King of the Ball

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The King's sudden onset of insanity was seen by some as a sign of divine anger and punishment and by others as the result of sorcery ; [6] modern historians such as Knecht speculate that Charles might have been experiencing the onset of paranoid schizophrenia. In A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century the historian Barbara Tuchman writes that the physician Harsigny, refusing "all pleas and offers of riches to remain", [12] left Paris and ordered the courtiers to shield the King from the duties of government and leadership.

He told the King's advisors to "be careful not to worry or irritate him Burden him with work as little as you can; pleasure and forgetfulness will be better for him than anything else. Blame for unnecessary excess and expense was directed at the foreign queen, who was brought from Bavaria at the request of Charles's uncles. The costumes, which were sewn onto the men, were made of linen soaked with resin to which flax was attached "so that they appeared shaggy and hairy from head to foot". Some chronicles report that the dancers were bound together by chains.

Most of the audience were unaware that Charles was among the dancers.

King of the Ball

Strict orders forbade the lighting of hall torches and prohibited anyone from entering the hall with a torch during the performance, to minimize the risk of the highly flammable costumes catching fire. According to historian Jan Veenstra the men capered and howled "like wolves", spat obscenities and invited the audience to guess their identities while dancing in a "diabolical" frenzy.

Isabeau, knowing that her husband was one of the dancers, fainted when the men caught fire. Charles, however, was standing at a distance from the other dancers, near his year-old aunt Joan, Duchess of Berry , who swiftly threw her voluminous skirt over him to protect him from the sparks. Froissart wrote that "The King, who proceeded ahead of [the dancers], departed from his companions The scene soon descended into chaos; the dancers shrieked in pain as they burned in their costumes, and the audience, many of them also sustaining burns, screamed as they tried to rescue the burning men.

The instigator of the affair, Huguet de Guisay, survived a day longer, described by Tuchman as bitterly "cursing and insulting his fellow dancers, the dead and the living, until his last hour". The citizens of Paris, angered by the event and at the danger posed to their monarch, blamed Charles's advisors.

A "great commotion" swept through the city as the populace threatened to depose Charles's uncles and kill dissolute and depraved courtiers. Greatly concerned at the popular outcry and worried about a repeat of the Maillotin revolt of the previous decade—when Parisians armed with mallets turned against tax collectors—Charles's uncles persuaded the court to do penance at Notre Dame Cathedral , preceded by an apologetic royal progress through the city in which the King rode on horseback with his uncles walking in humility.

The Bal des Ardents added to the impression of a court steeped in extravagance, with a king in delicate health and unable to rule. Charles's attacks of illness increased in frequency such that by the end of the s his role was merely ceremonial. By the early 15th century he was neglected and often forgotten, a lack of leadership that contributed to the decline and fragmentation of the Valois dynasty.

The vacuum created by the lack of central power and the general irresponsibility of the French court resulted in it gaining a reputation for lax morals and decadence that endured for more than years. Veenstra writes in Magic and Divination at the Courts of Burgundy and France that the Bal des Ardents reveals the tension between Christian beliefs and the latent paganism that existed in 14th-century society.

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According to him, the event "laid bare a great cultural struggle with the past but also became an ominous foreshadowing of the future. Wild men or savages—usually depicted carrying staves or clubs, living beyond the bounds of civilization without shelter or fire, lacking feelings and souls—were then a metaphor for man without God. In some village charivaris at harvest or planting time dancers dressed as wild men, to represent demons, were ceremonially captured and then an effigy of them was symbolically burnt to appease evil spirits.

The church, however, considered these rituals pagan and demonic.

Veenstra explains that it was believed that by dressing as wild men, villagers ritualistically "conjured demons by imitating them"—although at that period penitentials forbade a belief in wild men or an imitation of them, such as the costumed dance at Isabeau's event. In folkloric rituals the "burning did not happen literally but in effigie ", he writes, "contrary to the Bal des Ardents where the seasonal fertility rite had watered down to courtly entertainment, but where burning had been promoted to a dreadful reality.

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Because remarriage was often thought to be a sacrilege—common belief contrary to the Gospel — Luke Thus the purpose of the Bal des Ardents was twofold: The Book of Tobit partly concerns a woman who had seven husbands murdered by the demon Asmodeus ; she is eventually freed of the demon by the burning of the heart and liver of a fish. The event also may have served as a symbolic exorcism of Charles's mental illness at a time when magicians and sorcerers were commonly consulted by members of the court. The death of four members of the nobility was sufficiently important to ensure that the event was recorded in contemporary chronicles, most notably by Froissart and the Monk of St Denis, and subsequently illustrated in a number of copies of illuminated manuscripts.

While the two main chroniclers agree on essential points of the evening—the dancers were dressed as wild men, the King survived, one man fell into a vat, and four of the dancers died—there are discrepancies in the details. Froissart wrote that the dancers were chained together, which is not mentioned in the monk's account.

Furthermore, the two chroniclers are at odds regarding the purpose of the dance.

According to the historian Susan Crane, the monk describes the event as a wild charivari with the audience participating in the dance, whereas Froissart's description suggests a theatrical performance without audience participation. Froissart wrote about the event in Book IV of his Chronicles covering the years to , an account described by scholar Katerina Nara as full of "a sense of pessimism", as Froissart "did not approve of all he recorded".

Scholars are unsure whether either chronicler was present that evening. According to Crane, Froissart wrote of the event about five years later, and the monk about ten. Veenstra speculates that the monk may have been an eyewitness as he was for much of Charles VI's reign and that his account is the more accurate of the two.

The Froissart manuscript dating from between and from the Harleian Collection held at the British Library includes a miniature depicting the event, titled "Dance of the Wodewoses", attributed to an unknown painter referred to as the Master of the Harley Froissart. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

King's Ball

As in other European Epiphany celebrations, a Galette des Rois was baked, with a bean hidden in it. More recently, a small Christ child trinket has been substituted for the bean.

Post about King of the Ball

In the old French towns of Upper Louisiana, at the feast of Epiphany, on Twelfth Night a cake was served to the ladies, into which had been kneaded, before the baking, four beans. Each lady whose slice of cake contained a bean became a queen of the revels, and she in turn chose, a gentleman to be her king, signifying her preference by presenting him a bouquet.

The four kings thus chosen and duly proclaimed became the patrons of the first of a series of old-time entertainments known as the "kings' balls.

The series of festivities thus inaugurated lasted until Shrove Tuesday and the carnival. All who were present at the Twelfth Night festivities were expected to attend the king's balls without further bidding. About the 6th of January, in each year, which is called Le Jour de Rais, a party is given, and four beans are baked in a large cake; this cake is distributed amongst the gentlemen, and each one who receives a bean, is proclaimed king.

These four kings are to give the next ball. These are called "king balls.

They arrange all things necessary for the dancing party. In these merry parties, no set supper is indulged in. They go there not to eat, but to be and make merry. They have refreshments of cake and coffee served round at proper intervals. Sometimes bouillon, as the French call it, takes the place of coffee.

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