Evening's Empire (New Studies in European History)

by Craig Koslofsky

  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.

  37. See Sponsel, Der Zwinger; Georg Kohler, “Die Rituale der fürstlichen Potestas. Dresden und die deutsche Feuerwerkstradition,” in Die schöne Kunst der Verschwendung, ed. Kohler and Villon-Lechner (Zurich and Munich: Artemis, 1988), pp. 101–34; and Katrin Keller, “La Magnificence des deux Augustes: Zur Spezifik hÖfischer Kultur im Dresden des Augusteischen Zeitalters (1694–1763),” Cahiers d’études germaniques 28 (1995): 55–66.

  38. See Watanabe-O’Kelly, Court Culture in Dresden, pp. 193–237, and Karlheinz Blaschke, “Die kursächsische Politik und Leipzig im 18. Jahrhundert,” in Leipzig: Aufklärung und Bürgerlichkeit, ed. Wolfgang Martens (Heidelberg: Schneider, 1990), pp. 23–38.

  39. On fireworks, see Kevin Salatino, Incendiary Art: The Representation of Fireworks in Early Modern Europe (Santa Monica, CA: Getty Research Institute for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1997), Kohler and Villon-Lechner, eds., Die schöne Kunst der Verschwendung, and Eberhard Fähler, Feuerwerke des Barock: Studien zur öffentlichen Fest und seiner literarischen Deutung vom 16.–18. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1974).

  40. As an “absolutist” ruler whose displays of power always exceeded his real political impact, Augustus the Strong noted this irony at an intimate fête with thirteen of his courtiers and his mistress in July 1711. At the meal each person was asked to write a phrase or motto in the guestbook. Without comment, Augustus wrote “la feuse tierre (et) ies ne Reste que la feusme,” i.e. “the rocket climbs high, and nothing remains but smoke” – a realistic appraisal of the politics of spectacle from a monarch to his courtiers? See Paul Haake, August der Starke im Urteil der Gegenwart (Berlin: Curtius, 1929), pp. 121–23.

  41. Johann Neiner, Brachium Dexterae Excelsi, Oder die … Sieghaften Entsetzung Barcellone … und nächtlicher Illumination der gantzen Stadt Wienn (Vienna: Christian Barthlmae Pruckner, 1706), 4v: “Ihr treu-gesinnte Vasallen aber / die Ihr heut eure Häuser und Palläste / mit neuen Freuden-Feuern beleuchtet.”

  42. See the contemporary survey from Christian Schoettgen, Historische Nachricht von denen Illuminationen, wie solche zu alten und neuen Zeiten … in Gebrauch gewesen (Dresden: Hekel, 1736), p. 29. Schoettgen notes that the illumination of Magdeburg in 1701 was the first in the city’s history, for example.

  43. See Herbert Schwarzwälder, “Oberstleutnant Johann Georg von Bendeleben und sein großes Feuerwerk in Bremen zur Erinnerung an den Frieden von Habenhausen am 20. Oktober 1668,” Bremisches Jahrbuch 58 (1980): 9–22, and Thomas Lediard, Eine Collection curieuser Vorstellungen in Illuminationen und Feier-Wercken … bey Gelegenheit einiger publiquen Festins und Rejouissances, in Hamburg (Hamburg: Stromer, 1730).

  44. Its designer Inigo Jones thought it “generally approved of, especially by all strangers.” Strong, Art and Power, pp. 169–70. See Kevin Sharpe, The Personal Rule of Charles I (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), pp. 209–74.

  45. Monika Schlechte, “Barocke Festkultur in Dresden. Quellenforschung zu einem kulturgeschichtlichen Phänomen,” Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der Technischen Universität Dresden (Separatreihe 1 “Gesellschaftswissenschaften”) 39, 6 (1990): 7–11.

