In this volume, the authors bring fresh approaches to the subject of royal and noble households in medieval and early modern Europe. The essays focus on the people of the highest social rank : the nuclear and extended royal family, their household attendants, noblemen and noblewomen as courtiers, and physicians. Themes include financial and administrative management, itinerant households, the household of an imprisoned noblewoman, blended households, and cultural influence. The essays are grounded in sources such as records of court ceremonial, economic records, letters, legal records, wills, and inventories. The authors employ a variety of methods, including prosopography, economic history, visual analysis, network analysis, and gift exchange, and the collection is engaged with current political, sociological, anthropological, gender, and feminist theories.

Contents

List of Figures and Tables
Notes on Contributors

Introduction : Personal Relations, Political Agency, and Economic Clout in Medieval and Early Modern Royal and Elite Households
 Theresa Earenfight
1 Domina et Fidelibus Eius : Elite Households in Tenth-Century Francia and Anglo-Saxon England
 Megan Welton
2 Maintaining Elite Households in Germany and Italy, 900-1115 : Finances, Control, and Patronage
 Penelope Nash
3 Æthelings and their Entourages in Late Anglo-Saxon England : The Households, Retinues and Networks of Two Sons of King Æthelred the Unready
 David McDermott
4 Joan de Valence and Her Household : Domesticity, Management, and Organization in Transition from Wife to Widow
 Linda E. Mitchell
5 Eleanor of Brittany in Confinement : Problematizing Paradigms of the Household for Royal Prisoners
 Eileen Kim
6 “All my frendys fro me thei flee” : The Disgraced and Unstable Household of Eleanor, Duchess of Gloucester
 Sally Fisher
7 Serving Isabella of France : From Queen Consort to Dowager Queen
 Caroline Dunn
8 Political Power-Brokers in the Fifteenth Century English Royal Household
 Alexander Brondarbit
9 “Our Servants Say Scandalous Things about You :” Royal Households in the Fourteenth-Century Crown of Aragon
 Alana Lord
10 Love, Calumnies, Murders, War, Ambition, and Survival at the Court of King Fernando and Queen Leonor Teles of Portugal (1367-1384)
 Isabel de Pina Baleiras
11 The Portuguese Household of an English Queen : Sources, Purposes, Social Meaning (1387-1415)
 Manuela Santos Silva
12 Royal Household and Political Parties : The Configuration of Ferdinand the Catholic’s Entourage in Castile (1469-1516)
 Germán Gamero Igea
13 Rocking the Cradle and Ruling the World : Queens’ Households in Late Medieval and Early Modern Aragon and France
 Zita Rohr
14 A Precarious Household : Catherine of Aragon in England, 1501-1504
 Theresa Earenfight
15 There and Back Again : The Hospitality and Consumption of a Sixteenth-Century English Travelling Household
 Audrey M. Thorstad
16 The Households of Portuguese infantesin Avis Dynasty : Formation and Autonomy of Alternative Centers of Power in the Sixteenth Century
 Hélder Carvalhal

Index