Gripla - 2023, Page 134

132 GRIPLA
the right to such political display. The application of enforced hospitality
as a realization of political and social relations is deep-seated in Western
political culture (and more widely, for that matter) and extends back to
antiquity. In imperial Rome, the emperor’s power and a city’s loyalty and
subordination to him were ritually displayed in the adventus, a highly cer-
emonial reception of the ruler into the city.46 Medieval kings, especially
in the late Middle Ages and beyond, practiced similarly lavish and formal
entries into key cities and towns to underscore their authority. Such royal
entries, as they are collectively called, were often styled as ‘ancient tradi-
tion’ and explicitly referred to the imperial adventus in its ceremonial
language and symbolism. The reception of a new monarch into a city was
often the occasion for renewing rights and privileges, not least the spelling
out of the limitations of the ruler’s power over the city and its inhabitants.
This was especially noticeable for the entries in the Netherlands, known
as the ‘Joyous Entry’ (Blijde Intrede in Dutch but commonly referred to in
French, Joyeuse Entrée), but royal entries were called Joyeuse Entrée outside
of the Netherlands as well.47 In both Roman and medieval entries, formal
hospitality and feasting lay at the heart of the ritual. In this context, the
deed was not defined as slimesitting or violence but a royal or princely
prerogative, a spectacle of state.
46 See Björn C. Ewald’s and Carlos F. Noreña’s introduction to their The Emperor and Rome:
Space, Representation, and Ritual, Yale Classical Studies, vol. 35 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2010), 40‒41 with further citations.
47 See Gordon Kipling, Enter the King: Theatre, Liturgy, and Ritual in the Medieval Civic
Triumph (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998).