Addressing la ville des dieux: entry ceremonies and urban audiences in seventeenth-century Dijon.

On 31 January 1629, Louis XIII made his royal entry into Dijon, the capital of Burgundy, a highly-sensitive province on France's eastern frontier. Although the city had only been given three weeks, rather than the months that were usually allowed to prepare the elaborate and expensive ceremony, Louis's entry was on the whole typical of late sixteenth and early seventeenth-century French entrees royales et princieres. The allegorical archways along the procession route, designed and erected by the city government, employed classical themes and allegories to extol Louis's heroic virtues, comparing him alternately with Apollo and Caesar Augustus. The ceremony also highlighted the city's submission and fidelity to the king while four of the five archways celebrated Louis's recent defeat of the rebellious Protestant stronghold of La Rochelle.

Slightly more than three and one-half years later, Henri de Bourbon, prince of Conde and first prince of the blood made his entry into Dijon as Burgundy's new royal governor. In contrast with Louis's entry, the city had plenty of time to prepare, especially after Conde delayed the ceremony from May until late September 1632. As was the case in 1629, the ceremonial program was typical for a princely entry in the early seventeenth century. Conde was portrayed as Apollo, Louis XIII was depicted in imperial garb, and their superlative virtues were prominently celebrated. The entry also stressed the populace's love for its new governor and protector. Like Louis's entry, then Conde's was a standard celebration of royal majesty, "an occasion to adulate the royal person

[or his representative] as the source of right order and human benefits." (1)

What makes these two entries significant is not their stereotypical glorification of the king and prince. Rather they are interesting because when examined in light of the local political context and alongside other urban ceremonies we can see how Dijon's municipal elite used them to address not only the entering king or governor, but various elements of the local populace as well. A close examination of these entries reveals how they functioned not simply as "state ceremonials," as they are usually interpreted, but also as local political rituals. Both Louis's and Conde's entries were opportunities for the notables who directed Dijon's hotel de ville to articulate their concerns about mounting internal tensions and social instability to the city's populace. At the same time, they were also occasions for Dijon's notables to reinforce symbolically their vision of the city's social order during a period of mounting internal and external pressures.

The entry ceremonies staged by cities to welcome kings and princes have long drawn the attention of historians interested in late medieval and early modern French political culture. Lawrence Bryant and others have demonstrated how entries dramatized and symbolized the relationship between city and king, providing both with a "frame of reference." Originally, the late medieval/Renaissance joyeuse entree functioned as a "mise en scene for the union of the body politic" in which various groups embodied and enacted the abstract principles of the Renaissance Monarchy, establishing their respective rights and obligations. (2) By the mid-sixteenth century, however, the classicizing influences of Italian humanist culture and the impact of new theories of absolute royal sovereignty had helped transform the joyeuse entree into the entree royale et princiere, modeled on the Roman imperial Triumph. Once an occasion for dialogue and negotiation between the urban elite and the entering dignitary, the entree became instead a celebration of royal virtues; the king's (or prince's) role as sole guarantor of peace, prosperity and civic liberties; and the city's complete submission to the monarch's overwhelming power. (3)

In addition to the entree's "constitutional" aspects, other elements have also drawn attention. Recent studies have examined, for example, how urban elites used entries to promote a humanistic vision associating eloquence and learning with nobility and authority. (4) Scholars have also focused on the ceremonies' hermeneutics. Bryant has explored the significance of nudity in Henri II's entries, Michael Wintroub has compared entry programs to Renaissance cabinets of curiosities, and Marie-France Wagner, Daniel Vaillancourt and Eric Mechoulan have examined entries to ascertain the "urban rhetoric" of the court. (5) S. Annette Finley-Croswhite has shown how Henri IV's entries contributed to his "ceremonial reconciliation" with former Catholic League cities. In a similar vein, Yann Lignereux has recently pointed out how Henri's 1595 entry into Lyon fostered personal bonds between the king and France's second largest city, aiding the reestablishment of royal authority there. (6)

Studies of entry ceremonies, whether focusing on constitutional or other aspects, have thus tended to concentrate on the interaction between the city and the entering king or prince. In examining entries as a form of "state ceremony," to borrow Ralph Giesey's term, historians have largely ignored the ways they functioned as local rituals, like commemorative ceremonies or religious processions which served as "commentaries on the city, [and] its internal dynamics ... provid[ing] a medium for discourse among the constituent classes and between the literate elite and the masses." (7) In other words, scholars have yet to explore the ways royal and princely entries captured and articulated relations between the various social groups that constituted the cities staging these ceremonies. Thus, while scholars have noted how the entry's successions of archways and theaters formed an instructive and edifying narrative for the entering king or prince--the "principal spectator"--they have not yet considered, for the most part, what messages might have been conveyed to local participants and spectators. Because the entering king or prince in Dijon, as in many other cities, was accompanied along the procession by a large segment of the population, entries were an occasion for the notables who controlled the municipal government to address not only the entering king or prince, but also the populace of the city they governed. (8) They were an opportunity not only to articulate a vision of the city's relationship with the crown, but also a chance to reaffirm the existing social order and to repair and reaffirm vertical bonds of allegiance, deference and community with the city's middling and popular classes.

This article will show how members of Dijon's municipal elite used Louis XIII's 1629 and Conde's 1632 entries to present multiple, overlapping messages that addressed both the national and dynastic concerns of the monarchy and the local experiences and political interests of the city's middling and popular classes. It will examine these entries in light of local events and political issues and show how both entries were adapted to the city's political culture. In particular, it will explore how subsequent performances of the carnivalesque mere folle de Dijon translated the entries' celebration of royal political, military and dynastic virtues into the idiom of local experience and concerns. Louis XIII's and Conde's entries looked inward to the city and its inhabitants as much as they did outward to the king, the prince and their entourages. As local political rituals, the entries provided Dijon's city council and the notables who controlled it with an opportunity to express their concerns to the urban populace; a chance to cultivate support from the city's politically active master artisans, shopkeepers, and minor professionals whose support was essential to maintaining order; and an occasion to shore up their fragile and frequently-challenged authority among the city's more marginal, but still politically-aware and potentially unruly lower classes, especially its large population of wine-growers (vignerons). (9)

The fragile nature of municipal authority and the conflicting impulses motivating the notables who staffed early modern urban governments are well-known. In Dijon, as elsewhere, municipal offices were often burdensome, time-consuming and costly. Those who assumed them did so from a sense of duty to the local community and pride in their city's traditions. During their brief stints at the hotel de ville, city officials saw themselves as protectors of municipal interests and privileges. (10) At the same time, the influences of the Catholic Reformation and the lingering memory of the religious wars led most notables to support royal efforts to reinforce social hierarchies and to ensure peace and order by disciplining the lower classes. It was this sense of a shared mission with the crown that underpinned notables' claims to elite status and fueled their increasing efforts to distance themselves from popular culture and behavior. In cities such as Dijon, then, early seventeenth century municipal elites found themselves compelled to negotiate between competing loyalties to city and crown. (11)

These conflicting loyalties were accompanied by contradictory political exigencies. On one side were the monarchy's increasingly inflexible expectations that municipalities would maintain order, execute royal commands, and aid royal officers in their often unpopular duties. On the other were the populace's persistent beliefs that urban magistrates should defend local interests, protect the community from unjust burdens, and prevent the abusive depredations of outsiders, even those bearing royal charges. Urban officials were thus "caught in the middle between the traditional interests of their communities and the new demands put on them by the king." They knew the monarch was the ultimate source of their status and authority and that displeasing the crown could have disastrous ramifications. At the same time, they knew that their coercive and material power was highly limited and that their ability to control the populace rested largely on their ability to maintain respect for their status and authority. Preserving this "intangible aura," however, meant fulfilling, or at least appearing to fulfill, the popular expectations listed above. While urban elites knew that tooth and nail defense of local interests against royal imperatives was inconceivable, they were also aware that implementing royal demands viewed as unjust meant risking the loss of their fragile ability to maintain order. To reconcile these fundamentally irreconcilable demands, urban governments employed a number of strategies, including temporizing, negotiating, and appealing to powerful patrons. (12) In addition, they also sought to reinforce their symbolic authority whenever possible. This can be seen most clearly in the frequent precedence conflicts involving city officials during this period. In the mid-1620s, for example, the mairie successfully fought off the bailliage of Dijon's claims that its officials, rather than municipal magistrates, should publicly invest mayors with their symbols of office. (13) The mairie's officials also sparred with royal officers over their place in major public processions or religious ceremonies. When Dijon's clergy ordered public prayers for better weather without the mairie's approval, or when royal officials executed seizures and forced sales, or affixed seals in the absence of municipal sergents, the mairie responded quickly and vocally. (14) Given the symbolic foundations of political authority in this period, then, it is hardly surprising that Dijon's notables sought to use the entries of 1629 and 1632 to reinforce their authority. By speaking simultaneously to the king and the population of Dijon, the urban notables responsible for designing and staging the ceremonies sought to reconcile the diverging demands placed on them by the monarchy and the populace.