  46. Even the parsimonious soldier-king Frederick William I of Prussia, 1713–40, is only a partial exception. Recent studies have noted that Frederick William I, though legendary for his thrift and reduction of court life, also displayed the expected luxury and ceremony when receiving foreign ambassadors or princes. For a state visit of Augustus II in 1728, the Prussian king prepared a nocturnal shooting competition at the Charlottenburg illuminated by 8,000 lanterns. See Sponsel, Zwinger, p. 135, and Barbara Stollberg-Rillinger, “Höfische Öffentlichkeit. Zur zeremoniellen Selbstdarstellungen des brandenburgischen Hofes vor dem europäischen Publikum,” Forschungen zur Brandenburgischen und Preussischen Geschichte n.s. 7, 2 (1997): 145–76. On the nocturnal “Tabakskollegium” of Frederick I and Frederick William I, see Franziska Windt, Preußen 1701 – eine europäische Geschichte: Katalog (Berlin: Henschel, 2001), pp. 181–82.

  47. Stephen Orgel, ed., “Introduction,” Ben Jonson: The Complete Masques (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1969), p. 3. See Russell West, “Perplexive Perspectives: The Court and Contestation in the Jacobean Masque,” Seventeenth Century 18, 1 (2003): 25–43.

  48. For permanent, purpose-built baroque stages the English would have to wait until the Restoration: the Theatre Royal opened in Drury Lane in 1663, and the more elaborate Dorset Gardens Theater in Blackfriars opened in 1671. See Edward J. Dent, Foundations of English Opera: A Study of Musical Drama in England during the Seventeenth Century (New York: Da Capo Press, 1965), pp. 137–40.

  49. Strong, Art and Power, pp. 119–22, and Gösta M. Bergmann, Lighting in the Theatre (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1977), pp. 117–19.

  50. Hilliard T. Goldfarb, “Richelieu and Contemporary Art: ‘Raison d’état’ and Personal Taste,” in Hilliard T. Goldfarb, ed., Richelieu: Art and Power (Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 2002), p. 240.

  51. See ibid., pp. 240–42, illustration 107.

  52. Madeleine Laurain-Portemer, “Mazarin, militant de l’art baroque au temps de Richelieu (1634–1642),” Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire de l’Art français (1975): 65–100, here 72�
��74, 95, citing a letter of Benedetti to Mazarin dated March 7, 1640. See also Paul Fréart de Chantelou (1609–94), Diary of the Cavaliere Bernini’s visit to France, ed. with an Introduction by Anthony Blunt, annotated by George C. Bauer, trans. Margery Corbett (Princeton University Press, 1985), Appendix B, “Bernini and the Theatre,” pp. 339–41.

  53. Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly has underscored Werner Braun’s point that it is difficult to generalize about the state of opera in the Empire before 1660. See Werner Braun, “Opera in the Empire,” and Sara Smart, “Ballet in the Empire,” in Spectaculum Europaeum, ed. Béhar and Watanabe-O’Kelly, pp. 437–64, 547–70; Watanabe-O’Kelly, Court Culture in Dresden, pp. 166–92; and H.A. Frenzel, “The Introduction of the Perspective Stage in the German Court and Castle Theatres,” Theatre Research 3 (1961): 88–100.

  54. Jörg Jochen Berns, Frank Druffner, Ulrich Schütte, and Brigitte Walbe, eds., Erdengötter: Fürst und Hofstaat in der Frühen Neuzeit im Spiegel von Marburger Bibliotheks- und Archivbeständen. Ein Katalog (Marburg Universitätsbibliothek, 1997), p. 489.

  55. Goloubeva, The Glorification of Emperor Leopold I, pp. 23–25, 45–81.

  56. Markus Paul, Reichsstadt und Schauspiel: Theatrale Kunst im Nürnberg des 17. Jahrhunderts (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2002), pp. 292–325.

  57. Ibid., p. 323:

  Nicht eine Sonn hier steht: Viel Sonnen stehen stille /

  In diesen engen Raum: Du Sonnen-Prinz! Erfülle /

  Was unser Wünschen wünscht! Laß deine Gnadenstrahlen /

  Die unverdiente Gnad an unsrer Statt bezahlen.

  58. Tobias Beutel, Chur-Fürstlicher Sächsicher stets grünender hoher Cedern-Wald (Dresden: Bergen, 1671), fo. R4. See also Moritz Fürstenau, Zur Geschichte der Musik und des Theaters am Hofe zu Dresden (Dresden, 1861–62; repr. edn., Leipzig: Edition Peters, 1979), pp. 217–33, and Irmgard Becker-Glauch, Die Bedeutung der Musik für die Dresdener Hoffeste bis in die Zeit Augusts des Starken (Kassel and Basle: Bärenreiter-Verlag, 1951), pp. 30–79.

