ABSTRACT
Nuremberg the political year varied in length, since elections took place during the week after Easter no matter when it fell. 'I Each city had its own dates and customs, but the pattern was universal. In many cities the annual political procedures would have had only a limited public impact - in Nuremberg, for example, the elections involved a small group of patricians who met in secret. But so me events in the annual political cycle were major public occasions: in Ulm, for ex am pie, the great collective Schwöljest, when magistrates and citizens alike took a public oath to uphold the city's laws, took place every year on St George's day, 23 April. 10
Markets and fairs normally had more than strictly economic functions, as they provided ancillary opportunities for entertainment and socializing. But for people in every town until the Reformation - and in Catholic communities after it as weil - the most emotionladen events in the annual cycle were generally the religious holidays derived from the ecclesiastical calendar. The major festivals of the Christian tradition were obscrved in every community. But other annual holidays were strongly local in character: a saint who was neglected in one city might be the object of major veneration in another. In Lincoln, for example, until the Reformation the great religious event of the year was the feast of St Anne on 26 July. A special confraternity, closely supervised by the city council, spent weeks organizing the costumed procession, making sure that each of the city's corpora te groups fulfilled its tradition al responsibilities: the tilers' guild, for example, had to provide men to march as 'kings', while each alderman had to provide a silk gown for one of the 'kings' to wear. 11 There were only some towns in which the cult of St Anne had achieved such prominence. But other towns had other saints. The character of the event was entircly typical.
