Past Presents: New Year's Gifts at the Valois Courts, ca. 1400
Author(s): Brigitte Buettner
Source: The Art Bulletin, Vol. 83, No. 4 (Dec., 2001), pp. 598-625
Published by: College Art Association
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Past Presents: New Year's Gifts at the Valois Courts,
ca. 1400
BrigitteBuettner
While art historians have steadily pursued the study of patterns of artistic consumption and production, they have paid
much less attention to the distribution of artistic goods. What
follows proposes to address this aspect of the "life of things"
by focusing on gift giving, arguably the major mode by which
objects circulated before the ascendancy and triumph of
market economies. A nearly universal phenomenon in premodern societies, gift exchanges-of
material objects, services, or people-lay at the core of the social contract; without reciprocity, there would be no community, no culture,
not even language. Beginning with Marcel Mauss's Essai sur le
don (1925) and Bronislaw Malinowski's Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922), the function, meaning, and impact of gift
exchanges have been investigated intensely by anthropologists.1 And the gift has been periodically revisited by some of
the most acute thinkers of our times, from Pierre Bourdieu in
The Logic of Practice to Jacques Derrida in Donner le temps.2In
comparison with this almost totemic list of major texts in the
social sciences, the historical disciplines have remained next
to silent.3 Yet it is the absence of art history in this debate that
is especially surprising, simply because without objects there
would be no gifts.4 Moreover, one of the constants of gift
giving across cultures is that the valuables used as gifts were
more often than not those that we have come to regard as
works of art, those that now line the walls and fill the cases of
our museums-things
that provide whatJean Starobinski has
nicely characterized as a "surplus of visibility."5
During the European Middle Ages, gift exchanges or,
rather, the broader principle of reciprocity-that is, the obligation "to give, to receive, and to reciprocate," in Mauss's
classic formulation6-nourished
an immense variety of public and personal experiences.7 It played a vital economic role
in ensuring not only the flow of things but also some redistribution of wealth; it was a social behavior that bound rulers
and subjects, husbands and wives and their kin, lovers and
beloved. Reciprocity informed medieval religious attitudes,
for giving alms or seeking the benevolence of God and his
deputy saints through Church donations and prayers were all,
in the end, acts of gift giving. As an expression of largessethe supreme chivalric virtue-gift giving held a prominent
place in the long tradition of ethicopolitical treatises and thus
in the norms of conduct of medieval elites. Gifts were used as
political weapons to make and unmake alliances, to forge
diplomatic ties, to signal dominance; they were deployed to
bridge the divide between the living and the dead in funerary
offerings, between humans and the divine in charitable giving. And because they tended to be more precious and
memorable than everyday objects and carried special meanings, they spoke to people's aesthetic and affective sensibilities. Medieval society afforded countless opportunities for
granting presents, extending from basic modes of sociability,
as the keeping of an open table, to the more institutionalized
forms of social communion, such as weddings, royal and
princely entries into cities, embassies, peace agreements, appointments to an office. Gift giving was so much woven into
the medieval mentalite that one cannot turn the pages of a
literary work, in Latin or in the vernacular, religious or
secular, history or fiction, without constantly stumbling over
its glorified manifestations.
The purpose of this essay, however, is not to provide a
generic survey of medieval rituals and images of reciprocity,
but rather to highlight one key, if little-known and studied,
instance of seasonal gift giving at the Valois courts during the
reign of Charles VI (1380-1422): New Year's Day, known at
the time as the etrenne,a word, derived from the Latin strena,
used both for the gifts and the ritual exchange. A few surviving objects will guide this inquiry, which is otherwise based on
the richly detailed if bloodless household accounts and carefully compiled inventories of the first Valois collections. Additionally, and because there is no imagery of the etrennes
properly speaking, I shall rely on related imagery, mostly
scenes of book presentations, for visual evidence. Though
these are now analyzed in terms of commission and patronage, they, as much as the action they represent, would have
been couched in the more flowery language of gift giving.
Thus, instead of looking at these miniatures, deliberately
chosen because they are among the best known of the period,
in terms of their political meaning (as is generally done), I
shall explore them for the ways in which they illuminate and
are illuminated in turn by this innovative ritual of late medieval court culture. It is one of this study's assumptions that
objects and images mattered not primarily for their meaning
but more for their performative efficacy, and that is precisely
why they played a role in the production and reproduction of
social relations within court society. By so attending to the
specifically visual dimension of gift giving, often overlooked
by social scientists, this study primarily wishes to be a contribution to what Oleg Grabar has aptly termed the "anthropology of courtly objects."8
Christianizing the Roman Kalends
When the Valois courts celebrated the New Year in the late
Middle Ages, they (re)inscribed themselves into a long ritual
tradition. The custom of marking the New Year by exchanging gifts as a tangible good omen is a seasonal rite observed
by most cultures.9 In the West-where Christmas absorbed
most of the rituals previously associated with the New Year
only in the late nineteenth century-its roots reach back to
the ancient Near East.'1 One of the most grandiose visualizations of gift giving ever, the sprawling ruins of Persepolis, the
Persian palace complex built under Darius I and Xerxes and
destroyed by Alexander the Great's troops in 330 B.C.E., still
testifies to its importance." The surviving relief decoration
that adorns the northern and eastern staircases leading to the
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PAST
PRESENTS:
NEW YEAR'S
GIFTS
AT THE VALOIS
COURTS
599
1 Persepolis,ceremonialcomplex,
easternstairwayleading to the
apadana,detail of tributebearers
(photo: Giraudon/ArtResource,NY)
Great Audience Hall (apadana)displays a marvelous collection of varied but properly compliant foreign delegations
presenting finely detailed gifts or, as we would have it, tributes (Fig. 1): vessels,jewelry, animals, weapons, textile products, and raw materials (gold)-in essence, the same highend objects that one encounters in Europe at a much later
date. And that continuity in the nature of the gifts is matched
by the stability of the iconography of gift giving, which underwent remarkablyfew changes in its long historyfrom such
early examples down to the Middle Ages and beyond.
While it appears that the Greeks did not celebrate the
beginning of a new year (perhaps because there never was a
generally agreed-on day to do so), such festivities are well
attested for Rome.12 In the Republican age, when the year
started on March 15, family and friends exchanged strenae,
simple presents from the natural and agriculturalworld, such
as laurel branches, dried fruits, nuts, and honey. However,
once private citizens resolved to include principesamong the
recipients of New Year'sgifts, the custom evolved into a more
elaborate ceremony cementing both horizontal and vertical
social relationships. The Kalends-moved for military reasons from the spring toJanuaryin 153 B.C.E.-developed into
a major festivalduring the Imperial era with the presentation
of gifts to the emperors, of money in particular,during a now
official ceremony attended by all orders of Roman society as
its centerpiece. And the Kalends of January grew even more
important, outdoing the popular Saturnaliacelebrated from
December 17 to 24, when they were chosen as the day for
consular inaugurations. A multilayered festival, the Kalends
in late antiquity spread over three to four days and encompassed both civic and personal rituals.Judging from contemporary accounts, gifts were carted through the streets by the
thousands, to be heaped on relativesand friends gathered at
banquets.'3 These private festivities were interspersed with
official ceremonies: the Senate's and the army's swearing of
allegiance to the emperor through sacrifices and prayers
(vota);the offering of strenaeto the emperor; and, in return,
the showering of money (sparsio)on the crowds by the emperor and by the freshly minted consuls, who also financed
the famed circus games and animal hunts, an extravagant
counterprestation for the power that now elevated them
above common mortals.
Rome bequeathed the New Year's festivities to the medieval West, despite the early Church's vocal charges against
the "pagan"exchange of wishes, the decking of tables with
opulent and varied dishes as a prefiguration of the riches to
come, and the general belief in auspicious or nefarious signs
with whichJanuary1 wassupposedly laden.'4 Above all, Christian apologists inveighed against the revelry and raucous
processions of disguised people, men as women, both as
beasts, going from house to house carrying their wishes and
quests for small presents-a custom that left deep traces in
the West. They castigated the Christian flock for continuing
to spend money on material presents instead of channeling
their resources into a goal with spiritual rewards, whether
alms to the poor or donations for the foundation of
churches. Augustine, for instance, impressed with his usual
hortatory vigor on his audience, "When they [the pagans]
give gifts; do you give alms. They are called awayby songs of
license; you, by the discourses of the Scriptures.They run to
the theatre; you, to the church. They become intoxicated;
do you fast."15Finally, as had been done with other Roman
festivals, the Kalends were converted: the beginning of the
year was moved back to the spring and a special mass, ad
ab idolis,was added to the liturgies ofJanuary 1.
prohibendum
The Council of Tours in 567 instituted the Twelve Daysfrom
the Nativity to the Epiphany as one sanctified festive cycle,
with the Kalends of January, now the Feast of the Circumcision, seemingly neutralized at its midpoint. Canon 18 prescribed three days of fasting, explaining that "in order to
tread under foot the customs of the heathen, our fathers
ordained that privatelitanies should be held at the beginning
of January, psalms sung in the churches, and, at the eighth
hour on the first of the month, the Massof the Circumcision
pleasing to God."'6
Regardlessof these efforts, two centuries later, at the Synod
of Leptines held in 743, King Carlomanwas penalized with a
fine of fifteen sous for various "pagan"lapses in his and his
subjects' behavior, including the celebration of the Kalends
of January with wishes and gifts.17 Since traditions rarely
die by fiat, the gestures associated with January 1 continued
indeed both at a popular and elite level well into the central
Middle Ages, arguablygaining strength through the injection
of beliefs and rites from the newly assimilated regions of
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Germanic Europe. Nor was the ceremonial exchange of gifts
between ruler and subjects abandoned, though it was moved
from January 1, now taboo for state celebrations, to the
spring, when the Frankish nobility came together in the huge
gatherings known as Reichstage. As in Rome, this was an
occasion for the ruler both to compensate his vassals for their
services in a public forum and to receive their dona annua (or
annualia) as a token of their continued allegiance.18 Unlike
its Roman model, however, the early medieval display of
mutual obligations needs to be set against the background of
an economy in which cash transactions were now largely
replaced by gifts. Between the fifth and the ninth century, a
gift economy proper took hold instead: members of the
ruling classes grew to consider gift giving, sustained by the
rhetoric of liberalitas, a more prestigious form of property
transfer than any other that was available, be it trade, barter,
plunder, or theft.19 The luxury goods exchanged in this
manner included clothing, food (especially wine and
cheese), precious vessels and gems, arms and horses, and
slaves, which taken together added up to a shared grammar
of things that transcended the many local and ethnic divisions so typical of early medieval states. Concomitantly, the
iconography of presenting books (to God, saints, churchmen, and rulers) and of other valuables, ideally expressed by
the Adoration of the Magi, became commonplace in the
visual arts.20
Also compared with Roman law, which had drawn a clearcut distinction between free gifts (dona) and contractual
forms of exchange, including gifts with obligations (munera),
the Germanic laws blurred the lines of demarcation, and
gifts-now encompassed by one word, geba, and its derivatives-came to be burdened with legal and moral obligations,
sealed by the requirement to make countergifts.21 From now
on, medieval gifts were launched to be "gifts for," and refusing one amounted not merely to displaying rude manners
but actually to breaking the social contract. The Lombard
Edict of King Liutprand (d. 744), for instance, succinctly
stipulated that "gifts which are made without a return gift
[launigild] or without the formal alienation procedure [thingatione] ought not to stand at all."22 And Gregory of Tours
repeatedly resorted to the concept of an ars donandi, a flair
for the right gift at the right moment that obtains for the
giver the intended advantage, and that modern translations
can only render by the negative notion of bribery, since to us
there is no room for a gift linked to binding obligations.23
After the year 1000, references to an annual and public
exchange of gifts between rulers and their subjects begin to
fade, though on that day feudal obligations and taxes were
typically due. Gifts, of course, remained the main currency in
other rituals of reciprocity: chronicles, annals, chansons de
gestes, and romances teem with presents, small or exorbitant,
material or not, and would be unthinkable if stripped of a
long line of heroes famous for their feats of hyperbolic
largesse.24 Yet even during the central Middle Ages, the
unmitigated condemnation of the lingering "pagan habits"
by ecclesiastical authorities is proof enough that the exchange of wishes and gifts on January 1 had not been
stamped out either.25 In fact, the word estreineis attested for
the first time in 1165, and it appears from then onward with
regularity in literary sources.26
Revival or Continuity? New Year's Day at the Valois Courts
It was not until the fourteenth century that the etrennes
evolved from an ill-documented and presumably somewhat
diffuse popular practice into an official or, at least, semiofficial custom.27 Sporadic early in the century, the evidence
becomes more consistent from the 1380s onward, and by the
reign of Charles VI it was a well-established and major court
ceremony despite the fact that January 1 was still not the
official beginning of the year in France: "Item, every year, for
the etrennes,all great lords, ladies and prelates gave her rich
gifts, of which she has no detailed memory; and it would be
of great value if someone did," is the formula used in a
somewhat melancholy entry of the inventory of the precious
objects given to Isabelle de France, daughter of Charles VI,
during her brief marriage to Richard II, and requested by
France on her return to her native country in 1400.28 That
gift giving became obligatory on New Year's Day is even more
pungently illustrated by an anecdote concerning the court
goldsmith Jehan Nicolas, who at the end of the year 1456 was
sequestered by his patron, King Rene of Anjou, in order to
ensure the timely completion of the New Year's gifts that they
were jointly fashioning.29
The etrennes,which allowed nobles regularly to renew their
riches as well as to reaffirm, through objects, fundamental
familial and social bonds, can be counted among the many
cultural innovations formulated within late medieval court
society, one that would last well into the modern period.30
Why it was precisely the exchange of New Year's gifts that
once more became fashionable remains, at this point, somewhat of a mystery. Surely presents continued to be understood as a positive omen, without which the year to come
would not be bountiful.31 More specifically, it may be that the
old Roman meaning of the feast had not altogether disappeared or, alternatively, had been exhumed in remembrance
and reference to an antique yet latently present custom. As is
well known, the fourteenth century witnessed a new surge of
interest in things Roman. Fraught as the debate of "Renaissance versus renascences" may be, the late fourteenth century
undeniably was in France, as much as in Italy, the moment of
the early humanist movement, which spurred intellectuals,
artists, and patrons alike to search for ancient texts and
artifacts and, I would add, rituals and customs to be used as
sources of inspiration.32 It makes sense to regard the etrennes
as an example of this revivalist mode. As it happens, a striking
merger between the Roman past and the etrennesis provided
by one of the few surviving New Year's gifts, a collection of
Terence's comedies in a manuscript given toJean de Berry in
1408 by his treasurer Martin Gouge, later bishop of Chartres
and chancellor of France, and a repeated donor of manuscripts of exceptional quality.33 In the stunning presentation
miniature that opens the manuscript (Fig. 2), the restrained
pace of the book presentation in the civitas romana in the
lower register is sharply contrasted to the frenzied gesticulatoresand musicians who caper above, around the central scena
in which an expositor-Calliopius,
the editor of Terence-is
reading the play to the all-male populus romanus. Millard
Meiss remarked on the novelty of depicting a circular theater
(inspired by either written descriptions or actual remains of
Roman amphitheaters) as well as of endowing the actors with
masks, moreover, masks of different colors, as would have
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PAST
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NEW YEAR'S
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Terence
Presents
His Bookto Senator
Terentius
Lucanuswhilea PlayIs
Performed,
from Terence, Comedies,
before 1408. Paris,Bibliotheque
Nationalede Francems lat. 7907A,
fol. 2v
2
been the case in antiquity. He also rightly interpreted these
masks and the actors' disheveled postures in light of the
long-standing critiques that bunched together pagan theater,
medieval jongleurs, and charivaris,to which list the equally
condemned bodily excesses proper to the Kalends should be
added. But we have to remember that such negative views
were not espoused by everyone, least of all by the illuminator
who painted this scene with unabashed verve. And just as he
or she could have drawn on personal experience for rendering the Roman amphitheater, the frontispiece's general at-
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mosphere must have evoked the merrymaking and physical
exuberance characteristic of the Twelve Days cycle. In some
cities, including Paris, January 1 was the day of the Feast of
Fools, anemic echoes of which can still be found nowadays, as
in Philadelphia's mummers' parade. In Paris, a parodic confraternity called Enfants sans Souci loudly processed through
the city, and crowds of poor people went from door to door
to beg, and often extort, small presents, known as aguilaneuf,
in exchange for good wishes for the new year. As many
centuries before, all manner of people put on masks and
costumes and indulged in the timeworn propitiatory practices that the Church had tried, in vain, to eradicate.34
If in the city the people's ebullience would have matched
the energy of the actors in the Terence miniature, at court
there were musicians, acrobats, and jesters who likewise enlivened the ceremonial presentation of gifts.35 To some degree, the celebration of the etrennes by the nobility can be
viewed as a strategy to recuperate a popular feast and channel
it into a ceremonial framework, shaped by ideas about Roman imperial rituals, that would have served the interests of
the elite. That its heyday also coincided with one of the most
difficult periods in French history lends credit to this hypothesis. For these were years marked by repeated popular revolts
and ruthless repression at the hands of the Valois, by problems of dynastic legitimacy-the alleged cause of the ongoing
Hundred Years' War-and, not least, the power vacuum
caused by Charles VI's mental "absences." The king's inability
to hold the reins of his kingdom after the first onset of his
illness in 1392 prompted various members of the royal family,
in particular Queen Isabeau of Bavaria, the king's unclesJean
de Berry and Philip the Bold, duke of Burgundy, and their
offspring, to rule in his stead. And that led to the formation of the Armagnac and the Burgundian factions, who
were increasingly locked into a bloody internecine war that
wreaked havoc in Paris, and, with the 1420 Treaty of Troyes,
to the "scandalous" designation of the English king Henry V
and his descendants as heirs to the throne of France.36 What
is fascinating is that individuals who were avowed political
enemies to the point of murder-the assassination of Charles
VI's brother Louis of Orleans was ordered by his cousin John
the Fearless in 1407, and, in turn, the latter was killed twelve
to exchange New Year's gifts throughyears later-continued
out the period, as if to confirm the (perhaps pious) anthropological theory that gift giving is a social strategy that allows
for the conversion of aggressive tendencies into competitive
rituals of sociability.
Given this context, the revival of the etrennes,part of a more
general shoring up of the ritual apparatus in late medieval
court society, may have been a useful antidote against an
unnervingly brittle historical situation. Their success in
courts across Europe, irrespective of local situations, nevertheless proves that they should not be viewed simply as a
response to political matters but are better understood in
terms of their social function. Let me illustrate this point. In
1413 John the Fearless offered to his then estranged uncle
Jean de Berry the Livre des merveilles,a spectacularly illuminated collection of travel literature to the East, which among
other accounts of faraway marvels includes Marco Polo's
eyewitness report on the "costly gifts of gold and silver and
pearls and precious stones and fine white cloth" brought to
Kublai Khan by his subjects on New Year's Day. Though it
ended up being used as a gift, the Livre des merveillesrefers in
more than one way to its commission. For one, the compilation of texts would have been particularly meaningful to the
Burgundian duke, who in 1396 was made prisoner by Sultan
Bajazeth during the ill-fated Crusade that ended with the
defeat of the Westerners in Nicopolis, only to be released in
1402 at the order of the Ottoman's conqueror, Tamerlane.
