The book Premodern Rulership and Contemporary Political Power: The King's Body Never Dies, which summarizes the result of the project, has been published in 2017 by the Amsterdam University Press in the series Central European Medieval Studies. It contains twelve case studies that offer an integral reassessment of Kantorowicz´s model of the king’s two bodies in the light of original research conducted in different fields, from history and art history to literary criticism and archaeology.

The book covers a wide geographical and chronological spectrum that allows for a broad comparative perspective. It offers a panoramic and dynamic insight into the nature of political bodies based on a multidisciplinary approach and shows that Ernst Kantorowicz’s The King’s Two Bodies, along with its contribution to the study of the past, has a profound value for our contemporary world - urging us to reflect on problems such as nationalist discourses, social inequalities or forms of ideological engagement. This book demonstrates that even if most of monarchies are long gone today, the idea of the king’s two bodies is still a powerful tool to analyse and interpret the contemporary world.

K. Mroziewicz, A. Sroczyński (eds.), Premodern Rulership and Contemporary Political Power. The King's Body Never Dies, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2017. ISBN: 9789462983311.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements 7

Paweł Figurski, Karolina Mroziewicz, and Aleksander Sroczyński, Introduction 9

Part 1 Premodern Rulership

Álvaro Carvajal Castro, Assembly Politics and Conflicting Discourses in Early Medieval León (10th-11th c.) 21

Foteini Spingou, The Supreme Power of the Armour and the Veneration of the Emperor’s Body in Twelfth-Century Byzantium 47

Paweł Figurski, The Exultet of Bolesław II of Mazovia and the Sacralisation of Political Power in the High Middle Ages 73

Wojciech Kozłowski, ‘International’ Christian Society and Its Political Theology in Thirteenth-Century Latin Christendom 111

Karolina Mroziewicz, The King’s Immature Body: Representations of Child Coronations in Poland, Hungary and Bohemia (1382-1530) 139

Aleksander Sroczyński We Were the Trojans: Rhetoric and Political Community in Medieval and Early Modern Sarmatia and Illyria 169

Ágnes Máté, The Life and Afterlife of Pontifical Indiscretions in the Renaissance 193

Emilia Olechnowicz The Queen’s Two Faces: The Portraiture of Elizabeth I of England 217

Part 2 Contemporary Political Power

Gábor Szegedi, Blood, Honour and the Norm Race Defilement and the Boundaries of Community in Hungary, 1941 249

Piotr Słodkowski Dual Approaches to Communist Engagement Helena Krajewska and Marek Włodarski 279

Andrzej Probulski, The Supermen’s Two Bodies: The Body, the Costume, and the Legitimacy of Power in the DC Universe Narratives 299

Alexandra Ion, And Then They Were Bodies: Medieval Royalties, from DNA Analysis to a Nation’s Identity 321

List of Figures 353

General Bibliography 355