Evening's Empire (New Studies in European History) (51 page)

144.
Henry Vaughan, “The Night,” in
The Works of Henry Vaughan
, ed. L.C. Martin, second edn. (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1957
), pp. 522–23. On Vaughan’s sense of persecution in the Commonwealth era, see Watson, “Henry Vaughan and the Collapse of the Established Church,” pp. 144–61, and Geoffrey Hill, “A Pharisee to Pharisees: Reflections on Vaughan’s ‘The Night’,”
English
38 (
1989
): 97–113. As Hill notes, Vaughan refers to “these times of persecution and trial” in
The Mount of Olives
(1652), and in his 1654
Flores Solitudinis
the poet explains that “there are bright stars under the most palpable clouds, and light is never so beautiful as in the presence of darkness.”

145.
Rzepinska, “Tenebrism,” p. 93. Historians of art and philosophy have described this development in painting, astronomy, and optics, and in hermetic and alchemical thought. Goldammer’s “Lichtsymbolik in philosophischer Weltanschauung” describes especially clearly the wholly negative view of darkness in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century thinkers from Ficino and Paracelsus to Valentin Weigel.

146.
Catholics also developed popular forms of nocturnal piety in this period, most prominently the Devotion of the Forty Hours, which spread from its origins in Milan through Italy and France, and the evening Good Friday processions of southern Germany and the Rhineland. See below,
chapter 7
, for further discussion of these literal incursions into the night, urban and rural. On the importance of darkness and the night to these practices, see Mark S. Weil, “The Devotion of the Forty Hours and Roman Baroque Illusions,”
Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes
37 (
1974
): pp. 218–48; Bernard Dompnier, “Un Aspect de la dévotion Eucharistique dans la France du XVIIe siècle: les Prières des Quarante-Heures,”
Revue d’histoire de l’Eglise de France
67 (
1981
): 5–31; and Fred G. Rausch, “Karfreitagsprozessionen in Bayern,” in
Hört, sehet, weint und liebt: Passionsspiele im alpenländischen Raum
, ed. Michael Henker, Eberhard Dünninger, and Evamaria Brockhoff, Veröffentlichungen zur bayerischen Geschichte und Kultur 20 (Munich: Süddeutscher Verlag,
1990
), pp. 87–93, and the literature cited there.

1.
Norris’s first publication was a crude anti-Whig burlesque,
A Murnival of Knaves
, published in June 1683. See George R. Wasserman, “A Critical
Edition of the Collected Poems of John Norris of Bemerton”, PhD thesis, University of Michigan,
1957
, pp. 1–27.

2.
John Norris of Bemerton, “Hymn to Darkness,” in
A Collection of Miscellanies
(Oxford: J. Crosley,
1687
), pp. 37–38.

3.
Chris Fitter, “The Poetic Nocturne: From Ancient Motif to Renaissance Genre,”
Early Modern Literary Studies
3, 2 (
1997
): 2.1–61. Online at
http://purl.oclc.org/emls/03–2/fittnoct.html
. Fitter outlines the development of the poetic nocturne through Milton, distinguishing between “Cavalier” and “sacred” approaches within the genre, but he does not go on to examine its political inflection by Norris.

4.
Here Norris echoed a poem by John Walton of 1678: “So the
first Light himself
has for his Throne / Blackness, and Darkness his Pavilion.” I. W. [i.e., John Walton], “To my worthy friend, Mr. Henry Vaughan the Silurist” (1678), in
The Works of Henry Vaughan
, ed. L.C. Martin, second edn. (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1957
), p. 620. The use of darkness to emphasize majesty contrasts clearly with an earlier emphasis on darkness as concealing authority and hierarchy – seen for example when Shakespeare’s Henry V walks unrecognized among his troops the night before battle of Agincourt (act 4, scene 1). See Raymond Gardette, “Ténèbres lumineuses: quelques repères shakespeariens,” in
Penser la nuit: XVe–XVIIe siècles
, ed. Dominique Bertrand, Colloques, Congrès et Conférences sur la Renaissance 35 (Paris: H. Champion,
2003
), pp. 343–65.

5.
Norris, “Hymn to Darkness,” in
Collection
, p. 38.

6.
Massimo Ciavolella and Patrick Coleman, “Guide to the programs on ‘Culture and Authority in the Baroque’” held at the Center for Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Studies, UCLA, 2000–01.

7.
Ibid
. See Maria Goloubeva’s overview of the scholarship on the baroque as style and culture in
The Glorification of Emperor Leopold I in Image, Spectacle, and Text
, Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für Europäische Geschichte Mainz 184 (Mainz: von Zabern,
2000
), pp. 15–21, and the literature cited there.