More explicitly, the manuscript contains, at the beginning of
the section with the account written in the early thirteenth
century by the Armenian prince Haytoun Hayton (Hetoum),
a superb frontispiece that showcases John the Fearless as he
accepts the work from the hands of a rather generic-looking
author (Fig. 3).37 Functionally similar to the Terence frontispiece, such a self-reflexive image, which presents to the
viewer both the present and the presentation, served to anchor the text to an author while simultaneously upholding
the rhetoric of a free and disinterested gift, a gift, that is,
ostensibly unconcerned with a countergift.38 In this case, the
mythical character would have been readily apparent, for the
presentation, though utterly persuasive, was of course altogether fictional inasmuch as Hayton was dead long before
this manuscript was made. The remarkably penetrating profile portrait of John the Fearless painted by the Boucicaut
Master (or perhaps, as proposed recently, by the Mazarine
Master) is complemented by other identifying signs, such as
the cloth of honor decorated with the French fleur-de-lis and
the Burgundian blue and gold stripes that covers the bench
on which the duke is seated, or two of his favorite personal
emblems, sprigs of oak and carpenter's planes, embroidered
on his rich, deep red robe (a houppelande) and strewn about
the sumptuous border, interspersed with his arms (concealed
under later ones) and mottoes. Well known and often described, the miniature nonetheless contains an interesting if
microscopic detail that has so far escaped notice.39 Toward
the back of the expansive aedicule, two retainers are intently
device that enables the
perusing another, open book-a
painter to impart a sense of narrative succession, taking the
book, opening it, reading it. But the verso page of this
painted book contains a barely decipherable sketch that mimics a presentation scene, as if to reiterate, on a minor note,
the main action. It is the kind of visual subtlety that would not
have been lost on the courtiers' discerning eyes, eyes used to
reading images that only we think of as miniatures. Perhaps
this duplication was even meant as a veiled commentary on
the main action by intimating that a successful gift always
begets another gift.
Even though the Livre des merveillesmay have been relinquished with the specific intention to negotiate a rapprochement between nephew and uncle, it was only one among the
many objects, supplemented by a lavish feast, given by John
the Fearless on the New Year in 1413. Because this was a time
of acute political tensions and financial strictures, the seemingly inconsiderate squandering of resources provided the
Estates General with additional ammunition to denounce the
depletion of the royal collection and to complain about the
rampant corruption of the administration, then largely controlled by the duke of Burgundy and his allies.40 What
clashed, in essence, were two different value systems: on the
one side, the "bourgeois" concept of prestige derived from
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603
3 John Hayton PresentsHis Book toJohn
theFearless,from the Livre des merveilles,
1410-12. Paris,BNF ms fr. 2810, fol.
226r
work and professional competence, on the other, the social
ethos of the aristocracy,predicated on notions of prestigious
expenditure, what Jean Wilson has summarized as "vivre
noblement.''4l That ethos compelled individuals to carry
through the transformation of economic into social capital
even when they were nearly insolvent, so much so that
chronic debt, a way of life for every noble, became in effect a
form of symbolic capital.As Maussperceptivelynoted, the gift
economy enhances the authority of the most prodigal giver,
not of the most aggressive hoarder.42
The Object of the Gift
Riches, in order to be visible, had to be circulated, and the
trade volume in luxury items exchanged between courts as
well as within a given court was indeed staggeringlyhigh on
January 1. According to Jan Hirschbiegel, 6,403 actual gifts
are recorded for the period between 1381 and 1422 at the
Valois courts, a figure that must in reality have been substantially higher if one takes into account the gaps in the surviving documentation.43The Burgundian duke Philip the Bold
spent on average 6.5 percent o? his yearly budget on New
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4 Necklace of twelvemedallionswith double chain, Burgundian, ca. 1400, gold, colored stones, enamel. Cleveland
Museumof Art, Purchasefrom the J. H. Wade Fund, 1947.507
(photo: copyright2001, The ClevelandMuseumof Art)
Year's gifts.44More concretely, in 1404, Louis, duke of Orleans, disbursed the huge sum of 19,000 livres to buy his
etrennes,which included gold images, gems, a great many
hanaps(drinking vessels), and two hundred golden hats fashioned like helmets.45 Or, to give yet another measure, between 1401 and 1416 (the dates of his first and last inventory), Jean de Berry, generally held to be the quintessential
art patron, purchased and commissioned for himself only
about 119 objects, compared to the 358 that he received as
gifts from as many as 136 different individuals, more than
half of which were given at the etrennes;he, in turn, distributed only some 231 gifts, thus making a very good deal.46
What where the kinds of things that the Valois deemed to
be suitable as New Year's presents? Perhaps somewhat unexpectedly, manuscripts were seldom used on this occasion
between exchange partners of the same social standing
none, for instance, between two of the most assiduous practitioners of New Year's gifts, the brothersJean de Berry and
Philip the Bold.47 In 1456 the ambassador of the Milanese
duke Francesco Sforzato CharlesVIIwas categorical:a manuscript was not enough, a horse had to be added.48 By and
large, manuscripts featured in asymmetricrelationships, for
the most dedicated donors of manuscripts were courtiers,
presumablythose with a literarybent. In addition to a prelate
like Martin Gouge, we find secretaries and librarians,among
whom Gilles Malet, royal librarian and maistred'ho^tel,
is the
best known;49authors, chief among them Christine de Pizan
(to be considered below); or merchants involved in the book
trade, such asJacques Raponde.50
Members of the upper nobility were much keener on what
art history has long pushed to the margins the so-called
decorative, minor, or applied arts. In this period, they occupied very much the center of aesthetic appreciation and
social value. Categorized as joyaux (jewelry,jewels) and vaisselle (plate), these valuables were destined to adorn bodies,
rooms, and tables; in other words, they were worn and used
instead of being simply displayed. Necklaces, pendants,
brooches, cloak clasps, or rings decorated with pearls and
precious stones (above all, the pale variantof rubies known as
balas) and figures coated in enamel were prized etrennes(Fig.
4).51 Made of gold, silver, or gilded metals, intricate table
fountains, simpler hanaps,cups, ewers (aiguieres),bowls, and
other types of drinking and serving vessels appear by the
hundreds as well. So do flasks (flagons),used for a variety of
purposes, including to hold perfume, which could also be
dispensed in the popular ball-shaped pomanders (pommes
d'ambre)and musk-balls. Some of these objects, mainly the
drinking vessels, referred to the particularoccasion on which
they were given by sporting inscriptions, such as "a bonne
estraine" (for a good New Year).52 Particularsignificance was
attached to saltcellars,for salt, though a basic ingredient in
medieval cooking, also had propitiatory associations.53Salts
made in imitation of animals were especiallyfavored:Jean de
Berry had one in silver "in the fashion of an ostrich, with a
belly of pearl-shell, and seated on a terrace of silver-gilt
enameled with green,"which was given to him by a son-in-law
as an etrennein 1411, while Philip the Bold offered one with
a movable cover in imitation of a Book of Hours to his wife
Margaretof Flanders.54
A beautiful small salt made in the mid-fifteenth century is
still on view at the Musee du Louvre,Paris (Fig. 5). Composed
of a lustrous agate bowl set in a heavy gold mount, it rests on
an intricatelycarved architecturalbase decorated with pearls
and gargoyles and urinating children in white enamel.
Though diminutive in size, this object responds to the chief
criterion that singled out prestige objects. Plate and joyaux
were to be made of expensive and rare materials, often
combined in a technically challenging and aestheticallycomplex fashion, insofar as material and status mutually confirmed each other. This is readily apparent in the predilection for mounted pieces made, like the Louvre saltcellar, of
hard stones (like jasper, agate, chalcedony, porphyry,alabaster, and even amethyst), rock crystal, or glass, embellished
with enamels and other precious and semiprecious materials.55It would be misguided, however, to assume that material
worth and artisticintricacywere the only yardsticksby which
to measure an ambitious present. Giftsof modest worth could
be treasuredjust as much when they exhibited ingenuity;wit
and cleverness were after all highly prized qualities in the
courtlyvalue systemas a whole. Ingenuitywas what transformednatureinto artificeand convertedwhatwasfamiliar
into somethingnew,into somethingestrange, one of the four
categoriesthat Christinede Pizan uses to determine the
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PAST
PRESENTS:
NEW YEAR'S
GIFTS
AT THE VALOIS
COURTS
605
5 Saltcellar,French,mid-15thcentury,
gold and agate, h. 10 cm. Paris,Musee
du Louvre (photo: Reunion des
MuseesNationaux/ArtResource,NY)
merit of a gift.56 Surely would the owner of the Louvre
saltcellar have appreciated the visual play of the urinating
children, or Queen Isabeau of Bavariabeen absorbed by the
little golden box covered with a mirrored lid that revealed,
past her own likeness, a Alirginand Child nestled in one cavity
and, on the opposite side, a memento mori in the shape of a
sepulcher of Christ (by 1390, when her husband, then on a
journey, sent her this present, she had given birth to three
children and buried one of them).57 And estrangete' an object's visual and conceptual dexterity, its ability to flatter the
recipient's wit was the salient feature of an exceptional gift,
the famous "paintedwooden box," covered with white velvet
and closed with two silver clasps etched with the duke's arms,
that simulated a manuscript and that the Limbourg brothers
submitted to their patron Jean de Berry for his e'trennes in
1411. Here the material value was nil, the artifice everything.
Striking in this regard is the tabernacle now known as the
Goldene Rossl. Unquestionably the most prominent among
the handful of survivingpieces made about 1400, it has been
kept since 1509 in the abbey church of Altotting in Bavaria
(Fig. 6). As far as is known, this "image of Our Lady who
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606
ART BULLETIN
DECEMBER
2001
VOLUME
LXXXIII
NUMBER
4
'
6 Goldene Rossl,French, ca. 1400-1405; Churchof Altotting,Bavaria(photo: BayerischesNationalmuseum)
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PAST
PRESENTS:
NEW YEAR'S
GIFTS
AT THE VALOIS
COURTS
607
7 Detail of Fig. 6 with Charles VI in prayer
holds her Child seated in a garden" (transformed into a
reliquary in the eighteenth century) is the lone surviving
etrenne aside from manuscripts. It was presented on New
Year's Day 1405 by Isabeau of Bavaria to her royal husband
Charles VI, only to be pawned, along with other precious
objects, in that very same year to pay the arrears on the sum
pledged to Isabeau's brother Louis of Bavaria for his yearly
pension and his wedding to Anne of Bourbon.59 Superb in its
"surplus of visibility," the Goldene R6ssl would have been
appreciated as a goldsmith's tour de force, combining gold,
silver, and silver-gilt. Particularly noteworthy is the skilled use
of the then new and challenging technique of email en ronde
bosse,in which the cast figures and elements of the decor were
coated with a layer of enamel of differing degrees of translucency, ranging from opaque white to a transparent and costly
red, defined in sources as rouge cler. The piece has recently
been painstakingly restored to its former splendor, and one
can now at least visually experience its sensuousness and
marvel at the large rubies and sapphires and pearls set into
the ornate trelliswork that frames the Virgin and Child, or at
such exquisite details as the delicately rosy cheeks of its
figures. Charles, in knightly garb, is flatteringly inserted on
the elevated terrace above the page guarding the horse from
which he appears to have just dismounted (Fig. 7). The king
is separated from another knight, who holds his crowned
helmet, by a prie-dieu covered with a drapery whose deep
folds are enlivened with fine scrollwork made by pricking the
surface with little dots (pointille)-again, an innovative technique in the metalworker's idiom. The prie-dieu supports a
tiny open book, with covers and clasps in gold and pages in
silver, presumably a Book of Hours from which the king has
lifted his eyes to contemplate the object of his devotion. The
vision of the Virgin is mediated by three childlike saints, John
8 Royal Gold Cup, French, ca. 1380. London, British Museum
the Evangelist, John the Baptist, and Catherine, who gives a
gift, the ring sealing her mystical union with Christ. Commenting on the curious decision to depict Saint Catherine at
such a tender age, Willibald Sauerlander has proposed that
taken together the three saints allude to two children (out of
twelve) born to Isabeau and Charles in the years before this
piece was completed: Catherine in 1401, and Jean in 1398.
And he has further sensitively discussed the fairytale atmosphere of the Goldene R6ssl, with a king portrayed as a
dashing courtly hero, the opposite of the real Charles, who in
these years of ever fiercer onsets of his illness turned periodically into an incontinent, vulgar, dirty, and physically violent
being.60 This consummate object is in sum a gift with a plea,
a poignant instance of a "gift for," in which gift and return,
demand and response, are inextricably linked, not least in
the fact that Charles, the recipient, is made to kneel in a
donor stance vis-a-vis the Virgin and Child.
Charles VI also was awarded what is now known as the
Royal Gold Cup, held by the British Museum (Fig. 8). Given
to him during a journey to Touraine by his uncle Jean de
Berry in 1391, it may have been made as early as 1380
(judging on stylistic grounds) and therefore originally intended for his father and Jean de Berry's brother, Charles V
(who was born on Saint Agnes's day).61 Simpler in shape than
the Goldene R6ssl, this elegant hanap similarly combines
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608
ART BULLETIN
DECEMBER
2001
VOLUME
LXXXIII
NUMBER
4
9 Detail of Fig. 8 with Procopius offering jewels to Saint Agnes
gold, minute pointille decoration on the backgrounds, enameling, and pearls set on the cresting of the foot and (now lost)
around the lid. Episodes from the life of Saint Agnes, sunk
into the metal, are picked out with shimmering red, green,
and blue translucent enamels. For one detail, however, the
artist resorted to opaque enamel: the white lining of thejewel
box with which Procopius hopes to seduce the virtuous Agnes
in the first scene on the lid (Fig. 9). The artistic ingenuity of
the piece thus consists in both generating the narrative from
and centering the viewer's gaze onto the least brilliant passage of the cup. The artist may have wished to convey a
moralizing lesson through this device by suggesting that
earthlyjewels pale in comparison with the heavenly gems that
reward all martyrs. On the other hand, the cup, with its
pointed visual emphasis on the jewel box, could have functioned simultaneously as a shrewd antiphrastic exhortation to
the king: be like that young man and tempt me, Agnes/Berry,
with jewel boxes.
It is almost miraculous that the Royal Gold Cup, pawned in
1449 and then again in 1451 to pay for military campaigns,
escaped destruction. Along with the Goldene R6ssl, it is
among the few surviving relics of the huge mass of precious
objects that were made for the Valois (as well as the only still
existing item of plate from the collection of John, duke of
Bedford, regent of France, to whom it went after Charles VI's
death). If most has been lost, it is not so much on account of
later destructions (though they effected their ravages, too) as
the fact that many collections were dispersed either piece by
piece or in a wholesale fashion simply because valuables
continued to be used as securities for loans and as a handy
cash reserve. The need to expand personal hoards that could
be sent to the mint at any moment was pressing in periods of
the
imminent war-that is to say, most of the time-and
tremendous accumulation of plate and jewels in princely
households can in part be related to the escalating costs of
the Hundred Years' War, the conflict between the Armagnacs
and the Burgundians, and the myriad of minor armed conflicts that scarred late medieval Europe.62 The story of the
goldsmith Gusmin of Cologne, narrated by Lorenzo Ghiberti
in his Commentaries,most touchingly illustrates this practice.
In order to finance his Italian campaigns of 1381, Louis I of
Anjou decided to melt his entire collection. While many
objects had been received as gifts, some had been skillfully
crafted by Gusmin, who was so shattered by the news that he
chose to enter a heremitical order for the rest of his life.63
This kind of destruction should not be confounded with the
burning of valuables during a potlatch. Attractive as the
analogy may be, melting plate did not annihilate it; rather, it
transformed it into the more mobile wealth that is money.64
Similarly, but less drastically, gems were pried from their
mountings to be sold or deployed in a different context.
Contemporary sources describe this process with the warlike
notion of depecement,the dismembering of a work into its
component parts.65
As a devotional image, the Goldene R6ssl was a religious
artifact, and the Royal Gold Cup, though secular in use, was
decorated with a hagiographic cycle. The long list of religious
images, devotional objects, liturgical vessels, and reliquaries
exchanged on New Year's Day proves that sacramental and
even sacred objects, such as relics, were not considered inalienable; they tended, however, to circulate among those of
the highest social rank, primarily the dukes of Berry and
Burgundy.66 The question then arises: Was there any category
of things that was off-limits? Animals such as horses, dogs, or
falcons continued to be regarded as status symbols, and
therefore appear in lists of New Year's gifts with regularity.
But one looks in vain for the more unusual animals, the
monkeys, camels, or wildcats, which late medieval rulers collected as fervently as works of art to populate their menageries. As a general rule, rarities of exotic provenance, such as
watches, automata, vessels made of porcelain, elephant tusks,
boar teeth, or ostrich eggs, often recorded in Valois inventories, were absent on New Year's Day, undoubtedly because
foreign visitors appear to have been a negligible presence in
the essentially domestic ritual of the gtrennes.67Neither are
natural products and foodstuffs, flowers, puddings, venison,
or spices, oranges, and wine, used as presents elsewhere,
mentioned. At the other end of the spectrum of "valuables,"
human beings, key in systems of "total social prestation" and,
in the case of slaves, frequently exchanged in early medieval
times, were never exploited as New Year's gifts, though
women and children continued to be "given" as part of
marriage politics.68 Weapons and armor, much favored by
early medieval warrior society, and even knives were now
eschewed, too; "give your lady a knife on New Year's and her
love will cool down," as the anonymous author of Les Evangiles
des Quenouillesput it, advising instead to settle for hairpins to
rekindle amorous passion.69 One notable exception to this
rule was what must have been a dazzling display sword,
crafted in the "Venetian style," entirely sheeted in gold and
studded with precious stones, assessed at the considerable
sum of 2,250 francs, that Louis of Orleans gave, well, to
himself.70
Louis of Orleans's sword is not an isolated instance of a
donor who retained the most expensive present in a given
year for himself.71 To explain this seeming paradox it might
be useful to refer to Annette Weiner's innovative reinterpretation of the theory of gift giving.72 Working from the assumption that the supposedly universal "norm of reciprocity"
is largely a Western anthropological myth shaped by nineteenth-century economic theories, she proposes in its place
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PAST
the much more fundamental logic of "keeping-while-giving."
In her view, in any gift circuit some specific, inalienable
categories of things are withheld from exchange, foremost
among them those on which social and economic differences
rest and on which power is ultimately predicated. In the
medieval West, landed property typically was the principal
inalienable possession; as the basis of the nobility's social
identity and status, land ideally had to be transmitted intact
from generation to generation. And land or houses never
figure as New Year's gifts. Reserving the costliest gift for
oneself can therefore be read as a symptom that exposes the
entire system for what it is: even when rulers gave in their
critics' view to the point of apparent financial implosion, in
to
reality they well knew how to "keep-while-giving"-how
keep, indeed, bolster, their status and power.
The Space of the Gift
Because almost all New Year's gifts have been destroyed, it is
with our mind's eye that we have to recapture the sparks of
the thousands of iridescent objects that one encounters when
reading through inventories, to reimagine the aesthetic and
intellectual pleasure they would have given as they changed
hands, perhaps being appraised as by the knights in Arthur's
court on New Year's Day in Sir Gawain and the GreenKnight:
"And then rich men rushed forth to render their presents/
Yelled 'Year's-gifts' at Yuletide, yielded them by hand,/ Debated busily about those gifts."73 In this vivid evocation, the
performative context imparts additional meaning to the presents and imbues them with an aura now lost to us as we study
them in an act of solitary contemplation in the hushed environment of a museum or a library. In order to recover those
strands of meaning, we have to reconstruct the original spatial and gestural framework in which New Year's gifts were
exchanged. Presentation miniatures will guide us again.
