The ceremonies and festivities accompanying a formal entry by a ruler or their representative into a city in the Middle Ages and early modern period in Europe were known as the royal entry, triumphal entry, or Joyous Entry.Of course other cultures had equivalents, often even more spectacular, especially China and India. The entry centred on a procession carrying the entering ruler into the city, where they were greeted and paid appropriate homage by the civic authorities, followed by a feast and other celebrations.
The entry began as a gesture of loyalty and fealty by a city to the ruler, with its origins in the adventus celebrated for Roman emperors, which were formal entries far more frequent than triumphs. The first visit by a new ruler was normally the occasion, or the first visit with a new spouse. For the capital they often merged with the coronation festivities, and for provincial cities they replaced it, sometimes as part of a Royal Progress, or tour of major cities in a realm. The concept of itinerant court is related to this.
From the Late Middle Ages,Earlier transformations of the Roman triumph in late antiquity and the Early Middle Ages have been discussed by Michael McCormick, Eternal Victory: Triumphal Rulership in Late Antiquity, Byzantium and the Early Medieval West (Cambridge University Press) 1987. entries became the occasion for increasingly lavish displays of pageantry and propaganda. The devising of the iconography, aside from highly conventional patterns into which it quickly settled,"A remarkably consistent visual and iconographical vocabulary" according to Roy Strong. was managed with scrupulous care on the part of the welcoming city by municipal leaders in collaboration with the chapter of the cathedral, the university, or hired specialists. Often the greatest artists, writers and composers of the period were involved in the creation of temporary decorations, of which little record now survives, at least from the early period.
Origins and development
The contemporary account from Galbert of Bruges of the unadorned "Joyous Advent" of a newly installed Count of Flanders into "his" city of Bruges, in April 1127, shows that in the initial stage, undisguised by fawning and triumphalist imagery that came to disguise it, an entry was similar to a parley, a formal truce between the rival powers of territorial magnate and walled city, in which reiteration of the city's "liberties" in the medieval sense, that is its rights and prerogatives, were set out in clear terms and legitimated by the presence of saintly relics: "On April 5... at twilight, the king with the newly elected Count William, marquis of Flanders, came into our town at Bruges. The canons of Saint Donatian had come forth to meet them, bearing relics of the saints and welcoming the king and new count joyfully in a solemn procession worthy of a king. On April 6... the king and count assembled with their knights and ours, with the citizens and many Flemings in the usual field where reliquaries and relics of the saints had been collected. And when silence had been called for, the charter of the liberty of the church and of the privileges of Saint Donatian was read aloud before all... There was also read the little charter of agreement between the count and our citizens... Binding themselves to accept this condition, the king and count took an oath on the relics of saints in the hearing of the clergy and people".quoted in James M. Murray, "the Liturgy of the Count's Advent in Bruges", City and Spectacle in Medieval Europe, Barbara Hanawalt and Kathryn Reyerson, eds., 1994, p. 137; Murray compares this "political bargain" with a contemporary account of the similar Adventus Iocundus of April 1384.
In England, the first pre-coronation royal entry was staged in 1377 for the 10 year-old Richard II, and fulfilled the dual purpose of enhancing the image of the boy-king and reconciling the crown with the economically powerful City of London. The grand cavalcade through the streets was accompanied by the public conduits running with wine and a featured large temporary castle representing New Jerusalem. The success of the event set a precedent that was to continue at English coronations until well into the 17th-century.*
The procession of a new pope to Rome was known as a possesso. A ruler with a new spouse would also receive an entry. The entry of Queen Isabeau of Bavaria into Paris in 1389 was described by the chronicler Froissart.Bernard Ribemont, "L'entree d'Isabeau de Bavière à Paris: une fete textuelle pour Froissart," in Feste und Feiern, pp. 515–24. The entries of Charles IX of France and his Habsburg queen, Elizabeth of Austria, into Paris, March 1571, had been scheduled for Charles alone in 1561, for the entrate were typically celebrated towards the beginning of a reign,The entries made by Ferdinand of Aragon late in his reign, at Naples (1506), Valencia (1507), Seville (1508) and Valladolid (1509 and 1513), serve as exceptions that were occasioned by his need for confirmative propaganda, following the arrival in Castile of Philip that resolved the succession crisis attendant on the death of Isabella, and Ferdinand's withdrawal into Aragon. (Tess Knighton and Carmen Morte García, "Ferdinand of Aragon's Entry into Valladolid in 1513: The Triumph of a Christian King" Early Music History 18 (1999:119–163) p. 123.) but the French Wars of Religion had made such festivities inappropriate, until the peace that followed the Peace of Saint-Germain-en-Laye signed in August 1570.Victor E. Graham and W. McAllister Johnson, The Paris Entries of Charles IX and Elizabeth of Austria 1571 (University of Toronto Press) 1975.
