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The ceremonies and festivities accompanying a formal entry by a ruler or their representative into a city in the Middle Ages and early modern period in Europe were known as the royal entry, triumphal entry, or Joyous Entry.Of course other cultures had equivalents, often even more spectacular, especially China and India. The entry centred on a procession carrying the entering ruler into the city, where they were greeted and paid appropriate homage by the civic authorities, followed by a feast and other celebrations.
The entry began as a gesture of loyalty and fealty by a city to the ruler, with its origins in the adventus celebrated for Roman emperors, which were formal entries far more frequent than Roman triumph. The first visit by a new ruler was normally the occasion, or the first visit with a new spouse. For the capital they often merged with the coronation festivities, and for provincial cities they replaced it, sometimes as part of a Royal Progress, or tour of major cities in a realm. The concept of itinerant court is related to this.
From the Late Middle Ages,Earlier transformations of the Roman triumph in late antiquity and the Early Middle Ages have been discussed by Michael McCormick, Eternal Victory: Triumphal Rulership in Late Antiquity, Byzantium and the Early Medieval West (Cambridge University Press) 1987. entries became the occasion for increasingly lavish displays of Medieval pageant and propaganda. The devising of the iconography, aside from highly conventional patterns into which it quickly settled,"A remarkably consistent visual and iconographical vocabulary" according to Roy Strong. was managed with scrupulous care on the part of the welcoming city by municipal leaders in collaboration with the chapter of the cathedral, the university, or hired specialists. Often the greatest artists, writers and composers of the period were involved in the creation of temporary decorations, of which little record now survives, at least from the early period.
"On April 5... at twilight, the king with the newly elected Count William, marquis of Flanders, came into our town at Bruges. The canons of Saint Donatian had come forth to meet them, bearing relics of the saints and welcoming the king and new count joyfully in a solemn procession worthy of a king. On April 6... the king and count assembled with their knights and ours, with the citizens and many Flemings in the usual field where Reliquary and relics of the saints had been collected. And when silence had been called for, the charter of the liberty of the church and of the privileges of Saint Donatian was read aloud before all... There was also read the little charter of agreement between the count and our citizens... Binding themselves to accept this condition, the king and count took an oath on the relics of saints in the hearing of the clergy and people".quoted in James M. Murray, "the Liturgy of the Count's Advent in Bruges", City and Spectacle in Medieval Europe, Barbara Hanawalt and Kathryn Reyerson, eds., 1994, p. 137; Murray compares this "political bargain" with a contemporary account of the similar Adventus Iocundus of April 1384.
In England, the first pre-coronation royal entry was staged in 1377 for the 10 year-old Richard II, and fulfilled the dual purpose of enhancing the image of the boy-king and reconciling the crown with the economically powerful City of London. The grand cavalcade through the streets was accompanied by the public conduits running with wine and a featured large temporary castle representing New Jerusalem. The success of the event set a precedent that was to continue at English coronations until well into the 17th-century.*
The procession of a new pope to Rome was known as a possesso. A ruler with a new spouse would also receive an entry. The entry of Queen Isabeau of Bavaria into Paris in 1389 was described by the chronicler Froissart.Bernard Ribemont, "L'entree d'Isabeau de Bavière à Paris: une fete textuelle pour Froissart," in Feste und Feiern, pp. 515–24. The entries of Charles IX of France and his Habsburg queen, Elizabeth of Austria, into Paris, March 1571, had been scheduled for Charles alone in 1561, for the entrate were typically celebrated towards the beginning of a reign,The entries made by Ferdinand of Aragon late in his reign, at Naples (1506), Valencia (1507), Seville (1508) and Valladolid (1509 and 1513), serve as exceptions that were occasioned by his need for confirmative propaganda, following the arrival in Castile of Philip that resolved the succession crisis attendant on the death of Isabella, and Ferdinand's withdrawal into Aragon. (Tess Knighton and Carmen Morte García, "Ferdinand of Aragon's Entry into Valladolid in 1513: The Triumph of a Christian King" Early Music History 18 (1999:119–163) p. 123.) but the French Wars of Religion had made such festivities inappropriate, until the peace that followed the Peace of Saint-Germain-en-Laye signed in August 1570.Victor E. Graham and W. McAllister Johnson, The Paris Entries of Charles IX and Elizabeth of Austria 1571 (University of Toronto Press) 1975.
