Enter the King: Theatre, Liturgy, and Ritual in the Medieval Civic Triumph

Enter the King Theatre, Liturgy, and Ritual in the Medieval Civic Triumph

GORDON KIPLING CLARENDON PRESS · OXFORD 1998

Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP Oxford New York Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogota Bombay Buenos Aires Calcutta Cape Town Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madras Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi Paris Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto Warsaw and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © Gordon Kipling 1998 The moral rights of the author have been asserted First published 1998 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press. Within the UK, exceptions are allowed in respect of any fair dealing for the purpose of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of the licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside these terms and in other countries should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Kipling, Gordon. Enter the king : theatre, liturgy, and ritual in the medieval civic triumph / Gordon Kipling. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Pageants. 2. Civilization, Medieval. 3. Triumph. 4. Rites and ceremonies. I. Title. GT3980.K56 1997 394'. 5'0940902 -- dc21 97-32462 ISBN 0-19-811761-2 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 Typeset by Graphicraft Typesetters Ltd., Hong Kong Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddles Ltd, Guildford and King's Lynn

Contents List of Illustrations Abbreviations Introduction 1. The Idea of the Civic Triumph 2. The Christmas King 1. First Advent: The Fulfiller of the Profecye 2. Ordo prophetarum: 'You are the Prince of God amongst us' 3. The Sacred Flower of Jesse's Tree 4. Birth: 'We all mowe blesse the tyme of your Natiuite' 5. Second Advent: The Soul's Jerusalem 6. Tidings of Great Joy: The Nativity Shepherds 7. A Season of Penitence: The Least Brethren of the Lord 3. The Civic Triumph as Royal Epiphany 1. The Magi's Gift: Schawand Him King with Most Magnificence 2. The Triple Triumph of the Emperor Augustus 3. By These Signs You Shall Know Him 4. Roy surtout très catholique 5. Theatres of Princely Epiphany 4. Third Advent: Grace in this Life and Afterward Glory 1. The Royal Entry as Triumph of Death 2. The Ascent to Glory: Margaret of Anjou (London, 1445) 3. The Office of the Dead and the Entry of Henry V into London, 1415 4. The Royal Entry as Elegiac Dream Vision: Katharine of Aragon (London, 1501) 5. The Apotheosis of Christ the King: Charles VIII Enters Troyes (1486) 5. Fourth Advent: The Civic Triumph as Royal Apocalypse 1. New Heaven, New Earth 2. The Wedding Feast of Sponsus Pees the King 3. The Bride in the Garden and the Power of Desire 4. The Wedding of the Lamb 5. The Visio Pacis as Threatened Paradise -ix-

xi xv 1 6 48 48 61 63 71 85 99 102 115 115 130 139 169 176 182 182 188 201 209 221 226 226 237 250 264 280

6. The Queen's Advent 1. Assumpt aboue the Heuenly Ierarchie 2. Virgo Mediatrix 3. Conueie of Grace 4. The Queen Transformed: 'A worthie president, a worthie woman judge' 5. The Queen Declined: The Infernal Adventus of Mary Queen of Scots (Edinburgh, 1561) Bibliography Indexes -x-

289 289 318 327 342 352 357 373

List of Illustrations 1. The New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God (New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Cloisters Collection, 1968. MS 68.174, 36r) 2. Pierre Gringore, Mary in heaven and Mary on earth. Palais Royal pageant, entry of Mary Tudor into Paris, 1514 (British Library, MS Cotton Vespasian B II, 15 r. By permission of the British Library) 3. The Emperor Heraculus and Thierry d'Alsace. Entry of Archduke Charles into Bruges, 1515 (Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS 2591, 16r) 4. Romulus and Philip the Bold. Entry of Archduke Charles into Bruges, 1515 (Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS 2591, 23v) 5. Charles, Archduke of Austria, receives the crown of Jerusalem. Entry of Archduke Charles into Bruges, 1515 (Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS 2591, 41 r) 6. Schematic diagram of civic triumph for the entry of Philip the Good into Bruges, 11 December 1440 (Courtesy Janet Kipling) 7. Jesse Tree. Ces presentes beures a lusaige D giers s t au l g sans requerir (Paris, 1500, d4v (British Library, C. 29. g. 4. By permission of the British Library) 8. Annunciation to the Shepherds. Illustration for Terce, Ces presentes beures a lusaige D giers s t au l g sans requerir (Paris, 1504?), g4 v (British Library, C. 29. g. 4. By permission of the British Library) 9. Nativity. Illustration for Terce, Ces presentes heures a lusaige giers s t au l g sans requerir (Paris, 1504?), g5r (British Library, C. 29. g. 4. By permission of the British Library) 10. Pierre Gringore, Châtelet pageant for entry of Queen Claude into Paris, 1517 (British Library, MS Cotton Titus A. XVII 4r. By permission of the British Library) 11. Exterior castle framing interior bed of estate. The Coronation book of Charles V (British Library, MS Cotton Tiberius B. VIII, 44 v. By permission of the British Library) 12. Birth of the Virgin, Visconti Hours (Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, MS Banco Rari 397, 48r)

16

30

34

35

38 52

55

57

58

70

79 81

3. St Anne, the Virgin, and Christ amidst symbols of the Virgin. Ces presentes heures a lusaige de Paris s t au long sans ri s requerir (Paris, 1510), iiiv (British Library, C. 41. e. 7. By permission of the British Library) 14. Jean Dreux, Margaret of York and the Seven Works of Mercy (In Nicholas Finet, Benois seront les miséricordieux, Brussels, Bibliotheque Royale Albert Ier, MS 9296, 1r) 15. Alkmaar Master, Burying the Dead (Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum) 16. The Baptism of King Clovis. Entry of Francis I into Lyons, 1515 (Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek, MS Guelf 86.4, 18r) 17. Jesse Tree with the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit descending upon Christ (London, Lambeth Palace Library, MS 3, 198r. By permission of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Trustees of Lambeth Palace Library) 18. Archduke Charles as Solomon. Entry of Archduke Charles into Bruges, 1515 (Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek MS 2591, 44r) 19. Enthronement of Christ (Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, MS 20, 68'. By permission of the Master and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge) 20. Richard II Enthroned (London, Westminster Abbey. By courtesy of the Dean and Chapter of Westminster)

21. The Fountain of Grace.

22. The Lady Faith. Entry of Francis I into Lyons, 1515 (WolfenbÖttel, Herzog August Bibliothek, Codex Guelf 86.4, 13r) 23. Royal procession. Entry of Archduke Charles into Bruges, 1515 (Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS 2591, 7 v) 24. Civic procession. Entry of Archduke Charles into Bruges, 1515 (Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS 2591, 8 r) 25. Pieter van der Borcht, Inavgvratio extra vrbem (In Johannes Bochius, Historia narratio profectionis et inavgvrationis serenissimorvm Belgii principvm Alberti et Isabellae, Avstriae archidvcum (Antwerp, 1602), 182-3. Department of Special Collections, University Research Library, UCLA)

26. De aduentu domini in speciale.

27. De aduentu domini ad iudicium. Petrus de Natalibus, Catalogus sanctorum & gestorum ex diuersis voluminibus collectus

84

108 112 123

150

157

159 160 Frère Lorens, Somme le roi (British Library, MS 54180, 69 v. By permission of the British Library) 166 173 177 178

180 Petrus de Natalibus, Catalogus sanctorum & gestorum ex diuersis voluminibus collectus (Lyons, 1519), p. ijr. (British Library, 437 K. 19. By permission of the British Library) 189

(Lyons, 1519), p. iv. (British Library, 437 K. 19. By permission of The British Library) 28. The Four Daughters of God and the Annunciation (British Library, MS Egerton 2045, 25r. By permission of the British Library) 29. The apotheosis of an emperor (London, British Museum. Copyright British Museum) 30. L'Arc d'Alliance. Entry of Francis I into Lyons, 1515 (Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek, MS Guelf. 86. 4, 39r) 31. Pierre Gringore, Mary Tudor in the garden of France. Entry of Mary Tudor into Paris, 1514 (British Library, MS Cotton Vespasian B. II, 10r. By permission of the British Library) 32. Pierre Gringore, Amour Divine, Amour Naturelle, and Amour Conjugale. Entry of Queen Claude into Paris, 1517 (British Library, MS Cotton Titus A. XVII, 39r. By permission of the British Library) 33. Schematic diagram of the civic triumph for Philip the Good's entry into Ghent, 23 April 1458 (Courtesy Janet Kipling) 34. Jan van Eyck, Ghent altarpiece, interior (Ghent, St Bavo's Cathedral. Photo: Giraudon/Art Resource, New York) 35. Le Clos de France. Entry of Francis I into Lyons, 1515 (Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek, MS Guelf 86.4, 11v) 36. Le Jardin de Milan. Entry of Francis I into Lyons, 1515 (Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek, MS Guelf 86.4, 31r) 37. Triple pageant stage with the story of Isaac and Rebecca and the Coronation of the Virgin. Entry of Joanna of Castile into Brussels, 1496 (Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin PK, MS 78 D 5, 39r)

38. Master of the St Bartholomew Altarpiece,

190 194 204 251

255

260 266 274 283 286

290 Virgin and Child in Glory (Reproduced by courtesy of the Trustees, The National Gallery, London) 295

39. Attrib. to Jan Provoost, detail of The Virgin and Child in a Landscape (Reproduced by courtesy of the Trustees, The National Gallery, London) 40. Celestial coronation of the queen. Entry of Queen Claude into Paris, 1517 (British Library, MS Stowe 582, 32. By permission of the British Library) 41. Attrib. to Lorenzo Monaco, The Coronation of the Virgin (Reproduced by courtesy of the Trustees, The National Gallery, London)

42. Louis XII and Mary Tudor on Throne of Majesty. Entry of Mary Tudor into Paris, 1514 (British Library, MS Cotton Vespasian B. II, 8 v. By permission of the British Library) 43. Joanna of Castile as Queen of Sheba. Entry of Joanna of Castile

296

298

305

306 313

into Brussels, 1496 (Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin PK, MS 78 D 5, 52r) 44. Pierre Gringore, Blanche interceding with St Louis. Entry of Queen Claude into Paris, 1517 (British Library, MS Cotton Titus A. XVII, 43v. By permission of the British Library) 45. Pierre Gringore, The Three Graces and the Ponceau Fountain. Entry of Mary Tudor into Paris, 1514 (British Library, MS Cotton Vespasian B. II, 6r. By permission of the British Library) 46. Pierre Gringore, Châtelet pageant. Entry of Mary Tudor into Paris, 1514 (British Library, MS Cotton Vespasian B. II, 13v. By permission of the British Library) 47. Hans Holbein, preliminary sketch for the pageant of Apollo and the Muses. Entry of Anne Boleyn into London, 1533 (Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin PK, KdZ 3106) 48. Pierre Gringore, Queen Claude in the hortus conclusus. Entry of Queen Claude into Paris, 1517 (British Library, NIS Stowe 582, 34r. By permission of the British Library) 49. Pierre Gringore, the 'Clos de Repos'. Entry of Queen Claude into Paris, 1517 (British Library, MS Cotton Titus A. XVII, 35v. By permission of the British Library) 50. Pierre Gringore, the cup of Tantalus. Entry of Queen Claude into Paris, 1517 (British Library, MS Cotton Titus A. X-VII, 37v. By permission of the British Library)

319

322

329

331

335

337

339

Abbreviations DNB EETS (OS/ES) EHR ELN Hall, Chronicle JWCI PL PMLA REED RORD SATF

Dictionary of National Biography Early English Text Society (original series/extra series) English Historical Review English Language Notes Edward Hall, The Union of the two noble and illustre Famelies of Lancastre and York, ed. Henry Ellis ( London, 1809) Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes J. P. Migne (ed.), Patrologiae cursus completus series Latina (221 vols.; Paris, 1844-64) Publications of the Modern Language Association Records of Early English Drama Research Opportunities in Renaissance Drama Sociéré des Anciens Textes Français

Introduction A book about court festivals no longer requires an apologia. Once of interest only to antiquarians, studies of the Renaissance court fête now feature prominently in the work of our most creative and original literary, historical, and art-historical scholars. Jean Jacquot in France, the late Frances Yates and her students in Britain, and Stephen Orgel in America, among others, have moved the study of these spectacular, court-inspired festivities into the mainstream of research. We have long since learned to contemplate the 'more removed mysteries' of the court masque, admire the 'poetics of spectacle', and consider the 'complex and subtle expression of political theory' expressed in public ceremony and spectacle. It no longer seems especially hyperbolic to hear the court fête praised as 'an art form of extraordinary refinement'. 1 This quickening interest has so far been sharply focused upon the Renaissance period. Most studies have preferred to examine the court festivals of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries rather than those of the fourteenth and fifteenth. If medieval festivals are mentioned at all, they appear merely as a brief preface to the swelling theme of the dazzling ____________________ 1 1Important

studies of the court fête are too numerous to list more than a few of them here. Jean Jacquot Les Fêtes de la Renaissance (3 vols.; Paris, 1956-73) contains essays by a number of prominent scholars. D. J. Gordon's most important essays on the Renaissance court festival have been collected and edited by Stephen Orgel, The Renaissance Imagination ( Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1975). Frances Yates many important contributions include The French Academies of the Sixteenth Century ( London, 1947), The Valois Tapestries ( London, 1959; 2nd edn. 1975), and Astraea: The Imperial Theme in the Sixteenth Century ( London, 1975); the latter volume collects her most important essays on court fêtes. Among Frances Yates's students, Sydney Anglo Spectacle, Pageantry, and Early Tudor Policy ( Oxford, 1969) has made important advances in the study of Tudor court festivals, while Margaret McGowan L'Art du ballet de cour en France 1581-1643 ( Paris, 1963) is an invaluable study not only of the ballet de cour but of the court fête in France generally. Roy Strong's prolific work includes not only the most substantial general work we have on court festivals throughout Europe in the Renaissance, Art and Power: Renaissance Festivals 1450-1650 ( Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1984), but an important study of Inigo Jones, in collaboration with Stephen Orgel: Inigo Jones: The Theatre of the Stuart Court ( Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1973). Stephen Orgel many studies of Stuart court festivals include The Jonsonian Masque( Cambridge, Mass., 1965) and The Illusion of Power: Political Theater in the English Renaissance ( Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1975). In addition to a comprehensive bibliography of studies of pageantry, David Bergeron major work is English Civic Pageantry, 1558-1642 ( Columbia, SC., 1971). The first two quotations in this paragraph are taken from Ben Jonson ('more removed mysteries', a phrase important to D. J. Gordon and Stephen Orgel in their discussions of the Jonsonian Masque) and Stephen Orgel ('Poetics of Spectacle', the title of an influential essay on the Stuart masque); the last two are Roy Strong words, albeit taken from the dust jacket rather than the text of Art and Power.

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Renaissance festivals of the Medici, Valois, Tudor, and Stuart courts. Over a half-century ago, however, the Dutch cultural historian Johan Huizinga insisted upon the importance of the festival as the 'supreme expression' of late medieval culture, 'the highest mode of collective enjoyment and an assertion of solidarity'. He stressed that 'all literary, musical, and artistic enjoyment was more or less closely connected with festivals'. 2 Not many have been willing to follow Huizinga's lead into the culture of the late medieval centuries, and The Waning of the Middle Ages remains the only extensive study of late medieval festivals in the north, still pointing down the trail where others might profitably go. This book follows that trail, however gingerly. It attempts to describe for the first time the ritual purposes, symbolic vocabulary, and quasi-dramatic form of one late medieval courtly festival: the royal entry. As Roy Strong points out, there exists no 'full-length study of the royal entry in the middle ages'. 3 This book seeks to remedy that deficiency. Throughout, I have thus attempted to study these spectacular royal festivals without confining them to the relatively meaningless categories of national boundaries. A genuinely European tradition of courtly magnificence requires a broadly European perspective, and I have tried to be mindful of that requirement throughout. The chronological limits of this book -- circa 1370 to circa 1550 -- are not arbitrary, but have been set by the subject matter itself. Although the royal entry as a formal ceremony can probably be traced as an unbroken tradition from late classical times directly into the Renaissance, 4 this book begins where the royal entry adopts pageantry as its essential medium in the late fourteenth century. It argues that the spectacular pageant emblems invented to interpret and celebrate the meaning of this particular court fête can largely be described as the statement and variation of a single, albeit complex, informing idea. The book concludes at a point somewhere in the early to mid-sixteenth century as another informing idea supersedes the first, as the royal entry experiences a revolution in emblematic form. Most readers of this book will recognize the enormous debt that it owes to previous studies of court festivals, even as it departs from them significantly in methodology. Because the most original and interesting studies of the court fête have so far been contributed by cultural historians, they have usually been focused upon political meaning. Sydney Anglo, for example, ultimately found it impossible to consider Tudor court festivals 'from a purely artistic viewpoint' and was obliged at last to view ____________________ 2

The Waning of the Middle Ages, tr. F. Hopman ( London, 1924), 240; seebelow, Ch. 1. Art and Power, 196 n. 2`. 4 On this point, see the references cited in Ch. 1, n. 1.

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them 'partly as specific propaganda, partly as specific comment, and partly as a general princely mode of displaying power and magnificence'. The theme of his book thus attempts to describe 'a new period of political imagery expressed in public ceremony and spectacle'. 5 Roy Strong, similarly, describes the 'world of fantastic allegory' created by 'these endless festivities' as 'crammed with contemporary comment, but in a language that is today virtually incomprehensible as a means of presenting a programme of political ideas'. 6 These studies have thus predominantly taken Renaissance history and politics as their provinces, approaching these subjects through the political emblems of courtly pageantry; in them, the royal entry appears as one of many other 'spectacles of state'. In this book, by contrast, political meaning plays a much less central role. Instead, I emphasize the ritual and dramatic purposes of these pageant shows. Where other books view the civic triumph primarily as a series of pageant emblems devised by the citizens for their king with the purpose of articulating political ideas or disseminating propaganda, this study sees both king and citizens performing roles -- both dramatic and ritual in nature -- which they define by means of spectacular pageantry. The roles performed are partly traditional in nature, depending upon certain typological prototypes (Christ's Palm Sunday Entry into Jerusalem, for example), and partly occasional in nature, depending upon the inspiration of the moment. Political ideas are thus not excluded from consideration, but in this book such ideas appear only as secondary considerations to what I take to be the primary function of the royal entry as a serious late medieval art form -- in Huizinga's terms, one of the 'supreme expressions' of late medieval culture, one of its most serious modes of collective enjoyment, and a deeply felt assertion of communal solidarity. Since the civic triumph rarely has been viewed this way in the past, I have felt particularly obliged to explain how I think the art of these shows ought to be approached. Throughout these pages, as a consequence, I frequently engage in sometimes detailed explications of particular civic triumphs. These are offered both as methodological models and as illustrations of the sometimes considerable art of the medieval royal entry. I must emphasize that whatever its unintentional limitations, this book has several important intentional ones. To begin with what ought to be an obvious one, this book only considers the art of the medieval royal entry; it does not consider any of the many other varieties of civic or aristocratic rejoicing common to the period, nor does it consider those royal entries which were unaccompanied by pageantry. For the purposes ____________________ 2, 5. and Power, 4 (my italics).

5Spectacle, 6Art

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of this book, a civic triumph thus requires the formal entrance of a king, queen, or (rarely) other noble visitor into a city where he or she is received with pageantry by its citizens. As we shall see, this is not an arbitrary limitation, but one essential to the ritual and dramatic nature of this particular festive occasion. The procession of London fishmongers, who carried a pageant ship in procession to escort their Queen from Westminster to Eltham after the birth of Edward III ( 1313), cannot be considered in this book, even though Robert Withington has (incorrectly, I believe) identified it as an early form of royal entry. 7 Nor will this book consider the richly allegorical pageantry devised to celebrate the Burgundian court fêtes, the Field of Cloth of Gold ( 1520), the festival at Binche ( 1549), or the progresses of Queen Elizabeth. These all involved princely personages, some of them include spectacular processions, but they did not involve formal entries into cities, and they lacked the essential ritual purposes of the royal entry. Some readers may find one deliberate omission particularly curious: this book omits all but brief mention of the many spectacular princely entries that took place in Italy during the period. When I began this project, the Italian entries were very much a part of the story I wanted to tell. Often, they have left far more detailed records, both visual and literary, than the northern pageants. Francesco Laurana, for example recorded Alfonso of Aragon's entry into Naples ( 1443) in a panel sculpted over the gate to the castle. Borso d'Este's entry into Reggio Emilia ( 1453), Galeazzo Sforza's entry into Florence ( 1471), and Caesare Borgia's entry into Rome ( 1500) each attempted detailed recreations of antique Roman triumphs. Leonardo da Vinci contributed to the pageants for the entry of Louis XII into Milan. Both artistically and politically, these entries often contributed crucially to the transmission of Italian Renaissance ideas to the north. Despite their importance, however, detailed analyses of these brilliant fifteenth-century festivals have rarely been attempted. 8 They do ____________________ 7

English Pageantry (2 vols.; Cambridge, Mass., 1918-26), i. 126. See also Robert Withington, "The Early Royal Entry", PMLA 32 ( 1917), 616-23. This particular celebration has more to do with the carrus navalis pageant, which was carried in procession for various joyful celebrations over many centuries (hence carnevale). For this celebration, see George Kernodle, From Art to Theatre ( Chicago, 1944), 15. 8 By contrast, there are a number of important studies of 16th- and 17th-cent. Italian princely entries. See, for example, Andrew C. Minor and Bonner Mitchell (eds.), A Renaissance Entertainment: Festivities for the Marriage of Cosimo I, Duke of Florence, in 1539 ( Columbia, Mo., 1968) and Margaret McGowan, "Les Fêtes de cour en Savoie: L' uvre de Philippe d'Aglié", Revue d'histoire du théâtre, 3 ( 1970), 183-242. Briefer discussions of a few 15th-cent. Italian entries begin with Jakob Burckhardt, Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, tr. S. G. C. Middlemore (2 vols.; London, 1878); Josèphe Chartrou, Les Entrées solennelles et triomphales à la Renaissance, 1484-1551 ( Paris, 1928); and Strong, Art and Power.

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not appear in this book either because they belong to a different tradition of royal entry and are informed by ideas different from those central to the northern shows. In the sixteenth century, northern cities begin to imitate the Italian entries, and the Italian Renaissance idea replaces the late medieval idea that is the subject of this book. As a consequence, the story of the fifteenth-century Italian princely entries belongs to another book about the Renaissance, rather than the medieval, royal entry. At a later date, perhaps I will return to that other book. Quotations from texts in Latin, Dutch, and French texts often appear in English translation, in which case the original text will appear in a note. Except in the case of biblical texts, the translations are usually my own. Biblical texts are routinely cited from the Vulgate, and English translations of the Vulgate are conventionally taken from the Douay-Reims translation. -5-

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1 The Idea of the Civic Triumph Beginning in the late fourteenth century, the cities of northern Europe celebrated the ceremonial arrivals of their sovereigns with dramatic embellishments of an already colourful ritual that can be traced back to late classical times. 1 In addition to the marshalling of civic dignitaries to welcome the prince, the decoration of the city streets, the clamour of voices, the harmony of singers and musicians, and the splendour of the royal procession, the civic guilds now began to erect pageants in the streets and fill them with actors. God the Father, Christ, angels, prophets, evangelists, saints, virtues and vices, the Four Daughters of God, and the Nine Worthies -- among many others -- now joined the citizens lining the streets to celebrate the coming of the king. The surviving records document a rapid growth of the new shows in both complexity and popularity. We find our first certain records of such shows, consisting of a single pageant stage each, in 1377 at London and 1380 in Paris. Before the close of the fourteenth century, successive kings and queens of England and of France are enjoying civic triumphs containing as many as ten pageants enacted by dozens of actors. By the time we hear of the first certain civic triumphs in Bruges ( 1440) and Ghent ( 1458), the shows now require dozens of pageants and hundreds of actors, and it might take an entire day for the royal procession, stopping before each pageant along the way, to make its way through the city. 2 These civic triumphs, then, share a common dramatic heritage with the great religious dramas -- the Continental Passion plays and the English Corpus Christi cycles -- which sprang up throughout ____________________ 1For

the late classical origins of the royal entry, see Ernst H. Kantorowicz, "The King's Advent and the Enigmatic Panels in the Doors of Santa Sabina", Art Bulletin, 26 ( 1944), 207-31; Sabine MacCormack, "Change and Continuity in Late Antiquity: The Ceremony of Adventus", Historia, 21 ( 1972), 721-52; H. Versnel, Triumphus ( Leiden, 1970). 2For the first civic triumph with pageantry at Paris, see Bernard Guenée and Françoise Lehoux, Les Entrées royales françaises de 1328 à 1515 ( Paris, 1968), 12-13. For London, see Withington, English Pageantry, i. 128. Withington notes two earlier celebrations with pageantry, but neither was a royal entry. Kernodle, From Art to Theatre, 231, thinks the first uses of pageantry in the Lowlands occurred in 1301 and 1329 at Ghent, but his sources of information are unreliable late 17th-cent. chronicles which interpret 14th-cent. splendour in 17th-cent. terms. Against this we may weigh the far more reliable evidence of a nearcontemporary, Nicolaes Despars, who claims that civic triumph pageantry before 1440 "noyt daer te voren binnen Vlaenderen gheuseert". Cronijcke van den lande ende Graefscepe van Vlaenderen, iii (Bruges, 1839), 433.

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northern Europe at precisely the same period. At a time when, as Huizinga reminds us, 'all literary, musical, and artistic enjoyment was more or less closely connected with festivals', the ceremonial of the royal entry provided another popular occasion for communal artistic enjoyment. 3 However popular these shows may have been among their contemporaries, modern commentary has been quick to sense a sharp distinction between the sublime religious drama and the pompous civic triumph. We like to imagine the former as inspired by love of God while we suspect the latter to be driven by the vanity of princes. Huizinga, again, convincingly puts this distinction with characteristically eloquent clarity. The manifest superiority of the religious festival and the arts associated with it, he thought, lay in their inherent ideas. On the one hand, worship provided religious festivals with 'sublime thought, which lent them a grace and dignity that even the excesses of their frequently burlesque details could not affect'. The 'ideas glorified by the secular feast', on the other hand, 'were nothing more than those of chivalry and courtly love . . . vain convention and mere literature'. 4 Applying Huizinga's general cultural observation about medieval festivals to the specific case of medieval drama, we get the sharp, qualitative distinction which characterizes so much modern commentary. However burlesque or vulgar an episode in one of the great religious dramas might be -- whether the farce of Mak the sheep stealer in the Wakefield Cycle or the Jew-baiting bigotry of the Continental Passion play -- nevertheless the plays on the whole aspire to great art because their ideas are worthy and sublime. Civic triumphs, on the contrary, can never deliver more than transient enjoyment even if -- as they frequently do -- they include a particularly affecting religious pageant. Because the idea of the medieval civic triumph is itself vain and trivial, it must necessarily fail as art. If Huizinga's dismissal of such medieval courtly festivals as expressions of unworthy ideas has proven widely influential since he wrote, it also sums up eloquently the received critical opinion of his own time. Indeed, Huizinga was perhaps more charitable than most. At least he was willing to acknowledge some informing ideas, albeit puerile ones, at the heart of such secular shows as the civic triumph. To others, the civic triumph has seemed to have no such ideas at all. E. K. Chambers and Robert Withington, for example, explain the appearance of castles, angels, prophets, and apostles in civic triumphs either as 'an adaptation of the ordinary miracle-play to the conditions of a royal entry', or as 'trade-symbolism'. ____________________ 3Johan

Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages, tr. F. Hopman ( London, 1924),

240. 4Ibid.

240-1.

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The appearance of St John the Baptist during Richard II's triumphal entry into London ( 1392) proves both propositions at once, since St John undeniably appears also in English miracle plays and since this particular St John appears 'surrounded by all kinds of trees and a menagerie of strange beasts' -examples, presumably, of a grocer's wares. 5 Explaining the early civic triumph this way, not as the expression of unworthy ideas but as a mere hodgepodge of 'influences' from elsewhere, betrays an unstated belief that such spectacles have absolutely no ideas of their own, that they rely instead upon haphazard influences from 'legitimate' forms of drama and symbolism for their very existence. Because the early civic triumph has seemed to lack serious informing ideas, it has never received much critical attention, except as an antiquarian exercise. 6 Glynne Wickham stands nearly alone in discovering a serious informing idea in the religious pageants of the medieval civic triumph: The idea of military victory, however, implicit within the Roman triumph is modified in mediaeval Europe by Christian thinking to imply acknowledgement by the subject that the particular ruler is the representative in their midst, chosen by God for their own good as a figurehead and arbiter of justice. His anointment and acclamation at the Coronation are indicative of this belief: and, by means of presentation to the citizens of the capital during a procession through the streets, the acclamation is extended to a wider range of subjects than those privileged to attend the service in the Cathedral. 7 Almost all other writers pass briefly over late medieval triumphs in order to begin at the sixteenth century, when the Renaissance at last had given these shows a 'sublime thought' and had thereby 'lent them a grace and dignity'. Josèphe Chartrou Entrées solennelles et trioniphales à la Renaissance, 14841551 -- still one of the best studies of the civic triumph after half a century -provides a good example of this strategy. Chartrou deliberately chooses to examine the royal entry at what she perceives to be its period of transition. She briefly characterizes its vague 'medieval' past as a series of processions enlivened only by primarily religious tableaux and moral 'divertissements' sponsored by the religious orders: 'fountains which splutter claret wine and hypocras, scaffolds where the monks play pious mysteries and allegories to the praise of the king.' Then, after the monks ____________________ 5

E. K. Chambers, The Mediaeval Stage (2 vols.; London, 1903), ii. 173; Withington, English Pageantry, i. 131, and "The Early Royal Entry", 616-23. 6 Withington and Chambers continue a tradition of brilliant antiquarian studies of the drama that can be traced back at least as far as William Hone Ancient Mysteries Described ( London, 1823). 7 Early English Stages, 1300-1660 (4 vols.; London, 1959 --), i. 52.

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depart and the French invasions of Italy bring new inspiration to the civic triumph, Renaissance emblems (triumphal arches, obelisks, and antique divinities) and -- more important -- Renaissance ideas begin to appear: 'the cult of heroes, the passion for antiquity has replaced the Christian ideal of sanctity and asceticism.' In the end, she finds, the French civic triumph has adopted an informing idea which she describes as 'l'idée triomphale', and in so doing it has become an art form worthy of serious study. 8 So successful has this view proven in the last half-century that more recent writers have mainly contented themselves with chronicling, as Roy Strong puts it, 'the transformation of the royal entry into an antique triumph'. 9 Almost without exception, modern writers have found these shows interesting only when they cease being 'medieval' in substance and begin to adopt classical ideas and political imagery. If it is mentioned at all, the medieval civic triumph serves predominantly as a foil to set off the brilliance of its Renaissance successor. If the latter is to be characterized by its classical pretensions, artistic sophistication, and political imagery, then the former might usefully be described as medieval, naive, and moral. The early processions, on the one hand, seem cobbled together out of the 'panoply of virtues, vices, medieval symbolism, and biblical exempla' or from a 'compilation of castles, genealogical trees, tabernacles, fountains and gardens, . . . groups of allegorical personages and historical exempla' Renaissance processions, on the other hand, can have 'aesthetic unity' and -- especially -informing ideas: the 'imperial idea' ( Frances Yates), the 'liturgy of secular apotheosis' ( Roy Strong), 'l'idée triomphale' ( Chartrou), or, most commonly, scrupulous imitation of the antique Roman triumph. 10 ____________________ 10

Anglo, Spectacle, 1-7; Strong, Splendor at Court, 23-36; Frances Yates, "Charles Quint et l'idée d'empire", in Jacquot (ed.), Les Fêtes de la Renaissance, ii. 57-97; Chartrou, Les Entrées solennelles et triomphales,56-72. Another common apology for the biblical pageants so prominent in medieval civic triumphs justifies them as doctrinal aids: 'Pendant le moyen âge l'Eglise avait senti la nécessité de représenter uniquement les faits et gestes de l'Ancien et du Nouveau Testament, pour les rendre plus accessibles it la comprehension.' But even so, 'à la fin du X-Ve siècle et surtout pendant le XVle, nous voyons que les tableaux religieux cèdent peu à peu le pas aux exemples des traditions antiques'; Marcel Lageirse, "La Joyeuse Entrée du Prince Héritier Philippe à Gand en 1549", Anciens Pays et assemblées d'états, 18 ( 1959), 36. 8 9-10, 16-18, 26, 56-72. 9 Splendor at Court ( Boston, 1973), 31. Compare R. A. Jackson, Vive le roi! A History of the French Coronation from Charles V to Charles X ( Chapel Hill, NC, 1984), 175: 'The themes of the fifteenthcentury entries and the ways in which they were treated were distinctly medieval. In the course of the sixteenth century, the allure of humanism with its classical motifs and allusions gave the entries a new coloration, although themes typical of the Middle Ages continued to find their places in the entries.' See also Jean Jacquot, "Joyeuse et Triomphante Entrée", in Jacquot (ed.), Les Fêtes de la Renaissance, i. 9-19, and Josèphe Jacquiot, "De l'entrée de César à Rome à l'entrée des rois de France dans leurs bonnes villes", in J. R. Mulryne and Margaret Shewring (eds.), Italian Renaissance Festivals and their European Influence ( Lewiston, NY, 1992), 255-68.

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The history of these festivals, in short, has so far been written from the point of view of the sixteenth century. While brilliantly illuminating the art, political purposes, and social functions of the Renaissance triumph, we have left its predecessor, 'the medieval royal entry', a shadowy creature indeed. This in turn has made it difficult to understand why or how the transformation from the earlier 'naive' form to the later 'sophisticated' one occurred. Why, after all, should sophisticated Renaissance artists wish to tinker with a vain and silly ceremony? Two preconceptions in particular -- both deriving from this 'backward-looking' viewpoint-prevent us from coming to terms with the triumph. First of all, we persistently think of these earlier shows as somehow primitive by contrast with their later, more sophisticated, successors. As we have seen, they are accused of 'naivety', dismissed as mere 'divertissements', and are found guilty of pandering to 'vain convention and mere literature'. Because they are primitive, they cannot be the product of conscious artifice; rather, they seem to result from the unconscious and largely automatic accretions of folk tradition, trade symbolism, and religious piety. At first sight, this attitude might seem to derive from a mistaken cultural primitivism, a belief that the arts, as does technology, grow ever more complex from simple beginnings. But mere point of view, rather than such mistaken principles, seems a more likely cause of the trouble. Renaissance classical humanism has proven so successful a concept in illuminating the sixteenth-century triumph that we find it difficult to see the medieval royal entry in any other way. The Renaissance triumph à l'antique has become for us a kind of Platonic idea of civic triumph which medieval processions can never achieve. We thus often describe the earlier processions as if their organizers also meant to imitate the Roman triumph but could do so only naively and awkwardly for lack of accurate conceptions of the Roman originals. Consequently, we find ourselves scanning early royal entries for signs of classical humanism, only to be inevitably disappointed. Does not Lydgate compare Henry VI's London triumph ( 1432) to those of Scipio and Julius Caesar, and yet is any royal entry more Gothic and medieval? 11 In this spirit, one writer describes the early civic triumph as 'a visual repertory of late medieval Gothicism little touched by the new forms of the Renaissance', while another detects only 'the merest nod in the direction of classical allusion' ____________________ 11 For a discussion which considerably overvalues the classical triumph as a model for the medieval civic triumph, see Gordon Kipling, "Triumphal Drama: Form in English Civic Pageantry", Renaissance Drama, NS 8 ( 1977), 37-56. For Lydgate's passing allusion to the Roman triumph, see The Minor Poems of John Lydgate, ed. H. N. MacCracken, EETS os 192, vol. ii ( London, 1934), 647-8.

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among all the virtues, vices, and other symbols inhabiting a typically medieval' triumph. 12 Secondly, we have discovered high purposes for the Renaissance triumph: its pageantry can disseminate political ideals, express a society's aspirations towards political order, or serve as 'a vehicle whereby public acclamation could be focused on the person of the ruler as the incarnation of the State'. 13 But except for such tentative efforts as Glynne Wickham's, we have not discovered corresponding purposes for medieval royal entries. Indeed, the considerable authority of Huizinga, as we have seen, warns us that only trivial purposes at best are to be found in such shows. Looking from the secular liturgy of the Renaissance triumph to the repetitive biblical pageantry and tedious moral exhortation of the medieval shows, we are tempted to the broadest of unfavourable contrasts. No wonder that we are predisposed to see the aim of these medieval triumphs as little more than -- in George Kernodle's words -'general ornament and flattery', one means among many by which citizens might 'honor or cajole' their prince. 14 Perhaps medieval citizens thought it important to produce a show of some kind for their prince, but the nature or meaning of the show must have been relatively unimportant. Since they meant merely to flatter their prince by means of a spectacular show, a trade symbol contributed by a guild or a religious pageant borrowed from a local miracle play would serve as well as a pageant designed expressly for the occasion. All made equally colourfal and impressive shows. But we cannot escape the question of purpose so easily. Medieval citizens had many ways of honouring and cajoling their princes, after all. If this method proved particularly successful, why did they resort to it so infrequently? Kings often entered their cities in style, but with some remarkable exceptions, few cities received any prince with pageantry more than once in his reign. 15 If, on the contrary, such shows fulfilled no useful purpose, why were they almost inevitably repeated with each new reign? And why did they become ever more elaborate, more expensive, more popular? One of the most famous of the English medieval civic triumphs, Richard II's reconciliation with the city of London ( 1392), neatly illustrates the limitations of our current thinking and suggests new approaches that ____________________ 12

Strong, Splendor at Court, 25; Anglo, Spectacle, 7. Strong, Splendor at Court, 36. 14 Kernodle, From Art to Theatre, 68. 15 Since queens and visiting monarchs might also celebrate civic triumphs, several might take place in any given reign, but no individual was likely to celebrate more than one triumph in a city. Cities could have well afforded more, as witness the profusion of annual mystery cycles, midsummer shows, Passion plays, and lord mayor's shows throughout northern Europe. 13

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may help explain the artistry and purposes of these shows -- approaches which are 'triumphal' without being Roman, Christian instead of classical, and feudal instead of imperial. The earliest English royal entry to employ multiple pageants and to leave detailed descriptive records, Richard II's 'reconciliation' triumph serves particularly well for this purpose. 16 It uses many of the pageants, symbols, and ceremonies that characterize these shows throughout northern Europe for the next 150 years. In addition, Richard Maydiston's lengthy interpretative commentary can help us explain the meaning and purposes of the show from the viewpoint of a contemporary witness. Finally, because it stands among the very first of these shows, not only in England but in all northern Europe, 17 it can perhaps suggest reasons for the origins and the popularity of these elaborate civic triumphs. Having been deprived of its ancient rights and liberties, suffered the deposition and imprisonment of its mayor and sheriffs, and seen the courts removed to York -- all because it had denied the King a £1,000 loan which he deemed his by feudal right -- London dramatized its capitulation by means of the most extensive civic triumph yet attempted in England. 18 Only a single pageant had graced either the coronation triumph of Richard ( 1377) or that of Queen Anne ( 1382). But for this gesture of reconciliation, the city stationed at least four pageants along the route of the King's procession. 19 Obviously co-ordinated in theme, the pageants each depicted a celestial place populated by angels and saints. ____________________ 16

Richard Maydiston, "Concordia: Facta inter Regem Riccardum II et Civitatem Londonie" has been edited by Thomas Wright, Political Poems and Songs Relating to English History, Composed during the Period from the Accession of Edw. III. to that of Ric. III., Rolls Series 14 ( London, 1859), i. 282300; it has also been edited and translated by Charles R. Smith (unpublished dissertation, Princeton University, 1972). Maydiston's text may be supplemented in a few important details by Helen Suggett, "A Letter Describing Richard II's Reconciliation with the City of London, 1392", EHR 62 ( 1947), 209-11. The most useful discussions of the triumph itself appear in Smith, "Concordia", 42112, and Wickham, Early English Stages, i. 64-70, 17 London staged at least two earlier civic triumphs for the coronations of Richard II ( 1377) and Queen Anne ( 1382). French pageants begin at Paris in 1380 with 'divers personnages et plusieurs hystoires' ( Guenée and Lehoux, Entrées royales, 12-13); the first detailed, circumstantial accounts of such pageants occur with the entry of Isabella of Bavaria into Paris ( 1389). 18 For the political background to this extraordinary entry, see Harold F. Hutchinson, The Hollow Crown: A Life of Richard II ( New York, 1961), 138-40. Wickham, Early English Stages, i. 64, thinks that the pageantry reflects Richard's, rather than London's, capitulation in this quarrel, a judgement hard to reconcile with the enormous fine the city was forced to pay, the imprisonment its officers were forced to suffer, or (as we shall see) the imagery of the civic pageantry. It is true that London does not refer in its pageantry directly and unequivocally to its fault in the quarrel, but then neither does Ghent wish to recall its armed rebellion against Philip the Good when receiving him in 1458 after that city's capitulation. 19 There may in fact have been as many as six pageants. Maydiston describes only four in detail, but he also refers in passing to: 'in Lud quoque porta | Consimilis cultus stat similisque nitor; | Ad fluvii pontem nimium bene culta refulgent | Agmina spirituum' (ll. 353 -6).

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The first of the series, for example, stood atop the Great Conduit in Cheapside and consisted of a choir of singers costumed to look like one of the heavenly orders of angels. 20 The Conduit miraculously ran wine instead of water, and the angels both sang and scattered pieces of gold. The second pageant, the most technically ambitious of the series, took the form of a high, castle-like tower hung on ropes above the street. From the tower a youth and a maiden, dressed as angels, descended to the street 'enclosed in clouds . . . floating down in the air'. The youth offered a golden chalice of wine to Richard while the maiden delivered a pair of golden crowns to the King and Queen. They then miraculously reascended to their celestial tower. At the next stop, there was a pageant throne fixed to the Little Conduit and circled by three more angelic orders in attendance before the throne of the Almighty. God himself, played by a youth dressed in snow-white robes, sat above these heavenly hierarchies, a light beaming like the sun shining upon him. The three circles of angels sang and played musical instruments so sweetly, according to Maydiston, that the watchers were ravished with the beauty of it. Finally, a pageant set above Temple Bar depicted John the Baptist preaching in a wilderness constructed of a great variety of wild beasts and an equally large catalogue of trees. The beasts ran about, fighting, biting, leaping 'as savage beasts do in the desolate forest'. St John stood in the midst, dramatically pointing: 'Agnus et Ecce Dei.' An angel descended from the high roof above this pageant to the street, bringing two golden altarpieces with images of the Crucifixion upon them so that the King and Queen might contemplate Christ's mercy and his forbearance toward his enemies. Modern commentary has so far approached the meaning and purpose of these extraordinary pageants only through an antiquarian perspective of trade symbolism and of 'influences' from elsewhere. 21 Chambers, for example, thinks that the pageant of John the Baptist may reflect 'the regular contemporary drama' as such a scene 'pretty obviously came from the miracleplays'. 22 Withington, on the other hand, noting that a Grocer was mayor in 1392, thinks that trade symbolism must account for the trees and animals of the same pageant, and he further suggests that the second pageant, the celestial tower hung on ropes above the street, 'may show a chivalric influence' because such castles 'came from the "Court of Love" literature, possibly by way of the tournament'. 23 George Unwin similarly detects the Skinners' hands in the St John pageant because ____________________ ordo", l. 273. introduction to his edition and translation of Maydiston marks a welcome departure from this general trend. 22The Mediaeval Stage, ii. 173. 23English Pageantry, i. 129-31. 20"celicus

21Smith's

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of the presence of wild beasts. 24 Wickham does grant the show 'a firm didactic intention', but otherwise he is content to follow Withington and Unwin, differing in detail but not in substance. He would thus assign 'the choice of St John as the governing figure' in the last pageant to the Merchant Taylors because ' Richard had himself become an honorary member of that company in 1385 and in 1392 had granted them their second charter recognizing St John the Baptist as their patron saint'. 25 On the whole, discussion of these pageants remains where Withington's summation left it in 1918: 'By 1392 we have a pageant which shows the influence of the miracle-play; which combines elements of trade-symbolism and tournament, and which includes appropriate speeches.' 26 From the viewpoint of the show's meaning and purpose, however, such hypotheses fail to account for the pageants. Take John the Baptist as a trade symbol, for example. London trade-symbol pageants almost always take the form of portable structures carried in procession. The Fishmongers, set of four golden sturgeons and three silver salmon which they carried in procession to celebrate Edward I's victory at Falkirk ( 1298) illustrates this type, and several sixteenth-century mayors marched to their inaugurations behind portable pageants symbolic of their guilds. 27 Conceivably, guilds might also gather about a stationary pageant symbolic of their trade to witness a king's royal entry. In either case, the pageant serves as an identifying totem, a mascot, for the guild. But in 1392, as Maydiston points out, the guilds marched in the royal procession past stationary pageants. They identified themselves not with pageantry but with splendidly distinctive liveries. 28 The St John pageant, therefore, could not serve as a trade symbol in the usual sense, and the exceptional senses that one might imagine all seem frivolous: an advertisement for groceries? A boast of the glory of Merchant Taylors? In the end, this hypothesis fails because it confuses guild participation with symbolic meaning. We may rightly suspect, in other words, that the Skinners supplied pelts from which to fashion St John's wild beasts without concluding that the pageant symbolized the Skinners' trade. 29 If the trade-symbol hypothesis seems barren, the various 'influence' hypotheses seem at first more promising. By explaining the suspended tower pageant with its ingenious machinery of ascending and descending 24

The Gilds and Companies of London ( 4th edn., London, 1963), 271. Early English Stages, i. 368. 26 English Pageantry, i. 131. 27 Ibid. 124-5 ; see also Withington's account of the Merchant Taylors' pageant of St John the Baptist borne before Sir Thomas Rowe in 1568 ( ii. 21). 28 "Hos sequitur phalerata cohors cuiuslibet artis -- | Secta docet sortem quemque tenere suam' (ll. 7980). Cf. accounts of the Goldsmiths" liveries in 1382; William Herbert, The History of the Twelve Great Livery Companies of London, i ( London, 1837), 217-18. 29 Smith, "Concordia", 93. 25

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angels as an example of miracle-play or Court-of-Love influence, we avoid the question of meaning altogether. We can claim, in effect, that such shows 'represented' nothing more than the desire of the city to receive its prince with splendour -- with 'general ornament and flattery' -- and that any pageant subject would serve as well as any other provided it made a suitably magnificent show. But if subject matter was irrelevant, why do we find such an impressive co-ordination of pageant subjects in the series, each pageant reflecting a celestial theme? Above all, the thematic consistency of these pageants, as we shall see, belies the suggestion that they are the haphazard products of a trade symbol here, a warmed-over miracle play there, and a tournament castle farther on. Rather, such consistency suggests the presence of a governing scheme, however simple or complex. The city designed its pageantry, in fact, according to a thoughtful and consistent scheme traditional in its iconography and familiar throughout Christian Europe. The four pageants are not merely 'celestial' or 'heavenly', but seek to identify London as a type of the New Jerusalem. Long before European cities began decorating their streets with pageantry, they imagined themselves transformed into another Zion, a celestial Jerusalem, whenever a king made his ceremonial entry. 30 A contemporary London chronicler, for example, uses this traditional metaphor in describing the reception of Edward II and Queen Isabella in 1308: 'then was London seen ornamented with jewels like New Jerusalem.' 31 Not surprisingly, then, Maydiston finds himself relying upon this traditional image in describing how colourfal tapestries hung along the parade route turned the city into 'new heaven'. 32 In seeking to transform this verbal metaphor into visual imagery, London based its pageants upon St John's Apocalyptic description of the New Jerusalem: And I John saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice from the throne, saying: Behold, the tabernacle of God with men, and he will dwell with them. And they shall be his people; and God himself with them shall be their God. (Apoc. 21: 2-3) ____________________ 30

Kantorowicz, "King's Advent", 209-11. See also, by the same author, Laudes regiae ( Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1946), 71 : 'every city on earth preparing itself for the liturgical reception of one anointed, becomes a "Jerusalem" and the comer a likeness of Christ.' 31 'Tandem Londoniam venerunt, cui copiosa civium turba obviabant, et per regales vicos tapetos aureos dependebant, et tunc visa est Londonia quasi nova Jerusalem monilibus ornata'; William Stubbs (ed.), Chronicles of Edward I and II, Rolls Series 76, vol. i ( London, 1882), 152. 32 l. 62. Cf. "Bien il sembloit a les voir parees, I De la ville que feust ung paradis" (entry of Charles VIII, Troyes, 1486); Guenée and Lehoux, Entrées royales,270.

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1. The New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God In this vein, a band of musical angels first appears atop the Great Conduit to welcome Richard to the holy city. The King next encounters the high tower of New Jerusalem itself. Richard witnesses the descent of the holy city as medieval illuminators had so frequently imagined it ( Fig. 1 ). Hung upon ropes above the streets and populated by angels, the heavenly castle 'comes down out of heaven' at Richard's approach in fulfilment of St John's prophetic dream. Having beheld the 'tabernacle of God', Richard next arrives before the Almighty's throne itself, again just as the Evangelist's vision predicts. There he sits in glory amidst his court of angels, having come to 'dwell with men'. The descriptive imagery, formal speeches, and dramatic action associated with the pageants further emphasize and define this Apocalyptic metaphor. Both Maydiston and the city's custos, for example, repeatedly refer to Richard as a 'bridegroom' (sponsus) and to London, traditionally known as 'the king's chamber', as Richard's 'bridal chamber' (thalamus). 'Let not the bridegroom', begs the custos in a typical example, 'hate the -16-

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bridal chamber he has always loved'. 33 This application of the imagery of Canticles to sponsus Richard and sponsa London appropriately reflects St John's own description of the holy city as 'a bride adorned for her husband'. So in like manner Richard himself is made to echo the Apocalyptic speech that God makes from the throne of the holy city: the citizens of London, he promises, 'will now be my people and I shall henceforth be king to them'. 34 When angels descend from the tower of New Jerusalem to bring golden crowns to Richard and Anne, the custos is quick to point out that these are but the material types of the crowns of glory worn by the faithful in the holy city: 'may he that gives you the diadems of the terrestrial kingdom grant you also the eternal heavenly kingdom.' 35 The very city is transformed: angels and spirits appear among the earthly citizens; they cense the procession, spread the streets with flowers, sing psalms, and fill the air with musical harmonies. Even as angels become citizens, so citizens become angelic; the guilds marshal themselves so splendidly that 'whoever should witness these squadrons . . . would not doubt that he was seeing the forms of an angelic order'. 36 Wine runs in the conduits where water formerly ran. Like St John, Richard sees 'a new heaven and a new earth. For the first heaven and the first earth was gone' (Apoc. 21: 1). If London progressively takes the form of the New Jerusalem, Richard even more emphatically stands revealed as a type of Christ -- the Anointed One, heavenly spouse, Saviour, and Lord. Angels descend to crown him; water turns to wine at his approach; for him is reserved the golden Eucharistic chalice sent down from heaven. As Saviour, Richard redeems and pardons -first a banished murderer who throws himself before his horse as the procession is about to enter the city, 37 later the city itself as the mayor and sheriffs stand before his judgment throne repenting their offences. Indeed, the pageantry does not merely compare Richard to Christ. Rather, it stages Richard's epiphany as a type of Christ. All the pageants make this point generally whenever angels descend to welcome the Beloved of God, but the last pageant at Temple Bar takes Richard's epiphany as its particular theme. In this final pageant, John the Baptist preaching in the wilderness recognizes the Saviour in Richard and proclaims his epiphany to all: Behold the Lamb of God. Further, the city pairs this ____________________ 33

"Non oderit thalarnurn sponsus quem semper amavit" ( l. 147). Cf. ll. 11, 21, 24, 42, 66, and 209, among others. See Smith, "Concordia", 145-7, for a discussion of this point. 34 "Plebs mea nunc erit hec, rex et ero sibi nunc" ( l. 220 ). Cf. ' "Et ipse populus eius erunt et ipse Deus cum eis erit eorurn Deus" (Apoc. 21: 3). Smith, "Concordia", 148. 35 "Qui dat terreni vobis dyademata regni, | Regna perhennia celestia donet item" ( ll. 301-2). 36 "Cerneret has turmas quisquis, . . . non dubitaret | Cernere se formas ordinis angelici" ( ll. 97-8). 37 ll. 185-92.

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manifestation of Richard's Christ-likeness with a reminder of Christ's forbearance and humility. An angel descends from heaven to bring Richard a pair of golden altarpieces. The image of the Crucifixion depicted on them expresses the city's hope that Richard will 'be mindful of Christ's death', that he will 'be sparing of the ignorant even as that Heavenly King though unavenged was always forbearing to his enemies'. 38 Having once rejected its sponsus, the city now longs for the return of the Lamb to the holy city, but it prays for a coming in humility and forbearance rather than a coming in majesty and judgment. The imagery of the first three of these pageants finds an extremely close analogue -- perhaps a source -- in the familiar hymn "Urbs beata Jerusalem", which may be found in most medieval missals. 39 Both the pageantry and the hymn envision the advent of Christ to the New Jerusalem in the same way: Urbs beata Ierusalem, dicta pacis visio, Quae construitur in caelis vivis ex lapidibus, Et angelis coronata ut sponsata comite! Nova veniens e caelo, nuptiali thalamo Praeparata ut sponsara, copulatur Domino, Plateae et muri eius ex auro purissimo; Portae nitent margaritis, adytis patentibus Et virtute meritorum illuc introducitur Omnis, qui pro christi nomine hic in mundo premitur. Tunsionibus, pressuris expoliti lapides Suis coaptantur locis per manum artificis, Disponuntur permansuri sacris aedificiis. Anguleris fundamentum lapis Christus missus est, Qui compage parietis in utroque nectitur, Quem Sion sancta suscepit, in quo credens permanet. Omnis illa Deo sacra et dilecta civitas Plena modulis in laude et canore iubilo, Trinum Deum unicumque cum favore praedicat. Hoc in templo, summe Deus, exoratus adveni Et clementi bonitate precum vota suscipe; Largam benedictionern hic infunde iugiter. Hic promereantur omnes petita adquirere Et adepta possidere cum sanctis perenniter, Paradisum introire translati in requiem. ____________________ 38Smith,

"Concordia", 211. L. Mayer, "Renaissance, Humanismus und Liturgie", Jahrbuch für Liturgiewissenschaft, 14 ( 1938), 123-71; Clemens Blume, Analecta hymnica Medii Aevi, vol. li ( Leipzig, 1908), 110-12.

39Anton

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Just as in the pageantry, Christ enters the New Jerusalem ('hoc in templo . . . exoratus adveni') which descends for that purpose from heaven ('nova veniens e caelo'). Angels singing from the conduits of London find their counterparts in the perpetual melodies and eternal hymns which pour from 'urbs beata Ierusalem' to extol 'God the Three-in-One' ('trinum Deum unicumque'). Further, the hymn describes the city as a 'bridal chamber' (thalamo), just as Maydiston and the custos do, and it likewise develops fully the sponsus and sponsa relationship between Christ and his people. Finally the hymn closes with the request made also by the people of London that the King might take his people to himself, that they might enter paradise with his saints forever. As a processional hymn prescribed for the dedication of churches, this might well have suggested an iconographical plan to celebrate the processional rededication of the holy city London to its Christ-King Richard. Whether or not it performed this service in fact, the hymn can at the very least define for us the basic artistic cohesiveness of the city's pageantry and suggest the effect that the city was after. As this parallel suggests, these pageants lie on the very frontier between drama and ritual. Considered as drama, they establish a very complex relationship between actors 'on stage', Richard himself, and the citizens who gather round to watch. As 'divertissements' or street decoration, they may indeed serve to entertain and impress the King. At this level, perhaps, Richard serves only as the most important of all the watchers who come to be entertained by the show or instructed by the custos's explanatory speeches. But more importantly, the pageants also include the King in a mimetic action defined by the actors and scenery: Richard enters the New Jerusalem and experiences an epiphany. From this point of view, Richard is made to play the protagonist's role in a drama witnessed by the citizens. 40 But the role he plays borders on ritual in that the mimetic action he performs in the drama visibly symbolizes an invisible 'spiritual' action performed in reality. Like Christ at the Second Coming to the New Jerusalem, Richard comes to his kingdom for the second time. Forgiving bridegroom of an errant but penitent spouse, he takes his now faithful city to himself again. They shall henceforth be his people, he shall be their King, and he will dwell with them. ____________________ 40On

the roles of audience and actors in the civic triumph see Kipling, "Triumphal Drama", 41-5 and Alan E. Knight, Aspects of Genre in Late Medieval French Drama ( Manchester, 1983), 121-8. As William McClung remarks, 'the ideal spectator, the prince, is also the principal actor, moving from scene to scene in a sequence of epiphanies': "A Place for a Time: The Architecture of Festivals and Theatres", in Eve Blau and Edward Kaufman (eds.), Architecture and its Image: Four Centuries of Architectural Representation. Works from the Collection of the Canadian Centre for Architecture ( Montreal, 1989), 88.

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In characterizing Richard's coming to his kingdom as a type of Christ's coming to the New Jerusalem, this civic triumph takes its pageant subjects from the liturgy of Advent, a season specifically set aside by the Church both to celebrate Christ's First Coming in mercy and humility and to prepare for Christ's Second Coming in majesty and judgment. 41 The idea of Advent unites the descent of the New Jerusalem of the first three pageants with John the Baptist's preaching in the last. The city's pageants in fact manipulate the two aspects of the Advent idea to ensure mercy for the citizens rather than judgment. In its first three pageants, the city grants Richard his celestial advent in majesty and glory as he comes to judge his errant people. In the words of the hymn, the people entreat the 'highest Lord' to come into the city ('hoc in templo, summe Deus, exoratus adveni') where they sing 'glad hymns to him eternally in exultant jubilation'. But in the last pageant, Richard encounters John the Baptist, the 'forerunner of Christ' and the King's 'special patron saint'. 42 This is no mere trade pageant. Founded upon the very scriptural passage which the Sarum Missal prescribed for the fourth Sunday of Advent ( John 1: 19 ff.), it depicts St John as 'the voice of one crying in the wilderness, "make straight the way of the Lord" '. Standing in the wilderness of the Old Law, he points to the Lamb of God who comes to save the world. 43 Further, he presents Richard with an image of the Crucifixion, Christ's consummate example of the New Law of selfsacrifice and love. The city substitutes, in short, the advent of redemption for the advent of judgment. Again in the words of the hymn, the citizens call the Lord to come 'with thy wonted loving kindness . . . and thy fullest benediction'. And they hope to 'remain with him in glory evermore'. This tactic, in fact, follows the outline of the Advent liturgy precisely in that the Gospel readings of the second Sunday in Advent are devoted to the Second Coming, while those of the third and fourth Sundays centre upon John the Baptist's preaching. Apparently the strategy proved politically successful as well as liturgically accurate -- in Maydiston's highly idealized account at least -- for the monkish poet tells us that this image of the First Advent extinguished the righteous anger characteristic of the Second: 'If there was aught of anger in the King, it was immediately extinguished to nothing with the contemplation of this exhibit.' 44 ____________________ 41For

this commonplace see, among other sources, Mirk's Festial, ed. Theodor Erbe, EETS ES 96 ( London, 1905), 1-5; Jacobus de Voragine, Legenda aurea, ed. T. Graesse ( Leipzig, 1846), 3-4; Rupert of Dietz, De divinis officis, 3. 1 ( PL170. 55-6). 42For St John as 'forerunner', see Kantorowicz, "King's Advent", 218. For St John as Richard "special patron saint", see Maydiston, "Concordia", l. 426 ('Baptisteque Iohannis michi precipui') and Smith, "Concordia", 95-6. 43Smith, "Concordia", 98-9. 44"Huius ad intuitum, si quid sibi manserat ire, | Extitit extinctum protinus usque nichil" ( ll. 379-80); Smith, "Concordia", 207.

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Although the devisers of Richard's civic triumph proved themselves extraordinarily skilful in their use of these themes, their decision to turn to the Advent liturgy of the Church for inspiration would not have struck contemporaries as remarkable in the least. We shall see devisers of civic pageantry turning repeatedly to the same source. Throughout northern Europe in the late Middle Ages, princes enter cities transformed into earthly or celestial Jerusalems. Reflecting one or more of the liturgical modes of Advent, they come in humility bringing redemption or they come in majesty bringing judgment. Prophets will proclaim their comings as the fulfilment of prophecy. 45 As a general rule, the liturgy of Christ's Advent provided the civic triumph with its most prominent idea -- an idea that was at once widely understood, well defined, and yet flexible enough to inspire a variety of approaches. It was widely understood because the liturgy of Advent, at least in its general form, was familiar throughout Christian Europe. The complexity of the liturgy, which extended from the first week of Advent to the last Sunday in Epiphany, 46 gave rise to an extremely complex liturgical and iconographical development further complicated by variations in local usages. As a consequence, pageant designers in any given locality could draw from a complex and variable, yet well-defined, fund of ideas. Despite its complexity, the liturgy of Advent throughout Europe insisted on linking the coming and manifestation of Christ with the ceremonial receptions of princes. This linkage partly derives from the coincidence that the technical terms for princely receptions -- adventus, parousia, and epiphany -- became the names of liturgical concepts as well. Readers of the Vulgate found, for example, the Second Coming described in precisely the same language usually reserved for the receptions of Roman emperors: 'Adventus Filii hominis' refers in the Vulgate to the Second Coming; 'Adventus Augusti Judaeae' reads the inscription of a typical medallion struck to commemorate the reception of a Roman emperor. 47 ____________________ 45

Quite other themes do sometimes appear; when the city of Douai received Charles the Bold as its sovereign in 1472, it staged the histories of the Nine Worthies in as many theatres, reserving a tenth 'grand theatre' for Charles himself that he might be enthroned there as a Tenth Worthy. But this example stands out as a clear exception in a city that otherwise staged religious pageants. Eugene F. J. Tailliar, Chroniques de Douai ( Douai, 1876), ii. 54-5. 46 Although Advent, properly speaking, extends only from the Sunday nearest St Andrew's Day (30 Nov.) until Christmas Eve, the themes of the festival continue throughout the entire Christmas section of the liturgical year, which runs from the first Sunday in Advent until the Saturday before Septuagesima. In this book, Advent will therefore be used in this wider sense to refer to the celebration of the coming and manifestation of Christ, including Advent, Christmastide, Epiphany, and the 'Time after Epiphany'. 47 See, for example, the Vulgate heading for Luke 21: 25-37 (which is also the reading prescribed for the second Sunday in Advent). Also the parallel readings, Mark 13: 24-37 and Matt. 24: 29-35. For adventus coinage, struck from the reign of Trajan onward, see Jocelyn M. C. Toynbee, The Hadrianic School ( Cambridge, 1934), and Kantorowicz, "King's Advent", 213-14.

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Although the adventus procession resembled the triumph in some respects, the adventus (parousia and epiphany were synonymous terms 48 ) reception was not a reward for military victory. Rather, the adventus marked the arrival of a Roman emperor in one of his subjects' cities where he was received with due enthusiasm and ceremonially accepted as sovereign lord. As Sabine MacCormack points out, 'such rulers were generally regarded as in some sense divine, and were welcomed as saviours, benefactors and lords'. Consequently, 'when the emperor arrived, he could be welcomed as a god; this added religious overtones to the adventus ceremony, or made it a religious event in itself'. 49 The Gospels describe Christ's Palm Sunday Entry into Jerusalem as just such an adventus ceremony. Since the greetings, shouts of welcome, and palm branches all form part of the usual ritual of receiving Hellenistic rulers and Roman emperors as deities, they are doubly appropriate for the adventus of Christ which marks the public recognition -- the epiphany -- of the Saviour's divinity. So closely linked were these concepts, in fact, that medieval artists conventionally borrowed, as Gertrud Schiller puts it, the Roman image of the imperial adventus' for 'the pictorial schema of the Entry into Jerusalem'. 50 But in deliberately associating Christ's Advent -- whether his approaching Nativity or his Second Coming -- with the ceremonial of princely receptions, the liturgy developed this linkage of ideas in a different direction: the ceremonial of royal reception became the Church's most characteristic metaphor for Advent. From the earliest times, the Roman liturgy prescribed Matthew's account of the Palm Sunday adventus as an Advent lesson. At first sight, this lesson seems badly misplaced since it belongs more obviously to the Passiontide sequence. Because the liturgy deliberately forces the association of the adventus ceremony and the celebration of Advent, however, the reading makes excellent sense in context. Originally set for the fourth Sunday of Advent, the Gospel reading served as an immediate preparation for the reception of Christ at Christmas. But in the latter Middle Ages the most influential liturgies -- including Sarum and Paris -- moved this Gospel lesson to the first Sunday in the cycle, thereby introducing the celebration of Advent in terms of the Palm Sunday adventus. 51 The liturgy, in short, envisions the coming of the Christ to the world in terms of the coming of a king to a city. The cry ____________________ 48Kantorowicz,

"King's Advent", 210-11; MacCormack, "Change and Continuity", 724-5. and Continuity", 721-2. 50Iconography of Christian Art, tr. Janet Seligman (2 vols.; London, 1971-2), ii. 19. 51See, for example, The Sarum Missal, ed. J. Wickham Legg ( London, 1916); Margaret of Austria's copy of the Roman missal (Use of Paris) is BL C. 29. l. 8 ( Paris, 1501). See also Kantorowicz, "King's Advent", 228-9 and n. 135. 49"Change

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used by the children of Israel to receive Jesus into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday -- 'Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini' -- now serves to mark Jesus' Advent, his coming into the world. To support this idea, the liturgy further specifies a number of introits, antiphons, and offertory hymns for Advent to suggest the same idea of royal adventus. The 'Tollite portas', for example, which imagines the King of Glory entering a city, does double service as a gradual psalm and an offertory hymn ('Lift up your gates, O ye princes, and be lifted up, O eternal gates: and the King of Glory shall enter in,' Ps. 23: 7 ). 52 In the same vein, the second Sunday opens with an introit which imagines the people of Jerusalem preparing for the reception of their lord: 'Populus Syon, ecce Dominus veniet' ('People of Sion, behold the Lord shall come to save the nations,' Ps. 30 ). For the same Sunday, Luke's account of the Second Coming, described as a celestial adventus ( 21: 25 - 33 ), is prescribed. Yet another offertory hymn calls on the people of the holy city to rejoice at the reception of their saviour: 'Exulta satis Syon predica. filia ierusalem ecce rex tuus venit tibi sanctus et saluator' ('Rejoice greatly Sion, announce daughter of Jerusalem; behold thy king will come to thee, the holy and saviour,' Zach. 9: 9 ). This liturgical metaphor exerted a powerful influence over late medieval conceptions of the civic triumph. Above all, it insured that the idea of Advent, rather than the example of Christ's Palm Sunday adventus, would determine the ceremonial for the receptions of medieval princes. Since the Entry into Jerusalem placed, as it were, the seat of Christ's own approval upon the classical ceremonial, we might reasonably expect Christian Europe to model its princely receptions upon biblical example. Indeed, Ernst Kantorowicz, in a brilliant study unaccountably neglected by historians of the stage, argues just this point: the Entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday 'was the prototype after which the receptions of mediaeval princes were modelled'. 53 Some civic triumphs certainly did take this approach. When Maximilian I entered Bruges in 1477, he encountered first of all above the city gate a painted image of himself depicted as Christ entering Jerusalem with the children of Israel joyfully receiving him with the Palm Sunday greeting: 'Benedictus qui venit in nomine domini.' Clearly, the pageant designers meant Maximilian to see his own adventus as a version of this Palm Sunday prototype. To underline this point, the rest of the pageants ____________________ 52For

liturgical commentary on the use of the "Tollite portas", see Gulielmus Durandus, Rationale divinorum officiorum, ed. Vincenzio d'Avino ( Naples, 1859), 6. 3. 5. 53Kantorowicz, "King's Advent", 211; Laudes regiae,71-2: 'every liturgical reception of the adventus of a monarch reflects, or even stages, the Christian archetype of the performance: that is, the Lord's entry into Jerusalem, which was depicted time and again after the model of an imperial adventus.'

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confronted him with three more advents that both reflected the Palm Sunday 'original' and prefigured Maximilian's own reception. He thus encounters next a pageant of the Romans receiving Julius Caesar ('showing how joyfully the people of Bruges receive their prince'). In this way, the joy of the children of Israel is first reflected in the joy of the Romans, and then again reflected in Maximilian's own welcome. The second pair of the four pageants repeats this strategy, beginning with a biblical prototype, passing to a classical reflection, which in turn points to Maximilian. At a third pageant, the Egyptians accordingly receive the patriarch Joseph as their ruler because he has 'loved Wisdom and sought her out from his youth and has desired to take her as his spouse', while at the last pageant Theodosius came to his empire because 'he was clad with Justice and clothed himself with Judgment as with a robe and diadem'. So Maximilian comes to his people not through inheritance but through wisdom and judgment. These paired combinations of 'holy' and 'Roman' advents, descending from the Christian Palm Sunday prototype, served particularly neatly to install the future Holy Roman Emperor in his Burgundian dominions. 54 The weight of evidence, however, suggests that the Palm Sunday adventus did not serve as the general prototype for civic triumphs. In fact, the Fathers of the Church -- and medieval liturgists after them -- persistently represented the Entry into Jerusalem as but an earthly prefiguration of Christ's ascension, which they see as a celestial adventus: as comparing things spiritual with spiritual, . . . if you ardently desire to see that day, when Christ the Lord shall be received in the celestial Jerusalem, the head with all the members, bearing the triumphal insignia of victory, not now amidst the applauding popular crowds, but angelic powers, the people of both covenants crying aloud on every side, 'Blessed is he that cometh in the Name of the Lord'. 55 Consequently, the streets of the city which the medieval prince enters are more often decorated to resemble 'the New Jerusalem' -- as the London ____________________ 54 55

Dits die excellente cronike v Vlaender ( Antwerp, 1531), 193 r. St Bernard, "In Dominica Palmarum sermo I", PL 183. 255 : 'tamquam spiritualibus spiritualia comparantes. . . . si tota concupiscentia videre desideras diem illam, quando suscipietur in coelesti Jerusalem Christus Dominus, caput cum omnibus membris, portans triumphum victoriae, applaudentibus jam non popularibus turmis, sed virtutibus angelicis, clamantibus undique populis utriusque testamenti, Benedictus qui venit in nomine domini.' Cf. Durandus, Rationale, 1. 3. 14: 'Palmers, they who come from Jerusalem, bear palms in their hands in token that they have been the soldiers of that King Who was gloriously received in the earthly Jerusalem with palms: and Who afterwards, having in the same city subdued the devil in battle, entered the palace of heaven in triumph with His angels, where the just shall flourish like a palm-tree, and shall shine like stars.' Tr. John Mason Neale and Benjamin Webb, The Symbolism of Churches and Church Ornaments ( Leeds, 1843), 64.

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streets did for Edward II -- than antique Jerusalem. Richard II's 'reconciliation' triumph illustrates a typical medieval pattern: recollections of the First Coming ( John the Baptist) and the Second Coming (the descent of the New Jerusalem) predominate over momentary recollections of Passiontide (the Crucifixion altarpieces). According to one designer and theorist of such shows, 'the very form of these receptions' appeared not in the Palm Sunday lesson itself but rather in Psalm 67, where 'the glory of the entry of Jesus Christ into heaven' was described as if it were 'the entry of a sovereign into one of the principal cities of his realm'. By contrast, the Palm Sunday adventus seemed but an example of this type, an example, moreover, which Christ deliberately modified in order to fulfil Advent themes. Jesus thus entered Jerusalem 'in order to accomplish what the prophets had predicted concerning his coming to the world', and his Entry into Jerusalem upon a donkey 'conformed to the state of humiliation that he had chosen for his first Advent'. 56 By the late Middle Ages, devisers of civic triumphs could draw upon an idea of Advent which had been liturgically elaborated to celebrate no fewer than four comings of Christ, each of them seen metaphorically as an adventus. From the earliest times, the liturgy had established a dual understanding of Christ's Advent. His Incarnation -- his coming to mankind -in turn made possible mankind's ascension to Christ's heavenly kingdom at the Second Coming. Reflecting this duality, the liturgy paired Matthew's account of Jesus's Palm Sunday adventus as a metaphor for the First Coming (first Sunday of Advent) with Luke's account of Jesus' parousia -- his heavenly triumphal procession when he shall be seen 'coming in a cloud, with great power and majesty' ( 21: 25-33) -- as a metaphor for the Second Coming (second Sunday of Advent). The Fathers of the Church then extended this understanding from the general to the individual. St Bernard thus discovers a 'middle advent' of Christ to the individual soul. Between Christ's coming 'visibly and in the flesh to work our salvation' -- his coming to men -- and Christ's Second Coming 'in glory and majesty to judge the world' -- his coming against men -- St Bernard proposed Christ's coming to save individual souls. The Lord also comes into each man 'in spirit and virtue . . . to rebuild Jerusalem [in the soul] and to make all things new'. 57 This process is carried to its logical conclusion by such thinkers and liturgical rationalists as St Thomas Aquinas and Durandus who propose four advents: two general, two individual, and one for each Sunday ____________________ 56Claude

François Menestrier, "Des entrées solemnelles et réceptions des princes dans les villes", in J. M. C. Leber (ed.), Collection des meilleurs dissertations, notices et traités particuliers relatifs à l'histoire de France, vol. xiii ( Paris, 1838), 121-3. 57See St Bernard first, third, and fifth sermons for Advent, PL183. 35-40, 43-7, 50-2.

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in Advent. The First Coming of Christ now appears in two subdivisions: Christ's Incarnation is paired with his spiritual advent into individual souls. In these two cases, Christ comes to and into men to save and transform them. To balance these two advents, another individual coming is paired with the general advent of the Last Judgment. The Second Coming, like the First, now consists of two subdivisions corresponding to the resurrection of the individual soul and the general bodily resurrection of the Last Judgment. Christ thus comes individually to judge each soul at death, and he also comes generally to judge the world at the Last Judgment. 58 Each of these four advents produced its own distinctive version of the liturgical metaphor, the advent of Christ seen as an adventus. The First Advent (the Incarnation) emphasized the Epiphany of Christ. Indeed, according to many liturgical writers, the threefold celebration of Christ's Epiphany -- the Adoration of the Magi, the Baptism, and the first miracle at the Wedding at Cana -- was established to replace a Roman celebration of the triple triumph of the Emperor Augustus. 59 This coincidence encourages still further the medieval tendency to see the coming of Christ as a kind of imperial epiphany reception, and the liturgy focuses upon the announcement of the Lord's coming (the introit, 'Ecce advenit Dominator Dominus', 'Behold the Lord the Ruler is come') and the recognition of Christ's royalty: 'All they from Saba shall come, bringing gold and frankincense and showing forth praise to the Lord' (Isa. 60: 6, epistle and gradual). The second, individual, advent commonly takes the form of Christ's entry into human hearts. As St Bernard puts it, the Lord makes a spiritual adventus into a Jerusalem of the soul. Popular preachers will likewise urge their congregations to prepare their souls for Christ's Advent as a city prepares for the reception of its king. The Third Advent, as we shall see, finds its prototype in the ascension of Christ seen as a celestial adventus. St Bernard's vision of Christ entering 'the celestial Jerusalem . . . bearing the triumphal insignia of victory' identifies the type well. But each man at death may also follow the pattern of such a celestial adventus; consequently, the funeral liturgy is based upon just such a spiritual adventus to the celestial Jerusalem. 60 Finally, the Fourth Advent of the Last Judgment takes the form of the parousia -- the coming of Christ in celestial procession to judge mankind -- or the similar form of the ____________________ 58For

the fourfold meaning of Advent, see St Thomas, "Sermo in prima Dominica Adventus", in Jean Leclercq, L'Idée de la royauté du Christ au Moyen Âge ( Paris, 1959), 83-7; Durandus, Rationale, 6. 2. 2; J. Beleth, Rationale, PL202. 72; Bromyard, Summa praedicantium, A. 13. 1. 59Durandus, Rationale, 6. 16. 8; Honorius Augustodunensis, Gemma animae, 3. 18 ( PL172. 647). Below, Ch. 3. 60Kantorowicz, "King's Advent", 207-8; below, Ch. 4.

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coming of the faithful to the New Jerusalem, a version particularly familiar to us because it is the subject of Van Eyck's Ghent altarpiece ( Fig. 34 ). Although the idea of Advent thus took the same basic form -- the entry of Christ into Jerusalem -- it developed an impressive variety of thematic variations. In response to this complex yet well-defined idea, the devisers of medieval civic triumphs invented a formidable array of dramatic techniques for staging the advent of the Saviour. Some of these, such as the canopy borne over the head of the sovereign, the ceremonial freeing of prisoners, and the traditional shouts of the crowds, also identify the king as Christ-like and preceded the innovation of pageantry. As for the canopy, medieval chroniclers point out repeatedly that such devices honoured the king 'all in the form and manner that was done for our Lord on Corpus Christi Day'. 61 As Bernard Guenée observes, the same canopy which sheltered the host sheltered the king, and 'the royal entry thus became a semi-religious occasion, a veritable Corpus Regis, or glorification of the king. 62 The privilege of the sacramental canopy was consequently a jealously guarded one. Paris refused this honour to such foreign sovereigns as the Archduke of Austria, and Lyons denied it to the Duke of Bourbon, whom the city received instead as a type of John the Baptist, the forerunner of Christ. (This latter characterization was particularly appropriate since the King, Francis I, was scheduled to celebrate his own civic triumph -complete with canopy -- just a fortnight later. 63 ) Similarly, the custom of freeing condemned prisoners during a royal entry, which goes at least as far back as the thirteenth century, also identifies the king as Saviour. 64 In 1501, indeed, the Parlement of Paris had to decide the tricky question of whether the Archduke of Austria should be allowed this privilege on the occasion of his forthcoming entry into Paris even though Louis XII's reform edict of 1499 had limited the right of pardon ____________________ 61

Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, ed. Alexandre Tuetey ( Paris, 1881), 274. States and Rulers in Later Medieval Europe, tr. Juliet Vale ( Oxford, 1985), 27. 63 Georges Guigue (ed.), L'Entrée de François Premier roy de France en la cité de Lyon le 12 juillet 1515 ( Lyons, 1899), 65-6. 64 R. A. Jackson points out that 'as early as 1273 Louis VIII is reported to have freed prisoners when he made his postcoronation entry into Paris' ( Vive le roi!,98-9). J. C. Parsons points out that French kings first asserted the privilege of pardoning criminals as part of their coronation honours. The privilege made manifest the king's distinctively royal power which was symbolized in the sceptre presented to him as a part of the coronation ritual. French queens also enjoyed this coronation privilege as a way of associating them with the dignity of the crown, but English ritual, which tended to dissociate the king's wife from her husband's royal authority, denied queens this privilege and presented them instead as intercessors. 'Ritual and Symbol in the English Medieval Queenship to 1500', in Louise Olga Fradenburg (ed.), Women and Sovereignty ( Edinburgh, 1992), 63-5. 62

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exclusively to the king. In the end, the Archuduke was allowed to perform this advent ritual upon his entry into the city -- presumably on account of his status as a sovereign -- 'just as if the King himself had made his joyous advent into Paris'. 65 Counting on this custom, another condemned murderer, as we have seen, seized his chance for a pardon by prostrating himself before Richard II as the king was entering London. 66 So too the cries of greeting shouted by the crowds lining the streets often strike explicit Advent themes. French crowds customarily shout 'Noel, Noel', for example, as a way of paying explicitly divine honours to their prince. Even for the foreign regent John Duke of Bedford a Parisian crowd managed this cry with enough enthusiasm that a contemporary witness thought 'one paid him such honour as one ought to pay to God'. 67 More potently symbolic still, the Palm Sunday greeting, 'Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini', often greets the king, either in the form of chanted welcomes or as the subject of pageantry. So Master Jehan Rogier, in welcoming Francis I to Caen in 1532, observes that the citizens 'resume the harmonious palinodal chant which the children of the Hebrews chanted so melodiously at the coming of the puissant immortal King: Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini.' As Henry V rode into London in 1415, the same greeting, this time in the form of an anthem, was sung from a heavenly tower by 'innumerable boys representing the hierarchy of angels, clad in pure white, their faces glowing with gold, their wings gleaming, and their youthful locks entwined with costly sprays of laurel'. 68 The introduction of pageantry in the late fourteenth century transformed the civic triumph decisively in the direction of drama. With the proliferation of scenic tableaux, the king's advent became less and less a splendid ceremony, more and more a spectacular drama. Not surprisingly, therefore, we find pageant devisers borrowing dramatic strategies from ____________________ 65

tree faicte A paris par trespuissant prince & seigneur | Larcheduc de austriche | Conte de flandres ( Paris, 1501), 5 v-6r; Dits die excellente cronike, 293 v: 'oft die coninc selue to Parijs sijn blijde incomste hadde gedaen.' As R. A. Jackson points out, the right of pardon was not originally regarded as an exclusively royal privilege. From the mid-14th cent. onward, however, successive kings of France increasingly limited the right of pardon until Louis XII's reforming edict of 1499 finally 'limited to the king and his successors the right to grant pardons, and it revoked in perpetuity any such rights that anyone might have from him or his predecessors'. The restriction was clearly aimed at preventing the king's subjects from exercising the right of pardon. Neither this edict, nor the more comprehensive reform edict of 1507, however, prevented this right from being extended to brother sovereigns when they visited France. The king granted the right to both the Archduke of Austria ( 1501) and Charles V ( 1539) to mark the occasions of royal visits ( Vive le roi!,98-100). 66 Maydiston, "Concordia", 185-92. 67 Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, 301-2. 68 Francis I: 'Resumant le harmonieulz chant palinodial, que les enfants des Hebreux chantoient tant melodieusement a la venue du puissant roy immortel: Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domine!' M. L. Puiseux, La Cavalcade historique de Caen ( Caen, 1863), 58. Henry V: Gesta Henrici Quinti, ed. and tr. Frank Taylor and John S. Roskell ( Oxford, 1975), 105.

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appropriate liturgical dramas, and in this limited sense we do find the civic triumph betraying the 'influence' of other forms of medieval drama. An especially popular strategy, which we will examine in Chapter 2, imitated the Church's Ordo prophetarum. During Advent, some influential offices prescribed a dramatic presentation of Old Testament and pagan prophecies of Christ's coming. These were apportioned among several actors and declaimed at matins to prepare the congregation for the coming of the Lord at Christmas. 69 The civic triumph's adaptation of the Ordo prophetarum characteristically took the form of the liturgical metaphor we have been examining: the Advent of Christ seen as a royal adventus. In the civic variation, actors impersonating the prophets of Christ's Advent-from Moses to John the Baptist -- stood upon pageant scaffolds along the route of the procession to declare their prophecies fulfilled in the coming of the king. Dramatized episodes from the life of Christ similarly strive to parallel the coming of the king with the advent of the Saviour. Given the liturgical bias of these shows, most of these scenes tend to be drawn from the Nativity or Epiphany sections of the Gospels. Annunciations, joyful announcements of the Saviour's imminent coming, were particularly common, especially in queens' civic triumphs. So Pierre Gringore parallels the "Peace between God and Man" wrought by the Annunciation with the peace between England and France wrought by the marriage of Louis XII and Mary Tudor. His pageant ( Fig. 2 ) takes the form of an Annunciation scene ('Mary in heaven') placed just above a king and queen seated upon a joint throne symbolizing the Anglo-French marriage ('Mary on earth'). 70 The Annunciation to the Shepherds also frequently serves to symbolize 'the happiness of the Coming of our Lord', to cite one civic triumph's interpretation of this biblical episode. 71 The shepherds visible in Gringore's pageant may also be Nativity shepherds sharing in Mary's Annunciation, but his description of them 'singing harmoniously' points to a wider function. In addition to receiving the Good News of the Incarnation, pageant shepherds serve also as emblems of peace and as allegorical types of Christian pastors. Sometimes, indeed, they perform all three functions simultaneously. It would be difficult to weigh down the ____________________ 69Karl

Young, The Drama of the Medieval Church (2 vols.; Oxford, 1933), ii. 135-71; Chambers, The Madiaeval Stage, ii. 52-7; Wickham, Early English Stages, iii. 34. For a discussion of the civic triumph's adoption of the Ordo prophetarum, see below, Ch. 2. 70Pierre Gringore, Pageants for the Entry of Mary Tudor into Paris, ed. C. R. Baskervill ( Chicago, 1934), 14-15. 71Entry of Philip the Good into Bruges ( 1440). Dits die excellente cronike, 107 v: "'beteekenende die blijscepe vader comste va onsen gheduchteghe here en prinche".' See Ch. 2 below for a discussion of this triumph.

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2. Pierre Gringore, Mary in heaven and Mary on earth. Palais Royal pageant, Entry of Mary Tudor into Paris, 1514

shepherds who appeared to the Archduke of Austria at Paris ( 1501) with very many explicitly Christian implications; the pageant of the Peaceful Shepherd (Pasteur Paisible) who governs the garden of Paris ('Le Clos de Paris') merely allegorizes the era of peace which the Archduke brought to France. 72 Consequently, he and his companions ( Cueur Loyal, Droit Chemin, Bon Voulour, and Policy), even if they symbolize vaguely Christian virtues, serve a more nearly moral than religious allegory. But the shepherds and shepherdesses who represent 'Repos pacifique' at Rouen in 1485 do not merely symbolize the harmonious state of the realm; they also greet the advent of their Rex Pacificus in explicitly Christian terms by singing 'Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini'. 73 ____________________ 72

tee faicte A paris, a4 and Lehoux, Entrées royales,244-7.

73Guenée

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Presumably, since the king comes to the city as a type of Christ, almost any episode from the Gospels might prove grist for the pageant deviser's mill. In fact, despite the great popularity of Passion plays among the cities of northern Europe, scenes from the Passion cycle are relatively rare. 74 The exceptional case of Paris proves the rule. Here, the Confraternity of the Passion, which specialized in such religious mystères, won the right to stage tableaux in front of their hall on the occasion of royal entries. We first hear of them doing so in 1420 with a 'most piteous mystère of the Passion of Our Lord au vif according to the way it is sculpted around the choir of Notre-Dame de Paris'. 75 In 1461, Jean de Roye described one of the Confraternity's tableaux as 'a Passion [performed] by actors and without speaking, God hung on the cross and the two thieves to the right and the left'. 76 On these occasions, the Confraternity made no concession to the occasion; they merely performed their customary function of proselytizing the gospel through pious mystères. Because of the specialized nature of the Confraternity's interests, its desire to provide such Passion tableaux repeatedly prevailed over Advent themes. But elsewhere, such Crucifixion pageants as Jean de Roye saw rarely appear, and even where they do, their devisers sometimes contrive to make them bear Advent rather than Passiontide themes. When Margaret of York found Jesus hanging upon the cross during her Bruges civic triumph of 1468, she was not asked to contemplate the Easter sacrifice of her Saviour for the sake of sinful mankind. Rather, the pageant deviser converted the Crucifixion into a Second Coming image of the wedding of the bridegroom and holy Church. The Bruges Jesus thus hung from the cross while simultaneously 'holding a beautiful young maiden (in the costume of a bride with a church in front of her) by the right hand showing by true figure how the Saviour of the World had betrothed his bride, the holy Church, on the wood of the Cross'. A prophetic scripture from Isaiah, rather than an excerpt from the Gospels, is made to explain this complicated image: 'it shall be called the city of the sun. In that day there shall be an altar of the Lord in the midst of the earth, and the name of God at the borders thereof' ( 19: 18-19). 77 Here we see again the pressure ____________________ 74Resurrections

and Transfigurations do occur, but Crucifixions are very infrequent except at Paris. 75Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris,144: 'ung moult piteux mistère de la passion Nostre Seigneur au vif, selon que elle est figur autour de cueur de Nostre-Dame de Paris.' 76Journal de Jean de Roye, ou Chronique scandaleuse, ed. Bernard de Mandrot ( Paris, 1894), i. 28: 'Y avoit une Passion par persormages et sans parler, Dieu estendu en la croix et les deux larrons a destre et a senestre.' 77Despars, Cronijcke, 27: 'up twelcke ons zalichmakere Jesus Christus zeer compasselick an die ghalghe des crucen hinck, houdende eene schoone jonghe maecht (in de ghedaente van een bruydt met eender kercke voor haer) byder rechtere handt, als wesende tzelve die waerachtighe figeure

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of Advent liturgy upon the civic triumph. As the inscription makes clear, this Crucifixion is hardly a Passiontide image at all. Rather, it suggests more nearly the Apocalyptic foundation of New Jerusalem where the bridegroom will wed his faithful spouse. Epiphany pageants (which form the subject of Chapter 3) include not only representations of the Magi, but as well all those scenes which medieval commentary saw as manifesting the divinity of Christ. Here medieval devisers found great scope for their ingenuity, particularly since the liturgy of the Epiphany festival celebrated three of Christ's epiphanies -the Magi, the Baptism, and the Wedding at Cana -- and suggested many other prefigurations and types. At one end of the symbolic spectrum, the Magi welcomed Prince Edward to Coventry in 1474, each presenting him with his traditional gift. 78 In other places, the king manifests his divinity by performing miracles. Fountains spurt forth wine in London at Henry VI's approach 'like to the waters of Archedeclyne' at the Wedding at Cana. 79 At York in 1486, union roses sprung up miraculously out of a 'world desolaite' as Henry VII approached. Then, symbolic of Henry's epiphany, a crown came 'fro A cloude . . . Couering the Roses'. 80 In still other places, the Holy Spirit descends upon medieval sovereigns in the form of a dove, just as he did at the Baptism of Jesus: in this spirit, Charles VIII encountered at Paris 'a king seated in a great chair, and by great singular virtue the Holy Spirit came down upon him'. 81 So angels, saints, and the Virgin Mary sometimes descend from heavenly pageants to mark the epiphanies of medieval kings. Occasionally, a medieval deviser will stage Christ's Transfiguration for similar reasons: Christ transfigured before his apostles parallels the Christ-like transfiguration of the king before his subjects in the streets of a medieval city. 82 ____________________ hoe dat die verlossere des weerelts zijne bruydt, de helighe kercke, ghetraut hadde an thout des crucen, achtervolghende den verclaerse van zekere gheannexeerde rolle, daer inne clat ghescreven stond: "Civitas solis vocabitur, et in die illa erit altare Domini in medio terrae, et titulus Domini juxta terminum ejus."' The pageant's rendering of Isaiah's text has altered the original by omitting 'Aegypti' after 'terrae' to make it more redolent of the New Jerusalem rather than of Isaiah's Egypt. 78 The Coventry Leet Book, ed. Mary D. Harris, EETS os 134, 135, 138, 146 (4 vols.; London, 1907-13), ii. 393. 79 John Carpenter's letter, London, Corporation of London Records Office, Letter Book K, 103 v-104v: 'magni fontes vivacissimi scaturiebant aquas architriclinas in vinum conversus.' Lydgate ( Minor Poems, ii. 641-2) translates this: 'The water ranne like welles of paradise | The holesome licour full Riche and of grete pris | Lyke to the water of Archedeclyne | Which by myracle were turned into wyne.' For a discussion of this civic triumph, see below, Ch. 3. 80 Records of Early English Drama: York, ed. Alexandra F. Johnston and Margaret Rogerson (2 vols.; Toronto, 1979), i. 139 (from the York House Books). 81 Guenée and Lehoux, Entries royales, 115 : 'une grande chaire | Il y avoit un roy assis, | Et par grand vertu singuliere, | Sur lui venoit le Sainct Esprit.' 82 See, for example, Philip the Good's Bruges triumph ( 1440); Despars, Cronijcke, 441; below, Ch. 2.

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For most civic triumphs, the idea of Advent dictated that the Anointed must enter the holy city of Jerusalem. For most cities, this meant pageants like those provided for Richard II which suggested that the medieval city had become the transformed and glorified 'new heaven and new earth' of St John's Apocalypse. But in a few cases, especially where medieval rulers wished to appear as the temporal successors of Christ's earthly empire, pageants suggested instead a parallel between the historical Jerusalem and the medieval city. The citizens of Bruges and Douai designed extensive series of pageants in this spirit for the future Charles V in 1515-16, and these give a good idea of the range of meanings possible in such historical Jerusalem pageants. To inaugurate the future Emperor as ruler of the Netherlands, Bruges provided a series of eleven pageants which mirrored the foundation, rise, and decline of the kingdom of Israel-from Moses and Joshua to Nehemiah to Heraclius -- to a similar history of Bruges. The city also included a few Roman parallels, as appropriate to Charles's imperial destiny, in which the Eternal City is also seen as a holy city. The pageantry thus defined the citizens of Bruges as 'a Chosen People whose fortunes were to be restored by a new messiah, prince Charles'. 83 Visually, the thematic parallel took the form of single, castle-like structures with two 'portes' or 'tabernacles' ( Fig. 3 ). The left-hand tabernacle opened to reveal a scene from the history of Israel (the Emperor Heraclius brings the True Cross to Jerusalem) while the right-hand tabernacle reveals a parallel scene from the history of Bruges ( Thierry d'Alsace brings the Holy Blood to Bruges). Depending on how one looks at it, the symbolic castle represents either Jerusalem or Bruges; Jerusalem is Bruges. A similar point is made even more strikingly in a later pageant ( Fig. 4 ) which parallels a scene from Roman history (Romulus ordaining a hundred senators) with a scene from the Burgundian history of Bruges (Philip the Bold ordaining six 'chevetains' to govern Bruges). In this case, the common structure uniting both scenes took the form of a ciborium, the sacred vessel which holds the host, thereby characterizing both Rome and Bruges as parallel holy cities, as sacramental vessels containing the imperial body of Christ. In the following year, such Holy-Roman-imperial associations became even more dominant as Charles succeeded Ferdinand as King of Spain. In claiming the honour of being the first city to receive him as a king, Douai emphasized the imperial implications of this expansion of Austrian Habsburg dominion over Spain. Consequently, the city's pageants saw the history of Israel in Roman imperial terms. Charles appears in one pageant as King David entering the city of Jerusalem 'so triumphantly ____________________ 83Sydney

Anglo, introduction to Remy Dupuys, La tryumphante Entree de Charles Prince Des Espagnes en Bruges 1515 ( Amsterdam, [ 1971]), 23.

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3. The Emperor Herachus and Thierry d'Alsace. Entry of Archduke Charles into Bruges, 1515

that the people of Jerusalem came before him in great honour, having each in his hand an olive branch'. 84 Similarly, other Israelite victories are paralleled by other Spanish-Habsburg triumphs: Joshua's victory over Jericho, for example, parallels Maximilian's triumph at Venice; the heroic resistance of the people of Samaria to the King of Syria parallels the heroic resistance of the people of Douai against the King of France; Gideon's delivery of the children of Israel from servitude equals Archduke Philip's delivery of Liege from the French; Deborah's victory over Jabin prefigures Queen Isabella's triumph over the Moors and Saracens; and so on through eleven such parallels. In each case, Charles appears as the successor and inheritor of the holy Israelite kingship on the one hand, and of the Spanish and Habsburg crowns on the other. ____________________ 84

Tailliar, Chroniques de Douai, ii. 91-107. 'David, roy, fit son entr en la citée de Jerusalem, tant triomphant que le peuple de Jerusalem vint au devant de luy en grand honneur, ayant chascun en sa main une branche d'olivier, et si ye presenta le dict peuple au dict roy de grands tresors en sa dicte joyeuse entrée et noble bienvenue' (100).

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4. Romulus and Philip the Bold. Entry of Archduke Charles into Bruges, 1515

While such historical pageants rely heavily upon parallels, celestial Jerusalems based upon the new heaven or new earth described in St John's vision operate typologically: by virtue of these pageants, the medieval city stands transformed as a type of celestial Jerusalem. In some cases, indeed, pageants can make startlingly direct allusions to the biblical texts. The Ghent 'Wedding of the Lamb' pageant of 1458, because it borrows its design from Van Eyck's celebrated altarpiece, also borrows its visual representation from Apocalypse 22: 1, the 'river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding from the throne of God and of the Lamb'. 85 The Rouen Apocalypse pageant of 1485 similarly attempts to dramatize chapters 4 and 5 of St John's vision complete with the throne of the Almighty, the Lamb, twenty-four enthroned elders, the seven burning lamps, the Book of Life with its seven seals, and St John himself receiving his inspiration ____________________ 85 For a discussion of this pageant, see below, Ch. 5. -35-

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on Patmos from an angel descending on a cloud. 86 Such comprehensive imitations of the Apocalypse may be comparatively rare, but we do find single episodes faithfully represented: the descent of the New Jerusalem in one year, the Father of Heaven pondering his seven-branched candlestick in another, the Fountain of Grace watering the Tree of Life in still a third. Such Apocalyptic symbols as the Throne of Heaven, the Lamb of God, and the Fountain of Grace, indeed, are among the most popular scenes in the medieval deviser's repertory for depicting the city as the New Jerusalem. In many cities, pageants in the shape of heavenly castles serve to demonstrate that the medieval city has been apocalyptically transformed. London, for instance, specialized in providing such structures for its civic triumphs, although examples can also be found throughout Europe. Usually painted 'jasper green', they imitate the heavenly city which St John described as having 'light. . . like to a precious stone, as to the jasper stone, even as crystal' (21: 11). So John Carpenter describes the heavenly castle erected for Henry VI as a 'castrum iaspertinum', which phrase Lydgate expands to 'a castell, beldyded of jasper grene, | Upon whos tours the sonne shone ful shene'. 87 Details of the similar castle set in the same place for Henry V's civic triumph make its symbolic purpose even clearer. 'Adorned with graceful towers, pillars, and ramparts in rich profusion' and resting on two vaulted arches bearing the inscription, 'Glorious things are said of thee, O City of God' (Ps. 86: 3), its fabric covering seemed 'like white marble and green and crimson jasper, as if the whole work had been made by the art of masonry from squared and wellpolished stones of great price'. 88 Queen Margaret also found 'the faire Citie of Jherusalem | Bisette aboute with many a precious gemme' awaiting her London triumph of 1445. 89 So established in London was the idea that civic triumph pageants ought to represent heaven that we find this expectation recorded in Henry VII's Household Ordinances of 1494. When a queen should next be received into London, the relevant ordinance details, 'at the Condit in Cornylle ther must be ordained a sight with angelles singinge, and freshe balettes theron in latene, englishe, and ffrenche, mad by the wyseste doctours of this realme; and the condyt in Chepe in the same wyse'. 90 Similar jaspergreen Jerusalem castles, in fact, adorn each ____________________ 86Guenée

and Lehoux, Entrées royales, 247-52. For a discussion of this pageant, see below, Ch. 5. 87Carpenter, Letter Book K, 104v; Lydgate, Minor Poems, ii. 394. 88Gesta Henrici Quinti, 109. 89Gordon Kipling, "The London Pageants for Margaret of Anjou: A Medieval Script Restored", Medieval English Theatre, 4 ( 1982), 23. 90Francis Grose and Thomas Astle (eds.), The Antiquarian Repertory, new edn. ( London, 1807), i. 303.

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London triumph from the first, single-pageant effort of 1377 -- a castle of four towers surmounted by a gold mechanical angel who bowed down to the King to offer him a crown -- to the elaborate double triumph of Henry VIII and Emperor Charles V with its 'pageant representyng hevyn wt son, mone & sterrys shynyng and wt angellys and wt xij apostollys & . . . wt the assumpcion off owr lady meruelous goodly conveyde by a vyce and a clowde openyng wt Michael and Gabriel angellys knelyng and dyuers tymes sensyng wt sensers and wt voyces off yonge queretters [choristers] syngyng psalmys and ympnys [hymns]'. 91 Such pageant transformations of a city into the geography of the celestial Jerusalem were not limited to London alone. The same sorts of pageants might be found in Paris, where Isabella of Bavaria, for one, saw a New Jerusalem virtually identical to the London pageants: 'a representation of a richly starred firmament, with the Holy Trinity seated in great majesty, and within the heaven little Children as angels singing very melodiously.' From this 'sight with angels', two angels descended, just as they will do a few years later for Richard II in London, to bring her a 'rich golden crown, ornamented with precious stones'. 92 We encounter it yet again in Saragossa, where the celestial castle is inhabited by the Four Daughters of God rather than angels. 93 As late as 1596 in Copenhagen, an angel similarly descends from the heavens beneath a triumphal arch to place a crown on the head of Christian IV. 94 We can even find such a Jerusalem pageant among the illustrations of Archduke Charles's entry into Bruges in 1515 ( Fig. 5 ). Crown-bearing angels appear before the gates of this holy city as they did 125 years earlier in Paris and London. To be sure, this pageant explicitly represents the capital of the earthly Kingdom of Jerusalem, but it also depicts the celestial city placed among the moon and the sun and inhabited by angels. Here in its simplest form we see the quintessential idea of Advent -- both as it first appeared in civic triumphs late in the fourteenth century and as it remained popular into the early sixteenth -- the very image of the heavenly Jerusalem which awaits the coming of its Saviour. The idea of Advent suited the civic triumph so universally because it defined exactly the nature of the occasion which these triumphs were ____________________ 91Corpus

Christi College, Cambridge, MS298 (no. 8), p. 142; Thomas Walsingham, Historia Anglicana, ed. H. T. Riley, Rolls Series 28 ( London, 1875), i. 331. 92John Froissart, Chronicles, tr. Thomas Johnes ( 2 vols.; London, 1839), ii. 400. 93Geronimo de Blancas, Coronaciones de los Serenissimos Reyes de Aragon ( Saragossa, 1641), 113. 94Olav Lausund, "Splendour at the Danish Court: The Coronation of Christian IV", in J. R. Mulryne and Margaret Shewring (eds.), Italian Renaissance Festivals and their European Influence ( Lewiston, NY, 1992), 297.

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5. Charles, Archduke of Austria, receives the crown of Jerusalem. Entry of Archduke Charles into Bruges, 1515

designed to celebrate. The king might enter a city in state at any time; these shows, however, were usually reserved for one particular type of royal entry. Like coronations, civic triumphs were inaugural rituals. Where coronations could accommodate only a small minority of the elite to mark the king's inauguration, the royal entry staged its royal rite of passage to an unlimited audience drawn from all social strata. 95 In capital cities, they took place immediately before or after the coronation itself. In other major cities, the shows took place upon the prince's first official ____________________ 95'The

organizers [of coronations] always tended to neglect the religious ceremony, at which only a minority could be present, for the street spectacle, where a whole people could see the king. Our earliest description of the coronation-day procession of the king of England from the Tower of London to Westminster Hall dates from 1377. The considerable sums disbursed on this occasion would appear extravagant if one did not know the political importance of this procession from contemporary accounts.' Gueée, States and Rulers, 26.

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appearance there as sovereign, even if his arrival might be delayed for a considerable time. 96 AS such, civic triumphs marked the king's first advent; they celebrated his coming to his kingdom. Newly consecrated with the holy balm, the prince comes to his city manifest for the first time as the Lord's Anointed, a Saviour to his people. Reflecting this symbolism, civic triumphs may appropriately emphasize Epiphany imagery. But the sovereign also comes wearing his crown and bearing the orb and sceptre. Like the risen Christ, he comes also in majesty and glory. If the occasion especially warrants it, therefore, the pageantry may instead emphasize the imagery of the Second Coming. Whichever strategy they adopted, however, these shows rarely ignored their inaugural function. Second civic triumphs remained comparatively rare; third ones were almost unheard of. Conceived of in this way as inaugural shows, civic triumphs even assumed a certain legal status in some parts of Europe. In the Netherlands and in France, the shows customarily served as the ceremonial means of sealing the feudal contract between ruler and subject. Their explicit inaugural functions here teach us a great deal about how the shows were regarded throughout the north. Successive dukes of Brabant from 1356, for example, were required to confirm a charter of rights known as the Joyeuse Entrée before they could be received as lawful sovereigns. 97 Only then could a duke enter the gates of the city where his civic triumph awaited him. The Low Countries' civic triumphs, also known as joyeuses entrées, thus served as the ceremonial acknowledgements that the charter had been agreed and the prince had legally entered his reign. Parisian civic triumphs often embody a similar legal ceremony. Since French kings usually entered Paris only after being crowned at Reims, they could not be prohibited from entering the city until they had sworn to uphold a charter of rights. Instead, a French king celebrated his adventus, but at the end of it he might find the Cathedral of Notre-Dame barred to him until he swore an oath promising to uphold the rights and privileges of the three estates: clergy, nobles, and commons. 98 In either case, the pageantry of the civic triumph served as the counterpart to the prince's oath. He swore a ____________________ 96In

1541, the York City Council justified the expense of providing pageantry for Henry VIII's civic triumph because the event represented the King's first entry since his coronation some thirty-two years before: 'the makyng & devisyng of Towres Tyrrettes battylmentes of Tymbre & Canves' were agreed 'to be made & devysed after the best maner . . . ageynst the commyng of the kynges highnes & the Quenes grace to thysCity and specially consideryng yat it ys the furst tyme of ther commyng to ye said City'. REED York, i. 273. 97Bryce D. Lyon, "Fact and Fiction in English and Belgian Constitutional Law", Medievalia et humanistica, 10 ( 1956), 82-101. 98See, for example, the coronation triumphs of Charles VIII and Louis XII ( Guenée and Lehoux, Entrées royales, 116, 134).

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formal oath to be his subjects' good lord, and the pageantry dramatizes his subjects' acceptance of their sovereign and their joy at his advent. When rare second advents do occur, they often do so under circumstances which emphasize the primary inaugural function of these shows. Anne of Brittany celebrated two civic triumphs in Paris, but then she was twice crowned Queen Consort to two successive kings of France and so twice inaugurated. Others take place in the context of a re-inauguration, a broken feudal contract being reinstated. 99 Richard II's 'reconciliation' triumph offers one such example, while Philip the Good's entry into Ghent ( 1458) illustrates a more extreme case. In the English example, the mere refusal of a loan had constituted, in Richard's eyes, a breach of the city's feudal loyalty. In the Burgundian example, Ghent had actually taken up arms against its sovereign. In both cases, the shows appropriately drew their inspiration principally from the Advent liturgy of the Second Coming. While the London guilds managed the descent of the New Jerusalem, the citizens of Ghent dramatized their return to feudal loyalty by staging Van Eyck's Adoration of the Lamb altarpiece, complete with angels, God the Father, John the Baptist, Mary, the Lamb at the Altar, the Fountain of Grace, and various processions of saints and martyrs. 100 In other pageants, the same citizens depicted themselves as the lost sheep, as the prodigal son, as condemned souls awaiting the Harrowing of Hell, and as the defeated King of Armenia whom Pompey forgave. Although attending their Prince's Second Coming, they avoided images of the Last Judgement and provided him instead with patterns of mercy. They came to worship the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, hoping to find through repentance their places among the saved in the New Jerusalem. The inaugural occasion of the medieval civic triumph in large measure explains its preoccupation with Advent imagery. The show originated at the end of the fourteenth century, along with a number of other pageant dramas, and like these other forms the pageantry of the civic triumph ____________________ van Vlaenderen van 580 tot 1467, ed P. Blommaert and C. P. Serrure, Maetschappy der vlaemsche Bibliophilen 31 (2 vols.; Ghent, 1839-40), i. 222-5. 99The York triumph of Henry VIII ( 1541) is fraught with this sort of imagery. The civic officials awaited Henry's coming on their knees, the recorder actually delivering his welcoming address in that posture. The recorder begged. forgiveness on the part of the city for having 'greuously heynously and traitoryously offendyd your high invyncible and moste Royall majesty your imperyall crowne and dignitye in the most odyous offence of traterus rebellyon'. Trusting in the 'inspiracion of the holy goste repleyt with mercy and pety as evidently haith been sheweyd by your grace to your Subiectes layte offendours in thies North partes', the recorder pledged Trome thys tyme forward not onely to serue obey love and dreyd your maiestie Royall' but also pledged the citizens' goods and bodies to the King's service, as well as the prayers of their wives and children ( REED York, i. 274-5).

