Although much attention has been paid in recent decades to the phenomenon of (urban) festival in the medieval and early modern periods, there is still comparatively little work done on how festivals were organised and carried out by particular social groups. Scholars have predominantly focussed either on the magnificent ceremonies of royalty (e.g., festive entries, coronations, weddings) or been attracted by the culture of the ‘masses’, i.e., ‘folk’ customs. Social groups or layers placed somewhere in-between these two fashionable polarities (fashionable in terms of research) have received less attention. This applies, for instance, to the study of festivities of urban guilds and confraternities. However, such associations (whether occupational, devotional, or both), with their regular, annual assemblies, can be considered among the main carriers of festival traditions in the urban context, and undoubtedly deserve more scholarly attention than has been paid to them thus far. Guild records, though often quite laconic, can offer us information on various activities at festivals (ceremonies, pastimes, entertainment) and how these activities were regulated. It is more difficult, however, to determine the degree to which the regulations were actually followed as well as to detect the speed and extent of changes that occurred in festival ‘programmes’ over time.

This paper will examine the arrangement of festivals, and the keeping of records concerning their festive traditions, by merchants’ associations in medieval Livonia, particularly focussing on the Black Heads’ confraternities in Riga and Reval (Tallinn). In the miraculously preserved archives of these associations there survive documents that can be of considerable interest to social historians as well as theatre historians, namely three sets of regulations from around 1500, 1510, and 1514 for the Black Heads’ annual festivals at Christmas and/or Carnival. These documents, the length of which extends from 30 to 100 pages, constitute a comprehensive description of, or rather a scenario for, the activities during each particular day of an approximately two-week festival, allowing us a glimpse of what was done, when, where, by whom, and how. Such detailed scenarios for guild festivals are, as far as I know, unique in (northern) Europe, and therefore of enormous value for research on festival culture. However, since Livonia belongs to those ‘remote’ areas of medieval Europe whose historical and cultural context is not necessarily familiar to all our conference delegates, it might be useful, prior to the discussion of these significant documents, to start with a brief introduction to the urban centres and associations mentioned.

Livonia (German Livland) was a common name used for the territories that covered approximately present-day Estonia and Latvia. The birth of towns in Livonia was a result of the thirteenth-century German-Danish conquest and German expansion eastwards. The towns were granted German city laws, and the upper and middle classes consisted of German merchants and artisans. The local population (Estonians, Latvians, Livs, etc.), described in the sources by the common term ‘non-German’ (Undeutsch), constituted the lower social strata of the towns and the peasantry. Although the number of non-Germans in the larger cities has been estimated at nearly half the urban population (in smaller towns even more), the privileged position of the Germans determined that the towns were typically ‘German’ in terms of their administration, guild system, art and architecture, etc.

The three largest and most influential urban centres in Livonia were Riga, Reval, and Dorpat (Tartu). All three were important Hanseatic towns where the power was in the hands of German merchants. The merchants in these towns were united in two associations: the Great Guild and the Brotherhood of the Black Heads. The oldest statutes of the first originate from the second half of the fourteenth century, whereas the Black Heads occur in documents from the first decades of the fifteenth century. The Great Guild consisted of great merchants, involved in wholesale and long-distance trade, who were burghers of the town. The members of the Great Guild formed the summit of the urban elite and the most influential positions were held by them, including places on the town council. The Brotherhood of the Black Heads, in contrast, united predominantly young unmarried merchants and journeyman merchants (often sons of members of the Great Guild), but also ship captains and foreign merchants staying in town for a certain time. It was a common practice that when a Black Head married and took the burgher’s oath, he moved over to the Great Guild.

Study of the annual festivals of the Livonian merchants’ associations has revealed a distinct similarity to festive traditions elsewhere in northern Europe, particularly in the towns of northern Germany, but also in Denmark and the Low Countries.

Both the Great Guild and the Brotherhood of the Black Heads had four major annual festivals, which they called drunke – Christmas, Carnival, the popinjay shoot, and the celebrations marking the election of a May Count – in Middle Low German respectively winachten drunke, vastelauendes drunke, papegoyen drunke (or schutten drunke), and meygreven drunke (also meygreveschop).

