Writing Royal Entries in Early Modern Europe ed. by Marie-Claude Canova-Green, Jean Andrews, and Marie-France Wagner (review)

Nineteenth-century antiquarians recorded the details of royal entries in local histories but for much of the twentieth century they were seen as little more than unimportant ritual events to be noted before the narrative passed on to more critical matters. It is not always clear that contemporaries considered them particularly important. When in 1549, Sir William Paget’s embassy to Charles V was delayed because Philip was making a formal entry into all the major provinces and their capitals held by the Hapsburgs such as Gelderland, Friesland, Utrecht, Overijsel, Groningen, Holland, and Zeeland there is no indication in his letters that this was more than an irritant, delaying the more vital matters.

Paget’s attitude was not duplicated by others observing Philip’s progress in 1549. In the period before the decline of the ritual in the later seventeenth century, there was more to a royal entry into a European city than the ceremony and entertainment value. In the Low Countries it was a formal acknowledgement of commitment on both sides, especially important in 1549 since Charles had only recently conquered some of the provinces. Recently scholars have turned in increasing numbers to exploiting, through various interpretations, the implications of the surviving records of ceremonials. This revived interest has resulted in a detailed examination of the written materials about Court festivities and culture. Specialists are concerned to identify how they were used not merely in literary and material matters but also how the public performances were used to represent and acknowledge power, authority, and perhaps national identity. They are also examining how contemporary historians subverted these official objectives for other ends. As Louise Frappier shows in her chapter, Agrippa d’Aubigné inverted them to promote the justification of the reform movement.

Medieval royal entries are mainly known only from manuscripts or financial records but by the sixteenth century, printing was making the production of narratives, sometimes illustrated, available to the public and provided a new means for the rulers to impress those not able to attend including other monarchs. Whether these books are a true account of what happened is of course another matter but what all the contributors in this volume acknowledge is the common classical and religious background they employed, the shared iconography that went with that tradition, and the competitive ambition to make your ephemeral structures, costumes, dance, fireworks, and scripts better than your neighbour’s. Royal Entries were necessarily extravagant, put the provider into debt, employed many people and so were, in theory, good for the economy while a town with a gift for diplomacy might obtain highly desirable privileges. This volume has four main themes: the status of the printed records; their use as propaganda; their use as historical records; and the transformations that they underwent in different places and times.

It is difficult to select particular chapters for praise as all have their attraction for particular geographical areas or periods. Experts in those fields may or may not be convinced by the arguments – I am not convinced by Alexander Samson’s case about the London Entry of Philip and Mary – but all view what we thought we knew from an important and different angle. The way in which European ceremonies and their background were carried to the ‘New World’ and there transformed has not been widely considered: Jean Andrews’s chapter on the depiction of the Aztec emperors in a 1680 vice-regal entry to Mexico City should attract much attention.

Some chapters make points critical for any study of the available material. For example, Marie-France Wagner in discussing Henri IV of France’s entry to Moulins in 1595, shortly after the Catholic league had given up its struggle and he had been crowned...