100Kronyk

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was designed to reflect its festival purpose. The civic triumph celebrated the advent of the king. But not every show represented the coming of the king as if he were Christ entering Jerusalem. For one thing, the receptions of queens, which numbered perhaps one-third of all medieval civic triumphs, required a distinctive variation of this common pattern which will demand a chapter of its own (below, Chapter 6). Even though a queen's adventus served the same inaugural function as that of a king, her femininity generally precluded her from being received as a type of Christ. Consequently, queens generally entered cities according to the pattern of the Virgin's Assumption and Coronation in heaven. 101 Then, too, the receptions of foreign kings posed severe problems for medieval devisers and stretched the idea of Advent to its limits. How does a city celebrate the advent of an anointed king, after all, when he is not that city's king, that city's Christ? In fact, the liturgy of Advent inspired many ways of representing the adventus of the king. In some cases, the idea exerted only a tenuous hold -- or no hold at all -- upon the structure and meaning of the drama. Charles the Bold's civic reception at Douai was based entirely upon the Nine Worthies. 102 But it is worth remembering that most of these shows are inaugural in purpose. As celebrations of the advent of the king, medieval civic triumphs continued the custom of the Roman adventus, which never really died out. 103 Its distant, classical origins, indeed, point to an important distinction between medieval and Renaissance civic triumphs that we will do well to keep in mind. While the triumphal arches and chariots of the Renaissance shows identify them as latter-day Roman triumphs, the medieval civic triumph almost always identifies itself as an adventus or epiphany. Renaissance triumphal arches celebrate the virtue, prowess, heredity, and deeds of the imperial triumphator. Margaret McGowan's brilliant study of Henri II's entry into Rouen ( 1550) can thus quite accurately pay tribute to the ,aesthetic unity' which the civic organizers achieved by giving the King a 'triumph which scrupulously reproduced all the elements of an ancient Roman triumph'. 104 Medieval civic triumphs, by contrast, follow the logic of the adventus by seeing the king not as an emperor entering Rome, but as a type of Christ. Sometimes, indeed, medieval civic triumphs manage quite startling recollections of the classical adventus ceremonial. After Philip the Good entered Bruges in 1440, for instance, the Bouerij Gate through which the Prince entered the city was walled up and turned into a holy chapel. In the same way, the gate through which a Roman emperor ____________________ 101Below, Ch. 6. 102Tailliar, Chroniques de Douai, ii. 54-5. 103Kantorowicz, "King's Advent", 207-11. 104'Introduction', L'Entrie de Henri II á Rouen 1550 ( Amsterdam, [ 1973]), 38. -41-

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made his adventus might become a temple devoted to the worship of his divinity. 105 Richard II's reception, by identifying him as Christ, also follows the adventus mode. The city receives the Emperor as a kind of god, and Richard quite appropriately experiences an epiphany -- becomes manifest as Christlike -- before the pageant of John the Baptist. The liturgical ideas, inaugural occasion, and classical origins of the medieval civic triumph all testify to the seriousness of these royal receptions. None of these, however, can rescue the form from the charge of naïveté. Does not all this merely prove that medieval citizens would go to any length to 'flatter or cajole' their prince? Does not the use of serious ideas in a trivial cause constitute either naïveté, pomposity, or hypocrisy? Consider, once again, the idea of Richard II becoming manifest as Christlike before the pageant of John the Baptist. Do we require a more convincing example of serious, liturgical ideas of the Advent of Christ being used blasphemously in the service of a king's vanity? While thus denying the terms of Huizinga's rejection of the 'ideas glorified by the secular feast' as 'vain convention and mere literature', we have left the spirit of those objections unanswered. Ultimately, the mere presence of serious ideas -- or even of sublime ones -- cannot lend 'grace and dignity' to the civic triumph if they are committed to essentially frivolous and blasphemous purposes. In short, we need to know the purposes, both devotional and political, which led citizens to dramatize the inauguration of their king in the pattern of the Advent of the Saviour. From the king's point of view, his Christ-like reception into a pageant Jerusalem did not constitute blasphemy, idolatry, or tasteless flattery, but rather an exercise in pious imitation. Kings, like other Christians of the late Middle Ages, sought union with Christ through imitating the Saviour. As early as the thirteenth century, St Francis of Assisi strove so completely to share the Passion of Christ that he assumed the wounds of the Crucifixion. A century later, the idea appeared among the followers of the Devotio moderna and in the writings of several notable Christian mystics. The influential mystic Heinrich Suso, for example, freshly championed the imitatio Christi as a spiritual exercise leading to union with Christ. Through 'imitation of My forgiveness of My crucifiers', Christ tells Suso in a vision, 'then truly art thou crucified with thy Beloved'. To which Suso responds, 'my soul implores Thee to accomplish the perfect imagery of Thy miserable Passion on my body and soul'. 106 The idea ____________________ 105Van brabant die excellente Cronike.Van Vlaender ,Holl t,Zeelant int generael ( Antwerp, 1530), fo. PP3v. 106The Little Book of Eternal Wisdom, tr. C. H. McKenna ( London, 1910), 91-2. Cf. also The Life of the Servant, tr. James M. Clark ( London, 1952). -42-

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flowered thereafter in sermons, mystical writings, and devotional treatises, culminating in Thomas à Kempis and the Dutchman Mauburnus. The imitatio Christi thus enjoyed its greatest popularity north of the Alps during the fourteenth, fifteenth, and early sixteenth centuries -- in short, at precisely the same place and during the same centuries that saw the origin and establishment of the civic triumph as a popular form of civic pageantry. Ideally, the depiction of the king as Christ in a civic triumph served similar devotional purposes as Dürer's famous series of self-portraits, in which he gives his own features to the Man of Sorrows or to the crucified Christ. 107 There is no blasphemy or flattery in these self-portraits. Rather, as a faithful son of holy Church, the artist depicts himself as Christ, thus accomplishing the 'imagery of Thy miserable Passion' on his own body and soul. The drawing is a spiritual act, not merely a technical accomplishment; Dürerimitates the Man of Sorrows through his art. By the same token, the king, through his willing acceptance of the Christ-like role which the civic triumph thrusts upon him, seeks to imitate Christ the King. The ceremonial of his coronation -- especially his ritual anointment which made him the Anointed of God, a christus of the Church -- had prepared him well to play such a role. 108 The king's first, formal entry into a city thus constitutes the first manifestation of the king as the Anointed One to his people. Appropriately, his citizens respond to this manifestation by calling upon him to fulfil the role to which God has called him. Thus wherever we look we find civic triumphs inviting sovereigns to imitate the Saviour. When, therefore, John the Baptist identifies Richard II as the Lamb of God, he explicitly calls upon him to imitate Christ. As the angel presents the Crucifixion tablets to the King, he asks, in words strikingly reminiscent of Heinrich Suso, 'that the king, though moved by anger, might contemplate these tablets and that he might wish to be mindful of Christ's death. Let him be sparing of the ignorant even as the Heavenly King, though unavenged, was always forbearing to His enemies.' 109 The citizens of Bruges similarly used a pageant of Mary Magdalen washing the feet of Christ to celebrate Philip the Good's imitation of Christ's forgiveness ( 1440): 'and this pageant signified that our honoured lord had forgiven the city of Bruges all its misdeeds', explains the city chronicler. Later in the same triumph, a pageant of Christ's Resurrection professed to see Philip pursuing a yet more transcendental imitatio Christi. Noting the scripture on the pageant ____________________ 107Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art, ii. 197-8. 108Kantorowicz, Laudes regiae, 80-2. 109Maydiston, "Concordia", tr. Smith, 211: 'Orat ut inspiciat has rex, cure tangitur ira, | Mortis et ut Christi mox velit esse memor. | Parcat et ignaris veluti rex celicus ille | [Hostibus indulgens semper inultus erat' ( ll. 413-16). -43-

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('Behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world' (Matt. 28: 20)), the chronicler reports that 'this pageant signified that our honoured lord through his grace and mercy wished to be and remain with the City of Bruges forever'. 110 Political cajolery obviously plays a part in such pleas for royal imitations of Christ's mercy. In other cases, however, civic pageants take advantage of the idea of Advent to urge a more general imitation of Christ's divine kingship. At Troyes, for example, Charles VIII found himself contemplating the figure of a king surrounded by virtues within the Tent of Peace. Rather than a specific political plea, the pageant, according to the poetchronicler's description, comments upon the First Advent of Christ as a model for King Charles's royal adventus: 'the king will not reign properly if he does not have peace', explains the chronicler, for 'Jesus the true, triumphant King, was born in the time and the Tent of Peace'. Isaiah prophesied this by calling the Saviour ' Pater futuri, Princeps pacis', and Luke confirmed this by reporting how the angels chanted 'Et in terra pax est hominibus' at Jesus's birth. To be a true king, Charles must therefore imitate 'the Father of the world to come, the Prince of Peace'. He must come to his kingdom as Christ came to the world, bringing 'peace on earth among men'. 111 The citizens respond to this pious imitatio Christi with metaphorical expressions of political fealty based upon the idea of Advent. As the coming of the king is like the Advent of Christ, so their reception of their political lord is like the reception of their Saviour. To put it another way, their fealty to their king is a political image of their devotion to the Lord. The pageants for Philip the Good's reception at Bruges, as we shall see in a later chapter, almost entirely consist of variations upon this central metaphor. Before the Jacobin cloister, angels brought the Good News of the birth of Christ to the shepherds, saying, 'I announce to you with great joy, for today you will know that the Lord is come.' The shepherds' joyful reception of this news, according to the chronicler, 'signified the joy of the coming of our honoured Lord and prince', thus casting the citizens in the role of Nativity shepherds. Nearby, another pageant characterized the citizens as Zacchaeus, who climbed a tree to witness the coming of Jesus to Jericho. As in Luke's account, Jesus sees Zacchaeus and calls upon him to come down from the tree and receive the Lord at his home, for 'This day is salvation come to this house'. The pageant signified, according to the chronicler, that 'the Coming of our honoured Lord was greatly to the welfare of our City of Bruges'. And throughout the city, prophets stood upon scaffolds bearing such metaphoric declarations ____________________ 110Dits die excellente cronike, Cvijr-Cvijv. 111Guenée and Lehoux, Entrées royales, 281-2. -44-

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of fealty as 'The Prince of God is among us' and 'This is the day which the Lord hath made; let us rejoice therein'. 112 Elsewhere such acclamations of the Anointed One's advent take other metaphorical forms. By shouting the 'Benedictus qui venit', the people cast themselves in the role of the children of the Hebrews receiving Christ on Palm Sunday; their joy in receiving their king is like the Palm Sunday joy in Jerusalem. Often, city pageantry borrows the imagery of Canticles to portray its love for the king in the imagery of the sponsa's desire for her heavenly sponsus. Rouen, as we shall see in Chapter 5, took this approach in receiving their Dauphin in 1532. A lady representing the city stood in the midst of a lavish garden calling to her sponsus, 'Let my beloved come into his garden' (Cant. 5: 1). Upon that cue, a young lord, wearing the colours of the Dauphin, entered the pageant garden and took his place upon a throne placed beneath a huge fleur-de-lis set amidst the flowers and fruited trees of the 'grand verger. In one and the same image, Christ weds his faithful in paradise, and the Dauphin weds his people in the garden of France.' 113 Paris frequently contrives allegorical metaphors for its advent joy. At Henry VI's arrival before the gates of the city, three great hearts, representing the three political estates of the realm, opened 'as a sign that the hearts of this city open themselves with joy at the coming of their prince and lord' (above, Chapter 2). In this way, the corpus reipublicae does homage to its head, the King, just as the Corpus Christi pays homage to Christ. 114 In their manifest borrowing of religious concepts to explain and idealize political relationships, these pageants both reflect orthodox political theory of the late Middle Ages and point to the essential purpose of the civic triumph. As theory would have it, the king was the head and spouse of his country just as Christ was the head and spouse of his Church. Vincent of Beauvais (midthirteenth century) defined the prince as the 'maritus reipublicae' who contracted a moral and political marriage between himself and the state. Maydiston's frequent references to Richard II as London's 'bridegroom' reflect this thinking, as does sponsa- Rouen's romantic plea to its 'Beloved' to 'come into his garden'. As for the corpus mysticum itself, Lucas de Penna argued that 'just as men are joined together spiritually in the spiritual body, the head of which is Christ,. . . so are men joined together morally and politically in the respublica, which ____________________ 112Dits die excellente cronike, Cvijr-Cvijv. 113Andre Pottier(ed.), Les Entrées de Éléonore d'Autriche reine de France et A dauphin fils de François I dans la ville de Rouen ( Rouen, 1866), a3v-a4r. 114J. Delpit (ed.), Collection générale des documents français qui se trouvent en Angleterre( Paris, 1847), 241. -45-

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is a body the head of which is the Prince'. According to other influential theorists, the estates of the realm constituted the organic structure of his mystical body, and we even hear of French jurists arguing that the succession to the throne depended upon the consent of the three estates 'and of the whole civic or mystical body of the realm'. 115 Such a concept obviously goes far to explain the hearts of the three estates opening in joy to receive Henry VI in Paris in 1431. As an inaugural ceremony, the civic triumph celebrates the union of the bridegroom prince and his mystical body. Sometimes, the pageantry declares this purpose with striking clarity. For Charles VIII's first reception at Paris ( 1484), the citizens placed a king, as mystical head of the state, in a throne upon a high scaffold. His mystical body, the three estates of the realm, symbolized by a nobleman, a cleric, and a commoner, stood below. Suddenly, 'by means of a subtle and quaint engine', the king sent Peace to the common people, Force to the Nobility, and Dilection to the Church. The pageant not only demonstrates the moral nature of the King's marriage to his state, but also demonstrates that the body politic depends for its welfare upon the virtues of its head. 116 An even more spectacular declaration took the form of a fountain nourishing a beautiful garden at Rouen in 1508. Recalling the Fountain of Life which flowed through paradise in the Apocalypse, the pageant fountain gushed its waters through a beautiful meadow inhabited by a Lamb. Dame Justice, with her sword and balance, sat upon the fountain, while leopards frolicked with the Lamb about the waters. As Louis XII approached the pageant, the Lamb tasted the water, bowed to the king, and thanked him for the fountain. Politically, we are told, the pageant celebrated the waters of the King's justice which nourish the park of Normandy. The Lamb of Rouen, in gratitude, offers himself body and soul to the King. But the patent religious imagery of the pageant points to still more comprehensive meanings. While this pageant, like the last, declares the dependence of the body politic for its welfare upon the king, its celebration of the political marriage of the king and the commonweal takes its distinctive form from the idea of Advent. The King's advent turns Normandy into the paradise of St John's Apocalypse, and his coming to his kingdom reflects the Wedding of the Lamb. 117 Just as late medieval Christians, as members of the Body of Christ, declared their devotion to their Lord in a Corpus Christi procession, so ____________________ 115Ernst Kantorowicz, The King's Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology ( Princeton, 1957), 207-32. 116Guenéeand Lehoux, Entrées royales,114. 117Paris, Bibliothéque Nationale, MS fr. 5749, 12v-15r. -46-

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the same men received their newly crowned king as feudal lord -- as 'the Prince of God among us' -- through civic triumphs in a corpus reipublicaecelebration. The pageants may, indeed, 'flatter and cajole' the prince, but their primary purpose lay in celebrating and renewing the communal political bond which united the sovereign and his people3. In such shows we see late medieval Europe practising a form of ritualized communal drama which the anthropologist Clifford Geertz has called 'theatre state'. Together king and citizens perform their roles in a microcosmal drama of the supernatural order as they understand it. The civic drama in which they play together constitutes a kind of 'material embodiment' of an ideal political order, and by performing in it, they shape their imperfect world into at least a rough approximation of that ideal. To some extent, the medieval civic triumph thus offers another model of the 'metaphysical theatre' which Geertz describes: 'theatre designed to express a view of the ultimate nature of reality and, at the same time, to shape the existing conditions of life to be consonant with that reality; that is, theatre to present an ontology and, by presenting it, to make it happen -make it actual'. 118 If, as medieval political thinking would have it, the king came to his throne as a political Christ -- as an Anointed One -- the 'metaphysical theatre' of the civic triumph staged his pious imitation of Christ's advent and his subjects' joyful acclamation of his coming. The best of these shows, of course, stage an ideal; they avoid merely personal adulation by acknowledging the Christ-like role of kingship. They celebrate the Christlikeness of the king by way of celebrating the ideal of Christian polity towards which king and people must aspire in the years ahead. In short, they celebrate a political ideal more than they glorify a particular royal personality. In this way, the idea of Advent did in fact provide medieval civic triumphs with a 'sublime thought, which lent them. . . grace and dignity that even the excesses of their frequently burlesque details could not offset'. The dimensions of that idea, its importance to medieval citizens, and some sense of the variety of techniques for representing it should now beclear. It remains to see how that idea not only gave meaning and purpose to the medieval civic triumph, but how it also created a new form of drama. ____________________ 118Negara: The Theatre State in Nineteenth-Century Bali( Princeton, 1980), 13, 104. -47-

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2 The Christmas King 1. First Advent: The Fulfiller of the Profecye In May 1437, the citizens of Bruges rose in rebellion against their sovereign lord, drove him from the city, and closed the gates against him. In rising against Duke Philip the Good, the Brugeois committed a solemn and fearful act which questioned the legitimacy of all authority, both political and religious alike. Like Shakespeare's Richard II, Philip undoubtedly regarded himself as 'the deputy elected by the Lord' whom 'the breath of worldly men cannot depose' and most would have agreed with him. In rejecting the 'deputy elected by the Lord', the citizens-'cracking the strong warrant of an oath, | Mark'd with a blot, damn'd in the book of heaven' -- committed an act of communal sin which cut them off from the grace of God. To the aggrieved Prince, his rebellious subjects seem 'Pilates' who 'Have here deliver'd me to my sour cross, | And water cannot wash away your sin'. 1 In denying their fealty to their political lord, such traitors implicitly deny their faith in Christ as well. The citizens who once welcomed their Prince with cries of 'Benedictus qui venit' now seemed ready to weave him a crown of thorns and nail him to a 'sour cross'. In the end, both Duke and Brugeois made peace with one another in an extraordinary ceremony which sought to interpret the entire affair more in a religious than a political context. Philip imposed terms upon the citizens which, according to Richard Vaughan, were 'bizarre in their elaboration and humiliating in the extreme'. First of all, the civic authorities agreed to march -barefooted and bareheaded -- out of the town gates to meet their Duke, kneel penitently before him, and beg his forgiveness. Second, they pledged themselves to demolish the city gate which had been closed against the Duke, together with its bridges, barriers, and fortifications. Third, in place of the offending gate, they promised to build a chapel and to endow therein a perpetual daily mass for the souls of those killed in the rebellion. 2 ____________________ 1 Shakespeare, Richard II, III. ii. 56-7, IV. i. 235-6, IV. i. 240-2. 2 Philip the Good ( London, 1970), 87-92. -48-

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However bizarre these actions might seem to modern political sensibilities, it would be a mistake to view them merely as symbolic acts of political oppression. Rather, to members of a medieval Christian community, such acts also represented a purgatorial ritual by means of which the citizens might be restored to the grace of both their earthly and heavenly Lords. These carefully staged ceremonies, which find almost exact parallels in the Church's sacrament of penance, serve as formal, communal acts of contrition. Wearing their penitential sanbenitos, the city leaders kneel before their lord and confess their sins. They then undertake formal acts of penance intended to make amends for their misdeeds, and at last the Duke, playing father confessor to his errant people, forgives them and restores them to grace. As the centrepiece of this ceremony of communal repentance and princely charity, the city devised for Philip the first civic triumph ever performed in Flanders ( 1440). 3 Duke Philip may have dictated the acts of communal penance which the citizens were forced to perform, but the civic triumph was Bruges's idea. The inauguration of a new form of drama under these circumstances suggests the high ritual purposes that both prince and citizens expected the civic triumph to fulfil. In adopting this new form of symbolic drama, the citizens hope to achieve their rehabilitation as faithful subjects of their sovereign lord. In effect, by playing their roles in the civic triumph, the Duke and his subjects strive to reconstitute an ideal of Christian polity that had been destroyed in the rebellion. The civic triumph offered the citizens a symbolic and theatrical means of reuniting the head and body of the state in their proper, divinely ordained relationship. In acclaiming the advent of Philip to the city, the Brugeois might once again acclaim the advent of the 'Prince of God among us', ____________________ 3

In describing this civic triumph, Nicolaes Despars ( 1522-97) observes that the city erected 'poorten van triumphe ende costelicke tooghen' on this occasion, and that such pageants had not before appeared in Flanders ('ende noyt daer te voren binnen Vlaenderen gheuseert'); Cronijcke, iii. 433. An antiquarian, lawyer, and civic official of Bruges (he was échevin, conseiller, and twice bourgmestre), Despars knew the history of his city well. He compiled his own account of the history of Flanders from the extensive memoirs left to him by his grandfather Jacques Despars ( Biographie nationale de Belgique, v. 773-4). He writes therefore with great authority, and his opinion carries considerable weight. Modern histories (e.g. Kernodle, From Art to Theatre, 231), however, generally follow the Chronyke van Vlaenderen, 3 vols. (Bruges, 1727-36), i. 413, 507, in thinking that the first uses of such pageantry in the Low Countries occurred in 1301 and 1329 at Ghent. But the Chronyke, compiled 400 years after the events it describes, interprets 14th-cent. splendour in 18th-cent. terms; in the 1730s, the provision of 'Schouw-tonneelen en Spelen' for a royal entry was de rigueur. No other contemporary source suggests that such pageant structures accompanied a royal entry or blijde inkomst in the streets of any Low Countries city before 1440, and all later 15th-cent. shows seem to refer back to the Bruges entry of 1440. In creating the first such entry with pageants, the Brugeois drew upon their considerable experience in staging other forms of religious pageantry.

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thereby inaugurating their Prince anew. The civic triumph visualizes that ideal order, embodies it in carefully staged action, and thereby attempts to shape the social and political world into a material image of that ideal. 4 As a preliminary to the civic triumph, a carefully staged theatrical episode before the Cruysporte Gate of Bruges began the ritual reshaping of Flemish political life into a manifestation of Christian sovereignty. Had this been a traditional blijde inkomst, a delegation of citizens would have emerged from the Cruysporte, formally welcomed him, and escorted him into the city (Figs. 234). On this extraordinary occasion, however, the Duke approaches Bruges in the very image of an angry Christ the King, and he demands that his subjects receive him in humility and repentance. Before he enters the gates, his rebellious people must humble themselves before him, admit their sins, and beg his forgiveness. As he approaches Bruges, he therefore finds his subjects enduring a painful contrition in preparation for his coming. Over 1,400 people march from the city to meet him; barefoot, bareheaded, and wrapped in black garments, they fall together upon their knees before him and press their hands together in prayer. In loud voices, they beg his grace and mercy. A dramatic pause ensues. The Duke sees all, hears all, but makes no reply to these earnest prayers. At last, a mediator comes forward: the Duke of Orléans asks Philip to show mercy upon his people, and Philip relents. He pardons his people for their crimes, and immediately 1,400 voices acclaim their lord's mercy with a joyful chorus of 'Noel! Noel!' 5 However extravagant, such a ritual of repentance and pardon redeems the political bonds destroyed in the rebellion. Formerly a tyrant prince and rebellious citizens, they now adopt ideal roles characteristic of a Christian corpus reipublicae: a saviour prince receives the joyful homage of his repentant subjects. Once these roles have been firmly established, the civic triumph invokes an ideal Christian polity and inaugurates it in the streets of Bruges. The ritual drama which the Duke and his subjects perform places the city's history of rebellion, repentance, and pardon into an ideal Christian pattern of fall, repentance, and salvation. The citizens transformed the city's ____________________ 4Such

ritual drama, as we have seen (above, Ch. 1), lies at the heart of what Clifford Geertz calls 'the Theatre State'. To explain the phenomenon of the 'theatre state', Geertz proposes 'the doctrine of the exemplary center': 'This is the theory that the court-and-capital is at once a microcosm of the supernatural order -- "an image of the universe on a smaller scale" -- and the material embodiment of political order. It is not just the nucleus, the engine, or the pivot of the state, it is the state. . . . by the mere act of providing a model, a paragon, a faultless image of civilized existence, the court shapes the world around it into at least a rough approximation of its own excellence. The ritual life of the court, and in fact the life of the court generally, is thus paradigmatic, not merely reflective, of social order.' Negara, 13. 5Despars, Cronijcke, iii. 429-30.

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main processional route -- from city gate to princely residence -- into a vast stage on which was performed a drama of the righteous king and sinful people. Whether Philip's advent would herald a painful judgment or a merciful salvation was left for the drama to reveal in a series of theatrical encounters. Pageants on these subjects marked out the Duke's passage through the Cruysporte, along the length of Lange Straete, across the Mulenbrugge, through Hoog Straete, into the Burg Square and out again, through the Groote Maerkt, and finally into the Prinsenhof (Fig. 6). 6 To invoke this Christian pattern, the city selected the third Sunday in Advent ( 11 December 1440) for the performance of Flanders's first civic triumph. As the Duke enters Bruges on that day, the liturgical moment inevitably casts him in the role of the Saviour Christ making a First Advent to his sinful but penitent people. To make this point, the show begins with a carefully staged encounter based upon the Gospel lesson appointed to be read at mass that Sunday. In the morning, the city's priests read John the Baptist's call to penance from the pulpit: 'I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, make straight the way of the Lord, as said the Prophet Isaias' ( John 1: 19-28). 7 That afternoon, John the Baptist himself appears just outside the Cruysporte Gate to proclaim the Messiah and to call the people of the city to prepare themselves spiritually for his Advent (1). As soon as the Duke approaches the gate, the clergy of the town emerge from the Cruysporte to meet him with a 'green forest' or 'wilderness' mounted upon a four-wheeled cart. The Baptist stands within his wilderness, his stern admonition to 'make straight the way of the Lord' inscribed upon his breast. So that he might fully live up to his emblematic role as the 'forerunner', the clergy then wheel St John along at the head of the procession; he now leads the Duke through the city, thus symbolically preparing the way for the coming of the princely Messiah. 8 In this way, as one chronicler observes, the encounter achieves ____________________ 6

This route may be traced on Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder's bird's eye view of Bruges, engraved in 1562. In the following discussion, I adopt the forms of place names as they appear in Gheeraerts's engraving. Parenthetical numbers refer to pageants as listed in Fig. 6. 7 This reading is prescribed in the Roman Missal then in use at Bruges. The Sarum Missal prefers Matt. 11: 2-10, a passage which also features John the Baptist, but not John's citation from Isaiah. 8 Authoritative accounts of Philip the Good's entry into Bruges appear in several chronicles. The most detailed and circumstantial of these include Despars, Cronijcke, iii. 433-41; Dits die excellente cronike, Cvr-ixr; and Kronyk van Vlaenderen, ii. 105-11. Briefer but still valuable accounts include Van brabant die excellente Cronike, PPijv-iij v and Oliver van Dixmude, Merkwaerdige Gebeurtenissen, vooral in Vlaenderen en Brabant . . . van 1377 tot 1443, ed. J. J. Lambin (Ypres, 1835), 172-4. These last two accounts, however, do not attempt a comprehensive account of the show. Both describe only a few of the pageants; neither mentions, for example, Philip's encounter with John the Baptist.

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two symbolic meanings: 'that our honoured Lord came, and that each should make himself ready to receive him.' 9 The austere Baptist waiting at the city gates thus ritually mediates between the Prince and his people. On behalf of Duke Philip, he precedes the Messiah through the city and calls the people to prepare themselves to receive their lord. On behalf of the people, he meets and recognizes the Duke as their incarnate political Messiah. Later in this chapter we will consider the city's own self-portrayal in its dramatized response to St John's call to repentance. Here we must rather consider the city's theatrical representation of the Duke's entry. Philip enters Bruges as the long-expected 'fulfiller of the profecye'. 10 By adapting distinctive tropes and images from the liturgy of Christ's Advent, these civic pageants create for the Duke and citizens a secular ritual of princely advent. A number of the city's pageants, for instance, imitate the Advent Ordo prophetarum by placing actors costumed as biblical prophets along the route of the procession (1, 3, 5, 7, 13). At the Duke's approach, each prophet in turn recognizes the Duke as the long-awaited Messiah. As the Messiah's 'forerunner' and the final prophet of his Advent, John the Baptist aptly begins this series of encounters. But as he first recognizes, then escorts, the Duke through the city streets, twelve Old Testament prophets stand ready to confirm that their prophecies, too, have been fulfilled. 'Very well attired after the Old Law' in 'habits and hats upon their heads such as became prophets', they gather in groups of four to sing 'joyfully and melodiously' at the Duke's advent. 11 6. Schematic diagram of civic triumph for the entry of Philip the Good into Bruges, 11 December 1440. The plan, based on Marcus Gheeraerts's engraved map of the city, 1562, identifies the locations of the city's 21 pageants as follows: 1 John the Baptist; 2 Job on his dungheap; 3 four prophets; 4 Abraham and Isaac; 5 four prophets; 6 Jesse Tree; 7 four prophets; 8 Esther and Ahasuerus; 9 Mary Magdalene; 10 Annunciation to the Shepherds and Nativity; 11 St Dominic's prayer; 12 Zacchaeus and Christ's entry into Jerusalem; 13 King David and the city of Bruges; 14 first three works of mercy; 15 second three works of mercy; 16 seventh work of mercy; 17 Last Judgment; 18 Joachim and Anna at the Golden Gate; 19 St Peter's escape from prison; 20 Resurrection; 21 Transfiguration ____________________ 10 A 'Janitor' (porter) was meant to use these words in passing Henry VII through the gates of Worcester in 1486. The pageant was not actually performed, but the king was presented with a copy of the verses (BL MS Cotton Julius B XII, 16). For further discussion of this pageant, see's. 2 below. 11 Despars, Cronijcke, iii. 434-5; Dits die excellente cronike Cvijr. 9 "Ende was een bediet dat onse gheduchte heere quam, ende dat hem elck bereet soude maken om hem te ontfanghene". Dits die excellente cronike, Cvijr. -53-

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The appearance of these prophets heralds the dawning of the 'Great Day of the Lord' upon the people of Bruges. A banner fixed to each of the prophetic stages accordingly proclaims: 'This is the day which the Lord hath made: let us be glad and rejoice therein' ( Ps. 117: 24). There is, perhaps, some ambiguity about this proclamation. Does it refer to the great and joyful day of Christ's Incarnation in which Emmanuel, coming to his people in humility, brings them peace and salvation? Or does it refer instead to that other great and terrible day in which the Messiah, coming in wrath and majesty, will punish the wicked, humble the lofty, and judge the quick and the dead? The prophets themselves are quick to clarify this point. They come to proclaim the Messiah's merciful Incarnation, not his wrathful Second Coming. Isaiah himself thus appears at one prophet's stage, where he exhorts the citizens to 'remember the tender mercies of the Lord' on that day ( Isa. 63: 7). The minor prophet 'Osee' (Hosea) standing at another prophet's stage (3), similarly urges the citizens to 'Come, and let us return to the Lord' ( Osee 6: 1). Others herald the joyful Great Day in snippets chosen from Psalms, Proverbs, the Book of Wisdom, and other sources: 'thy people shall rejoice in thee' ( Ps. 84: 7); 'now I may die gladly since I have seen thy face'; 'angered is the lord and merciful'; 'let great joy be made among the people'; 'his tender mercies are over all his works' ( Ps. 144: 9); and 'The Prince of God is among us'. Perhaps a few prophets even gingerly direct their admonitions more to Philip than to the people, a reminder, perhaps, that the Duke himself is but a mortal man before the Lord, whom he merely represents: 'He that is inclined to mercy shall be blessed' ( Prov. 22: 9); 'Love justice, you that are the judges of the earth' ( Wisd. 1: 1). Amid these exhortations, one pageant (6) depicts the single most important of the prophetic images of Advent: Isaiah's messianic childking, whose coming will initiate the Great Day, visualized as a flower sprung 'out of the root of Jesse' ( Isa. 11: 1-5). A crucial liturgical fixture in preparing the church for Christmas, the passage is prescribed for Ember Friday as an announcement of the imminent birth of the Saviour, and it inspires the third of the seven Greater Antiphons ('O Radix Jesse') appointed for vespers during Advent. 12 The pageant's design, familiar from countless Jesse windows and medieval illuminations ( Fig. 7 ), depicts the royal house of David from which Christ ultimately descends. 13 'So ____________________ Romanum Mediolani, 1474, ed. Robert Lippe (2 vols.; London, 1899- 1907), i. 9. 13For the iconography of the Jesse Tree, see Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art, i. 14. To the woodcut illustration reproduced in Fig. 7, compare similar designs in the Spinola Hours (Malibu, J. Paul Getty Museum, Ludwig MS IX. 18, 65r), in New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, MS M. 917, 148 (reproduced in John Plummer, The Hours of Catherine of Cleves ( New York, [ 1966]), pl. 90) and in the Jesse window, St Laurence's Church, Ludlow (c. 1330). The design was familiar throughout Europe in the late Middle Ages. 12Missale

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7.Jesse Tree

naturally counterfeited that it was a wonder', a 'great tree' sprouts from the body of a recumbent Jesse, who lies sleeping in bed. Twelve children clad in white sit upon the branches to represent the twelve kings of Christ's ancestry who adorn so many medieval illustrations of the tree. Musicians playing organs, harps, lutes, and clavichords seemed to transform the place into an 'earthly paradise'. 14 Christ himself, however, apparently does not bud forth from the topmost branch as he does in virtually every medieval depiction of the Jesse Tree. Rather, Philip's arrival completes the visual emblem; the Duke's presence before the tree defines him ____________________ 14 Despars merely reports that the tree was 'zo natuerelick ghecontrefeit als een wondere' ( Cronijcke, iii. 435). Dits die excellente cronike reports the most detailed information about the tree's iconography: 'een persoon liggende te bedde | en+ huyt h spruytende een grot boom vp elch tack sitt de een cleen kindekin in witte ghecleet' (Cvijr). Van brabant die excellente Cronike supplies the further information that the children sitting on the branches represented Christ's twelve kingly ancestors ('die boom van Yesse . . . die xii. coning '), and adds that musicians played at the pageant (PPiijr). -55-

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as its promised flower. A spiritual son of David sprung from the house of Jesse, his coming illustrates Isaiah's prophecy of messianic advent. Further along the processional route, at the very centre of the show, Isaiah's prophetic image achieves its fulfilment in a visionary Nativity (10). Upon a platform in front of the Jacobin (Dominican) Friary, two manifestations of divinity appear to greet the Duke's adventus: upon the platform itself, citizens dressed as shepherds gather about Mary and Joseph to do homage to the Christ-child; meanwhile, from atop the Friary tower, the heavens open to reveal the celestial throne of the Almighty blazing with brightness and glory. They take Luke 2: 1-14 as their text, a Gospel lesson prescribed for the masses and offices of Christmas Day. 15 Both scenes clearly recall the standard medieval illustrations of the Annunciation to the Shepherds and the Nativity. Although iconographically distinct, these scenes often appeared as facing pages in books of hours, where they conventionally introduce terce and provide a visual commentary on the Nativity (Figs. 8-9). 16 In keeping with Luke's account of the 'brightness of God' which 'shone round about' the shepherds so that they 'feared with a great fear', the presence of the Almighty manifests itself in a 'great light' flashing menacingly from the throne as if it were lightning. 17 In medieval illustrations, however, the 'great light' which surprises the shepherds usually takes the form of a 'glory' from which an angel appears to deliver the Good News. This pageant unusually treats the 'great light' as a direct manifestation of the Almighty. Moreover, no actor portraying God the Father sits in the throne. Rather, the Almighty apparently manifests himself in the form of the 'great light' alone. A number of children dressed as angels gather around the brilliant throne to sing the Nativity anthem, 'Glory to God in the highest; and on earth peace to men of good will'. In keeping with the Gospel story, one angel descends from heaven to bring the shepherds tidings of the Incarnation: 'I proclaim to you with great joy that today you will know that God comes.' 18 His annunciation to the shepherds, however, is not quite the traditional one. This revision of the Gospel text ('I bring you good tidings ____________________ 15 Missale Romanum, i. 17 (first mass on Christmas Day). The shepherds also figure in the Gospel lesson for the second mass, Luke 2: 15-20. This latter passage is prescribed for all Saturday masses of the Blessed Virgin from Christmas to the Purification. 16 Alternatively, these scenes were often superimposed, so that in the foreground the shepherds might gather around the manger, while in the background the same shepherds are seen receiving the angelic annunciation. 17 For similar representations of God the Father as a brilliant light seated in a throne, compare the Paris entry of Isabella of Bavaria ( 1392), below, Ch. 6, and the London entry of Henry V ( 1415), below, Ch. 4. 18 For texts, see below, n. 149. -56-

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8. Annunciation to the Shepherds. Illustration for Terce

of great joy . . . this day, is born to you a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord') carefully adapts the angelic proclamation so that it might be equally well fulfilled by either the coming of Philip or the birth of Christ. In linking the birth of Christ with the advent of Philip, the angel's proclamation deftly recognizes a third manifestation of the divine. In the absence of actors portraying either God the Father or the infant Christ, Philip's presence provides this pageant with its epiphany. Just as no actor sits in the throne of the Almighty, so the records do not report the presence of a Christ-child in this pageant either. Instead, the shepherds may well direct their homage towards the approaching Duke. Metaphorically they do so in any case. Whether or not some surrogate child lies wrapped in a blanket and cradled in Mary's arms, Philip is both the king whose brightness illuminates the city and the Christ-child who comes to be -57-

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9. Nativity. Illustration for Terce

born in Bruges. This, the central show of the series, fittingly manifests his Nativity as the city's lord in the eyes of his people. Indeed, the pageant itself serves as an act of symbolic homage, a loyal response to and public recognition of Philip's epiphany. Appropriately, the last of the Old Testament prophets who waited in the streets of Bruges to recognize the Messiah was Philip's brother sovereign, King David (13). As a royal prophet, David naturally foresees that the Messiah's First Advent should properly take the form of a kingly adventus. He accordingly awaits Philip upon the Mulenbrugge, which the Portuguese and Genoese merchants have converted into a model of the city of Bruges. King David sits in state before the model city, playing his harp and singing one of his psalms: 'The mercies of the Lord I will -58-

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sing forever' ( Ps. 88: 1). Inscribed upon a roll above the city, a carefully revised citation from another of David's psalms supplies an explanatory motto for the dramatic emblem: 'Let the city rejoice that seeks the Lord' ( Ps. 104: 3, altered from 'Let the heart rejoice . . .'). In keeping with this injunction, a number of maechdekins (manikins), who represent the citizens of Bruges, pop out of the city to sing 'Noel! Noel! Noel!' at the Duke's approach. As a dramatic emblem, this harmonious model city defines an ideal Christian version of the 'real' city. The Duke and his subjects would do well to emulate the mercyloving, devout King David and his jubilant, faithful subjects. A curiously self-reflective -- even metadramatic -- emblem, the pageant requires the Duke to enter an imitation Bruges, where he is received by replica citizens, even as he enters a 'real' city to receive the acclamation of 'real' citizens. The pageant thus transforms Philip's 'literal' adventus into an explicitly symbolic one. If, as we have seen, the liturgy persistently envisions Christ's Nativity as a royal adventus, here the citizens of Bruges invert that liturgical metaphor to portray Philip's adventus as a type of Christ's Nativity. As Christ once entered the world in Bethlehem, so Philip now enters a figurative city of David to the sounds of the Christmas acclamation, 'Noel! Noel!' 19 A metaphorical heir of David, he comes to Bruges to 'sit upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom' ( Isa. 9: 6-7). In staging this ritual enactment of the First Advent of the Saviour to a sinful world, the devisers of the show consistently represent the Duke as the bringer of grace. In restoring the city to favour, the Duke thus imitates the Lord's dispensation of grace to the world. One of the city's more impressive symbols of grace, for example, depicts the Immaculate Conception. It required the gilding of the Burgh's gateway, together with its three associated towers, to recreate the Golden Gate of the Temple at Jerusalem (18). The pageant shows the meeting of Anne and Joachim at the gate to symbolize, by analogy, the restoration of God's grace to the city of Bruges. Like the Jesse Tree and the preaching of John the Baptist, this episode belongs, both liturgically and conceptually, to the Nativity section of Gospel history. Occurring on 8 December, the Festival of the Immaculate Conception forms a natural part of the Church's Advent ____________________ 19Cries

of 'Noel! Noel!' signified general public rejoicing in the late Middle Ages and often bore no specific allusion to Christ's Nativity. However, the association of the cry with Christmas rejoicing was a strong one, and contemporaries often drew the inevitable parallel between greeting a king's royal entry with 'Noel!' and greeting Christ's Nativity with the same cry: 'ce nom de Cam, sonne en mal, et est dissonant du nom du bon pere Noë, lequel jusques auiourd'huy en toutes ioyes publiques (si comme à la nativité de nostre Seigneur et aux entrees des Princes, et à la publication dune paix, . . .) est acclamé et vociferé par la tourbe des enfans, Noë Noë Noë.' Jean Lemaire de Beiges, uvres, ed. J. Stecher (Louvain, 1882), i. 42.

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preparation for Christmas. It had, indeed, been celebrated just three days before Philip entered the city. Conceptually, the Meeting at the Golden Gate prepares the way for the Nativity of Christ by providing a parent free of original sin. As a consequence, the scene sometimes prefaces representations of Christ's own Nativity. 20 Here the scene prepares the way for Philip's own advent as a bearer of grace. Just as the reunion of Joachim and Anne at the gate restored God's grace to mankind as embodied in the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary, so now Philip's adventus symbolizes the restoration of princely mercy and grace to Bruges. 21 By selecting so many images based upon the iconography of the Nativity, the citizens of Bruges clearly attempt to shape the political occasion into a new beginning; with this entry, Philip's reign begins anew and he approaches the city as if he were being inaugurated for the first time. By way of inaugurating Philip as Bruges's sovereign lord, the citizens stage their Prince's metaphorical 'birth'. To make this idea clear, the devisers of the triumph adopt, in the main, the familiar iconographical vocabulary often used in medieval depictions of the Nativity of Christ. The Duke's civic triumph, in short, 'reads' like a medieval icon of the Nativity. In the manner of a stained-glass window or an altar painting, Advent prophets consort with Nativity shepherds, a Jesse Tree sprouts beside a cityscape of Bethlehem, and the preaching of John the Baptist calls sinful men to repentance. The famous Jesse window at Chartres, for example, places a row of Advent prophets on either side of a huge tree, which grows from within the walls of Bethlehem to shade and dominate the city. Jesse himself slumbers peacefully at the root of this genealogical tree, while his descendant kings sprout from its branches. The window thus assembles a collection of images startlingly similar to those assembled by the pageant devisers of Bruges: Jesse Tree, Bethlehem, Advent prophets, descendant kings. 22 The same emblems which serve the glazier to construct an icon of the Nativity now serve the civic dramatists to represent the metaphorical 'nativity' of their prince. ____________________ 20 As we shall see (below, Ch. 2, s. 5), the Confraternity of the Passion performed a Nativity sequence for the entry of Henry VI into Paris ( 1431). It began with the Conception of Our Lady and continued through the Flight into Egypt and the Slaughter of the Innocents. 21 According to Dits die excellente cronike, the pageant 'beteekende die conceptie van onset vrauwe | midts dat hi dien dach in ghec men soude hebben | en+ was oock ten propooste dat die stede v Brugghe die versteken en+ huyter gracie gheweest hadde van onsen gheducht heere ende prinche weder ghec was in sijnd' ghehade en+ gracie' (108 r). Despars ( Cronijcke, iii. 438) echoes this interpretation. 22 The Chartres window probably reproduces Abbot Suger's design for a similar window at Saint-Denis. In van der Goes's Portinari altar, shepherds adore the Christ-child against the background of a castle-like building emblazoned with King David's harp to symbolize the city of David. Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art, i. 18, 82. -60-

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2. Ordo prophetarum: 'You are the Prince of God amongst us' Because medieval cities often saw civic triumphs as marking a metaphoric royal nativity, they often borrowed symbolic characters and dramatic strategies from liturgical Nativity dramas to represent the occasion in this way. The Ordo prophetarum provided the civic triumph with an especially valuable source of inspiration in this respect. The Ghent triumph of 1458, for example, repeats the experiment first tried at Bruges ( 1440) by staging just such a procession of prophets to greet the Duke. Once again, a series of actors impersonating the prophets of Christ's Advent -- from Moses to John the Baptist -- stand upon pageant scaffolds along the route of the procession to declare that the king who comes is the Messiah whom they have prophesied (below, Chapter 5). In Ghent as in Bruges, a close imitation of the Ordo serves to recognize authoritatively the true identity of the Christ-like king who may otherwise seem only a mortal to ordinary viewers. Few civic triumphs require such a faithful imitation of the Ordo. Most make do with only a prophet or two to declare that the biblical prophecies have been fulfilled in the civic adventus of the kingly Messiah. Ysay ( Isaiah) and Jeremy (Jeremiah) fulfil this role at Coventry ( 1456) as they recognize Queen Margaret and Prince Edward as Virgin and Christ-child. 23 As the last prophet and 'forerunner of Christ', John the Baptist often confirms the coming of a royal Christ merely by pointing at the king, as he does for Richard II in 1392 or for Charles VII at Paris in 1437. 24 Sometimes, as he did at Bruges for Philip the Good, the actor playing St John performs his 'forerunner' role by preceding the sovereign thorough the city. The same dramatic conceit thus reappears at Ghent in 1458. Dressed in lion-pelt but otherwise 'naked and barefoot' as reported in Isaiah 20, the prophet of Advent confronts Philip the Good once again, declares 'haec est requies mea' ( 28: 12), takes the bridle of the Duke's horse in hand, and leads him into his palace. 25 More often than not, however, the prophets who appear in the pageants assume no individual identities. We recognize them more surely by their prophetic voices or even their distinctive clothing than by their names. Their special powers of perception and their undoubted authority are more important than their names. In this fashion, for instance, a 'company of prophets with venerable white hair, in tunicles and golden copes, their heads wrapped and turbaned with gold and crimson', receives Henry V into London after his Agincourt victory by singing Psalm97: 'Sing ye to the Lord a new ____________________ 23 Coventry Leet Book, ii. 287. 24 Guenée and Lehoux, Entrées royales, 77-8. 25 Chronyke van Vlaenderen, ii. 349. -61-

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canticle, because he hath done wonderful things.' 26 So at Paris in 1492 six prophets 'like the prophets prophesying the coming of Jesus Christ' surround a pageant king and queen to acknowledge the coming of Anne of Brittany to her throne. 27 Sometimes they make their presence known as painted figures, becoming in effect a part of the emblematic scenery necessary to stage a royal epiphany: 'and within the same gate was painted an image of a prophet having a roll inscribed, "You are the Prince of God amongst us".' 28 Often even commonplace characters find themselves transformed into prophets as they suddenly assume prophetic voices. A mere Janitor (doorkeeper) plays the role of prophet in Worcester ( 1486) as he bids Henry VII 'hertely welcome' before the city gate; in so doing he assumes an almost priest-like role and speaks learnedly in liturgical Latin: Ecce Advenit dominator, domine Et Regnum in manibus potestas & Imperium, Venit desideratus cunctis gentibus. To whom this Citie both al and some Speking by me, biddeth hertely welcome. 29 To Worcester's official porter, Henry's adventus fulfils the Advent prophecies of the Lord's coming, and hence the king requires formal recognition as the 'most desired of all nations' in an act of liturgical worship. The doorkeeper accordingly greets the advent of his king by reciting the introit for Epiphany (first two lines) and an Advent anthem (third line). 30 'Quis est ille qui venit' (who is it who comes), he asks rhetorically on behalf of the people of the city. Is he Noah, Jason, Julius Caesar, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, David, Scipio, or Arthur? And then, assuming his prophet's role, he authoritatively answers his own question: Longe hath bee towlde of such A prince commyng. Wherefore frendes, If that I shalnot lye, This same is the fulfiller of the profecye. 31 ____________________ 26

Gesta Henrici Quinti, 107. 'Et aux costés du dit escaffault y avoit six prophètes, c'est assavoir à cescun costé trois, prophetisant comme les prophètes prophétisoient la venue de Jesu Crist; lesquels portoient en leurs rollers semblables mots n+n latin que les prophètes devant dis faisoient en leur temps': Jean Nicolai , "Sensieult le couronnement et entr de la royne de France en la ville de paris", Bulletin de la Socété de l'Histoire de France ( 1845-6), 118. 28 Remy Dupuys, La tryumphante Entree, B5 v: 'et au dedens de mesmes porte fut paincte vne ymage de prophete ayant en vng rolet escript. Tu es le prince de dieu enuers nous.' 29 BL MS Cotton Julius B. XII, 16r. This pageant did not actually take place. Above, n. 10. 30 These verses are prescribed in both the Sarum and Roman missals. 31 BL MS Cotton Julius B. XII, 16 v. 27

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In his proclamation, of course, the gatekeeper-prophet evokes both political and religious legitimacy for Henry Tudor, who wanted to be seen as the 'legitimate' successor of Henry VI, whom the Yorkists had deposed. In opening the gates of Worcester to this new Tudor king, he explicitly accepts Henry's claims to be the king 'chosen by Grace of God' and symbolically ushers him into his kingdom. By the end of the fifteenth century, the association of Advent prophets with the civic triumph had claimed such a strong hold upon the medieval imagination that we find this civic version of the Ordo prophetarum affecting the staging of Christ's Entry into Jerusalem in medieval Passion plays. In the manuscript of the English N-Town Cycle the liturgical metaphor has come full circle. As Jesus rides his donkey into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, prophets emerge from the crowd to proclaim the coming of the Saviour. An Ordo prophetarum has thus been added to an otherwise straightforward dramatization of Palm Sunday so that the prophets of Advent now greet Christ's adventus as if he were a medieval king entering his city in triumph. 32 3. The Sacred Flower of Jesse's Tree One prophecy in particular serves the medieval civic triumph as its single most important representation of the king's symbolic nativity: the Jesse Tree. Throughout western Europe, civic triumphs use Isaiah's visionary prophecy ( Isa. 11: 1-10) as a way of proclaiming the advent and birth of the messianic king. The medieval Church made Isaiah's prophecy an essential part of its Advent preparation for the birth of the Christchild, both as a lesson and as one of the distinctive Advent antiphons. 33 Medieval allegory had long identified the root (radix) of Isaiah's prophetic tree with Jesse, the stem (virga) with the Virgin Mary, and the fruit or flower (flos) of the rod with Christ, and these allegorical personae had been popularized in countless wall paintings, stained-glass windows, and manuscript illuminations. 34 As a consequence, the Jesse Tree image served as the civic triumph's most common representation of the king's messianic heritage. The presence of Jesse Trees, genealogical trees -- or occasionally both -- provided a chance to present the sovereign's royal ____________________ 32 The N-Town NIS indicates that two prophets' speeches, now lost, were at one time interpolated into the 'Entry into Jerusalem' play. See Ludus Coventriae, ed. K. S. Block, EETS ES 120 ( London, 1922), pp. xix, 240 n.1, 241 n.1. 33 Isaiah's prophecy is prescribed as the first lesson for Wednesday in Ember week, and the prophecy is further recalled in the first of the Greater Antiphons, 'O Radix Jesse'. 34 Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art, i. 15-22. -63-

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genealogy as an image of Christ's sacred genealogy. London explicitly makes this point ( 1432) by confronting the boy-king Henry VI with two such trees. Outside St Paul's Cathedral, 'twoo green treen ther grewe vpariht' within a pageant 'castell bilt off iaspar grene' redolent of the New Jerusalem. One of them, which springs out of a recumbent figure of Jesse, traces the sacred lineage of Christ through David and the Virgin. The other, rooted in the kingly Saints Edward and Louis, traces Henry's twin pedigree through both the English and French royal lines. Since both trees look very similar, and since both grow from the same garden in the same sacred castle, the pageant clearly enforces a typological relationship. In the most important similarity of all, they both alike culminate in a Prince of Peace: Christ, at the top of the Jesse Tree, brings peace between man and God, while Henry, at the top of the genealogical one, is destined 'to brynge inne pees bitwene England and Fraunce'. 35 Just as the Jesse Tree symbolizes Christ's birth, so Henry's parallel genealogical tree proclaims the birth of a new kingly Messiah. Even in the absence of such explicit typology, the presence of genealogical trees in medieval civic triumphs is always designed to suggest that the king springs from a sacred genealogy in the image of Christ. When the Emperor Charles V entered London together with King Henry VIII ( 1522), a genealogical tree at Leadenhall presented the common pedigree of both monarchs. In this version of the sacred tree, John of Gaunt replaces Jesse at the root of the tree, while the top of the tree blooms with 'ij ymages one off them representyng the parson off the emprower and another the kynges grace'. In between, branches spring out of the root, their leaves dripping 'swete water'. Upon each branch sit some fifty-five pictures and Images off the parsons off kynges and Quenys and princes all in fyne golde in dyvers setys and stagys and a lyne ascendyng from oon to an other, from the lowyst to the hyest'. 36 So designed, this pageant must have looked very similar to any number of conventional Jesse Trees (cf. Fig. 7 ): a trunk rooted in a single progenitor at the bottom of the image, the branches of the tree burgeoning upwards with successive kingly generations, culminating at last in a messianic descendant at the very top of the tree. Ostensibly a 'merely' genealogical tree, this Leadenhall pageant thus borrows the distinctive elements of the familiar Jesse Tree to suggest a common, 'sacred' ancestry for Henry and Charles. To a large extent, the English Reformation regarded the Jesse Tree as part of the symbolic vocabulary of Roman Catholicism. For this reason, ____________________ 35 Lydgate, Minor Poems, ii. 643-4. 36 Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 298 (no. 8), 136. Hall, Chronicle, 638. -64-

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Protestant London expunged Jesse Trees from Edward VI's coronation triumph ( 1547). 37 As a consequence, when the Jesse Tree next reappeared in London, it did so in the context of the Marian counter-Reformation, where it served to proclaim the advent of a restored Catholic monarchy. In acclaiming Philip of Spain as their new king, the city of London ( 1554) erected a 'marvelouse fayre' tree in Cheap illustrating the joint descent of Philip and Mary from Edward III. Once again, the pageant makes no overt mention of Isaiah's prophecy; nevertheless the tree undeniably recreates Tudor genealogy according to the emblematic vocabulary of the Jesse Tree image. Edward III thus lies beneath the root of the tree, represented in the familiar guise of Jesse as 'an olde man linge on is left side, with a long white beard and close crowne on his head'. Just as in countless Jesse windows throughout Europe, the 'greene arboure or tree' grows up from the root, sprouting branches on both sides 'whereon did sit young faire children, which represented the persons of such kinges, quenes, princes, dukes, earles, lordes, and ladies, as descended from the said king Edward the iii'. Only at the top of the tree does this London pageant depart from convention. Two buds blossom at the top, not one: 'a quene of the right hand, and a king of the left, which presented their magesties'. In all other respects, however, this London pageant attempts to represent royal genealogy as a visual metaphor for Christ's genealogy. In so doing, it presents the marriage of Philip and Mary as the fulfilment of prophecy: Which both descended of one auncient lyne It hath pleased God by mariage to combyn. The tree thus serves as a powerful symbol of the new political and religious order that has been re-established in the joint advent of Philip and Mary. 38 In France, Jesse Trees often take the form of giant fleurs-de-lis. In this way, French civic triumphs proclaim the advent and birth of a king who ____________________ 37 Edward's civic triumph was based upon Lydgate's poem describing Henry VI's civic triumph of 1432. That earlier triumph, as we have seen, featured a Jesse Tree counterposed to Henry's genealogical tree. Instead of this pageant, the citizens of 1547 created a pageant of St George and St Edward the Confessor ( Anglo, Spectacle, 281-94, esp. 291-2). The devisers of Elizabeth I's civic triumph ( 1559) similarly evaded the Catholic implications of the Jesse Tree image. Although Queen Elizabeth found the members of her family connected by the branches of a rose bush, her pageant carefully avoided the distinctive elements of the Jesse: radix, virga, and flos; The Quenes Maiesties Passage through the Citie of London to Westminster the Day Before Her Coronacion, ed. James M. Osborn, introd. Sir John Neale ( New Haven, 1960), 31-4. The overall design of the pageant owes more to the frontispiece illustration of Hall Chronicle or to Holbein's Whitehall painting than to the Jesse Tree. 38 The Chronicle of Queen Jane, and of Two Years of Queen Mary, ed. J. G. Nichols ( London, 1850), 149-50. -65-

fulfils both national and biblical prophecies. As the symbolically 'newborn' king of France, he enters the city both as the flower of Jesse's tree and as the scion of Clovis and St Louis. The Jesse Trees which symbolized this idea generally took one of two forms. On the one hand, a Jesse Tree might take the form of an enormous fleur-de-lis plant with many blossoms; 39 on the other, more conventional trees will blossom with fleursde-lis instead of orthodox arboreal blooms. Charles VIII, who was particularly anxious to proclaim himself a king born of the line of Clovis, experienced both of these symbolic varieties. 40 Consider, for example, the 'tres bel arbre' in the shape of a lily plant with which the city of Tours welcomed Charles ( 1486). In this version of the traditional Jesse Tree, St Louis takes Jesse's place as the progenitor of a royal and sacred line. He sits at the root of a fleur-de-lis three times taller than a lance and bristling with 'flowers . . . in very great abundance'. From each of the plant's many flowers issued a 'small king' regally dressed and bearing a sceptre. Just as the branches of the Jesse Tree sprout with the kingly progenitors of Christ, so this enormous fleur-de-lis details the new king's sacred lineage; its blossoms contain 'all the kings who have been procreated in St Louis's line'. 41 An even more heroically proportioned lily tree appeared four years later as Charles made his 'jocundus adventus' into Vienne ( 1490). Since Charles was making his first formal entry into the city during the first week of Advent, the appearance of a 'luminous and gilded' Jesse Tree that stretched 'higher than all the houses' of the city was clearly intended to appropriate one of the most potent emblems of the current liturgical season to proclaim the king's first advent to the people of Vienne. In order to emphasize a clear allusion to Isaiah's messianic prophecy, the citizens of Vienne greeted their king with a tree blossoming with lilies, 39

For the Paris entry of Louis XII ( 1498), a giant lily plant traced Louis's genealogy from St Louis (at the root) through seven intermediary generations, to Louis XII, who rises up, like Christ on a Jesse Tree, from a flower at the top of the tree ( Guenée and Lehoux, Entrées royales, 132). 40 Charles VIII's pre-coronation entry at Reims featured tableaux depicting the 'three most important sages in the legendary history of the French: the Trojan origins of the French in an heroic age; the formation of the French kingship and the promulgation of the Salic law [i.e. the history of Pharamond]; and the baptism of the first Christian king of the French with the sacred balm from the Holy ampulla'. King Clovis's baptism and consecration was staged expressly as a prefiguration of Charles's own forthcoming consecration as King. Jackson, Vive le roi!, 176-9; Théodore Godefroy, Le Cérémonial françois (2 vols.; Paris, 1649), i. 189. 41 Guenée and Lehoux, Entrées royales, 278-9: 'Ung tres bel arbre qui lys representoit. . . . | Des fleurs avoit en tres grant abondance, | Aux pieds duquel estoit le remembrance, | De sainct Louys fort proprement faict; | Car hault estoit trois fois plus qu'une lance, . . . | D'une chascune d'icelles fleurs issoit | Ung petit roy habillé richement, | L'ung comme l'aultre, et chascun d'eux tenoit | Sceptre royal bien faict et proprement, . . . | Cet arbre cy nous signifie | Trestous les toys qui ont esté | Procreez de la lignie | De sainct Louys.'

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not just a gigantic lily plant as at Tours. St Louis once again replaces Jesse at the root of the tree, but on this occasion the legendary twelve peers of France accompany him to show that the kingly line springs from both chivalric and saintly origins. The tree's ten fleurs-de-lis represent the ten generations of sacred lineage linking the saintly progenitor at the root of the tree with 'the king actually reigning' blossoming from a flower at the top. 42 Unlike the earlier Tours version, which required the presence of the 'real' Charles VIII to complete its image of a sacred French monarchy, the Vienne tree more carefully defers to the standard visual imagery of the Jesse Tree prophecy. Just as Christ conventionally springs from a flower atop late medieval Jesse Trees ( Fig. 7 ), so here Charles blooms from a fleur-de-lis at the top of this civic tree. Surprisingly, one standard element of the medieval image has not appeared in any of the civic Jesse Trees that we have thus far examined: the Virgin Mary depicted as the shoot (virga) from which the Christflower (flos) springs. 43 This absence is particularly remarkable when we consider that the virga Jesse is one of the more familiar of the Virgin's emblematic personae ( Fig. 13 ) and that throughout Europe Jesse Trees became prominent in the decorative schemes of Lady Chapels as a way of celebrating Mary's central place in the scheme of salvation. On the face of it, the Jesse Tree emblem would seem to serve equally well in civic triumphs to acclaim the role of the consort queen as virga (royal childbearer) as it does to proclaim the advent of the flos (messianic king). But the very popularity of the virga Jesse as a symbol of the Virgin meant that the meaning of these pageant symbols would have to be very carefully considered and perhaps even restricted. The consort must not seem equal to the king. The Jesse Tree must clearly proclaim that the king's advent as the fulfiller of prophecy; the Jesse Tree must emphasize the messianic flos, not the virga; the branch must appear clearly subordinate to the flower. These anxieties are clearly at work in the Jesse Tree which Coventry designed for a joint entry ( 1456) of Queen Margaret and Prince Edward, who both, on this occasion, represented the crown in different ways. Because of the increasingly hopeless madness of Henry VI, Margaret of Anjou entered the city as Queen Regent. Edward, though only a child, was the heir apparent and, furthermore, was to enter a city that liked to ____________________ 42 'Erat arbor perlucens auto sculta, que in decern liliis genealogiam beati Ludovici usque ad ispum modernum regem, decern reges in altum ferebat excedebatque altitudine tecta domorum et in pede illius erat rex sanctus Ludovicus, cum xii. paribus Francie, dittissimis vestimentis ornatis, et cum maxima facium lucentium quantitate' ( Guenée and Lehoux, Entrées royales, 296-7). 43 Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art, i. 15-22. -67-

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advertise itself as the 'prince's chamber'. In this symbolically complex occasion, the citizens of Coventry found the Jesse Tree an apt symbol for their complicated allegiances. For once, both virga and flos appear together on the tree, and two biblical prophets appear to explain these symbols. Ysay ( Isaiah), first of all, performs his usual role as the inspired prophet of the Jesse Tree vision. He applies the Advent prophecies of Christ's birth to Prince Edward, whom he expressly identifies as England's future kingly Messiah: 'Like as mankynde was gladdid by the birght of Ihesus', he tells Margaret, 'So shall pis empyre ioy the birthe of your bodye.' Jeremy (Jeremiah) then seconds his prophetic colleague by explaining the symbolic elements of Ysay's Tree to Margaret. He first praises 'pe blessed tyme of your [ Margaret's] natiuyte' as if she were the Blessed Virgin. Then, 'replete with spirite prophetical', Isaiah explains to Margaret that his vision of a rod (virga) springing out of the root of Jesse and a flower (flos) rising up out of the rod ( 11: 1), has been fulfilled in the joint appearance of the Queen and Prince, she being the 'rote of Iesse' and Edward the 'fragrante floure' which has 'sprongon' from that queenly 'rote'. 44 In Coventry's adroit adaptation of these traditional personae, the Jesse Tree emblem admirably parallels one mother-son relationship ( Christ and the Virgin) with another ( Edward and Margaret). While the pageant conventionally symbolizes Edward's advent as England's newborn Messiah, it energetically proclaims Margaret's crucial role as the primary support of the Christmas king. In emphasizing that support, indeed, the prophet Jeremy chooses to identify Margaret not merely with the 'rod' that conventionally springs out of the 'root' of Jesse, but with the 'rote' itself. As a dramatic emblem, the Jesse Tree on this occasion both represents Margaret and explains her unusual power. Given the incapacity of her husband and the infancy of her son, she alone represents both the physical 'body' and the symbolic 'rote' of the royal line. In the absence of her husband, she embodies the promise that the Lancastrian line will continue, and from her alone springs the infant Prince Edward, who seems destined to be the 'fulfiller of the profecye'. In symbolizing Margaret's power, however, the Coventry Jesse Tree also symbolizes her weakness. As Queen Regent, she wields power only on behalf of her husband and only for the purpose of ensuring the accession of her son. This Coventry pageant thus requires the presence of both Queen Margaret and Prince Edward to dramatize how power is being 'born' and 'nurtured' in England. ____________________ 44 Coventry Leet Book, ii. 287. Although the show was designed for both Margaret and Edward, the Prince did not in fact accompany Margaret on this occasion. -68-

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In more conventional contexts, the Jesse Tree has only limited usefulness as an emblem for a consort queen's accession. Isaiah's tree most clearly envisions the advent of a Prince of Peace, not that of a Virgin mother. Pierre Gringore's Jesse Tree design for Queen Claude ( Paris, 1517) illustrates the difficulties inherent in adapting such a strongly masculine emblem to symbolize the advent of a consort queen. 45 Claude, of course, was no 'mere' consort. When she entered Paris in 1517, she came to the city both as the consort of Francis I and as the sovereign Duchess of Brittany, a dukedom not yet incorporated into the crown of France. How, then, should the citizens of Paris acclaim their new Queen in her various roles? With respect to the crown of France, perhaps, she must be seen as the virga Jesse, but with respect to the duchy of Brittany, she can claim to be the promised flos itself -- that is if a woman can claim such a symbolic status in France. Gringore's design for a pageant at the Châtelet ( Fig. 10 ) clearly regards her role as Duchess of Brittany as paramount. In an extraordinary experiment, he attempts to feminize the familiar Jesse Tree image. Although both Claude and Francis jointly occupy the topmost branch of 'a tree of many branches like a Tree of Jesse', 46 the design of the tree makes it clear that Francis owes his lofty perch to Claude. As an emblem of royal nativity, Gringore's tree may seem to present both King and Queen jointly as the promised flowers springing from the sacred tree. As Gringore himself points out, however, this extraordinary Jesse Tree specifically represents the Queen's ancestors -- the 'genealogy of the maternal side' 47 -- not the King's. The branches of the tree are defined exclusively by female figures, not male ones. Claude rightly blooms from the top of the tree because she is the daughter of Anne of Brittany, who occupies the righthand branch just beneath her. Male figures occupy branches of the tree only because they are married to one of Claude's female ancestors. Anne of Brittany's branch therefore includes both of her husbands - Charles VIII and Louis XII -- despite the fact that Charles made no contribution whatsoever to Claude's ancestry. Francis therefore takes his place atop the ____________________ 45 For Gringore's own description of this pageant, see Nantes, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS 1337, 16. Another account, not by Gringore, occupies a number of manuscripts, most of them illustrated, e.g. British Library, MS Cotton Titus A. XVII, British Library, MS Stowe582, Cambridge, Magdalene College, MS Pepys 1791, and Bibliothèque Nationale, MSS fr. 5750 and 14116. The text of this widely disseminated account also forms the basis of a printed version: Lentree de la royne de France a Paris faicte le mardy xii. iour du moys de may. Lan de grace. mil cinq cens & xvii. ( Paris, 1517). 46 "Ung arbre ayans plusieurs br ches c me ung arbre de yesse" (BL MS Cotton Titus A. xvii, 39v). 47 'La genealogie du coste maternal': Nantes, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS 1337, 16v. -69-

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10. Pierre Gringore, Châtelet pageant for entry of Queen Claude into Paris, 1517

tree for the same reason that both Charles and Louis occupy Anne's branch -not because he is the promised flower of a sacred line, but because he is the consort of such a flower. Gringore's design, however, is plainly uncomfortable with the feminized implications of this innovation. The emblem must not be allowed to suggest that the Consort Queen is more important than the King, still less that Francis depends in some way upon Claude to uphold his royal estate. To avoid these implications, Gringore obscures the saintly ancestor, who should be seen in Jesse's place, slumbering at the root of the tree. Instead, he takes advantage of the pageant's setting -- the Châtelet, the Parisian courts of justice -- to define the laws and customs of France -70-

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as the proper ground, if not the genealogical root, of Claude's Jesse Tree. The poet therefore conceals the 'root' of the tree behind a kind of tapestry veil. In front of the tapestry, he places four allegorical ladies who represent the 'ground' out of which the tree grows: Severité, Mansuetude, Loy, and Costume. As the pageant expositor explains to Claude, these four ladies in fact symbolize aspects of Francis's role as king: they represent 'the ordinary justice of your spouse', and define 'the noble place from which you are descended'. 48 Far more than the kings and queens inhabiting the branches of Claude's tree, these four allegorical ladies carry the essential significance of the pageant. The pageant descriptions carefully name and describe these ladies; by contrast, the kings and queens are never specifically named and only briefly mentioned. The pageant thus describes the subordination of the Tree of Brittany to the laws and customs of France. As a symbol of royal nativity, the pageant is more about the birth of French nationhood than it is about Claude's symbolic birth as Queen. Isaiah's prophecy of the birth of the Messiah becomes a prophecy of another kind: it foresees the eventual, formal incorporation of Claude's duchy into the French crown. 4. Birth: 'We all mowe blesse the tyme of your Natiuite' Whenever a medieval civic triumph employs emblems of the Nativity, it dramatizes a ritual and dramatic metaphor essential to medieval ideas of Christian kingship: each princely accession re-enacts a symbolic Nativity. This idea reflects familiar biblical conceptions of holy kingship according to which the kings of Israel become the begotten sons of God at their inaugurations. In a psalm made familiar to the Middle Ages through its repeated use in the first mass on Christmas Day, King David thus rejoices: 'The Lord hath said to me: Thou art my son, this day have I begotten thee' ( Ps. 2: 7). 49 Because every king comes to his city for the first time as a newly born son of God, prophets may aptly proclaim his advent, Jesse Trees may fittingly display his messianic lineage, and the people, like shepherds, may rightly cry 'Noel!' in joy upon hearing the glad tidings. Court poets sometimes elaborate metaphors of the new king's symbolic nativity with extraordinary ingenuity. In Georges Chastellain's 'mystical allegory', for example, Louis XI's inaugural entry into Paris ( 1461) recalls ____________________ 48 Nantes, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS 1337, 16v: 'Cy endroit est la iustice ordinaire | De ton espoux qui gloire a merite | Mansuetude avec seuerite | Coustume et loy par leur science ardue | Ont congnoissance a la vraye verite | Du noble lieu dont tu es descendue.' 49 This line from Ps.2 both serves as the introit for the first mass on Christmas Day and is repeated as the alleluia chant in response to the gradual psalm prescribed for the same service. -71-

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the birth of the Christ-child in Bethlehem. Every detail of Louis's civic triumph finds its parallel in the Gospel story of the Nativity: Mary signifies the royal house of France, Joseph represents the Duke of Burgundy, the shepherds refer to the princes and prelates of the realm, and Louis himself symbolizes 'the sovereign Christ on earth'. 'These shepherds', Chastellain writes, 'have come hurriedly to Bethlehem, that is to say to Paris, to see what God has made manifest to their eyes: indeed a king newly crowned, a king engendered from the word and will of God.' King Louis, the poet stresses, is 'an infant . . . newly-born, conceived of the Holy Spirit and magnified in Grace. Who is he? He is the son of God, descended from heaven and diffused on earth for the health of the realm.' 50 The advent of a child-king made the evocation of such imagery almost obligatory to medieval devisers. King Richard I appears at Coventry ( 1474) to welcome the young Prince Edward: 'The presens of your noble person reioyseth our hartes all,' he tells his princely descendant, 'We all mowe blesse the tyme of your Natiuite.' In the context of the unsettled conditions of the War of the Roses, his words look as much forward to Edward's future symbolic nativity as king as they do to his 'real' birth in the past. 51 In both London and Paris, Henry VI found himself figured in 'a childe off beaute precellyng'. Since Henry was only 10 years old at the time ( 1431-2), the devisers may have been more concerned with verisimilitude than symbolism in choosing one child --' a boy of the King's age and build' -- to portray another. 52 But even so, the symbolism of the child Messiah was too potent to resist, and the devisers of both triumphs took advantage of Henry's youth to portray him specifically as a type of the Christmas babe. The Parisian triumph accordingly selected the first Sunday in Advent as the most appropriate symbolic date to welcome their new King. The London devisers, calculating that Henry would probably ____________________ 50

'Ces pasteurs . . . sont venus hastivement en Bethléem, est-à-entendre à Paris, voir ce que Dieu a fait et manifesté à leurs yeux: certes un roy nouvellement couronné, un roy produit du mot et volenté de Dieu. . . . Que a produit ceste Marie? Quoy? certes, un enfanchon, un petit fieuchon nouveau-né, conçu du Saint-Esprit et magnifisé en grâce. Qui est? Il est le fil de Dieu, descendu du ciel et diffus en terre pour salut du royaume. . . . le souverain christ en terre, n+ qui tout le peouple chrestien doit avoir attente en regart.' uvres, ed. Kervyn de Lettenhove ( Brussels, 1863-6), vii. 6, 16, 33. I am indebted for this text to Lawrence M. Bryant, The King and the City in the Parisian Royal Entry Ceremony: Politics, Ritual, and Art in the Renaissance, Travaux d'Humanisme et Renaissance 216 ( Geneva, 1986), 132-3. 51 Coventry Leet Book, ii. 391®. 52 London ( 1432): Lydgate, Minor Poems, ii. 640. Paris ( 1431): 'ung enfant du grant du roy et de son age' ( Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, 276 ); see also Delpit, Collection générale, 243, where the actor portraying Henry is described as 'un enfant, representant la personne du Roy'. Curiously, an English account inaccurately describes the same actor as 'a man lykened to pe Kyng'. The Brut; or, The Chronicles of England, ed. Friedrich W. D. Brie, EETS os 131, 136 (2 vols.; London, 1906-8), ii. 460.

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enter the city during the extended Epiphany season, carefully selected liturgical images from Advent (the Jesse Tree), Christmas ( Isaiah's fountains of the Saviour), and Epiphany (the first manifestation of the King of Justice) to inaugurate their boy-prince as King of England. 53 Because every king comes to his throne as a symbolic 'infant newly born', the medieval civic triumph frequently represents him as a child whatever his chronological age. Philip the Good was 21 when the citizens of Bruges greeted his advent as if they were shepherds acclaiming the Nativity of the Christchild. Louis XI was 38 when Chastellain wrote of him as a mystical 'infant newly born'. Although still a 14-year-old adolescens in 1485, Charles VIII had already claimed his legal majority. When he enters Rouen for the first time that year, however, his subjects persistently regard him as a metaphorical child. The central pageant of his civic triumph thus stages the ritual anointment of the child Solomon ( Charles) by the prophet Nathan (a French bishop) as an aged and expiring King David ( Louis XI) looks approvingly on. In portraying Charles as an infant Solomon, a 'beau fils blont', the citizens of Rouen mean no slight to their new King's pretensions of adulthood. Rather, they see Charles ascending the throne in the form of an infant Messiah, a second Solomon, a son of David whose legitimacy has been certified by the clergy and who has been anointed with the holy chrism. 54 For similar reasons the citizens of Paris chose a juvenile persona to represent their 38-yearold monarch during his inaugural triumph ( 1461). Above the Saint-Denis Gate, Louis saw himself as a divinely inspired infant piloting an ancient ship: a child-king, attended by a brace of angels, guides the Ship of State from its topmost crow's nest. This image, which manifests Louis's character as a new and divinely ordained captain of an ancient ship, thus aptly chooses a child actor to represent the mature King. Further, as the King rides beneath the city gate, the two attendant angels descend from the infant Louis on high to place a crown upon the head of the real Louis below. The inaugural purpose of this symbolic coronation is unmistakable. As the crown descends from the child actor to rest upon the head of the adult King, the pageant proclaims Louis to be a mystic 'infant newly born' at the very beginning of his reign. 55 ____________________ 53 See below, Ch. 3. 54 Guenée and Lehoux, Entrées royales, 253. Politically, of course, Charles remained a 'child'. Until his marriage to Anne of Brittany in 1491, when he seized effective control of the crown, he remained very much a figurehead under the regency of his sister, Anne of Beaujeu. 55 Godefroy, Cérémonial françois, i. 180. Journal of Jean de Roye, 27; Bryant, Parisian Royal Entry, 132-3. The actor representing Louis rode in the crow's nest of the ship; the ship itself served as the heraldic emblem of Paris. -73-

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Such pageants remind us once again that the civic triumph shares something of the inaugural function of the coronation ritual. To be sure, the coronation ceremony alone possesses the power of ritual metamorphosis. For a man to be transformed into a king, he must participate in a special ecclesiastical consecration, have the holy unction applied to his head, and receive symbols of authority: crown, orb, and sceptre. 56 His first formal entrance into a city as sovereign then continues his inauguration by manifesting his transformed and consecrated identity to his people. But because he has only just assumed his royal persona, he comes to his people in the infancy of his new identity. From the point of view of the king, perhaps, a nativity pageant in a civic triumph may simply refer to the ritual transformation which he has already undergone in his coronation. But from the point of view of the people gathering around, the performance of such nativities also constitutes an important ritual action. By means of such symbolic performances, they witness and certify the birth of their sovereign on behalf of the people. Their presence at, and acclamation of, the new king's birth thus constitutes a vital ritual acceptance of their new sovereign. A number of these shows use scenes of childbirth to invoke this potent metaphor: as the new king enters the city, so he is born to his people. When Charles VIII entered the Italian city of Chieri ( 1494), he came as a foreign sovereign and made no claim to that city's lordship. Charles found himself among political sympathizers, however, and Chleri's civic triumph clearly supports his pretensions to the crown of Naples. As he enters the city, the Piedmontese citizens portray his advent as a nativity pageant in which he may be born to them as a king (even if not their king). A beautiful and bejewelled woman 'of blessed grace' thus lies in a canopied bed, where she has just given birth. The royal estate of the mother is symbolized in the richness of the bed, which is gilded, canopied with cloth of gold, covered with silk, and flanked by 'great shields of golden fleurs-de-lis'. Meanwhile, a company of angels gathers about the manifestly divine child, who represents Charles. His nurse stands just before the royal bed to display the newborn child to the crowd of angels who attend him. As in Christ's Nativity, moreover, both child and mother seem to have experienced the birth without pain or distress: her 'sweet visage' is 'so very restrained that one had never seen better, rosy-cheeked and not pale . . . clear, fresh, gleaming, and polished' while the 'marvellously beautiful' child receives angelic veneration 'without tears and ____________________ 56 Jackson, Vive le roi!; Ralph E. Giesey, "Inaugural Aspects of French Royal Ceremonials" in Coronations: Medieval and Early Modern Monarchic Ritual, ed. János M. Bak ( Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1990), 35-45. -74-

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without fright'. 57 Even the citizens play a crucial role in this drama of royal nativity. They attend the birth of a royal infant like shepherds and Magi drawn to a stable in Bethlehem. In witnessing this royal epiphany, they publicly acclaim 'the Prince of God among us' and so play their appointed parts in a ritual drama of royal legitimacy. 58 If Chieri envisions Charles VIII's symbolic birth in conventional religious terms, Rouen designs a similar nativity for Francis I ( 1516), but this time the King's advent is conceived according to a thoroughly classical vocabulary of imagery. Like several of the pageants we have examined, the fourth of this civic triumph's spectacles dramatizes the birth of 'a beautiful young infant very richly dressed and in such a way that he easily called to mind the king'. By contrast with those other pageants, however, this show sets the stage for Francis's symbolic nativity with a series of decidedly neo-classical images. First of all, a 'tower named Athens', which dominates one side of the pageant, defines for Rouen its idealized type: a renascent classical city dedicated to learning. Within this symbolic tower, moreover, the goddess Athena expectantly awaits the birth of a divine child who will transform Rouen into a new Athens. Secondly, a silver globe, which stands just opposite the tower, reminds us that the fallen world languishes in its Silver Age. Thirdly, the celestial child hovers above the silver sphere, waiting to be born. Represented as one of the pre-existent souls described in the Timaeus, he yet inhabits his 'stellar body' and appears as merely a glittering star obscured by a cloud. 59 Finally, as the stage machinery responds to the king's presence, the celestial child-king experiences his birth according to a pattern which explicitly imitates 'Virgil describing the Age of Gold in his bucolics'. The clouds part, the star-soul takes ____________________ 57

The woman, described as an 'acouchee', has just given birth to a 'jeune enfant, | beau a merveilles, sans pleur et sans effroy, | le plus gorrier et le plus triumphant | qu'on vit jamais, fusse le filz du roy'. André de la Vigne, Le Voyage de Naples, ed. Anna Slerca ( Milan, 1981), 167-8. For commentary, see Bonner Mitchell, The Majesty of the State: Triumphal Progresses of Foreign Sovereigns in Renaissance Italy (1494-1600) ( Florence, 1986), 59, who finds this pageant 'enigmatic but indubitably significant'. 58 Charles, of course, was merely passing through Piedmont on his way to Naples. He made no claim to sovereignty in the northern Italian cities through which he passed. As Bonner Mitchell points out, however, 'cultural and political ties between France and Piedmont were close', crowds were friendly, and the house of Savoy apparently supported Charles's claim, so much so that the dowager Duchess, acting as regent for her young son Charles II, 'received the king in Turin . . . almost as though he were sovereign of the city'. In addition, the Piedmontese apparently imitated French rather than Italian fashions in staging civic triumphs for Charles VIII. Instead of triumphal arches, 'there were mystèes on platforms, much like those customary for royal entries in France, including Charles's own recent entries into Paris ( 1484), Rouen ( 1485), and Troyes ( 1486)'. Majesty of the State, 58. 59 Plato describes the descent of the soul from its native star in the Timaeus, 41e-42d. For a full discussion of this trope as it informs the allegory of Katharine of Aragon's London entry ( 1501), see below, Ch. 4.

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human form, and it descends to the silver globe, becoming -- as 'scriptures' posted upon the pageant declare -- the 'newborn child' of the Fourth Eclogue who 'descends from heaven above'. Immediately the star-child alights upon it, the silver globe opens to reveal a gilded interior, the world reverts to its pristine Golden Age, and the cycle of centuries begins anew. 60 Whether or not these shows costume their 'infants newly born' in classical or biblical dress, they personify essentially the same inaugural metaphor -- they visualize the civic triumph as the moment of the king's political birth. The classical version of the metaphor, however, sharpens and refines the concept: it envisions Francis's entry into Rouen more precisely as the moment of his political incarnation than as his royal nativity. As in the pageant the star-soul descends from the heavens to become a mortal child, so in the streets of the city the realm of France seems to take mortal flesh in the person of the king. More explicitly than any other nativity pageant, this Rouen show thus visualizes (in Kantorowicz's memorable phrase) the 'incarnation of the body politic in a king of flesh'. 61 In devising this visionary image of royal advent, the pageant machinery almost lovingly details the various stages of Francis's incarnation as an infant king. As a pre-existent soul, the infant king brings his spiritual virtues with him into the world. He accordingly descends from the heavens along three 'rays' given off from his native star which symbolize 'the graces and perfections of the soul'. When 'the beautiful young infant' arrives on earth, he begins to acquire physical qualities as his soul experiences its incarnation. Aglaia, Thalia, and Euphrosyne therefore shower the proxy king with bodily graces to match his spiritual ones, so much so that 'one might call him a masterpiece of Nature'. To complete the process, Athena arms him with intellectual graces appropriate to the Apollo of a new Golden Age. As she once did to Perseus 'for his virtues', she now gives the star-child her 'crystalline shield, called the Shield of Prudence, upon which was portrayed the head of Medusa'. 62 This final accoutrement -____________________ 60

"Au hault dudit escharfault estoit escript ce que escript virgile en ses bucoliques en descripuant laage dor. Iam noua progenies celo demittitur alto. Et au has du coste du monde. Redeunt saturnia regna". Lentree du tres cbrestien et tres victorieux Roy de france Francoys premier de ce nom faicte en sa bon+e ville et cite de Rouen ( Rouen, 1516), c2r. 61 King's Two Bodies, 13. 62 'Ainsi que lenfant descendoit les rayons de lestoille . . . Lenfant descendoit en iceluy monde auec trois rayons pour noter les graces et perfections de lame. Et estoit receu par troys belles filles bien gorgiasement acoustrees de draps de soye et de drap dor . . . representantes les troys deesses nommees graces. desqlles les noms sont Aglaia | Thalia | et Euphrosine. Et estoit en ce signifie que le roy a toutes graces en luy tant du corps que de lame tellement que on le peult dire vng chief doeuure de nature. . . . ladicte deesse pallas . . . lui donna lescu de prudence.' This final gift, indeed, hints at a periodic cycle of stellar apotheosis and earthly incarnation. The goddess of wisdom, we are told, had once bestowed this very shield upon Perseus 'pour ses vertues', and he had used it to become such a paragon of 'noblesse' that he 'finablement obtint de iuppiter lieu et place entre les estoilles' ( Lentree du tres chrestien et tres victorieux Roy, clv-c2r).

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although it has nothing to do with Virgil's newborn child --completes the incarnation of Francis's classical surrogate hero by depicting him as the ideal 'esperit chevalereux' of Christine de Pisan and Guillaume de Fillastre. He stands revealed not only as a sponsor of Peace, but also as a paragon of medieval chivalry, ' Perseus, l'honneur de noblesse'. 63 The resolute classicism of this pageant drama may at first glance obscure the imagery of the Christmas babe. Even though it dresses the infant Francis in classical armour, the spectacle nevertheless stresses his Christian identity. The pageant thus follows the lead of late medieval moralists and mythographers who turned the Golden Age into an allegory of the Garden of Eden and imposed Christian allegories upon Ovidian myths. The Ovide moralisé, for instance, regards Ovid's tale of Perseus as an allegory of Christ's redemption of mankind in which sponsus Christ ( Perseus) redeems his captive sponsa (Andromeda) from the Devil (sea monster). 64 In a similar way, Athena gives the infant Francis her crystalline shield in order to confirm not only his chivalric credentials, but also his Christian ones. If the Medusaheaded shield identifies the king as chivalric Perseus, 'paragon d'honneur', its crystalline brightness also identifies him as light come down from heaven to redeem his people. This latter, Christian moral takes the form of a hymn to Francis that reads very much like a Christmas carol. 'When King Francis comes to the world', it proclaims, 'Clarté nouvelle is descended from heaven upon the earth' so that 'Peace is restored to us and so much Grace manifest in him'. 65 In the advent of this royal infant of heavenly light, so full of grace that he restores peace to a fallen world, we witness once again the Nativity of the Christmas babe, even if he is disguised in classical armour. Like kings, consort queens are also figuratively born to their people as they enter the city for the first time. The medieval church, after all, honoured the Nativity of the Virgin almost as zealously as it revered the Nativity of Christ, and it was therefore a natural extension of the ____________________ 63

In describing the star-child as a second Perseus 'paragon 'lhonneur' and 'lhonneur de noblesse', the pageant verses ( Lentree du tres chrestien et tres victorieux Roy, c2 v) recall Christine de Pisan's characterization of Perseus as 'lesperit chevalereux' ( Epistle of Othea, V). Similarly, Guillaume de Fillastre makes Perseus, 'père de noblesse', one of the patrons of the Order of the Golden Fleece. Cf. La Toison d'or ( Troyes, 1530), 9r. 64 The Ovide moralisé heavily influenced Pierre Bersuire Reductorium morale, Mansion Ovide Methamorphose ( 1484), and Vérard Bible des poètes ( 1493). For the influence of all these texts on late medieval allegory, see Rosemond Tuve, Allegorical Imagery: Some Mediaeval Books and their Posterity ( Princeton, 1966), 219-333. For Christian allegories of the Golden Age myth, see Harry Levin, The Myth of the Golden Age in the Renaissance ( Bloomington, Ind., 1969), 34-7. 65 'Clarte nouuelle est descendue | Du ciel sur la terre et sur Ionde | Quand le roy francoys vint au monde | Par le quel paix nous est rendue | En luy tant de grace estendue. | On voyt de la terre et des cieux. I Quil a ia place entre les dieux.' Lentree du tres chrestien et tres victorieux Roy, c2 v. The hymn is posted upon the pageant just opposite a similar hymn which compares Francis to Perseus, 'lhonneur de noblesse'.

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dramaturgy of the royal entry to visualize their queens' advents according to liturgical imagery borrowed from the Feast of the Virgin's Nativity. Because the consort serves her people more by bearing children than by ruling, queens' pageants are often more fascinated with the imagery of birth than are kings' pageants. In part, this emphasis derives from the Marian imagery which forms the common currency of queens' civic triumphs. The frequent appearance of Annunciation and Nativity scenes in these shows thus often emphasizes the consort's role as childbearer. 66 But triumphs can also dramatize the queen's own symbolic birth as a way of marking the inauguration of her reign. A queen may thus find herself contemplating a royal bedchamber which the citizens have made ready for her own miraculous -- if symbolic -- birth. Perhaps the Parisian entry of Isabella of Bavaria ( 1389), which was widely reported by Froissart and others, established the pattern for this potent imagery. In an allegorical show based upon the Virgin's Nativity, the Parisians accordingly cast Isabella as the divine child in a miraculous nativity pageant that celebrates her distinctively feminine powers in the scheme of salvation. 67 Before the Châtelet, the basoche (Parisian law clerks' guild) had constructed a castle containing a royal bedchamber. In its visual effect, the pageant imitates a manuscript illustration technique; to show the interior and exterior of a building at the same time, medieval painters conventionally treat the silhouette of a castle as little more than an elaborate frame surrounding the interior scene. A very similar design appears as a manuscript illustration in The Coronation Book of Charles V ( Fig. 11 ). As in the pageant, the artist uses 'exterior' details -- the towers and battlements of the Archbishop's Palace at Reims -- to frame an 'interior' view of Charles V upon a royal bed of estate just prior to his coronation. In its simplest and most playful meaning, the pageant thus comprises a visual pun, for the Châtelet (i.e. 'little castle') then housed the Parisian law courts, known as the king's lit de justice. As Froissart observes, the exterior portion of the castle is represented by wooden battlements and towers 'strong enough to last forty years'. The interior scene, meanwhile, playfully represents the metaphorical lit by means of a particularly sumptuous, if disconcertingly literal, bed: 'a superb bed, as finely decorated with curtains, and everything else, as if for the chamber of the king, and ____________________ 66 For a full discussion of this symbolic vocabulary, see Ch. 6 below. 67 For this pageant, see Jean Froissart, uvres, ed. Kervyn de Lettenhove (25 vols.; Brussels, 1867-77), xiv. 10-11 (original text); Chronicles, tr. Johnes, ii. 400 (English version). Jean Juvénal des Ursins describes the same pageant, but he concentrates almost exclusively upon the mechanical cerf. See Histoire de Charles VI in Joseph-François Michaud and Jean-J.-F. Poujoulat (eds.), Nouvelle Collection des mémoires relatifs à l'histoire de France ( Paris, 1854), ii. 378-9. -78-

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11. Exterior castle framing interior bed of estate

this bed was called the bed of justice' 68 If this were an ordinary bed, and if the basoche had placed a king in it, we might be tempted to speculate upon the meaning of this pageant as an emblem of royal justice. 69 Was royal justice asleep, perhaps, awaiting the advent of the Queen to waken the sleeping rex justitiae? But as Froissart's description makes clear, this is no ordinary bed, and the image is not primarily a juridical one. To us, such a bed may seem an item of intimate, domestic furniture, but in the fourteenth century elaborately hung beds were displayed in reception chambers as ceremonial objects -- as 'furniture of estate' -- to express in visual terms the 'estate' of the owner. 70 As symbols of the royal estate, state beds featured as the chief item of furniture in the king's chief presence chamber at this period. By the fourteenth century, as Paul Binski points out, such beds of estate 'were central to, indeed defined, the formal royal séance in France'. 71 Such ____________________ 68For

the lit de justice as a French royal institution, see Sarah Hanley, The Lit de Justice of the Kings of France: Constitutional Ideology in Legend, Ritual, and Discourse ( Princeton, 1983). 69This is, in fact, the dominant view of this puzzling pageant. See ibid. 29. 70For the information in this paragraph concerning 'beds of estate', I am indebted to Edwin Hall , The Arnolfini Betrothal: Medieval Marriage and the Enigma of Van Eyck's Double Portrait ( Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1994), 83-8, and to the references cited there. 71The Painted Chamber at Westminster ( London, 1986), 36.

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a bed dominated the east end of the Painted Chamber in the Palace of Westminster. The manuscript illustration ( Fig. 11 ) thus chooses to symbolize Charles V's assumption of royal status by depicting him sitting for the first time upon a magnificent bed of estate seen within the frame of a castle. The lit in the Châtelet, to be sure, was not quite so literal a bed as the one depicted in the illustration; rather it comprised an elaborate, cordoned-off seating space covered by a canopied structure and containing 'a backdrop, pillows, and rich textiles specially constructed for the séance. . . a chamber within a chamber, the whole assembly coming to symbolize justice or judicial kingship'. 72 But the pageant's bed of estate nevertheless refers to the royal presence chamber. Although no one actually used these 'beds of estate' as beds, at least under normal conditions, much of the formal business of medieval kingship -ranging from audiences, to judicial pronouncements, to parliaments -- took place before and around these imposing pieces of furniture. Exceptionally, such beds might be employed to mark certain transitions in the royal estate, such as the queen's ceremonial lying-in after the birth of an heir or for the ceremonial tying in state of a deceased king or queen. As a religious image, such a bed of estate sometimes appears in medieval miniatures of the Nativity. Edwin Hall thus points out that the Boucicaut Master introduces an elaborately hung bed of estate into the 'otherwise rustic surroundings of the Nativity stable: first it serves as a lit de repos for the Child, and then, in the Adoration of the Magi miniature, it becomes a throne-like seat of estate for the Virgin and Child.' 73 Although the appearance of such a bed of estate in a stable may seem incongruous, the painter uses it as a definitive visual representation of Christ's royal estate. The basoche chose to place a woman -- 'a person to represent St Anne' -in this bed of royal estate for the same reasons that both the illustrator of Charles V's Coronation Book and the Boucicaut Master employ symbolic beds of estate. The one illustrator thus depicts Charles V for the first time sitting in a royal bed of estate within a castle as a way of symbolizing his assumption of royal status in France. So, too, St Anne's presence in the Châtelet's royal lit shows that a queen has now assumed her place at the very heart of the French royal establishment. And just as the Boucicaut Master inserts a royal bed of estate into the Nativity stable to emphasize the spiritual royalty of Christ's birth, so the pageant designers borrow familiar religious imagery to depict the inauguration of their new queen as a sacred nativity. In terms of traditional religious iconography, ____________________ 72 Binski, Painted Chamber, 2, 13-15, 36; John Steane, The Archaeology of the Medieval English Monarchy ( London, 1993), 73. 73 Arnolfini Betrothal, 157 n. 73. -80-

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12. Birth of the Virgin

images of St Anne reclining in a bed invariably represent the Nativity of the Virgin. As in the Visconti Hours ( Fig. 12 ), St Anne is almost always shown lying in an especially opulent bed. 74 The bed is appropriately a lavish one, first of all, because the salvation of mankind begins with that bed. As the collect prescribed for mass on the Feast of the Virgin's Nativity puts it, St Anne's 'childbearing of the Blessed Virgin was the beginning of salvation'. So, too, the richness of the bed's decorations 'as if for the chamber of the king' also symbolizes Anne's role as the progenitor of a royal lineage -- the Queen of Heaven and ultimately the King of Justice -- which will spring from that bed. An introit contributed by Sedulius to the mass for the Virgin's Nativity thus reminds us that the child ____________________ 74 Compare the similar opulence of St Anne's bedchamber as depicted in The Hours of Catherine of Cleves, pl. 5. -81-

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born to St Anne will in turn 'bring forth the King who ruleth heaven and earth for ever and ever', while the alleluia for that day exults in the happiness of the Virgin, 'for out of thee hath risen the sun of justice, Christ, who is our lord'. 75 As this compelling religious emblem makes clear, the very symbol of Parisian justice -- the Châtelet -- has been transformed, indeed feminized. The king's lit de justice has become the queen's lit de parage (childbed). Where judgments were once delivered by a man sitting in a throne, a woman now secures human salvation through childbirth. As Isabella approaches the Châtelet, a dramatized beast fable illustrates the nature of the feminized, queenly variety of justice that her people expect her to dispense. A mechanical white stag emerges from a 'warren' constructed nearby and approaches St Anne's bed. Wearing as it does a golden crown about its neck, the stag clearly represents the remarkable cerf which Charles VI encountered at Senlis and then adopted as his heraldic device. 76 He represents France -- a point emphasized by his resemblance to the heraldic stags decorating the Palais Royal just across the street from the Châtelet. 77 Pursued by an eagle and a lion who advance threateningly towards their quarry, the stag trembles with fright and flees to the bed of justice for succour. Are the eagle and the lion, like the hart, to be understood as heraldic animals? If so, perhaps St Anne's mediation averts a political and military threat to the French hart. More plausibly perhaps, they are merely animal predators -- the king of the beasts and ____________________ 75

For the collect, introit, and alleluia prescribed for the commemorative mass for the Feast of the Nativity of the Virgin, see Missale Romanum, i.377-8. For Anne's role as 'the focal point of the sacred lineage of Mary and Jesus', see Francesca Sautman, "Saint Anne in Folk Tradition: Late Medieval France", in Kathleen Ashley and Pamela Sheingorn (eds.), Interpreting Cultural Symbols: Saint Anne in Late Medieval Society ( Athens, Ga., 1990), 69-94. L. M. Bryant ( Parisian Royal Entry, 179) makes the interesting suggestion that the liturgy for St Anne's Day particularly associates the saint with justice. He thus points out that the mass for St Anne's Day uses Ps. 44 to address St Anne: 'Thou hast loved justice, and hated iniquity: therefore God, thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness.' Unfortunately, however, the use of this psalm is not peculiar to the St Anne's Day liturgy. It appears in virtually every saintly commemoration, including the common masses for virgins and martyrs. 76 Juvénal des Ursins, Histoire de Charles VI, 343-4. 77 Jean Juvénal des Ursins ( Histoire de Charles VI, 378) provides details of the stag's heraldic accoutrements and notes its resemblance to the painted stags displayed at the Palais. Some variant texts of Froissart Chroniquesalso include details of the crown circling the stag's neck ( uvres, xiv.11). For the history of the cerf as a royal beast, see Bryant, Parisian Royal Entry, 180 n. 31, and Juvénal des Ursins, Histoire de Charles VI, 343. It is more clearly a specifically royal beast than an animal 'associated with parlementary justice' as Bryant suggests. To some extent, a folk tradition may also account for the appearance of the stag in this pageant. According to the Roman de Saint Fanuel, which enjoyed some popularity in France during the 13th and 14th cents., Anne lived as a child in an empty eagle's nest and was fostered by a stag whose antlers budded with flowers. One day, as the stag is being coursed by the king and his seneschal, Anne intervenes to save him. See Sautman, "Saint Anne in Folk Tradition", 70-3. Does this folk tradition perhaps account for the appearance of two stags in the borders of the Visconti Hours illumination ( Fig. 12 )?

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king of the fowls respectively -- and their threat is to be understood by means of some now lost allusion to the medieval bestiary. In this little drama of a terrified stag's flight to St Anne for safety, the action of the pageant incorporates yet a third pun upon lit: the royal lit de justice, which is St Anne lit de parage, now also serves as the stag's lit d'un cerf (lair). 78 The stag thus instinctively senses the predominant nature of this transformed lit de justice; under feminine authority, it has become more a place of refuge for the oppressed than the judgment seat of the mighty. In protecting the stag, St Anne represents the essentially mediatory role which queens exercise in presiding over the lit de justice. As a patron of royal justice, she cannot herself protect the terrified hart from its menacing predators, but she can intercede with divine power on behalf of a petitioner. As the Queen pauses before the Châtelet, the pageant celebrates her advent to 'the bed of justice'. When the King takes his place in the 'lit de justice', he comes to distribute justice. As this pageant points out, however, the Queen comes to the bed of justice to perform a different role. Where the King judges, she mediates and protects. At her request, 'twelve young maidens, richly dressed, with chaplets of gold on their heads', respond to the stag's plight. They come 'out of the wood, holding naked swords in their hands' and interpose themselves between the stag and his enemies, 'showing that with their swords they were determined to defend the hart and the bed of justice'. 79 In her saintly way, St Anne thus sponsors, mitigates, intercedes, alleviates. Indeed, she can claim to be the original and archetypical female mediatrix, for in giving birth to the Virgin, she performs that primal act of heavenly intercession which marks 'the beginning of salvation' according to the collect prescribed for the Feast of the Virgin's Nativity. As Queen Isabella approaches the Châtelet, St Anne lit de parage -the bed in which Mary was born -- appropriately symbolizes her own role as a sponsor of royal justice. Perhaps, indeed, the Queen's own pregnancy most explicitly associates her with both St Anne and the Virgin. Like her biblical predecessors, she too carries a royal child in her womb and knows that she will perform her most significant act of mediation by giving birth. The fate of the Valois dynasty and of her people depends upon the anticipated child. The very action of the pageant, indeed, emphasizes ____________________ 78 In the technical vocabulary of venery, lit specifically referred to the 'lodge' or 'lair' of a deer, especially a stag. For the currency of lit in all of these senses, see Randle Cotgrave, A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongves ( London, 1611), s.v. lict. 79 Froissart, uvres, xiv.11 (original text); Chronicles, tr. Johnes, ii.400 (English version). Juvénal des Ursins ( Histoire de Charles VI, 378) describes how 'those who governed the stag' were able 'to move the eyes, antlers, mouth, and all its limbs' so as to make it appear to tremble. -83-

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13. St Anne, the Virgin, and Christ amidst symbols of the Virgin

and defines Isabella's mediatory pregnancy. As she pauses before St Anne's lit de parage, saint, Queen, and unborn child form themselves into a conventional iconographical grouping: the holy genealogy. Just as late medieval illustrators frequently depict the Christ-child glimmering in the womb of Mary, who emerges in turn from the womb of St Anne ( Fig. 13 ), 80 so the pageant similarly aligns St Anne, Queen Isabella, and the unborn child. Focused as it is upon St Anne's 'bed' this emblematic grouping clearly celebrates Isabella's symbolic 'birth' as Queen even as it anticipates the future birth of a Valois prince. ____________________ 80 Cf. The Hours of Catherine of Cleves, ed. Plummer, pl. 143. -84-

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The pageant not only celebrates Isabella's birth as Queen, but also represents it. The show at the Châtelet may anticipate Christ's Nativity, but it actually reenacts the Nativity of the Virgin by casting the Queen of France in the role of Mary. Isabella has already played the mature Virgin, as we will see, in at least two earlier pageants in this same show. 81 As she now pauses before the 'bed' of St Anne she takes her place as St Anne's child. Isabella's arrival before this pageant thus effects a distinctively queenly epiphany: St Anne gives birth to a Virgin, whose advent will eventually produce a Saviour. Isabella's appearance before the pageant, moreover, initiates the action in which St Anne intercedes with divine power to save the heraldic stag of France. The show accordingly represents the Queen's symbolic birth as an act of divine mediation which begins the work of national salvation, a process which the Queen must continue by giving birth to a second, even more miraculous, child. Second Advent: The Soul's Jerusalem On the first day of Advent, 1431, Henry VI of England entered Paris to be crowned ' Henri II' of France. The English regency council almost certainly selected the date of the entry with a careful eye to its liturgical symbolism. A child not yet 10 years old, Henry might well have remained uncrowned for many years to come had it not been for such symbolic considerations. In 1429 Henry's rival, the Dauphin, had himself crowned at Reims, the traditional site of French coronations. With their armies in retreat and a rival French king established upon French soil, the English found the always tenuous allegiance of their 'subjects' and allies wavering. In this crisis, according to Bernard Wolffe, 'it was vital to establish Henry V's heir upon French soil and to strengthen his rights by the symbolism of coronation'. 82 Given these considerations, the selection of the first Sunday in Advent for the celebration of the boy's solemn adventus played an important part in the English attempt to counteract the symbolic impact of the Dauphin's coronation. Henry's first entry into his French capital would therefore take place upon a day appointed in both the Sarum and Gallican lectionaries for the reading of St Matthew's account of Christ's Entry into Jerusalem. The symbolism of the liturgy thus informed the political symbolism of the occasion, emphasizing at once the king's regality and sanctity. Even the boy's youth served him well in this symbolic climate. Since the liturgy of the first Sunday in Advent ____________________ 81 See Ch. 6 below. 82 Henry VI ( London, 1981), 58. The English council had not even considered crowning Henry before the deteriorating political situation in France forced its hand. -85-

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primarily emphasizes the themes of Christ's First Coming, this boy-king's advent might usefully be celebrated in images of the Incarnation and Epiphany of the infant Saviour. As we might expect, this auspicious symbolism set the stage for a series of Nativity and Epiphany pageants designed to celebrate the advent of the Christmas king. In contributing its usual mystére to the triumph, the Confraternity of the Passion thus staged a sequence of edifying biblical tableaux on an immense scaffold in front of the Hospital of the Trinity which 'reached from a little beyond St Sauveur to the end of the Rue Darnetal'. 83 Rather than the familiar scenes of Christ's Passion and Crucifixion which were its trademark, however, the Confraternity presented on this occasion a series of 'histories demonstrating the Nativity of our Lord, Jesus Christ'. 84 These seem to have formed an episodic narrative of the Advent and Incarnation of the Saviour, stretching 'from the conception of Our Lady until Joseph took her into Egypt because of King Herod who had seven score and four thousand male children beheaded or killed. This was all in the Mystery.' 85 The various accounts of the civic triumph identify the subjects of at least five of these 'histories': the Immaculate Conception, the Marriage of the Virgin, the Nativity of Christ, the Adoration of the Magi, and the Flight into Egypt. 86 Together, the various ____________________ 83

Delpit, Collection générale, 242-3; Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, 276. The otherwise detailed French account does not give the subjects of any of the episodes, but it does report that they all have something to do with the Nativity of Christ: "Et a l'endroit de la Trinite, avoit escarfaulx moult richement aornez, es quelez, estoient figures de personnaiges vifs, les ystoires demonstrans la nativité de notre" (s'.) Jeshus Crist; les queles personnes aucunement ne se mouvoient et apparoient estre ymages et estoient bien huit vins personnaiges' ( Delpit, Collection générale, 242). 85 "Après s'en vint devant la Trinité où il avoit sus eschaffaut le mistere depuis la Concepcion Nostre Dame jusques que Joseph la mena en Egipte pour le toy Herode qui fist decoller ou tuer VIIxx IIII milliers d'enfans masles"'; Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, 275. English translation: A Parisian Journal 1405-1449, tr. Janet Shirley ( Oxford, 1968), 269-70. 86 In the passage cited immediately above, the Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris seems to report that the Confraternity's mystéres began with the Conception of the Virgin and ended with the Flight into Egypt. An English chronicler recalls two more of these tableaux with particular vividness: 'And then in the same strete was made a scaffold; and perupon men disgysed after the weddyng of oure Lady, and of the birthe of oure Lorde Ihesu Crist, fro the begynnyng to the ende.' He was particularly impressed with the skills of the actors in the tableaux: 'And here was neyder man nor childe flat any wight myght perceyue, flat euer chaunged any chere or countenaunce all the tyme duryng; hot held theire contenaunce, as they had been ymages peynted; so pat all peple pat sawe hem, seyd pat they sawe neuer in peire lyves such a-noder sight' ( Brut, ii.459). Monstrelet reports five episodes in all: 'there were pageants that represented in dumb show the nativity of the holy Virgin, her marriage, the adoration of the three kings, the Massacre of the Innocents, and a good man sowing his corn, which characters were specially well acted' (tr. Johnes, 597). The puzzling tableau depicting 'a good man sowing his corn' seems curiously out of place in this context. Monstrelet is probably thinking of the parable of the wheat and tares ( Matt. 13: 24-43), but it is unclear how such a pageant (a Last Judgment allegory) belongs to such a Nativity sequence. Perhaps Monstrelet is mistaken in this detail? 84

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reports make clear that the Confraternity's mystére consisted of a coherent sequence of tableaux depicting the history of the coming of the Saviour from Immaculate Conception to the Flight into Egypt, 'fro the begynnyng to the ende'. In so doing, these biblical pageants seek to invest the boyking's entry into Paris with the imagery of Christ's Incarnation. In the same spirit, a second pageant -- one contributed this time by the officials of the Châtelet (the royal court of justice) -- offered a symbolic epiphany of the child as a Rex Justitiae. Iconographically, it takes the form of the Throne of Justice that we will examine in Chapter three. On a scaffold before the Palace of Justice, a boy resembling Henry sat majestically enthroned, dispensing justice to his subjects, one of whom offers him a petition. English and French barons kneel on either side of the throne, 'offeryng vp their arms' to him. In kneeling and offering up their arms to the enthroned child, their political homage takes the form of the Adoration of the Magi. What especially distinguishes this visionary epiphany of the King's royalty from other such Thrones of Justice common to the medieval civic triumph, however, are the two crowns which miraculously hover in the air over the boy's head. Such a stagecraft miracle serves as a manifestation -an epiphany -- of the King's special status. It declares the King's divine election and sets him apart as one who 'comes in the name of the Lord'. Above all, the pageant carefully modifies the conventional imagery of the Throne of Justice so that it serves as a particular manifestation of the idea of the Anglo-French monarchy as defined in the Treaty of Troyes: by thassent of the three estates of either of the realmes of Fraunce and Englande, . . . it be ordeigned and prouided that fr the tyme that we or any of our heires come to the croune of Fraunce, bothe the crounes that is to saie of Fraunce and England perpetually be together in one and in thesame persone, . . . And that bothe realmes shalbee gouerned . . . not seuerally vnder diuerse kynges in one tyme, but vnder that same person whiche for the tyme shalbe kyng of bothe the realmes and souereigne lorde . . . kepyng neuerthelesse in all maner of other thynges to her of ye same realmes their rightes, liberties, customes, vsages, and lawes, not makyng subiecte in any maner of wise one of thesame realmes to the rightes, lawes or vsages of that other. 87 The pageant's two hovering crowns thus manifest Henry's extraordinary status as king of two kingdoms as envisioned by the treaty. Similarly, the 'estates of either of the realmes of Fraunce and Englande' who kneel in attendance before the the enthroned king symbolize the dual feudal allegiance which recognizes and upholds the boy's divine right to those crowns. In the manner of such epiphanies, the pageant thus offers much more than ____________________ 87 Hall, Chronicle, "Henry V", p. 99. -87-

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a flattering personal image for the King. It serves, rather, as a manifestation of the King's public body, in this case of Henry's dual Anglo-French monarchy, appointed by God, sustained by his faithful barons, and doing impartial justice to all classes of society and to both nations. Despite these two striking invocations of Advent and Epiphany themes, the other pageants in the civic triumph showed surprisingly little interest in proclaiming the divinity that hedged its new King. Rather, with English armies in decline and the Dauphin claiming to be the rightful king of France, the English looked to this triumph for a forthright demonstration of the capital's allegiance. Obligingly, most of the other pageants concerned themselves with declarations of the city's faith in its anointed monarch. At the Saint-Denis Gate, for example, three mechanical hearts, representing the three estates of the city, opened with joy at the coming of the king. At another station, Paris herself, personified as Dame Renown and accompanied by the Nine Worthies of both sexes, greets Henry and declares that 'with her whole mind she receives him humbly'. She then acts out a famous and worthy city's reception of its king by leading Henry in splendid procession through the gates of Paris. 88 At still another station, a group of nuns, calling themselves the 'Daughters of Zion', wait for Henry beside a small golden castle symbolic of the heavenly Jerusalem. 89 From a central tower in the model Jerusalem, a mechanical peacock -- a denizen of paradise -- spreads its feathers and crows while the nuns, true to their role as the daughters of the heavenly Zion, rejoice in the advent of their Messiah and praise his holy name. In order to produce the 'great confirmation of obedience' which the English so longed to see, 90 these pageants seem sharply to contrast with the Nativity and Epiphany tableaux. They focus upon the city's acclamation of the messiah rather than upon manifestations of Henry's messianic kingship. They accept Henry's Christ-like role, but they particularly emphasize the city's readiness to receive its long expected lord with humility and rejoicing. While these various protestations of civic loyalty certainly do reflect particular English political anxieties, one cannot really say that these pageants are more politically oriented (in the narrow sense of the term) than the Nativity and Epiphany ones. One group stages Henry's triumph from the ____________________ 88

Delpit, Collection générale, 243. Ibid. 244. The pageant bears a French text in which the nuns clearly identify themselves as 'the daughters of Zion': "Les dames de religion, | Comme les files de Syon, | Se rejouissent pour leur roy, | Qui est venu en noble arroy". The castle further identifies itself as the heavenly Jerusalem (Zion) by its golden substance and by bearing a scriptural quotation drawn from Ps. 149: "Filie Syon exultent in Rege suo, laudent nomen ejus". 90 Wolffe, Henry VI, 58. 89

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point of view of the Christ-like king who comes to save his people. The other dramatizes the same event from the point of view of the people who await the Anointed One, prepare for his Advent, and rejoice at his coming. Hence, as a result of these differing representational perspectives, the pageants are political in different ways. The throne pageant at the Châtelet primarily adopts Epiphany imagery; it not only invites us to see the young English King revealed as a Rex Justitiae, but as we have seen it also manifests the idea of the dual Anglo-French monarchy: ordained by God, supported by the peers of both realms, dispensing justice impartially to both kingdoms. 91 In the same way, the Daughters of Zion pageant reflects a political view more appropriate to its distinct representational strategy. It provides a politically satisfying declaration of Parisian loyalty to the English King by asking us to regard these enthusiastic greetings as a type of Advent joy: Parisian citizens welcoming their King seem also to be the children of Israel greeting the coming of the Lord. Given the traditional independence of the various civic organizations that provided the pageants and the unusual circumstances of the entry, such differences in strategy are probably inevitable. 92 By comparison to civic triumphs at London or Bruges, where common planning and co-operation between the various guilds often produced a high degree of thematic and stylistic coherence, Parisian triumphs in the fifteenth century often seem but a succession of separate shows, united only in their common responses to the political anxieties of the moment and, perhaps, by a traditional understanding of what is proper to such events. But in its unusual relationship to the coronation, Henry's triumph broke with traditional Parisian practice, thereby emphasizing the conceptual heterogeneity of the show. Most Parisian civic triumphs are retrospective; they celebrate the first advent of a king or queen who has already been crowned at Reims. Henry's entry, by contrast, was prospective; it celebrated the advent of a king who would be crowned two weeks later. 93 While some ____________________ 91

According to J. W. McKenna's study of the political symbolism of Henry VI's dual monarchy, this pageant 'marked the zenith of English political propaganda in France': ' Henry VI of England and the Dual Monarchy: Aspects of Royal Political Propaganda, 1422-32', JWCI 28 ( 1965), 160. 92 There is much less central planning in the production of early Parisian civic triumphs. The various civic and guild organizations -- the basoche, the Confraternity of the Passion, and so forth -each staged their individual pageants with relative independence. Several of these organizations may well have regularly designed their pageants to a standard theme for entry after entry (see Bryant, Parisian Royal Entry, passim, on this point). It was certainly possible, of course, for one of these groups to set a standard for the others in any given civic triumph. Pierre Gringore's advent as the general designer of Parisian civic triumphs in the late 1490s marks a real change in this pattern. For the first time, all pageants could be planned centrally. 93 For the date of Henry's coronation in Paris on the third Sunday in Advent, see Bryant, Parisian Royal Entry, 84.

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pageants were content to view the entry in the traditional way as the first ritual manifestation of a new king, others responded to the unusual timing of the entry and regarded the show as a ritual of communal preparation for the coronation. As a result of these divergent approaches, the show seems especially incoherent, even by fifteenth-century Parisian standards. For our purposes, however, this very incoherence is of particular value because it reveals the various organizations conceiving differently of the idea of Advent. Taking their cue from the liturgical date of the civic triumph and the youth of the King, some of the organizations dramatized Henry's entry as a kind of Incarnation or Epiphany. Other sponsors thought of the triumph primarily as a preliminary spiritual preparation leading to the coronation. Instead of dramatizing the manifestation of the Saviour, they dramatize the city's attempts to prepare itself to receive the Saviour when he finally manifests himself. These tableaux accordingly explore another liturgical idea known as Christ's 'Second Advent', that is, the Lord's secret and spiritual advent into the hearts and souls of those who are prepared to receive him. This idea, as we shall see, conceives of the advent of Christ from the point of view of the individual soul who, having experienced the spiritual advent of Christ, is filled 'with all joy and peace in believing that [he] may abound in hope, and in the power of the Holy Ghost'. 94 Conceived of this way, the idea of Advent finds apt expression in the second group of Parisian tableaux which dramatize Henry's entry from the perspective of the people who experience and respond to the coming of the Lord. In devising these manifestations of faith, the Parisian citizens could draw inspiration from a considerable body of liturgical theory which imagines a Second Advent of Christ as a complementary extension of the Incarnation. 95 While both advents referred alike to the Incarnation, each regards this event differently. On the one hand, conceived as Christ's 'First Advent', the Incarnation recalls an historical event of general significance: Christ came to the world bringing grace and salvation to all mankind. On the other hand, conceived as Christ's 'Second Advent', the Incarnation represents a spiritual and ever contemporary event of individual significance: Christ comes spiritually into individual souls bringing each of us grace and making personal salvation possible. In the first, physical incarnation which happened once in the past, Christ humbly took on human flesh; in the second, spiritual one which happens whenever, as St Bernard puts it, 'anyone amongst you . . . desires to prepare a ____________________ 94 95

For the Second Advent significance of this reference to Rom. 15: 13, see below, p. 95. It is important to keep in mind that we are examining the idea of the Second Advent of Christ, not the Second Coming, which is a very different thing. For the latter, see below, Ch. 5.

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seat for Christ in his soul', human flesh takes on the Holy Spirit. 96 As a historical event, the First Advent often finds its most apt liturgical expression in 'historical' metaphors: Christ's Entry into Jerusalem used as an Advent Gospel lesson on the first Sunday of the season or the 'Tollite portas' ('Lift up your gates . . . and the King of Glory shall enter in') used throughout Advent as gradual and offertory psalms. By contrast, this second, 'spiritual' advent usually requires a correspondingly spiritual metaphor. In this vein, the Fathers of the Church and popular homilists often speak of the Second Advent as if it were a kind of spiritual royal entry. St Bernard, the Church Father who did most to elaborate the imagery of the Second Advent, thus imagines Christ coming to inhabit 'the Jerusalem of your souls'. 97 By the late Middle Ages, the liturgy had so far succeeded in imposing this metaphor that we find such popular theologians as Bromyard and Mirk advising their readers to prepare their minds for Advent in the same manner that a city prepares itself for a royal adventus: For with the coming of the king the streets are cleaned and whatever should offend his sight is carried away; the homes are decorated and hung with tapestries and hangings; the citizens are dressed up. Therefore put away sins from the street of the mind: let the house of the mind be adorned and decorated with virtues; and let hangings be hung upon the backs of the poor. 98

While admonitions to spiritual preparation appear throughout the four weeks of Advent, the liturgical imagery of the third week particularly evokes the necessary spiritual preparation required of those who would receive the Lord. ____________________ 96

"Beata anima quae sedes est Sapientiae. Quaenam est illa? Anima utique iusti. Merito plane, quia iustitia et iudicium praeparatio sedis tuae. Quis in vobis est, fratres, qui desiderat in anima sua sedem parare Christo"? ( St Bernard, PL 183. 45). 97 PL 183. 51. St Bernard recognized only three advents of Christ: "ad homines, in homines, contra homines" ( PL 183. 43-7). He did not distinguish, as do later commentators, between the spiritual coming of Christ to individual souls at death and the coming of Christ at the general resurrection of all bodies at the Last Judgment. As a consequence, while the distinction between Christ's First and Second Advents tends to blur in later commentaries, for Bernard the Second Advent assumed a much greater importance as a spiritual advent between the Incarnation and the Second Coming. 98 John Bromyard, Summa praedicantium, A. 13. 33, tr. Smith, "Concordia", 146. Cf. John Mirk's more extended version of this familiar homiletical metaphor: 'we must do as e commendable custom is and as reson requireth, that whan an erthly kinge woll cum to a parte of his kyngdom, to a citee or to a good tovn, thoo pat be his loving legemen vnto peire power and degre in pe most worship pei wol receyve hym to his plesure at pat commyng. Pen sith pis kinge pat is commyng, as pe gospell spekith of pis day, he is king of all kinges and lorde of all lordes -- David in Psalmo, "Rex omnis terre Deus" -- it is semyng and requysite pat all kinges, lordes, princis and comouns worship oure souereyn lorde Criste Ihesu, to whom all Cristen creatures be legemen, reuerently to receyve hym in his commyng, inasmoche as he commyth not onely to one parte of his kyngdome but he commyth mercifulli to shewe hym to euery synhill creature.' The Advent and Nativity Sermons from a Fifteenth Century Revision of John Mirk's Festial ( Heidelberg, 1981), 58-9.

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Originally a penitential fast comparable to Lent, Advent still retains something of its Lenten character by virtue of the Ember Days of fasting and penance observed during the third week of the season. In this spirit, the popular Golden Legend refers to Advent not as a festival but as a fast, at once 'a joyous fast and a fast of penance', 99 and preachers like John Mirk delight in drawing contrasts between the 'first commyng of Criste Ihesu into pe world' which 'brought ioye and blisse with hym to all Cristen creatures' and the 'dredefull [second] commyng of Criste to the dome' that 'shall be so cruell and vengeable pat no tonge can tell'. 100 The offertory prayer on the third week, for instance, establishes this theme by portraying the worshippers as sinners held captive by their own iniquity and longing for forgiveness: 'Lord, thou has blessed thy land: thou hast turned away the captivity of Jacob. Thou has forgiven the iniquity of thy people' ( Ps. 84: 2-3). 101 In the same spirit, the postcommunion prayer implores the mercy of the Lord, that 'by atoning for our sins we may be prepared for the coming festival' [of Christ's birth]. 102 As Christmas Eve approaches, the penitential confessions become ever more strident, the prayers for deliverance ever more urgent: 'May our fasts be acceptable to thee, O Lord, we beseech thee, and by expiating our sins render us worthy of thy grace, and lead us to thy everlasting promises' (offertory prayer, Ember Wednesday); 'O God, who seest that we are afflicted through our own wickedness, mercifully grant that we may be consoled by thy visitation' (collect, Ember Saturday). 103 This Lenten sobriety only ends with the Christmas Eve announcement that 'tomorrow shall the iniquity of the earth be abolished, and the Saviour of the world shall reign over us'. 104 ____________________ 100

Mirk, Advent and Nativity Sermons, 65-6. "Benedixisti domine terram tuam auertisti captiuitatem iacob. remisisti iniquitatem plebi tue". To strengthen this suggestion, the reformed ( 1570) missal of Pius V also uses this text as an introit chant ( Missale Romanum, i.5, ii.5). 102 "Imploramus domine clementiam tuam: ut hec diuina subsidia a uitiis expiatos ad festa ventura nos preparent" ( ibid. i.5 ). 103 Ember Wednesday: "Accepta tibi sint quesumus domine nostra ieiunia: que expiando nos tua gratia dignos efficiant: et ad sempiterna promissa perducant". Ember Saturday: "Deus qui conspicis quia ex nostra prauitate affligimur concede propitius ut ex tua uisitione consolemur" ( ibid. 7, 9 ). 104 (Alleluia, Christmas Eve): "Crastina die delebitur iniquitas terre. et regnabit super nos saluator mundi" ( ibid. 15 ). 99 "Hinc est etiam quod jejunium adventus partim est exsultationis partim moeroris" ( de Voragine , Legenda aurea, 1). "Secundus etiam aduentus subdiuitur, quia aduentus iusticiae est duplex" ( Bromyard, Summa praedicantium, A. 13. 1). The Legenda's description merely reflects orthodox thinking about the nature of the Advent fast, as in Durandus, Rationale: "Hoc jejunium est partim exultationis, et partim moeroris. Exultationis est, ratione primo adventum, scilicet in carnem, de quo mentio fit in hoc tempore; moeroris est, propter secundem adventum, scilicet ad judicium, de quo fit etiam ibi mentio, et ideo in eo quædam cantica lætiti dicuntur, propter adventum misericordiæ et exultationis, et quædam subticentur, et jejunatur, propter adventum severæ justitiæ, et moeroris" (6. 2. 6).

