JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. This content downloaded from 178.250.250.21 on Fri, 01 Jan 2016 01:02:28 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions MLR, 88.3, 1993 793of the importance offeasts and festivals for medieval people in general is essential for the proper appreciation of the detailed descriptions of such festivities and ceremonial in the epic writings of the period. Minstrels and other entertainers are, of course, closely connected with feasts and festivals, especially at marriage feasts, where their treatment varied. The entries in the Marienburger Tresslerbuch between 1399 and I409 provide a rare glimpse of their emoluments and position: they received expensive gifts of clothing and appear to have owned their own horses, unlike Walther von der Vogelweide at one point in his career; the reciters and singers, whose voices are described as 'high-toned as nightingales' were also employed at diplomatic functions. Elsewhere we learn about several female 'troubadours' in Provence, whose entertainments included recitation, singing, music, and dancing.Festivities marked political events: for instance, to celebrate the entry into knighthood of Friedrich Barbarossa's sons at Mainz in I 84 and the accommodation between the Guelfs and the Staufer in I235. Such festivities were both private and familial but at the same time public and political. Urban festivities were likewise. Monarchs frequently progressed through their domains to assure themselves of the loyalty of their subjects; the Pope and the Curia did the same during the summer malarial season in Rome. Such visits were actually a boost to the economy of the townships visited.
There were also what the editors term 'Gegenfeste' (counter-feasts or anti-feasts) exemplified in the writings of Rabelais. Such anti-feasts, as they are apparent today in the carnival season in Catholic regions, seem to have been given over to the Devil and were abandoned in Protestant Europe. The masked dancers and the participation of bear-handlers, it is suggested, may well be the relics of ancient pagan, even Celtic, rites, disapproved of though tolerated by the Church.This is a handsomely produced volume with two pages of excellent colour reproductions of female entertainers (dancers, musicians, and troubadours) from illustrated manuscripts. It is a considerable achievement of the organizers and editors to have assembled such an all-embracing collection of papers on such an important medieval subject. The index lists personal names and texts referred to. It would have been useful to have had an index of topics and to know the academic institutions to which the contributors belong, since this book will be an authoritative source on its subject for the foreseeable future....