S2E12 Gilles, Giants, and Dragons, Oh My!: The Reinvention of Folkloric Festivals in Belgium

Ritualized festivals in Francophone Belgium (Wallonia) are focal points of civic pride and serve as vehicles for local expressions of historical commemoration. Numerous saint-military marches received UNESCO recognition as examples of “Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity” in 2012. The annual processionals involve hundreds of marchers from local communities dressed in Napoleonic-era military uniforms, carrying authentic muskets and escorting a saint statue. Many of these marchers trace family involvement back multiple generations. The small town of Binche became renowned for its Carnival festivities, which included les Gilles – local men dressed in masks with enormous ostrich plume headdresses. In the cities of Mons and Ath, saint processionals transformed into large-scale ritualized celebrations which strayed from their roots as disciplined and formal manifestations of piety into carnivalesque celebrations centering on giant statues, (Ath) and mock combat with a dragon (Mons). These three festivals have also received UNESCO recognition: the Carnival of Binche in 2003 and Le Doudou of Mons and La Ducasse of Ath in 2005. All of these ritualized festivals, which date to the late-medieval and early modern eras, ceased during the French revolutionary regime. Commemoration only revived during the mid-19th century and multiple factors influenced the reconstruction of these festivals. This talk explores the 19th-century reinvention of Wallonian folkloric traditions, their evolution through the 20thcentury, and how these little-known local festivals became the cultural centerpieces of these communities in the present-day.

Bio: Dr. Erik Hadley received his BA in History from the University of Montana and MA and PhD in History from University at Buffalo, with specializations in Early Modern Europe and the Atlantic World. He is a lecturer in the History Department at Boise State University, where he teaches classes on medieval and early modern Europe and oceanic histories of the Atlantic and Pacific Worlds. His research interests center on cultural history, particularly folkloric rituals, identity and popular commemoration, in both Western Europe and indigenous peoples in the Americas and Hawai’i. Dr. Hadley is the recipient of 2019-2020 Fulbright Research U.S. Scholar grant to Belgium to study the historical evolution, commemoration and public memory of UNESCO-recognized folkloric ritual festivals dating back the late Middle Ages and has authored numerous articles on historic cultural identity in French-speaking Belgium.

Watch the video here.