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Those pageants which conceived of Henry's civic triumph as a spiritual preparation for his coronation would naturally address themselves to such imagery. In reflecting a spiritual -- even psychological -- interpretation of the coming of Christ, the Parisian civic triumph stages Henry's advent in correspondingly spiritual and psychological imagery. Where the concept of Christ's Second Advent emphasizes the inner preparation and spiritual worthiness required for the reception of the Lord, many of the pageants spell out Paris's inner worthiness of its king and its eagerness to receive him. Indeed, since spiritual worthiness, as St Bernard points out, demands obedience and reverence to those in authority, these dramatizations of joyful allegiance represent the citizens as both religiously faithful and politically loyal, thus providing the 'great confirmation of obedience' so important to the English regime. 105 If the Second Advent formula prescribes exclamations of joy and praise for the soul filled with the Holy Spirit, other pageants stage just such exclamations of joy to mark the spiritual advent of the King. If the formula sees the soul transformed by faith, still other pageants testify to the spiritual transformation made possible through the spiritual advent of the Saviour. As Henry enters the city, Paris receives him into its heart and expresses its joy in receiving the long-expected Messiah. Two of the pageants, in fact, attempt surprisingly original translations into pageantry of the very tropes we have just been examining. Consider, first of all, the tableau which awaited Henry at the gate of Paris. An almost perfect example of what Rosemond Tuve calls 'that rather decadent literalizing of metaphors' so common to fifteenth-century allegory, 106 the pageant attempts to visualize Henry's entry into the city according to the imagery of the familiar collect for the second Sunday in Advent as if he were entering the hearts of his people, stirring them, and filling them with joy and peace. 107 Above the SaintDenis Gate, the three estates of the city sail in the Ship of Paris. As the King approaches, these mariners hang over the side of the ship 'iij blody hertys like vnto mennys hertys, bot loey were gretter'. 108 As a 'sign that the hearts of this city open with ____________________ 105

"Third Sermon for Advent", PL 183. 45 : "Redde, inquam, reverentiam praelato, et oboedientiam; quarum altera cordis, altera corporis est. Nec enim sufficit exterius obtemperare maioribus nostris, nisi ex intimo cordis affectu sublimiter sentiamus de eis. Quod etsi tam manifeste innotuerit indigna praelati alicuius vita, ut nihil onmino dissimulationis, nihil excusationis admittat, propter eum tamen a quo est omnis potestas, ipsum quem modo talem novimus, excelsum reputare debemus, non praesentibus; personae meritis, sed ordinationi divinae, et dignitati ipsius officii deferentes". 106 Allegorical Imagery, 387. 107 The collect is prescribed in both Roman and Sarum missals: "Excita domine corda nostra ad præparandas Unigeniti tui vias: ut per ejus adventum, purificatis tibi mentibus servire mereamur". See Missale Romanum, i.5. 108 Brut, 459.

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joy at the coming of their prince and lord', 109 the hearts miraculously open to reveal emblems within of the joy and love that fill the hearts of the city at the reception of its lord. Sweet-smelling flowers spring from inside one to be strewn over the King; white doves and small birds fly forth from the others, forming yet another emblem of the soaring joy that supposedly fills the hearts of Paris as a response to Henry's advent. 110 It was to prove a reasonably popular image in French civic triumphs. The similar tableau (Fig. 32) which Pierre Gringore designed for the entry of Queen Claude( 1517) 111 may have been directly inspired by Henry VI's pageant, although Gringore gives the image a very different symbolic meaning. Even provincial cities, perhaps consulting the chronicles for appropriate precedents, found this an appealing emblem. When Anne de Montmorency entered Béziers as Francis I's governor and personal representative ( 1533), the citizens declared their love for their sovereign by means of a tableau once again echoing Henry VI's pageant. Placed above a triumphal arch built around the city gate through which the King's deputy entered the city, three emblematic hearts signified, respectively, the love of the whole country ( "le cueur de France"), of the province ( "un cueur . . . signifiant Lenguedoc"), and of the city ( "le cueur de Beziers"). 112 In its vision of the heart of Paris opening joyfully to receive its Lord, this pageant dramatizes one of the central images that medieval commentary uses to refer to that spiritual advent of Christ. The liturgical theorist Durandus, for example, speaks of the Second Advent occurring 'every day in the hearts of the faithful by the Holy Spirit', an image reflected in a collect prescribed for the second Sunday of Advent: 'Stir up our hearts, O Lord, to prepare the ways of Thine only begotten Son; that through His coming we may attain to serve Thee with purified minds.' 113 The popular preacher John Mirk similarly stresses the essential importance of receiving Christ upon his advent with 'a precious present' ____________________ 109

"En signe que les cuers des estas dicelle ville se ouvrirent de joye, de la venue de leur prince et seigneur" ( Delpit, Collection générale, 241). 110 In this attempt to make the spiritual advent both visible and palpable, the literalism of this pageant draws upon a tradition of late medieval images of romantic love. Cf. Tuve, Allegorical Imagery, 387. 111 For a discussion of this pageant, see below, Ch. 5. 112 Entrée de François ler dans la ville de Béziers (Bas Languedoc), ed. Louis Domairon ( Paris, 1866), 37-9. Montmorency's entry preceded that of Francis I by three days. Francis's own entry carried further the theme of the city's profession of loyalty and love to its ruler. 113 Durandus, Rationale: "Secundus [adventus est] in mentem, qui decensus fit quotidie in cordibus fidelium per Spiritum sanctum" (6. 2. 2); Missale Romanum, i. 3 : "Excita domine corda nostra. ad preparandas unigeniti tui uias ut per eius aduentum purificatis tibi mentibus seruire mereamur". On this point, also see Mirk, Advent and Nativity Sermons, 57-8.

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consisting of 'the praysyng of pe hert. . . . For pe laude and praysyng of pe movth avayleth nought withoute pe enterely prayer of pe hert.' 114 The flowers that spring from one of the opened hearts recall a familiar 'Second Advent' allegorical image from the Somme le roi: the garden of the heart, burgeoning with virtues and nurtured by God 'pe grete gardener'. 115 Durandus similarly thinks that the series of 'Greater Antiphons', which are a distinguishing feature of Advent worship, exhort us to purify the sanctuary of our body, which has been soiled by the five senses, until it is rendered worthy of receiving God, because the King who ought to come will refuse to dwell in the midst of impurity'. 116 He similarly construes the 'Rorate caeli' introit ('let the earth be opened and bud forth a Saviour') as an allegorical image of Christ's Second Advent entry into the hearts of the faithful: in the moral sense, the earth is the human heart, which spiritual men open by their preaching until it gives birth to the Saviour, that is to say, until Christ be reformed in their heart after the words of the Apostle: 'you are my little children, of whom I am in labour again, until Christ be formed in you' ( Gal. 4: 19). 117 Although Durandus may be stretching a metaphorical point in this comment, the liturgy of the season delights in similar imagery. Durandus also thought that the collect for the third Sunday signifies 'the advent of Christ into our heart' because it prays for the Lord to 'enlighten the darkness of our minds by the grace of Thy visitation'. 118 The epistle for mass on the second Sunday in Advent similarly describes the effects of Christ's spiritual advent upon those whose hearts have been stirred and minds purified: Now the God of patience and of comfort grant you to be of one mind, one towards another, according to Jesus Christ; that with one mind and with one mouth you may glorify God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Wherefore receive one another, as Christ also hath received you unto the honour of God. . . . Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing: that you may abound in hope and in the power of the Holy Ghost. ( Rom. 15: 4-13) ____________________ 114

Mirk, Advent and Nativity Sermons, 70. Tuve, Allegorical Imagery, 102, 108; Frère Lorens, The Book of Vices and Virtues, ed. W. Nelson Francis, EETS os 217 ( London, 1942), 95-6. 116 Rationale: "Actor lectionarii nos hortatur, ut purgemus hospitium nostri corporis, quod per qunque sensus sordidatum est, ad suscipiendum Deum, quia in dordibus habitare despicit Rex venturus"' (6. 2. 13). 117 In Durandus' time, this introit opened worship on the first Sunday in Advent. Later missals (both Rome and Sarum) consign it to the fourth. An especially important introit, it also begins all Saturday services devoted to the Virgin throughout Advent. Rationale, 6. 3. 1. 118 Ibid. 6. 5. 2. 115

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So, too, the Communion antiphon for that Sunday celebrates the spiritual joy 'that cometh to thee from thy God', and the postcommunion prayer asks that the Eucharist may become 'spiritual nourishment' that will 'teach us to despise earthly things and to love heavenly ones'. 119 Described in this way, the Eucharist itself becomes at once a preparation for, and an enactment of, the secret and spiritual advent of Christ. A second pageant in the series -- that of the Daughters of Zion -- literalizes the liturgical imagery of the Lord's spiritual advent in yet another way. 120 If the introit for the second Sunday in Advent prophesies, in the words of Isaiah ( 30: 30 ), that the People of Zion will behold the coming of the Lord with joy in their hearts, 121 the pageant seeks to dramatize the fulfilment of this prophecy by means of a castle representing the heavenly Zion. Although the golden castle structure topped by a mechanical peacock must have been visually striking, the pageant's most important symbolic appeal lay in sound rather than visual impression. It predominantly serves the triumph as an emblem of the joy which the faithful feel at the advent of the Saviour. One measure of such advent joy is expressed by the exultant crowing of the mechanical peacock -- a bird of paradise -- as the King approaches the golden castle. Another takes the form of the choir of nuns, who gather about the castle to sing their praises of the King. To do so, they model their rejoicing after Psalm 149, which is written on the golden castle and which prescribes the appropriate manner in which the 'Daughters of Zion' ought to praise the Messiah with singing and rejoicing: 'Let the daughters of Sion be joyful in their king. Let them praise his name in choir: let them sing to him with the timbrel and the psaltery.' 122 The city and its inhabitants now take on scriptural rather than allegorical identities: Paris has become Zion, the nuns have become the Daughters of Zion, and their joyful reception takes the form of musical adoration. The advent of the Lord requires such expressions of joy, as all medieval commentators point out, because it celebrates 'pis first commyng of Criste Ihesu into pe world' which 'brought ioye and blisse with hym to all Cristen ____________________ 119

"Ierusalem surge et sta in excelso et uide iocunditatem que ueniet tibi a deo tuo" (Communion antiphon); "Repleti cibo spiritalis alimonie supplices te domine deprecamur: ut huius participatione misterii, doceas nos terrena despicere. et amare celestia" (postcommunion prayer); Missale Romanum, i.4. 120 Delpit, Collection générale, 244. 121 Once again, a widespread use, common both to the Sarum and Roman missals: "Populus Sion, ecce Dominus veniet ad salvandas gentes: et auditam faciet Dominus gloriam vocis suae in laetitia cordis vestri". See Missale Romanum, i.2. 122 According to Delpit ( Collection générale, 244) the Latin text of Ps. 149 as posted on the golden castle reads: "Filie Syon exultent in Rege suo, laudent nomen ejus". The text thus alters the Vulgate slightly from 'Filii Syon' (Children of Zion) to 'Filie Syon' (Daughters of Zion).

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creatures'. 123 The liturgy of the season accordingly requires expressions of joy in anticipation of the Lord's coming even as it demands sobriety and penitence. Again and again, the congregation, figured as the People of Zion, are called upon to rejoice in the coming of the Lord. Psalms and anthems like those which the nuns sing for Henry accordingly fill the various church services for Advent. Zechariah's famous advent prophecy, for example, appears several times in the masses and vespers of Advent as well as the Christmas Day mass: 'Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Sion, shout for joy, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold thy King will come to thee, the just and saviour.' 124 The introit for the second Sunday in Advent similarly manages to construe one of Isaiah's wrathful prophecies ( 30: 30 ) as if it were a joyous prophecy of spiritual salvation wrought by Christ in the hearts of the faithful: 'People of Sion, behold the Lord shall come to save the nations: and the Lord shall make the glory of His voice to be heard in the joy of your heart.' 125 The heartfelt singing of such canticles of joy, according to Durandus, 'signifies the joy of the Elect who progress "from virtue to virtue" until they see "the God of gods in Sion" ' ( Ps. 83: 8). 126 If the citizens open their hearts joyfully to Henry through these pageants, still others insist that the King open his to them. Consider the three-part tableau devoted to the life of St Denis which awaited Henry at the old Saint-Denis Gate on the rue Saint-Denis. Ostensibly a devotional icon to the city's patron, it consisted of scenes which explicitly emphasized the saint's dual role as both an agent and a recipient of the spiritual advent -- the same dual role which the triumph imagines for Henry. In the first scene, according to the legend posted on the pageant, St Denis comes to France 'to multiply our faith . . . through preaching'. He thus literally represents the first coming of the Christian faith to France and its people. In the second scene, he continues the work of France's spiritual conversion by openly protesting his faith to the proud Roman prefect who he knows will condemn him to death for doing so. Again, the scripture posted upon the pageant emphasizes his role as an agent of faith: he stands before the prefect 'like a good and firm champion showing his faith'. Finally, the third tableau stages the familiar scene of the last ____________________ 123Advent and Nativity Sermons, 65. Cf. the Legenda aurea, 1: "Hinc est etiam. quod jejunium adventus partim est exsultationis partim moeroris. Nam ratione adventus in carnem dicitur jejuniam exsultationis; . . . . Et ad hoc innuendum ecclesia cantat tunc quaedam cantica laetitiae". 124Zach. 9: 9; this usage is common to both Sarum and Roman missals. 125"Populus syon ecce dominus ueniet ad saluandas gentes et auditam faciet dominus gloriam vocis sue in letitia cordis nostri": Missale Romanum, i.2. 126Rationale: "Renovatus quidem cantus gaudium electorum significat, qui proficiunt de virtute in virtutem, in quia videbitur Deus deorum in Sion" (6. 2. 14). -97-

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Communion of St Denis.'Because he had preached and written much of the faith without fault', Christ appears miraculously to St Denis in his prison cell, offers him the Eucharist, and confirms his salvation. 127 This last tableau thus stands in relationship to the first two as pattern and copy: in Christ's coming to redeem St Denis (in the midst of a brilliant light, according to the Golden Legend 128 ), we see the saint experiencing Christ's spiritual advent himself; in St Denis's coming to multiply our faith' in France, we see the saint effecting the spiritual advent in others. Like Durandus' spiritual man, he opens human hearts through preaching and example so that they may experience the advent of the Saviour. 129 As its explanatory legend makes clear, the pageant not only illustrates the spiritual advent in the life of St Denis, but also attempts to inspire such an advent in the young king. Directly addressing Henry, it admonishes him to defend the faith which St Denis brought to France. Since all 'French kings are called très chrétien for defending the faith', it says, the 'jeune roy' must defend it too 'as the ancient French kings have done'. 130 Such an admonition, stressing as it does the particular duties and devotion of French kings, combines the city's political motives with the adventist idea. On the one hand, the legend extends the spiritual evangelism of St Denis from the pageant directly to the King. The three tableaux propose a model for his own conduct as a très chrétien king. If Henry is to experience the saving advent of the Lord, he will both fulfil his duty as king and ensure the Lord's advent in his own heart. On the other hand, this spiritual admonition serves as a vehicle for the city's political evangelism. In calling on the 'jeune roy' to defend the faith of St Denis 'as the ancient French kings have done', the pageant transparently demands something more than Henry's evangelical zeal on behalf of the Christian faith. A devotional icon to the patron saint of France, the pageant invites Henry to share the particular faith of France, to take St Denis for his own patron, commit himself to the line of 'ancient French kings', and nurture the spiritual welfare of the French nation. In its didacticism, the pageant thus reverses the roles of king and city in the royal entry. As he views these tableaux, Henry becomes the subject of a spiritual and political awakening while St Denis becomes its agent. Where before he had seemed a Christ-like king entering the heart of Paris, Christ and France now offer to enter his heart. ____________________ 127 Brut, ii.460. The pageant, erected at the Old Saint-Denis Gate, was placed at the traditional site of the jail where St Denis was imprisoned before his execution. 128 De Voragine, Golden Legend, ii. 240. 129 Rationale, 6. 3. 1; above, nn. 116, 117. 130 "Se les rois francois sont appellez | Pour le foy garder tres cristiens | Defendez la vous je me (jeune?) roy | Comme ont fait les toys anciennes (anciens)"; Delpit, Collection générale, 242. -98-

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Very few medieval kings experience such moments of spiritual illumination. For the most part, the idea of Advent dictates that kings will inspire spiritual transformations and citizens will experience them. As he enters the city, the king expects to play the role of the Messiah; correspondingly, the citizens almost inevitably find themselves cast in the role of the people who must receive their Saviour with joy. Citizens customarily fulfil these expectations, as we have seen, by acclaiming the king's advent with choruses of 'Noel! Noel!' or by shouting the Palm Sunday greeting, 'Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini!' But the citizens also dramatize their acclamation from the pageant structures as well as the streets. They entrust to carefully chosen emblematic characters the task of representing the king's power to inspire them and the sincerity of their enthusiastic responses. 6. Tidings of Great Joy: The Nativity Shepherds As one of its most distinctive symbols of the king's spiritual, second advent into the hearts of his citizens, the civic triumph appropriated from the liturgical drama those other indispensable figures of the Nativity: the musical shepherds. They are particularly useful to the civic triumph because their humble status and spontaneous emotions can serve as idealizations of the citizens' acclamation of their king: as the shepherds responded with joy to the Nativity of Christ, so the citizens respond with joy to the symbolic nativity of their king. In the civic triumph's repertoire of symbolic characters, they thus tend to play complementary roles both to the Ordo prophetarum and to the visit of the Magi. Where the prophets are learned and intellectual men, the shepherds appear as simple and emotional folk. Throughout medieval commentary, they are always thought of as men of spontaneous emotions; they express their emotions rather than their thoughts. For St Augustine, the shepherds' spiritual condition contrasts them with the Magi more sharply than their social status does. The shepherds, he observes, experienced grace before the Magi, because 'feeling less sinful', they 'rejoiced more readily over their salvation, whereas the Magi, burdened with many sins, more humbly asked for forgiveness'. 131 The prophets proclaim the Messiah's birth; the Magi humble themselves before the first epiphany; the shepherds distinguish themselves by their spontaneous joy. ____________________ 131Augustine, "In Epiphania Domini, V", PL 38. 1036: "In illis [i.e. the Jews] gratia prior, in istis [i.e. the Gentiles] humilitas amplior. Fortasse ergo illi pastores minus rei, de salute alacrius exsultabant: isti autem Magi multis onerati peccatis, submissius indulgentiam requirebant". -99-

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The shepherds serve as such potent symbols of the Second Advent in civic triumphs for two reasons. First, their humble social status made them convenient emblems of spiritual humility. As humble labouring men, they keenly experience the fallen nature of the world and do not require penitence to prepare them spiritually for the advent of the lord. Second, their capacity for spontaneous expressions of joy (often symbolized by their musical ability) make them apt symbols of the spiritual joy made possible by the king's advent. The spontaneous joy they experience at the king's advent, as medieval commentators point out, distinguishes the sheep from the goats, spiritual from corporeal men, the elect from the damned. Where merely corporeal men regard the king's advent with fear and apprehension, Durandus explains, the saints experience at the advent of the Son of God a special joy, a 'general joy, because they have seen a rational creature elevated in an ineffable manner by his elevation to Divine Nature'. Their joy naturally expresses itself in music. All of the Advent anthems, he points out, end with an alleluia 'in order to indicate the joy that we feel in the Coming of the Saviour', and it is especially characteristic of 'spiritual men -- and not of secular men -- to sing new songs' as an expression of joy at Advent. 132 Their joyous acclamation of the Saviour does not alter the hard social conditions of these 'spiritual men', but it signals the spiritual transformation made possible by the coming of grace (in the form of the king's presence) to their otherwise fallen world. Especially in French and Burgundian triumphs, shepherds often take the stage to re-enact their biblical roles as recipients of the angels' annunclation. For Charles VII ( Paris, 1437) and Philip the Good (Bruges, 1440), for example, choirs of angels herald the advent of the prince by singing their anthem, "Gloria in excelsis Deo", while shepherds joyfully receive these tidings on behalf of the citizens. 133 So strongly are shepherds identified as recipients of good news, however, that we sometimes find them receiving quite other annunciations than scripture would warrant. In his pageant for Mary Tudor's entry into Paris ( 1514), as we have seen, Pierre Gringore surprisingly adapts the shepherds to the purposes of a queen's triumph by having them share in the archangel Gabriel's Annunciation to the Virgin (Fig. 2). In the lower compartment of the Palais Royal pageant, ____________________ 132 Rationale: "Generalis tamen commemoratio omnium sanctorum bene fit, quoniam licet sancti ex adventii filii Dei speciale gaudium et praemium assecuti fuerint, majus tamen ad generate gaudium eorum extitit, quia creaturam rationalem ex unione ad divinam naturam viderunt ineffabiliter sublimatam" (6. 2. 7); "Spiritualium enim est canticum novum cantare, et non sæcularium, qui cum adhuc quasi veteres sint, et mala earum adhuc recentia potius lugere, quam gaudere debent" (6. 2. 14). See also 6. 2. 8. 133 Enguerran de Monstrelet, Chronique, ed. L. Douët-d'Arcq (6 vols.; Paris, 1857-62), v.309. -100-

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they gather around Mary Tudor and Louis XII, who are enthroned in glory like the King and Queen of Heaven. They 'sing melodiously', however, in response to the Annunciation scene in the upper compartment. The rondeau they sing compares the willingness of the Virgin ('Marie au ciel') to make 'peace between God and men' to the peace between England and France which Mary Tudor ('Marie en la terre') has achieved by marrying Louis XII. In this and other similar pageants, shepherds symbolize the spiritual qualities made possible by the king's metaphoric nativity. The shepherds who welcome the Archduke of Austria to Paris ( 1501) explicitly manifest the Prince's power to transform the inner lives of the citizens. The pageant of the Peaceful Shepherd (Pasteur Paisible) who governs the garden of Paris ('Le Clos de Paris') attempts to describe the work of spiritual transformation which the advent of the Archduke brings to the people of Paris. Pasteur Paisible and his 'bergiers' companions ( Cueur Loyal, Droit Chemin, Bon Voulour, Honneur, Peuple Ioyeux, Accord, and Louenge) 'play their instruments' and 'sing melodiously' to symbolize the harmony and peace created by the Archduke's advent. Their names define the specific qualities of spirit that animate citizens in a state of grace. At the Prince's approach, the citizens appear in their redeemed forms as shepherds, their peaceful and harmonious spiritual states characterized by loyalty, good will, the via recta, honour, joy, accord, praise, and peace. 134 As symbols of citizens inspired by grace, shepherds often play their roles, as we have seen, in symbolic gardens. In Paris ( 1504), Anne of Brittany encountered such a symbolic garden in the form of a 'grant et sumptueux mistère' before the Châtelet. In it, the melodious singing of 'bergers et bergières' symbolized 'peace and union at the park of France'. 135 The Fountain of Ponceau in Paris lent itself particularly well to this symbolic function. It could easily be made to gush with wine and surrounded by a garden landscape to dramatize the King's power to transform and redeem his realm. The spigots of the fountain could be transformed into the petals of a fleur-delis so that the Fountain of Grace could be seen to provide essential nourishment for the French heraldic symbol. 136 Shepherds gather about such a fountain to sing their sweet and melodious songs for Charles VIII in 1484, while in 1492 a fleur-de-lis spouting ____________________ 134 tree faicte A paris, a4. 135"Item devant le Chastelet avoit ung aultre grant et sumptueux mistère, ouquel estoit plusieurs personnages comme bergers et bergières en paix et union au parc de France, chantans mélodieusement, et plusieurs autres choses de grande conséquence": André de la Vigne, "Le Sacre d'Anne de Bretagne et son entrée à Paris en 1504", Mémoires de la Société de l'Histoire de Paris et de l'Île de France, 29 ( 1902), 295. 136On this point, see Bryant, Parisian Royal Entry, 142-3. -101-

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'liqueur douce et humaine' from its petals specifically represents Paris as the peaceful world ('le monde en paix'). The shepherds play their part in this symbolic garden by singing 'chancons de pleasance' to express their joy in the peaceful world which the Queen's advent has created. 137 In some cases, the shepherds and shepherdesses who disport themselves in these symbolic gardens may even suggest more courtly, bucolic pastors. A group of 'the most beautiful girls' perform a 'bergerie' for Charles VIII as part of his Lyons triumph in 1489. Dressed as loving pastoral shepherdesses in courtly taffeta gowns, they are nevertheless accompanied by ewes, rams, and dogs to establish their workaday credentials. But a distinction between bucolic and nativity shepherds can be highly misleading. The courtly 'bergerie' had already transformed the way that late medieval painters imagined biblical shepherds. In books of hours, the Annunciation to the Shepherds 'is treated as a pastorale in which shepherds dance, play music and disport themselves with their wives'. In Nativity illustrations, as we have seen (Fig. 9), the shepherds 'appear round the crib labelled with the names given to them in French Mystery Plays: "Alison" and "Mahault" for the women, "Gobin le Gai", "Aloris", "Ysanber" and "le beau Roger" for the men.' 138 In the pageantry of the civic triumph, biblical shepherds necessarily take on the characteristics of bucolic shepherds because both are seen as peaceful, musical, and emotional. The 'bergières' who gather to sing their songs of joy about a fountain that spurts forth 'vin clairet' to welcome Charles VIII do not lose their biblical credentials simply because they have gained pastoral ones. In inviting 'all those who wished to drink of the fountain', 139 they perform a role that is rich in symbolism at once courtly and religious. 7. A Season of Penitence: The Least Brethren of the Lord Joyous acclamation is not the only 'Second Advent' dramatic technique in the repertoire of the medieval civic triumph. On those occasions in which a civic triumph is used as a means of reconciliation between citizens and their sovereign, the penitential themes of the Advent fast are particularly appropriate. In the first chapter, we examined one such occasion in detail: the impressive civic triumph ( 1392) which the citizens of London designed to be the centrepiece of their reconciliation with Richard II, ____________________ 137Nicolai, "Sensieult le couronnement", 115-16. 138J. Harthan, Books of Hours and their Owners ( London, 1977), 171. 139"Sera faicte une bergerie des filles les plus belles, habillées de taffetas et de toiles de plaisance et auront brebis, moutons et chiens. En outre y aura une fontaine qui jettera vin clairet, duquel boiront tous ceux qui voudront boire": E. M. Bancel, Jehan Perréal dit Jehan de Paris ( Geneva, 1970), 22. -102-

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whom they had deeply offended. Earlier in this chapter, we then began an examination of an even more serious exercise in the same genre: the Bruges triumph ( 1440) designed to seal the citizens' reconciliation with Duke Philip the Good after a military rebellion. In doing so, however, we only examined the ways in which the Bruges triumph makes use of First Advent themes to represent Philip the Good's advent in the image of the Saviour's Nativity. We can conclude our examination of the Bruges triumph at this point, because we are now in a position to appreciate the sophisticated and surprising ways in which the Brugeois also marshalled Second Advent themes in representing themselves to their triumphant prince. The citizens' extensive self-representation is unusually detailed in a theatrical form which conventionally spends most of its efforts on staging epiphanies of the king or queen. Elsewhere a pageant or two in a lengthy civic triumph might be reserved for expressing the city's joy at the king's advent or dramatizing civic acclamation of the sovereign; in the 1440 show, by contrast, at least half of the pageants are wholly devoted to dramatizing the effects of Duke Philip's advent upon the city's changing spiritual condition. The citizens marshal their pageants, moreover, in a carefully organized sequence (Fig. 6), so that Philip's entry apparently evokes the citizens' spiritual regeneration in three phases: repentance, renewal of grace, and spiritual restoration. Together these pageants constitute a complementary epiphany to those which stage the Duke's own manifestation as the Christmas king. If the Duke's entry into Bruges proclaims him to be the Christ-like head of the body politic, the Brugeois progressively reveal themselves to their Duke as his equally Christlike political body. Early pageants in particular represent the citizens as the sinful subjects of a wrathful Lord. The coming of Christ, as a consequence, initially occasions fear and penitence. These early pageants therefore seek to depict the citizens' penitential preparation for the coming of their Lord. Popular sermons, for instance, routinely point out that the congregation must practise the discipline of contrition if they are to prepare themselves properly for the coming of the Lord in Advent: This mercyfull and myghtfull kinge Criste Ihesu, pat is commyng as a mercyfull lorde, he ioieth and is glad of good men pat be meke and lowe in spirite. . . . Whan he perseyvep we knowlege owre offence and synnys, be contrite and sory perfore and be in will to amend vs and forsake oure synnys, pat mercyful lorde dope away pe payne pat we haue deseruyd or els so aswagyp hys ire pat it deryp vs lytyl or no3t. For he is so mercyfull pat, yf we will be contrite and mekely aske for3euenes, he will for3eue vs oure offence and reseyve vs to grace. 140 ____________________ 140

Mirk, Advent and Nativity Sermons, 49-53.

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For Bruges, this process begins with John the Baptist's call to repentance immediately outside the city gate (1). As the Baptist then leads Duke Philip through the Cruysporte passage, Job awaits, sitting naked upon his dungheap just inside the city wall (2). Rejecting the counsel of his wife and his three false friends, he submits himself penitently to the will of the Lord: 'The Lord gives, the Lord takes away, Let the will of the Lord be done.' 141 Two pageants later before St Obrecht's Priory, a tableau of Abraham and Isaac (4) specifically recalls the melodramatic show of penitence before the city gates in which the citizens had dressed themselves in sackcloth and offered up their lives to Philip. In the pageant, the patriarch Abraham raises a sword to slay his son Isaac as an offering to God, but an angel stays his hand. 'Now I know that you fear the Lord, " reads a scripture affixed to the pageant, thus driving home the emblem's lesson that the citizens' readiness 'to obey their Lord in everything' has saved them. 142 On stage as in life, the lord forgoes the sacrifice he has demanded. Yet another scaffold towards the middle of the series represents the city as a repentant sinner forgiven by Christ. Where many Low Countries conventionally portray themselves as the faithful sponsa betrothed to her lord (e.g. the Maid of Ghent), on this occasion the citizens of Bruges choose a repentant prostitute as their representative. 143 In a 'very rich stage' representing Simon the Leper's house, Mary Magdalen falls weeping at the feet of the Saviour (9). To the consternation of his disciples, Jesus does not rebuke the penitent Magdalen but forgives her 'many sins . . . because she hath loved much' ( Luke 7:47). In just such a way, the chronicler points out, 'our dread lord has forgiven the city of Bruges all her misdeeds'. 144 In the midst of these histrionic demonstrations of repentance, yet another group of pageants details an attempt by the citizens to prepare themselves for the advent of a wrathful lord. In a series of three pageants near ____________________ 141

"Voor die poorte was die hystorie v Job in leu de person | sitt de vp een messinck al naecht in sijn keytijnichede | e by h drie v sijn vriend a deen side | e sijn wijf aen dander side h begrijpende. Ende Job altoos themwaert hebbende paciencie | e loefde gode v al | e voor die staegie daer st t ghescreu . D s dedit d s abstulit sicut d o placuit ita fact est. E was een beteekenesse dat die stede v Brugghe was in grooter keytiuicheyt | ende en hadde up nijement huer betraw dan in die gracie van haren prinche". Dits die excellente cronike, Cvijr. 142 Despars explicitly makes this point: "die van Brugghe insghelijcx ooc ghereet zijn omme voortan haerlieder prince in als te obedierene" ( Cronijcke, iii.434). See also Dits die excellente cronike, 107r, for a very similar significatio: "die stede v Brugge ghewillich was | e gheobediert hadde huer here prinche". 143 For the civic maids in the role of sponsae to the princely visitor, see Ch. 5 below. 144 'Up een zeer rijckelick stellagie . . . figuerlick betoocht hoe Marie Magdeleine, in thuys van Sijmoen Lepreux, in alder odtmoediclheit den almueghenden Heere te voete viel, die welcke endelinghe zeide, by tinhoudene van zijnen bijllette: Dimittuntur ei peccata multa quia dilexit multum': Despars, Cronijcke, iii.435-6. Dits die excellente cronike provides the obvious significatio: ' was een beteekenenesse dat onse gheduchte heere die stede van Brugghe al hare mesdaet vergheu hadde.'

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the centre of the triumph, the citizens attempt to enlist intercessors on their behalf. Two tableaux (8) pointedly urge Duchess Isabella to assuage her husband's wrath against the citizens, thus fulfilling her consort's role as virgo mediatrix. 145 The first of these, which shows Ahasuerus choosing Esther 'above all other women', makes the point that Duke Philip loves his spouse 'more than all the women' just as Ahasuerus loved Esther ( Esther 2: 17). The second pageant then asks Isabella to use Philip's love to intercede with him on behalf of the city. In it, Esther steps forward to speak on behalf of the people of Judaea, 'who were in great fear'. Ahasuerus, 'because of the love he felt for her', asks, 'What is thy petition, Esther, that it may be granted thee?' Esther replies, 'Give me my people for whom I plead' ( Esther 7: 2-3). Such a scene may hint at the essential innocence of the people of Israel, who have been plotted against by the wily Haman in the biblical story. But as an acknowledgement that the citizens have not earned or merited their Prince's grace, another more sinister tableau shows a wrathful Christ preparing to punish a sinful world with plague (11). Neither painful obedience nor tearful repentance averts the threatening scourge this time; rather, only the earnest intercessory prayers of St Dominic and the Virgin Mary secure the miracle of God's pardon at the last possible moment. In this way, the city once again places the history of its rebellion in a theological context of sin, repentance, and redemption by means of unmerited grace. The city's salvation, like that of the repentant sinner, depends ultimately upon the intercessions of saints especially beloved of the lord who alone have the power to avert a wrathful and terrible judgment. The liturgical pattern of the Advent season moves from penitential preparation to joyful relief as the Lord's coming takes the form of a merciful Nativity rather than a wrathful judgment. The pageantry of the Bruges civic triumph imitates this pattern in a very similar fashion. The theatrical representations of the city's penitence not only establish the city's spiritual preparation for the Duke's advent but they also create a good deal of dramatic tension. They create expectations that the Duke's advent will necessarily result in a wrathful visitation, a just punishment for communal sin. Towards the middle of the show, however, these tensions are relieved as another group of pageants asserts the joyful and festive side of Advent. While the initial pageants stress imagery characteristic of Advent's 'fast of penance', these now turn to celebrate the 'joyous fast' which responds to the grace bestowed upon the world at Christ's Nativity. ____________________ 145Dits die excellente cronicke ( Antwerp, 1531), Cvijr-Cvijv; Despars, Cronijcke, ii.435. For a discussion of the civic triumph's traditional characterization of the queen (or, in this case, duchess) as a virgo mediatrix, see Ch. 6 below. -105-

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Two important tableaux near the centre of the triumph especially dissipate the tension evoked by the penitential scenes. The first of these (12) takes place immediately after the scene depicting St Dominic's prayer and therefore serves as a response to the saint's plea for mercy. In a joyful proclamation that a time of grace rather than punishment is coming to Bruges, the tableau stages the story of Zacchaeus, a rich sinner, who climbed a tree to catch a glimpse of the Messiah as he entered Jericho. 146 Entering the city, Christ spots Zacchaeus in his lofty perch and commands him to 'make haste and come down: for this day I must abide in thy house'. As Zacchaeus descends from the tree and escorts the Saviour to his house, Christ embraces the sinner and proclaims that 'this day is salvation come to this house'. So the Duke's entry into Bruges, we are told, similarly heralds the formerly sinful city's restoration to 'happiness and welfare'. 147 In its command that Zacchaeus must make his house ready for the Lord, the pageant continues the Advent theme of spiritual preparation. Bruges, like Zacchaeus, must continue to prepare for the advent of its lord, but for the first time the city represents the Duke's advent as joyful rather than fearful. Further, just as the Duke's entry to Bruges precipitates a spiritual reformation among the citizens, so Christ's coming to Jericho precipitates a spiritual reformation in Zacchaeus: 'Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have wronged any man of any thing, I restore him fourfold' (Luke 19: 1-9). The following pageant (13) then takes pains to manifest the city's response to its merciful deliverance. At that pageant, we recall, Philip enters a model of the city of Bruges while King David plays his harp and little maechdekins pop out of the city to sing 'Noel! Noel! Noel!' at the Duke's approach. From Philip's point of view, as we have seen, the pageant offers a frankly symbolic portrayal of the Duke's entry as a type of Christ's Nativity. If we now view the same pageant from the point of view of the citizens, we can see that they also offer a frankly symbolic portrayal of their own role. The little maechdekins may be citizens of Bruges, but since King David presides over the model city, they can also claim to dwell in a city of David. As David plays his psalm ( 88: 1 ) in praise of the Lord's mercy ('The mercies of the Lord I will sing for ever'), ____________________ 146Despars, Cronijcke, iii.436-7; Dits die excellente cronike, 107v. Both tableaux -- that of St Dominic's prayer and that of Zacchaeus on Palm Sunday -were staged on scaffolds built atop the wall of the Jacobin cloister, thus emphasizing a relationship between the two pageants. 147"E beteekende dat die comste v onsen gheduchten here grotelic was ter blijschap e wel vaert van onset stede van Brughe" ( Dits die excellente cronike, 107v); "Men daer by hadde willen te kennen gheven dat sprincens comste in Brugghe die gherechtige welvaert van der stede was" ( Despars, Cronijcke, iii.437). -106-

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they respond by bursting from the city with cries of 'Noel! Noel! Noel!', and their actions, according to a motto inscribed on the pageant, illustrate yet another of King David's psalms: 'Let the city rejoice that seeks the Lord' ( Ps. 104: 3). 148 However amusing it may seem, their mechanical action serves as an apt symbol of the citizens' spiritual transformation: once fearful and penitent, they are now animated by joy in response to the merciful advent of the lord. The triumph carefully stages the very moment in which the citizens experience a transformation from fearful anticipation of a wrathful visitation to joyful thanksgiving for a merciful advent. This transformation occurs at the very midpoint of the show in the Nativity pageant (10). At this point, as we have seen, the Duke first appears to his people as a newborn babe, the Christmas Messiah, instead of the wrathful Christcome-to-judgment of the parousia. The citizens who witness this unexpectedly benevolent divine manifestation take symbolic form in the pageant as Nativity shepherds. Much of the Bruges Nativity pageant's significance lies in the nature of the shepherds' reaction to the angelic annunciation and in their homage for the Messiah, for it represents the ideal form that the citizens' own response should take to the Duke's adventus. The lightning bolts which emanate ominously from the throne of the Almighty are dispelled by the birth of the Christ-child. No longer fearing 'with a great fear', they 'all look upward with the same expression, which was splendid'. Their joyful reception of the Good News, the chronicler observes, 'signifies the happiness of the coming of our respected Lord and Prince'. 149 In this way, the Nativity becomes a particularly evocative emblem of the city's acceptance of their Duke, who comes not as a vindictive Father but a merciful Saviour. They receive Philip into Bruges with the same joy as that of the shepherds who once received the infant Christ into the world. As a political image, the pageant borrows a trope from the liturgy of Advent to establish a properly subordinated relationship between sovereign and subject. This symbolic Nativity represents Philip's advent as a type of Christ's merciful First Coming 'as a mercyfull lorde, [who] ioieth and is glad of good men pat be meke and lowe in spirite'. 150 At the same time, ____________________ 148

The text of Ps. 104: 3 has been altered from 'Let the heart of them rejoice that seek the Lord'. Despars, Cronijcke, iii.436; Dits die excellente cronike, 107 v. Both chronicles report the adapted text of the annunciation: 'Annuntio vobis gaudium magnum, quia hodie scietis quia venit Dominus.' Both also emphasize the shepherds' histrionic joy (Despars: 'die voorzeide herderkins al upwaert keken met eender contenance die fray was'). Dits die excellente cronike uniquely explains the emblematic significance of their happiness: "E die herderkins v bened maect eene conten chie | die aerdich was | beteekenen de die blijscepe v der comste v onsen gheduchtegh here e prinche". 150 Mirk, Advent and Nativity Sermons, 49. A merely conventional description of the motives of the First Advent of Christ. Compare, for example, de Voragine, Golden Legend, 4-6. 149

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14. Jean Dreux, Margaret of York and the Seven Works of Mercy it represents the citizens as humble shepherds who are exalted by their joy at the coming of the Lord. This remarkable change in the citizens' spirits prepares the stage for an even more startling transformation. Consider the climactic cluster of four remarkable pageants depicting the Seven Works of Mercy which are performed near the end of the show (14-17). On four successive street corners, Philip encounters tableaux representing Jesus' famous Last Judgment parable ( Matt. 25: 31-46), which was known to the Middle Ages as the Seven Works of Mercy. In each tableau, the city had depicted one of the traditional Works: feeding the hungry, refreshing the thirsty, clothing the naked, giving lodging to the homeless, comforting prisoners, visiting the sick, and burying the dead. We can in fact reconstruct these tableaux with some confidence because each carefully evokes the familiar visual iconography of the Seven Works. While Jean Dreux's famous manuscript painting (Fig. 14), done some twenty-eight years after the Bruges entry, cannot claim to illustrate the Bruges pageants, nevertheless both painting and pageantry must have looked very similar. Both represent the Seven Works in virtually identical iconographical imagery. In the painting, the Duchess of Burgundy ( Duke Philip's daughter-in-law) performs one of the Seven Works in each of seven tabernacle-style panels. In the streets of Bruges, Philip similarly finds a symbolic representation of himself -- in each case he appears as 'a rich man' rather than as a duke -- performing -108-

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one of the Works in each of seven tabernacle-style booth stages. The first two of these stages consist of three tableaux each, while the last two consist of a single compartment each: the seventh Work ('burying the dead') and a sombre vision of Christ seated upon a rainbow performing the Last Judgment. In each tableau, a scripture bearing the appropriate text from Matthew 25 explains the scene: 'I was hungry and you gave me to eat'; 'I was thirsty and you gave me to drink'; 'I was naked, and you covered me'; and so on. 151 These four pageants triumphantly complete Bruges's symbolic regeneration. At the beginning of the show, the citizens had represented themselves as penitent sinners. In the middle, they rejoiced as grace was restored to them. Here at the end of the show, their atonement complete, they now appear as humans created in the image of God. For the first time -- not only in Bruges but anywhere in Europe -- the citizens appear in civic triumph pageants symbolically represented as types of Christ. The standard visual iconography of the Seven Works of Mercy makes this point by including a figure of Christ among the recipients of Mercy in each compartment. He thus stands among the crowd of hungry, thirsty, naked, and homeless recipients of the Duchess Margaret's charity in the first four of Jean Dreux's miniatures, then looks out from the prison bars in the fifth, stands at the bedside of the sick man in the sixth, and finally stands almost hidden behind the two priests officiating at the burial scene in the seventh. Although the brief descriptions of the Bruges Works of Mercy pageants do not explicitly mention his presence, each compartmented stage must almost certainly include a Christ figure amongst the crowd of hungry, thirsty, homeless, naked, imprisoned, sick, and dead recipients of charity. But even if not, the scripture posted beneath the throne of the Son of Man on the last stage makes it clear that Christ is to be sought primarily among the crowd of his humble 'brothers', not among the great and powerful: 'Come, ye blessed of my Father, for as long as you did it to one of these my least brethren, you did it to me.' 152 In insisting that the citizens' sincere penitence has restored them to Christlikeness, these pageants rest their case firmly upon the theology ____________________ 151The Bruges pageants clearly derive from the iconographical tradition, which adopts a different order of the 'Works' from that prescribed by the scripture. Matt. 25: 31-46 lists the works in the following order: feeding the hungry, refreshing the thirsty, lodging the stranger, clothing the naked, visiting the sick, comforting the prisoner. The visual tradition adds 'burying the dead' to the scriptural lists, and reorders the first six as follows: feeding the hungry, refreshing the thirsty, clothing the naked, lodging the stranger, comforting the prisoner, visiting the sick. 152"Venite benedicti patris mei, quod diu hec vni ex hijs fratribus meis minimis fecistis mihi fecistis" ( Dits die excellente cronike, 108r'; Despars, Cronijcke, iii.437). The pageant verse combines Matt. 25: 34 and 25: 40. -109-

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of the Second Advent. Medieval commentary points out again and again that the Second Advent not only justifies and saves the penitent sinner, whose soul Christ seeks to enter each day, but in so doing, Christ also transforms the sinner into his image. St Bernard particularly thinks of the Second Advent as a parallel phenomenon to the Incarnation. As God takes on human flesh in Christ, so human flesh can be glorified by taking on the Holy Spirit: Thanks to Christ's spiritual Second Advent, we may 'look for the Saviour, our Lord Jesus Christ, who will reform the body of our humbleness, made like to the body of his glory'. 153 We can only experience the reformation of our human bodies into the Body of Christ's glory, however, on one condition: when Christ comes to us, he must find 'our hearts already reformed and made like to the humility of his own heart'. The necessary humility, however, can only be achieved by the practice of penitence: 'Only let us confess our iniquities, and for the glory of his grace, he will justify us freely. For he loves the soul which is constantly examining herself in his sight and judging herself with sincerity. And it is only for our own sakes he extracts this judgment from us, because if we judge ourselves we shall not be judged.' 154 Transformed by means of this spiritual discipline, earthly man becomes Christ-like. Indeed, St Bernard chooses language to suggest that -- in some senses at least -- the penitent's body as well as his heart may participate in such a transformation: 'This is the work which the second advent shall accomplish, "that as we have borne the image of the earthly" so may we "bear the image of the heavenly" [man]'. 155 By embracing the idea of Christ's Second Advent, the citizens emphatically turn the symbolic tables upon their Duke. While portraying themselves as the 'least brethren' of Christ, they represent Philip in these pageants as a 'rich man'. This worldly characterization robs him of the spiritual dignity which the penitent sinners have achieved, while at the same time the deliberate reduction in Philip's social status emphasizes his accountability to a King higher than himself. As far as Philip is concerned, his accountability before Christ may well be the main point of these four pageants. In essence, the parable depicted in these tableaux is about the nature of divine judgment. To the medieval mind, in fact, it specifically refers ____________________ 153

PL 183. 49. Bernard here quotes Phil. 3: 20-1. PL 183, 49: "Adveniens enim Salvator reformabit corpus humilitatis nostrae, configuratum corpori claritatis suae, si tamen prius fuerit cor reformatum et configuratum humilitati cordis ipsius". 155 PL 183. 51: "Veniet enim ad te Filius cum Patre, veniet Propheta magnus, qui renovabit Ierusalem, et ille nova facit omnia. Hoc enim faciet hic adventus, ut, sicut portavimus imaginem terreni, sic portemus et imaginem caelestis". Bernard here quotes from 1 Cor. 15: 49.

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to the Second Coming, that 'dredefull commyng of Criste to pe dome'. As the risen souls gather before Christ on the Last Day, these Seven Works will serve as the criteria by which Christ will judge each soul -- particularly the souls of the rich, powerful, and privileged. On that 'cruel!' and 'vengeable' day, according to the popular preacher John Mirk, only those who have shown mercy to Christ's least brethren will themselves receive mercy. In citing this parable, in fact, Mirk finds that it also refers to the Second Advent theme of Christ's spiritual advent into the individual soul. Ultimately, Christ's judgment merely reflects the quality of each person's spiritual response to Christ's Second Advent -- a point he elaborates by drawing a parallel with Christ's Palm Sunday adventus. Just as the citizens of Jerusalem once received their Saviour by spreading their clothes 'in pe wayes and stretes bifore Criste', so the 'gostely' clothes which each Christian should spread before Christ as he makes his spiritual royal entry should consist of 'good werkes of mercy and of pitee vnto pe pore and nedy': For he pat yevith of his erthly goodes to pe pore peple and nedy for pe loue of God, suwrely he spredith his clene clothes in Goddis way. And so he receyueth his mercifull kynge Criste Ihesu which woll rewarde hym in pe kingdome of hevyn. Quia 'quod vni ex minimis meis fecistis michi fecistis' -- for pat mercifull lorde seith, 'pat ye do to oon of my pore pat commyth in my name ye do to me'. And so pe kinge commyth to pe whan pow receyvest any pore creature in his name. 156 Just as in Mirk's explication of this parable, the Duke's treatment of the 'pore creatures' of Bruges establishes the criteria according to which Christ will judge the Duke's soul. Philip may have entered Bruges like Christ the King come to judge his errant subjects on the Last Day. Indeed, the imagery of the show has frankly invited him to play that role, albeit the civic triumph often prefers to cast him in the role of the forgiving Christ of the Incarnation. In this climactic series of pageants, however, Philip himself is made to experience the Second Coming of Christ as the Son of Man calls the Duke of Burgundy to account for himself. To some extent, indeed, the pageant dares to stage the moment in which Christ delivers his 'dredeful dome' on Philip's soul. Just as in the Alkmaar Master's version of the Seventh Work (Fig. 15), the third and fourth tableaux in this cluster of pageants combine the 'burial of the dead' with the Last Judgement. Unlike the first two tableaux which each group three of the Works together, however, the third pageant stage isolates the 'burial of the dead' for special ____________________ 156Mirk, Advent and Nativity Sermons, 66-8. -111-

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15. Alkmaar Master, Burying the Dead

emphasis. Philip witnesses the pious rich man paying for a funeral while the priests bury the dead man. Then, in the fourth tableau of the series, Philip comes before another single scene, isolated for special emphasis: the Judgement Seat of the Son of Man represented as 'a high throne wherein our Lord God sat in his Power' judging the souls of those who have come before him. The Alkmaar Master's version of the Lord's judgment seat takes the form of an Apocalyptic rainbow throne. In this fashion, the painter fulfils the conventional iconography of the Seven Works by showing a burial scene taking place beneath Christ's Judgment Seat. In this way, the painter suggests that a divine judgment has already been passed upon the dead man, who is being buried, and will inevitably also be passed upon the patron, whose pious Works of Mercy the series of seven panels celebrates. In dramatizing this conventional design, this fourth tableau gathers together the seven rich men depicted in the various compartments of the -112-

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other three pageants in the cluster. They now all stand together before the Son of Man, awaiting divine judgment. More importantly, as he pauses to consider this pageant, Duke Philip inevitably finds that the design of the show includes him dramatically in the tableau. He too stands before the throne of the Almighty, awaiting the doom of a King greater than he. Perhaps diplomatically, perhaps hopefully, the Son delivers a judgment which sorts Philip and the seven rich men among the sheep rather than the goats: 'Come ye blessed of my Father; for as long as ye did it to these, the least of my brethren, you did it unto me.' The chronicler, quick to second this judgment, carefully observes that Christ's words specifically refer to 'the mercy that our duke has done to the city of Bruges'. 157 Without question, however, the staging makes clear that the Duke has been -is being -- called to account for his treatment of the citizens of Bruges. As the Duke leaves these pageants, the show once again allows him to resume his role, to play his chosen part as a type of the majestic and divine King of Heaven. Even so, his role is transformed. No longer cast as the terrifying Christ-come-to-judgment of the Second Coming, the final pageants of the show represent Philip as a transfigured and resurrected Saviour surrounded by his faithful and reverent disciples. They serve as explicit emblems for the new relationship between the Duke and his subjects -- the Prince of God among his people -- which the civic triumph inaugurates. On the penultimate stage, for example, Christ rises from the dead to reassure his disciples: 'Behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world' (Matt. 28: 20). In the final pageant, St Peter offers to build a tabernacle upon Mount Tabor for his transfigured Master, whose face shines like the sun and whose garments become as white as snow ( Matt. 17: 1-4). The two pageants together proclaim the corporate unity of a saviour prince and his disciple-subjects. Together, they form an emblem of mutual recognition. In the first, the Duke adopts his people, while in the second, the people consecrate Philip as their Prince. On the one hand, the gracious and merciful Prince comes to his people and declares that he 'wishes to be and remain with the city of Bruges forever'. On the other, the citizens prepare a hallowed dwelling place for their princely Messiah in which he might be honoured and glorified. As the chroniclers put it, these pageants serve as 'a memorial and an image that our respected lord chooses to live here and to keep here his court in his city of Bruges', and they demonstrate that 'the ____________________ 157"E een vrauwe presenteirde een rolle daer in dat stont ghescreu . Venite benedicti patris mei | quad diu hec uni ex hijs fratribus meis minimis fecistis mihi fecistis. Het welcke beteekende die ontfermhertichede die onse hertoghe der stede van Brugghe ghedaen hadde". Dits die excellente cronike, 108r. -113-

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citizens of Bruges desired nothing else than to keep their prince among them forever'. 158 Although a great deal of explicit political commentary can legitimately be teased out of these shows, one must not overestimate the importance of topical interpretations. For the most part, the devisers of the show carefully subordinate political commentary to ritual exposition. The final pageants, for example, clearly refer to the citizens' rebellion against their Prince. In staging an image of Christ's Resurrection before their Duke, the civic devisers probably meant to suggest that the Duke's entry into Bruges represented his political resurrection after the city's violent betrayal. By the same token, the Transfiguration pageant acknowledges the city's newly altered view of Duke Philip. Like Christ upon Mount Tabor, Philip appears transfigured in his subjects' eyes. Formerly he appeared to be a rejected tyrant, but now he seems to manifest a princely glory in the streets of Bruges. But such topical interpretations often invert the show's metaphors. Rather, the citizens of Bruges would more probably view Philip's political resurrection as a metaphor for the Christian archetype; in short, they seek to stage the eternal pattern in terms of the topical signs of contemporary political life. Contemporary reporters, as we have seen, almost always interpret the pageants in this way, as evidence of both the citizens' and the Duke's common desire to dwell together in consecrated unity 'forever'. Such a desire, of course, can only be fulfilled in a ritual eternity, not in a temporal present. These images invoke the spiritual head and corporate body which Duke Philip and the citizens of Bruges may together represent but not literally incarnate. They dramatize the ideals of Christian polity towards which prince and citizens aspire. As such, they serve to shape the contemporary Flemish political moment into a Christian ritual pattern sub specie aeternitatis. ____________________ 158"E was een memorie e een imagen dat onse gheduchte here hier ghelieu wilde te wonen e sijn hof te houdene hier in sine stede v Brugghe" ( Dits die excellente cronike, 108v). "Daer by men bedieden wilde dat die Brugghelinghen niet anders en begheerden dan haerlieder prince eeuwelick by hemlieden te behoudene" ( Despars, Cronijcke, iii.441). -114-

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3 The Civic Triumph as Royal Epiphany

1. The Magi's Gift: Schawand Him King with Most Magnificence At the heart of every civic triumph lies an essential epiphany. As the king enters the city for the first time, his people solemnly present him with a gift to mark the occasion. Particularly in England, material gifts are the rule. Most British civic triumphs include a carefully staged scene in which the civic officials meet the royal cortége, deliver a formal speech of welcome, and give their royal visitor a purse of gold. In presenting their advent gift of 1,000 marks to Elizabeth I ( 1559), the aldermen of London re-enact a scene made familiar by centuries of tradition: And there, by appointment, the right woorshipfull maister Ranulph Cholmley Recorder of the citie, presented to the Quenes maiestie a purse of crimosin sattin richly wrought with gold, wherin the citie gaue vnto the Quenes maiestie a thousand markes in gold, as maister Recorder did declare brieflye vnto the Quenes maiestie, whose wordes tended to this ende, that the Lord maior, hys brethren, and comminaltie of the citie, to declare their gladnes and good wille towardes the Quenes maiestie, did present her grace with that gold, desyering her grace to continue their good and gracious Quene, and not to esteme the value of the gift, but the mynd of the geuers. 1 ____________________ 1

Quenes Maiesties Passage, 45. This practice is traditional in English civic triumphs. Compare the similar ceremony at St Paul's churchyard for the reception of Katharine of Aragon ( 1501): the mayor, recorder, sheriffs, and aldermen 'aboode her honourable comyng and with moch treasoure and great plentie of plate of silver and gilt, as basones and pottes fulfillid with coyne to a great summe -salutid, presentid, and also gave unto her the seid gieftes, and with agoodly countenances and demeanour'; The Receyt of the Ladie Kateryne, ed. Gordon Kipling, EETS os 296 ( London, 1990), 35. In Scotland, a 'propyne' contained in an ornamental casket was customarily displayed in the entry procession and presented to the sovereign at a suitable point. For the entry of Queen Anne into Edinburgh ( 1589), 'there was let downe unto her, from the top of the porte, in a silke string, a box couered with purple veluet; wherupon was embroidered A. for Anna, her Maiestie's name, set with diamonds and precious stones, esteemed at twentie thousand crownes, which the township gave for a present to her Highnes'. See Anna Jean Mill, Mediaeval Plays in Scotland ( Edinburgh, 1927), 189, 201, 204. For Henry VI, however, the mayor and aldermen followed the French custom (for which see below). Two days after the entry, they went to the Palace of Westminster and presented their traditional gift of 1,000 ( Lydgate, Minor Poems, ii. 647).

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On the Continent, material gifts were not, as a rule, presented as an episode in the triumph procession itself, but they nevertheless formed an essential part of the larger celebrations of the monarch's 'joyous advent' into each city. 2 As a consequence, the obligatory gift ceremony might take place at an especially dramatized episode after the entry. Two days after Isabella of Bavaria's entry into Paris ( 1389) -- an event intended to celebrate both the Queen's first advent and the inauguration of the King's personal rule -- parties of citizens paraded through the streets bearing advent gifts for both monarchs. In each party, costumed porters carried a very richly worked litter . . . covered with a transparent crape of silk, through which might be seen the magnificent things it contained'. 'Two strong men dressed as savages' bore the King's litter, while 'two men dressed, one as a bear, the other as a unicorn' bore the Queen's. The party accompanying the King's gift entered the royal bedchamber, placed the litter in the midst of the apartment, congratulated the King -- 'Most beloved lord and king, your citizens of your good town of Paris present to you the plate that is contained in this litter, as tokens of their joy that you have taken the government of the kingdom into your own hands' -and left the King to examine his gift: 'there were four pots of gold, four saucers to match, four golden salts, twelve cups of the same, twelve porringers, and six dishes of gold also: the whole weighed one hundred and fifty mares.' Meanwhile, the other party entered the Queen's chamber to deliver her gift: 'the model of a ship in gold, two large flaggons of gold, two comfit boxes, two salts, six cups, and as many saucers, all of gold: twelve lamps of silver, two silver basins, two dozen of silver porringers, the same number of silver cups: the whole weight of gold and silver being three hundred mares.' Having 'recommended their town and inhabitants to her protection', they, too, departed. 3 As these accounts make clear, both subjects and sovereigns alike regard these gifts as a material expression of fealty. They symbolize the feudal devotion which the subjects offer to their rightful sovereign. Master Cholmley, the London recorder, thus takes considerable rhetorical pains to explain that the true value of the city's gift lay not in the gold itself but in what it 'declared' (i.e. represented): the 'mynd of the gevers' consisting of 'their gladnes and good wille towardes the Quenes maiestie' and their desire that she would 'continue their good and gracious Quene'. Similarly, the citizens of Paris explain their gifts to the King as 'tokens' representing the joy they feel at his accession to power, and they give still other ____________________ 2 See Bryant, Parisian Royal Entry, 31-40, for a discussion of gifts in French royal entries. 3 Froissart, Chronicles, tr. Johnes, ii. 403. The Duchess of Touraine also received a similar gift on this occasion. -116-

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presents to the Queen in an explicit act of feudal homage, by means of which they place themselves under her protection. Gifts, of course, were used throughout the king's reign to symbolize the feudal homage of the giver. But the idea of Advent made such gift-giving ceremonies especially important to the civic triumph. Because civic triumphs usually marked the sovereign's first coming to his people, the adventus ceremony necessarily symbolized the formal inauguration of the relationship between sovereign and people. The citizens' presentation of a gift to their sovereign necessarily assumes a particularly solemn ritual significance on such an occasion. This first offering of a gift constitutes a primal act of homage -- an epiphany -- like that of the Magi. Just as the Magi bestowed gifts on the Christ-child to symbolize their faith in, and their willing submission to, the christus of God, so the gifts of citizens on the occasion of their sovereign's adventus symbolizes both their fealty and their willing submission to 'the Prince of God among us'. No wonder that, over the course of time, sovereigns came to regard this adventus gift as if it were some sort of 'right' consequent upon their accession to the throne 4. Whether or not such gift ceremonies featured as an episode in the civic triumph itself, the potent symbolism of the advent gift guaranteed that the king would at least be offered symbolic gifts in the course of the show. Guardians at the gate thus frequently proffer the keys to the city. Crowns descend upon royal heads. Angels offer chalices. Wine spurts from fountains. Some of these presents are offered directly to the visitor, white other gifts are bestowed upon kingly surrogates within the pageant stages. At Bruges ( 1515), the future Charles V thus sees himself portrayed by an actor kneeling before the gates of Jerusalem (Fig. 5): At the gate of this city were three angels who promised the noble prince victory and [the city's] obeisance. And each came before him with a gift . . . the first offered him a rich blazon of arms of his realm, declaiming in a high voice that which was once said to Gideon: 'The Lord is with thee, O most valiant of men! Go in this thy strength, and thou shalt deliver Jerusalem'. The second angel placed the royal crown on his head and declaimed, 'The crown will be granted ____________________ 4

In the 16th cent., as L. M. Bryant points out, the notion of the advent gift was transformed from a feudal offering into a 'right'. This partly occurs because cities like Tours began to contribute to the advent gift which was presented to the king during his Parisian entry. They thus voted 'a special gift of 300,000 livres to the young Charles VIII to celebrate his "joyeux avénement á la couronne" as well as "subvenir aux frais de son sacre et de son entrée á Paris" '. Faced with this development, writers like Claude de Seyssel begin to refer to 'le don que le royaume a de toute ancienneté accoustumé de payer tux toys á leur joyeux advénement'. It was then but a small step to convert the 'gift' into a tax imposed upon the whole nation at the king's accession ( Parisian Royal Entry, 36-7).

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to you and yours in perpetuity'. And the third presented him with the keys of the city and said, I give to you the keys of this realm'. 5 Many such 'symbolic' gifts, of course, were of considerable material value. Richard II's 'reconciliation' triumph ( 1392) consisted entirely of dramatized gift presentations. From each pageant, angels scattered golden coins upon the King. Other pageant characters pressed upon him a seemingly endless series of opulent, symbolic gifts: the keys to the city, a ceremonial sword, three horses, a pair of golden crowns, a pair of golden chalices, and two pairs of sculptured, golden altarpieces. The city's custos, acting as a travelling expositor, explained the symbolic significance of these gifts at each station. Few civic triumphs could match such a lavish standard of presentation; most were content to combine symbolism and ready cash value at a lower degree of munificence. The golden key that Charles VIII received upon his entry into Paris more nearly defines the usual standard. 6 By offering such gifts to their sovereign, the citizens perform a symbolic act of recognition and acclamation. The gifts offered need not be symbolically complex to have this effect. In explaining their litter full of golden table service as 'tokens of joy that you have taken the government of the kingdom into your own hands', the citizens of Paris could make no clearer proclamation that they both recognize and acclaim their sovereign's new status. At the same time, a similar gift also seals their relationship with the royal consort. In giving their gift, the citizens thus 'recommended their town and inhabitants to her protection', a request that both recognizes and acclaims Isabella's traditional role as queenly mediatrix. 7 Similarly, in presenting Duke Philip the Good with the keys to their city in 1458, the citizens of Ghent explicitly regard the gift as an emblem of their loyalty, which they characterize as being akin to religious devotion: 'we offer you all that is ours, and all that is possible for us to offer, that is to say, our bodies, our goods, our wills, and everything ____________________ 5

'A la Porte de ceste cite estoient trois anges qui promettoient an noble prince la victoire & obeissance dicelle. et luy venoient an deu t auec chascun vng don & le dictie de mesmes desquelz le premier luy offrit vng riche blason des armes dicelluy royaulme ch tant a haulte voix ce que iadis fut parlange dict a Gedeon. Nostre seigneur est auec toy prince trespuissant. Va & en icelle puissance deliureras Hierusalem. Le second ange luy scoit la couronne royale sur son chief en chantant. La cour ne te sera octroyee pour toy & les tiens a perpetuite. Et le tiers luy presentoit les clefz de la cite et disoit, Je te donray les clefz de ce royaulme' ( Dupuys, La tryumphante Entree, Eiiv). 6 For the gifts given Richard II, see above, Ch. 1. For Charles VIII's golden key, see Bryant, Parisian Royal Entry, 32. 7 For a discussion of the queen's traditional role as virgo mediatrix as represented in civic triumphs, see Ch. 6 below.

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that it may please you to command of us to live and to die, to your command and judgment towards and against US.' 8 The offering of more symbolically elaborated gifts, however, necessarily produces more elaborate acts of recognition and can embody a considerable political agenda. By offering Richard II a seemingly endless series of chalices, crowns, and altarpieces during his 'reconciliation' triumph, the citizens of London explicitly recognize and acclaim Richard's identity as the earthly image of Christ the King, but at the same time their gifts explicitly confront him with the self-sacrificial implications of the role that he demands to play: Soon an angel descends from the high roof bearing very precious gifts in both hands. Truly, the tablets are suitable for sacred altars-looking upon them it is impossible to be unmindful of God. The figure of the crucified Christ, the weeping disciple, and the ecstatic mother are here sculpted in relief . . . The keeper now takes these tablets from the hands of the angel and speaks on behalf of the people as follows. . . . These tablets which you see signify this: behold, a faithful people have presented these tablets to a faithful king. They ask that the king, though moved by anger, might contemplate these tablets and that he might wish to be mindful of Christ's death. Let him be sparing of the ignorant even as that Heavenly King though unavenged was always forbearing to his enemies. 9 In this case, the gift deftly envisions both the role that the King claims to play and that which the citizens want him to play. By giving these symbolic gifts, the citizens of London witness the epiphany of their new King in much the same way that the Magi bore witness to the manifestation of the Saviour. Medieval commentary never tires of explaining how the three gifts of the Magi made visibly manifest Christ's triple nature as God, King, and Man: And pen wyth all pe reuerence pat pay cowthen, pay kneleden done, and offeryd yche on of hom pes pre penges: gold, and ensens, and myrre; knowlechyng by pe gold pat he was kyng of all kynges, and by ensens at he was veray God, and by myrre pat he was veray man, pat schuld be ded, and layde yn graue wythout rotyng. For gold ys kyng of metelles; ensens is brent yn holy chyrche in worship of God; myrre ys an ornement pat kepyth ded bodyes from rotyng. 10 ____________________ 10

Mirk, Festial, 49. This traditional formula appears in the writings of Church Fathers and popular homilists alike. Compare, for instance, Durandus, Rationale, 6. 11. 4 (who ascribes the original formula to Bede), Honorius, Sacramentarium, PL 122. 781, and de Voragine, Legenda aurea, 92-3. 8 En vous offrant ce qu'il est en nous et que nous est possible, c'est á savoir, nos corps, nos biens, nos volontés, et tout ce qu'il vous plira á nous commander pour vivre et mourir, á vostre dit et ordonnance envers et contre tous' ( Kronyk van Vlaenderen,213). 9 Maydiston, ' Concordia', ll. 381-94, 411-27; tr. Smith, 207-11.

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Their act of presentation thus applies the symbolic meanings of the gifts ('gold ys kyng of metelles') to the Christ-child ('he was kyng of all kynges') to produce an epiphany, a public recognition, of the inward and spiritual significance of the recipient. In medieval parlance, such gifts have revelatory powers to show the inner and hidden, as in Dame Julian of Norwich's Showings of Divine Love. The word 'epiphany', as popular medieval homilists frequently explain, means 'pe schowyng of our Lord Ihesu Cryst, veray God and man, pat he was'. 11 In this way, the Magi's act of giving must be seen as an act of interpretation, a feat of symbolic exegesis. The Magi do not so much give gifts as they apply them pedagogically. Their gifts 'read' and interpret the Christ-child's significance for others who may be less perceptive than they. At the same time, their act of giving also constitutes a formal act of feudal homage. Their gifts not only reveal publicly the child's royal nature ('knowlechyng by pe gold pat he was kyng of all kynges'), but they serve as tribute offerings to their acknowledged sovereign, which they offer 'wyth all pe reuerence pat pay cowthen'. Civic triumphs create, witness, and acclaim epiphanies in very similar ways. The citizens of Aberdeen, for instance, explicitly appropriate the imagery of Christ's first Epiphany for a pageant to mark the advent of their Queen, Margaret Tudor ( 1511). In staging the visit of the Three Kings to Bethlehem, they cast their new Queen in the role of a foreign Magus come to witness James IV's epiphany as the Christmas king. At the second pageant in the series, the Queen found the Three Kings presenting their symbolic gifts to the Christ-child: syne thow gart the orient kingis thrie Offer to Chryst, with benyng reverence, Gold, sence, and mir, with all humilitie, Schawand him king with most magnificence. 12 The pageant thus stresses the gifts' powers of manifestation: by presenting their 'magnificent' gifts to the babe, the Magi show Christ to be a true king. Margaret accordingly enters this scene, first of all, to be instructed by the Magi's schawand. But just as they are foreigners -- 'orient kingis' -she too is a foreign queen. In bringing her before this epiphany of a Scottish Christ-child, the pageant requires her to perform a similar act of 'benyng reverence' and 'humilitie'. 13 ____________________ 11

Mirk, Festial, 47-8. Cf. Nicholas Love Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, ed. Michael G. Sargent ( New York, 1992), 42-3: 'Of pe Epiphany pat is pe opune shewyng of oure lorde.' In French, the usual synonyms for epiphany were montrer and apparaître. 12 William Dunbar, Poems, ed. James Kinsey, Clarendon Medieval and Tudor Series ( Oxford, 1958), 16-18. 13 This pageant will form part of a larger discussion of the role of queens as agents in their husbands' and sons' epiphanies. (below, Ch. 6).

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A pageant at the gate of Lyons ( 1507) accomplishes much the same sort of epiphany for Louis XII, but it does so without specific allusions to the story of the Magi. Each of six emblematic characters places in turn a laurel crown upon the head of Louis's proxy, a prince bedecked in fleurs-de-lis and situated in front of 'a great palm signifying Victory'. Two of the emblematic figures are young men representing specifically chivalric virtues: Noble Vouloir and Ardent Désir; their laurels reflect the victories Louis has just achieved over the imperial armies in Italy. Four young girls, representing -- almost -- the four classical virtues, then bestow laurel crowns reflective of Force, Prudence, Diligence, and Valliance. As their speeches make clear, these allegorical figures are not conferring virtues upon Louis. Their gifts do not prepare him for anything. Rather, as with the Magi's gifts, these six laurel crowns make Louis's own virtues visibly manifest to the people of Lyons. The allegorical figures, like the Magi, bear witness to Louis by giving him gifts that show his inner nature to the people. Since these gifts take the form of crowns, the six virtues also commit an act of symbolic homage in bestowing them upon Louis. They present their crowns to a king greater than they, one who combines and manifests all of the virtues which they separately represent. 14 Gifts bestowed in this way instantly define the relative status of both king and giver; however great the giver, the gift acknowledges that the recipient is even greater. Some epiphany gifts, however, descend from on high to mark the king out from all others as the 'Prince of God among us'. Gifts given in this way are tokens of divine favour rather than tokens of homage. Consider once again, for example, those three gifts which angels bestow upon the surrogate Prince Charles as he kneels before the gates of the Jerusalem pageant in Bruges (Fig. 5). The blazon, crown, and keys may well have been 'real' gifts passed on to the 'real' Prince Charles, but they fulfil their primary purpose in this pageant by making manifest the spiritual idea of Christian kingship which Charles must represent as the legitimate sovereign of the people of Bruges. The pageant stresses that Charles derives his right to rule not primarily by inheritance, but from an act of divine election. The crown and keys which represent his right to rule the people of Bruges come to him as a gift directly from God. More significantly, the blazon of arms which the first angel gives him -- the 'cross potent' of the kings of Jerusalem displays not his familial lineage, but rather his spiritual lineage. Ultimately, he rules Bruges because he is Gideon's spiritual heir, not because he is the Archduke Philip's son. Just as Charles derives his ____________________ 14 George Guigue (ed.), Entrée de Louis XII á Lyon le 17 juillet 1507 ( Lyons, 1885), 13-15. Presumably Diligence and Valliance replace Temperance and Justice because the two latter were seen as less chivalrously appropriate than the former pair? -121-

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kingly privileges as gifts from God, so he must exercise those privileges by governing the people of Bruges in the image of God's rule over. According to Ernst Kantorowicz's famous formula, these gifts reveal the ideal, spiritual 'body politic' within the temporal 'natural body' of Prince Charles. 15 The Baptism of Christ, rather than the Visit of the Magi, offered the most important model for this sort of epiphany. The Baptism, which ranked as the second most important of Christ's epiphanies, was celebrated both upon the Sunday immediately following Epiphany and upon the octave of Epiphany (13 January). Its symbols include the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the newly baptized Christ and the voice of the Father from heaven: 'This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased' ( Matt. 3: 17). Medieval commentary, furthermore; often construed these manifestations of Christ's divinity as a giftgiving episode. According to this influential school of thought, the dove descends upon Christ at the Baptism at the behest of the Father in order to bestow the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit upon the Son. These spiritual gifts, as distinguished from the Magi's material ones, are the very ones which Isaiah ( 11: 1-10) describes as the distinguishing features of the Messiah. 16 They provide the Messiah with his spiritual authority and serve as the spiritual signs which will identify him to his people. French civic triumphs often place particular emphasis upon those divine gifts which were thought to manifest the spiritual authority of the French dynasty as trés chrétien kings. These include the holy ampule of ointment, the fleur-delis, the oriflamme, and the power of healing ('the king's touch'). A pageant for Francis I ( Lyons, 1515) shows God bestowing these distinctive gifts upon King Clovis and his successors (Fig. 16), in a scene that frankly imitates Christ's Baptism. As St Remy, assisted by St Vaast, baptizes Clovis, the Father signals his blessing from above and dispatches attendant angels with the 'quatre grans dons merveilleux' that mark Clovis's epiphany. The illustration shows the delivery of two of these spiritual insignia which are meant to manifest Clovis's new trés chrétien nature: one angel delivers the holy ampule to St Remy, while the other presents the sign of the fleur-de-lis, to St Vaast. 17 Both pageant designer and illustrator alike rely heavily upon the various Epiphany implications of this scene. The pageant is an Epiphany, first of all, because it imitates the Father's bestowal of spiritual gifts upon ____________________ 15 King's Two Bodies, 7-41. 16 For a discussion of Christ's Baptism as an Epiphany theme and the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit as an Epiphany sign, see sections 2 and 3 of this chapter immediately below. 17 Guigue (ed.), Entrée de Louis XII á Lyon,21-5. -122-

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16. The Baptism of King Clovis. Entry of Francis I into Lyons, 1515

the Son at the Baptism. It depicts the Father endowing Clovis with these symbolic gifts in exactly the same manner that he bestows the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit upon Christ at the Baptism. Not surprisingly, the iconography of the scene therefore belongs very much to the tradition of depicting Christ's Baptism, which often involves baptismal fonts, angels, and an approving Father surveying the scene from the heavens. Further, because French churches commemorated Clovis's baptism on the octave of the Epiphany (13 January), this connection was an explicit -123-

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one. 18 Above all, however, the nature of the gifts bestowed from on high upon Clovis makes this indisputably an Epiphany scene. While neither gift possesses much material significance, both serve as divinely ordained signs with the power to create royal manifestations. Consider the fleurde-lis, for example. According to the legend, God bestowed this sign upon Clovis as a special mark of God's care for France. It was more than mere heraldry; it was a sign of royal sanctification. The holy ampule, an even more important royal insigne, contained a chrism used at coronations to mark out the king as One Anointed, a christus. Such oils were commonly used at coronations throughout Europe, but the king of France could boast that he 'alone among all the kings of earth enjoys the glorious privilege of being anointed with oil sent from heaven'. All other kings had to make do with oil bought 'in the drugstore'. 19 These gifts not only possessed the power to manifest the king's divine nature, but they also contained certain powers of transformation. The kings of France are invested with their royal nature upon their coronations just as Jesus was invested with the gifts of the Holy Spirit upon his Baptism. Not anyone, of course, can be invested with these insignia, but once a true descendant of Clovis is anointed with the holy ampule, he becomes a priest, a sacerdos; he may henceforth take Communion in both kinds, and he will find that he can cure with his touch the 'king's evi '. 20 Conversely, even a true descendant of Clovis will not enjoy true royal authority without possessing these gifts. Although Charles VII was proclaimed king in 1422, he was not universally accepted as such until he could be anointed with the holy ampule seven years later. Until he finally received his anointing and the royal insignia at Reims in 1429, even Joan of Arc insisted upon calling him the Dauphin. 21 Many such pageants celebrate the transforming and sanctifying power of Clovis's gifts. The entry pageant for Francis I, for instance, does this by linking the presentation of the gifts with the Baptism, a ritual rebirth. Reims appropriately staged a tableau of Clovis's baptism and consecration for its precoronation triumph of Charles VIII, who responded to the show with exaggerated, histrionic reverence. When he understood that the tableau represented the 'mystery of Consecration' which he himself ____________________ 18

The Church observed two memorials of St Remy. The most important of these was his saint's day, 1 Oct. But since St Remy also plays a large role in the legend of Clovis, Jacobus de Voragine directs his readers to 'the legend for the other feast of Saint Remy, the one celebrated after Epiphany' (i.e. 13 Jan.) for the story of how Clovis 'was converted and became a Christian'. De Voragine, Golden Legend, i. 85-7, ii. 217. 19 Jackson, Vive le roi!,32. Kantorowicz, King's Two Bodies, 338-9. 20 Marc Bloch, Les Rois thaumaturges ( Paris, 1961), 212-13; Jackson, Vive le roi!,31-2; Kantorowicz, King's Two Bodies, 338-9. 21 M. G. A. Vale, Charles VII ( Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1974), 195-7.

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would shortly undergo, he reverently unbuttoned his mantle and removed his hat before continuing his entry. 22 A few months later, an entry pageant at Rouen ( 1485) reminded Charles that the miraculous 'Unction of Kings' had transformed him into a sacred king. In so doing, this tableau chose to explore the biblical heritage of Clovis's gifts. In a pageant based upon the first chapter of 3 Kings, a 'beau fils blont' (chosen to resemble Charles) played Solomon. David, on his deathbed, gave Bathsheba permission to crown Solomon king. Then, when it came time for Nathan and Zadok to anoint Solomon (with a phial resembling 'the holy ampule with which the King our Lord has been anointed at Reims'), a rich crown descended 'by subtle means' over the head of Solomon-Charles. 'And then, in an instant, by a certain movement, was elevated the said Solomon very high' while people grouped around him, dressed in the habits of France, Normandy, Picardy, and Flanders sang 'vivat rex Solomon . . . vivat rex in sempiternum'. 23 The holy ampule thus transforms Charles into a Solomon. More importantly, however, the show makes visible -it manifests -- the miraculous power of the gift. Upon the instant that the oil is applied to the head of the child, a miracle of transformation occurs and the newmade king is elevated above all other men. No civic triumph was more aware of the revelatory powers of gifts than the coronation triumph of Elizabeth I ( London, 1559). The author of the Quenes Maiesties Passage repeatedly considers the exchanges between Queen, pageant actors, and citizens to be 'signes' and 'ymages' which must be 'noted', 'considered', and interpreted for what they 'shewed' about the character of the new Queen: And her grace . . . shewed her selfe generallye an ymage of a woorthie Ladie and Gouernour, but priuately these especiall poyntes were noted in her grace, as signes of a most prince lyke courage, whereby her louing subiectes maye ground a sure hope for the rest of her gracious doinges herafter. 24 Amidst these various 'signes', the writer finds especially significant the manner in which the Queen accepts the myriads of gifts pressed upon her in the course of her entry. These occasions seem to have particular powers to reveal the Queen's inner character: 'Here was noted in the Queries maiesties co tenaunce, during ye time that the childe spake, besides a perpetual att tienes in her face, a meruelous change in looke, as the childes wordes touched either her pers or the peoples tonges and hertes' (30). His appraising eye frequently notes approvingly how the Queen's acceptance of humble gifts from the poorest of her subjects 'shewed' the Queen's love towards the 'Poore and nedie': ____________________ 22

Jackson, Vive le roi!,176-7. Guenée and Lehoux, Entrées royales, 252-7. 24 Quenes Maiesties Passage, 60; my italics. 23

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What more famous thing doe we reade in auncient histories of olde time, then that mightye princes haue gentlie receiued presentes offered them by base and low personages. If that be to be wondered at (as it is passingly) let me se any writer that in any one princes life is able to recount so manie presidentes of this vertue, as her grace shewed in ye one passage through the citie. How manie nosegaies did her grace receiue at poore womens handes? how ofttimes staied she her chariot, when she saw any simple body offer to speake to her grace? A br che of Rosemarie giuen to her grace with a supplicati by a poore woman about fleetebridge, was sene in her chariot till her grace came to westminster, not without the meruaillous wondring of such as knew the presenter and noted the Queenes most gracious receluing and keping the same. (62) If the acceptance of such humble gifts shows the Queen's empathy for the poorest of her subjects, her acceptance of more substantial gifts reveals much about her noble qualities. Her subjects, as we have seen, present her with 'a thousand marks in gold' as a token of their 'gladness and good wille towardes the Quenes malestie'. In accepting the gift, she takes pains to regard the money as but a material emblem of their 'earnest loue', and her response accordingly takes the form of a matching declaration of her own love for the citizens: 'I will be as good vnto you, as euer quene was to her people. . . . And perswade your selues, that for the safetie and quietnes of you all, I will not spare, if nede be to spend my blood, God thanke you all.' Her 'gracious aunswer', we are told, revealed her to be 'so noble an hearted pryncesse', that 'it moued a meruaylous showte and reioysing' (45-6). The writer's interest in the revelatory power of gifts reflects the dramatic imagery of the show. Many pageants in this civic triumph include gift presentations, both large and small, so that the Queen seems to move through the city from one such presentation to another. At the very first station, for instance, the city's pageantry seeks to appropriate the spectators' welcoming shouts into the show's essential imagery by defining them as symbolic gifts offered to the new Queen: O pereles soueraygne quene, behold what this thy town Hath thee presented with at thy fyrst entraunce here: . . . Beholde with what two gyftes she comforteth thy chere. The first is blessing tonges, which many a welcome say . . . The second is true hertes, which toue thee fr their roote. (29) At a later pageant, the city's gifts come in the form of 'the eight beatitudes expressed in the .v. chapter of the gospel of S. Mathew' which, in the manner of the Magi's gifts, are 'applyed' to Queen Elizabeth to witness that 'her good doinges before had geuen iust occasion, why that these blessinges might fall vpon her'. As these symbolic gifts are applied -126-

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to the Queen, she stands progressively revealed as the 'quene of worthy fame' especially blessed by God -- in effect, 'the prince of God among us' (41-2). The pageants shower small gifts as well as large upon the Queen: 'The childe after he had ended his oracion, kissed the paper wherin the same was written, and reached it to the Queenes maiestie which receiued it graciouslye both with woordes & countenance, declaring her gracious mynde toward their reliefe' (56-7). At the end of the show, the city sends her forth with other spiritual gifts; just as she acquired 'blessing tonges' and 'true hertes' at the first pageant, so she now receives her subjects' 'firme hope' and 'earnest praier', to which prayers the Queen 'helde vp her handes to heauen warde and willed the people to say Amen' (59). This pattern of small and largely metaphorical gift exchanges establishes the context for the show's central epiphany. At the Little Conduit in Cheapside, the city presented the Queen with an English bible as part of an elaborate allegory of Time and his daughter Truth, which we will examine in more detail later. 25 At present, we will confine ourselves only to the epiphany produced when Time's daughter, at the climax of the pageant, passes this bible, labelled 'Verbum veritatis, down to the Queen. In the context of the Reformation, such a gift deliberately cuts to the very heart of the most essential religious and political divisions of the time. In offering an English rather than a Vulgate bible, the city establishment knowingly declares its Protestant sympathies. Perhaps the Queen cannot utterly decline the gift, but the manner of her acceptance will prove highly revealing. As with the myriad of other gift presentations that occur throughout the triumph, the spectators will interpret the 'shewe'; they will 'note' and 'consider' her acceptance of this gift as a 'signe' and 'ymage' of the new Queen's rule. Both Queen and citizens engage in positional skirmishing as they seek to control the possible meanings of this interpretatively fraught presentation. As she first approaches the pageant, Elizabeth thus enquires about the meaning of the allegory. When told that 'the Byble in Englishe shoulde be deliuered vnto her by Truth', she immediately attempts to receive it in a way that will bring the episode to a speedy conclusion: 'she thanked the citie for that gift, and sayd that she would oftentimes reade ouer that booke, c maunding sir John Parrat, one of the knightes which helde vp her canapy, to goe before and to receiue the booke.' By thus seizing upon the book before it is formally offered, the new Queen carefully demonstrates goodwill towards the Protestant cause. But by pre-empting Truth's speech and the formal offering of the book, she considerably diminishes ____________________ 25 For a full discussion of Elizabeth I's coronation triumph, see Ch. 6 below. -127-

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the symbolic elaboration of the book's meaning and the dramatic impact of the offering of the gift. Demanding not just goodwill but a greater 'shewe' of the Queen's intentions, the city declines this gambit and insists that the pageant run its course: 'learning that it [the bible]' should be deliuered vnto her grace downe by a silken lace, she . . . passed forward till she came agaynste thaldermen.' At this point, the mayor and aldermen postpone the offer of the bible in an exercise calculated to raise the symbolic stakes. Instead, they choose this moment to present their new Queen with 1,000 golden marks as a token of their feudal loyalty. The Queen, as we have seen, responds in kind: in accepting this material token of her subjects' high regard, the Queen promises to spend her own life's blood, 'if nede be', in their service. But if she offers blood for gold, what will she offer for the bible, which will now be elaborated in the pageant's allegory as a gift greater than mere gold? The Queen's acceptance of this second, more important, gift must manifest an even greater commitment to her people than the mere spending of her blood. As Truth offers Elizabeth the English bible, all eyes will search the manner of her acceptance of this gift as a 'signe' and 'ymage' of her political and religious resolve. Will she adopt a merely tolerant attitude toward her Protestant subjects? Or will she declare herself an active champion of their cause? Will she distance herself significantly from the gift, perhaps by having one of her courtiers fetch it for her, thus refusing to touch it herself? Old Father Time, speaking for the Protestant establishment, pleads for an explicit sign of her willingness to propagate the Truth as symbolized by an English bible: Now s ce yt Time aga his daughter truth has brought, We trust O worthy quene, thou wilt this truth embrace. Taking up her cue, the new Queen chooses to open her reign with an unambiguous 'signe' of her 'mynd'. Elizabeth 'as soone as she had receiued the booke, kyssed it, and with both her handes held vp the same, and so laid it vpon her brest, with great thankes to the citie therfore' (44-9). In this calculatedly histrionic gesture, the new Queen dispenses with political caution. She deliberately represents herself as the enthusiastic champion of a self-avowedly Protestant city. Contemporaries were quick to appreciate the implications of this first, public manifestation of Elizabethan policy. The writer of the city's official account of the entry, for instance, recommends the Queen's 'receiuing of ye Bible at the little conduit in cheape' to his readers as one of the 'two principall sygnes' that Elizabeth had truly been 'set in [her] seate by gods appointing': -128-

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For when her grace had learned that the bible in Englishe should there be offered, she thanked the citie therefore, promysed the reading therof most diligentlie, and incontinent commaunded, that it shoulde be brought. At the receit wherof, how reuerently did she with both her handes take it, kisse it, & lay it vpon her brest to the great comfort of the lookers on. God will vndoubtedly preserue so worthy a prince, which at hys honor so reuerently taketh her beginning. For this saying is true, and written in the boke of Truth. He that first seketh the kingdome of God, shall haue all other thinges cast vnto him. (63-4) For him, the Queen's acceptance of the bible had produced a profound manifestation of the Queen's relationships with her people and with God. The staunchly Protestant chronicler Richard Grafton heartily agreed. He saw an even more doctrinaire sign in Elizabeth's acceptance of the bible: 'Tyme had nowe once againe restored vnto us Goddes veritye whereby the dregges of Papistry, might bee put away.' 26 Two years later, John Knox's fellow citizens remembered this powerful epiphany and determined to restage it for their new Queen, Mary. In their version of the Magi's gift, an angel descends from a cloud with a psalm book and a bible, both in English. In this offer, the Protestant citizens of Edinburgh set their Catholic Queen an insoluble problem. The Queen cannot well refuse these Protestant icons, especially since the angel offers them as explicit 'signes' of her subjects' loyalty. 27 But she cannot well accept them either, much less embrace these gifts and thank God for them as Elizabeth had done. Acceptance of these books by a devoutly Catholic monarch would inevitably create a manifestation of religious hypocrisy. In the end, she can only temporize: The verses of hir awin praise sche heard and smyled. But when the Bible was presented, and the praise thairof declared, sche began to frown; for schame sche could not refaise it. But she did no better, for immediatelie sche gave it to the most pestilent Papist within the Realme, to wit, to Arthoure Erskyn. 28 As the implacable John Knox undoubtedly intended, Mary's evasiveness created its own damning epiphany. ____________________ 26

Abridgement of the Chronicles of England ( London, 1572), 195r-v. Grafton served on the civic committee which designed the pageants; see Anglo, Spectacle, 346 n. 3. 27 In his speech, the angel thus offers the gifts on behalf of Mary's subjects 'In signe flat they and all flat they posses, | Bodie and goodis shall ever redie be | To serue you as their souueraine hie mistres.' In effect, the subjects thus offer their loyalty conditionally upon the Queen's acceptance of the books. For the text of the angel's speech, see A. A. MacDonald, "Mary Stewart's Entry to Edinburgh: An Ambiguous Triumph", Innes Review, 42 ( 1991), 109-10. For a full discussion of this important civic triumph, see Ch. 6 below. 28 Mill, Mediaeval Plays in Scotland, 190 n. 2. The Queen also received a conventional 'propyne' in the form of silver plate. There was, however considerable resistance to such a gift for fear that it might 'engender murmur'. A. R. MacDonald, "The Triumph of Protestantism: The Burgh Council of Edinburgh and the Entry of Mary, Queen of Scots, 2 September 1561", Innes Review, 48 ( 1997), 747.

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2. The Triple Triumph of the Emperor Augustus The Church conceives of Epiphany as a season, not just as a Twelfth Night festival. During Epiphany, the Church annually seeks to recall in its liturgy all those episodes in which Christ progressively manifested his divinity to the world. The Twelfth Night Epiphany (6 Jan.) occupies a place of particular honour in this sequence of epiphanies as it celebrates the first of Christ's formal epiphanies, not just to the Jews, but to the world of the Gentiles as represented by the Magi. For the rest of the season, which lasted until the Saturday before Septuagesima, the Church celebrates Christ's progressive Epiphany as a series of revelatory miracles: Christ's Baptism, his first miracle at the Wedding at Cana, the miracle of the loaves and fishes are among the most important. Depending upon the length of the season (it might vary from one to six Sundays), as many as six such miracles might be commemorated in the prescribed Gospel lessons: Christ's miracles of healing, his manifestation of divine wisdom, his power over the sea and the winds, his Transfiguration. 29 Epiphany was a season of miracles inaugurated by a particularly miraculous feast day. According to an extremely popular reckoning, the Feast of the Epiphany (6 Jan.) commemorated not just one, but rather three of Christ's manifestations. Both popular and learned authorities agree that on this day, 'holy chyrche makepe mynde, how Ihesu Cryst was schewet veray God and man [in] fire wayes: by pre kynges offryngys, yn his one folowyng [i.e. baptism], and by water ynto wyne turnyng'. 30 The prescribed Magnificat antiphon for Epiphany vespers both reflects and promotes this idea: 'We keep this day holy in honour of three miracles: this day a star led the Magi to the manger; this day water was turned into wine at the marriage feast; this day Christ chose to be baptized by John ____________________ 29

Properly speaking, the Epiphany season consists of Epiphany itself (6 Jan.), the octave of the feast (13 Jan.), and the Sunday that may fall between. The 'Time after Epiphany' continues the Church's celebration of Christ's progressive manifestation until the Saturday before Septuagesima, which is the ninth Sunday before Easter. Depending upon the date of Easter, Septuagesima may occur as early as 18 Jan. or as late as 21 Feb. The length of the 'Time after Epiphany' may therefore vary from a few days to five weeks and include as few as no Sundays to as many as five. In its references to the Epiphany 'season', this book means to include both the narrowly defined season itself (6-13 Jan.) and the 'Time after Epiphany' (14 Jan -- Septuagesima) as essential parts of a larger liturgical season. 30 Mirk, Festial, 48-9; Durandus, Rationale, 6. 16. 1-7; Honorius Augustodunensis, PL647; Isidore of Seville, De off. ecc. 2. 26. Some authorities would add a fourth manifestation to be celebrated on the same day: the miracle of the loaves and fishes. Jacobus de Voragine scrupulously points out that 'there is some doubt, however, whether this fourth miracle occurred on this particular date'. Legenda aurea, 87 -8 (tr. Golden Legend, i. 78-9). See also Honorius Augustodunensis, PL172. 648. Since John's Gospel places this episode near the Passover season ( John 6: 4), most medieval theologians rejected this fourth Epiphany miracle (cf. Durandus, Rationale, 6. 16. 8). Gospel lessons based on this miracle are rarely prescribed for the Epiphany season.

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in the Jordan, for our salvation.' 31 As these passages make clear, the Church chooses to commemorate these three events during Epiphany because it believes that all three manifestations occurred on the same anniversary date. These authorities often muster impressive calculations in support of this proposition: When Jesus was thirteen days old, the Magi, led by the star, came to him. . . . On the same day, twenty-nine years later, he had entered his thirtieth year (he was then twenty-nine years and thirteen days old), and, as Luke says, was begining, his thirtieth year; or, as Bede has it and the Roman church affirms, he was already thirty years old. Then, I say, he was baptized in the Jordan. . . . On the same day one year later, when he was thirty or thirty-one years plus thirteen days old, he changed water into wine. 32 The coincident dating of these three epiphanies, in turn, lent them a particularly important revelatory significance and established them as the most important of Christ's manifestations. The medieval church decided, in fact, that these three events defined three different manifestations of Christ's divinity. The star of Bethlehem thus produced Christ's Epiphany (which comes from , above, and , phanos or apparition) because the star, appearing from above, showed the Magi that Christ was the true God. Christ's Baptism, by contrast, created a Theophany (from , god, and ), because the three miraculous signs (the voice from heaven, the dove, and Christ himself) made the entire Trinity manifest. If this Theophany refers to the first of the essential Christian sacraments, the miracle at Cana likewise prefigures the sacrament of the mass. By changing water into wine at Cana, Christ thus produced a first manifestation of transubstantiation which, because it took place in a house, came to be known as his Bethphany (from B

, house, and

).

33

Because these events provided the three definitive signs of Christ's progressive epiphany as the Messiah, Epiphany became known as the 'Feast of the Three Miracles'. 34 Two of these miracles, indeed, prefigure the most essential sacraments of the Church -- baptism and transubstantiation -- which are themselves outward and visible signs of spiritual grace. This ____________________ 31

'Tribus miraculis ornatum diem sanctum colimus: hodie stella Magos duxit ad praesepium: hodie vinum ex aqual fctum est ad nuptias: hodie in Jordane a Joanne Christus baptirari voluit, ut salvaret nos, alleluia.' 32 De Voragine, Legenda aurea, 87-8 (tr. Golden Legend, i. 78-9). 33 Honorius Augustodunensis, PL172. 647. Bede, who would add a fourth essential miracle to this series of epiphanies, thinks that the miracle of the loaves and fishes should be known as Christ's Phagiphany (from , a mouthful, and ). Durandus, Rationale, 6. 16. 1-8; de Voragine, Legenda aurea, 87-8. 34 Durandus, Rationale, 16. 6. 8. This point is discussed immediately below.

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obvious connection between the three miracles and the sacraments even led Orosius, for one, to regard Epiphany as 'the Feast of the Apparition and Manifestation of the Sacrament of the Lord'. 35 To the Eastern Church, in fact, Epiphany was more a celebration of Christ's Baptism than it was an observance of the Magi's visit. It was known as a 'festival of light' more in reference to the spiritual illumination of baptism than to the Magi's star. Baptismal water was solemnly consecrated on each Epiphany day, and the festival became one of the three great seasons in which baptisms were performed. Although the Visit of the Magi became the 'principal' of the three manifestations celebrated in the Western Church, 36 the Baptism and the Wedding at Cana were still accorded particular honour. Honorius Augustodunensis, for instance, observes that baptisms are normally scheduled for the octave of the Epiphany (13 Jan.), a day when the prescribed Gospel lessons recalled Christ's Baptism. 37 The Roman Church customarily blessed baptismal water on Epiphany Day, and medieval commentary is careful to point out that the Cana miracle prefigures the sacrament of the mass. 38 A popular and widespread medieval tradition makes an explicit connection between Christ's three miracles and the triumphal processions of Roman emperors. So important was this connection, indeed, that some medieval commentators considered that the Church established the date of Epiphany with reference to a particular triumph of the Emperor Augustus. As Orosius tells the story, Octavian Caesar returned from the East in 27 BC as a conqueror, having defeated Antony and subdued Egypt. Beginning on 8 ides January (6 Jan.), he entered the city of Rome to celebrate an extraordinary three-day-long 'triple triumph': On this day for the first time Caesar was first greeted as Augustus. This title, which was before held inviolate by everyone, and to which other rulers had never aspired, manifests (declarat) that such a seizure of supreme power over the world was legitimate. From that day, the highest power of the state began to be held by one man, and so it has remained. This is called monarchy by the Greeks. This unprecedented triple triumph thus seemed to mark not only the first mifestation of the Emperor Augustus, but also the first manifestation ____________________ 35

'Epiphania, hoc est, aparitionem, sive manifestationern Dominici sacramenti observamus'; Paulus Orosius , Historiarvm adversvm paganos libri VII, ed. Karl Zangemeister ( Leipzig, 1889), 6. 22. 36 So Jacobus de Voragine describes the primary importance of the Magi as a sign of the Epiphany: 'prima autem apparition praecipue hodie celebrantur et ideo ejus hystoriam [i.e. of the Magi] prosequamur' ( Legenda aurea, 88). 37 PL172. 648. 38 Michel Andrieu, Les Ordines Romani du haut Moyen Âge (5 vols.; Louvain, 1931-61), iii. 82, 111. Honorius Augustodunensis, PL172. 647.

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of the Roman Empire itself. For Orosius, this first imperial epiphany seemed all the more remarkable because it took place upon 'the same day -- that is, 8 ides January -- in which we observe the Epiphany -- that is the Appearance or Manifestation -- of the sacrament of the Lord'. 39 Later commentators sharpened the meaning of this suggestive linkage between secular and sacred epiphanies. Durandus, for instance, apparently imagines that the Romans extended the celebration of this Augustan triple triumph into a popular annual feast, and he claims that the Church deliberately instituted the Epiphany (which he calls the 'Feast of the Three Miracles') on 6 January to rival it: 'by a happy transformation, the Church has thus consecrated this day to celebrating Christ and his triple miracle.' 40 In doing so, the early Church successfully opposed an Augustan epiphany of secular imperium with a Christian epiphany of spiritual imperium. The success of this 'happy transformation' then provided the later Middle Ages with an especially vivid illustration of the triumph of Christianity over paganism, one repeated frequently by medieval commentators. 41 This connection between miraculous and processional epiphanies was to prove a particularly important one to the devisers of medieval civic triumphs. Medieval commentary never forgot that triumphal processions were themselves epiphanies, because they occur when kings arrive at a city to make a formal 'Appearance' or 'E +00E1 (Epiphany). 42 Because a civic entry was one of the most important ways that an emperor might manifest himself to his subjects, Christ chose this method as a way of revealing himself as the Messiah ( Matt.21), and Christ's Palm Sunday Entry into Jerusalem was, therefore, technically just such an epiphany. 43 The work of manifesting Christ's divinity that was begun by the three miracles was completed with this formal and ceremonial epiphany. Medieval civic triumphs, like the triple triumph of the Emperor Augustus and Christ's Palm Sunday entry, almost always mark the king's inaugural manifestation. As the king enters the city, he makes his first formal appearance to his people. The chief purpose of the pageantry which he encounters in the streets of the city is to support this ritual epiphany by ____________________ 39

'Hoc die primum Augustus consalutatus est. Quod nomen cunctis antea inviolatum, et usque ad nunc caeteris inausum dominis, tantum orbis licite usurpatum, apicem declarat imperii: atque ex eodem die summa return ac potestaturn penes unum esse coepit et mansit, quod Graeci monarchiam vocant' ( Paulus Orosius, Historiarvm adversvs paganos libri VII, 6. 20). 40 Rationale, 16. 6. 8. 41 Honorius Augustodunensis, PL172. 647, 798. 42 Kantorowicz, "King's Advent", 211. 43 Because the Palm Sunday entry was seen as an adventus or epiphany procession, as we have seen, most lectionaries prescribed Matthew's narrative of the Entry into Jerusalem as the Gospel reading for the first Sunday in Advent. See above, Ch. 1.

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making the unseen seen, by visualizing and elaborating the king's public manifestation. The pageants serve the triumph as the signs of the king's epiphany. This characteristically medieval combination of liturgical and processional epiphanies appears with particular clarity in Henry VII's civic entry at York ( 1486). The four pageants which Henry Hudson, parish priest of Spofforth, designed for the occasion invoke both kinds of epiphany. On the one hand, Henry celebrates a military triumph. A year earlier, Henry had been a mere pretender to a throne held by a Yorkist king, Richard III. Having succeeded in his conquest, Henry now entered the city that symbolized his defeated enemy and demanded the allegiance of its citizens. 44 In an open acknowledgement of the Tudor King's victory, the civic triumph recognizes Henry as the rightful King in much the same way that the Romans recognized Augustus's victory with a triple triumph. York thus offers the city's homage to Henry in a series of symbolic gift presentations. 45 At each of the first three pageants, Henry receives one of the symbolic regalia of the English monarchy: crown, sceptre, and sword. As a sign of his triumph, he undergoes a symbolic coronation in the streets of York. On the other hand, even as he enjoys his military triumph, Henry also re-enacts Christ's Epiphany. Hudson selects a cast of characters that deliberately recalls the Epiphany story: three kings and the Virgin Mary. As with the Magi, their symbolic giftgiving -- an act of feudal submission from a lesser to a greater monarchconstitutes a formal epiphany of Henry's kingship. At the last pageant station, the show concludes with a final epiphany, a spectacular manifestation of God's grace: the Virgin Mary descends from heaven to offer divine blessings to the new king. ____________________ 44

For the political aims of Henry VII's northern progress in 1486, see Anglo, Spectacle, 21-8 and Lorraine Attreed, "The Politics of Welcome: Ceremonies and Constitutional Development in Later Medieval English Towns", in Barbara A. Hanawalt and Kathryn L. Reyerson (eds.), City and Spectacle in Medieval Europe ( Minneapolis, 1994), 219-23. 45 REED York, i. 137-52. The following discussion follows the account in the York House Book (13742). This is the official civic record of the triumph and probably derives, in part at least, from Henry Hudson's own device and pageant verse. As Lorraine Attreed points out, it is a prospective account, delineating what was supposed to happen rather than what actually happened ( "The Politics of Welcome", 221). Another account appears in BL MS Cotton Julius B. XII, 10r-13r ( REED York, i. 146-52). Although less detailed in its descriptions of the pageants, it occasionally preserves lines of verse omitted in the House Book version. A less reliable version, it misplaces the pageant of King David to the end of the show. Unlike the York House Book version, this is the account of an eyewitness, who probably reported what he had witnessed retrospectively, eking his own report out with copies of the pageant verses, which were probably given him on separate sheets of paper. He may even have organized his own report around his misordered collection of pageant verses. Under these conditions, it would be relatively easy to 'misplace' a pageant in sequence.

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In addition to this pattern of gift presentations, Hudson also allows the King to work a miracle as a way of showing that Henry exercises divine authority in the city as the 'Prince of God among us'. Miracleworking, of course, is one of the traditional ways by which supernatural beings manifest their presence in the natural world. As in the Gospels, they serve the civic triumph as aweinspiring 'acts of power' which demonstrate at once the divine authority of the king. Again and again, the devisers of these shows plan miraculous epiphanies for the king's civic triumph. Gates fly open, water changes to wine, statues spring to life, a ruinous republic transforms itself into a well-ordered one, angels descend from the heavens -- all at the apparent command of the king. In the very opening scene of this civic triumph, accordingly, Henry performs just such an impressive coup de théâtre: he miraculously transforms a wilderness landscape into a Tudor rose garden. As Henry approaches the city gate, 'a world desolaite' awaits him in the form of a wilderness 'full of treys and floures' (139/28-9). The pageant represents York as a fallen 'natural' world, and like the world before Christ's Incarnation it is 'desolate' in that it lacks its saviour. Henry's entry into this York wilderness thus re-enacts Christ's Incarnation: his presence alone transforms it into a world full of grace. As the King pauses before the wilderness, 'A rioall rich rede rose' and a 'Rich white rose' immediately respond by springing up together. All the other flowers in the wilderness thereupon 'lowte and evidently yeue suffrantie' to this Tudor union rose, thereby transforming a chaotic wilderness into an ordered garden. In approval, 'grete Ioy and Anglicall Armony' break forth from 'a heven' built above the garden (139/27-33). This stagecraft miracle, of course, serves the civic triumph only as one of several manifestations or showings that Henry truly possesses the divinity that hedges a true king. To make heaven's election of Henry as the 'Prince of God among us' absolutely clear, Hudson consistently seeks to dramatize the operations of divine providence, to make them visible to human eyes. In the first pageant, he accomplishes this purpose by opening the heavens just above the rose garden and allowing us to see and hear the reactions of heaven to the advent of Henry VII. A choir of angels sings tidings of 'grete Ioy' with 'Anglicall Armony', just as they did on the night of Christ's Nativity. In an even greater manifestation of divine joy, a cloud opens to permit a royal crown -- the first of Henry's symbolic gifts -- to descend from heaven to cover the red-and-white union rose. At the show's final pageant, Hudson once again engineers another opening of the heavens to permit the Virgin Mary to descend to Henry with an explicit acknowledgement of his divine election as England's -135-

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King. This, too, required a considerable feat of stagecraft ingenuity for its spectacular effect. But in addition to the full-scale miraculous epiphanies that frame the show, Hudson plans a series of smaller, less scenically ambitious, manifestations of divine joy. As the King travels between the first two pageants, a rain of rose water falls from the heavens. Between the second and third, a hail of comfits symbolizes heavenly joy. Finally, as he approaches the final pageant, wafers snow down from heaven 'for ioye and reioysing of the kinges commyng'. The first of these stagecraft miracles motivates King Ebranke, the legendary founder of York (Eboracum), to offer his epiphany gift. As the first of the show's three kings, he witnesses Henry's transformation of the 'world desolaite' into a Tudor rose garden and immediately recognizes the miracle as a sign of the new King's 'aboundance of grace'. Like a Magus before Christ, Ebranke kneels before Henry and presents him with the first of his symbolic gifts: the keys to the city and his royal crown. The giving of these gifts, Ebranke points out, constitutes an act of feudal homage from one king to another: To you henrie I submitt my Citie key and Croune To reuyll and redresse your dew to defence Neuer to this Citie to presume ne pretence Bot holy I graunt it to your gouernaunce as A principall parcell of your inheritaunce. (140/13-17) In granting Henry the keys and crown, York's founder explicitly acknowledges Henry as his legitimate successor, as one who possesses the city 'by cource of liniall succession' (140/8). More importantly, King Ebranke recognizes Henry as a greater king than himself, a saviour authorized by God to redeem his fallen city. Just as the 'world desolate' has been transformed by the presence of the union rose, so Ebranke foresees that Henry will 'Shew your grace to this Citie with such Abounedance | As the reame may recouer in to prosperitie' (140/21-2). As Henry enters further into York, Hudson arranges for King Solomon to do homage as the second of Henry's three magi. By virtue of his anointing and his wisdom, this Son of David frequently serves as a type of Christ the King. So King Solomon appropriately appears as a king of kings, sitting in 'A Rioall treyne' [throne] and presiding over a council of six other crowned kings 'betokining the sex henries'. As the seventh Henry approaches, this council of kings confers and agrees to a communal act of feudal submission. The six previous Henrys surrender a 'septour of sapience' to Solomon, who in turn delivers it to Henry VII (141/1-8). In this way, the anointed king of the Old Law pays his homage to this -136-

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new Tudorrex christus. Solomon needs no stagecraft miracles to recognize the signs of Henry's 'god-indewid' authority: Now reane [reign] ye reule ye your reame rightwosly By politike prouidence as god haith in dewid To you sufferatince [your sovereignty] in sapience submitting me vmbly Your sage savour [sober] sothfastnese haith so be shewid In ich Iudiciall right this reame to be renewid. (141/27-31)5 In delivering his sceptre of sapience to Henry, Solomon acknowledges Henry's superior wisdom. 'Submitting me vmbly' to the Tudor King, the son of David uses his own God-given 'sapience' to recognize that God has endowed Henry with an even greater, more 'sovereign' sapience than his own. The gifts of these first two kings have established Henry's rights to his kingdom and confirmed his kingly wisdom. From atop 'a Castell appeiring of grete force' (141/41-2), King David -- the third of York's kingly magi -- now surrenders to Henry the 'swerd of victorie' as a token of his 'power Imperiall' (142/8, 14). With this military gesture of submission, King David also surrenders his castle -- a symbol both of Jerusalem and of York -- in acknowledgement of Henry's rightful conquest. As the conqueror of Jerusalem and founder of a sacred dynasty, David recognizes a kindred spirit in Henry Tudor. As one of the Nine Worthies himself, he can speak with authority when he finds in the new King a 'maner more noble then' his fellow Worthy 'Charlis of france' (142/11). David is particularly interested in Henry's status as a conqueror, because the Tudor claim to the throne depends in large part upon Henry's military triumph over a Yorkist king. Hudson, the pageant designer, makes this point clear by 'garnishing' one of his pageants 'with Shippes And botez in euery side in tokenyng of the kinges landing at Milforde havyn' (148/11-12). 46 More importantly, God has promised David that he is destined to be the founder of a sacred dynasty that the Messiah will 'raise up' from his seed (2 Kgs. 7: 12-14). David can thus rightly claim, as he does in addressing Henry, that God has given him the 'might [power] to devyne goodly' concerning how 'god so disposith of his preordiniance' (142/12-13). He knows the elect of God when he sees him, and he recognizes that Henry ____________________ 46 The York House Book -- usually the most reliable of the accounts of this triumph -- does not mention this detail, which is reported uniquely in BL MS Cotton Julius B. XII, 11r. The herald who contributes this latter account, moreover, places this 'tokenyng' of Henry's conquest at the Ouse Bridge pageant of Solomon. He gives no details whatsoever of the King David pageant, which he misplaces last in the series. Since his account was probably reconstructed after the fact (see previous n.), he may perhaps have remembered the detail but misplaced it in the wrong pageant. The reference to Henry's conquest seems more likely to belong to David's pageant than to Solomon's. -137-

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rightly comes to York to take up his 'inheritance', which has been confirmed by Henry's 'acres victorious' (142/10, 26). When King David thus kneels before the new King to submit both his sword and his city to Henry, his gesture necessarily recognizes Henry's victory on Bosworth Field as a sign -- a manifestation-of Henry's right to the English throne. The citizens of David's castle emphatically agree. Whether one regards them as the children of Jerusalem responding to the advent of their Saviour or as the citizens of York responding to the advent of their new King, the 'Citisyns' of the castle 'shew' their enthusiasm for their new King in a collective epiphany of their new-found allegiance. 'After A sight of the king and remembrance of hyme', they emerge from the pageant castle in Tudor livery ('clothing of white and greyne'), thereby 'shewing yet trueth and hertly affeccion vnto the kinge' (142/1-4). Much as she does in Matthew's Gospel, the Virgin Mary now completes the cast of this Tudor epiphany story. Just as the gifts of the three kings have made Henry's kingliness manifest to the people of York, so now the Virgin completes Henry's civic epiphany by explicitly revealing Henry's role as the elect of God, a rex christus. Making good use of the Weavers' Assumption pageant, 47 the Queen of Heaven performs a final stagecraft miracle by descending from heaven into the streets of York just before Henry enters the minster. In descending directly from 'My Son and my soveraine' (143/2), moreover, she connects the first Epiphany with Henry's civic triumph, Christian archetype with Tudorimitatio Christi. She descends from heaven to earth because her son has 'elected' Henry as his 'knyght' and specifically 'assynyd' him to be the city's 'gouerner for his people protection' (142/40-1; 143/2, 8). As virgo mediatrix, Mary descends into the streets of York to carry out an act of divine intercession. She puts herself at the king's service, promising to pray continually for Henry: 'I shall sew to my sone to send you his grace' (143/14). By the same token, she also seeks to intercede with Henry on behalf of the people of York, who have 'maide me yer meane withoutin obieccion | In hope of yet help to haue it holy' (143/4-5). The Virgin's descent thus reveals exactly the nature of Henry's divine 'eleccion'. He stands between the citizens and God. As Christ's 'knyght', he answers for his actions to the King of Heaven and requires the mediation of the Virgin. As Christ's elected 'gouerner' over the people of York, he imitates Christ the King, and the Virgin rightly seeks to mediate between the citizens and Henry. ____________________ 47 The Weavers' guild, who were responsible for the mystery play of the York Assumption, possessed a cart with a winching mechanism to hoist Mary into heaven. Here, apparently, the Virgin both descends and reascends. The city paid the Weavers 4 shillings for the use of their cart, which fulfiled all the scenic requirements of this pageant ( REED York, i. 145/33-4). -138-

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As he enters York, Henry thus encounters his three kings one by one. In performing his initial miracle at the gates of the city, he compels their tribute. As he travels the streets of the city, he receives from them the symbolic signs of his authority: crown, keys, sceptre, and sword. Each gift seals an act of royal submission by means of which Henry is proclaimed York's rightful king. As Mary now descends from heaven to offer her services as virgo mediatrix, Henry receives a final revelatory blessing from above. In the streets of the Yorkist capital, he is crowned King by his former enemies and manifests himself to these once-rebellious citizens as the messianic king chosen by God to rule all the people of England. 3. By These Signs You Shall Know Him For the medieval Church, Epiphany was a season of signs. The most important of these signs, the three miracles, form the central core of Epiphany worship, but the liturgy of the season teems with similar signs: the Bethlehem star, the baptismal dove, the voice out of heaven, the water changed into wine, the kings of Tharsis, Arabia, and Saba bearing gifts, the Lord enthroned on high worshipped by angels, the 12-year-old child confounding the doctors in the Temple. Medieval commentary is fascinated by the ways that signs like these can create epiphanies, which it refers to as apparitio, manifestatio, or ostensio. 48 Jacobus de Voragine characteristically finds that he can summarize the Feast of the Epiphany merely by enumerating its three distinctive signs: the Bethlehem star, the Father's voice at the Baptism, and the changing of water into wine at the wedding feast. 49 Bromyard learnedly classifies the three sorts of signs capable of producing an ostensio: visual signs (the star, the baptismal dove), voices (Nativity angels, the Father's voice), and writings (prophetic scripture). 50 These miraculous signs, among others, provide the chief liturgical themes of the Epiphany season. The lectionary prescribes narratives of the miracles themselves. 51 These commemorate not only the three miracles, but all those events that seem to manifest Christ's divinity by means of supernatural signs. Masses for the first Sunday after Epiphany thus commonly prescribe Luke's account of the 12-year-old Jesus confounding the doctors in the Temple ( 2: 42-52), because this episode is widely held to manifest his supernatural wisdom. Subsequent Sundays then commemorate other ____________________ 48 Honorius Augustodunensis, PL172. 647; Augustine, PL 39. 1035. 49 De Voragine, Legenda aurea, 88. 50 Summa Praedicantium, s.v. ostensio, O. 8. 2. 51 Matt. 2: 1-12 (the Magi), Twelfth Night; John 1: 29-34 (Baptism), Sunday within the octave; Matt. 3: 13-17 (Baptism), octave; John 2: 1-11 (Wedding at Cana), second Sunday after octave. -139-

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miraculous signs that extend the manifestations of Christ's divinity to ever widening circles of believers (the leper and the centurion) 52 and to his ever more comprehensive powers over the forces of creation (he commands the winds and the sea to be calm). 53 The visual signs and voices that appear in these narratives then reappear throughout the countless anthems, prayers, and responses in the masses and offices of the Epiphany season. Again and again, medieval congregations heed Isaiah's call to 'Arise, thy light is come' and hear the Magi pursue the Bethlehem star. By virtue of other Epiphany responses and anthems, the dove descends, the Father's voice blesses the newly baptized Christ, and the Saviour changes water to wine. 54 In addition to these visual signs and voices, the liturgy also rehearses the prophetic writings that have been fulfilled by the Epiphany. Isaiah's prophecy of the coming of the light and the visit of the Magi ( 60: 1-6) serves as the Old Testament lesson on Epiphany, and verses from it continue to be repeated throughout the season in anthems, responses, and offertory prayers. 55 Particularly in these briefer elements, the liturgy tends to condense scriptural narrative into liturgical signs. The Epiphany narrative of the Three Kings' visit ( Matt. 2: 1-12), for example, becomes encapsulated into a vivid 'visual sign', the Bethlehem star, and the liturgy of the day repeatedly employs this sign. Epiphany mass invokes the star as an alleluia chant and Communion anthem: 'We have seen his star in the east, and are come with gifts to adore the Lord', and it appears as well as the prescribed collect for the Epiphany mass: 'O God, who by the leading of a star didst today manifest thy only begotten Son to the Gentiles, mercifully grant that we who know thee now by faith may be admitted to the vision of thy majesty.' 56 The anthems prescribed for Epiphany lauds similarly proclaim the star's power to manifest Christ to the Gentiles: Begotten before the day star, and before the ages, the Lord our Saviour was this day made manifest to the world. Thy light is come, O Jerusalem, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee, and the Gentiles shall walk in thy light. ____________________ 52

Matt. 8: 1-13, third Sunday after Epiphany. Matt. 8: 23-7, fourth Sunday after Epiphany. 54 Baptism: 'Hodie in Jordane', 'in specie columbae', and 'Vox de coelo' ( Durandus, Rationale, 6. 16. 7). The Cana miracle is recalled in the antiphon, 'Deficiente vino' and the Communion prayer, 'Dicit Dominus'. 55 'Surge illuminate' and 'Omnes de Saba venient' form a number of liturgical elements, as do similar verses from Ps. 71: 10-11: 'Reges Tharsis'. 56 'Deus, qui hodierna die Unigentitum tuum gentibus stella duce revelasti: concede propitius; ut, qui jam te ex fide cognovimus, usque ad contemplandam speciern tuæ celsitudinis perducamur.' The anthem (Vidimus stellam') is adapted from Matt. 2: 2. 53

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That star glittereth as a flame, and discovereth God the King of kings: the Wise Men saw it and offered their gifts to the great King. 57 Taken together, these varied liturgical elements orient Epiphany worship strongly towards a sustained contemplation of the Bethlehem star. They celebrate the star's power to create a manifestation so convincing that even Gentiles will automatically bend their knee to worship 'God the King of kings' in the form of a child born in a manger. At the same time, Epiphany masses also develop one of Isaiah's brief prophecies into one of the season's most familiar signs: 'all they from Saba shall come, bringing gold and frankincense: and shewing forth praise to the Lord' ( 60: 6). First read as part of the epistle lesson, this verse then becomes the gradual for the day. Antiphons for offertory and Communion restate and confirm this important scriptural sign: 'The kings of Tharsis and the islands shall offer presents: the kings of the Arabians and of Saba shall bring gifts: And all kings of the earth shall adore him: all nations shall serve him' (Ps. 71: 10-11). In the day's liturgy, these short verses represent what Bromyard would call the 'scriptural signs' which are fulfilled by the visit of the Magi. Early in the mass, the epistle and the gradual proclaim the sign, the anthems corroborate it, and the Gospel narrative proclaims the sign's fulfilment. Once again, scriptural narrative is encapsulated in signs. The liturgy represents the Epiphany to worshippers by evoking those characteristic signs which have the power to manifest the Lord's divinity, thus compelling belief. The medieval civic triumph similarly marshals signs to compel allegiance, if not belief. The pageants not only define the path of the king's journey through the city, but they also mark the signs of his unfolding manifestation. Each new pageant -- each new sign -- requires the king's presence to create its manifestation of transcendent majesty. At one pageant, the king may seem to perform a miracle. At another, he may perhaps receive symbolic gifts. At still another, some representative denizen of heaven -- whether the Four Daughters of God, classical deities, angels, the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove, or the Virgin Marym -- may descend to make the king's divine election manifest. The pageants function in the civic triumph like the anthems, collects, lessons, and chants that fill the Epiphany liturgy with signs; they serve the civic triumph as the elements of a dramatized liturgy of royal epiphany. ____________________ 57 Other anthems at Epiphany vespers commemorate the gifts of the Magi ('And opening their treasures the Magi offered the Lord gold, frankincense, and myrrh') and celebrate the signs of universal joy at the Saviour's epiphany ('O ye seas and rivers, bless the Lords: O ye fountains, sing a hymn to the Lord'). -141-

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Because its dramatic structure consists primarily of discrete epiphanies, the medieval civic triumph often struck an uneasy balance between the individual episode and the structural coherence of the overall performance. The citizens who gathered in the crowded streets to watch the show, for example, enjoyed very little freedom of movement. If even the King of France found, to his cost, that he could not move through the crowded streets of Paris to follow the progress of his wife's triumph without being struck down by zealous bailiffs, how could more humble citizens hope to see more than a single episode? 58 From their viewpoint, the show was effectively limited to the king's encounter with a single pageant. They might see Solomon deliver his 'scepter of sapience' to Henry VII at York, but they would not necessarily see this single manifestation of Henry's royal wisdom as part of a larger, progressive royal epiphany. The show would not seem particularly incomplete to them because they would have both seen and acclaimed a visionary ostensio of their new King. Those travelling in the King's procession, however, experience the show quite differently as a meaningful progression of epiphanies. They experience Solomon's act of homage as only one part of a larger series, which is defined by reference to the visit of the Magi. The show's 'framing devices' further contribute to this more inclusive experience: the stagecraft miracle at the first pageant initiates the string of epiphanies while the Virgin's descent at the end aptly concludes the sequence. From this viewpoint, Henry's manifestation seems to begin, unfold, and conclude in ways that could not be experienced by those who can witness no more than a single ostensio. This tension between the individual and the comprehensive appears with particular clarity in Henry VI's London triumph of 1432. 59 On the ____________________ 58

In 1389, Charles VI decided to disguise himself and ride incognito through the streets of Paris to see the entry of Queen Isabella. When he reached the Châtelet pageant, the bailiffs who had been stationed there to protect the pageant 'laid about them most lustily, to keep off the crowd', and in so doing, they struck the King several sharp blows. Grandes Chroniques de St Denys, quoted in Froissart, Chronicles, tr. Johnes, ii. 401 n. . 59 Most references to this triumph assume that the poet John Lydgate devised it. Over eighty years ago, however, H. N. MacCracken pointed out that Lyclgate's poem merely versifies a letter written by the London town clerk, John Carpenter, at the request of a 'brother' (i.e. presumably the monk Lydgate, since John Carpenter was himself one of the 'sixty priests of London'). 'King Henry's Triumphal Entry into London, Lydgate's Poem, and Carpenter's Letter', Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen, 126 ( 1911), 75-102. Inexplicably, commentary on Lydgate has largely overlooked this important article. In it, MacCracken shows conclusively that Lydgate's description of the pageantry closely follows Carpenter's letter, and that, except for a few brief passages, 'every detail in Lydgate is found in Carpenter, and the continued likeness of phrasing, together with such words as "columbyne", show that Lydgate is paraphrasing this Latin letter'. Carpenter's letter not only provided the 'source' for Lydgate's poem, but it was almost certainly 'addressed to Lydgate, to help him in the composition of his poem' (98).

