The favourite convent of the Discalced Carmelites, by the Church of St. Martin, was the scene of constant royal visits and semi-religious dissipations, and one of the most pompous of the ceremonious festivities that beguiled the dazzled crowd at the beginning of the reign was the series of shows that celebrated the canonisation of three of the most popular of Spanish saints in 1622, when all Madrid, in alternating devotional ecstasy and frivolous jollity, followed the King and his wife in honouring St. Isidore, the husbandman, now the patron of Madrid, St. Teresa of Avila, and St. Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuits. Accompanied by the bull-fights and ceremonial trials of accused heretics, called _autos-de-fe_, which specially delighted the crowd, this canonisation fete also {62} revived an ancient Spanish diversion, which thenceforward became under Philip's patronage one of the most highly appreciated of the pleasures of his literary Court, namely, the Literary Academies, as they were called, and Floral Games, or poetical competitions, in which the poetasters tried their mettle one against the other, in hope of gaining the ear of powerful patrons for their verses. It was a struggle of keen wits; for in no time or court was poetry, especially satirical and dramatic poetry, ever so fashionable; and that it degenerated later into preciosity, extravagance, and affectation was the natural result of the universal struggle to gain a hearing in a chorus of verse. [Sidenote: An equestrian masque] There are abundant and for the most part tedious contemporary descriptions of these various courtly festivities, descriptions usually as pompous and dry as is to our taste the affected frivolity of the festivities themselves.[14] But though these turgid productions cannot be quoted to any great length in a book like the present, which is intended to suggest a general picture of the Court and times rather than a series of minute sectional photographs, an idea may be gained of the scale upon which the festivities were arranged, by giving a rigidly condensed translation of the account of a great masque and equestrian display given by Philip and his brother Carlos on the 26th February 1623.[15] {63} "All the Court was anxious for the day when his Majesty and the Infante Don Carlos should honour and delight it with the promised feast. It took place on Palm Sunday, with a magnificent mask notable not only for its beauty, its ingenuity, and costly garments, and the high nobles and gentlemen who took part, but also because his Majesty and his Highness appeared in it.