One of the most eloquent images showing the interactive
nature of court culture and gift giving is the famous miniature painted about 1409 by the Boucicaut Master (or the
Mazarine Master) that graces a political compilation written
by Pierre Salmon (Fig. 10).74 In it a rather stiff Charles VI, as
if impaled on his fleur-de-lis-covered throne, accepts the
book tendered by his secretary. Though pushed to the left,
king and author, larger in scale and higher on the picture
plan, are emphatically offered to the gaze of the nearby
courtiers and, through the wide frontal opening, to the beholder. The central transaction is thus singled out by dint of
a "surplus of visibility," and that is crucial, for full visibility was
the precondition for the ritually correct giving of gifts. All the
more noticeable, then, is the way in which Jean de Berry,
wearing a rich, black houppelande embroidered with golden
swans, unceremoniously turns his back to the king and the
central exchange in order to contemplate a bejeweled pendant worn by another courtier. This shrewd comment on the
old duke's legendary rapacity in an otherwise rarefied atmosphere is the kind of catchy detail, like the depicted book in
the Livre des merveillesfrontispiece painted by the same illuminator, that would have delighted the viewer.
The artist has perfectly captured the quasiliturgical nature
of court culture-a culture in which seeing and being seen
were of paramount importance. The court emerges as a
metaspectacle, in which each participant, at the same time
PRESENTS:
NEW YEAR'S
GIFTS
AT THE VALOIS
COURTS
609
spectator and actor, is invited visually to assess all others.75 By
sprinkling his image with courtiers who walk in all directions
and look out from windows and over the rooftops, the illuminator reinforces the notion that the court was a realm of
both different kinds of looking and competing visual claims.
The bystanders also imaginarily expand the scene beyond the
picture frame: it is as if the gift, dropped like a stone, rippled
from the inner court to the outer household and, beyond, to
the city of Paris. At the same time, the busy activity in the
courtyard and outside the walls evokes the tenet in French
royal ideology that encouraged kings to be visible to their
subjects. That is why royal and princely residences around
1400 remained quite permeable to commoners, who could
enter their courtyards, though they had to stop short of
penetrating into the semiprivate sphere where the presentation of the book is taking place, a space whose access is here
guarded by the resolute doorkeeper, a huissier dressed in the
royal livery, a verge in hand.
Because of the miniature's relative topographical realism,
the painted architecture is generally thought to correspond
to an actual royal palace in Paris, the H6tel Saint-Pol, favorite
royal residence under Charles V and Charles VI. Adjacent to
the newly erected stronghold of the Bastille (in which many
of the most important objects of the royal collection were
housed), the H6tel Saint-Pol was dismantled from the sixteenth century onward, and its specific layout was not recorded.76 We do know, however, that it was exceptionally
large and comfortable, and composed of an irregular collage
of discrete buildings, connected through galleries, gardens,
and courtyards. As implied by the miniature, the king's apartments were situated close to the main portal, while those of
the queen, about half the size of her husband's, were further
away toward the Seine, both being completely independent,
closed off, if one wished, by heavy doors (and with the
progression of Charles VI's malady, Isabeau wished to do so
ever more). We may be looking at the queen's apartment in
the presentation scene that opens the manuscript of her
collected works that Christine de Pizan offered to Isabeau
about 1410 (Fig. 11).77 Boldly occupying center stage, the
writer wears the habitual blue dress and imposing headgear
that identify her in authorial miniatures, while the recipient's
facial features are sufficiently individualized to make her as
recognizable as her husband is in the Salmon illustration.
Because it is now such a familiar image, reproduced on
postcards, posters, and other products of museum gift shops,
one can easily forget how strange, indeed, estrange an experience it must have been when opening a book to be greeted
by an all-female presentation scene, one for which there were
no immediate precedents.78
Although in hindsight the two miniatures read almost like
a diptych, one replete with gender implications, it is more
accurate to view the domestic female environment and the
semipublic male realm as a pictorial translation of two different rooms that could be found in apartments of both women
and men. For while Isabeau's space suggests the semiprivate
chamber, known as the chambrede retrait, or closet, typically
furnished with a daybed, Salmon's presentation is taking
place in the chambred parer, or presence chamber.79 According to Mary Whiteley's detailed studies of the relation between space and its use in late medieval French palace archi-
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610
ART BULLETIN
1
DECEMBER
2001
VOLUME
LXXXIII
NUMBER
4
tl
10 PierreSalmonPresents
His Bookto
CharlesVI,from Pierre Salmon,
REponses
a Charles}7 et Lamentation
au
roisurson etat,ca. 1409. Paris, BNF ms
fr. 23279, fol. 53r
tecture, the layout of a princely apartment was standard,
comprising, at its minimum, this basic unit.80Adopted even
in tents and ships, it led into several rooms and closets on
either side, used for sleeping, as wardrobes, to store collections of valuables and books, and, most intimate of all, as a
space for study (estude).So successful that it was reiterated
without major alterations down to the eighteenth-century
chambresa enfiBlade,
this innovative formula was apparently
inaugurated in the Palace of the Popes in Avignon during the
first half of the fourteenth century. By 1400 this horizontal
organization of rooms was common, offering more comfort
besides a more efficient way to channel the syncopated pul-
sation of court activities than did the older formula of vertically stacked rooms.8l In the Louvre, for instance, the central
donjon, built under Philip Augustus, was transformed into a
jail for distinguished prisoners and a storehouse for the royal
coffers when the complex was modernized in the 1360s under Charles V.82Here, too, the king's apartment, along the
south wall, was newly organized around a chambrea parerof
considerable dimensions, flanked on the left by the chambre
de
retrait(Fig. 12). Below him, on the second floor, Queen
Jeanne de Bourbon had the use of the entire space as well,
and even though her apartment lacked a study and a library,
it boasted a comparably large chambrea parer,the center of
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PAST
NEW YEAR'S
PRESENTS:
GIFTS
AT THE VALOIS
611
COURTS
11 Christinede Pizan PresentsHer Book
to Isabeau of Bavaria, from Christine de
Pizan, CollectedWork,ca. 1410.
London, British Library ms Harley
4431, fol. 3r
her court. (Like the horizontal succession of rooms, the
spatial segregation of wife and husband became the canonical arrangement from then onward.83) Several small stairways, concealed within the thickness of the walls, permitted
internal circulation between the two apartments, which one
could also reach from a majestic external spiral staircase.
Created by the royal architect Raymond du Temple, this
grand viz was one of the Louvre's most innovative features.
Enshrined in a projecting tower, pierced with ample openings enframed by ten genealogical sculptures, it rose along
the entire central axis of the south wall. It is along its now lost
steps that we have to imagine the long procession of household members and envoys from distant courts, laden with
splendid New Year's gifts, working its way up and down;
intermittently seen from the courtyard, past vigilant doorkeepers, messenger after messenger stopping at the queen's
chambre d parer after having deposited the presents in the
room above.
The nerve center of a court's ceremonial topography was
no longer the great hall, where the low-ranking household
members took their daily meals and large feasts and banquets
were celebrated, but the chambrea parer. It supplied a more
intimate space in which a ruler could dine in relative isolation, entertain privileged visitors, and hold more private
court ceremonies, such as the receipt of New Year's gifts. The
sharper separation of public and private domains, and hence
of types of activities and visibilities, remains in fact another of
the lasting contributions of late medieval architectural planning.84 Contained within the semiprivate boundary of a ruler's apartment and its restricted social sphere, the etrennes
found an appropriate frame to champion values of exclusiveness, quality, and refinement. And this is where the etrennes
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12 Palais du Louvre, Paris, plan of the second floor with the
king's apartment: D: chambrea parer;C: chambrede retrait;B:
chapel and oratory; A: daytime chamber; E: salle du roi; F: two
chambers for nighttime use; and V: grande viz (Reconstruction
by M. Whiteley and J Blecon, after Mary Whiteley)
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612
ART BULLETIN
DECEMBER
2001
VOLUME
LXXXIII
NUMBER
4
13
Limbourgbrothers,January,calendar
page from the Tres7ichesheuresde
Jean
deBerry,before 1416. Chantilly,
Musee
Conde ms 65, fol. lv (photo:
Giraudon/Art
Resource,NY)
most
markedlydiffered from the public nature
of the Roman
Kalends,
while at the same time departing
from coeval ceremonies,
weddings, funerals,entries,jousts, and even
the more
collective
rituals of the Twelve Days cycle, which
embraced
in
one
festive occasion the entire household
and, beyond, the
urban
space and its denizens; cities and
other civic entities,
important
donors on other ceremonial occasions,
pointedly
never
appear on New Year's gift lists.
Though
sparselyfurnished, the chambrea parer
provided a
specific
area- a thronelike seat or
monumental bench set off
by
a of honor, as seen in
cloth
many presentation miniatures
that was strictlyoff-limitsto everyone
except the ruler.
The
description of King Richard II's presence
chamber, in
which
"he leet ordeyne and make in his
chambir a trone,
wherynne
he was wont to sitte fro aftir mete
unto euensong
tyme,
spekynge to no man, but ouerlokying alle
menn; and yf
he
loked
on eny mann, what astat or degre
that evir he were
of,most
he knele," well articulates
the idea of an almost
sacramental
fulcrum toward which all gazes and
gestures
were
directed.85
In addition to the throne, the
chambre
a parer
might
contain a dressoir,an open cupboard
on which to
display
one's more marvelouspossessions,
not unlike the way
people
nowadays crowd their mantelpieces with
Christmas
and
NewYear's
cards as an index to the extent of
their social
networks.86
All of this comes vibrantly alive in
the opulent
miniature
that opens the Tres rachesheuresn
in this case a
commission
from Jean de Berry to the
Limbourg brothers
shortly
before 1416.87TheJanuary page,
though not a scene
of
giftexchange, nevertheless
showcases the kind of banquet
that
we have to project back into the
chambre
a parer(Fig. 13) .
It
is
a chatty,
almost garrulous image, generating
ample "surplus
of visibility"by cataloguing the
accumulation of wealth,
whether
people or objects, that Berry needed
to assert his
prestige,
and in so doing reconfirm his
dominance
to the
viewers
of this image that is, to himself,
his entourage, and
future
onlookers. Clad in a houppelande
trimmed with fur and
strewn
with gold embroideries and
diamonds, the monumental
duke
is differentiated from his all-male
entourage of court
officials
and servantsby redundant visual
signs: the sophisticated
spatial organization that at once
detaches him from
and
bindshim to his surroundings; the
full profile view,
glorified
by the mandorlalike fire screen;
the cloth of honor
decorated
with his arms (lilies) and his
heraldic animals
(bears
and swans). Although difficult to
perceive in a reproduction,
a miniature gilded bear and
swan also perch on
either
end of the oversize nef at the center
of the table. The
nef;
a vessel used both to store
lavish
trenchers or foodstuff
and
asa place setting for the most
honored guest, was a
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PAST
prized New Year's gift. Jean de Berry, for instance, donated a
gold nef, its body decorated with leaf work and six enamels
bearing the arms of France and Berry, supported by four
tigers, set with gems and sixty pearls, to Charles VI as his
etrenne of 1405.88 Other kinds of vessels are on display on
the cupboard to the left. These are handled by the serving squires, a reminder that medieval people's perception of
objects would have been radically different from our own,
limited as we are to experiencing them, when they survive, by
sight but not by touch. In the Limbourgs' miniature, there is
are caran almost overwhelming sensory overload-things
ried and examined, food smelled and tasted; when looking
long enough, one even starts to hear the noises made by
cutting, pouring, shuffling, and rubbing, or the clinking of
gilded belts and metal vessels, the crackling of the fire, the
dogs barking and people shouting. The human voice is actually present in a literal way, for the chamberlain standing
behind the duke, like a new Saint John Chrysostome, is
expectorating gilded words, "Aproche, Aproche," directed to
the prelate seated to Berry's right, possibly Martin Gouge.
Moreover, the duke's and his courtiers' bodies are bedecked
in costumes that are given both an optical and tactile appeal
through the addition of gold embroideries, belts, and jewelry.
The entire scene is closed off by a tapestry, which, while it
warms the wall in the back of this Berrichon potlatch, further
enhances its palpably physical quality. Because it depicts an
episode from the Trojan War, one could say that the tapestry
foreshadows the anthropological idea that rituals of conviviality are a social strategy to convert hostile impulses.
The Performance of the Gift
Whereas information about the physical settings that accommodated a court ritual like the etrennesis reasonably plentiful,
evidence about how gifts were actually presented is scanter
and more oblique. Contrary to what one might expect, rare
are the scenes of reciprocity showing people of the same
social standing face to face. Oddly, two of the few examples
that I have come across concern the same person, the Holy
Roman Emperor Charles IV. The first is a wall painting in the
chapel dedicated to the Virgin at Karlstein Castle, outside
Prague, which the emperor had built as a monumental shrine
for the imperial insignia and his remarkable collection of
relics (Fig. 14).89 The now somewhat damaged frieze, which
would originally have covered the entire south wall flanking
the altar niche, was painted about 1357, probably by Charles's
court artist Nicholas Wurmser of Strasbourg. Above a delightful architectural fantasy, the main, central band is divided
into three distinct episodes. Closest to the entrance, the
emperor receives from the hands of his nephew, the future
King Charles V, a piece of the True Cross and two thorns
from the most sacred French relic, the Crown of Thorns.
Next, in a parallel composition, the emperor takes possession
of another Passion relic, probably a fraction of the Holy
Sponge, given either by Aloysius Gonzaga of Mantua or by
Peter of Lusignan, king of Jerusalem and Cyprus. Finally,
Charles IV, now bent, inserts a cross-shaped relic into the
magnificent reliquary cross he had actually commissioned to
hold these treasures.
Note that in this case, both gift-giving scenes portray the
protagonists in symmetrical, equivalent poses. That holds
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true for the second example, this one found in a manuscript.
In the heavily illuminated copy of the Grandes chroniques de
Francemade for Charles V himself, the miniature on folio 479
illustrates one moment of the state visit paid by Charles IV
and his son Wenceslas to Paris inJanuary 1378 (Fig. 15).90 In
it, we see the two rulers again personally and directly exchanging gifts-rings of exaggerated size, set with rubies and
diamonds, which they have taken from their own fingers and
now display as though they were relics proclaiming the authenticity of their bond. The exceptional quality of this intimate trade is enhanced by the fact that the two sovereigns are
alone, upright and in mirrorlike attitudes. Indeed, when one
turns the page back to folio 478 verso (Fig. 16), the meaningful gradation of the poses becomes evident, for here we
see the dukes of Berry and Burgundy as donors, standing but
suggesting a genuflection, while other members of their retinue, cast outside the frame, are made to kneel in the customary donor pose.91 It is a semiological contrast that reflects
actual rituals of interaction, which reserved the standing
position for rulers while everyone else had to kneel deferentially, thus translating relations of dominance and submission
into spatial terms.
Whether symmetric or asymmetric, the iconography of gift
giving invariably implies that donors and recipients swapped
their gifts directly. With the etrennesthat would have been the
exception. Among nobles, long-distance gifts were perforce
the rule. Messengers, on foot or on horseback, carried the
unique and fragile objects-along with the pressures of comoften considerable distances.92
petitive expenditure-across
If the gift pleased, and unless the recipient was a true miser,
the messengers themselves could count on handsome rewards, a pledge for the return gift to be made.93 Even when
donor and recipient shared the same physical space, the
offering of a present would not have happened with the kind
of immediacy conveyed by images, for it was one of the duties
of the all-powerful chamberlains to screen everything before
it could be delivered to the final destination.94 Household
officials are indeed conspicuously at hand in presentation
miniatures; the visual rhetoric, however, restricts their role to
that of passive witnesses so as to maintain the fiction of a
direct connection between patron and protege. An example
that goes against the grain is a lively if crude ink sketch on a
flyleaf from an obscure manuscript ofJustinian's The Institute,
dedicated in 1458 to Duke Charles of Orleans, son of Louis
and Valentina Visconti (Fig. 17).95 Truer to reality, it restores
the intermediary to his actual role by having the smartly
dressed court official instead of the enthroned duke take the
bulky manuscript from the donor-translator into his hands.
It is not surprising that such high-ranking courtiers ended
up on the receiving end, rounding out their incomes with
ingratiating tips and gifts.96 According to Christine de Pizan,
they could be called on to act as artistic advisers if they
mustered the required expertise. In her biography of Charles
V, she writes that in the gardens of the Louvre visitors presented the king with "strange gifts from divers lands, artillery
or other engines of war and divers other things" and that
"merchants came bringing velvets, cloths of gold or other
things and all manner of strange and fine things or joyaux,
which he had those appraise who were skilled in knowledge
of such things of whom there were some in his household."97
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614
ART BULLETIN
DECEMBER
2001
VOLUME
LXXXIII
NUMBER
4
14 EmperorCharlesIV ReceivesRelics
from CharlesV and from Aloysiusof
Gonzagaor Peterof Lusignan(?), wall
painting, ca. 1357. Karlstein Castle,
Chapel of the Virgin (photo:
Bildarchiv Foto Marburg)
15 EmperorCharlesIV and CharlesVExchangeRings, from the
Grandeschroniquesde France,ca. 1379. Paris, BNF ms fr. 2813,
fol. 479r
From the same author we learn that chamberlains acted as
go-between even for husbands and wives, as "it was not the
custom among higher nobility for ladies to be as commonly
in the presence of their husbands as other women"-encouraging women regularly to question the chamberlains
about their husbands' well-being.98 Inventories confirm that
spouses or, for that matter, parents and children presented
gifts through intermediaries even when living under the same
roof.99 And this is borne out by a later testimony about King
Henry VII (r. 1485-1509) and his queen, Elizabeth of York.
In herald Norroy's account, the king, seated at the foot of his
bed, would collect Elizabeth's NewYear's gifts from the hands
of a member of her household; in like fashion, the queen
received her husband's present; then, still separately, they took
hold of the presents brought by members of their courts.100
Gifts as Social Distinction
The physical separation of men and women among the upper
nobility is embedded in presentation images as well. When
the recipient is a man, he is normally surrounded by male
staff; when a woman, by ladies-in-waiting. But was the practice
of gift giving itself gender-specific? According to Jan Hirschbiegel's statistics, the Valois women, headed by Valentina
Visconti and Isabeau of Bavaria, frequently participated in
New Year's gift exchanges. Nevertheless, they did so differently from their male relatives. First of all, women gave
presents of lesser value, so that the highest sums were spent
on those transacted between male kin-fathers,
uncles,
brothers, cousins, and nephews.0l? Secondly, while women
certainly bestowed gifts on men, they included categories of
female recipients largely absent from male lists of etrennes.