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one hand, the city deployed a series of seven pageants that were entirely comprehensible in their own terms without reference to the series as a whole. Each pageant drew from the liturgical signs of the Epiphany season to dramatize an entirely self-contained epiphany of Henry's transcendent majesty. In their planning for the show, the citizens of London almost certainly expected it to occur during the Epiphany season, a circumstance that would have made the show's interest in Epiphany imagery doubly relevant. 60 This approach, as we shall see, even undermined some of the structures that London had traditionally used to organize its civic triumphs. On the other hand, the show's exclusive preoccupation with the liturgical signs of Epiphany provided it with an impressive overall coherence. Henry's manifestation as King progressively unfolds with reference to the traditional signs of Christ's Epiphany. As he moves from pageant to pageant, he encounters each of the major signs of the Epiphany season in rough liturgical sequence. At first sight, the civic triumph which greeted Henry VI in London on a February Thursday in 1432 seems to organize the young King's entry into London as an imagined ascension into the celestial Jerusalem. Most of the pageants on this occasion consisted of the same sort of angelic castles that had become familiar to London royal entries since the reign of Richard II, and they fulfilled much the same purpose: they imaginatively transformed the streets of the medieval city into the geography of heaven. 61 As Henry crossed London Bridge, he thus encountered a 'hevenly towre' peopled with 'virgens celestiall' and 'hevenly creatures' who bestowed upon him the gifts of nature, grace, and fortune, along with the gifts of ____________________ A glance at the poem shows that Lydgate probably did not personally witness the civic triumph. The actors in the pageants which Carpenter describes did not speak. 'Scriptures' were merely posted upon each pageant to give them speech. Lydgate, however, often represents these 'scriptures' as speeches spoken by the various characters. Other important reports all depend in great measure upon Lydgate; BL MS Harley540, 41v-42r; London, College of Arms, MS Vincent 25, 106v-107 v; Gregory's Chronicle, in James Gairdner (ed.), The Historical Collections of a Citizen of London in the Fifteenth Century ( Westminster, 1876). Since only Carpenter's letter and the Lambeth Palace manuscript have any significant authority, the following discussion draws mainly from London, Corporation of London Records Office, Letter Book K, 103 v-104 v and London, Lambeth Palace Library, MS Lambeth 12, 255r-v. Occasionally, however, Lydgate's verse serves as a convenient representation of Carpenter's letter. 60 The winter of 1431-2 made it difficult to fix a date for Henry's arrival in London. The King left Paris on the day after Christmas, but the remarkable bitterness of the weather rendered travel both difficult and dangerous (see Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, 279-80). Under these conditions, London probably reckoned that they could safely expect the King sometime during Epiphany season, and they were very nearly correct. The entry, in fact, occurred just a few days after the conclusion of the 'Time after Epiphany'. In 1432, Septuagesima fell on Sunday, 16 Feb., and the entry into London occurred on the following Thursday, 21 Feb. 61 Above, Ch. 1; G. Kipling, "Wonderfull Spectacles: Theater and Civic Culture", in John D. Cox and David Scott Kastan (eds.), A New History of Early English Drama ( New York, 1997), 156.

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the Holy Spirit and St Paul's 'armour of God' (pageant two). 62 A little later, at the Great Conduit in Cheapside, Henry came upon paradiseperhaps the new earth of St John's Apocalyptic vision -- where angelic maidens drew Eucharistic wines from the fountains of the Saviour while Enoch and Elijah appeared in the heavens above to greet the young king (pageant five). At the next pageant, Henry encountered the New Jerusalem descended to earth in the form of a 'castell beldyd of jasper grene I (pageant six). He then continued on to a final pageant station just outside St Paul's Cathedral, where he saw the throne of the indivisible Trinity surrounded by armies of angels, who promised to watch over him in all he did and to reward him with life eternal (pageant seven). Despite this clearly ordered sequence, however, the pageantry takes more interest in creating individual epiphanies for Henry than in tracing the stages of the young King's imaginary journey. Many of the pageants ignore altogether -- or even work against -- the ostensible journey sequence. Consider that sixth pageant, for example, the jasper'asper-green castle of New Jerusalem. In staging this scene, the pageant deviser refuses to draw out the Apocalyptic implications of Henry's presence in the celestial Jerusalem. Instead, he devotes all of his attention to an emblematic sign which may even run counter to the Apocalyptic meanings usually associated with the jasper-green castle. The deviser treats the castle merely as a container to hold three symbolic trees: two intertwined genealogical trees trace the young King's lineage from English St Edward and French St Louis while a Jesse Tree traces the lineage of Christ. Richly dressed, living actors represent the various descendants of St Edward, St Louis, and Jesse; they sitting upon the branches which sprout forth from these fruitful, vividly green, and astonishingly tall trees. These trees, rather than the castle, carry the primary meaning of the pageant, and this civic triumph uses them primarily as the signs of Henry VI's epiphany. In Chapter 2, we noticed that such Jesse Trees attempt to visualize that most potent Advent prophecy of Isaiah (11: 1-2: 'And there shall come forth a rod out of the root of Jesse, and a flower shall rise up out of his root. And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him'). In the medieval symbolic repertory, Isaiah's Jesse Tree always serves as a prophecy of Christ's First Coming and is therefore fulfilled by the Nativity and Epiphany. Here, however, this conventional First Coming image is located within a castle that medieval artists always took to be a Second Coming emblem: the Apocalyptic New Jerusalem. The pageant deviser is unlikely to be striving for a complex image here. This civic triumph ____________________ 62 BL MS Harley540, 41v. -144-

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requires a castle because such castles had become traditional in London. But the deviser largely disregards the Apocalyptic implications of the jasper castle, which he treats here merely as a traditional stage locus, and he concentrates instead upon the two trees, which he clearly regards as signs. Because the Jesse Trees visualize a scriptural prophecy, perhaps Bromyard would regard them primarily as 'scriptural signs'. The pageant deviser, however, primarily employs them as 'visual signs'. He is particularly interested in the ostensio that is visually produced when Henry pauses before the pageant. Just as his own genealogical trees are here revealed to be a type of the Jesse Tree, so Henry stands revealed as the type of royal Saviour come to the world as those trees have foretold. As Henry pauses before this pageant, these signs create an epiphany of Henry as "Fulfiller of the Profecye". They manifest him as the Christ-like Saviour, as the first king come to rule not one but two kingdoms, and, like Christ, he comes to his kingdom as a child. If we are to understand the function of these arboreal signs properly, however, we need to see that they are not really citations from scripture at all. Rather, we will do better to consider them primarily as citations of Church liturgy, where they serve as the distinctive signs of Christ's Advent and Epiphany. Since most medieval Christians did not read the Bible, these passages would only be familiar in their liturgical contexts. A medieval congregation, particularly one conversant in Vulgate, might well recall Isaiah's Jesse Tree prophecy from the five-verse excerpt ( 11: 1-5) prescribed as the Advent lesson for Ember Friday, where it serves as one of the chief 'scriptural signs' that will be fulfilled at the Lord's birth. They would be far more likely to recognize Isaiah's Jesse Tree, however, from the single verse (11: 10) memorably used as one of the distinctive Advent antiphons: the "O Radix Jesse". In this form, Church liturgy represents the Tree explicitly as a 'sign to the people' (signum populorum) pointing to the Epiphany of Christ, 'before whom kings shall keep silence, and unto whom the Gentiles shall make their supplication'. 63 The testimony of countless Jesse Tree windows shows that medieval congregations did in fact think of the Jesse Tree prophecy in this way. Both in visual and liturgical imagery alike, the Church represented the Jesse Tree as a signum populorum of Christ's Advent, and the civic triumph likewise conceives of the image in this way, as a 'sign to the people' of London. ____________________ 63 'O Radix Jesse, qui stas in signum populorum, super quem continebunt reges os suum, quem Gentes deprecabuntur: veni ad liberandurn nos, jam noli tardare.' The 'Greater Antiphons' of Advent (also known popularly as the 'Advent Os') served as the Magnificat antiphons between 17 and 23 Dec. Verses from Isaiah make up three of these antiphons: "O Radix Jesse", "O Clavis David", and "O Emmanuel". -145-

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Each of the seven pageants similarly forges visual signs from bits of liturgical scripture to stage manifestations for Henry. To judge from John Carpenter's letter, which provides the most authoritative description of the show, the 'design' of the show consisted of little more than a list of topically arranged scriptures. These relevant bits of scripture not only served as the subject matter for the pageants, but they also were posted on each pageant in large letters 'able to be redde with-oute a spectakle', according to Lydgate (267). The pageants, which attempt to visualize these scriptural signs, vary in their complexity depending upon the number and nature of scriptures chosen for each station. Prophecies from Isaiah figure in no fewer than three of the show's pageants. As Richard Osberg points out, Isaiah's Jesse Tree prophecy figures in at least two of the show's pageants. These include not only the Jesse Tree pageant itself, which we have just examined, but also the second pageant's vision of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit descending upon the Messiah: 'And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him: the spirit of wisdom, and of understanding, the spirit of counsel, and of fortitude, the spirit of knowledge, and of godliness' ( 11: 2-3). 64 In addition, the fifth pageant visualizes the so-called "Canticum Isaye", which became familiar to medieval Christians in the form of an Epiphany anthem: 'You shall draw waters with joy out of the Saviour's fountains' ( 12: 3). The fourth pageant constructs its image of a 'childe off beaute precellyng' seated 'middis off the throne rayed lyke a kyng' (277-8) by grouping together four thematically linked scriptures from Psalms and Proverbs, all having to do with the importance of justice to the king. Two similar scriptures explain the second pageant's vision of a Tabernacle of Wisdom 'surmountyng off beaute . . . of moste magnyficence . . . made for the lady callyd Dame Sapience' (227-32). In fact, every pageant in the triumph carefully constructs its visual signs -some allegorically complex, some straightforward -- upon a foundation of just such scriptural signs. The show began at the gate of London Bridge with a relatively straightforward visual sign of Henry's first epiphany. It depicts but a single verse of scripture: 'His enemies will I clothe with confusion' (Ps. 131: 18). ____________________ 64 "The Jesse Tree in the 1432 London Entry of Henry VI: Messianic Kingship and the Rule of Justice", Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 16 ( 1986), 220. Osberg thinks that the civic triumph has a three-part structure reflecting what he sees as three thematic divisions of Isa. 11: 1-9. I cannot agree with this proposed structure. While two of the pageants allude to the first three lines of this passage (the gifts of the Holy Spirit in pageant two and the Jesse Tree in pageant six), they do not make any use whatsoever of the imagery in the latter six lines of the passage which Osberg cites. Indeed, Osberg would have us see the Font of Salvation (pageant five) as somehow reflecting lines 3-9 of Isaiah's 'Jesse Tree' prophecy, but in fact they are an attempt to visualize quite another passage (Isa. 12: 3). -146-

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Excerpted from a familiar gradual psalm, this verse traditionally encapsulates God's promise that he will raise up a Messiah out of the lineage of David. It serves, in short, as one of the scriptural signs that will be fulfilled at the Epiphany of the Promised One. Here a mechanical giant, who serves as porter, shakes his sword to terrify Henry's enemies and admits Henry to the Bridge Gate, which has been decorated with the heraldic signs of Henry's dual kingship -- 'the armes off englond and off Fraunce' (93). The scripture thus represents the porter's recognition of Henry as his rightful king. By allowing Henry to pass the gate, the giant porter thus shows that Henry fulfils the scriptural sign of the promised Messiah. The next pageant in the series requires Henry to fulfil not just one, but three, of the traditional scriptural signs that would be fulfilled by the appearance of the Promised One. As a group, they all seem designed to dramatize Henry's first public manifestation as King. The first of these, drawn from a psalm described in the Vulgate as a 'Carmen nuptiale regis Messiae' and made familiar in a variety of liturgical settings, 65 casts Henry in the role of a triumphant Messiah come to his people like a royal bridegroom come to marry his bride. As a liturgical sign of Henry's epiphany, it marks the public inauguration of the new King's reign; it urges him to set out, proceed prosperously, and reign' (Ps. 44: 5). The second scripture applies to Henry Isaiah's famous sign of the sevenfold spirit of the Lord which will manifest the true Messiah by descending upon him: 'And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him: the spirit of wisdom, and of understanding, the spirit of counsel, and of fortitude, the spirit of knowledge, and of godliness' ( 11: 2). The third scripture -- a non-biblical one this time -- completes this first, formal manifestation of the kingly Messiah by offering Henry the seven pieces of spiritual armour proper to the 'regis Messiae': 'Accept the crown of glory, the sceptre of clemency, the sword of justice, the cloak of prudence, the shield of faith, the helmet of ____________________ 65

As Richard Osberg observes, Ps. 44 'was generally understood to celebrate the marriage of the messianic King with Israel (prefiguring the Church); the liturgy, particularly in the Little Office of the Virgin, develops the allegory further by associating the bride with the Virgin' ('Lambeth Palace Library Manuscript', 258). Because every female saint was seen as an allegorical sponsa to Christ, Ps. 44 becomes a fixture in almost every votive mass for the Virgin and for those of virgin martyrs (e.g. the Sarum forms for the common of virgin martyrs, St Katharine, St Margaret, among many others). See Durandus, Pationale, 17. 47. 1 on this point. The psalm also featured in votive masses for the apostles, and Honorius Augustodunensis ( PL 172. 648) thinks it especially appropriate for services on the Sunday after Epiphany, as a reflection of the symbolism of the Marriage at Cana. The psalm's use as a description of the royal Messiah appears in the coronation ceremonial. When the sword of state was strapped to Henry VI's thigh, for instance, the officiating bishops chanted verse 4 of the psalm in unison: 'Accingere gladio tuo super femur tuum, potentissime' ( Gregory Chronicle, 166).

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salvation, and the girdle of peace.' 66 Each of these scriptures thus defines Henry's triumph as a royal nativity, as the formal initiation of a new reign. We should have no difficulty in seeing that they have been chosen specifically as signs of Henry's symbolic birth, along the lines that we investigated above in the second chapter. In transforming these scriptural signs into visual ones, however, the pageant designer chose to emphasize them more as signs of Christ's Epiphany than of his Nativity. To begin with, the pageant deviser turns all three of these passages into that most characteristic of Epiphany motifs, the giving of gifts. Accordingly, he finds evidence in the three scriptures to justify the employment of no fewer than three 'empresses' and fourteen angelic maidens to present Henry with a series of emblematic gifts. He thus teases the first of the scriptures (Ps. 44: 5) into a description of three gifts being showered upon the 'regis Messiae': ' Intende, prospere, procede, et regna. Which is to say: set out prosperously by means of Fortune, proceed long by means of Nature, and reign virtuously by means of Grace.' 67 He then summons three empresses -Fortuna, Natura, and Gratia -directly from the pages of Frère Lorens famous Somme le roi to present Henry with these gifts and hence play the role of the Three Kings in the Epiphany story. In Lorens's allegorical treatise on the virtues and vices, these three ladies preside, respectively, over the three kinds of goods of varying worth: the 'litle goodes' of Fortune (the material things of this world), the 'myddel good' of Nature (one's own physical, intellectual, and moral attributes), and the 'grete good' of God's Grace, which alone can confer life and health to the soul. 68 ____________________ 66

'Accipe coronam glorie, sceptrum clemencie, gladium justicie, pallium prudencie, scutum fidei, galeam salutis et vinculum pacis.' The imperative accipe occurs in Carpenter's letter ( Letter Book K, 104 r); Lambeth begins this quotation without a verb; as a gloss to Lydgate's poem, by contrast, the scripture begins, 'Induat te Dominus corona glorie . . .' ( Minor Poems, ii. 637). 67 'Intende, prospere, procede, et regna. Quasi dicerent: Intende prospere per fortunam; procede longene per naturam et regna virtuose per gratiam' (Letter Book K, 104r). 68 For the enormous influence of Frère Lorens Somme le roi in late medieval allegory, see two important studies by Rosemund Tuve: Allegorical Imagery, and "Notes on the Virtues and Vices", JWCI26-7 ( 1963-4), 264-303, 42-72. Richard Osberg also briefly discusses the gifts of Nature, Grace, and Fortune ('The Jesse Tree', 222-3). According to Lorens, the 'smale goodes', or 'goodes of fortune', consist merely of the things of this world and are of little value. The 'myddel goodes', or 'goodes of nature', are 'goodes of kynde and of techyng'. They include 'fairenesse of body, douztynesse, strengpe, swiftnesse, meke and bonere, cler wyt, good vnderstondynge, gret memorie, and alle opere suche goodes pat kynde bryngep forp' as well as 'alle opere goodes pat any man purchasep bi studye and bi good wone, as goode maneres and goode pewes and sume vertues'. These are more important than the little goods of Fortune, but since they are given alike to heathens as to Christians, they cannot make a man truly good and are therefore not true goods either. Therefore, only the 'gretc good', consisting of grace, virtue, and charity which 'men clepen pe grace of God', is truly good, 'for it zyuep life and helpe to pe soule, for wip-out pat good pe soule were ded'. The Book of Vices and Virtues, 74-9.

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In paying their conventional tribute to an emperor greater than they, these three ladies offer Henry gifts fraught with incarnational imagery, but the gifts they present are surprisingly limited to the Somme's categories of 'litle' and 'middel' goods. They thus represent Henry's physical birth, not his spiritual awakening. The Empress Natura, for example, presents him with 'strength and fairness' ('fortitudine et decore',) the Empress Fortuna with riches and honours ('divitiis et honoribus',) and the Empress Gratia with wisdom and perception ('sapientia et intellectu'.) Not even the Empress Gratia here gives a spiritual gift to the young King, as we would expect from Frère Lorens's allegory; rather all three limit themselves to the extraordinary physical, mental, and material gifts that the young King presumably received at birth. It remains for the two sets of seven angelic ladies to present Henry with the more spiritual gifts that we would have expected from the Empress Gratia. Their gifts carefully establish the young King, born so fortunate, fair, and wise, as the Christ-like Messiah. Seven celestial maidens now offer Henry seven white doves, each emblematic of one of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit as described in the second pageant scripture (Isa. 11: 2). Since they take the symbolic form of doves, these seven gifts specifically identify Henry as the infant Messiah. In an ancient exegetical tradition, the seven gifts constitute the birthright of Christ. Isaiah's prophecy, in other words, tells us that Christ will be born with the gifts and that their manifestation in him will identify him as the Messiah. For this reason, as Gertrud Schiller observes, the seven spirits which Isaiah imagines resting upon the Messiah often appear in late medieval art 'rendered pictorially as gifts of the Holy Ghost by seven doves flying to Christ'. As Christ blooms from the flos atop the Jesse Tree, they circle and converge upon him (Fig. 17). 69 As the Somme le roi puts it, 'pes were graces wher-of he [ Christ] was al ful from pe tyme pat he was bigete in his modre wombe'. At the same time, all Christians receive the seven gifts at baptism: 'pes seuene holi gostes and holi ziftes we take alle at oure holy cristenyng.' 70 Indeed, the association of the seven doves with the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit also derives from the standard imagery of Christ's baptism. Bible commentaries on the seven gifts passage in Isaiah thus routinely draw parallels between the Spirit of the Lord descending to rest upon the Messiah in Isaiah's prophecy and the descent of the Holy Ghost in the ____________________ 69 Iconography of Christian Art, i. 16. See also Tuve, "Notes on the Virtues and Vices", 43-4. 70 The Book of Vices and Virtues, 117. Cf. Durandus, Rationale, 6. 16. 9-10, who thinks that the psalm 'Venite' is used at Epiphany to reflect the doctrine that baptism confers the sevenfold grace of the Holy Spirit. -149-

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17. Jesse Tree with the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit descending upon Christ

form of a dove at Christ's Baptism. 71 There can be no mistaking, in short, the distinctive Epiphany sign of the descent of the Holy Ghost in the form of a dove in this pageant. The Epiphany associations of all this gift-giving are then only further emphasized when seven more angelic virgins 'pure and clene' present Henry with the seven pieces of spiritual armour itemized in the pageant's third scripture. At first glance, these seven pieces of spiritual armour seem to evoke St Paul's 'whole armour of God' (Eph. 6: 10-17). But if we ____________________ 71 Nicholas de Lira, in a commentary on Isa. 11: 2, thus constructs a conventional symbolic gloss to explain how the spirit of the Lord 'shall rest upon him' ('Et requiescet super cum'): 'quia in baptismo eius apparuit Spiritus sanctus in specie columbae super eum, Matt. 3. ad designandum plenitudinem omnis gratiae in eo, ideo subditur.' Biblia Sacra cum glossa ordinaria (6 vols.; Douai, 1617), iv. 139. -150-

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set the pageant's list of spiritual armour side by side with that of St Paul, we will find that the two share just two items in common: 72 Henry VI's pageant armour 1. Crown of Glory 2. Sceptre of Clemency 3. Sword of Justice 4. Pallium (Cloak) of Prudence 5. Shield of Faith 6. Helmet of Salvation 7. Girdle of Peace

St Paul's 'whole armour of God' [none] girdled with Truth Breastplate of Justice shod with the Gospel of Peace Shield of Faith Helmet of Salvation Sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God

The similarities and differences between these two lists reflect Henry's dual status: on the one hand, the virgins offer him Pauline spiritual armour proper to a Christian knight, a miles Christi; on the other, they present him with spiritual regalia specifically appropriate to a Christian king, a rex christus. The first of the virgins' gifts are therefore specifically items of coronation regalia: crown, sword, sceptre, and cloak. The 'corona glorie' in particular comes to the pageant directly from the coronation ceremony. When the presiding bishop places the royal crown on the king's head for the first time, he proclaims, 'coronet te Deus corona gloriae'. 73 So, too, the 'pallio prudencie' most clearly refers to the pallium (mantle) presented to the king as a part of his coronation regalia. The 'gladio iusticie' and 'septro clemencie' similarly derive from the medieval iconography of divine kingship. Christ the King, for instance, holds the Sword of Justice while presiding over the Last Judgment in the Rohan Book of Hours, while God the Father grasps the sceptre in the upper register of the Ghent altarpiece (Fig. 35). 74 Wherever the royal and Pauline significances of these gifts conflict, however, the pageant suppresses the biblical meaning ____________________ 72

The two lists share in common only the shield of Faith (scutum fidei) and the helmet of Salvation (galeam salutis.) In addition to Eph. 6: 10-17, other biblical passages that mention allegorical pieces of armour include 2 Cor. 6: 7, Isa. 11: 5, and Isa. 59: 17, although none of them mentions a crown of glory. See Richard Osberg, ' "The Lambeth Palace Library Manuscript Account of Henry VI's London Entry", Mediaeval Studies, 52 ( 1990), 262-3, for one recent attempt to trace the imagery of this passage into one or another of these biblical passages. 73 Leopold G. Wickham Legg, English Coronation Records (Westminster, 1901), 96; William Maskell , Monumenta ritualia Ecclesiae Anglicanae (3 vols.; Oxford, 1882), i. 32. The English Liber regalis in fact prescribes that seven items of regalia should be presented to the king, each offered in turn according to the same accipe formula used in the pageant scripture: 'accipe gladium . . . accipe pallium . . . accipe sceptrum' ( Legg, English Coronation Records, 95-8). 74 Paris, Bibliothèque Natonale, MS lat. 9471, 154 r. The sword is the emblem of Justice, the first daughter of God. For the Sword as an emblem of divine justice, see Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art, ii. 137, 159-60, 207, 225-6, 228, and pis. 711, 801.

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in favour of the royal one. Even though the Sword represents the Word of God in Ephesians 6, it cannot do so here; as an item of coronation regalia it must instead serve Henry as an emblem of royal justice. Like heavenly acolytes in a coronation ceremony, these seven virgins thus endow Henry with the liturgical and biblical emblems of his identity. Just as he did at his coronation, Henry receives these chivalric signs piece by piece, and when he has put them on, he becomes manifest as a type of Christ the King. 75 In bestowing these gifts, the various empresses and angelic maidens show that the scriptural signs of messianic royalty have been fulfilled. Like the Magi, they recognize the kingly Messiah in the child who comes. Their gifts serve to reveal -- indeed manifest -- Henry's Christ-like identity. And with a new canticle composed especially for the occasion, they sing their acclamation of the King whom 'god hath sent unto the sight, Thi lord, thi prince, thy kyng by right'. 76 The signs of Henry's epiphany, moreover, are specifically made to recall Christ's first two epiphanies as celebrated in the liturgy: the visit of the Magi and the descent of the Holy Spirit at the Baptism. Together, these emblems constitute the natural, material, spiritual, and royal signs of the child-king's nature. Indeed, the extraordinary number and profusion of these gifts function as the pageant's most potent Epiphany sign. As John Carpenter's letter puts it, the gifts are not merely bestowed upon Henry but they also seem to pour down upon him. 77 In so doing, these signs mark the young King as the one -- in the words of Psalm 44 -- possessed of beauty and grace and anointed with the oil of gladness above the sons of men, whom God has blessed forever. By these signs you will know him. As he now moves on to the third pageant station opposite Leadenhall in Cornhill Street, the signs of Henry's epiphany begin to address the quality of his rule more than his messianic identity per se. What the citizens gathered there witness, in fact, is not Henry's epiphany at all, but rather that of Dame Sapience, the allegorical bride of the messianic king. In the previous pageant, the King appeared to the people of London as ____________________ 75 See, for example, the account of Henry's coronation ceremony in Gregory's Chronicle, 166. Not all of the pieces of pageant armour are matched by items of coronation regalia. The king receives two sceptres, a ring, and armillas. The pageant gifts remain armour, not regalia. The pageant artist, however, attempts to redefine the chivalric armour with reference to the coronation regalia. 76 As Richard Osberg points out, the language of Carpenter's letter presents this song as one of those 'new canticles' which should be sung to the Lord (Pss. 39 and 95). "Lambeth Palace Library Manuscript", 257. 77 Idemque dominus rex sic salutatus et receptus ac donis gratuitispreditus et infusas, Carpenter says, Henry goes on to the Tabernacle of Sapience (Letter Book K, 104r). -152-

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the bridegroom king of Psalm 44; now Dame Sapience makes her appearance as that king's bride, a 'queen . . . in gilded clothing, surrounded with variety' (Ps. 44: 10 ). 78 Just as the queenly bride in the psalm comes to her wedding surrounded with rejoicing, attendant virgins (Ps. 44: 15-16), so Dame Sapience appears to Henry surrounded by her own attendant maidens, the Seven Liberal Arts. Medieval commentary conventionally understands the queenly sponsa in this familiar psalm as a figure of Christ's bride, either his earthly bride, the Church, or his heavenly bride, the Virgin Queen of Heaven. 79 As he approaches Dame Sapience, his pageant sponsa, the young King finds himself playing his part in a dramatized "Carmen nuptiale regis Messiae". The pageant description, for instance, reflects this imagery by saying that Henry approached Dame Sapience's house like a bridegroom, ad sponsum Tabernaculum Domine sapiencie. 80 Dame Sapience, as her name suggests, appears to Henry as an allegorical reflection of Divine Wisdom, 'a female figure, crowned, and with a sceptre in her hand'. According to Gertrud Schiller, Divine Wisdom was portrayed in this way from the eleventh century onwards to represent the Messiah's bride, Ecclesia. This queenly Ecclesia figure then became 'associated with the Virgin who was to bear the divine son in Isaiah's prophecy'. 81 For this reason, Peter Damian identifies the Virgin symbolically as a seven-columned House of Wisdom which God built for himself to inhabit. 82 In keeping with this potent allegory, Dame Sapience's "Tabernacle" has also been patterned after the House which Wisdom 'hath built [for] herself . . . she hath hewn her out seven pillars' (Prov. 9: 1). 83 The House's seven pillars, which conventionally symbolize the seven gifts ____________________ 78

Osberg points out that Carpenter's description of Dame Sapience as 'in vestitu deaurato circumdatam varietate' (Letter Book K, 104 r,) in this pageant borrows Ps. 44's description of the queen: filiae regum in honore tuo. | Astitit regina a dextris tuis | in vestitu deaurato, circumdata varietate ('Lambeth Palace Library Manuscript', 256). 79 Nicholas de Lira sums up the medieval exegetical tradition which sees Ps. 44 as a celebration of the wedding between Christ and his Church: Biblia Sacra cum glossa ordinaria, iii. 755-8. Christ's marriage to his Church, of course, is merely a figurative reflection of his marriage to the Virgin Queen of Heaven. The liturgy for the Feast of the Assumption thus prescribes Ps. 44 by way of characterizing the Virgin as the sponsa-queen of the Messiah. 80 In the Lambeth manuscript only. Carpenter version reports less colourfully that Henry merely travelled 'vsque speciosum Tabernaculum Domine Sapiencie' (Letter Book K, 104 r). On this point, see Osberg, "Lambeth Palace Library Manuscript", 257-8. 81 Iconography of Christian Art, i. 23, 41. Osberg, "Lambeth Palace Library Manuscript", 258. 82 Sermo 45, "In Nativitate Beatissimae Virginis Mariae", PL 147. 741: 'Sicut ergo impossible erat ut humani generis redempto fieret, nisi Dei Filius de Virgine nasceretur; ita etiam necessarium fuerat ut Virgo, ex qua Verbum caro fieret, nasceretur. Oportebat quippe prius aedificari domum, in quam descendens coelestis Rex habere dignaretur hospitium. Illam videlicet, de qua per Salomonem dicitur: "Sapientia aedificavit sibi domum, excidit columnas septem (Prov. IX)."' 83 Carpenter letter describes this Tabernacle as 'super vii columnas quas exciderat', a clear reference to Proverbs: 'Sapientia aedificavit sibi domum, | Excidit columnas septem' ( 9: 1).

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of wisdom and the virtues which enabled Mary to conceive Christ, here specifically refer to Dame Sapience's gifts of wisdom in the form of the Seven Liberal Arts. 84 She therefore appears to Henry exactly in the same way that the House of Wisdom often appears in medieval illustrations as an architectural setting that defines the Virgin as Divine Wisdom. In the context of all this conventional imagery, Dame Sapience serves as a sign of the messianic king's dedication to Divine Wisdom. Henry's arrival before this pageant dramatizes an idealized epiphany of the young King's devotion to Sapience as the cardinal principle of his rule: like Solomon, he pursues Wisdom above all other virtues and so betrothes himself to her. The scriptures posted on the pageant, indeed, clearly articulate this commitment. In one of them, Sapience herself seems to address the King, reminding him that 'by me kings reign and wise men possess glory'. 85 Another psalm inscribed on the front of the pageant and deemed 'especially fitting to young kings' exhorts Henry: 'now, O ye kings, understand: receive instruction, you that judge the earth' (Ps. 2: 10 ). 86 In visualizing these various scriptural signs, the deviser has turned the House of Wisdom into an academy where Sapience is defined in terms of the Seven Liberal Arts. Sapience's attendant maidens both epitomize the traditional Arts and define the pillars which uphold the House itself. Further, they introduce Henry to the various patrons of these Arts: Priscian (Grammar), Aristotle (Logic), Cicero (Rhetoric), Boethius (Music), Pythagoras (Arithmetic), Euclid (Geometry), and Albumazar (Astronomy). One must not conclude, however, that the presence of the Arts and their patrons establishes the House of Wisdom as a distinctively secular establishment. Rather, because the Seven Arts embody human wisdom, as Gertrud Schiller observes, they both emanate from Divine Wisdom and serve as paths to her. For this reason, 'medieval theologians regarded Mary as a mistress of all seven of those Liberal Arts which led to a knowledge of God', and only her consummate mastery of the Arts qualified her to conceive Christ. 87 In peopling the House of Wisdom with the Seven Arts, the pageant deviser not only defines Dame Sapience as a representative of Divine Wisdom, but he also portrays Henry's path to her. In particular, ____________________ 84Schiller,

Iconography of Christian Art, i. pls. 38, 86. Peter Damian, PL 147. 741: 'Septem namque virginalis haec domus suffulta columnis exstit, quia venerabilis Mater Domini septem sancti Spiritus donis, id est, sapientiae, et intellectus; consilii, et fortitudinis; scientiae, et pietatis, atque timoris Dei ( Isa. XI).' 85Based loosely upon Prov. 8: 15-20. 86'Et ante praefatas scientias et cloctores, in fronte tabernaculi, scriptum erat illud exhortatorium Davidicum, juvenibus regibus congruum: et nunc reges intelligite, erudimini qui judicatis terram' (Letter Book K, 104r). 87Iconography of Christian Art, i. 31-2, 42.

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the scriptures posted on the pageant connect Henry's pursuit of Divine Wisdom to his kingly profession. If he is to judge the earth, he must take instruction in Dame Sapience's Tabernacle. To render justice in the image of Christ the King, he must love wisdom first of all. Like the previous pageant, this one also creates its manifestation of Henry from the selected signs of Advent and the Epiphany. Images of a seven-pillared Tabernacle appear in illustrations of the Annunciation to identify Mary as the House of Wisdom prepared as a dwelling place of Christ. The Seven Liberal Arts are carved into the Incarnation portal of Chartres cathedral as attendants to the Virgin Mary and the infant Christ. 88 In a well-known Advent sermon, St Bernard takes Proverbs 9: 1 as his text to symbolize the man who has prepared an acceptable habitation in his soul for Christ by means of the cultivation of justice. The soul of such a man, he says, is upheld by nine pillars of justice, and he accordingly cites many of the very same scriptural texts emphasizing the importance of justice to the king that we encounter in these pageants for Henry VI. 89 Given all this emphasis upon the Advent and Incarnation of Divine Wisdom, we should not be surprised to find that the Epiphany season reserves one of its most important Sundays to commemorate an important manifestation of Christ by means of a supernatural display of wisdom. Almost all liturgies in the Roman Church prescribe Luke's account ( 2: 42-52) of Jesus confounding the doctors in the Temple for the Gospel lesson on the first Sunday after the octave of Epiphany: 'and all that heard him were astonished at his wisdom and his answers.' Occurring in the liturgy immediately after commemorations of the Magi and the Baptism and immediately before the miracle at Cana, the Church liturgy represented this manifestation of Divine Wisdom in a child as the third of Christ's historical epiphanies. Since it was never pre-empted by even the earliest possible date for Septuagesima, it became one of the most important of Christ's epiphanies in the late Middle Ages. For the purposes of Henry VI's entry into London, its portrait of a 12-year-old Christ 'full of wisdom and the grace of God' could not help but suggest a parallel to the 11year-old child-king. If he were to fulfil England's hopes for a messianic ruler, as these pageants suggest, then he had best imitate the young Christ, who began to manifest himself almost exactly at Henry's ____________________ 88 Ibid. 31-2, 41, and pl. 63. 89 Third Sermon for Advent, PL 183. 43-7. In addition to his main text (Ps. 9: 1), St Bernard also cites Ps. 44, Ps. 98: 4 ('the king's honour loveth judgment'), and Ps. 88: 15 ('justice and judgment are the preparation of thy throne'). These latter two texts, as we shall see, figure importantly in the next pageant. -155-

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time of life, 'advanced in wisdom, and age, and grace with God and men' ( Luke 2: 52). As Henry makes his way further up Cornhill Street, all these preliminary manifestations are enfolded into an epiphany of Henry as a King of Justice. On a platform high atop a castellated Conduit, the newborn king richly endowed with gifts of Nature, Grace, Fortune, and Sapience appears as a 'childe off beaute precellyng'; he sits there upon a certain lofty and exceedingly beautiful Throne of Justice' wisely dispensing justice to his people. 90 To his right hand he is attended by Lady Mercy, to his left hand by Lady Truth, while from above Lady Clemency embraces and strengthens his throne. Two wise judges and eight lawyers stand upon the steps before the throne as representatives of the King's Justice. For its general iconographical features, this 'exceedingly beautiful' pageant throne set upon a stepped platform thus models its physical details upon King Solomon's 'great throne of ivory' overlaid with the finest gold which was set atop six steps (3 Kgs. 10: 18-20). Indeed, it would be surprising if this pageant did not pay tribute to this famous biblical prototype to some extent, since artists of the era commonly represented medieval kings sitting in thrones modelled after Solomon's. 91 It may therefore have resembled the scripturally correct gold-covered throne that served as a sign of Prince Charles's epiphany at Bruges in 1515 (Fig. 18). Solomon -a 15-year-old youth resembling Prince Charles -- sat enthroned in glory while four Queens of Sheba sitting on the steps of the throne praised the magnificence, wisdom, power, and glory of Solomon-Charles, 'the king above all others'. A scripture above the throne further spelled out the Christ-like implications of this King come in majesty and judgment: 'Blessed be God who has this day sent the wise Son of David to reign above this people.' 92 This image of a King of Justice seated upon the throne of Solomon recapitulates one of the most familiar of the liturgical signs of Christ's Epiphany. The prescribed Christmas epistle from Hebrews 1: 1 - 12, for instance, evokes the image of the Son seated upon a heavenly throne 'for ever and ever; a sceptre of justice is the sceptre of Thy kingdom. Thou has loved justice and hated iniquity, therefore God, Thy God, hath ____________________ 90 Lydgate, Minor Poems, ii. 277. Letter Book K, 104r: 'super Conductum aquae sphaericum in dicto vico exaltabatur quidam excelsus justitiae throtius, admirabilis decoris.' 91 Real thrones also imitated the scriptural account of Solomon's throne. Henry III of England, for instance, directed his keeper of works to construct his 'new chair at Westminster' in the image of Solomon's throne ( Steane, Archaeology of Medieval English Monarchy, 37-8). 92 Dupuys, La tryumphante Entree, E4: 'Benoist soit dieu qui a ce iourduy enuoye le tressaige filz de Dauid pourregner dessus ce peuple.' The illustration is not faithful to some of the pageant's details. It particularly lacks the steps which served as the base of the throne. -156-

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18. Archduke Charles as Solomon. Entry of Archduke Charles into Bruges, 1515

anointed Thee with the oil of gladness above Thy fellows.' This image is then reinforced with an offertory antiphon based upon one of the pageant's own scriptural sources: 'Thine are the heavens, and Thine is the earth, the world and the fullness thereof Thou has founded; justice and judgment are the preparation of Thy throne' (Ps. 88: 12, 14). 93 The same scripture was fashioned into an anthem at Henry's coronation service as he took the throne for the first time. 94 The opening of Epiphany mass invokes Christ's regal manifestation with an introit which also includes another of the pageant scriptures: 'Behold the Lord the Ruler is come: and the Kingdom is in His hand, and power, and dominion. Give to the King Thy judgment, O God.: and to the King's Son Thy Justice' (Ps. 71: 2). This same introit also introduces mass for the octave of Epiphany, and ____________________ 93 Third mass for Christmas Day. The same offertory anthem is repeated at the Feast of the Circumcision, 1 Jan. 94 Legg, English Coronation Records, 86. -157-

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the image once again reappears in the mass for the following Sunday: 'Upon a high throne I saw a Man sitting, whom a multitude of Angels adore singing together: Behold Him the name of whose empire is for ever.' Since Sundays in the Middle Ages were commonly referred to by citing their introits, the Sunday after the octave of Epiphany became known as 'excelso throno'. Even in the waning services of the Epiphany season, the liturgy continues to employ these same scriptural signs: 'The Gentiles shall fear Thy name, O Lord, and all the kings of the earth Thy glory.' 95 From Christmas Day to the Saturday before Septuagesima, the Church insistently reminds the congregation not only of the Saviour's first manifestation as a babe in a manger, but also of his final manifestation as Christ the King seated upon the heavenly Throne of Justice. In its choice of scriptural signs, the liturgy pays great attention to Solomon as a prefiguration of the Messiah. The introit that opens Epiphany worship, as we have seen, comes from Psalm 71 and describes the messianic king holding absolute dominion over the world and dispensing divine justice. This was a particularly appropriate choice because the psalm in question was held to be 'a prophecy of the coming of Christ, and of his kingdom, prefigured by Solomon and his happy reign'. 96 The liturgy of Epiphany generally uses Solomon in this way as a prophetic sign pointing to the future reign of the Messiah. Solomon thus appears throughout Epiphany services in the season's many evocations of the King to whom 'all they from Saba shall come, bringing gold and frankincense: and shewing forth praise to the Lord' (Isa. 60: 1-6), and the Messiah to whom 'the kings of Tharsis and the islands shall offer presents: the kings of the Arabians and of Saba shall bring gifts: and all kings of the earth shall adore him: all nations shall serve him' (Ps. 71: 10-11). 97 Such images define the conventional iconography of Christ the King ( Majestas Domini), who is often shown seated upon a throne holding the orb, sceptre, or sword as his symbol of imperial dominion. The bishops and nobles who crowd around Christ's throne in a medieval Apocalypse illustration, for example, are performing the same medieval coronation rites upon the King of Heaven that they would expect to perform upon earthly sovereigns (Fig. 19). By the same token, royal portraits conventionally depict medieval kings as types of the Majestas Domini. If we did not know that the Westminster Abbey portrait of an enthroned monarch was meant to represent Richard II (Fig. 20), we might well mistake it for a representation of Christ the King because of its heroic scale and ____________________ 95 Gradual, mass for the sixth Sunday after Epiphany (Ps. 101: 16-17). 96 This is the Douay-Reims description of Ps. 71. 97 e.g. epistle, gradual, and offertory for Epiphany mass. -158-

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ecclesiastical context. In its vision of an enthroned Christ sitting upon a high throne amidst a multitude of angels, the Epiphany liturgy sanctioned and popularized such images. Given the authority of royal iconography and Church liturgy, pageant images of the king as Majestas Domini became one of the most frequently staged emblems in the medieval civic triumph. We have already examined one of these in some detail at the Paris triumph of Henry VI (Chapter 2), and we have seen Solomon used as a sign of Henry VII's epiphany at York earlier in this chapter. We will encounter similar figures of the Majestas Domini frequently throughout our examination of the medieval civic triumph. Given the Epiphany liturgy's interest in Solomon's epiphany before the Queen of Sheba, we should not be surprised to find that King Solomon frequently serves the civic triumph as a sign of the royal Messiah's Epiphany. Illustrations of the Queen of Sheba paying tribute to Solomon often appear in parallel to the Adoration of the Magi in the Speculum humanae salvationis and in medieval books of hours. The Queen who comes from afar to bring gold, frankincense, and praise prefigures the -159-

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visit of the Magi to Christ. 98 In similar fashion, devisers of civic triumphs stage the visit of the Queen of Sheba to Solomon as a sign of the king's epiphany. The citizens of Ghent, for instance, use the Queen of Sheba as a sign of Philip the Good's epiphany in 1458: King Solomon, sitting in his royal throne in seat of ivory, richly clad in royal habit, three of his knights standing by him, and the Queen Sheba kneeling before him, with three of her maidens also richly dressed and habited. And King Solomon gave her his royal scepter as if he should have given it to her in the hand, and before the aforesaid scaffold stood written: Your glory exceeds the fame which I heard. [3 Kgs. 10] In the scriptural account, the Queen of Sheba in fact comments on Solomon's wisdom and works, but the pageant deviser has substituted gloria tua for sapientia et opera tua (3 Kgs. 10: 7) to emphasize the Epiphany meaning of the pageant. Philip's glory is here manifest; his wisdom and works are not being praised. 99 In these cases, perhaps, the pageant deviser went directly to the scriptural accounts of the Queen's visit to Solomon (3 Kgs. 10: 1-15). In a Bruges pageant for Archduke Charles ( 1515), however, we can see that the dramatist has devised his pageant liturgically (Fig. 18). He conceives .of the Queen of Sheba's visit as the liturgy does by having four queens do homage before Solomon's epiphany. They thus represent 'all they from Saba', as in the Epiphany anthems, rather than a single Queen of Sheba who appears in scripture, and they are each assigned a separate appreciation of Charles/ Solomon's magnificence, glory, wisdom, and fame. These images of the Majestas Domini and the enthroned Solomon were to prove among the most effective in the symbolic repertory of the medieval civic triumph. Nowhere more clearly do we see the pageant deviser striving to represent the first manifestation of the king as 'prefigured by Solomon and his happy reign'. In much the same spirit, this London civic triumph constructs its image of Solomon's throne as a prophecy of the coming of Henry VI and of his kingdom, prefigured by Solomon and his happy reign. As with the previous pageants, the kings' presence before these visual and scriptural ____________________ 98

Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art, i. 23; Grimani Breviary: Venice, Biblioteca Marciana, MS lat. XI 67 (7531), 74 v (Adoration of the Magi), 75r (Queen of Sheba before Solomon). 99 Kronyk van Vlaenderen, ii. 229 : 'de coninc Salomon, zittende in sinen coninclyken troen in eenen setele van yvorye, rykelic ghecleedt met coninclyken habyten, drye van sinen ridders by hem staende, ende de coninginne Saba knielde voer hem, met drye van haren maghden oec costelic ghecleedt ende gehabitueert, ende de coninc Salomon boet haer sinen coninclyken ceptre, als oft hine haer in de handt gegeven soude hebben, ende voer 't vorseide stellagie stont ghescreven: Major est gloria tua quam rumor quem audivi. Reg. L. 3. C. 10.'

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signs fulfils their prophecies of the advent of the Christ-like king who comes to rule his subjects with mercy, truth, clemency, and justice. No fewer than four scriptural signs -- each emblazoned upon the pageant -- contribute to the overall design. First of all, its image of a royal throne upheld by Clemency and attended by Mercy and Truth visualizes King Solomon's own allegorical description of the wise king sitting in his Throne of Judgment: 'mercy and truth preserve the King, and his throne is strengthened by clemency' (Prov. 20: 28). 100 The judges and lawyers standing before the throne visualize the scripture used in both the Christmas and coronation anthems: 'justice and judgment are the preparation of thy throne' (Ps. 88: 15); this is an especially apt scripture since, as the Queen of Sheba remarks, the Lord has expressly appointed Solomon king 'to do judgment and justice' (3 Kgs. 10: 9). The third scriptural sign characterizes the king's devotion to justice: 'the king's honour loveth judgment' (Ps. 98: 4). Finally, the fourth scripture quotes the Epiphany introit to make clear that the king imitates divine justice: "Give to the King Thy judgment, O God: and to the King's Son Thy justice" (Ps. 71: 2). As the boyking Henry pauses before this image of the boy-Christ-king, type and anti-type confront one another; the same psalms which are sung at Epiphany and Christmas to acclaim the coming and manifestation of Christ now become visual signs to declare the coming and manifestation of Henry VI. This vision of Majestas Domini revealed in a 'childe off beaute precellyng' sums up the city's hopes for the qualities of the young King's rule. Despite all the explicitly imperial motives for Henry's double coronation as King of two realms, the triumph has so far taken little interest in descrying the signs of a warrior-king in this son of Henry V. 101 Only the porter at the Bridge Gate has touched upon this theme with his oblique promise to sow confusion among Henry's enemies. 102 Otherwise, the signs of Henry's epiphany have been predominantly 'domestic' ones. The city has been most anxious to see Henry as a master of more traditional arts of home rule. He is equipped with wisdom and justice instead of military prowess. This London triumph does not profess to see signs of a future conqueror in the child-king. The armour they bestow ____________________ 100The Vulgate bible describes Prov. 20 as one of the "Parables of Solomon", and these lines refer to 'the king that sitteth on the throne of Judgment' who 'scattereth away all evil with a look' (Prov. 20: 8). 101On this subject see McKenna, "Henry VI of England and the Dual Monarchy", 160-2. 102The scripture assigned to the giant warder at Bridge Gate, 'inimicos ejus induam confusione' (Ps. 131: 18), only admits of an 'imperial' significance because of the presence of the arms of both England and France displayed beside the Bridge. These constitute a clear armorial reference to Henry's joint inheritance. -162-

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upon him will not serve to lead an army; rather, it merely invests him with the inner and spiritual qualities that he will need to be a good king to his people. 'Now that his royal majesty had been strengthened by the power of virtue, the pre-eminence of wisdom, and the knowledge of justice,' Carpenter remarks, Henry was ready to embark upon the next stage of his journey. 103 As he approaches the next pageant built atop Great Conduit in Cheapside, he now encounters a different sort of epiphany. This time, Henry shares his moment of epiphany with the city of London which appears to him now in the form of an earthly paradise. The visual details of the pageant dramatize Henry's power to transform the city into a holy place. His very presence seems to produce a miracle of transubstantiation, for the Conduit's fountains now spout wine rather than water. Or rather, they spout water which has been transformed into wine, for Carpenter compares them to the 'aquas architriclinas' which Jesus turned to wine at the Cana wedding. By virtue of this sign, Henry appears to the people of London as the Christ who changes water to wine, and in so doing he manifests his regal divinity once again. By the same token, Henry's presence seems also to have transformed this bit of London into a prelapsarian paradise, 'sparkling with flowers and shining with fruit-bearing trees'. 104 Enoch and Elijah, their faces brightly shining like angels, peer out from among the trees and flowers of this locus amoenus, where they patiently await the coming of the Messiah. 105 As Jacobus de Voragine reminds us, the two prophets did not die, but were carried up in a whirlwind and 'transferred into the terrestrial paradise'. 106 From their Eden-like vantage ____________________ 103

'Cum ipsa regia majestas tanta potentia virtutum, praeeminentia sapientiae, rationatu justitiae, fulsita fuerat, mox nobilissimum vicum Civitatis, "Chepe" vulgariter nuncupatum, subintrans' (Letter Book K, 104r). 104 Carpenter reports that 'inveniebat super magnum aquaeductum ibidem amoenissimum et pulcherrimum locum ad modum Paradisi consitum, stellatum floribus, et arboribus fructiforis relucentem, et breviter omnium rerum speciositate conspicuum. Ex cujus latere Aquilonis in civitatem Regis magni fontes vivacissimi scaturiebant aquas architriclinas in vinum conversas, qui gustus regios post tantam virtutum adoptionem merito poterant recreate' (Letter Book K, 104r-v). Lydgate expands Carpenter mention of arboribus fructiforis into a formidable list of fruit trees (II. 349-62). 105 According to Carpenter, "Ennok" and "Ely" were congratulating the King on his adventus ('de tanti Regis adventu',) and they were 'portantis facem, illuminantis propriam' (Letter Book K, 104 v). Their illuminated appearance alludes to the description of Jesus, Elijah, and Moses together upon a 'high mountain' at the Transfiguration (e.g. Matt. 17: 1-9; Mark 9: 1-12; Luke 9: 28-36). For Elijah's role, in particular, as a 'forerunner' who awaits the appearance of the Messiah, see Mal. 4: 4 and Mark 9: 10-12. 106 According to biblical tradition, neither prophet died but was assumed into heaven. The whirlwind, properly speaking, was specifically Elijah's method of celestial transport (de Voragine, Golden Legend, i. 296). For Elijah's whirlwind, see 4 Kgs. 2: 11. Enoch gained his reputation as a prophet on the basis of the apocryphal Book of Enoch.

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point, they at last fulfil their assigned roles in Christian tradition by blessing Henry, thus recognizing him as the expected Messiah for whom they have long tarried. Two of the pageant's three scriptures give voice to these blessings: 'The enemy shall have no advantage over him, nor the son of iniquity have power to hurt him' (Ps. 88: 23); 'The Lord preserve him and give him life, and make him blessed upon the earth: and deliver him not up to the will of his enemies' (Ps. 40: 3). 107 In the blessings bestowed by Enoch and Elijah upon the young King, the triumph continues to offer compelling signs of Henry's messianic identity to the citizens of London. Henry turns the 'waters of Archedeclyne' into wine, and the resulting vintage allegorically manifests the nature of its creator. So that the citizens of London might taste the waters of this symbolic fountain, the pageant deviser apparently stationed three allegorical virgins -- Mercy, Grace, and Pity -- to draw wine from the Conduit's various fountains and distribute it to all who cared to drink. 108 Mercy ministers wines of Temperance, Grace doles out liquor of Good Governance, and Pity distributes wines of Comfort and Consolation. According to the logic of the remedia contra vitium, each of these virtuous beverages serves to counter its opposite vice: the wine of Temperance opposes Recklessness ('cruelle hastynes'), the liquor of Good Governance deters vengeance and fury ('furious wodnes' ), and the wines of Comfort and Consolation mitigate extreme severity ('the swerd of rightwysnes' ). Each of these allegorical liquors thus manifests the idealized, regal character that the citizens hope to find in their King. Despite this interest in royal virtue, this pageant takes only a peripheral interest in establishing such a personal epiphany for Henry. In fact, it takes Henry's messianic identity for granted. The pageant takes more interest in the fountain's effects upon its landscape than in the fountain ____________________ 107

Regarding the messianic implications of these scriptures, St Augustine ( De civ. Dei, 17. 9) thinks that these words from Ps. 88 refer to Jesus, but under the name of David. 108 Lydgate poem ( Minor Poems, ii. 641-2) provides the sole authority for the ministrations of Mercy, Grace, and Pity. Neither Letter Book K nor the Lambeth manuscript mentions their presence. Possibly, therefore, they are merely Lydgate's invention. Lydgate, in fact, departs a good deal from his source in order to contrive a flattering allusion to John Wells, Lord Mayor of London, who had commissioned him to write this poem, in describing this pageant. He goes so far as to declare that these "Wells of the Saviour" were 'devysed notably in dede | For to accorden with the Meirys name'. The pageant's three allegorical virgins, however, play no part in Lydgate's flattery. Apart from this single example, as MacCracken demonstrates, every other detail of Lydgate's description carefully replicates a detail to be found in the extant text of Carpenter letter ( "King Henry's Triumphal Entry into London", 75-102). Certainly, this detail seems genuine. Although we have two versions of the Latin text, both differ significantly in details ( Osberg, "Lambeth Palace Library Manuscript", 256). Since we do not have the actual text from which Lydgate worked, it remains possible that Lydgate found Mercy, Grace, and Pity in the text he received. This analysis assumes that they are genuine.

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itself. It reserves its most prominent signs -- the wine-flowing fountains and the terrestrial paradise -- to visualize the pageant's most important scriptural sign: 'You shall draw waters with joy out of the Saviour's fountains' (Isa. 12: 3). St Bernard saw this passage as a Christmas scripture that describes how Christ's First Coming transforms the spiritual nature of his people: 'Christ is for us as a fountain, in which we may wash ourselves clean', indeed, a fountain through whom 'we may be able to recover that paradise which was irrigated by a four-branched stream'. In Christ, he points out, 'we have the waters of pardon from the fountain of mercy for washing away our sins; we have the waters of discretion from the fountain of wisdom for slaking our thirst; and we have the water of devotion from the fountain of grace for irrigating the plants of our good works'. 109 In the Sarum liturgy, this line serves as the climax of the Old Testament lesson for the octave of the Epiphany. 110 Its prophetic vision of the Messiah as a fountain overflowing with grace serves as an apt prefiguration of the Baptism, which is the subject of that Sunday's Gospel lesson, and it prefigures as well Christ's first miracle at Cana. This scripture is especially significant, furthermore, because it marks Isaiah's last appearance in the Sarum liturgy as the prophet of Advent. His voice, which has been heard almost continually since the first week of Advent to announce the coming of the Saviour, now announces the fulfilment of his prophecies in this final scripture. For the medieval church, this passage formed the very heart of the prophet's "Canticle of Thanksgiving". Speaking from the point of view of the world sub legis, Isaiah prophesies the advent of a world sub gratia that would be inaugurated by the appearance of the Messiah. His canticle imagines the joyful response of those who lived to experience the world transformed by the presence of grace. Those people, the prophet foresaw, would indeed draw waters with joy from the fountain of the Saviour. The pageant similarly visualizes the civic world transformed by the coming of ____________________ 109

"In Nativitate Domini, Sermo primus", PL 183. 117-18: 'Fons nobis est Christus Dominus unde lavemur, sicut scripturn est: Qui dilexit nos, et lavit nos a peccatis nostris [Apoc. 1: 5]. . . . Putas inveniri poterit quartus fons, ut paradisum recuperemus quatuor fontium irrigatione amoenissimum? . . . Nunc autent ut de exhibitione praesentium firma sit exspectatio futurorum, paradisum habemus multo meliorem, et longe delectabilorem, quam primi parentes habuerunt, et paradisus noster Christus Dominus est. In quo tres quidem fontes iam invenimus: quartun quaeramus. Habemus de fonte misericordiae ad diluendas culpas, aquas remissionis; habemus de fonte sapientiae ad potandam sitim nostram, aquas discretionis; habemus de fonte gratiae ad irrigandas plantas bonorum operum, aquas devotionis: quaeramus ad decoquendos cibos aquas ferventes, aquas aemulationis. . . . Et vide ne forte de fontibus istis praedixerit Isaias: Haurietis aquas in gaudio de fontibus Salvatoris [Isa. 12: 3].' 110 Sarum Missal, 39. In other liturgies, this passage serves as a Christmas reading. See St Bernard's first Christmas sermon, discussed immediately above.

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21. The Fountain of Grace. Frère Lorens, Somme le roi

its Messiah. A civic landscape, transformed by grace, becomes a garden. By 'you', the pageant refers to the citizens of London who stand to benefit from this flowing forth of royal virtue. They are invited to drink the aquas architriclinas, which the three virgins dispense. The Prince's virtues spill from the fountain and nourish the landscape, filling it with flowers and fruit trees. His qualities of Temperance, Good Government, Comfort, and Consolation define the condition of the city sub gratia in the presence of its saviour. London, transformed by the virtues of its messlanic king, becomes a garden, a terrestrial paradise. This allegorical garden landscape returns us once again to the pages of Frère Lorens Somme le roi. Illustrated manuscripts of that seminal work conventionally include an illustration of the Fountain of Grace which stands at the centre of a spiritual garden (Fig. 21). 'Departed in seuene stremes, pat belle pe seuene ziftes of pe Holy Ghost,' the fountain 'zyuep moysture and waterynge of pe welle of grace' throughout the garden, 'and makep it wexe grene and burione & profiten, and kepep it alwey a-lyue and fresch'. Seven Trees of Virtue grow in the garden, and seven 'rizt faire maidenes' draw water from the streams that pour from the fountain to nourish them so that they might 'beren pe fruyzt of lif wip-outen -166-

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ende'. They perform their horticultural duties under the direction of 'God pe fadre, pat is pe grete gardyner'. 111 The pageant, to be sure, makes do with only three maidens, and its spiritual well sends forth only three streams of aquas architriclinas, but its allegory broadly parallels that of Frère Lorens. 112 The earthly paradise with its central fountain symbolizes the once-fallen soul restored to the state of grace through the ministrations of the 'grete gardyner'. The fruit trees that spring up around these fountains of the Saviour thus symbolize the spiritual harvest that Henry, as England's Great Gardener, will reap from the citizens of London. As he pauses before the pageant, the fountains of Mercy, Grace, and Pity make manifest the effects of Henry's advent upon his people. He comes to restore them to the paradise from which they have fallen, thereby restoring England to its prelapsarian state again. For the remainder of his journey through the city, the civic triumph chooses to dramatize Henry's ascent into the Castle of Heaven. At the Great Conduit in Cheapside, he has already made the first stage in his imaginative ascent, for the terrestrial paradise -- the home of Enoch and Elijah -- was thought to be situated well above the earth, high up in the 'material heavens', but still in the 'sublunar region' and not as high as the 'empyrean heaven' to which Christ ascended. 113 Imaginatively ascending further, he next reaches the ramparts of the celestial Jerusalem itself at the sixth pageant, which was built near the Cross in Cheap just outside the gates of St Paul's. He accordingly finds the twin Jesse Trees which we examined above enclosed within a 'castrum jaspertinum'. Because the castle is built of jasper and shines so brightly, it must necessarily represent the New Jerusalem of St John's vision ('and the building of the wall thereof was of jasper stone: but the city itself pure gold, like to clear glass'). 114 Finally, he reaches the conclusion of his journey at the imperial throne of the Trinity, which awaits him in the churchyard. Appropriately, his entry into the precincts of St Paul's thus dramatizes his entry into the holy city. Surrounded by a court of angels, each Person of the Trinity bestows a final blessing upon the King. Typically, their blessings take the form of scriptural signs of Henry's messianic identity: 'God hath given his angels charge over thee,' promises the Father, 'to keep ____________________ 111Lorens, The Book of Vices and Virtues, 96. 112Jacob's Well is a good example of the widespread influence of the Somme in England at precisely the same period as this civic triumph. It describes a well of grace consisting of 'vii sprynges of watyr of grace, pat is, vii ziftes of pe holy gost'; ed. Arthur Brandeis, EETS os 115 ( London, 1900), 2. 113De Voragine, Golden Legend, i. 295-6. 114Apoc. 21: 18; cf. also Apoc. 21: 11, 19; Lydgate, Minor Poems, ii. 394; Carpenter, Letter Book K, 104v. -167-

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thee in all thy ways' (Ps. 90: 11); 'I will fill him with length of days', the Son promises, and the Holy Spirit adds, 'I will show him my salvation' (Ps. 90: 16). Dramatically, these lines thus also function as the sort of signs that Bromyard would refer to as 'voices'. Just as at Christ's Baptism, the heavens seem to open before Henry, the throne of the Trinity appears, and these scriptures represent an auricular sign -- a 'voice from heaven' -that identifies Henry as the Son and messianic king to all those gathered around. The show thus ends as it began, by visualizing a scriptural sign in order to engineer an epiphany. As a matter of dramatic strategy, in fact, this London triumph methodically explores the full range of possible techniques for staging an epiphany. Henry receives homage, accepts symbolic gifts, works a miracle, is blessed by the Trinity, is declared the fulfiller of prophecy, is visualized allegorically, restores the fallen city to its prelapsarian purity. Visual signs, scriptural signs, and voices declare him to be the Expected One. Like Christ the King, he ascends to the celestial Jerusalem. Perhaps we may even descry a kind of rudimentary plot in the organization of these pageants. The first half of the show -- the part most concerned to establish the child-king's messianic identity -- carefully stages Henry's personal manifestation as the infant Saviour at his First Coming. The second half of the pageant then devotes itself to tracing, however formally, the Christ-king's celestial apotheosis. But this pattern is a largely formal one. The final pageant, which brings Henry before the imperial throne of the Trinity, is as anxious as the first to establish Henry's messianic identity for its audience. Throughout the show the pageants are most consistently fascinated by the power of signs to produce individually dramatized epiphanies. So effective was this show at producing epiphanies, indeed, that it became one of the touchstones of the triumphal form in London. It was set down as a precedent in the records of the city, and it was still being consulted over a century later as the definitive model for British civic triumphs. 115 Medieval civic triumphs throughout Europe commonly make use of staged epiphanies. What distinguishes this one from all the others, however, is its liturgical self-consciousness. Whoever conceived of this entry thought of it largely in terms of a series of scriptural signs specifically appropriate to the first formal epiphany of a Christian king. For the most part, the scriptures were drawn not directly from the Bible itself, but from the Bible as represented in the liturgy. Most fifteenth-century ____________________ 115The devisers of Edward VI's civic triumph in 1547 based their design upon this triumph. In that sense, this became the only civic triumph ever to experience a revival. -168-

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London triumphs are conceived of liturgically in this way. We have seen, for instance, how Richard II's 'reconciliation' triumph drew heavily upon liturgical tropes from Advent, and in the next chapter we will examine the extraordinary debt of Henry V's London triumph to the liturgy of the funeral office. But this civic triumph for Henry VI is perhaps the most liturgically oriented of all. Almost every scripture comes from the Sarum liturgy. The triumph chooses its liturgical scriptures primarily from the introits, anthems, and lessons of the Epiphany season. It further conceives of Henry's entry in terms of that season's most important themes, which it addresses in roughly liturgical order: the gifts of the Magi, the Baptism, Christ's manifestation of Divine Wisdom, Solomon's throne, the first miracle at Cana. In visualizing these scriptures and themes, the triumph dramatizes Henry's entry into the city as a liturgical event -almost as an act of worship -- designed to mark the first manifestation of the Christ-king. More explicitly than in any previous British civic triumph, this show conceives of the people of the city more as a congregation of worshippers than as an audience. They play their part not merely by witnessing, but also by acclaiming and celebrating Henry's manifestations. 4. Roy surtout très catholique In June of 1493, Charles VIII of France rode north to celebrate a series of remarkable diplomatic achievements. The preceding October, Anne of Brittany had given birth to a son, the Dauphin Charles-Orland. In November, he had turned an invading English army away from his northern territories by reaching a financial accommodation with Henry VII. Then in May, he managed to pacify the Emperor Maximilian by signing the Treaty of Senlis. Having produced an heir, driven a wedge between his two greatest antagonists, secured his northern borders, and averted two wars, Charles could now turn his attentions towards the throne of Naples. Before fully embroiling himself in planning an invasion of Italy, however, he decided to undertake a thanksgiving pilgrimage to Boulogne in early June. There, in a city recently besieged by English armies and then threatened by imperial ones, he solemnly presented 'a heart of gold weighing thirty mares' 116 to the Virgin at the high altar of the Church of Notre-Dame. ____________________ 116The Church of Notre-Dame in Boulogne was an important pilgrimage destination. Duke Philip the Good made the pilgrimage to Notre-Dame of Boulogne on twelve occasions ( Vaughan, Philip the Good, 128). For the 'coeur d'or du poids de treize marcs' that Charles presented in Boulogne and for his subsequent entry into Abbeville on 17 June 1493, see François César Louandre , Histoire d'Abbeville et du comte de Ponthieu jusqu'en 1789, 3rd edn. (2 vols.; Abbeville, 1883-4), ii. 2-7. The following analysis is based upon this source. -169-

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This act of religious piety was to provide the theme for the civic triumph that Charles celebrated at Abbeville, as he journeyed back to Paris. Upon entering the Porte Marcadé, he found a string of eight pageant theatres marking his route to the Priory of Saint-Pierre, where he was to spend the night. They consisted of an introductory scene focused by seven tableaux based upon the 'Ave maris stella', one of the most famous of the medieval hymns in praise of the Virgin. 117 At the introductory 'scène muette', the Maid of Abbeville (Abbatisvilla), accompanied by her three attendants (Humble Service, Jocundité, and Léaulté, 'joyously applies' herself 'to present the Ave maris stella' to her King. Having been introduced to the hymn (pageant one), Charles thereafter works his way pageant by pageant through the city and stanza by stanza through the hymn. Each tableau takes its 'scripture' from the first line of successive stanzas: 'Ave marls stella' (pageant two), 'Sumens illud Ave' (pageant three), 'Solve vincla reys' (pageant four), and so on through all seven verses of the hymn. Each tableau attempts to represent the subject matter of these stanzas in pantomime. Very much like the London triumph for Henry VI that we have just examined, this show attempts to transform liturgy into visual signs. Two examples will illustrate the show's iconographical technique. The second pageant ('Ave stella marls'), for instance, places a 'jeune fille' with a halo in an upper stage. She holds an 'estoite de met continuellement tournant' and so represents the Virgin in her 'stella maris' persona. A lower stage, meanwhile, reveals a group of sailors praying earnestly to the Virgo stella maris above them. The next pageant ('Sumens illud Ave') works out the implications of the hymn's second verse: Sumens illud Ave Gabrielis ore, Funda nos in pace, Mutans Evae nomen. Accordingly, this tableau's two stages play on the conventional antithesis between Mary and Eve, the Annunciation and the Fall. The theatre's lower scene graphically illustrates the consequences of the Fall. Eve herself appears there amidst a multitude of poor women, whom she has condemned to a life of painful labour because of her sin. The scene in ____________________ 117

The hymn was variously ascribed to St Bernard and Venantius Fortunatus, and was in common use by the 9th cent. It remains a popular hymn to this day. In France, the hymn was appointed for vespers in the Officium parvum beatae Mariae, for the Saturday office of the Blessed Virgin, and for feasts which have no proper hymns. In the Roman breviary, it served as a hymn for the first and second vespers in the Feasts of the BVM as well as for vespers in the Officium parvum.

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the upper stage, however, dispels this harsh doom. Gabriel ('un beau fils bien aorné') tells the Virgin ('un jeune fille de belle et gracieuse manière et contenance') that she will bear the Saviour. In this way, the pageant reverses Eva's name with Gabriel's "Ave", as the hymn envisions. Both hymn and triumph serve alike as vehicles for an act of worship; the one offers seven stanzas, the other seven theatrical scenes, dedicated 'à la louange de la vierge Marie'. Both liturgically and dramatically, this triumph would therefore seem better suited to a queen than a king. Had Anne of Brittany entered Abbeville on this occasion instead of Charles VIII, we might well have examined these pageant images as the signs of distinctively queenly epiphanies. Abbeville's civic triumph remains a 'kingly' one nevertheless. The Virgin appears in these pageants as the object of Charles's religious devotion, not as his role-model or prototype. As the king moves from pageant to pageant, he prays to the Virgin by performing the 'Ave maris stella' -much as he would have done as part of his customary spiritual regimen as he observed the Officium parvum beatae Mariae or attended the Saturday office of the Blessed Virgin. Because the hymn featured prominently in medieval books of hours, it profoundly shaped the private devotions of the laity. As the primary officiant in this pageant, therefore, he performs a familiar act of 'private' devotion witnessed by the people of Abbeville. 118 In this respect, the triumph shares much of the religious ethos of Charles's recent pilgrimage to Boulogne. In both Abbeville and Boulogne, Charles histrionically dedicates his heart to the Virgin in a 'private' religious act publicly performed. Indeed, the timing of Charles's late-afternoon entry into Abbeville made this devotional performance especially appropriate. Since the Officium parvum beatae Mariae prescribes the 'Ave maris stella' specifically for vespers, his entry took place at approximately the correct canonical hour. But we must not regard this entry merely as a representation of Charles's private reverence. As he progresses through the town, he also leads the people of the city in their communal worship of the Virgin. In this sense, he also fulfils the priestly function proper to his role as a rex christianissimus. As the hereditary special protectors of the Church, French kings bore this title as part of their royal style. Abbeville's introductory pageant theatre, in fact, addresses Charles by that very title -- 'roy surtout trèscatholique' -- and his progress through he city permits him to manifest the faith that justifies such a title. His pious devotion to Mary, above all, ____________________ 118Charles's 'Private' devotions on this occasion, it is true, are not really private, but they would seem only marginally more 'public' than usual, since kings were always 'on stage'. -171-

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marks him out in these pageants as just such a rex christianissimus. Charles manifests kingship through worship. Because statecraft and worship are inextricably linked, he naturally concludes a treaty by performing a pilgrimage; in so doing, he acknowledges the special relationship between the Virgin and the French crown. His pilgrimage to Boulogne had allowed him to express his kingly devotion to the Virgin by presenting her with a symbolic golden heart. His Abbeville triumph now allows him to dedicate his heart to her even more publicly, thereby manifesting to the people of his kingdom the strength and sincerity of his religious dedication. Like the other triumphs we have examined in this chapter, this show thus attempts to stage an epiphany of the King. For the first time, however, it is primarily a spiritual and psychological one, a manifestation, above all, of the religious piety characteristic of a 'roy surtout très catholique. Throughout the show, the pageant images emphasize the French dynasty's intimate relationship with the Holy Family. The fifth pageant ('Monstra te esse matrem'), for instance, provides an astonishing visual image of the Virgin as Holy Mother suckling both the Christ-child and the infant Dauphin at the same time. As she presses the mouth of Christ to one breast, milk sprays from the other into the Dauphin's cradle. The Dauphin of France -- 'surtout très catholique' even in the cradle -- thus vividly becomes the Virgin's second son as she 'shows herself a mother' to the dynasty. 119 The eighth tableau ('Sit laus Deo patry') similarly concludes the show with a spectacular vision of Charles arriving in heaven before the Holy Trinity. The earthly King thus stands before a heavenly Trinity enthroned in glory amidst the court of heaven. A brilliant sun, turning incessantly, shines from behind the throne. Nine choirs of angels -- playing divers instruments and singing hymns to create 'the effect of celestial harmony' -- circle the Trinity as they frequently do in medieval manuscript paintings. As the pageant scriptures make clear, all this celestial brilliance and ethereal harmony aims at producing an epiphany of Charles's kingly glory, not a humbling of his earthly pretensions. In pausing before the pageant, Charles -- true to his nature as a 'roy surtout très catholique' -commands an equal share of heavenly glory; indeed, as the pageant scripture stresses, the Trinity serves here as an image of Charles's kingly nature: "'We praise from our hearts the Holy Trinity,'" says a French scripture posted on the pageant, 'Which our king is in this territory'. 120 While few civic triumphs are quite so extravagant in their imagery, many find other ways of showing the inner, spiritual nature which makes ____________________ 119

The Dauphin, christened Charles-Orland, was born 10 Oct. 1492 and died three years later, 6 Dec. 1495. Cf. Dictionnaire de biographie française, s.v. Charles VIII. 120 'Louons de c ur la Sainte-Trinité | Que nostre roy est en cest territoire, | Auquel Dieu doinct vivre en prospérité | Et obtenir des ennemys victoire' ( Louandre, Histoire d'Abbeville, ii. 6).

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the king a suitable manifestation of the divine. For many triumphs, the king's name itself serves as a holy object, a sign which, if interpreted properly, may produce an accurate epiphany of the king's inner nature. Consider Francis I's entry into Lyons ( 1515), for example. A series of pageants undertook a moral and spiritual interpretation of the king's name, letter by letter, as he proceeded through the city. In the first of these, the lady Foy (Faith), stood atop a pillar holding two symbolic gifts: in her right hand, a golden letter 'F', in her left a chalice and host (Fig. 22).

22. The Lady Faith. Entry of Francis I into Lyons, 1515 -173-

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These gifts, she explains, are the outward signs that the king possesses the primary virtue of a très chrétien roy, a truly noble Faith ('la foy de gentilhomme'). Later along the route of the entry procession, Francis encounters a second lady standing atop a pillar bearing two more epiphany gifts: a golden letter 'R' and a 'bichet' for measuring grain. She is the lady Rayson (Reason), and these gifts testify to Francis's powers of rational judgement -- his ability to weigh, measure, and administer justice so as to produce 'good order and policy'. Further on, Lady Attrempance waits to bestow her epiphany symbols: a golden letter 'A' and an 'orloge' (clock) as a sign of his steadiness, endurance, and force of character. 121 And so on, through a total of seven such ladies, who appear regularly at intervals to spell out the king's name: Charity, Obeyssance, Justice, and Sagesse. Each brings her gift to manifest another essential feature of Francis's character, and his character is completely revealed only when his name is entirely spelled out. We have seen a series of prophets marshalled in this fashion to announce the advent of the Saviour. These ladies similarly serve their civic triumph as agents of the King's epiphany. Together, they engineer a progressive epiphany of the King's inner nature based upon an allegorical analysis of his name. 122 Civic triumph pageants, in fact, are customarily filled with epiphany agents whose sole purpose is to reveal the inner qualities of the king. Hosts of allegorical characters profess to see 'tokenes of vertue and nobles' in the noble visitors, thereby making these inner qualities visible to the citizens as well. 123 The city of Rouen ( 1508), for example, chooses to represent itself as a spirited roan horse. Some would-be riders -- men of obvious authority -- attempt to mount the horse, but because of its noble heart, it will not be mastered. When an actor representing Louis XII approaches, however, it recognizes at once the consummate horsemanship of its 'true and natural master and lord'. He mounts the steed and rides him without spurs; the roan horse responds so joyously and so voluntarily to the king's guidance that it begins to march and saunter like a parade horse. The king's superior horsemanship thus manifests his ____________________ 121

Guigue (ed.), L'Entrée de François Premier, 18, 19-20, 27-9. For similar alphabetical allegories, see Charles VIII's entry into Rouen ( 1485), which includes both an explication of the King's spiritual nature (Counseil Loyal, Hault Vouloir, Amour Populaire, Royal Povoir, Liberalité, Esperance, Sapience) and that of the city of Rouen (Repos Pacifique, Ordre Politique, Unction de Roys, Espoir en la Croix, Nouvelle Eaue Celique). Guenée and Lehoux, Entrées royales, 241-65. See also the Parisian entries of Louis XI ( 1461) and Anne of Brittany ( 1492), where the city manifests itself by means of a series of such epiphany agents. Louis XI : Journal de Jean de Roye, 25; Anne of Brittany: Nicolai, "Sensieult le couronnement", 115-16. 123 Captain Policy, addressing Katharine of Aragon, London, 1501 ( Receyt of the Ladie Kateryne, 17).

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consummate mastery of government. 124 Or consider the Nine Worthies, who sometimes convene in the city streets like a latter-day Ordo prophetarum to foster the sovereign's epiphany as a chivalric hero. This company of Worthies, each in his own pageant 'theatre', greeted Charles the Bold upon his entry into Douai ( 1470), while their nine female counterparts similarly welcomed Joanna of Spain into Brussels ( 1496). 125 At Paris ( 1432), the Nine Worthies of both sexes escorted Henry VI on horseback through the Saint-Denis Gate and into the city as a guard of honour. 126 On these occasions, the Nine act not so much as a company of prophets announcing the advent of the Expected One, but rather as feudal vassals rendering homage to their lord. They revealed him to be the first among equals, the head and chief of the Worthies. Douai's civic triumph explicitly made this point, for instance, in its final tableau, where an effigy of Charles the Bold sat enthroned amidst the entire company of Worthies as the king of chivalry. 127 For Charles VIII's inaugural civic triumph ( Paris, 1484), this attempt to envision the king's spiritual qualities became an extensive manifestation of royal charisma. Like one of those symbolic nativities that we examined in Chapter 2, its first tableau consisted of a royal child springing from the top of a six-branched fleur-de-lis beneath a sun of 'great brilliance', which shone brightly over the scene. What distinguishes this version of the King's metaphorical nativity, however, is the lily's six branches, each of which manifests one of the King's spiritual virtues: Justice,Misericorde, Amour, Science, Raison, and Paix. 128 This fleur-de-lis thus borrows the iconography of Isaiah's Jesse Tree prophecy to serve as Charles VIII's signum populorum. It shows the new King budding forth from the sacred lily flower rather than from the root of Jesse while a divine sunburst approvingly spreads its 'grand reluissance' over the scene. In this evocation of Isaiah's prophecy, however, the new Messiah's advent is made ____________________ 124

"Lentree Royale & Magnifique du Tres Chrestien Roy de france que Louys xije de Ce nom En sa bonne ville et Cite de Rouen . . . faicte . . . Le jeudy xxviije Jour de septembre Lan de Grace Mil Cinq centz et huict", Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS fr. 5749, 16 v-18r; ed. Pierre Le Verdier , L'Entrée du Roi Louis XII et de la reine à Rouen (1508) ( Rouen, 1900), 24-6. 125 At Douai, the Worthies occupied separate tableaux, four of them in the Rue Notre-Dame and five grouped together in the Grand Place du Marché ( Tailliar, Chroniques de Douai, ii. 339). Joanna of Spain encountered the Nine Female Worthies, whose presence demonstrated that she, like her mother Isabella of Castile, was a chivalric virago ( Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, MS 78 D. 5, 47 v-48r). 126 They were led by the goddess Fame and a herald representing the city of Paris. In this case, however, the preux and preuses were meant to represent Paris, whose chivalry Henry had supposedly come to govern well ( Delpit, Collection générale,240-1). 127 Tailliar, Chroniques de Douai, ii. 339. 128 Guenée and Lehoux, Entrées royales, 111.

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manifest by means of an inventory of virtues, not by a school of prophets, or the Virgin's presence, or even a kingly genealogy. They resemble, but do not precisely duplicate, those gifts of the Holy Spirit which Isaiah sees 'resting' upon the Messiah ( 11: 1-10). They are, rather, the necessary kingly virtues that Charles VIII brings to his people at this historical moment. They reveal him to be a roy très chrétien, a king whose spiritual character is worthy of his calling. This spiritual representation of the King initiates a further series of epiphanies designed to show the charismatic effects that a king so filled with spiritual gifts will have upon his people. One such epiphany, for instance, takes the form of an estates allegory. At one station, the spiritual virtues of the enthroned King affect each of the estates differently. He bestows Peace upon the people, motivates the nobility with Force, and inspires the Church with Love. In each case, his own virtues motivate the estates to perform their ideal roles in society. The pageant is thus a study in royal inspiration. A few pageants later, Charles's inner resources are once again seen to inspire and transform his subjects. In this case, he stands beneath a large fleur-de-lis surrounded by a nation of dispirited people. His very presence, however, transforms them. Admiring the King, they 'lift themselves up' out of their misery. There can be no better demonstration of the King's charismatic powers. The final pageant of all caps this study in royal charisma with a miraculous sign of divine approval. The Holy Spirit descends upon an enthroned king, confirming within him the 'virtu singuliere' which inspires and motivates his people. The triumph thus both begins and ends with spectacular epiphanies designed to manifest the King's considerable spiritual powers. 129 He stands revealed to his people as a roy très chrétien not merely because he is anointed with Clovis's holy ampule, but also because he manifests to his people -- and inspires them with -- the power of the Holy Spirit. 5. Theatres of Princely Epiphany The staging of the king's epiphany often begins outside the city gates. As the king approaches the gates, representatives of the city's civic and religious establishments march out to meet him: bishops, clergy, scholars, Parlementarians, provosts, échevins, and merchants. 130 Remy Dupuys's painting ____________________ 129Guenée and Lehoux, Entrées royales, 114-15. 130At Paris in the mid-15th cent., for instance, the civic procession included the Bishop of Paris, representatives of the University of Paris, the Parlement of Paris, the provost of Paris, the members of the Chambre des Comptes, and the provost of the merchants and échevins of Paris. -176-

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23. Royal procession. Entry of Archduke Charles into Bruges, 1515 of Prince Charles's entry into Bruges ( 1515) illustrates a typical scene: the royal procession approaches Bruges from a left-hand folio while the civic cortège rides out from the city to meet him on the right-hand folio (Figs. 23-4). The extraordinary figure -- mounted backwards upon a donkey and enclosed in a castle bristling with torches -- suggests the possibility of extending the mimetic capabilities of the civic cortège by means of spectacle and characterization. In 1437, the seven virtues and seven vices accompanied the civic procession that met Charles VII outside the ____________________ So Jean de Roye ( Journal de Jean de Roye,23-5) describes the composition of the procession that came out of the Saint-Denis Gate to meet Louis XI ( 1461). This was a relatively modest procession by the standards of the next century. When Henry II approached Paris in 1549, the King took his place upon a blue velvet chair in a specially constructed 'theatre' to watch the procession, which took many hours to pass. Although the procession was similarly constituted to the procession that met Louis XI, many more participants represented each civic and religious corporation. Bryant, Parisian Royal Entry, 52-3. Processions representing provincial French cities, by contrast, would be composed of fewer constituent bodies, but would undoubtedly cut as grand a spectacle. Cf. the Tours civic procession that met Charles VIII in 1486 ( Guenée and Lehoux, Entrées royales, 267-9). -177-

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24. Civic procession. Entry of Archduke Charles into Bruges, 1515 Saint-Denis Gate at Paris. 131 These colourful figures then escorted the King into the city, providing an allegorical context for the King's encounters with the civic pageantry. A century later, an elaborate, costumed civic cortège had become a more important feature of the show at Rouen than the stationary pageants; it included allegorically costumed characters (e.g. Honour, Triumph, Fame), gods and heroes ( Theseus, Mercury, Hercules, Hebe, Lucina, Iris, Juno), and a series of Roman triumphal chariots modelled upon Petrarch. It passed in review before Eleanor of Austria before escorting the royal procession through the City. 132 The civic constituency may even symbolically extend into the past as the relics of saints are borne in solemn procession to witness the king's first epiphany. 133 As these civic and royal cortèges meet, a carefully orchestrated act of formal homage takes place. The city's representative -- often either a bishop or a provost -- delivers a speech of welcome and then surrenders the city ____________________ 131Guenée and Lehoux, Entrées royales, 72. See below, Ch. 4, for a discussion of this reception. 132Entry of Eleanor of Austria. Pottier (ed.), Les Entrées de Éléonore d'Autriche,a4v-c1r. 133As at Troyes ( 1486); Guenée and Lehoux, Entrées royales, 269. -178-

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to its rightful king, perhaps by presenting the keys to the city to him. Then, as a sign of their submission to the new king, the civic cortége reverses itself and becomes a part of the royal procession. This new and larger procession now escorts the king through the gates and into the city. As a sign of his sacred status, the échevins will hold a canopy over the king's head 'just as is done for Our Lord at Corpus Christi', and the clergy will often bear a processional cross before him. 134 Together, the participants in the entry procession represent the royal head and corporate body of the state, which now appear for the first time to the people of the city, whose function is to acclaim this manifestation of the king united to his corpus reipublicae. On the Continent, this encounter of sovereign and citizens often took place in a specially constructed epiphany theatre. Eleanor of Austria, for instance, sat upon the stage of a theatre 'richement prepare' at Rouen ( 1532), from which vantage point she received the homage of the civic procession as it passed by her in review. In this fashion, Queen and citizens presented themselves to one another. Only after this initial manifestation did the Queen descend from her theatrical perch, seat herself in a litter, and proceed with her entry into the City. 135 In the Burgundian Netherlands, each new duke was obliged to proclaim a charter of rights and privileges also known as the joyeuse entrée from the stage of a similar epiphany theatre (Fig. 25). As its name suggests, the proclamation of this document marked the formal beginning of his reign in the same way that a coronation does. By staging this proclamation in a theatre, however, the citizens transformed this essential ceremonial into a theatrical epiphany in which the duke manifests himself to his subjects for the first time and they acclaim him as their rightful lord. Let us consider a representative example: when Duke Charles the Bold entered Mechelen for the first time ( 1467), the citizens erected a 'triumphant theatre' covered with black velvet and black cloth of gold, bristling with coats of arms, and blazing with torches that 'lent a glittering reverence' to the scene. The Duke himself sat enthroned in the middle of the stage upon a black, cushioned chair, with the three estates grouped around him: on his right hand the Bishop of Luyck and the oldest nobility of Mechelen; on his left hand the Grand Bastard of Burgundy together ____________________ 134Henry VI, Paris, 1431: "Tost que le roy entra dedens la ville ilz lui mirent ung grant ciel d'azur sur la teste, serné de fleurs de lis d'or, et le porterent sur lui les iiii eschevins tout en la fourme et maniere comme fait à Nostre Seigneur à la Feste-Dieu" ( Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, 274). For the processional cross, see Guenée and Lehoux, Entrées royales, 269 ( Charles VIII, Troyes, 1486). 135Pottier (ed.), Les Entrées de Éléonore d'Autriche, a4v-c1v. -179-

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25. Pieter van der Borcht, Inavgvratio extra vrbem

with other princes, counts, and the magistrates of Mechelen. Surrounded by the emblems of his authority and enthroned amidst the three estates of his duchy, Charles solemnly manifests himself to the people of Mechelen for the first time as a living emblem of legitimate ducal authority. In the solemn drama which now ensues, the citizens and their Duke give substance to this theatrical image by formally constituting their feudal contract. The pensionary of Mechelen, Jan de Leeuw, recalls that the Duke's forefathers had rewarded the city's unstinting loyalty and faithful service with a charter of privileges, and he now again offers the city's fidelity to the new Duke, pledging their 'worldly goods and blood' to him 'in all reverence and obedience'. A herald then demands to know whether the citizens agree with what the pensionary has said. If so, will they so declare themselves? In response, the people of Mechelen, we are told, raise their hands together and with one voice shout their acclamation: 'Jae wy, Jae wy, daer by willen wy leven en sterven!' Upon this sign, the Duke rises from his throne to play his part in this solemn epiphany of feudal authority. He performs his part of the feudal contract by proclaiming once again Mechelen's charter of rights and privileges. The citizens and princes now conclude this epiphany of sovereign authority -180-

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with a final acclamation: 'Vive le prince, vive le prince, vive le prince! 136 Having acclaimed this ceremonial manifestation of their Duke, they then lead him through the city gates. His entry into the city symbolically acts out the formal inauguration of his reign. ____________________ 136Hyacinthe Coninckx, "La Joyeuse Entrée des seigneurs de Malines", Bulletin du Cercle Archéologique Littéraire et Artistique de Malines, 6 ( 1895), 264-6. -181-

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4 Third Advent: Grace in this Life and Afterward Glory 1. The Royal Entry as Triumph of Death

Whether proclaiming the king's epiphany or rejoicing at his spiritual advent into the hearts of his subjects, the civic triumphs so far considered have celebrated the king as the bringer of grace and salvation. Such shows, as we have seen, take their inspiration from the Church's teaching about the First Advent of Christ, the Advent which Bromyard calls the twofold Advent of Mercy: Christ came once in mercy and humility bringing salvation to mankind, and he also comes daily in spirit to save individual souls. 1 According to these patterns, the city receives its prince as the Lord's Anointed, 'the Prince of God among us', the 'lover of Peace and Concord'. They pay him such honours as one ought to pay to God himself, the hearts of the citizens fly open to him at his approach, and the citizens shout 'Noel!' and chant 'Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini'. 2 But if the Regent of the Netherlands, Margaret of Austria, expected the citizens of Geneva to receive her with such acclamations in 1501, she was sorely disappointed. One of the pageants, for example, consisted of a genealogical tree patterned to even more heroic proportions than we have yet seen. Some 60 to 80 feet tall, made of gilded iron, it illustrated Margaret's imperial ancestry in the fashion of a Jesse Tree, growing from a recumbent Emperor Wenzelaus, King of Bohemia, at the root, budding from the branches with actors portraying the Emperors Albert, Sigismund, Frederick, and Maximilian, and flowering at the top with representations of herself and her brother, the Archduke Philip. Golden ____________________ 1 Bromyard, Summa praedicantium, A. 13. 1: "Quantum ad primum adventus Christi in generali est duplex. Primus videlicet misericordiae. . . . Et uterque subdiuiditur, quia aduentus misericordiae est duplex. Vnus in virgine carnern assumendo. Alius in animum gratiam. largiendo".' See also St Bernard, PL 183. 39-40. 2 For the epithets "Princeps Dei est apud nos' and 'Lover of Peace and Concord", see Despars, Cronijcke, iii. 434, and Hall, Chronicle, 639. For divine honours paid to the prince, see Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, 144, 302. For open heart pageants, see Ch. 2 above, and for the shouts of "Noel!" and "Benedictus qui venit", see Ch. 1 above. -182-

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letters proclaimed this her Ortus Nobilitas, but at the same time a prominent biblical scripture taught her to see this flowering tree in quite a different light: Haec est flos agri, a delicate reminder of Isaiah 40: 6 ('all flesh is grass, and all the glory thereof as the flower of the field') and Psalm 102: 15 ('man's days are as grass, as the flower of the field so shall he flourish'). Should she miss this somewhat delicate reminder of the mortality and vanity of earthly glory, she could hardly ignore the point of the last pageant of the civic triumph, placed at the very door of her lodging. Death himself awaited her there, bearing two relentless messages: 'Death annihilates all; all are subject to death' and 'vanity of vanities, all is vanity'. Though joyfully received, she came neither as Saviour nor Blessed Virgin. No 'Noels' were sung nor 'Benedictus qui venits' chanted. Further, such earthly glory as she brought with her by birthright stood revealed as vanity. True glory was, indeed, offered her at one pageant, but it was set high atop a mountain in the Temple of Honour, and to get there she would have to pass first through the Temple of Virtue. Above all, the funereal tone of the last pageant, where Death kept his court at the door of the Princess's lodging, convinces us at once that this royal advent, unlike the ones we have so far studied, chooses to emphasize the coming of God's final judgment rather than the saving advent of his grace and mercy. 3 'Grace in this lyf and aftirwarde glorie,' a London pageant expositor promises Queen Margaret of Anjou, and then hastens to add that the promise of heavenly glory after death remains a conditional one, dependent upon the Queen living a life of 'high goodnesse' during her reign. 'Noo man to lacke reward when he goth hens,' the expositor explains, 'that lyueth here in parfite innocens.' 4 Although out of place, perhaps, for modern tastes, such funereal comments as these occur extremely often in medieval civic triumphs. So the chronicler of Louis XII's coronation triumph at Paris ( 1498) closes his account with a prayer that the King may so well lead his life that 'at the end of his days he may be able to acquire the realm of Paradise'; 5 a half-century later, the city recorder of York prays melodramatically upon his knees that the Holy Trinity might preserve Henry VIII ____________________ 3 Jean Molinet, Chroniques, ed. Georges Doutrepont and Omer Jodigne ( 3 vols.; Brussels, 1935-7), ii. 494-9. 4 BL MS Harley 3869, 3' ( Kipling, "London Pageants for Margaret of Anjou", 21). 5 "Et afin que la gloire et triumphe qui a esté faicte a la venue dudit seigneur soit respandue par tout le monde, nous prierons Dieu qu'il vueille preserver de mal et de danger nostre souverain pasteur, et si bien conduire que, en la fin de ses jours, il puisse acquerir le royaume de Paradis" ( Guenée and Lehoux, Entrées royales, 135). -183-

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long to reign ouer vs in prosperitye | And that after thys your gracys mortall and transyrory lyff our Saviour Chryste in Rewarde of your said beningnitye shewyd vnto vs wreches his creatours and your Subiectes graunte vnto your hignes the eternall fruycion of his infynyte glory. 6 Such large and small references to the inevitable account that each man must settle with the Lord thoroughly permeate the medieval civic triumph. Some take the form of passing references: a pageant of the Daughters of Zion welcomes Charles VIII and his noble lords to Troyes in 1486, singing 'may God increase their honours, | And after the end of their lives reward them with Paradise'. 7 Others, as we shall see, contribute the matter for complete pageants and iconographical programmes for entire civic triumphs. But whether of passing or essential importance to any particular pageant, the funereal mode is rarely absent altogether. On the contrary, the medieval civic triumph insistently admonishes the monarch to prepare his 'accompte and rekenynge' even while it celebrates him as the bringer of grace. 8 Paradoxically, he enters the city both as saviour and sinner; he comes both to render justice and to be judged. As sovereign, he represents Christ leading his people to salvation. As a mortal man, he faces himself the Second Coming of Christ. His entry into the holy city, in short, re-enacts the triumphal ascent of Christ to the heavenly Jerusalem even as it prefigures the inevitable journey his own soul must make after death to heaven or to hell. In part, the currency of this funereal tone derives from a popular medieval description of Roman triumphal entries. Often used by preachers and moralists as a Palm Sunday homily, it went a long way towards establishing the civic triumph in medieval minds as a careful balancing of divine honours and mortal humility. According to this often-repeated formula, three deliberate humiliations accompanied the three honours which the people paid their victorious emperor during a triumphal entry into Rome. First, all people, whether of high or low estate, should meet him with grete Ioye & reuerence, in her beste and richeste aray'. Second, all his captives, 'fetrid and manaclid', should 'rownde abowte environ his chare' and go through the streets with him in procession. Third, the emperor should ride in his chariot like a god, wearing the mantle of Jupiter and crowned with laurel. 'But lest these exalted rewards should ____________________ 6 REED York, i. 275. 7 "Dieu leur accroisse leurs honneurs, | Et apres la fin Paradis" ( Guenée and Lehoux, Entrées royales, 271). 8 For an example of a civic triumph specifically concerned with these themes, see the discussion of Margaret of Anjou's London triumph, immediately below, from which this quotation is taken. -184-

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swell the heart, and make the favourite of fortune forget his birth and mortal character, three causes of annoyance were attached to them.' First, in order 'to schewe clerely pat all worldely glorie is transitori and not abidynge and evidently to declare pat in hi3e estate is none assurance', a 'ribald' sat uppermost in the triumphal chariot. Secondly, the 'ribald' might 'smite pe conqverroure euer in pe necke and uppon pe hed', the better 'to abate the haughtiness which the applause of his countrymen might tend to excite'. 'Nosce te ipsum' (know thyself), he would shout in the emperor's ear, reminding him that despite the purple cloak of Jupiter he was merely mortal. Finally, upon the day of a triumph any man might heap what scorn he would upon the conqueror, without fear of punishment. As a Christian allegory, the three honours became those paid to Christ upon Palm Sunday, while the three corresponding 'annoyances' belonged to the Passion and Crucifixion. 9 As a model for the civic triumph, this influential description insisted upon administering doses of self-knowledge and humility along with glory. In this spirit, the king should accept his civic triumph as Christ accepted his Palm Sunday hosannas. Commentators thus remind us again and again that 'our Lord Christ, in order to destroy Pride first of all among men, did not wish to come haughty and proud in a chariot and with a caparisoned horse, but humble and meek upon Palm Sunday mounted upon a contemptible donkey'. 10 So we are told that kings ought properly to enter cities after the manner of Christ, 'conforming to the state of humiliation that he had chosen for his first Advent'. 11 In this spirit, we recall, Richard II was asked to contemplate the Crucifixion but a moment after St John identified him as the Lamb of God. 12 To some extent, as this traditional formula makes clear, medieval kings expected edifying moral instruction in their civic triumphs, the better to emphasize the Christ-like humility of their coming to rule. If they did ____________________ 10

"Rex noster Christus ut destrueret superbiam primi hominis, noluit venire fastuosus et superbus in curribus et in equis phaleratis, sed humilis et mansuetus ascendens in die Palmarum super asinam contemptibilitatis ut hominem terrenum ab amore mundi revocaret et ad amorem Dei provoet". St Bonaventura, Sermones Dominicales, ed. Jacobi guidi Bougerol ( Grotta Ferrata, 1977), 13-35. 11 "Ce qui nous marque les usages de ces entrés, quoique d'une manière pauvre et simple, conforme à l'état d'humiliation qu'il avait choisi pour son premier avènement" ( Menestrier, "Des entrées solemnelles", 123). 12 Above, Ch. 1. 9 Details from John Lydgate, The Serpent of Division, ed. H. N. MacCracken ( London, 1911), 53-4, and Gesta Romanorum, tr. C. Swan and W. Hooper ( New York, 1959), 63-4. See also Bromyard, Summa praedicantium, T. 5. 36; John Gower, Confessio Amantis, 6. 2328-490; and Kipling, "Triumphal Drama", 4-26.

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not literally carry 'ribalds' in their triumphal chariots, they expected the pageantry of their royal entries to 'show clearly that all worldly glory is transitory' and to remind them that they were not gods and must, like all men, die. 13 We hear, for example, of seven allegorical characters reciting a 'moral treatise' to Charles VIII to instruct him in the tropological meaning of his civic triumph in Rouen. 14 Directly or indirectly, the king receives such moral advice so that by reigning well he may enter heaven. As another English pageant puts it, 'from vertu to vertu men shall vp ascende; | Than shall God be seyn in the Mount Sion. | Thus you gide vnto youre lyues ende'. 15 Still more startlingly, we read of a pageant depicting the 'Vengeance of God upon Idolatry' enacted for Mary Stuart's civic triumph at Edinburgh; to show her what papist idolaters like herself might expect if they cling to their Catholic ways, she sees the fire of the Lord consume Korah, Dathan, and Abiram because of their rebellion against the congregation of Moses. 16 Here in this extraordinary triumph negative suasion replaces the positive from which Charles VIII benefited: unless you change your ways, the Queen is told, you shall be damned. However influential this widespread description may have been for the medieval understanding of the civic triumph, a far more important inspiration for these moral reminders and apocalyptic warnings lies in the liturgy of Advent. A double awareness of gratitude for God's grace, on the one hand, and fearful anticipation of his terrible judgment on the other, forms an essential part of the Church's teaching about the two comings of Christ. Because the First Coming 'of Cryst ynto pys world broght ioy and blysse wyth hym', the English preacher John Mirk explains, 'perfor holy chyrch vsyth surnme songes of melody, as Alleluja and oper'. But at the same time, because the Second Coming 'of Cryst to pe dome [Judgment] schall be so jrus [vengeful] and so cruell, pat no tong may tell, perfor holy chirch layth downe sum songes of melody as: "Te Deum laudamus" . . . yn tokenyng of vengans pat woll come aftyr'. 17 If anything, the Church has always directed its observance of Advent more towards a contemplation of God's wrathful Second Coming than his merciful First. Throughout the Middle Ages, it remained a season of fasting and penance. In a few medieval liturgies, the penitential nature of Advent so overshadowed its festival importance that the season ended rather than began ____________________ 13 In this respect, the civic triumph may appropriate some of the festival inversions characteristic of the Feast of Fools and other such 'festivals of inversion'. For a brief and helpful critical discussion of these civic festivals of inversion, see Ann-Marie Lecoq, "La Città festeggiante: Les Fêes publiques an XVe et XVIe siécles", La Revue de l'art, 33 ( 1976), 88. 14 Guenée and Lehoux, Entrées royales, 244. 15 BL MS Harley 3869, 4' ( Kipling, "London Pageants for Margaret of Anjou", 23). 16 Mill, Mediaeval Plays in Scotland, 88-91. 17 Mirk, Festial, 1. -186-

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the liturgical year. In this way, as Ernst Kantorowicz points out, 'adventus has the meaning of parousia and refers to the Second Coming of Christ at the end of time'. 18 Even where the liturgy retains its 'normal' character, it carefully balances joy and judgment. We hear Matthew's account of the Entry into Jerusalem on the first Sunday in Advent 'where Christ is shown pious and gentle upon a donkey', while on the second Sunday we hear Luke's corresponding prophecy of the Second Coming 'in a cloud, like a Judge of great power'. 19 We need only look at Charles VII's coronation entry ( Paris, 1437) to see how thoroughly the medieval civic triumph could assimilate these liturgical formulae. As Charles entered the city, first of all, a procession of the seven virtues and seven mortal sins joined his cortège and followed him through the city in procession. 'Mounted on divers beasts' and 'dressed according to their properties', they served, perhaps, a more ambiguous symbolic function to medieval eyes than to modern ones. 20 Certainly their presence transformed the King, conceived as a private person, into a sort of Everyman who might incline toward virtue and achieve salvation or decline toward vice and merit damnation. But in addition to this tropological (moral) meaning, a medieval observer might also have suggested an anagogical (religious) meaning. The pairing of seven virtues and seven deadly sins often served the Middle Ages as a symbol of the Lord's Prayer, divided as it was into seven petitions, each designed to propitiate one of the virtues while discouraging its parallel vice. 21 According to this scheme, the fourteen costumed actors transformed the King, conceived in his royal person, into a type of the Lord towards whom the paternoster is directed. The civic pageants, in fact, maintain both meanings at once, balancing divine honours with apocalyptic warnings of the judgment to come. In the earlier pageants, for example, epiphany themes predominate: an angel descends to bring Charles the fleur-de-lis as in the legend of King Clovis; John the Baptist points to the Agnus Dei; and saints greet the coming of the Lord. 22 ____________________ 18

"King's Advent", 218 n. 73. "Qui quidem processus notatur dominica prima aduentus, ubi ostenditur pius & mansuetus super asinam: & secunda vbi promittit se venietentem in nubibus, tanquam iudicem cum potestate magna" ( Bromyard, Summa praedicantium, A. 13. 1). 20 'Et la vindrent au devant de luy, monstés sur diverses bestes, en maniere de personnages de vii. vertus et des sept pechiés mortels, moult bien faitz et habilliés' (le heraut Berry); 'en aprés vinrent les personnages des Sept pechiés mortelz et des Sept vertus, montés a cheval, et estoient tous habilliés 19

seloncq leurs proprietés' (Enguerran de Monstrelet). Guenée and Lehoux , Entrées royales , 72 -9. For medieval use of tropological and anagogical meanings -- as well as literal and allegorical meanings -- see H. Caplan, Of Eloquence ( Ithaca, NY, 1970), 93 - 104. For the sins and virtues as a paternoster symbol, see Tuve, Allegorical Imagery, 85 -7. 22 Guenée and Lehoux, Entrées royales, 75 -9. 21

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But at the penultimate pageant -- certainly the most spectacular and important of the series -- the officials of the Châtelet (the royal court of justice) emphasize Charles's Everyman persona through a graphic contemplation of the double meaning of Advent. Appropriate to the Châtelet, an allegorical grouping of the three laws -- Divine, Natural, and Human -- states the theme of the pageant. The two main scenes, however, make clear the pageant's belief in the superiority of Divine Law over the other two. Against the Châtelet itself stood the angelic annunciation of the Nativity to the shepherds. Following Luke's account ( 2: 8-14), an angel appeared from heaven and sang the anthem 'Gloria in excelsis Deo' to the shepherds. Because the pageant celebrates the First Advent of Christ 'who brought joy and bliss with him' into this world, it appropriately 'useth some songs of melody' to celebrate God's saving grace, as Mirk would have it do. Directly across the street, however, a complementary pageant represented the 'jrus' and 'cruell' Second Coming. The chronicler Monstrelet's report makes the design of the pageant sound rather like that of the Last Judgment altarpieces of van der Weyden and Memling, which prominently feature the Archangel Michael weighing the souls of sinners in a balance scale. 23 As in these famous paintings, the Parisian Archangel weighed human souls in a pageant landscape which depicted the Last Judgment, paradise, and hell. Monstrelet then adds a detail that further defines the pageant's meaning: the scene, he says, was enacted against 'la Boucherie' -- the slaughterhouse. 24 Approaching this complex pageant, Charles VII comes as a beneficiary of the divine grace of Christ's Incarnation. But he also comes as a sinner whose soul must be weighed in St Michael's scale. The sins and virtues which accompany him will either weigh him down to hell or lift him up to heaven. In this way King Charles's royal adventus uses the liturgical formulae of Advent to provoke kingly meditation upon the severe and wrathful God who will judge his reign according to Divine Law, not the law of men. More so than in any civic triumph we have yet studied, Charles VII comes to his kingdom more to be judged than to do justice himself. 2. The Ascent to Glory: Margaret of Anjou (London, 1445) Although Charles VII had to contemplate the Second Coming in the form of a Last Judgment complete with the resurrection of the dead, the ____________________ 23 Rogier van der Weyden, Last Judgment, Beaune altarpiece. Hans Memling, Last Judgment, Danzig altarpiece. 24 "Et a l'autre costé, contre la Boucherie, estoient le Judgement, Paradis et Enfer. Et ou milieu estoit saint Michiel l'Angle, qui pesoit les ames" ( Guenée and Lehoux, Entrées royales, 77). -188-

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26. De aduentu domini in speciale

weighing of souls, and the consignment of mankind to heaven or to hell, most civic triumphs concerned themselves more narrowly with the spiritual resurrection of the king's soul immediately after his death. In this spirit, the Trinity pageant at St Paul's, we recall, promised Henry VI 'long life and after death Salvation', 25 while the citizens of Troyes hoped that Charles VIII might win paradise after his death. In this, the pageant devisers followed the lead of medieval liturgists and popular homilists who imagined two 'Second Comings' of Christ to judgment. One of these (which they usually call ChristThird Advent because it comes next after his two 'First Comings') occurs to each man individually just after death, while the other (which they call the Fourth Advent) will occur generally at the end of time. At the former, 'particular' judgment (Fig. 26) Christ raises individual souls and judges them, while at the latter 'general' judgment (Fig. 27) Christ raises the bodies of all mankind and separates the sheep from the goats. 26 For devisers of medieval civic triumphs, the ____________________ 25 Above, Ch. 3. 26 Aduentus iusticiae est duplex. Unus ad iudicium particulare, uidelicet in morte iustorum, vel malorurn per se, vel per angelos bonos, vel malos, sententiarn executioni debite demandando, -189-

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secundus ad iudicium generale, sed de his duobus, vitimus dicetur infra locis suis' ( Bromyard, Summa praedicantium, A. 13 1). In similar fashion, Petrus de Natalibus distinguishes between the two 'particular' judgments (i.e. the Second and Third Advents): "Aduentus domini specialis duplex est. Primus in mente ad sanctificandum: de quo Johan xiiij Ad eum vieniemus: & mansionern apud ea faciemus. Secundus in morte ad premiandus: de quo Luce. xij. Et vos estate parati quia qua hora non putatis filius hominis veniet. Harum duorum aduentuû festa quam uis ab ecclesia nunquam commemorentur a pluribus tamen devotius frequentissime recoluntur". Catalogus sanctorum & gestorum ex diuersis voluminibus collectus ( Lyons, 1519), 2r (text) and 1v, 2r (illustrations).

