Architectures of Festival in Early Modern Europe by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction, History, Renaissance
ISBN: 9781317178927
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2017-10-25T04:00:00+00:00

The viewing platforms built in 1660 also attest to the small-scale conflicts that impacted on major public celebrations. Although the design and construction of the échafauds for Louis’s entrée were subject to comparatively looser controls than those applied to triumphal architecture, it is important to note that designs still had to be submitted to Noblet, Paris’s maître d’oeuvres.64 However, the chains of command for the construction of échafauds were much less clearly delineated; instead of being tightly controlled from the ‘centre’, networks of patronage and the operation of planning permission influenced this aspect of the event’s design. The key players in the deployment of viewing platforms were the entrée’s municipal organising committee and the Trésoriers de France, one of the main institutions responsible for handling royal finances during the ancien régime.65 As we shall see, the right to grant planning permission for échafauds in 1660 could be framed as a tussle between representatives of royal and municipal interests.

The first reference to scaffolds on 19 July 1660 was uncontroversial: the Bureau de la Ville granted permission to the ‘Payeurs de Rentes’ and for the construction of the anonymous scaffold on rue Saint-Antoine.66 At most, like the contracts for the triumphal arches, this demonstrated that large-format apparatus were made well in advance of the entrée. However, a few days later, on 24 July, the situation began to get out of hand, when the King’s Privy Council issued an arrêt, or ruling, about several scaffolds that had been demolished on the previous day, supposedly on the orders of the Trésoriers.67 This document lays bare the tensions between parties involved in organising the entrée, as the demolished scaffolds were under the jurisdiction of the entrée’s municipal organising committee. As a consequence of the damage that had been done, the Trésoriers were compelled to see that the scaffolds were entirely rebuilt, with the Privy Council seeking additional information as to the identities of ‘les officiers [et] ouvriers et au[tres] qui ont fait les Démolir’ (‘the officers and workers and others who had them [the scaffolds] demolished’).68 Additional minutes from this meeting evoke a rather dramatic scene, with the Trésoriers accused of going to several places in the city on 23 July and:

firent abattre les Eschaffaux posez pour l’ordre des Supplians [the Prevôt des marchands et échevins] en quelques endroits de rües non incommodes, mais necessaries à placer les personnes qui seruent à releuer la ceremonie: & pour paruenir à leurs desseins exciterent le people à demolir lesdits Eschauffaux, ce qui est [un] mauvais exemple, tend à sedition.69

[having pulled down scaffolds erected on the order of the suppliants in parts of the street that were not inconvenient, but [in fact] necessary to place the spectators to see the ceremony; and to accomplish their designs incited the people to demolish the said scaffolds, setting a bad example, that tended towards sedition.]

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