Urban Drama, Part 5A

The Order of the Pageant:

from Transgression to Transformation

…space as an all-encompassing void is inconceivable; there is only a relation of contiguity.  There is place, but not space.  This became the traditional view in Jewish philosophy.[i]

The way to read this kind of late medieval drama is to see it as at once as a part of the historical moment in Christian time and place, as well as a work of art that stands outside of its own textual specificity and thus open to a variety of modern critical approaches, including the seemingly shocking and outrageous attempt here to see it through Jewish eyes.  Insofar as there is some justification for this it comes from the minor but no less real actual presence of Jews in the lands Froissart writes about.

Stage 1.  The first dramatic representation of the processional welcome takes place at Porte Saint-Denis, known as the Bastide.  A representation in this context means a combination of tableau-vivant, choral performance, and allegorical speech.  The stone gate is covered with temporary decorations to enhance its appearance, and above all a painting of the starry heavens.  There is a chorus of young children dressed as angels who stand on a platform attached to the gate, and they sing softly and harmoniously.  Then there is a living actress playing the part of the Virgin Mary who holds the Infant Jesus in her arms.  “The baby was plaything with a little mill made out of a large walnut,” writes Froissart. This detail stresses the sentimental and human side of the Queen of Heaven, an embodiment of the ideal that is manifest in a different way by Queen Isabella.  The child’s toy (or doll) and his playfulness bring the divine powers down into direct contact with the humble, earthly everyday experience of the city.  The banners across the starry sky indicate the bonding of France and Bavaria through this marriage, the beaming sun serving as the unifying image throughout the rest of these processional entertainments and the jousts that are to follow.[ii]

Stage 2.  Then we have the reactions of those who see this representation. “The Queen and the ladies looked at these things with great pleasure as they came through the gate…”  Note here that the whole complex royal and urban procession does two things.  The ladies pass through the gate, that is, they enter the city, and their entrance creates a bond between them and the masses of people who gather to observe and take part in the festivities.  This is a ritual passage, a transformative act, wherein the stranger becomes one of us, a Parisian.  Then we are told by the historian “and so did everyone else when they passed by there.”  Here inside the liminal zone between outside and inside the actions are more complicated.  Like the noble ladies, all the people in the crowd take pleasure in seeing the representation at the Bastide—and seeing thus includes more than just observing the painting, the actors, and the actions, but also hearing the singing.  The crowd also sees the Queen and her entourage with pleasure: it enjoys seeing her come into their city, it enjoys watching her looking at the representation, and it takes part in her pleasure at being a part of the ceremonial welcome.  The Queen sees what the city has put on display for her, and the city watches the Queen’s participation and her formal pleasure. These expressions of joy are more than emotional responses or outer signs of intellectual appreciation: they are also manifestations of the divine pleasure smiling down on all. 

Stage 3.  What is pleasure in this context?  It is a term which includes but is not limited by a sense of enjoyment, sensual and aesthetic delight in the sight of what is familiarly, novel and appropriate to the situation.  The Queen delights in seeing her marriage put in a context which affirms its spiritual, social and political value, and is pleased that the people of the city have taken this time, used their wealth, and considered her worthy of the representation.  For their part, they are pleased by her beauty, graciousness and tact in condescending to walk through their city and smile at their efforts.  Pleasure is thus emotional and intellectual.  It is what is expected in the occasion, built-in to the rules of the game, and it is also a spontaneous reaction to the sight, sounds, tastes, and feel of the whole occasion.

Stage 4.  Something similar happens at each of the stations—or stopping points or theatrical settings—on the route of the procession, where the queen and her party, the crowds gathered to see her enjoying herself, and the performers at work in each event all take pleasure in one another.  Some representations emphasize one aspect more than another, but all work together in harmony.  Sometimes the queen spends more time at one place rather than another.  Sometimes she smiles, sometimes she speaks spontaneously of her pleasure, as do the people.  It is this inter-activity which goes beyond the formal entertainments and the expensive artificial props to bond the loyalty of queen to city and citizens to their sovereign lady.  Each station represents an aspect of their expectations from one another, in a variety of intellectual, religious and mythical con-texts.  Take for instance the few lines cited by Froissart when the angelic choir-boys at the second Gate of Saint-Denise:

Lady with the lilied gown,

Queen you are of Paris town,

Of France and all this fair countrie:
Now back to paradise go we.

Here the Queen is enfolded into the well-rehearsed performance, her lilied garments serving as more than a display of her own beauty and nobility, but also to integrate her into the spiritual myth of paradise, the heavenly court above which is the ideal version of the royal household on earth, just as Paris is the epicenter and the microcosm of all of France.  By crowning her, the choristers act as representatives of the divine court, but also of the city itself.  For the it is the city—all of its buildings and streets, and not just the gates, fountains or facades of important buildings—that is to be seen as heaven on earth because the Queen passes through: and she is Queen of Heaven on Earth precisely because the city has shown its wealth, power and loyalty to embrace her in its heavenly role.