The challenges facing Dijon's notables were complicated by the fact that the urban community they addressed was far from homogeneous. Recent scholarship on early modern French and European cities has called our attention to what might be described as their tripartite social order. At the top were an elite group of noble officials and magistrates (whose relationship to the city, as in the case of Dijon's sovereign court magistrates, was often distant and ambiguous) and prominent notables, including lawyers, other professionals, and wealthy merchants (often termed the civic or municipal elite). In Dijon as elsewhere, these elites enjoyed considerable wealth, property, and status. The vast majority were well-educated, literate in French and often Latin, and shared the humanistic culture of the colleges and universities. Their style of life, comportment and access to the levers of power and influence thus marked them as a distinct social and cultural group. This elite governed an urban population made up predominantly of journeymen, unskilled laborers and agricultural workers (especially vignerons in Dijon's case), not to mention even more marginal groups such as vagrants, women and young men. These latter groups, which comprised the majority of the city's population, had little or no property, lived in precarious financial circumstances, and were looked down upon by their betters as the canaille or gens de neant ("the worthless people" or "those without property"). The urban masses generally had little education, were often illiterate and usually spoke only the regional patois, although it should be noted that perhaps one-third of journeymen and vignerons were at least somewhat literate in French. (15) It was they who bore the brunt of new taxes, poor harvests, economic downturns and other crises. Moreover, they were also viewed with suspicion and alarm by the city's elites, who viewed them as a constant threat to peace and order.

In between the elites and the masses was a relatively small group of shopkeepers, master artisans, and lesser professionals who possessed enough wealth, property, status and education to have a stake in the existing social order. The members of this group, often referred to collectively with the elite as the gens de bien ("the good people" or "those with property") were important figures in their parishes, served as intermediaries between the populace and the civic elite, and supplied the backbone of the urban militia--the main element of coercive force at the city council's disposal. On the whole, this middling group sided with the civic elite and shared its fear of popular violence and disorder. The alliance between the civic elite and these middling groups in Dijon helped the city's notables maintain order and justified their continued privileges and status. Like their social inferiors, however, the middling group was also highly vulnerable to new taxes, economic dislocations and other pressures. They shared the lower classes' belief that the municipal elite should prioritize local interests over ill-informed and often ill-intentioned royal orders emanating from afar. When the municipal elite was perceived to have failed in the defense of local interests, or when fiscal, economic and other pressures became too great, the middling groups could withdraw their support for the regime. The result was usually a breakdown of order and violent uprisings from below which in turn threatened the notables' wealth and status. (16) Dijon's civic elite, like their colleagues elsewhere, were thus in the unenviable position of trying to maintain the support of key middling groups while enacting royal policies that they detested.

Complicating matters further was the fact that the boundaries between the gens de bien and the gens de neant were still ambiguous and contested in Dijon during the late 1620s. Prior to 1611, all male heads of household could participate in the annual mayoral elections, and the city's lower classes were actively courted by candidates for the city's highest office. As Mack Holt has shown, the popular classes jealously guarded their right to take part in the elections, less for the political power it gave them than to prove their identity as gens de bien. Lower class participation, however, also led to sustained periods of unrest prior to elections, considerable unpredictability in their outcome, and frequent charges of corruption by rival candidates. After a decade of wrangling between the city's royal courts, who wanted wholesale changes in the electoral format; the mairie, which opposed any "encroachments" on its privileges; and the crown, the right to vote was restricted to those who had paid a minimum taille of four livres for three consecutive years. While this provision would have disenfranchised most of Dijon's lower classes, it does not appear to have been vigorously enforced as long as elections remained orderly and predictable. Judging by the relative stability in the numbers of votes cast throughout the first half of the seventeenth century, Dijon's lower classes remained a significant, if now chastened element of the electorate. (17) Even in the 1620s and 1630s, Dijon's popular classes, especially the vocal and well-organized contingent of vignerons who lived inside the city walls, continued to see themselves as active members of Dijon's political community. They sought to remain informed about local and even national affairs and expected the mairie to defend local interests as they saw them. Dijon's municipal elite still needed the tacit support of those they considered gens de neant, but who considered themselves gens de bien, to govern effectively in the late 1620s. (18)

The entries of 1629 and 1632 reflect the municipal elite's efforts to maintain the support of the different segments of the urban populace as well as the favor of the king and governor. Louis's entry, for example, not only glorified his virtues and celebrated his triumph over La Rochelle, it also reflected the mairie's preoccupation with preventing unrest among the populace. Both the middling and lower classes in the late 1620s feared the possibility of higher taxes on wine and foodstuffs if the monarchy, as rumored, replaced Burgundy's Estates with new bureaux des elections. In spite of its efforts to maintain calm in the city, the mairie, which also opposed the elections, ultimately lost the middling group's support and failed to contain popular anger over the possibility of new taxes. The result was the well-known lanturelu uprising of February 1630 and Louis's subsequent decision to strip the city of its privileges. However, while many other cities never recovered their lost privileges, Dijon's were restored a little more than a year later (with Conde's assistance) as a reward for the city's refusal to join Burgundy's governor, the duc de Bellegarde, in supporting Gaston d'Orleans's rebellion. As a result, Conde's entry, while overtly praising both his and Louis's virtues, also served as the occasion for a symbolic healing of the rifts that had emerged between Dijon's municipal elite, the rest of the gens de bien and the popular classes following lanturelu. In honoring Conde's arrival as governor, the entry also celebrated the restoration of the city's cherished privileges and offered hope for a more peaceful and harmonious future.

The 1629 and 1632 entries were designed by two echevins who, in many ways, typified the notables who controlled Dijon's hotel de ville. Etienne Brechillet and Pierre Malpoy were both avocats at the Parlement of Burgundy. Both appear to have been financially respectable, but hardly wealthy, paying between 50 sous and three livres per year in tailles (after a fifty percent reduction for municipal service). In addition to being successful avocats (a contemporary described Malpoy as one of the most famous avocats of his time), both had lengthy careers at the mairie. Brechillet, who designed Louis XIII's entry, served nine terms as echevin between 1626 and 1656, including two stints of three consecutive terms (1626-29 and 1636-38), the maximum allowed by law. By the late 1620s, Brechillet had also been appointed as a legal counsellor to the city and in June 1628, he served as garde des evangiles--the city's chief magistrate between the end of the outgoing Mayor's term and the election. Malpoy, the designer of Conde's entry, served ten terms as echevin between 1615 and 1637, twice sitting for the three-year maximum (1615-17 and 1631-33). He, too, was a legal counselor to the city and garde des evangiles in 1633. Malpoy and Brechillet each appear to have been local literary figures of some note and Brechillet was even called upon to present Louis XIII with the city's gift during his entree. In short, both Brechillet and Malpoy can be seen as spokesmen for the city council and the notables who dominated it in the early seventeenth century. (19)

In addition to these activities, Brechillet and Malpoy were also members of Dijon's carnivalesque mere folle, one of the many misrule groups found in French cities during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. By the early seventeenth century, Dijon's mere folle had somewhere between 200 and 500 members, drawn primarily from the legal professions but also including artisans, merchants and other members of the city's middling classes. The mere folle's membership thus brought together the notables who dominated the mairie with members of the middling social groups in a context of civic and festive sociability. (20) The mere folle's main activity was to parade through the city's streets in their red, yellow and green costumes to celebrate carnival, important feast days and the arrival of important dignitaries. These parades, often staged with the financial backing of the city government, included street performances of comic plays featuring a collection of French speaking characters such as Pere Bontemps (the symbol of regional prosperity and well-being), assorted deities, and other educated figures alongside patois-speaking vignerons, fools and representatives of the lower classes. (21)

While the mere folle drew from the city's elite and middling classes, its plays targeted a much broader audience. Indeed, the mere folle's performances were in many ways moments which brought the entire urban populace together as members of the civic elite and middling groups performed in the popular idiom for audiences drawn from all levels of society. The plays' pervasive bilingualism, according to Juliette Valcke, was highly unusual during this period, even for pieces meant for popular audiences. Moreover, she argues, the plays consistently portrayed the vignerons and other popular characters with respect, while criticizing national and local elites as readily as the lower classes. The plays' French-Burgundian bilingualism, she concludes, was no mere literary artifice or comic technique, but instead, reflected their authors' desire to address the broadest possible cross-section of the urban populace, from the upper classes who could speak both French and Burgundian to the lower classes who primarily spoke the latter. Even more importantly, she claims, the patois-speaking characters drew the popular audience into the performance and helped it understand the plays' intended meanings. "Un theatre bilingue," she concludes, "en permettant au peuple de bien saisir l'importance de l'action qui se deroulait sur scene," provided the elite authors of the mere folle's plays a perfect opportunity to mobilise "l'opinion populaire." (22)

