireless and often controversial campaign to restore and document Gothic monuments. The volume offers important new insights into key buildings such as Prague Cathedral and Karlstein Castle. By bringing together their expertise in architecture, archaeology, painting, stained glass, manuscript illumination, textiles, sigillography and epigraphy, the authors also present a rich and complex picture of connections and influences stretching across the region from the small town of Kosice in the east, to major centres such as Vienna, Cracow and Nuremberg, as far as the royal seats of Paris and London at the western extremities of Europe. Much of that vibrant cultural exchange took place in the climate of economic prosperity that attracted itinerant artists and supported prolific workshops, but some of the most astonishing examples of it came about amidst intense dynastic rivalry and religious strife. This collection is also a lasting record of the British Archaeological Association's conference held in Prague in 2006, the first such meeting east of the Rhine in its long and distinguished history." --Book Jacket.

Whereas aspects of iconography have been reflected in monographic studies on individual pieces, the broader functional context of liturgical textiles and their iconography have so far barely been considered in scholarly publications. The book, presenting the papers delivered during a colloquium in 2007 at the Abegg-Stiftung, provides insights into this topic from various viewpoints.