8.
Jesuit culture played an important role in the use of darkness to intensify Christian imagery and devotion. The application of Ignatian spirituality to baroque theater was promoted by seventeenth-century Jesuits such as Emanuele Tesauro of Turin: see Sebastian Neumeister, “
Tante belle inuentioni di Feste, Giostre, Balletti e Mascherate
: Emmanule Tesauro und die barocke Festkultur,” in
Theatrum Europaeum: Festschrift für Elida Maria Szarota
, ed. Richard Brinkmann
et al
. (Munich: W. Fink,
1982
), pp. 153–68.

9.
On the
Ballet de la Nuit
see Marie-Claude Canova-Green, “Le Ballet de cour en France,” in
Spectaculum Europaeum: Theatre and Spectacle in Europe (1580–1750)
, ed. Pierre Béhar and Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly, Wolfenbütteler Arbeiten zur Barockforschung 31 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz,
1999
), pp. 485–512; Dominik Keller, “Unter dem Zeichen der Sonne,” in
Die schöne Kunst der Verschwendung
, ed. Georg Kohler and Alice Villon-Lechner (Zurich and Munich: Artemis,
1988
), pp. 57–58, and Kathryn A. Hoffmann,
Society of Pleasures: Interdisciplinary Readings in Pleasure and Power during the Reign of Louis XIV
(New York: St. Martin’s Press,
1997
), pp. 13–40.

10.
See Marianne Closson, “Scénographiques nocturnes du baroque: l’exemple du ballet français (1580–1650),” in
Penser la nuit
, ed. Bertrand, pp. 425–47; Ian Dunlop,
Louis XIV
(London: Chatto & Windus,
1999
), p. 31; and Isaac de Benserade,
Ballets pour Louis XIV
, ed. Marie-Claude Canova-Green (Toulouse: Société de Littératures Classiques,
1997
),
I
: 7–35, 91–160.

11.
Benserade,
Ballets pour Louis XIV
, ed. Canova-Green,
I
: 94.

12.
See Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly, “From ‘Société de plaisir’ to ‘Schönes Neben-Werck’ – The Changing Purpose of Court Festivals,”
German Life and Letters
45, 3 (
1992
): 216–19.

13.
This is discussed most clearly in Roy Strong,
Art and Power: Renaissance Festivals 1450–1650
(Woodbridge: Boydell Press,
1984
), p. 4, and Karl Möseneder,
Zeremoniell und monumentale Poesie: die “Entrée solennelle” Ludwigs XIV. 1660 in Paris
(Berlin: Gebr. Mann,
1983
), pp. 34–43.

14.
“Cette société de plaisirs, qui donne aux personnes de la cour une honnête familiarité avec nous, les touche et les charme plus qu’on peut dire. Les peuples, d’un autre côté, se plaisent au spectacle,” as quoted in Hoffmann,
Society of Pleasures
, pp. 13, 30, 173–74.

15.
Möseneder,
Zeremoniell
, p. 36.

16.
From a contemporary English translation: Justus Lipsius,
Sixe Bookes of Politickes or Civil Doctrine
, trans. William Jones (London: Richard Field,
1594
), pp. 68–70.

17.
Jean de La Bruyère,
Les Caractères
, ed. Robert Garapon (Paris: Garnier,
1962
), pp. 275f. See also the comments of Gabriel Naudé (1639) on “seduction and deception by appearances,” as cited in Möseneder,
Zeremoniell
, p. 36.

18.
Michel de Puré (1634–80),
Idée des spectacles anciens et nouveaux
(Paris, 1668, repr. Geneva: Minkoff Reprint, 1972), pp. 161–318, and Claude-François Ménestrier (1631–1705),
Traité des tournois, joustes, carrousels et autres spectacles publics
(Lyon,
1669
; repr. New York: Garland, 1979).

19.
See the valuable study by Milo
Vec,
Zeremonialwissenschaft im Fürstenstaat. Studien zur juristischen und politischen Theorie absolutistischer Herrschaftsrepräsentation
, Studien zur Europäischen Rechtsgeschichte 106 (Frankfurt: Klostermann,
1998
).

20.
Julius Bernhard von Rohr (1688–1742),
Einleitung zur Ceremoniel-Wissenschaft der Grossen Herren
, ed. with a commentary by Monika Schlechte (Leipzig: Edition Leipzig,
1990
; reprint of the second edn., Berlin, 1733), pp. 732–880.

21.
Ibid
., pp. 733f., as cited in Möseneder,
Zeremoniell
, p. 39.

22.
Rohr discusses (1) processions, (2) tourneys and chivalric sport, (3) Carrousels, Ringrennen, and equestrian ballet, (4) carnivals and masquerades, (5) concerts, dances, balls and ballets, (6) operas and comedies, (7) costume feasts and “peasant weddings”, (8) sleigh rides, (9) illuminations, (10) fireworks, (11) target shooting, and finally (12) hunting.
Ibid
., “Verzeichniß der Capitel” and pp. 732–875.