It is hardly surprising, then, that shortly after both entries, the mere folle staged performances incorporating the earlier ceremonies into local festive and carnival culture. The Chariot de triomphe du roy, which was performed shortly after Louis XIII's entry, and Le retour de Bontemps and Chariot des deities a l'honneur de monseigneur le prince, which were staged after Conde's, repeated the entries' messages to the urban audience and made explicit references to the ceremonies themselves. Such overlap was hardly accidental. The plays, like the entries, were written by none other than Malpoy, who composed Chariot du Triomphe, and Brechillet, who wrote Chariot des deities and Le retour de Bontemps (the latter in collaboration with another avocat and frequent echevin, Benigne Perard). (23) The repetition of the ceremonies' themes in this local and popular context shows how the notables responsible for both the entries and the plays sought to ensure that the messages embedded in Louis's and Conde's entries were received and understood by the larger urban audience. They demonstrate that the municipal elite used the entry ceremonies both to express their concerns to a local audience, as well as to protect symbolically their status and authority with all who participated in and witnessed the ceremony. The entries, with their classical allusions and their extensive use of French and Latin, spoke primarily to the entourage of the entering king or governor, the urban elite, and the city's middling classes. This does not mean, however, that the popular classes were not also part of the intended audience. As Christian Jouhaud has observed, witnesses did not need to be able to decipher fully an entry's profusion of images, allusions and texts to grasp its meaning. Entries' audiences, he observes, cannot be divided into a small, literate elite able to comprehend the ceremony and the rest, who were merely uncomprehending, passive bystanders. Nonetheless, he notes, social distinctions did produce an "inequality of competences and levels of reading" that limited the popular classes' ability to interpret entries' messages. (24) That is why the notables who staged these entries translated their messages into patois, recast them in plays of the mere folle and repeated on the streets of Dijon shortly after the entries themselves.

The principal theme of the 1629 entry was Louis's defeat of La Rochelle (Oct. 1628), which had already been celebrated in Dijon with a feu de joie attended by "une grande multitude du peuple" and judged "des plus beaux qui ce soit jamais veu en ladicte ville." The theater designed by Pierre Guillaume, another avocat and echevin, portrayed the king as a young Hercules defeating rebellion, depicted as a wild-eyed woman with a torch in one hand and a sword in the other. Other scenes showed the genies of France and the king lifting a royal mantle from the ground and a winged victory with crowns and a trumpet. Overseeing the ceremonies was none other than Brechillet, whom the mairie would commission to design Louis XIII's entry when the latter unexpectedly announced his intention to visit Dijon en route to Dauphine at the beginning of January 1629. (25)

Louis' announcement came shortly after his magnificent triumphal entry into Paris as the conqueror of La Rochelle on 23 December 1628. (26) While Louis's entry into Dijon was thus part of the national and international celebrations surrounding his victory, it was also much more as far as Dijon's municipal elite was concerned. In spite of Louis's apparent reticence, the mairie insisted on treating Louis' arrival as a formal entree royale and on reviving a ceremony that had last been performed fully by Charles IX in 1564 (Henri IV's entry, made just after the city' surrender in 1595, had been hasty and improvised, with only one triumphal arch). (27) Upon learning of Louis's intentions, the city council dispatched five echevins to the archives to consult records of the royal entries of 1520, 1548 and 1564. (28) Shortly thereafter, the mairie approved Brechillet's designs for five triumphal archways, sent to neighboring towns for musicians and borrowed eight thousand livres to pay for the ceremony. In the weeks that followed, the mairie turned its attention to ensuring that Louis would perform the ceremony's central act, swearing the oath "devant le grand autel [of Saint Benigne Cathedral] comm'il est accoustume entre les mains de Mgr le garde des sceaulx sur les saintz Evangilles de conserver la Ville et les habitans en leurs privileges." Up until a few days before the entry, it seemed that Louis would take the oath, which one deputy referred to as among "les actes plus importans et solemnelz de ladite entree." Then, almost without warning, the monarchy began to voice reservations and on the eve of the entree, Richelieu informed the council that Louis would not swear the traditional oath. When the time came for Louis to take the oath the next day, he instead promised to confirm the city's privileges once the keeper of the seals had received the necessary supporting materials. (29)

The mairie's concern with the customary oath at Saint-Benigne should be understood not only as part of its persistent efforts to preserve municipal traditions, but also in light of the unsettled atmosphere in the city itself. Burgundy in the late 1620s was suffering from food shortages, outbreaks of plague and depredations caused by troops on their way to Italy. (30) Tensions ran high in the city as well. In October 1627, a conflict between the Parlement and the Chambre des Comptes spilled into the streets when a crowd rioted in an attempt to block the latter's exile to Autun. More ominously, rumors were circulating that the crown planned to abolish the Estates of Burgundy and install royal tax officials known as elus. (31) Louis's entry thus came at a time when the mairie found itself trying to negotiate its conflicting obligations to the monarchy and the urban populace. Ensuring that Louis would swear the traditional oath at Saint Benigne would have gone a long way in helping to allay fears, especially among the crucial middling groups, about the rumored threats to the city's privileges. At the same time, Louis's public confirmation of Dijon's privileges would have been a powerful endorsement of the city's current social and political order, in particular the authority of those who dominated the hotel de ville.

Brechillet's decision to reprise the king's triumph over the rebellion of La Rochelle was by no means foreordained. The royal entry staged by Troyes only a few days earlier emphasized the city's love for the king and culminated with a traditional scene in which a young girl presented the king with a heart of gold that opened to reveal a fleur-de-lys. In contrast with Paris and Dijon, La Rochelle did not figure as a major iconographic theme in the Troyes entry. Brechillet's program thus reflected the elite's preoccupation with maintaining the city's fragile and deteriorating order. The theme of Louis's triumph over La Rochelle was not only appropriately grand and heroic, it also allowed the mairie to stress the virtues of obedience and the high costs of rebellion to the urban populace. (32)

Much has been made of the king or prince's role as the entry's "privileged spectator" who discerned the entry's underlying narrative as he proceeded from archway to archway. According to Michael Wintroub, "it was the king's role, in traveling from one tableau vivant to another, to link them all together--to activate them through the connecting thread of his experience--into a coherent narrative program." (33) The entering king or prince, however, was not the only one who would have experienced the ceremony in this way. A large portion of the city populace also accompanied the king through the archways. These included the city's clergy, members of its sovereign courts, the city government and, most significantly, the urban militia. Before each entry, the mairie ordered all males between eighteen and sixty to be prepared to march, and while the five-hundred livre fine levied on those absent suggests that attendance was far from perfect, nonetheless, entry accounts all note that "a large number of inhabitants" took part. (34) According to Pierre Malpoy, roughly two thousand members of the urban militia took part in Henri de Bourbon's 1632 entry, and a quarter of a century later, Benigne Griguette claimed that eight thousand inhabitants (nearly half the city's population!) marched under arms during the Duc d'Epernon's entree in 1656. (35) Even though the latter figure was clearly exaggerated, it is clear that a large number of the city's adult males took part in each entry procession. And while many of those in the procession would not have known the classical references upon which the allegorical archways were based, they would have understood the general meaning of the images they encountered. This would have been especially true for members of the city's middling classes, many of whom would have been at least somewhat literate and able to read some of the French verses and inscriptions that adorned the archway. (36)

Brechillet's entry program could thus be understood on two different levels, depending on the viewer's position. The king and his entourage saw an unambiguous celebration of Louis's triumph over La Rochelle and his heroic virtues as monarch. For the local audience, especially the gens de bien, the fate of La Rochelle served as warning about the dangers of disobedience and the necessity of obeying the king in all matters. References to the Rochellois' horrible crime, the inevitability of the king's triumph, and the terrible punishment awaiting those who challenge divine and royal authority ran throughout the ceremony. The third archway, for instance, portrayed La Rochelle as the mortal Niobe, whose excessive pride in her many progeny and her impiety towards Apollo's mother Latona (in this case an allegory for France) prompted the sun god to kill her children as punishment. (37) The archway depicted Niobe half turned into a boulder and three of her daughters representing "les villes rebelles tant celles qui sont reduittes que celles qui ne le sont point encores" fleeing a nude Apollo resembling Louis XIII, with his bow drawn in their direction. French verses in the middle of the arch chastised the "insolente mere d'orgueil" and noted the "plus rude chastiment" she and her daughters would now endure. (38) The theme was repeated on the final archway, which portrayed Louis XIII as Augustus, leading a figure of rebellion in chains and La Rochelle as Cleopatra allowing herself to be bitten by a snake, signifying "la vengeance divine et la punition de ceux qui attentent a la sainctete de Roys." (39)

These images contrasted sharply with the initial archway, the only one to depict the king's relationship with Dijon rather than La Rochelle. Louis entered Dijon not to scenes of rebellion and retribution, but to one of proper submission and loyalty. A figure of Louis on horseback was welcomed by Cybele, the mother of the gods and an allegory for Dijon, and by an image of fidelity, "qui s'humilioit devant le Roy." The scene's other elements called attention to the many benefits the city enjoyed as a result of its proper relationship with the king, including the advantages of urban society, agricultural prosperity, and the honor of having a Parlement. (40)

A few weeks later, the city's mere folle, or infanterie dijonnoise, performed Pierre Malpoy's Chariot de triomphe du roy, in which a pompous, Latin and French-speaking maistre aux arts attempts to explain to two patois-speaking vignerons an allegorical painting depicting Louis's victory as Jupiter's banishment of the Titans to the underworld. The vignerons at times seem more concerned with the problems inherent in hosting the giants and in news about Pere Bontemps, who has left the city to serve the king at La Rochelle, than in the subtleties of the maistre's explication. In spite of this, the maistre continues, describing the duke of Buckingham's defeat at the Ile-de-Re. All three then celebrate the king's triumph and the vignerons recount their joy at the recent entry ceremony, both in seeing the king and in enjoying the plentiful food and drink. The play ends with the maistre and vignerons hoping for more victories from Louis and a dauphin to secure the succession.

