Pageants Rolling Through Medieval France

[Rosanne]

In reading about the 22 cards and the Renaissance Triumphs, I was taken with the Chariot. I remembered learning about the Pageant. In medieval times the word pageant had meant the wagon or the movable stage on which one scene of a mystery or miracle play was performed. The pageant was built on wheels and consisted of two rooms, the lower one being used as a dressing room and the upper used as a stage.
Mystery/miracle plays were very popular;They were first acted out inside the church in areas called mansions. Then as they became longer and more elaborate they moved outside the church- then into the square.When a papal edict in 1210 forbade the clergy to act on a public stage, supervision and control of presenting the plays passed into the hands of the town guilds, and various changes ensued. The local language replaced Latin, and scenes were inserted that were not from the Bible. The acting became more dramatic as characterization and detail became more important. Based on the Scriptures from the creation to the Second Coming and on the lives of the saints, the plays were arranged into cycles and were given on church festival days, particularly the feast of Corpus Christi, lasting from sunrise to sunset. Each guild was responsible for the production of a different episode.
One very famous play was called 'Jour dou jugement' and a manuscript with small illuminations survive along with some of the songs. You can see the pictures in separate folio's here http://toisondor.byu.edu/dscriptoriu.../jugement.html
I wonder if our 22 cards came from something like this. Here is an image of a pageant. These were not the floats of the original Triumphs in Italy- these are stages with the box shape base - a dressing room.Here is an image http://www.wpi.edu/Academics/Depts/H...be/slide2.html I could imagine a manuscript with the 22 images depicting the different mystery plays. The Sun for example could well be the play about Cain and Abel or the Papesse as the Annunciation. The people stayed in one place and the stage(pageant) was rolled into the area, the act of the play was performed and then it moved on to the next group. Some French plays had as many as 54 pageant/ rolling stages in one play.
I find this very interesting- do you? ~Rosanne