23.
See Jean-Louis Sponsel,
Der Zwinger, die Hoffeste und die Schloßbaupläne zu Dresden
(Dresden: Stengel,
1924
), pp. 73–98, and Beatrix Bastl, “Feuerwerk und Schlittenfahrt: Ordnungen zwischen Ritual und Zeremoniell,”
Wiener Geschichtsblätter
51 (
1996
): 197–229.

24.
Richard Alewyn and Karl Sälzle,
Das große Welttheater: Die Epoche der höfischen Feste in Dokument und Deutung
(Hamburg: Rowohlt,
1959
), pp. 30–31. See Samuel John Klingensmith,
The Utility of Splendor: Ceremony, Social Life and Architecture at the Court of Bavaria, 1600–1800
(University of Chicago Press,
1993
); and Hellmut Lorenz, “Barocke Festkultur und Repräsentation im Schloß zu Dresden,”
Dresdner Hefte
12, 38 (
1994
): 48–56.

25.
Innovative organizations of space and time often develop together: consider the communal monastery and the daily schedule of Benedict’s Rule or the work of Jacques LeGoff on medieval cities and “merchants’ time.” The “spatial turn” in recent scholarship calls to our attention the range of baroque innovations in the measurement, structuring, and management of time, in all its divisions.

26.
Richard Alewyn,
Das große Welttheater: Die Epoche der höfischen Feste
, second edn. (Munich: Beck,
1985
), pp. 37–39.

27.
Alewyn sees “the transition from Renaissance to baroque” as “the decisive phase” in the nocturnalization of court festivals:
ibid
., p. 37.

28.
Jean Cordey,
Vaux-le-Vicomte
, Preface by Pierre de Nolhac (Paris: Éditions Albert Morancé,
1924
), and Peter-Eckhard Knabe, “Der Hof als Zentrum der Festkultur. Vaux-le-Vicomte, 17. August 1661,” in
Geselligkeit und Gesellschaft im Barockzeitalter
, ed. Wolfgang Adam, Wolfenbütteler Arbeiten zur Barockforschung 28 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz,
1997
)
II
: 859–70.

29.
Knabe, “Der Hof als Zentrum,” p. 861.

30.
See Alewyn and Sälzle,
Welttheater
, pp. 98–102, and E. Magne,
Les Fêtes en Europe au XVIIe siècle
(Paris: Martin-Dupuis,
1930
).

31.
The account of Antoine Caraccioli, bishop of Troyes, is published in H. Noel Williams,
Henri II: His Court and Times
(London: Methuen,
1910
), pp. 341–43. On the time of day of the accident see also Lucien Romier,
Les origines politiques des guerres de religion
, 2 vols. (Paris: Perrin,
1913
–14),
II
: 379–80.

32.
See Gordon Kipling,
The Triumph of Honour: Burgundian Origins of the Elizabethan Renaissance
, Publications of the Sir Thomas Browne Institute, Leiden: General Series 6 (The Hague: Leiden University Press,
1977
), pp. 74–136; Strong,
Art and Power
, pp. 16–19; Jean Verdon,
Night in the Middle Ages
, trans. George Holoch (University of Notre Dame Press,
2002
), pp. 127–34.

33.
Strong,
Art and Power
, p. 18.

34.
As Strong notes, daytime spectacles such as royal entries and tournaments were replaced by court entertainments under the first two Stuarts (
ibid
., pp. 153–70, p. 154).

35.
Alewyn and Sälze,
Welttheater
, pp. 91–97. In sixteenth-century Germany town and village dances, including those of the elites of German cities such as Augsburg and Nuremberg, were held on Sunday afternoon. See Wolfgang Brunner, “Städtisches Tanzen und das Tanzhaus im 16. Jahrhundert,” in
Alltag im 16. Jahrhundert. Studien zu Lebensformen in mitteleuropäischen Städten
, ed. Alfred Kohler and Heinrich Lutz (Vienna: Verlag für Geschichte und Politik,
1987
), pp. 45–64, 52.

36.
See Sponsel,
Der Zwinger
, pp. 32–42, Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly,
Court Culture in Dresden: From Renaissance to Baroque
(New York: Palgrave,
2002
), pp. 30–34, 130–65, and Horst Richter,
Johann Oswald Harms. Ein deutscher Theaterdekorateur des Barock
(Emsdetten: Lechte,
1963
), pp. 28–52. See also the
Dresdner Hefte
11, 33 (1993), special volume on “Johann Georg II und sein Hof.” The Festival of the Planets is described in Gabriel Tzschimmer,
Die Durchlauchtigste Zusammenkunft, oder: Historische Erzehlung, was der durchlauchtigste furst und herr, Herr Johann George der Ander, herzog zu Sachsen
(Nuremberg: J. Hoffmann,
1680
), which specifies the time of each day’s events.