Until the mid-14th century, the occasions were relatively simple. The city authorities waited for the prince and his party outside the city walls, and after handing over a ceremonial keyLingering into modern times is the ceremonial presentation of the "key to the city" to an honoured guest. with a "loyal address" or speech,At Charles V's entry into Genoa in 1533, a twelve-year-old girl, dressed as Victory and carrying a palm frond, delivered a suitable oration all'antica— in Latin. (George L. Gorse, "An Unpublished Description of the Villa Doria in Genoa during Charles V's Entry, 1533" The Art Bulletin 68.2 June). and perhaps stopping to admire Tableau vivant such as those that were performed at the entry into Paris of Queen Isabeau of Bavaria, described in detail by the chronicler Froissart, conducted him through the streets which were transformed with colour, with houses on the route hanging tapestries and embroideriesThe richly worked hangings of a bed would serve. or carpetsPile carpets were displayed on tables or on a dais; pile carpets were not usually trod under foot until the seventeenth century. or bolts of cloth from their windows, and with most of the population lining the route. At Valladolid in 1509
Heraldic displays were ubiquitous: at Valladolid in 1509, the bulls in the fields outside the city were caparisoned with cloths painted with the royal arms and hung with bells. Along the route the procession would repeatedly halt to admire the set-pieces embellished with and pictured and living allegories, accompanied by declamations and the blare of trumpetsAt Valladolid in 1513 Ferdinand was welcomed with four pairs of kettledrums, trumpets by the dozens, and . "They made such a din that if a bird happened to fly past, they made it fall from the sky into the crowd", the chroncicler records. (Knighton and Morte Garcia 1999:125). and volleys of artillery. The procession would include members of the three Estates, with the nobility and gentry of the surrounding area, and the clergy and of the city processing behind the prince. From the mid-14th century the guild members often wore special uniform clothes, each guild choosing a bright colour; in Tournai in 1464 three hundred men wore large embroidered silk fleur de lys (the royal badge) on their chests and backs, at their own expense.Françoise Piponnier and Perrine Mane; Dress in the Middle Ages; pp. 150–151, Yale UP, 1997; The prince reciprocated by confirming, and sometimes extending, the customary privileges of the city or a local area of which it was the capital. Usually the prince also visited the cathedral to be received by the bishop and confirm the privileges of the cathedral chapter also.Strong, 1984, p. 7 There a Te Deum would be customary, and music written for the occasion would be performed.
The procession might pause for allegorical figures to address it, or pass beside a family tree or under a temporary classical-style triumphal arch with either painted figures or posed actors perching on it, standing in for statuary in the case of arches. Still more elaborate entertainments began to be staged during or after the civic feast, and by the mid-17th century these could be as spectacular as the staged naval battles, , and that courts staged for themselves. The court now often had a major role in both designing and financing entries, which increasingly devoted themselves to the glorification of the absolute monarch as hero, and left the old emphasis on his obligations behind; "any lingering possibilities of its use as a vehicle for dialogue with the middle classes vanished".Strong, 1984, p. 41 At the third "triumph" at Valladolid in 1509, a lion holding the city's coat-of-arms shattered at the King's arrival, revealing the royal arms: the significance could not have been lost, even on those unable to hear the accompanying declamation.Knighton and Morte García 1999:146
During the 16th century, at dates differing widely by location, the tableau vivant was phased out and mostly replaced by painted or sculpted images, although many elements of street-theatre persisted, and small or other displays became incorporated into the programmes. The entry in 1514 of Mary Tudor to Paris, as Louis XII's new Queen, was the first French entry to have a single organizer; ten years before Anne of Brittany's entry had been "largely medieval", with five stops for in the streets.One Pierre Gringore, apparently appointed by the government. Baumgartner, Frederick J; Louis XII, pp. 136 (Anne) and 240 (Mary), Alan Sutton Publishing Ltd, Stroud, 1994,
During the Hundred Years' War, the entry of the ten-year-old Henry VI of England, to be crowned king of France in Paris, 2 December 1431, was marked with great pomp and heraldic propaganda. Outside the city he was welcomed by the mayor in a blue velvet houppelande, his retinue in violet with scarlet caps, and representatives of the Parlement of Paris in red trimmed with fur. At the porte Saint-Denis the royal party were greeted with a grand achievement of the French arms that Henry claimed, gold fleurs de lis on an azure ground. The king was offered large red hearts, from which doves were released, and a rain of flowers pelted the procession. At the symbolic gateway, a canopy of estate embroidered with more gold lilies was erected over the young king, who was carried in a litter supported on six lances carried by men dressed in blue. Through the city there were welcoming pageants and allegorical performances: before the Church of the Innocents, a forest was erected, through which a captured stag was released and "hunted".The contemporary sources, including The Chronicles of Enguerrand de Monstrelet (Thomas Johnes, tr., London 1810, vol. vii, p. 46ff) and the Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, are noted in the brief description in Walter Franz Schirmer, John Lydgate: a study in the culture of the XVth century 1979, p. 137; John Lydgate was called upon to provide texts for similar pageantry at home, such as the entry of Henry into London, 1434.