One such list of gifts made by Valentina Visconti in 1392 can
serve as a representative example. Aside from a large and fine
diamond given to the king, all her gifts went to women, specifically, to the royal household's female personnel: ladiesin-waiting, seamstresses, and washerwomen, as well as the
chamber women, wet nurses, and nannies in care of the two
royal daughters, nieces of Valentina and Louis of Orleans.'02
The most gender-specific feature of gift giving has to do with
the fact that women, being legally and financially dependent
on their husbands and fathers, found themselves more often
on the receiving than on the giving end. As it was, the
expenses for the presents they made were folded into the
budgets of their "guardians"; only Queen Isabeau, in line with
a practice established some hundred years earlier, had at her
disposition an independent household with its own, and
substantial, treasury.103Though caution is in order when drawing generalizations from relatively meager data, these patterns are concordant with the observation of anthropologists
that "transacting is the political activity of men par excellence,"
that women join the gift economy as distributors of the
wealth controlled by their husbands, and that gifts, as much
as their representations, are not effects of sexual difference
but constitutive of it.104 Revealing in this regard is the fact
that the wives of men attached to a given court both offered
and received presents from the ruler, whereas the opposite
case of gifts to men related to female staff does not occur.105
A useful contrast to Valentina's list is provided by a similar
enumeration of her husband's expenses for the year 1401.106
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GIFTS
AT THE VALOIS
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615
16 TheDukes of Bery and Burgundy
PresentGiftsfrom the King to Emperor
CharlesIV and His Son Wenceslas,from
the Grandeschroniquesde France,
fol. 478v
After the already mentioned sword worth 2,250 francs, Louis
of Orleans gave two virtually identical presents to his paternal
uncles Berry and Burgundy, a gold image on a silver-gilt base,
encrusted with pearls, sapphires, and balas rubies, one depicting Saint Louis, the other Saint Martin, each valued at
1,250 francs. Then came a circular gold image with a Virgin
in white enamel (750 francs) that Louis sent to the queen,
followed by the gift to his wife, an enameled gilded cup and
ewer, decorated with stones, which cost him 650 francs. Finally, less expensive gifts, small diamonds, rings, or goblets,
were awarded to cousins, nieces, and nephews, to chamberlains and other noblemen from Louis's retinue, as well as to
various messengers. Like many comparable lists that have
been preserved, this one ended with a discretionary category,
in this case nineteen diamonds that the duke "gave away at
his own pleasure and will on New Year's without wishing to
make any further declaration."107
While one could multiply such examples, in the end there
would be little variation; they all indicate that the main aim of
New Year's gifts, whether gender-specific or not, was to maintain and represent social relations. Year in, year out, gifts
were pressed into service to enforce the major dividing line
that separated court society into distinct if overlapping
spheres. There was the inner circle, composed of blood
relatives, affines, great officers and prelates of the kingdom,
a small number of foreign rulers, and courtiers of high social
standing, among whom reciprocity and a certain symmetry in
the value of gifts was the rule.'08 Herein, competitive gift
giving was instrumental in producing differences in prestige,
if not in social rank per se.109 The Burgundian chronicler
Enguerrand de Monstrelet implies as much in his description
of John the Fearless's liberal distribution of pendants, fashioned after his personal emblem, in 1411, writing that "on the
the duke of
feast day [the Feast of the Circumcision]....
Burgundy (who had alone more princes, knights, and gentlemen attached to him than all other princes together) gave
presents ofjewels and rich gifts, of greater magnificence than
any one, according to the custom of the day.""0
The challenge of outdoing one's peers through acts of
demonstrative expenditure was fundamentally different from
the relationship established with the outer circle, comprising
people only loosely connected to a court (such as merchants
and artists and writers) as well as the hundreds of socially
diverse lower ranks of a noble household. In this case, much
less was at stake and asymmetry was the rule. Objects of
inferior value and artistic elaboration, typically simple jewels
with a ruler's insignia or small diamonds, bought in bulk
from merchants in precious wares, provided an expedient
means through which to distribute gifts to hundreds of people at once. Like liveries, they helped to impart a sense of
corporate identity to the socially heterogeneous and potentially explosive court milieu in which intrigues and factions
were endemic."l
While such comparatively small presents-at the court of Brabant, a specific word, lijfcoecghelde
(literally, gingerbread money), came into use for etrennesrewarding lower court staff"l2-went from top to bottom, deferential gratitude, allegiance, service, and labor traveled the
other way. Emblematic in this regard is the relationship
between the Limbourg brothers and their patron Jean de
Berry. In return for the gift of their services as court artists,
they could count on both wages and countergifts: we know of
diamonds and several pieces ofjewelry, of a house and, more
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616
ART BULLETIN
DECEMBER
2001
VOLUME
LXXXIII
4
NUMBER
1
$i
I
i
17 PresentationScenewith Duke Charlesof Orleans,from Justinian,
Institutions,before 1458. Paris, BNF ms fr. 497, fol. Av
chillingly, of a young girl that the duke kept sequestered in
one of his castles to be offered in marriage to Paul de
Limbourg, possibly the same girl that his agents had abducted a few years earlier from the house of the bishop of Le
Puy, along with "a Bible, a Breviary, and a silver belt."'13
Gift giving, like most court rituals, adhered to that mute
but persuasive grammar made of objects, words, and gestures
that ceaselessly spoke of rank and status. No matter their
nature, the value of gifts had to be graduated to reflect the
social standing of both donor and recipient. In her Livre du
corps de policie, Christine de Pizan in fact proposes an even
finer grid governing the choice of a gift, arguing that it
should not only be commensurate with the status of both
exchange partners but also take into account the reason for
its offering, because there are differences between a gift given
for merit, one as a guerdon (reward), and one given out of
pure largesse ("franche liberalite de pure courtoisie").ll4
That, at least, was the theory, for in practice the language of
gifts must have been a slippery one, as someone could very
well swerve from accepted norms. This in turn could endow
an object with additional meaning: it could express a particular mark of favor from a ruler, be charged with a specific
affective or political meaning, or signal an aggressive social
climber who sought to rise above the ruck by disregarding the
rules.
Nevertheless, and though there are no (surviving?) sumptuary laws regulating gift giving at the first Valois courts,
courtiers would have internalized notions about the decorum
of a gift. That explains why nonnoble donors, mainly merchants and bankers, did not offer the most expensive presents, even if their wealth would easily have allowed them to
do so. Written rules concerning gift giving can, however, be
found in other contexts, such as city ordinances. Florence,
for instance, granted diplomatic gifts according to the rank of
the donees, and a special law determined their value. Because
city officials had to be mindful of both historical precedents
and psychological contingencies, that law may not always
have been observed; it nonetheless provided a point of normative reference. In his study of Florentine civic rituals,
Richard Trexler rightly stresses that the infinite diversity of
works of art afforded a convenient means to customize a gift,
thus forestalling any discontent that might arise when a foreign ambassador realized that his present had the same price
tag as that given to a colleague from a different city.ll5 The
desire to personalize a gift at the Valois courts is likewise
abundantly documented. For instance, Berry's four secretaries, Pierre de Gynes, Michel Lebeuf, Jehan de Cande, and
Erart Moriset, repeatedly pooled their resources to acquire
for their patron objects they knew he was fond of, including
a finely wrought inkwell, decorated with Berry's arms and
bears, one of his heraldic animals. Similarly, in 1410, Berry's
daughter Marie gave her father a little perfume flask made of
gold coated, exceptionally, with black enamel and fashioned
like a bear carrying a basket embellished with a balas ruby,
two sapphires, and six pearls."l6 In addition to countless
objects that bore either the donor's or the recipient's heraldry, emblems, mottoes, name saints, and, more rarely, portraits, gifts might incorporate a donor's professional identity-the inkwell offered by the secretaries is an example, as
are liturgical items given by priests or treatises on medicine
the claim that giving always
by doctorsl17-substantiating
involves giving part of oneself.
Yet then as now, and despite all efforts to make a gift stand
out among the mass of objects conveyed to a ruler on New
Year's Day, donors could never count on its effect beforehand. For giving, even (or particularly) when obligatory,
never proceeds from pure calculation and always entails a bit
of a gamble; unlike the mechanical execution of a prescripted narrative, we have to imagine that gift giving required from its participants a subtle "feel for the game," an
aptitude, as Gregory of Tours would have it, for the ars
donandi.118 Unfortunately, rare are the testimonies that inform us about the emotional side of gift giving, those feelings
of satisfaction or disappointment, gratitude or envy, esteem
or flattery that enveloped gifts with an immaterial but weighty
wrapping. One of the best-known instances of a successful gift
is described by the poet Jean Froissart, who in 1395 offered
Richard II a compilation on love. According to the writer, the
king "dipped" into the manuscript in several places, and was
much pleased by its appearance and content.119 Occasionally
the opposite happened. A good example of a gift that failed
to fulfill its intended goal concerns Martin Le Franc, secretary to Count Amadeus VIII of Savoy and provost of the
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PAST
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AT THE VALOIS
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617
i
-r.
18 Peronet Lamy, Martin Le Franc PresentsHis Book to Philip the
Good,from Martin Le Franc, Le championdes dames, 1442-43.
Brussels, Bibliotheque Albert Ier ms 9466, fol. lr
chapter of the cathedral of Lausanne. He dedicated his prolix poem in defense of women, Le champion des dames (completed in 1442 or 1443), to Philip the Good, third duke of
Burgundy. The presentation manuscript contains a frontispiece, painted by Peronet Lamy, in which a somewhat diminutive author submits his work to the duke, flanked by his son,
the future Charles the Bold, and a group of courtiers engaged in an animated discussion (Fig. 18).120 Though a little
awkward, the miniature contains nice touches, like the blue
velvet cover of the depicted book that matches the inventory's description of the actual book, or the slender colonnette
that already separates the gift from the giver. Nothing, however, distinguishes the overall composition from its cognates.
We therefore take the scene and its implication-the
acceptance of the book-to mean a fait accompli, and forget that
"presentation" images, included in the manuscript when it
was offered, really were carefully manufactured expressions
of wishful thinking, which, like a visual captatio benevolentiae,
crystallized for perpetuity the yet to occur and fleeting moment of the book's original publication.121 In Martin Le
Franc's case, the miniature fell short of its ostensible purpose, and in contrast to the favorable impression the book
makes on those who are present in the image, Le champion des
dames, though accepted, was set aside, lying idle instead of
generating an adequate guerdon. What is rather unusual is
that the disappointed poet renewed his charge, perhaps encouraged byJean de Cr6quy, one of the duke's chamberlains.
He wrote a sequel, known as the Complainte du champion des
dames, in which his now personified book comes forward to
protest at having been mistreated by the duke, whose judgment, the poet (no fool) hastens to add, was influenced by
I ?
"*
.'
'I
',I"
'X
*I
.
I.
19 Martin Le Franc PresentsHis Book to Philip the Good,from
Martin Le Franc, Le championdes dames, 1451. Paris, BNF ms fr.
12476, fol. lv
envious counselors. This addendum was inserted into a new
and much more richly illuminated manuscript, prefaced with
a laudatory presentation scene laced with uplifting allusions
to Jason and Gideon as antetypes of Philip the Good (Fig.
19)-and that did the trick.122
The notion that courts promised more than they delivered
was a timeworn topos in the literary tradition of court critique. Protests over delayed reciprocation were nonetheless
very real because many return gifts never materialized or, if in
cash, were only paid after considerable delay, and then only
thanks to assiduous appeals to a ruler's financial officers
(bribing officers who had access to cash was in fact one of the
more lucrative spin-offs of the official gift economy). It is
unlikely that creditors would have been comforted by anthropologists' explanation that it is in the nature of gift exchanges
for some time to elapse between giving and being repaid,
since otherwise they could not be told apart from market
transactions, in which reciprocation has either to happen
instantaneously or be stipulated in advance.l23 Among many
others, Christine de Pizan vehemently complains about the
"delay in payment and the tiresome pursuit of their [the
French princes'] treasurers."124 Being a fine theorist of largesse as well as a consummate practitioner of gift giving,
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618
ART BULLETIN
DECEMBER
2001
VOLUME
LXXXIII
NUMBER
4
20 Jean le Tavernier, AubertPresentsHis Workto Philip the Good,
from David Aubert, Chroniqueset conquetesde Charlemagne,ca.
1460. Brussels, Bibl. Albert Ier ms 9066, fol. 1lr
Christine (who was never formally attached to any court) had
learned how to navigate the labyrinthine world of late medieval patronage and to protect herself-and the considerable
financial investment that an illuminated manuscript represented for a writer-by customarily issuing her books in
multiple copies that she then sent to various patrons.l25
When circumstances required it, she could even redirect a
particular work, as she did after the death of Philip the Bold,
who had commissioned the Livre des fais et bonnes meurs de
Charles V, which she offered instead as an etrenne to Jean de
Berry.l26 And she also resorted to the financially altogether
safer strategy of composing and dedicating poems in a genre
that came later to be known as etrenne-poems that made gifts
out of words.127
Christine de Pizan was in good company when "recycling"
her texts. Insofar as they were routinely strapped for cash,
donors of high social standing did not disdain to do likewise
with objects they had themselves commissioned (both the
Livre des merveillesand, more tentatively, the Royal Gold Cup
are examples of this) or obtained as gifts.128 Alternatively, it
was entirely acceptable to combine two etrennes by letting
donors know what one wished. Jean de Berry, for instance,
did not think it unfitting to ask Count Louis of Vend6me, a
grand maistreof the king's h6tel, to give him a set of gems and
pearls to be added to a little barrel-shaped vessel made of
rock crystal (barrilletde cristal) donated previously by Martin
Gouge.'29 That one could request specific gifts is corroborated in a fascinating letter written in 1400 by Philip the Bold
to his brother. He reminded Berry that he had not yet
received his itrennes and asked for an image of James the
Greater to complement one of James the Lesser he had
gotten from Louis of Orleans (Berry was courteous enough to
comply with an elaborately gilded image). In the same
breath, he wanted to know what Berry wished for his own
New Year's gift so that it could be ordered in time.130 Further
problematizing notions of spontaneous gifts, the transactions
generated by the etrennesoccasionally led to detailed financial
agreements. Hence, in 1402, Berry convinced the king to
open the royal coffers and disburse 14,000 of the 18,000 6cus
he needed to purchase a fabulous balas ruby. Even 14,000
6cus was just too astronomical a sum, so the duke had to
agree that it would cover his New Year's gifts for three years
rather than one.'31 In fact, gifts in cash steadily increased,
either as allowances meant to remunerate political, military,
and diplomatic services-a "reward for his services as well as
for his etrennes,"as the standard formula reads-or as what
were in essence fixed yearly pensions not connected to any
specific service or function.132
This is not the place to tackle the tangled issue of the
relationship between gifts and market transactions. One last
presentation miniature, taken from David Aubert's Chroniques
et conquetesde Charlemagne (Fig. 20), will help me to suggest
some concluding remarks. Though the manuscript was offered to Philip the Good in 1460, the grisaille miniature must
have been inspired by the one painted by the Boucicaut
Master in Pierre Salmon's manuscript some fifty years earlier.133 Here again, the main action-Aubert presenting his
work to the fashionably attired duke-has been pushed into
the background, and is revealed to us thanks to the same
device of removing the front wall. Lined with several distinct
buildings of a ducal palace, this courtyard, too, bustles with
courtiers, all male. However, at the margins, that is, ingeniously, in the foreground, a variety of townspeople, both
men and women, are selling their wares; they exemplify the
prosperity enjoyed under the duke's "good government," in
sharp contrast to the ensuing cycle of miniatures, most of
which linger on gory battle scenes. Moving in this regard
beyond the Salmon frontispiece, the illuminator of this miniature, Jean le Tavernier, establishes an insightful distinction
between the inside-the
courtly world inhabited by horses,
falcons, petitioners, modish denizens, and even a ducal
mercantile realm stocked with
dwarf-and the outside-the
jewelry, exhibited on the stall located inside the stately portal,
with clothes, vessels, and (as I see it) cured fish displayed
outside the wall. Just as obviously, however, the two worlds are
conceived as tangent entities, confirming, in the words of
Natalie Zemon Davis, that there always was a "porousness
between the world of commerce and the world of gifts."134
The unavoidable meshing of gift and money is compellingly illustrated by the admittedly much later step-by-step
directives given by the earl of Huntington, attached to the
court of James I (r. 1603-25), at a time when, as during the
Roman Empire, it once again became the norm to give gold
coins to rulers as New Year's gifts:
You must buy a new purse of about v s. price, and put
thereinto xx peeces of new gold of xx s. a piece, and go to
the Presence-Chamber, where the Court is, upon NewYere's day, in the morninge about 8 o'clocke, and deliver
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PAST
the purse and the gold onto my Lord Chamberlain, then
you must go down to the Jewell-house for a ticket to
receive xxviii s. and vii.d. as a gift for your paines, and give
vi d. there to the boy for your ticket; then go to Sir William
Veall's office, and shew your ticket, and receive your xxviii
s. vi d. Then go to theJewell-house again, and take a peece
of plate of xxx ounces weight, and marke it, and then in
the afternoone you may go and fetch it away, and then give
the Gentleman who delivers it to you xl s. in gold, and give
to the box ii s. and to the porter vi d.135
Even had the presentation of the etrennesnot been so thoroughly bureaucratized about 1400, the fact remains that
they, too, were shot through with monetary concerns. First,
the great majority of gifts were purchased (from artists or
merchants, the latter often getting them back as securities for
the loan of cash). Second, once they were recorded in account books, gifts were assessed against a uniform monetary
standard into which they could be converted if necessary.
This habit was so pervasive that the counterfeit manuscript
offered by the Limbourgs to Jean de Berry ended up being
estimated like any other object in his collection, thus turning
an
this parody of a present into a real commodity-though
inexpensive one, of 2 livres 10 sous. In the end, what account
books and inventories categorized as etrennesincluded, by our
reckoning, a variety of transactions: besides gifts and countergifts properly speaking, presents could be equivalent in
function to sale transactions, pensions, salaries, and other
emoluments, or, indeed, to what we have come to consider as
a manifestation of patronage. So the question that needs to
be asked is: Why, in the representation of its practitioners,
were all these forms of exchange treated as if they were
gifts?136 The hypothesis may be advanced that the annual
performance of the etrennesand gift giving in general allowed
late medieval nobility to counteract the values attendant on
the growth of a cash economy by stressing social functions
over economic aims. Court society viewed the handling of
money, though ever more widespread, as an indecorous gesture, which it affected to believe had not yet infiltrated the
most intimate corners of its own world. The fourteenthcentury poet Watriquet de Couvin, for instance, thought that
minstrels differed from servants in that they received clothes
and jewels as opposed to a salary.137And a similar sentiment
was echoed a century later by the Burgundian court historiographer Georges Chastellain, whose position was secure
enough that he could proudly reject monetary retribution for
his services: "you have shamed me by sending me money,
which I am not accustomed to taking or receiving, because I
do not wish to sell my service to good men for a price."138
Surely the etrennes were the kind of "symbolic alchemy"
whereby a ritual is produced in order to suppress the reality
of economic exchanges, a "sincere fiction of a disinterested
exchange" that wove people into a complex web of prestation
and counterprestation allowing social cohesion and competition to be expressed and perpetuated.139 To write them off
as a fraudulent exercise aimed at upholding a neofeudal
ideology of largesse would be missing the point entirely. The
operative distinction that set the etrennes apart from other
forms of exchange was, as in the potlatch or the Kula, not
between a disinterested and a pro forma gift. It was the
PRESENTS:
NEW YEAR'S
GIFTS
AT THE VALOIS
COURTS
619
difference between public and private interaction that mattered first and foremost. In his Welsche Gast, a successful
manual of good behavior for nobles written about 1215,
Thomasin von Zerclaere already made that point when he
contrasted open chivalric gifts with hidden monetary transactions.140 Alms, too, were supposed to be distributed without
publicity, at least when one complied with the evangelical
injunction, "But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand
know what thy right hand doeth" (Matt. 6:3). Gifts at court,
on the other hand, were required to be visible.141 Semipublic rituals like the annual offering of New Year's gifts
provided a festive forum in which the appropriateness of
things and actions could be evaluated. Its participants were
called on to play the role of eyewitnesses who could see,
discuss, broadcast, and remember what was given by whom to
whom, and of translators of the language of objects who
could discriminate between things that signified and those
that remained silent, who could read between the lines and
folds of what changed hands. But actions and participants
would have been nothing without the presence of artistically
contrived, precious, often clever objects. In that, the tangible
wishes of the etrennescarried with them something that abstract and value-neutral money never could: a productive
surplus of visibility.
Brigitte Buettner is the author of Boccaccio's "Des cleres et
nobles femmes": Systems of Signification in an Illuminated
Manuscript (1996). She is currentlypreparing a translation of
Guillebertde Metz's Description de la ville de Paris with Michael
T. Davis [Department of Art, Smith College, Northampton, Mass.
01063, bbuettne@smith.edu].
Frequently Cited Sources
Christine de Pisan, Le livre des fais et bonnes meurs du sage roy Charles V, ed.
Suzanne Solente, 2 vols. in 1 (1936; reprint, Geneva: Slatkine, 1977).
