Here’s Unfortunate Revels

Abstract

Among the books in the Royal Collection of the British Library is a handsome folio by Franciscus Modius, Pandectae Triumphales, sive Pomparum, et Festorum ac Solennium …, published in Frankfurt in 1586. The book is stamped with the Stuart arms and the fleur-de-lys, and in all probability once formed part of the library of Henry, Prince of Wales.1 Modius devotes the first of his book’s two parts to an historical account of triumphs and spectacles that reaches back to the classical period and to classical sources, and brings the discussion almost up to date by describing ceremonial occasions, including royal entries and festivals of the modern period, from the twelfth century to the late sixteenth. The second part is devoted to ‘hastiludii’ or tournaments, first and at length to tournaments ‘per Germaniam’, and then in less detail to tournaments ‘per Europam universam’; there is a short final section largely concerned with duelling. The range of the volume is impressively wide, chronologically and territorially, and its detail remarkable, describing tournaments and ceremonies step-by-step, and frequently providing itemised lists of participants. Modius seeks to lend dignity to ceremonies of the modern period by relating them to ancient persons and events: Darius, Alexander the Great and Caesar predict and parallel Frederick Barbarossa, Charles IV and Henry II of France, not in strict analogy but as participating in equally significant events of state.