Of these four, Christmas and Carnival were the most important, being described in the records as ‘the main drunke’ (hovetdrunke, meisten drunke) or the ‘great drunke’ (grote drunke). Both of them lasted for approximately two weeks and included various indoor and outdoor celebrations. In addition to merrymaking, the great drunke also functioned as a time to settle a number of administrative matters: admitting new members, electing new officials (an alderman, assessors, treasurers, etc.), discussing and drafting new regulations, holding court, and so on.

Some idea of the management of their annual festivals can be acquired from the statutes (scra) and account books of the guilds and confraternities. From the normative sources we learn that for each of the four major festivals, the associations appointed two persons, called stewards (schaffer), to be in charge of organisational matters. The stewards had to purchase everything for a festival, including food, beverages, and tableware, as well as the means of lighting, heating and decorating the guildhall. They had to hire minstrels, and pay the cook and various servants. The stewards also had a number of obligations during the course of a festival as they were in charge of several ceremonies. At the end of a festival they had to count the expenditure and income and present the records to a higher official, usually a guild alderman or a chief treasurer. Stewards were appointed by the alderman and several weeks before the actual commencement of a festival, for instance, the Carnival stewards were appointed at Christmas and the popinjay stewards at the end of Carnival. The office of steward was presumably not very popular, not only because of the organisational effort required but also because of material responsibility. According to the statutes, if something was stolen during a festival, such as silver cups, or broken, such as windows or furniture, it was the stewards who had to pay for it. However, it was a general rule that anyone who had once acted as a steward at the main drunke, did not have to perform this duty again. This was guaranteed by writing down the names of the stewards in the guild records, including the account books.

While the account books provide us generous information of what was bought for (and in all likelihood consumed at) festivals and in what quantities, they offer us but little insight into the activities (ceremonies, pastimes, etc.) carried out during the drunke. Practically all we know on the basis of the statutes and accounts is that there were banquets, dancing, and music, but anything more specific can hardly be said of the time prior to around 1500.

From that time on, however, elaborate festival scenarios began to be compiled (or at least have been preserved) in the merchants’ associations, and the most informative are the three sets of regulations from the pre-Reformation period, referred to at the beginning of this essay. The earliest among these are the undated Carnival regulations of the Rigan Black Heads, dated by scholars to the end of the fifteenth or the beginning of the sixteenth century (henceforth referred to as the regulations from ca. 1500). These regulations, which actually survive in a 17^th-century copy, comprise 144 articles, which describe the preparations for the festival and the activities of the confraternity during each day of the drunke. Another set of Carnival regulations of the Rigan Black Heads, from 1510, is even longer and more detailed, containing 216 articles. Unlike the regulations from ca. 1500, in which articles simply follow one another, those from 1510 have sub-headings naming the individual days of the drunke.

The surviving regulations from Reval consist of two parts: the first is devoted to the Christmas drunke and the second to the Carnival drunke. The document was compiled in 1513–1514, most probably during the course of the ongoing festival season. The Reval regulations are somewhat shorter and less detailed than the Rigan ones. They primarily list the duties of stewards, but in the overall context also shed light on the activities of the confraternity during individual days of a festival.

Although all three sets of regulations survive for the Black Heads’ confraternities, they reflect festive traditions of the merchants’ class in Riga and Reval in general, for the regulations frequently refer to the activities carried out in association with, or in the presence of, the members of the Great Guild and the town councillors.

The nature of these regulations does not allow us to categorise them as strict norms; instead, as I implied above, they should rather be viewed as a kind of ‘theatre scenario’ or an outline for ritualised festive behaviour. The information that can be deduced from these documents includes the following (and the list is far from exhaustive): the temporal parameters of the drunke; the degree of importance of individual days in relation to one another; the activities –indoor as well as outdoor – carried out on each day (in most cases with the exact start time indicated); the pre- and after-ceremonies of the festival; the distribution of roles to be assured and duties to be performed at the festival; the speeches to be made (by whom and how); the seating order at the tables; guidelines on proper behaviour; the objects used in various rituals; the clothing worn at particular ceremonies; the food and drink served on specific occasions; the number and types of dances and pieces of music; the venues for different activities; the routes taken during the parades and street dancing, etc. Due to their extraordinary comprehensiveness, these festival scenarios offer us valuable insights into the customs and mentality of the Livonian merchants’ associations.