  59. John Lauder, Lord Fountainhall, Journals of Sir John Lauder, Lord Fountainhall … 1665–1676, ed. with Introduction by Donald Crawford, Publications of the Scottish History Society 36 (Edinburgh: Printed at the University Press by T. and A. Constable for the Scottish History Society, 1900), pp. 3–5.

  60. Claude-François Ménestrier, Des ballets anciens et moderns selon les règles du théâtre (Paris: R. Guignard, 1682), cited in Jan Clarke, “Illuminating the Guénégaud Stage: Some Seventeenth-Century Lighting Effects,” French Studies 53, 1 (1999): 3–15, here 7.

  61. See the rich and detailed study by R.B. Graves, Lighting the Shakespearean Stage, 1567–1642 (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1999).

  62. Quoted in Dent, Foundations of English Opera, pp. 139–40.

  63. See Strong, Art and Power, pp. 5–6, 126–52; Bergmann, Lighting, pp. 44–88. Of course, the other northern Italian courts shared in the development of these theater techniques.

  64. Strong, Art and Power, p. 140.

  65. Leone di Somi, “Dialogues,” in Allardyce Nicoll, ed., The Development of the Theatre (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1966), p. 275.

  66. Joseph Furttenbach the Elder, Mannhafter Kunstspiegel, in The Renaissance Stage: Documents of Serlio, Sabbattini and Furttenbach, trans. Allardyce Nicoll, John H. McDowell, and George R. Kernodle, ed. Barnard Hewitt (Coral Gables, FL: University of Miami Press, 1958), p. 206 (emphasis mine).

  67. Strong, Art and Power, p. 140. On Madrid see Margaret Rich Greer, The Play of Power: Mythological Court Dramas of Calderón de la Barca (Princeton University Press, 1991), and the literature cited there.

  68. See the model funeral sermon (based on the funeral sermon for Agnes von Dohrstadt) in Balthasar Kindermann’s Der Deutsche Redner, first edn. (Wittenberg: Fincelius, 1660), p. 275. On Mazarin see Johann Michael von Loen, Gesammelte kleine Schriften, ed. Johann Caspar Schneider (Frankfurt and Leipzig: Zu finden bey Philipp Heinrich Huttern, 1750), §3, p. 45.

  69. Thomas Kirchner, “Der Theaterbegriff des Barocks,” Maske und Kothurn 31 (1985): 131–41. Jonathan Dewald also emphasizes theater as the image of political life in his study of Aristocratic Experience and the Origins of Modern Culture: France 1570–1715 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), pp. 37–38.

  70. Everyday lighting at court was especially conspicuous consumption. Scholars are just beginning to assess its place among the material expenses of court life. See William Ritchey Newton, Derrière la façade: vivre au château de Versailles au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Perrin, 2008), pp. 131–73, Jeroen Duindam, Vienna and Versailles: The Courts of Europe’s Dynastic Rivals, 1550–1780 (Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 63–89, and Hanns Leo Mikoletzky, “Der Haushalt des kaiserlichen Hofes zu Wien (vornehmlich im 18. Jahrhundert),” Carinthia 146 (1956): 658–83.

  71. “At court – in hell”: see Helmuth Kiesel, “Bei Hof, bei Höll”. Untersuchungen zur literarischen Hofkritik von Sebastian Brant bis Friedrich Schiller (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1979).

  72. Rohr, Grossen Herren, pp. 18–19, and Théophraste Renaudot, ed., Quatriesme centurie des questions traitées aux conférences du Bureau d’Adresse, depuis le 24e Ianvier 1639, jusques au 10e Iuin 1641 (Paris: Bureau d’adresse, 1641), p. 416: “en la vie des courtizans de l’un et l’autre sexe qui font de la nuit jour et du jour la nuit.”

  73. Casimir Freschot (1640?–1720), Mémoires de la cour de Vienne, ou Remarques faites par un voyageur curieux sur l’état présent de cette cour (Cologne: Chez Guillaume Etienne [actually The Hague], 1705), p. 91. German translation as Relation von dem kayserlichen Hofe zu Wien (Cologne: bey W. Stephan [actually Amsterdam or Leipzig], 1705), pp. 51–52. On Freschot see Erich Zöllner, “Das barocke Wien in der Sicht französischer Zeitgenossen,” in Probleme und Aufgaben der österreichischen Geschichtsforschung: ausgewählte Aufsätze, ed. Heide Dienst and Gernot Heiss (Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 1984), pp. 383–94.

