Festive Traditions in Late Medieval and Early Modern Spain

A King Travels ❊ This page intentionally left blank A King Travels FESTIVE TRADITIONS IN LATE MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN SPAIN ❊ Teofilo F. Ruiz princeton university press princeton and oxford 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 press.princeton.edu Jacket Art: TheBurialoftheSardine (CorpusChristiFestivalonAshWednesday) c.1812–19 (oil on canvas) by Francisco Jose de Goya y Lucientes (1746–1828). Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Madrid, Spain / Giraudon / The Bridgeman Art Library All Rights Reserved 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. Festivals—Spain—History. 2. Festivals—Political aspects—Spain— History. 3. Philip II, King of Spain, 1527–1598—Travel. 4. Ceremonial entries—Spain— History. 5. Spain—History—711–1516. 6. Spain—History—House of Austria, 1516– 1700. 7. Spain—Social life and customs. 8. Popular culture—Spain—History. 9. Political culture—Spain—History. 10. Spain—Politics and government. I. Title. GT4862.A2R85 2012 394.26946—dc23 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 13579108642 1 TO PAUL H. FREEDMAN FRIEND, COLLEAGUE, ARBITER ELEGANTIARUM ❊ This page intentionally left blank ❊ Contents ❊ Preface ix Abbreviations xiii Chapter I Festivals in Late Medieval and Early Modern Spain: An Introduction 1 Chapter II The Meaning of Festivals: A Typology 34 Chapter III Royal Entries, Princely Visits, Triumphal Celebrations in Spain, c. 1327–1640 68 Chapter IV The Structure of the Late Medieval and Early Modern Royal Entry: Change and Continuity 113 Chapter V A King Goes Traveling: Philip II in the Crown of Aragon, 1585–86 and 1592 146 Chapter VI Martial Festivals and the Chivalrous Imaginary 193 Chapter VII Kings and Knights at Play in Late Medieval and Early Modern Spain 210 Chapter VIII From Carnival to Corpus Christi 246 Chapter IX Noncalendrical Festivals: Life Cycles and Power 293 Conclusion 331 Appendix The Feasts of May 1428 at Valladolid 335 Bibliography 339 Index 345 vii This page intentionally left blank ❊ Preface ❊ 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 em- bracing either the institutional and political history practiced by my be- loved master, Joseph R. Strayer, or the new social science–inflicted history which was very much in vogue at Princeton under Lawrence Stone’s bril- liant direction. My knights were replaced by peasants, pageantry by struc- tures. 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 ca- reer 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 magic—my lively five-year-old grand- daughter, Sofía, provides that—I 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 depic- tion 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 power—whether 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 ix PREFACE the twelfth century, states that “power was order.” And that order was often articulated through processions and spectacles.1 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 remem- ber 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 besot- ted by Carl Schorske’s 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 Ame- lang, Hilario Casado Alonso, Xavier Gil Pujol, Manuel González Jimé- nez, Francisco García Serrano, the late Julio Valdeón, 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. In many respects, this work, as most of my work over the many decades, had its genesis at the Shelby Cullom Davis Center (Princeton). I have been extraordinarily fortunate to grow as a historian in the shadows of my late master Joseph R. Strayer and in close contact with the late Lawrence Stone. I benefitted immensely from the wisdom of Peter Brown, Natalie Z. Davis, and Anthony Grafton, and from William Jor- dan’s enduring friendship and scholarly example. Elsewhere in the coun- try, Elizabeth A. R. Brown, Thomas N. Bisson, Olivia R. Constable, Paul H. Freedman, to whom my debt for his friendship and insights I will never be able to repay, Richard Kagan, David Nirenberg, Joseph O’ Callaghan, Carla and William Phillips, Charles Radding, Daniel Smail, Jesús Rodríguez Velasco, and many others whose names I would have 1 See Thomas N. Bisson, The Crisis of the Twelfth Century: Power, Lordship, and the Ori- gins of European Government (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009), 5. x PREFACE included were it not for the fear of making this an endless list, have made my life as a historian a pleasure. If I was fortunate to find an intellectual home at Princeton early in my academic life, I have been equally fortunate to find myself at UCLA in later years. One cannot be the colleague of such scholars as Ivan Berend, the late Father Robert Ignatius Burns, Patrick Geary, Carlo Ginzburg, Lynn Hunt, Margaret Jacob, Gabi Piterburg, Ron Mellor, David Myers, David Sabean, Debora Silverman, Geoffrey Symcox, and many others, without great profit to one’s own scholarship and social well being. Else- where at UCLA, Efraín Kristal and Jesús Torrecilla have contributed enormously to my work and life in Los Angeles. My graduate and under- graduate students have made important contributions to my development and to specific aspects of this book. My wife, companion, best friend, and first and only love, Scarlett Freund, has created the setting in which I have been able to be productive and, far more important, happy for more than two decades. The incomparable Brigitta von Rheinberg has been a faithful friend and advocate for many years. I have no words to thank her for her help and critical reading. Sarah Wolf and Sara Lerner have been incredibly helpful and kind to me and to my book. I owe them a great debt. Eva Jaunzems has carefully and lovingly copyedited the entire man- uscript. She has saved me from many infelicities, but she has also been respectful of the quirks and cadences of my writing style.

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