Prior to examining certain rituals as described in the regulations, it is necessary to review the temporal parameters of the Christmas and Carnival drunke in Livonia. Neither of these coincided exactly with the calendar Christmas and Carnival. The Christmas drunke of the Great Guild and the Brotherhood of the Black Heads began on St Stephen’s Day, i.e., on 26 December. It can be assumed that for the town-dwellers, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day were associated with religious practices, above all, attendance at mass, whereas St Stephen’s Day marked the beginning of the ‘secular’ celebrations. The final day of the Christmas drunke in pre-Reformation time is not known, but various sources indicate that the revelries went on at least until 6 January (i.e. Epiphany) if not longer.

The exact duration of the Carnival drunke is clearly stated in the sources, although there were differences between Riga and Reval with regard to the commencement day and the concluding day of the revelries. According to the statutes from 1416 of the Black Heads in Riga, their Carnival drunke began on the Wednesday before Carnival (Tuesday) and ended on the first Sunday in Lent, i.e., Invocavit Sunday. Sometime later, it is not known exactly when, the confraternity extended its drunke for two more days, for in their regulations from 1510 it is stated that the revelries ended on the Tuesday night following the first Sunday in Lent.

In Reval, according to the regulations from 1514, the drunke lasted from the Sunday preceding the little Carnival (little Carnival was the Thursday preceding Estomihi Sunday, which, in turn, was called the great Carnival) until the first Sunday in Lent, that is, from Sexagesima until Invocavit. (The duration of the Carnival drunke, as specified in the sources from the first decades of the 16^th century, is visualised in the following diagram, with the Sundays preceding Easter being numbered).

I do not intend to discuss here in detail the activities performed on each day of a festival or the symbolic meaning behind individual rituals, for I have done this elsewhere. Instead, I choose to focus on two types of ceremonies, both of which are excellent samples of the dramaturgical features of these festival regulations, namely on the making of speeches, and (since processions is one of the topics of our conference) on parades. In addition, I shall briefly touch upon the distribution of roles among the festival participants.

However, in order to give a general idea of what was going on at the merchants’ festivals in Livonia, as well as for the sake of better orientation in the following discussion, I have compiled a table, which presents the scenario of the Carnival drunke in Riga according to the regulations from 1510 (Fig. 2). Given that the length of these regulations is 103 pages, this table provides only a very compressed outline of the events. The numbers in the last column refer to the appropriate articles of the regulations in which the data on the activities is to be found. I have deliberately left out the first 23 articles, which are devoted to the election of stewards and other officials at Christmastime as well as to the immediate preparations for a festival on the Monday and Tuesday preceding the opening day of the drunke.

Not all the days during a two-week festival were of equal importance: some of them included several pastimes and ceremonies (and at various sites), and can therefore be regarded as the highlights of the drunke, whereas some others were characterised by a relatively low activity. The degree of importance of particular days within the Rigan Carnival drunke can easily be recognised on the basis of the table above (Fig. 2): the differences are indicated by the number of articles devoted to each day and by the variety of activities performed during their course.

Ceremonial speeches – whether greetings, toasts or general announcements – played a very important role in the overall observance of a festival. According to the regulations, almost all the speeches were made by the alderman, only some general announcements belonged to the duties of the stewards. The ritual of making a speech by the alderman was an elaborate one. First, he had to make a steward ask the elders of the confraternity what he was supposed to say and when. After that, the younger of the two assessors, who were seated next to the alderman, had to ring a bell. Only thereafter did the alderman stand up and say in a loud voice, so that he could be heard in the entire house, what he had to say.

The speeches recorded in the regulations are comparatively short, consisting of two to three sentences. The majority of these begin with a traditional phrase: "I ask you to listen" (Ick gebede juw to horen), and end with: "thereby let everyone be in good spirits" (dar mede weset alle gudesz hagen). For instance, on Tuesday evening, that is, prior to the opening day of the Carnival drunke, during the general gathering of the members, the alderman had to invite everyone to the festival with the words: "I ask you to listen! Whoever is a Black Head or intends to become one, should come tomorrow at twelve, and take the drunke seriously."

