Carnival in Romans
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"Could there have been a Huguenot plot at the bottom of the 1579-80 revolt in Dauphiné? Judge Guérin seemed to think so, or at least he wanted to make us think so."--Carnival in Romans (1979) by Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie |
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Le Carnaval de Romans: de la chandeleur au mercredi des cendres (1979, translated into English as Carnival in Romans: Mayhem and Massacre in a French City) is a book by Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie which dealt the 1580 massacre of about twenty artisans at the annual carnival in the town of Romans-sur-Isère in France.
In this book, Le Roy Ladurie used the only two surviving eyewitness accounts of the massacre (one of which was hostile towards to the victims of the massacre by Guérin, the other sympathetic yet often inaccurate by Piémond), together with such information as plague lists and tax lists, to treat the massacre as a microcosm of the political, social and religious conflicts of rural society in the latter half of the 16th century in France.
This book provides an example of a micro-historical approach to the social structure of the town of Romans and tax rebellions in early modern France.
Includes the following chapters: The Urban and Rural Setting, Taxes: Commoner versus Noble, Strikes and Debts, Mardi Gras 1580 or God on Our Side, a Slaughter of Peasants, The Winter Festival, etc.
English blurb:
The city of Romans, in what was once the province of Dauphine in southern France, was the scene each year of a colourful and animated Mardi gras carnival. In 1580, however, the winter festivities degenerated into a bloody ambush. While costumed craftsmen and peasants mimed and danced their uprising in the streets, and notables and bourgeoisie hurried from banquets to balls in their ostentatious finery, Jean Serve-Paumier, master craftsman, draper, and leader of the popular party was assassinated and his friends and supporters beaten and pursued by the hired mob of Judge Antoine Guerin, leader of the most reactionary and inflexible part of the ruling party. More than a cruel incident, this particular Carnival night marked the intersection of an urban movement and even larger rural stirrings. Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie marshals a wealth of evidence and reveals the town of Romans as a microcosm of the political and religious antagonisms that were tearing through 16th-century France.
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