pagina

The connection between pageant and pagina (the Latin word for a page, a slab, a fixed piece of writing) is debated. One theory holds that the movable stage was called a pagina because each scene of a mystery play was like a page — the story unfolded scene by scene as different wagons moved through the city. Another theory connects it to a different source entirely. What is clear is that by the fourteenth century, 'pageant' in English meant a movable stage or scaffold, and by extension, the performance presented on it.

Medieval mystery plays were performed on pageant wagons during festivals like Corpus Christi. Each guild was responsible for a different biblical scene: the shipwrights performed Noah's flood, the goldsmiths performed the Magi. The wagons processed through the city, stopping at designated stations. The audience stayed put; the theater came to them. Each wagon was a pageant. The whole sequence was the pageant cycle.

By the sixteenth century, 'pageant' had expanded beyond wagons to mean any spectacular public display — a royal procession, a coronation ceremony, an elaborate show. Elizabeth I's coronation procession in 1559 featured pageants at multiple points along the route. The word shifted from naming the vehicle to naming the spectacle. The wagon disappeared. The word grew.

Modern pageants are beauty contests and historical reenactments. The Miss America pageant began in 1921 in Atlantic City. The word still carries the meaning of organized display — staged, sequential, performed for an audience. But the movable stage is forgotten. Nobody watching a beauty pageant thinks about a wagon in a medieval street carrying the story of Adam and Eve.