Immortal Meals #24: Jaén’s Eggfight August 12, 2015
Author: Beach Combing | in : Medieval , trackback
Jaén in Andalucia (Spain) is a town with its roots in Spain’s troubled late middle ages, half Arab, half Christian. Jaén also stars in a wonderful book by one of our greatest living medievalists Teofilo ‘God’ Ruiz now at UCLA. In City and Spectacle, Ruiz describes life in fifteenth-century Jaén in terms of the shows, where the piazzas, churches and streets became stages. The master of ceremonies of the city was the Constable. Today, the official deputised by the mayor would just spend ten thousand dollars on fireworks but back then you had to use your imagination. For example, there might be massive duels between Christian and Moorish knights (actually the Moorish knights were Christians with false beards) that ended with the baptism (in a city fountain) of the King of Morocco. There were mummers and dancers. There was a re-enactment of the three kings’ pilgrimage to the baby Christ: something still to be found in many Spanish cities at Epiphany. When the king visited four thousand children were made to escort him into the city on wicker horses: that would have been lovely to see. There were duels involving dried pumpkins: 150 knights fought each other with this dreadful weapon simultaneously. There was bear-baiting: wonder where the bears came from? Even important funerals saw the whole city decked out in black.
But best of all were the food fights. Oh to have been there. On the last day of Carnival in 1463 the crowds were given so much food (chickens, patridges and goats) that they began fighting with pieces of meat: whether this was planned or spontaneous is not explained. However, even better were the egg battles. On Easter Monday, the Constable provided almost ten thousand eggs for the population by way of ammunition and signaled the onset of the wildest form of warfare imaginable in urban Spain. The experience must have been absolutely fabulous because come May Day the town had another egg battle, though this time only four thousand eggs were provided. The Constable not only led public dancing with his wife (apparently she was graceful) but also put on feasts after the mock battles. Nothing, of course, can hope to do justice to ten thousand eggs in the central piazza of Jaén short of a video put up on youtube and we don’t, and Beach says this to his infinite regret, have anything of this kind for the late Middle Ages. Any other massive food fights? Drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