Some of the speeches are rhymed, probably both for mnemonic reasons and for giving a speech a humorous undertone. For instance, on the last evening of the Carnival drunke, the alderman was to encourage the members to finish all the remaining supplies of beer by saying:

The ritual consulting of the elders (mainly the former aldermen of the confraternity) was certainly not because the alderman really needed to be foretold the content of his speech but rather a symbolic act which was to assure the members that everything proceeded in an appropriate manner, i.e., according to the good old traditions of the confraternity.

That the associations paid great attention to the preservation of old customs is frequently indicated in their festival scenarios. The regulations from Riga and Reval contain several paragraphs which emphasise that something was done "according to the old custom" (na older gewahnheit; vp dat olde). Unfortunately, the scarcity of sources prior to 1500 does not always allow us to determine just how old this or that ‘old custom’ actually was. It is nevertheless clear that the sense of continuity played a very relevant role in the (festival) activities of the associations.

* * *

It has repeatedly been pointed out by scholars that an important function of a festival was to reaffirm the sense of corporate identity within the celebrating group. It is also true that if the celebrations remained within the ‘four walls’, e.g., guildhalls, this aim would only have been partially fulfilled. In order to demonstrate the strength and solidarity of a given association to other town-dwellers and receive public recognition, the members had to show themselves in a group, for instance, while parading through the streets.

The major festivals of the merchants’ associations in Livonia included several such public displays of status and power. At the highpoints of Christmas and Carnival, the merchants rode, marched, or danced through the streets from one association to another, and made merry in the marketplace (see Fig. 2). While doing so, they used a number of visual and acoustic means to attract attention, to make visible their membership within a particular association, and to underline their leading position among the urban inhabitants. Such means included dress (occasionally common livery), carrying the confraternity banner, and holding burning torches. Their parades were accompanied by music, in particular by the sound of drums and trumpets.

Let us examine more closely two parades of the Rigan Black Heads, which took place on the Thursday, the little Carnival. The first was to signify "the fetching in of the Carnival" (vastelauent intohalen). On the previous night, the alderman was to hold the following speech: "I ask you to listen! Tomorrow we plan to fetch in the Carnival, according to the old custom. Whoever is a Black Head or intends to become one, be here tomorrow at twelve with his horse, under the threat of a fine." The regulations from ca. 1500 reveal that, prior to the commencement of the drunke, the alderman had to negotiate with his assessors and Carnival stewards about the uniform members would dress themselves in for the festive procession on horseback, so that their outfit be "to the honour of the town and of the confraternity."

On Thursday, the Black Heads assembled at noon, first at the house of the younger assessor, then at that of the older assessor, and thereafter rode together to fetch the alderman. After that, they gathered in front of their confraternity house (called the New House, sometimes King Arthur’s Court), and the parade began. The minstrels rode in front so that the approach of the parade could be heard from a distance. The stewards followed, holding white sticks in their hands, and thereafter rode the alderman, flanked by his two assessors. Then followed the elders and after them, in pairs, rode the ordinary members. The parade passed through the Sand Gate and left the town. After the confraternity stopped for a certain time at the Sand Hill, a ceremonial ride into the town took place. This was a symbolic activity, which signified the fetching in of the Carnival.

In Reval, too, the Carnival was "fetched in" on the same day. There, the ceremony of the Black Heads included a parade with drums and a sleigh ride, an activity not mentioned in the regulations of Riga.

A similar custom, to fetch in the Carnival on the little Carnival day, is also known from some other towns in northern Europe, for instance, from Gdansk (Danzig) in 1495. The Rigan regulations do not indicate whether the Black Heads carried with them any symbolic figure, which could be regarded as the personification of Carnival. There is evidence for such a custom from some German towns. In Münster, for instance, the St Anne’s confraternity, uniting the sons of rich burghers, likewise rode out of the city and back on the little Carnival day. They carried with them a doll, stuffed with hay and straw, and called variously the Doctor or the Fool (Geck). However, taking into consideration the extraordinary comprehensiveness of the Rigan regulations, it can be assumed that if a similar custom had been practised by the Black Heads in Riga, then there would be some trace of it in their records.