27. De aduentu domini ad iudicium importance of this 'Third Advent' is that it brings souls to glory where the first two advents merely conferred grace upon the just. According to St Thomas Aquinas, for example, at the First Advent, the Son comes alone. In the Second Advent the Son comes with the Father to inhabit the soul. By this Advent, which is through justifying grace, the soul is freed from sin but not from all punishment, because grace is conferred but glory is not yet conferred, and on account of this a Third Advent of Christ is necessary in which he comes at the death of saints, that is when he receives them to himself. St Whence John: If I shall go, in suffering, and prepare a place for you, destroying obstacles, I will come again to you, that -190-

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is in death, and take you to myself, that is to Glory, that where I am, you also may be, 27 Here in this popular formula 28 medieval devisers found the central theme and structural outline of one of the most widespread forms of civic triumph. Their royal entries modelled upon the Third Advent of Christ, many medieval monarchs prefigured their souls' ascent to paradise as they entered cities transformed by pageantry into celestial Jerusalems. Such would be the reward of a royal saviour, of a bringer of grace to his people, of a king who reigned in 'high goodnesse'. In Queen Margaret of Anjou's coronation triumph ( London, 1445), St Thomas's Third Advent formula finds a nearly ideal dramatic expression. Because both the structure and themes of the pageant series are drawn almost exclusively from this formula -- or one very like it -- the show provides a remarkably clear illustration of the 'Third Advent' civic triumph. 29 To begin with, the city divided its seven pageants, roughly equally, between a meditation upon the grace which Margaret brings to England and a prophecy of the spiritual ascent to glory which she will receive as a result. The first four pageants thus salute Margaret as a 'conueie of Grace' (l. 64) 30 in that she brings peace to a war-sick kingdom. They consist of a pageant of Peace and Plenty, another of Noah's Ark, a third of the Four Daughters of God redeeming mankind, and a fourth of St Margaret as virgo mediatrix. In St Thomas's terms, these pageants depict the grace which has been conferred upon both Margaret and, through her, England as a result of Christ's 'coming into the hearts of men'. Not surprisingly, the versifiers trumpet the word grace again and again throughout the speeches of these first four pageants almost like ____________________ 27

In primo adventu venit solum Filius. In secundo adventus venit Filius cum Patre ad inhabtandum animam. Per isturn adventurn qui est per gratiam justificantern, anima liberatur a culpa, non ab omni poena, quia confertur gratia, sed nonclum confertur gloria, et propter hoc necesarius est tertius Christi adventus in quo venit in morte sanctorum, scilicet quando ipsos recipit ad seipsum. Unde in Johanne: si abiero, in passione, et paravero vobis locum, tollendo obstacuum, iterum veniam ad vos, scilicet in morte, et tollam vos ad meipsum, scilicet in gloria, ut ubi sum ego illic et vos sitis ( John XIV: 2-3). "Sermo in Prima Dominica Adventus", in Leclercq, L'Idée de la royauté du Christ , 85 -6. 28 See, for example, Durandus, Rationale, 6. 2. 2. 29 The one circumstantial account of this triumph consists of a complete set of verses, without descriptions of the pageants themselves, traditionally (but mistakenly) thought to be Lydgate's on the sole authority of John Stowe. The text itself gives some reason to suppose that two versifiers wrote the speeches: the first, second, third, and seventh pageants all take the form of octaves of fourstressed lines, while the remainder are pentameter stanzas of rhyme royal. The text itself is complete but somewhat jumbled. See Kipling, London Pageants for Margaret of Anjou, 5 - 19. 30 A series of transcriptional errors has badly confused the manuscript versions of the pageant speeches. The following citations are taken from the restored and edited text as printed in Kipling, ' London Pageants for Margaret of Anjou', 19 - 23.

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a Wagnerian leitmotif. Indeed, the pageant deviser carefully associates Margaret's bringing of grace to England with the grace wrought by the Incarnation through a pair of allegories which depict Margaret as a type of Blessed Virgin 'full of grace' through whom God brings salvation to mankind through the birth of Christ. But because these first four pageants have conferred only grace but not glory, as St Thomas would have it, the final three pageants turn to a prophecy of the glory that Christ will confer upon her after death. The word grace drops out of the verse, and allegories of the Second Coming replace the Incarnation allegories of the first half of the series. Margaret becomes Queen of Heaven instead of Blessed Virgin Mother. She sees God in the "faire Cite of Iherusalem | Bisette aboute with many a precious gemme" ( ll. 146-7), glimpses Mary wearing a crown of twelve stars "assumpt aboue the heuenly Ierarchie" ( l. 148), and is promised that Christ will also "crowne here in blisse eterne" ( l. 155 ) at the Day of Judgment provided her 'acompte and rekenynge' (l. 161) is in order. The second half of the pageant series, in short, illustrates what St Thomas means by the Third Advent of Christ: having freed her from sin and filled her with grace, Christ frees her also from punishment and brings her to glory. 31 The first two pageants see Margaret as a bearer of grace in two ways. First of all, this marriage of a French princess and an English king will apparently end the war, unite two kingdoms in love, and bring the blessings of peace to England. Secondly and more conventionally, as Queen she will provide an heir to the throne. Thus at the foot of London Bridge the goddesses Peace and Plenty define the spiritual and material blessings of Peace which Margaret brings to England. Plenty greets the Queen as "by influence of grace | Doughter of Iherusalem . . . causer of welth, ioie, and abundaunce" ( ll. 1-5), while Peace prophesies that 'through youre grace . . . Pees shal approche' as well as 'rest and vnite' between "the reawmes two, Englande and Fraunce" ( ll. 10 - 12 ). At this point, perhaps, the title 'Doughter of Iherusalem' merely identifies Margaret as the child of René of Anjou, 'King of Jerusalem', but even this early in the show an insistence upon the Queen as an agent of heavenly grace suggests a larger meaning. Indeed, this evocative title will soon grow in significance as, first, Margaret becomes a type of that other daughter of Jerusalem, the Virgin Mary, and, second, she takes her place as a citizen of the celestial Jerusalem when she has ascended to glory. At the same time, the biblical ____________________ 31 The only previous critical discussions of this triumph are in Walter Schirmer, John Lydgate, tr. Anne Keep ( London, 1961), 224-5 and Brian Crow, "Lydgate's 1445 Pageant for Margaret of Anjou", ELN 19 ( 1981), 1704. The former confines itself to a summary of the pageant subjects, while the latter constitutes the first attempt at a critical analysis of the show's allegory. -192-

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injunction, "Ingredimini et replete terram" (Gen. 8: 17), which was probably fixed to the Bridge Gate itself, defines for the Queen yet another blessing that the citizens expect of her: an heir to the throne. A pageant of Noah Ark in the midst of London Bridge then defines Margaret's role further as bearer of divine grace. Just as the Ark preserved Noah 'by Goddes myght and Grace' from 'the flood of vengeaunce caused by trespasse' ( ll. 18-21), so Margaret will preserve England from the war. The Queen resembles "the Doue that brought the braunche of pees . . . Conducte by Grace" ( ll. 25-8). She becomes, in short, not merely a bringer of blessings, but the agent of England's salvation, a theme that the following two allegorical pageants will hammer home. The third and fourth pageants of the series now view Margaret's advent allegorically as a reflection of the grace wrought by Christ through Mary at the Incarnation. More than a mere political agent of an Anglo-French truce, Margaret comes to London, according to these pageants, as the chosen vessel of God's grace, a virgo mediatrix whose prayers have purchased peace between God and man and who has therefore initiated "thys tyme of Grace" ( l. 54). At Leadenhall, accordingly, "Dame Grace, Goddes Vicarie Generalle" ( l. 42) explains to Margaret the allegory of the Four Daughters of God. Based upon Psalm 84 ( "Mercy and Truth have met each other: Justice and Peace have kissed"), the pageant demonstrates how God and Grace had set "twixt reawmes tweyn stedfast loue" ( ll. 38-9) in the form of Queen Margaret. 32 On one level of the pageant structure, apparently, Truth and Mercy, Justice and Peace 'kiste and mette' while Dame Grace gave 'Foure patentes, faire, fressh, and legible, | Conteynyng .iiij. preceptes imperialle' ( ll. 43-4) to the Daughters. On another level, the three estates -- Clergy, Knighthood, and Laws -- together with St George and St Denis, formed a "Conseile of Grace" ( l. 51) to 'ratefie' these patents. Since the time of St Bernard, allegorical expositions of Psalm 84 have served primarily as Advent homilies associated with the Annunciation. 33 The Four Daughters alternatively indict and defend sinful man, demanding his destruction and pleading for mercy. To satisfy all four Daughters at once, God decrees that if one without sin will consent to die for man, the claims of Truth and Justice will be met while allowing for the pleas ____________________ 32

At the opening of Parliament three months earlier, John Stafford, Archbishop of Canterbury, took this very passage for his text, apparently interpreting it in the same way that the pageant does. See J. Strachey et al., Rotuli Parliamentorum ( London, 1767-77), v. 66. 33 St Bernard sermon "In Festo Annuntiationis" ( PL 183. 383-9) ultimately influenced such diverse works as Grosseteste's Chasteau damore, de Guilleville's Pelerinage, Lydgate's Life of our Lady, and Gréban's Mystére de la Passion. The pageant's version of this allegory finds its closest analogue in Love Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, 16, where God has his chancellor, Reason, read a 'sentence' containing four clauses to the Daughters.

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28. The Four Daughters of God and the Annunciation of Peace and Mercy at the same time. Christ offers himself for the sacrifice, and the Annunciation follows. Not surprisingly, illuminations on this subject often appear in books of hours to illustrate the Annunciation. In its most popular form, a vision of the Daughters kissing in heaven pairs with an illustration of Gabriel announcing the birth of Christ to Mary on earth ( Fig. 28 ). 34 Instead of pairing the Parliament in heaven with the Annunciation in a single view, however, the London pageant ____________________ 34 Cf. BN MSS fr. 244 and 245; the Gulbenkian Hours (Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon, Hours of René of Lorraine), 13 ; and the Wharncliffe Hours, National Gallery of Victoria, Australia, 15. See The Wharncliffe Hours, ed. Margaret Manion ( London, 1981), 58-9, 89. Pierre Gringore uses a version of this visual formula, as we have seen, for one of Mary Tudor's civic pageants at Paris in 1514 (Fig. 2). -194-

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master parcels his version of these two scenes between two successive pageants. The Leadenhall pageant thus limits itself to the Parliament in heaven. The four 'preceptes imperialle' which Dame Grace gives to the Daughters to still their quarrel are probably the four clauses of her rendering of Psalm 44 which she reads at the beginning of her speech: "Grace conueie you forthe and be youre gide | In good life longe, prosperously to reyne" ( ll. 34-5). If so, perhaps the Vulgate text, also fourfold, would have been blazoned upon the pageant: 'Intende, prospere procede, et regna.' 35 Margaret's advent as Queen of England, therefore, takes the place of Christ's Advent in the original allegory. God sends Margaret to England as he once sent Christ to earth. Her coming creates 'this tyme of Grace' in which "pees schall floure and fructifie" ( ll. 54-5), thereby satisfying the conflicting claims of Truth, Peace, Justice, and Mercy which have made the ending of the war so difficult. A fourth pageant, erected upon the Tun in Cornhill, defines still further the Marian implications of Margaret's advent. It features St Margaret ( "Oure Queen Margarete to signifie", l. 70), but as a Blessed Virgin, a mediatrix full of grace, rather than in her conventional role as a slayer of dragons. Described as a 'conueie of Grace', a 'Virgyne moost benigne', the saint prays 'maugre the myght of spirites maligne' to "God aboue hire praier pure and swete" ( ll. 64 -7) 36. Margaret's 'good mediacioun', the expositor says, has 'exiled th'angeles of wrecched tirannye' and proscribed war so that "pees shal haue hys [war's] place" ( ll. 59 - 62 ). By this he means not only "desired pees bitwixt Englande and Fraunce" ( l. 75 ) but also universal peace between God, man, and nature. In the future, "Aungeles of pees shall haue dominacioun" ( l. 57 ), and Erthe, see, and trees shall ben . . . obeisaunt to mannes wille and plesaunce' (ll. 734). The scope of Margaret's mediation thus logically follows more clearly from the Incarnation allegory of the previous pageant than from the legend of St Margaret. St Bernard's telling of the Four Daughters allegory, for example, mentions the Angels of Peace, praises Mary's mediation, and declares that the Incarnation restored peace between God and man. 37 In this London ____________________ 35 Ps. 44 was a popular text in pageantry because of its reputation as a 'triumphal' psalm. It appears, for example, in the London triumphs of Henry VI ( 1432) and Anne Boleyn ( 1533), and in Mary Tudor's Parisian triumph ( 1514). 36 All saints, of course, serve as mediators between God and man, and the Sarum Breviary tells us that St Margaret prayed just before her martyrdom that whenever a woman in labour should call upon her name the child might be delivered painlessly. Francis Procter and Christopher Wordsworth (eds.), Breviarium ad usum insignis Ecclesiae Sarum, vol. iii ( Canterbury, 1886), 508. Perhaps the pageant expositor has this in mind when he refers to the 'Pees graunted to growe and multeplie' which St Margaret has won "by Grace and good mediacioun" ( ll. 59 - 60 ). But if so, he couches an allusion to painless childbirth in oddly comprehensive terms. 37 PL 183. 388-9. -195-

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pageant, accordingly, both saint and namesake Queen serve alike as types of royal virgins who mediate peace. St Margaret 'signifies' the Queen, but both are also cut in the pattern of Mary as blessed virgins full of grace. Queen Margaret's political mediation between England and France reflects the heavenly mediation which her patron, St Margaret, performs, and both of these reflect the Virgin's universal mediation which won peace between God and man at the Incarnation. In this way, the pageant transforms a saint's legend into a Marian archetype, further depicting Margaret's royal adventus in terms of Christ's First Coming. Queen Margaret's role as agent of heavenly grace has expanded with each new pageant until it has assumed the proportions of saint and mediatrix. But these themes serve only as preparation for what follows. The very first line of the fifth pageant announces a decisive change in emphasis: "Grace in this lyf and aftirwarde Glorie" ( l. 78), a phrase which marks at once the first statement of a new theme and a last mention of an old one. Henceforth Margaret leaves behind her role as bearer of grace and instead ascends to glory, as St Thomas Aquinas would have it. God has conferred grace upon Margaret, and through her he has conferred grace upon England. Now, however, she foresees her ascent to glory after death as a reward for her grace and mediation, an ascent which characterizes Christ "Third Advent". Accordingly, the next three pageants confer glory upon Margaret in three stages: an allegory counsels her to beware the suddenness of Christ's Second Coming, a vision of the celestial Jerusalem outlines her soul's ascent to glory immediately after death, and a glimpse of the Assumption of the Virgin reminds her of the Last Judgment and bodily resurrection when she must make her account and reckoning to the Lord at the end of time. 38 Marking a sharp change in thematic direction, a pageant of the Five Wise and Five Foolish Virgins now stages the Third Advent of Christ to Queen Margaret. Upon the pageant, the heavenly sponsus has wed his beloved sponsa and now invites his guests to the wedding feast. Five prudent virgins whose 'hertes onely brent . . . to serue the Spouse' take their places at the feast, gaining their 'mede | For contyrience in thoght, worde, and dede'. Five 'necligent' virgins, however, were refused and "founde vnable" ( ll. 86-91). Instead of such an Incarnation allegory as the Four Daughters of God, this fifth pageant thus stages one of the Second ____________________ 38 If we take into account the 'missing' pageant at the Standard (see Kipling, "London Pageants for Margaret of Anjou", 5-14), we should rather consider Margaret's ascent in four stages. Another pageant at the Standard devoted to Margaret's ascent to glory would further 'balance' the show thematically: four pageants devoted to grace would then be followed by four more devoted to glory. -196-

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Coming parables by which Christ admonishes his disciples to 'watch ye therefore, because you know not the day nor the hour' when the Lord will come ( Matt. 25: 1-13). 39 To ensure that his audience understands the scene in this sense, the expositor prefaces his narration with a carefully selected quotation from Psalm 83, 'How plesaunt be thy tabernacles highe, Lorde' ( "Quam dilecta tabernacula tua, Domine"). "This psalme by short processe | Of oure Lorde concludeth high goodnesse: I Noo man to lacke reward when he goth hens | That lyueth here in parfite innocens" ( ll. 80-4). And lest the point still be missed, he ends with a formal significatio: "A pees shall be where as now trouble is, | After this lyfe, endely in blys" ( ll. 111-12). Clearly, if Margaret is to attend the wedding feast of "Sponsus Pees the Kynge" ( l. 99 ), she must emulate the Wise Virgins and prepare for the coming of the Lord by living a life of 'parfite innocens': "Who seketh rest with feithfull, trewe corage | Shalle dwelle atte last in Goddes heritage" ( ll. 97-8). In this sense, the pageant warns her to 'watche ye therefore, because you know not the day nor the hour'. But it prefers, on the whole, to illustrate heavenly rewards than to threaten eternal punishment, and so it emphasizes the wedding feast to which all 'redy' souls are invited: Alle thyng is redy; plentie and suffisaunce. Praied for to come, gestes moost and leste, Vnto the Spouses, full of heuenly purueaunce. Milke and honye flowyng in habundaunce. ( ll. 100-3) Margaret, presumably, is to be numbered among the wise and 'ready' Virgins as the pageant enacts the Third Advent. Sponsus Pees has come, and he invites her, together with all faithful souls, to the celestial banquet: Eteth and dryncketh, my ffrendes, of the beste, Moost chered frendes, dryncketh inwardly; After the ffeste take ye youre reste,' Thus seithe the Spouse, Hys ffeste to magnifie. ( ll. 106 -9) Sponsus Pees, indeed, offers no merely symbolic feast. The pipes of the Great Conduit, upon which this pageant was built, spout wine instead ____________________ 39

As the liturgical theorist Durandus points out, such parables illustrate the Third Advent of Christ 'which takes place at the death of each man', and he cites as illustration St Luke's version of this very parable, the one in which Christ advises, 'let your loins be girt, and lamps burning in your hands. And you yourselves like to men who wait for their lord, when he cometh and knocketh, they may open to him immediately' ( Rationale, 6. 2. 2). Durandus here quotes only verses 38-9 of Luke 12: 35-40. See also Petrus de Natalibus, who uses the same passage from Luke to illustrate the 'adventus domini specialis . . . in morte' (i.e. the Third Advent): Catalogus sanctorum, ijr.

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of water, as is traditional. 40 Not only the Queen, but all may drink 'of the beste', gaining thereby a foretaste of the heavenly feast to come. Having numbered herself among the Wise Virgins at the Third Advent of Christ, Margaret may now ascend to the celestial Jerusalem, travelling the path to heaven that all justified souls must follow after death. 'To Goddes house now schall we goo right glade' ( l. 119), the next pageant expositor promises her, and she accordingly sees God's house built above the Cheapside Cross: "the faire Cite of Iherusalem, | Bisette aboute with many a precious gemme" ( ll. 146-7). Like several similar 'jasper castles' full of angels and archangels built on the same spot for earlier civic triumphs, this one was designed according to the passage in St John's Apocalypse in which an angel took me up in spirit to a great and high mountain: and he shewed me the holy city Jerusalem . . . having the glory of God, and the light thereof was like to a precious stone. . . . And the building of the wall thereof was of jasper stone. . . . And the foundations of the wall of the city were adorned with all manner of precious stones. ( 21: 10 -11, 18-19) Like St John, the expositor explains, the Queen must make a spiritual ascent up the holy mountain if she is to reach her soul's Jerusalem: "From vertu to vertu men shall vp ascende"; | "Than shall God be seyn in the Mount Sion" ( ll. 141-2). As this apt quotation from Psalm 83 makes clear, 41 Margaret's adventus "throgh youre Cite from place to place" ( l. 129) has now become but a symbol of her soul's spiritual ascent 'from vertu to vertu' to glory. She must climb, then, a ladder of the virtues towards the holy city. 42 The expositor's speech, indeed, built as it is upon quotations from two gradual psalms ('songs of ascent'), strongly emphasizes the spiritual nature of the Queen's ascent to glory. Much of the pageant, in fact, might have been inspired by St Augustine's explanation of one of these gradual psalms, 'Laetatus sum', from which the pageant quotes extensively: This psalm . . . longs for Jerusalem itself, that is, he who ascends in this psalm, for it is a song of degrees. . . . He therefore longs to ascend. And whither does he wish to ascend except into heaven? What does 'into heaven' mean? Does he wish to ascend that he may be with the sun, moon, and stars? Nonsense. But there is in heaven the eternal Jerusalem, where are our fellow citizens, the angels; ____________________ 40 "And by pe wey, as she cam purgh pe Cite, there were shewed and made many devises and storyes, with angeles and oper hevenly thinges, with songe and melody in dyuers places; and pe condites ran wyne, both white and rede, for all peple pat wold drynk" ( Brut, ii. 489). 41 "Ibunt de virtute in virtutem, | Videbitur Deus deorurn in Sion" (Ps. 83: 8). 42 Crow, "Lydgate's 1445 Pageant", 172-3. -198-

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we wander about on earth away from these our fellow citizens. We sigh in our pilgrimage; we shall rejoice in the city. 43 For Margaret, too, this life is a pilgrimage and she longs to ascend. The eternal Jerusalem which rises above her represents more a state of soul than a physical place. According to the popular anagogical interpretation of ' Jerusalem', the pageant represents 'the life that the blessed shall enjoy in heaven', 44 or as the expositor puts it, This pagent wold mene, youre Excellence, That ther is ioie in verrey [i.e. true] existence. Where is reioiced alle felicite Withouten ende eternally t'endure, Contemplacioun of the Deite, Which noon erthely langage may discure. ( ll. 132 -7) Filled with grace, Margaret now rises towards glory. The previous pageant had staged the Third Advent itself -- Christ's 'Coming at the death of saints'. This pageant, in turn, stages the spiritual adventus that follows the Third Advent; the souls of the saints ascend to the eternal Jerusalem and enter the holy city in triumph, where Christ 'receives them to himself, . . . that is, to Glory'. 45 For Margaret, the soul's ascent to the celestial Jerusalem follows the archetypal pattern of the apotheosis of the Virgin Mary. In ending the Queen's civic triumph with a vision of the Queen of Heaven 'assumpt aboue the heuenly Ierarchie' and wearing her Apocalyptic crown of twelve stars, the devisers call upon the Marian prototype to bring Margaret's ascent to glory to its logical conclusion. Throughout the show, the pageantry has insistently characterized Margaret as a type of Mary: royal virgin, daughter of Jerusalem, bearer of grace. Margaret's soul at the previous pageant longed to ascend to the eternal Jerusalem; now through Mary she completes the ascent 'aboue the heuenly Ierarchie' (l. 148). Appropriately, the pageant is based upon Apocalypse 12: 1, a passage ____________________ 43

Psalmus iste . . . ipsam Jerusalem desiderat, id est, iste qui ascendid in hoc psalmo & est enim, Canticum graduum. . . . Ascendere ergo vult iste. Et quo vult ascendere, nisi in coelum? Quid est, in coelum? Utrum ideo vult ascendere, ut sit cum sole et luna et stellis? Absit. Sed est in coelo aeterna Jerusalem, ubi sunt cives nostri Angeli: ab ipsis civibus nostris peregrinamur in terra. In peregrinatione suspiramus; in civitate gaudebimus' (St Augustine, Enarratio in Psalmum CXXI, PL 37. 1619). 44 Rabanus Maurus, "Allegoriae in sacram scripturam", PL 112. 966. Rabanus Maurus quotes Ps. 121 as an illustration of the anagogical meaning of ' Jerusalem'. This definition became a touchstone for distinguishing the four levels of meaning throughout the Middle Ages. See Durandus, Rationale, proemium 12, and Caplan, Of Eloquence, 93-104. 45 Leclercq, L'Idée de la royauté du Christ, 85 -6.

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used as an introit for the Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin. Margaret reaches the last stage of her triumphal progress through London to see Mary achieving the final stage in her ascent to glory. As Queen of England confronts the Queen of Heaven in a final, summary pageant, earthly type confronts heavenly archetype. Margaret's ascent to glory has led to a crown of gold and has been reflected in Mary's apotheosis to a crown of stars. But Margaret's symbolic identification with the Virgin can go only so far. Because the Virgin has been assumed body and soul into heaven, the celestial Jerusalem is for her as much a physical as a spiritual place. Margaret, however, has only made a spiritual adventus; she must await the general resurrection before she may physically enter heaven. Consequently, her civic triumph ends with warnings of that judgment still to come at the Fourth Advent of Christ: This storie to youre Highnes wolde expresse The grete Resurecioun generall, Whereof oure feith bereth pleyn witnesse: The ferefull sowne of Trumpe Iudiciall Vppon the poeple yt sodeynly shall calle, Eche man to make acompte and rekenynge Right as hys consciencie bewreien shalle, All be it Pope, Emperour, or Kynge. (ll. 156-63) At that Day of Judgment, the Queen of Heaven will sit at the right hand of the Lord as he raises the dead and separates the sheep from the goats. Many who are now in a state of grace will later fall into sin and be numbered among the goats when that 'ferefull sowne of Trumpe Iudiciall' calls all to judgment. Hence even in exalting Margaret to glory, this final pageant returns her emphatically to mortal earth. Where before she had served as virgo mediatrix in a peace between France and England, now she finds herself in need of just such a mediatrix herself. Appropriately, the expositor asks the Queen of Heaven to 'Praie for oure Queene that Crist will here gouerne | Longe here on lyue in hire noble astate, | Aftirward crowne here in "blisse eterne" ( ll. 153-5). Do we hear the expositor speaking, perhaps, with the voice of the 'ribald' in the chariot? Although earlier pageants had greeted Margaret as if she were the Blessed Virgin, this final pageant teaches the Queen to 'know herself' by enforcing a contrast: the Virgin reigns above, Margaret below. She must yet 'do well' if she is to wear a heavenly crown, for like any mortal she must 'make acompte and rekenynge' at the Day of Judgment. -200-

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There can be no mistaking the funereal tone of this Third Advent triumph. In a way wholly surprising to modern taste, the city inaugurates its Queen while staging her symbolic death. In similar fashion, we have seen the Regent of the Netherlands join the Dance of Death, and the King of France, with all his sins and virtues about him, has come before the Lord at the Last Judgment to have his soul weighed in St Michael's balance. To medieval tastes, of course, such shows were neither surprising nor insulting. Rather, they view the glory of the king's earthly triumph from the perspective of heavenly glory, sub specie aeternitatis. The king who today comes to judge must tomorrow come to judgment. In this way, the medieval civic triumph hopes to encourage royal reflection upon duty and obligation rather than privilege, upon the exercise of virtue rather than power. These shows appeal, in short, to conventional medieval morality; in great measure, they share the same moral aims as the popular sermon exemplum about the 'ribald' in the emperor's chariot. They stand thus beside mirrors of princes, philosophical consolations, the mementos mori, and dream vision allegories -- all those medieval assurances that mundane fame and glory are illusory, that one should seek virtue and God instead. But even if the appeal of conventional morality had not existed, the liturgical inspiration of the civic triumph would alone have exerted powerful thematic pressure in the direction of the funereal mode. 3. The Office of the Dead and the Entry of Henry V into London, 1415 While the Church distinguishes four advents of Christ, as the medieval theorists point out, the liturgy of Advent celebrates only two of them properly: the Incarnation and the Last Judgment. 46 Both the office of the dead and the mass for the Feast of All Souls (2 Nov.), however, incorporate liturgical expressions of the Third Advent of Christ 'at the death of saints'. Of these, the office of the dead, which formed an essential part of every book of hours, is the fuller expression of the two. The mass for All Souls' Day comprises a yearly celebration of the funeral office as an act of intercession for all those faithful souls languishing in purgatory until they may be admitted into heaven. The service prays that God may extend his grace to those souls in the form of remission of their sins so ____________________ 46 This widespread idea appears as a primary point in popular sources: 'Licet autern quadruplex sit adventus, tamen ecclesia specialiter de duplici: sed in carnem et ad judicium videtur memoriam facere sicut in officio ipsius temporis patet' ( de Voragine, Legenda aurea, 3). Cf. Mirk, Festial, 1, who does not even mention the other two advents. See Durandus, Rationale, 6. 2. 3, for an official formulation of this point. -201-

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that they may ascend to glory. The All Souls service, however, includes only portions of the complete funeral service. In particular it omits the important prayers, discussed below, which imagine the soul's reception into paradise. As a consequence, we will have to examine the office of the dead, rather than the All Souls service, if we are to grasp the medieval Church's most complete liturgical expression of the Third Advent. The office of the dead, in fact, enjoys close historical and liturgical connections with Advent, serving in some senses as an extension of the liturgical metaphors of Advent into the sacramental offices. The thirteenthcentury sequence 'Dies irae,' now a fixture in the burial mass, may have been originally composed for the first Sunday of Advent. A graphic evocation of the coming of Christ to the Last Judgment, it served the Church as one of those 'songs of melody' which it 'layth down,' according to Mirk, because 'pe comyng of Cryst to pe dome schall be so jrus and so cruell'. An appropriately terrifying vision of the 'Day of wrath, day of mourning | . . . When from heaven the Judge descendeth, | On whose sentence all dependeth', the sequence later found an important place in the funeral mass as a potent reminder for the congregation that 'Man for judgment must prepare him'. 47 Some liturgies, indeed, specify scripture lessons similar to those used at Advent. The description of Christ's parousia, taken from 1 Thessalonians 4, for example, is a more detailed version of Luke's description of the same event, which is prescribed as the Gospel lesson for the second Sunday at Advent. But the most profound indebtedness of the burial service to Advent lies in the most distinctive features of its own imagery rather than in a few liturgical echoes or even direct borrowings. Just as the liturgy of Advent repeatedly imagines the coming of Christ in terms of an emperor's ceremonial civic reception, so the liturgy of the funeral office imagines the solemn adventus of the soul into the celestial Jerusalem. Beginning with the responsory, 'Subvenite', the liturgy prepares for the arrival of the soul in heaven as if it were a medieval king entering a city in state: 'Come to his assistance, ye angels of the Lord, receiving his soul, offering it in the sight of the Lord. May Christ, who has called thee, receive thee, and may angels conduct thee into Abraham's bosom.' 48 A series of prayers then imagines the setting out of the soul from this world and its adventus into the next. In the first, the soul departs and begins its journey: 'Go forth, O Christian soul, out of this world. . . . May thy place be this day in ____________________ 47 "Dies irae, dies illa, | . . . . Quando judex est venturus, | Cuncta stricte discussurus". 48 "Subuenite sancti dei occurrite angeli domini suscipientes animam eius offerentes earn in conspectu altissimi. Suscipiat eam christus qui uocauit et in sinu abrahe angeli dedducant offerentes"; Sarum Missal, 428, 430. -202-

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peace, and thy abode in the celestial Jerusalem.' Then, imagining the reception of the soul in that holy city, another prayer, associated with St Peter Damian, commends the soul to God, praying, may the resplendent multitude of the angels meet thee; may the court of the apostles receive thee; may the triumphant army of glorious martyrs come out to welcome thee; may the splendid company of confessors clad in their white robes encompass thee; may the choir of joyful virgins receive thee; and may thou meet with a blessed repose in the bosom of the patriarchs. As he arrives, the gates of the city open for him. St Michael leads him in, and he is received among the ordered hosts of heaven: patriarchs, prophets, apostles, angels, archangels, cherubim, seraphim, elders. Together, they all sing new canticles to the Lord.49 A series of shorter prayers and anti phons takes up the theme even more earnestly: 'Lord receive thy servant in the eternal habitation, and give him rest and kingship in the celestial Jerusalem,' begs one prayer, while an important antiphon even more graphically imagines the celestial adventus: 'May the angels lead thee into paradise: may the martyrs receive thee at thy coming, and lead thee into the holy city of Jerusalem. May the choir of angels receive thee, and may thou have eternal rest with Lazarus, who once was poor.'50 Because of this pervasive imagery, each funeral is a coronation, each saint a king who enters the celestial city in triumph to be crowned in glory. A long iconographic tradition undergirds the imagery of the funeral office. As early as the fifth century, an ivory carving in the British Museum parallels the apotheosis of a Roman emperor with his earthly triumph (Fig. 29).51 Inevitably, the Church Fathers seized upon this imperial metaphor to explain the Ascension of Christ as such an imperial apo theosis, depicting him entering heaven in triumph as a way of declaring his victory over death.52 By enshrining this iconographic tradition in its ____________________ 49

"Proficiscere anima christiana": Sarum Missal, 427. "Commendo te", PL 151. 925 ff.; Kantorowicz, "King's Advent", 208; the Sarum Missal, 430, from which some details in this account are also taken, represents a variant of the original version. 50 "Suscipe domine seruum tuum. N. in habitaculum eternum et da ei requiem et regnum ierusalern celeste" (prayer), and "In paradisum deducant te angeli in suo conuentu suscipiant te martyrs et perducant te in ciuitatern sanctam ierusalem" (antiphon). Sarum Missal, 430, 447. Cf. the prayer "Delicta iuventutis": 'Suscipiat eurn sanctus Michael Archangelus Dei, qui militiae cae lestis meruit principatum. Veniant illi obviam sancti Angeli Dei et perducant eum in civitatem caelestel Ierusalem' ( Kantorowicz, "King's Advent", 207 n. 3). 51 Ernst Kitzinger, Early Medieval Art, 2nd edn. ( London, 1955), 13-14, 100, and pl. 6. 52 St Cyrus preached a Palm Sunday sermon on the subject of the Ascension as early as the mid-4th cent., and St Bernard is still turning the same metaphor seven centuries later, where he envisions Christ's Palm Sunday reception as a triumphal entry into 'the heavenly Jerusalem . . . bearing triumphs of his victory, not now amidst the applause of popular crowds, but angelic

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29. The apotheosis of an emperor

funeral liturgy, the Church transformed the Third Advent of Christ into one of the great poetic commonplaces of the age. Valla's memorable description of the soul's entry into heaven stands for many another such poetic elaboration of the imagery of the office of the dead: ____________________ powers' (above, Ch. 1). As Gertrud Schiller points out, the iconographic tradition from earlier times emphasizes Christ's entry into the city of heaven as a representation of his triumph over death, and, for the faithful, redemption from sin and death ( Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art, ii. 19).

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If when we enter with honour into a city, especially if unknown, men and women run to the doors of the houses and follow with eager eyes either the beauty of our body or the clothing or something similar, and we for our part enjoy not only the honour which is attributed to us but the sight of them if they are beautiful and ornate, how much and how certainly greater will it be in paradise when we enter into that city in which the majesty of the inhabitants is inef fable? But this kind of joy which is born from the concourse of people and from being looked at is most known in a triumph. Therefore let us imagine the entry of the soul as though, after a victory, it was returning to the fatherland in triumph. He will be drawn in a chariot by white horses and crowned by laurel or gold, Valla continues, 'so that Phoebus as described by the most eloquent poets, will seem a villain by comparison'. Not able to wait for the soul's arrival, Christ himself rises up from his throne and comes on foot to greet him.53 We recognize here the essentials of the Third Advent of Christ: the soul of the saint ascends to heaven at death, and Christ comes forward to take him to himself. The funeral liturgy has added the machin ery of the adventus, here classicized by Valla into a triumph. Valla's poetic elaboration of this most characteristic imagery of the funeral liturgy par allels the dramatic elaboration of the same imagery in civic pageantry. Playing his part in a dramatic conceit patterned after the liturgical imagery of the office of the dead, many a medieval king entered his city as if he were a soul entering paradise. The liturgy of the funeral office has clearly left its imprint upon the London triumph of Henry V ( 1415).54 To celebrate the return of its vic torious king after the Battle of Agincourt, the city almost certainly took both the design and the theme of its pageantry from the office of the dead. For the design of Henry's civic triumph, the devisers imitated the soul's entry into paradise as imagined in the liturgy. As the King pro gressed from Bridge Gate to St Paul's Cathedral, the pageantry dramat ized the stages of the soul's reception into the celestial Jerusalem: entry ____________________ 53

De vero bono, book 3, quoted in Charles Trinkaus, In our Image and Likeness ( London, 1970), i. 198. That Trinkaus mistakenly judges this a 'most extravagant image of man's entry into heaven' suggests the dimensions of the gulf which separates our own commonplace ideas from those of the Middle Ages. 54 This discussion of Henry V's civic triumph follows, except for a few details, the Gesta Henrici Quinti, ed. and tr. Taylor and Roskell, 101-13. Except in a few instances, I quote from the editors' translation. Perhaps 'based in part on the official programme' (p. xxvii), the Gesta is clearly the fullest account. I do, however, also take a few details (1) from an English verse account, formerly ascribed to Lydgate, which Taylor and Roskell print in an appendix (191-2), (2) from Elmham Liber metricus, in Charles A. Cole (ed.), Memorials of Henry the Fifth ( London, 1858), 125-8, and (3) from Sir Edward Maunde Thompson (ed.), Chronicon of Adam of Usk, 2nd edn. ( London, 1904), 128-9, 310-13.

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into the gates of paradise, welcome by the ordered hosts of heaven, and arrival before the throne of the Almighty. Unlike Valla's ctassicized, Renaissance version of the soul's triumphant ascent to glory after death, the pageant series adopts the chastening theme of the liturgy's version of the celestial adventus. Upon his arrival, Henry finds the gates of heaven proclaim it to be 'the City of the King of Justice'. He comes therefore not to reign in glory himself, but to be judged before the throne of the 'Sun of Justice'. Henry's entry into Jerusalem-London is designed to affect him in much the same way as Scipio's ascent to the heavens affected the Roman conqueror. Viewed from the perspective of heaven, even the great est mortal achievements seem transient and petty. He discourages rather than enjoys the adulation of the crowd, entering the city of heaven prayer fully, not pridefully, 'pondering the matter in his heart, . . . rendering thanks and glory to God alone, not to man'. The pageants themselves were designed according to the symbolic architecture of heaven. Some made do with drapery canopies or taber nacles to suggest the dwellings of the inhabitants of heaven. The throne of heaven itself, for example, was set atop a tower of tabernacle niches and surmounted by a sky-blue canopy held aloft by angels. At the foot of London Bridge, the Bridge Gate served for the gates of heaven. Two giant warders, one bearing the keys to the city, guarded the entry to the Civitas Regis Iustitiae, according to a legend inscribed on a wall. Elsewhere, the architecture was more ambitious. Several of the pageants were clearly designed according to the Apocalyptic description of New Jerusalem, 'like to a precious stone, as to the jasper stone, even as crystal'. The pageant at the drawbridge thus featured turrets constructed of timber and 'covered with linen cloth painted the colour of white marble and green jasper as if made of stones squared and dressed by the handiwork of masons'. An even more spectacular reflection of the glory of God in the otherworldly masonry of heaven, a timberwork castle 'adorned with graceful towers, pillars, and ramparts', stretched across Cheapside, permitting passage by means of two arched gateways. Like the turrets on the drawbridge, 'the covering of the castle was of linen fabric painted in colours to look like white marble and green and crimson jasper, as if the whole work had been made . . . from squared and well-polished stones of great price'. A banner above the gateways identified it still further as a parish in the New Jerusalem: 'Glorious things are said of thee, O City of God' (Ps. 86: 3). Even the River Thames was pressed into duty to perform as one of the rivers of paradise. Passing over the Bridge, Henry found this banner flying from one of the jasper-stone turrets of the second pageant: "The stream of the river maketh the City of God joyful" ( Ps. 45: 5). -206206.

The inhabitants of New Jerusalem appear in these heavenly mansions in approximately the same order and welcome Henry in the same ways as the funeral office imagines them to do. In welcoming Henry's soul to paradise, they characteristically subordinate the King's earthly honours to the Lord's divine glory. Just within the gates of Paradise, St George greets Henry as England's patron, perhaps playing the archangel Michael's role as Psychopomp. Wearing the martyr's crown ('laurel studded with gems sparkling like precious stones') and bearing a 'triumphal helm' of saintly victory, he represents a spiritual and superior version of the English King and conqueror. The scroll he carries states not only the theme of the civic triumph, but also the condition of Henry's admission to heaven: "Honour and Glory to God alone" ( 1 Tim. 1: 17). At the same station, a hierarchy of angels meets the King, singing an anthem based upon the Palm Sunday greeting: 'Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini.' Cos tumed to suggest the resplendent multitude of the angels' which, accord ing to the liturgy, greets the soul and 'leads him into paradise', they were 'clad in pure white, their faces glowing with gold, their wings gleaming, and their youthful locks entwined with costly sprays of laurel'. At the next station, a company of prophets 'with venerable white hair' greeted the King, costumed 'in tunicles and golden copes, their heads wrapped and turbaned with gold and crimson'. They sang the Psalm suggested by the Sarum liturgy ('et inter cantantes canticurn nouum cantet'): 'Sing ye to the Lord a new canticle: because he hath done wonderful things' (Ps. 97). To express their joy at the 'wonderful thing' the Lord had done at Agincourt, they 'released in a great flock . . . sparrows and other tiny birds, of which some descended on to the king's breast, some settled upon his shoul ders, and some circled around in twisting flight'. At the next pageant, the apostles (twelve 'men of venerable old age'), martyrs, and confessors ('twelve kings of the English succession, martyrs and confessors'), fulfilling the liturgy's vision of 'the court of the apostles . . . the triumphant army of glorious martyrs . . . and the splendid company of confessors', wel comed Henry in heavenly communion. They presented the King with ,round leaves of silver intermingled with wafers of bread', and served him with 'wine from the pipes and spouts of the conduit': so that they 'might receive him with bread and wine just as Melchisadek did Abraham. As the liturgical prayer predicts ('may the choir of joyful virgins receive thee'), Henry next encounters 'a choir of the most beautiful young maidens, very chastely adorned in pure white raiment and virgin attire, singing together with timbrel and dance, as if to another David coming from the slaying of Goliath'. Although they sing a song in praise of Henry ('Welcome Henry ye fifte, Kynge of England and of France'), a host of archangels -207207.

and angels restores the thematic balance by praising God. "Beautiful in heavenly splendour, in pure white raiment, with gleaming wings", they shower Henry with golden coins and leaves of laurel -- symbols of heavenly grace -- and sing the angelic anthem, "Te Deum laudamus"'. Each of these pageants has welcomed the King to heaven by virtue of his faithful service to the Lord rather than by right of his own earthly glory. But in bringing the conqueror of Agincourt before the King of Heaven, the last pageant boldly contrasts the relative glory of God and man, showing that God's is not only greater, but of an entirely different order. To dramatize the gulf which separates earthly and heavenly glory, the devisers represented God not in the person of an actor, but rather as 'a figure of majesty in the form of a sun . . . emitting dazzling rays' which 'shone more brightly than all else'. Around the throne, more anthropo morphic 'archangels moved rhythmically together, psalming sweetly and accompanied by every kind of musical instrument'. Having entered the 'City of the King of Justice', Henry has at last come before the "Sun of Justice" itself. The pageant deviser reveals God to Henry in the form of the sun, precisely as St John sees him in the Apocalypse. The New Jerusalem, St John says, 'hath no need of the sun, nor of the moon, to shine in it. For the glory of God hath enlightened it. . . . And the nations shall walk in the light of it: and the kings of the earth shall bring their glory and honour into it' ( 21: 23-4). Represented as pure, celestial glory in the form of a dazzling sun, the Lord literally outshines the mortal King. Henry thus comes to heaven as one of the 'kings of the earth' who bring glory to God rather than as a demigod who rises to heaven through his own glory. As the chronicler observes, this pageant concludes 'in the same strain as the preceding' ones, 'the tributes of praise to the honour and glory not of men but of God'. St George had put it still more concisely: "Honour and Glory to God alone". The humbling of Henry's worldly glory before the dazzling celestial glory of the Lord here underlines the homiletic strategy of this Third Advent triumph. On the one hand, the King enters his earthly city tri umphantly, the proud sovereign of his people. On the other hand, he enters spiritually the city of paradise as the humble subject of the King of Heaven. The pageantry of the civic triumph thus performs a similar chastening function for the King as the funeral liturgy does for the wor shipper: by mortifying one's mortal pride it makes one worthy of heaven. Henry enters London as Christ once entered Jerusalem, in a 'poor and simple manner, conforming to the state of humilation'.55 His demeanour as he rode through the streets shows that he understood his role well: ____________________ 55Menestrier, Des entrées solemnelles, 123. Above, n. 11. -208208.

the king himself, wearing a gown of purple, proceeded, not in exalted pride and with an imposing escort or impressively large retinue, but with an impassive coun tenance and at a dignified pace, and with only a few of the most trusted members of his household in attendance. . . . Indeed, from his quiet demeanour, gentle pace, and sober progress, it might have been gathered that the king, silently pondering the matter in his heart, was rendering thanks and glory to God alone, not to man. This is the very message that 'ribalds' were supposed to drive home to triumphing Roman emperors, reinforcing their message with blows upon the head and neck if necessary: 'all worldely glorie is transitori and not abidynge and evidently to declare pat in hi3e estate is none assurance.'56 Henry required no such therapeutic beating. The theme of the pageantry reflected his own pious attitude towards Agincourt, after all,57 and his ostentatious humility proved that he knew himself but a mortal man despite the imperial purple cloak he wore. The civic triumph constituted London's dramatically staged prayer for its King. By entering a city trans formed by pageantry and actors into the New Jerusalem, he enacted his people's vision of his soul's future ascent to glory, speeded upon its way by the manifest evidence of God's grace in Henry's victory at Agincourt. 4. The Royal Entry as Elegiac Dream Vision: Katharine of Aragon (London, 1501) In this funeral apotheosis, Henry V celebrated a Third Advent civic tri umph in its most classically simple form. By translating the imagery of the funeral liturgy directly into civic pageantry, the city transformed the King's royal entry into his soul's heavenly adventus. By contrast, the deviser of Katharine of Aragon's London reception ( 1501) staged for her a very similar funeral apotheosis, but in an allegorically extended manner which demonstrates the civic triumph's possibilities for literary sophistication.58 In a brilliant dramatic conceit, the deviser depicted Katharine's triumph, ____________________ 56

Lydgate, Serpent of Division, 53-4. For Henry's self-effacing attitude toward Agincourt, see James Hamilton Wylie, The Reign of Henry the Fifth ( 2 vols.; Cambridge, 1919), ii. 178. 58 The following account is based upon my more complete analysis of Katharine of Aragon London reception in The Triumph of Honour ( The Hague, 1977), 72-95. The most extensive accounts of the event occur in College of Arms, MS 1st M. 13, 3v3-45r, printed in The Receyt of the Ladie Kateryne, ed. Gordon Kipling, EETS os 296 ( London, 1990). Independent civic accounts occur in Guildhall MS 3313, 275-285v, printed in A. H. Thomas and I. D. Thornley (eds.), The Great Chronicle of London ( London, 1938), 296-309; and in BL MS Cotton Vitellius A. XVI, 184r-195r, printed in C. L. Kingsford (ed.), Chronicles of London ( Oxford, 1905), 234-48. While several other manuscript accounts exist -- and some have been printed -- they all derive from one or the other of these sources. For another important and extensive analysis of this civic tri umph which emphasizes the scholastic sources of the pageantry, see Sydney Anglo, The London Pageants for the Reception of Katharine of Aragon: November 1501, JWCI 26 ( 1963), 53-89 (reprinted in a slightly condensed form in Spectacle, 56-97). 57

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which celebrated her arrival in England to marry Henry VII's son Prince Arthur, as a stellar apotheosis. Instead of entering the gates of paradise in triumph, she became a pilgrim soul returning after death to her 'native star' in heaven. She, too, suffered a necessary humiliation, but it came as the result of a symbolic, astrological conjunction: Katharine's wandering, Spanish star dimmed and paled the nearer it drew to Arthur's Tudor constellation. If Henry V's triumph demonstrates a seminal relationship between funeral liturgy and the civic triumph, Katharine's reception shows a further, more literary development as the civic triumph becomes a medi eval dream vision, a poetic form which is itself often funereal in theme. The pageant deviser planned Katharine's journey through the streets of London as a medieval stellar apotheosis. Like many a famous astral traveller before her -- Scipio in Macrobius' Dream of Scipio, Boethius in the Consolation of Philosophy, and Geffrey in the Hous of Fame -- Katharine is 'translated to a star'. The theme is ultimately Platonic in origin. As Plato explains in the Timaeus, the Lord at Creation assigned each soul to a star, setting him 'as it were in a chariot'. The soul leaves this stel lar chariot to be born into the world, and after death he returns to the abode of his 'native star' where 'he shall gain a life that is blessed and congenial'.59 According to this pattern the pageant deviser sends Katharine to Hesperus, 'the bright star of Spain' (as one pageant actor puts it), an appropriate 'native star' for a princess who comes from Hesperia, the Roman 'land of the evening star'. He makes the nature of the Princess's journey clear from the very first pageant. As Katharine arrives before the first pageant, the Tabernacle of the Saints on London Bridge, Sts Ursula and Katharine announce that they will convey Katharine to the 'court celestial'. St Ursula, moreover, reveals that she has just descended to earth for this purpose from her own native star, Ursa Minor, which is 'set fast by Arthure [the constellation Arcturus], with other sterres bright' in the heavens. In other words, St Ursula claims that she now dwells in the constellation Ursa Minor, which is placed among the stars in heaven next to Arcturus, the medieval name for Ursa Major.60 Her stellar vantage ____________________ 59

Plato, Timaeus, Critias, Cleitophon, Menexenus, Epistles, ed. and tr. R. G. Bury ( London, 1966), 91-3. For a discussion of the Neoplatonic development of the stellar translation motif, see J. A. Stewart , The Myths of Plato, ed. G. R. Levy, 2nd edn. ( Fontwell, 1960). See also Boethius, De consolatione philosophiae, 4, met. 1; Macrobius, Commentary on the Dream of Scipio, tr. W. H. Stahl ( New York, 1952), 142-6; Chaucer, Works, ed. F. N. Robinson, 2nd edn. ( Boston, 1957), 287. 60 Arcturus . . . is a sign made of seven stars . . . commonly called in English Charlemagne's wain. . . . Arcturus . . . is properly a star set behind the tail of the sign that is called Ursa Major. . . . And before all that constellation Arcturus has the name of that star, as Isidore says' ( BL MS Add. 27944, 118r). In this freely translated version of Bartholomew de Glanville's De propri etatibus rerum, John of Trevisa refers to Isidore Etymologiarum, 3. 71.

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point allows her to identify Arcturus, 'beautee of the northe, with bright sterres seven', as the stellar home of Katharine's bridegroom, Prince Arthur. As the Princess struggles to return to her abode in the evening star Hesperus, she finds that Arthur already awaits her in his constellation. To mortal eyes, therefore, Katharine's arrival in the celestial court and her marriage with the Prince will appear as the astrological conjunction of Arcturus and Hesperus.61 As the Princess travels from London Bridge to St Paul's Cathedral, the pageantry makes her seem to ascend from earth, through the spheres of the cosmos, where she resumes her stellar body as Hesperus, to the Throne of Honour set above the firmament. Each pageant measures her progress towards that stellar conjunction which is to be her destiny. Leaving the Tabernacle of the Saints, she next approaches the earthly Castle Policy, where her native star intercedes for her, shines upon the castle gates, and bursts them open. 'Who openyd these gatis? What, opened they alone?' shouts the amazed captain of the castle, rushing to the battlements: O, now I see weell why: The bright sterre of Spayne, Hesperus, on them shone, Whoes goodly beames hath persid mightily Thorugh this castell to bring this good lady. After two denizens of the castle, Virtue and Noblesse, have further directed her on the path to honour, she climbs to the lowest of the heavenly spheres, that of the moon. There an angel, an astrologer, a philosopher, and a 'divine' each cast a 'figure' (astrological prophecy) for Katharine by reading a 'volvell' (a kind of astrolabe) on which is shown an approach ing conjunction of the sun, Arcturus, and Hesperus. Job, the divine, gives to each of these in turn as they appear on the dials of the volvell a theo logical significance: It is the Sonne of Justice, therthe illumyneng; This is the very Hesperus that shone so bright In the west, to oure compforte, by his dethe fallyng; This is Arthure, illumyneng iche cost With vij bright sterrys, vij yeftes of the Holy Gost.62 ____________________ 61

One such mortal was Richard Maring, a brother of the monastery of Edington. His MS treatise, "Conjunctio Arthuri et Veneris", employs the same astrological motif as does the wed ding triumph ( BL MS Sloane 4822, 1r-42v). See Anglo, "London Pageants", 184-6. 62 For the sake of simplicity, I have left one element out of this complicated 'figure'. The volvell in fact shows this threefold conjunction occurring in the sign of Sagittarius 'and his triplicity'. A triplicity is a combination of three signs of the zodiac, in this case Aries, Leo, and

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The promised conjunction actually occurs at the next pageant, the 'Sphere of the Sun', where the souls inhabiting the 'chariots of the stars' now become visible. She thus sees her bridegroom, Prince Arthur, not as a Tudor prince, but revealed in his 'stellar body' as the 'Sun of Justice'. He triumphantly rides his constellation, Arcturus, which the Middle Ages knew as the Wain, in the form of a stellar chariot through the great, turning wheel of the zodiac. At this point, as we shall see, the astrological power of her own native Hesperus falls her, and she ascends further heavenward only through the grace of her bridegroom's superior stellar influence. At the next pageant, she reaches the throne of God the Father, to whom the stars of Arcturus seem as the seven-branched candlestick burning before his face, as described in St John's Apocalypse ( 4: 5). Finally, she reaches the Throne of Honour at the last pageant, where she is invited to share a throne with Prince Arthur beside Honour himself -- a throne fixed upon the eternal foundation of the seven virtues and set above the cosmos. The unusual conclusion of Katharine's stellar translation, which takes her beyond God the Father to the Throne of Honour, reflects the triumph's chief literary source, Jean Molinet's elegy for the Burgundian Duke Philip the Good, Le Trosne d'honneur ( 1467).63 At first sight, an elegy may seem an unlikely model for a wedding triumph. But the funereal mode, as we have seen, precisely suits a Third Advent triumph. Molinet's elegy per forms the same humbling function in Katharine's stellar translation that the funeral liturgy performed in Henry V's apotheosis. Instead of dram atizing the funereal adventus of the soul into the holy city, Katharine's triumph stages Duke Philip's elegiac ascent to the Throne of Honour. In the poem, Virtue and an angel attempt to console Noblesse, who is grieving over the death of Duke Philip, through a vision of the Duke ascending the nine spheres of the cosmos to take his place upon a Throne of Honour surrounded by hierarchies of angels and numberless stars. Each of the planetary spheres which Philip climbs bears a golden letter, and together these spell the Duke's name: PHILIPPVS. Upon each sphere also stands one of the Nine Worthies and a virtue symbolized by one of the golden letters. Philip may thus only approach the throne by ascending the nine spheres and by gaining the approval in turn of each of the Nine Worthies and nine virtues who inhabit them. At the end of the journey, Honour himself awaits, enthroned in glory, his face shining like the sun. Two golden chairs stand on either side of his throne, one reserved ____________________ Saggitarius. Job sees this triplicity, which he, as does Alfonso, thinks of as the 'triplicitie of the Lyon', as the 'Lion of Juda'. For the meaning and significance of triplicities in this pageant, see Anglo, Spectacle, 72 ff. 63 Les Faictz et dictz de Jean Molinet, ed. N. Dupire ( Paris, 1936-9), i . 36-58.

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for Philip, the other for Charles the Bold, his son. When Philip arrives, Honour crowns him with a coronet of laurel, bestows a royal sceptre upon him, and seats him in the right-hand chair. Turning to address Charles the Bold, Honour now reveals that the left-hand chair bears the new Duke's name, arms, and device, awaiting such time as he shall follow his father's virtuous path upward through the spheres of heaven. Katharine's ascent through the spheres of the cosmos and her meet ings with characters named Virtue, Noblesse, and Honour follow the pattern of Duke Philip's funeral apotheosis. Above all, the final pageant minutely imitates Molinet's description of the Throne of Honour.64 In the pageant throne sits Honour himself, dressed in a purple velvet robe, his chair set atop a pair of stairways. These steps serve for Katharine as did the spheres of the cosmos for Philip: upon each step 'there dwellith a vertue', and as Honour explains, 'all fokes of necessitie | Must come by thise vertues or thei com at me'. Evidently Philip and Charles have relinquished their seats beside Honour in favour of Katharine and Arthur, for two empty chairs now flank Honour's pageant throne, each contain ing, as Molinet foresaw, a golden sceptre and a crown of laurel 'in tokyn that they were recerved and kept for the Prince and the Princes'. Even though she follows the path of Duke Philip's glorious apothe osis, Katharine's journey proves more humbling than exalting. While the Duke gains moral and spiritual power as he ascends the spheres of the cosmos, the Princess's primarily astrological powers progressively weaken. As Philip reaches the uppermost sphere of heaven, he has assimilated each of the virtues on the nine spheres of the cosmos. As a symbol of his consummate moral power, he begins to glow with such resplendent 'Singularité de Grace' that he bursts city gates open by merely looking upon them.65 At the beginning of her triumph, Katharine possesses a very ____________________ 64

'Par dessus toute nature celeste estoit situé ung tres precieux trosne garny de beauté incom parable, d'estoilles sans nombre, d'angles par millions, de mansions, glorieuses et de personnes de nom tres haultement intronisees. . . . Pour parvenir a ce glorieux trosne, failloit passer par noeuf cieux, ou estoient noeuf dames, noeuf preux et noeuf lettres d'or, qui, coeullies ensemble, faisoient Philippus, propre nom de ceste tres haulte et precieuse fleur de noblesse le grand duc d'Occident, lequel, pour singulieres graces en luy infuses et pluseurs haulx et grans fais chevalereux, avoit mery et deservy d'estre eslevé en ce haultain trosne par dessus tous les noeuf cieulx. . . . Après qu'il fust eslevé par dessus ces noeuf cieux ou noeuf lettres de son nom estoient escriptes et que les noeuf dames et les noeuf preux y estans l'eurent recoeully et bienvienné chascun a son appartenir, la noble dame Vertu le presenta devant Honneur, duquel la face resplendissoit comme le soleil, car il estoit glorifié en son precieux trosne, auquel il avoit fait preparer deux cha eres richement aornees de fin or, l'une a dextre, l'autre a senestre; et allots que Honneur aperchut ceste tres haulte et exellente fleur de noblesse, le grand duc d'Occident, il fist convocquier et appeller tous les bienheurés du celestiel empire, et en leur presence, le assist a sa dextre et luy donna sceptre et couronne de laurier' (ibid. 45, 46, 56). 65 Ibid. 54-5.

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similar power but progressively loses it. As she approaches the gates of Castle Policy, we recall, the beams of the 'bright sterre of Spain' shine upon them and burst them open. But as she leaves the earthly castle and ascends into the heavens, her astrological powers diminish. Only two pageants later, the brilliant beams which had 'pierced mightily' through the castle fade abruptly before the 'Sun of Justice'. Not only does Arthur outshine her as he rides a seven-starred triumphal chariot through the cos mos, but, according to a scripture posted on the pageant, Hesperus 'dips into the sea'.66 This astrological conjunction of Arcturus and Hesperus is to be a joining of unequals after all. The staging of the pageant scene, indeed, reinforces this moment of astrological humiliation. A moment before, Katharine had ridden as the triumphatrix in her own procession through London; now, as she stops before this pageant, the London audience sees her own earthly triumph form but a part of Arthur's grander, celestial one. The humbling logic of the Third Advent triumph thus sharply distinguishes her apotheosis from that of her Burgundian predecessor. Duke Philip's innate merit gave him the strength to ascend all nine spheres of the cosmos. On her own merit, Katharine can climb no higher than the sphere of the sun. She needs the astrological power of Arthur's constellation to draw her further heavenward. Duke Philip, gaining strength and virtue as he climbs the spheres, claims his seat on the Throne of Honour because his 'Singularité de Grace' deserves no less. Katharine is offered hers only by grace of her bridegroom. There is a hierarachy even among the stars, she discovers, and in a Tudor heaven she must feel grateful even to shine erratically as a single point of light annexed to a great constellation. By substituting a stellar apotheosis borrowed from a courtly elegy for the celestial adventus of the soul from the funeral office, the deviser reveals his policy of seeking literary equivalents for liturgical metaphors. He pre serves the characteristic themes of the Third Advent triumph -- the mani festation of God's saving grace upon the sovereign, his enforced humility, the sharp contrasting of worldly and heavenly glory, the ladder of virtues, the heavenly adventus -- but he translates its imagery and roles. Take the matter of characterization, for example. Queen Margaret entered London playing the traditional liturgical role of the Blessed Virgin ascending to her coronation in heaven. Katharine does follow a vaguely similar Marian ascension to her coronation in heaven, as we shall see in Chapter 6, just as Prince Arthur also appears in a Christ-like role as the 'Sun of Justice'. ____________________ 66Volvitur Arthuri triga aurea cardine semper | Inmoto nec Aquis, mergitur Hesperiis' ( Great Chronicle, 305). -214214.

But the decision to emphasize literary forms above liturgical ones has relegated these traditional roles to secondary importance. For a literary apotheosis the deviser required literary characters. In Martianus Capella Marriage of Philology and Mercury he found precisely the literary equivalent he needed for the traditional roles of ascendant Virgin and bridegroom Christ. Capella's characterizations of Philologia as a humble, virtuous mortal and of Mercury as a star-god in search of a virtuous mate suggest exactly the relationship that the deviser saw in Katharine and Arthur. In Capella's allegorical account of Philo logia's acension through the heavens to marry Mercury in the palace of Jupiter above the heavens, the pageant deviser found a literary pattern for Katharine's civic triumph which appropriately combined a stellar apotheosis with a wedding. The opening of Capella's popular scholastic allegory67 broaches the matter of Philologia's disadvantageous mortality, a problem similar to the one Katharine faces in marrying her Tudor star-prince. Though Mercury wishes to marry Philologia and though Virtue finds her worthy, Jupiter objects categorically to the marriage of a god with a mortal. An assembly of the gods resolves this dispute by stipulating that Philologia first be made immortal, a privilege which will henceforth be granted to all deserving mortals. The allegory then translates Philologia to heaven in three stages which the deviser will follow in structuring Katharine's journey: the bride's preparation for the journey, her triumphal procession through the spheres of the cosmos, and her reception at the palace of Jupiter in the Milky Way. To begin with, Philologia must be convinced that she is worthy to marry Mercury. To this end she allows her mother Phronesis to bind the girdle of Wisdom about her in prepara tion for the journey. The Muses then sing to her, the Cardinal Virtues salute her, the three Graces kiss her, and Apotheosis offers her the cup of immortality. Her preparation ended, the bride triumphantly ascends the spheres of the cosmos, borne aloft on a litter drawn by allegorical repres entations of the four characteristics of intellectual endeavour: work, love, application, and painstakingness. Juno Pronuba, patroness of marriage, guides Philologia upon a tour of the fixed stars, where Capella, following Plato, imagines the gods to be housed. Philologia finally arrives in the palace of Jupiter in the Milky Way, where Mercury has taken his throne near Pallas and where an empty throne now awaits her among the Muses. ____________________ 67

P. R. Cole judges the Marriage to be "the most successful textbook ever written"; Later Roman Education ( New York, 1909), 16. See also E. R. Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, tr. W. R. Trask ( New York, 1953), 38-9, and for a translation of the Marriage, W. H. Stahl and R. Johnson with W. L. Burge, Martianus Capella and the Seven Liberal Arts, 2 vols. ( New York, 1971-2).

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The pageant scenario adopts Capella's three-stage ascension, together with several of the characters and incidents, to translate Katharine to her Tudor heaven. In the first stage (pageants one and two), emissaries from the star-world descend from heaven to prepare Katharine for her jour ney, comfort her, and confirm her in the graces of Policy, Noblesse, and Virtue, which are the necessary requisites for those aspiring to star travel. In the second stage (pageants three and four), the Princess makes her ascent, stopping briefly on the spheres of the moon and the sun. Rather than the four characteristics of intellectual endeavour, the four charac teristic ways of knowing speed her ascent: angelic revelation, astrological prognostication, philosophical inquiry, and religious faith, epitomized by Raphael, Alfonso, Boethius, and Job. Like Philologia, Katharine gains the wisdom to discern the gods dwelling in the stars, a development marked by the appearance of Fronesis ( Philologia's mother Phronesis in the ori ginal), who introduces the Princess to Arthur, whose chariot-constellation Arcturus dominates the heavens. The final stage of Katharine's journey (pageants five and six) brings her safely to heaven, where the Temple of God has replaced the palace of Jupiter, and where Molinet's Throne of Honour has replaced Philologia's throne amidst the Muses. While Katharine finds her exemplar in Philologia, Mercury will not do for Arthur. We must turn to the legend of King Arthur's stellar trans lation to find the pageant deviser's literary equivalent of the bridegroom Christ. An Arthurian stellar translation particularly suits the form of this triumph, of course, but it also reflected one of the chief themes of Tudor royal propaganda. Since the mid-fifteenth century, English writers had occasionally postulated King Arthur's ascension to Arcturus as a more Christian alternative to his final voyage to Avalon. In his Fall of Princes ( 1430-8), for example, Lydgate narrates the traditional Celtic version of Arthur's death, only to reinterpret it as a stellar translation. After Arthur's final battle, says the Monk of Bury, he was borne in a litter to an isle called Avalon where he still rides with his knights 'in Faerie'. But obviously dis satisfied with this pagan Elysium where the souls of the virtuous go to salve their wounds, Lydgate immediately reinterprets Arthur's final jour ney to allow him to die corporeally but live on spiritually in his 'native star'. Arthur, the 'sun of Britain,' ascended 'up to the rich, starry, bright castle which astronomers call Arthur's constellation', and where he lives in Christian glory.68 Nearly two centuries later, Ben Jonson recalls the same Platonic version of the Arthurian myth when, at the opening of The Speeches at Prince Henry's Barriers ( 1610), Arthur is "discovered in a star above": ____________________ 688. 3095-108. -216216.

I, thy ARTHUR, am Translated to a star; and of that frame Or constellation that was called of me 4 So long before, as showing what I should be, ARCTURUS, once thy king, and now thy star. Such the rewards of all good princes are.69 Continued references to Arthur's 'translation' to Arcturus kept this Pla tonic version of the king's death continuously alive in literature at least until the reign of CharlesI.70 But the coincidental birth of Prince Arthur at Winchester (traditionally thought to be the ancient site of Camelot) beneath the star Arcturus made this literary apotheosis into a Tudor polit ical symbol. The court astrologer, noting the coincidence, obligingly pro duced a Platonic -- rather than a properly astrological -- horoscope for the Prince which suggested that King Arthur's soul had descended from the star to be reborn in the royal babe.71 Several Tudor court poets promptly followed suit, professing to see in the face of the Tudor Prince the linea ments of the reborn British King, 'the clear likeness of great Arthur beneath the image of a boy'.72 As Katharine ascends the spheres of the cosmos, her bridegroom thus appears to her in his stellar body as the 'translated' King Arthur, chief of the Three Christian Worthies. Dressed in full armour and riding ' Arthur's constellation' like a chariot, he combines qualities reminiscent of two of the worthies whom Philip the Good encountered in Le Trosned'honneur. ____________________ 69

Works, ed. C. H. Herford and P. and E. Simpson ( 11 vols.; Oxford, 1925-52), vii. 325. "Charles His Waine", The Poems of Sir John Davies, ed. R. Krueger ( Oxford, 1975), 231-2: " Brittaine doth under those bright starres | remaine | Which English sheapheards Charles his waine doe name"; | "But more this Ile is Charles his waine, | Since Charles her Royall wagoner became: | For Charles, which now in Arthures seate doth raigne, | Is our Arcturus and doth guide the waine". Cf. William Segar: "After this conflict, king Arthur was neuer found aliue, or dead: but (as some Poets haue supposed) was taken vp into the firmament, and remaineth there a Starre among the nine Worthies; which fancie is founded vpon the prophecie of old Merlyn, who many yeeres before affirmed, that Arthur after a certaine time should resuscitate, and come vnto Carlion to restore the round Table"; Honour, Military, and Ciuill, contained in foure Bookes ( London, 1602), 57. In a similar vein, both Camden and Leland supposed that Arthur took "his name or signification" from the star Arcturus. William Camden, Remains ( London, 1876), 71; John Leland, Assertio inclytissimi Arturii, ed. W. E. Mead, EETS os 165 ( London, 1925), 98. 71 The horoscope has been preserved in Bernard André's history of Henry VII's reign: "Ortu enim Arcturi stella, quae secundum genetliacos .xij. calend. Octobris oritur Arcturus quoque prin ceps natus est"; J. Gairdner (ed.), Memorials of King Henry VII, Rolls Series 10 ( London, 1858), 41. For the meaning of this horoscope, which sees the coincidence of the annual 'birth' of the star Arcturus with the birth of Prince Arthur as signifying that the soul of the star had been translated into the Prince, see Kipling, Triumph of Honour, 83-5. 72 See contemporary poems on Prince Arthur's birth by Bernard André and Giovanni Gigli ( Gairdner, Memorials of King Henry VII, pp. lx, 44-6) and by Pietro Carmeliano: H. A. Kelly, Divine Providence in the England of Shakespeare's Histories ( Cambridge, Mass., 1970), 323-4. 70

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In his ascension through the cosmos, Philip meets Dame 'Instruction Chevalereuse', who teaches him the use of arms necessary to a prince engaged in virtuous battles. A perfect exemplar of chivalry, King Arthur accompanies her 'en chaïere royale'. Philip shortly afterwards encounters Dame Justice sitting 'in the middle of the heavens like the sun among the planets, in order to illuminate the whole celestial court'. Beside her, Charlemagne rules this sphere as a paragon of justice. 73 By placing King Arthur in Charlemagne's Wain, the pageant deviser combines the qualities of chivalry and justice. Called by one speaker 'the Sonne of Justice, thearth illumyneng', Arthur illuminates the heavens as Dame Justice had, and he also wears 'the sperituall Armour of Justice', a further indication of his Charlemagne-like role as paladin of his virtue. But as King Arthur, he also rides his triumphal chariot as the paragon of medieval chivalry -- a 'prince of all princes the very floure', as Philologia's mother Fronesis calls him. In this sense, his armour is not merely symbolic, but a useful chivalric implement such as Dame Instruction Chevalereuse bestows upon her devotees. If Katharine's ascension to the Throne of Honour seems distinctly less glorious than Arthur's translation to Arcturus, we must remember that she is merely the protagonist of the piece; Arthur is the hero. As the pageants unfold, Katharine gradually discovers that Arthur was able to return to his starchariot because, like Duke Philip, he had mastered all the virtues. In working out the implications of the Duke's name, ' Philip the Good, Molinet makes him an exemplar of every personal and chivalric virtue. Similarly, Molinet's Virtue and Noblesse appear to Katharine at the second pageant to point out that the seven stars of Arcturus represent the seven virtues, 'dystingued in theoryke and cardinall'. 74 Upon the sphere of the moon, Job further reveals that the stars figure the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. In the sphere of the sun Arthur wears the "sperituall Armour of Justice", the seven pieces of spiritual armour which, according to St Paul, the just soul wears. Finally, before the throne of the Father of Heaven, Arthur's seven stars become the seven-branched candlestick of the Apocalypse. This final vision unites all the others for Katharine. St John had seen in his dream three interrelated septenaries: seven angels, in the form of seven stars, watching over the seven churches of Asia all figured in the single, seven-branched candlestick. For Katharine, St John's septenaries combine in Arthur: the seven churches become the one ____________________ 73Molinet,

Faictz et dictz, i. 49, 51-2. the pageant deviser's use of St Gregory the Great's Moralia in libros beati Job to interpret the seven stars of Arcturus as the seven virtues, the Spirit of Sevenfold Grace, and as the seven-branched candlestick of the Apocalypse, see Anglo, Spectacle, 63.

74For

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Church Universal, watched over by one seven-starred constellation, where Arthur himself now resides as a single guardian angel. Arthur's growth in stature thus parallels Katharine's diminution. She becomes progressively less glorious as Arthur becomes progressively more so. Finally she sees him as the Tudor myth would have him ideally be: the perfect Christian knight and protector of the Church Universal. Although the pageant deviser clearly admires the literary sources on which he depends, he is not limited by them. Rather he uses them to elaborate the form of the Third Advent triumph which he had inherited from his predecessors. He shapes this civic triumph according to the 'fourfold' allegorical method so frequently employed by medieval writers. Literally, Katharine enjoys a triumphal procession through the streets of London. Tropologically, her triumph represents the search on the part of the just ruler for honour. Allegorically, the conjunction of Arcturus and Hesperus mirrors the political marriage of England and Spain. Anagogically, Katharine's triumph dramatizes the just soul's translation from earth to its native star in heaven as a consequence of the Third Advent of Christ. As a consequence of the pageant deviser's literary predisposition, Katharine's civic triumph takes the form of a medieval dream vision. The symbolic death, which we have seen many another prince meet at his civic triumph, becomes for her a mere falling asleep. When the Princess rides into the city to find the streets transformed into the geography of the heavens, her experience parallels that of Molinet's dreaming poet who falls asleep in his everyday world only to awaken in a transformed dream landscape. In their dreams, both meet the denizens of the other world and discover that the dream world is in fact the real world, a world of spiritual reality, while the ordinary world of physical illusion is but a poor shadow of it. Since Katharine now sees with the eyes of the spirit where formerly she saw with the eyes of the body, her dream experience is truer than her waking one. According to a popular medieval theory of the nature of dreams, Katharine dreams a somnium celeste, which is brought to pass through impressions made by those celestial minds or intelligences which are said to direct the heavenly bodies in their courses, since they are able to stamp their figures or influences upon the Imagination in accordance with their natures and in proportion to the aptitude or fitness of our minds to receive them. 75 So Katharine's dream, which figures her approaching marriage by means of the imminent conjunction of Hesperus and Arcturus, is sent to her ____________________ 75Peter

of Abano, quoted in W. C. Curry, Chaucer and the Medieval Sciences, rev. edn. ( London, 1960), 207. -219-

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by such 'celestial minds' as those of Sts Ursula and Katharine, the angel Raphael, the Father of Heaven, and the star-prince Arthur, each of whom 'directs the heavenly bodies'. Thanks to the pageant deviser's visions, Katharine learns through her dream more than could have been told her in any other way: she is to help achieve everlasting honour for the Tudor dynasty. In addition, she gains a glimpse of her bridegroom's true, spir itual nature. These literary chracterizations of Arthur and Katharine underline the ambivalent attitude toward characterization generally in Third Advent civic triumphs. Arthur appears primarily as the reborn King Arthur, but also as the Christ-like Sun of Justice and heavenly sponsus. Katharine behaves first of all as a humble Philologia come to marry her star god, but also as the heavenly sponsa. As Prelacy tells the Princess: The Kyng of Heven is like an erthely kyng That to his sonne prepareth a weddyng. And right so as oure soveraign lord, the Kyng, May be resemblid to the Kyng Celestiall, This noble Kyng doeth a mariage ordeigne.76 In a similar fashion, as we have seen, Henry V comes to heaven primarily as one of the humble kings of the earth who brings 'honour and glory to God alone'. Nevertheless, angels at the gates of paradise welcome him as if he were Christ entering Jerusalem. So too Margaret of Anjou enters London as the daughter of René, King of Jerusalem, a French princess who brings peace to England. But she also comes as that other daughter of Jerusalem, the Blessed Virgin, who ascends to her marriage and corona tion in heaven after bringing peace between God and man on earth. This ambivalence reflects, of course, the inherent ambivalence of the religious idea -- the imitatio Christi (or imitatio Mariae) -- upon which it is based. The king comes to the city as a mortal who strives to be Christ-like. He imitates Christ by entering the city according to the state of humiliation that Christ had chosen for his Entry into Jerusalem. His salvation, his reception into the holy city, depends upon the sincerity of this role playing. Because the Third Advent idea stresses human mortality -- the coming of Christ to the just soul at death -- it tends to emphasize the earthly limitations of the king and hence the inevitable mortal failure to fulfil the heavenly pattern. In some Third Advent triumphs, the sense of mortal limitations can seem so overwhelming as to suppress the heavenly exemplars altogether. At the end of her civic triumph at Geneva, we recall, ____________________ 76 Receyt of the Ladie Kateryne, 30. -220220.

Margaret of Austria came before the throne of Death, not that of the Father of Heaven. Her earthly glory was humbled, but we do not see her ascent to the holy city. Katharine of Aragon's progress through London strikes a more usual balance between mortal limitation and heavenly per fection. Though supremely virtuous and noble by earthly standards, she fails to reach heaven on her own merit. She requires -- and receives -- the saving gift of grace so that she may ascend to glory. 5. The Apotheosis of Christ the King: Charles Vlll Enters Troyes (1486) Some civic triumphs, of course, resolve the ambivalence on the side of Christian perfection rather than mortal limitation. In one of its pageants for Charles VIII's inaugural advent ( 1486), for example, Troyes staged the apotheosis of the King's soul and its reception into the celestial Jerusalem after the pattern of Christ's Ascension. The joyful adventus of the King, we are told, transforms the city into paradise: Blien il sembloit a les voir parees, De la ville que feust ung paradis.77 At the gates of the city, Charles thus entered a symbolic 'new heaven and new earth' in the form of an elaborate two-level pageant called 'The Garden of the Trinity'.78 The lower scaffold represented the restored para dise of the new earth: an orchard full of trees, grass, flowers, plants, and singing birds. A troupe of pretty maidens sang and played an organ from this paradise at the advent of the King. A scaffold set high above the gate, by contrast, represented 'new heaven' in the form of an enthroned Trinity surrounded by attendant angels. The general design of the pageant thus resembles the Ghent altarpiece with its upper register dominated by the Lord enthroned in majesty and a lower register devoted to an orchard like paradise filled with saints. According to the official account of the event, the maidens on the lower scaffold symbolized the 'Daughters of ____________________ 77

Guenée and Lehoux, Entrées royales, 270. The account of the first few pageants is very confused, and it is difficult from the poet's description alone to tell whether one, two, or three pageants are located at the 'Beffroy' Gate. The city account books, printed as an appendix to the poet's description, suggest two initial pageants: one before the gate devoted to David and Goliath, one at the gate itself composed of a garden of maidens and a Trinity. See Guenée and Lehoux, Entrées royales, 285 (where the vari ous pageants are enumerated, beginning with 'Golias' and 'le jardin des pucelles') and 287 (where they are listed again, beginning with 'les eschaffaux de Golyas, du jardin de la Trinite. . . .). This last mention of a 'jardin de la Trinite' strongly suggests that the throne of the Trinity and the garden of maidens were conceived as a single pageant.

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Zion who rejoice in their King' (Ps. 149: 2).79 Indeed, these particular Daughters of Zion, the account continues, represent those virgin saints especially revered at Troyes and 'who have always prayed for the town'. Charles, in fact, has already encountered the relics of these saints as they were brought before him in solemn ecclesiastical procession outside the walls of the city.80 Having left their earthly remains behind, he now encounters them in their celestial, resurrected bodies in paradise. As saints who forever pray for Troyes, they symbolize the city in much the same way that the Maid of Antwerp symbolizes that city. Clearly the same sort of singing and organ-playing maidens who inhabit the upper register of the Ghent altarpiece, they sing to him an anthem based on Psalm 83, with its Third Advent wish for 'Grace in this life, and afterward Glory': Dieu leur accroisse leurs honneurs, Et apres la fin Paradis.81 The presence of these maidens and the song they sing thus fulfil con ventional Third Advent themes. As saintly virgins of Troyes who have become Daughters of a heavenly Zion, they welcome the King's soul into paradise. In this vein, their song, which represents Troyes's prayer for its King, foresees his ascent to celestial glory as a reward for a reign spent in virtuous rule. But if the coming of Charles transforms Troyes into a paradise, the city's reception also transforms the King into a triumphant Christ. The musical virgins, for example, welcome Charles as 'Jesus the King' into their restored Zion, 'rejoicing in his divinity'. As the saintly virgins sing and play their organ, an angel descends in a cloud from the throne of the Holy Trinity to bestow upon the King two symbolic gifts: a cross and the Arma Christi (Jesus' coat of arms depicting the implements of the Crucifixion82). Both gifts, the poet-chronicler explains, will serve Charles as talismans of military victory, one for attack, one for defence. The white cross adorned with pure silver is the cross of Constantine, and in delivering this gift to Charles, the angel uses the very words with which he had formerly greeted Constantine: 'In this sign you will conquer.' The Arma Christi, a blue shield emblazoned with the crown of thorns and the name 'JESUS' in gold, represents the holy oriflamme and will prevent ____________________ 79

The text in fact refers to the 'pseaume dernier' (presumably Ps. 150) but cites Ps. 149: 2: 'Filiae Sion in rege exultent' ( Guenée and Lehoux, Entrées royales, 271-2). Perhaps a reference to Ps. 150 was also intended, particularly to the line 'laudate cum in cordis et organo' which Van Eyck uses for his musical angels on the Ghent altarpiece. 80 Guenée and Lehoux, Entrées royales, 269. 81 See above, n. 7. 82 Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art, ii. 189-97 and pls. 668-9.

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Charles from being conquered. Ultimately, these gifts are more import ant to Charles as symbols of moral triumph than of military victory. Charles enters Troyes as Christ's knight, his sword and shield transformed into cross and Arma Christi. Further, the cross and crown of thorns -- instru ments of Christ's Passion -- cast Charles in the role of 'Jesus the King' entering his kingdom in triumph. The shield in particular, according to the poet, 'proves that Jesus Christ the most Glorious King wishes to enter his celestial city by means of Passion and dolorous suffering, and through which he had made us blessed'.83 There is no danger of mistaking Charles for Christ, of course. Christ himself presides over this pageant, along with the other two persons of the Trinity, from the heavenly throne high above the city gate. Rather, Charles's entry into Troyes successfully imitates Christ's Ascension. These symbolic gifts thus equip Charles for his imitatio Christi. Riding into Troyes bearing the shield of Jesus Christ the King, Charles VIII imitates the Christian archetype of the soul's fune real adventus into the celestial city: Christ's entry into 'the palace of heaven in Jerusalem in triumph with his angels' after his Crucifixion to celebrate his victory over sin and death.84 The popularity of these triumphs lay partly in their powerful appeal to the prince's conscience, and partly in their reminder that the sovereign was himself the subject of a heavenly King who would one day demand a reckoning for his conduct. But as we took over the examples discussed above, we can also see that the popularity of the Third Advent triumph was subject to certain national and sexual limitations. While abundant examples of striking single Third Advent pageants can be found in royal entries throughout Europe, only in England do we find a consistent pref erence for civic triumphs devoted in their entirety to the dramatization of the soul's judgment and apotheosis. Perhaps it would require an extensive comparative analysis of national attitudes towards kingship to discover completely satisfactory reasons for this preference. But tradition undoubtedly played an important role. The repeated use of Third Advent triumphs throughout the fifteenth century in London in part reflects the authority of a particular form which first took shape in the reign of Richard II. Then, too, Parisian triumphs, for example, rarely enjoyed the central control of a single deviser until the sixteenth century; London triumphs seem to have been under the control ____________________ 83

' "Le bel escu si faict a desmontré, | Que JESUS CHRIST le Roy tres glorieux, | En sa cité celeste voult entrer | Par passion et souffrir douloureux, | Et par lesquels il nous a faict heureux" ( Guenée and Lehoux, Entrées royales, 274). 84 Durandus, Rationale, 1. 3. 14 (above, Ch. 1 n. 55).

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of a single deviser -- or at least a committee -- throughout the medieval period. For this reason, London triumphs were more likely to adopt a single, multiple-pageant scenario than were Parisian ones. Such national preferences aside, female triumphs throughout Europe were also more likely to adopt a Third Advent strategy than were male ones, and the reasons for this are far easier to comprehend. First of all, as we shall see in Chapter 6, the Assumption of the Virgin served as the most important formal model for queens' triumphs, and as this idea involved an ascent to the celestial Jerusalem similar to that of the funereal apo theosis we have been examining, there was a tendency to combine the two formal models: the queen's soul ascends to heaven after its Third Advent judgment according to the model of the Virgin's Assumption. At the same time, since queens conventionally came to their thrones as consorts rather than as sovereigns in their own rights, their triumphs naturally sought forms which suggested both accountability to a higher power as well as a heavenly apotheosis. The Third Advent form provided an ideal solution to this problem of dual characterization. From the perspective of medieval drama, these Third Advent triumphs assume a further importance. In structure and imagery they offered dra matic possibilities that the other advents we have so far examined do not offer nearly so well. The entry of the sovereign could follow a wide spec trum of patterns, ranging from the confident, triumphal ascent of Christ, to the qualified ascent of a queen who must offer her 'account and reck oning', to a dream vision allegory fraught with scholastic philosophy. The dramatist might simply parallel the king's progress through city streets from gate to cathedral by transforming it with pageantry into his entry into heaven from pearly gates to the throne of the Almighty. Alternatively, he may wish to concentrate upon the soul's ascent to paradise rather than its celestial reception, thereby emphasizing the lifetime's preparation which is necessary to an apotheosis after death. Such triumphs, as we have seen, tend to emphasize the ladder of virtues which each man must climb in life before he may present an acceptable account to the Lord; or perhaps the king will be shown coming to judgment surrounded by all his virtues and vices. Indeed, because of the dramatic possibilities inherent in the soul's journey, stage by stage, from earth to heaven, we often find Third Advent pageants structuring an entire civic triumph rather than accounting for the subject matter of only a pageant or two within a triumph. As Katharine of Aragon's London triumph shows, the liturgical image of the soul's apotheosis borrowed originally from the funeral liturgy could provide authentic drama, and we can speak with out hesitation of plot and characterization much as if the show were a -224224.

more conventional drama. As the Elizabethan scholar Richard Mulcaster as soon to point out, the triumph had become a drama and the city its stage: 'if a man should say well, he could not better tearme the citie of London that time, than a stage wherein was shewed the wonderfull spectacle, of a noble hearted princesse toward her most louing people.'85 ____________________ 85 Quenes Maiesties Passage, 28. -225225.

5 Fourth Advent: The Civic Triumph as Royal Apocalypse New Heaven, New Earth When medieval homilists warn that the Second Coming 'of Cryst to Þe dome [Judgment] schall be so jrus [vengeful] and so cruell, Þat no tong may tell',1 they are addressing primarily an audience of sinners who must be taught a proper fear of the Lord lest they be damned. As we saw in the previous chapter, this description of the wrathful Christ come to judg ment refers property to the Fourth Advent of Christ. At this final, 'gen eral' advent at the end of time, the Lord comes to resurrect and judge all mankind, separating the sheep from the goats. For the unredeemed, the Fourth Advent of Christ will indeed seem vengeful and cruel, for on the Last Day they will find themselves sorted with the goats and con signed to hell. For the saved, however, the vengeful Judge will seem a Lamb, and the Last Day will seem joyous rather than terrifying. According to St Thomas Aquinas, the righteous have good reason to look eagerly forward to the Last Judgment: The fourth advent of Christ will be to judgment, that is to say, when the Lord will come to judge, and then the glory of the saints will refill their bodies to overflowing, and the dead will rise again. Whence St John: For the hour cometh, wherein all that are in the graves shall hear the voice of the Son of God. And they that have done good things, shall come forth unto the resurrection of life.2 For them, the Fourth Advent of Christ promises the establishment of the kingdom of God. They will assume their resurrected and glorified ____________________ 1

Mirk, Festivaa1. "Sermo in prima Dominica Adventus", in Leclercq, L 'Idde de la royauté du Christ,86: "Quartus Christi adventus erit ad judicandurn, scilicet quando Dominus veniet ad judicium, et tunc glo ria sanctorum redundabit usque ad corpus et resurgent mortui. Unde in Johanne: Venit hora et nunc est quando omnes quis sunt in monumentis audient vocem Filii Dei, et procedent qui bona egerunt in resurrectionem vitae" ( John 5: 28-9). In order to emphasize that the righteous should anticipate the Last Judgment with joy, St Thomas omits the concluding phrase of John 5: 29, 'but they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of judgment'.

2

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bodies, the New Jerusalem will descend, they will enter the holy city, and they will dwell forever in the presence of the Lord. Medieval civic triumphs only rarely dramatize the king's advent as a wrathful and fearful adventus. To do so inevitably alters the drama's cus tomary pattern of inauguration and joyous acclamation into one of repu diation and punishment. Indeed, a civic triumph dramatizing a terrible Last Judgment seems extremely unlikely. In keeping with the idea of a Last Judgment, one of the parties to the triumph -- either the citizens or the sovereign -- would have to consign the other to a fiery damnation. Either the king would find himself metaphorically entering hell, or his advent would consign his people to a fiery damnation. In either case, such a civic triumph would seem to symbolize an inevitable dissolution of the corpus reipublicae rather than a reaffirmation of corporate solidar ity. It is hard to see how the parties could collaborate to perform such a metaphorical adventus without destroying one another in the process. In previous chapters, we examined a few triumphs that seemed to threaten just such a ritual of dissolution. Richard II, for instance, demanded that the rebellious citizens of London dramatize their abject submission to royal authority in the famous 'reconciliation' triumph ( 1392). In it, as we have seen, he eagerly embraced his initial role as the pitiless Judge of the Second Coming, and he seemed to threaten a pun ishing doom for his rebellious citizens. In the course of his triumph, how ever, he gradually assumed a more merciful First Advent persona, and the show resolved itself in a re-inauguration of the bond between king and citizens.3 Similarly, in making peace with their wrathful Duke ( 1440), the citizens of Bruges also touched briefly upon Fourth Advent themes. The Duke's adventus seemed initially to promise a punishing visitation of the Lord's terrible judgment. In the end, however, that civic triumph managed to resolve itself in a Second Advent drama of penitence and submission as both Duke and citizens came to see one another as images of Christ.4 But if the King could not ordinarily be represented as a wrathful Christ come to punish sinners, he could nevertheless be seen as the glorious Christ of the Fourth Advent who comes to reward saints with 'the resur rection of life' and establish the kingdom of God. The medieval Church regularly set aside the second Sunday in Advent to contemplate and pre pare for this final coming of Christ to his kingdom. The Gospel lesson for the day ( Luke 21: 25-33) graphically describes Christ's parousia, his descent from heaven in an Apocalyptic triumphal procession to establish ____________________ 3 Above, Ch. 1. 4 Above, Ch. 2. -227227.

the kingdom of God on earth.5 Like adventus,parousia was one of those technical terms used to describe princely receptions, but in Christian par lance it had come specifically to refer to Christ's final entry into the world at the end of time:6 And they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with much power and majesty. And he shall send his angels with a trumpet, and a great voice: and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from the farthest parts of the heavens to the utmost bounds of them.7 Few medieval writers, of course, would have used a Greek term, like parousia, to describe this Apocalyptic triumph. Most in fact use the more familiar Latin terminology and refer to it as a celestial adventus. St Bernard, for instance, describes the parousia as a cosmic adventus procession sym bolizing the unity of Christ and his elect. Indeed, he imagines that Christ resurrects the elect specifically so that they might join him in that heav enly triumphal procession. The King of Glory thus descends from heaven 'reforming or bodies and making them into bodies of his brightness': Who shall be able to think of the day of that adventus when he will descend in the fullness of his glory, preceded by the angels; and to the sound of trumpets they shall raise up the powerless body from the dust, and shall carry it off to meet Christ in the heavens.8 For the elect, the parousia was to be the last and most joyful sign of all: 'When you shall see these things come to pass, know that the Kingdom of God is at hand' ( Luke 21: 31). As a representation of the idea of Advent, the king's entry into the city may therefore suggest the parousia of the Son of Man rather than the adventus of the Messiah. Such imagery, after all, merely idealizes the civic triumph's own ritual of royal inauguration and public acclamation. As in both the Gospels and the Apocalypse, the parousia initiates the coming of the Lord to his people to establish a redeemed and perfected kingdom. So the king can also come to the people like the Christ of the Fourth Advent, not to judge or to punish his people, but to join with them in establishing a new and perfected kingdom. In evoking the Fourth ____________________ 5

Matthew version of the parousia ( 24: 29-30) also appears in the gradual for the day. For parousia and adventus as synonymous terms for imperial receptions, see above, Ch. 1; Kantorowicz, "King's Advent", 210-11; and MacCormack, "Change and Continuity", 724-5. 7 Matt. 24: 31; cf. Mark 13: 27. 8 Sermo VI, "De triplici adventu, et carnis resurrectione": "Ipse Dominus Sabaoth, Dominus virtutum et rex gloriae, ipse descendet ad reformanda corpora nostra, et configuranda corpori clar itatis suae. . . . Quis cogitabit them adventus illius, quando descendet cum plenitudine luminis, praecurrentibus angelis, et tubae concentu excitantibus de pulvere corpus inops, et rapientibus illud obviam Christo in aera?" ( PL 183. 54). 6

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Advent, then, the medieval civic triumph rarely focuses upon 'The fere full sowne of Trumpe Iudiciall' at 'the grete Resurecioun general!'.9 Rather, Fourth Advent pageants typically focus upon the nature of the future life that citizens and king will pursue together. The citizens of Rouen staged Charles VIII's inaugural entry ( 1485) specifically in imitation of the Son of Man's parousia.10 He may have approached the city by travelling the roads instead of descending in tri umphal procession from above, but in all other respects his entry plainly means to dramatize -- to pre-enact, as it were -- the Fourth Advent of Christ. In particular, Charles's approach to the city seemed to bring about all those astonishing and terrifying events which St John envisions in chapters 4 and 5 of the Apocalypse. That prophetic vision, indeed, vir tually engulfs Charles in the form of an immense, awe-inspiring pageant depicting new heaven constructed in front of the city's cathedral. There he found an enormous tree trunk supporting three stages 'one atop the other'. The whole 'theatre', which pivoted around its central axis, was large enough to accommodate forty-four actors. The various levels of the pageant connect new heaven and mortal earth. First, God the Father sits enthroned atop the highest stage in fearful majesty, hold ing the Book of Life sealed with seven seals. The four evangelists (in the shapes of Eagle, Bull, Lion, and Angel) attend him, each seated in a less splendid throne than that of the Almighty. Cherubim, seraphim, and lesser angels surround the Father, while a rainbow defines the arch of heaven above. Upon the second circle, a mechanical Agnus Dei quickens into apparent life, emerges from the town's coat of arms,11 and waits to receive the Book of Life from the hand of the Father. Seven lamps 'which are the seven spirits of God' ( Apoc. 4: 5) burn before his face. Twenty four 'ancients' sit in separate, tabernacle-work 'sieges' round about the Lamb, each dressed in white garments and wearing a crown of gold. Upon the third and lowermost level, St John occupies the isle of Patmos, where he busily writes down his vision as he experiences it. ____________________ 10

For Robinet Pinel's detailed account of the 'Ordre Politique' pageant, together with his explanatory 'traicté moral', see Guenée and Lehoux, Entrées royales, 248-52. The other 'official account' of the entry concentrates upon the procession and pays little attention to the civic tri umph: Charles Marie de Beaurepaire (ed.), Entrée de Charles VIII à Rouen en 1485 ( Rouen, 1902). It notes, for instance, that 'le conte de Richemont, soy-disant roi d'Angleterre' [i.e. the future Henry VII] (p. 9) formed part of Charles VIII's retinue during the entry. 11 The town's coat of arms prominently features the Lamb of Rouen. This mechanical lamb reappears in successive civic triumphs (see below, s. 2), and the popularity of the Fourth Advent theme in Rouen probably owes a great deal to the city's desire to capitalize upon its famous heraldic beast. 9 For these lines in the context of Margaret of Anjou's entry into London ( 1445), see Ch. 4, s. 2 above.

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Charles's advent before this remarkable scene initiates the awe inspiring events of the Fourth Advent. An angel descends upon a cloud, from highest heaven of this turning cosmos to the island of Patmos, from the throne of the Father to St John. He brings St John this vision of new heaven and, in the form of a banderole inscribed with golden let ters, commands him to 'come up hither, and I will show the things which must be proclaimed' ( Apoc. 4: 1). At the same time, the Book of Life descends miraculously from God's hand to the Lamb 'by subtle, unknown means'. One party of the ancients plays upon musical instruments and sings choral blessings to 'him that sitteth on the throne, and to the Lamb: benediction, and honour, and glory, and power, for ever and ever' ( Apoc. 5: 13). The other party responds in kind with a 'new canticle' of praise: 'Thou are worthy, O Lord, to take the book, and to open the seals thereof' ( Apoc. 5: 9). The mechanical Lamb bows to King Charles, ceremoni ously breaks the seven seals, opens the book, reads it, then returns it once again to the hand of the Father in the same miraculous fashion. Despite all of these portentous signs, this evocation of the most fear ful of St John's visions does not, in fact, suggest that the Lord's 'jrus' and 'cruel!' doom is about to fall upon Rouen. The Lamb's breaking of the seals, after all, ought to herald the Great Day of the Wrath of the Lamb ( Apoc.6): the Four Horsemen should appear to 'kill with sword, with famine, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth'. A great earthquake should split the earth, the sun should become 'black as sack cloth of hair', the moon should turn to blood, and the stars should fall from heaven. Instead, the Lamb closes the book and returns it to the Father. He closes Pandora's box, so to speak, before the evils can escape. Rather than wreaking vengeance upon 'the kings of the earth, and the princes, and tribunes, and the rich, and the strong, and every bondman, and every freeman' ( Apoc. 6: 15), the Lamb reverently bows and amic ably greets 'the king our lord and all passers by'. Instead of a terrifying scene of world-destroying, eschatological chaos, in fact, this extraordinary pageant specifically embodies an image of 'Ordre Politique' -- that very title is inscribed in blue letters upon a silver banderole and fixed to the pageant. The citizens of Rouen evoke St John's vision precisely in order to celebrate the French political order as embodied by Rouen's new lord, Charles VIII. In terms of dramatic action, the King's advent before this image of new heaven proves to be deliberately anticlimactic. Were he to approach this cosmic emblem as a representative of the old and corrupt order, Charles would be subject to the wrath of the Lamb and would face a terrible doom. But as Robinet Pinel, the pageant's deviser, proclaims, the -230230.

King's approach in fact reaffirms the 'Order Politique' as represented in St John's vision of new heaven. There is no need to destroy the old order to make way for the new, because the King in fact represents the new: Charles huitiesme venu en ce repere Est figuré en l'escript solemnel. L'apocalipse au quart et quint chapitre Escript et met l'istore en belle epistrej. If St John's Apocalypse can be read as 'figure' of Charles VIII's entry into Rouen, then it is only appropriate for the pageant Lamb to bow rev erently to the King, not just as one lamb to another but as an inferior to a superior. Because the King's advent embodies the divine 'Ordre Politique', the calamitous book may be closed and returned to the Father. For Charles and the citizens of Rouen, the King's advent proves to be an extremely reassuring parousia, a gathering of the elect into the kingdom of God rather than a punishing visitation of the Almighty. The Apocalypse happens, but without pain. Each element of Norman soci ety, indeed, finds its place within St John's vision of new heaven. In the Apocalypse, for instance, the seven lamps burning before the face of the Lamb symbolize the seven churches in Asia ( 1: 20). In the pageant, how ever, they figure 'the seven chief churches of the Duchy of Normandy'.12 The throne of the Father similarly figures the French 'siege royal', and Charles sits in that 'cler trosne . . . sang de France appointé' as an image of the Father. The twenty-four 'anciens' similarly represent the King's 'conseilliers', the four evangelists attending the Father symbolize the four estates: clergy, nobility, bourgeoisie, and commons, and the Lamb, of course, figures the city of Rouen. As Pinel points out, Charles, as an image of God, is the 'worthy' one of whom the twenty-four ancients sing their canticles: Reluisant liz resplendissante brance Ou triumphe conduit du sang de France Vostre entree nous fait de joie vestus En vous soit glore, honeur, toutes vertus, Nobles sur tous, flourissant en puissance. The pageant thus offers a powerful civic acclamation of Charles's king ship. As King, he is the one 'worthy' enough to hold the citizens' Book of Life. They do not fear the wrath of the King, but instead look forward ____________________ 12

"Les sept chefz d'esglise de la duché de Normendie qui sont: l'archevesque de Rouen et les six eveschez: Bayeux, Lisieux, Evreux, Seez, Avrences, Contances" ( Guenée and Lehoux, Entrées royales, 249).

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with 'joie' to a 'plaisant' future: 'Nous donnant paix, c'est nostre toy begnin | En son joenne aage nous oste tout venin.' For the citizens of Rouen, the new king's parousia has indeed brought them a vision of the Son of Man full of power and majesty, but it has also shown them their future as a vision of peace. If this extraordinary turning cosmos illustrates the divine order that the new King achieves for Rouen, still another explores the transforma tion that Rouen will experience thanks to this imposition of divine 'Ordre Politique'. New earth succeeds new heaven. A second Apocalyptic pageant closes the civic triumph by depicting Rouen as the 'new earth' created at the Lord's Fourth Advent.13 The pageant transforms the streets of Rouen into an imitation of the New Jerusalem, whose walls enclose a garden -a fountain, a river, and a tree -- but no buildings or houses. The title of the pageant -- 'Nouveau Eau Celique' -- specifically evokes the 'river of water of life, clear as crystal', that flows 'from the throne of God and of the Lamb' in the garden world of New Jerusalem ( Apoc. 22: 1). As in the garden of New Jerusalem, the pageant's fountain irrigates a Tree of Life. The pageant's tree, however, symbolizes Rouen's life as a withered tree which is being restored by the ministrations of its new monarch. As Charles makes his advent, the fountain gushes 'nouvelle eaue celique' from its three spouts, irrigating the roots of a 'dry tree named "The People' ". 'By subtle means artificially arranged' the tree trembles and springs to life. Foliage miraculously burgeons forth from once-bare branches; green leaves suddenly spring from one side of the tree and white leaves from the other. In this way, the new King works his miracle of civic resurrection. In this image of King Charles portrayed allegorically as a Fountain of Grace, the pageant dramatizes a familiar tradition of contemporary moral allegory. Medieval commentary thus frequently interpreted St John's fons vitae (Fountain of Life) to represent Christ as a Fountain of Grace irri gating the garden of paradise. Frère Lorens, for example, draws upon this tradition to find allegorical places for all three members of the Trinity in the garden of paradise: God is the 'grete gardyner', Christ the 'welle of grace' that 'makep it wexe grene and burione & profiten, and kepep it alwey a-lyue and fresch', and the water that flows from the fountain represents the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost.14 For other writers, the fons vitae of paradise symbolically figures the two most important Christian ____________________ 13

For the 'Nouvelle Eaue Celique' pageant, see Robinet Pinel's description in Guenée and Lehoux, Entrées royales, 261-5. The following discussion draws its evidence and quotations from this source. 14 Lorens, The Book of Vices and Virtues, 96-7 ; see also the same imagery in Henry VI's London triumph of 1432, above, Ch. 3, s. 3.

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sacraments: Baptism and the Eucharist. Christ, as the source of both sacra ments, thus appropriately appears in the allegorical form of the 'Fountain of Grace'.15 In its image of a kingly Fountain of Grace restoring a dried civic tree to life, the pageant unites images of the king and people in a sacramental relationship. The welfare of the people -- their very life -seems to depend upon the flow of kingly grace. The Fourth Advent of Christ, according to St John, will bring about just such a sacramental union of the saints and Christ. In the Apocalypse, the blessed drink freely of the water of life, eat of the tree of life, and live eternally in the presence of the Lord whom they serve gladly with love. The creation of new heaven and new earth will initiate a time of eternal peace when 'there shall be no curse any more; but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it, and his servants shall serve him' ( Apoc. 22: 1-17). This pageant, with its appealing image of Rouen trans formed into a peaceful paradise nourished by royal grace, stages a hope ful imitation of that Aocalyptic advent to come. In particular, the pageant strives for a mystical or 'anagogical' interpretation of Charles VIII's entry. As in Rabanus Maurus' famous anagogical. interpretation of ' Jerusalem', the pageant envisions for the citizens and their prince 'the life that the blessed shall enjoy in paradise'.16 The better to envision the transformed life of its citizens, this garden landscape attempts to depict the Apocalyptic kingdom of God according to the commonplace understanding of ' Jerusalem' as meaning vision of peace' (visio pacis).17 Rabanus Maurus, indeed, finds great significance in this popular interpretation because it defines for him the essential nature of the life of saints in the celestial Jerusalem: ' Jerusalem is interpreted as a visio pacis, even if seen from a great distance, for the peace of the saints wandering about on earth cannot be equal to the peace of saints in heaven under the kingship of God.'18 Heavenly peace thus differs from earthly peace because it takes place in the presence of the Lord and according to the regime which he personally imposes. For Rouen, the advent of the King has fulfilled that condition; the King is present among the citizens, ____________________ 15

According to Josua Bruyn, 'the fountain of life would convey the symbolic meaning of Baptism and the Eucharist, represented by the Water and Blood which flowed from the wound in Christ's side. Many commentaries support the view that the fountain of life was mystically equated with the "Fountain of Grace", Christ Crucified.' Van Eyck problemen: De Levensbron, het werk van een leerling van Jan van Eyck ( Utrecht, 1957), 146. 16 For Rabanus Maurus' anagogical meaning of ' Jerusalem' as applied to other 15th-cent. civic triumph pageantry, see Ch. 4 above, p. 219. 17 "Id est Hierusalem, . . . visio pacis interpretatur". Augustine, De Civitate Dei, 19. 11. 18 Jerusalem, visio pacis interpretatur, quamvis multa distantia: narn pax sanctorum in terra peregrinantium non potest aequari paci sanctorum in coelo stellam; et Deo regnantium. ( "Allegoriae in sacram scripturam", PL 112. 966). Cf. also "De universo libri XXII", PL 111. 337-8.

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and heavenly 'Ordre Politique' now informs the civic life of Rouen. The grace of the King flows like a fountain of water upon the city, refresh ing it with new life. The visio pacis need no longer seem but a far-off vision. The Rouen pageant includes a company of musical shepherds -- four shepherds and a shepherdess -- in its garden precisely in order to capture such a vision of peace in the garden of paradise. They have apparently stepped into this pageant from some contemporary bucolic poem ('une fiction traictee sur bucoliques') such as the eclogues of Mantuan or Aeneas Silvius. Quite apart from their function as witnesses to the Nativity, such shepherds belong in the garden of paradise because they live quintessen tially peaceful lives: they look after lambs, compose love songs, engage in singing contests, and they create musical harmony. As the native denizens of garden landscapes, such musical pastors conveniently represent urban citizens transformed into peaceful denizens of paradise. The Rouen shep herds, in fact, emphasize their credentials as quintessentially peaceful cit izens by singing a prayer for peace: 'Da pacem Domine in diebus nostris' ( Ecclus. 50: 25). They likewise celebrate with singing and dancing the 'repos joyeux, paisible et clarifique' that the king's advent has achieved. Their activities, in short, wonderfully dramatize the life of the saints as an anagogical visio pacis.19 Garden landscapes like this one serve the civic triumph as one of its most pervasive means of dramatizing political transformation. George Kernodle pointed out long ago that such gardens served the civic tri umph by symbolizing 'the flourishing realm of the prince' and repres enting 'the city, the nation, or the blessed state of prosperity'.20 At the ____________________ 19

Two other groups of characters also serve to illustrate the 'life of the blessed in paradise'. The first group, consisting of five allegorical ladies, gathers around the Fountain of Grace specifically to worship the King. As the King's procession passes, they 'bow and make reverence at the passage of the king and of all the blood royal of his company'. Their names, indeed, sig nify the nature of the feudal loyalty that each offers the King: Reverence, Obaissance, Unité, Equité, and Normendie. Taken together, the initials of all these virtues 'spell out' the city's name and hence manifest in full Rouen's loving homage for its king. Characteristically, they offer a psalm of praise for the King's advent; they 'sing very sweetly in similar voices and in two parts a chanson made for the said entry and reception of the king our lord'.

The pageant also includes two characters -- a giant and a dwarf -- who are there, according to Pinel's narrative, simply 'pour rite'. Their presence may well have been suggested by the biblical text which inspires the shepherds' song: 'Da pacem Domine in diebus nostris.' The complete passage from which this verse is drawn ( "Ecclus" 50: 25) mentions also the 'joyfulness of heart' that should accompany 'peace in our time'. Certainly the pageant depicts the inhabitants of the garden as joyful. If these characters are not there simply for the sake of pleasant diversity, might they not operate as expressions of just this 'joyfulness of heart' which is supposed to character ize the peace of God in the New Jerusalem? 20 From Art to Theatre, 73.

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advent of the king, the city becomes an image of paradise, the nation a peaceful garden-state. However briefly and transiently, the king leads his people into a new-created paradise. The medieval civic triumph prim arily stages the Fourth Advent primarily as a way of celebrating and affirming a new political regime. It frequently fills the streets of medieval cities with paradises presided over by a wise Prince of Peace, whose advent transforms the city into a Jerusalem interpreted in the Augustinian man ner as a 'visio pacis'. For the civic triumph, as a consequence of pageants such as these, the Fourth Advent mode usually produces by far the most optimistic and positive royal acclamation. The 'flourishing' and 'pros perity' that Kernodle noticed suggest that a loving king and faithful peo ple together might achieve something like that 'vision of peace' described by St John. The more auspicious the political moment, the greater the king's ability to achieve that far-off visio pacis for his people. Consider, for example, the playwright John Rastell's attempt to envision the extraordinary work of civic transformation that might be possible when two monarchs work together to achieve that vision of peace.21 For the unusual joint triumph of Henry VIII and the Emperor Charles V ( London, 1522), Rastell designed a stunning 'Ile off englond' pageant compassede all abowte wt water made in siluer and byce lyke to waves off the see and rockys ionyng therto watelde abowte wt roddys off siluer and golde and wythyn them champion contrey: mountayns and wooddys where were dyuers bestes goyng abowte the mountayns by vices and dyuers maner off trees herbys and flowres as roses, dayses, gyloflowres, daffadeles and other so craftely made thatt hitt was harde to knowe them from very natural! flowres, and in the moun tayns pondys off fressh water wt fisshe. Henry and Charles approach this remarkable model, the pageant dram atizes, with stunning ingenuity, the transformational power of the two princes. First, the advent of the two princes seems to breathe life into this image, transforming a mere model into a living paradise: 'And att the commyng off the emprower the bestys dyd move and goo, the fisshes dyd sprynge, the byrdes dyd synge reioysyng the commyng off the ij princes the emprower and the kynges grace.' Next, this mechanical paradise reveals the cause of its own miraculous transformation. Images of Henry and Charles rise miraculously out of the 'Ile off englond' and make peace: ____________________ 21

For the political background, see Anglo, Spectacle, 170-202. The contemporary description of Rastell's pageant at the Stocks in Cornhill Street is taken from Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, MS 298 (no. 8), 138-40.

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ther were ij goodly ymages one in a castell lyke to the emprower in visage, and the other in an herbar wyth rosys lyke to the kynges grace wyth ij swerdys nakyd in ther handys. Whiche castell, garden, and the yrnages dyd Ryse by a vyce. The yrnages dyd beholde eche other, and then cast away ther swerdys by a vyce, and wt another vyce ioyned eche to other and embrasede eche other in tokennyng off love and pease. Finally, the 'father off hevyn' completes the transformation of the 'Ile off englond' into a vlsio pacis. Disclosing himself from above 'all in burnyd golde', he surveys the paradise which his two sons have created, and pronounces his blessing upon it in the words of the sixth beatitude: 'Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the sons of God' ( Matt. 5: 9). It would be hard to miss the Apocalyptic implications of garden landscapes such as these. As symbols of the visto pacis to be achieved in the Apocalyptic New Jerusalem, they serve as complementary scenic devices to all those jasper-green, celestial castles that we examined in Chapter 1. Both kinds of scenic device attempt to envision the medieval city in terms of the imagined landscapes of the Apocalyptic New Jerusalem. Many civic triumphs, as we have seen, include both of these symbolic landscapes in a complementary pairing. In Henry VI's London, the earthly paradise prepares the young King to ascend to the castle of New Jerusalem. So here in Charles VIII's Rouen, the cosmic vision of 'Ordre Politique' leads to a vision of shepherds dancing around the Fountain of Grace. Castle pageants, however, primarily represent the New Jerusalem as seen from the outside. The pageant deviser shows us the walls of the city primarily to define the rightful goal of our earthly pilgrimage: 'From vertu to vertu men shall vp ascende . . . | To the faire Cite of Iherusalem, I Bisette aboute with many a precious gernme.'22 By contrast, garden pageants represent interior views of the same place. The burgeoning of pageant gardens in the streets of medieval cities dram atizes paradise achieved. The action has moved within the walls of the New Jerusalem, so to speak. The king's advent imaginatively transforms the visio pacis from a far-off vision into a present reality. That, after all, is what the Fourth Advent means for the saved. In this sense, these garden pageants represent an interior view of the New Jerusalem in a spiritual sense as well: they attempt to portray the spiritual quality of life that the citizens will enjoy in communion with their king in the garden of paradise. ____________________ 22Kipling, "London Pageants for Margaret of Anjou", 23. -236236.

2. The Wedding Feast of Sponsus Pees the King According to Christ's parable of the wedding feast ( "Matt." 22: 1-14), 'the kingdom of heaven is likened to a king, who made a marriage for his son'. When those who had been invited to the wedding would not come, the Lord sent his armies 'and burnt their city'. When a guest arrived without wearing a wedding garment, the Lord bid his servants to 'bind his hands and feet, and cast him into the exterior darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. For many are called, but few are chosen.' In the Apocalypse, this eschatological wedding feast serves as St John's metaphor for the establishment of the kingdom of God. The voice out of the throne announces: the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath prepared herself. And it is granted to her that she should clothe herself with fine linen, glittering and white. For the fine linen are the justifications of saints. And he said to me: Write: Blessed are they that are called to the marriage supper of the Lamb. ( "Apoc." 19: 7-9) According to medieval theological understanding, of course, the elect of God are all brides of Christ, and the marriage describes the intimate and joyful relationship that each of the chosen shall enjoy in the kingdom of God. St John, however, chooses to represent the bride not as a group of separate individuals, but rather as a corporate body, the city of God. When the Lamb's bride actually appears two chapters later, therefore, she takes the form of New Jerusalem, who comes 'down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband' ( 21: 2).23 In its most common staging of this idea, the medieval civic triumph personifies the city as the sovereign's beloved. Imitating Christ the King, the medieval prince comes to the city to enter into a married relation ship with his subjects. In this respect, the ritual of the coronation once again extends into the streets of the medieval city, because the cere monial of the coronation strongly suggests that the king performs a symbolic marriage to his realm. In entering the city for the first time, therefore, the new king can fittingly come to his people like a bridegroom to his bride.24 Dramatized in this way, such an advent projects an ideal ____________________ 23

Cf. Apoc. 21: 9-10, where an angel says to St John: 'Come, and I will shew thee the bride, the wife of the Lamb. And he took me up in spirit to a great and high mountain: and he shewed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God.' 24 This imagery was probably always implicit from the 14th cent. on, but at the end of the 14th cent., the English and French coronation ordos refer to the ring which the king receives at his coronation merely as a 'regiae dignitatie annulum', a 'ring of kingly dignity' ( Legg, English Coronation Records, 97). By the beginning of the 16th cent., however, the king's marriage to his realm had become an explicit image and the ring an explicit wedding ring. For a discussion of this idea, see Jackson, Vive le roi!,85-90.

