Royal Domain Research Articles

Significance of the Pledges of Tovste оf 1427 and 1444 in Politics of Gediminids and Jagiellonians

The Tovste urban-type settlement is currently located in Chortkiv district of Ternopil region. This publication discusses the content of the relevant documents of 1427 and 1444 on donations of 100 marks in coins of that time each from Grand Duke of Lithuania Vytautas the Great and King of Poland Wladislaus III of Varna to members of the family of Hinkovyches. Both documents are stored in the Archive of the Radziwiłły family at the Main Archive of Ancient Acts in Warsaw. The grant of Duke Vytautas the Great was first published, obviously, by the medievalist, Prof Władysław Semkowicz. The latest generalizations about these donations belong to Dr. Janusz Kurtyka and Prof. Vitaliy Mykhaylovskiy. The document of 1427, given to Ivanko Hinkovych in Horodło, was apparently issued on October 2. The Grand Ducal seal is preserved. The provision was made in “grosses of Podolia”. But in fact, due to the fact that this is the common name of coins in circulation in Podolia at that time, it is difficult to determine the specific coin. The Lithuanian Duke did not directly indicate the merits for which the grant was awarded, so definition of the purpose of the donation is also based on assumptions. Apparently, in this way Duke Vytautas the Great sought to strengthen himself throughout Podolia, and perhaps this was part of his policy of establishing control even over all of Rus' and the Golden Horde. Simultaneously, the Lithuanian ruler had an obligation to establish the Church Union with Rome. The document of 1444, given to Bohdan Hinkovych in Orșova, was apparently issued on September 24. The royal seal is also preserved. The grant was probably made in the amount of 100 marks of Cracow, which was divided into 48 grosses. It was at that time that the anti-Ottoman Crusade was already underway under the general supervision of the Holy See in the person of the legate Julian Cesarini. Therefore, it makes sense to assume that the grant to Bohdan was made in the context of its organization. He could even be the direct participant of the campaign. The сrusaders felt an urgent need for recruits. In this case, the royal grants of this kind in Western Podolia and the royal domain of the Jagiellonians were important not only for Central and Eastern Europe, but for all Christians in general in the context of the rescue of Constantinople on the eve of 1453.

Урбанізаційні процеси у Подільському воєводстві у 1434-1572 рр.: за матеріалами Коронної метрики

The purpose of the article is to study the dynamics of urbanization processes in the Podolian voivodeship from 15th until end of second half of the 16th century, which had a decisive impact on the development of the region. Th e research methodology is based on the principles of historicism, scientifi city, objectivity and systematicity. Methods of generalization, comparison, classifi cation, statistical comparison, document analysis of sources were used. Th e scientifi c novelty lies in the fact that for the fi rst time a comparative analysis of the dynamics of locational processes in the Podolian voivodeship has been carried out. Th e infl uence of geo- graphical location on the development of the cities of Western Podillia is studied. Conclusions. From the 16th century, Western Podillia became part of the Kingdom of Poland, as a result of which it underwent numerous processes of integration and modernization, including urbaniza- tion. Th e urbanization process led to the creation of about 57 cities, organized on the basis of the Magdeburg law, which was a classic in Central and Eastern Europe. Initially, county centers and settlements that belonged to the royal domain were transferred to the status of a city on the Magdeburg right. Only in the second half of the 15th century the number of noble cities begins to grow. While the number of cities owned by the Catholic Church remained low. Despite the rapid pace of urbanization, the newly formed cities mostly remained villages in terms of economic and social organization. Urbanization of the Podolian voivodeship lagged behind other lands of the Crown by at least half a century, which is explained by its later accession to the Kingdom of Poland and its troubled border. Th e article contains tables, which list the currently known cities and towns of Western Podilia.

Chevaux, paysans et artisans: Le travail attelé entre Meuse et Loire (XIIe-XVIe siècle) [Horses, peasants and craftsmen: Harnessed work horses between Meuse and Loire (12-16th centuries)] by Floriana Bardoneschi (review).

