La cérémonie de l'entrée à Paris au Moyen Âge

The Medieval Paris Entrance Ceremony. L. M. Bryant. Through a diachronic analysis of all medieval entrances of kings into Paris, the prominent—but little noticed—popularly generated and constitutional aspects of the entrance ceremony are outlined. The approach shifts the focus from the royal ceremony as involving the king taken apart, to viewing the king as symbol and part and parcel of the political community. Constitutional kingship was represented in processionals, pageantry, gestures, symbolism, as well as pictorially in miniatures. In the course of time, the extraordinary nature of entrances led to creative transformation and synthesis of spontaneous, traditional and official elements. The entrance ceremony was founded on reciprocity and consensus among the socio-legal groups participating therein. It was thus natural that the Paris Parliament began transforming the entrance in a way which would demonstrate that its political position was only second to that of the King. Only in the seventeenth century was the entrance ceremony totally remodeled in accordance with absolute monarchy, imitating ancient practices.Bryant Lawrence M. La cérémonie de l'entrée à Paris au Moyen Âge. In: Annales. Economies, sociétés, civilisations. 41ᵉ année, N. 3, 1986. pp. 513-542