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This book is about the Roman triumphal procession in its capacity as spectacle and performance. It analyses the triumphs as visually emphatic events that both conveyed and constructed Roman views of the world. Aiming at approaching issues of identity, the book analyses how Rome presented and perceived the defeated on triumphal display. Spoils, captives, and representations are the objects, and the basic questions strive to establish both contents and context: What was displayed? How was it paraded? What was the response? Arms, ships and rams, coins and bullion, sculptures and paintings, art and valuables, golden crowns, prisoners, hostages, animals, and trees are all examined in separate chapters, as are the representations that were made specifically for the occasion: models and personifications of cities, peoples, rivers, and vivid tableaux staging scenes from the war. To be able to engage in issues of processional contents and sequence, acted roles, visual interplay, spectator participation, and emotional effect, the study embraces the complete corpus of ancient sources of the historical triumph, literary and pictorial. The approach includes discussions of the triumph as a religious rite and as a political act. But performance is the key word, and attention is in the first place paid to the visual expressions and schemes of the parade, and the interplay between these and the spectators.

Dionysius’ account of God’s processions has been interpreted in a range of ways. Thomas Aquinas interprets divine processions as created likenesses of God. The Byzantine tradition interprets them as ἐνέργειαι in God. Neoplatonist readers of Dionysius read them as both divine self-differentiations and activities performed by creatures. Each reading can accommodate some of Dionysius’ claims, but not others. After considering reasons for and against each interpretation, I show how Dionysius’ texts on beauty, which present a phenomenological metaphysics of beauty, provide grounds for synthesizing significant aspects of each. The paper closes with a presentation of that synthesis.

Many debates in Christian theology and philosophy, especially debates having to do with the Trinity (like the debate over the filioque) and with divine action (like the debate over whether there is a distinction between God’s essence and God’s energies), have made use of the idea of divine processions. But with rare exceptions, theologians have said little about how the terms used for divine processions are the same terms used for liturgical, military, and state processions and marches. Rather, in general, theologians have treated these terms in a purely technical metaphysical sense. I contend that progress will be made on solving these debates if we attend to the image of actual processions that is conveyed by words originally used for divine processions (including Latin words like ‘processio’ and ‘procedere’ and Greek words like ‘proodos’ and ‘ekporeusis’). After describing the relevant debates, I outline a method for recovering the experiences and images conveyed by those procession words; this perceptual and aesthetic method draws upon the work of a range of phenomenologists and phenomenologically-inspired thinkers. I then use this method to draw out the content of procession words, and to show that procession as such is a pure perfection, a property of being, a privileged manifestation of persons, and a divine attribute. Finally, I show how this more holistic approach to divine processions allows for a defense of the Western Christian doctrine of the filioque, without losing essential Eastern Christian insights about the procession of the Holy Spirit, and a defense of the Eastern doctrine of the essence–energies distinction, without losing crucial Western insights about divine simplicity. While it is of course beyond the scope of a single paper to solve such complex debates, this paper lays a foundation for future synthesis between Eastern and Western views.

During the parliamentary elections in Italy after World War II, rumours spread in the public sphere about the occurrence of “miracles.” These “miracles” were interpreted as warning messages from the divine about the danger posed by the Communist Party. This was considered part of a strategy to promote Christian Democrats by representatives of the Catholic Church and was viewed with concern by communist countries in Eastern Europe as the phenomenon began to spread. In the second half of 1948, the Romanian authorities initiated measures to abolish the Greek Catholic Church and persecute the Roman Catholic Church. In this context, rumours spread in Catholic circles about “miracles” intended to stimulate the resistance of believers in the face of persecution. The phenomenon of “miracles” also spread among Orthodox believers, who were dissatisfied with the elimination of religious education in schools and the beginning of the collectivization of agriculture. For this reason, this phenomenon was considered a danger by the communist authorities in Romania. In this study, we aim to examine how the authorities dealt with the issue of “miracles,” what measures were taken, which institutions were involved, and what the consequences were for long-term religious policy in communist Romania.

Event tourism is increasingly recognized as a vital segment of the travel industry, with cultural festivals providing valuable tourism opportunities. Madurai, an ancient city in South India known as the \"Athens of the East,\" celebrates \"Chithirai Thiruvizha,\" touted as one of the world's largest celebrations, spanning an entire month. The purpose of this research is to explore the opportunities for event tourism at Madurai city, promised by the grandeur of the occasion. The article investigates the meticulous planning, organization, and execution of this festive experience to understand prospects of the suitable form of event tourism through a detailed case study approach. The study evaluates the festival through four destination mix elements-physical products, programs, people, and packages-to assess its readiness as a destination product for tourism and uses the event triangle framework to analyze the complex relationship among the event's stakeholders (participants, spectators, and sponsors) to investigate how the Chithirai Festival's stakeholder dynamics can contribute to its evolution into a sustainable destination product. The study contributes to tourism literature by applying event management frameworks to real-world scenarios and offers actionable recommendations for communication, sustainability, partnerships, and operational improvements. Thus, the study enables a deeper understanding of event management and dynamic interaction between event characteristics, destination attributes, and tourism development measures.