  74. The author of several devotional tracts and a Pietist utopia, Sinold also published an manual of advice, Die Wissenschaft zu leben … und … ein tüchtiges Mitglied der menschlichen Gesellschaft zu seyn (Frankfurt and Leipzig: “in den Buchläden zu finden,” 1739), p. 212. On Sinold von Schütz, see Hans Wagener, “Faramonds Glukseligste (sic) Insel: Eine pietistische Sozialutopie,” Symposium 26 (1972): 78–89, and the literature cited there.

  75. See for example the 1640 oil painting of a nocturnal banquet at court by Wolfgang Heimbach (1615–78), Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

  76. Julius von Pflugk-Harttung, Im Morgenrot der Reformation, fourth edn. (Basle: A. Rohde, 1922), pp. 182f.

  77. On the shift from two to three meals per day, see Roman Sandgruber, “Zeit der Mahlzeit. Veränderung in Tagesablauf und Mahlzeiteinteilung in Österreich im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert,” in Wandel der Volkskultur in Europa. Festschrift für Günter Wiegelmann, ed. Nils-Arvid Bringéus and Günter Wiegelmann (Münster: Coppenrath, 1988), pp. 459–72.

  78. Jacqueline Boucher, “La nuit dans l’imagination et le mode de vie de la cour des derniers Valois,” in Penser la Nuit, ed. Bertrand, pp. 413–24, p. 418; see the overview in Duindam, Vienna and Versailles, pp. 150–60.

  79. Arthur Kern, ed., Deutsche Hofordnungen des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts (Berlin: Weidmann, 1905–07), II: 49, 71, 79.

  80. Kurt Treusch von Buttlar, “Das tägliche Leben an den deutschen Fürstenhöfen des 16. Jahrhunderts,” Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 4 (1899): 15–19.

  81. The eldest son, John George II, inherited the bulk of the territory, the electoral dignity, and the Dresden court; the three younger sons (Augustus, Christian, and Maurice) founded the cadet lines of Saxony-Weißenfels, Saxony-Merseburg, and Saxony-Zeitz, with their courts at Halle, Merseburg, and Zeitz, respectively. Typically the three younger brothers sent their court diaries to John George II in Dresden, who in turn sent reports of the comings and goings at his court to Halle, Merseburg, and Zeitz. See Gabriele Henkel, “Die Hoftagebücher Herzog Augusts von Sachsen-Weißenfels,” Wolfenbütt
ler Barock-Nachrichten 18, 2 (1991): 75–114, and Watanabe-O’Kelly, Court Culture in Dresden, pp. 30–34.

  82. Eberhard Schmidt, Der Gottesdienst am Kurfürstlichen Hofe zu Dresden (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1961), pp. 32–34.

  83. Henkel, “Hoftagebücher,” pp. 106–14.

  84. Ibid., pp. 111–12: “Der Liebe großer Irrgarten und darauff das Poßenspiel: Die 2 betrogene Ehemänner gennant, agiert.”

  85. In 1680 the court moved from Halle to Weißenfels on the accession of Duke John Adolph, and in 1685 a small Komödiensaal was opened in the Weißenfels palace. See Klaus-Peter Koch, “Das Jahr 1704 und die Weißenfelser Hofoper,” in Weißenfels als Ort literarischer und künstlerischer Kultur im Barockzeitalter, ed. Roswitha Jacobsen (Amsterdam and Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 1994), pp. 75–95.

  86. See Fähler, Feuerwerke des Barock, p. 125.

  87. Sponsel, Der Zwinger, p. 43.

  88. In Dresden and in other Lutheran cities such as Berlin, court nobles and urban elites began to stage torch-lit nocturnal funeral processions in the 1680s. They were quickly imitated by citizens and townspeople, despite the vehement resistance of the clergy, and by 1700 nocturnal funerals were the norm in Lutheran cities. See Craig Koslofsky, The Reformation of the Dead: Death and Ritual in Early Modern Germany (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), pp. 133–59.