Until the mid-14th century, the occasions were relatively simple. The city authorities waited for the prince and his party outside the city walls, and after handing over a ceremonial keyLingering into modern times is the ceremonial presentation of the "key to the city" to an honoured guest. with a "loyal address" or speech,At Charles V's entry into Genoa in 1533, a twelve-year-old girl, dressed as Victory and carrying a palm frond, delivered a suitable oration all'antica— in Latin. (George L. Gorse, "An Unpublished Description of the Villa Doria in Genoa during Charles V's Entry, 1533" The Art Bulletin 68.2 [June 1986:319–322]). and perhaps stopping to admire tableaux vivants such as those that were performed at the entry into Paris of Queen Isabeau of Bavaria, described in detail by the chronicler Froissart, conducted him through the streets which were transformed with colour, with houses on the route hanging tapestries and embroideriesThe richly worked hangings of a bed would serve. or carpetsPile carpets were displayed on tables or on a dais; pile carpets were not usually trod under foot until the seventeenth century. or bolts of cloth from their windows, and with most of the population lining the route. At Valladolid in 1509 the town was so gay, so decked out in wealth and canopies and luxurious carpets, that not even Florence or Venice could match it. All the beautiful ladies were delighted to be on display and were definitely worth seeing, [and] everything was so brilliantly arrayed, that I, who am of the town and have never left it, could not recognize it.Luís de Soto, chaplain of the king and coordinator of the Entry, quoted in Knighton and Morte García 1999:139.
Heraldic displays were ubiquitous: at Valladolid in 1509, the bulls in the fields outside the city were caparisoned with cloths painted with the royal arms and hung with bells. Along the route the procession would repeatedly halt to admire the set-pieces embellished with mottoes and pictured and living allegories, accompanied by declamations and the blare of trumpetsAt Valladolid in 1513 Ferdinand was welcomed with four pairs of kettledrums, trumpets by the dozens, shawms and sackbuts. "They made such a din that if a bird happened to fly past, they made it fall from the sky into the crowd", the chroncicler records. (Knighton and Morte Garcia 1999:125). and volleys of artillery. The procession would include members of the three Estates, with the nobility and gentry of the surrounding area, and the clergy and guilds of the city processing behind the prince. From the mid-14th century the guild members often wore special uniform clothes, each guild choosing a bright colour; in Tournai in 1464 three hundred men wore large embroidered silk fleur de lys (the royal badge) on their chests and backs, at their own expense.Françoise Piponnier and Perrine Mane; Dress in the Middle Ages; pp. 150–151, Yale UP, 1997; The prince reciprocated by confirming, and sometimes extending, the customary privileges of the city or a local area of which it was the capital. Usually the prince also visited the cathedral to be received by the bishop and confirm the privileges of the cathedral chapter also.Strong, 1984, p. 7 There a Te Deum would be customary, and music written for the occasion would be performed.
Increasing elaboration
During the 14th century, as courtly culture, with the court of Burgundy in the lead,The refinements of court protocol and the magnificence of court entertainments of Philip the Good and Charles the Bold set courtly fashions for decades in the fifteenth century. began to stage elaborate dramas re-enacting battles or legends as entertainment during feasts, the cities began to include in entry ceremonies small staged pageant "tableaux", usually organised by the guilds (and any communities of foreign merchants resident), and drawing on their growing experience of medieval theatre and pageantry. Initially these were on religious themes, but "gradually these tableaux developed, through the fifteenth and into the sixteenth century, into a repertory of archways and street-theatres which presented variants of a remarkably consistent visual and iconographical vocabulary." Fortune with her wheel, fame and time, the seven virtues, both Christian and classical, and the Nine Worthies and other classical, biblical and local heroes,At York in 1486 Henry VII of England was presented with the keys to the city by the mayor and the allegorical founder-figure of Eburak, a phantom king conjured up by Geoffrey of Monmouth's 12th-century history of the kings of Britain and embedded in civic cult (Gareth Dean, Medieval York 2008:50). among whose number the honoree was now to be counted. As the tradition developed, the themes became more specific, firstly stressing the legitimacy of the prince, and his claim by descent, then setting before him the princely virtues and their rewards, which especially included the benefits to him of encouraging prosperous cities and provinces.
The procession might pause for allegorical figures to address it, or pass beside a genealogical tree or under a temporary classical-style triumphal arch with either painted figures or posed actors perching on it, standing in for statuary in the case of arches. Still more elaborate entertainments began to be staged during or after the civic feast, and by the mid-17th century these could be as spectacular as the staged naval battles, masques, operas and ballets that courts staged for themselves. The court now often had a major role in both designing and financing entries, which increasingly devoted themselves to the glorification of the absolute monarch as hero, and left the old emphasis on his obligations behind; "any lingering possibilities of its use as a vehicle for dialogue with the middle classes vanished".Strong, 1984, p. 41 At the third "triumph" at Valladolid in 1509, a lion holding the city's coat-of-arms shattered at the King's arrival, revealing the royal arms: the significance could not have been lost, even on those unable to hear the accompanying declamation.Knighton and Morte García 1999:146