Court Celebrations: The Birth of Juan II in the Cancionero de Baena

Francisco Imperial’s dezir for the birth of Catherine’s son calls on fellow courtiers to join him and respond to the birth of the prince (PN1–226). The narrative poem begins by recounting the birth of the prince together with the birth cries uttered by his mother. After the opening stanzas, Imperial’s dezir then turns to pageant in a way which recalls the fifteenth-century English pageant celebrating the birth of the Earl of Warwick. Mummings and pageants to celebrate royal events, such as those by John Lydgate, although later than Imperial’s are unlikely to be the first examples of English mummings. In the long pageant section of his poem on the birth of Juan II, Imperial uses heraldry, astrology, and Marian iconography. Plantagenet heraldry takes its place alongside astrological prophecy for the Castilian prince, similar to astrology predicting the character of a prince in works like Gower’s Confessio amantis. Imperial may also evoke John of Bridlington’s ‘Prophecy of the Bull’ written about Edward III.