In the late Middle Ages, general processions that involved the entire town were familiar events for the people of Lille. From the late fifteenth through the sixteenth century, the frequency of such processions, both annual and occasional, seems to have increased almost year by year. As elsewhere in medieval Europe, these urban rituals were of various types: processions of devotion, penance, petition, or thanksgiving. Among all such ceremonies, however, there was one procession for which Lille was famous; it was the annual procession in honour of the Virgin Mary, which took place on the Sunday after Trinity. Called simply la Procession de Lille, it had been founded by Countess Margaret of Flanders in 1270. It thus antedated by several decades the establishment of the Corpus Christi procession in Lille and it always overshadowed the latter event, which took place only three days earlier on the Thursday after Trinity. By the fifteenth century the Lille procession had become a spectacular religious and civic ritual that involved all the city’s institutions and inhabitants. Alain Lottin describes the organization of the procession in the following way:

Lille at that time was governed by a body of 25 men – increased to 39 in 1467 – known collectively as la Loi. Of that number the twelve aldermen or échevins wielded primary authority. Because the latter also exercised judicial functions, the governing body was also known as le Magistrat. While the collegiate church of Saint Peter was responsible for the religious aspects of the Lille procession, the municipal government directed the secular participants and contributed substantial sums of money for the rich decorations of the parade and for the prizes that were awarded each year. As Lottin states, both the guilds and the youth groups staged dramatic spectacles on pageant wagons, but he fails to point out the crucial differences between the two sets of participants. I have described in a number of previous papers and articles how the neighbourhood youth groups mimed mystery plays along the route of march as the procession passed and how, after the procession, they pulled their wagons into the city square and staged the plays ‘en bonne et vraie rhétorique’. The trade and craft guilds, however, did not stage mystery plays; they mounted tableaux vivants on wagons that moved in the procession itself. The tableaux were usually called histoires because they were living pictures that illustrated events from sacred history. Contrary to Lottin’s assertion, the guilds had no part in the staging of plays after the procession. Because their contribution to the dramatic activities of the Lille procession are less well known that that of the youth groups, I will devote this paper to examining the guild pageants and their role in Lille’s most important cultural manifestation of the year.

Each year the Magistrat would issue an ordinance or proclamation announcing the upcoming Corpus Christi and Lille processions, which were only three days apart. In the surviving registers of these ordinances, the first reference to the guilds taking part in the procession dates from 1396. It states simply that all ‘gens de métier’ should accompany the candle or torch of their own guild and should march peacefully in the places assigned to them. We do not know, however, when the guilds first began marching in the procession, since the earliest register surviving dates only from 1382. The first reference to dramatic representations by the guilds is found in the proclamation of 1402:

The ordinance makes it clear that the jeux moved in the procession, presumably on wagons, each accompanying the sponsoring guild. It does not tell us, however, what kind of representation was involved. In later documents the word jeux is normally applied to the plays staged by the neighbourhood youth groups after the procession, while the word histoires is used to designate the tableaux vivants staged by the guilds in the procession itself. Since it seems unlikely that the guilds would present complete plays in dialogue while moving through the streets of Lille, we must suppose that the dramatic representations of 1402 were non-speaking scenes from the lives of the saints or from other events in sacred history. The place of the guilds and their pageant wagons in the procession was immediately preceding the body of clergy (colege) from the collegiate church. They in turn would precede the fierte or reliquary of the Virgin Mary, which was the centre-piece of the parade and the principal focus of devotion. At this early date the composition of the procession seems to have been less elaborate than that described by Lottin, which reflects the practice of a later period.

The ordinance was re-issued in 1417 with a significant difference in the order of march. As in 1402, the guilds are directed to process ‘tout devant le college de l’eglise Saint-Pierre’ in the order assigned to them, but the wagons are no longer to accompany the guilds to which they belong:

Thus the procession of 1417 opened with a series of tableaux vivants on wagons and closed with another series. Since it was the aldermen who determined the place of each guild in the procession, one wonders what they had in mind by grouping the pageant wagons in this fashion. Was it simply a practical matter of separating horse-drawn wagons from walking participants or was there perhaps an attempt to set a theme for the procession? If the latter, we have no hint of the subjects of the tableaux beyond the reference to ‘vies de sains’. Did they portray events from the lives of the patron saints of the guilds or perhaps from the life of Mary in whose honour the procession was founded? Did the other subjects include scenes from the Bible, miracles, or perhaps moral allegories? We will never know the answers to such questions because the surviving documents, though they are numerous for this period, fall silent on the matter of guild pageants for the next 65 years.