Bourdieu, Pierre, The Logic of Practice, trans. Richard Nice (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1990).
David, Henri, Philippe le Hardi, duc de Bourgogne et co-regentde France de 1392 t
1404: Le train somptuaired'un grand Valois (Dijon: Bernigaut et Privat, 1947).
Elias, Norbert, The CourtSociety,trans. EdmundJephcott (NewYork: Pantheon
Books, 1983).
Graves, Frances-Marjorie, Quelquespieces relatives t la vie de Louis d'Orleans et de
Valentine Visconti, safemme (Paris: Honore Champion, 1913).
Guiffrey, Jules, Inventaires deJean, duc de Berry (1401-1416), 2 vols. (Paris: E.
Leroux, 1894-96).
Hirschbiegel, Jan, "Etrennes: Untersuchungen zum hofischen Geschenkverkehr im spatmittelalterlichen Frankreich der Zeit Konig Karls VI
(1380-1422) am Beispiel der Neujahrsgeschenke," 2 vols., Ph.D. diss.,
University of Kiel, 1997.
Lightbown, Ronald W., Secular Goldsmiths' Work in Medieval France: A History,
Reports of the Research Committee of the Society of Antiquaries of London, vol. 36 (London: Society of Antiquaries, 1978).
Malinowski, Bronislaw, Argonauts of the WesternPacific: An Account of Native
Enterpriseand Adventure in the Archipelagoesof Melanesian New Guinea (1922;
reprint, Prospect Heights, Ill.: Waveland Press, 1984).
Mauss, Marcel, The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies,
trans. W. D. Halls (New York: W. W. Norton, 1990).
Meiss, Millard, 1967, French Painting in the Time of Jean de Bery: The Late
Fourteenth Century and the Patronage of the Duke, 2 vols. (London: Phaidon).
, 1974, FrenchPainting in the Time ofJean de Berry:The Limbourgsand Their
(New York:Braziller).
Contemporaries
Stratford,Jenny, "DasGoldene R6ssl und die Sammlungen des franzosischen
Konigshofs," in Das Goldene Rdssl: Ein Meisterwerkder Pariser Hofkunst um
1400, exh. cat., Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Munich, 1995 (Munich:
Hirmer, 1995), 36-51.
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All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
620
ART BULLETIN
DECEMBER
2001
VOLUME
LXXXIII
NUMBER
4
Notes
Many thanks to my research assistantsSarah Horowitz and Heather Egan; to
Smith College for financial assistance to purchase the photographs; to Suzanne Modica (Art Resource) for her invaluable efforts to get proper reproductions; to Perry Chapman, the anonymous Art Bulletinreaders, and Lory
Frankel;toJohn Moore, RichardLim, and, especially,Michael Gorrafor their
many suggestions to improve this text. I am most indebted to Jan Hirschbiegel, who, when we met by chance in 1998, generously shared the findings of
his almost completed doctoral dissertation with me. His work will be published shortly,and it will provide both a systematiccatalogue of etrennes
during
CharlesVI's reign and a sophisticated analysisof the social networksthat gift
giving enabled.
1. Mauss and Malinowski.To name but a few of the studies that followed:
Claude Livi-Strauss,TheElementary
Structuresof Kinship(1949), trans.James
Harle Bell, John Richard von Sturmer, and Rodney Needham, ed. (Boston:
Beacon, 1969); Marshall Sahlins, Stone Age Economics(New York: Aldine,
1972); Annette Weiner, InalienablePossessions:The Paradoxof Keeping-whileGiving(Berkeley:Universityof CaliforniaPress, 1992); and MauriceGodelier,
TheEnigmaof the Gift,trans. Nora Scott (Chicago: Chicago UniversityPress,
1999), with extensive bibliography.On Mauss,see now ChristopherBracken,
The PotlatchPapers:A ColonialCaseHistory(Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1997), with up-to-date bibliography. For an older but still valuable
assessment of Malinowski'scontribution, see Raymond Firth, "The Place of
Malinowskiin the Historyof Economic Anthropology,"in Man and Culture:
An
Evaluationof theWorkof BronislawMalinowski(London: Routledge and Kegan
Paul, 1957), 209-27.
2. Bourdieu;Jacques Derrida, GivenTime:I, Counterfeit
Money,trans. Peggy
Kamuf (Chicago:Universityof Chicago Press, 1992). To which can be added
Georges Bataille, "The Notion of Expenditure,"in Visionsof Excess:Selected
Writings,1927-1939, ed. and trans. Allan Stoekl with Carl R. Lovitt and
Donald M. Leslie Jr. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985),
116-29; and idem, The AccursedShare:An Essay on GeneralEconomy,trans.
Robert Hurley (New York:Zone Books, 1988), esp. vol. 1: 63-77. And on a
more popular level, Lewis Hyde, The Gift:Imaginationand the EroticLife of
(NewYork:Vintage, 1979). Helmuth Berking, Sociology
of Giving,trans.
Property
Patrick Camiller (London: Sage, 1999) offers the best summary of major
literature and issues.
3. With the notable exception of Natalie Zemon Davis, TheGiftin SixteenthCenturyFrance (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2000), published
during the revisions of this article.
4. Though there is to date no comprehensive study of works of art as gifts,
useful discussions for specific time periods or milieus can be found, for
instance, in MartinWarnke, TheCourtArtist:On theAncestry
of theModernArtist,
trans. David McLintock (Cambridge:Cambridge UniversityPress, 1993); as
and SubjectsofDesire
well as in Michael Camille, TheMedievalArtof Love:Objects
(NewYork:Abrams,1998), 50-71. See also the insightful article by Genevieve
Warwick,"GiftExchange and Art Collecting: Padre Sebastiano Resta'sDrawing Albums," Art Bulletin 79 (1997): 630-46; and the equally significant
observationsby Jean C. Wilson in Painting in Brugesat the Closeof theMiddle
Ages:Studiesin Societyand VisualCulture(UniversityPark, Pa.: Pennsylvania
State UniversityPress, 1998), 61-70.
5. Jean Starobinski,Largesse,trans.Jane MarieTodd (Chicago:Universityof
Chicago Press, 1997), 5.
6. Mauss, 13-14, 39-43. Though Mauss does not refer to him, his formulation is strikinglysimilarto the one given by Seneca in the De beneficiis(Moral
Essays,vol. 3, ed.John W. Basore, Loeb ClassicalLibrary,vol. 310 [Cambridge,
Mass.:HarvardUniversityPress, 1975], 13-17), who relates the "triple obligation" to the Three Graces. Seneca also foreshadows Derrida's critique of
reciprocitywhen he argues that a gift is not a gift when one expects a return
(ibid., 7 and passim).
7. There are no general accounts of gift giving in the medieval period. On
specific periods and problems, see, however, Stephen D. White, Custom,
France,1050-1150
Kinship,and Giftsto Saints:TheLaudatioParentumin Western
(Chapel Hill, N.C.: Universityof North CarolinaPress, 1988); Georges Duby,
and PeasantsfromtheSeventh
TheEarlyGrowthof theEuropeanEconomy:Warriors
to theTwelfthCentury,trans.HowardB. Clarke (Ithaca,N.Y.:Cornell University
of MedievalCulture,trans.
Press, 1974), 48-57; Aron J. Gurevich, Categories
G. L. Campbell (London: Routledge, 1985), 215-58; and Lester K. Little,
ReligiousPovertyand theProfitEconomyin MedievalEurope(Ithaca, N.Y.:Cornell
UniversityPress, 1978), 3-18 and passim. For a more wide-ranginghistorical
discussion, see Alain Guery, "Le roi depensier: Le don, la contrainte, et
l'origine du systeme financier de la monarchie francaise d'Ancien R6gime,"
Annales:Economies,
Societis,Civilisations39, no. 6 (1984): 1241-69.
8. Oleg Grabar,"The Shared Culture of Objects,"in ByzantineCourtCulture
from 829 to 1204, ed. Henry Maguire (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks,
1997), 117. Grabardiscusses an exceptional 15th-centuryIslamiccompilation
now available in English as the Bookof Giftsand Rarities(Kitabal Hadayawa
al-Tuhaf),ed. and trans. Ghada al-Hijjawial-Qaddumi (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1996). The same text is also at the center of
Anthony Cutler's investigation of diplomatic gifts, "Les 6changes de dons
entre Byzance et l'Islam (IXe-XIe si&cles),"Journal des Savants,Jan.-June
1996, 51-66. For a fine analysisof the visual properties of the armshellsand
necklaces and other valuables used in the Trobriand Kula, see Malinowski,
86-88, 172-73; and esp. Shirley C. Campbell, "AttainingRank:A Classification of KulaShell Valuables,"in TheKula:NewPerspectives
on MassimExchange,
ed. Jerry W. Leach and Edmund Leach (Cambridge:Cambridge University
Press, 1983), 229-48. On the properlyvisualdimension, see also the brief but
RenaissanceLitpenetrating remarksby PatriciaFumerton, CulturalAesthetics:
eratureand thePracticeofSocialOrnament(Chicago:Universityof Chicago Press,
1991), 35.
9. The only global historicalsurveyon NewYear'sfestivitiesremainsEug&ne
Muller's all-embracingLejour de l'an et les etrennes:
Histoiredesfeteset coutumes
de la nouvelleanneecheztous lespeuplesdans tous les temps(Paris:M. Dreyfous,
1881). Important,too, is Arnold van Gennep, TheRitesofPassage(1908), trans.
Monika B. Vizedom and Gabrielle L. Caffe (London: Routledge, 1960), esp.
vol. 1, pt. 8, Cycledes
178-79, and idem, Manueldefolklorefranfais
contemporain,
douzejours, De Noel aux Rois, by Bernadette Guichard (Paris: Picard, 1988),
3471-529. For a summary on gift giving, including on New Year's Day, in
Japan, see Harumi Befu, "Cyclesof GiftinginJapan,"in TheGiftin Culture,ed.
R6za Godula, special issue of PraceEtnograficzne
31 (1993): 25-34. Also Joy
and PowerinJapan and Other
Hendry, WrappingCulture:Politeness,Presentation,
Societies(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993).
10. William S. Walsh, Curiositiesof PopularCustomsand of Rites, Ceremonies,
and MiscellaneousAntiquities(1898; reprint, Detroit: Gale ReObservances,
search, 1966), 740-50; Ronald Hutton, TheStationsof theSun:A Historyof the
Ritual Yearin Britain(Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress, 1997), esp. 116-17;
Dani&leAlexandre-Bidon,"Folklore,fetes et traditionspopulaires de Noel et
du premier de l'an (XIVe-XVIes.)," Razo:Cahiersdu CentredEtudesMedievales
deNice8 (1988): 37-64; Francois-AndreIsambert,Lafin del'annee:Etudesurles
fetes de Noel et du NouvelAn a Paris, Centre d'Etudes Sociologiques, CNRS:
Travaux et Documents, vol. 5 (Paris:Societe des Amis du Centre d'Etudes
were outlawed in 1793 and then
Sociologiques, 1976). In France the etrennes
reestablished,at the pressing demands of merchants, under Napoleon. After
the Revolution, the most sought-after etrenneswere jewels crafted with fragments of the Bastille. In England, Oliver Cromwellhad similarlysuppressed a
custom too closely identified with ceremonial politics of the nobility (see
Muller [as in n. 9], 504-7). Edith Wharton's story "NewYear'sDay" (in the
collection OldNew York),set in the 1870s, describes how the New Year'sDay
ceremonial, observedby New Yorkfamilies of Dutch descent alone, fell out of
fashion. Wharton also would have been familiar with Victorian annual gift
books, typicallyoffered on Christmasand New Year'sDay, a genre that called
on the talents of many major writersand artists.
vol. 1, Structures,
11. ErichF. Schmidt,Persepolis,
Reliefs,Inscriptions
(Chicago:
UniversityPress of Chicago, 1953), esp. 82-90. For our purposes, useful, too,
are R. Ghirshman,"Apropos de Persepolis,"ArtibusAsiae20 (1957): 265-78;
Peter Calmeyer,"TextualSources for the Interpretationof Achaemian Palace
Decoration," Iran 18 (1980): 55-63; and Nicholas Cahill, "The Treasuryat
of ArchaePersepolis:Gift-Givingat the City of the Persians,"AmericanJournal
ology89 (July1985): 373-89. Even if Persepolis may not, as some think, have
been a "ritual city" for the performance of New Year ceremonies, many
scholars agree that the celebration of the Persian nawruzwas a major festival
during the pre-Islamicera in the Mesopotamianbasin. Ancient Near Eastern
art is rich with representations of gift giving.
12. On gift giving in Greece, see, however, the excellent collection edited
in
by ChristopherGill, Norman Postlethwaite,and RichardSeaford,Reciprocity
AncientGreece(Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress, 1998); as well as Lynette G.
in the Greek
Mitchell, GreeksBearingGifts:ThePublicUseof PrivateRelationships
World,435-323 BC (Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress, 1997). For Rome
and EarlyChristiandevelopments, I rely on Michel Meslin, Lafte deskalendes
romain:Etuded'unritueldeNouvelAn (Brussels:Latomus,
dejanvierdans l'empire
Uber Geschenke und Glickcommercium:
1970); Dorothea Baudy, "Strenarum
Museumfiir Philologie130,
wuinschezum r6mischen Neujahrsfest,"Rheinisches
no. 1 (1987): 1-28; and Martin P. Nilsson, "Studien zur Vorgeschichte des
19 (1918): 50-150.
Weihnachtsfestes,"ArchivfiirReligionswissenschaft
13. The 4th-centurypagan philosopher Libanios of Antioch wrote a lively
oration praising the Kalends of January,which also offers the most detailed
description of it. See Libanios, Discours,vol. 2, DiscoursII-X, ed. and trans.
Jean Martin (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1988), 187-202. The most influential
theoretical text for medieval thinkers was Cicero's De officiis(trans. Walter
Miller, Loeb ClassicalLibrary,vol. 30 [Cambridge,Mass.:HarvardUniversity
Press, 1975]).
14. Fedor Schneider, "UberKalendaeIanuariaund Martiaeim Mittelalter,"
20 (1920-21): 82-134, 360-410, with many
Archivfiir Religionswissenschaft
relevant sources. Also Edmund K. Chambers, The MediaevalStage (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1903), vol. 1, 228-73, and vol. 2, app. N; and E.
Vacandard,"L'idolatrieen Gaule au Vie et au Vile siecle," RevuedesQuestions
21 (1899): 424-54.
Historiques
15. Saint Augustine, Sermon 198, in Sermonson theLiturgicalSeasons,trans.
MarySarahMuldowney(New York:Fathersof the Church, 1959), 56. For the
original, see Migne, Pat. lat., vol. 38, col. 1025, as well as Sermon 129, vol. 39,
col. 2001, from which Jacobus de Voragine quotes a passage comprising a
reference to "devilishgifts"in the chapter "Circumcisionof the Lord"in his
popular GoldenLegend(Jacobusde Voragine, TheGoldenLegend:Readingson the
Saints, trans. William Granger Ryan [Princeton: Princeton UniversityPress,
1993], vol. 1, 77-78).
16. Walsh (as in n. 10), 733; and Meslin (as in n. 12), 114. For the original,
This content downloaded from 128.252.67.66 on Mon, 12 Jan 2015 08:21:57 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
PAST
ed. FredericusMaassen,in MonumentaGermaniae
see ConciliaAeviMerovingici,
Historica:Legum,SectioIII: Concilia,vol. 1 (Hannover: Impensis Bibliopolii
Hahniani, 1893), 126. See also Joannes Dominicus Mansi, SacrorumConciliorum Nova et AmplissimaCollectio(1901; reprint, Graz:Akademische Drucksund Verlagsanstalt,1960), vol. 9, 776, 912, for the first canon of the Council
of Auxerre, held in 578, which likewise prohibited the practice of giving
"devilish strenae."The changes in the liturgy are summarized in Fernand
chrgtienneet de liturgie
Cabrol and Henri Leclercq, Dictionnaired'archeologie
(Paris:Letouzey et Ane, 1907-53), vol. 3, s.v. "Circoncision(Fete de la)."
17. Migne, Pat. lat., vol. 89, cols. 809-18, for the complete transcriptionof
the proceedings, including a long list and explanation of beliefs and practices
that Carlomanwasasked to abjure.In the 9th century,the NorwegianjarlEric
stated that he gave gifts on New Year'sDay in imitation of a "princelycustom
in other lands" (quoted in Nilsson [as in n. 12], 112). Nida Louise Surbertowards
A Contribution
PoeticCorpus:
Meyer, GiftandExchangein theAnglo-Saxon
theRepresentation
of Wealth(Geneva:Slatkine, 1994), analyzesgift exchanges in
Old English and Norse poetry.
18. One peculiar aspect of Carolingianimperial gift-givingpracticewas that
the gifts presented by the magnates had to receive the stamp of approvalnot
(chamberlain) but also of the empress. See Hincmar of
only of the camerarius
Reims, De ordinepalatii, chap. 22 (ed. Thomas Gross and Rudolf Schieffer,
MonumentaGermaniae
Historica,vol. 8, Fontes iuris Germaniciantiqui in usum
scholarum separatim editi, vol. 3 [Hannover: Hahn, 1980]), available in
English in David Herlihy, ed., The Historyof Feudalism(1970; reprint, New
Jersey: Humanities Press, 1990), 219. The text is discussed by Joseph Fleckenstein, "Die Strukturdes Hofes Karlsdes Grossen im Spiegel von Hinkmars
83 (1976): 5-22. See
desAachenerGeschichtsvereins
De ordinepalatii,"Zeitschrift
aux rois de
sur les dons annuelsfaits anciennement
also Jean Lebeuf, Remarques
des
Francedela seconderace(1728), reprinted in ConstantLeber, ed., Collections
noticeset traitesparticuliers
meilleursdissertations,
relatifsa l'histoiredeFrance(Paris:
Dentu, 1838), vol. 7, 393-94.
19. Timothy Reuter, "Plunder and Tribute in the Carolingian Empire,"
Transactionsof the RoyalHistoricalSociety,5th ser., 35 (1985): 75-94; Philip
Grierson, "Commercein the Dark Ages: A Critique of the Evidence," Transactionsof the RoyalHistoricalSociety,5th ser., 9 (1959): 123-40; and Patrick
Geary, "Sacred Commodities: The Circulation of Medieval Relics," in The
ed. Arjun Appadurai
in CulturalPerspective,
SocialLife of Things:Commodities
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 169-91. In Mauss's view,
Germanicsocieties offer one of the most "typical"realizationsof the systemof
gift exchanges.
20. Richard C. Trexler, TheJourneyof the Magi: Meaningsin Historyof a
ChristianStory(Princeton: Princeton UniversityPress, 1997), with up-to-date
bibliography.
21. For a detailed study of the cultural meaning of the Old Germanicword
geba,see Gabriele von Olberg, "Gebe,gift, gabe:Uberlegungen zum Bezeichnungs- und BedeutungswandelmittelalterlicherRechtsworterim Sinnbereich
des Gebens, Schenkens, Tauschens, etc.," in Spracheund Recht:Beitrdgezur
zum 60. GedesMittelalters;
Festschrift
fiir Ruth Schmidt-Wiegand
Kulturgeschichte
burtstag,ed. KarlHauck et al. (New York:Walter de Gruyter,1986), 625-45.
Equally rich for cultural and linguistic insights is Jacob Grimm, "Ueber
Schenken und Geben" (1864), in KleinereSchriften,vol. 2, Abhandlungenzur
und Sittenkunde
(Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1965), 173-210. For the
Mythologie
Indo-Europeanroot *do-and its opposite meanings of "to give"and "to take,"
see the rich discussion by Emile Benveniste, "Gift and Exchange in the
Indo-EuropeanVocabulary,"in Problemsin GeneralLinguistics,trans. MaryE.