Reviewed by: Chevaux, paysans et artisans: Le travail attelé entre Meuse et Loire (XIIe–XVIe siècle) [Horses, peasants and craftsmen: Harnessed work horses between Meuse and Loire (12–16th centuries)] by Floriana Bardoneschi Fabrice Guizard (bio) Chevaux, paysans et artisans: Le travail attelé entre Meuse et Loire (XIIe–XVIe siècle) [Horses, peasants and craftsmen: Harnessed work horses between Meuse and Loire (12–16th centuries)] By Floriana Bardoneschi. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2021. Pp. 549. Floriana Bardoneschi's book title sums up very well the aim of her thesis, which will certainly become a reference work for specialists in the history of agricultural techniques. The book is based on a wealth of sources drawn from the French National Archives and Côte d'Or Departmental Archives. Textual analysis is combined with critical analysis of images produced in the late Middle Ages and experimental archaeology. Bardoneschi adds her own experience of horse riding and driving. Thus, her book offers a technical, economic, and social triple approach. Published in the prestigious History of Techniques collection of Classiques Garnier, the book corrects many established ideas about the use of the draft horse in the medieval rural economy. Readers may however be disappointed with the mediocre quality of the black-and-white pictures. As a subsistence economy is largely dependent on animal traction, the tools used to turn animal power into motive power are key elements explaining agricultural growth. This book explores the evolution of techniques in the area between Meuse and Loire from the twelfth to the sixteenth century, when horse traction became more frequently used and transformed the rural world. Owning a horse was also a sign of social ascent for a peasant elite aspiring to chivalry and the nobility. Bardoneschi notes, however, that it is not possible to completely visualize this hierarchical organization of farmers based on possessing land and horses. Some sources documenting daily life contain traces of this hierarchy between Meuse and Loire that is, unsurprisingly, inside the royal domain and its area of influence. The first part of the book focuses on the zootechnical aspects of using a horse: selecting, training, and looking after the animal, almost at the individual level, an approach introduced in the animal turn in scholarship. The second part is strictly technical. Bardoneschi excels in reviewing harnessing methods and their effectiveness. This fits perfectly in the experimental archeology exploring traction techniques during antiquity carried out by G. Raepsaet (Attelages et techniques de transport dans le monde gréco-romain, 2002). Approaching horses as agricultural auxiliaries is enriched with drawings demonstrating practical knowledge and the author's personal experimentation with hitching a horse. Bardoneschi explains that the technical refinement of the harness reached a form in medieval times that hardly changed afterward. Farmers favor low-line traction to achieve the highest degree of adaptation to the morphology of [End Page 871] the animal. The integration of braking possibilities completes this progress in using horses on uneven terrain. The other parameters are the quality of the vehicles and the towed instruments, as well as the power of the animals harnessed to them. Technically speaking, horses are not necessary for work on the land. Oxen are the most economical and most powerful champions of agricultural traction. The peasants' interest in horses was social and cultural rather than pragmatic. The final part of the book reveals the legacy of G. Comet (Le paysan et son outil, 1992) and details the different uses of horses on farms. Working with horses eventually became more profitable, thanks to the high quality of craftsmanship developed around the harness and towed agricultural equipment. Productivity increased accordingly, enabling reinvestment in the latest equipment and new horses. As these animals saved valuable time in all sorts of agricultural activities as carriers of goods and people, the introduction of horses contributed to the rise of capitalism. Fabrice Guizard Fabrice Guizard is assistant professor in medieval history at University of Valenciennes. He is coeditor with C. Beck of Animal source d'énergie: Enquêtes dans l'Europe d'avant la révolution industrielle (Presses Universitaires de Valenciennes, 2018). Citation: Guizard, Fabrice. "Review of Chevaux, paysans et artisans: Le travail attelé entre Meuse et...

