People, Place, and Power in Eighteenth-Century Ghent

Memorialization

Ceremonies such as the entrance ceremony provided the opportunity for local and national politics to come together. Such events required a big monetary and organizational effort, usually on the side of the civic institutions. In order to preserve and share the memory of such events beyond the time and space in which they occurred, a festival book was often created. The festival book is thus a complex artifact that can be considered an artistic record of the event as well as a visual representation of the power of the city that hosted it.

The city of Ghent was not new to this kind of event or to the making of commemorative festival books. The festival book printed at Ghent to celebrate the entry into the city of Charles VI as Count of Flanders also has counterparts in similar books created to commemorate the empereor’s entry into other cities. 

It is not possible to determinate the number of copies of the festival book that were printed in Ghent for Charles VI. However, besides the copy hold at Rutgers Library, it has been possible to locate a few other exemplars of the festival books.

The role played by the Festival book printed in Ghent can be clarified if one considers the making of the book, particularly the role played by visual representations (illustrations in the book).

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