Meek (CoralGables,Fla.:Universityof MiamiPress, 1971), 271-80; and idem,
Languageand Society,trans.ElizabethPalmer (CoralGables,Fla.:
Indo-European
Universityof Miami Press, 1973), 53-100.
22. TheLombard
Laws,trans.KatherineFischer Drew (Philadelphia:University of PennsylvaniaPress, 1973), 175.
23. As, for instance, in Gregoryof Tours, Historyof theFranks,trans. Lewis
Thorpe (Harmondsworth:Penguin, 1974), vol. 4, 29: ".. . although he [King
Sigibert] could not beat them [the Huns] in battle, he managed to suborn
them later on by bribery [superavitartedonandi]."Discussed in the excellent
article by Jiirgen Hannig, "Arsdonandi: Zur Okonomie des Schenkens im
friheren Mittelalter,"Geschichte
in Wissenschaft
und Unterricht
37, no. 3 (1986):
149-62.
24. On largesse in courtlyliterature,the basic study remains MarianParker
Whitney, "Queen of MediaevalVirtues:Largesse,"in VassarMediaevalStudies,
ed. ChristabelForsythFiske (New Haven:Yale UniversityPress, 1923), 183215. Helpful, too, is Judith Kellogg, MedievalArtistryand Exchange:Economic
Institutions,Society,and LiteraryFormin OldFrenchNarrative(New York:Peter
Lang, 1989). For the powerful theme of the "rashboon," or don contraignant,
which required that someone be bound by the promise to grant a gift without
knowing its content beforehand, see Jean Frappier, "Le motif du 'don contraignant' dans la litterature du Moyen Age," in Amourcourtoiset tableronde
(Geneva: Droz, 1973), 225-64. He followed Mauss in interpreting it as an
attenuatedvestige of Celtic potlatch customs. See MarcelMauss,"Surun texte
de Posidonius: Le suicide, contre-prestationsupreme," and Henri Hubert,
"Le systeme des prestations totales dans les litteratures celtiques," Revue
celtique42 (1925): 324-29, and 330-35.
25. In his Sermoin circumcisione
Domini,Maurice de Sully, the 12th-century
bishop of Paris,condemns those "badChristians"who observe the Kalendsin
very much the same terms as in Early Christian literature (Alan Charles
PRESENTS:
NEW YEAR'S
GIFTS
AT THE VALOIS
COURTS
621
Homily[Oxford:Blackwell,
Robson, Mauriceof Sullyand theMedievalVernacular
1952], 87). Burchard of Worms (d. 1025) includes New Year's rituals in the
chapter "On MagicalArts"in his influential treatise, the Decretum,on canon
law (Pat. Lat., vol. 140, cols. 960-61). From then on they became a standard
item in questionnaires used for the interrogation of presumed witches.
26. LegrandRobertde la languefranfaise,2d ed., s.v. "etrenne."Also Frederic
Godefroy,Dictionnairedel'anciennelanguefranfaise,et de tousses dialectesdu IXe
au XVesiecles(Paris:Librairiedes Sciences et des Arts, 1937-38), s.v. "estrene,"
Worterbuch
and Tobler-Lommatzsch
(Wiesbaden:F. Steiner, 1955),
altfranzosisches
s.v. "estreine."In addition to a New Year'sgift, the word designated any first
use of a thing or a person, such as the first product sold by a merchant on a
given day or, indeed, the defloration of a woman, "avoirl'etrenne d'une
femme." The English equivalent is "handsel."According to the OxfordEnglish
Dictionary,2d ed., s.v. "handsel,"the oldest meaning of the word, ca. 1200, was
simplythat of a good omen, a luckypresage. Significantly,it was in the course
of the 14th century that "handsel"took on the exact meaning of etrenne.
27. According to Hirschbiegel, vol. 1, 47, the first and isolated surviving
documentaryevidence of an etrennegift in a court setting is to be found in a
royal payment of 1304, followed by a list of New Year'sgifts made by Edward
II in 1315.
28. Louis Douet-d'Arcq,Choixdepi&esineditesrelativesau regnede CharlesVI
(Paris:Jules Renouard, 1863-64), vol. 2, 278.Throughout the Middle Ages,
the favoritedate for the beginning of the year was March25, although at least
four other dates were in use, including Easter,adopted in France in the 13th
century. It was only in the 16th century,with the confirmation of the Gregorian calendar, that the year was made to start officiallyon January 1, at least
in Roman Catholic countries. Protestantcountries, particularlyEngland and
its colonies, followed the older date until 1752.
29. Lightbown, 107. King Rene set up a professionallyoutfitted goldsmith's
workshop in a small room adjoining the inner chambers of his chateau at
Angers.
30. The custom is now relativelywell studied for Tudor England, in part
because many New Year Gift Rolls survive. The reference work is Arthur
Jefferies Collins, Jewelsand Plate of QueenElizabethI: The Inventoryof 1574
(London: BritishMuseum, 1955). Valuable,too, are David Starkey,ed., Henry
VIII:A EuropeanCourtin England(NewYork:CrossRiverPress, 1991), 126-35;
and Lisa M. Klein, 'Your Humble Handmaid: Elizabethan Gifts of Needle50, no. 1 (1997): 459-93; as well as Fumerton (as
work,"RenaissanceQuarterly
in n. 8), 29-66, with particular emphasis on the giving of aristocraticchildren.
31. For divinatorypractices and other "pagan"customs performed on New
Year's Day, see Hutton (as in n. 10), 7-13, who adds that New Year's gifts
appear "in every full set of household accounts survivingfrom the period
1400-1550" (15). Full of fascinatingdata is the ethnographic compilation in
desDeutschenAberglaubens
Hanns Bachtold-Staubli,ed., Handworterbuch
(Berlin: Walter de Gruyter,1927-42), s.v. "Neujahr."
32. Gilbert Ouy, "Paris,l'un des principaux foyers de 1'Humanisme en
Europe au debut du XVe siecle," Bulletinde la Societedel'Histoirede Pariset de
1967-68: 71-98; idem, "L'Humanismeet les mutations polil'Ile-de-France,
tiques et sociales en France au XIVe et XVe siecles,"in L'Humanismefranfais
au debutde la Renaissance,Colloque International de Tours, 1971 (Paris:J.
Vrin, 1973), 27-44; and generally the publicationsof the CNRSUnit in Paris,
Culture Ecrite du Moyen-AgeTardit (CEMAT).On Jean de Berry'santiquarian tastes, see Meiss, 1974, 19-65; and Herman T. Colenbrander, "The
Limbourg Brothers:The Joyauxof Constantine and Heraclius, the TresRiches
Heures,and the Visit of the ByzantineEmperorManuel II Palaeologus to Paris
in 1400-1402," in Flandersin a EuropeanPerspective:
ManuscriptIllumination
around1400 in Flandersand Abroad,ed. Maurits Smeyers and Bert Cardon,
Proceedings of the International Colloquium, Leuven 1993 (Louvain:
Peeters, 1995), 171-84.
33. Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale de France (BNF) ms lat. 7907A, fol. 2v.
See Meiss, 1974, 41-54, 347-50. On Martin Gouge, see Guiffrey,vol. 1, nos.
936, 937, 969, 993; Meiss, 1967, 48, 108, 189, 298; and Meiss, 1974, 249, 283,
336, 347. He and Berry exchanged many other kinds of etrennes.
34.Jacques Heers, Fetes des fous et carnavals (Paris: Fayard, 1983), esp.
135-41, 208-9; Roger Vaultier, Lefolklorependantla guerrede CentAns d'apres
les lettresde rimissiondu Tresordes Chartes(Paris:LibrairieGuenegaud, 1965),
88-97; Henri Rey-Flaud,Le charivari:Les rituelsfondamentauxde la sexualite
(Paris:Payot, 1985), 27-46; and Natalie Zemon Davis, Societyand Culturein
EarlyModernFrance(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1975), 97-123. In
addition, the more specific discussions by Ingvild Salid Gilhus, "Carnivalin
Religion: The Feast of Fools in France,"Numen37, fasc. 1 (1990): 24-52; and
and
GregoryLubkin, "Christmasat the Courtof Milan:1466-1476," in Florence
Milan: Comparisons
and Relations,ed. Craig H. Smyth and Gian Carlo Garfagnini, Villa I Tatti Series, no. 11 (Florence: Nuova Italia, 1989), 257-70. On
the negative meaning of gesticulatioin medieval culture, see Jean-Claude
Schmitt, La raisondesgestesdans l'occidentmedieval(Paris:Gallimard,1990).
35. In 1386, for instance, the "fool's bishop" and eight minstrels received
respectively6 and 100 francsfor having performed onJanuary 1 for Philip the
Bold's solace. Bernard Prost and Henri Prost, Inventairesmobiliers
et extraitsdes
comptesdes ducs de Bourgognede la maison de Valois(1363-1477) (Paris: E.
Leroux, 1902-4, 1908-13), vol. 2, no. 1356; and Hirschbiegel, vol. 2, no. 169.
36. Among the considerable literature on the political situation in France
around 1400, particularlyuseful are R. C. Famiglietti, RoyalIntrigue:Crisisat
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622
ART BULLETIN
DECEMBER
2001
VOLUME
LXXXIII
NUMBER
4
the Court of Charles VI, 1392-1420 (New York: AMS Press, 1986); Bernard
Guenhe, Un meurtre,une societd:L'assassinat du duc d'Orldans, 23 novembre1407
(Paris:Gallimard, 1992); Colette Beaune, TheBirthof an Ideology:Mythsand
France,trans. Susan Ross Huston (Berkeley:
Symbolsof Nation in Late-Medieval
Universityof CaliforniaPress, 1991); as well as the two wide-rangingbiographies by FrancoiseAutrand, CharlesVI:Lafolie du roi (Paris:Fayard,1986) and
CharlesV: Le Sage (Paris:Fayard,1994).
37. Paris, BNF ms fr. 2810, fol. 226r. Millard Meiss, FrenchPainting in the
Time of Jean de Berry:The BoucicautMaster (London: Phaidon, 1968), 39,
116-22; Guiffrey,vol. 2, no. 1005;Hirschbiegel,vol. 1, 72, and vol. 2, no. 1582,
as well as vol. 1, 132-36, for other politically motivated gifts. Jean de Berry
replied a few months later with the return gift of a Miroirhistorial(the French
translation of Vincent of Beauvais, Speculumhistoriale;see Meiss, 1967, 49).
was recorded within the
Exceptionally, the transferof the Livredesmerveilles
pages of the manuscript itself by Berry's secretary Nicolas Flamel. Marco
Polo's description of the Mongol New Year is most readily available in the
translation of his Travelsby Ronald Latham (Harmondsworth: Penguin
Books, 1978), 138-39.
38. The most complete, though largely descriptive, study is by Evelyn Bein der PariserBuchmalerei
nesch, "Dedikations-und Prasentationsminiaturen
vom spiten Dreizehnten bis zum friihen FuinfzehntenJahrhundert,"Ph.D.
und
diss., Vienna University, 1987. See also Joachim Prochno, Das Schreiberin derdeutschenBuchmalerei
Dedikationsbild
(Leipzig:Teubner, 1929); and Karl
Julius Holzknecht, LiteraryPatronagein the MiddleAges (Philadelphia: n.p.,
1923), 165-69. For Burgundian examples, CyrielStroo, "BourgondischePresentatietaferelen:Boeken en Politiek ten Tijde van Filips de Goede en Karel
ed. J.M.M.Hermans and K. van
de Stoute,"in Boekenin de lateMiddeleeuwen,
der Hoek (Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 1994), 285-98; and the incisive comments on examples in early printed books by CynthiaJ. Brown, Poets,Patrons,
and Printers:Crisisof Authorityin Late MedievalFrance(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell
UniversityPress, 1995), 99-151.
39. Francois Avril, "Le Livre des merveilles,manuscrit Francais 2810 de la
Bibliotheque Nationale de France," in MarcoPolo: "Lelivre des merveilles"
(Lucerne:FaksimileVerlag, 1996), 291-324; as well as Marie-ThereseGousset,
"Un programme iconographique concu parJean sans Peur?"in ibid., 353-64.
I am most grateful to FrancoisAvrilfor having given me permission to look at
the actual manuscript and for having discussed the frontispiece with me.
40. The lengthy admonition issued on this occasion by the city and the
a by Henri Moranville, "Remontrancesde
University of Paris was published
l'Universite et de la Ville de Paris Charles VI sur le gouver ement du
de lEcole des Chartes51 (1890): 420-42. Discussed in
royaume,"Bibliotheque
RichardVaughan,John theFearless:TheGrowthof BurgundianPower(NewYork:
Barnes and Noble, 1966), 98-102. Similar sentiments, in particular on the
excessive distribution of "private"gifts, are articulated in Philippe de
Mezieres's influential political allegory Le songedu vieilpelerin,completed in
de
1393.Jacques Lemaire, Lesvisionsde la vie de courdans la litteraturefrancaise
la fin du MoyenAge (Paris:Klincksieck,1994), 184 n. 54, estimates that John
the Fearless gave more etrennesto his courtiers than all other princes combined, and Hirschbiegel, vol. 1, 139, confirms that the Burgundian dukes as
well as various members of their courts were the most lavish givers, followed
by the Orleans family.
41. Wilson (as in n. 4), 13-84. Or as Stephen White (as in n. 7), 152, aptly
puts it: "what nobles strived for was not to maximize their wealth but to
maximize prestige by controlling the circulation of wealth," which echoes
Chris A. Gregory, Giftsand Commodities
(London: Academic Press, 1982), 51,
for whom the "gifttransactor""maximisesnet outgoings," whereas the capitalist "maximisesnet incomings." See also the classic analysisof "courtrationality"by Elias, 66-77, 92-93.
42. Mauss, 72: "To give is to show one's superiority, to be more, to be
higher in rank, magister."He also refers to the itrennesas an example of
excessive giving in his own day (66). Maurice Rey, Lesfinances royalessous
G6nrrale de l'Ecole
CharlesVI:Les causesdu deficit1388-1413, Bibliotheque
Pratiquedes Hautes-Etudes,6th sec. (Paris:S.E.V.P.E.N.,1965), 77, shows that
the French royal household suffered from a permanent deficit of about 10 to
12 percent. Roger Sablonier, "Zurwirtschaftlichen Situation des Adels im
Verofed. H. Appelt,
Sphtmittelalter,"in AdeligeSachkulturdesSpitmittelalters,
fentlichungen des Institutsfir MittelalterlicheRealienkunde Osterreichs,no.
5 (Vienna:OsterreichischeAkademie der Wissenschaften,1982), 9-34, offers
an excellent overview of the structural changes in patterns of income and
expenditure among late medieval nobility.
43. Hirschbiegel, vol. 1, 57, 98.
44. David, 55-64, 148-52, summarizedin RichardVaughan, PhiliptheBold:
TheFormationof theBurgundianState (Cambridge, Mass.:HarvardUniversity
Press, 1962), 234-35.
45. LLon-Emmanuel-Simon-Joseph de Laborde, Les ducs de Bourgogne:Etudes
sur les lettres, les arts et l'industrie pendant le XVe siecle et plus particulierementdans
les Pays-Bas et le Duch de Bourgogne (Paris: Plon, 1849-52), vol. 3, 215, no. 6030.
See, however, Hirschbiegel, vol. 2, no. 1350, who quotes another document
the sum given is considerably
pertaining to the same acquisition, in which
smaller. As costly as they could be, the etrennesnevertheless pale when comin n.
pared with the riches enumerated in the Bookof Giftsand Rarities(as of 8).
list
gifts
Paragraph 46 (84), for instance, contains a perhaps hyperbolic
which
to her
presented on New Year's Day 895 by a ruler's daughter fiance,
silver
included, among other precious objects, forty gold trays and twenty
trays,each of which held ten perfume-laden pomanders. The livre (tournois)
was solely a money of account, equivalentin value to the gold franc; the other
main currencywas the ecu, worth a little more than the livre.
46. All of these figures have to be considered the minimum amount, since
not all gifts or acquisitionswere recorded. See Guiffrey,vol. 1, XXXVIIand
LV n. 1; Meiss, 1967, 48; and Hirschbiegel, vol. 1, 72, with some variationsin
the figures.
47. Etrennesaside, only two manuscriptsare known to have been exchanged
by them: a psalter in 1400 and one of the three copies of the Fleurdeshistoires
dela terred'Orient,which Philip the Bold had bought fromJacques Raponde in
dePhilippele Hardi,duc deBourgogne
1403. PatrickM. de Winter, La bibliotheque
(1364-1404) (Paris:Editions du CNRS, 1985), 58-59.
48. Warnke (as in n. 4), 205, who adds that the following year, however,
Sforzasent three illuminated manuscriptsto the duke of Savoy.According to
Hirschbiegel, tapestriesfared not much better; the only six that are recorded
were given by the Burgundiandukes, rulersof the cityof Arras(vol. 1, 120 and
ff., for other gifts of textiles, articles of clothing, and various accessories).
49. Among others, he gave a Grandeschroniquesde France,qualified as
"beautiful,"to Philip the Bold as anetrenne in 1396, in return for which he
obtained silverplate of a value of 200 francs. De Winter (as in n. 47), 166, no.
175; Hirschbiegel, vol. 1, 75, and vol. 2, nos. 600, 719. See also Muriel J.
Hughes, "TheLibraryof Philip the Bold and Margaretof Flanders,FirstValois
Duke and Duchess of Burgundy,"Journalof MedievalHistory4 (1978): 169, no.
10.
50. On Jacques as well as his brother Dine Raponde and their involvement
in the book trade, see Brigitte Buettner, Boccaccio's"Desclereset noblesfemmes":
Systemsof Significationin an IlluminatedManuscript,College Art Association
Monograph on the Fine Arts,vol. 53 (Seattle:Universityof WashingtonPress,
1996), 7-15; and Leon Mirot, EtudesLucquoises(Paris:n.p., 1930), 79-169.
51. The best account on jewelry is by Ronald W. Lightbown, Mediaeval
EuropeanJewellerywith a Catalogueof the Collectionin the Victoriaand Albert
Museum(London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1992). According to Hirschbiegel, vol. 1, 105-14, 43 percent of gifts belonged to this category.
52. Stratford,47, ill. 23.
53. A 19th-centuryNew Year's saying in Tennessee still enjoined, "always
make sure the salt-shakeris full on New Year's Day, and you will prosper
throughout the year" (quoted in Hennig Cohen and TristramPotter Coffin,
eds., TheFolkloreof AmericanHolidays[Detroit: Gale Research, 1987], 15).
54. For the first, Guiffrey,vol. 1, no. 689; for the second, David, 73. Objects
imitating books were quite fashionable. A tiny 16th-centuryenameled pendant in the shape of a book can be seen in the WaltersArt Gallery,Baltimore.
55. Lightbown, 106, 50-61, for the best description of the ever more
complex forms devised by goldsmiths. See also the excellent contribution by
Helmut Hundsbichler, GerhardJaritz,and ElisabethVavra,"Tradition?Stagnation? Innovation? Die Bedeutung des Adels fir die Spitmittelalterliche
Sachkultur,"in Appelt (as in n. 42), 34-72.
56. Christine de Pizan, Le livredes troisvertus,ed. CharityCannon Willard
(Paris:Honore Champion, 1989), 79; trans.as TheTreasureof theCityofLadies;
or, TheBookof the ThreeVirtues,by Sarah Lawson (Harmondsworth:Penguin,
1985), 78-79. This comes in a passage where Christine considers how a lady
ought to repay a gift made by a "poor or simple person."On the appreciation
of wit in court society, Lee Patterson offers perceptive comments in "Court
Politics and the Invention of Literature:The Case of SirJohn Clanvowe,"in
Identities,and
Cultureand History,1350-1600: Essaysin English Communities,
Writing,ed. David Aers (Detroit:Wayne State UniversityPress, 1992), 7-41.
du MoyenAgeet de la Renaissance,2 vols.