Review: Framing the Church: The Social and Artistic Power of Buttresses in French Gothic Architecture

Review: <i>Framing the Church: The Social and Artistic Power of Buttresses in French Gothic Architecture</i>

What is the boundary between public and private? Some reflections, based on the royal domain

In a political society where service to the king and kingdom are passed down family lines – so, where public responsibilities are hereditary, where the monarch himself is simultaneously head of State and head of a lineage but sacrifices his inheritance to run the country – the boundary between public and private is problematic, to say the least. This article uses the royal domain to analyze how theorists of power under the Ancien Regime discussed the dividing line between the public and private spheres. The domain, the inheritance of the kings of France, was originally composed of possessions of the Capetian family but ownership gradually shifted to the crown, thus making them possessions of the State. Private rights then challenged collective interest in a history deeply shaken by the accession of Henri IV to the crown and the union of his holdings with the royal domain. The ensuing enquiry by legal advisors raised issues that are active to this day, ultimately shedding light on a central aspect of political construction both before and after the French Revolution. The connection between the dynastic nature of the monarchical regime and the assertion of sovereignty leads to a tension that opens the path of modernity, but without resolving one of the major contradictions of the system, in which the respect of personal or corporate acquisitions presupposed by privilege could upset an all-powerful dedicated to the benefit of all.

La construction et l’évolution des prieurés victorins (xiie–xvie siècles, Bassin parisien): Bilan et perspectives de recherche

Saint-Victor of Paris is an abbey of Regular Canons established in 1113 in the vicinity of Sainte-Geneviève mountain. This abbey was soon endowed with a number of small priories so as to facilitate the supervision of a scattered patrimony and/or the organization of worship in parish churches in the area between Senlis and Orléans. The sixteen priories of Saint-Victor were under the supervision of the Abbey and are located within the royal domain. Regular Canons lived in priories which were either built ex nihilo, which is unusual, or more commonly restored. In fact, the community was granted several churches built in the eleventh century. This article aims to take stock of the remains of the Victorine priories in order to gain a better understanding of religious settlements and of the evolution of their buildings. The sources are both historical and archaeological. Is the architecture of the priories inspired by that of the mother abbey? What phases of construction and development of priories can be distinguished? Further investigations are needed to solve these questions.

Politics in the Marketplace: Work, Gender, and Citizenship in Revolutionary France by Katie Jarvis

Reviewed by: Politics in the Marketplace: Work, Gender, and Citizenship in Revolutionary France by Katie Jarvis Elizabeth Colwill Katie Jarvis, Politics in the Marketplace: Work, Gender, and Citizenship in Revolutionary France (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2019). Pp. 352. $47.95 cloth. In this prize-winning book on the Dames des Halles of revolutionary Paris, Katie Jarvis brings to life a rich and multifaceted history of the female hawkers of produce, fish, and flowers whose retail privileges were first bestowed by Saint Louis in the thirteenth century. Jarvis maps the residences and market stalls of the Dames des Halles, listens to their disputes, and traces their steps through the muddy streets and into the turbulent halls of governance. The tableau that she paints is so richly textured that the reader can almost glimpse the Dames as they bargain with consumers, petition for currency reform, denounce monopoly-holders, and contest price limits. Delving deep into police, legislative, judiciary, and financial records, Jarvis illuminates the evolving moral economy of the Dames des Halles and their significance as revolutionary actors. Jarvis presents compelling evidence for the tangible political impact of the Dames des Halles during the early years of revolution—an influence rooted, as Rene Marion’s 1995 dissertation demonstrated, in the Dames’ corporate role in certifying the legitimacy of the early modern monarchy. “After the opening salvo of the Revolution,” Jarvis writes, “most Parisians readily accepted the Dames’ authority as the sovereign people incarnate” (50). Jarvis disentangles the voices of live Dames des Halles from the fictive “poissarde” stereotypes of the revolutionary pamphlet literature. While the pamphleteers drew upon the Dames’ words and reputations to advance their own political agendas, Jarvis shows how the market women manipulated and refashioned that political symbolism in their own interest, mobilizing their unique identity to influence popular politics, deputies, and legislative decisions. Melding an older corporate identity with a revolutionary sense of maternal and civic duty, the Dames hired a poet to compliment the electors of the Third Estate, organized processions and patriotic subscriptions, and called on Lafayette to forgive wet-nursing debts. After the March to Versailles, they strategically distanced themselves from the violent excesses of revolutionary activism, then requested medals from the municipal government as bonnes citoyennes. “Protectors of the nuclear and national family,” they exposed revolutionary plots and spanked recalcitrant nuns (69–75). By bestowing or withholding their allegiance to the monarch and speaking out as revolutionary mothers to patriotic father-deputies, they reshaped the nature of sovereignty. [End Page 1042] Politics in the Marketplace situates the Dames squarely in the public sphere—not the public sphere of letters but in the hubbub of les Halles teeming with wholesalers, consumers, retail merchants, and government inspectors. The revolutionary marketplace, in transition from royal domain to national property and from corporate privilege to protocapitalist “liberty,” formed the locus of the Dames’ collective identity as merchants and as citoyennes. Jarvis’s meticulous analysis of the reconstruction of les Halles and the reorganization of trade establishes that debates over commerce, from hoarding and high prices to market space and taxation, were central to the politics of revolution. Her sleuthing uncovers the Dames’ vigorous involvement in revolutionary negotiations over parasols and patentes, credit and currency reform. The final chapter turns to the patente, an occupational license tax for the self-employed, which altered the Dames’ relationship to citizenship and the state under the Directory between 1796 and 1798. In the wake of the Le Chapelier law, the patente shifted the organizational nexus of the market from corporate bodies to the individual, transforming “occupational labor into intangible personal property” (203). Jarvis reads the Directory’s imposition of the tax on ambulant merchants in 1796 as conferring a form of fiscal citizenship through which the Dames, now considered individual commercial agents, entered a personal contract with the state. “The patente transformed work into a type of property,” which, she asserts, “signified civic independence without gendered foundations.” In formalizing the Dames’ contract with the state as “citizen workers” and taxpayers, the patente “disrupt[ed] the gendered binaries of citizenship” (203). If, in theory, the patente undermined the logic of gendered exclusions from citizenship, as Jarvis argues, in fact, the state’s...