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of Christian polity in which a sovereign is united with his subjects in perfect political and religious harmony. As Duke Philip the Good approached the Walpoort Gate at Ghent ( 1458), a young woman appeared to him.25 Enclosed in a little arbour built just above the gate, she is the Maid of Ghent, Gandia Virgo, her identity attested by the civic coat of arms emblazoned just beneath the pageant. Since classical times such symbolic maidens had frequently per sonified the Tyches of European cities and served as their tutelary god desses, and such figures often greeted a Roman triumphator as he entered a city.26 Christ's Palm Sunday Entry into Jerusalem was in fact coloured by this tradition since the Gospel account personifies the city of Jerusalem as the daughter of Sion'.27 To a certain extent, therefore, Philip's encoun ter with this symbolic Maid at the gates of Ghent continues a vivid and evocative classical tradition of representing cities as female, especially since that tradition was also favoured by Christian tradition.28 But as the Maid's costume and the pageant's inscription shows, this representation of Gandia Virgo is no mere Tyche. She is the first essay in a long series of civic Maids. In the late sixteenth century, her remote descendants will roll out to meet princely visitors aboard wheeled thrones at Antwerp, Ghent, and Brussels.29 Dressed in a white wedding gown with her unbound hair hanging down about her shoulders 'like a bride , ____________________ 25

For the Walpoort pageant, see Kronyk van Vlaenderen, ii.217; Jean Chartier, Chronique de Charles VII roi de France, ed. Vallet de Viriville (3 vols.; Paris, 1858), iii.81-2; Chronyke van Vlaenderen, ii.349. 26 William S. Heckscher, "Shakespeare in his Relationship to the Visual Arts: A Study in Paradox", RORD13-14 ( 1970-1), 26-8. 27 St Matthew's account of the entry, which was prescribed for the first Sunday in Advent, represents the Palm Sunday entry as a fulfilment of Isaiah's prophecy, 'Tell ye the daughter of Sion: Behold thy king cometh to thee, meek, and sitting upon an ass, and a colt the foal of her that is used to the yoke' ( Isa. 62: 11; Matt. 21: 5). 28 Allegorical personifications of cities are always female, both as a reflection of the grammat ical gender of the underlying Latin terminology (e.g. civitas,respublica) and as a reflection of Christ's mystical marriage with the Church, which is also feminine in grammatical gender (eccle sia) as in concept. On this point see Philippa Berry, Of Chastity and Power: Elizabethan Literature and the Unmarried Queen ( London, 1989), 67. 29 We can follow the development of the Maid of Antwerp, for instance, in a series of late 16th-cent. illustrations. She first appears in Abraham de Bruyn's illustration, enthroned upon a relatively simple triumphal car for the entry of Francis of Anjou ( 1582): La Magnifique Entrée de Franfois d'Anjou en sa ville d'Anvers, introd. Helen M. C. Purkis, Renaissance Triumphs and Magnificences ( Amsterdam, [ 1971]), pl. IIII. She then reappears in Marten de Vos's grander, more baroque throne for the Archduke Ernst of Austria ( 1594); Johannes Bochius, Descriptio pvblicae gratvlationis, spectacvlomm et lvdorvm, in adventv sereniss. principis Ernesti Archidvcis Avstriae, . . . an. MD.XCIIII. XVIII. kal. ivlias, alliisqve diebvs Antiverpiae editorvm . . . ( Antwerp, 1595), 62. Finally, she materializes once again in Denis van Alsloot painting of the Triumph of lsabella ( 1615), her wheeled throne masquerading on this occasion as the Archduchess's own court; James Laver, Isabella Triumph ( London, 1947), pl. 10. In these pageants, the Canticle

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she represents the Duke's betrothed spouse. As Philip approaches, she kneels, clasps her hands prayerfully together, and rejoices. A verse from Canticles inscribed in golden letters upon the scene expresses her long ing for her husband: 'I have found him whom my soul loveth' ( 3: 4). This verse from Canticles invites us to 'read' this encounter in the same way that medieval exegetes commonly taught people to read the Song of Solomon as an allegory of Christ's marriage with his Church.30 In this way, Ghent represents itself as the Duke's earthly sponsa and simultane ously creates Philip's role as Ghent's heavenly sponsus. Nor should one overlook the Apocalyptic implications of these roles. The Gospels, as we have seen, figure Christ's Second Coming as 'the Wedding Feast of Sponsus Pees the King' and urge the faithful to 'watch ye therefore, because you know not the day nor the hour' when the Lord will come to marry his bride.31 Like the New Jerusalem, Ghent appears to its Lord 'prepared as a bride adorned for her husband' ( Apoc. 21: 2), and she appropriately addresses Philip in the language of Canticles, a poem widely regarded as an allegorical prefiguration of the wedding feast to come. While such a performance may seem to employ the imagery of Canticles merely as a decorous expression of the city's loyalty, one must not underestimate the Apocalyptic implications of this imagery. Many civic triumphs explicitly stage such unions of royal bridegroom and city bride as deliberate allusions to the union of Christ and his Church in the New Jerusalem. In this way, they dramatize the inaugural union of king and citizens in the medieval city as a prefiguration of the Apocalyptic union to come. Let us examine a fairly typical example. In 1532, the young Dauphin of France entered Rouen to find himself metaphorically playing the lead in a drama based on St John's visionary Wedding of the Lamb.32 The city of Rouen relied upon its civic emblem, the Lamb, to establish the Dauphin's role as Apocalyptic bridegroom. The Dauphin ____________________ maid has become a royal bride, her queenly status worthy of a kingly sponsus. Her attendant vir gins now serve her as courtly ladies in waiting, and their allegorical personalities define the civic sponsiz's character and the nature of her longing for the royal bridegroom. 30 The allegorical interpretation of Canticles was familiar to such early Church Fathers as Tertullian, Ambrose, Jerome, and Bede. Cf. especially Tertullian, "Adversus Marcionem", PL 2. 411; Jerome, "Interpretation homiliarum duarum Origenis in Cantica canticorum", PL 23. 1117 fif. Twelfth-cent. theologians extensively elaborated various mystical interpretations of Canticles as a spiritual marriage between Christ and the Church, Christ and the Virgin, and Christ and the soul. Cf. Rupert of Deutz, "In Cantica canticorum de Incarnatione domine commentariorum", PL 168. 837-962; Honorius Augustodunensis, "Expositio in Cantica canticorum", PL 172. 347496; and St Bernard, "Sermones in Cantica canticorum", PL 183. 785-1198. 31 Matt. 25: 1-13; for 'Sponsus Pees the King' see above Ch. 4, s. 2. 32 The entry took place on 4 Feb. 1532 when the Dauphin Francois was almost 15 years old. For the pageant, see Pottier (ed.), Les Entrées de Éléonore d'Autriche, a3 r-a4 v.

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François could rightly play such a role, not simply because he was the eldest son of Francis I, but because he had just been created Governor of Normandy and had come to Rouen to take possession of his new province.33 As he approaches the Porte du Pont, two angels appear above the city gate in the first act of the city's betrothal to its rightful lord. They bear between them the city's coat of arms; suddenly, by virtue of one of those stagecraft miracles in which the civic triumph so delighted, the Lamb of Rouen seemingly quickens and animates. Finding himself in the presence of the Dauphin, he ceremoniously 'humbles himself, and makes reverence to the said lord'. The Lamb of Rouen thus pays homage to the Lamb of God in a moment of revelatory epiphany. At a 'theatre' built just within the city gate, the sponsa now makes her appearance to the Dauphin. As befits a 'prince's daughter' of Canticles who is attended by the daughters of Jerusalem, Dame Rouen is 'very richly dressed' and attended by two 'damolselles'. According to the scrip ture inscribed on the theatre, she calls longingly to her royal bridegroom in the sponsa's voice: 'Let my beloved come into his garden' ( Cant. 5: 1). Indeed, she beckons to the Dauphin from just such a garden of love: 'a grand orchard adorned with many trees bearing different fruits, strewn with flowers.' We have seen a version of this garden before in the little arbour built above the Walpoort Gate in Ghent where Gandia Virgo awaited her lover, Duke Philip the Good. In that pageant, we recall, the arbour had served merely as a minor, descriptive detail -- no more import ant than her wedding dress or unbound hair -- that helped us to identify Gandia Virgo with the Canticles sponsa, who woos her beloved in an orchard setting. In this Rouen theatre, however, the arbour has become one of the pageant's major emblems. It attempts a detailed recreation of the Canticles garden as a dramatic locale for the Apocalyptic union of the sponsus and sponsa. As the place where the bridegroom espouses his bride, the pageant rep resents the civic landscape of Rouen metamorphosed into the garden world of the Canticles orchard. Redeemed by the presence of its bride groom, the city has been transformed into the earthly paradise. This is, of course, a version of the Apocalyptic garden that we examined above, but in this case the pageant creates its image of the earthly paradise prim arily according to the pattern of the Canticles orchard. As its most promin ent feature, a huge fleur-de-lis blooms in the very middle of the orchard. In Canticles, the lily, of course, identifies the bridegroom, who proclaims himself 'the flower of the field, and the lily of the valleys' ( Cant. 2: 1). ____________________ 33Pottier, cd., Les Entrées de Éléonore d'Autriche reine de France et du Dauphin, pp. ix-xv. -240240.

Since the lily also serves as France's national symbol, its commanding position here also proclaims it to be a definitively French orchard. The Dauphin's throne appropriately shelters beneath the lily, both to identify the royal sponsus with the lily and to show that this orchard does indeed belong to the bridegroom, as the bride says when she calls her beloved into his garden. In this respect, the pageant's central throne once again recreates a feature of the Apocalypse rather than Canticles. It imitates the throne of God that sits amidst the garden landscape of the New Jerusalem. In combining imagery from the Apocalypse and the Canticles in this way, the pageant reflects the dominant medieval understandings of these books. The Fathers of the Church almost always read Canticles as a detailed portrayal of the Wedding of the Lamb which is only briefly described in the Apocalypse.34 St Gregory the Great, for instance, makes exactly this point. In the text of the Canticles, he declares, Christ and the Church are specifically referred to as the bride and bridegroom, which names are frequently repeated in the New Testament (because now the consummated union of the Word and flesh, Christ and the Church, is celebrated) . . . in the Apocalypse of St John: 'Blessed are they that are called to the mar riage supper of the Lamb' ( Apoc. 19: 9). And once again: 'And I saw the Bride as if newly married descending from heaven' ( Apoc. 21: 2).35 Conversely, medieval commentaries on the Apocalypse frequently refer their readers to Canticles for further information about the Wedding of the Lamb. The New Jerusalem 'prepared as a bride adorned for her husband', according to St Bruno, must be identified with 'the Bride of a most noble Bridegroom, whose praises in Canticles canticorum, resonate so elegantly and sweetly. And concerning which the blessed Johnthe Evangelist says, He that hath the bride, is the bridegroom' ( John 3: 29).36 In this spirit, fifteenth-century paintings often depict the New Jerusalem as a paradise cut according to the pattern of Solomon's orchard. The Prado Fountain of Life typically identifies its image of the 'river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding from the throne of God' ( Apoc. 22: 1) with a quotation from Canticles: 'The fountain of gardens: the well of living waters' ( 4: 15).37 ____________________ 34

For a brief summary of this tradition, see Bruyn, Van Eyck problemen,64-8. 'In hoc ergo libro Dominus et Ecclesia, non Dominus et ancilla, sed sponsus nominatur et sponsa . . . Quae nomina in Testamento novo (quia jam peracta conjunctio Verbi et carnis Christi et Ecclesiae celebrata est) frequenti iteratione memorantur . . . in Apocalypsi Joannis: Beati qui ad coenarn nuptiarurn Agni vocati sunt ( Apoc. 19: 9).Et rursus ibidem: Et vidi sponsam quasi novarn nuptarn descendentern de coelo ( Apoc. 21: 2)' ( "Super Cantica canticorum expositio", PL 79. 476). 36 Haec [Jerusalem nova] est enim ilia, et illius sponsi nobilissimi nobilissima sponsa, cujus laudes in Canticis canticorum, tam eleganter suaviterque resonant. De qua et beatus Ioannes evangelista air: 'Qui habet sponsam, sponsus est ( Jn. 3: 29)' ( "Expositio in Apocalypsim", PL 165. 717). 37 Bruyn, Van Eyck problemen,65. 35

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In choosing this familiar combination of imagery, the civic triumph seeks to portray the Dauphin's advent not merely as a beginning, but as a consummation. The new Governor enters the capital city of Normandy for the first time not merely to begin his rule, but to achieve a state of communal fulfilment, even perfection. The city thus symbolically paral lels the Dauphin's entry into the city by staging the bridegroom's tri umphant entry into the Apocalyptic garden landscape of the New Jerusalem. Like the garden landscapes we examined above, this pageant represents the Apocalyptic city as a visio pacis, but in this case the vision has been achieved specifically by the Dauphin's conjugal love for his bride. As the Dauphin pauses before this theatre, his counterpart, a player Dauphin, appears on stage for the first time. Attended by four pages dressed in the Dauphin's livery, he responds to the bride's invitation, enters the orchard, and takes his seat in the royal throne beneath the fleur-de-lis. In doing so, he consummates his union with the bride just as the Dauphin consummates his union with the citizens of Rouen upon entering the city. Both make their entries into their respective landscapes more as lovers than as rulers. The bride emphasizes this point by remarking that love has drawn her bridegroom into the orchard, and that the flowers and fruits growing in the garden, respond to his presence with reverent homage: Prince d'honneur | puis quil vous plaist transmettre En ce verger | ou amour vous conduict: Toutes les fleurs et les fruitz quil produict Soffrent a vous | comme a vous doibvent estre.38 So also has love presumably drawn the Dauphin to Rouen, and the cit izens respond in turn with their acclamation 'as they ought to do'. This latter image, in which citizens are figured as flowers and fruits grow ing in the orchard of an earthly paradise, borrows a familiar conceit from the Church Fathers. The orchard of Canticles, declares Honorius Augusodunensis, is an image of paradise; it represents the Church in which diverse species of herbs exemplify the differing virtues of many saints. ' Christ is the gardener of this garden, and he is the sponsus who plants with grace and irrigates with doctrine.'39 As these traditional images ____________________ 38

Pottier (ed.), Les Entrées de Éléonore d'Autriche, a4r. 'Hortus est Ecclesia, in qua multae sanctorurn virtutes sunt, diversae herbarurn species. . . . Hujus horti hortulanus est Christus, qui et sponsus, qui eum plantat gratia, irrigat doctrina' ( "Expositio in Cantica canticorum", PL 172. 423). For the same trope, see also Honorius' Speculum ecclesiae, PL 172. 833. For further discussion of these references and other similar images, see Bruyn, Van Eyck problemen,66-7.

39

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make clear, the Lord enters his garden to nurture it. Because the sponsus reveals himself to be a gardener, he expresses his love to his sponsa hor ticulturally. The people simultaneously respond, 'as they ought', by grow ing and blooming. As the Dauphin reaches the centre of Rouen, the final pageant theatre attempts to envision the city and its people transformed by the advent of the bridegroom. Once again a scripture from Canticles establishes the scene as an emblem of reciprocated love: 'My Beloved to me and I to him' ( 2: 16). To emphasize the importance of a loving bond between the citizens and their Governor, the pageant also chooses to employ one of those pastoral emblems so common to Fourth Advent paradises. As François approaches the theatre, he thus finds a company of shep herds and shepherdesses singing and dancing pleasantly in the 'parc de Normandie'. The chief of the shepherds ('ung grand berger') conducts the dance by playing on his bagpipes (sa muse'). Suddenly, in the midst of her dancing, one of the shepherdesses steps forward and presents a small lamb to the Dauphin 'with much humility and great reverence'. The gift is a frank invitation; by accepting the lamb, François also becomes a shepherd and metaphorically joins their dance. Knowing well the role he should play, the new Governor receives this novel epiphany gift 'agreeably'. Since the lamb serves Rouen as its distinctive heraldic emblem, these pastors function as particularly apt symbols of the Dauphin's role. In the presence of its Governor, the city becomes the 'parc de Normandie' and its people become idealized as shepherds and shepherdesses. Their singing, dancing, and music are all signs of their harmonious and joyful lives. If he is truly to fulfil his role as Normandy's Governor, he must become Rouen's shepherd. That, after all, is one of the meanings of the gift he is given. Like the Good Shepherd, he must lovingly watch over the Lamb of Rouen. As the scriptures painted on the pageant testify, moreover, both sheep and shepherds alike enjoy solace and repose in the park of Normandy. In their relationship to their new Governor, they are all sheep and he is the shepherd who watches over them. That is another mean ing of the gift presented to the Normandy. Sheltered beneath the Dauphin's 'pouoir', they live joyously ('tendront ioyeux propos'), free from danger and disagreement.40 As the pageant scriptures make clear, only the lov ing union of prince and people -- 'My Beloved to me and I to him' -can achieve such harmony; only his 'pouoir' can guarantee their 'ioyeux ____________________ 40"Tous les aigneaulx du parc de Normandie | Et leurs pasteurs | en soulas et ropos | Soubz ton pouoir tendront ioyeux propos: | Sans que danger en riens les contredie." Pottier (ed.), Les Entrées de Éléonore d'Autricbe, a4r. -243243.

propos' and free them from danger. If the Prince is to be Rouen's shep herd, he must also be Rouen's lover. The Advent of the Bridegroom became one of the most popular ver sions of the medieval civic triumph. For two centuries and more, princes continued to espouse their city brides.41 Almost always these scenes took place at the city gate as the inaugural scene in the civic triumph. Some are simply conceived as protestations of the city's love for its sovereign and may not require actors at all. Douai ( 1516) established its creden tials as the Archduke Charles's sponsa simply by posting a relevant scrip ture from Canticles above the Porte Notre-Dame: 'Let my beloved come into his garden' ( 5: 1).42 Five years later, however, Valenciennes stationed an allegorical Maid above the Porte Cambrisienne to welcome Emperor Charles on behalf of the city ( 1521).43 In one hand she carries the city's coat of arms, in the other a biblical scripture bearing the words of the sponsa: 'I am come out to meet thee, desirous to see thee, and I have found thee' ( Prov. 7: 15).44 In many cases, the sponsa's bridesmaids join her to welcome her princely sponsus, just as they do in Canticles. In this way, they can be given allegorical identities to detail the bride's character and the quality of her longing for her beloved. Dame Abbatisvilla, for instance, appears to Charles VIII above the gate of the Porte Marcadé Abbeville ( 1493) to invite him into the city. Her attendant bridesmaids -- Humble Service, Jocundité, and Léaulté -- instantly define the nature of her love for her royal bridegroom, both as a woman and as a person ification of the city.45 Many cities dramatize the virgin's longing for her bridegroom with considerable dramatic vigour. Charles the Bold arrives before the walls of Mechelen ( 1467) to find the city gate closed.46 At once, fifty-two trum pets strike up a 'lusty melody' to announce the appearance of the Maid. ____________________ 41

In a very early example ( 1392), we recall (above, Ch. 1), the citizens of London repeatedly evoked the imagery of Canticles to represent Richard II as the 'bridegroom', the citizens as his spouse, and the city itself as the king's 'bridal chamber' (thalamus). While this imagery remained merely a verbal conceit in the 'reconciliation' triumph of 1392, it soon became an established part of the triumph's visual and dramatic representation, especially on the Continent. Often this imagery has been misunderstood. Peter Arnade thus reads the representations of Duke Philip the Good and the City of Ghent ( 1458) as, respectively, bridegroom and bride as suggestive of the 'diminished political statute' of the city and 'as a token of their willingness to submit'; Realms of Ritual. Burgundian Ceremony and Civic Life in Late Medieval Ghent (Ithaca, NY, 1996), 136. 42 Tailliar, Chroniques de Douai, ii.94. 43 L. P. Gachard, Collection des voyages des souverains des Pays-Bas (4 vols.; Brussels, 1874-82), ii.560. 44 Though this seems, on the face of it, a plausible expression of the sponsa's longing for her lord, this is perhaps an inappropriate choice of scripture. In Proverbs, these lines are spoken by a deceiving harlot who hopes to divert a young man from his pursuit of wisdom! 45 Louandre, Histoire d'Abbeville, i.321. 46 Coninckx, La Joyeuse Entrée,262.

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As befits the Duke's heavenly consort, she descends from the heavens enthroned in a 'shining cloud'. In one hand, she holds seven large golden keys, one for each of the city's gates. In the other, she wields a golden sceptre topped with Mechelen's emblem -- two clasped hands or dextrnrum iunctio -- and its motto: in trowen vast. In a heraldic context, this motto refers to the city's 'steadfast fidelity' to its feudal lord, as symbolized by the handclasp. In a romantic context, however, the motto can also mean 'faithful betrothal', in which case the clasped hands device symbolizes the marriage of civic Maid and royal bridegroom.47 On behalf of the city, the Maid then declares Mechelen's 'vaste getrauwigheid' for Charles, delivers up the city's seven golden keys, and reascends on her cloud into heaven. In this little drama, the citizens thus choose to represent their feudal loy alty for Charles as a kind of heavenly romantic ardour; the metaphor makes perfect sense to a people accustomed to regard the erotic romance of Canticles as a figure of the Church's spiritual longing for Christ. All these city maidens, of course, are created in the image of the Virgin. As brides of a Christ-like king, they perforce model themselves upon the Queen of Heaven. Ultimately, as St Augustine remarks, the bride whom Christ woos in the Canticles is the Virgin Queen of Heaven, and later commentators delighted in reading Canticles in this way. As Alanus de Insulis puts it, while this canticle of love, that is the epithalamium of Solomon, refers specifically and spiritually to the Church [Ecclesia], nevertheless it refers most specifically and most spiritually to the glorious Virgin, . . . for the Virgin Mary is like the Church of God in many ways."48 ____________________ 47

'In de slincke handt eenen vergulden schepter, dewelke boven hadde twee handen saemen in een gevueght beteekenende ende daer mede te kennen gevende, de Mechelsche divys in trouwen vast' ( Coninckx, La Joyeuse Entrà9e, 262). For the dextrarum iunctio, see Heckscher, "Shakespeare and the Visual Arts",35, and especially Hall, Arnolfini Betrothal,18-22, 36-7. Hall points out that the 'linking of right hands was in fact a new symbolic gesture that arose in transalpine Europe' in the 14th and 15th cents. It 'signified not so much concordia (as the ancient gesture did) as the mutual consent of the spouses that had become, in scholastic terminology, the essen tial form of the sacrament of matrimony' (37 and 145-6 n. 65). 48 'Unde cum canticurn amoris, scilicet epithalamium Salomonis, specialiter et spiritualiter ad Ecclesiam referatur, tamen specialissime et spiritualissime ad gloriosam Virginem reducitur. . . . Virgo enim Maria similis est Ecclesiae Dei in pluribus' ( "Elucidatio in Cantica canticorum", PL 210. 53-60). Christ, according to St Augustine ('Sermo 195 in Natali Domini'), 'est speciosus forma prae filiis hominum ( Ps. 44: 3), sanctae filius Mariae, sanctae sponsus Ecclesiae, quem suae genetrici similem reddidit: nam et nobis earn matrem fecit, et virginem sibi custodit. . . . Est ergo et Ecclesiae, sicut Mariae, perpetua integritas, et incorrupta fecunditas' ( PL 38. 1018). Peter Damian ( PL 144. 741) refers to the womb of the Virgin as the bridal chamber of the sponsus: 'Necesse erat prius erigi thalamum, qui venientem ad nuptias sanctae Ecclesiae susciperet Sponsum, cui David, exsultans in spiritu, epithalamium canit, dicens: "Tanquam sponsus Dominus procedens de thalamo suo" ( Psal. 18: 6).' Cf. also Honorius Augustodunensis, "Expositio in Cantica can ticorum", PL 172. 347 f.; and Bruyn, Van Eyck problemen,65-6.

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Not surprisingly, therefore, some cities prefer to employ the Virgin as the city-bride who welcomes the king into the garden. Because Rouen regarded the 'glorieuse vierge' as its principal 'guardian, protector, and safeguard of the people', for instance, the Queen of Heaven appropriately personified the city in this way as Francis I's sponsa ( 1516).49 By characterizing the Virgin as a bride and placing her in an orchard, however, the citizens continued to emphasize the sensual and even erotic imagery of Canticles. No civic triumph worked harder to accommodate the sensual imagery of 'Solomon's epithalamium' to its sacred significance. The intimate relationship between citizens and Virgin, first of all, is sym bolized in the Church of Notre-Dame, wherein the people 'continually and very devotedly serve and honour the Virgin'. The Virgin thus rep resents Ecclesia, just as in Alanus de Insulis's commentary, and the city's pageant theatre thus appropriately stood before the church instead of at the city gate on this occasion. At the same time, however, the Virgin must appeal to Francis, in the manner of a 'canticle of love', sensually and even erotically. She therefore behaves like the bride of Canticles; in inviting her sponsus into the orchard of love, she does not fail to appeal sensually to her bridegroom. Finally, the garden itself, representing as it does the Apocalyptic paradise of the New Jerusalem, largely presents its vision of political fruition in terms of the imagery of sensual fulfilment. In its visionary imitation of the Fourth Advent, this extraordinary civic triumph thus dramatizes the Wedding Feast of Sponsus Pees the King specifically as an Apocalyptic love feast that unites King and citizens in a paradise at once spiritual and sensual. True to her role as the celestial bride of the heavenly bridegroom, Mary appears to Francis 'environed with the sun and having the moon beneath her feet, signifying the vision of the Apocalypse: "A woman clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet"' ( Apoc. 12: 1). She wears a crown of twelve stars so large and heavy that it requires the assistance of two angels to support and steady it.50 As Francis's sponsa, she is no mere con sort, but a powerful and majestic partner. The Virgin exercises her power by representing the citizens of Rouen to the King. In this way, she fulfils ____________________ 49

The following account is based upon the contemporary description in Lentree du tres chrestien et tres victorieux Roy, c3v-c4 v. The Virgin appeared to Francis on this occasion from a pageant scaffold attached to the Church of Notre-Dame, wherein 'la glorieuse vierge est continuellem t et tresdevotem t servie et honoree. Et aussy que les norm s et prcipallemet les citoi s de Rou ont de tout temps d ne leurs cueurs et affections a icelle vierge en lobserv t c me la tutrice protec tion et saulvegarde de eulx et de tout le pays' (c4r). 50 We have seen Mary adopt this role before, as the Queen of Heaven 'assumpt aboue the heuenly Ierarchie' and wearing her Apocalyptic crown of twelve stars at the conclusion of Margaret of Anjou's entry into London (above, Ch. 4, s. 2).

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her role both as virgo mediatrix51 and royal sponsa. The Church of Notre Dame stands at the heart of the city, and the citizens form a commun ity of worshippers who gather in the garden to serve and honour the Virgin with continual devotion. In this way, the Church of Notre-Dame defines the community of Rouen, and the Virgin can thus appropriately serve as the embodiment of the community. The garden over which the Virgin presides is also a suitably Apocalyptic vision of Rouen transformed into a feminized, earthly paradise. 'By this garden', remarks the writer of the official description, 'one ought to under stand Paradise.' The details of the pageant orchard certainly do suggest that the citizens had designed a horticultural paradise for the Virgin: 'Full of vines and bunches of grapes, both green and black, of marrow leaves and flowers and fruit, of rose bushes filled with white and red roses, and other flowers and greenery and so well planned and so artfully made that they seemed to be natural.' The Virgin 'belongs' in this garden as much as she belongs in the Church of Notre-Dame. One of the Virgin's most important symbols, after all, is the hortus conclusus (cf. Fig. 13). Indeed, she herself ranks as the chief of the horticultural delights which fill this par ticular garden. Where medieval commentary often represents plants in the garden of paradise in terms of martyrs (roses), confessors (violets), and virgins (lilies), so this pageant garden primarily represents the foliage as symbols of the Virgin. To make this point, she holds a palm branch, an emblem explained by an accompanying scripture from Ecclesiasticus, 'I was exalted like a palm tree in Cades, and as a rose plant in Jericho' ( 24: 18). As is appropriate to a pageant representing the king's sponsa, Rouen appears to Francis as a feminized paradise. As we might expect from a theatre erected immediately outside the Church of Notre-Dame, the pageant garden represents Ecclesia, that other mystical bride of Christ. Our informant, in fact, says that this 'beau iardin' specifically represented the 'Hortus deliciarum', a term which immediately evokes the familiar 'mystical' emblem for the Church figured as the Apocalyptic paradise. 'By "Paradise", which is called the "Hortus deliciarum"' according to Honorius Augustodunensis, 'is meant Ecclesia, in which are the delights of scripture and which is called the House of God, where are glories and riches. In such a paradise flows a fountain, for Christ, the fountain of all good things, is born of the pure Virgin.'52 In this vein, two fountains ____________________ 51 For a discussion of the queen's role as virgo mediatrix in civic triumphs, see below, Ch. 6. 52 'Per paradysum, qui hortus deliciarum dicitur, Ecclesia accipitur, in qua sunt Scripturarum deliciae et quae est vocata ad domum Dei ubi sunt gloria et divitae. In tali paradyso fons oritur, dum Christus, fons omnium bonorum, de casta Virgine nascitur' ( "Speculum ecclesiae", PL 172. 833). Cf. Hildebert de Lavardin: "Ecclesia Dei mysticus est paradisus" ( PL 171. 1279). -247247.

flow from this pageant paradise. Unlike the more masculine fountain 'proceeding from the throne of God and of the Lamb' in the Apocalypse, the twin fountains in this hortus deliciarum are emphatically feminine ones, spraying as they do from the breasts of 'two small living women dressed in flowers'. The waters which flow from these fountains, more over, are largely responsible for transforming Normandy into paradise, for they provide the essential spiritual nourishment for the garden. By this pageant, our reporter informs us, 'one should understand Normandy watered by the two fountains of Justice and Charity, by means of which it flourishes'. In this version of the Apocalyptic garden, Justice and Charity are both feminine virtues and paradise grows exclusively from feminine nurturing. As these details suggest, this Apocalyptic garden presents itself to the King not just as a virtuous sponsa, but also as a woman who should be desired and enjoyed. The delights on offer in the hortus deliciarum are not all transmuted into moral allegories; many suggest quite sensual delights, whatever their moral or spiritual meanings. The 'force de instru mens et musiciens' that play in the garden may symbolize a political har mony achieved between king and citizens, but first of all the music of paradise must appeal to the ears: the musicians 'chantoient melodieuse ment'. Many of the objects in the garden, in fact, appeal specifically to the appetites. These include, among others, the grapes and marrows that grow in the garden as well as the flower maidens spraying fountains from their breasts, or indeed the waters that slake the thirst of all Normandy. As a hortus deliciarum, the garden is a paradise primarily because it is delicious. Consider the Lamb of Rouen, who grazes among a field of lilies planted upon a hillock at the foot of the garden. Since the lilies are heraldic symbols of the kingdom of France, this detail undoubtedly helps to identify the Lamb's home as a distinctively French paradise. For the symbolic purposes of the pageant, however, the Lamb's feeding carries the pageant's essential meaning. The Lamb of Rouen grazes upon the lilies to illustrate an important scripture from Canticles: 'My beloved feeds among the lilies' ( 2: 16). Moreover, the Virgin even presents herself as the very patroness of delightful consumption. She takes pleasure by giv ing pleasure to others. 'Those who feed among the lilies', she proclaims, I have indeed desired to choose as my friends. It is my pleasure, my joy, and food, for I am 'la dame a son plaisir'.53 ____________________ 53 'Et en ung tableau en langue fr coyse ou dicte ce qui ensuit en quel la vierge parle. "Celui qui prent entre les lys pasture. I Pour mon amy ay bien voulu choisir. | Cest mon soulas ma ioye et nourriture. | Aussi ie suys la dame a son plaisir."' To acknowledge the Virgin's role as 'la dame a son plaisir', the Lamb pauses in his meal to bow reverently in thanks to his protectress and -248248.

To achieve this paradise for the Lamb of Rouen, however, the King must also possess and enjoy his sponsa. The city's sponsa and the garden she embodies may ultimately serve as mystic allegories and represent high moral qualities, but both must first make their appeal in terms of the sensual imagery of Canticles. The Virgin must attract her beloved into the garden; therefore she must be desirable. For the King as well as for the Lamb of Rouen she must be 'la dame a son plaisir'. The King's attrac tion may take various forms, to be sure. Francis enters Rouen, among other reasons, because he comes piously to worship the Virgin in the city's Church of Notre-Dame. Immediately after viewing this pageant, in fact, the King does enter the church, where he is received 'in all honour, reverence, and humility by the very reverend father in God, Monsieur the Archbishop of Rouen'. The Virgin even promises to requite the King's devotion with more martial pleasures. She accordingly offers Francis a palm branch not merely because it identifies her with the garden, but more importantly because it signifies that the Virgin grants victories to the kings and princes she favours.54 Despite these more exalted pleasures, however, the pageant's emphasis upon the attractions of sensual pleasure are remarkable. The pageant's emphasis upon pleasure has much to do with illustrat ing the paradise that occurs with the union of sponsus Francis and sponsa Rouen. If the sensual and erotic imagery of Canticles serves to character ize the mutual attraction of the King and citizens, so, too, the symbolic orchard must also be constructed of the same imagery. Rouen's faithful devotion to her King and Francis's desire for Rouen largely create the conditions for the paradise mystically presented by this pageant. As the writer of the official account observes, the Lamb can feed in peace only if the paradise is possessed by -- even dominated by -- the King: 'the Lamb passing among the lily represents, as is said, Rouen ruled and governed beneath the crown of France.' The citizens 'give their hearts and affec tions' to both the King and the Virgin, and they respond to Rouen's devotion in different ways. The Virgin offers her protection to the citi zens as a virgo mediatrix. The King offers his by keeping Rouen safe from military threats. Together, the two lovers cause Justice and Charity to ____________________ patron: 'ung agneau tresbien faict et de b s mouverm s prenoit sa pasture. Premierem t iceluy aigneau sortoit de dessoubz les piedz de la vierge soubz la protecti de la quelle tousiours se tient comme dict est. Apres se tournoit vers elle en luy faisant plusieurs foys la rever ce' ( Lentree du tres chrestien et tres victorieux Roy, c4r-c4 v). 54 'Elle tenoit une palme en sa main pour noter ses perfecti s jouxte ce qui est escript. Sicut palma exaltata sum in cades [ Ecclus. 24: 18]. Ou pour m strer que elle d ne ou est moyen de dormer aux roys et princes les victoires signifiees par la palme' ( Lentree du tres chrestien et tres vic torieux Roy, c4r).

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flow through the whole land of Normandy. The Apocalyptic paradise thus springs from mutual desire and is expressed in the imagery of sensual appetite: Within the hortus deliciarum, 'My beloved feeds among the lilies'. 3. The Bride in the Garden and the Power of Desire So far the imagery of the Fourth Advent has seemed an exclusively male territory. The parousia, Apocalypse, the general resurrection, the Last Judgment, the 'Wedding Feast of Sponsus Pees the King', and the descent of the New Jerusalem are all events that prominently feature Christ as triumphant King of Heaven, judge, and bridegroom. Queens, however, play prominent roles in the Apocalypse too, as witness the 'Woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars' ( Apoc. 12: 1). Very early on, medieval comment ary identified this 'great sign in heaven' as a representation of the Virgin as Regina Coeli, Christ's heavenly sponsa. Margaret of Anjou, for one, found this image held up to her as a proper subject for queenly imita tion in her London civic triumph.55 Many queens' triumphs, in fact, offer very similar advice. She plays her part in the apocalyptic transformation of the city as the heavenly bride of Sponsus Pees the King. Often she inspires the transformation of the city into an orchard. Her civic triumph casts her in the role of the delectable sponsa of Canticles, and she finds herself entering the city for the first time as if responding to the call of the spouse to 'come into my garden, come and you will be crowned'. Although the sponsa is predominantly a 'queenly' characterization, the king sometimes finds himself playing this role in another monarch's orchard. When Francis I entered Lyons on his way to the Italian wars ( 1515), he wanted to stress the legitimacy of his claims to the duchy of Milan. Since that claim was endorsed by Pope Leo X, one of the pageant theatres represented 'the great friendship and union that existed, or one hoped would exist, between the Pope and the King'.56 Somewhat bizarrely, the pageant devisers chose to portray this 'friendship and union' between Pope and King as a reflection of the love of the sponsus for his sponsa in the Canticles garden (Fig. 30). In effect, this decision meant that Francis would have to appear in the pageant depicted as the Pope's bride, and he accordingly appears as a pretty young woman 'richly dressed and clothed in a robe of cloth-of-gold, having in her hand a fleur-de-lis, ____________________ 55

Above, Ch. 4, s. 2. 'Le moral ou figure de ladicte hystoyre donnoyt à entendre la grande amytié & fédération que estoyt ou que estre on espéroyt entre le pape & le roy.' Guigue (ed.), L'Entrée de Franéois Premier,51.

56

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30. L'Arc d'Alliance. Entry of Francis I into Lyons, 1515

which woman represented the royal majesty and person of the king and was named Noblesse Royale'. Leo X appears in only a slightly less bizarre form as a handsome young man costumed as a 'sort of prelate of the church named Souverain Prestre'.57 Despite the young man's clerical clothing, the pageant clearly shows him as a young lover wooing his lady ____________________ 57

'Avoyt deux personnages c'est assavoyr l'ung en sorte de prdlat d'esglise, figurant le pape, & estoyt noraroé le Souverain Prestre, l'autre personnage estoyt une belle fille, richement acoultrée & vestue d'une robbe de drap d'or, tenant en sa main une fleur de lys, laquelle fille reprdsentoit la magesté royale & personne du roy & estoyt nommée Noblesse Royale' ( Guigue, L'Entrée de François Premier, 51).

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in a millefleur garden. Very much in the manner of a foreign consort queen, Francis I finds himself celebrated here as the loving consort of a superior monarch. As the embodiment of his people, he rightly assumes a symbolic feminine persona rather than appearing in his 'natural' mas culine form. Such a representation, after all, is perfectly in keeping with conventional understandings of the Canticles, where the sponsa of Christ represents the Church, which is symbolically female although it refers to both genders alike. In this sense, Francis quite properly responds to the bridegroom's call to 'come into his garden'. Nevertheless, such representations are exceedingly rare in the medieval civic triumph. Queens' advents almost always invoke the imagery of Canticles; they frequently conceive of the queen's advent in terms of the bride's response to her bridegroom's longing. We hear the sponsus calling most ardently to his delectable sponsa, of course, on those occa sions when the queen's entry coincided with her marriage. Indeed, the accessions of most medieval queens were marked by weddings rather than (as with a king's accession) funerals; as consorts, they rather married into their roles than succeeded into them. As a consequence, we sometimes find whole civic triumphs given over to representations of kingly bride grooms and queenly brides, each conceived of as a type of the heavenly sponsus and his longed-for sponsa. At Bruges in 1468, no fewer than ten varied types of bridegroom Christ called longingly to their ten chosen sponsae.58 In doing so, the various pageants 'interpreted' the wedding of Margaret of York and Charles the Bold in various senses. 'Historical' interpretations include pageants of Adam and Eve, ' Alexander and Cleopatra', Moses and ' Tharbis the King of Egypt's daughter', Esther and Ahasuerus, and Tobias and Sara. In another pageant, Christ 'sacramen talizes' marriage by turning water to wine at the Marriage in Cana. Two strictly 'allegorical' pageants interpret all of these examples in terms of Canticles. In one, 'a yonglinge, lyke to a bride grome' calls to 'a maid wt manye other maids, lyke to a bride': 'O! You are beautiful my love and my spouse' ( 4: 1). In answer, the maid tells her companions, 'Daughters, tell my beloved that I languish with love' ( 5: 8). In the other pageant, a bride tells a group of maidens around her, 'I found him whom my soul loves' ( 3: 4), while her bridegroom replies, 'thou art all fair, my love, and there is not a spot in thee' ( 4: 7). Finally, the most interesting pageant in the series offers an 'anagogical' interpretation of Margaret's forthcoming marriage in terms of one of the 'heavenly mysteries'. In it, ____________________ 58English account: BL MS Cotton Nero C. IX, 175v; Flemish accounts: Despars, Cronijcke, iv.25-9 and Dits die excellente cronike,137-138v. -252252.

Christ hangs from the cross while at the same time, like a bridegroom, he holds a beautiful young maiden by her right hand. She wears bridal clothes and holds a figure of a church to identify herself. This ultimate anagogical image thus teaches Margaret to see Christ's Crucifixion as a type of Christ's mystical marriage to the Church.59 To judge from this latter image, these Bruges pageants aim at some thing more than mere 'relevance' to the occasion of the entry. They do indeed stage a series of parallels to the royal marriage which is about to take place, and these clearly act as pious 'mirrors' for Charles the Bold and Margaret of York. But at the same time, their pageants interpret the political and religious significance of Margaret's coming to Bruges. She comes to the city as a sponsa to the city's lord; the various pageants define that role according to its biblical, historical, and allegorical types. The most memorable of these must surely have been the Crucifixion pageant. In its startling image of Christ taking the Church as his bride at the Crucifixion, Duke Charles is thus clearly meant to play the role of the self-sacrificing Lord. Meantime Lady Church, whom Christ marries in the pageant, combines two obvious symbolic referents. On the one hand, as the sponsa of the heavenly King, Lady Church clearly serves as one of Margaret of York's spousal alter egos. But on the other hand, as Lady Church, she clearly represents as well the people of Bruges, whom Duke Charles must symbolically 'marry' as their Duke. Such symbolic com pression captures exactly the nature of the role Margaret is asked to play in life as well as in the civic pageant. She comes to Bruges as the city's mediatrix and advocate. In marrying the city's advocate, Charles sym bolically marries his people. Her advent, in short, serves to unite the peo ple with their lord. These pageants portray the queen as a sponsa in essentially the same way that cities portray themselves as the king's sponsa. Both are versions of the Fourth Advent in which the king marries his corpus reipublicae mysticum in an imagined Apocalyptic garden. It is the mystical marriage that creates the visio pacis characteristic of the Fourth Advent. The queen finds herself symbolizing the city in much the same way that, say, Gandia ____________________ 59

' Alexander and Cleopatra' refers to the marriage of Alexander Bales to Cleopatra, daughter of Ptolemy (1 Macc. 10: 58). Moses's second wife is named ' Tarbis' or ' Tharbis' and is described as 'filia regis Aethiopum' in Petrus Comestor, Historia scholastica, PL 198. 1144. One pageant also offered an interpretation of the marriage in terms of imagery drawn from heraldry and medieval bestiaries. A maiden bearing the arms of Burgundy sat between a lion and a leopard; above her head sprouted a great fleur-de-lis with the motto: 'Leo et pardus in gremio flosculi se amplexi sunt sub lilio' (BL MS Cotton Nero C. IX, 175v; Despars, Cronijcke, iv.28-9; Dits die excellente cronike, 138r). Hugo of St Victor takes the Leo and Pardus to be symbols of the pride of the bride and groom from which they ascend to humility ( "De amore sponsi ad sponsam", PL, 176. 992).

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Virgo embodies Ghent to Philip the Good. Both marry the king on behalf of -- and for the sake of -- the cities they embody. Queens' triumphs, in fact, deliberately appropriate the female and civic implications of this Fourth Advent imagery. In identifying herself with the city, the queen thus supersedes the various allegorical civic maids to become the bride groom's sponsa. Personifications of cities cannot, as a consequence, ordin arily appear in queens' triumphs. To do so would either establish a rival sponsa to the queen who must therefore compete for the favours of the kingly sponsus, or conceivably such an appearance of two desirable spon sae might suggest a symbolically confusing mystical relationship between the queen and a female city. To avoid this conceptual problem, civic triumphs often adopt a dif ferent Fourth Advent tack, albeit one equally reflective of the imagery of Canticles. They depict the city as the garden of paradise and set their queens the task of nurturing it. The nurturing queen once again serves as an evocative emblem of the visio pacis achieved. Pierre Gringore par ticularly delighted in constructing such symbolic gardens for the Parisian civic triumphs he superintended at the beginning of the sixteenth cen tury.60 Mary Tudor's entry ( 1514) seemed especially to transform France into an extraordinary garden-realm combining the qualities of biblical hortus conclusus and romantic dos d'amour (Fig. 31). To begin with, Gringore plans his garden according to the fashionable allegory of the Roman de la rose. The lower level of the pageant thus represents France as if it were the rose garden described in the Roman. It consists of a 'clos' (walled gar den) containing a central rosebush, from which a 'pucelle', representing Mary (the Red Rose of England), buds forth. As in the climactic scene of the poem, the lover (here given the allegorical name 'Unique Vouloir des Princes') enters the garden to claim his rosebud. But even as he designs his pageant to recall the courtly, amatory allegory of the Roman, Gringore also draws inspiration with equal assurance from what might seem a con ceptually conflicting source: the hortus conclusus of Canticles. In practice, however, these two distinct iconographical vocabularies serve to com plement one another. The sophisticated lovers of the Roman appear as courtly and contemporary 'types' of the biblical sponsa and sponsus. To ____________________ 60

For Anne of Brittany's ,entry ( 1504), he devised a 'parc de France' full of shepherds and shepherdesses disporting themselves 'in peace and union' and 'singing melodiously'. Here Anne's advent secures the peace and harmony characteristic of a pastoral eclogue (de la Vigne, "Le Sacre d'Anne de Bretagne",295). Civic payments disclose Gringore's responsibility for this pageant; see Charles Oulmont, "Pierre Gringore et l'entréla Reine Anne en 1504", in Més offerts à M. Émile Picot (2 vols.; Paris, 1913), i.385-92. We will examine another of Gringore's garden pageants in the next chapter: the Three Graces gather about a fountain in an enclosed garden (Fig. 45) to bestow their gifts.

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31. Pierre Gringore, Mary Tudor in the garden of France. Entry of Mary Tudor into Paris, 1514

transform English Mary into the sponsa of Canticles, Gringore assigns to her a number of the Virgin's mystical personae. He thus fills his pageant rose garden with the same Marian iconographical symbols commonly found in contemporary iconographical illustrations. Mary's familiar rose bush emblem, which appears in many compendia of the Virgin's icono graphical symbols (cf. Fig. 13, for example), refers to the same quotation from Ecclesiasticus that informs the pageant: 'Plantacio Rosae in Iericho' ( 24: 18).61 This symbol, so appropriate to the Rose of England, celebrates ____________________ 61

The illuminators of the Grimani Breviary, for example, also symbolize Mary as a rosebush within an 'ortus conclvsvs'. Venice, Biblioteca Marciana, MS lat. 1.99, 831r. See G. E. M. Salmi Ferrari , and G. L. Mellini, The Grimani Breviary ( London, 1972), pl. 110.

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one of the Virgin's most important mystical personae: Divine Wisdom, who took root in the holy city of Jerusalem and was exalted 'as a rose plant in Jericho' ( Eccls. 24: 15-18).62 A scripture posted upon the 'muraille' of Gringore's rose garden further describes Mary as the object of the heavenly bridegroom's desire: 'Thy belly is like a heap of wheat set about with lilies' ( Cant. 7: 2). Such an allusion defines Mary's role in terms of the Canticles sponsa even as it helps to characterize the 'unique vouloir' of the rosebud's courtly lover. As the Canticles sponsa, he enters the enclosed garden filled with desire for his beloved. As the princely lover of the mystic rose, he becomes the Solomon-like king who desires Divine Wisdom above all things. All of this biblical and romantic imagery serves to declare the trans forming power of love. Ultimately, the royal lover's desire for his mystic rose transforms the fallen, strife-torn urban world into the redeemed, peaceful garden-world of the Fourth Advent. Indeed, Mary's presence has created the garden in the first place. Her mystic rosebush, the only cultivated plant within the walls, in fact defines the enclosed space as a garden.63 The strongly fortified walls of the garden otherwise resemble nothing so much as city defences. Gringore, in fact, wants us to see it as just such a city wall. Another scripture posted upon it borrows a verse from a psalm to identify the hortus conclusus as the city walls of the New Jerusalem, the city of peace: 'Let peace be in thy strength and abundance in thy towers' ( 121: 7).64 Mary's presence, therefore, transforms France from an embattled castle to a peaceful garden-city. Peace now reigns within the garden and Discord has been thrown out of the gates. Her trans forming power, moreover, derives from the love which the bridegroom Prince feels for her. As the Desired One, she attracts the single-minded 'Vouloir' of the Prince. He has become a lover rather than a warrior, and his realm accordingly becomes a version of the Canticles orchard, a garden of peace. Heaven itself, in the form of a still more idealized hortus conclusus, floats just above the rose garden. Gringore names this one 'le Vergier de ____________________ 62

The pageant scripture cites only a phrase of a longer passage from Ecclesiasticus: "Plantatio rosac in lerico". The larger context of this passage, which serves as an epistle reading for the com mon mass of the Blessed Virgin Mary, seems clearly relevant to the pageant image, however. 63 The carpet of small, white flowers, because it grows indiscriminately 'wild' both within and without the walls, cannot represent cultivated garden plants. 64 According to Church tradition, this gradual psalm expressed the joy of the saints as they ascended to the New Jerusalem: 'Primo gaudet se admoniturn ire ad coelestem Jerusalem, ubi sancti securi sunt, et cum Domino judicabunt. Secundo ascensuris optat abundantiam pacis, ibi, rogate.' Cf. P. Lombard, PL 191. 1141-6, and W. Strabo, PL 113. 1043. Because of its ability to invoke the saints' ascension to the New Jerusalem, the same psalm appears in the pageantry for Margaret of Anjou's entry into London (above, Ch. 4).

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France' and places a single lily plant within it. The colour, position, and architecture of the lily garden establish its heavenly credentials and dis tinguish it from Mary's earthly garden. To begin with, its enclosing walls are made of gold rather than stone, and it floats directly above Mary's rose garden.65 The lily, moreover, is enclosed not just by a fence, but also by a golden throne of 'antique' tabernacle work surmounted by a crown. Gringore calls his throne 'le Throsne d'Honneur', a name which may recall the celestial throne of Jean Molinet's poem.66 The ladies who attend upon the throne, meanwhile, also point to its heavenly locality, for they represent the virtues who uphold the throne of the messianic king, a point further underlined by the biblical scripture emblazoned on the throne: ' Mercy and Truth preserve the king, and his throne is strengthened by clemency' (Prov. 20: 28).67 By placing the lily plant in a heavenly throne, Gringore thus depicts the royal estate of France in its eternal and heavenly manifestation. Mary's earthly bortus conclusus, by contrast, symbolizes the earthly, if redeemed, French nation; it therefore flourishes 'under' the Throne of Honour, both physically and politically -- a point made in passing by Mary's princely lover, who refers to 'La rose figurant marie | En ce cloz sur toutes prouinces I Soubz le liz.'6868 In the upper garden we see the eternal visio pacis; the lower garden represents the kingdom of France transformed into an earthly image of the heavenly garden. The king of France thus appears twice in the pageant. First of all, in his mortal and 'natural' body, he enters the garden as the earthly Prince, Louis XII. Filled with desire for the rose, he also manifests his allegorical nature, the 'Unique Vouloir des Princes'. But secondly, he also sits upon a heavenly throne, and his divine and immortal body can only be represented emblematically by the fleur-de-lis. So embodied, the king represents the French royal estate, which eternally presides over the nation. ____________________ 65

Compare the Grimani miniaturist's version of the Castle of Heaven (identified by its Marian 'Porta Celi'), which he places on a high hill directly above the redeemed, earthly 'ortvs conclvsvs'. Venice, Biblioteca Marciana, MS lat. 1.99, 831r. Grimani Breviary, pl. 110. 66 For , Molinet Le Throsne dhonneur as one of the sources for Katharine of Aragon's London civic triumph of 1501, see Ch. 4, s. 4 above. 67 We have seen these four ladies before upholding the thrones of Henry VI ( London, 1432) and Charles V ( Mons, 1515), where the messianic connotations of their attendance are clear. See above, Ch. 3, for an examination of Henry VI's pageant. For Charles V, see Gachard, Collection des voyages, ii. 543. Gringore has added a fourth lady, Force, to 'reinforce' the three biblical guardians of the throne. ( "Verité et misericorde | Preseruent le liz de discorde | Et clemence garde et matrosne | Par force remforcist le throsne"; Gringore, Pageants for Mary Tudor,8.) Design con siderations, rather than allegorical ones, seem to have dictated this addition. He could then achieve symmetry by placing two ladies on either side of the throne. 68 Gringore Pageants for Mary Tudor,9.

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As a reward for the redeeming transformation which she has mediated, Mary ascends from her own earthly hortus conclusus to the heavenly 'Vergier de France'. An actor representing the Pope thus assists Mary's ascension by grasping the stem of the rose, thereby 'aiding the said rose bud to mount the Throne of Honour and to unite with the lily'.69 This portion of the pageant allegory, of course, celebrates the Pope's aid in arranging the match between Louis and Mary, thereby bringing peace. But it also emphasizes that Mary requires aid in order to reach her heavenly throne. Above all, Mary must not be allowed simply to 'grow' upward under her own power -- only the Christ-like king may ascend to heaven upon his own volition. The pageant in fact re-enacts a flowery apotheosis in which she rises from an earthly 'clos' to a heavenly 'vergier'. Even so, to reach her spouse's heavenly throne, she requires the aid of the Pope, who serves as a kind of psychopomp, a mediator between the earthly and heavenly gardens.70 In negotiating a peace treaty between France and England, the Pope offers Mary the chance to become an instrument of earthly peace. Characterized in the pageant as 'Humble Marie', she naturally imitates her namesake, the Virgin (fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum, Luke 1: 38); because 'Divine Grace augments her Faith' (according to the expositor), she offers herself for this purpose.71 By her willingness to become the spouse of the most high, she becomes the instrument of earthly peace. She achieves for her people the visio pacis. Mary thus transforms France into a garden more by humble inaction than decisive action, more by deferring to the 'Unique Vouloir des princes' than by exercising her own queenly 'vouloir'. As these pageants repeatedly make clear, the queen's powers of inter cession depend not upon right or reason but ultimately upon her ability to inspire the king's love. The citizens of Rouen stressed this point in a spectacular representation of the necessity of love that greeted Francis I's consort, Eleanor of Austria, at Rouen ( 1532).72 In a 'theatre' requiring much sophisticated stage machinery, a phoenix ( Queen Eleanor's heraldic badge) first flies down from a high tree and alights upon the ground; immediately thereafter, a 'cherubin' descends from the heavens on a cloud. The cloud opens, the 'cherubin' emerges, he lights a torch, and within ____________________ 69

'Au costé dextre dudit buysson estoit vng personnaige nommé le grant pasteur representant nostre saint pere le pape tenant la tyge dudit rosier comme aydant a monter le dessusdit bouton au throsne dhonneur et ioindre au liz' (ibid., 9). 70 'Par le grant pasteur de lesglise | Est la rose si hault montee I Que au throsne dhonneur place a prise | Et du hault liz est accointee' (ibid.). 71 'Humble marie . . . | En ce pays tu soyes la bien venue | Au quel par toy bonne paix est entree | Diuine grace a ta foy augmentee' (ibid., 8). 72 Pottier (ed.), Entées de Éléonore d'Autriche, [23].

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the flame the phoenix burns to cinders. The ashes of the phoenix then reform into a new bird, who joins a salamander (Francis I's heraldic badge) to dwell within the fire. Scriptures mounted upon the pageant explain that the heavenly fire which consumes the phoenix represents lardant amour' burning upon the torch of 'charite'. The salamander lives within that fire, but the flames consume the phoenix, which must be reborn to live in such an environment. The fire of love which burns and consumes her, she learns, also recreates and transforms her so that she must live in it ever after. If she is to reign in France as the salamander's consort, fire must become her element. Some pageants, indeed, take pains to stress just how comprehensive the queen's mastery of love must be. As Queen Claude approached a pageant at the Church of the Holy Innocents ( Paris, 1517), for example, a large, golden heart divided itself in three parts and opened to reveal three allegorical ladies: Amour Divine, Amour Naturelle, and Amour Conjugale (Fig. 32).73 In another pageant, perhaps, the opening of such a triune heart might serve to act out the city's welcome by literalizing a commonplace metaphor: the city 'opens its heart' to the new queen. But here the three heart segments, together with the three allegorical ladies who inhabit them, pointedly represent the three sorts of love which Claude herself must find within her own heart if she is to perform her roles as a consort and mother of kings. To emphasize this point, the designer has posted the arms of the consort ( Claude herself) and those of the King's mother ( Louise of Savoy) beside the arms of France. On a lower portion of the pageant scaffold, performers accordingly act out 'historical' examples of these three forms of queenly love. As an example of queenly 'Amour Divine', Abigail appeases king David's anger and saves him from the sinful vengeance he had contemplated against Nabal 1 Kgs. 25). To illustrate 'Amour Naturelle', Veturia persuades her son Coriolanus to renew his proper allegiance to Rome. Finally, two queenly ladies appear as types of 'Amour Conjugale': Julia, the daughter of Caesar, who brought peace to Rome by marrying Pompey, and Portia, who so loved Brutus that she swallowed burning coals rather than live on after his death. Such a pageant thus offers the new Queen an analysis of the very sources of queenly power. If she is to 'be like Esther for [her] people', she must understand and nurture the love on which her power depends. Such a dependence of power upon love inspires one of the queen's most distinctive personae: the Desired One. Again and again, pageants ____________________ 73Nantes, Bibliothéque Municipale, MS 1337, 12r-14v. -259259.

32. Pierre Gringore, Amour Divine, Amour Naturelle, and Amour Conjugale. Entry of Queen Claude into Paris, 1517

teach the queen to see herself as an object of the king's romantic desire. A scene from the Judgment of Paris serves this purpose in civic triumphs at Brussels ( 1496) and London ( 1533). As Anne Boleyn pauses before a London pageant stage, the three goddesses are tendering their bribes to Paris: Juno offers riches, Pallas wisdom, and Venus 'the fairest lady on earth'. Paris, about to award the golden apple to Venus, sees Queen Anne approach. An honest judge, he cannot help but offer the apple instead to this 'fourth Lady, now in presence', for she is 'peerless in riches, wit, -260260.

and beauty, which are but sundry qualities' in the three goddesses.74 Duke Philibert of Savoy's romantic ardour for Margaret of Austria, by contrast, found expression in imagery redolent of the Roman de la rose. As she entered the city gates of Dijon( 1501), Cupid and Venus led an assault upon the 'Chasteau Amoureux'.75 Other cities take pains to point out that the queen's attractions are not merely physical, but intellectual and spiritual as well. The Three Graces thus often shower their gifts on the queen as she comes to claim her throne. In London ( 1533), they are the graces of classical myth -- Aglaia, Thalia, and Euphrosyne -- and they fortify her with gifts of joy, honour, and continual success.76 In Paris (Fig. 45) they are Thomistic ladies with names redolent of theological concepts ( Gratia Preveniens, Gratia Gratis Data, and Gratia Gratum Faciens), but they offer secular and alluring gifts to Mary Tudor ( 1514) nevertheless: beauty, joy, and prosperity.77 But most often, the pageants embody the voice of the heavenly spon sus calling to his beloved; the queen, his chosen sponsa, enters the city in response to his longing call. From a pageant scaffold near St Paul's, three attendant ladies (perhaps intended to suggest the 'daughters of Jerusalem' who wait upon the bride of Canticles) greet Anne Boleyn with messages from her heavenly bridegroom. The words of the royal coronation psalm float above the heads of all three in a heavenly nimbus: Regina Anna! prospere procede, et regna! ( 44: 5). One of the virgins holds a tablet with the bridegroom's invitation to 'come and be crowned' inscribed upon it: ' Veni amica! coronaberis' ( Cant. 4: 8). Indeed, an angel sitting nearby holds Anne's heavenly crown, until she completes her journey and takes her place upon the celestial throne. Two other virgins, meanwhile, hold tablets which encourage the Queen to persevere in answering her bride groom's call. One, holding a silver tablet, advises her, 'Domine, directe gressus meos', while the second, holding a golden tablet, urges 'confido in domine'. Finally, the ladies together remind Anne that she must be both bride and mother of the saviour if she is to play fully her role in the scheme of salvation. They accordingly cast down wafers prophesying that by bearing the King's son, she will create a Golden World for her ____________________ 74

Brussels pageant for Joanna of Castile, 1496 ( Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, MS 78 D. 5, 57r). Udall's pageant for Anne Boleyn, London, 1533 ( British Library, MS Royal 18 A. LXIV, 1-16); cf. Hall, Chronicle,801-2; The noble tryumphaunt coronacyon of quene Anne, in A. F. Pollard (ed.), Tudor Tracts 1532-1588( Westminster, 1903), 16; Francis J. Furnivall (ed.), Ballads from Manuscripts (2 vols.; London, 1868), i.395-8. 75 Molinet, Chroniques, ii.490. 76 Hall, Chronicle,801; noble tryumphaunt coronacyon of quene Anne,16. Furnivall, Ballads from Manuscripts, i.393-4. 77 British Library, MS Cotton Vespasian B. II, 5v-6r; Gringore, Pageants for Mary Tudor,3-4.

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People. Leaving this pageant, Anne then completes her journey as she enters the Castle of Heaven at the next pageant.78 Such representations of the queen's desirability ultimately derive from those passages of the Canticles in which the heavenly sponsus calls longingly to his sponsa: 'O! you are beautiful, my love, and my spouse' ( 4: 1); 'Thou has wounded my heart, my sister, my spouse, thou has wounded my heart' ( 4: 9); 'Come, from Libanus, my spouse, thou shalt be crowned' ( 4: 8); 'O daughter of Sion, fair as the moon, elect as the sun' ( 6: 9); 'Thy belly is like a heap of wheat, set about with lilies' ( 7: 12). Many similar passages from Canticles, as we have seen, were spoken by those allegorical Maids of Ghent, of Antwerp, and of Rouen, among others. In all of those cases, however, the pageant devisers under standably chose their quotations from the female side of the Canticles dialogue. The city, depicted as a worthy and desirable sponsa, called long ingly to her royal sponsus, inviting him into the hortus deliciarum of an earthly paradise. These queenly civic triumphs, by contrast, borrow from the male side of the Canticles dialogue. The bridegroom calls longingly to the bride, and he invites her into the garden of love. The distinctive passages chosen from Canticles to represent the bride groom's longing for a celestial bride are predominantly liturgical ones. The vast majority of the passages in question were in fact prescribed for one liturgical occasion each year: the Feast of the Assumption of the Vir gin. In the Sarum Missal, for instance, such passages were prescribed to be read not only upon the Feast of the Assumption itself, but through out the octave of the feast.79 Similar passages drawn from other biblical texts also emphasize the feast's liturgical identification of the Virgin Queen of Heaven as the heavenly sponsa. Both Andrew of Crete and St John Damascene had applied the 'royal wedding psalm' (Ps. 44), to the Virgin's Assumption in a series of influential homilies; in so doing, they influenced the developing liturgy of the feast. Snippets from that psalm accordingly contributed matter for its gradual psalm and offertory hymn: 'Harken, O daughter, and see, and incline thy ear: and the King shall ____________________ 78

Hall, Chronicle,802; noble tryumphaunt coronacyon of quene Anne,17. The scripture, also discussed on p. 323 below, reads: 'Anna Regina nominum Regis de sanguine natum, cum paries populis aurea secla tuis.' 79 The Sarum Missal prescribes the following readings as an epistle reading for the Feast of the Assumption: 3: 11; 4: 1, 7, 8, 10-13, 15; 5: 1; 5: 8, 9; 7: 6, 7. Passages from Canticles also appear in the readings for a few other minor liturgical occasions, such as the 'Mass in Remembrance of the Feasts of the Blessed Virgin Mary'. For the appropriateness of Canticles to the Feast of the Assumption, see the widely disseminated sermon (attributed to St Jerome) printed in various editions of the Homeliarius: "Sermo beati Hieronymi De Assumptione virginis gloriose" (the second of two so assigned to this festival), e.g. in Homeliarius doctorum, ed. Joannes Scotus of Strasburg ( Basel, 1506), sec. 2, fo. 35.

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greatly desire thy beauty. The daughter of the King comes in, all beau tiful' ( 44: 11-12, 14); 'Full of grace are thy lips, because God hath blessed thee for ever' ( 44: 3). These same passages, in turn, inspired countless wall paintings and windows depicting the Coronation of the Virgin in European churches.80 In all of these cases, liturgical imagery imagines that the Virgin rises to her beatific coronation to answer Christ's romantic longing for a heavenly sponsa. In many triumphs, the Desired One is chosen, at least implicitly, from among a group of highly desirable ladies. She is thus modelled upon those very passages from Canticles, prescribed to be read throughout the octave of the Assumption, in which the heavenly sponsus describes his beloved sponsa as 'my dove, my perfect one . . . the chosen of her that bore her' ( 6: 8). Three such pageants will illustrate this type. In one ( Paris, 1492), King Solomon sends messengers in search of 'belles filles' throughout all the regions of his realm. From among the crowd of those who respond to his summons, 'he chooses one to his pleasure, the which he wished to have for fame, and crowned her' as his queen.81 A second, an Edin burgh pageant ( 1503), recreates the Judgment of Paris; Mercury presents Paris with 'the Apyll of Gold, for to gyffe to the most fayre of the Three [goddesses]'. In this version of the familiar episode, however, the Edin burgh Paris does not give the apple to Margaret Tudor as a sign that the Queen unites in herself all of the qualities of the three goddesses. Instead, this pageant is more interested in Paris's choice (as an analogy of the King's choice of bride) than in the Queen's good qualities. Paris there fore follows precedent and gives the apple to Venus, just as James IV presumably chose Margaret for his bride.82 In a third pageant at Rouen ( 1532), four highborn and wealthy ladies merely lift a princess aloft in a throne in order to illustrate a text from Proverbs 31: 29, 'Tu superegressa ____________________ 80

Marina Warner Alone of All her Sex ( London, 1976; repr. 1985), 113. Anne of Brittany, Paris, 1492; Nicolai "Sensieult le couronnement", 116-17. 82 Margaret Tudor, Edinburgh, 1503; John Leland, De rebus Britannicis collectanea (6 vols.; London, 1774), iv. 289. As Edgar Wind shows, the Judgment of Paris conventionally served as a emblem of the triplex vita: contemplative, active, and pleasurable. 'To pursue any of them at the expense of the others is, according to Ficino, wrong or even blasphemous.' He who chooses only one goddess necessarily spurns the other two, and the rejected deities will inevitably punish the faulty judge for his choice. The wise man thus opts for universality. 'To complement a prince on his universality by comparing his judgement to that of Paris's,' Wind observes, 'became a fixed formula of Renaissance euphuism'. Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance (new and enlarged edn.; London, 1968), 82. In this familiar version of the emblem, Paris must never choose between the three goddesses. Rather, he typically discovers that the wise prince combines in himself the gifts which the three goddesses only represent separately. (Cf. Anne Boleyn's encounter with the three goddesses, immediately above.) In this Edinburgh pageant, by contrast, Paris chooses Venus. The pageant is about choosing one among many. His rightful choice of Venus mirrors James's rightful choice of Margaret. 81

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es universas' ('Thou has surpassed them all').83 In preferring one lady above the rest in this group, this rather playful pageant puns upon the literal meaning of superegredior, meaning 'to surmount', 'to mount above'. Each of these pageants, it is true, offers an elegant compliment-by analogy to the queen. Each emphasizes the selection of one especially desirable lady from among a group of desirable ladies. The Edinburgh pageant goes even further by linking Paris's choice of Venus with God's choosing of Mary to be his mother and bride. Thus as Paris is giving the golden apple to Venus in one compartment, Gabriel is saluting Mary in a second compartment, and Joseph is taking Mary to his wife in a third.84 In choosing Margaret for his bride, James IV thus mirrors these other acts of bridal selection, both divine and classical. Such pageants always depict the chosen woman as the most beautiful of the belles filles, the fairest of the goddesses, the woman of most surpassing nobility and beauty. But at the same time, they may also suggest that she is but one of many desirable women. She surpasses all the other belles filles primar ily in the king's mind. There is nothing absolute about either Solomon's or Paris's choice -- indeed, both choices, we may recall, ultimately led to disaster; rather, the pageants strongly suggest the relative nature of the king's choice. Solomon chooses one of the ladies 'to his pleasure' and the very fact that Paris, a mortal, is asked to award the golden apple shows that no absolute judgment between the three goddesses is possible. The queen's persona as Chosen One thus emphasizes that her ability to trans form cities into gardens and to achieve the Fourth Advent vislo pacis for her people depends ultimately upon the king's potentially shifting desire, not on any inherent quality of her own. 4. The Wedding of the Lamb As Philip the Good approached Ghent in 1458, the historical moment was charged with threatening portents. Five years earlier, the city had taken up arms against its lawful sovereign, but Philip had defeated the rebels at the Battle of Gavere and imposed harsh financial and political penalties upon the defeated citizens. For five years, Ghent languished in economic and political distress. The city repeatedly requested Philip to visit it and seal a format reconciliation, but Philip steadily withheld his forgiveness. There was some talk among his advisers, in fact, that the Duke might destroy the city, levelling it to the ground. The Duke firmly rejected this advice -- how would such an important part of his patrimony be replaced? ____________________ 83Eleanor of Austria, Rouen, 1532. Pottier (ed.), Les Entrées de Élionore d'Autriche, [22-3]. 84Leland, Collectanea, iv. 289-91. -264264.

-- and he forbade his troops from occupying or plundering the city. Nevertheless, it clearly suited Philip that the wealthiest and most power ful town in his territories should feelingly know its master. Even when Philip at last decided to restore the city to political grace by entering it and taking up a brief, symbolic residence once again in the Hof ter Walle, he did so only because it had become politically opportune to do so.85 Given these political loomings, the city frankly embraced the Duke's entry as an imitation of the Second Coming. Constitutionally, it was in fact his second coming. The Duke had celebrated his inaugural joyeuse entréein 1419, at which time he proclaimed Ghent's civic charter of rights and privileges and was proclaimed Count of Flanders.86 That original charter, indeed, had confirmed Ghent's position as the most powerful of the Duke's towns, granted it judicial rights and political power over a wide area of the surrounding countryside, and granted the city an extraordinary degree of political and judicial autonomy. The Ghent War had largely destroyed that original compact, and Philip had imposed a new civic constitution which restricted many of the city's rights, deprived it of its special position of power and privilege within Flanders, and relegated it to the status of an ordinary Flemish town.87 The Duke's ceremonial second coming, as a consequence, represented the formal inauguration of a new civic constitution, a new incarnation of the political corpus reipublicae. To perform this act of symbolic reconciliation, Ghent, like Bruges before it, chose this moment to stage its first civic triumph (Fig. 33). In planning their triumph, Jan de Cuelenare and his rhetorician colleagues studied the Bruges triumph of 1440 carefully (above, Chapter 2) and adapted many of its features.88 Both triumphs initially cast Philip in the ____________________ 85

85 For the political background to the entry of 1458, see Vaughan, Philip the Good,303-33; Arnade, Realms of Ritual, 127-42; and Jeffrey Chipps Smith, "Venit nobispacificus Dominus: Philip the Good's Triumphal Entry into Ghent in 1458", in Barbara Wisch and Susan Scott Munshower (eds.), "All the World~ a Stage . . .": Art and Pageantry in the Renaissance and Baroque, i: Triumphal Celebrations and the Rituals of Statecraft (University Park, Pa., 1990), 258-90. Vaughan points out that ' Philip's conciliation of Ghent in 1458 . . . was attributed to his desire to ensure that city's loyalty in the event of a war with France' (353). 86 Elisabeth Dhanens, "De Blijde Inkomst van Filips de Goede in 1458 en de plastische kun sten te Ghent"', Academiae Analecta: Mededelingen van de Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België, 48/2 ( 1987), 55. 87 Vaughan, Philip the Good,304-5, 332. 88 The Kronyk van Vlaenderen (254) identifies Jan de Cuelenare's role as deviser of at least some of the pageants (' Jan de Cuelenare, de welke alle wel speelden ghenouchelyke misteryen ende spelen nieuwe gemaect') and mentions in particular his responsibility for a pageant of Alexander's forgiveness of Saraballa, which took place the day after the royal entry. Jeffrey Chipps Smith observes that 'Philip the Good's entry into Bruges on 11 December 1440 offered the Ghent pageantry planners their best model, since Bruges also used the occasion to soothe the duke's anger over their riot three years earlier' (' Venit nobis pacificus Dominus', 265).

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33. Schematic diagram of the civic triumph for Philip the Good's entry into Ghent, 23 April 1458. The plan, based on a city view of 1534 and on Antonius Sanderus's map of 1641, identifies the locations of the city's 20 pageants as follows: 1 two prophets; 2 Gandia virgo; 3 the Prodigal Son; 4 prophet; 5 Cicero's oration before the Emperor Gaius; 6 Lion breathes life into cubs born dead; 7 prophet; 8 David and Abigail; 9 armorial display with text recalling Harrowing of Hell; 10 Chorus beatorum in sacificium agni pascalis; 11 Parable of the Lost Sheep; 12 Pompey's clemency to the King of Armenia; 13 prophet; 14 St Peter's attempt to walk on water; 15 prophet; 16 watchman keeping castle with help of the Lord; 17 Solomon and Queen of Sheba; 18 Gideon and the angel; 19 elephant and castle; 20 prophet. -266266.

role of a stern Christ come to judge. Both represent the citizens as errant but repentant.89In both, the Duke eventually relents and restores his penitent subjects to grace. Both make extensive use of a civic Ordo pro phetarum as a means of dramatizing the Duke's civic adventus as a type of Christ's Advent. Where the Bruges triumph prefers the imagery of the First Coming and stages a new Nativity for its Duke, the Ghent triumph chooses the imagery of the Second Coming as the proper vehicle for its drama of reconciliation. The Advent of the Duke clearly heralds the apocalypse for the cit izens, but what sort of apocalypse? The drama of the civic triumph carefully mediates between the Christ's two opposing Fourth Advent per sonalities: the wrathful Judge and the loving Redeemer. Which of these roles will form the basis of Philip's imitatio Christi? Does he come to punish his sinful people with a doom so 'cruell, flat no tong may tell', or does he come to celebrate with them the 'Wedding of Sponsus Pees the King'? The scenario of the civic triumph confronts Philip with these ambiguities in his own nature. It invokes the image of the wrathful Christ of the Fourth Advent, however, primarily to exorcize it. In the end, if Philip consents to play his role in life as he has in the civic triumph, he will reject the vengeful judge in himself and embrace the role of loving lord whose nature is more inclined to redemption than to punishment. This ambiguity in the Duke's perceived nature appears, first of all, in the biblical verse that served as 'the motto or the title of the whole entry', according to the pageant's most recent commentator: 'Veni nobis pacificus dominus et utere servitia nostra sicut placuerit tibi' ( Judith 3: 6).90 Philip first encountered this scripture woven into the hangings masking the barbican before the Walpoort Gate, and thereafter it repeatedly appeared emblazoned along his route of passage.91 Taken in the context of the Duke's entry, the passage clearly invokes the idea of Advent to charac terize Philip's entry into the city. In particular, it recalls a number of similar scriptures that fill the liturgy of Advent with anticipations of the First and Second Comings of the Lord: Exsulta satis, filia Sion, jubila, filia Jerusalem: ecce Rex tuus veniet tibi sanctus, et Salvator mundi. ( Zach. 9: 9-10) 92 ____________________ 89

Peter Arnade observes that 'the entry's theme of triumph and repentance sanctified the duke's power; a program of classical and biblical stagings depicted Philip as a warrior God and Ghent as the Prodigal Son seeking absolution' ( Realms of Ritual,133). 90 Jeffrey Chipps Smith, ' Venit nobis pacificus Dominus', 261. 91 Kronyk van Vlaenderen,214-15; Chartier, Chronique de Charles VII, 82. 92 'Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Sion, shout for joy, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold thy King will come to thee, holy, the Saviour of the world.' Offertory, Saturday in Ember week; Communion, Christmas Day.

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Tollite portas, principes, vestras: et elevamini, portae aeternales, et introibit Rex gloriae.( Ps. 24: 7)93 Hodie scietis, quia veniet Dominus, et salvabit nos: et mane videbitis gloriam ejus. ( Exod. 16: 6-7)94 Just as these scriptures depict the Advent of Christ in terms of a royal adventus, so the pageant's scripture applies the familiar metaphor in reverse; predictably, it depicts Philip's civic triumph in terms of Christ's Advent. Moreover, in its depiction of Philip as the longed-for coming of a 'pacificus dominus' (peaceful lord), the passage especially represents Philip's coming as a joyful parousia of the King of Peace to his saved and redeemed people. But the civic triumph scripture is not one of those traditionally pre scribed for Advent worship. It only resembles one of those. An excerpt from the Old Testament Book of Judith, it actually represents the craven surrender of all the cities of all the western kings to Holofernes, general of the armies of Nebuchadnezzar. 'Let all we have be subject to thy law. Both we and our children are thy servants. Come to us, peaceful lord, and use us and our services as you will ( Judith 4: 4-6). Taken in its biblical context, then, this passage evokes unflattering portrayals of both Philip and Ghent. It undoubtedly depicts Philip as a wicked but powerful Holofernes coming to subject the people to his will. And given Ghent's abject sub mission to Philip -- the city had gone so far as to unfasten its city gates, take them off their hinges, and lay them down in the fields outside the town95 -- It also represents the people of Ghent as ignobly suffering under a Babylonian captivity. They may well receive Philip 'with garlands, and lights, and dances, and timbrels, and flutes'; nevertheless they will not 'for all that mitigate the fierceness of his heart' ( Judith 3: 10-11). The strength of these negative associations, of course, depends upon one's prior awareness of a little-known passage. Will anyone, either among the citizens or the court party, be able to supply the context of this scrip ture?96 The relative unfamiliarity of the passage probably ensures that its presumed Advent context will represent Philip's coming as a joyful advent. Nevertheless, for those who may recognize its scriptural context, the pass age suggests a darker, more doom-laden Advent for the people of Ghent. ____________________ 93

'Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of Glory shall come in.' Gradual, Wednesday in Ember week; offertory, Christmas Eve. 94 'Today ye shall know that the Lord will come and save you, and in the morning ye shall see his glory.' Introit, Christmas Eve. 95 Vaughan, Philip the Good,353. 96 One indication of the relative unfamiliarity of the Book of Judith is that the book is almost never used as a liturgical source for anthems, prayers, versicles, or scriptures.

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The pageants continue to pursue the ambiguous implications of this scripture. Just outside the Walpoort Gate, the first two members of the city's Ordo prophetarum (which will eventually number seven prophets) wait to greet the Duke; like the Bruges prophets (above, Chapter 2), they recognize Philip as the long-expected christus (1). The prophetic scrip tures they bear, however, predominately refer to the apocalypse rather than the Incarnation, and Philip therefore appears to the citizens as the wrath ful Christ of the Last Judgment. Isaiah begins by warning the sinful citizens of the 'jrus' and 'cruell' doom awaiting them: 'Behold the name of the Lord cometh from afar, his wrath burneth, and is heavy to bear: his lips are filled with indignation, and his tongue as a devouring fire' ( Isa. 30: 27). To add to this rather bracing forecast, Ezekiel applies to Ghent his graphic prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem: 'Blow the trumpet, let all be made ready, yet there is none to go to the battle: for my wrath shall be upon all the people. The sword without: and the pesti lence, and the famine within: he that is in the field shall die by the sword: and they that are in the city, shall be devoured by the pestilence, and the famine' ( Ezek. 7: 14).97 Despite these grim forecasts, however, Philip immediately thereafter encounters Gandia Virgo in her pageant orchard (2), and he plays sponsus to her civic sponsa, complete with all the epi thalamic trimmings borrowed from Canticles: 'I found him whom my soul loveth.'98 Such a pageant inevitably presents the Duke in his more positive Fourth Advent incarnation: the heavenly bridegroom come to marry his people in an eschatological wedding and to lead them into paradise. Which of these manifestations will be proven correct? The Wrath ful Judge or the Loving Saviour? As Philip passes through the Walpoort Gate, a series of pageant the atres begins to confront Philip with this ambiguous persona. The first half of the show consists of four tableaux and two encounters with the Ordo prophetarum (3-9). In each of the four initial tableaux, a kneeling figure pleads for mercy before a standing, threatening, judgmental figure. The most important problem faced by all characters in each of these tableaux lies not in the sin of the supplicant, but rather in the wrath of ____________________ 97

It is difficult to say how much of these passages was posted on the pageant. The sources give only the first part of each verse ('Ecce nomen Domini venit de longinquo' and 'Canite tuba parentur omnez, etc.'), but the presence of the 'etc.' in the citation ( Chartier, Chronique de Charles VII, 81) suggests that some of the verses are only being identified, not fully cited. The imagery of the pageant implies the presence of rather more of each prophetic quotation than is in fact cited. 98 Kronyk van Vlaenderen,217; Chartier, Chronique de Charles VII,81-2. Smith (' Venit nobis pacificus Dominus', 261) identifies the Maid as ' Gandia Virgo'; although she never appears as such in the source texts, the name describes her allegorical function admirably. See above, s. 2, for further discussion of this pageant.

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the authoritative character. In each case, a wrathful response to the sup plicant's plea appears either foolish, ignoble, or inhuman. In each case, the powerful, authoritative figure chooses to master his anger and respond to the plea with mercy. In this fashion, the first half of the show takes up the wrathful, punishing persona of the Fourth Advent Christ and rejects it decisively. The citizens begin this first movement with a frank admission of their communal sin. Even their admission of sinfulness, however, challenges the ambiguities in Philip's kingly role. Just inside the Walpoort Gate, a tableau of the Prodigal Son (3) represents Ghent's rebellion as a case of self-inflicted misery. The prodigal, wretchedly clad in a ruined coat and ripped stockings, kneels before his father and confesses his folly: 'Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee' ( Luke 15: 21). The father, as everyone knows, instinctively responds to this confession with love, rather than punishment. The pageant father takes the prodigal into his arms, restores him to grace, and overlooks his sin.99 Embodied in the prodigal, the tableau thus represents Ghent's sins as eminently forgivable follies. As sinners, the parable portrays them as more errant and foolish than wicked. The pageant's real point lies in the reactions of the father. In forgiving his son and restoring him to grace, after all, the father must reject the wrathful judgment of his righteous elder son. Even a pageant that frankly confesses Ghent's sins thus questions the central ambiguity of Philip's advent: will he imitate the merely righteous son or will he emulate the divinely forgiving father? The tableau votes its choice, of course; the righteous son does not even appear. But Philip comes to the city in unresolved wrath. How will he respond? The four members of the Ordo prophetarum who inhabit the first part of the show forecast a positive answer to this question. They predict that the Lord's Advent will ultimately be characterized by mercy towards sin ners rather than punishment. One (4) recognizes in Philip the signs of a disposition more prone to mercy than punishment: 'the law of clemency is on his tongue' ( Prov. 31: 26).100 Another (7) gives voice to Haggai's ecstatic description of Christ's Advent, a prophecy that seems particularly applicable to the bridegroom persona: 'The Desired of all nations shall come, and I will fill this house with glory' ( Hag. 2: 8). As to where this ____________________ 100

"Lex clementiae in lingua ejus" ( Kronyk van Vlaenderen,218). In the original, the biblical verse refers to 'the valiant woman'. 99 De sone aermelijc gecleedt, sijn wambays quaet, sijn coussen voer de knien onstic, de vader hem in sinen aermen ontfaende, ende gracie hem doende, overmidts der kennessen van sijnder mesdaet, ende onder voer 't vorseide stellagie stont ghescreven: Pater, peccavi in coelum, et coram te.' Kronyk van Vlaenderen,217-18.

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promise of Ghent's glorification will be fulfilled, the prophet can only point enigmatically onward, towards the as-yet unseen second part of the civic triumph.101 A series of tableaux, meanwhile, forces Philip to confront his wrath as a dominating, ignoble passion, and suggests that in asserting his merci ful nature he achieves true nobility. In the first of these (5), Cicero kneels before Caesar, Ghent's legendary founder. Newly attired in his imper ial regalia, he sits majestically in his imperial throne attended by his court of twelve 'senators'. The orator successfully pleads for clemency on behalf of the prisoners taken when Caesar conquered Rome. 'None of your virtues is better than clemency,' Cicero says, quoting from one of his orations.102 In this way, the exercise of mercy appears as the truly 'imperial' virtue in a conqueror. Another theatre (8) depicts vengeance as a self-destructive passion that a true king must master. Abigail kneels before David, who appears in full armour, his sword drawn ready to wreak his 'indignation and wrath' upon her husband Nabal. Abigail's plea stills David's anger, however, and David's scripture represents his grateful acknowledgement of her mediation: 'Blessed be the Lord the God of Israel, who sent thee this day to meet me, and blessed by thy speech' (1 Kgs. 25: 32).103 So impressed is he with Abigail's intercession, indeed, that after Nabal's death he takes her to wife. This tableau thus begins David's transformation from wrathful conqueror to royal bridegroom. The tableau hints that in giving vent to his wrath, Philip debases him self; by mastering such an excessive passion, he reasserts his true kingly nature as a loving sponsus. The most interesting of these three tableaux depicts the proper expres sion of wrath as a noble quality, indeed a creative, life-giving act (6). A truly noble wrath, however, has nothing to do with punishment. A heraldic black lion stands rampant, roaring fiercely; a white lioness crouches 'humbly' at his feet in a suppliant posture. Three apparently dead lion cubs lie across the paws of the lioness. The black lion roars ____________________ 101

'Ecce venit desideratus cunctis gentibus et replebitur gloria ejus domus domini.' The prophet is looking towards the Torrenpoort ('siende ter vorseiden Torrepoorten waert') as he delivers this prophecy ( Kronyk van Vlaenderen,219). Haggai's prophecy, in context, refers to the rebuilding of the Temple. As such, Christian tradition often interprets this Advent prophecy as referring to the Second Coming, specifically to the 'new heaven and new earth' as embodied in the New Jerusalem. 102 "Nulla de virtutibus tuis major clementia est." The Kronyk van Vlaenderen (218) identifies the source of the scripture as Cicero's oration Diuturni silentii. 103 "Benedictus dominus Deus Israel, quite misit." Kronyk van Vlaenderen,219-20. Elizabeth Dhanens thinks -- mistakenly, in my view -- that Abigail represents the city in this tableau, and that in giving her right hand to David she performs an image of the mystic marriage between the Duke and his city. "De Blijde Inkomst van Filips de Goede", 72.

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and the cubs rouse and stir into life. In part, the pageant uses heraldic symbolism to create a chivalric blazon for Philip as Count of Flanders, and the lion's roaring thus forms a property spirited assertion of knightly courage. The Black Lion of Flanders accordingly holds a standard embla zoned with the Duke's coat of arms, and his roaring recalls Hosea's description of the fierceness of the Lord's wrath: 'As a lion he shall roar, and the children of the sea shall fear' ( Osee 11: 10).104 But this striking image also depends upon the allegorical 'natural history' of the lion as reported in the medieval bestiary. According to the Physiologus, lions are not so much born as reborn. The lioness bears her cubs dead, and the male lion animates them by breathing into their nostrils. Christian homillsts embraced this unusual nativity as an allegorical type of the Resurrection.105 If Philip is to express a noble and kingly anger, he must therefore do it in the manner of the lion. Heraldically, the lion roars in defence of Flanders; allegorically, the lion's roar inspires its cubs with new life. Both expressions of wrath are ennobling rather than degrading. If Philip is to embody the Lion of Flanders, he must therefore express his wrath in similar ways, to save and defend his people rather than to punish them. The first movement of the civic triumph thus dramatizes the Duke's darker Fourth Advent persona, the avenging, punishing Christ of the Last Judgment. In each case, the show confronts Philip with the wisdom of containing these passions, both for his own sake (because vengeance is an ignoble passion) and for the sake of his people (because they have only been foolish rather than wicked). The show now reaches a formal division at the Torrenpoort (9), one of Ghent's interior gates. Just as Philip began the show by entering the city through one gate, he now makes a crucial transition by passing through this second gate. As Philip approaches the arch, a fanfare of trumpets sounds to announce the conclusion of one episode and the beginning of another. Similarly, the dazzling heraldic display that covers the front of the arch also serves as a formal division between parts of the drama.106 ____________________ 104 The lion's rampant stance is inferred from the Kronyk van Vlaenderen (219), which says that he 'sat' up in the theatre to roar while simultaneously holding in his paw a standard of the Duke's arms ('daer up dat [stellagie] sat al gapende een groet Zwart Leeu, als oft hy briesschede, ende hadde in sinen pooet eenen rykelyken standart, van ons harrden gheduchten heeren wape nen'). The same source says that the white lioness lay down by him ( "jeghen hem over lach eene schoene witte Witte Leeuwinne, onnozelijc gestrect up hare poeten"), and Chartier emphasizes her suppliant posture: 'et devant, une lyonne blanche, hunblement couchée à terre' ( Chronique de Charles VII83). 105 Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art, i52; ii136, 148, 209 and pls. 489, 571, 716. 106 Kronyk van Vlaenderen,220-2, lavishes almost as much descriptive detail on this gate as upon the following pageant depicting the Ghent altarpiece. Georges Chastellain regards it as par ticularly beautiful ( Euvres, iii414). -272-

As he passes through the gate, Philip discards his vengeful Fourth Advent persona and triumphantly adopts his role as the redeemer king. To make this point, indeed, the gate symbolically connects the limbo that was and the paradise that is about to be. A scripture from the Gospel of Nicodemus greets Philip with a cry of relief spoken by one of the just souls languishing in limbo: 'You have come, O desirable one, whom we await in darkness.'107 The passage thus depicts Philip's advent in terms of Christ's triumphant descent into hell after his Crucifixion, when he redeemed the just souls from limbo and led them into paradise. The sun, moon, and stars that decorate the brightly lit passageway under the arch interpret the Harrowing of Hell as a cosmic journey from a lower to an upper realm. As he passes through the Torrenpoort, Philip begins the work of leading his people into paradise. Just beyond the Torrenpoort in the de Poel, one of the large open spaces in the town, he finds himself entering the paradisiacal garden of the New Jerusalem. The massive theatre erected in de Poel (10) con vincingly fulfils the prophecy which the prophet Haggai made a few pageants earlier, that the Desired of all nations would come and that 'this house' would be filled with glory. At least ninety actors collaborated to stage a tableau representing St John's vision of the Wedding of the Lamb ( Apoc. 21: 22-22: 6). To do so, the pageant attempts to reproduce, as faithfully as possible and in heroic scale, Jan van Eyck's famous version of the Apocalyptic scene in the Ghent Altarpiece (Fig. 34), which the Kronyk van Vlaenderen aptly describes as the 'Choir of the blessed at the Sacrifice of the Paschal Lamb'.108 Each of the stage's three tiers measured 50 feet long by 28 feet broad. As in Van Eyck's painting, God the Father dominates the uppermost, 'heavenly' tier of the stage, and sits in a golden throne. The Virgin Mary sits enthroned on his right hand, John the Baptist on his left. Choirs of angels sing and play instruments on either side of this group. These represent the court of heaven. The lower ____________________ 107

"Advenisti desiderabilis quem expectamus in tenebris. In historia resurrectionis. Nicodemus" ( Kronyk van Vlaenderen, 221). The passage does not occur in this form in the Gospel of Nicodemus; however, there is a somewhat similar one: 'Aduenisti redemptor mundi . . . ut eriperes nos ab inferis et morte per maiestatern tuam' ( 24: 19). 108 "Chorus beatorurn in sacrificium agni pascalis" ( Kronyk van Vlaenderen,222). Paul Bergmans originally brought the Kronyk's detailed description of this Ghent pageant to the attention of art historians: "Note sur la représentation du retable de l'Agneau mystique des Van Eyck, en tableau vivant, à Gand en 1458", Annales de la Fédération Archéologique et Historique de Belgique, 20 ( 1907), 530-7. Later historians have often used this description to investigate the early history of the altarpiece, particularly the Kronyk's transcription of the altarpiece's scriptural legends. Curiously, Jean Chartier reports this imposing pageant with only the briefest of descriptions: "Dedens ladite porte eult ung autre eschaffault, et ou melieu avoit une fiantaine et à l'environ l'estat de l'Église triumphant" ( Chronique de Charles VII,84).

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34. Jan van Eyck, Ghent altarpiece, interior two tiers represent the paradise of new earth created within the New Jerusalem. Again as in the Van Eyck image, the Lamb and the altar dom inate the middle level. The Lamb stands atop the altar, and blood flows from his chest into a chalice. Angels cense the Lamb on either side, and -274274.

the Holy Ghost, in the form of a dove, descends from the upper tier to the Lamb. On either side of this central group and completely filling the lowermost tier, the multitude of the blessed reverently approach the Altar of the Lamb in groups of six: confessors, patriarchs, prophets, Christian knights, just judges, virgins, apostles, hermits, martyrs, and pilgrims. Standing upon the ground before the pageant, a huge Fountain of Life, its central pillar twenty-five feet high, spouts wine from three spigots into a surrounding basin, from which the Duke may drink as he pleases: 'This is the Fountain of Water of Life proceeding from the Throne of God and of the Lamb' ( Apoc. 22: 1). 109 This gigantic image necessarily dominates the entire civic triumph. It forms the iconographic heart of the show. As a coup de théâtre, it vividly stages the Fourth Advent of Christ, but it is the Lamb, and not Philip, who plays the lead. The pageant forcefully reverses the Duke's role. He now comes before this image requiring the Lamb's redemption. Philip may have entered the city like a wrathful Christ come to judge his peo ple, but as the curtains open upon this massive structure, a truly heroic image of Christ's Fourth Advent appears to the Duke. 110 Biblical pattern confronts ducal imitation, and the former necessarily humbles the latter. There is no ambiguity about this 'pacificus Dominus'. The image also diminishes Philip in theological status as well as in scale. This immense image of the sacrificial and redeeming Lamb of God is itself an artistic imitatio Christi; in so far as it redeems rather than destroys, it represent a theologically superior imitation of the Fourth Advent. In the face of this image, Philip can no longer convincingly perform his own small and angry imitatio Christi. Instead, he and his party form part of the enormous composition. They take their places -- visually and theologically -- amidst the crowds of the blessed who come to worship the Lamb.111 The fountain of living water flows from the Lamb to him, ____________________ 109

'Hic est fons aquae vitae procedens de sede Dei et agni' ( Kronyk van Vlaenderen,225). Like the altarpiece itself, the pageant is full of 'scriptures', and the Kronyk faithfully reproduces each of them. While all of these undoubtedly play an important part in this pageant's imitation of the Fourth Advent, an analysis detailed enough to accommodate all of these would prove very long indeed and would embark us more upon an analysis of the iconography of Van Eyck's paint ing than upon the pageant itself. 110 As in most Lowlands civic triumphs, the stages took the form of curtained booths (cf. Fig. 37). As the princely guest approached, the curtains were drawn to reveal the scene within. The Kronyk van Vlaenderen thus reports that the angels upon the upper tier sang and played con tinuously behind the closed curtains before Philip arrived and they were opened: 'Ende emmer waren de selve inghelen in biede de choren naer toghen van desen figueren, als de gordinen toeghes chuuft waren, altoes singhende ende speelende zeere melodieuzelijc ende ghenouchlijc' (223). 111 Jeffrey Chipps Smith thinks that Philip was especially invited to identify with the pageant's group of Christian knights because 'only the members of the milites christi [in the pageant] were all specifically labeled, and not surprisingly, each had some association with Philip' ( "Venit nobis pacificus Dominus",266).

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and because he requires the Lamb's redemption, he drinks from it. After this encounter, Philip's wrathful imitatio Christi is simply no longer viable, at least in iconographical and dramatic terms. It is too small in scale, too ignoble in its vengeful expression. In future, if he is to attempt to live up to this superior lmitatio Christi, his own performance of the Fourth Advent will have to take the form of the Lamb of God who 'takes away the sin of the world' and redeems, rather than punishes, his people. He will have to become an unambiguous and earnest 'pacificus Dominus'. Whatever its intended effect upon Philip, this extraordinary pageant is very much intended as Ghent's self-presentation to its sovereign lord. Com pleted in 1432 for St Bavo's Cathedral by Duke Philip's most favoured court artist, the altarpiece had rapidly become one of the most notable of civic sights.112 Because of its intimate association with the city of Ghent, the famous image serves the civic triumph as an idealized image of the city transformed into the Apocalyptic paradise. The transformation of Van Eyck's image to the pageant stage only strengthens this association. Van Eyck's Wedding of the Lamb imaginatively takes place in new earth, the redeemed paradise of New Jerusalem. In Van Eyck's painting, the towers and encircling, crystalline walls of New Jerusalem can be seen at some distance behind the Fountain of Life and the Altar of the Lamb. The Ghent pageant, because it takes place within the city itself, requires no such background. The city walls of Ghent provide the appropriate representation of the New Jerusalem that encloses the garden landscape at its centre. The pageant thus represents Ghent in its ideal state, trans formed by a redeeming lord into an image of the New Jerusalem. It is a vision that Philip can perhaps realize as the city's bridegroom, but not as its judge. If the first half of the triumph brings Philip to this tremendous vlsio pacis, the rest of the triumph proceeds directly from it. Philip may have entered the city as a wrathful judge, but he leaves this theatre to imitate the role of Christ as the loving Redeemer. Three new members of the city's Ordo prophetarum appear in the second half of the triumph; their 'scriptures' have been carefully chosen to signal this reconstruction of the Duke's persona. These three prophets (13, 15, 20) thus deliver pleas for understanding and psalms of praise rather than prophecies. The first of these (13) implores Philip to esteem the worth of his people rather than (as he did earlier) reckoning their iniquities: 'Look upon thy servants and ____________________ 112Jeffrey Chipps Smith rightly calls attention to the altarpiece's especially close connections to Philip the Good, which 'would have evoked a wealth of personal and symbolic associations for the duke' ( "Venit nobis pacificus Dominus", 266-7). -276276.

upon their works' ( Ps. 89: 16), declares the scroll unrolling from his hand. The ecstatic praise of the next prophet (15) especially evokes the Fourth Advent of the 'peaceful king': 'Then shall all the trees of the woods rejoice before the face of the Lord, because he cometh' ( Ps. 95: 12-13). Perhaps the scripture inscribed on this prophet's scroll continued this verse to its end: 'He shall judge the world with justice, and the people with truth.' If so, the prophet explicitly foresees the advent of a heavenly king whose judgments are to be anticipated with joy rather than with fear.113 Finally, the last of the prophets (20) steps down from his pageant, grasps the bri dle of the Duke's horse, and leads him into the Hof ter Walle. His prophetic scripture, 'this is my rest' ( Isa. 28: 12), wittily anticipates, of course, his arrival at his lodgings after a long day, but it also indicates the comple tion of his journey in thematic terms as well. By the time he reaches the ducal residence, the civic triumph will have completed the transformation of his kingly role from judge to redeemer.114 The more substantial tableaux in the latter half of Ghent's civic tri umph, meanwhile, reinvent Philip's new role as Ghent's sovereign lord. The first of these (11), staged just beyond the Wedding of the Lamb, forms the basis for the regeneration of Philip's royal persona. By depict ing the Duke as the Good Shepherd of Christ's most familiar parable, it defines Philip's new role as a Saviour and Redeemer rather than as a Judge. With his shepherd's crook in one hand, the pageant shepherd tri umphantly holds his 'lost sheep' in the other hand, and as the Duke rides past he makes it bleat in acknowledgement: 'Rejoice with me,' he says, 'because I have found my sheep that was lost' ( Luke 15: 6). 115 Such an image completely redefines the relationship between the Prince and his ____________________ 113

These final three prophets represent the fifth, sixth, and seventh members of the entire Ordo prophetarum. For the fifth prophet ( "Respice, domine, in servos tuos") and the sixth prophet ( "Exultabunt omnia ligna silvarum a facie domini, quia venit"), see Kronyk van Vlaenderen,226-7, and Chartier, Chronique de Charles VII, iii85. 114 Chartier does not mention this seventh and final prophet. The Kronyk van Vlaenderen (231) briefly describes him, however, and specifies his 'scripture' ( "Haec requies mea. Isaiae. X " [sic]). Only the Chronyke van Vlaenderen records the details of his dress and his performance: 'Voor her Hof ter Walle, was er en Mensch seer konstig in een leeuw-vel geldeedt, die den Thoom van her Peirdt van Philips vattende, hem heeft binnen geleydt' ( ii349). The lion-pelt is the usual cos tume of John the Baptist. Perhaps we are to understand that the Baptist once again is playing his 'forerunner' role by grasping the bridle of the Duke's horse and preceding him to the Prinsenhof. If so, we should recall that the Baptist also played his forerunner role as the herald of the Second Coming as well as the First. Such a role would seem more in keeping with the imagery of this triumph. On this point see Kantorowicz, "King's Advent", 217-18. 115 'Daer up was een . . . personnagie van eenen herdde gheabilliert met eenen schapleple . . . draghende up sinen hals een levende schaep, dat by dede blieten als mijn gheduchten heere daer voren liedt; voer hem stont geschreven: Congratulamini mihi, qui inveni ovem quam perdideram' ( Kronyk van Vlaenderen,225).

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citizens. However errant the lamb may have been in escaping from his kindly rule, the shepherd thinks only of finding, saving, and redeeming the lost sheep, not of judging or punishing it. This essentially caring and pastoral sovereignty, moreover, springs directly from the emblematic roles established in the Van Eyck Wedding of the Lamb pageant. If Van Eyck's visio pacis represents Christ as the Lamb of God, this one depicts the Duke in a complementary role as the Shepherd. If this pageant creates Philip's new saviour persona by transforming the King into a shepherd, another pageant (14) achieves a similar effect by paralleling Philip even more directly with Christ as an indulgent and tolerant saviour. On the water beneath the Hoofdbrug, the apostles sit in a fishing boat opposite Christ, who appears on the shore. John instinct ively recognizes the Master: 'It is the Lord' ( John 21: 5), declares his scroll. Peter attempts to walk upon the water to meet Jesus, thus demon strating the strength of his own faith. Unable to master his doubts, however, he immediately sinks into the water, his scroll unrolling with his prayer: 'Lord, save me' ( Matt. 15: 30). Jesus plays his part in this little drama of faith and salvation by pulling Peter from the water and gently rebuking his disciple: 'O thou of little faith, why didst thou doubt?' ( Matt. 15: 30).116 AS in the first half of the triumph, pageants like these portray the citizens as errant and even faithless; the difference in their tone, of course, lies in this new merciful and redemptive ver sion of Philip's kingly persona. His instinct towards salvation embraces not only the innocent lamb, but more importantly the faithless disciple as well. At least one of these latter pageants (12) depicts redemption as an act which ennobles both giver and receiver alike. A tableau in the Hay Market dramatizes a tale from Valerius Maximus in which a Roman consul mag nanimously extends mercy towards a defeated enemy. As in the pageants from the first half of the triumph, a wretched suppliant grovels before a powerful and triumphant king. In this case, Tigranes, the defeated king of Armenia, kneels humbly before Pompey the Great. Like the people of Ghent, Tigranes had rebelled against rightful authority, and Pompey, like Philip, had suppressed the rebellion by force of arms. Instead of nursing his wrath, however, Pompey examines carefully Tigranes' spiritual qual ities. 'Observing that king's courage and submission, Pompey felt com passion towards him, restored him to his original state, gave him again his crown, lands, and honours.' Pompey responds in this way, moreover, because his own temperament leads him to value pardoning as highly as ____________________ van Vlaenderen,226-7.

116Kronyk

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conquering.117 As a type of the redeemer king, Pompey thus combines knightly courage with a compassionate mind. He does not merely for give his former enemy, but restores him once again to his original state, and this magnanimous act of redemption both honours Tigranes and glorifies Pompey. 118 The remaining pageants of the triumph accommodate Philip's newly constructed Saviour persona to his accustomed role as a warrior king. His manifestation as a 'pacificus Dominus' need not exclude his profession as one of the Christi milites, a defender of the Church Militant. The Christi milites, after all, form a prominent part of the company of the blessed who crowded around the Altar of the Lamb. Represented alle gorically as a chivalric Mars, Philip appears first as a civic guardian (16). He protects a Flemish castle and its inhabitants from the dragons, wolves, and other beasts which threaten it: 'Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain' ( Ps. 127: 1). He likewise takes his role as the chivalric redeemer of an entire nation (18). Gideon, whose fleece connects him both to the Lamb of God and to Philip's chivalric Order of the Golden Fleece, receives a delegation of Israelites. Because he has just rescued them from Midianite oppression, the Israelites gratefully beg him to be their king: 'Rule thou over us and thy son, and thy son's son: because thou hast delivered us' from them ( Judg. 8: 22). Finally and most memorably, Philip's chivalric ambitions expand to encompass all of Christendom (19). The show thus includes an astonishing pageant elephant with a castle upon its back filled with Israelite warriors. This traditional image of the Church Militant accordingly casts Philip in his cherished role as the leader of a new crusade.119 Philip may have come to Ghent like the wrathful judge of the Second Coming, but by the time he has completed his journey through the city, his performance has rejected that initial persona and embraced instead ____________________ 117

'Siende de oedtmoedt ende onderdanicheit van den selven coninc, hadde deeren ende com passie up hem, steldene ende restitueerdene in sinen eersten staet, gaf him widere sine croene, landen ende eerlijcheeden, midts dat Pompeius dochte sijnde alsoe groeten erre ende lof te verghevene als te verwinnen; ende voer dit stellagie stont ghescreven: Aeque pulchrum est vincere reges et parcere' (ibid. 225-6). For Valerius Maximus' version of this story, see Factorum et dic torum memorabilium libri novem, ed. Karl Friedrich Kempf ( Stuttgart, 1966), 5. 1. 9. 118 To make the point that his new redemptive and pastoral kingly role is a glorious one, the second half of the triumph brings the Queen of Sheba before Solomon to remark that his glory (rather than his 'wisdom and works', as in the original biblical text) is greater than she had heard: "Major est gloria tua quam rumor quem audivi" (3 Kgs. 10). For a discussion of this pageant, see Ch. 2 above. 119 Jeffrey Chipps Smith rightly associates the Ghent elephant and castle with one of the famous entremets at the Feast of the Pheasant: 'at the culmination of this banquet the personification of Ecclesia, the Christian church, rode in upon an elephant and urged the Burgundian nobles to save her from the infidels' ( "Venit nobis pacificus Dominus", 267-8).

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the Redeemer Christ of the Fourth Advent. Such a transformation in his role, of course, dramatizes Ghent's own plea for redemption. The cit izens had sought a reconciliation with their Duke for five years, and they have designed this triumph as a ceremony of reconciliation. The Wedding of the Lamb pageant, because it borrows an image from the greatest work of the Duke's favourite painter, appeals directly to the Duke for just such a reconciliation. The heroic scale of the image enfolds Duke and citizens together in one composition. Its image of the Apocalyptic paradise defines an ideal corpus reipublicae which incorporates both Prince and his sub jects under the sovereignty of Christ. Such an ideal may yet bring both parties together politically as well as aesthetically. More interestingly, however, the civic triumph stages Philip's redemp tion. He may have come to Ghent to imitate the Fourth Advent, either to condemn or to save the citizens, but at the heart of the show he finds himself coming before the Lamb equally with all the other members of the congregation of the blessed. As a drama of the Fourth Advent, the civic triumph brings a sinful Duke before Christ. In the show's central scene, the Lamb redeems rather than judges Philip. As Van Eyck's famous image would have it, the Lamb indeed sacrifices himself for Philip's sins as his blood flows into the Eucharistic chalice. By the same token, the wine in the Fountain of Life flows for Philip as well. What the Duke needs redeeming from, of course, is his wrath against Ghent. The dra matic action of the triumph stages the giving up of his old vengeful self and the embracing of his new redemptive self. In that action, moreover, lies a second act of redemption. By renouncing his former vengeful self and embracing a new pastoral persona, Philip redeems himself in the eyes of his people. 5. The Visio Pacis as Threatened Paradise In dramatizing the king's entry in terms of the Fourth Advent, the medieval civic triumph celebrates the king's power to transform both the symbolic landscape and the lives of his people. At the same time, how ever, the civic triumphs are often acutely aware of the tenuousness, the impermanence, of these transformations. The earthly king, after all, can only imitate the heavenly one. He may create an Apocalyptic garden-state in the image of the New Jerusalem, but he must build it in the midst of the fallen world which threatens its very existence. It can be only an image, after all; made of mortal earth, it must inevitably pass away. As a result, many of the paradises created in civic triumphs are fraught with intimations of their own mortality. Even in the act of celebrating the -280280.

appearance of paradise upon earth, they betray anxiety about the greater apocalypse still to come. When Francis I entered Lyons ( 1515), the moment was full of such paradoxical apocalyptic loomings. This was no mere inaugural progress for the new king, who had been crowned less than a year before. He was passing thorough Lyons on the way to the conquest of Milan. His approach to the city at the head of an army may well have cast him in the role of a wrathful king come to wreak a doom 'so jrus and so cru ell, Pat no tong may tell'. But that was how he wished to present himself to his Italian enemies, not to his French subjects. If Milan portended an Armageddon to come, Lyons must seem a vislo pacis by contrast. Located on the border between France and Italy, however, the city understandably suffered the sorts of anxieties that all cities on the front lines must feel. Lyons may have seemed a peaceful garden, but it was also a threatened one. As a consequence, Francis entered the city not primarily to create paradise for the elect, but to reassure a city fearful of a threatened apoca lypse. He sought to safeguard his peaceful garden-state by chivalric mil itancy. If Charles V and Henry VIII transformed London into a paradise by casting their swords aside, Francis preserved Lyons as an unfallen para dise by wielding his effectively. As Francis made his way through the city, these anxieties were reflected in a series of paradoxical gardens. Each took the form of a hortus con clusus, a garden walled about. From within, they formed peaceful images of France as a harmonious garden-state, a paradise fit for the peaceful life of the blessed. From without, however, they seemed to bristle with defences against a hostile world. The walls which enclosed and protected each of the gardens, indeed, formed the most prominent and unusual architectural feature of each pageant. Built explicitly as a military pal isade, each fence bristled with pointed stakes and ramparts, and each defended rather than enclosed one of the otherwise peaceful gardens 'like the palisade of a military camp'. 120 This fascination with military defences, in fact, reflected the city's own larger military anxieties. Fearing that Lyons might be attacked while the French army was occupied in Italy, Francis had recently fortified the city and charged the duc de Bourbon and Jean Jaquez, the city's Governor, with the responsibility of defending the city in his absence. Actors representing these two protectors thus appropri ately appear as sentinels, brandishing their swords in front of the gate to ____________________ 120The 'clos de France' pageant at the Porte de Bourgneuf: 'Avoyt une clousture en sorte de closture de camp de guerre, que dicte estoit le clotz de France & avoyt par le milyeu une entrée gardde de deux beaulx hommes d'armes armds' ( Guigue L'Entrée de Francois Premier, 12). -281281.

the 'clos de France' pageant. Another of the pageants, a pastoral garden full of shepherds, was staked out with ramparts and palisades built in deliberate imitation of Lyons's new defences. 121All this fascination with walls and defences, however, suggests that these measures had increased civic anxiety rather than assuaged it. Each of these gardens adopts a different allegorical mode to depict Lyons as a version of the Apocalyptic paradise. In the first of these, the 'clos de France' (Fig. 35), for instance, plays upon erotic imagery drawn from the Roman de la rose to construct its vision of Lyons as the object of the king's desire. Francis performs the role of the courtly lover who seeks to enter the 'garden walled about' and possess the virginal bloom within. Aided by the two courtly ladies (La Cité de Lyon and Loyauté) who hold the garden's lock and key, Francis penetrates the garden and possesses the flower by occupying its topmost bloom. 122 A second alle gory calls upon the imagery of the unicorn hunt. The Virgin Peace sits enthroned within a garden named 'le parc de France', its gate open to tempt the unicorn (Tranquillity) to enter and put his head in the lap of the virgin. Francis, as royal hunter, must encourage Tranquillity to enter the garden by driving away the 'Great Bear', representing the Italians and the Swiss, who frighten the unicorn and threaten the park. We notice here for the first time how threatened these garden land scapes seem, how tentative their visio pacis, how fragile their grasp upon the 'life of the blessed in paradise'. There is a bear raging outside the 'parc de France', for instance, and the gate to the hortus conclusus stands open. At the moment Lyons has peace, but without the tranquillity that should accompany it. Will the unicorn find its way into the garden, thus restoring Tranquillity to the Virgin Peace? Or will the bear frighten the unicorn away, enter the garden, and molest the virgin? The 'dos de France', similarly, may rightly appeal to Francis as an object of his royal desire, but at the same time it has constructed elaborate defences against the attentions of other princes. ____________________ 121

'Lequel parc, en front dudict eschaffault, traverssoit icelluy & estoyent arranchés lesdicts paulx & clousture de parc en la sorte & mamere que pour lots se faisoyent les rampars de la. crue clousture & nouvelle fortification de ladicte ville de Lyon, sur le quartier & pays de Bresse' (ibid. 45). 122 The fleur-de-lis, indeed, represents the result of this act of dynastic generation. A kind of Jesse Tree, it stands ready to display the King's genealogy. So far, however, Francis's family tree is only an abstract one, because he has not yet married. It thus contains abstractions -- ' France' and 'Grace de Dieu' -- but no actual children. Indeed, it specifically reserves two of its branches for a future dauphin and whatever other 'royale génération' may yet appear in the future. All this courtly erotic imagery thus invites the King to play his part as the garden's royal lover and con tribute new buds to the fleur-de-lis. Francis, as the garden's proper lover, thus creates the 'clos de France' through a virtuous act of royal possession.

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35. Le Clos de France. Entry of Francis I into Lyons, 1515

The city may offer itself to Francis as a lover, but otherwise it pre sents itself to the world as a 'Civitas Inviolata', according to a legend emblazoned across the pageant. That legend means, we are told, that the 'clos de France' remains 'Inviolata' precisely because ' Lyons has never been subjected to any foreign princes, but has always remained obedient and loyal to the kings of France.' As a garden closed about, the city thus presents itself to the rest of the world according to the sacred imagery of the Virgin, whose conventional symbols include both the hortus conclusus -283283.

(because she is virgo intacta) and the lily (as a sign of her chastity). The military palisade which serves as the wall of the hortus conclusus thus pro tects the garden's chaste inviolability from the threat of forcible violation. Since the King is about to leave the 'clos de France', Lyons is forced to face the possibility of just such a violation. The security, peace, and chastity of the city thus present themselves as a potential paradise lost; with the King gone, the garden depends for its continued existence as a 'Civitas Inviolata' upon the strength of its palisade and the zeal of its knightly protectors. Perhaps the most evocative image of Lyons as a threatened paradise took the form of the extraordinary 'parc de bergerie' that awaited Francis as he made his way through the streets of the city towards Saint-Sébastian hill. Such a 'parc' should have resembled the Rouen paradise of 1485, with its bucolic shepherds dancing around a Fountain of Grace. The bergiers who inhabitant this Lyons pageant represent precisely the sort of peaceful citizens one would expect from the genre: actors dressed alike as shepherds but with distinctive enough costumes so that the shepherdess can personify the City of Lyons while the three male shepherds can rep resent the city's three estates ( l'Église, Marchandise, Peuple). 123 The wall enclosing this 'parc de bergerie', however, startlingly challenges this image of the peaceful Jerusalem. As in the city's other garden pageants, a mil itary fence, rather than a garden wall, surrounds this hortus conclusus. These Lyonnais shepherds, indeed, are hard at work militantly staking out their garden with ramparts and palisades. 124 The shepherds seem terrified rather than joyous; instead of dancing or playing music, they diligently toil to construct and strengthen the protective walls of their park. 125 Instead of the transformed garden-world presided over by the Prince of Peace, these emblems immediately characterize Lyons as a threatened and 'fallen' land scape desperately hoping for the advent of a Messiah. At Francis's approach, the pageant actors perform once again the Nativity drama of angelic annunciation and pastoral inspiration. A her ald ('poste') -- whose name Joyeuse Nouvelle recalls the 'tidings of great joy' which the angels proclaimed to the shepherds at Christmas -- enters ____________________ 123

'Dedens ledict parc estoyent quatre personnages, c'est assavoyr troiz bergiers & une bergiére, lesquelz estoyent bien vestus & fournis de tous acoultremens de bergerie, toutesfoiz en leurs habis différens scelon leurs norns' ( Guigue, L'Entrée de Françis Premier,45). 124 'Lequel parc, en front dudict eschaffault, traverssoit icelluy & estoyent arranchés lesdicts paulx & clousture de parc en la sorte & maniére que pour lots se faisoyent les rampars de la crue clousture & nouvelle fortification de ladicte ville de Lyon, sur le quartier & pays de Bresse' (ibid. 45). 125 'Lesdictz troyz bergiers & bergiére faisoyent & travailloyent á fayre la clousture de leurdict parc' (ibid. 45).

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the garden, blows his trumpet, commands the shepherds to cease their labours, and bids them rejoice and sing. The High Shepherd, the great King of France, Joyeuse Nouvelle proclaims, has come to transform their woe to delight and reward those whose hearts have served the fleur-de lis. Their labour at an end, the four shepherds now rejoice in separate speeches. They address the King directly to express the love and loyalty they feel for their 'hault pasteur' and 'noble roy François'.126 Perhaps, responding to Joyeuse Nouvelle's invitation, they even play music as the -King leaves this scaffold for the next. The transformation which the King occasions is here an exclusively spiritual one. By his coming, he inspires the shepherds with joy and permits them to fulfil their essential natures as peaceful, musical, and loving subjects. By playing the Christmas king, therefore, Francis's advent seems after all to transform a fallen garden into a version of the earthly paradise. His entry into Lyons apparently restores the city to its lost innocence. The -trouble with this scenario, of course, is that Francis's own actions are the ones which have threatened and corrupted these garden landscapes in the first place. Francis, after all, is responsible for fortifying all these peaceful gardens -- protecting them, perhaps, but changing their natures nevertheless. Because the King is leaving France to conquer Milan, the 'Civitas Inviolata' faces the threat of violation from foreign princes who may now try to force their way into the hortus conclusus. The Virgin Peace may presently reign supreme within the 'parc de France', but the king's Italian campaign has banished Tranquillity from the garden and the Great Bear rages menacingly just outside the palisades. Much depends upon the strength of the city's defences, but those very defences have tainted the garden with the penalty of the Fall. Instead of watching their sheep and making music, the shepherds labour feverishly about the defences of the 'parc de bergerie', and only the King's advent can restore them to something like their prelapsarian state. But how permanent can such a restoration be when the King's own militancy appears to be com promising the peace of each of these gardens? Even as it voices these anxieties, the triumph also manages -- however 'loyally' and delicately -- to identify the very origin of these threats to the city's peaceful gardens. Towards the middle of the triumph -- between the lparc de France' and the 'parc de bergerie' -- Francis enters yet another hortus conclusus, albeit a 'foreign' one: the 'jardin de Milan' (Fig. 36).127 Amidst so many anxieties about the transformations that Lyons may be suffering as a result of Francis's attempt to conquer Milan, this pageant ____________________ 126Ibid. 47-8. 127Ibid. 39-42. -285285.

