Performance anxiety: Federico Gonzaga at the court of Francis I and the uncertainty of ritual action

Sixteenth Century Journal

Volumn 33, Issue 2, 2002, Pages 333-352

  Cashman III, Anthony B ^a  

^a Brown University College of the Holy Cross

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 60950411187     PISSN: 03610160     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/4143911     Document Type: Review

References (25)

1. Sherry B. Ortner, High Religion: A Cultural and Political History of Sherpa Buddhism, Princeton Studies in Culture, Power, History (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989), 14.
2. Ortner, High Religion, 14-15.
3. Catherine Bell, Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 82.
4. Pierre Bordieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, Cambridge Studies in Social Anthropology, 16, gen. ed. Jack Goody (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 14.
5. Stanley J. Tambiah, Culture, Thought, and Social Action: An Anthropological Perspective (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985), 48.
6. R. J. Knecht, Francis I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 16-17.
7. Leonardo Mazzoldi, Mantova: La Storia (Mantua: Istituto Carlo D'Arco per la Storia di Mantova, [1961]), 2:229.
8. Raffaele Tamalio, Federico Gonzaga alla Corte di Francesco I di Francia: Net carteggio private con Mantova (1515-1517) (Paris: Honoré-Champion, 1994), 26;
9. Mazzoldi, Mantova, 229.
10. Alessandro Luzio and Rodolfo Renier, Mantova e Urbino: Isabella D'Este ed Elisabetta Gonzaga nelle Relazioni Famigliari e nelle Vicende Politiche (Turin: L. Rouz, 1893), 224-27;
11. Tamalio, Federico Gonzaga, 26-28, 55-56. Tamalio points out that Federico bore the burden of political responsibilities even during his first stay at the French court.
12. See also Luzio and Renier, Mantova e Urbino, 226, for Federico's supplication to Francis I on behalf of the duke of Urbino.
13. Archivio di Stato di Mantova, Archivio Gonzaga, busta 198. Hereafter, I employ the abbreviations ASMn., AG. to denote these archival sources. Additionally, I use b. for busta, lib. for libra, and copial. for copialettere.
14. When the payment arrived in the hands of Lautrec, the French marshal in charge of Milan, he passed it along to Francis as a gift, an action that Francesco protested. Mazzoldi reports that the loan was repaid when Francesco sent his master of income, Lodovico Donnesmondi, to Milan on 29 July 1516 to receive repayment of the loan authorized by royal command; see Mazzoldi, Mantova, 233, 265-66 n. 172.
15. For more on the appearance of Federico Gonzaga and his personal coat of arms, see Giancarlo Malacarne, Araldica Gouzaghesca: La storia attraverso i simboli (Sabbioneta: Il Dulino, 1992), 116-20.
16. "A demenino" refers to a style of jousting that utilized heavy lances with the capacity for greatly injuring an opponent. Riccardo Truffi, Giostre e Cantori di Giostre (Rocca S. Casciano: Licinio Capelli, 1911), 71.
17. Honor was, of course, subjective, but within a group, certain values repeatedly defined honorable comportment; see J. G. Peristiany, "Introduction," in Honour and Shame: The Values of Mediterranean Society, ed. J. G. Peristiany (Chicago: University of Chicago Press; London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1966), 10-11. Given the subjective nature of honor, Peristiany provides a simple but helpful definition: "Honour is at the apex of the pyramid of temporal social values." In the case of sixteenth-century court society, loyalty, civility, urbanity, propriety, and exclusivity served as fundamental values.
18. Ortner, "Patterns of History: Cultural Schemas in the Foundings of Sherpa Religious Institutions," in Culture through Time: Anthropological Approaches, ed. Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), 57.
19. Ortner's concept of "schemas" corresponds closely to Pierre Bordieu's better-known term, the habitus; Bordieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice. Bordieu defines the habitus as "a socially constituted system of cognitive and motivating structures" (76), that is, deeply believed, inherited concepts, meanings, and experiences which shape our thoughts and actions at every instant. Therefore, the actions which the habitus produces are "always tending to reproduce the objective structures of which they are the product" specifically because "they are determined by the past conditions which have produced the principle of their production"(72). This does not imply a purely mechanical reaction to a set of circumstances (which Bordieu explicitly rejects), but also does not permit the doer of any action unlimited free will. By extension, then, existing structures - social, cognitive, or other - tend to resist change.
20. See also Statio's description of the assault on the castle, 16 May 1518, Statio Gadio to Francesco Gonzaga.
21. For an additional contemporary account of the joust, see Robert de la Marck Fleuranges, Memoires du maréchal de Florange, dit le Jeune Adventureux, 2 vols., ed. Robert Goubaux and P. Andre Lemoisne, Société de l'histoire de France (Paris: Renouard et al., 1913-24), 1:225-26.
22. For the history of tournaments see Richard Barber and Juliet Barker, Tournaments: Jousts, Chivalry and Pageants in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 1989);
23. Francis Henry Cripps-Day, The History of the Tournament in England and France (London: Bernard Quaritch, 1918; repr. New York: AMS, 1982);
24. Maurice Keen, Chivalry (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), chap. 5, "The Rise of the Tournament";
25. Julian Pitt-Rivers, "Honour and Social Status" in Honour and Shame, ed. Peristiany, 37.