ABSTRACT
Civic processions, or street pageants during the Middle Ages were part of the middle-class milieu, their form and content planned by the municipality. As such, they offered a parallel to the aristocratic pastimes of hunt and tournament. The scenes for these spectacular displays were the major thoroughfares, city gates, and public squares or market places, with their crosses and water conduits. These cisterns, their flat platforms forming an ideal stage, were usually corporate gifts of the rising merchant class, a symbol of their new wealth and power.