Measuring crops with the šukunnûm-number

Šamaš-hazir was the manager of the royal domain of Hammu-rabi, king of Babylon (1792-1750 BC), in southern Mesopotamia. Harvest registers and yield tables found in his archives take the form of tabular accounts in which an estimated yield rate is expressed by a number called šukunnûm. Although the šukunnûm-number is used to keep accounts of barley yield rates, it is never associated with a specific unit of measurement. In order to define the elaboration and the nature of the šukunnûm-number, this article will analyze its relation to surface and capacity units and its function in crop measurements.

System prawny Luizjany w okresie francuskiego panowania kolonialnego w latach 1699–1769

The subject of the paper is an attempt to show the legal system of Louisiana in its first period of operation – first as a trading colony administered by the French merchant Antoine Crozat and the Scottish financier John Law, and then as a royal domain, which Louisiana was until 1769. The diversity of the local legal systems of pre-revolutionary France was impossible to implement in the legal framework of the French colonies, and therefore it was decided to apply in Louisiana the universally applicable laws in the form of Grand Ordinances and the law of the local region of Île-de-France – La Coutume de Paris. The legal system of the colony was not the same as the legal system of the European capital, as evidenced by the regulations created directly for the overseas territories. The best known example of such a legal act was the Ordonance of Louis XIV from 1685. (Code Noir), which regulated slavery in French colonies. The authors argue that, despite the lack of reception of the Napoleonic Code in Louisiana, elements of the French legal tradition were an impor tant factor in building and consolidating the civilian element, which still distinguishes the legal system of the American state of Louisiana from that of other members of the Union.

Locators of the settlements under Wallachian law in the Sambor starosty in XVth and XVIth c. Territorial, ethnic and social origins.

This article deals with issues related to the origin of locators of the Wallachian settlements on the example of villages established in the Sambor starosty in the XVth and XVIth centuries. It relies primarily on the analysis of information found in the location documents of settlements arising in this area. The research carried out here leads to the conclusion that the first owners of the Wallachian villages in the Sambor starosty were the representatives of the Wallachian nobility, most probably from the Transylvania area, who received extensive land bestowals from the king Vladyslav Jagiello in the XVth century. From the knyazships founded by the nobility came the knyazes who founded new Wallachian villages within the royal domain in the XVIth century. They were mainly from the peasant estate, and most of them were recruited from the ruthenised knyaz families and from the subjects of the same domains. Although the ethnic Vlachs constituted a small percentage of residents of the Sambor starosty and were quickly subjected to ruthenisation, their descendants continued to lead the ranks among the locators. The work also draws attention to the characteristics of the development of the settlement network in the Sambor area. New settlements were most often created at a short distance from the home rural centres surrounding them from various directions. After some time, these "villages" could also become "home" for subsequent settlements. New settlements were usually located in areas situated higher than the home settlements of founders who, looking for new settlement areas, headed upstream as the rivers were natural communication routes.