Malpoy's play reiterated the entree's warnings about the high costs of disobedience while also attempting to calm tensions between the municipal elite and the city's popular classes. When the vignerons express pity for the giants, the maistre explains that their sympathy is misguided. Later, one of the vignerons describes his experience of Louis's entree, noting how he went out to the Abbey of the Chartreux where the procession began. The vigneron recounted how he followed the procession to Saint-Benigne, described the scene with the rebellious Niobe and her daughters atop the third archway, and then explained how he followed the procession along the rest of its route. (41) The play thus showed how the city's elites used the entry's narrative structure to warn the populace about the dangers of rebellion. It also showed a representative of the popular classes remembering one of the key moments in the entry where this warning was most apparent.

Malpoy's play, far from being dismissive or scornful of the city's lower classes, actually sought to strengthen the bonds between notables and populace while reminding the popular classes of the dangers of rebellion and the need to obey the king in all things. The maistre initially treats the vignerons as "rustique progenie" and dismisses them as brutes who merely disturb his genius. After the vignerons convince him to explain the painting, the maistre's authority is repeatedly challenged by his excessively formal, pedantic language which at times makes him incomprehensible. The vignerons, while simple-minded, nonetheless show themselves to be well informed about the particulars of the siege of La Rochelle, especially the role of the comte d'Harcourt, whose induction into the infanterie was the occasion for the play. By the end of the performance, the maistre has dropped his dismissive attitude toward the vignerons while the latter, now able to at least partially understand his erudite language, join him in singing Louis's praises. (42) Harmony between elites and populace, as well as lower class obedience and deference, were thus symbolically reaffirmed.

The mairie's emphasis on the theme of rebellion and its consequences was also heightened by the near absence of any references to La Rochelle's Protestantism in the entree or the play. As Holt has shown, Catholic piety was a fundamental element of Burgundian identity, especially among the vignerons. During the Wars of Religion, Dijon had been one of the principal centers of the Catholic League, and sixteenth-century entrees had highlighted the duties of kings and governors to defend the faith. (43) Conde's 1632 entree explicitly linked heresy and rebellion, praising the prince for restoring the "Vraye et Orthodoxe Religion" in the Huguenot cities where it had been abolished. Other cities, such as Toulouse, also highlighted the king's role as defender of the faith and celebrated his triumph over rebellious heretics in their entrees. (44) The minimal attention which Brechillet and Malpoy paid to these themes in their celebrations of Louis's defeat of France's main Huguenot stronghold is thus striking. La Rochelle's Protestantism is entirely effaced in Brechillet's design; although the connection was raised in Chariot des deities, its significance was muted. The maistre aux arts enters by praising Louis for eliminating Calvin's heresy and the rebellions it inspires, but this conjunction quickly disappears when he starts addressing the vignerons. The latter revive the theme briefly, with one observing that Jupiter "n'a aime pas trop les lutheriens." The maistre confirms that Louis has indeed crushed their mutinous pride but otherwise passes over their comment to explain the rest of the painting, ignoring the vignerons' mis-identification of the Calvinist Rochellais. On the whole, Brechillet and Malpoy clearly chose to emphasize the theme of rebellion pure and simple. In downplaying the connection between heresy and rebellion, they made the example of La Rochelle applicable to the current situation in Dijon, where heresy was virtually non-existent but where rebellion was a growing possibility.

Although Louis later confirmed Dijon's privileges by lettres patentes, his refusal to swear the traditional oath must have been viewed with alarm, especially by the middling classes the mairie was trying to reassure. As the year continued, the situation only worsened. Throughout the spring of 1629, Louis and the keeper of the seals Michel de Marillac repeatedly rejected requests by deputies of the provincial Estates to summon the triennial meeting in May. In June 1629, the edit des elections replaced Estates in Burgundy and the other pays d'etats with bureaux des elections, further fanning fears of new and onerous taxes. In the months that followed, as the mairie, Estates, and Parlement sought to have the edict revoked, the situation in Dijon deteriorated. In January 1630, mayor Euvrard wrote the city council from Paris to express alarm at reports of growing unrest. On 18 February, Bellegarde wrote with similar concerns, urging the mairie to remind the populace that a revolt would bring about the city's ruin. (45) The next day, in the wake of the Mayor and the Estates' failure to obtain the edict's revocation, the mairie ordered the echevins and militia officers to keep close watch over the city. (46) These efforts ultimately came to naught. On 28 February, an armed group of vignerons and poorer artisans, led by the "king" of the recently-ended carnival and supported by a large crowd, began attacking the residences of those they suspected of profiting from the elections. Initial attempts to quell the riot failed as the middling classes refused to heed the mairie's call to arms. Only when the crowd threatened to move beyond attacking those associated with the elections did enough members of the militia turn out to enable the mairie and Parlement to restore order. While most of the city's prosperous artisans and other middling inhabitants did not join the rebels, they also refused to help repress the revolt. (47) The extent to which the urban elite itself was complicit in the breakdown of order remains a subject of debate, but we do know that for the next two months, the mairie unsuccessfully tried to convince a skeptical monarchy that the revolt was only a minor uprising by "gens de neant" and that the city's "bons habitans" had done all they could to suppress it. In spite of these protestations, Louis stripped the city of its privileges as punishment for the revolt. The echevinage was reduced from twenty to six and the vicomte-mayeur was henceforth to be selected by a small assembly of notables and royal officers, with Louis reserving the right to select the mayor from a list of three nominees for the next six years. Louis also reorganized the civic militia, ordered all vignerons permanently expelled, and imposed other punitive measures against the city. Two months later, he suppressed the mere folle as contrary to good morals and public tranquillity. (48)

For the notables who dominated Dijon's hotel de ville, the popular rebellion they had warned against the year before brought about the devastating consequences they had feared. In stripping the city of its centuries-old privileges, Louis threatened to deprive many notables of the offices, influence and status that had long defined their place in the local community. Within a few months of the new regime's installation, conflicts among the municipal elite over the remaining offices reached a level that required Bellegarde's personal intervention. (49) By the middle of 1631, however, Dijon's privileges and traditional municipal regime had been restored. In March 1631, the city government refused to follow governor Bellegarde's lead and join Gaston d'Orleans' rebellion. This visible display of loyalty and obedience, combined with renewed lobbying by the mairie and the support of the Prince de Conde, soon to be Burgundy's new governor, resulted in the revocation of the elections, the restoration of the city's privileges, and the revival of the mere folle (with some restrictions) in May 1631. Six months later, Louis named Conde governor of Burgundy and by early February 1632, plans were being made to stage an entree to welcome the First Prince of the Blood to his new provincial capital. Originally scheduled for May, the entree was postponed to June and then to the end of September after Conde was forced to go to Brittany on the king's behalf. (50)

In contrast with the ominous undertones three years earlier, Conde's entry on 30 September 1632 celebrated Dijon's renewal and restoration in the wake of the crisis of 1629-31. As in the case of Louis's entry, the program designed by Pierre Malpoy echoed themes and motifs that were already in the air. Almost a year earlier, the barrister Charles Fevret had portrayed Conde as an "astre favorable" whose influence had freed the province from the many evils--destructive troop movements, ruinous debts, internal rebellions, and the near loss of the provincial Estates--it had suffered in recent years. Benigne Perard's poem, A la Bourgogne, urged Burgundy to cast off its mourning clothes and regain the imperial color of its glory days under the Valois Dukes. Conde's appointment as governor, the poem continued, restored harmony, obedience and prosperity to the long-troubled region. (51) As in 1629, Malpoy's entry program and the elaborate, illustrated folio that commemorated it, addressed the local populace as well as the entering prince himself. On the one hand, the entree's allegorical archways and poems were typical in their adulation of Conde's and Louis XIII's triumphs and heroic virtues. At the same time, though, many of the scenes also celebrated Dijon's restoration and the healing of its internal divisions through Conde's protection and mediation. Once again, those responsible for the entry designed it to function simultaneously as a state ceremony in honor of the prince and as a local civic ritual celebrating the restoration of the city's privileges and its revived fortunes.