36. Le Jardin de Milan. Entry of Francis I into Lyons, 1515

offers a favourable -- even flattering -- view of the King's military adventure. The 'jardin de Milan', as it turns out, is a modern version of the Gardens of the Hesperides. Lodovico Sforza (Le More) appears in the villain's role as the giant Ajax, who has seized the garden 'by force, tyranny, and cupid ity of having the fruit of an apple tree bearing golden apples'. Francis (Noble Champion) plays the part of Hercules in this mythic-chivalric quest; he selflessly undertakes this 'enterprise' on behalf of the daughters of the Hesperides, who have been deprived of their rightful inheritance -286286.

by Ajax. This pageant thus goes a long way towards identifying Le More as the villain of the entire civic triumph. As the covetous usurper of gar dens he has already seized the 'jardin de Milan', and he threatens as well the 'clos de France'. Further, the 'Great Bear', who we see here rampag ing through the Milanese garden, is the same animal who, in an earlier pageant, frightened the unicorn of Tranquillity from entering the 'parc de France'. As the Noble Champion of the civic triumph, Francis cer tainly plays the hero's role, and he rightly defends the 'clos de France' against the depredations of such a villain. Nevertheless, even this mythic interpretation is problematic. If we are to condemn the More for his cupidinous desire for the golden apples, how then are we to regard the spectacle of the Noble Champion, who has climbed atop the roof of the gateway to the 'jardin' and is busily helping himself to the same golden apples? Is this the noble reward of chivalric enterprise, a virtuous imitation of a mythic prototype, or do we merely see a small boy greedily stealing apples? Does not this image of a man stealing apples from a garden suggest in some ways the Garden of Eden and thus the Fall? Further, if Noble Champion is the hero of the piece, why is he being upstaged by Bon Droict, who stands squarely centre stage in his counsellor's robe, asserting law rather than force of arms? Given all of the Lyonnais anxieties about violating gardens, what are we to make of the fact that the King of France has in fact invaded a Milanese garden -- a hortus conclusus, moreover, that is not bristling with military palisades but which is merely surrounded by 'an enclosure of sil ver pickets, like the fence of a garden'?128 On the one hand, Francis has turned peaceful French gardens into armed camps; on the other, he has invaded the peace of a Milanese garden. Are we not supposed to recog nize this similarity as in some sense ironical? And what do we make of the More and his 'Great Bear', who looks so very much like a lapdog in the illustration. Can this really be the ferocious beast that so terrified the unicorn outside the 'parc de France'? Can the More be so threatening to France that he compels the king to invade Italy? Even if he is so vicious, does the More threaten the peaceful French gardens because he covetously desires to possess them and violate them, or merely because the King's attempted conquest of Milan subjects those peaceful French gardens to the More's reprisals? So much depends upon the character of the prince. The civic triumph, indeed, professes outward confidence in the King's noble character. On the one hand, as we have seen, it stages epiphanies of Francis as a trés ____________________ une closture de palis argentés, en sorte de closture de jardin' (ibid. 39).

128'Avoyt

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chrétien king in the image of Clovis and fills the streets with symbolic ladies who manifest the King's virtues (above, Chapter 3 and Fig. 22). Provided that the King lives up to these hopeful epiphanies, all will be well. On the other hand, it represents the fortification of Lyons as a prud ent military precaution in the face of the King's conquest of Italy. In this sense, the King's character is very much in question, for his fascination with those golden apples in an Italian garden may well be responsible for despoiling and corrupting the garden-state of France. Above all, this triumph, like so many other Fourth Advent triumphs, celebrates the King's power to transform the city and the lives of its peo ple. For the first time, however, we encounter a triumph that may well voice some disquiet over the King's transformational power. To judge from these pageants, Lyons was already a garden-state before the King's arrival. The civic triumph, as a consequence, dramatizes the effects of the King's advent upon these various images of paradise. On his way to despoil one paradise of its golden apples -- the 'jardin de Milan' -- he is forced to fortify the three French gardens against the threat of violation by foreign princes. These fortifications may successfully hold the fallen world at bay and keep the city 'Inviolata', but they nevertheless also trans form all those idealized gardens into military camps, and peaceful shep herds into rampart-building navvies. What has happened, one wonders, to the visio pacis and the 'life of the blessed in paradise'? As Francis enters Lyons, an apocalyptic drama of some sort certainly does takes place. But what sort of apocalypse? Is this a story of paradise gained, paradise pre served, or paradise lost? The King's power to transform the city and the lives of its people may, after all, lead to disaster as well as triumph. The King's advent might prove to be either a punishing visitation or a joyful annunciation. Ultimately, this extraordinary triumph chooses to dramat ize the ambiguous nature of the King's power to affect his people. In so doing, it confronts the King with the city's fears for the future as well as with its hopes. -288288.

6 The Queen's Advent 1. Assumpt aboue the Heuenly Ierarchie On 9 December 1496, the city of Brussels welcomed its new ruler with an especially elaborate civic triumph. According to the fashion of Flemish entries, the show, which took place at night, was lit by torches mounted atop booth-shaped pageant stages. As was their custom, the Chambers of Rhetoric devised and performed the pageants, and the scale of the show, measured by the number and variety of pageant stages, was designed to rival the famous civic triumphs of the Burgundian past. The Chambers of Bruges had mounted twenty-one pageants for Philip the Good's entry in 1440, and the Ghent Rhetoricians' famous triumph of 1458 also con sisted of about twenty such pageants. The twenty-nine pageants staged by the Brussels Chambers of Rhetoric on this occasion thus bested those celebrated shows and staked the city's claim of pre-eminence among its rivals. They also tested the ingenuity of the Chambers, for each of the brilliantly lit booth stages would have to present a scene drawn from bib lical history or classical myth appropriate to the occasion. The coincid ence of liturgical and political occasion, however, must have powerfully stimulated the imaginations of the Rhetoricians. Because the new ruler was entering Brussels for the first time during the second week of Advent, the temptation to fill the stages with Christ-like epiphanies must have seemed irresistible. At several of the booth stages, Advent prophets might appear to announce the coming of the city's new christus; at another stage, shepherds might be shown hearing the glad tidings from angels; a Jesse Tree might sprout forth a new bud at another; the Four Daughters of God might kiss and reconcile; Magi might bend their knees to an infant Saviour; the Queen of Sheba might come from afar to witness the great ness and glory of Solomon; John the Baptist might behold the Lamb of God and make straight the ways of the Lord. In the event, however, the Brussels rhetoricians found none of these subjects suitable. Joanna of Castile entered Brussels as the city's new Archduchess, but as a woman, she could not appropriately be received as a Christ-like saviour. That role was reserved for her spouse, the Archduke Philip. As a female consort, she expected to play other roles and to experi ence different epiphanies. -289289.

37. Triple pageant stage with the story of Isaac and Rebecca and the Coronation of the Virgin. Entry of Joanna of Castile into

Brussels, 1496 The Rhetoricians combined two of these roles in one particularly ambi tious pageant, the most complex of the series (Fig. 37). It takes as its subject the double inauguration celebrated in the civic triumph: she comes to the city to be married to the Archduke Philip of Austria and she comes to be crowned Duchess over the citizens of Brussels. The three booth stages on the lower level of the pageant elaborate a political and scrip tural parallel to her marriage while the single, upper stage defines the ultimate, anagogical meaning of her coronation. The three lower stages form an Old Testament mirror of the Princess's marriage, while the upper stage, if not strictly a New Testament mirror, is at least an analogue drawn from Christian myth. The bottom panels tell the story of the marriage of Rebecca and Isaac from Genesis 24. In the central panel, the aged Abraham sends his servant, 'Elyazar', into Mesopotamia to find a wife for his son. In the left-hand panel, Rebecca modestly covers herself with her cloak upon first meeting Isaac. In the right-hand panel, Rebecca and Isaac marry in fulfilment of God's covenant with Abraham. The Old -290290.

Testament story forms a political analogue to the story of Joanna's marriage. Maximilian (Father Abraham) has sent his servants into Spain ( Mesopotamia) to find a wife for his son Philip ( Isaac). Joanna ( Rebecca) has now just met her bridegroom and soon will be married; together the two will become the patriarch and matriarch of a new Promised Land. In the top stage, meanwhile, the Virgin Mary, having ascended to heaven, kneels before the Trinity and assumes her heavenly crown. The Corona tion of the Virgin likewise defines Joanna's actions in entering the city. She comes to be crowned Queen of the holy city, raised to glory by her Christ-like spouse. This pageant clearly inhabits the same symbolic world as the ones we have so far examined, and it employs the same dramatic strategy. Its uppermost stage, in particular, draws the same sort of typological paral lel between earthly triumph and heavenly apotheosis as does the Bruges pageant of 1515 which we have already examined (Fig. 5).1 Both pageants occasion moments of epiphany: just as the one pageant invites Archduke Charles to see his entry into Bruges as a type of Christ's celestial adven tus, so the other pageant invites Archduchess Joanna to see her entry into Brussels as a type of the Assumption and Coronation of the Virgin. In this way, the pageants define typological identities for the visitors -- Charles as Christ the King, Joanna as Queen of Heaven. By the same token, the same pageants also establish typological identities for their respective cities: both are transfigured as the celestial Jerusalem. The Bruges pageant deviser uses scenery to make this point; he sets his scene before the looming towers of New Jerusalem as described in St John's Apocalypse. The Brussels pageant deviser, however, relies upon the torches and mirrors which sur round the upper pageant stage to imitate the starry brilliance of heaven. These, together with the presence of the Trinity, make the expected par allel between Brussels and the celestial Jerusalem. So too the story of Rebecca and Isaac in the three lower pageant stages establishes an import ant parallel between the earthly Jerusalem and the contemporary Flemish city so that Brussels might appear to its new ruler as a holy city. But even though she enters the city as a type of heavenly queen and seems to experience a celestial adventus, as kings customarily do, her jour ney is hedged by limitations and filled with qualifications. To begin with, the Brussels pageant is not centrally about Joanna at all, at least not in the way that the Bruges pageant is about Archduke Charles. Whereas the latter pageant contrives an epiphany in which Charles becomes manifest as a type of Christ in Majesty, this Brussels pageant deliberately subordinates ____________________ 1Dupuys, La tryumphante Entree, Eiir; see above, Ch. 1. -291291.

Joanna's role both to that of her father-in-law Maximilian (who claims the central role as Abraham in the lower pageant and who appears as the Father in the upper) and to that of her spouse Philip (who plays Isaac below and the Son above). We can see this subordination, first of all, in the way Joanna, as the Holy Virgin, kneels to the Trinity in heaven, or in the way that Rebecca modestly hides her face with her cloak in the presence of Isaac. But in addition, these modest signs of reverence point to the pageant's central epiphanies. This pageant primarily stages Philip's Christ-like epiphany to her, and she will ideally react to it with rever ence and awe, as do Rebecca and the Virgin. As she pauses before these tableaux, she more clearly serves as an agent than as the central actor in the pageant's epiphany. Her presence is required before this pageant much as the Magi's presence is required at the Epiphany, or the Queen of Sheba's presence is required before the throne of Solomon. The deviser makes this point emphatically by means of the passage from Canticles 3:4 which he has placed between the two levels of the pageant, where it serves as the explanatory motto for both of the stories: "Inveni quem diligit anima mea" ( "I found him whom my soul loves"). These words from Canticles traditionally declare the sponsa's joy in her union with her heavenly sponsus. As a consequence, this biblical motto forces us to see not only the Assumption of the Virgin and the story of Isaac and Rebecca, but also the marriage of Philip and Joanna in terms of the sponsa and sponsus of Canticles. Joanna, as she pauses before this pageant, is made to respond, as did those other types of the sponsa -- Rebecca, the Virgin, and Holy Church -- to the Christ-like bridegroom's invitation to 'Come and be crowned'. She pays tribute to the Christ-likeness of her bridegroom, who inspires a longing in her soul. That proper longing of the sponsa for her sponsus, of Mary for Christ, of Rebecca for Isaac, of the Church for its Head, of the citizens for their prince, thus forms the subject of this pageant. Joanna coming to be crowned merely defines that proper love both for herself and for the citizens of Brussels. In so doing, she directs it, by virtue of this pageant, to its proper object in her hus band, the Archduke Philip who is also the city's lord. Although the pageant denies a Christ-like identity to Joanna, it never theless casts her in a parallel role, virtually a female version of the famil iar Christ-like saviour common to kings' triumphs. To stage the entries of their queens, medieval cities turned to a female version of the idea of Advent with its own complex of iconographical ideas. Queens, like kings, imaginatively ascended to the Castle of Heaven as they moved through the streets of their cities. The earliest queen's triumph on record, the London entry of Anne of Bohemia ( 1382), merely reused the angelic -292292.

castle that had featured in Richard II's civic triumph five years earlier. Both King and Queen alike thus came to their kingdom by ascending to the same Castle of Heaven.2 Medieval pageant devisers found a general prototype for such queenly advents in the liturgy for the Assumption and Coronation of the Virgin. This was appropriate because the liturgy of the Assumption shares the parousal imagery of Christ's Third and Fourth Advents; all alike are more concerned with preparing the worshipper for the Second Coming of Christ than they are with commemorating the First.3 We should not therefore be surpised to find the themes of the Second Coming echoed in the Assumption of Mary. Because the Gospels and early Church tra dition were resolutely silent about the Virgin's death and burial, later ages modelled the idea of the Assumption particularly after Christ's Ascension; both were celebrated with festivals of obligation in the medieval Church. The Ascension, a movable feast celebrated forty days after Easter, forms the climax of the Nativity-Easter cycle, while the Assumption, a fixed feast celebrated on 15 August, concludes the cycle of the festivals of the Virgin. Both were celebrated with liturgical processions which re-enacted the heavenly advents of Christ and the Virgin. If anything, the icono graphy of the Virgin's Assumption was more familiar than that of Christ's Ascension. From the twelfth century onwards, scenes of the Coronation of the Virgin conventionally appeared in books of hours, and no subject was more popular for decorative programmes in churches. By the later Middle Ages, this pious and imaginative invention had replaced better documented episodes in the life of the Virgin as the focus of Christian veneration, so that the Assumption rather than the Incarnation now rep resented the moment of Mary's triumph.4 ____________________ 2Herbert,

History of the Livery Companies, iii. 217-18; Withington, English Pageantry, i. 129. O'Brien, "Renaissance Books and Raphael's Disputa: Contextualizing the Image", in Margaret M. Manion and Bernard J. Muir (eds.), Medieval Texts and Images: 'Studies of Manu scripts from the Middle Ages' ( Chur, 1991), 77 n. 28: 'All these images are parousial and demonstrate the culmination of a salvation achieved through the Eucharist. The liturgies of Advent, All Saints, the Assumption and the Canon of the Mass have a summa-like quality. Office and Mass texts for the feast days overlap. The Office readings for the Assumption were, for example, not con cerned with the historical event, but with the resurrection of the flesh in general as discussed in Jerome's letter "Cogitis me o Paula". It is thus related to both the First Sunday in Advent and to the feast of All Saints in theme. Thus a Coronation image might feasibly be replaced with a resurrection of the flesh image without much change in meaning.' 4A scene illustrating the Assumption and Coronation of the Virgin conventionally introduced the office of compline in the Hours of the Virgin, except in some English and Dutch books of hours which used a Passion sequence rather than the life of the Virgin as the iconographical pro gramme for the illustrations. Harthan, Books of Hours and their Owners, 26-9. For the popular ity of the Assumption and Coronation of the Virgin as a theme of church decoration, see Emile Mâle , The Gothic Image, tr. Dora Nussey ( New York, 1972), 246-58. For the growth of the idea 3Cecilia

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The Assumption and Coronation of the Virgin served as the most important female version of the idea of Advent; we see in the Brussels pageant only one essay in a familiar theme. The metaphoric parallel between the Virgin's celestial adventus and the queen's earthly civic entry was already conventional long before pageants first appeared in city streets to visualize the metaphor. Indeed, the first Parisian civic triumph for which we have a detailed record, the entry of Isabella of Bavaria into Paris ( 1389), employs as many as five different parallels between Queen Isabella's entry into Paris and the Virgin's Assumption into heaven.5 The show, first of all, took place on the octave Sunday of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, a date which could only enforce the deliberate paral lel between Isabella's entry into Paris and the Virgin's entry into heaven. Just as an octave Sunday constitutes a second commemoration of a feast, so Queen Isabella's entry could be seen as a second commemoration of the Virgin's Assumption. In staging this idea, the pageants, for the most part, were generally made to represent 'rich starry firmaments'. The second of these heavenly pageants, for example, thus stood atop the Porte-aux-peintres through which the Queen must pass in order to enter the city of Paris. It con tained the Trinity seated in great majesty with little children, represent ing angels, singing melodiously. As Isabella passed beneath the gate, two angels descended from the heavens above. They held between them 'an extraordinary rich, golden crown, ornamented with precious stones, which they gently placed on the head of the queen'. In crowning Isabella Queen of Paris, they told her, they also crowned her Queen of paradise. Before reaching her angelic coronation, however, Isabella first had to pass through a preliminary gate which revealed her qualifications for her role. Above the Saint-Denis Gate she saw the Virgin and infant Saviour -played by a real mother and child -- in a heaven full of stars. While the Christ-child played with 'a windmill made from a great nut', a resplend ent sun -- Charles VI's heraldic device -- suggested the King's illuminat ing presence in the scene. Isabella almost certainly glimpsed a metaphor for her own destiny in the Valois-illuminated heaven above her. The pageant combined the assumed and crowned Virgin with the infant Christ in Majesty in a votive image made familiar in fifteenth-century altarpieces. The Master of St Bartholomew's version of this image (Fig. 38) shows ____________________ of the Assumption, see Warner, Alone of All her Sex, 81-117. See also Georges Duby, The Age of the Cathedrals, tr. E. Levieux and B. Thompson ( Chicago, 1981), 124-5, 158-60, and Penny S. Gold , The Lady and the Virgin ( Chicago, 1985), 56-9. 5 Froissart, Chronicles, tr. Johnes, ii. 398-402. Juvénal des Ursins, Histoire de Charles VI, ii. 378-9. Bryant, Parisian Royal Entry, 81-2, 153-4. -294294.

38. Master of the St Bartholomew Altarpiece , Virgin and Child in Glory

the crowned Virgin looking down from heaven while cradling the Holy Child in her arms. The child grasps a orb and cross regally in his hand to identify himself as Salvator Mundi. Sometimes, as in Jan Provoost's sim ilar image, Christ plays instead with a toy shaped like an orb and cross -conceivably a 'windmill made from a nut' (Fig. 39).6 The iconography ____________________ 6

According to Martin Davies, 'the object held by the Child' in the Provoost painting 'is a toy that could be made to rise like a helicopter and then fall'. The Early Netherlandish School, 3rd edn. ( London, 1968), 163. Compare Van Eyck Virgin and Child with Chancellor Rolin, in which the infant Christ also holds the orb and cross, which is properly the emblem of Christ the Heavenly King's universal dominion. Many paintings and carvings depict a similar domestication of the orb of power; in these, the infant Christ plays with a toy ball as he sits cradled in his mother's arms. Occasionally, as in the WakefieldSecunda Pastorum, shepherds present the Christ child with a toy ball as one of their humble Nativity gifts. In every case, 'the symbol of Christ's sovereignty now appears as the Child's toy ball'. Lawrence J. Ross, "Symbol and Structure in the Secunda Pastorum", in Jerome Taylor and Alan H. Nelson (eds.), Medieval English Drama: Essays Critical and Contextual ( Chicago, 1972), 183-5.

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39. Attrib. to Jan Provoost , detail of The Virgin and Child in a Landscape

of the pageant thus similarly links the Nativity -- Christ's First Coming -with the ascensions of both Christ and Mary -- which are subjects more appropriate to Christ's Second Coming. The pageant is given point, fur thermore, by the fact that Isabella of Bavaria was herself pregnant at the time she made her entry into Paris. Before she might enter the city, gain her crown, and take her place in the celestial heavens promised by the angels, she must first produce an infant saviour. As with Mary, her holy motherhood qualified her for her ascension. Isabella of Bavaria's royal entry thus managed to bring together no fewer than five distinct advents in typological association: Christ's First Advent leading to his Nativity; Christ's celestial adventus or Ascension into heaven; the Virgin's parallel celestial adventus leading to her coronation in heaven; -296296.

Isabella of Bavaria's civic adventus; and finally, the liturgical advent, the octave of the Assumption of the Virgin, which occasioned this celebration of the parallel between Isabella and the Virgin Mother. All these advents point once again to the idea of Advent which regularly informs these shows and gives them their communal purpose and meaning. The parallel between the queen's advent and the Virgin's Assumption provides one of the most characteristic epiphanies experienced by medi eval queens in their civic triumphs. At first glance, such angelic corona tions seem deceptively like those which kings customarily enjoy in their civic triumphs. Just as Isabella of Bavaria saw herself transfigured, by virtue of pageantry, as a type of the Queen of Heaven, so most of these shows include at least some hint of the queen's investment with a celes tial crown. For Anne Boleyn, an angel descends to place a crown upon the head of a white falcon, the new Queen's heraldic badge ( London, 1533).7 Katharine of Aragon, having ascended the spheres of the cosmos, finds her heavenly throne awaiting her, a crown resting upon its seat, 'as reward for Noblesse and Vertue' ( London, 1501).8 Margaret of Austria, approaching the end of her civic triumph at Dijon ( 1501), comes at last before God the Father and God the Son, sitting upon a throne of azure, the words of the Marian hymn 'Ave maris stella' fixed just beneath it.9 Margaret of Anjou, ascending toward 'the faire Cite of Iherusalem, | Bisette aboute with many a precious gemme' during her London civic triumph, sees a vision of the Queen of Heaven 'assumpt aboue the heuenly Ierarchie' and wearing her Apocalyptic crown of twelve stars.10 Frequently, the queen hears the voice of the heavenly sponsus calling to her from the pageants to 'come and be crowned', deliberately invoking, as we have seen, a passage from Canticles used to celebrate the Feast of the Virgin's Assumption: 'Veni de libano sponsa mea, veni coronaberis' ( 4: 8).11 Such angelic coronations always emphasize the conditional nature of the queen's ascent -- they are filled with qualifications that do not appear in similar shows performed for kings. Pierre Gringore, for example, designed ____________________ 10

Kipling, London Pageants for Margaret of Anjou, 11. 146-8; above, Ch. 4, s. 2. For example: Mary Tudor, Montreuil-sur-Mer and Paris, 1514 ( Gringore, Pageants for Mary Tudor, 6; Francis Wormald, The Solemn Entry of Mary Tudor to Montreuil-sur-Mer in 1514, in J. Conway Davies (ed.), Essays Presented to Sir Hilary Jenkinson ( London, 1957), 478. Anne Boleyn , London, 1533 ( Hall, Chronicle, 802; Noble tryumphaunt coronacyon of quene Anne, 17). See above, Ch. 5, for the liturgical uses of Canticles 4: 8. 7 Hall, Chronicle, 801; Noble tryumphaunt coronacyon of Quene Anne, 15; Furnivall, Ballads from Manuscripts, i. 389-92; Withington, English Pageantry, i. 182-3. 8 Receyt of the Ladie Kateryne, ii. 751-805; above Ch. 4, s. 4. 9 Molinet, Chroniques, ii. 490. The pageant singles out the words, 'Monstra te esse matrem' ('Show thyself a mother', fourth verse), thus stressing the importance of Margaret's role in pro ducing an heir.

11

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40. Celestial coronation of the queen. Entry of Queen Claude into Paris, 1517

quite a spectacular epiphany pageant for Queen Claude in 1517 (Fig. 40).12 In this Parisian apotheosis, which he has placed at the beginning of the Queen's civic triumph, Gringore invents an elaborate machine to enable a celestial crown to descend miraculously upon an actress representing ____________________ 12

Two accounts of the pageantry survive. One more or less 'official' account was contributed by an anonymous writer whose text formed the basis of both manuscript and printed versions. The manuscripts, all illuminated with versions of the same designs, must have been designed for aristocratic libraries. No fewer than four versions of this illuminated text survive: BL MSS Cotton Titus A. XVII and Stowe 582; Cambridge, Magdalene College, MS Pepys 1791; and Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MSS fr. 5750 and 14116. Jehan Boissier printed an abridged version of the same text, without illustrations: Lentree de la royne de France a Paris faicte le mardy xij. iour du moys de may. Lan de grace rail cinq cells & xvij. [ Paris, 1517]. Gringore, however, objected to the inaccuracies and misrepresentations of this version, so he prepared his own account and presented it to the Queen. This version survives as Nantes, Bibliothbque Municipale, MS 1337. Both versions are valuable -- one an illustrated record of a witness to the triumph, the other an account by the deviser of the pageants.

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Queen Claude. A golden apple floats down a short distance from a cloud, then springs open to reveal a second golden apple within. In turn, the second apple descends a little further, gives birth to still a third, which produces in its turn yet a fourth. Finally, a dove emerges from the fourth apple, the crown held firmly in its beak. After placing the crown upon the head of the actress, the dove reascends into the last apple, the four apples swallow one another up, and the whole machine reascends into the cloud. This miraculous coronation unmistakably recalls the Corona tion of the Virgin by the Holy Ghost; indeed, the descent of the Holy Ghost in the form of a dove applies one of the most familiar of Christ's epiphanies (the descent of the dove at his Baptism) to Claude's adventus in a way that reminds us of the familiar strategies for staging kings' civic triumphs.13 Although it is essentially a simple rope-and-pulley machine, Gringore has ingeniously elaborated the device in order to emphasize the supernatural and miraculous nature of this impressive epiphany for Queen Claude. But even as he strives for the marvellous, he crowds the stage with emblematic characters and devices that define, qualify, and even under cut the spectacular coronation which he has worked so hard to achieve. Consider, for example, the four ladies on the lowest level of the pageant, who represent, according to Gringore, both abstract virtues (Prudence, Justice, Magnanimity, and Continence) and four noble and virtuous princesses' who 'reign over the realm of France': Madame d'Angoulême, Madame de Bourbon, Madame d'Alençon, and Madame de Vendôme.14 Kings and queens alike are used to being greeted by abstract virtues in such civic pageants. But only in a queen's civic triumph would a deviser contemplate giving such abstract virtues 'real' identities. In doing so, Gringore necessarily presents the four 'noble and virtuous princesses' as patterns of ideal conduct towards which Claude must aspire. By contrast, ____________________ 13

Compare, for example, the descent of the dove upon an enthroned Charles VIII ( Paris, 1484). Guenée and Lehoux, Entrées royales, 115. 14 Gringore describes them as "quatre vertues Cest assauoir prudence iustice magnaminite et continence les qlles representoient quatre nobles et vertueuses princesses veufues qui sont au toy aulme de france cest assavoir madame dangolesme mere du roy tres xpien madame de bourbon Madame dalencon et madame de vendosme lesquelles quatre vertus dominent en icelles veufues" ( Nantes, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS 1337, 6r). They were, respectively, Louise of Savoy, mother of Francis I (Angoulême); Anne de France, daughter of Louis XI and formerly co-regent during the minority of Charles VIII (Bourbon); Marguerite de Lorraine ('la Bienheureuse'), the mother of Charles, duc d'Alençon (hence the mother-in-law of Francis's sister Marguerite); and Marie de Luxembourg, widow of François de Bourbon, comte de Vendôme. The illuminated texts describe the 'quatre veufves' in much the same terms, only clarifying that the Madame d'Alençon referred to was the 'fille de loraine' (hence, the mother rather than the wife of Charles, duc d'Alenqon) ( BL MS Cotton Titus A. XVII, 32 v).

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such characters would seem nearly treasonous in a king's triumph -imagine, for example, the political and symbolic peril of permitting an actor to represent the Duke of Buckingham (perhaps also identified as 'Princely Liberality') in a London civic triumph for Henry VIII, or even permitting an actor representing the duc de Bourbon (perhaps as 'Noble ur') in a Parisian civic triumph for Francis I. Gringore's pageant more clearly honours the four princesses than it does Queen Claude -- they manifest the four virtues while she merely aspires towards them. To a great extent, this portion of the pageant takes their epiphanies, not hers, as its subject. The patterns of virtuous conduct represented by these four princesses further seem designed to limit the new Queen's aspirations to power. To begin with, Gringore has deliberately not chosen the most powerful or most brilliant women in the realm to serve as Claude's patterns. He does not, for instance, include Marguerite d'Angoulême, the King's sister, among the company of exemplary princesses, even though she was arguably the most powerful woman in the realm at the time. Rather, he deliberately chooses four 'princesses veufves' (widows) for his exemplars of queenly virtue. Although princesses of high status, they each have given up effective power to their sons: Francis I, and the dukes of Bourbon, Alençon, and Vendôme. These 'four widows' may indeed 'reign over the realm of France), as one writer puts it, but they do not rule.15 Indeed, one might argue that they represent patterns of ideal queenly conduct precisely because they have withdrawn from the exercise of whatever power they once possessed, leaving their sons to wield uncontested (hence unthreatened) rule. As objects of veneration, these four widow-princesses represent Claude's final queenly destiny: having produced and nurtured heirs, they have withdrawn at their sons' accessions to cultivate saintly virtue. Marked out by their widow's weeds (which make them almost indistinguishable from nuns), the four virtuous princesses become almost hermit-like, contemplative creatures, standing apart from the world of active queenship, in which, just above their heads, a successor is being crowned and acclaimed. The particular virtues which 'dominate' in the four widows emphasize still further their saintly withdrawal. This particular formulation of the Four Cardinal Virtues -- Prudence, Justice, Magnanimity, and Continence -- emphasizes what Spenser would call the 'private moral virtues' rather than the 'public' ones. Gringore's formulation of the virtues probably ____________________ 15"Et aubas dudit escharfault estoient quatre autres dames . . . Representent quatre veufves qui regnent ou royaulme de france" ( BL MS Cotton Titus A. XVII, 32v). -300300.

derives from Christine de Pisan Livre de prudence,16 which considers those virtues necessary to an honest life. It does not particularly consider the virtues necessary to rulers. Prudence thus serves as the first virtue in importance, and even Justice -- far from being a distinctively 'regal' virtue -- consists of such 'parts' as religio,pietas, and veritas. The choice of Continence (rather than Temperance), with its suggestion of sexual abstinence, also underlines the nun-like ideal which Gringore seeks to establish for a future dowager queen, whose subsequent marriages might prove politically threatening. At the very beginning of Claude's civic triumph, Gringore thus makes Claude contemplate her final queenly des tiny as an ascetic, powerless, saintly dowager whose status depends upon the son she has nurtured and the virtues which she cultivates. Even the miraculous coronation, which occurs in the pageant's upper levels, qualifies and undercuts Claude's aspirations to rule. Like the four widow-princesses, the biblical 'dames du vieil testament' who surround Claude and acclaim her coronation each manifest a dominant, queenly virtue. In this case, however, each of the biblical ladies possesses a virtue which Claude shares -- they each manifest singly one of Claude's many virtues. Their presence at Claude's coronation, therefore, serves as an act of public epiphany -- their presence both celebrates and defines the virtues which have made Claude worthy of her miraculous coronation. This act of celebration also serves to define the nature and limit the scope of Claude's queenly power. The biblical dames also symbolize domestic and private rather than regal and public virtues, and thus they too define Claude's worthiness in terms of loving subordination to a king. Sarah, the first of Claude's biblical sponsors, for instance, serves Gringore as an emblem of spousal fidelity; she consequently holds a 'scripture' which reads 'Est fidelia ut Sarra' as a token that ' Sarah was faithful and very loyal to Abraham, her husband', just as Claude is faithful to Francis. So Claude, in her relationship with Francis, manifests Rachel's amiability toward Jacob, Rebecca's prudence before Isaac, Esther's shamefaced modesty and respect toward Ahasuerus, and the fertility which Leah brought Jacob.17 All but one of Claude's biblical sponsors, in short, defines Claude's queenly virtues in terms of the qualities she will need as a wife rather than a ruler. Only Deborah seems to break this pattern, for she alone among the crowd of Claude's patrons is not defined merely as the accessory of ____________________ 16

Christine in turn takes her version from the Formula honestae vitae of Martin de Braga ( Pseudo Seneca). See Tuve, Allegorical Imagery, 57-143, and "Notes on the Virtues and Vices", 264-303. 17 'Le premier persormaige representoit Sarra et estoit son escript tel "Est fidelis vt Sarra", qui est a dire que sarra fut fidelle & tres loyalle a abraham son mari pareillem+t aussi en tel cas est la Royne' ( Nantes, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS 1337, 6r).

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some powerful man. Indeed, Deborah, one of the Judges of Israel, often serves in medieval and Renaissance thinking as one possible pattern for a sovereign, female ruler.18 The devisers of Queen Elizabeth's London civic triumph, for example, will seize upon Deborah as a welcome pattern for female sovereignty.19 Gringore transforms his Deborah, however, from a ruler of Israel into a nun-like exponent of the contemplative life. He thus gives her a scripture which celebrates Deborah's 'doctrina celestibus erudita'; as the Queen's sponsor, she accordingly confirms that Claude is 'full of all good doctrine and divine morals'.20 Even in crowning the new Queen so spectacularly, Gringore rigidly confines the nature of Claude's queenship to the domestic and homely. Gringore's celebration of such homespun virtues in Claude prepares her for her role -- or more properly, her two roles -- as a consort queen. Both roles reflect, of course, one of the Virgin's emblematic identities. The miraculous coronation celebrates Claude as the chosen spouse of the King of Heaven. The Holy Ghost descends to crown her, and a series of biblical dames acclaim her special status as sponsa and consort of the Most High. The lower level of the pageant, by contrast, celebrates Claude's role as mother of the heavenly King, a role symbolized by cultivation of personal virtue and even saint-like renunciation of the world. Perhaps Gringore has even designed the structure of the pageant to suggest that the dowager queen's nun-like widowhood is an essential preparation for a celestial coronation that is the reward of all faithful Christian women: are the widow-princesses below meant to be contemplating the miraculous coronation just above their heads? But even as he invokes the Coronation of the Virgin to celebrate Claude's advent, Gringore caps this pageant with a deliberately ambigu ous scripture which seems designed to enforce doubts about the poten tial exercise of queenly power. Large golden letters, placed just above the cloud from which the dove will emerge, seem to suggest that the miracu lous coronation might rather reflect divine wrath than divine pleasure: 'Attendite a facie ire colombe.' As Gringore himself points out, this ver sion of Jeremiah 25:38 reflects God's anger towards the children of Israel because of their wickedness and prepares them for their punishment: the ____________________ 18

Even John Knox, in The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women ( 1558), is obliged to recognize Deborah's legitimacy, albeit as an exception that God was pleased to make to the general rule of male authority. See The Political Writings of John Knox, ed. M. A. Breslow ( Washington, 1985), 66-70. 19 See section 4 of this chapter below. 20 "Helbora . . . avoit tel escript, Est doctrinis celestibus erudita Denotant que laditte dame est plaine de toute bonne doctrine et meurs celestes ainsi q fut laditte helbora" ( Nantes, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS 1337, 6 v).

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Babylonian captivity. Because of the placement of this surprisingly dire sounding scripture, it almost certainly refers to the dove which descends from the cloud to crown Claude -- but if so, how should it be interpreted? Does Gringore, for instance, play Jeremiah to Claude? Does he thus warn her that the holy dove which crowns her may also swiftly punish her mis deeds? Or does the scripture refer to Claude as the dove, thus transform ing Claude into a powerful queen who will punish the enemies of France? Conceivably, the scripture might even regard Claude's miraculous corona tion as the means by which the dove will visit his anger upon the chosen people. In other words, Gringore might conceivably hint that Claude's coronation represents a divine punishment to her people. Gringore's own explication tries to interpret the scripture as an emblem of Claude's humility: Jeremiah means, he says, that she has no more malice or bitterness than a dove -- indeed, that her humility has made her especially 'redoubtable'. But this interpretation, composed especially for Queen Claude,21 is probably a 'diplomatic' one. Even so, he connects the scripture with the Babylonian Queen Semiramis, who bore a dove as her heraldic emblem, and he therefore draws a parallel between Claude and Semiramis. The Babylonian Queen, it is true, often appears in medieval art and poetry as one of the Nine Worthy Women, hence an emblem of noble queenliness. She appears in this guise, for example, as one of the chivalric ladies who welcome Joanna of Castile into Bruges in 1496.22 But she also was famous for murdering her husband and seizing the throne. In the main, Gringore invokes the image of Worthy Queen Semiramis, 'who was very humble but of high and noble heart'. But Gringore also associates Semiramis with the Babylonian captivity, so much so that he makes Jeremiah's warning about the anger of the dove refer to Semiramis's ensigns, borne by the triumphant Babylonian troops who enslave the children of Israel.23 The scripture thus begs a stubbornly ambiguous ____________________ 21

The particular allusions which Gringore makes to Semiramis and the emphasis which he places upon Claude's humility, of course, would not be readily apparent to the pageant's audience. To most eyes, as a consequence, the possible interpretations of the scripture would probably seem more threatening. 22 M. Lecourt, "Notice sur l'histoire des neuf preux et des neuf preuses", Romania, 37 ( 1908), 529-37; N. Jorga, Thomas III marquis de Saluces: Étude historique et littiraire ( Paris, 1893), 11720; Francis Lee Utley, The Crooked Rib ( Columbus, Oh., 1944), 224-5; Berlin, Kupferstich kabinett MS 78 D. 5, 47r. 23 "Hyeremye le alegue non q+ voeille dire que en laditte princesse y ait fiel ne amer non plus que a vne columbe. Mais vueil soustenir que son humilite la fait redoubter tout ainsi que proesse fait redoubter les princes. Et nous en baille lexemple le dit hieremye. Disant q+ la royne de babilone nominee semiramis tres humble mais de hault et noble cueur portoit en ses armes enseignes et estandars une columbe dont ledit hieremye prophetisant les dommaiges et captivitez lesquelz deuoient advenir au peuple de israel par les babiloniens leurs aduersaires les aduertit que ilz segar dasset de la fureur de la columbe". Nantes, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS 1337, 7r-v.

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interpretation for the scene: Claude is both queen and anti-queen. Its dominant note reveals her to be a humble type of the Queen of Heaven, but at the same time an undertone suggests the possibility of a worry ing, alternative epiphany: a wrathful, punishing, Babylonian Empress. The difference seems to lie in her attitude towards power. By renouncing power, she becomes a humble consort and fulfils the pattern of the Queen of Heaven; by seeking power, she becomes a high and noble queen, a type of the wrathful Babylonian Empress. One frequently staged pageant scene directly addresses the nature and source of the queen's authority as ruler. Many queens' triumphs carefully adapt the familiar Throne of Majesty, so common to kings' triumphs, to serve as the essential medium of the epiphany of the Queen of Heaven. Male Thrones of Majesty, we recall (Figs. 18-20), identify the king as a type of Christ in Majesty, bearing the emblems of power (crown, orb, and sceptre) and surrounded by reverent, kneeling worshippers. In the female version of this emblem, however, the king merely makes room on his throne for a queen, just as, according to the familiar iconography of the Coronation of the Virgin, Christ makes room for Mary upon his celestial throne. From the thirteenth century on, altarpieces frequently depict Christ crowning Mary while she sits beside him upon his heavenly throne (Fig. 41). As the English preacher John Mirk imagines this familiar scene, Christ 'hape taken vp our lady yn body and in sowle ynto Heuen, and set hut by hyrn yn hys trone, and crowned hur qwene of Heuen'.24 Gringore designed a series of these thrones for Mary Tudor's civic triumph ( Paris, 1514). One pageant, for instance, offers a vision of Louis XII and Mary Tudor sitting upon their Throne of Majesty as if they were Christ and the Virgin reigning over the court of heaven (Fig. 42).25 Both King and Queen sit majestically in their joint throne wearing their crowns and holding their sceptres while God the Father leans down from heaven to bless the scene. To show that he regards the scene as a type of the Coronation of the Virgin, Gringore emblazons the familiar text from Canticles just beneath the throne: "Veni de libano sponsa mea, veni coronaberis" ( 4: 8). Often, indeed, pageant kings will complete the icono graphical pattern by placing a crown upon the head of pageant queens who sit enthroned beside them. A pageant for Mary Tudor's entry into Montreuil-sur-Mer ( 1514) pre sents the familiar Christian iconography in the form of classical mytho logy, casting Christ and the Virgin in the roles of Apollo and Diana.26 ____________________ 24

Mirk, Festial, 227. Gringore, Pageants for Mary Tudor, 6-7, 25. 26 Apollo and Diana often serve as conventional figures of Christ and the Virgin, of course. This pageant reflects the third of Mâle's iconographical formulas for representing the Coronation of the Virgin, in which Christ himself places the crown upon Mary's head ( Gothic Image, 257-8). 25

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41. Attrib. to Lorenzo Monaco, The Coronation of the Virgin

As Mary approaches the pageant, she finds Apollo and Diana sitting together in a 'chaise' atop Mount Parnassus. Apollo presents a crown of laurel to Diana, who in turn offers it to Mary. As our informant points out, Apollo represents the King, Louis XII, who gave the crown of laurel to Mary, because she was 'the most excellent and triumphant queen of -305305.

42. Louis XII and Mary Tudor on Throne of Majesty. Entry of Mary Tudor into Paris, 1514

all the others'.27 The gift of the crown thus creates its intended moment of epiphany -- but for whom? For Diana (Mary), the chaste goddess and queen of heaven, most excellent above all others? Or for the Christ-like Apollo ( Louis XII), whose glory is made manifest by the excellence of his consort? ____________________ 27 "La deesse Dyane sur ledit mont luy offrant par la Couronne de laurier. . . . A l'autre par tie la deese Diane habillee de velours assize en la chaise: le dieu Apollo qui luy donnoit la Couronne de laurier. . . . Le dieu Apollo pouoit representer le Roy qui donnoit a la Royne la couronne de laurier arbre de triumphe pour la plus excellente et triumphante Royne de toutes les autres" ( Wormald, "Solemn Entry of Mary Tudor", 477). -306306.

At the very least, queens always share their epiphanies with kings. Whatever throne the queen occupies always belongs to a king, and what ever crown she wears has come by gift, not by right. For this reason, medieval coronation ritual traditionally enthrones queens upon their hus bands' left hands, upon seats lower than those of their kingly spouses. This arrangement, as John Carmi Parsons points out, visually symbolizes the queen's 'isolation from the authority symbolized by [the king's] scepter', which he wields with his right hand.28 For the same symbolic reasons, a pageant queen may never sit alone upon a Throne of Majesty -indeed, she can no more appear alone on her pageant throne than the Virgin Mary can reign alone upon her celestial throne apart from the presence of Christ. When Diana offered her crown to Mary at Montreuil sur-Mer, she paid the new Queen of France a high compliment. Diana's gesture conceded Mary's superiority as a queen, but, at the same time, it also embodied a declaration of superior kingly authority. Apollo, not Diana, chose to give the crown of laurel to Mary. Sovereignty rightly belongs to Apollo, after all, and he can give a queenly crown -- either to Diana or Mary -- as he pleases. In the female version of this pageant, the queen therefore always occupies a joint throne with her kingly spouse as a sign that she derives her authority from him, that she mediates rather than rules.29 For a queen, the ascent to the Throne of Majesty thus always occa sions two epiphanies: her manifestation as a type of the Queen of Heaven serves in turn to proclaim her husband as a type of the King of Glory. In this context, let us examine once again the Annunciation pageant that Pierre Gringore designed for Mary Tudor's entry into Paris (Fig. 2). In Chapters 1 and 2, we studied the ways that this pageant regards Mary's advent as a type of the Annunciation. At this point, however, we can see that it also explicitly regards Mary as an agent of Louis XII's Christ-like epiphany.30 It does this primarily by filling the pageant with images drawn from Advent and Nativity iconography -- images which more logically point to the coming of Christ than to the apotheosis of Mary. In the ____________________ 28

Parsons adds, however, that 'probably by 1318, on occasions other than the coronation, she was seated to the king's right as enjoined by scripture ( III PEG. 2: 19; Ps. 44: 10). This custom was rationalized with the assertion that potential queens-regent were thereby associated with the power symbolized by the king's scepter' ( Parsons, "Ritual and Symbol in the English Medieval Queenship", 64). 29 In some cases, queens did in fact sit beside their royal spouses upon a common throne. As Pauline Stafford observes, 'the Life of Edward the Confessor describes how normally, even by law, a Throne was prepared on which [Queen] Edith sat at Edward's side, although she often spurned it, preferring to sit at his feet'. Queens, Concubines, and Dowagers ( London, 1983), 129. 30 BL MS Cotton Vespasian B. II, 14 v-15 v; Gringore, Pageants for Mary Tudor, 14-15, 26-7. For a preliminary discussion of this pageant, see Ch. 1 and 2, s. 4, above.

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lower level of the pageant, he places Mary on a joint throne with Louis, reminiscent of the Coronation of the Virgin. But on the upper level, the Virgin Mary appears at the moment of the Annunciation. In this upper scene, Mary appears most explicitly as the agent of Christ's Advent. The scene would be quite at home in a king's civic triumph. The archangel Gabriel has just arrived to announce the birth of the Saviour, on which cue the dove descends to impregnate the Virgin. On the lower level, moreover, Gringore gathers a group of musical shepherds around the Throne of Majesty to sing about the 'peace between God and man' which has been mediated by Mary. In its most limited sense, their song celeb rates the success of French royal policy, which has achieved peace between France and England by means of the marriage of Louis and Mary. But as musical shepherds, these singers also recall the Nativity, and their singing thus more broadly celebrates the universal peace wrought on that occasion between God and man31. These symbolic agents of Advent and the Nativity show that the pageant is more interested in Louis's epiphany than in Mary's. In both of the pageant's scenes, Mary is made to pay tribute to Louis XII. Her power, status, indeed her very identity, depends upon the powerful King and Saviour who has chosen her for his mother and bride. Above kneels 'Mary au ciel' the pious, accepting, nearly passive vessel of salvation. Below, 'Mary en la terre' takes her place on the royal throne in much the same spirit as the shepherds sing their song. Both Marys serve as agents of Louis XII's epiphany; they both alike testify to the peace wrought by this Christ-like king. From an iconographical point of view, the positions and descriptions of these two Marys are reversed. The Annunciate Virgin -- clearly the 'earthly' one -- belongs 'below', while the enthroned Mary, a type of the Queen of Heaven, should reign in majesty from 'above'. From a polit ical point of view, however, these unusual positions are correct. If Mary Tudor is to prove her right to sit beside Louis upon a French Throne of Justice, she must emulate the earthly Virgin Annunciate. By aspiring to bear a royal child, she thus fulfils the Marian pattern and manifests her self as an earthly type of the Queen of Glory. In such a pageant, Gringore seems to work against the grain, so to speak, of the imagery he employs. The imagery seems designed to celeb rate Mary as mother of the infant Christ and as Queen of Heaven. But in fact, the imagery more clearly celebrates the magnificence of Louis as ____________________ 31

The Nativity's gift of peace between God and man, announced in the angels, song to the shepherds ('on earth peace to men of good will'), forms a familiar theme in Nativity sermons. See, for example, J. Beleth, PL 202. 100, and Mirk, Festial, 21-2.

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King of Glory, who chooses Mary as the agent of universal peace. Her own epiphany serves primarily to effect the more important epiphany of her husband. There are good political reasons, of course, for Gringore's approach. As a foreign queen, Mary must, symbolically speaking, be put in her place. She must be impressed with French glory and confined to a consort's supportive role in the great drama of European politics. But the Queen's femininity, not her foreignness, ultimately relegates her to such a supporting role. Even native French princesses found them selves treated in exactly the same way. When Anne of Brittany entered Paris as the consort Queen of Charles VIII ( 1492), she, too, saw herself sitting in a Throne of Justice beside her royal spouse. The imagery of the Virgin's heavenly coronation is unmistakable. But the six prophets who attend this Throne of Majesty ensure that Charles, rather than Anne, will claim the symbolic focus of interest. 'Like the prophets prophesying the coming of Jesus Christ', each carries a 'rollet' with an Advent prophecy inscribed on it.32 The pageant accordingly takes the manifestation of Charles VIII as King of Justice as its theme; Anne's adventus merely provides the occasion for his epiphany. Justice himself thus presents Louis to Anne as a saviour, who will both defend her from her enemies and uphold justice, 'by which kings reign'. As with Gringore's pageant, imagery drawn from the Annunciation and Nativity defines the Queen's subordinate place on these thrones. The imagery which defines her Virgin like coronation upon a heavenly throne ultimately serves to manifest her husband's Christ-like glory as the rightful possessor of that throne. For many a queen, her ascent to the Throne of Majesty enforces a sharp distinction between her queenly nature and that of her kingly spouse. Kings, after all, ascend to their thrones as a matter of right. They are already kings before they enter the city. In their coronations, they undergo the sacrament of anointing as a sign that 'the Lord laid down that royalty should be priestly, for through the holy unction of chrism Christian kings must be considered holy, after the likeness of priests'.33 Male civic triumphs, as a consequence, tend to dramatize relatively straight forward journeys from city gate to Throne of Glory as the king, a chistus of God, comes to his kingdom and claims his throne. ____________________ 32

"Et aux costès du dit escaffault y avoit six prophètes, c'est assavoir à cescun costé trois, prophetisant comme les prophètes prophètisoient la venue de Jesu Crist; lesquels portoient en leurs rollets semblables mots en latin que les prophètes devant dis faisoient en leur temps" ( Nicolai, Sensieult le couronnement, 118-19). 33 Nicolas de Clamanges of Champagne, writing to Henry V of England, quoted in Marc Bloch , The Royal Touch: Sacred Monarchy and Scrofula in England and France, tr. J. E. Anderson ( London, 1973), 122.

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Female consorts, by contrast, not only have to be transformed into queens, but they also owe their transformations to the king. Their civic triumphs therefore cast them in more passive roles as their spouses call them forth ('come, my love, come and be crowned') and elevate them in status. Because the sacrament of anointing is forbidden them at their coronations, they dare not claim the same quasi-priestly status as kings. 'No woman', Jean Golein observes, 'ever approaches so near the priestly order as to receive the royal unction' nor can queens, as kings commonly do, cure scrofula by means of the royal touch.34 This difference in status is of course implied in the Virgin's heavenly coronation, which, as we have seen, serves as a general prototype for these shows. Christ has to bridge a chasm between creator and created being in elevating Mary, both body and soul, to her celestial throne. To do so, he must transform Mary's earthly body into a divine one; she enjoys cor poreal glorification from the moment of her death while the rest of the saints must await the Last Judgment to acquire their glorified bodies. But even as Queen of Heaven, she does not judge; she has neither the power to save nor to condemn. She merely intercedes with her powerful spouse to obtain mercy for her people. While queens' civic triumphs always imply this distinction in status, some take special pains to emphasize both the gulf that separates king and consort, and the king's divine largess which permits her glorification. London casts Katharine of Aragon in the role of based upon Martianus Capella's Philologia, a mortal, whom Jupiter ( Henry VII) makes immor tal so that she may marry Mercury ( Prince Arthur). Hesperus, her 'native star', may guide her brilliantly on earth, but it dims and pales as she ascends the spheres of the cosmos, then fails entirely before the seven starred magnificence of her bridegroom's constellation, Arcturus. She ulti mately requires the 'special! favour' of 'Almighti God' (Henry) and the excellence' of the Son ( Arthur) to reach the Throne of Honour.35 The same desire to stress the queen's humble status, compared to the king's divine estate, partially explains the popularity of such pageants as those depicting Solomon marrying the Pharaoh's daughter ( Brussels, Montreuil-sur-Mer, and Paris).36 In these pageants, the bride's foreign ness creates the gulf which must be overcome. They represent the queen as an alien and pagan princess who has been chosen by the Son of David to share the throne he enjoys as anointed king of the Chosen People. ____________________ 34

Bloch, Royal Touch, 103, 281-2, 331. For a discussion of this triumph, see Ch. 4, s. 4, above. 36 Brussels: Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett MS 78 D. 5, 36 v-37 r; Montreuil-sur-Mer: Wormald, Solemn Entry of Mary Tudor, 477; Paris ( 1492): Nicolai, Sensieult le couronnement, 116-17. 35

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Civic triumphs may even depict 'native' queens as 'foreigners' in this sense. Anne of Brittany, for instance, was depicted as a foreigner during her first Paris entry ( 1492). One of the pageants taught her to regard herself as the Pharaoh's daughter chosen by Solomon to reign in the holy city of Jerusalem. As she paused before this familiar biblical image, King Solomon placed a crown upon the Pharaoh's daughter, who responded by kneeling before him to do obeisance. The image self-consciously pre figures the Coronation of the Virgin, but by calling upon Solomon and the Pharaoh's daughter to perform the roles of Christ and the Virgin, the scene emphasizes the queen's foreignness. She has no 'natural' right to the throne, and as a consequence acknowledges her elevation by kneeling to the king in grateful homage. Such a response acknowledges the largess which has raised her so high as well as the distinction in status which will always separate king and consort. Manifestations of the king's personal glory are specially designed to enforce the queen's relative humility. In their own civic triumphs, kings are never asked to contemplate epiphanies of their consorts' glory; rather they can always expect to see their own glory made manifest. Philip II of Spain, for example, encountered an image of himself on horseback, 'vna statua Equestre all'antica', an image which revealed his Habsburg pretensions to imperial majesty ( London, 1554).37 Such images of queens are rare. Instead, queens are always encountering epiphanies of their husbands' glory. During her Paris triumph of 1492, for example, Anne of Brittany encountered a heroic equestrian image of Charles VIII as Charlemagne, carrying in his right hand a naked sword and in his left a regal orb, his crown topped with a golden cross 'signifying that in his time he subdued and put under his allegiance the greatest part of the world'.38 Such an image is clearly designed to manifest Charles's own qualities -- his chivalric grandeur and his pretensions to imperial status. In the same vein, the city of Aberdeen ( 1511) confronts Margaret Tudor with a manifestation of James IV's chivalric glory in the form of a heroic statue of the Bruce.39 Such a pageant, as we shall see, pointedly relegates the Queen to her subordinate place in her husband's dynasty. Even more ____________________ 37

John Elder Letter in Chronicle of Queen Jane and Queen Mary, 145-52. Commentary: Anglo, Spectack, 330-1. 38 "Et la reprèsentation du dit Charlemaine povoit avoir environ une lance de hault, assez mem bru et fourny selonc sa haulteur, tenant en sa main destre une épée nue, grande et large selonc la grandeur du dit personnage, et en l'autre main la pormme ronde à la croix dessus; le dit per sonnage couronné en estat réal, et sur le hault de sa couronne une croix d'or signefiant que en son temps il submist et mist en son obéissance la plus grande part du monde" ( Nicolai, Sensieult le couronnement, 117). 39 Dunbar, Poems, 16.

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dramatically, Katharine of Aragon finds her own glory dimmed as she pauses before an image of her bridegroom, Prince Arthur, revealed as a reborn King Arthur riding a stellar triumphal chariot through the cos mos.40 Even as Isabella of Bavaria sees herself revealed as a type of the Blessed Virgin during her Paris entry of 1389, the same pageant is dom inated by the device of Charles VI, a resplendent, golden sun spreading its rays through the heavens, a manifestation of the King's divine glory.41 For a great many of these shows, indeed, the queen's entry is seen primarily as a manifestation of the king's glory, and only secondarily of the queen's. The coming of a noble and famous queen pays tribute to the king who called her 'to come and be crowned'. As a consequence, queens' triumphs often feature pageants that might have been staged unal tered in kings' triumphs. The visit of the Queen of Sheba to Solomon, as we have seen, features in the liturgy as a prefiguration of the epiphany. The Queen who comes from afar to bring gifts to Solomon figures the visit of the Magi to Christ. Male triumphs use this emblem to charac terize the king as a Solomon, a Christ-like son of David, before whose glory the Queen of Sheba naturally kneels in obeisance. So Sheba, as we have seen, kneels before Solomon at Ghent in 1458 to confess that 'Your glory exceeds the fame which I heard.' In this case the citizens of Ghent portray themselves as the Queen of Sheba, and through her they pay tribute to Philip the Good's divine glory.42 Female triumphs, by contrast, use the very same emblem to recommend to their queens the humility of Sheba, who came from afar to kneel before the glorious son of David. In a typical dramatization of this pageant emblem (Fig. 43), Joanna of Castile kneels as Sheba before the Archduke Philip 'to see King Solomon and to hear his wisdom' (according to the legend inscribed above the pageant).43 In effect, the pageant diminishes the kneeling queen in status. Instead of a royal princess, she becomes a female Magus who comes from afar to witness the manifestation of her Christ-like lord. Such kingly manifestations keep female triumphs carefully focused as much upon the king as upon the queen. Such a divided focus would be regarded as intolerable in a king's triumph, because it would suggest divided loyalties. Female triumphs, by contrast, always take pains to declare divided ____________________ 40

Receyt of the Ladie Kateryne, ii. 473-539. For analysis, see Kipling, Triumph of Honour, 82-9. 41 Froissart, Chronicle, ed. Johnes, ii. 399. 42 Kronyk van Vlaenderen, ii. 229. See Ch. 3, s. 3 above for a discussion of this pageant. 43 Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett MS 78 D. 5, 52r; compare a very similar pageant depicting Mary Tudor as the Queen of Sheba come from afar to kneel before her Solomon, Louis XII ( British Library, MS Cotton Vespasian B. II, fol. 7 v). She offers Louis-Solomon a pax as a sign of the peace between England and France which their marriage has been designed to assure.

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43. Joanna of Castile as Queen of Sheba. Entry of Joanna of Castile into Brussels, 1496

loyalties, to proclaim that proper allegiance to the queen must necessarily depend upon a higher allegiance to the king. The queen may enter the city and play the protagonist of her triumph, but the show always reserves a dominant role for her spouse as sponsor, author, and prime mover of the show. Such a role, after all, merely reflects his higher status. Kings, like Christ, ascend into heaven; queens, like Mary, have to be assumed. The king calls his spouse to 'come and be crowned'; he elevates her to the throne, glorifies her. Queens' civic triumphs, as a consequence, often include kingly epiphanies as a respectful acknowledgement of the king's transforming power. Some triumphs are not satisfied with a mere symbolic acknowledge ment of the king's moving presence in the show; they instead take pains to reveal the real king hard at his work of transformation. Various of the Nine Worthies, remarking that 'your own souerayn lorde & kynge is present here', remind a queen of England that they will 'obey to you lady [and] youre persone prayse | and welcum you Curtesly' not primarily for -313313.

her own sake, but 'for the loue of your lege lorde Herry that hight'.44 A Spanish princess pauses before a London pageant depicting the 'Father of Heaven'. As she does so, she cannot help but notice that her new, royal father-in-law, Henry VII, has taken a prominent standing just oppos ite the pageant to watch the show. Lest she miss this obvious conjunc tion of symbol and referent, a 'Prelate of the Chirche' asks her to regard her forthcoming marriage as a reflection of the 'secret mystery' of the Incarnation, 'the maryage of God to the nature of man'. The Kyng of Heven is like an erthely kyng That to his sonne prepareth a weddyng. And right so as oure soveraign lord, the Kyng, May be resernblid to the Kyng Celestiall. The King's 'ordeigning' of this marriage thus establishes the context for the Princess's civic triumph -- she comes as the fulfilment of his divine plan, his work of salvation in which she will serve as a willing instrument.45 In a good many civic triumphs, the queen's advent fulfils the divine plan in quite a different way. In these, Advent and Nativity themes insist ently promise a Saviour to come, and they prefer to cast the queen in the role of mother, rather than bride, of Christ. To some extent, such pageants reflect civic anxiety about the stability of the regime: the citizens hope for a clear and uncontested succession as a promise of continuity and peace. Charles VI thus delayed Isabella of Bavaria's Parisian civic triumph for four years, and when she entered the city, she was visibly pregnant. The very first pageant of the series, as we have seen, celebrated Isabella's pregnancy in terms of the holy motherhood. The promised birth of an heir, coming at precisely the moment that a truce in the Hundred Years War had been concluded with England, seemed to promise stability and peace -- a welcome reflection, perhaps, of the peace on earth secured at the birth of Christ.46 But such pageants also reflect limitations in conceptual thinking about the role of a consort queen in the royal estate. For the most part, the queen's role as consort was constitutionally vague -- she played the role of royal spouse, whatever that role might be. Perhaps her clearest and best-defined constitutional function lay in the production of an heir. In ____________________ 44

Margaret of Anjou, Coventry, 1456; Coventry, ed. R. W. Ingram, Records of Early English Drama ( Toronto, 1981), 32-3. 45 Katharine of Aragon, London, 1501; Receyt of the Ladie Kateryne, 30-1. 46 Charles married Isabella on 18 July 1385; the entry did not take place until 20 June 1389. Bryant ( Parisian Royal Entry, 81) argues that 'the entry was in fact the occasion for celebrating the signing of a three-year truce with England -- thus ending the basis for the perennial war tax -as well as a coup in the king's government that had made the peace possible'.

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this vein, a mystère of the Three Kings adoring the Christ-child ( Paris, 1504) reminded Anne of Brittany of her duties as mother of the future king.47 Similarly, when Edward IV's Queen, Elizabeth Woodville, entered Norwich in 1469, she was pregnant with her second child. The pageants of the Annunciation and the Salutation which greeted the Queen on this occasion show that the citizens regarded their Queen's adventus primar ily as foreshadowing a princely nativity.48 Even when unusual circumstances grant the queen a modicum of polit ical power, her subjects may see her maternal role as the definitive one. When Margaret of Anjou entered Coventry in 1456, for example, she considered herself regent of England. This unusual circumstance might have precipitated something of an iconographical crisis in a loyal provin cial city: how does one design a civic triumph for the reception of a queen regent? As we have seen, Coventry avoided that problem by focus ing its show not upon Queen Margaret's adventus, but upon the Christ like advent of her son Prince Edward (above, Chapter 2).49 The two most important prophets of Christ's Advent, Isaiah and Jeremiah, appear beside a Jesse Tree to receive the Queen, but in doing so they pointedly, wel come Margaret as Edward's mother rather than as Coventry's Queen. The second pageant in the series especially underlines this point by having Prince Edward's patron saint, not Margaret's, welcome the Queen to the city. St Edward the Confessor thus tells her that he prays espe cially for 'prince Edwarde my gostly chylde whom I love principall'. St John the Evangelist joins him in this prayer, offering in addition to become Margaret's 'bedeman' because of her 'virtue' in giving birth to Prince Edward, whose 'vertuus voyce . . . shall dayly well encrese'. In similar fash ion, the Nine Worthies, who appear at the next pageant, pledge Margaret their obedience ('I hector of troy flat am chefe conqueroure | lowly wyll obey yowe & knele on my kne') and offer her their services as chivalric champions ('I Iosue . . . wyll put me to pyne | as a knyght for his lady boldly to fight'). Most, however, also point out that they do so 'for the ____________________ 47

The Frippiers performed this and other mystéres at the fontaine Sainct Innocents ( Godefroy, Cérémonial françois, i. 694; de la Vigne, 'Le Sacre d'Anne de Bretagne', 295). 48 Henry Harrod, "Queen Elizabeth Woodville's Visit to Norwich in 1469", Norfolk Archaeology, 5 ( 1859), 32-3. Queen Elizabeth in fact gave birth to a second daughter, Cicely. Her first son, Prince Edward, was not born until the following year. 49 REED Coventry, 29-34; Coventry Leet Book, 285-92. The city paid John Wedurby of Leicester 25 shillings 'for pe provicion & makyng of these premisses of the welcomyng of oure Souerayn lady the quene & for his labour Inne & out' ( REED Coventry, 34). Quotations are from the REED edition, but the EETS edition includes some important records excluded from REED. Just as London regarded itself as 'the king's chamber', so Coventry advertised itself as 'the prince's chamber'. This may explain something of the special reverence for Prince Edward which these pageants show.

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loue of your lege lorde Herry' or for the sake of the prince, 'the same blessyd blossom pat spronge of your body', who seems destined to 'suc cede' the Nine in renown. Perhaps the appearance of the Worthies testifies to a need that Margaret, as a queen, simply cannot fulfil: a strong, chi valric, male leader who can bring an end to the political chaos of the Wars of the Roses.50 The Queen's own saintly patron and namesake, Margaret of Antioch, also appears in the show, but only at the very end, as a kind of afterthought, and only then to offer purely conventional assistance: 'yn any dredefull cace | Calle on me boldly per of I pray you.' Such pageants may address Margaret, but they patently refer to Prince Edward. Moreover, except for the final St Margaret pageant, their icono graphical vocabulary belongs to the repertory of images usually reserved for kings. Male patron saints almost always sponsor a king's ascent to the celestial Jerusalem, or they admit him into the gates of the holy city; the Nine Worthies conventionally celebrate the king's manifestation as a chivalric warrior capable of defending his kingdom from all enemies. In the end, Coventry seems to have regarded Margaret's entry as a kind of triumph-by-proxy: the Queen entered the city, but Coventry received its Prince.51 In its studied declaration of loyalty to the child-prince, this Coventry triumph reveals a good deal of uncertainty about the role of a queen regent. The use of the same technique in a Scottish triumph, by con trast, suggests the possibility of hostility toward the Queen, as if the city wanted to limit severely the Queen's role and influence in the kingdom. When James IV's Queen, Margaret Tudor, entered Aberdeen in 1511, she came as a scion of the old enemy at a time of increasing Anglo-Scottish tension. The three children so far born to her had each died within a year of birth, yet Aberdeen insisted on receiving her with images redolent of Advent and Epiphany that could only remind her of her duty to ____________________ 50

The city strongly supported the Lancastrian side. A year earlier, the council had raised a company of 100 archers, intending to bolster the Lancastrian army at the first battle of St Albans. The company was disbanded, however, when word reached Coventry that the battle had already been fought and lost ( REED Coventry, 29). Coventry thereafter became a Lancastrian stronghold, however; the Lancastrians held a Parliament there in 1459 which annulled the Yorkist-controlled Westminster Parliament of 1456 ( Great Chronicle, 191). 51 The Queen apparently complained to the Council that the city's ceremonial attendances did not fully recognize her status as Queen Regent. During past royal entries, the Leet Book reports, the mayor with his mace and the sheriffs with their staffs of office would ride before the king. Traditionally, the servants of these civic officials rode before the queen, and only these servants did so during this entry too. The Queen's officers 'groged' (complained) about this ceremonial slight, 'seying the Quene owed to be met yn like fourme as the kyng Shold Which yn dede as ys scide owe to be so except her displeser wold be eschewed'. As a consequence, when the Queen left Coventry, the mayor and sheriffs rode before her 'like as be fore tyme [they] did be fore the kyng . . . and So they did neuer be fore the Quene tyll then' ( REED Coventry, 35-6).

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produce an heir.52 The first pageant, for instance, staged the Annunciation, the second depicted 'the orient kingis thrie' offering to Christ their gifts of 'Gold, sence, and mir, with all humilitie', while the fifth in the series seems to have depicted some sort of Jesse Tree that 'gart upspring, with branches new and greine'.53 The show's insistence on depicting the Virgin in the role of Advent mother certainly betrays a good deal of civic anxiety about the lack of a royal birth after eight years of failed motherhood. Apart from her role as mother, however, the show seems to deny Margaret any active role as Queen. The show excludes scenes of the Virgin's Assumption or Coronation from its iconographical vocabulary; it stages no epiphanies of Margaret as Queen of Heaven. Rather, the fourth pageant of the show invites Margaret to contemplate a heroic image of the Bruce as a 'nobill, dreidfull, michtie campioun'. In its evocation of a militant, fiercely independent -- even anti-English -- ideal of kingship, such a pageant implicitly challenges the authority of an English queen to rule over a Scots nation. Most startling of all its images, the third pageant stages a scene which does not occur in any other European civic triumph: the Expulsion from Paradise. At Margaret's approach, an angel 'with sword of violence' drove Adam and Eve 'Furth of the joy of paradice . . . for innobedience'.54 At best, Aberdeen's use of this evocative image is highly ____________________ 52

James (later James V), b. 10 Apr. 1512, was the only one of Margaret's children to live more than two years. The three children born before 1511 included an earlier James (b. 1507, d. 1508), Arthur (b. 1509, d. 1510), and a daughter (name unknown, d. shortly after baptism, 1508). Dunbar's poem 'Blyth Aberdeane, thow beriall of all tounis' provides the only record of this entry. Dunbar, Poems, 135-6. 53 The portion of the Maitland MS (dated 1570-85) which once contained this poem has been lost. The Redpeth MS, a 17th-cent. transcript of Maitland, preserves the poem, but con tains a number of blanks where the scribe evidently had difficulty reading his copy-text. One of these Redpeth lacunae obscures the meaning of the final pageant in the series, which I describe here as 'some sort of Jesse Tree'. The Redpeth MS reads: 'The syne of great renoun I Thow gart upspring, with branches new and greine' ( II. 2-8). Laing, in his edition of Dunbar's poems, supplied the words 'nobill Stewarts' to complete the line, and his conjectural emendation has been accepted by later editors (although Kinsey prefers 'royall Stewartis' for his edition, 328). The 'branches new and greine' clearly show that Dunbar meant to describe some sort of tree, whether a Jesse Tree or a genealogical one -- either alternative would yield very similar emblematic sense. In addition, one might observe that the words 'tree of Jesse' would fill out the line just as well as 'royall Stewartis', and would suit the context better. 54 Scenes of the Expulsion, in their graphic depiction of the misery wrought by Eve, conven tionally serve as typological antitheses for emblems of salvation mediated by Mary. To the left side of Strozzi's altarpiece for San Domenico at Fiesole ( 1430-45), for example, one angel drives Adam and Eve from paradise, while in the larger right-hand panel, the appearance of another angel before Mary heralds the Annunciation. In other contexts, the Expulsion serves as the typo logical antithesis for the Epiphany or the Assumption and Coronation of the Virgin. Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art, i. 48; Louis Réau, Iconographie de l'art cbritien ( 3vols.; Paris, 1955-7), ii. 88-90.

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ambiguous. What sort of epiphany is occasioned by Margaret's appearance at this pageant station? Does this encounter perhaps enforce a contrast, so that Queen Margaret might appear as the vessel of salvation depicted in the first two pageants? If so, then Aberdeen embraces her as the instru ment of Scotland's salvation in that her child will redeem -- or perhaps avert -- the effects of a fall. Or does this encounter suggest, rather, a par allel between Eve and Margaret? If so, the pageant becomes a negative metaphor for Margaret's queenly influence. Most civic triumphs conventionally depict the queen as a type of medi atrix. This pageant, however, explicitly distrusts the queen's powers of mediation; James would take Margaret's advice at his peril. Where many civic triumphs promise a triumphant entry into a celestial paradise, this pageant threatens an ignominious expulsion from an earthly one.55 Perhaps, then, Margaret's appearance reveals her not as the 'new Eve' ( Mary), but rather as the author of original sin who has the power to transform James into the fallen Adam and the earthly paradise of Scotland into the fallen world. Taken together, therefore, these images provide deliberately mixed metaphors for English Margaret as a Scottish queen. They eagerly accept -- indeed urge upon her -- a role as mother of the infant Saviour but they omit any reference to an active political role as Queen -- indeed, the third pageant in the series may well reject such a role. 2. Virgo Mediatrix In pageants such as these, the queen modestly defers both to her kingly spouse and infant son in exercising royal power. Others, however, define for her a role in which she may exercise a queenly power essential to her subjects' welfare: virgo mediatrix. One of Gringore's pageants for Queen Claude ( Paris, 1517) takes this role as its subject (Fig. 44).56 At first glance, however, the pageant disconcertingly resembles one of those kingly epiphanies that we examined in Chapter 3. St Louis sits majestically upon his judgment throne while Dame Justice attends at his left hand and Dame Wisdom (in the person of Blanche, St Louis's mother) attends at his right hand. To complete the scene, three humble men reverently offer petitions to the king. The image, in short, more obviously refers to Francis than to Claude. If we were to place the King before this pageant, it would ____________________ 55 Adam and Eve appear extremely infrequently in triumphs. When they do appear, they are always represented in their prelapsarian state -- except for this pageant. They appear, for example, as types of the sponsus and sponsa at Bruges in 1468 ( BL NIS Cotton Nero C. IX, 175v). 56 For Gringore's own commentary, see Nantes, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS 1337, 17r-19v. -318318.

44. Pierre Gringore, Blanche interceding with St Louis. Entry of Queen Claude into

Paris, 1517 instantly identify Francis with St Louis and stage his manifestation as a type of Rex Justitiae. A closer look at this image, however, shows that Gringore has significantly modified this kingly epiphany to emphasize the intercessory powers of the female figures who attend upon the king. In the kingly version of this image, powerful members of the establishment usually cluster about the throne of judgment like so many angels at the court of -319319.

heaven.57 By contrast, these three petitioners -- all powerless, humble, and uninfluential men -- clearly need sponsorship if their petitions are to suc ceed. The two female figures who stand on either side of the throne are in fact interceding with St Louis on behalf of the petitioners. They call upon him to love wisdom and judge his people impartially. As a result of their intercessions, St Louis renders justice to the petitioners by per forming acts of mercy. He relieves the unjustly oppressed petitioner, frees the repentant criminal, and charitably pities the poor and friendless man. He understands that 'the king who judgeth the poor in truth, his throne shall be established forever' (Prov. 29: 14). The pageant thus invokes the epiphany of the Rex Justitiae in order to assert the Queen's powers of mediation. Neither threatening nor com peting with the King's exclusive exercise of power, she mitigates, qualifies, and directs Justice to the benefit of the people. In this way, as the expos itor points out, Claude mediates the people's needs to the King: 'it lies in you, noble queen of France, to help your people, by praying the king that he may nourish the people in good peace and keep them from pain.' At the same time, she also mediates the King to her people. Claude's advent occasions Francis's kingly epiphany. As she pauses before the pageant, she becomes a kind of Sheba witnessing the magnificence and glory of her Solomon.58 She literally stands between King and people, humbly interpreting one to the other. In a symbolically conventional way the city accepts the queen as its virgo mediatrix by offering her a valuable, material gift -- perhaps 1,000 marks in a golden purse, a collection of gold plate, or even an especially valuable jewel. As with the similar gifts offered kings on these occasions (above, Chapter 3), the value of these presents lies primarily in the sym bolic homage they offer the queen. The presentation of this symbolic gift creates a moment of ceremonial epiphany in which the citizens formally recognize their sovereign on the occasion of his -- or her -- first advent. But in paying symbolic tribute to the queen in this way, the citizens often qualify their presentations to make clear that their primary fealty lies with the king. When both king and queen enter a city simultaneously, for instance, the king may receive a more impressive present than the queen, or perhaps the queen will receive a similar present, but only in a clearly ____________________ 57 Compare, for example, the London pageant of 1432 in which judges and sergeants of the law gather about Henry VI's throne 'representing | For comune profite doon and Rightwesnesse | Honour of kyng in every mannes sight | Of comune custome lovyth equyte and right' ( Lydgate, Minor Poems, ii. 277). 58 In the context of this kingly epiphany, St Louis's mother Blanche plays an especially import ant role. She represents Louise of Savoy, Francis I's powerful and influential mother. -320320.

secondary presentation. Richard II thus received two coursers during the 'reconciliation' triumph of 1392, but his consort, Anne of Bohemia, only received a single palfrey. In another presentation later on, both King and Queen received similar gilded altarpieces, but the Queen received hers in a second presentation only after the King had been given his.59 Isabella of Bavaria received a gift after her entry into Paris ( 1389), but the citizens pointedly offered the King one too because, they reckoned, the Queen's entry symbolized the 'joieux advénement' of his reign.60 In fulfilling her role as virgo mediatrix, the queen comes to the city as much to bring a gift as to accept one. She is both the recipient of grace herself, and the bearer of divine grace to the citizens who receive her. The Three Graces gather about the Ponceau Fountain in Paris to bestow their traditional gifts of Prosperity, Jubilation, and Beauty upon Mary Tudor (Fig. 45). In so doing, however, their gifts to Mary merely sym bolize the more spiritual gifts of grace which have been 'sent from the holy heavens' to mark the royal marriage. To make this point, each of the three sister goddesses adopt a Thomistic identity -- Thalia becomes Gratia Preveniens, Euphrosyne becomes Gratia Gratis Data, and Aglaia be comes Gratia Gratum Faciens -- and each becomes the spokesman for one element of God's threefold grace (Prevenient, Co-operative, and Particip ating Grace respectively). The first Grace gives Mary prosperity, she says, because that gift symbolizes the presence of God's Prevenient Grace in the union of the rose and lily ('il fault preuenir affin dauoir icelle pros perité a assembler lesditz liz et rosier'). So the second lady's gift, Jubilation, symbolizes the presence of Co-operative Grace in Mary's advent, while the third Grace's present, Beauty, figures the presence of Participating Grace.61 When she entered London in 1456, almost all the civic triumph pageants recognized Margaret of Anjou as the bearer of God's grace to England. The goddesses Peace and Plenty welcome her as the bearer of spiritual and material blessings, and accordingly welcome her to London as 'Causer of welth, ioie, and abundanunce' and prophesy that 'through youre grace . . . Pees shal approche' and 'the reawmes two, Englande and Fraunce' shall achieve 'rest and vnite'. To Noah, she is like the 'Doue that brought the braunche of pees' as a 'Tokyn and signe the Floode shulde cesse', and to Madame Grace, Chauncelere de Dieu, her advent initiates 'this tyme of Grace' in which 'pees schall floure and fructifie'. ____________________ 59 Maydiston, "Concordia", 11. 223 ff., 431 ff. 60 The Queen's entry, as Bryant points out ( Parisian Royal Entry, 81), was partly staged to cel ebrate the end of the regency and the beginning of the King's personal rule, hence the point of the gift to the King. For these gifts see Ch. 3, s. 1 above. 61 Gringore, Pageants for Mary Tudor, 3-4. -321321.

45. Pierre Gringore, The Three Graces and the Ponceau Fountain. Entry of Mary Tudor into Paris, 1514

To others, she is a 'Doughter of Iherusalem',a 'conueie of Grace', and a 'Prenostike of pees'.62 Many queens most clearly bear grace to their people in the form of a child. The Coventry pageants of 1456 thus look forward to the birth of a prince from Queen Margaret's body in the same way that 'mankynde was gladdid by the birght of Ihesus'.63 So the citizens of Paris ( 1389) rejoice in Queen Isabella's pregnancy by staging their pageant of the Virgin and Child. To show that they are thinking of the birth of a real child, not just constructing a religious icon, they put the child in his mother's arms and give him a toy to play with.64 ____________________ 62

Kipling, "London Pageants for Margaret of Anjou", 1-5, 10-12, 25-7, 41, 64. REED Coventry, 30. 64 Above, s. 1. 63

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When Anne Boleyn entered London in 1533, she too was pregnant. The citizens of London, as a consequence, saw her advent almost exclusively in terms of her role as the grace bearer, and they made it clear that they expected from her the gift of a holy child. The civic triumph they staged thus took the form of a series of carefully dramatized gift exchanges.65 At one station, an angel places a golden crown on the head of Anne's white falcon. At another, the Three Graces (this time in orthodox classical form) present her with hearty gladness, stable honour, and continual success. More worldly-minded givers, the London aldermen, present their royal mistress with a golden purse containing 1,000 marks. Paris offers the golden apple to Anne, signifying the triple gift of wisdom, riches, and felicity. Various groups of reciters present the Queen with gifts of verse. But even as England bestows these material, intellectual, and spiritual gifts upon its new Queen, it expects another gift in return. In a pageant depicting the 'progeny of St Anne', a child puts the city's request into words: Right so, dere Ladie, our Queene most excellente, Highly endued with all giftes of grace, As by your living is well apparente, Wee the citizens, by you, in shorte space, Hope such issue and descente to purchase, Whereby the same faith shall be defended, And this cittie from all damages preserved. The gifts which Anne receives as she passes through the city serve thus as a form of barter -- even, as the pageant expositor puts it, 'purchase'. Behind the child expositor, indeed, St Anne's children and grandchildren gather, offering the queen an image of the fruitful and holy gift they expect from her. In still another pageant, three ladies cast wafers down upon the pregnant Queen with this message written upon them: ' Queen Anne, when thou shalt bear a new son of the King's blood, there shall be a golden world unto thy people.' The confident wording of this scripture (which is also written boldly across the pageant) underlines the urgency of her people's expectations. In no other civic triumph is the queen's role as virgo mediatrix and bearer of heavenly grace so clearly or so explicitly defined for her. The pageants expect their new Queen to give them a royal child who will preserve the realm in the Christian faith. Such a gift, it is clear, would more than repay the gifts given her this day and justify her advent as Queen.66 ____________________ 65

For a full analysis of this important civic triumph, see Gordon Kipling, "He That Saw It Would Not Believe It: Anne Boleyn's Royal Entry into London", in Alexandra F. Johnston and Wim Hüsken (eds.), Civic Ritual and Drama in Medieval and Renaissance Europe ( Amsterdam, 1997), 37-79. 66 Hall, Chronicle, 801-2; Noble tryumpbaunt coronacyon of Quene Anne, 15-17.

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As the city's mediatrix, the queen identifies herself with the citizens' interests, becoming their advocate before the king. Anne of Brittany's second Parisian triumph ( 1504) established this mediatory relationship with her people in a preliminary ritual. Just before embarking on her civic triumph, the Queen formally accepted homage offered by a delega tion of Parisian officials, but in so doing she embraced her role as medi atrix by promising to champion the people before the King.67 Another Anne -- this time Richard II's consort -- similarly accepted a commission as London's advocate during the 'reconciliation' triumph of 1392, where she played opposite Richard's wrathful King of Justice. London arranged for Anne's manifestation as virgo mediatrix to take place before Temple Bar amidst a presentation of gifts that signalled the show's central epi phany. At that pageant, we recall, before the pointing finger of John the Baptist, Richard appeared to the city as the one whom 'God appointed . . . to be His own king'.68 Like the Magi, the city acknowledged this epiphany by presenting the King with a pair of altarpieces, begging him at the same time to 'be sparing of the ignorant even as that Heavenly King though unavenged was always forbearing to his enemies'. As Richard leaves the stage, the Queen arrives for a second carefully staged epiphany. This time, by means of a second pair of altarpieces, the city recognizes in Anne a manifestation of the virgo mediatrix: The queen will be able to speak in behalf of her grateful people: What a man does not dare, the woman alone can. As Esther stood before the judgement seat of Ahasuerus, she made void the proclamations which he himself first ordained. There is no doubt that the Almighty gave you as the companion of this king dom for this: may you be like Esther for your people. Therefore, the city humbly begs for the beneficent aid in which it has more hope. The city gives you these tablets suitable for altars that they may stand before God and you before a man. As often as you look upon these tablets, may you remember the people of the city and cause the king to be a friend to them. Under these circumstances, the offer of the gift becomes a kind of con tract; in accepting the city's gift, the Queen must accept as well the role that the citizens would thrust upon her. In the event, Queen Anne plays her part to perfection. First, she not only thanks the citizens for their gift, but, speaking in the authentic voice of the virgo mediatrix, she promises 'if there is to be peace, . . . it will be ____________________ 67

Bryant, Parisian Royal Entry, 93-4; de la Vigne, "'Le Sacre d'Anne de Bretagne'", 284-5. Cf. Pierre Gringore's characterization of Mary Tudor's marriage to the French people as a type of the Virgin's act of mediation, which secured 'peace between God and men' ( Pageants for Mary Tudor, 15). 68 Above, Ch. 1; Maydiston, Concordia, p. 209.

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perfected through me'. Then, in a carefully staged scene in Westminster Hall, she plays Mary to Richard's Christ and intercedes for the city in much the same way that the Virgin intercedes for sinful mankind. Approach ing the judgment throne, she histrionically prostrates herself at the feet of the King. When the King lifts her up, she explains that I suffer deeply for those citizens and for the city which has thus reverenced you and your household, and I steadfastly beg through Him by whom you bear love for me, if by love I bring anything worthy, that you would deem it worthy to spare the citizens who gave so willingly such magnificent gifts to you for sub mission. May it be acceptable now to return the city's ancient rights and to restore its liberties Richard, of course, finds he can no more deny Anne's mediation than Christ can deny Mary. In agreeing to her request, he invites her to take her place beside him on the Throne of Majesty, thus achieving a final epiphany as Queen of Heaven.69 As this episode illustrates, the queen sits upon the Throne of Glory not merely as an act of kingly noblesse oblige, but because she, too, exer cises an essential, distinctively queenly, power. If the king comes to judge his people in the civic triumph, the queen comes to mediate, to bring mercy beyond justice.70 As an emblem of this distinctively queenly power, the civic triumph repeatedly recommended the example of Queen Esther. Like many medieval consorts, Esther came to her throne as a 'foreign' queen, a daughter of Israel chosen for her beauty by a Persian king. Nevertheless, when King Ahasuerus had planned to destroy her people, she was able to intercede to save them. Esther's extraordinary power to intercede successfully on the behalf of a condemned people made her an Old Testament type of the virgo mediatrix and a pattern of conduct for medieval queen consorts. Bishop Grosseteste, for example, recommends the example of Esther to Eleanor of Provence as the Church's 'legitimizing example of an interceding queen'.71 Throughout the Middle Ages, queens were constantly exhorted -- especially at their coronations -- to imitate Esther by seeking the well-being of their people,72 while cities cast themselves ____________________ 69

Maydiston's pietistic and self-consciously literary account of the 'reconciliation' triumph undoubtedly sacrifices fact to formal iconography in reporting the actions of the two protago nists. These very qualities, however, make the account valuable for an understanding of the icono graphical roles that the city and court valued. Maydiston, "Concordia", pp. 213-19. 70 In the earliest French civic triumph, Isabella of Bavaria approaches the lit de justice at the Châtelet, where she sees an allegorical drama illustrating her queenly powers of intercession. For a discussion of this pageant, see above, Ch. 2, s. 4. 71 John Carmi Parsons, "Earthly Queen, Heavenly Queen: Appeal and Intercession in Medieval England"(unpublished paper), 5-6. 72 Stafford, Queens, Concubines, and Dowagers, 25-6, 30; Maydiston, Concordia, p. 108.

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in the role as the children of Israel, the better to urge their queens -- as London did Anne -- to 'be like Esther for your people'. However 'foreign' the queen may seem, the citizens always present themselves as Esther's people, thereby adopting her as their mediatrix and advocate. Joanna of Castile came to Brussels in 1496 as a daughter of Spain. But, as a pageant of Esther and Ahasuerus points out, the city expected her to regard the people of Flanders as 'her' people and to inter cede on their behalf with her husband, the Archduke Philip.73 When Mary Tudor came to Montreuil-sur-Mer in 1514, she, too, saw herself portrayed as Queen Esther 'appeasing' the anger of King Ahasuerus.74 Lest we mistake the nature of Mary's 'appeasement', our informant is quick to point out that Mary interceded on behalf of the French, not the English. Her intercession had thus freed the people of Montreuil-sur-Mer from the threat of a war with England. To emphasize this point, two dates were inscribed on the pageant in large Roman numerals: that of the Anglo-French treaty which ensured peace and that of Mary's wed ding to Louis XII, which secured the treaty. The city saw her agreement to the wedding, in short, as the political form of Mary's 'appeasement', which secured peace for the citizens. Such an act, the pageant makes clear, further reflects the intercessionary powers of the Queen of Heaven herself and qualifies Mary for her place upon a celestial throne. A choir in the pageant accordingly welcomes her into the city, singing to her -as if she were the Virgin ascending to her heavenly coronation -- a motet based upon the Canticles text, 'Veni sponsa mea, veni coronaberis'. Esther serves as an especially potent emblem for queenship because she embodies the virtue of self-effacing modesty. Her modesty and respect sharply contrast with her two self-aggrandizing opponents, Haman and Vashti. To make this point, a number of civic triumphs stage the scene in which Ahasuerus chooses her for his Queen instead of the scene in which she pleads for her people. Ahasuerus always chooses Esther for her beauty and her modesty. The citizens of Bruges accordingly stress the source of Margaret of York's power as Duchess of Burgundy ( 1468) by dramatizing Ahasuerus' passion for Esther's beauty, which won her a coro nation and royal marriage.75 By the same token, this scene is sometimes paired with Ahasuerus' rejection of his first wife Vashti, whose arrogance ____________________ 73

Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, MS 78 D. 5, 39 v (text), 40r, (illustration): 'Hoc scemate repres entatur Quam vti Hester regina Judaicam plebam ab insidus Aman mardocheumque eximens lib erauit .|. Sic Johanna hyspanie populam suum a maliuolis tutabit | Et fiacti assuerus rex persarum hester reginam Judaica generis nutuis a terra leuauit .|. Sic archidux Austrie Philippus Johannam hyspanie cordialius amplexus fuit.' 74 Wormald, "Solemn Entry of Mary Tudor", 477-8. 75 Despars, Cronijcke, iii. 29; Dits die excellente cronike, 138v.

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and pride led to her fall and divorce. At Sluis, for instance, Margaret of York ( 1468) contemplated contrasting emblems of queenship in the form of a pageant depicting 'quene Astor, that was Last wyfe vnto Assuerus the king' followed by another depicting Vestie that was furst wife vnto the Kynge Assureus'.76 So Pierre Gringore recommends Esther as an emblem of queenly modesty and respect to Queen Claude ( Paris, 1517); these virtues won a throne for Esther and maintained her power, even as Vashti's pride earned her a divorce and Haman's malice condemned him to death.77 Esther thus maintains Ahasuerus' love and her own power of mediation through self-effacing modesty. Her powers of mediation depend upon her scrupulous refusal to assert royal authority and her humble deference to her kingly spouse. 3. Conueie of Grace As virgo mediatrix and willing instrument of peace, the queen co operates in and helps complete the work of salvation. Her civic triumph constitutes a formal and ceremonial act of mediation: by her coming, she brings grace to her people. Some queens, as we have seen, bring grace to their people by reconciling conflicts between king and people. Anne of Bohemia, Richard II's consort, embraced her role as virgo mediatrix to 'perfect' peace between repentant Londoners and her wrathful King of Justice ( 1392).78 Similarly, the people of Bruges devoted two pageants of their own 'reconciliation' triumph ( 1440) to a dramatized version of the story of Esther and Ahasuerus. By so doing, they invited their Duchess, Isabella, to intercede on their behalf with Duke Philip the Good.79 More often, however, the queen's adventus brings the gift of international rather than civic peace. Through their marriages, foreign queens secure treaties, end wars between nations, and bear children who, as heirs of both coun tries, will presumably guarantee peace in the future. Margaret of Anjou brings the blessings of peace 'twixt the reawmes two, Englande and Fraunce' to London in 1445. By marrying Henry VI, she serves as a 'conueie of Grace' between God and the two formerly warring kingdoms: ____________________ 76

BL MS Cotton Nero C. IX, 174I-V; for a printed version, see Archaeologia, 31 ( 1845), 328. 'Au coste senestre estoit ung personnaige representant hester qui en son escript auoit tel morz: "Verecundia gravis et pudore venerabilis vt hester". Cest a dire que laditte dame est vere cunde ou honteuse ainsi comme hester qui fut femme de assuere apres que la royne vasti fut expulsee pour son orgued . . . Comme il appert au iie chappitre de hester. . . . Et que nonobstant la descripcion de son humilite se monstre vertueuse en ses faictz comme il est escript au liure de hester. De aman qui impetra la mort de hester et peuple des iuifz mais non obstant lhurnilitee de laditte hester trouua moyen de faire pendre son ennemy au gibet ou il pretendoit faire pen dre mardochee oncle de lad hester' ( Nantes, Bibliothéque Municipale, MS 1337, 6 v, 7 v). 78 Maydiston, "Concordia", ll. 453-4. 79 Despars, Cronijcke, iii. 435. 77

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'Aungeles of pees shall haue dominacioun,' Sentence yeuen from the heuenes highe, Siewed by Grace and good mediacioun, Pees graunted to growe and multeplie, Exiled th'angeles of wrecched tirannye, Werre proscribed, pees shal haue hys place; Blesside be Margarete makyng this purchase. The pageant expositor here quite properly assigns to Margaret the act of 'good mediation' by which she 'purchased' peace from heaven. Her entry into London literally fulfils the treaty of peace, proscribes war, and ini tiates 'this tyme of Grace' for the realm.80 As this speech suggests, the queen's advent not only mediates political détente between great powers, but also reflects that universal peace on earth characteristic of the Nativity: 'pes bytwyx God and man, and bytwix angeles and man, and bytwyx man and man.'81 The Four Daughters of God, who kiss and reconcile as Margaret of Anjou enters London, fulfil one familiar Advent prophecy of universal peace: 'Misericordia et veritatas obviavrunt sibi; Iustitia et pax osculate sunt' (Ps. 84: 11).82 So as Mary Tudor approaches the Paris Châtelet (Fig. 46), two of these same daughters fulfil another part of the same Advent prophecy. Justice descends from a cloud while Truth ascends from below; both then pro ceed to sit amicably together upon a joint throne, thus literally achieving the psalm's vision of Advent peace: 'Veritas de terra orta est et Iusticia de celo prospexit' (Ps. 84: 12). To underline this point, a character named Bon Accord assembles before the throne representatives of the new uni versal concord which Mary's advent has occasioned: Phoebus (the sun), Diana (the moon), Stella Maris (one of the Virgin's mystic personae, here also an emblem of Mary Tudor), and Minerva (Prudence). As the pageant's designer explains, 'the coming of this star of the sea [Mary] has put Bon Accord between the princes'.83 Moreover, the queen comes to 'marry' her people, thus giving them an effective advocate. Mary Tudor's advent re-enacts the Virgin's primary act of heavenly mediation: 'just as the peace between God and men was once made by means of the Virgin ____________________ 80Kipling, "London Pageants for Margaret of Anjou", 9-16, 57-64, 76. 81Mirk, Festial, 21. 82Kipling, "London Pageants for Margaret of Anjou", 33-56. For Ps. 84 as an Advent psalm, see Ch. 4, s. 2, and nn. 33-4 above. 83'Cest du roy son bon et vertueulx espoux et france la fertille qui par le moyen de mynerue deesse de prudence a la venue dicelle estoille de met a mys bon accord entre les princes' ( Gringore, Pageants for Mary Tudor, 12). -328328.

46. Pierre Gringore, Châtelet pageant. Entry of Mary Tudor into Paris, 1514

Mary, so now we [French people] are discharged of our burdens, because Mary marries with us.'84 Encounters like these between queen and pageant actors serve to dram atize the queen's powers of mediation. As she moves from pageant to pageant through the city, the queen bears divine grace to her people; most often, her gift of grace takes the form of universal peace. As Anne of Brittany passes through the Saint-Denis Gate in Paris ( 1492), the god dess Peace responds to her advent by descending to earth, striking down the god of war, and uniting Francq Voulloir ( France) with Secure Alliance ____________________ 84

Expositor's speech, pageant at Palais Royal. 'Comme la paix entre dieu et les hornmes | Par le moyen de la vierge marie | Ffut iadis faicte ainsy a present sornmes | Bourgoys francoys deschargez de noz sommes | Car marie auecq nous se marie.' Gringore, Pageants for Mary Tudor, 15.

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(Brittany).85 Conceived as political commentary alone, the pageant pro vides a rather transparent allegorical significatio for Charles VIII's recent political and military successes. In marrying Anne, he annexed the duchy of Brittany to the French crown and defeated English and imperial mil itary challenges to his authority. But conceived as drama, Anne's advent mediates the descent of peace. Before she approaches the Saint-Denis Gate, War divides Francq Voulloir from Secure Alliance, and the four estates of the realm (l'Église, Noblesse, Marchandise, and Labeur), powerless themselves to act, can only complain 'that they cannot have any good until War . . . is removed'. The Queen's advent, however, abruptly turns this communal misery to joy. While she has no power to dispatch Peace to France herself, her presence before the pageant persuades God to do so. Although he had previously paid little heed to the estates' complaints, the Lord now takes pity upon humanity and answers their prayers. He sends Peace to earth, who shuts War up in hell. The resulting union of France and Brittany initiates a wider social harmony as the complaints of the four estates turn to hymns of praise as each enjoys the 'goods' of peace: sins are pardoned, merchants ply their trade in safety, the earth gives forth its fruits to the tillers of the soil. In 1533, Queen Anne Boleyn entered London as the bearer of a new Golden Age to the people of England. As the bearer of divine grace, her passage through the city mediates between the heavens and earth so that the gods return to dwell with men as she enters the city.86 To perform her act of divine mediation, however, she has to play two distinct, if com plementary, roles at the same time. On the one hand, as a conventional virgo mediatrix, she seems to ascend to a heavenly coronation. She there fore follows the path of the ascendant Virgin that has become so famil iar a fixture of these shows. The angel's descent from heaven to crown a white falcon thus serves as a portent of her own heavenly coronation. A pageant of St Anne's 'holy generation' foresees a similarly fruitful 'issue and descente' from her. Attendant virgins relay the bridegroom's message, 'Come my love! thou shalt be crowned!' and urge her onward: 'prosper! proceed! and reign!' At the end of the show, having completed her celes tial ascent, she enters the Castle of Heaven itself, 'a fair tower with four turrets' from which emerged the music of 'suche seueral solempne instru mentes, that it semed to be an heauenly noyse'.87 On the other hand, as ____________________ 85

Nicolai, "Sensieult le couronnement", 114-15. Hall, Chronicle, 801-2; Noble tryumphaunt coronacyon of quene Anne, 15-17; Furnivall, Ballads from Manuscripts, i. 364-401. 87 Noble tryumphaunt coronacyon of quene Anne, 17; Hall, Chronicle, 801-2; Furnivall, Ballads from Manuscripts, i. 388-9. 86

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47. Hans Holbein, preliminary sketch for the pageant of Apollo and the Muses. Entry of Anne Boleyn into London, 1533 she ascends to heaven to join her Christ-like bridegroom, more classical deities -- Apollo and the Muses; Juno, Pallas, Venus; the Three Graces -recognize her as quite another sort of virgo mediatrix -- the Just Virgin of the Golden Age. As she moves from pageant to pageant, she inspires the gods to descend, poetry and music to revive, and peace to prevail. Her advent, in short, restores the Golden Age to the streets of London. The very first pageant stage carefully establishes the nature of the Golden Age which Anne inspires. Holbein's preliminary sketch for the pageant (Fig. 47) brings Parnassus and the Font of Helicon to Fenchurch.88 As Anne approaches, Apollo and the Nine Muses began to play on their 'seueral swete instrumentes' and to recite 'many goodly verses to her great praise and honour'. Anne's presence inverts the usual relationship between Muse and mortal. She inspires them, not they her. Apollo, for instance, claims that if he did not strike his lyre strings, they would sound of them selves. Even as it is, he cannot stroke them fast enough.89 Each Muse, ____________________ 88

Holbein seems to have envisioned an even more self-consciously 'classical' design than the poets required, for he places Apollo and the Nine Muses above a Roman triumphal arch. In the event, however, the scene took place at street level, but Holbein's design otherwise admirably interprets the poets' idea. 89 Furnivall, Ballads from Manuscripts, i. 382.

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'accordyng to her propertie', welcomes the Queen, some of them in lan guage which deliberately recalls Virgil's famous Fourth Eclogue prophecy ('iam redit et virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna'): Aeterne iam veris honour, iam secla redibunt Qualia Saturni regna tenentis erant . . . 90 Anne's journey, so auspiciously begun, continues to dramatize the springing forth of the new Golden Age. In particular, her presence inspires a liberal outpouring of music, oratory, and poetry as she moves through the streets of London. Upon various stages along the way, musicians, orators, and poets stand ready to perform. 'Meruailous swete armony, both of song & instrument' greets her at the Standard in Cheapside. Two hundred children await her at St Paul's churchyard, 'which sayd to her diuers goodly verses of Poetes, translated into Englishe, to the honor of the kyng and her'. At St Martin's Church, 'a goodly quere of singyng men and children . . . sang newe balades made in praise of her'. 'Diuers singyng men and children' met her at Temple Bar and entertained her 'til she cam to Westminster halle'. By the same token, Queen Anne mediates peace between gods and men, even if the gods who descend at her approach are classical rather than Christian ones. The Three Graces have each their 'seueral gift of grace' to present to the Queen. Paris again makes his fateful choice between the three goddesses, but this time he gives the golden apple to a more worthy virgin, one who combines 'riches, wit, and beauty | Which are but sundry qualities in you three'. Instead of the division and strife which resulted from his original judgment, his choice this time produces concord and unity. Even the deliberate, almost macaronic, jumbling of Latin and English speeches delivered by the various pageant actors offers important testimony to Anne's effect upon the city. With the revival of the Golden Age in Tudor England, English serves equally with Latin as the literary medium of the new outpouring of the Muses. Anne Boleyn's triumph could not bear grace to London in the same way that Mary Tudor's advent seemed to do for Paris. Mary had come to France, after all, with a peace treaty in her pocket; Anne's advent -representing, as it did, the King's Great Matter and the break with Rome -- rather threatened religious and political strife. By having the Golden Age return, Udall and Leland, the show's devisers, found a way by which Anne might still bear grace to England and inspire peace among a divided people. First of all, this adventus of a pregnant queen promises ____________________ 90Furnivall, Ballads from Manuscripts, i. 388. -332332.

a blessing that the rejected Queen Katharine proved unable to provide for her people: 'a new son of the king's blood'. But as the gods descend from Olympus to greet the new Queen, Anne Boleyn's advent promises an even grander blessing for her people; her coming represents nothing less than a new period of English national greatness for her people. The ingenuity -- indeed the extravagance -- of the classical conceit on which her adventus is based shows how strongly felt was the Queen's role as bearer of grace. To some extent, the importance of this role determined the timing of the queen's civic triumph. In England, queens' advents, like those of kings, formed an expected part of the ritual of inauguration, and a queen might expect to play her role in the civic triumph spectacle either just before or just after her coronation. On the Continent, however, there was a much less clear relationship between the queen's inauguration and her civic tri umph. As consort, she might reign for years before celebrating her corona tion and performing her first formal adventus. In Paris, queens' entries were often timed to celebrate important political accomplishments. If an appropriate occasion did not present itself upon the queen's accession, then the queen's coronation and civic triumph might be considerably delayed -- if necessary for years. Anne of Brittany reigned as Louis XII's consort for six years without benefit of coronation. Only after he had negotiated an important peace treaty with the Emperor Maximilian and Philip of Burgundy did Louis judge the moment right for such cere monies. He then dispatched her directly from Blois, where the treaty had been signed, to Paris, where a civic triumph welcomed Anne as the cause of 'peace on earth and between god and men'.91 By the same token, Isabella of Bavaria had to wait four years until she might enter Paris to receive her crown. When at last she was permitted to do so, the king had secured a three-year truce with England, ended the hated war tax, and seemed about to restore the city's liberties. In this context, the Queen's advent now served to herald and celebrate these accomplishments. Isabella's advent accordingly follows the path of the Virgin's Assumption and Coronation, and she takes her rightful place in the lit de justice as her people's mediatrix and protector. When Queen Claude, Francis I's consort, was at last permitted her coronation and civic triumph, the event was so timed that she might enter Paris bearing her traditional gifts of grace to her people. These 'gifts' took the form of a series of peace treaties which had at last settled the ____________________ 91De la Vigne, Le Sacre d'Anne de Bretagne, 270, 295. Bryant, Parisian Royal Entry, 155, 226. -333333.

Italian wars and achieved peace between France, Spain, and the Empire. The last of these treaties, the Peace of Cambrai, was signed in March 1517, and when Claude entered Paris two months later, one of Francis's subjects could remark, with justice, that 'there was great peace and tran quillity in the kingdom of France, and no noise or rumour of war, divi sion or partisanship. Merchants plied their trade in perfect safety as well on land as on sea. Frenchmen, Englishmen, Spaniards, Germans and all other natives of Christendom traded peacefully together. This was a great favour bestowed by God on Christendom.'92 Not surprisingly, the court seized upon Claude's coronation triumph to proclaim its accomplishments to the people of the capital. The civic triumph's deviser, Pierre Gringore, casts the Queen as the virgo mediatrix whose advent brings this 'great favour' to the people of France. But Gringore designs a deliberately humble accessory role for Queen Claude in this drama of state: he makes her a sort of assistant gardener and sets her to work watering the garden of France. In a sym bolic hortus conclusus constructed around the Ponceau Fountain Gringore thus sets Queen Claude and the two young 'filles de France' to work watering a garden of French lilies (Fig. 48).93 They draw water from the fountain and spray it over the flowers from a hollow golden sphere punc tured with holes. Claude's mediatory role becomes clear when we examine the deviser's iconographical source for this pageant: the Garden of Grace described in Frère Lorens's Somme le roi (Fig. 21). Like the 'rigt faire maidenes' who draw water from the seven streams of the well of grace in order to nour ish the 'sevene trees of vertue' in Fr re Lorens's garden, so Claude and the two 'filles de France' draw living water from the Ponceau Fountain and spray it over the lilies in the garden of France. In both allegories alike, the ladies who nourish the plants are mere intercessors. Frère Lorens thus stresses that 'pe grete gardyner . . . is God pe fadre' and identifies his 'ri3t faire maidenes' with the seven petitions of the paternoster. In watering the garden, they make their prayers to God, and their prayers are answered as the garden flourishes.94 By the same token, Gringore emphasizes that 'the King plants and creates his realm; the queen by her humility waters it, by means of which [action] it grows', and he sets an ____________________ 92

Jean Barillon, secretary to Antoine Duprat, Chancellor of France and Cardinal Archbishop of Sens. Quoted in R. J. Knecht, Francis I ( Cambridge, 1982), 69. 93 Gringore's description of the pageant: Nantes, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS 1337, 8r; briefer descriptions in Lentree de la royne, Avv and BL MSS Cotton Titus A XVII 33 v-34 r and Stowe 582, fo. 33. The 'deux filles de France' represented in the pageant probably refer to the two royal princesses Renée de France (Claude's sister) and Marguerite of Angoulême (Francis I's sister). 94 Lorens, The Book of Vices and Virtues, 96-7.

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48. Pierre Gringore, Queen Claude in the hortus conclusus. Entry of Queen Claude into Paris, 1517 explanatory scripture upon the pageant, based loosely upon 1 Corinthians 3: 6, to make clear the limited nature of the queen's ministrations: 'Rex plantavit, ego rigam, deus autem incrementum dedit' ('The King planted, I watered, God, however, gave the increase').95 As a royal gardener, the Queen merely nurtures a garden which the Christ-like King has designed and planted. Hers is a humble but necessary task. By nurturing the King's garden, she mediates between the King who plants the garden and the ____________________ 95

Gringore applies St Paul's words to this passage as follows: 'le roy plante et edifie son roy aulme. la royne par son hulmilitee lenrose par quoy il multiplie' ( Nantes, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS 1337, 8r). In the original biblical text, Paul warns his correspondents not to boast about their teachers, some bragging 'I am of Paul' and others 'I am of Apollo'. Paul and Apollo, he writes, are both ministers of Christ. Then follows the passage in question. 'Ego plantavi, Apollo rigavit: sed Deus incrementu, dit' ('I planted, Apollo watered, God, however, gave the increase').

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people who enjoy its fruits. 'Preste ie suis', she says, 'de lenroser et de le soullaiger | . . . Treshumblement c me royne de fr ce | Multipliant ce beau iardin francoys'.96 Her symbolic task again recalls the Fourth Advent model of king's triumph in which his mystical marriage transforms the urban landscape into a garden, into a new Eden redeemed from the fallen world of the past. It reflects as well the series of mystical personae which link the Virgin Mary and the Canticles sponsa: 'a garden enclosed, a fountain sealed up. . . . The fountain of gardens: the well of living waters.'97 Claude takes on at least two of these identities: on the one hand, she is not only associated with the fountain, but she also distils 'living waters' into the garden. On the other, as the presence of a fence behind the fountain shows, she performs her ministrations in 'a garden enclosed'. Specifically a lily garden, this allegorical hortus conclusus represents France -- 'le beau jardin francoys'. As a consequence, the Queen and the city combine in a single, expressive image: the Queen's presence in her symbolic garden transforms the city into an Eden.98 Francis, however, meant Claude's entry as more than just a self congratulatory gesture. The King wanted Claude's triumph to play an important part in his campaign to win ratification of the Concordat of Bologna. Because it threatened to cede important powers to the papacy at the expense of privileges enjoyed by the Parlement and the University, this Franco-Papal treaty was deeply unpopular, and the Parlement had so far refused to ratify it.99 In these circumstances, Gringore's pageants carefully document Francis's prowess as the author of peace, and then include references to the Concordat in their visionary garden landscapes. The redeemed garden-world, which Francis wishes to provide for his subjects, depends upon this last, crucial treaty. In presenting this vision to the citizens of Paris, Claude's civic triumph thus mediates between the King and his people to achieve their recognition of Francis's accom plishments and their acceptance of the Concordat. ____________________ 96

The actress representing Queen Claude speaks these words; Nantes, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS 1337, 8 v. 97 Cant. 4:12-15. As the Virgin's mystical personae these symbols form familiar themes of medieval iconography. See, for example, Fig. 13. 98 Parisian triumphs frequently represented the city as a mystical garden. Anne of Brittany's first entry, for example, occasioned an elaborate pageant at the Fountain of Ponceau which depicted Paris as a peaceful garden dominated by a great lily plant which distilled 'liqueur douce et humaine' from five fleurs-de-lis. See Nicolai, "Sensieult le couronnement", 115-16, and Bryant, Parisian Royal Entry, 115. 99 For a full discussion of this issue, see Knecht, Francis I, 51-65.

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49. Pierre Gringore, the 'Clos de Repos'. Entry of Queen Claude into Paris, 1517

In a pageant at La Trinité, Gringore demonstrates that the peace and tranquillity of the garden-world are indeed favours bestowed by the God like king. To make this point, he locates his vision of the peaceful gar den world directly beneath the throne of the heavenly King, whose good will, he tells us, 'holds his people in the Garden of Repose' (Fig. 49).100 The design of the pageant once again invokes the Apocalyptic new heaven and new earth of St John's vision. In the upper, 'heavenly' compartment ____________________ 100For Gringore's own description see Nantes, Bibliothèque Municipal, MS1337, 9r-v. -337337.

of the stage 'a king and queen in their magnificence' sit together in a common throne as if they were Christ and the Virgin. Beneath, a com mon labourer, representing 'le peuple francois', takes his rest beneath a lily plant in an earthly hortus conclusus named the 'Clos de Repos'. Two allegorical ladies, Concorde and Union, protectively brandish clubs (the 'baston de victoire' and the 'baston de prouesse') to guard the peace of the garden. Above, the king and queen bend their efforts to ensure the good repose of the lily garden, the queen by her prudent and knowledge able liberality, the king by his well-advised 'support de peuple'. Gringore does not take much interest in the effects of the queen's liber ality upon the garden (perhaps, however, her pose suggests that she is inter ceding with her Christ-like spouse on behalf of the labourer). She remains a benign, admiring witness to the king's energetic support de peuple' which creates a secure Garden of Repose for the French labourer and enables the lily to flourish. In Gringore's earthly garden, the labourer's repose depends upon the fruits of the king's 'support': concord and union. The clubs wielded by the allegorical ladies, however, demonstrate that the garden's peace depends as much upon the king's forcefulness as his goodwill. Concorde brandishes her club of victory as a sign of the national unity which Francis has achieved by defeating foreign enemies: 'by the victory the king has had in the mountains [the Battle of Marignano] the French people are beneath the lily in concord.' Union's allegorical club similarly ensures that the labourer will continue to enjoy repose 'beneath the lily'. By brandishing the club of prowess, Francis ensures harmony among the princes, and the garden remains a place of repose. In its characterization of 'le peuple francois' as a common labourer, this pageant obviously addresses itself more to popular opinion than to the political views of the privileged estates. As she pauses before this pageant, Claude plays her part in moulding that opinion on behalf of the king. She presents to those very people this image of Francis as a king vigor ously pursuing their welfare. His energetic support has provided them with a secure and peaceful garden where they might enjoy their repose beneath a flourishing French lily.101 Where kingly prowess secures peace for the common labourer at La Trinité, more feminine qualities induce peace among the mighty and ____________________ 101

According to Gringore, le baston de victoire signifies que par la victoire que le roy a eue de la les m s que le peuple francoys est soubz le liz en concorde. Similarly, the presence of 'Vnyon' figures 'quil y auoit vnyon entre les princes mais non obstant ce fut bien requis que le baston de proesse lust m stre . . . et neust este que les deux bastons que tenoient en leurs mains proesse et victoire le peuple fr coys ne fust pas en asseurance soubz le liz qui est florissant dedans le clos de repos' ( Nantes, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS 1337, 9r).

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50. Pierre Gringore, the cup of Tantalus. Entry of Queen Claude into Paris,

1517 powerful in the next pageant. At the Porte-aux-peintres, peace is influ enced by charity and mediated by faith, not won by military victory and maintained by strength (Fig. 50).102 In an upper scaffold, Dame Charity presides over an exclusively female society which is tending the garden world of France. A figure of Queen Claude, Charity herself shines like the sun over the garden-world of France, encouraging the plants to bud and flower. In response to this celestial warmth, a large French lily plant blossoms to reveal Dame Faith within its flower. As Gringore explains, all 'buds flourish by the heat of the sun, just as Faith, who is in the lily, ____________________ 102For Gringore's explanation see Nantes, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS1337, 10r11v. -339339.

flourishes by the heat of the Sun of Charity'.103 Meanwhile, four nymphs busily nurture the garden-world, thus fulfilling the scripture posted upon the pageant: 'our earth yields her fruit' ( Ps. 84: 13). A Hamadryad accord ingly fills the forests with green branches; an Oread brings grapes from the mountains; a Naiad waters the earth; and a Napae covers the pas tures with flowers.104 So successful are their efforts, according to Gringore, that 'there is no region in Christendom which pullulates and flourishes better than France'.105 Just beneath the garden, these apparently feminine qualities of faith and charity draw together the Christian princes in peace. No clubs are brandished here; rather, a 'jeune enfant' pours 'living water' ('eaue vifve') from a golden phial into golden vessels held up expectantly by the Pope, the Emperor, the King, two cardinals, two bishops, and three princes. The enfant' Tantalus -- 'the most friendly of men' according to Philostratus -offers his 'cup of friendship' to all who would drink of it.106 As he pours the nectar of the gods into the waiting cups of the mortals, he mirrors Charity's gesture immediately above. Like Dame Charity, Tantalus occu pies a golden, sun-shaped circle in the heavens, its rays illuminating the scene; he distils his living water among the princes as freely as she spreads her sunbeams throughout the garden. Where she nurtures hope, Tantalus distributes 'confederation and good peace' among the Pope, Emperor, King, and other princes. According to the scripture posted upon the pageant, 'whoever drinks from the phial of Tantalus must share the dangers of his friends'.107 As Gringore explains the peculiar 'virtue' of Tantalus' nectar, ____________________ 103

Although Gringore does not explicitly connect Dame Charity with Queen Claude, he clearly implies this relationship by setting Charity in the sun above the garden of France. The manuscript illuminator certainly sees this relationship, for he identifies the woman in the sun as 'La royne' rather than 'Charité'. Gringore explains, 'Par le liz dedans lequel est foy nous signifie que tout ainsi que les boutones florissent par la challeur du soleil aussi foy qui est de dans le liz florit par la challeur du soleil de charite.' Nantes, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS1337, 11 v. 104 These figures represent varieties of nymphs. Hamadryades, Oreades, and Napaeae -- nymphs of the earth -- presided over trees, mountains, and flowers respectively. Naiades, water nymphs, presided over rivers, springs, wells, and fountains. 105 'Il ny a region en laxPiente qui pululle et florisse mieuix que france.' Nantes, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS1337, 11 v. 106 Philostratus, The Life of Apollonzus of Tyana, tr. F. C. Conybeare (2 vols.; London, 1969), i. 285-305. 107 Gringore renders the relevant passage from Philostratus, 7. 14, as follows: 'Quic qz bibunt ex tantali phiala participes periculorum cum amicis esse opportet' ( Nantes, Bibliothèque Muni cipale, MS1337, 10r). He cites as his source, however, 'Thof c. octauo'. A Latin translation of Philostratus by A. Rinucino had already appeared in several editions, including an Aldine edition ( Venice, 1501-4) and a 1504 edition published at Lyons: Phylostratvs de vita Apollonii Tyanei scriptor Lucvlentvs a Philippoberaldo Castigaws. In the latter edition, the relevant passage reads as follows: 'quicumque ex illo bibunt, periculorum cum amicis participes sint' (u7r). Cf. Loeb edi tion, ed. F. C. Conybeare, ii. 186-7.

