Royal and Elite Households in Medieval and Early Modern Europe : More Than Just a Castle

In this volume, the authors bring fresh approaches to the subject of royal and noble households in medieval and early modern Europe. The essays focus on the people of the highest social rank: the nuclear and extended royal family, their household attendants, noblemen and noblewomen as courtiers, and physicians. Themes include financial and administrative management, itinerant households, the household of an imprisoned noblewoman, blended households, and cultural influence. The essays are grounded in sources such as records of court ceremonial, economic records, letters, legal records, wills, and inventories. The authors employ a variety of methods, including prosopography, economic history, visual analysis, network analysis, and gift exchange, and the collection is engaged with current political, sociological, anthropological, gender, and feminist theories. List of Illustrations vii Notes on Contributors viii Introduction: Personal Relations, Political Agency, and Economic Clout in Medieval and Early Modern Royal and Elite Households / Theresa Earenfight 1 1. Domina et Fidelibus Eius: Elite Households in Tenth-Century Francia and Anglo-Saxon England / Megan Welton 15 2. Maintaining Elite Households in Germany and Italy, 900-1115: Finances, Control, and Patronage / Penelope Nash 42 3. Æthelings and their Entourages in Late Anglo-Saxon England: The Households, Retinues, and Networks of Two Sons of King Æthelred the Unready / David McDermott 73 4. Joan de Valence and Her Household: Domesticity, Management, and Organization in Transition from Wife to Widow / Linda E. Mitchell 95 5. Eleanor of Brittany in Confinement: Problematizing Paradigms of the Household for Noble Prisoners / Eileen Kim 115 6. “All my frendys fro me thei flee”: The Disgraced and Unstable Household of Eleanor, Duchess of Gloucester / Sally Fisher 142 7. Serving Isabella of France: From Queen Consort to Dowager Queen / Caroline Dunn 169 8. Political Power-Brokers in the Fifteenth-Century English Royal Household / Alexander Brondarbit 202 9. “Our Servants Say Scandalous Things about You:” Royal Households in the Fourteenth-Century Crown of Aragon / Alana Lord 225 10. Love, Calumnies, Murders, War, Ambition, and Survival at the Court of King Fernando and Queen Leonor Teles of Portugal (1367-1384) / Isabel de Pina Baleiras 248 11. The Portuguese Household of an English Queen: Sources, Purposes, Social Meaning (1387-1415) / Manuela Santos Silva 271 12. Royal Household and Political Parties: The Configuration of Ferdinand the Catholic’s Entourage in Castile (1469-1516) / Germán Gamero Igea 288 13. Rocking the Cradle and Ruling the World: Queens’ Households in Late Medieval and Early Modern Aragon and France / Zita Rohr 309 14. A Precarious Household: Catherine of Aragon in England, 1501-1504 / Theresa Earenfight 338 15. There and Back Again: The Hospitality and Consumption of a Sixteenth-Century English Travelling Household / Audrey M. Thorstad 357 16. The Households of Portuguese infantes in the Avis Dynasty: Formation and Autonomy of Alternative Centers of Power in the Sixteenth Century / Hélder Carvalhal 378 Index 405 The authors bring fresh approaches to the subject of royal and noble households in medieval and early modern Europe with a focus on the nuclear and extended royal family, their household attendants, noblemen and noblewomen as courtiers, and physicians.