There is, however, no lack of documentation relating to the guilds’ usual participation in the procession during those years. The mounting of tableaux vivants seems to have been a voluntary exercise, but it was the duty of every guild to parade each year as a corporate body in the Corpus Christi and Lille processions. One of the articles in the charter of the butchers’ guild, for example, reads:

Moreover, it was the duty of every member of a guild to march in the same processions in the company of his confreres. Anyone who did not participate was subject to a fine. In addition, the ordinances of the Magistrat make it clear that the twelve échevins were assiduous and forceful in exercising their right to determine the place of the guilds in the parade. Two ordinances from the fifteenth century provide a complete list of the guilds ranked according to the order in which they marched in the two processions. The first list, dating from 1423, contains the names of 33 guilds; the second, dating from 1485, contains the names of 57 guilds. Those appearing in the earlier list retain the same order in relation to each other in the later list, and the 24 new guilds are inserted mainly in the first half of the sequence. The end position was of course the most prestigious because it was closer to the reliquary of the Virgin. Sometimes the Magistrat had to arbitrate disputes between guilds in regard to their assigned position. In 1420, for example, the weavers and the mercers quarrelled about their places relative to one another. The weavers wanted to follow the mercers ‘pour aler plus pres de le fiertre et a l’honneur aux jours du Sacrement et Procession de Lille’. The aldermen ruled in the weavers’ favour and ordered the mercers to precede them. It seems to have been a temporary victory, however, since in both the lists mentioned above, the weavers precede the mercers.

The next reference to histoires being mounted by the guilds is found, not among the ordinances, but in the municipal account book for the fiscal year 1482–83. During the intervening years the plays staged by the neighbourhood youth groups – called les rues et les places in the documents – had grown in number and importance. In the 1430s a contest had been established in which the best mystery plays and farces were awarded prizes. In most years the contest was conducted by the so-called Bishop of Fools, who was elected by the canons of the collegiate church each year during Twelfthnight festivities, who organized festive entertainments and contests in the city at other times of the year. The cost of the prizes was borne by the municipal treasury, and therefore a reference to their being awarded to the youth groups for the best plays (jeux de personnaiges) appears in the account books almost every year. In 1483, however, the Bishop awarded prizes not only to the youth groups for their plays, but also for the first time to the guilds for their tableaux:

There is no way to know whether the guilds had been staging tableaux vivants in the procession between the invitation of the aldermen in 1417 and the awarding of prizes in 1483. It is, however, possible that such was the case. Since the pageant scenes were voluntary, there was no need for the échevins to issue ordinances about them, and since the guilds did not participate in a contest, there were no expenses to record in the account books. Thus the absence of documentation may not indicate a lack of participation. Whatever happened in those earlier years, it appears that in 1483 the municipal government offered prizes to the guilds to encourage them to contribute to the visual and dramatic spectacle of the procession, a spectacle that the aldermen probably hoped would bring even more pilgrims and visitors to the city for the already famous Lille procession.

The same phrase recording prizes given to ‘ceulx des places et mestiers qui ont fait histoires et jeux moralisiéz’ recurs in the account books through 1487. There is no reference to prizes in 1488, and in 1490 only the ‘places’ are mentioned as having received prizes, though it is possible that the scribe omitted ‘et mestiers’ by accident. For the next three years the prizes are given to ‘ceulx qui ont fait histoires et jeux moralisiéz’, and from 1494 to 1499 they are awarded to ‘ceulx qui jouerent jeux moralisiéz’. From 1501 to 1526 the prizes go to ‘ceulx qui ont joué jeux moralisiéz et de folie’. Thus the term histoires, which was normally used to designate the tableaux vivants disappears from the records in 1494. It would seem, then, that the guilds ceased to participate in the contest at that time, but it is not clear whether they no longer contributed pageant wagons to the procession on a voluntary basis. It is also possible, of course, that their participation continued and that the accountants who kept the books were not concerned with the kinds of distinctions we would like to find.

