Arnaldo Sousa MELO; Maria do Carmo RIBEIRO

Published in Pleasure in the Middle Ages

Keywords: Medieval towns, Pleasure, Portugal, Public festivities, Urban space.

The aim of this paper is to analyze the major Portuguese public festivities in late XIV and XV centuries, mainly in three Portuguese towns – Lisbon, Porto (Oporto) and Braga – in order to study their relationship with the urban space. We start by studying civic and religious festivities, namely royal baptisms, weddings and enthronements, as well as royal and lordly entries in towns, but also regular festivities such as the Corpus Christi. We proceed to study the urban areas where they occurred, their itinerary, the type of festivities (street theater, processions, bullfights, music and dance...) and the ornamentation of those urban areas. Finally we will analyze pleasure connected to these different types of festivities, as well as to various social groups. Our methodology is based upon different types of sources, namely written and iconographic documents, as well as remaining medieval historic buildings and urban plans.