Elite Political Cultures
What IS a residential court?
a) the regular constant dwelling place of the ruler
b) the place where the actual seat of the court and the departments of government
are to be found
c) the venue where the ceremonial and ritual that surrounded the prince could be
properly observed by his/her subjects.
The changing role of nobility in the business of rule since late fifteenth century:
a) emergence of new nobilitya
b) Princely monopoly on war; changes in war techniques
c) Taxation
Most famous interpretation of such developments and also responsible for turning the
early modern courts (or aulic history) into a fashionable topic for historians:
Sociologist Norbert Elias (1897- 1990); taught a while at University of Leicester
The Civilizing Process (1939; 1969)
Combines the nineteenth-century thesis of state-building with the classic notion of a
civilisation des moeurs from the later Middle Ages into the eighteenth century; Elias suggests
a change from ‘Fremdzwang’ to ‘Selbstzwang’: External forces dictate more subdue forms of
behavior which were soon to be embraced as ‘internal’ standard, an ideal. The court is for
Elias the place in which this process of ‘internalisation’ took place, rulers and nobles acted as
the main protagonists; the court is presented as the gilded cage for the ‘domesticated’
grandees.
Recent critics:
a) to much focus on French court; unreliable sources
b) relationship nobility – ruler not as antagonistic as described by Elias;
relationship of co-operation and interdependency