The guilds were not the only groups to mount tableaux vivants on wagons in the procession. In 1434 the aldermen granted a subsidy to a company from the parish of Saint Saviour, which was a poor, working-class district of the city. The group, called Les Compagnons de Saint Sauveur, received the money because of the ‘frais et despens par eulx soustenus en certaines hystoires par eulx faictez en la procession’. No other grant to this group is recorded until 1460, when there begins an annual subsidy for ‘pluiseurs histoires remoustrees pour la decoration de la procession’. It is not until the account-book entry for 1466 that we learn that the subject of their histoires was the ‘Passion nostre seigneur Jhesucrist’. The entry for 1470, however, gives a more complete picture of the activities of this group:

Thus in the place of greatest honour, immediately before the reliquary of the Virgin Mary, a company from the poorest section of the city staged scenes from the Passion on wagons moving in the procession. In 1479 the group changed its name to La Gauguerie and added scenes of the Nativity and Resurrection. In 1481 they added tableaux of the Annunciation and the Gifts of the Magi ‘avec aucunes aultres histoires nouvelles par eulx adjoustees […] et aussi des martires d’aucuns glorieux sains’. In 1483 there is a reference to the great number of horses needed to pull all the company’s wagons. That year too, as we have seen, marked the beginning of the guilds’ participation in a contest to win prizes for the best tableaux vivants. If one tries to visualize the components of this enormous parade winding throught the streets and squares of Lille – all the major institutions of the city with all their members; the 57 guilds, many with tableaux on wagons; the numerous wagons of La Gauguerie with scenes from the life of Christ and other subjects; the wagons of the neighbourhood youth groups stationed along the route of march, on which the players mimed their plays – one can still only begin to conceive the scale and grandeur of the Lille Procession at the end of the fifteenth century.

The sixteenth century brought significant social and cultural changes – and sometimes upheavals – to the life of the city, and the year 1527 saw the first of a series of major alterations in the organization of the procession. In that year the échevins took over all the duties of the Bishop of Fools and his vicars and paid one of their own officers to

We can only speculate as to the reason for the takeover, but it may not be a coincidence that the influence of Lutheranism had begun to be felt in the previous year. At that time the aldermen, who saw the new movement as a threat to the stability of their city, had entered into a conflict with the bishop of Tournai and the local governor as to who should be responsible for prosecuting and judging the ‘heretics’. Ultimately the emperor Charles V ruled in the aldermen’s favour. In such an atmosphere, it seems likely that they would want to consolidate their authority in as many areas as possible, including the procession, not for the sake of power itself, but to maintain order in the city so that commerce could thrive. Most of them were, after all, wealthy businessmen.

It is noteworthy that the histoires of the guilds are not mentioned in the 1527 account, nor in any other before 1533. In that year, however, there is another significant change in the organization of the procession: the guilds are again awarded prizes for the most beautiful tableaux vivants. Although an ordinance from this year speaks of ‘les histoires accoustumees’, as if the guilds had staged them all along, the account book records the cost of prizes given for the two ‘plus belles histoires des mestiers, qui ont esté avecq les chandelles desdis mestiers, comme mis sus de nouvel’. In addition to the two prizes, a small subsidy was awarded to each of the 28 guilds that presented tableaux on wagons. Apparently the aldermen were willing to pay the significant cost of increasing the number of biblical scenes that could be viewed in the procession. This, too, may have been a response to the perceived threat of heresy in the city, for 1533 was the year of the first executions for that ‘crime’ in Lille. The death penalty was carried out in the same public square through which the procession passed and in which the youth groups staged their plays afterward. In the spring of that year, two Lutherans were burned alive and four others were beheaded, the last of these on the very eve of the procession. If the aldermen’s death sentence against the Lutherans had been an austere warning to the people of Lille about the dangers of heresy, their efforts to increase the number of biblical tableaux and plays that were seen on procession day may have been meant as a positive reinforcement of the truths of sacred history to which the people should adhere.

