Christianae veluti Cereri serta deferebant ... The Baroque Festival in Telč in 1656 as Referred to in the Jesuit Annual Reports
Abstract
The paper discusses the festival of St. Margaret that that took place in Telč in 1656.
It bore the typical hallmarks of a Baroque Gesamtkunstwerk. It made use of all channels of communication and multi-semantic references.
The paper attempts to interpret these on the basis of the festival programme described in the Jesuit annual reports. It shows why those who staged the festival linked aspects of both the form and content of the cult of St.
Margaret to that of Ceres from classical times. It also shows the means they used to do so.
This connection was made possible by their similar roles as patrons of agriculture and harvests, and the analogous date of the celebrations. The introductory part of the festival had the formal attributes of the rituals of Ceres' cult.
There was an emphasis on castitas, which had its parallel in the virgin purity of the Christian martyr. The extent of the synthesis is testified to by the connection of the colour white, lilies, and girls' hairstyles, and by a drama linking general concepts from Antiquity with Christian ones.
This interplay of temporal layers also illustrates that the boundaries between reality and fiction blurred in both the festival and the specific source.