57. Victor Gay, Glossaire
archeologique
(Nendeln, Liechtenstein: KrausReprint, 1971-74), s.v.'jouel."
58. Guiffrey,vol. 1, no. 994; Meiss, 1967, 48; Hirschbiegel,vol. 2, no. 1537,
and no. 1507 for the "47 gold coins from his own collection" that the duke
once with
gave as countergift. Paul de Limbourg presented the duke at least
a "real"gift for his etrennes,a little salt made of agate and gold (Meiss, 1974,
78; Guiffrey,vol. 1, no. 1211; Hirschbiegel, vol. 2, no. 1681). Estrangetestill
defines the most arrestingmoder example of artistic etrennes,Arcimboldo's
the
allegorical portraits of Emperor Maximilian II as the Elements and
Seasons, presented on New Year's Day 1569. See Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann's engaging discussionsof Arcimboldo'spaintingsas "seriousjokes,"esp.
"Arcimboldo'sSeriousJokes: 'Mysteriousbut Long Meaning,"'in TheVerbal
ed. Karl-Ludwig
and the Visual:Essaysin Honorof WilliamSebastianHeckscher,
and idem,
Selig and Elizabeth Sears (New York:Italica Press, 1990), 59-86;
"Arcimboldo'sImperial Allegories: G. B. Fonteo and the Interpretation of
39, no. 4 (1976): 275-96,
Arcimboldo'sPainting,"Zeitschriftfiir
Kunstgeschichte
with references to New Year's poems offered to the emperor.
59. Excellent exhibition catalogue with equally superb illustrationsedited
derPariserHoJkunst
by Reinhold Baumstark,Das GoldeneRissl:Ein Meisterwerk
um 1400, Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Munich (Munich: Hirmer, 1995).
The full entry of CharlesVI's still unpublished inventoryis transcribedon 53
(Paris, BNF ms fr. 21446, fol. 24r).
"Kinderals Nothelfer: Parergon iber das soge60. Willibald
Sauerl,nder,
nannte Goldene R6ssl," in ibid., 90-101.
61. Ormonde M. Dalton, The Royal Cup in the BritishMuseum(London:
British Museum, 1924); Lesfastes du gothique:Le siicle de CharlesV, exh. cat.,
Grand Palais,Paris, 1981-82, no. 213; andJenny Stratford,TheBedfordInventories:The WorldlyGoodsofJohn,Dukeof Bedford,Regentof France(1389-1435)
78(London: Society of Antiquariesof London, 1993), 319-25. Lightbown,
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PAST
82, dates the cup to the 1390s, but the style conforms well to miniaturesmade
in the late 1370s and early 1380s.
62. Lightbown, 13, for letters patent issued by CharlesV in 1369 asking that
"the plate that he is sending and will send to his said Mint shall be converted
into deniers of white silver."The fate of Charles VI's collection is vividly
summarized by Philippe Henwood, "Administrationet vie des collections
d'orfevrerie royale sous le regne de CharlesVI (1380-1422)," Bibliotheque
de
l'EcoledesChartes138 (1980): 179-215. KathrynBrush, "The Receptajocalium
in
the Wardrobe Book of William de Norwell, 12 July 1338 to 27 May 1340,"
Journal of MedievalHistory10 (1984): 249-70, discusses Edward III's use of
jewels and plate as gifts to forge alliances and to secure loans to finance his
militarycampaigns against the French. For more general considerations, see
DavidHerlihy,"TreasureHoardsin the ItalianEconomy,960-1139," Economic
HistoryReview,2d ser., 10, no. 1 (1957): 1-14, and the interesting comments
by Gu6ry (as in n. 7), 1254-59, on the emergence of taxes, that is, of a
unilateral logic of imposition to replace the logic of exchange.
63. Richard Krautheimer,"Ghibertiand Master Gusmin,"Art Bulletin29
(1947): 25-35.
64. See, however, Hannig (as in n. 23), 156, for a 12th-centurypotlatch
allegedly witnessed by Geoffrey of Vigeois: during a court assembly,a knight
scattered silver coins into a plowed field, while another used wax candles to
cook, and yet another burned thirty of his horses alive. Also Richard C.
Florence(1980; reprint, Ithaca, N.Y.:Cornell
Trexler, PublicLifein Renaissance
UniversityPress, 1991), 325-26, for the practice of selling gifts. Levi-Strauss
(as in n. 1), 56, observes that the present-dayequivalent to the ritual destruction of objects is not destruction per se but the uselessnessand duplication of
gifts.
65. Henwood (as in n. 62), 186-87. An example of this would be the large
figural amethyst that CharlesVI took from a gold image to be given to Jean
de Berryin 1406 (Guiffrey,vol. 1, no. 607; Hirschbiegel, vol. 2, no. 1370).
66. Beginning in 1389, Philip the Bold gave to his brother Jean de Berry
exclusivelygolden and bejeweled three-dimensionalobjects of religious subjects. See Bernard Prost, "Les arts a la cour du duc de Berry," Gazettedes
3d ser., 14 (1895): 342-49; David, 149; and Hirschbiegel, vol. 1,
Beaux-Arts,
114-19. For Godelier (as in n. 1), 94-95, 108-70, gifts are inherently dual in
nature: on the one hand, they are inalienable, like sacred objects; on the
other, alienable, like commodities.
67. Among the few exceptions is a horn of a unicorn given to Jean de Berry
by his treasurerMac6 Heron (Guiffrey,vol. 1, no. 1138; Hirschbiegel, vol. 2,
no. 1694). A similarobject was sent to the duke that same year by Pope John
XXIII, who a few years earlier had given him a ewer made of porcelain
(Guiffrey, vol. 1, nos. 1139, 830). A thorough, up-to-date study of Valois
patronage remains a desideratum. See, however, the brief remarksbyJulius
von Schlosser,DieKunst-und Wunderkammern
derSpdtrenaissance:
Ein Beitragzur
Geschichte
desSammelwesens
(Leipzig:Klinkhardtund Biermann, 1908), 22-33.
68. Startlingly,a child was offered as a New Year'sgift to Queen Elizabeth
in 1561 (Fumerton [as in n. 8], 43). Mauss'sconcept ofprestation(1-7, 78-83)
has been rendered in Hall's new translationby "service."Because it is closer
to the original and in common use in the anthropological literature, I think
it preferable to keep "prestation,"as in the older translationby Ian Cunnison
(The Gift:Formsand FunctionsofExchangein ArchaicSocieties[New York:W. W.
Norton, 1967], 1-5, 76-81).
69. Lestvangiles desQuenouilles,ed. MadeleineJeay (Paris:Vrin, 1985), 93,
163 n. 629.
70. Graves,179; and Hirschbiegel, vol. 1, 127, and vol. 2, no. 1086.
71. Another example would be the large gold nef,encrusted with gems and
pearls, costing 12,000 ecus, more than half extracted from the royal coffers,
that Philip the Bold offered himself in 1404. See David, 152; Hirschbiegel,vol.
2, no. 1275.
72. Weiner (as in n. 1), 33-40. See also the evocative description by Duby
(as in n. 7), 51-53, of medieval kings as "principalaccumulators"and displayers of wealth in parallel to their role of models of "necessarygenerosity."
73. Sir Gawainand the GreenKnight:A Dual-LanguageVersion,ed. and trans.
WilliamVantuono (New York:Garland, 1991), lines 66-68.
74. Pierre Salmon, Reponsesd CharlesVI et Lamentationau roi sur son itat,
Paris, BNF ms fr. 23279, fol. 53r. This is but one of four presentation scenes
included in this manuscript.Discussed by Meiss (as in n. 37), 124-25; Christine Lapostolle, "Temps,lieux, et espaces: Quelques images des XIVe et XVe
siecles," Medievales18 (1990): 101-20; and esp. Anne D. Hedeman, Of Counselorsand Kings:The ThreeVersionsof PierreSalmon's"Dialogues"
(Urbana, Ill.:
Universityof Illinois Press, 2001).
75. Elias, 104, wrote that "the individual is alwaysobserved in court society
in his social context, as a personin relationto others."
76. Fernand Bournon, "L'H6telroyal de Saint-Pol,"Memoires
de la Societede
l'HistoiredePariset de 'Ile-de-France
6 (1879): 54-179.
77. London, British Libraryms Harley 4431, fol. 3r. Meiss, 1974, 38-39,
293-96. Sandra Hindman, "The Iconography of Queen Isabeau de
Baviere
(1410-1415): An Essayin Method," GazettedesBeaux-Arts
102 (1983): 102-10,
has shown that many details of this interior are historicallyaccurate.
78. This is all the more notable considering that a noblewoman's staff,
including Queen Isabeau's, was mostly male, save for the ladies-in-waiting
(and some categories of servants), the only ones Christine de Pizan has
included here. Deborah McGrady,"WhatIs a Patron? Benefactors and Authorship in Harley4431, Christinede Pizan's Collected Works,"in Christinede
PRESENTS:
NEW YEAR'S
GIFTS
AT THE VALOIS
COURTS
623
Pizan and the Categoriesof Difference,ed. Marilynn Desmond (Minneapolis:
Universityof Minnesota Press, 1998), 195-214, discusses the way in which the
manuscriptvalorizesthe author at the expense of the patron. Later all-female
presentation scenes, possiblyinspired by Christinede Pizan, are examined by
MyraD. Orth, "DedicatingWomen: ManuscriptCulture in the French Renaissance, and the Cases of Catherine d'Amboise and Anne de Graville,"
Journalof EarlyBookSociety1, no. 1 (1997): 17-47.
79. Richard Firth Green, Poetsand Princepleasers:
Literatureand the English
Courtin the Late MiddleAges (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980),
38-70; and the fine discussion by Simon Thurley, TheRoyalPalacesof Tudor
and CourtLife, 1460-1547 (New Haven: Yale University
England:Architecture
Press, 1993), esp. 122-25.
80. MaryWhiteley, "Royaland Ducal Palaces in France in the Fourteenth
and Fifteenth Centuries:Interior, Ceremony, and Function,"in Architecture
et
d lafin du MoyenAgeet d
vie sociale:L'organisation
desgrandesdemeures
interieure
la Renaissance,
ed.Jean Guillaume (Paris:Picard, 1994), 47-63; and idem, "La
grosse tour de bois de Vincennes, r6sidence de CharlesV,"BulletinMonumental 152, no. 3 (1994): 313-35. For a similaranalysisof the Coudenberg Palace
in Brusselsrebuilt under Philip the Good, see KristaDe Jonge, "Der herz6gliche und kaiserliche Palast zu Brussels und die Entwicklungdes h6fischen
Zeremoniells im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert,"Jahrbuchdes Zentralinstituts
fur
5-6 (1989-90): 253-82.
Kunstgeschichte
81. Bernhard Schimmelpfennig, "Admaiorempapegloriam:La fonction des
pieces dans le palais des Papes a Avignon,"in Guillaume (as in n. 80), 25-46.
The best surveysof late medievalsecular architectureare by Uwe Albrecht,Der
Adelssitzim Mittelalter:
Studienzum Verhiltnisvon Architektur
und Lebensform
in
Nord-und Westeuropa
(Munich:Deutscher Kunstverlag,1995) and VonderBurg
zumSchloss:Franzosische
Schlossbaukunst
im Spitmittelalter
(Worms:Wernersche
Verlagsgesellschaft,1986).
82. MaryWhiteley,"LeLouvrede CharlesV: Disposition et fonctions d'une
residence royale,"Revuede l'Art97 (1992): 60-71; and idem, "Deux escaliers
royauxdu XIVe siecle: Les 'Gransdegrez' du palais de la Cite et la 'grande viz'
du Louvre,"BulletinMonumental147, no. 2 (1989): 132-54. See also Maurice
Berry and Michel Fleury with B6atrice de Andia, L'Enceinteet le Louvrede
PhilippeAuguste(Paris:DAAP, 1998).
83. The gender distinction is to be found in many other coeval palaces,
such as in Louis of Orleans's H6tel de Boheme, refurbished shortly before
1400. Claude Rib6ra-Perville,"Les h6tels parisiens de Louis Ier d'Orleans
(1372-1407)," Bulletinde la Societede l'Histoirede Paris et de lIle-de-France
107
(1981): 23-70; and for another example, Simone Roux, "R6sidencesprincieres parisiennes: L'exemple de l'h6tel de Bourbon, fin XIVe-milieu XVe
siecle," in FiirstlicheResidenzenim Spitmittelalterlichen
Europa,ed. Hans Patze
and Werner Paravicini (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1991), 75-101. See also
interesting remarks by Catherine Wilkinson Zerner, "Women'sQuarters in
Spanish RoyalPalaces,"in Guillaume (as in n. 80), 127-36; and Elias, 49-51.
The proceedings of a recent conference on "women'sspaces"in the Middle
Ages are published in DumbartonOaksPapers52 (1998), while another is
summarized by J6rg Wettlaufer and Jan Hirschbiegel on "Das Frauenzimmer-La Chambre des Dames," Mitteilungender Residenzen-Kommission
der
Akademiedes Wissenschaften
zu G6ttingen8, no. 2 (1998): 65-71.
84. See Georges Duby, ed., A Historyof PrivateLife,vol. 2, Revelationsof the
MedievalWorld,trans.Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge,Mass.:HarvardUniversityPress, 1988) for a general discussion of new definitions of privacy,as
well as the observationsby Elias,51-53, on the distinction between appartement
desocieteand appartement
deparade.ChristopherDyer, Standardsof Livingin the
LaterMiddleAges:SocialChangein England,c. 1200-1520 (Cambridge:Cambridge UniversityPress, 1989), 98-106, connects the increase in the number
of rooms, each with a different function, to the general trend in the later
Middle Ages of intensive rather than extensive investments, in this case of
having fewer but more commodious dwellings.
85. Quoted in Patterson (as in n. 56), 18.
86. The interface between gifts, display,and record keeping is illustratedin
a letter byJohn Husseydescribingthe receipt of NewYear'sgifts by HenryVIII
in 1538 in which he says that the king "stood leaning against the cupboard,
receiving all things; and Mr Tuke at the end of the same cupboard, penning
all things that were presented";quoted in Starkey(as in n. 30), 126.
87. Chantilly, Mus6e Cond6 ms 65, fol. lv. Meiss, 1974, 188-90, already
suggested a link between the miniature and a "ceremony,connected with the
presentation of the book, with New Year."
88. Hirschbiegel,vol. 2, no. 1345. An enlarged view of the nefin theJanuary
page is reproduced in Francoise Robin, "Le luxe de la table dans les cours
princieres (1360-1480)," Gazettedes Beaux-Arts86 (July-Aug. 1975): 1-16.
Louis I of Anjou, for instance, possessed thirty-one nefs, all of which were
painstakingly described in his inventories (Henri Moranville, Inventairede
et desjoyauxdeLouisI, duc d'Anjou[Paris:Ernest Leroux, 1903-6]).
l'orfIvrerie
Also Charles C. Oman, MedievalSilverNefs, Victoria and Albert Museum
Monographs, no. 15 (London: H. M. StationeryOff., 1963).
89. Iva Rosario, Art and Propaganda:CharlesIV of Bohemia, 1346-1378
(Woodbridge:Boydell Press, 2000), 35-40, with most current discussion and
bibliography.
90. Paris, BNF ms fr. 2813. See Anne D. Hedeman, TheRoyalImage:Illustrationsof the "Grandes
deFrance"(1274-1422) (Berkeley:University
Chroniques
of California Press, 1991), 128-33; Claire Richter Sherman, ThePortraits
of
CharlesV of France(1338-1380), College Art Association Monograph Series,
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All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
624
ART BULLETIN
DECEMBER
2001
VOLUME
LXXXIII
NUMBER
4
vol. 20 (New York: New York University Press, 1969), 41-43; Trexler (as in n.
20), 85-87; and the cautionarycomments by FrancoiseAutrand,"M6moireet
ceremonial: La visite de l'empereur Charles IVa Paris en 1378 d'apres les
GrandesChroniques
et Christine de Pizan,"in Unefemmede lettreau MoyenAge:
Etudesautourde Christinede Pizan, ed. Liliane Dulac and Bernard Rib6mont
(Orleans:Paradigme,1995), 91-103. For the text, see Roland Delachenal, ed.,
LesGrandesChroniques
deFrance:Chronique
desregnesdeJeanIIet deCharlesV,vol.
2 (Paris: Librairie Renouard, 1916), 193-277, as well as the rendition by
Christinede Pizan,vol. 2, 89-132. On fol. 472, in another image of gift giving,
representativesof the city of Parisdeposit beautiful objects on a table in front
of the emperor and his son. Though rendered in generic terms in the
miniatures, all the gifts, many of which were crafted by the royal goldsmith
Jehan (Hennequin) Duvivier,are minutely described in the text. Discussedby
Lightbown, 38-39, 83-94.
91. See, by contrast,Roger de Gaigni&res'srendering of the scene in which
John the Good offers-not receives, as some of the literature has it-a
Byzantinediptych to Pope Clement VI, a gift handed over by a high-ranking
intermediary.Reproduced with bibliographyin Charles Sterling, La peinture
medievalea Paris, 1300-1500 (Paris:Bibliotheque des Arts, 1987), no. 20.
92. For instance, in 1405, a horseman was hastilydispatched from Dijon to
the chateau of Rouvresin order to bring the etrennes
from Philip the Bold to
his grandchildren (David, 152).
93. Among many examples, one can refer to Pierre Salmon, later royal
secretary,who in 1393 brought the etrennesof his then employer Louis of
Orleans to Philip the Bold and received for this service a drinking set in
vermeil (silver-gilt;see David, 56). One could compare messengers, in function, to the Roman legal nexum,discussed by Mauss, 48-50, 61-62. Generously rewardingmessengers and sending gifts promptlyare included among
the rules for proper gift givingby Christinede Pizanin her Livredestroisvertus,
1989 (as in n. 56), 78.
94. So a notice instructsthat the king's chamberlainbe reimbursedfor his
out-of-pocket expense to reward a messenger bringing presents from the
marshalde Sancerre.See Louis-ClaudeDouet-d'Arcq,Comptes
del'hoteldesrois
deFranceaux XIVeet XVesiecles(Paris:Jules Renouard, 1865), 107, as well as
106-16, 376-79, for other entries concerning gifts transactedbetween intermediaries. Hirschbiegel, vol. 1, 179-80, highlights the figure of the Burgundian chamberlainGuy de la Tremoille, who was,with his brother Guillaume,
one of the steadiest and most ambitious donors of etrennes.Later, the Burgundian chronicler Georges Chastellainrecords that no business, "appointment or benefice, loan or gift,"could be made without the approvalof Philip
the Good's chamberlainand chancellor Nicolas Rolin, the intent donor in the
famous panel painted by Jan van Eyck in the Louvre and the similarly
de Hainaut. I quote
purposeful courtier in the frontispiece to the Chroniques
Chastellainin Joseph Calmette, Les grandsducs de Bourgogne(1949; reprint,
Paris:Albin Michel, 1987), 229.
95. Paris,BNF ms fr. 497, fol. Av. For a brief mention of the manuscript,see
Pierre Champion, La librariede Charlesd'Orleans(Paris:Honor6 Champion,
1910), 60.