The Rigan regulations also name the streets through which the parade proceeded as well as certain buildings that were passed by. From that we learn that the route taken was by no means arbitrary, nor was it the shortest possible between the New House and a city gate. Instead, the Black Heads’ parade was an elaborate perambulation, and the streets passed included the principal streets of the town where the wealthy and powerful lived. Such a selection of the route guaranteed a large audience for the parade not only in terms of quantity but also that of quality.

The ceremony of fetching in the Carnival in Riga was followed by jousting (stechen) in the market square, a custom known to have been associated with the Carnival season in many towns of medieval Europe. After that, the Black Heads returned to the New House and continued to celebrate there.

In the same evening, another parade was arranged, this time with the purpose of "bringing the Carnival" to the members of the Great Guild. Unlike the event at noon, this was not a mounted parade but a dancing one. The alderman of the Black Heads made an announcement: "I ask you to listen! We plan to bring Carnival to the brothers at the Great Guildhall, according to the old custom. May God give a good year to everyone who dances there and back so that the row is longer." Thereafter the confraternity elected the lead dancers, the rear dancers, and the torch bearers, and the parade began. Street dancing to the Great Guildhall was likewise not a simple proceeding from one house to another but an elaborately choreographed ceremony, involving, for instance, movement through the town in two rows, circling three times around certain buildings, etc. Once at the Great Guildhall, the alderman of the Black Heads was to announce to the alderman of the Great Guild: "Here come the honourable Black Heads and bring you the Carnival, according to the old custom." The guild alderman was to reply to this (his speech, unfortunately, is not recorded in the Black Heads’ regulations), and thereafter both associations danced for some time together in the guildhall, until it was time for the Black Heads to return to their confraternity house.

Similar dancing parades, though with different aims, also took place on some other days during the Carnival (see Fig. 2) as well as at Christmas. On certain days, e.g., at Carnival from Estomihi Sunday onward, married women and maidens were invited to join the festivities. Dancing with female guests took place not only indoors but involved street dancing as well. In these cases, too, it was meticulously regulated, as if according to a script, who was to dance with whom, how many dances, in which order, etc.

Another remarkable feature of the merchants’ festivals, which bears similarities to a theatre play, was that the participants were distributed certain roles or tasks which they had to perform during the course of the drunke. The most detailed lists of roles survive for the Christmas and Carnival drunke of the Black Heads in Reval. These roles included: lead dancers, rear dancers and drummers (different ones for each particular ceremony), torch dancers, inviters of female guests from the two parishes of the town, married women’s attendants, maidens’ attendants, door keepers, jug keepers, banner bearers, tree bearers, scribes, etc. Altogether there were around twenty different roles, and usually two (sometimes four) members were appointed to each of these. The comparison of the total number of the festival participants with the number of those with a specific duty reveals that, on average, almost half of the confraternity members were responsible for the success of particular ceremonies or in charge of certain other activities. This illustrates well the corporate character of the drunke: how the festivals and their shared activities served to strengthen the feeling of unity within an association.

Such distribution of roles was certainly not something specific to Livonian merchants’ associations. The statutes of the two leading merchants’ confraternities in Lübeck, North-Germany – the Circle Society and the Merchants’ Company – refer, for instance, to lead dancers and rear dancers at Carnival. However, I do not know any location other from Reval and Riga, in which information on the festival roles has survived in such great detail.

I believe I have aroused enough interest concerning the Livonian festival scenarios and demonstrated that they can be of significance also from the perspective of theatre history. It is impossible to discuss all the information they can offer in a single essay. However, by way of conclusion, I would still like to consider certain general questions that might occur in connection with these festival scenarios from Riga and Reval.

