The Theatre of the Renaissance Civic Triumph

FAIN: FA-53248-07

Gordon L. Kipling
UCLA; Regents of the University of California, Los Angeles (Los Angeles, CA 90024-4201)

Two forms of the royal entry were performed widely in European cities from c.1400 to c. 1700: a medieval one (the subject of my recent book, “Enter the King”) that represented the king as if he were Christ entering Jerusalem, and a Renaissance one based on the Roman “acclamatio” to which I now turn. Instead of affirming the king’s assumption of sovereign power in his own realm, the new royal entry asserted imperial power among other European states. Its classical vocabulary of style allowed it to avoid the christological implications of the earlier form and to control political meanings in a time of religious contention. Since many occur during contested transfers of power, they often demonstrate anxieties about political weaknesses.