A wealth of sources has been preserved about the organization and procedure of court ceremonial in the early modern period Nevertheless, in the eyes of European historians, they remained for a long time in the shadow of the prevailing political and social history, which focused almost exclusively on research into social structures and on the grand telling of national stories 1 It was only in the last third of the 20 th century that the dominant structural and sociological principles became the target of criticism by researchers dealing with the history of culture 2 They demanded that in contrast to the history of events, which emphasized the detailed reconstruction of depersonalized historical phenomena and processes, the main object of research should be humanity, and knowledge of its world of thought, value hierarchy and everyday behaviour
The concept, semantics and period typology of ceremonial at the early modern Habsburg courtsHuman behaviour and actions should not be examined in isolation solely through the lens of history, but in the context of other scientific disciplines 3 It is surely no accident that anthropology, ethnology and sociology have consistently dealt with ceremonial since the genesis of these scientific fields Moreover, they were able to provide historians with an appropriate methodology and terminology These disciplines proved that ceremonial represented a constitutive element in the social and spiritual life of various 1