In 1534 the aldermen ordered another major change in the organization of the procession. We have seen that for many years the company from the parish of Saint Saviour had exclusive rights to stage scenes from the Passion. In fact, the ordinance of 1533 states specifically:

The following year, however, the aldermen abandoned that long-standing tradition and assigned 23 scenes from the Passion to 23 of the guilds. The 23 other guilds

The guilds had the option of declining to stage a tableau vivant, but only five did so, which means that there were 41 guild pageant wagons in the procession of 1534. The Passion scenes began, as in Gréban’s Passion, with the Creation of Adam and Eve and ended with the Descent into hell. (For a complete list of the tableaux, see Appendix I.) We do not know what scenes the other guilds staged, except for the two that won prizes. The hosiers won first prize for the story of Judith and Holophernes, and the casket makers won second prize for the story of Joachim and Anna. In any case, it would seem that all or most of the tableaux represented biblical scenes, which suggests again that the aldermen were intent on providing examples of sacred history that would counteract the heterodox interpretations of the Bible circulating among the populace.

The most radical change in the organization of the guild pageants took place in 1535. An ordinance from that year describes the new sequence of tableaux as follows:

Thus the guild pageants would process in pairs of scenes that were linked typologically. The first tableau would present an Old Testament event that prefigured the New Testament scene immediately following. The masons’ pageant, for example, which depicted the manna from heaven, was followed by the fullers’ wagon, on which was staged the multiplication of the loaves and fishes. There was one group of three tableaux that had two Old Testament antecedents, and the last three pageants – Resurrection, Descent into hell, and Last Judgement – had no figural antecedents. The curriers guild presented a giant, probably one of the folkloric figures, such as Lydéric the legendary founder of Lille, that were often represented at festivals in Flanders. In two cases, two guilds joined to make one tableau. In all, 43 guilds participated in exhibiting 41 tableaux vivants in the procession of 1535. (For a complete list of the tableaux, see Appendix II).

Apparently both the aldermen and the guilds were satisfied with this typological pattern of presenting the tableaux, for it was never changed after 1535. Even in 1565, the last year in which plays and tableaux were presented at the procession, the same pattern was maintained. Moreover, the guilds always presented the same scenes that they had staged in 1535. The titles of the winning tableaux are given in the account books for a number of the years in that period. Each tableau so identified was staged by the same guild that presented it in 1535. Prizes, consisting of gold coins, were awarded to the two best histoires from the Old Testament and the two best from the New Testament. The account books list the winning guilds in fifteen of the years between 1535 and 1565. In those years, sixteen guild pageants won at least one prize, while seven guilds were awarded five or more prizes in different years. The cappers, with their tableau of the child Samuel, won most often, taking nine prizes.

Over the years the échevins of Lille had shown themselves to be specially concerned with the order and stability of the city. Their many ordinances prohibiting certain activities were all issued with this goal in mind. Even their power struggles with the collegiate church of Saint Peter, the bishop of Tournai, and the governor of the province were efforts to maintain control over the town and its people and thus to provide a stable environment for commerce. If, then, the aldermen were satisfied with the new manner of presenting biblical tableaux vivants in the procession, they must have believed it to be an effective means of combatting the influence of heterodox religious movements, which they perceived to be a serious threat to public order. Although they did not hesitate to burn heretics in the public square, they probably felt that it was much better for the peace and stability of the city to teach the orthodox view of sacred history by means of guild pageants in the annual processions.

The following is taken from a proclamation concerning the organization and order of the Procession of Lille in 1534. It was issued by the aldermen and council of the city on April 21st of that year. The procession took place on June 7th. (Affaires Générales, A.M.L., Carton 654, Pièce 3)

Et quant aux aultres mestiers, ilz seront tenus de faire, s’ilz veullent avoir pris, histoires de la Passion, assçavoir:

The following is a list of the guilds and their tableaux vivants in the Lille procession of 1535. It was drawn up by the aldermen or by one of the officers of the Magistrat. (Affaires Générales, A.M.L., Carton 654, Pièce 3)

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