A Europe of Courts, a Europe of Factions: Political Groups at Early Modern Centres of Power (1550–1700). Rubén González Cuerva and Alexander Koller, eds. Rulers and Elites 12. Leiden: Brill, 2017. x + 264 pp. $137.
the conquering monarch (like Gustaph Adolphus’s entry into Riga in 1621), they were carefully balanced and often-peculiar events in which the previously established language of festivals appropriated profoundly novel significations. One peculiar case was presented in the text devoted to the city of Valladolid as a “theater of peace” in 1605, when this venerable center of erudition was chosen for the ratification of Anglo-Spanish peace. These ceremonies in peace glorifying Valladolid were, as was often the case, an enactment of political realities, being often a truer mirror than the reality itself. Each of the chapters in this book is an important piece of research in its own right, shedding a new light on the power of festivals in early modern Europe. They greatly differ in their approaches and methodologies, but viewed together, they offer a priceless addition to the understanding of festival culture and the mechanisms of displaying and negotiating power.