More recherché sources were brought to bear; Aulus Gellius' Noctes Atticae furnished a detail that became part of the conventional symbolism: coronation with seven crowns. Boccaccio's long poem Amorosa visione (1342–43), following the schema of a triumph, offered a parade of famous personages, both historical and legendary, that may have provided a model for Petrarch, who elaborated upon Livy in an account of the triumph of Scipio Africanus and in his poem I Trionfi. Castruccio Castracani entered Lucca in 1326 riding in a chariot, with prisoners driven before him. Alfonso V of Aragon entered Naples in 1443 seated on a triumphal car under a baldachin, as is shown by a surviving bas-reliefStrong, 1984, p. 44 Picture of relief on the earliest, and still perhaps the most beautiful, permanent post-classical triumphal arch, which he built the same year.George L. Hersey, The Aragonese Arch at Naples, 1443–1475 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973) summarises the scholarship on the Arch and reports eye-witness accounts of the Entry and pictorial illustrations. In Italian, specific meanings developed for trionfo as both the whole procession, and a particular car or cart decorated with a display or tableau; although these usages did not spread exactly to other languages, they lie behind terms such as "triumphal entry" and "triumphal procession".
The emphasis began to shift from the displays as static tableaux that were passed by a procession in festive but normal contemporary dress, to the displays' being incorporated in the procession itself, a feature also of the religious medieval pageant; the tableaux were mounted on carri, the precursors of the float, and were now often accompanied by a costumed throng. The carnival parades of Florence that were refined to a high pitch in the late quattrocento set a high standard; they were not without a propaganda element at times, as in the lavish parades of Carnival 1513, following the not-universally welcomed return of the Medici the previous year; the theme of one pageant, more direct than subtle: The Return of the Golden Age.Shearman 1962. With the French invasions of Italy from 1494, this form of entry spread north. Cardinal Bibbiena reported in a letter of 1520 that the Duke of Suffolk had sent emissaries to Italy to buy horses and bring back to Henry VIII of England men who knew how to make festal decorations in the latest Italian manner.John Shearman, "The Florentine Entrata of Leo X, 1515" Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 38 (1975:136–154) p. 136. The arrival in England, via another route, of "Antony Toto" and Bartlommeo Penni may have satisfied this need.
Charles V was indulged in a series of Imperial entrate in Italian cities during the Habsburg consolidation after the Sack of Rome, notably in Genoa, where Charles and his heir Philip made no less than five triumphal entries.In 1529, 1533, 1536, 1542 and 1548. (J. Jacquot, ed., Les fêtes de la Renaissance II: Fêtes et cérémonies au temps de Charles-Quint, Paris 1960). Impressive occasions like Charles V's royal entry into Messina in 1535 have left few concrete survivals,Sheila ffoliot argues convincingly in Civic Sculpture in the Renaissance: Montorsoli's Fountains at Messina (Studies in Renaissance History, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1984) that many features of Giovanni Angelo Montorsoli's Fountain of Orion in Messina, which survives in much degraded condition, owe their origins to the programme for the Entry of 1535. but representations were still being painted on Sicilian wedding-carts in the 19th century.
After Andrea Mantegna's great mural of the Triumphs of Caesar rapidly became known throughout Europe in numerous versions in print form, this became the standard source, from which details were frequently borrowed, not least by Habsburg rulers, who especially claimed the Imperial legacy of Rome. Although Mantegna's elephants were difficult to copy,Oxen were disguised as elephants to draw one of the floats in the carnival parade given by Lorenzo di Piero de' Medici's fraternal company, the Broncone, at Florence, 6 February 1513. (John Shearman, "Pontormo and Andrea Del Sarto, 1513" The Burlington Magazine 104 No. 716 November p. 478.). chained captives, real or acting the part, were not, and elaborate triumphal carts, often pulled by "" might replace the earlier canopy held over the prince on horseback. The and text of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili of 1499 were another well-known source, and Petrarch's I Trionfi was printed in many illustrated editions; both were works of mythological allegory, with no obvious political content. Entries became displays of conspicuous learning, often with lengthy Latin addresses, and the entertainments became infused with matter from the abstruse worlds of Renaissance and hermeticism, to which they were very well suited. In the world of Renaissance Neo-Platonism, the assertion and acting-out of the glory and power of the prince might actually bring it about.Strong, 1984:40–41.
