Princes, Patronage, and the Nobility: The Court at the Beginning of the Modern Age, c. 1450-1650

by Ronald G. Asch (Editor), Adolf M. Birke (Editor)

Using a comparative perspective, this volume studies the court as a crucial center of government and politics, as well as the dominant focus for the ruling elites. The essays explore how the early modern court gradually developed from the medieval royal household to its very different form in
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Comparing England, Germany, France, Spain as well as the Netherlands and Italy, the editors find that several common themes the problem of integrating a number of often vastly different provinces and principalities through the attraction of a court;
the capital city's function as the basis of the court and as its rival; the role of the Court during the great religious conflicts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; and the court as an instrument for domesticating the nobility and a stronghold of aristocratic influence.

Genres: History

520 pages, Hardcover

First published July 25, 1991

About the author

Ronald G. Asch is a graduate of Tübingen University where he also completed his doctorate (1982) on the counts of Fürstenberg in the 16th and 17th centuries after having studied earlier in Kiel and in Cambridge (Clare Hall).