Teofilo F. Ruiz - A King Travels: Festive Traditions in Late Medieval and Early Modern Spain

A King Travels

TEOFILO F. RUIZ

Copyright 2012 by Princeton University Press
Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street,
Princeton, New Jersey 08540
In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street,
Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TW

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Jacket Art: The Burial of the Sardine (Corpus Christi Festival on Ash Wednesday) c.181219 (oil on canvas) by Francisco Jose de Goya y Lucientes (17461828). Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Madrid, Spain / Giraudon / The Bridgeman Art Library

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ruiz, Teofilo F., 1943
A king travels : festive traditions in late medieval and early modern Spain / Teofilo F. Ruiz.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-691-15357-5 (hardcover : acid-free paper) ISBN 978-0-691-15358-2 (pbk. : acid-free paper) 1. FestivalsSpainHistory. 2. FestivalsPolitical aspectsSpain History. 3. Philip II, King of Spain, 15271598Travel. 4. Ceremonial entriesSpain History. 5. SpainHistory7111516. 6. SpainHistoryHouse of Austria, 1516 1700. 7. SpainSocial life and customs. 8. Popular cultureSpainHistory. 9. Political cultureSpainHistory. 10. SpainPolitics and government. I. Title.
GT4862.A2R85 2012
394.26946dc23 2011034618

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

This book has been composed in Bembo

Printed on acid-free paper.

Printed in the United States of America

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

CHAPTER I
Festivals in Late Medieval and Early Modern Spain: An Introduction

CHAPTER II
The Meaning of Festivals: A Typology

CHAPTER III
Royal Entries, Princely Visits, Triumphal Celebrations in Spain, c. 13271640

CHAPTER IV
The Structure of the Late Medieval and Early Modern Royal Entry: Change and Continuity

CHAPTER V
A King Goes Traveling: Philip II in the Crown of Aragon, 158586 and 1592

CHAPTER VI
Martial Festivals and the Chivalrous Imaginary

CHAPTER VII
Kings and Knights at Play in Late Medieval and Early Modern Spain

CHAPTER VIII
From Carnival to Corpus Christi

CHAPTER IX
Noncalendrical Festivals: Life Cycles and Power

APPENDIX
The Feasts of May 1428 at Valladolid

DURING my adolescence, I was led to the Middle Ages by an unhealthy diet of nineteenth-century romantic novels. Alexander Dumas, Victor Hugo, Sir Walter Scott, and other novelists replaced my earlier fascination with Jules Verne and Emilio Salgari. My youthful and fairly feverish mind was always populated by knights and highborn ladies, by romance and pageantry. When I entered graduate school, I had to leave all that behind me, reluctantly. Becoming a professional historian in the early 1970s meant embracing either the institutional and political history practiced by my beloved master, Joseph R. Strayer, or the new social scienceinflicted history which was very much in vogue at Princeton under Lawrence Stones brilliant direction. My knights were replaced by peasants, pageantry by structures. I do not regret at all that detour in my growing up as a historian, but having embarked recently on a long journey to re-read everything I read when I was fifteen or sixteen years old, it is only now, at the end of my career or, as Cervantes put it, with my foot almost in the stirrup for that long journey into the night, that I return to my first dreams and love.

Although I love fantasy and magicmy lively five-year-old grand-daughter, Sofa, provides thatI am not foolish enough to think that all these delightful accounts that I will so lovingly gloss in chapters to come and relentlessly inflict upon you present anything like an accurate depiction of reality (whatever reality is). I am fully conscious that they are representations, distorted and ideologically-ridden versions of events that took place long ago and to which we have access only indirectly and at secondhand. Moreover, I am also fully conscious that these representations come, more often than not, from those close to the centers of powerwhether royal, aristocratic, municipal, or clerical. As such, they reflect peculiar ideological biases. But, once again, these narratives were essentially representations. Despite how close to reality late medieval and early modern narratives tried to make them appear, they were mostly fantasy. Arches were described, even though they were never really built. Displays were exaggerated, and the nature of feasts was often distorted to suit the political needs of the sponsors and writers. But representations also tell us important things about the nature of society, about the men and women who participated in these festive events, who gazed upon them and upon each other, who paid for them, and who scripted them for the benefit of those in power, those seeking power, or those contesting power. Recently, Thomas Bisson, in a spectacular book on the crisis of For sure not all festivals led to order. In fact, on many occasions they were sources of disorder. But to return to my early point, as the reader enters into this bizarre world of late medieval and early modern Iberian festivities, let her/him remember this caveat. It was all, in the end, perhaps quite different from what the chroniclers of a by-gone past would have encouraged us to believe.

As always, my list of acknowledgments is extensive. All throughout my life I have accumulated immense debts to many scholars whose example, comments, criticisms, and support as friends and fellow historians have meant a great deal to me. Long ago, a dear friend at Princeton, Park Teter, commented, upon hearing of my projected thesis, that I, who was besotted by Carl Schorskes genre of cultural history, was very much like the kid in high school who wished to play the violin but ended playing the tuba. I have been glad to play the tuba for a long while, but I hope this book is a bit of violin playing. I had a lot of help. In Spain, James Amelang, Hilario Casado Alonso, Xavier Gil Pujol, Manuel Gonzlez Jimnez, Francisco Garca Serrano, the late Julio Valden, and many others have inspired me by their work and sustained me by their friendship, as did Ariel Guiance in Argentina. In France, Jacques Le Goff, Christiane Klapisch, Denis Menjot, Jacques Revel, Adeline Rucquoi, Jean Claude Schmitt, Avram Udovitch, and Lucette Valensi have all inspired my work and helped me always to feel at home in Paris. In England, Robert Bartlett, Sir John H. Elliott, Judith Herrin, Peter Linehan, Angus MacKay, and R. I. Moore have contributed, in ways they cannot imagine, to the making of this work.