A precocious example of the Entrata with a consistent and unified allegorical theme was the entry of Medici Pope Leo X into Florence, November 1515.Singled out by André Chastel, "Le lieu de la fête", in J. Jacquot, ed. Fêtes de la Renaissance (Paris 1956, vol. I:420), and described at length by John Shearman, "The Florentine Entrata of Leo X, 1515" Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 38 (1975:136–154), from whose account these details are drawn. All the city's artistic resources were drawn upon to create this exemplary entry, to a planned programme perhaps devised by the historian Jacopo Nardi, as Giorgio Vasari suggested; the seven virtues represented by seven triumphal arches at stations along the route, the seventh applied as a temporary façade to the Duomo, Santa Maria del Fiore, which still lacked a permanent one.
This transformation happened much earlier in Italy than in the North, and a succession of entries for Spanish Viceroys to the blockaded city of Antwerp, once the richest in Northern Europe and now in steep decline, were "used by the city fathers to combine increasingly eulogistic celebrations of their Habsburg rulers with tableaux to remind them of the commercial ruin over which they presided."Strong, 1984, p. 48 The Pompa Introitus of the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand into Antwerp in 1635, devised by Gaspar Gevartius and carried out under the direction of Rubens, was made unmistakably pointed, and included a representation of the god of commerce, Mercury, flying away, as a lamenting figure representing Antwerp points at him and looks imploringly out at the Viceroy, whilst beside her lie a sleeping sailor and a river god, representing the wrecked trade of the city from the blockading of the river Scheldt. Eventually the Viceroy managed to obtain the lifting of the ban on trade with the Indies which the entry had represented as Antwerp's only hope of escaping ruin; but by then the Spanish had agreed to the permanent blockade of the river.Strong, 1984, p. 49
In 1638, the occasion of the French queen mother Marie de Medici's triumphal entry into Amsterdam lent de facto international recognition of the newly formed Dutch Republic, though she actually traveled to the Netherlands as an exile. Spectacular displays and water pageants took place in the city's harbor; a procession was led by two mounted ; a large temporary structure erected on an artificial island in the Amstel River was built especially for the festival. This building was designed to display a series of dramatic tableau vivant in tribute to her once she set foot on the floating island and entered its pavilion. The distinguished poet and classicist Caspar Barlaeus wrote the official descriptive booklet, Medicea Hospes, sive descriptio publicae gratulationis, qua ... Mariam de Medicis, excepit senatus populusque Amstelodamensis. Published by Willem Blaeu, it includes two large folding engraved views of the ceremonies.
Charles V entered Rome in splendour less than three years after his army had sacked the city. The famously troublesome citizens of Ghent revolted against Philip the Good in 1453 and Charles V in 1539, after which Charles arrived with a large army and was greeted with an entry. A few weeks later he dictated the programme of a deliberately humiliating anti-festival, with the burghers coming barefoot with nooses round their necks to beg forgiveness from him which, after imposing a huge fine, he consented to do.Wilenski:34–35 The entries of Charles and his son Philip in 1549 were followed the next year by a ferocious anti-Protestant edict that began the repression that led to the Dutch Revolt, in the course of which Antwerp was to suffer a terrible sack in 1576 and a long siege in 1584–85, which finally ended all prosperity in the city.
The cultural atmosphere of Protestantism was less favourable to the royal entry. In the new Dutch Republic entries ceased altogether. In England, part of the Accession Day festivities in 1588, following the defeat of the Spanish Armada were especially joyous and solemn. Delaying the event a week to 24 November, Elizabeth rode in triumph, "imitating the ancient Romans" from her palace of Whitehall in the city of Westminster to enter the city of London at Temple Bar. She rode in a chariot
"made with four pillars behind, to have a canopie, on the top whereof was made a crowne imperiall, and two lower pillars before. whereon stood a lyon and a dragon, supporters of the armes of England, drawn by two white horses"The quote and the description are from Roy C. Strong, "The Popular Celebration of the Accession Day of Queen Elizabeth I" Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 21.1/2 (January 1958:86–103) pp92f.
