As an event that memorably featured the spouting blood of beheaded aristocrats, the Opening Ceremony of the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris may not seem an obvious comparison to the rituals of France’s royal past. But the echoes of history were there, in the organizers’ decision to hold the proceedings at the city’s heart rather than in a closed stadium. This staging was a first for the modern Games, but it was in many ways the heir of a much older tradition, when medieval and Renaissance kings (and queens) made their ceremonial entries into the capital city.
From the time of Saint Louis (King Louis IX) in the thirteenth century, French monarchs liked to stage an event known as the joyeuse entrée (Joyous Entry). These spectacles celebrated the occasion of a ruler’s first arrival at their biggest towns, and especially at Paris following their coronation or a particularly noteworthy victory. The royal procession followed quite a different route from the 6km travelled along the Seine by the Olympians. The athletes headed west from what used to be the eastern edge of the medieval city to where heads of state awaited them at Trocadéro. The French kings instead stopped first at the magnificent basilica of Saint-Denis, then far to the north of the urbanized area, though today comfortably within Metro reach and a short jaunt from the Stade de France arena. The leading citizens of Paris came out to meet him, and then the entire retinue proceeded south down the rue de Saint-Denis to the cathedral of Notre-Dame and the Palais de Justice. These two buildings of course featured prominently during the Opening Ceremony. The cathedral is still clad in scaffolding after the devastating 2019 roof fire, while the Palais was dressed up as the site of Revolutionary fervour, in many ways a very fitting rebuttal of the authority of kings which was once publicly celebrated there.
So even though the kings of France did not arrive by boat like today’s athletes, our glistening horsewoman Morgane Suquart who galloped back upriver towards the Île-de-la-Cité was in some ways a spectre of the mounted rulers who once paraded towards the same goal. And the entertainments offered en route brought a modern twist to the scenes that might have met the royal eyes. The twelve tableaux vivants (living pictures) seen along the Olympic route were very much akin to the types of song-and-dance routines, allegorical scenes, and even subversive displays which the organizers of medieval entries presented to their royal visitor. These were always loaded with meaning, commenting on current social and political topics just as the Opening Ceremony did with its emphasis on embracing diversity—and could be just as controversial. This year’s segments deliberately showcased a range of symbolic values, some typically French, some international, and some (like its call for peace) not out of place in a medieval setting. The cross-over between a good party and diplomatic pageantry is far from new to Paris.
Some of the more formal imagery of the Games would have also appeared familiar to medieval spectators. Christine de Pizan described the entry ceremony of King Charles V in 1364. Christine was the first professional woman author in European history, a noblewoman who wrote on topics from political theory to gender to religion to history, and rightfully appeared in the “Sororité” segment of the Opening Ceremony as one of the golden statues of France’s great women. She remarked on the great pomp of the king’s entry, from the emblems on the king’s cloak (we might think of the five-ringed flag worn on Suquart’s shoulders during her ride) to the bearing of the royal sword and sceptre, not unlike the progress of the Olympic torch. Emblems and symbols would have decked out the medieval procession route just as those of the Games do much of Paris, sending the message then and now that a special presence had come to town.
And of course Joyous Entries were not just about the sovereign—far from it. They were also celebrations of civic identity and power, and here again the resonances with the Opening Ceremony really shine through. Royal entries gave the Parisian elite a chance to show off their wealth and status, present demands to the king, and formally receive new privileges, called liberties. The modern tendency to conflate the culture of the capital with that of the nation as a whole has little historical basis, but this celebration of Parisian pride does fit in with an older narrative. In particular, the craft guilds who represented and regulated the many trades of medieval industry played a major part in staging these costly royal entries. Among these would have been the stonemasons, whose modern-day counterparts had their restoration work on Notre-Dame featured (a medieval process if ever there was one!). The segue into the production of leather Vuitton cases and the Olympic medals themselves—commemorative medallions were made for royal entries at least from the early modern period—likewise highlighted crafts with a venerable history. The symbolism of Paris as a ship, seen at the Palais de la Cité (and on the city’s modern heraldry), goes back directly to the thirteenth-century seal of the marchands de l’eau, the boat merchants who controlled the city’s river trade. Even the visual effect of the contingents of different national athletic teams dressed in their uniforms created the same sorts of colour blocks that the guild liveries would once have done while greeting the king.
In a country that is particularly leery of its medieval past, the Opening Ceremonies at Paris offered a surprising parallel with French royal history, reimagined for the very different world of the twenty-first century. The innovation of this year’s spectacle was arguably more of a revival or continuation, embracing the city’s long-accustomed role as the mise-en-scène for such a ritual welcome, a moment of both confrontation and dialogue. “Synchronicité” indeed.
Erika Graham-Goering is Associate Professor in the department of archaeology, conservation and history at the University of Oslo, and currently serves as an associate editor for French History. Her research focuses on the French aristocracy in the later Middle Ages. She has written about royal entries in the journal Historical Research.
To learn more about the history discussed here, you can read Lawrence M. Bryant’s chapter on “The Medieval Entry Ceremony at Paris”, available online in the book Coronations: Medieval and Early Modern Monarchic Ritual.
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Remarquable article