96. The intersection of bribes and gifts is examined by Sharon Kettering,
"Gift-Givingand Patronage in EarlyModern France,"FrenchHistory2, no. 2
(1988): 131-51; Alain Derville, "Pots-de-vin,cadeaux, racket,patronage:Essai
surme
les
canismes de d6cisionl'ltat
dans
bourguignon," Revuedu Nord56
(1974): 341-64; and Marc Boone, "Dons et pots-de-vin:Aspects de la sociabilit6 urbaine au Bas Moyen Age: Le cas gantois pendant la p6riode bourguignonne," Revuedu Nord70 (1988): 471-87.
97. Christinede Pizan, 46-47; trans. in Lightbown,42. See also Green (as
in n. 79), 61-63. It is not uncommon to find presentation scenes takingplace
in the garden of a palace in manuscripts of the second half of the 15th
century.
98. Christine de Pizan, 1985 (as in n. 56), 63.
99. Examplesin Prost and Prost (as in n. 35), vol. 2, no. 1195; and Hirschbiegel, vol. 2, nos. 116, 117, the latter further stating that Philip the Bold
charged his butler to bring to his wife some diamonds and what had become
the habitual gift of 1,000 francs.
100. In Walsh (as in n. 10), 734. See also Stratford,45, who concludes, in my
viewwrongly,that this ceremonial may alreadyhave been establishedin early
15th-centurycourts. In general, the formal elaboration of court etiquette and
protocols only occurred in the second half of the 15th century at the Burgundian court.
101. Hirschbiegel, vol. 1, 142-49. Only 22 women (about 15 percent)
appear among the 144 named donors. On the other hand, of 298 donees, 67
(about 22.5 percent) were female. One should also mention that Marie de
from the duke, includSully,Philip the Bold's mistress,often received etrennes
ing some that were presented to her by his wife (see Prost and Prost [as in n.
35], nos. 2506-7; and Hirschbiegel, vol. 2, nos. 248, 249).
102. Graves,69-70. Hirschbiegel, vol. 2, nos. 534-45, and, for the same
year, nos. 482-97, for gifts made by Isabeau of Bavaria.In her case, too, the
majorityof giftswere given to women of a similarsocial profile, while the most
expensive gift went again to the king. Alexandre-Bidon (as in n. 10), 56, refers
to King Ren6 of Anjou as bestowing etrennes on yet another category of
women, namely, prostitutes.
103. Rey (as in n. 42), 173-274.
104. Lisette Josephides, The Productionof Inequality:Genderand Exchange
amongthe Kewa (London: Tavistock, 1985), 220. Equally fundamental are
withWomenand Problems
with
MarilynStrathern,TheGenderof theGift:Problems
Societyin Melanesia(Berkeley:Universityof CaliforniaPress, 1988); and Annette B. Weiner, Womenof Value,Men of Renown:NewPerspectives
in Trobriand
Exchange(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1976); and idem, Inalienable
Possessions(as in n. 1). Weiner articulates the most sustained critique of
Levi-Strauss'sclassic assertion that "woman"is the "supremegift,"insofar as
he argued that the rules of exogamy and the incest prohibition are the
foundation of language and culture ([as in n. 1], 31).
105. In 1420, for example, CharlesVI gave substantialrings to the wife of
the president of the Parlementand to that of a member of John the Fearless's
court respectively.See Barthelemie-AmedeePocquet du Haut-Juss6,La France
generaldu royaume(Paris:
gouvernee
parJean sans Peur:Les depensesdu receveur
Presses Universitairesde France, 1959), no. 806; and Guiffrey,vol. 1, lii-liii.
Francoise Piponnier, Costumeet vie sociale:La cour d'AnjouXIVe-XVesiecle
(Paris:Mouton, 1970), 261-88, discusses this asymmetryin relation to the
distributionof cloth and clothes at court.
106. Graves,176-78.
107. Another document designates this discretionarycategoryas"etrennes
secretes."See Pocquet du Haut-Juss6(as in n. 105), no. 804. As shown by Rey
(as in n. 42), 145, most gifts were paid from the argenteriedepartment,
correspondingto the Englishwardrobe.The head of the departmentwas one
of the top court officials,who participatedin the establishmentof inventories,
negotiated with providers, and checked the quality and timely execution of
the orders. The h6tel of the king's argentier
apparentlycontained a workshop
to alter and restore valuable objects.
108. Hirschbiegel,vol. 1, 144 and ff., concludes his statisticalsurveywith a
similar observation,namely, that a homogeneous group of people of similar
rank observed the principle of reciprocity most regularly.Jan Hirschbiegel
and Ulf Christian Ewert propose a complex model of the correlation between different criteria governing patterns in gift giving (illustrated with
Philip the Bold's etrennesof 1396 and 1397) in "Gabeund Gegengabe: Das
Erscheinungsbild einer Sonderform h6fischer Reprasentation am Beispiel
des franz6sisch/ burgundischen Gabentauscheszum neuen Jahr um 1400,"
Sozial-und Wirtschaftsgeschichte
87, no. 1 (2000): 5-37. For
Vierteljahrschriftfiir
excellent general descriptions of late medieval noble households, see Chris
Given-Wilson,TheRoyalHouseholdand the King'sAffinity:Service,Politicsand
Finance in England 1360-1413 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986);
Werner Paravicini,"Alltagbei Hofe," in AlltagbeiHofe,Residenzenforschung,
vol. 5 (Sigmaringen:Jan Thorbecke, 1995), 9-30; and idem, "The Court of
the Dukes of Burgundy:A Model for Europe?"in Princes,Patronage,and the
Nobility:TheCourtat theBeginningof theModernAge,c. 1450-1650, ed. Ronald
G. Asch and Adolf M. Birke (Oxford:Oxford UniversityPress, 1991), 69-102.
109. Elias, 78-116, argued that court etiquette fulfilled a comparablefunction in establishing distinctions of "actualpower positions."
110. The Chronicles
trans. ThomasJohnes (LonofEnguerrandde Monstrelet,
don: George Routledge and Sons, 1867), vol. 1, 153.
111. In addition to the pendants mentioned by Monstrelet, and among
many other examples, one can refer to the six hundred little greyhounds,
made of gold coated with blue enamel, distributedby CharlesVI for the 1419
followed by smallpeacocks, another of his emblems, in 1420. Pocquet
etrennes,
du Haut-Juss6(as in n. 105), nos. 796, 803; and Hirschbiegel,vol. 2, nos. 1749,
1760. See further Stratford,46, for objects depicting or shaped like a tiger
given to CharlesVI on NewYear'sDay 1395. She surmisesthat there may have
been specific emblematic themes for each year.
112.Andre Uyttenbrouck,"Quelquesaspectsde la vie quotidienne a la cour
de Brabant,"in AlltagbeiHofe (as in n. 108), 155-56.
113. Documents published in Meiss, 1974, 74-78.
114. Christine de Pizan, Le livre du corpsde policie,ed. Angus J. Kennedy
(Paris:H. Champion, 1998), 23-26, trans.as TheBookof theBodyPoliticby Kate
Langdon Forhan (Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress, 1994), 25-28. On
the "socialstratification"of gifts, see also Wilson (as in n. 4), 61-84; and the
wonderful documents discussed in Carol M. Chattaway,"Lookinga Medieval
Gift Horse in the Mouth: The Role of the Giving of Gift Objects in the
Definition and Maintenance of PowerNetworksof Philip the Bold,"Bijdragen
en Mededelingen
114 (1999): 1-15.
de Geschiedenis
derNederlanden
Betreffende
115. Trexler (as in n. 64), 323-26.
116. Guiffrey,vol. 1, nos. 330, 1140; Hirschbiegel,vol. 1, no. 1492, and vol.
2, no. 1660.
117. For instance, Simon Allegret, one ofJean de Berry'spersonal doctors,
gave his patron three such books (Guiffrey,vol. 1, no. 1003, and vol. 2, no.
173, 313); and an abbot offered a small head reliquary(Guiffrey,vol. 1, no.
95). On the question of personalizing presents, see also Klein (as in n. 30).
118. On this, Bourdieu, 80-82, is most eloquent.
119. Oeuvres
ed. BaronJ.M.B.C.Kervynde Lettenhove (Brussels:
deFroissart,
V. Devaux, 1867-77), vol. 15, 167. See also Brigitte Buettner, "ProfaneIlluminations, Secular Illusions:Manuscriptsin Late Medieval CourtlySociety,"
ArtBulletin74 (1992): 76-78.
fol.
Discussed most
120. Brussels,Bibliotheque Albert Ier ms 9466, lr.
recently in Francois Avril and Nicole Reynaud, Les manuscrits a peintures en
France, 1440-1520 (Paris: Flammarion, 1993), no. 112 (and no. 106 for a
comparable case); and Marguerite Debae, La bibliotheque de Marguerite
d'Autriche: Essai de reconstitution d'apres
l'inventaire
de 1523-1524 (Louvain:
Peeters, 1995), no. 145. For the text, see Martin Le Franc, Le champion des
dames, ed. Robert Deschaux (Paris: Honore Champion, 1999).
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PAST
121. As is confirmed by the dedicatory inscription accompanying the presentation miniature of the Biblehistorialethat the courtierJean de Vaudetar
offered to CharlesV in 1371: "Ipresent and give you this book / I hand it over
on my knees / Jehan Vaudetar your servant / Who is depicted here." See
sur la librairiede CharlesV (Paris:Honore ChamLeopold Delisle, Recherches
pion, 1907), vol. 1, 74-76; Lesfastes du gothique(as in n. 61), no. 285; and
Sherman (as in n. 90), 25-28. The manuscript is in The Hague, Museum
Meermanno-Westreenianiumms 10.B.23. Instances of a courtier in place of
an author or a translatoroffering a book are rare. Another example from a
famous manuscript-the Chroniques
deHainaut,translatedbyJean Wauquelin
(Brussels, Bibliotheque Albert Ier ms 9242-44)-depicts the counselor Symon Nockart presenting the volume to Philip the Bold (L.MJ. Delaiss6, "Les
deHainautet l'atelier deJean Wauquelin a Mons dans l'histoire de
Chroniques
la miniature flamande," in MiscellaneaErwin Panofsky,Bulletin des Musees
de Belgique4, nos. 1-3 [1955]: 21-56).
RoyauxdesBeaux-Arts
122. Paris,BNF ms fr. 12476, fol. Iv. See Avriland Reynaud (as in n. 120),
no. 50; and Francois Avril, La passion des manuscritsenlumines:Bibliophiles
Franfais, 1280-1580, exh. cat., Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, 1991, no. 21.
The text of the complainte
included in this manuscriptwas edited by Gaston
Paris, "Un poeme inedit de MartinLe Franc,"Romania16 (1887): 383-437.
123. Mauss, 35-39; Bourdieu, 98-111, and his formula that "the countergift must be deferred and different" (105); and Derrida (as in n. 2), 39-46,
to whom the only possible gift is ultimately that of "givingtime."
124. Christine de Pizan, Christine'sVision,trans. Glenda K. McLeod (New
York: Garland, 1993), 123. For the original, see Lavision-Christine,
ed. Mary
Louis Towner (Washington,D.C.: Catholic Universityof America, 1932), 168.
Delaysin paymentwere of course not limited to gift exchanges. Merchantsin
plate and joyauxwere particularlyvulnerable in this regard, and accounts
show them devoting considerable energy to get their dues from pennypinching treasuryofficials whosejob it was to reduce the chronicallyinflated
expenditures on luxury items.
125. For a study of how different dedications affected the decorative program of a particularwork, see SandraL. Hindman, ChristinedePizan's"Epistre
Othea":Painting and Politics at the Courtof CharlesVI (Toronto: Pontifical
Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1986). For Christine's view on "measured"
largesse-inspired by Cicero's rule of the "golden mean" in giving, and a
central concern to most medieval theoreticians of liberality-see Christinede
Pizan, vol. 1, 79-82, 100-103, as well as idem, 1998 (as in n. 114), 23-26. In
the burgeoning field of Christine de Pizan studies, this topic has not yet
received the attention it deserves.
126. Guiffrey, vol. 1, no. 943; and Hirschbiegel, vol. 2, no. 1335. She
presented three other books as etrennesto Jean de Berry: an allegorical
commentary on the Seven Penitential Psalms in 1410 (Guiffrey,vol. 1, no.
977; and Hirschbiegel,vol. 2, no. 1467); the Faizd'armeset dechevaleriein1413
(Guiffrey,vol. 1, no. 1004; and Hirschbiegel, vol. 2, no. 1561); and the Livre
de la paix in 1414 (Guiffrey,vol. 1, no. 1239; and Hirschbiegel, vol. 2, no.
1613). To Philip the Bold, she gave as an itrennein 1404 the Livre de la
mutaciondefortune,another copy of which she offered a few months later to
Berry(de Winter [as in n. 47], 215-17). Finally,she offered a copy of the Debat
des deux amants, dedicated to Louis of Orl6ans, as an etrenneto Charles
d'Albret,constable of France (see Pierre Cockshaw,Miniaturesengrisaille,exh.
cat., Bibliotheque Albert Ier, Brussels, 1986, no. 7).
127. Both Christine de Pizan and her contemporaryEustache Deschamps
excelled in this genre. See Christine de Pizan, Oeuvrespoetiques,3 vols., ed.
Maurice Roy (Paris:Firmin Didot, 1886-96), vol. 1, nos. 16, 18-21, 36; and
Eustache Deschamps, Oeuvrescompletes,
11 vols., ed. Auguste Henry Edouard
Queux de Saint-Hilaireand Gaston Raynaud (Paris: Firmin Didot, 18781903), vol. 3, nos. 496, 531. The same literarypractice is attested elsewhere;
the Scottish poet WilliamDunbar,for instance, wrote a "hansell"
poem for his
patronJames IV (ThePoemsof WilliamDunbar,ed. H. B. Baildon [Cambridge:
Cambridge UniversityPress, 1907], 1); and it is said that Voltaire's literary
career was launched after he wrote a charming etrenneat the
age of twelve.
Arne Holtorf, Neujahrswiinsche
imLiebesliede
desausgehenden
Mittelalters:
Zugleich
ein Beitragzur Geschichte
des mittelalterlichen
in Deutschland,
Neujahrsbrauchtum
Arbeiten
zur
G6ppinger
Germanistik,no. 20 (G6ppingen: Alfred Kfimmerle,
1973), provides the most thorough study of poetic etrennes.
128. Or the gold ring with a bear set on an emerald base, which the duke
of Berryreceived in 1408 from the merchant Baude de
Guy and gave,
before his death, to Paul de Limbourg (Guiffrey,vol. 1, no. 415; andshortly
Meiss,
1974, 74). Cutler (as in n. 8), 56, observes the same phenomenon in the case
of Byzantinediplomatic gifts.
PRESENTS:
NEW YEAR'S
GIFTS
AT THE VALOIS
COURTS
625
129. Guiffrey,vol. 1, no. 808; Hirschbiegel,vol. 2, no. 1443. Or Guiffrey,vol.
1, no. 187, for a little ruby given by his wife and subsequentlyinserted into a
reliquary.
130. Hirschbiegel, vol. 1, 56, 116, and vol. 2, no. 1034. He quotes Otto
Cartellieri,Geschichte
vonBurgund,1363-1477 (Leipzig:Quelle und
derHerzoge
Meyer, 1910).
131. Guiffrey,vol. 1, no. 366; Hirschbiegel,vol. 2, no. 1292;and Meiss, 1967,
48, who erroneously gave the sum of 1,800 6cus. Shortly before the duke's
death, this gem, inserted into a cross, was given back to the king, who later
melted down the cross to produce cash for a militarycampaign. According
to Hirschbiegel, vol. 1, 108, this is the single most expensive etrenneto be
recorded.
132. Margaretof Flanders offers a case in point, for, in addition to other
presents, she received every year 1,000 francs from her husband Philip the
Bold (David, 61). On this particularaspect of the gift economy, see Barthelemie-AmedeePocquet du Haut-Jusse,"Lesdons du roi aux dues de Bourgogne
Philippe le Hardi et Jean sans Peur (1363-1419): Les dons ordinaires et
extraordinaires,"Mimoiresde la Societepourl'Histoiredu Droitet des Institutions
des AnciensPays Bourguignons,Comtoiset Romands6 (1939): 113-44, and 7
(1940-41): 95-129; Andr6e van Nieuwenhuysen, Lesfinancesdu duc de BourgognePhilippele Hardi (1384-1404): Economieetpolitique(Brussels:Editions de
l'Universite de Bruxelles, 1984), 373-83; and Hirschbiegel, vol. 1, 127-28.
133. Brussels, Bibl. Albert Ier ms 9066, fol. llr. Joseph van den Gheyn,
et conquestes
de Charlemaine:
des 105 miniaturesdeJeanle
Cronicques
Reproduction
Tavernier,d'Audenarde
(1460) (Brussels:Vromant, 1909), pl. 1; Le siecled'orde
la miniatureflamande:Le mecenatdePhilippele Bon, exh. cat., Palais des BeauxArts, Brussels, 1959, nos. 95-97; Cockshaw (as in n. 126), no. 10. Though
often reproduced, this frontispiece has not been discussed in any detail. I
should like to thank ElizabethMoody,who is writingher doctoral dissertation
on it and related manuscripts at Princeton University,for having discussed
this image with me.
134. Natalie Zemon Davis,"Beyondthe Market:Books as Giftsin SixteenthCenturyFrance,"Transactions
of theRoyalHistoricalSociety,5th ser., 33 (1983):
87. Sahlins (as in n. 1), 185-230, formulated a theoretical model predicated
on a continuous spectrum of possibilities between the poles of economic
transactionsand gift exchanges. Also Mauss, 100-101 n. 29; and Malinowski,
176.
135. Earl of Huntington, quoted in Peter Burke, "RenaissanceJewels in
Their Social Setting," in PrincelyMagnificence:CourtJewelsof the Renaissance,
1500-1630, exh. cat., Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1981, 10. Fumerton (as in n. 8), 196-200, argues that there was a constructed opposition
between "native"gift culture and foreign money economy. The box mentioned by Huntington was used to collect small coins for servants;it gave its
name to Boxing Day. By the 16th century, the official etrennes
given to French
kings similarlyconsisted of gold or silver tokens commemorating important
events of the elapsed year (Muller [as in n. 9], 464).
136. Throughout the Middle Ages, both tributes from foreign people and
feudal obligations were described as dona,eulogiae,and the like. See Hannig
(as in n. 23), 153; Duby (as in n. 7), 51. Derrida (as in n. 2) in refusing to
acknowledge as a gift an offering tied to the expectation of a countergift can
do so only by choosing not to take into account the transactors'own representation of the exchange.
137. Lemaire (as in n. 40), 65. For the same topos at the court of the
Medici, see Marcello Fantoni, "Feticcidi prestigio: I1 dono alla corte medicea," in Rituale, cerimoniale,etichetta,ed. Sergio Bertelli and Giuliano Crif6
(Milan:Bompiani, 1985), 143.
138. Georges Chastellain,quoted in Brown (as in n. 38), 108.
139. Bourdieu, 110-12, who further writes of "the denial of the economy
and of economic interestswhich, in pre-capitalistsocieties, was exerted first in
the veryarea of 'economic' transactions...." (133). For an incisive critique of
anthropologists' tendency to stress the social dimension of exchange at the
expense of its economic implications, see Weiner (as in n. 1), 211-26.
140. Thomasin von Zerclaere, Der WelscheGast,ed. F. W. von Kries, Goppinger Arbeiten zur Germanistik, no. 425 (Goppingen: Kfimmerle, 1984),
lines 15,239-62. This is the thirteenth of his sixteen rules about largesse
(milte)and proper gift giving.
141. Cited in the KingJames version. The distinction between open gifts
and quiet acts of charitywas already espoused by Seneca, De beneficiis(as in
n. 6), 63-64. Ideally for Mauss, 14-18, the "moralityof the gift" commands
some wealth not to be paraded but returned to the gods, to the poor, or to
children.
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