The Earl of Essex followed the triumphal car, leading the caparisoned and riderless horse of estate, followed by the ladies of honour. The windows of houses along the procession route up the Strand were hung with blue cloth. At Temple Bar, the official gate to the City, there was music and the Lord Mayor handed over the mace and received it again. In a "closet" constructed for the occasion, the Queen heard a festive service celebrated by fifty clergymen at St. Paul's Cathedral and returned in a torchlit procession in the evening.
Nevertheless, the entry of James I into London in 1604 was the last until the Restoration of his grandson in 1660, after the English Civil War. The court of Charles I intensified the scale of private and other entertainments, but the cities, increasingly at odds with the monarchy, would no longer play along. The Duchy of Lorraine, a great centre of all festivities, was swallowed up in the Thirty Years War, which left much of Northern and Central Europe in no mood or condition for celebrations on the old scale. In France the concentration of power in royal hands, begun by Richelieu, left city elites distrustful of the monarchy, and once Louis XIV succeeded to the throne, royal progresses stopped completely for over fifty years; in their place Louis staged his elaborate court fêtes, redolent of cultural propaganda, which were memorialised in sumptuously illustrated volumes that the Cabinet du Roi placed in all the right hands. Changes in the intellectual climate meant the old allegories no longer resonated with the population. The assassinations of both Henry III and Henry IV of France, of William the Silent and other prominent figures, and the spread of guns, made rulers more cautious about appearing in slow-moving processions planned and publicised long in advance; at grand occasions for fireworks and illuminations, rulers now characteristically did no more than show themselves at a ceremonial window or balcony. The visit of Louis XVI to inspect the naval harbour works at Cherbourg in 1786 seems, amazingly, to have been the first French entry of a king designed as a public event since the early years of Louis XIV well over a century before. Though considered a great success, this was certainly too little and too late to avoid the catastrophe awaiting the French monarchy.
Ideologues of the French Revolution took the semi-private fête of the former court and made it public once more, in events like the Fête de la Raison. Under Napoleon, the Treaty of Tolentino (1797) requisitioned from the papacy a mass of works of art, including most of the famous sculptures of Roman antiquity in the Vatican. A Joyous Entry under the name of a fête was arranged for the arrival of the cultural loot in Paris, the carefully prepared Fête de la Liberté of 1798. With the increased sense of public security of the 19th century, entries became grander again, on such occasions as the Visit of King George IV to Scotland, where medieval revivalism makes its first appearance, along with much Highland romanticism, Queen Victoria's visits to Dublin and elsewhere, or the three . On these occasions, though ceremonial acts remained meaningful, overt allegories never regained the old prominence, and the decorations receded into festive, but simply decorative affairs of flags, flowers and bunting, the last remnant of the medieval show of rich textiles along the processional route.
Today, though many and have quite separate, independent origins, civic or republican equivalents of the entry continue. They include , New York's traditional ticker-tape parades and the Lord Mayor's Show in London, dating back to 1215 and still preserving the Renaissance car, or float model. It is not frivolous to add that the specific occasion of the contemporary American Thanksgiving Day Parade or the Santa Claus parade is the triumphal entry into the city of Santa Claus in his sleigh.
Art historians also detect the influence of the tableau in many paintings, especially in the late Middle Ages, before artists had trained themselves to be able to develop new compositions readily.Many of the best known examples, like the Annunciation (van Eyck, Washington) or the large Virgin of Einsiedeln by Master E.S relate to tableaus not from entries, but engravings by Jean Duvet, who worked on at least two royal entries, may well do. In the Renaissance, artists were often imported from other cities to help with, or supervise, the works, and entries probably helped the dissemination of styles.
These livrets are not always to be trusted as literal records; some were compiled beforehand from the plans, and others after the event from fading memories. The authors or artists engaged in producing the books had by no means always seen the entry themselves. Roy Strong finds that they are "an idealization of an event, often quite distant from its reality as experienced by the average onlooker. One of the objects of such publications was to reinforce by means of word and image the central ideas that motivated those who conceived the programme."Strong, 1984:47. One Habsburg entry was all but called off because of torrential rain, but the book shows it as it should have been.Phillip II into Antwerp in 1549 British Library Thomas Dekker, the playwright and author of the book on The Magnificent Entertainment for James I is refreshingly frank:
An early meeting between the festival book with travel literature is the account of the visit in 1530 of the future Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor, then King of Hungary and Bohemia to Constantinople.
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