RT Article
T1 Carnival in Rouen: A History of the Abbaye des Conards
JF The sixteenth century journal
VO 32
IS 4
SP 1027
OP 1055
A1 Reid, Dylan
LA English
PB Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, Inc.
YR 2001
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/1802373217
AB Enough evidence survives about the Abbaye des Conards, which organized Rouen's yearly carnival in the sixteenth century, to create a case study of a French festive society. The abbey's members were drawn from the city's "middling sort"-artisans, merchants, and minor officials. Thanks to a period of urban prosperity and autonomy, and the development of Rouen's printing industry, the abbey enjoyed a golden age of creativity in the middle of the century. The advent of the Wars of Religion ended this era and forced the abbey into a more formal relationship with Rouen's Parlement. The abbey survived the opposition of both the Protestant and ultra-Catholic movements, but disappeared in the early seventeenth century, partly because the attitudes of its own supporters were changing. The history of the abbey reveals that rather than being popular or elite, the Conards' membership and activities were distinctively urban in nature.
DO 10.2307/3648990