Festival book

The genre thrived in Renaissance and early modern Europe, where rulers utilized the form to both document and embellish displays of wealth and power.

The pamphlets were ephemera; a printed description of two leaves describing the entry of Ferdinand II of Aragon into Valladolid, 1513, survives in a single copy (at Harvard) because it was bound with another text.

[6] Thomas Dekker, the playwright and author of the book on The Magnificent Entertainment for James I of England is refreshingly frank: The Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian I, went a step further, creating enormous virtual triumphs that existed solely in the form of print.

The Triumphal Arch (1515), the largest print ever made, at 3.57 x 2.95 metres when the 192 sheets are assembled, was produced in an edition of seven hundred copies for distribution to friendly cities and princes.

[10] An early meeting between the festival book with travel literature is the account of the visit in 1530 of the future Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor, then King of Hungary and Bohemia, to Constantinople.