Like other contemporary entrees, Malpoy's program exalted Conde and Louis while portraying the city in largely passive, submissive terms. The third archway, for instance, depicted a greater than life-size image of Louis on his throne, crowned with laurel and dressed in a Roman triumphal robe. Flanking Louis were two Victories--one terrestial and one naval--and the two columns of his reign, Justice and Piety. Kneeling before Louis was a figure representing Burgundy modeled on a medal showing Rome kneeling before Augustus. (52) The following archway used an image of Apollo's slaying of Phorbas to celebrate Conde's piety and valor. Echoing a theme favored by royal apologists and propagandists, Malpoy also called attention to the qualities Conde possessed by virtue of his royal blood, including incorruptibility, erudition, wisdom, prudence, and mastery of eloquence, laws, and harmony (in both musical and political senses). (53)

While the fourth archway praised Conde, it also revived the theme of rebellion that had been so prominent in 1629, albeit with a more explicit link to heresy. According to Malpoy, the scene on the archway was an allegory of Conde's defeat of the Huguenot rebellions of Languedoc and Guyenne. A slain wolf represented the "brigandages et pilleries" halted by Conde as well as his defeat of "tous les desseins et toutes les nouveautes qui se preparoient a la ruine de pais et de cette ville capitale." For his efforts, Apollo/Conde was rewarded with palm, oak and olive branches from the genie de Dijon. (54) In praising Conde, then, the fourth archway also reminded the local populace of the disastrous consequences of its rebellion two years earlier and the new hope for peace, prosperity and stability promised by the arrival of Burgundy's powerful and influential new governor.

The theme of civic renewal is evident in the entry's first archway, where the figure of le bon evenement welcomed the prince to his new capital. Beneath him, French verses beckoned Conde, "Entres GRAND PRINCE a la bonne heure/Dans la ville ou les Dieux ont choisi leur demeure." Two hundred paces further a second, more elaborate archway depicted a grassy, wooded glen where five deities--Minerva, Mars, Ceres, Bacchus and Mercury--surrounded an empty chair intended for the Prince. These five figures, easily recognizable as representatives of the "city of the gods," greeted the prince. French verses explained that the gods who, according to the commentary, had ruled the city from its founding, now handed their authority over to "celui que ce peuple desire/Hereus qui se verra sous son gouvernement." (55)

In depicting Dijon as la ville des dieux, Malpoy elaborated on an established humanist trope, using it to proclaim the city's rebirth and restoration to the urban populace as a whole. The theme of la ville des dieux was a play on the name of the Roman military outpost--Divio--over which the city was built. The account in Pierre de Saint-Julien's De l'origine des bourgongnons (1581) provides a common explanation of the name and its origins. According to Saint-Julien, Divio was founded by the emperor Aurelian (270-75 C.E.) to appease the tutelary gods of the Celtic settlement which he had recently destroyed. The new city was founded on the very same spot with the most favorable of auspices. All ceremonies and sacrifices needed to placate the gods were performed, and the new city was named Divio in their honor. (56) Despite this prominence, the theme of Dijon as la ville des dieux does not appear to have enjoyed a central role in earlier entries. Although records are poor, there is no evidence of Dijon being represented as la ville des dieux during sixteenth century entrees. In Louis XIII's 1629 entry, it made only a limited, though significant, appearance at the opening archway in the form of Cybele, mother of the gods. (57) Malpoy, by contrast, not only invoked it on the first two archways of the 1632 entree, but also provided a lengthy analysis of the competing theories about the city's Roman or Celtic foundations and the origins of the city's particular association with the gods. (58) While it is true that the theme of la ville des dieux may have been most familiar to the humanistically-educated civic elite capable of reading the lengthy Latin inscriptions on the archway, the city's middling classes, many of whom would have been literate in French and may have even possessed a smattering of Latin, would have most likely been able to understand the reference. Some members of the popular classes were also probably literate enough to decipher at least some of the text as well. (59)

Malpoy's depiction of Dijon as la ville des dieux may have been the most prominent representation of the city, but it was not the only one. While the third archway glorified Louis XIII, it also recalled Dijon's status as provincial capital and the survival of its privileges in the form of a kneeling woman crowned with ten towers. The towers--nine in a circle and higher one in center--symbolized the "wheel" used to select the third estate's representatives to the chambre des elus of the Estates of Burgundy, which had just survived extinction. The central tower, Malpoy noted, stood for Dijon. (60) Similarly, the fourth archway, which celebrated Conde's heroic deeds, also contained a reminder of the city in the form of the genie de Dijon, who presented the prince with palm, oak and olive leaves in honor of his triumphs. (61)

It is the final archway, however, which fully reveals how Malpoy constructed Conde's entree not only to honor the Prince but also to proclaim the city's renewal and the restoration of order and harmony to the local audience. While Conde and his entourage would have seen the Prince depicted as Apollo playing a lyre, local participants would have seen the narrative culminate with an image of Dijon as Troy rebuilt. Conde/Apollo's delicate harmonies, according to Malpoy, "releve et rebastit vostre ville capitale, ruinee et desolee comme vous scaves." Conde's approach, Malpoy noted, was "digne certes d'un dieu, et d'une ville des dieux." Dijon, according to Malpoy, had suffered as greatly as Priam's city but now, thanks to the prince's prudence, skill and influence was "[remis] en son premier estat, et dans ses anciens droits et privileges." (62) While the parallels between Troy and Dijon would have been most accessible to the humanistically educated viewers of the prince's entourage and the civic elite, the archway's design ensured that its basic message--the restoration of Dijon's lost splendor--was accessible to much of the city's middling and popular classes classes as well. The two rivers at Conde's feet could represent either those of the Trojan plain--the Skamandros and Simoeis--or the more familiar rivers of Dijon, the Suzon and the Ouche. French verses on one of the columns explained the archway, and by extension the message of the entire entry, to the audience: "Qu'Apollon ait basti les murailles de Troye/Sans aide des Macons/Les pierres s'eslevans elles mesmes de joye/Et se posans a l'air de ses belles chansons/l'estime beaucoup plus (GRAND PRINCE) le miracle/Que tu nous a fait voir/Contre toute esperance, et malgre tout obstacle/Remettant cette ville en son premier pouvoir." (63)

Conde's entree was mirrored by not one but two performances of the mere folle, both of which echoed the entry program's themes and reinforced its messages to the urban populace as a whole. Brechillet and Perard's Le retour de Bontemps was performed in Conde's presence just four days after his entree. The play recounts Bontemps' return to his native province after a long absence. The two vignerons, his normal companions, initially fail to recognize him, prompting a long speech implicitly paralleling the benefits of Bontemps' "heureux advenement" with the prince's. (64) Eventually, Bontemps convinces the vignerons of his identity and recounts his wanderings. He then explains that he has returned to witness Conde's arrival and the infanterie's celebrations in his honor. At this point, l'empirique--a comical medical doctor--enters and announces that he has come to treat Bontemps, who has developed hydropsy after eating too much salty food and drinking nothing but wine. The empirique examines Bontemps' urine, confirms his condition, and prescribes a most severe treatment, including "trois dragmes de procez" and "Deux dragmes de femme mauvaise." After another prescription, Bontemps returns to the stage, proclaiming that his health will be eternal thanks to Conde. (65) An astrologer and Bontemps then explain an allegorical painting to the vignerons. At the end of this lengthy exchange, the first vigneron highlights the interdependence between the patois-speaking popular classes and the French-speaking elites by asking the literate Bontemps to tell them if these paintings mean that peace is at hand. The response is naturally affirmative. The astrologer predicts a good harvest, Bontemps asks Conde's permission to remain in the city and the empirique tells Bontemps that he can best preserve his health by obtaining Conde's generosity. (66)

Just as the entree declared that Conde's arrival had restored the city's fortunes and repaired its internal divisions, so Le retour de Bontemps proclaimed the city's renewed happiness and prosperity under the Prince's protection. Two additional aspects of the play stand out. As in the 1629 Chariot de triomphe, the vignerons describe their reactions to the festivities surrounding Conde's entry. They go on to model the civic elite's conception of the populace's correct response to current events, stressing the latter's joy and gratitude to the king, highlighting the restoration of the city's privileges, and noting that Dijon, more than any other city, is the king's loyal daughter. (67) The play, then, implicitly recalls and negates both lanturelu and its consequences, supplanting them with new images of civic harmony and a restored social and political order.

