Hofgesellschaft und Hoflinge an europaischen Furstenhofen in der Fruhen Neuzeit (15.-18. Jahrhundert).(Book Review)

Edited by KLAUS MALETTKE and CHANTAL GRELL, with the assistance of PETRA HOLZ (Munster: Lit Verlag, 2001; pp. 546. Eur 25.90).

IN 1400, the opening date of this 546-page collection of thirty-three essays on the European court, the definition of which in the early Quattrocento was still inchoate, there were at least twelve courts, princely, ecclesiastical and republican, on the Italian peninsula, not counting such glamorous entourages as that surrounding the Medici circle in Florence. In 1800 there were at least ten. This volume includes two articles on the Italian courts, one by a Malettke student, the gifted Sven Externbrink, of fourteen pages on the clientele system at the court of Savoy during the regency (1637-1648) of Marie-Christine of France, and one of sixteen pages on the clientele machine at the papal court by Birgit Emich of Freiburg. It is generally accepted by scholars of early-modern Europe that the court system found its origins in the Italian courts and in the potent example of Valois Burgundy, which ceased to function as a court with the death of Charles the Bold in 1477. Bernhard Steichi from Basel contributes the one and only piece, of eighteen pages, on Burgundy, on court etiquette, placed towards the end of the …