Staging death: the royal funeral for Peter of Portugal at Barcelona (1466)

Abstract

The royal funeral held at Barcelona in June 1466 for Peter of Portugal boasted all the ceremonial trappings with which the Catalan capital city marked a King’s passing. It was staged in accordance with the traditional late medieval pattern: lying in state at the Palau Reial Major, funeral cortege through the streets of Barcelona and solemn obsequies and burial at the Church of Santa Maria del Mar. These ceremonies must be read as political propaganda couched in symbolic language. Against the backdrop of the ongoing civil war, the Principality’s institutions, that is, the Diputació del General and the Consell de Cent, strove to publicise Peter’s legitimacy as well as their own, highlighting their political agenda at loggerheads with that of King John II of Aragon.