Of greater significance is a scene where the vignerons discuss a recent event known locally as the "passage des pouacres." The pouacres were the troops of the king's rebellious brother, Gaston d'Orleans, who set fire to the popular faubourg Saint-Nicholas in June 1632 in retribution for the city's refusal to open its gates to Gaston and Bellegarde the previous year. (68) Indeed, it had been Bellegarde's participation in the revolt that had prompted the king to send Conde to Burgundy in the first place. During the troops' first passage in March 1631, the mairie had ordered the city's inhabitants to guard the walls and gates around the clock and maintained close contact with the royal court. Once Gaston and Bellegarde's troops had departed, the mairie began lobbying for restoration of the city's privileges, citing its refusal to welcome the rebels. In May 1631, with Conde's help, the city's privileges were restored and the edit des elections, which had provoked the crisis of the late 1620s in the first place, was revoked in return for an indemnity of one-hundred-sixty thousand livres. (69)

By referring to the passage des pouacres and the successful defense of the city, Brechillet and Perard's play also evoked memories of the earlier passage of Gaston and Bellegarde's armies. In so doing, it affirmed the role of the middling classes and the populace as a whole in winning back the city's privileges. In the play, one of the vignerons describes how he was on guard near the Saint Pierre gate when the city's cannon began firing on Gaston's troops. While we may be tempted to dismiss this as dramatic license, the fact is that some vignerons and other members of the popular classes did serve in Dijon's civic militia and they certainly would have been called upon to take up arms, along with most other adult males, in moments of crisis. Indeed, more than four-thousand inhabitants, roughly one-fourth of the city's entire population, took up arms in response to Gaston's incursion. Brechillet and Perard's audience was thus reminded that the entire populace, including the middling and lower classes, had twice demonstrated their loyalty and obedience to the king and the municipality in recent months. As the city council's registers noted, "tous les habitans ... resoluent d'y mourir pour le service de sadicte Majeste." (70) Thus, when we examine these scenes in light of recent local events, we see how Brechillet, Perard and the city's notables used Conde's entry and the events around it to restore their ties with the larger urban populace, whose active and tacit participation in the lanturelu revolt had nearly undermined the notables' symbolic authority and the institutional basis of their power. By invoking the shared defense of the city from Gaston's troops and the subsequent restoration of its privileges, the play absolved the middling classes from charges of failing to defend order and authority, as they had done briefly in February 1630. At the same time, the play also reconverted the popular classes from a threat to the city's order, stability and well-being to partners in their maintenance. It restored, at least symbolically, the urban community's situation prior to lanturelu, affirming the populace's obedience to the established social and political hierarchy.

Although the date and circumstances under which Brechillet's Chariot des deities was performed are unclear, elements of the piece suggest that it, too, was staged in close conjunction with the entry itself. In Chariot, four classical deities and the genie dijonnois take turns welcoming Conde to the city and praising his many virtues. This is followed by a dialogue between two vignerons and a song in patois. At first glance, the play appears to do little more than echo the entry's adulation of Conde's personal qualities. In fact, however, Chariot also contained a second set of messages aimed primarily at the local audience. In his address to Conde, for example, Apollo reprises the entry's identification of Dijon as la ville des dieux, using the humanist play on words to depict the city as a sort of "sacred center" that all dijonnais, regardless of wealth or social status, shared and needed to defend. (71) This theme was amplified by the genie, who reminded the audience of both of the recent rebellion and the city's ability to overcome the internal divisions it exposed.

    Si d'un mutin projet l'esmotion civile
    Attaque leur repos, et menasse leur ville,
    Ou que l'injuste assaut d'un pouvoir estranger
    Emporte leurs esprits aux frayers de danger,
    Guerrier, je les rasseure au milieu des alarmes,
    Et dans l'espoir douteux des combats, et des armes. (72)

Like the entry ceremony, the Chariot des deities, turned what was ostensibly an occasion for the glorification of the monarchy and the prince into a reaffirmation of the urban community's unity and cohesion, as well as the municipal elite's status and authority which had been so badly damaged during lanturelu. (73)

As this article has tried to show, late sixteenth and early seventeenth century entrees royales et princieres were more than merely "state ceremonies" expressing the relationship between the city and the entering king or prince. They were also more than an occasion for worshipping the "messianic-eschatological" qualities of the king/governor and an opportunity for the city to display its submission and obedience. Entries did more than express the humanist outlooks and values of the municipal elites who designed them. They were as much local political rituals as national state ceremonials. As Louis XIII's and Henri de Bourbon's entries into Dijon, as well as the mere folle performances that accompanied them demonstrate, entrees royales et princieres were embedded in urban political culture and experience. They were opportunities for a city's notables, such as those who controlled Dijon's hotel de ville, to express their concerns and views to the entire populace upon whose tacit support their authority partially depended. Increasingly caught between the irreconcilable demands of crown and populace, Dijon's notables used the entries to harmonize these conflicting demands, shore up their fragile authority with the potentially unruly populace, and reaffirm a social order that faced mounting internal and external threats. The 1629 and 1632 entries certainly glorified the entering king or prince. At the same time, however, they told a story about the city to its inhabitants. In 1629, the message was a warning about the high costs and the disastrous consequences of disobeying the king, as exemplified by the recent case of La Rochelle. In 1632, the story was one of recovery; a celebration of the city's restored privileges and the renewed bonds between the municipal elite and the middling and popular classes indirectly and directly responsible for lanturelu. The urban notables who wrote the programs of these entries thus used them to speak not only to the entering king or prince, but also to the thousands of local inhabitants who participated in the ceremony or watched joyfully as the entry processions wound their way through la ville des dieux in the early seventeenth century.

ENDNOTES

Research for this article was supported by a Fulbright Research Fellowship and a Ruby Grant for Research in the Humanities from Reed College. I would like to thank Philip Benedict, David Harris Sacks, Hilary Bernstein, and Sara Beam for their many helpful comments on earlier drafts. I would also like to thank Katherine Fidler for her help with the research for this article.

1. Lawrence M. Bryant, King and City in the Parisian Royal Entry Ceremony: Politics, Ritual and Art in the Renaissance (Geneva, 1986), 17-18.

2. Bryant, City and King, 15-18, 208; idem, "The Medieval Entry Ceremony at Paris," in Coronations: Medieval and Early Modern Monarchic Ritual, ed. Janos M. Bak (Berkeley, 1990), 112; Roy C. Strong, Art and Power: Renaissance Festivals, 1450-1650 (Berkeley, 1973), 7-8. See also Pascal Lardellier, Les miroirs du paon: rites et rhetoriques politiques dans la France de l'ancien regime, (Paris, 2003); Bernard Guenee and Francoise Lehoux, eds., Les Entrees royales francaises de 1328 a 1515 (Paris, 1968); Mary Ann Fruth, "The Royal Entry: A Study of Tradition and Change in French Festivals" (Ph.D. diss., Ohio State University, 1970); Chrisitian de Merindol, "Entrees royales et princieres," in Les entrees: gloire et declin d'un ceremonial: colloque du 10 et 11 mai 1996. Chateau de Pau, eds. Bernard Guenee, Christian Lesplat, and Paul Mironneau (Biarritz, 1997), 27-48. For entry ceremonies in the Low Countries during the late Middle Ages, see Peter Arnade, Realms of Ritual: Burgundian Ceremony and Civic Life in Late Medieval Ghent, (Ithaca, 1996), 127-58. On the concept of "Renaissance Monarchy" see J. Russell Major, From Renaissance Monarchy to Absolute Monarchy: French Kings, Nobles and Estates (Baltimore, 1994).

3. Bryant, King and City, 17-18, 208-18; idem, "The Medieval Entry," 112-13; idem, "Politics, Ceremonies, and Embodiments of Majesty in Henry II's France," in European Monarchy: Its Evolution and Practice from Roman Antiquity to Modern Times, eds. H. Durchardt, R. Jackson and D. Sturdy (Stuttgart, 1992), 150-51; Ralph Giesey, "Models of Rulership in French Royal Ceremonial," in Rites of Power: Symbolism, Ritual and Politics Since the Middle Ages, ed. Sean Wilentz (Philadelphia, 1985), 52-3; Strong, 42-8; Guenee and Lehoux, 24-29.

4. Bryant, "Politics, Ceremonies, and Embodiments"; Michael Wintroub, "Civilizing the Savage and Making a King: The Royal Entry Festival of Henri II (Rouen 1550)," Sixteenth Century Journal 29 (1998): 465-94; idem, "L'Ordre du rituel et l'ordre des choses: L'entree royale d'Henri II a Rouen (1550)" Annales HSS, (mars-avril 2001): 479-505.

5. Bryant, "Politics, Ceremonies, and Embodiments"; Wintroub, "L'ordre du rituel"; Marie-France Wagner, Daniel Vaillancourt, and Eric Mechoulan, "L'entree dans Toulouse, ou la ville theatralisee," Dix-septieme siecle 50 (1998): 613-37. See also Guenee, Lesplat, and Mironneau.

6. S. Annette Finley-Croswhite, Henry IV and the Towns: The Pursuit of Legitimacy in French Urban Society, 1589-1610 (Cambridge, 1999), ch. 4; Yann Lignereux, Lyon et le roi: De la <<bonne ville>> a l'absolutisme municipale (1594-1654) (Seyssel, 2003), 57-65.