Le rôle des corvées dans le système des redevances acquittées par les habitants des villages de ius Valachicum en Petite-Pologne et en Ruthénie de la Couronne aux XVe et XVIe siècles

The Role of Serfdoms in the Obligation System of the Inhabitants of Villages on the Wallachian Law in Lesser Poland (Małopolska) and Crown Ruthenia (15th-16th century).&#x0D; The aim of the article is an attempt to define a role of serfdoms in the system of obligations provided by the population living in the settlements established on the Wallachian law. On the basis of a critical analysis of a relatively numerous sources preserved from the region in question (in particular, the documents associated with the rights given to individual villages, inventories, and royal domain), an attempt was made to verify the common belief in the scholarship on this topic about the lack of, or at least the minimum, share of the serfdoms for the owners in the obligation system of the inhabitants. As a result, a specific feature of the Wallachian law was indicated, which was the obligation – elsewhere unknown or occurring only in minute traces – of performing small errands a few times in a year for the benefit of the dukes (kniaź). It was recorded throughout the entire studied period and in all of the areas partaking in the Wallachian colonisation. In contrast, there are many more doubts regarding the conviction about a complete lack of serfdoms for the owners of villages. The presented source material indicates that there were indeed settlements to which this duty did not apply (and perhaps this situation was even dominating), but in other places the older and usually less strenuous forms of labours were present (annual works, duties “under the order”, ect.), while the attempts to impose weekly serfdoms date back to the 1530s and 1540s. Its widespread implementation in the areas outside of mountains is strictly linked to the development of a grange, set up for the production of grain. For the Wallachian settlements this meant a limitation, and then a thorough disposal of their privileged legal status. It is not a matter of coincidence that this colonising tendency was clearly restrained at the turn of the 16th and 17th century. This fate was avoided only be the villages situated in a typically mountainous area where the natural conditions prevented the production of crops on a large scale. Populations living therein – that were ruled by the Wallachian law – lasted longer and the processes of assimilation and integration with the local surroundings took place more slowly.

TO THE QUESTION OF THE LEGAL STATUS OF THE POPULATION OF THE TSAR’S DOMAIN IN RUSSIA IN THE 17TH CENTURY (THE RIGHT TO USE THE SOVEREIGN’S RENT LANDS)

By the end of the 17th century, Palace fiefdoms were located in about 60 counties of the Russian state. County and city people who lived on the territory of the Tsar’s domain, had a special legal status. In the historical science no special complex research on the study of the system of rights and duties of the Palace population in Russia in the 17th century has been carried out. This article to a certain extent eliminates this gap in the Russian historiography. The author analyzes peculiarities of legal status of the population of the tsar’s lands in Russia in the 17thcentury, in particular, she deals with the right of the Palace district and the townspeople to use tsar’s quitrent land. The main types of rent possessions in the tsar’s fiefdoms, the conditions under which the population could rent the tsar’s lands were studied. The process of increasing payments for the use of Palace natural lands during the 17th century is shown. The methodology was based on the work of famous Russian pre-revolutionary historians I. E. Zabelin, S. B. Veselovsky, A. I. Zaozersky, researchers of the Soviet and post-Soviet periods V. I. Buganov, A. G. Mankov, Y. E. Vodarsky, S. V. Vidyaikin among others. The research applied the methods of historicism and scientific objectivity. The novelty of this article is determined by the introduction into the scientific circulation of a number of unpublished clerical historical sources from five archives of the country, as well as the published clerical documents of various orders of the Russian state, including scribe, census, boundary, income books, etc. The source base also included legislative acts: “the Cathedral Code of 1649”, tsar’s personal decrees, and letters of the second half of the 17th century. The basic types of rent articles on the territory of the Royal domain have been examined. The conditions of the lease maintenance of the sovereign’s rent lands for the Palace population are defined. The methods of determining the amount of rent for the right to use certain types of sovereign’s natural lands are revealed. Based on the results of the study, the following conclusions are made. A characteristic feature of the legal status of the Palace district and city people was the right to take in the maintenance of the sovereign’s forests, rivers, lakes, meadows, arable land, crafts. Rent for their use significantly replenished the sovereign’s Treasury in Russia in the 17th century.