Why were these regulations compiled? Who were they targeted at – the entire confraternity or certain specific individuals? If we assume that the regulations were of practical use and meant for all members, i.e., to remind and instruct them what to do and when, then this assumption is contradicted by the great length of these documents. It is known that the statutes of an association were traditionally read aloud to the members at the major gatherings of the year, but the statutes were considerably shorter than the festival scenarios under discussion. However, the answer seems to be provided by the documents themselves, for the opening paragraph of each regulation points to the persons it was meant for. The Rigan regulations from ca. 1500 begin with the words: "The following is the ordinance of the New House: how the alderman must act at Carnival – how many speeches he makes every day, briefly described – and likewise the stewards". The beginning of the Reval regulations from 1514 specifies that these constitute the instructions for stewards: "Those, who are stewards at the Black Heads’, must follow the prescriptions below". Hence, the regulations were meant for persons who performed the central role at festivals – those in charge of preparations and general management (stewards) and those leading the ceremonies (alderman, stewards).

Indeed, these regulations could prove highly useful from purely practical perspectives. Unlike in the Great Guild where an alderman was elected for three years, the Black Heads had a new alderman each year. As a rule, then, an alderman had the chance to perform his specific role as the leader of Christmas or Carnival celebrations only once in his lifetime, and could not count much on personal experience in the past. Consulting the script for a festival was one possible way of preparing oneself for the approaching drunke. It was the same with stewards, for, as I indicated above, there were different ones for each festival.

At the time when the festival scenarios were compiled, i.e., during the first quarter of the 16^th century, the average number of participants at the Black Heads’ drunke fluctuated between 100 and 120. A successful management of a two-week festival, moreover, with so many attendants, surely required great organisational efforts. Relying on the script could assist everything to proceed smoothly and according to the ‘old traditions’ of the confraternity.

However, it would be mistake to regard these regulations as documents of a merely practical character. The instructions from Reval, for instance, not only list the tasks and speeches of the stewards but also include a few speeches by the elders as well as descriptions of ceremonies; in short, many more details than would have been necessary for the stewards to successfully perform their role. The documents under discussion, particularly the comprehensive Carnival regulations from Riga, should first and foremost be viewed as elaborate accounts of the festival activities, reflecting the wish of the Black Heads’ confraternities to perpetuate their magnificent ceremonials for themselves and for the future members. The annual festivals were the summit of the social life of the confraternity, and served to re-affirm their unity and group identity. Keeping records of their festive traditions was likewise a means of maintaining and strengthening this identity. It is also revealing that these regulations were compiled from around 1500 onwards, a period, when a taste (or a need) for elaborate accounts of ceremonies generally emerged in Europe.

When using the Rigan and Reval regulations, for instance, for the purpose of the study of customs, one should also be aware of the following. First, these documents mirror rituals connected to male upper-class corporate life in an urban context, and as such, do not provide insight into Christmas and Carnival customs of the region in the broader sense. Second, these regulations only reflect upon the official festival programme of these associations, and do not provide evidence on any other activities that belonged to the unofficial (often prohibited) sphere of the same festivals, such as gambling in the confraternity house, of which we know from other sources. These regulations likewise do not refer to pastimes practised by the same merchants during the course of the drunke, but not within the official scenario and outside of the guildhall, for instance running about in disguise or penetrating into houses – again information that can be acquired from other types of sources. It is also relevant to keep in mind that these regulations have been recorded from an institutional perspective, i.e., reflecting the activities carried out by the confraternity members. They do not refer to any entertainment provided for the Black Heads by occasional visiting groups, such as schoolboys performing verses and possibly even short plays at Carnival. Information on the latter originates from the account books of the confraternity, which include laconic records of payments to the performers. Finally, some more shortcomings must be kept in mind, which I referred to above. We do not know how strictly these festival scenarios were followed or how much spontaneity was allowed. It is also hard to detect how quickly and to what extent the festival programmes changed over time. There are already certain important differences between the Carnival regulations from ca. 1500 and 1510: for instance, the former do not mention the jousting at the ring on the little Carnival, as do the latter. It is natural that a festival scenario cannot remain static, despite the emphasis on keeping ‘old customs’. However, since through centuries, traditional activities were preserved in oral form, any kinds of development are difficult to follow. The records I have examined tell us more than most, but they are far from telling us everything we would like to know about Christmas and Carnival in Livonia.

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