7. Giesey, "Models of Rulership"; idem, "The King Imagined," in The Political Culture of the Old Regime, ed. Keith Michael Baker (London, 1987), 41-59; Edward Muir, Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice (Princeton, 1981), 5. The essays by Attreed, Lindebaum and Ruiz in Barbara K. Hanawalt and Katheryn L. Ryerson, eds., City and Spectacle in Medieval Europe (Minneapolis, 1994) are something of an exception, although Attreed's essay is the only one to deal with entries per se. Christian Jouhaud has also examined how entries and their printed accounts were addressed to multiple audiences, but without looking at the role of local political and social contexts in shaping their messages. See his "Printing the Event: From La Rochelle to Paris," in The Culture of Print: Power and the Uses of Print in Early Modern Europe, ed. Roger Chartier, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Princeton, 1989), 290-333. Dylan Reid has examined how the Conards of Rouen played on elements of the royal entry ceremony in their 1541 carnival procession, though he sees this more as an expression of middle-class assertiveness and identity on the part of the Conards than an attempt to synchronize entries and carnival performances on the part of the civic elite. See "The Triumph of the Abbey of the Conards: Spectacle and Sophistication in a Rouen Carnival," in Medieval and Early Modern Ritual: Formalized Behavior in Europe, China and Japan, ed. Joelle Rollo-Koster (Leiden, 2002), 147-73. On early modern French urban ceremonies, see Bryant, King and City; Robert Muchembled, Culture populaire et culture des elites dans la France moderne (XVe-XVIIIe siecle) (Paris, 1978); Sara Beam, "Farce, Festive Societies and the Reformation of Manners, 1500-1650" (Ph.D. diss., University of California at Berkeley, 1999); Yves-Marie Berce, Fete et revolte: Des mentalites populaires du XVIe au XVIIIe siecle (Paris, 1976); Peter Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (New York, 1978); Robert A. Schneider, The Ceremonial City: Toulouse Observed, 1738-1780 (Princeton, 1995); Robert Darnton, "A Bourgeois Puts His World in Order: The City as Text," in The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (New York, 1984), 107-43; Michele Fogel, Les ceremonies d'information dans la France du XVIe au milieu du XVIIIe siecle (Paris, 1989).

8. Wintroub, "Civilizing the Savage, 470-71"; Giesey, "Models of Rulership," 53; On the requirement to march under arms before the entering king or governor, see below, note #34.

9. On the pivotal role of the middling sort, see William Beik, Urban Protest in Seventeenth-Century France: The Culture of Retribution (Cambridge, 1997): 22-3; James B. Collins, Classes, Estates and Order in Early Modern Brittany (Cambridge, 1994): 17-20, 259; Jonathan Barry and Christopher Brooks, eds., The Middling Sort of People: Culture, Society and Politics in England, 1550-1800 (New York, 1994); and Steve Hindle, The State and Social Change in Early Modern England, c. 1550-1640 (New York, 2000). On political awareness among Dijon's vignerons see Mack P. Holt, "Culture populaire et culture politique au XVIIe siecle: L'emeute de lanturelu a Dijon en fevrier 1630," Historie, Economie et Societe 16 (1997): 597-615.

10. Bernard Chevalier, Les bonnes ville de France du XIVeme au XVIeme siecles (Paris, 1982), 15-16; Robert A. Schneider, "Crown and Capitoulat: Municipal Government in Toulouse, 1500-1789," in Cities and Social Change in Early Modern France, ed. Philip Benedict (London, 1989), 202; Peter C. Wallace, "Civic Politics and Civic Values in Colmar, 1648-1715," French Historical Studies 18 (1994): 907-37; Lignereux, 591-618; Hilary J. Bernstein, "Politics and Civic Culture in Sixteenth-Century Poitiers" (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1996). Dijon's echevins swore that they would "bien et loyaument ... garderont et aideront a garder de tous leur pouvoir les droits, privileges, franchises et libertes de ladite ville sans les enfreindre en aucune maniere que ce soit." Archives Municipales de Dijon (hereafter AMD) B-20 #29.

11. Beik, 93-4; Chevalier, chs. 6 and 9; Lignereux, part two; Robert A. Schneider, Public Life in Toulouse, 1463-1789: From Municipal Republic to Cosmopolitan City (Ithaca, 1989), chs. 8-10. On Dijon, see Michael P. Breen, "Legal Culture, Municipal Politics and Royal Absolutism in Seventeenth-Century France: The Avocats of Dijon (1595-1715)" (Ph.D. diss., Brown University, 2000), ch. 3.

12. Beik, chs. 4-5. Quote on p. 94.

13. AMD B-264, ff. 25v-37r and 285r-292r, deliberations of 24-26 June 1626 and 10-15 June 1627.

14. On precedence conflicts and conflicts with the clergy, see AMD B-264, ff, 274v-284v, 1-10 June 1627, and ff. 56vr-61r, 17-24 July 1626. On conflicts with other jurisdictions, see AMD B-245, ff. 242r-v, 5 May 1608; B-252, f. 113r, 16 Sept. 1614; B-280, f. 179r, 12 Oct. 1642. See also, Charles Bertucat, La Jurisdiction Municipale de Dijon: Son etendue (Dijon, 1911).

15. See below, note #37.

16. Collins, 17; Beik, 22-3; Keith Wrightson, "'Sorts of People' in Tudor and Stuart England," in Barry and Brooks, 28-51. On Dijon's social structure, see James R. Farr, "Consumers, Commerce and the Craftsmen of Dijon: The Changing Social and Economic Structure of a Provincial Capital," in Benedict, 134-73.

17. Mack P. Holt, "Popular Political Culture and Mayoral Elections in Sixteenth-Century Dijon," in Society and Institutions in Early Modern France, ed. Mack P. Holt (Athens, 1991), 98-116; Breen, 167-94.

18. Holt, "Culture populaire et culture politique"; Beik, 126-33.

19. AMD L-228 & L-234, Taille rolls, 1625 and 1643. For Brechillet and Malpoy's political careers, see AMD B-253 to B-295, registers of deliberations, 1615-16 to 1656-7; AMD B-31 and B-31bis, "Conseils de la ville." For a summary of their works, see Philibert Papillon, Bibliotheque des auteurs de Bourgogne, 2 vols. (1745; reprint, Geneva, 1970), I:102-3 and II:13-14.

20. Dylan Reid, "Carnival in Rouen: A History of the Abbaye des Conards," Sixteenth Century Journal 32 (2001): 1027-1055. According to Reid, the Conards disappeared at the beginning of the seventeenth century as a result of confessional divides among the middling social groups who comprised it. The absence of such divides in Dijon may explain the mere folle's persistence into the 1640s, though its membership undoubtedly became increasingly dominated by notables over time.

21. Juliette Valcke, "La societe joyeuse de la mere folle de Dijon. Histoire (XVe-XVIIe siecles) et edition du repertoire," 3 vols. (Ph.D diss., Universite de Montreal, 1997); Maurice Lever, Le sceptre et la marotte: Une histoire des fous de cour (Paris, 1983): 82-98; Natalie Zemon Davis, "The Reasons of Misrule," in Society and Culture in Early Modern France (Stanford, 1975), 97-123; Joachim Durandeau, Histoire de la mere-folle laique de Dijon (Dijon, 1911). In 1615, for instance, the mairie ordered a theater built so its members could watch a mascarade by the infanterie. Several months later, it paid fifteen livres to a painter for decorating the chariots used in the mascarade and another nine to a printer for publishing the mascarade's French and patois verses. AMD B-253, ff. 73v and 162v-63r, 24 July and 10 Nov. 1615.

22. Valcke, I:154-59. The social and cultural significances of the linguistic boundaries between French and patois have been examined recently by Paul Cohen, "Courtly French, Learned Latin, and Peasant Patois: The Making of a National Language in Early Modern France" (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 2001).

23. [Pierre Malpoy], "Le Chariot de Triomphe du Roy (25 Feb. 1629)," in Theatre de l'Infanterie Dijonnoise, ed. Joachim Durandeau (Dijon, 1908); [Etienne Brechillet and Benigne Perard], "Retour de Bontemps, dedie a Monseigneur le Prince, Gouverneur et Lieutenant General de sa Majeste en ses pays de Bourgogne, Bresse, Berry, etc., et represente a son entree par l'Infanterie dijonnoise, le dimanche troisieme octobre 1632" in Valcke, III:576-642; and [Etienne Brechillet], Le chariot des deities a l'honneur de Mgr. le Prince, par l'Infanterie Dijonnoise. (Dijon, 1632).

24. Jouhaud, 326-7.

25. AMD B-266, ff. 146r-48v, 18 and 21 Nov. 1628. Louis announced his intention to visit the city in a letter dated 10 Jan 1629. AMD B-266, ff. 188r-v, 13 Jan, 1629.

26. Jouhaud, 296-322.

27. Marie-Claude Mary, "Recherches sur les entrees princieres a Dijon au XVIe siecle" (These de D.E.S., Universite de Dijon, 1967); Marie-Pierre Desmergers, "Les fetes a Dijon au XVIIeme siecle" (Memoire de Maitrise, Universite de Dijon, 1996); Finley-Croswhite, 60.

28. AMD B-266, ff. 191r-92v, 14-15 Jan, 1629.

29. Joseph Garnier ed., Correspondance de la mairie de Dijon, 3 vols. (Dijon, 1870), III:200-02, letter #743--Guillaume and Blanot, echevins, to mairie; AMD B-266, ff. 213r-225v, 28-31 Jan. 1629.

30. Gaston Roupnel, La ville et la campagne au XVIIe siecle: etude sur les populations dijonnais, 2nd ed. (Paris, 1955).

31. AMD B-265, ff. 129r-v, 27 Oct. 1627; James R. Farr, Hands of Honor: Artisans and Their World in Dijon, 1550-1650 (Ithaca, 1988), 201-10; Major, 239-42.