Stage 5.  Indeed, the narrator, Froissart, makes this very point, when he breaks through the text to speak of his own reactions to the procession of welcome.  He wonders where the sumptuous cloths on display come from.  He is attracted by the exotic and luxurious quality of the material, as well as the scenes depicted by art that “was pleasant and entertaining to look at”.  Like the mass of citizens and other spectators, the whole occasion is wonderful to see—and hear, smell, taste, feel.  Like the noble ladies and gentlemen, Froissart is a courtier and his appreciation has a degree of sophistication that supplements the immediate sense of surprise and wonder.  It is “magnificent”, that is, the scenes strike him as expensive, artistic, rare, powerful and full of profound meanings.  Things have an intrinsic meaning by their material, an aesthetic meaning by their artistic craft, an intellectual meaning by their allegorical intricacy and wit, and a spiritual meaning by their linkage to religious and courtly narratives and values.

Stage 6.  At the Cathedral, what makes the Queen and her party feel pleasure is explained by an account of how the representation was constructed.  The Genoese engineer prepared the paraphernalia a full month ahead of time.  Then the tight-rope walker’s performance is described.  Although no specific meaning is assigned to this spectacle, the wonder and amazement it creates in the spectators is of a piece with all the other stages in the procession of welcome.  The time and money spent in preparing for the show, the practice and skill of the performer, the appearance of the tight-rope walker with two torches descending from a great height across the Cathedral square in the growing dusk, all combine to give the audience a thrill, a sense of something quite out of the ordinary, the skill and agility given as gifts to the Queen and to the city.  The audience is pleased to see this and there-fore grateful for the noble lady for being the occasion for this wonder, and pleased to see her enjoying herself with this gift that is bestowed on her in their name by the organizers of the procession.  The performance entertains, as it still does today, by its display of courage and skill, to be sure; but is also a sign of the “magic” way in which communication and movement between heaven and earth is possible—a man seems to fly, to walk across the empty space above the crowds; and this suggests a middle region between the completely pure heaven above and the dark, mutable, mortal and physical ground beneath.  There is no empty space, a void between what creates and what is created, but a series of places related by signs—a signified place (Hebrew for makom or stage), just as there is no absolute breach between time (zman or chronological moment): within rabbinical thought makom and zman can be used as metonymic names for God.  In Christian terms, the connections between here and there, then and now, we in the mortal region of history and death and those in the celestial place of eternity and the infinite purity of being is occupied more or less by the Incarnate Christ in Jesus (as told in the dramatic narrativbes of the Gospel), by the saints and angels who constitute the Church Triumphant, and by the Church itself as Corpus Christi, as ecclesiastical hierarchy, and as physical buildings and the sacramantal acts that occur therein.

Stage 7.  At this point, after the tight-rope walker’s performance, Queen Isabel and her party enter the Cathedral.  The movement indoors is a change in scene from public event to a more private experience, yet one that extends the same meanings and pleasures from outside for the whole city to participate to this now more enclosed ecclesiastical space. 

The Queen was escorted through the church and the choir up to the high altar, where she knelt down and said prayers of her own choice, and offered to the treasury of Notre-Dame four cloths of gold and the crown which the angels had placed on her head as she entered Paris.

We can see that the procession continues while at the same time it is transformed from a civic occasion to a religious one.  That the Queen should choose her own prayers indicates that she too has prepared a unique performance in the midst of the generally scripted choreography (and geography) of her welcome: she puts her own unique mark on the inner meaning of the ceremony.  The offering of the crown she had received from the angelic children at the start of her entry now completes this opening phase of the drama, and integrates her into the religious life of the community, just as the reception itself and the wearing of the crown showed her to be the city’s idealized representation of the Virgin Mary.

Immediately after, Sir Jean de la Rivière and Sir Jean Le Mercier offered her a considerably richer crown which they held in readiness, and this was placed on her head by the Bishop of Paris and the four dukes of her escort.

At this point another remarkable transformation occurs.  The symbolic crown from the representation of angels is replaced by a real royal crown by the combined efforts of the Bishop and the Dukes, the ecclesiastical and aristocratic estates.  Isabella now truly is Queen by the grace of God and by the acclamation of the nobility. 

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[i] Israel Isaac Efros, The Problem of Space in Jewish Mediaeval Philosophy (New York, NY: AMS Press, 1966; orig. Columbia University Press, 1917) p. 65.

[ii] In this discussion, almost all the specific political considerations and circumstances of the marriage are put aside; our stress is on the symbolic and dramatic elements.  As Froissart describes Paris, however, it is well to remember that in terms of the whole of his history, the kingdoms of Spain, France and England overlap and inter-act in one Christian ideal.