`titrebUrban Entries: origins and development of an urban ritual (Montpellier, 14th-15th centuries)`/titrebThe urban chronicle of Montpellier known under the nickname of the “Petit Thalamus” and written between 1204 and 1423 keeps the memory of about thirty urban entries in a general meaning because it includes not only the rare royal entries that occured during this period but also the entries of French and Navarrese princes or even the king’s officers or bishops’ entries from the very first one of Jacques II, king of Aragon and lord of Montpellier, in 1277, until the one of Guillaume Forestier, bishop of Maguelone, which is the last one recorded. Thus, the “Petit Thalamus” offers us the occasion to plunge ourselves into the internal perception of such a ritual seen by the consulate itself and not any more from a royal point of view : it allows to see, more than a princely entry, the town welcoming the prince. The detailed study of such narratives composed under the close supervision of the consuls themselves highlights the flexibility of the ritual as well as the possibility of variations from an absolute model that has been designed for the entry of the pope Urbain V in 1367 when he came to visit a town where he founded an important university college. It must, then, be underlined, that before the 1350’s, such a ritual does not seem to really exist or does not seem to be noteworthy enough to be recorded in the urban chronicle, which is more or less the same : what is recorded about the kings of Aragon and of Majorque is not their entries but why they came to Montpellier and what they accomplished during their stay in connection with urban politics. But, from the middle of the 14th century, the entry itself, or the narration of the entry, began to become prominent in the urban memory.Nevertheless, the princely entry is perhaps more constraining for the prince himself than what has been generally thought as, for instance, the king of Navarre, Charles III, is the very first one to express publicly some reluctance to comply with such a ritual, first as a prince in 1378 and then as a king in 1408 and again in 1410. In fact, the leverage of the ceremony from the second half of the 14th century led to a certain banalisation of the phenomenon which comes along with a weakening of the ritual which recovers its strength and its majesty only under very special circunstances such as the entry of the emperor Sigismond of Luxembourg in 1415 or the one of the Dauphin Louis in 1420, in spite of the martial appearance of his cortege. Last but not least, Montpellier is the very first town of the French kingdom to use a processionnal canopy on these occasions, a major innovation first appeared for the entry of the pope Urbain V and then used only twice, for the entry of Charles VI in 1389 and the one of the Dauphin Louis in 1420. But, finally, considering the urban entries on one hand as a global phenomenon, which is to say by not isolating the king entries from the other ones, and on the other hand from an urban perspective, allows us to understand how such a ritual could be used by the town authorities to reinforce their own power on the community itself.