32. Jouhaud, 320-22.

33. Wintroub, "Civilizing," 470. See also Wagner, Vaillancourt, and Mechoulan, 615-66; and Giesey, "Models," 52-3.

34. On orders to be prepared to march under arms, see AMD B-266, f. 205r, 21 Jan. 1629; B-269, f. 306r, 11 May. 1632; B-285, f.265r, 18 Feb. 1648. The five hundred livre fine is noted in AMD B-269, f. 286v, 5 Apr. 1632.

35. [Benigne Griguette], Les armes triomphantes de son altesse Monseigneur le duc d'Espernon pour le sujet de son heureuse entree faite dans la ville de Dijon, le huictieme jour de May 1656 (Dijon, 1656), fourteenth unnumbered page.

36. According to James R. Farr, about sixty percent of Dijon's master artisans were fully literate in the early seventeenth century. Moreover, literacy rates among journeymen rose from just over one-third in the late sixteenth century to more than half by the mid-seventeenth century. See Hands of Honor, 239-40. On vigneron literacy, see Mack P. Holt, "Wine, Community and Reformation in Sixteenth-Century Burgundy," Past and Present (138): 58-93. The relatively high degree of literacy among Dijon's artisans and wine-growers is not surprising, given the city's location in the more literate northern part of the kingdom. For an analysis of French literacy rates, see Francois Furet and Jacques Ozouf, Lire et ecrire: L'alphabetisation des francais de Calvin a Jules Ferry, 2 vols. (Paris, 1977).

37. [Etienne Brechillet], Dessein des arcz triomphaux erigez a l'honneur du Roy, a son entree en la ville de Dijon, le dernier de janvier, mil six cens vingt-neuf (Dijon, 1629), 9. The allusion may have been to the story of Niobe in Book VI of Ovid's Metamorphoses.

38. Brechillet, Dessein, 9-11; On the significance of the nude figure of the king, see Bryant, "Politics, Ceremonies and Embodiments," 138.

39. Brechillet, Dessein, 14-16.

40. Ibid., 3-4.

41. Malpoy, Chariot, 23-24, 32-34.

42. Ibid., 16, 25-31, 35-39.

43. Mack P. Holt, "Burgundians into Frenchmen: Catholic Identity in Sixteenth-Century Burgundy," in Changing Identities in Early Modern France, ed. Michael Wolfe (Durham, NC, 1997): 345-70; idem, "Wine, Community and Reformation"; Mary, 52-3.

44. [Pierre Malpoy], Entree de tres haut et tres puissant Prince Henry de Bourbon, Prince de Conde ... Gouverneur et Lieutenant-General pour Sa Majeste en Provinces de Bourgogne, Bresse et Berry, en la Ville de Dijon, le trentiesme du mois de septembre 1632 (Dijon, 1632), 72-3; Wagner, Vaillancourt, and Eric Mechoulan, 620-21.

45. Major, 239-42; Farr, Hands of Honor, 207-08; Garnier, III:218-22, letters #753-54--Euvrard, vicomte-mayeur to echevins, 2 and 16 Jan. 1630; ibid., III:227-28, Letter #757 Bellegarde to mairie, 18 Feb. 1630.

46. AMD B-267, ff. 152v.-53r. and 154r-55v., 19 and 21 Feb. 1630.

47. For contemporary descriptions of events see AMD B-267, ff. 157r-60v, 28 Feb. 1630; Garnier, III:227-28 and 230-31, Letters #757 and 759, Bellegarde to mairie; "Journal et registre domestique de Pierre Genreau, procureur au Parlement," Bibliotheque Municipale de Dijon, Ms. 1011, ff. 22v-23v; and Charles Fevret, De la sedition arrivee en la ville de Dijon le 28 Fevrier 1630, et jugement rendu par le Roy sur icelle (Lyon, 1630). More recent analyses include Xaviere Patouillet, "L'emeute des lanturelus a Dijon en 1630" (Memoire de maitrise, Universite de Dijon, 1971); Farr, Hands of Honor; 203-10; Beik, 126-33; and Holt, "Culture populaire," 600-03.

48. On the aftermath of lanturelu, see Breen, 199-203.

49. The main conflict was between the six echevins and a new body of twenty-four eminent bourgeois known as the conseillers de la ville. Garnier, III: 255-56, Letter #773, Bellegarde to mairie, 28 Dec. 1630; AMD B-268, ff. 143r-44v, 146r-v, 147v, 151v-52r [31 Dec. 1630, 3-10 Jan. 1631].

50. Breen, 203-05; AMD B-268, ff. 201r-203r, 210r, 211v-212r, 214r, and 241r-244v, 19-28 Mar. and 12 May 1631; B-269, ff. 182v-83r, 283r, 286r-88v, 306r, and 324v, 18 Nov. 1631, 30 Mar. to 28 May 1632; B-270, ff. 123v-67v, 30 Sept. 1632.

51. Charles Fevret, Discours faict au Parlement a Dijon le Jeudy 20 November 1631, sur la presentation & lecture des Lettres du Gouvernement de Bourgogne & Bresse, expediees en faveur de tres-haut, tres-puissant & tres excellent Prince Monseigneur Henry de Bourbon Prince de Conde, premier Prince du Sang, premier Duc & Pair de France, Gouverneur pour le Roy es Provinces de Bourgogne, Bresse et Berry (Dijon, 1631), 6-8; Benigne Perard, A la Bourgogne, pour l'entree de Monseigneur le Prince dans la ville de Dijon (n.p., [1632?]). Perard was also the author of another celebratory poem, Les voeux de la ville de Dijon a Monseigneur le Prince, (n.p., [1632?]).

52. Malpoy, Entree, 55-63.

53. Ibid., 69-71. On the significance of the sang royal in Bourbon-absolutist ideology, see Ralph Giesey, The Juristic Basis of Dynastic Right to the French Throne (Philadelphia, 1961).

54. Malpoy, Entree, 67-69, 74.

55. Ibid., 39-40; 45-6.

56. Guillaume de Villebichot, De coetu poetarum, (1543), cited in Luc Verhaeghe, "Vers composes pour les enfants de la mere-folle de Dijon vers la fin du XVIe siecle [fonds francais, ms. 24039]" (Memoire de licence, Rijkuniversiteit de Gent, 1969), 47; Pierre de Saint-Julien, De l'origine des bourgongnons, et antiquite des estats de Bourgogne (Paris, 1581), 642-44. Saint-Julien refers to a more detailed account by the president Desbarres, while Malpoy's commentary also cites a work by the avocat Jean Richard.

57. For the sixteenth-century, see Mary, 12-49, and the accounts of the entries of the duc d'Aumale (1550) and the duc de Mayenne (1574) reprinted in Entrees et rejouissances dans la ville de Dijon (Dijon, 1885). For the 1629 entry, see above, p. 68-9.

58. Malpoy, Entree, 47-9.

59. On the linguistic abilities of different social groups, see Cohen, 55-7 and 283-85. On literacy rates in Dijon, see above, note #37.

60. Malpoy, Entree, 62.

61. See above, note #55.

62. Malpoy, Entree, 80-81.

63. Ibid., 80, 83-4.

64. Brechillet and Perard, in Valcke, III:586-7.

65. Ibid., III:589-625

66. Ibid., III:626-40.

67. Ibid., III:559-60.

68. Ibid., III, 595-98. On the passage des pouacres, see AMD B-269, ff. 330r-38v, 13-21 June 1632.

69. AMD B-268, ff. 201r-207v; 210r, 214r, 241r-44v, 19 Mar.-12 May 1631; Garnier, III:262-65, Letters #778 and 779--Louis XIII to mairie, 22 March 1631 and Perard, echevin to mairie, same date; AMD B-269, ff. 78v-79r, 24 July 1631.

70. Vigneron participation in Dijon's militia is attested to in a letter from Marie de' Medicis to the mairie during a minor crisis in 1628. See AMD B-265, ff. 203v-04r, 15 Feb. 1628. See also Beik, 82, and Henri Drouot, "Henri IV et les officiers de la milice dijonnaise (1595)," Annales de Bourgogne 7 (1935): 248-61. AMD B-269, f. 336v, 19 June 1632.

71. Brechillet, Chariot, 4-5. Here I am adapting Clifford Geertz's concept of a "sacred center", which he defines as "a collection of stories, ceremonies, insignia, formalities, and appurtenances ... that mark the center as center and give what goes on there its aura of being not merely important but in some odd fashion connected with the way the world is built." Clifford Geertz, "Centers, Kings, and Charisma: Reflections on the Symbolics of Power" in Wilentz, 15.

72. Brechillet, Chariot, 2-3.

73. In this sense, the entries can be seen as occasions which sought to reinforce a fragile sense of urban communitas, the "unstructured or rudimentarily structured and relatively undifferentiated comitatus, community, or even communion of equal individuals" upon which the city's social and political structures and hierarchies ultimately rested. See Victor W. Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (Chicago, 1969), esp. 96-130.

By Michael P. Breen

Reed College

Department of History

Portland, OR 97202