ABSTRACT
Although the Habsburgs are generally considered the prototype of concealed monarchs, distant from their subjects, their court protocol demonstrates that they knew how to employ, with considerable skill, the range of resources offered by palace and urban ceremonial. Philip II, the most invisible of the dynasty, gave signs of this awareness, and it was fully demonstrated by his successor Philip III with the courtly religious festivals of his reign. If the peak of Golden Age ritual was to a great extent a product of the lively existing religiosity and the stimulus provided by the Counter-Reformation Church, it is also very much the case that it was sanctioned – and encouraged – by the royal presence. Royal participation in the special celebrations held for saints and the beatified not only gave these ceremonies a markedly political and confessional character but also converted them into an integral part of the court’s solemnities. Thanks to these festivities Spain and its capital were transformed into one of the privileged spaces of Christendom and among the most prodigious examples of sanctity of all Europe; at the same time the festivals and the published accounts of them fulfilled the double function of exalting national interests and eulogizing royal authority.
