The Princely Court: Medieval Courts and Culture in North-West Europe, 1270-1380

by Malcolm Vale

In this engaging work, Malcolm Vale sets out to recapture the splendor of court culture in Western Europe during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Exploring the time between the death of St Louis and the rise of Burgundian power in the Low Countries, he illuminates a period in the history of princes and court life previously overshadowed by that of the courts of the dukes of Burgundy. The result is a fascinating evaluation of the nature and role of the court in European history, and a celebration of a forgotten age.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Medieval, Medieval History

440 pages, Hardcover

First published December 20, 2001

Reviews

[Silvio Curtis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Scholarly book about courts in England, France, and the Low Countries in the time period the subtitle says. It pays most attention to the Low Countries, that is, what is now Belgium and the Netherlands, which at the time was a bunch of counties, duchies, and so on variously dependent on the kings of France, the kings of England, or the emperors of Germany. "Court" is a loose concept, more or less meaning everyone who hangs around the prince. For sources, this book is mostly based on surviving records of the princely households telling how much money they paid who for what. It sounds like the author looked at a lot of these and most of them are unpublished. The book deals with a huge variety of topics, from payment of livery distributions to stylistic observations on art, but always focuses on details to an extent that would be good for a more narrowly focused topic but doesn't work well here. It's hard to tell sometimes what the individual pieces of evidence are supposed to be evidence of, how confidently you can reconstruct it, and how widely it was true in time and space. Best for people who are interested in the medieval European economy.

[Susan Abernethy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Link to my review of this book:

https://flhwnotesandreviews.com/2017/...