Event tourism is increasingly recognized as a vital segment of the travel industry, with cultural festivals providing valuable tourism opportunities. Madurai, an ancient city in South India known as the \"Athens of the East,\" celebrates \"Chithirai Thiruvizha,\" touted as one of the world's largest celebrations, spanning an entire month. The purpose of this research is to explore the opportunities for event tourism at Madurai city, promised by the grandeur of the occasion. The article investigates the meticulous planning, organization, and execution of this festive experience to understand prospects of the suitable form of event tourism through a detailed case study approach. The study evaluates the festival through four destination mix elements-physical products, programs, people, and packages-to assess its readiness as a destination product for tourism and uses the event triangle framework to analyze the complex relationship among the event's stakeholders (participants, spectators, and sponsors) to investigate how the Chithirai Festival's stakeholder dynamics can contribute to its evolution into a sustainable destination product. The study contributes to tourism literature by applying event management frameworks to real-world scenarios and offers actionable recommendations for communication, sustainability, partnerships, and operational improvements. Thus, the study enables a deeper understanding of event management and dynamic interaction between event characteristics, destination attributes, and tourism development measures.

Many Shii religious media stores that operate beside shrines, along procession routes, or in Shia-majority neighborhoods, began in the early 1980s documenting Muharram processions on nascent home recording technology. Unlike the footage broadcast on national television, the recordings released by Shii videographers are intricately connected to the pulse of the atmosphere of the processions: their sonic mood, ambient materiality, and concomitant bodies in mourning. Through ethnographic fieldwork among Shii media producers in the Pakistani city of Lahore, this article explores the strategies deployed by one videographer to disclose love and mourning for Imam Hussain and the Ahl-e Bait, the family of the Prophet Muhammad. This article asks, what sequence of events and techniques of montage did this videographer choose to deploy to make his recordings of Lahore's Muharram commemorations commensurable with the experiences of those participating?

India’s struggle for independence from colonial rule was marked by a multitude of resistance movements and ideological currents, culminating in its liberation in 1947. This article examines a pivotal cultural strategy within this struggle: Bal Gangadhar Tilak’s deployment of Hindu cultural revivalism as a tool for mass mobilization. It argues that Tilak’s seminal contribution was his strategic appropriation of the format and function of Islamic Muharram processions, which in colonial Mumbai operated as a carnivalesque heterotopia, a transgressive public sphere that temporarily inverted social hierarchies. Drawing theoretical insights from Mikhail Bakhtin and Michel Foucault, this study first deconstructs the Muharram procession as a site of popular expression and political potential under colonial surveillance. It then analyzes how Tilak ingeniously reinterpreted this model, transforming the Ganesh Utsav and Shivaji Festival into analogous Hindu public spectacles. While this strategy was profoundly effective in forging a unified anti-colonial consciousness, the article concludes that it simultaneously initiated a process of religious demarcation, marginalizing interreligious syncretism and shaping the trajectory of communal politics in contemporary India.

This study examines the Ionic frieze of the Parthenon, focussing on the concept of ‘Divinespace’ and ‘Mortalspace’ within its artistic composition. I examine how divinities and mortal figures are depicted in specifically designated spaces and how they intersect during the Panathenaic procession. Notably, two gods, Aphrodite and Hermes, are observed crossing into ‘Mortalspace’, identified by the two groups of athlothetai—officials responsible for the festival’s organization. The casual nature of their presence and the lack of awareness shown towards divine intrusions add depth to the understanding of ancient Greek religious art and rituals. By analysing votive reliefs from the Athenian Akropolis and by comparing them to the frieze, this research sheds light on the intricacies of the depiction and symbolism in this remarkable ancient artwork.

The procession of El Señor de los Milagros is a multitudinous religious manifestation originally from Peru that tours numerous cities around the world each year in October. In Barcelona (Spain), the procession centers the diverse dances performed in honor of the “Cristo Moreno”, especially La Marinera, which is considered the cultural heritage of the Peruvian nation and is performed mainly by dance groups formed by new generations of Peruvian migrants’ children. This article analyzes the relationship between new generations and the practice of dancing La Marinera in honor of El Señor de los Milagros in Barcelona. Our main methodological strategy was an ethnography focused on the processions held in Barcelona (Spain) in 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2022. We also conducted in-depth interviews with key informants and focus groups and a review of documents and historical information. In this article, we will show that the performance of the Marinera dance in the procession can foster a connection between young dancers and the worship of the Lord of Miracles. Its performance promotes the appreciation and safeguarding of this practice as a distinctive cultural and national element of Peru, also allowing for a public staging oriented toward spectacle, framed in a transnational and globalized context.