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'all those who drank of it together were at once very loyal friends and kind, the one to the other, ready and determined to sustain and support them to the death in all dangers and perils'.108 This vision of a redeemed and peaceful world filled with charity, hope, loyalty, and kindness contrasts sharply with the militant concord and wary union of the Trinité pageant. Dame Charity as a virgo mediatrix rightly presides over this pageant, for here peace depends upon more feminine virtues which nurture hope and inspire friendship. The Sun of Charity and Phial of Tantalus figure negotiation and mediation rather than force and might. In particular, the pageant celebrates the Peace of Cambrai (between Francis, the Emperor Maximilian, and Charles of Spain) and the Concordat of Bologna (between Francis and the Pope) which had seemingly brought all the princes and prelates together in peace and mutual friendship. Because the Concordat had not yet been registered by the French Parlement, however, Gringore makes the Pope central to the pageant's vision of peace. In the upper stage, Gringore carefully associates Dame Hope with the Concordat, for he gives her an ensign blazoned with the arms of God, the Pope, and the King. The garden's hopes for peace, by implication, depend upon the unity of Pope and King under God as figured in that banner. In the lower compartment, Gringore similarly makes the Pope an equal party with the princes. To the left, five prelates raise their golden bowls to catch the streams of 'living water'; to the right, five princes raise theirs. Gringore thus makes peace dependent upon the concord between these two match ing groups, one which symbolizes the Concordat, and the other which symbolizes the Peace of Cambrai. The failure of one, by implication, will inevitably destroy the 'confederation and good peace' enjoyed by all. Such a pageant frankly addresses the people of Paris, not the Queen who pauses in front of it. Claude, it is true, finds herself represented in the pageant as Dame Charity, but if she is to spread the warmth of char ity about the garden of France, she must begin here with the people of Paris. The pageant offers the people a vision of peace, and Claude's advent both proposes that vision to them and influences their acceptance of it. On the day following the Queen's entry, Francis would once again issue letters patent to Parlement demanding registration of the Concordat.109 The court had therefore carefully scheduled Claude's entry to make good use of the Queen's personal prestige and of her traditional queenly roles ____________________ 108 'Car lad eaue avoit ceste vertu que tous ceulx qui en beuuoient ensemble estoient continet tres loyaulx amys et benings lung a lautre prestz et deliberez de eulx soustenir et entretenir iusques a la mort en tous dangers et peritz.' Nantes. Bibliothèque Municipale, MS1337, 10v-11r. 109 Knecht, Francis I, 56. In the event, Parlement found it easy enough to resist this attempt to influence public opinion, although Francis would later win his point despite Parlementary opposition. -341341.

-- mediatrix and sponsor of peace -- so that she might possibly play an important role in mediating public policy. In this attempt to mediate public opinion, Claude enters Paris to play two conventional roles: Queen of Heaven and virgo mediatrix. To some extent, these roles are distinct and conceptually separate ones. On the one hand, as in most such shows, the queen's journey through the city deliberately recalls the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, and her Christ like spouse makes space for her upon his throne where she reigns as he rules. She therefore enters the city as the Queen of Heaven. Her advent transforms the city into a garden, and actors in the pageants convention ally call her to be crowned just as the sponsus of Canticles calls his sponsa. On the other hand, as virgo mediatrix she finds her queenly powers lim ited to influence and persuasion, which she conventionally uses to nur ture peace, reconcile opposition, and sponsor the interests of the powerless before the powerful. She often enters the city not as the performer of her own advent, but as the agent in either her husband's or her son's epi phany. She witnesses the manifestation of the royal Messiah; she rarely experiences such an epiphany in her own right. By so doing, she medi ates between the king and his people, revealing his Christ-like nature to them and directing their rightful fealty towards him. These two roles -- the ascending Queen of Heaven and the agent of Christ's Epiphany -- are never exclusive ones in the medieval civic triumph, however; the queen almost always plays both simultaneously, the proportions of each depending upon the complexity of the pageant drama in which she finds herself. 4. The Queen Transformed: 'A worthie president, a worthie woman judge' So long as queens remained mere consorts, they were likely to continue playing essentially intercessory roles in their civic triumphs. The eventual accessions of a few women as sovereign monarchs rather than mere con sorts challenged conventional thinking about the role of women as head of a Christian corpus reipublicae. Was a queen regnant the same thing as a king? If so, should a city cast her in the role of royal christus, have John the Baptist point her out as the Lamb of God, stage her ascent to the celestial Jerusalem, and sit her alone in the Throne of Justice to preside over the court of heaven? Or was she merely a peculiar variety of con sort after all, one married, perhaps, to an abstract spouse (as Elizabeth I's claim to have married the state, for instance)? Should the pageants of her civic triumph still cast her essentially in the role of a mediatrix? If so, how should the triumph dramatize her mediation? With whom, for -342342.

whom, and for what benefits might a queen regnant intercede? Plainly, neither alternative offered a solution to what was, after all, both a con ceptual and iconographical crux. The idea of Advent supplied both dra matic form and an emblematic vocabulary for dramatizing the entries of kings (the coming of Christ) and consort queens (the apotheosis of the Virgin), but attempts to apply the same emblematic ideas to the entries of queens regnant could produce only emblematic confusion and con tribute to the decline of the form. We see the consequences of this confusion in a civic triumph which the citizens of Bruges devised for their Duchess, Mary of Burgundy ( 1477).110 Having no precedents for the receptions of queens regnant to draw upon, the devisers of the show were clearly puzzled by their task. In the last of their three pageants, they turn to the 'Matter of Troy' to find an appropriate precedent for the advent of a regnant female. Just before the ducal palace, King Priam joyfully receives Queen Penthesilea into Troy. There is no suggestion of a classical Roman triumph here; Priam merely greets her as a particularly welcome ally against the besieg ing Greeks. Nor could the devisers claim much originality in comparing Mary with Penthesilea. The warrior Queen had long ago become a fixture of medieval imagery as one of the Nine Worthy Women -- she appears, for example, with her eight sister Worthies to welcome Joanna of Castile into Brussels in 1496.111 But in depicting the legendary female Worthy making her Trojan advent, the devisers at least discovered a way to dram atize the advent of a female saviour. If the city could not welcome Mary as a Christian Salvator Mundi, they at least found in Penthesilea a female champion who had come to save Troy from destruction. In the aftermath of Charles the Bold's disastrous defeat and death at Nancy, Bruges undoubtedly felt itself very much a city under threat.112 Perhaps, in these circumstances, many citizens of Bruges did genuinely feel that the advent of their Duchess was as welcome to them as the advent of Penthesilea was to Troy. Certainly the scriptures posted upon the pageant emphasized civic joy: 'Panthasalia virgo in ciuitate troyanam amicabiliter recepta fuit' and 'Et factum est gaudium in illa ciuitate cum turba plurima'. But however inspired, this advent of a female Queen and saviour is not a really viable alternative. Because Penthesilea was a foreign ____________________ 110 Dits die excellente cronike, 81v-82r. 111 Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett MS 78.D.5, 50 v-51 r. See also: Eustache Deschamps, "Balade XCIII", uvres complètes, ed. Marquis de Saint-Hilaire and Gaston Raynoud, SATF ( 1873- 1903), i. 200, 362; Huizinga, Waning of the Middle Ages, 61. 112 For a discussion of the political consequences of Charles the Bold's defeat at Nancy, see Christine Weightman, Margaret of York, Duchess of Burgundy, 1446- 1503 ( Gloucester, 1989), 102-26. -343343.

queen, she could not come to the city as its anointed head and lord. The devisers in fact emphasize this point by including King Priam in the pageant -- they might have fudged the problem of Penthesilea's status, after all, merely by having the people of Troy alone waiting at the gates of Troy to welcome the Queen. But by including Priam, the devisers suggest divided loyalties -- the citizens rejoice in the advent of their Queen, but they seem to require a king to represent them in welcoming her. The other two pageants in the series do not even pretend to regard Mary as an independent ruler. Both of them frankly regard her as a con sort, albeit a temporarily unmarried one. A pageant at the old Mulenbrugge clearly assigns to Mary the conventional consort's task of nurturing an infant saviour. In staging the story of Moses in the bulrushes (Exod. 2: 1-10), it praises the 'virgo' who liberates Moses from the water. But the pageant makes clear that Moses, not the anonymous 'virgo' who saves him, is the more important figure; she merely renders an essential ser vice to the patriarch of Israel: 'Dominus deus patrum vestrorum, deus abraham, deus ysaac, deus Jacob misit ad nos.' The description of the pageant, which cites this scripture in full, does not even make clear which 'virgo' appears on stage. Was she Pharaoh's daughter, who found Moses, adopted him, and gave him his name? Or was she the wily mother, who placed her son in the basket and set him adrift only when she could be sure that Pharaoh's daughter would discover it? The second pageant of the series even more frankly regards Mary as a consort badly in need of a kingly spouse. It depicts Sara receiving her father's benediction prior to her marriage with Tobias ( Tobit 7: 15). Such pageants plainly regard Mary more as an heiress than a queen, more as a woman who can transmit sovereignty to a kingly spouse rather than as an independent ruler in her own right. Most of all, perhaps, these pageants demonstrate a telling failure of their devisers' imaginations. They may at one point welcome her as a worthy warrior queen, but they cannot sustain that vision throughout the entire show. In the main, they regard her as an incipient consort, charge her to care well for the infant saviour, and bestow upon her a fatherly benediction in anticipation of her inevitable marriage. In the end, they look forward to the advent of a princely spouse who will provide the military security and kingly author ity for which the city longs.113 ____________________ 113

The civic triumph anticipates Mary's forthcoming marriage to the Emperor Maximilian which would take place only four months later (Aug. 1477); Maximilian then made his own entry into Bruges on 28 Aug., and he was received with traditional imagery, including one pageant which deliberately invoked the parallel of Christ's Palm Sunday advent: 'bouen voor die poorte stont een seer schoon tafereel | daer die voork edele hertoghe in stont gheconterfeyt naer sinen persoon van schilderyen | ende daer stont ghescreuen, Benedictus qui venit in nomine domini' (Dits die excellente cronike, 1931).

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No such reservations about the nature of queenly authority are allowed to colour the London triumphs of the Tudor queens. Both Mary and Elizabeth received the sacrament of royal unction at their coronations, performed the healing miracle of the 'king's touch',114 and wielded power independently of a kingly spouse. Their civic triumphs, as a consequence, are characterized by attempts to adapt imagery designed to dramatize the apotheosis of a virgo mediatrix to suit the advent of a queen regnant. The very inadequate descriptions of Mary's coronation triumph ( 1553) show the city experimenting for the first time with exclusively classical imagery.115 Roman triumphal arches rather than pageants mark the stages of the Queen's journey through the city, and as a consequence, she enters a London transformed into a new Rome rather than a celestial Jerusalem. Nevertheless, in the niches of the arches a few images recall the older biblical ideas. The Florentine arch on Gracechurch Street, for instance, combines images of Mary herself and a classical goddess (Pallas Athena) with similar images of a biblical worthy and a legendary queen regnant (Judith and Tomyris).116 These three forceful and confident female images serve as hopeful epiphanies of the queen's royal nature in much the same way that sim ilar figures had long served kings. They make manifest the queen's royal charisma, and they seem to be defining for Mary an especially militant queenly identity. More importantly, they seem, on the face of it, to be attempting symbolic manifestations of independent female authority. On the face of it, none of these ladies can be described as the loving sponsa of a more powerful, messianic king; none defers to male authority. All three, in fact, embody divine authority. As a goddess, Athena would seem to exemplify divine authority, while the mortals Judith and Tomyris might appropriately serve as exemplars of divinely ordained heroines. As defined by these typological images, Mary presumably comes to her people as a ____________________ 114

Bloch, Royal Touch, 103-6, 331. The few brief descriptions of this triumph are scattered through the following sources: Two London Chronicles from the Collections of John Stowe, ed. C. L. Kingsford, Camden Miscellany 12 ( London 1910), 29-30; Chronicle of Queen Jane and Queen Mary,27-30; The Diary of Henry Machyn, ed. J. G. Nichols, Camden Society ( London, 1848), 43-5; and The Accession, Coronation, and Marriage of Mary Tudor as Related in Four Manuscripts of the Escorial, tr. C. V. Malfatti ( Barcelona, 1956), 31-2. 116 Accession, Coronation, and Marriage of Mary Tudor, 32, 115. As originally conceived, the roster of 'neuf preuses' (see n. 22 above) consisted entirely of pagan women, although their male counterparts, the 'neuf preux', consisted of three pagan, three Jewish, and three Christian wor thies. By the turn of the 16th cent., this inconsistency was eliminated by redefining the worthy women into subgroupings of pagan, Jewish, and Christian heroines. In this rearrangement of the 'preuses', Judith took her place alongside Esther and Jael as the three Jewish worthy women. See Hans Bergkmair cycle of woodcuts, "Drei Gvt Haidin", "Drei Gvt Ivdin", and "Drei Gvt Kristin" ( 1516) and Horst Schroeder, Der Topos der Nine Worthies im Literatur und bildender Kunst ( Göttingen, 1971), 168-74. 115

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queen come to judgment, a self-sufficient monarch in her own right very much like the Christ of the Second Coming. Nonetheless, these three militant, female images are ultimately prob lematic ones, especially for a queen named Mary. All three of these exem plary ladies, after all, have long served as medieval typological exemplars for the Virgin Mary. To an age that saw Jupiter as a symbol for God the Father and Apollo as a symbol for Christ, Athena served as an attrac tive emblematic figure for the Virgin, in part because of the goddess's devotion to virginity.117 Neither Athena's virginity nor her militancy, however, were the most important qualities which suggested this potent symbolic identity. Rather, Athena's reputation as a goddess of wisdom transformed the goddess into an especially apt emblem for the Virgin widely regarded as the mistress of the Seven Liberal Arts and the very embodiment of Divine Wisdom. 118 By the same token, Christian typology also transformed the remarkable military victories of Judith and Tomyris into emblems of primarily spiritual triumph. In manuscript and printed editions of the Speculum humanae salvationis, for instance, we conven tionally find images of Judith decapitating Holofernes and of Tomyris decapitating King Cyrus as typological parallels for Mary's triumph over the devil. Moreover, while Judith and Tomyris physically destroy their antagonists, the Virgin accomplishes her victory by spiritual means. She merely reads a book and meditates upon the instruments of the Passion. In the end, then, the Florentine merchants who designed this London pageant found the parallels between an avowedly Roman Catholic Queen Mary and the Virgin Mary to be irresistible. Instead of attempting to find an entirely new triumphal identity for the Queen, they continued to work from within a Marian repertory of symbolic images. They did, however, modify significantly that repertory significantly, the better to celebrate the first advent of a regnant queen. To begin with, they swept away the heretofore familiar imagery of Marian ascent to a coronation in heaven. The triumphal arch now replaces the heavenly castle, and Mary's ____________________ 117

Wind, Pagan Mysteries, 182-3. The use of Athena as a typological identity for the Virgin Mary was first popularized, as Gertrud Schiller points out, in Byzantine books of homilies in the 8th to 10th cents. ( Iconography of Christian Art, i. 42). It spread widely throughout Europe from there. For the triumphs of Judith and Tomyris as types of Mary's victory over the devil, see Adrian Wilson and Joyce Lancaster Wilson, A Medieval Mirror: Speculum humanae salvationis 1324-1500 ( Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1984), 80, 201, and pl. III-12. For Mary as an embodiment of Divine Wisdom, see above Ch. 3, s. 3, and nn. 82-4. Anglo's speculation that 'the juxtaposition of Judith and Tomyris was derived by the patriotic Florentines from their favourite author Dante' ( Spectacle, 321) is clearly untenable.

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advent therefore suggests deliberate achievement and personal victory rather than submissive, female deference to a higher masculine power. The pageant devisers similarly choose Marian symbolic images quite unlike any that London has seen before: they are forceful, vigorous, militant, even aggressive. To some extent, they thus define a militant Marian identity for the Queen which serves the purposes of a resurgent Roman Catholi cism. They are certainly not the sorts of images that herald the advent of a mere mediatrix. The powers they grant to Mary may not precisely be military in nature -- these images are designed, as we have seen, to define the Virgin's forceful spiritual militancy -- but they are powers nevertheless, and they are being used moreover to declare the nature of the Queen's authority to rule her people as a Catholic sovereign, not merely reign over them as a consort.119 Just as this pageant seeks to define a more forceful image for the Queen while remaining within the dominant Marian tradition, a second triumph, a year later, pushes this experiment further; it inverts the imagery of Assumption to grant the Queen a distinctively kingly role. When Mary enters London again, this time beside her husband Philip of Spain ( 1554), a traditional 'kingly' epiphany places her in the Throne of Justice and crowns her King of Glory. 120 At the conduit in Fleet Street, the Four Daughters of God attend an enthroned king and queen, Justicia and Equitas to their right, Veritas and Misericordia to their left.121 Sapientia descends to the throne from heaven and crowns the queen, who in turn offers a crown to the king.122 Virtually the same scriptures that adorned Henry VI's Throne of Justice in 1432 (Chapter 3) reappear here: 'Per me Reges reg nant'; 'Misericordia & veritas custodient regem'; 'ecce in iustitia reganabit ____________________ 119

Anglo thinks that the images of Judith and Tomyris, because both decapitated their enem ies, pointedly invite an allusion to Queen Mary's triumph over Northumberland, who was under sentence of decapitation at the time of Mary's entry into London ( Spectacle, 320-1). Although possible, such a reading seems unnecessary and unconvincing given the Marian iconographical tradition. 120 Three reasonably detailed accounts of the show survive: (1) a brief narrative in the Chronicle of Queen Jane and Queen Mary, 78-81; (2) John Elder's narrative, also printed in the Chronicle of Queen Jane and Queen Mary, 145-52; and (3) an anonymous Italian pamphlet, La solenne et felice intrata delli Serenissimi Re Philippo, et Regina Maria d'Inghilterra, nella regal città di Londra alli xviij. d'Agosto MD.L.III. (n.p., [ 1554]). Anglo, Spectacle, 327-39 cites generously from these sources. 121 In keeping with the imagery of the Throne of Justice, Equity has replaced Peace as the fourth daughter of God. 122 The accounts differ on whether Sapientia crowns both figures, or whether she offers one crown to the queen, who in turn offers it to the king. In the main, I agree with Anglo ( Spectacle, 357) that the account in La solenne . . . intrata is more reliable here. I assume, however, that Sapientia brings two crowns, places one on the queen's head, and then gives the other to the pageant queen so that she may in turn present it to the pageant king. This alternative remains faithful to the details of both sources.

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rex'; and 'Iudicabit populos in equitate'. The descriptions do not make clear whether the king and queen sit together in a common throne or whether they sit next to one another in separate thrones, but the pageant nevertheless carefully inverts the usual roles assigned to kings and queens in previous triumphs. Here the queen assumes the more powerful role, while the king takes his place beside her as consort. Heavenly Wisdom descends to place a crown on Mary's head, thus staging the moment of epiphany which identifies 'the Prince of God among us'. Still more sur prisingly, the queen now offers a crown to the king. She completes the familiar image of the Coronation of the Virgin, but this time the king becomes the consort assumed to heaven by a Queen of Glory. The pageant verse, directed to the king alone, may refer to Philip 'governing' the world and 'reigning' in England, but the pageant imagery makes clear that Philip reigns in England only by Mary's leave. Where Mary's civic triumphs sought to invest the Queen with the emblems of sacramental kingship, Queen Elizabeth's London triumph ( 1559) regards the traditional emblems of the idea of Advent with a good deal of ambivalence.123 As Protestant apologists, the devisers either avoid or seek to rehabilitate the images associated with Roman Catholic con ceptions of monarchy. On the one hand, the show eliminates some of the most characteristic images of the idea of Advent: no angels descend from heaven to crown the Queen, nor does the Queen ascend to a Castle of Heaven. In particular, this triumph avoids all direct Marian images; no heavenly sponsa invites her to 'come and be crowned' or longingly calls her into a garden. On the other hand, however, the show seeks to rehabilit ate, rather than banish, other important images of medieval sovereignty to suit an overtly Protestant regime. Representing as it did 'a triumph for the Protestant Reformation', as Roy Strong points out, it nevertheless ____________________ 123

The city paid Richard Mulcaster 40 shillings for 'makyng of the boke conteynynge and declaryng the historyes set furth in and by the Cyties pageauntes at the tyme of the Quenes high nes commyng thurrough the Cytye to her coronacion' ( London, Corporation of London Records Office, Repertories, 14. 143r). As C. R. Baskervill points out, 'Mulcaster was not a mere scribe, and it is reasonable to conclude that he made the book as author of the pageant devices and of the accompanying speeches' (TLS (15 Aug. 1935), 513). The various editions of The Quenes Maiesties Passage through the Citie of London to Westminster the Day Before Her Coronacion ( London, 1558) probably incorporate Mulcaster's 'boke', and remain our only detailed account of Elizabeth's civic triumph. This text has been widely reprinted. Parenthetical citations refer to page numbers in the facsimile edition, ed. J. M. Osborn ( New Haven, 1960), but Arthur F. Kinney's critical and annotated edition (in his Elizabethan Backgrounds (Hamden, Conn., 1975), 7-39) is especially to be recommended. Commentary: Roy Strong, 'The 1559 Entry Pageants of Elizabeth I', in The Tudor and Stuart Monarchy: Pageant, Painting, Iconography, ii: Elizabethan ( Woodbridge, 1995), 33-54; Anglo, Spectacle, 344-59; Bergeron, English Civic Pageantry, 11-23; Susan Frye, Elizabeth I: The Competition for Representation ( New York, 1993), 22-55.

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remained 'wholly a child of the preceding Gothic ages' in style.124 Funda mentally conservative in its emblematic ideas, the show nevertheless man aged to create a new queenly persona for Elizabeth out of the rejected imagery of the medieval civic triumph. Perhaps the Cheapside pageant most clearly demonstrates this triumph's attempts to rehabilitate rather than replace the traditional vocabulary of imagery. Near the Great Conduit, eight children stand upon an arch, symbolically 'appointed & apparelled' to represent 'the eight beatitudes expressed in the .v. chapter of the gospel of S. Mathew, applyed to our soueraigne Ladie Quene Elizabeth' (41). As the Queen arrives before the pageant, each child symbolically bestows a blessing upon her. The scene they play together thus makes few pretences to novelty. In earlier tri umphs, similar virtues almost routinely appear to bestow their gifts upon the queen. Such scenes conventionally stage the advent of the Queen of Heaven. We recall, for example, the Three Thomistic Graces who bestow their gifts upon Mary Tudor at Paris, or the gifts of grace which have transformed Margaret of Anjou into a 'conueie of Grace, Virgyne moost benigne' as she entered London. Such encounters, in short, serve to estab lish the consort's credentials as both a holy virgin full of grace and a bearer of grace to her people. This pageant, indeed, establishes very sim ilar credentials for Elizabeth. Not only does a child expositor 'apply' these 'blessings' to the Queen, but at the same time the beatitudes are 'the promises & blessinges of almightie god made to his people' (42). As a 'conueie of Grace'. Elizabeth receives the eight beatitudes only to transmit them to her people. ____________________ 124

Strong ( Art and Power, 11) further observes that 'stripped of its Catholic trappings, the remnants of the archaic repertory were made use of: the legitimacy of descent appeared in the usual form of a tree, this time the family rose tree of the houses of York and Lancaster culminat ing in the Tudors; the virtues of the speculum principis tradition were re-worked to a Protestant ethic, with a tableau of biblical beatitudes and a triumph of virtue over vice; the typological tradi tion was deployed to depict the young queen as Deborah, "the judge and restorer of the house of Israel". Catholic cosmic apocalyptic visions gave way to monarchy cast as Old Testament king ship revived.' But the very conservatism of the show's iconography made an important political point. By 1559, Continental triumphs had largely adopted a new emblematic vocabulary. Throughout France and the Low Countries, monarchs now entered their cities beneath triumphal arches. From an English Protestant point of view, however, these new Roman emblems were fatally associated with Roman Catholic imperialism, especially since the new-style triumphal arches had been used in 1554 for the entry of Philip of Spain. In these circumstances, perhaps, the older emblematic tradition was at least associated with English tradition, and it may have seemed more appropri ate to rehabilitate that than to adopt the new form. Roman triumphal arches thus do appear in the 1559 show (e.g. the 'gorgeous & sumptuous arke' erected at Gracechurch Street, which 'extended from thone syde of the streate to thother, rychelye vawted with batlementes conteining three portes', Quenes Maiesties Passage, 31), but they serve only as platforms for the pageants; Mulcaster's 'boke' does not recognize them as Roman per se.

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But if the devisers of this show adopt one traditional Marian persona for their Queen, they also seek to rehabilitate that persona to suit a Protestant queen. In order to bestow grace upon her people, Elizabeth must first minister the Word. The pageant cites texts in the manner of a minister of the gospel rather than a missal or lectionary; it applies' the Word to Elizabeth and to her people. Elizabeth significantly comes to London full of blessings, not grace -- perhaps a narrow distinction, but potentially an important theological shibboleth -- and the pageant carefully cites a particular Gospel passage rather than Church tradition or patristic com mentary to validate its emblem. Perhaps in citing an episode from the ministry of Christ, indeed, the pageant most clearly establishes the Prot estant credentials of the Queen's rehabilitated persona. In making her advent as a virgin full of blessings, she comes to minister the Word of God to her people, not to mediate between God and man. A similar ambivalence towards traditional imagery of kingly epiphany characterizes the triumph's two Thrones of Justice. In the first of these, the devisers invoked once again the emblem of Solomon's throne, but altered its details significantly so as to accommodate the throne to the use of a queen regnant. 'A childe representing her maiesties person' sits 'in a seate of gouernement' borne upon the shoulders of four virtues (37). But these particular four virtues -- 'Pure religion, Loue of subiectes, Wise dome and Iustice' -- are not the traditional ones associated with the Throne of Justice (38). They are neither the Four Daughters of God (Mercy, Truth, Peace, and Justice) nor are they some such conventional formula tion as Mercy, Truth, and Clemency who kept Henry VI's 'mighti throne from myschief and fallyng, | And makith it strong with longe abydyng'.125 Wisdom and Justice may perhaps serve as traditional attendants upon the enthroned King of Justice, but the appearance of Pure Religion and Love of Subjects alters the nature of the throne considerably. Instead of a Throne of Justice, it has become 'the seate of worthie gouernance' (38); its devisers, in short, have fudged its significance in 'rehabilitating' the standard image. The Queen does not sit in this throne to do justice so much as to 'govern worthily'. However vague the concept of 'worthie gouernance' may seem, the Queen has obviously had to pass a test of the purity of her religion to sit in such a throne. She also draws upon a power that no king has explicitly depended upon. Curiously enough, one of the props of the new Queen's throne, Love of Subjects, derives from the virtues formerly associated with queens consort. Like Esther, Elizabeth draws power from love, but in her case, she must take care to maintain her subjects' love, not that of her spouse. ____________________ 125Lydgate verses for Henry VI's triumph ( 1432), Minor Poems, ii. 630-48. -350350.

The fifth pageant of the series, at the Conduit in Fleet Street, redeems the conceptual vagueness of the 'seate of worthie gouernance' by finding an approximate queenly equivalent to Solomon's Throne of Justice in Deborah's 'chaire, or seate roiall' (53). Elizabeth finally experiences her epiphany as a female Judge of Israel, if not a reigning Queen of Justice. Obliged as it was to keep faith with scripture, the pageant backed this throne with a palm tree (for Deborah 'sat under a palm tree, . . . and the Children of Israel came up to her for all judgment'126), but she sat there in sixteenth-century clothing, 'richlie apparelled in parliament robes, with a sceptre in her hand, as a Quene, crowned with an open crowne' (54). On the one hand, this image carefully avoids the traditional emblems of sacramental monarchy now tainted with suggestions of Catholic legit imacy. Deborah was not of royal estate; she was not anointed; nor was she a 'son of David' like Solomon. Nevertheless, she was 'sent' by God. On the other hand, the image guards against attack from the Protestant left as well. Knox might fulminate against female sovereignty,127 but Eliza beth need not doubt her legitimacy, 'considering god oftimes sent women nobly to rule among men, as Debora which gouerned Isarell in peace the space of xl. yeres' (55). Emphatically, the pageant regards Deborah not as a messianic type to be embodied, but rather as a scripturally sanc tioned example of a female ruler: 'a worthie president, O worthie Queene, . . . a worthie woman iudge, a woman sent for staie' (54). If this pageant seeks to claim formerly kingly powers for a queen reg nant, another pageant -- the most memorable of the series -- attempts to rehabilitate one of the former personae of the Virgin Mary -- the virgo mediatrix -- to suit the advent of a Protestant queen (46-9). As Elizabeth approaches the Little Conduit in Cheapside, she performs one of those miraculous epiphanies that had long been the staple of the civic triumph. Similar to the miracle wrought by her grandfather a century earlier in York (Chapter 3), she transforms a 'cragged, barreyn, and stonye' landscape into a garden, 'fayre, freshe, grene, and beawtifull, the grounde thereof full of flowres and beawtie' (46-7). Her presence revives the single, des olate tree 'all withered and deadde, with braunches accordinglye' which dominates the barren landscape so that it flourishs as a 'very freshe and fayre' bay tree. The inhabitants respond to the Queen's presence as much as the vegetation does. Her advent transforms a wretch named 'Ruinosa ____________________ 126

Judg. 4: 5. The devisers clearly found themselves in emblematically exotic territory, for they had to label the unfamiliar tree A Palme tree for the benefit of the audience (53). 127 'To promote a woman to bear rule, superiority, dominion, or empire above any realm, nation, or city is repugnant to nature, contumely to God, a thing most contrarious to his revealed will and approved ordinance, and, finally, it is the subversion of good order, of all equity and justice.' The First Blast of the Trumpet, in Political Writings of John Knox, 42.

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Respublica' -- 'one in homely and rude apparell crokedlye, and in mournyng maner' -- into a 'freshe personage well apparaylled and appoynted' now 'in state tryumphant' and renamed 'Respublica bene instituta' (46-8). One might well argue that in adopting this persona for Elizabeth, the devisers have not 'rehabilitated' it at all. Elizabeth merely mediates this change from a Decayed to a Flourishing Commonwealth, just as her sister consorts merely mediate similar landscape transformations. The pageant's action, however, calls upon her to perform her virgo mediatrix role in a particularly Protestant manner. Her approach calls forth from a cave in a hill 'an olde man with a Sythe in his hande, hauynge wynges artificiallye made' (47). He is Time, and he brings with him his daugh ter Truth, who holds an English bible in her hands. She gives the Word to the pageant's expositor, who offers it in turn to Elizabeth. As we have seen (above, Chapter 3), this gift occasions the central epiphany of the pageant. First of all, the gift symbolizes the Queen's per sonal motto: Veritas Temporis Filia. In order to complete the meaning of that motto, Elizabeth must accept Truth's gift, and by accepting it, the Queen necessarily performs a crucial emblematic action which reveals her nature as a Protestant ruler: she receives the Word on behalf of her Reformed people. Only if empowered by the Word can the Queen trans form a landscape sub lege into a redeemed landscape sub gratia, for the Word, not the Catholic sacraments, is the true means of grace. The magically altered garden manifests the Word's power, not Elizabeth's, for only the Word offered in the English bible has the power to reform the landscape. In playing this powerful and memorable scene with the pageant actors, Elizabeth ministers the Word to her people with great relish. She actively co-operates with the role that the pageant has assigned her. She takes the book eagerly, kisses it, embraces it, and offers 'great thankes to the citie therefore' (48-9). By her histrionic display of approval, she demonstrates that she understands and accepts her new queenly role. The virgo medi atrix has become the Minister of the Word. 5. The Queen Declined: The Infernal Adventus of Mary Queen of Scots (Edinburgh, 1561) Not all queens regnant were so sympathetically received, nor did they act their roles so expertly. For the Edinburgh triumph of Mary Queen of Scots ( 1561), John Knox's Edinburgh prepared a hellish adventus for its Queen. Unusually in the history of these shows, Mary's inaugural adventus took place amidst conflicting allegiances driven by religious -352352.

controversy. Since Mary came to her crown from abroad, her household had little effective influence over the conduct of the triumph. Under these conditions, her inaugural entry understandably reflects the distrust and suspicion of the Protestant establishment that staged the show.128 Although she has been showered with heavenly grace, her civic triumph darkly warns, Mary's stubborn persistence in papist idolatry will doom her to hell. The show consisted of two thematically related halves which together reflected Christ's Third Advent coming to judgment. The first three pageants endow Mary with 'Grace in this Life'; the final two con sign her to her eternal reward.129 At first, Mary's reception must have seemed deceptively to promise a celestial adventus in the usual way. Angels sing to her 'in the maist heven lie wyis' from scaffolds set high atop gates; saintly virgins 'cled in the maist hevenlie clething' fill cups of wine for her from the streams which miraculously spouted from the town cross; Dame Fortune smiles upon her, and 'thrie fair virgynnis, all cled in maist precious attyrement', named 'Luiff, Iustice, and Police', add their blessings. Despite the apparently Catholic symbol of wine spouting Eucharistically from the cross, Mary finds that heaven, like Edinburgh, is in Protestant hands. As she passes beneath the first gate at the 'Butter Trone', a mechanical cloud opens to permit the miraculous descent of a 'bony barne' costumed as an angel. Unlike the saints who descended to earth from the 'court celestial' to convey Katharine of Aragon directly to heaven, this angel presents Mary with two symbolic books -- an English bible and a Protestant psalm book -- which she must 'reade and vnderstand' if she is to succeed as Queen. These precious giftes 'most ganand for a godlie prince' contain, says the angel, 'Godis lawe, his word, and testement, | Trewlie translated with faithfull dilligence'. They explain all the Queen must know if she is to achieve an apotheosis into a Protestant heaven, for they describe The perfytt waye vnto pe heavens hie, And how to rewle your subiectis and your land, And how your kingdome establyshed shalbe; Iudgement and wysedome herin shall you see. The Protestant Bible and psalter take the place of the 'ladder of virtues' which has been central to the other apotheoses we have examined. By ____________________ 128 For the complex ideological context in which the entry took place, see MacDonald, "Mary Stewart's Entry", 101-10, Michael Lynch, Edinburgh and the Reformation ( Edinburgh, 1981), 82-98, and MacDonald, "Triumph of Protestantism", 72-5. 129 Mill, Mediaeval Plays in Scotland, 189-91, for original accounts. Angel's speech at first pageant: MacDonald, "Mary Stewart's Entry", 109-10. -353353.

living according to these books, Mary would gain the necessary virtues to climb heavenward. But should she refuse the 'perfytt waye' they describe, the angel warns, the books also show how God 'thretnes with his scurge and wand' all those 'who the contrarie does wilfullie'. He then reascends into his cloud, which promptly claps shut. Most civic triumphs, as we have seen, use a pageant like this as a metaphor for fealty: the citizens' acceptance of their new ruler is like the Christian's acceptance of his Saviour. This pageant, by contrast, draws exclusive boundaries between sovereign and subjects. Heaven is Protestant, the Queen Catholic. The Protestant Bible symbolizes an essen tial division rather than corporate unity between the ruler and her body politic. Only if Mary embraces her subjects' symbolic gifts and defends their Reformed religion may she be accepted into heaven. Faced with this challenge, Mary attempted a diplomatic response; she accepted the gifts but gave them to one of her Catholic retainers. 130 The city's pageants, however, left little room for such diplomacy; they demanded, as Mary was soon to discover, a categorical declaration. In this spirit, the second half of Mary's triumph dramatizes the 'scourge and wand' with which God punishes those 'who the contrarie does wil fulie'. Unlike Margaret of Anjou's London triumph (Chapter 4), which bridges national differences through heavenly grace and admits the Queen to the celestial Jerusalem, Mary's civic triumph condemns her to a fiery judgment and a hellish adventus. 'The terrible sygnifications of the ven geance of God upon idolatry' thus await Mary at the 'Salt Trone'. To the pageant deviser's mind, the rebellion of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram against the congregation of Moses (Num. 16: 8-35) constitutes an Old Testament prefiguration of the damnable impiety of the Catholic mass. To imitate the biblical description of the Lord's destruction of the schis matics even as they were in the act of offering incense to him, the pageant deviser puts three wooden effigies of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram upon a scaffold and burns them 'in the tyme of their sacrifice': And they went down alive into hell, the ground closing upon them, and they per ished from among the people. . . . And a fire coming out from the Lord destroyed the two hundred and fifty men that offered the incense. (Num. 16: 33, 35) To draw the parallel with the impiety of the mass, a speech was made 'tending to abolishing of the mass', and a 'priest in his ornaments red die to say mass, made of wode' stood expecting the same fiery vengeance so that he might be burned in the very act of elevating the host. According ____________________ Above, Ch. 3. -354354.

to one account, however, the Earl of Huntly 'stayed that pagient'.131 Nevertheless, a final pageant continues this foretaste of the fiery vengeance of the Lord upon idolaters by burning a spectacularly combustible dragon upon a scaffold at Nether Bow. Although the description of the pageant is too sparse to say for certain, perhaps the dragon, in view of the viru lent anti-Catholic imagery of the triumph, represents the Beast of the Apocalypse.132 If so, the civic triumph casts Mary in the role of the beast's mistress, the Whore of Babylon, who 'shall be burnt with fire, because God is strong, who shall judge her' (Apoc. 18: 8). Whatever the precise meaning of this final immolation, these pageants clearly substitute an infernal adventus for the celestial one which con ventionally forms the centerpiece of a Third Advent triumph. As the show's devisers see it, Mary's adherence to the mass threatens to brand her as an idolatress who can look forward only to a fiery damnation in the afterlife. Even her own barons are moved to Protestant evangelism at the end of her triumph, for at Holyroodhouse they make 'some speitche concernyng the putting away of the mess' and sing 'ane psalme'. Mary thus finds herself celebrating a triumphal entry into hell, and her pro cession through Edinburgh follows a pattern as old as that of the soul's celestial adventus, one which imagines the soul being welcomed into the ____________________ 131

The four independent accounts differ on what occurred at this pageant. All agree that some thing was 'brunt vpoun the skaffet', and three mention the priest saying mass. Of the two most detailed accounts, John, seventh Lord Herries, reports: 'Upon the top of this pageant, there was a speech made tending to abolishing of the mass, and in token that it was alreddie banished the kingdome, there was the shape of a priest in his ornaments reddie to say mass, made of wode, which was brought forth, in sight of all, and presentlie throwen in a fyre made upon the scaf fold and burnt.' The English ambassador, by contrast, reports that 'There, for the terrible sygnifications of the vengeance of God upon idolatrie, ther wer burnt Coron, Nathan and Abiron, in the tyme of their sacrifice. They were mynded to have had a priest burnt at the altar, at the elevation. The Erle of Huntly stayed that pagient' ( Mill, Mediaeval Plays in Scotland, 191 n. 1). These differences have led Peter Davidson, for one, to suggest that the one pageant was substi tuted for the other upon the insistence of the Catholic Earl of Huntly. See "The Entry of Mary Stewart into Edinburgh, 1561, and Other Ambiguities", Renaissance Studies, 9 ( 1995), 417, 419. Most of the supposed differences between these two reports, however, are a matter of differing perspectives. Herries describes what he saw, while the English ambassador attempts to describe what the spectacle meant. The latter may not actually have seen the performance; instead, his description of the pageant trades rather heavily upon the 'scripture' that must have been embla zoned upon the structure: 'The terrible sygnifications of the vengeance of God upon idolatrie' and the biblical episode that was being represented (Num. 16: 33-5). Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, after all, were consumed by a 'fire coming out from the Lord' specifically as they were making their heretical sacrifice. As 'schismatics' (from the viewpoint of Scottish Reformers), they would probably be dressed as Roman Catholic clerics, and their heretical sacrifice would have taken the form of the Catholic mass. The representation of this Old Testament scene, in short, must have looked very much like the burning of 'a priest in his ornaments reddie to say mass as Herries reports, particularly if one missed the exact biblical reference. 132 MacDonald, "Mary Stewart's Entry", 107.

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gates of hell by phalanxes of demons.133 The topography of the city fur ther contributes to this imagery; 'rydand down the castellhill' between Edinburgh Castle and Holyroodhouse, Mary necessarily travels steeply and remorselessly downwards as she moves from pageant to pageant.134 In this respect, perhaps the traditional Moorish whifflers also play unusu ally significant roles as suitably diabolical attendants for Mary. Dressed as they are in 'blak hattis, and on thair faces blak visouris, in thair mow this rings', they perforce serve in this procession to clear a path to hell.135 In dramatizing the Queen's triumphal entry into hell, this pageant testifies eloquently to the persistence of tradition. Faced for the first time with a sovereign rather than a consort queen, the citizens of Edinburgh had no symbolic vocabulary to deal with the meaning of her entry. Since the Marian pattern was inappropriate, both on constitutional and reli gious grounds, these Protestant subjects of a Catholic queen designed a show that dramatized the possibility of their rejection both of their Queen and of the iconography that had given these shows their communal pur pose and meaning for over 150 years. No Christ-like king calls her to be crowned; no Jesse Tree proclaims the immanent birth of an infant saviour. It is that very right to come to her kingdom as a kind of Christ that the citizens question here, and their rejection tells us a great deal about the seriousness with which citizens and sovereigns conceived of their roles and performed them to one another. ____________________ 133

Kantorowicz, "King's Advent", 207 n. 4. As A. A. MacDonald points out, ' Edinburgh entry processions followed a traditional pat tern. The sovereign would arrive at the West Port, pass up the hill to the Castle, then make his way down the High Street, stopping at various stations, before making his egress at the Netherbow, en route to Holyrood' ( MacDonald, "Mary Stewart's Entry", 103). Following this pattern, Mary began the day with dinner at Edinburgh Castle and proceeded downhill to Holyrood, where she was required to listed to a 'speitche concernyng the putting away of the mess [mass]'. Letter from Randolph to Cecil, quoted in Thomas Wright (ed.), Queen Elizabeth and her Times (2 vols.; London, 1838), i. 73-4 and Mill, Mediaeval Plays in Scotland, 189-90. 135 Infernal advents, to be sure, were understandably rare, and they usually involved sectarian passions. Perhaps the closest analogues to Mary's triumphal descent into hell, in fact, were the London Pope-burning processions of the late 17th cent. These processions, which were more nearly akin to popular carnivals than royal entries, borrowed the ceremonial of the civic triumph to convey the Pope to hell. Elaborate effigies of popes, inquisitors, Jesuits, friars, and other such 'hieroglyphic Monsters' were paraded solemnly through the streets in mock triumph. Then, before a huge statue of Good Queen Bess at Temple Bar, they suffered the fate of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. 'Brought condignly to a new Light of their own making', each effigy in turn was 'one after another added to encrease the Flames' of an immense bonfire. See Sheila Williams, "The Pope-Burning Processions of 1679-1680, and 1681", JWCI 21 ( 1958), 115-16. 134

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Chronological Index to Civic Triumphs 1377 London ( Richard II) 8, 11-21, 28, 33, 37, 40, 42, 43, 61, 102-3, 118, 119, 185, 227, 244 n., 321, 324-5, 327 1380 Paris ( Charles VI) 6, 12 n. 1389 Paris ( Isabella of Bavaria) 12 n., 37, 56 n., 78-85, 116, 142, 294-7, 314, 321, 322 1414 Saragossa ( Ferdinand the Honest) 37 1415 London ( Henry V) 28, 36, 56 n., 61-2, 169, 205-9, 210, 220 1431 Paris ( Henry VI) 45-6, 60 n., 72, 85-99, 159, 175, 179 n. 1432 London ( Henry VI) 10, 32, 36, 64, 65 n., 72, 115 n., 143-69, 170, 189, 195 n., 236, 257 n., 320 n., 347, 350 1434 Paris ( John Duke of Bedford) 28 1437 Paris ( Charles VII) 61, 100, 177-8 1440 Bruges ( Philip the Good) 6, 29, 32, 41-2, 43-4, 49-61, 73, 100, 103-14, 227, 265, 267, 289, 327 1443 Naples ( Alfonso of Aragon) 4 1445 London ( Margaret of Anjou) 36, 183, 186, 191-201, 214, 220, 246 n., 250, 297, 321-2, 327-8, 349, 354 1453 Reggio Emilia (Borso d'Este) 4 1456 Coventry ( Margaret of Anjou) 61, 67-8, 313-14, 315-16, 322 1458 Ghent ( Philip the Good) 6, 35, 40, 61, 118, 161, 238-9, 244 n., 254, 264-80, 289, 312 1461 Paris ( Louis XI) 71-2, 73, 174 n., 177 n. 1467 Mechelen ( Charles the Bold) 179-81, 244-5 1468 Bruges ( Margaret of York) 31-2, 252-3, 318 n., 326 1469 Norwich ( Elizabeth Woodville) 315 1471 Florence ( Galeazzo Sforza) 4 1472 Douai ( Charles the Bold) 21 n., 41, 175 1474 Coventry ( Prince Edward) 32, 72 1477 Bruges ( Mary of Burgundy) 343-4 Bruges ( Maximilian I) 23-4, 344 n. 1484 Paris ( Charles VIII) 32, 39 n., 75 n., 101, 118, 175-6, 187-8 1485 Reims ( Charles VIII) 124-5 Rouen ( Charles VIII) 30, 35, 73, 75 n., 125, 174 n., 186, 229-36 1486 Tours ( Charles VIII) 66-7, 177 n. Troyes ( Charles VIII) 15 n., 44, 75 n., 178, 184, 189, 221-3 Worcester ( Henry VII) 53 n., 62-3 York ( Henry VII) 32, 134-9, 142, 159, 351 1489 Lyons ( Charles VIII) 102 1490 Vienne ( Charles VIII) 66-7 1492 Paris ( Anne of Brittany) 40, 62, 101-2, 174 n., 263, 309, 310, 311, 312 1493 Abbeville ( Charles VIII) 169-72, 244 1494 Chieri ( Charles VIII) 74-5 1496 Brussels ( Joanna of Castile) 175, 260, 289-92, 294, 303, 310, 312-13, 326, 343 1498 Paris ( Louis XII) 39 n., 183 1500 Rome ( Caesare Borgia) 4 1501 Dijon ( Margaret of Austria) 261, 297 Geneva ( Margaret of Austria) 182-3, 220-1 London ( Katharine of Aragon) 75 n., 115 n., 174 n., 209-21, 224, 297, 310, 312, 314 Paris ( Philip Archduke of Austria) 27-8, 29, 101 1504 Paris ( Anne of Brittany) 40, 101, 254 n., 315, 324, 336 n. -373-

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1507 Lyons ( Louis XII) 121 1508 Rouen ( Louis XII) 46, 174-5 1509 Milan ( Louis XII) 4 1511 Aberdeen ( Margaret Tudor) 120, 311, 316-18 1514 Montreuil-sur-Mer ( Mary Tudor) 297 n., 304-7, 310, 326 Paris ( Mary Tudor) 29-30, 100-1, 194 n., 195 n., 254-8, 261, 304, 312 n., 321, 349 1515 Bruges ( Charles V) 33-5, 37-8, 62, 117-18, 121-2, 156, 157, 161, 177-8, 291 Lyons (Duke of Bourbon) 27 Lyons ( Francis I) 27, 122-3, 173-4, 250-2, 281-8 Mons ( Charles V) 257 n. 1516 Douai ( Charles V) 33, 244 Rouen ( Francis I) 75-7, 246-50 1517 Paris ( Claude) 69-71, 94, 259-60, 298-304, 318-20, 327, 333-42 1521 Valenciennes ( Charles V) 244 1522 London ( Henry VIII and Charles V) 37, 64, 235-6, 281 1532 Caen ( Francis I) 28 Rouen ( Eleanor of Austria) 178-9, 258-9, 263-4 Rouen ( Dauphin François) 456, 239-44 1533 Béziers ( Anne de Montmorency) 94 London ( Anne Boleyn) 195 n., 260-2, 297, 323, 330-3 1541 York ( Henry VIII) 40 n., 184 1547 London ( Edward VI) 65, 168 n. 1549 Paris ( Henri II) 41, 177 n. 1550 Rouen ( Henri II) 41 1553 London ( Mary I) 345-7 1554 London ( Philip II and Mary I) 65, 311, 347-8 1559 London ( Elizabeth I) 65 n., 115, 116, 125-9, 302, 348-52 1561 Edinburgh ( Mary Queen of Scots) 129, 186, 352-6 1582 Antwerp ( Francis of Anjou) 238 n. 1589 Edinburgh ( Anne of Denmark) 115 n. 1594 Antwerp ( Ernst Archduke of Austria) 238 n. 1596 Copenhagen ( Christian IV) 37 1615 Antwerp ( Isabella Archduchess of Austria) 238 n. -374-

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General Index abbreviations: c.t.: civic triumph(s); k.: king(s); q.: queen(s) Abbeville: Porte Marcadé170, 244 Priory of Saint-Pierre 170 c.t. Charles VIII ( 1493) 169-72, 244 Aberdeen: c.t. Margaret Tudor ( 1511) 120, 311, 316-18 Adam of Usk 205 n. ADVENT AND RELATED SUBJECTS as a season of joy 93-7, 105 as a season of penance 92, 97, 102-14; originated as a penitential fast 92, 186-7; penance transforms sinner into image of Christ 110; three stages of penance represented in c.t. 103 Ember week 54, 63, 91-2; liturgical expression 92, 145 First Advent of Christ 25-7, 53-85, 86, 185, 188, 227; liturgical expression 62-3, 73, 85-6, 91, 186; restores peace between God and man 193-5; with Second Advent, confers grace upon the just 190-2; see also CHRIST First Coming of Christ 20, 25-6, 39, 71-85, 87, 92, 107, 144, 186, 192, 196, 201, 293, 296 first Sunday in Advent 20, 22, 25, 95 n., 133 n., 187, 202 Fourth Advent of Christ 25-7, 189, 200, 226-88, 267, 293; Christ's general. judgement of all mankind 189; inaugurates the Kingdom of God 226-9, 231; initiates 'new heaven' and 'new earth' 229-33; liturgical expression 186; see also BIBLE AND RELATED SUBJECTS, Last Judgement; parousia fourth Sunday in Advent 20, 22, 25, 95 n. idea of, as informing idea for c.t. 2, 7-47, 93, 98-9, 117, 292-5 liturgical expression (general) 20-1, 59-60, 105, 186-7, 267-8; Greater Antiphons 95, 145 n.; 'O Radix Jesse' 54, 63, 145 n. Second Advent of Christ 25-7, 85-114; advent of Christ into individual hearts 93-6, 191; liturgical theory 90-2, 94-6, 100, 109-10; with First Advent, confers grace upon the just 190-2; liturgical expression 91-6, 100; as a 'particular advent' 190 n.

Second Coming of Christ 20, 25-6, 39, 92, 110-11, 113, 144, 183-4, 186, 188, 192, 196, 226-88, 267, 271 n., 293, 296, 346 second Sunday in Advent 20, 23, 25, 93, 187, 202 selected as date for c.t. 51, 59-60, 66, 72, 85, 89 n., 289 Third Advent of Christ 25-7, 51, 189-225, 293, 353; brings souls to glory 190, 192, 196-201, 353; Christ's particular judgement of individual souls 189-90; liturgical expression 186, 190-1, 201-3, 224-5; funeral office as Third Advent liturgy 202; gradual psalms indicate ascent towards celestial Jerusalem198-9 see alsoadventus, 'dies irae, ' Office of the dead adventus: celestial 23, 24, 26, 199, 200, 209, 214, 221-3, 228, 291, 353 ceremony of royal inauguration 117 funeral 202-9, 212-25 infernal 353-6 liturgical metaphor 25-6, 268 of Protestant Queen 348-52 term for c.t. 21-2, 25, 41, 107, 188, 228, 267 term for liturgical season 21, 187 as type of Christ's Nativity 58-9 Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini234 Agincourt, Battle of 205, 207, 208, 209 Alanus de Insulis245, 246 Albert, Holy Roman Emperor 182 Albumanzar 154 Alfonso X of Castile 216 Alkmaar Master 111-12 ALLEGORICAL SUBJECTS alphabet allegory 173-6 armour: cloak of prudence 147, 151; crown of glory 147, 151; girdle of peace 148, 151; helmet of salvation 147-8, 151; sceptre of clemency 147, -375-

ALLEGORICAL SUBJECTS (cont.): 151; Shield: of faith 147, 151; of prudence 76; sword of justice 147, 151 Attrempance 174 baston de victoire338 baston de prouesse338 Bon Accord 328 Bon Droict 287 Bon Voulour 29 Charity 174, 339-41 Civitas Inviolata283-4 Claré nouvelle77 Comfort and Consolation 164, 166 Concorde 338 Continence 299, 300, 301 Coustume 71 Cueur Loyal 29 Death 183, 221 Dilection 46 Diligence 121 Droit Chemin 29 Equité ( Equitas) 234, 347 Faith (Foy) 173, 339 Fame (Renown) 88, 175 n., 178 Force 46, 121, 157 n., 176 Fortune 143, 148-9, 353 Gardens: Clos de France286-8; Clos de Paris29; Garden of Maidens 221 n.; Garden of Repose 337-8; Garden of the Trinity 221-2; Grand Verger 45; jardin de Milan285-8; parc de France282; Vergier de France256-8 Good Governance 164, 166 Honour 178, 183, 212, 213; Throne211, 212, 213, 216, 257, 258 Hope (Esperance, Espoir) 174 n., 341 Humble Service 170, 244 Instruction chevalereuse 218 Jocundité144, 170 Joyeuse Nouvelle284-5 Justice 46, 151 n., 174, 175, 193-5, 218, 299, 300, 301, 318-20, 328, 347, 350, 353 Liberalité174 n. Love (Amour) 174 n., 175, 176, 353; Ardent Désir121; Amour Divine, Conjugale, Naturelle259; Chasteau Amoureux261; of subjects 350 Law (Loy) 71, 188 Loyauté282 Magnanimity 299, 300 Maid: Abbatisvilla170, 244; Antwerp222, 238, 262; Ghent 104, 238-9, 252-3, 262, 269; Rouen240, 262 Mercy (Clemency, Mansuetude, Misericordia) 71, 156, 162, 164, 167, 193-5, 347, 350 Nature 143, 148-9

Noble Champion 286-8 Nouvelle Eau Celique174 n., 232-4 Obeyssance 174, 234 Ordre Politique174 n., 230-2, 234, 236 Peace (Paix) 46, 175, 176, 191-2, 193-5, 282, 285, 321, 329-30, 350; Sponsus Pees 197; Tent of Peace 44; Repose pacifique 29, 174 n.; Rex Pacificus 29 Peuple françois338 Pity 164, 167 Plenty 191-2, 321 Policy 29, 211, 214, 216, 353 Prelacy 220, 314 Prudence 121, 299, 300, 301 Pure Religion 350 Reason (Raison) 174, 175 Respublica: bene instituta352; ruinosa351-2 Reverence 234 Royal Pouvoir174 n. Seven Liberal Arts 153-5, 346 Science 175 Secure Alliance329-30 Severité71 Shepherds: Pasteur Paisible29 Ship of Paris73, 93-4 Singularit de Grace213 Souverain Prestre251 Tabernacle of the Saints 210-11 Temperance 164, 166 Three Estates 46, 176, 284; l'Église284, 330; Marchandise 284, 330; Noblesse 330; Peuple284, 330 three 'goods' (little, middle, great) 148 Throne of Justice/Judgement 87, 156-63, 347-8, 350-1 Time 127-9, 352; see also Truth Tranquillity 282, 285 Tree: of Life 36; of Virtue, seven 166 Triumph 178 Truth (Veritas) 156, 162, 193-5, 328, 347, 350; Daughter of Time 127-9, 352 Unction of Kings 125, 174 n. Union (Unité) 234, 338 Valliance121 Verbum veritatis127 Victory 121 Virtue 176, 183, 211, 212, 213, 216, 218; ladder of virtues 198, 214, 224, 353

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Vouloir: Francq 329 -30; Hault 174 n.; Noble 121 ; Unique des Princes 254, 257, 258 War 329 -30 Wisdom (Sagesse, Sapience) 146, 152 -6, 174, 318, 347 -8, 350 ; House 153 -5; Tabernacle 146, 152 n., 153 -5 Worthy Governance 350 -1 Ambrose, St 239 n. André, Bernard 217 n. Andrew of Crete 262 Anglo, Sydney 1 n., 2 3, 10 - 11, 134 n., 209 n., 212 n., 218 n., 235 n., 347 n. animals in c.t.: beast fable 82 -3, 271 -2 cerf (stag) 78 - 85 eagle 82 elephant and castle 279 falcon 323, 330 great bear 282, 285, 287 -8 lions 82, 271 -2; black lion of Flanders 272 peacock 96 phoenix 258 -9 salamander 259 unicorn hunt 282 Anne of Beaujeu 73 n. Anne of Bohemia, Q. Consort of Richard II 12, 292 -3, 321, 324 -7 Anne of Brittany, Q. Consort to Charles VIII and Louis XII 40 62, 69 - 70, 73 n., 101 -2, 169, 171, 309, 315, 324, 329 -30, 333 as character in c.t. 69 - 70 Anne of Denmark, Q. Consort of James VI 115 Anne of France 299 Anthony, Grand Bastard of Burgundy 179 Antony, Mark 132 Antwerp: c.t. Ernst Archduke of Austria ( 1594) 238 n. c.t. Francis of Anjou ( 1582) 238 n. c.t. Isabella, Archduchess of Austria ( 1615) 238 n. Apotheosis of a Roman Emperor 203 -4 Aquinas, St Thomas 25, 190 -1, 196, 199, 226, 261, 321 his Third Advent liturgical formula provides c.t. structure 191 -2, 196 aquas architriclinas 163, 164, 166 Archedeclyne, see Wedding at Cana, aquas

architriclinas Arcturus, as Prince Arthur's constellation 210 -12, 214, 216, 219, 319 Aristotle 154 Arnade, Peter 244 n., 265 n., 267 n. Arthur, K. of Britain 62, 216 -18, 220 his stellar translation to Arcturus 216 -17 as Sun of Justice 218 Arthur, Prince of Wales 210 -21, 310 as Sun of Justice 218 Arthur, Scottish Prince 317 n. Attreed, Lorraine 134 n. Augustine of Hippo, St 99, 164 n., 198 -9, 233, 245 Augustus, Roman Emperor 26, 132 3, 134 'Ave maris stella' 170 -2 Bales, Alexander 252 -3 Bancel, E. M. 102 n. baptism 149 Barrillon, Jean 334 Baskervill, C. R. 348 n. Batten, Charles L. 69 Bedford, John Duke of 28 Bede, the Venerable 119 n., 239 n. bed of estate 74 -5, 78 - 80 syrnbolizes assumption of royal status 80 Benedictus qui venit in nomine domini 23, 24, 28, 30, 45, 48, 99, 182, 183, 207, 344 n. Bergeron, David M. 1 n. Bergkmair, Hans 345 n. Bergmans, Paul 273 n. Bernard of Clairvaux, St 24, 25, 26, 90 -1, 93, 110, 155, 165, 170 n., 193, 195, 203 n., 228, 239 n. Berry, Philippa 238 n. Bersuire, Pierre 77 n. Béziers: c.t. Anne de Montmorency ( 1533) 94 BIBLE AND RELATED SUBJECTS Abigail 259, 271 Abiram 186, 354 Abraham 62, 104, 207, 290 -2, 301 Adam 252, 317, 318 n. Agnus Dei, see Lamb of God Ahasuerus 105, 252, 301, 324 -7 ancestors of Christ 55, 60, 66 Anne, St 59 - 60, 80 -5, 323 ; genealogy of 84, 323, 330 Annunciation to Virgin Mary 29, 78, 155, 171, 193 -5, 264, 307, 315, 317 Annunciation to Shepherds 29, 44, 56 -7, 100 -1, 188 ; see also shepherds armour, spiritual 144, 147 -8, 150 -2 Assumption of the Virgin 41, 291 - 318 Babylonian captivity 303 -377-

BIBLE AND RELATED SUBJECTS (cont.): Beast of the Apocalypse 355 Bethlehem59-60, 72, 75 Bathsheba125 Book of Life 35, 229, 230 'Canticum Isaye' 146 Coronation of the Virgin 41, 263, 291-318; iconography 304-8 Dathan 186, 354 Daughters of Zion 88, 96-7, 184, 221-2 Daughters of Jerusalem, as classical Tyche 238 David33-4, 54, 56, 58-60, 62, 64, 71, 73, 106-7, 125, 134 n., 137-8, 147, 164 n., 207, 221, 259, 271, 351 Deborah 34, 301-2, 349 n., 351 Divine Wisdom 153-5, 169 Ecclesia 153, 245-7, 279; see also Divine Wisdom Elijah144, 163-4, 167 Elyazar, servant of Abraham290 Enoch 144, 163-4, 167; Book of 163 n. Esther 105, 252, 259, 301, 324, 325-7, 345 n., 350 Evangelists, Four 229 Eve 170-1, 252, 317-18 Expulsion from Paradise 317-18 Ezekiel269 Flight into Egypt60 n., 86 fons vitae232-3, 275-6, 280; symbolizes Baptism and Eucharist 237 Fountain of Grace 36, 40, 101, 163-7, 232-3, 236, 284 Fountain of Life 46 Fountains of the Saviour 73, 144, 146, 163-7 Four Daughters of God 37, 141, 151, 193-5, 196, 328, 347, 350 Gabriel, Archangel37, 100, 171, 194, 264, 308 Garden of Grace 334-6 General Resurrection, see Last Judgement Gideon 34, 121, 279 God the Father 13, 35, 36, 40, 212, 218, 221, 229, 230, 236, 273-5, 304, 310, 314; as dazzling light 56, 172, 208, 294; as 'great gardener' 95, 167, 232, 242-3, 334; as Sun of Justice 208 Goliath 207, 221 grace 143, 148-9, 164, 167, 191, 193, 282 n., 321; prevenient, co-operative, and participating 261, 321, 349 great day of the wrath of the Lamb 230 Haman 105, 326-7

Herod 86 Holofernes 268, 346 Holy Spirit 32, 91, 141, 275, 299 hortus conclusus247, 254-8, 281-8, 334-6 hortus deliciarum247-50, 262 Hosea (Osee) 54 Immaculate Conception 59-60, 86; Festival (8 December) 59-60 Isaac62, 104, 290-2, 301 Incarnation of Christ, see Christ Isaiah54-6, 61, 63-71, 73, 146, 153, 165, 175, 238 n., 269, 315; 'Canticle of Thanksgiving' 165-6 Jabin 34 Jacob62, 301 Jael 345 n. Jeremiah61, 68, 303, 315 Jesse 55-6, 60, 144; as radix of Jesse Tree 63-4, 66, 70 Jesse Tree 54-6, 59-60, 63-71, 73, 144, 146, 149, 179, 182-3, 315, 317 Joachim 59-60 Job 211, 216, 218 John the Baptist 8, 13, 17, 20, 25, 29, 40, 41, 43, 51-3, 59, 60, 61, 104, 130-1, 185, 187, 273-4, 277 n., 324, 342 Joseph24, 56, 60, 86, 264 Joshua33, 34, 315 Judith345-6; as type of the Virgin 346 Katharine, St 210, 220 kings of Tharsis, Arabia, and Saba139, 140158 Korah 186, 354 Lamb of God 35, 36, 40, 43, 46, 226, 229, 230, 240, 273-6 Last Judgement 26, 40, 151, 186, 188, 192, 196, 200-2, 226-8, 250, 269, 310; and Fourth Advent 91 n.; see also ADVENT Leah 301 'Lion of Juda' 212 n. Magi 32, 75, 86, 99, 120, 292, 315, 317, 324 Marriage of the Virgin 86 Mary Magdalen43, 104 Mary, Virgin29, 32, 40, 41, 56, 61, 64, 74, 100-1, 105, 134, 138-9, 141, 142, 169-72, 245, 322; as Bridegroom's sponsa245, 262, 291, 333; Conception 60 n.; as Divine Wisdom 153-5, 256,

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346; as Ecclesia 245-7; iconographical symbols 84, fountain sealed up 336, hortus conclusus255, 257 n., 283-4, 336, lily 284, porta coeli257, rosebush 255-6, 'stella maris' l70, 297, 328, virga Jesse 63, 67-8, well of living waters 336, as 'la dame a son plaisir' 248-9; as mother to the French royal house 172; as Q. of heaven 192, 245, 250, 273-4, 291, 308; as royal infant 83-4; symbolizes the city 245-7 Melchisadek207 Messiah147, 153, 163, 165-6, 175 Michael, Archangel37, 188, 201, 203, 207 Moses29, 33, 61, 163 n., 186, 252-3, 344, 354 Mount Tabor 113-14 Nabal 259, 271 Nathan 73, 125 Nativity of the Virgin 77-8, 81, 83-5 Nebuchadnezzar268 Nehemiah33 Noah 62, 191, 193, 321 Paradise 55, 144, 163-7, 232-6, 240-4, 246-50, 282-8, 330-42 Parliament in heaven 193-5, see also Four Daughters of God pater noster334 Patmos, Isle of 35, 229-30 Pharaoh's daughter 310-11, 344 prodigal son 41, 267 n., 270 prophets of Christ's advent 29, 53-6, 58, 60, 61-3, 71, 175, 309 Rachel301 Raphael, Archangel216, 220 Rebecca 290-2, 301 Salutation 315 Sara, wife of Tobias252, 344 Sarah, wife of Abraham301 seven-branched candlestick 36, 212, 218; seven lamps 229, 231; symbolize seven churches in Asia218, 231 seven gifts of the Holy Spirit 122, 124, 143-4, 146, 149-50, 166-7, 175, 211, 218, 232 seven virtues, seven vices 177-8, 187, 218 seven works of mercy 108-13; iconography 109 Sheba, Q. of 156, 159-62, 292, 312, 320 shepherds 29, 56-8, 60, 71, 75, 107, 188, 284-5, 308; bucolic102, 234, 243, 284; represent princes and prelates of the realm 72; symbolize Advent joy

99-102, 107, 234 n., 285; symbolize Fourth Advent visio pacis234, 236, 243, 284; symbolize spiritual humility 100 Simon the Leper 104 Slaughter of the Innocents 60 n., 86 Solomon 73, 125, 136-7, 142, 154, 156, 162, 263-4, 279 n., 292, 310-11, 312, 320, 351; Throne of 156-63, 350-1 sponsa and sponsus16-17, 19, 31-2, 45, 77, 104, 147, 153-5, 196-8, 220, 237-64, 269, 292 'Tharbis, dau. of k. of Egypt' 252-3 Tobias252, 344 transubstantiation 163 Tree of Life 232-3 Trinity 37, 144, 167-8, 172, 221-3, 291, 294 Vashti 326-7 Wedding at Cana 252 Wedding of the Lamb 46, 237, 239-44, 273-7, 278, 280; describes wedding of Christ and people 237; portrayed in Canticles 241; symbolizes inaugural union of k. and subjects 239 Whore of Babylon 355 Wise and Foolish Virgins 196-7 Zacchaeus44, 106 Zadok125 Zechariah97 see also CHRIST Binski, Paul79-80 Blanche, mother of St Louis31819 Blois333 Bochius, Johannes238 n.Boethius210, 216 Boissier, Jehan298 n. Boleyn, Anne, Q. Consort of Henry VIII260-1, 297, 323, 330-3 falcon emblem323, 330 Bonaventura, St 185books of hours 159, 171, 201Boucicaut master 80Boulogne 171, 172 Church of Notre-Dame 169 Bourbon, Duke of 27, 281-2, 300 Bromyard, John91, 139-40, 182, 187 n., 189-90Bruce, The 34, 317 Bruges: Burgh 51, 59 Cruysporte50, 104 Jacobin cloister44, 56-7 Mulenbrugge 51, 58-9, 344

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Bruges (cont.): Prinsenhof51, 61 Rebellion against Philip the Good ( 1437) 48-9 St Osbrecht's Priory 104 as type of Jerusalem33 as type of Rome c.t. Charles V ( 1515) 33-5, 37-8, 62, 117-18, 121-2, 156, 157, 161, 177-8, 291 c.t. Margaret of York ( 1468) 31-2, 252-3, 318 n., 326 c.t. Mary of Burgundy ( 1477) 343-4 c.t. Maximilian I ( 1477) 23-4, 344 n. c.t. Philip the Good ( 1440) 6, 29, 32, 41-2, 43-4, 49-61, 73, 100, 103-14, 227, 265, 267, 289, 327 Bruno, St 241 Brussels: c.t. Joanna of Castile ( 1496) 175, 260, 289-92, 294, 303, 310, 312-13, 326, 343 Brut 198 n. Bruyn, Josua233 n., 241 n., 242 n. Bryant, Lawrence M.72 n., 82 n., 89 n., 117 n., 314 n., 321 Buckingham, Duke of 300 Caen: c.t. Francis I ( 1532) 28 Cambrai, Peace of 334, 341 Camden, William217 n. canopy used to depict k. as type of Christ 27, 179 Canticles: as allegory of Christ's marriage with the Church 239 c.t. uses sensual and erotic imagery to depict city's attractiveness to the k. 248-50 as description of apocalyptic Wedding of the Lamb 241 garden represents interior landscape of New Jerusalem242 Caplan, H.187 Carmeliano, Pietro217 n. Carpenter, John, Town Clerk of London32 n., 36, 142 n., 143 n., 146, 148 n., 152, 153 n., 163 'Carmen nuptiale regis Messiae' 147, 153 castle pageants 13, 36, 145, 167 representing the New Jerusalem36-7, 64, 144, 167, 198, 206, 236, 239, 240-1, 256, 292-3, 330 Chambers, E. K.7-8, 13 Chambers of Rhetoric 289 Charlemagne137, 218, 311

Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor (Archduke of Burgundy) 33, 37-8, 64, 121-2, 156, 161, 177-8, 235-6, 244, 281, 291, 341 depicted in c.t. 121, 291 Charles I, K. of England217 Charles V, K. of France78-80 in MS illustration 78-9 Charles VI, K. of France82, 85, 88, 100, 116, 142, 294, 312, 314, 321, 333 Charles VII, K. of France124, 187-8, 201 Charles VIII, K. of France15 n., 30, 32, 39 n., 44, 61, 66-7, 69-70, 74-5, 118, 169-72, 175, 177 n., 184, 186, 189, 221-3, 229-34, 236, 244, 299 n., 309, 311, 330 depicted in c.t. 69-70, 125, 231 as Fountain of Grace 232-3 as infant Solomon 73 as newborn infant 74-5 Charles, Duke of Orleans50 Charles II, Duke of Savoy 75 n. Charles-Orland, Dauphin of France169, 172 Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy 21 n., 175, 179-81, 213, 244-5, 252-3, 343 Chartres60 Chartier, Jean269 n., 272 n., 273 n., 277 n. Chartrou, Josèphe8-9 Chastellain, Georges71-2, 73, 272 n. Chieri: c.t., Charles VIII ( 1494) 74-5 Cholmley, Ranulph, Recorder of London115, 116 CHRIST Ascension 293, 296; as Roman imperial adventus203-4 Baptism 149-50 bridegroom 250, 263 brother to the humble 109 Christ-child 56-8, 60n., 61, 64-5, 294-7 Christ the King, seeMajestas Domini Crucifixion 42, 185, 223, 273; as type of Christ's mystical marriage to the Church: depicted in altarpieces 13, 18, 20, 43, 119; represented in c.t. 31 flos of Jesse Tree 63-4, 67-8, 149 Fountain of Grace 232-3 Harrowing of Hell 273

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K. of Heaven 113, 222-3 K. of Justice 81-2 Lamb of God 273-6, 278 Nativity 25-6, 54, 56-8, 59-60, 71-87, 106-7, 201; iconography 60; see also ADVENT Palm Sunday entry into Jerusalem3, 63, 99, 111, 220, 344 n., 237; as earthly prefiguration of celestial adventus24; as inaugural epiphany 133; liturgical expression 184-5; as model for medieval civic triumphs 23-5; as Roman adventus procession 22-3 Passion 42-3, 185; infrequently represented in c.t. 31 Resurrection 43, 113, 114, 272 Salvator Mundi295 Son of Man 113, 231-2 Transfiguration 32, 113-14, 163 n.; and Epiphany 130 see also ADVENT; EPIPHANY Christine de Pisan77, 301Christmas: liturgical expression 56, 71, 73, 156, 157n., 158, 162, 165; of Christmas Eve 92Chronyke van Vlaenderen49, 277 n.ciborium(pageant structure) 33, 35 Cicely, dau. of Edward IV315 n. Cicero154citizens portrayed in c.t. 103-14city portrayed in c.t.: garden of Canticles 240-3 garden of New Jerusalem163-7, 232-6, 242-3 king's sponsa237-50, 262 woman to be desired and enjoyed 248-50 CIVIC TRIUMPHS blasphemy 42 constitute acclamation of the people 74, 89-102, 180-1, 228, 235 as corpus republicae procession 45, 49-50, 103, 113-14, 179, 227, 253, 265, 280, 342 devotional purposes 42-7 distinguished from royal entry 3-4 dramatic form 2, 3, 6, 19, 28-9, 49, 142-3, 224-5 dramatic heritage 6-7, 40-1, 61-3, 99, 102 dramatizes citizens' spiritual preparation for k.'s adventus89-99, 102-14, 270 dramatizes citizens' spiritual response to k.'s nativity 101-2, 109-13 as dramatized liturgy of royal epiphany 141-2 formal criteria 4, 5, 7-47, 223-5 as funereal apotheosis 201-9, 227 inaugural purposes 38-42, 74, 147-8,

169, 179-81, 228, 235, 239, 265, 333 influences from other forms: court of love 13, 15, 28-9; trade symbolism 10, 13-15; see also drama, medieval Italian 4, 5 k.'s adventus: as dream vision 219-20; medieval form 2, 3, 5-6, 10, 12-14; restores realm to prelapsarian state 165-7, 285; transforms city into paradise 221-2, 232-6, 242-4, 280-8 metaphorical representation of Christ's Advent 22-7, 59, 267, 268 naïveté42 organization of c.t. 89-90 pageants mark signs of k.'s unfolding manifestation 141-3 political meaning in c.t. 3, 8, 11, 47 rarity of second c.t. 39, 265 reception of foreign kings problematic 41 as re-enactment of Christ's Epiphany 134 relationship to coronation 38-9, 74, 333 relationship to Joyeuse entrée procession 39-40, 265 Renaissance form 8-10 represents k.'s nativity 58-61, 66, 71-7, 86-7, 90, 106, 148, 175, 267, 284-5; use of childbirth scenes 74-85 represents q.'s nativity 71, 77-85 ritual purposes 2, 3, 19, 38-42, 49-51, 74, 333 sponsus's desire for sponsa transforms city into paradise 256, 264 stages k.'s act of worship 171 as stellar apotheosis 209-21 symbolic vocabulary 2, 3, 12-14 'theatre state' 47 Third Advent form: depends upon imagery from Office of the dead 202-3; dramatizes soul's journey to heaven or hell 184-225, 352-6; epitomizes earthly limitations and human mortality of k. and q. 220-1; funereal tone 183-225; national and gender constraints of form 223-5; as type of Christ's Ascension 203-4, 221-4, 291, 342 transforms Advent and Epiphany liturgy into visual signs 144-69, 170-2 see also kings' roles in c.t., queens' roles in c.t.

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Civitas Regis Justitiae206CLASSICAL AND MYTHOLOGICAL SUBJECTS Aglaia, see Graces Ajax 286-7 Andromeda: as sponsa77 Apollo76, 304-7, 331; as type of Christ 346 Apotheosis (pageant character) 215 Athena 75-7, 215, 260, 330, 345-6; as type of Virgin 346 Athens: as type of Rouen75 Brutus 259 Caesar, Julius24, 62, 259, 271 Cicero271 Constantine222 Coriolanus259 Cupid 261 daughters of the Hesperides 286 Diana304-7, 328 Euphrosyne, see Graces Font of Helicon 331 four Cardinal Virtues 215 Gardens of the Hesperides 286-7 Golden Age 75-7 Graces, the Three 76, 215, 261, 321, 323, 330, 332 Hamadryad 340 Hebe 178 Hector of Troy315 Hercules 178, 286-7 Iris 178 Judgement of Paris260-1, 263-4, 323, 332 Julia, dau. of Caesar259 Juno178, 215, 260, 330 Jupiter215-16, 310; as type of God the Father 346 Just Virgin of the Golden Age 331-2 Lucina 178 Medusa 76-7 Mercury 178, 215-16, 310 Minerva 328 Muses 215, 216, 330 Naiad340 Napae340 Oread340 Paris88, 175 n., 260, 263-4, 332; see also Judgement of Paris Parnassus305, 331 Penthesilea343-4 Perseus76-7; as sponsus Christ 77 Philologia215-16, 218, 220 Phoebus 328 Phronesis ('Fronesis') 215, 216, 218 Pompey the Great 40, 259, 278-9 Portia 259 Priam, K. of Troy343-4

Romulus33, 35 Scipio 62 Semiramis 303-4 Silver Age 75 Tantalus340-1 Thalia, see Graces Theodosius24 Theseus178 Tigranes, K. of Armenia278-9 Tomyrus 345-6; as type of the Virgin 346 Troy343 Venus 260, 261, 263-4, 330 Veturia 259 Claude, Q. consort of Francis I 69-71, 94, 259-60, 298-304, 318-20, 327, 333-42 as Dame Charity 339-41 Cleopatra, dau. of Ptolemy I252-3clos d'amour254 Clovis, k. of the Franks 66, 122-5, 187, 288 Cole, P. R.215 n. Comestor, Pettus253Concordat of Bologna336, 341Confraternity of the Passion, see Paris Copenhagen: c.t., Christian IV ( 1596) 37 Coronation Book of Charles V78-80coronation 74, 85, 147 n., 151, 152, 157-8, 162, 179 of King of Heaven 158-9 and office of the dead 203 scenes in c.t. 118, 121, 135-6, 139, 294, 297-318, 323, 330 symbolizes marriage of k. to realm 45-6, 237 of the Virgin 292-318 Corpus Christi 45-7, 179cortèges, civic and court 176-81 Cotgrave, Randle83 n.court festivals: Burgundian 4 carrus navalis4 n. festival at Binche ( 1549) 4 Field of Cloth of Gold ( 1520) 4 means of presenting political ideas 4 medieval 1, 6-7 progresses of Q. Elizabeth I4 Tudor2

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Coventry: as 'Prince's Chamber' 68 c.t. Margaret of Anjou ( 1456) 61, 67-8, 313-14, 315-16, 322 c.t. Prince Edward ( 1474) 32, 72 Crow, Brian192 n., 198 Cyrus, St 203 n. Dahnens, Elizabeth271 n. Damian, St Peter153, 154 n., 203, 245 n.dance of death 183, 201 Davidson, Peter355 n. Davies, Sir John217 n. Davies, Martin295 n. de Bruyn, Abraham238 de Clamanges, Nicolas309 de Cuelenare, Jan265 de Fillastre, Guillaume77 de Glanville, Bartholomew210 n. de Guilleville, Guillaume193 n. de la Vigne, André74-5, 324, 333 de Leeuw, Jan180 de Lira, Nicholas150 n., 153 n. de Montmorency, Anne94 de Natalibus, Petrus190 n., 197 n. de Roye, Jean31, 177 n. de Voragine, Jacobus92, 98, 124 n., 130 n., 131, 132, 139, 163, 167, 201 n. de Vos, Marten238 n. Denis, St 97-8, 193 Deschamps, Eustace343 n. Despars, Jacques49 n. Despars, Nicolaes49 n., 55 n., 60 n., 104 n., 107 n., 114 n., 253 n.Devotio moderna42dextrarum iunctio245'dies irae' 202 Dijon: c.t. Margaret of Austria ( 1511) 261, 297 Dits die excellente cronike55 n., 60 n., 104, 107 n., 113, 114 n., 253 n. Dominic, St 1056Douai 34 Grand Place du Marché175 n. Porte Notre Dame 244 rue Notre Dame175 n. c.t. Charles V ( 1516) 33, 244 c.t. Charles the Bold ( 1472) 21 n., 41, 175 drama, medieval 6-7, 11, 13, 40-1 French mystery plays 102 informing ideas 7 N-Town Plays 63 passion plays 7, 31, 63 religious mystères31 'theatre state' 46 Wakefield Plays 7, 295 see also Ordo prophetarum

Dreux, Jean108-9 Dudley, John, Duke of Northumberland 347 n. Dunbar, William317 n. Dupuys, Remy117-18, 156 n., 176-7 Durandus, Gulielmus24 n., 25, 92 n., 94-5, 97-8, 100, 119 n., 130 n., 133, 140 n., 147 n., 149 n., 191 n., 197 n., 201 n., 223 Dürer, Albrecht43 Ebranke, King136 Edinburgh352-6 Butter Trone 353 Castle Hill 356 n. Edinburgh Castle 356 n. Holyroodhouse 355, 356n. Nether Bow 355, 356 n. Salt Trone 353 c.t. Q. Anne ( 1589) 115 n. c.t. Margaret Tudor ( 1503) 263 c.t. Mary, Q. of Scots ( 1561) 129, 186, 352-6 Edith, Q. Consort of Edward the Confessor 307 n. Edward II, K. of England14, 25 Edward III, K. of England: as type of Jesse 65 Edward IV, K. of England315 Edward, Prince, later Edward V, K. of England32, 72 Edward, Prince of Wales, s. of Henry VI61, 67, 315 Elder, John311, 347 n. Eleanor of Austria178, 179, 258-9 phoenix emblem 258-9 Eleanor of Provence 325 Elizabeth I, Q. of England115-16, 125-9, 342, 345 Elizabeth Woodville, Q. Consort of Edward IV315 Elmham, Thomas205 n.EPIPHANY Adoration of the Magi 26, 32, 86-7, 130-2, 134, 141, 142, 152, 155, 159, 161, 169 Baptism of Christ 26, 32, 122-4, 130-2, 140, 149-50, 152, 155, 165, 168-9; iconography 123; and the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit 127 -383-

EPIPHANY (cont.): Christ and the Doctors in the Temple 139, 155-6, 169 as date for c.t. 143 n. epiphany scenes in c.t. 17-18, 32, 39, 41, 57-8, 85, 87-8, 115-81, 127-9, 141-2, 144-81, 211, 292, 301, 320-1, 324-5, 351-2; manifestation of royal charisma 175-6 epiphany theatres 179-81 'Feast of Three Miracles' 132-3, 139 'festival of light' 132 first manifestation of Emperor Augustus 132 first manifestation of Roman Empire 133 gift presentations 115-20; as an act of interpretation 120; constitute primal act of homage 117-18, 120-1, 179; create royal manifestations 124-5, 179; as epiphany scenes in c.t. 115-30, 134-9, 148-52, 173-6, 222-3, 243, 320-1, 323, 324, 333-42; forms contract between city and q. 324; manifest Christ's triple nature 119-20; manifest inner character of recipient 120-1, 125-6, 173-6; manifestation of the King of Justice 73, 87-8, 156-63, 169, 304; means by which citizens accept q. as their mediatrix320-1; as 'right of accession' 117; symbolic gifts 117-20, 126, 149-51, 222-3, Anna Christi222-3, Cross of Constantine222-3, Crown 118, 121, 135-6, 139, 299, English bible 127-9, 353-4, fleur-de-lis122, holy ampule 122-5, keys to the city 117, 121, 136, 139, 179, 245, 'king's touch' 122, 124, oriflamme 122, 222-3, regalia 134-9, 151, sceptre 136, 139, sword 137, 139; as type of the gifts of the Magi 117, 119-21, 15-51 liturgical season 21, 32, 62, 73, 122, 130-4, 139-42, 145-6, 157-8, 162, 169, 312 miracle of the loaves and fishes 130 Octave of the Epiphany 122-3, 132, 157-8, 165 season of miracles 26, 130-3 season of signs 125-9, 139-81; apparitio139; dove 122, 131, 139, 140, 149-50, 299; manifiestatio139, 152; ostensio139, 142, 145; scriptural signs 140, 141, 145, 147, 148, 168; 'showing' 120-1, 125-9, 135; signum populorum145, 175; star of Bethlehem 131, 139, 140-1; visual signs 141, 145, 146, 148, 168, 170; voices 141, 168; voice from heaven 122, 131, 139, 140

stagecraft miracles in c.t. 87, 135-9, 142, 163-5, 211 term for royal entry 21-2, 133 Twelfth Night 130 Wedding at Cana 26, 32, 130-2, 139, 140, 147, 163, 165 Ernst Archduke of Austria238 n.Euclid154'excelso throno' Sunday 158Feast of All Souls: as liturgical expression of Christ's Third Advent 201-2 Feast of Fools 186 n. Feast of the Ascension 293Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin 153 n., 293 as date for c.t. 294, 297 iconography 293 liturgical expression 200, 262-3, 293, 297 Feast of the Circumcision: liturgical expression 157 n. Feast of the Nativity of the Virgin 78, 81-3, 153 n.Feast of the Pheasant 279 n. Ferdinand of Aragon, K. of Spain33'festivals of inversion' 186 n. Ficino, Marsilio263 n.'figure' (astrological prophecy) 211fleur-de-lis: as pageant setting 45, 101, 175-6, 240-1, 253, 257, 282 n., 334, 338-41 as type of Jesse Tree 65-7, 282 n. Florence: c.t. Galeazzo Sforza ( 1471) 4 fourfold allegorical method 219, 233, 252-3 Francis I, K. of France69, 75-7, 94, 173-4, 246-50, 250-2, 259, 281-8, 300, 318-19, 334-42 as new-born child 75-6 as Pope's sponsa250-2 salamander emblem259 as 'stellar body' 75-6 Francis of Anjou 238 n. Francis of Assisi, St 42 François, Dauphin of France and Governor of Normandy 239-44 Frederick, Holy Roman Emperor 182 Froissart, Jean78-9, 82 n., 83, 116, 294

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gardens: complementary scenic devices to apocalyptic castles 236, 240-1 represent paradise achieved 236 symbols of political transformation 163-7, 234-6 Gavere, Battle of 264 Geertz, Clifford47, 50 n.genealogical tree: as type of Jesse Tree 63-4, 69-71, 144-5, 182-3 Geneva: c.t. Margaret of Austria ( 1501) 182-3, 20-1 George, St 65 n., 193, 207, 208Gesta Henrici Quinti205-9 Gheeraerts, Marcus, the Elder 51 n.Ghent: altarpiece, see Van Eyck, Jan de Poel273 Hay Market 278 Hof ter Walle61, 265, 277 Hoofdbrug278 St Bavo's Cathedral 276 Walpoort 238 n., 267, 269, 270 c.t. Philip the Good ( 1458) 6, 35, 40, 61, 118, 161, 238-9, 244 n., 254, 264-80, 289, 312 Gigli, Giovanni217 n. Goes, Hugo van der: Portinari altar60 n. Golden Legend,see de Voragine, Jacobus Golein, Jean310 Gordon, D. J.1 n. Grafton, Richard129Grandes Chroniques de St Denys142 n. Gréban, Arnoul193 n. Gregory the Great: Moralia in libros beati Job218 n. Super Cantica canticorum expositio241 Grimani Breviary161, 255 n., 257 n. Gringore, Pierre29-30, 69-71, 89 n., 94, 100-1, 194 n., 254-60, 297-304, 307-9, 318-20, 321-2, 327, 328-9, 333-42 Grosseteste, Robert193 n., 325 Guenée, Bernard27, 38 n. Hall, Edward65 n., 87, 261 n., 262 n. Hall, Edwin79 n., 80, 245 n. Hanley, Sarah79 n. Harthan, John102, 293 n. Heckscher, William S.238, 245 n. Henri II, K. of France41, 177 n. Henry III, K. of England156 n. Henry V, K. of England85, 162, 205-9, 212, 220, 309 n. Henry VI, K. of England10, 32, 36, 45, 63, 64, 67-8, 85-94, 96-9, 143-56, 159, 161-4, 167-9, 175, 189, 314, 316, 327, 347, 350 as 'childe, off beaute precellyng' 72, 146, 156, 162 Henry VII, K. of England32, 36, 53 n., 62-3, 134-9, 142, 169, 217 n., 220, 229 n., 310, 314, 351 landing at Milford Haven137 victory at Bosworth Field 138

Henry VIII, K. of England37, 40 n., 64, 183-4, 235-6, 281, 300, 332 Heraclius, Emperor334 Herries, John, Seventh Lord 355 n.Hesperus: Katharine of Aragon's 'native star' 210-12, 214, 219, 310 Hildebert de Lavardin247 n. Holbein, Hans65 n., 331Homeliarius doctorum262 n.Honorius Augustodunensis130 n., 147 n., 239 n., 242, 245 n., 247 Hudson, Henry, of Spofforth 134-5Hugo of St Victor 253 n. Huizinga, Johan2-3, 7, 11, 42 Huntly, Earl of 355'Ile of Englond' 235-6imitatio Christi42-3, 138, 155, 2203, 267, 275-6 king imitates Christ the King in c.t. 42-7, 152, 169, 222-3, 275-80 see also kings' roles in c.t. imitatio Mariae220Incarnation, see CHRIST Isabella, Duchess of Burgundy 105, 327 Isabella of Bavaria, Q. Consort of Charles VI 12 n., 37, 78-85, 116-17, 142, 294-7, 310, 321, 325 n., 333 as type of the Virgin 85 Isabella of Castile, Q. of Spain34, 175 n. Isidore of Seville 210 n.Jacob's Well167 n. Jackson, Richard A.9 n., 28 n., 124-5, 237 n. Jacquot, Jean1 James IV, K. of Scotland120, 263-4, 311 James V, K. of Scotland317 n. Janitor 53 n., 62-3

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Jaquez, Jean, Governor of Lyons281-2 Jerome, St 239 n., 262 n., 293 n. Jerusalem: celestial 24, 26, 35, 37, 88, 96, 143-4, 167-8, 184, 192, 196, 198-200, 202-9, 221, 223-4, 262, 291, 297, 316; represents 'life of the blessed in paradise' 199, 233, 236 historical city 25, 33, 34, 45, 117, 137-8, 220, 311; Golden Gate 59-60 New 15-16, 19-21, 24-5, 27, 32, 33, 36-7, 40, 144, 167, 206, 221-2, 227, 229-33, 236, 237, 246, 256, 271 n., 273-6, 280-8, 337-8 of the soul 25, 91, 95-6 Joanna of Castile, Archduchess of Burgundy 175, 289-92, 303, 312, 326, 343 Joan of Arc, St 124 John Damascene, St 262 John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster64 John of Trevisa 210n. John the Divine, St 15-17, 36, 167, 198, 206, 208, 212, 218-19, 229-33, 235, 237, 239, 337 as character in c.t. 35-6, 144, 229-31, 233 John the Evangelist, St 315 Jonson, Ben21617Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris86, 143 n., 179 n.Joyeuse entrée39-40, 179, 265 Julian of Norwich120 Juvées Ursins, Jean78 n., 79 n., 83 n. Kantorowicz, Ernst15 n., 23, 76, 122, 124, 203 n., 277 n., 356 Katharine of Aragon, Princess of Wales 75 n., 209-21, 297, 333, 353 Kernodle, George4 n., 6 n., 11, 234-5kings' roles in c.t.: as another monarch's sponsa250-2 'Christmas king' 71-85, 107, 147, 285 city's sponsus237-50, 252-3, 276 Everyman 187-8 'flos' of Jesse Tree 65-6, 149, 175 'fulfiller of prophecye' 53, 62-3, 68, 145, 168 Good Shepherd 243, 277-8 Lamb of God 275-6 'lover of peace and concord' 182 loving redeemer 267, 269-71, 276-80 Messiah33, 51-2, 58, 61, 64, 67, 68, 71, 88, 99, 147-9, 152, 158-64; child Messiah72-7, 149, 155-6, 162, 168 miles Christi151, 219, 223, 275 n. 'ordre politique' of the New Jerusalem230-2 'pacificus Dominus' 268, 275-80 'Prince of God among us' 45, 47, 49, 54, 75, 117, 121, 127, 135, 182 Prince of Peace 64, 69, 233-5 rex christus124, 138, 151, 171-2, 174, 176, 222-3, 237 Rex Justitiae83, 87-9, 309, 319-20, 350 as type of Christ 27-8, 41, 42-7, 51, 57-8, 131-68

as type of Trinity172 wrathful judge 226-7, 265-7, 269-77, 280 'kings touch' 310, 345 Kinney, Arthur F.348 n. Kinsey, James317 n. Knecht, R. J.336 n., 341 n. Knox, John129, 302 n., 351, 352Kronyk van Vlaenderen118-19, 161 n., 265 n., 270 n., 271 n., 272 n., 273, 275 n., 277 n. Lageirse, Marcel9 n. Laing, David317 n. Lecoq, Ann-Marie186 n.Legenda aurea, see Voragine, Jacobus Legg, Leopold G. Wickham151 n. Leland, John217 n., 332 Lemaire de Belges, Jean59 n.L'Entrée de François Premier250 n., 251 n., 281 n., 282 n., 284 n., 287 n.Lentree du tres chrestien et tres victorieux Roy246-9 Leo X, Pope250-1, 258, 340-1 Leonardo da Vinci4 Levin, Harry77 n.lit de Justice78-85, 325 n., 333see also bed of estatelit de parage82-3lit de repose80lit d'un cerf83Little Office of the Virgin 147 n., 170 n., 171locus amoenus, see BIBLE AND RELATED SUBJECTS, paradise; city portrayed in c.t. London36-7, 223-4, 333 Bridge 143, 146-7, 162, 192-3, 205-6, 210, 211 celebration of Edward I's victory at Falkirk (1298) 14 Cheapside 65, 167, 196 n., 206

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Cheapside Cross 167, 198 Cornhill 152, 156, 19 entry of Edward II and Q. Isabella ( 1308) 14 Fenchurch 331 Fleet St Conduit 347, 351 Gracechurch St 345, 349 n. Great Conduit in Cheapside 16, 144, 156, 163, 164, 167, 197, 205, 211, 261, 332 Leadenhall 64, 152, 195 Little Conduit in Cheapside 127, 351 Palace of Westminster80, 115 n., 156 n., 325, 332 Pope-burning processions 356 n. Procession of Fishmongers ( 1313) 4, 14 St Martin's Church 332 St Paul's Cathedral 64, 144, 167, 189, 205, 211, 261, 332 specializes in castle pageants 36 Standard in Cheapside 196 n., 332 Stocks in Cornhill St 235-6 Temple Bar 17, 324, 332 Thames206 Westminster Abbey 158 c.t. Anne Boleyn ( 1533) 195 n., 260-2, 297, 323, 330-3 c.t. Anne of Bohemia ( 1382) 12, 292-3 c.t. Elizabeth I ( 1559) 65 n., 115, 116, 125-9, 302, 348-52 c.t. Edward VI ( 1547) 65 n., 168 n. c.t. Katharine of Aragon ( 1501) 75 n., 115 n., 174 n., 209-21, 224, 297, 310, 312, 314 c.t. Henry V ( 1415) 28, 36, 56 n., 61-2, 169, 205-9, 210, 220 c.t. Henry VI ( 1432) 10, 32, 36, 64, 65 n., 72, 115 n., 143-69, 170, 189, 195 n., 236, 257 n., 320 n., 347, 350 c.t. Henry VIII and Charles V ( 1522) 37, 64, 235-6, 281 c.t. Margaret of Anjou ( 1445) 36, 183, 186, 191-201, 214, 220, 246 n., 250, 297, 321-2, 327-8, 349 c.t. Mary I ( 1553) 345-7 c.t. Philip II and Mary I ( 1554) 65, 311, 347-8 c.t. Richard II ( 1377) 6, 11, 36, 293 c.t. Richard II ( 1392) 8, 11-21, 28, 33, 37, 40, 42, 43, 61, 102-3, 118, 119, 169, 185, 227, 244 n., 321, 324-5, 327; 'urbs beata Jerusalem' as literary source 18-20 Lorens, Frère: Somme le roi95, 148-9, 166-7, 232, 334-6 Louandre, François César169 Louis XI, K. of France71-2 as 'infant newly born' 72, 73, 177 n. as type of Christ 72

Louis XII, K. of France27-8, 46, 69-70, 101, 121, 183, 257, 304-6, 307-9, 326, 333 as character in c.t. 69-70, 101, 174, 304 Louis, St 64, 144, 318-20 Louise of Savoy 259, 299, 320 n. Love, Nicholas120 n., 150 n., 193 n. Lucas de Penna45 Ludlow: St Lawrence's Church 54 n. Luyck, Bishop of 179 Lydgate, John10, 11 n., 32 n., 36, 72, 142 n., 143 n., 146, 148 n., 156 n., 163 n., 164 n., 184-6, 191 n., 193 n., 205 n., 209, 216, 350 Lynch, Michael353 n. Lyons: Porte de Bourgneuf281 n. Saint-Sébastian hill 284 c.t. Charles VIII ( 1489) 102 c.t. Duke of Bourbon ( 1515) 27 c.t. Francis I ( 1515) 27, 122-3, 173-4, 250-2, 281-8 c.t. Louis XII ( 1507) 121 MacCormack, Sabine22 MacCracken, H. N.142 n., 164 n. MacDonald, A. A.129 n., 353 n., 355 n., 356 n. McGowan, Margaret1 n., 41 McKenna, J. W.89 n., 152 n. Macrobius 210 Majestas Domini: iconography 151-2, 158-63, 168, 304 q.'s version of this emblem 304-8 Maitland MS 317 n. Mâle, Emile293 n., 304 n. Mansion, Collard: Ovide Methamorphose77 Mantuan 234 Margaret of Anjou, Q. Consort of Henry VI36, 61, 67-8, 183, 191-201, 214, 220, 250, 297, 315, 321-2, 327-8, 349, 354 as 'conueie of Grace' 191-6, 322, 327-8 Margaret of Antioch, St 195-6, 316 as patron of childbirth 195 n. Margaret of Austria, Regent of the Netherlands182-3, 201, 220-1, 261, 297

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Margaret of York, Duchess of Burgundy 108-9, 252-3, 326-7 Margaret Tudor, Q. Consort of James IV120, 263-4, 311, 316-18 Marguerite of Angoulème 300, 334 n. Marguerite of Lorraine 299 Marie of Luxembourgy 299 Marignano, Battle of 338 Mating, Richard211 n. Martianus Capella: Marriage of Philology and Mercury215-16 310 Martin of Braga 301 n. Mary I, Q. of England65, 345-8 Mary, Q. of Scots 129, 186, 352-6 Mary Tudor, Q. Consort of Louis XII29, 100-1, 254-8, 297 n., 307-9, 326, 332, 349 as character in c.t. 29, 101, 254-8, 304-6, 307-9 Mary, Duchess of Burgundy 343-4 Master of St Bartholomew 294 Mauburnus, Joannes43 Maurus, Rabanus199, 233 Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor 23-4, 169, 182, 291-2, 333, 341, 344 n. Maydiston, Richard12 n., 13-20, 43, 45, 119, 324-5 Mechelen: c.t. Charles the Bold ( 1467) 179-81, 244-5 Memling, Hans188 Menestrier, Claude François25, 185 n., 208 Milan281, 285 c.t. Louis XII ( 1509) 4 Milford Haven137 Mill, Anna Jean115 n., 129 n., 353 n., 355 n., 356 n. Mirk, John91, 92, 94-5, 96-7, 103, 107, 111, 119-20, 130, 186, 188, 201 n., 202, 226, 304, 328 Mitchell, Bonner75 n. Molinet, Jean: Le Trosne d'honneur212-14, 216, 217-19, 257 Mons: c.t. Charles V ( 1515) 257 n. Monstrelet, Enguerrand de86 n., 187 n., 188 Montreuil-sur-mer: c.t. Mary Tudor ( 1514) 297 n., 304-7, 310, 326 Mulcaster, Richard225, 348 n. Nancy, Battle of 343 Naples75 n.

Kingdom of 169 c.t. Alfonso of Aragon ( 1443) 4 native star 210, 216 Nicolai, Jean62 n., 309, 311, 336 n. 'noel', traditional shout of greeting 28, 50, 59, 71, 99, 106-7, 182, 183 Normandy 46, 234 seven chief churches 231 Norwich: c.t. Elizabeth Woodville ( 1469) 315 O'Brien, Cecilia293 Office of the dead 201-9, 224 compares soul's entry into heaven to a king's adventus202 extends liturgical metaphors of Advent into sacramental offices 202 and Henry V's London c.t. 205-9 liturgical expression of Third Advent of Christ 201-3 officium parvum beatae Mariae, see Little Office of the Virgin open heart as Second Advent image 88, 93-6, 182, 259 Order of the Golden Fleece 279 Ordo prophetarum: formed by Nine Worthies 175 liturgical drama imitated in c.t. 29, 53-6, 61-3, 99, 267, 269-70, 276-7 Orgel, Stephen1 Orosius132-3 Osberg, Richard146, 147 n., 148 n., 151 n., 152 n., 153 n., 164 n. Ovid 77 palm tree as stage setting 121 Paris31, 39-40, 85, 93, 98, 116, 118, 170, 333 basoche77-80, 89 n. Châtelet 69-71, 78-85, 87, 101, 188, 325 n., 328 Church of the Holy Innocents 259; Fountain 315 Confraternity of the Passion 31, 60 n., 86, 89 n. Frippiers 315 La Trinité86, 337-8 Notre Dame Cathedral 39 Palais Royal 82, 100-1, 116 Parlement 336, 341 Ponceau Fountain 101, 321, 334-6

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Porte-aux-peintres294, 339-341Sainte-Denis 60 n., 73, 88, 93, 97, 175-7, 294, 329, 330Ship of Paris (emblem) 76, 934University 336c.t. Anne of Brittany ( 1492) 40, 62, 101-2, 174 n., 263, 309, 310, 311, 312c.t. Anne of Brittany ( 1504) 40, 101, 254 n., 315, 324, 336 n.c.t. Charles VI ( 1380) 6, 12 n.c.t. Charles VII ( 1437) 61, 100, 1778c.t. Charles VIII ( 1484) 32, 39 n., 75 n., 101, 118, 175-6, 187-8c.t. Isabella of Bavaria ( 1389) 12 n., 37, 56 n., 78-85, 116, 142, 294-7, 314, 321, 322c.t. John, Duke of Bedford ( 1434) 28c.t. Louis XII ( 1498) 39 n., 183c.t. Mary Tudor ( 1514) 29-30, 100-1, 194 n., 195 n., 254-8, 261, 304, 312 n., 321, 349c.t. Philip the Fair ( 1501) 278 parousia: liturgical term 21, 187 sign of the establishment of the Kingdom of God 228 term for Christ's Fourth Advent 25, 26, 107, 201, 227-9, 231, 250, 268, 293 term for royal entries 21-2, 228 Parrat, Sir John127 Parsons, John Carmi307, 325Passiontide (liturgical season) 31-2 Paul, St 144, 150-2, 218, 335 Peter, St 278 Peter of Abano 219 Petrarch, Francesco: Trionfi178 Philibert, Duke of Savoy 261 Philip II, K. of Spain65, 311, 347-8, 349 n. Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy 33, 35 Philip the Fair, Archduke of Austria27, 34, 289-92, 312, 326, 333 as character in c.t. 182 Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy 6, 29, 32, 41-2, 43-4, 48-61, 73, 100, 102-14, 118, 161, 169 n., 212-14, 217-18, 227, 238-9, 254, 264-80, 312, 327 as character in c.t. 108-14 inaugural Joyeuse entrée ( 1419) 265 Philostratus340Physiologus272Piedmont 75 n. Pinel, Robinet229 n., 230, 231, 234 n. Pius V, Pope92 n. Plato215 Timaeus75, 210 Pottier, André240 n. Prado, Fountain of Life241Priscan 154prisoners, freeing: depicts k. as Saviour 27-8 French right of pardon 28

Provoost, Jan 295Pythagoras 154queens' c.t.: create epiphanies of their spouses 292-318, 342; q. diminished in status before k.'s epiphany 311-12 demonstrate that q. owes her status to k. 310 dramatize q.'s response to the sponsus's longing 252 evoke imagery of Canticles 252 hedged with conceptual limitations as to q.'s status and power 299-304, 342 initiate peace characteristic of the Nativity 328-9 often initiate international peace 327-42 often portray divided loyalties 312-13 q. regent 342-57 symbolize marriage with subjects 328-9 transform city into paradise 336, 351-2 unite people with the king 253, 342 Virgin's Assumption and Coronation as general prototype 41, 78, 196-201, 214, 220, 224, 330-3, 342, 347-8 queens' roles in c.t.: agent in producing epiphany of their spouses 292-318, 342 apocalyptic 'woman clothed with the sun' 199-200, 246-7, 250 bearer of gifts to her subjects 321-5, 329-33 bearer of grace 191-6, 199, 320-42 childbearer and holy mother 67, 78, 192, 296, 302, 314, 315-18, 322-3, 333 daughter of Jerusalem192, 199, 220 desired one 259-64, 350 dispenser of feminized justice 82-3 'flos' of Jesse Tree 69 mediatrix 83, 105, 118, 138, 193, 195-6, 200, 247, 249, 318-27, 340-3, 345, 351; q.'s mediatory powers depend upon her ability to inspire k.'s love 258-9 -389-

queens' roles in c.t. (cont.): minister of the Word 350-2 nurturing gardener 254-9, 334-6 'Prince of God among us' 348 problematic feminity 41, 224 Q. of Glory 348 Q. of heaven 192, 199-200, 291-318, 325, 342 restorer of the Golden Age 330-3 royal virgin 192, 199 saintly widow 300-2 sponsa of Canticles 239-64, 292, 342, 350 type of Virgin 191-201, 214, 220, 292-318, 346-7, 349 'virga' 67-8 Quenes Maiesties Passage115, 125-9, 225, 348-52 Randolph, Thomas356 n. Rastell, John235-6Receyt of the Ladie Kateryne209, 211, 221, 297Redpeth MS 317 n.Reggio Emilia: c.t. Borso d'Este ( 1453) 4 Reims85, 89, 124-5 Archbishop's Palace 78 c.t. Charles VIII ( 1485) 124-5 remedia contra vitium164 Remy, St: Baptism of Clovis 122 René of Anjou, 'K. of Jerusalem' 192, 220 Renée, Princess of France334 n. 'ribald' in the emperor's chariot 185-6, 200, 201, 209 Richard I, K. of England72 Richard II, K. of England11-21, 28, 33, 37, 42, 43, 61, 143, 185, 223, 227, 321, 327 Westminster Abbey portrait 158-60 Richard III, K. of England134 Rogier, Jean28 Rohan Book of Hours151Roman adventus procession 22, 41, 238 medieval imitations 41-2 Roman de la rose254, 261, 282Roman de Saint Fanuel82 n.Roman triumph 8-9, 33, 41, 343, 345 of Augustus26 of Julius Caesar11 as Palm Sunday homily 184-6 Renaissance imitations 10, 41 of Scipio 10 as Third Advent image 205 triumphal arch as c.t. pageant 331, 346-7, 349 n. Rome33

c.t. Caesare Borgia ( 1500) 4 Rome, new: c.t. transforms city into 345 Roskell, John S.205 n. Ross, Lawrence J.295 n. Rouen: Church of Notre Dame 229, 246-7 coat of arms 229 Lamb of Rouen231, 240, 243, 248-9 Porte du Pont240 represented in c.t. as Lamb of God 229, 231 c.t. Charles VIII ( 1485) 30, 35, 73, 75 n., 125, 174 n., 186, 229-36 c.t. Dauphin François ( 1532) 45, 239-44 c.t. Eleanor of Austria ( 1532) 178-9, 258-9, 263-4 c.t. Francis I ( 1516) 75-7, 246-50 c.t. Henri II ( 1550) 41 c.t. Louis XII ( 1508) 46, 174-5 royal entry, see civic triumph'roy surtout très catholique' 171-2Rupert of Deutz 239 n.St Albans, first battle of 316 n.St Anne's Day: liturgical expression 82 n. Saragossa: c.t. Ferdinand the Honest ( 1414) 37 Sarum breviary195 n.Sarum missal202-3, 262 Sautman, Francesca82Schiller, Gertrud 22, 149, 151 n., 153, 154, 161, 205 n., 346 n. Schirmer, Walter192 n.Scipio 206, 210 Sedulius81-2 Segar, William217 n.Septuagesima130, 143 n., 155 Sforza, Lodovico286-8 Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor 182Sluis: c.t. Margaret of York ( 1468) 327 Smith, Charles R.12 n., 13 n. Smith, Jeffrey Chipps265 n., 267, 269 n., 275 n., 276 n., 279 n.somnium celeste219Speculum humanae salvationis159, 346 Spenser, Edmund300sphere of the moon 211, 216, 218 -390-

sphere of the sun 212, 216, 218speculum principis tradition 349 n. Stafford, John, Archbishop of Canterbury 193 n. Stafford, Pauline307 n. Steane, John156 n. Stewart, J. A.210 n. Stowe, John191 n. Strong, Sir Roy1 n., 2, 3, 9, 10-11, 348-9 Strozzi, Bernardo317 n. Suger, Abbot of SaintDenis 60 n. Suso, Heinrich42, 43 Taylor, Frank205 n.Te deum laudamus208Tertullian 239 n.Thierry d'Alsace33-4 Thomas à Kempis43Three Estates 193 as k.'s corpus mysticum46, 175 Tours: c.t. Charles VIII ( 1486) 66-7, 177 n. Treaty of Senlis 169très chrétién98, 122, 174, 287-8 Trinkaus, Charles205 n.'triplicity' (astrological term) 211, 212 n.triumph, see civic triumph, Roman triumph Troyes: 'Beffroy Gate' 221 n. Treaty of 87 c.t. Charles VIII ( 1486) 15 n., 44, 75 n., 178, 184, 189, 221-3 Turin 75 n. Tuve, Rosemond77n., 93, 94 n., 148 n., 187 n., 301 n.Tyche (city's tutelary goddess) 238 Udall, Nicholas332union rose (Tudor symbol) 135 Unwin, George13-14Ursa Major, seeArcturusUrsa Minor 210 Ursula, St 210, 220Vaast, St 122Valenciennes: Porte Cambrisienne244 c.t. Charles V ( 1521) 244 Valerius Maximus278-9 Valla, Lorenzo204-5, 206 Van Alsloot, Denis238 n.Van brabant die excellente Cronike55 n. Van der Weyden, Rogier188 Van Eyck, Jan: Ghent altarpiece 27, 35, 40, 151, 221, 222, 273-6, 278, 280, 294 n. Vaughan, Richard48, 265 n.Venantus Fortunatus170 n. Venice34 Vérard, Antoine77 n.Veritas Temporis Filia352vespers 171 Vienne: c.t. Charles VIII ( 1490) 66-7 Vincent of Beauvais 45Virgil 75-6, 332 Fourth Eclogue 76, 332 Visconti Hours81-2visio pacis (vision of peace) 232, 233-6, 242, 253, 254, 257, 258, 276, 278, 280-8volvell 211 Warner, Marina294 n.Wedding Feast: metaphor for the establishment of the Kingdom of God 196-8, 237, 239, 246, 250, 267, 314

Wedurby, John, of Leicester315 Weightman, Christine343 n. Wells, John, Lord Mayor of London164 n. Wenzelaus, K. of Bohemia: as radix Jesse182 Wickham, Glynne8, 11, 12 n., 14 Williams, Sheila356 n. Winchester: reputed site of Camelot 217 Wind, Edgar263 n. Withington, Robert4, 6 n., 7-8, 13-14 Wolffe, Bernard85 Worcester: c.t. Henry VII ( 1486) 53 n., 62-3 Worthies, the Nine 21 n., 41, 88, 137, 175, 212, 217, 313-14, 315-16 female 88, 303, 343, 345 Wylie, James Hamilton209 Yates, Frances1, 9York 39 n., 134-9, 142, 159, 183-4, 351 House Book134 n. Ouse Bridge 137 Weavers' Assumption Pageant 138 c.t. Henry VII ( 1486) 32, 134-9, 142, 159, 351 c.t. Henry VIII ( 1541) 40 n., 184 -391-

Index of Bible Passages Gen 8: 1719324290 Exod. 2: 1-1034416: 6-7268 Numb. 16: 8-35354 Judg. 4: 5351 8: 22279 1 Kings 25259, 271 2 Kings 7: 12-14137 3 Kings 112510156, 161-2 4 Kings 2: 11163 n. Judith 3: 6267 3: 10-112684: 4-6268 Esther 2: 17105 7: 2-3105 Ps2154 23: 723, 91, 268 3023 40: 3164 4482 n., 147, 148, 152-3, 195, 262-3 45: 5206, 261 60: 1-6158 6725 71139, 140, 141, 157-8, 162 8397, 197, 198, 222 8454, 92, 193-5, 328, 348 86: 336, 206 8858-9, 106, 157, 162, 164 89: 16276-7 90168 95: 12-13277 9761-2, 207 98: 4162 102: 15183 104: 359 117: 2454 121198-9, 256 127: 1279 131: 18146-7, 162 n. 144: 954 14988 n., 96, 222 Prov. 7: 15244 8: 15-20154 n. 9: 1153, 155 20: 28156, 162, 257 22: 954 29: 14320 31: 26270 31: 29263-4 Eccls. 24: 15-18247, 255-6

Cant. 2: 1240 2: 16243, 248, 250 3: 4239, 252, 269, 292 4: 1252, 262 4: 7252 4: 8262, 297, 304, 310, 326 4: 9262 4: 12-15241, 336 n. 5: 145, 244 6: 8263 6: 9262 7: 12262 Wisd. 1: 154 Ecclus. 50: 25234 Isa. 9: 6-759 11: 1-1054, 63, 68, 122, 144-7, 149-50, 151 n., 175-6 12: 2-3146, 165 19: 18-1931 2061 28: 1261, 277 30: 27269 30: 3096, 97 40: 6183 59: 17151 n. 60: 1-6140, 141 60: 6026 62: 11238 n. 63: 754 Jer. 25: 38302 Ezek. 7: 14269 Osee 6: 154 11: 10272 Hag. 2: 8270, 273 Zach. 9: 9-1023, 97, 267 Mal. 4: 4163 n. 1 Macc. 10: 58253 Tobit 7: 15344 Matt. 2: 1-121403: 171225126-7, 236, 349 -392-

8: 1-13140 8: 23-7 140 13: 24-4386 n. 15: 30-1 278 17113, 163 n. 2191, 133, 238 n. 22: 1-14237 24: 29-31228 25: 1-13197, 239 25: 31-46108-9, 111, 113 Mark 13: 27228 n. Luke 1: 38258 2: 1-1456, 188 2: 15-2056 n. 2: 42-52139, 155-6 9: 28-36163 n. 12: 35-40197 n. 15: 6277 15: 21270 19: 1-9106 21: 25-3323, 25, 227-8 John 1:19-2820, 51 3: 29241 5: 28-9 226 14: 2-3190-1 21: 5278 Rom. 15: 4-1390, 95 1 Cor. 3: 6335 2 Cor. 6: 7151 n. Gal. 4: 1995 Eph. 6: 10-17151 n., 152 1 Thess. 4202 1 Tim. 1: 17207 Heb. 1: 1-12156 Apoc. 1: 20231 4-535, 212, 229, 230-1 6230 12: 1199-200, 246, 250 18: 8355 19: 7-9237, 241 21: 2-315, 17, 237, 239, 241 21: 9-10237 n. 21: 1136, 167 n. 21: 18167 21: 19167 n. 21: 22-22: 6208, 273-6 22: 1-1735, 232, 233, 241, 248 Nicodemus 24: 19273 -393-