Castles in Townscapes: Studying Fortified Medieval Towns and their Environments in Eure-et-Loir (France)

ABSTRACT In the north of France, fortified towns and their castles have made a strong environmental impact since the eleventh century or earlier. This paper describes recent research that has begun to analyse the environmental impact of fortified towns during the medieval period, specifically between the eighth and the sixteenth centuries. The focus is on the place of fortifications within the townscape and the link between town and country, particularly through various forms of artificialisation – human modification – of the hydrological system. The case study area south-west of Paris, containing 33 medieval defended towns, was the location of conflicts on the borders of the French royal domain during this period. In many towns, defensive walls and moats can still be seen, and good preservation of the town plan and limited urban development since the nineteenth century has enabled environmental data to be obtained from ditches and rivers, while historical maps, excavations and archival studies, supported by some geophysical survey, has facilitated more detailed analyses.

Más por fuerça que de grado: La acción y el lenguaje de la competencia ciudad-nobleza en la Sierra castellano-manchega, en el advenimiento de la monarquía isabelina

Durante el siglo XV y sobre todo en el paso a la monarquía isabelina, Castilla experimenta un alto nivel de violencia causado por una nobleza que persigue unos objetivos políticos ligados a su vinculación contradictoria con el poder regio y el realengo. En este último caso, la violencia noble no sólo constituye una manifestación de fuerza sino un instrumento de legitimación de la misma violencia y sus ganancias. Las ciudades operaron de manera similar, manipulando la percepción de esa violencia para construir el reproche ejercido contra la nobleza. Pero también demostraron su capacidad para atraer la cooperación de algunos linajes nobles, incorporándolos a la defensa activa y pública de los intereses urbanos mediante un marco de contraprestaciones atractivo. Dados los concejos y señoríos implicados, el ámbito de la serranía castellano-manchega constituye un espacio idóneo donde ensayar este análisis.

Okinawa’s Buddhism

The Satsuma Domain (Satsuma-han) invaded and controlled the Ryūkyū Kingdom in 1609, and after the fifteen rules (掟十五条) had been issued in 1611, by which the Satsuma dominated the Ryūkyū Kingdom, Buddhism was restricted. This made Buddhism stagnate and gradually decline. In 1910, Buddhism in the Ryūkyū Islands was unified with mainland Japanese Buddhism, and the five temples of the old royal domain of the Shō family, who ruled until 1879, were forced to become private temples. Accordingly, there was no danka (parishioner) system which needed to be abolished. Temple management met financial difficulties at that time. Here I give consideration to this process, consulting a wide variety of sources from the region itself, as well as diplomatic reports.

За пределами королевского домена: чем еще владела английская корона при первых Стюартах

За пределами королевского домена: чем еще владела английская корона при первых Стюартах

The Japanese Tower at the Royal Domain in Laeken: A remarkable application of Japanese lacquer techniques in Belgium

The Japanese Tower, commissioned by King Leopold II of Belgium in 1900 and designed by the French architect Alexandre Marcel, was finished and inaugurated in 1904. This building presents a remarkable variety of decorative techniques and materials, including Japanese lacquer executed using specific and complex decorative techniques. Preliminary research on the interior decorations allowed the rediscovery and highlighting of a large and unique collection of lacquerwork and architectural Japanese ornaments from the Edo and Meiji period, combined with European artefacts. This paper focuses on the study of the extensive use of Japanese lacquer found in the upper floors of the Tower. This focus was facilitated by collaboration with other specialists, which granted a better understanding of the secrets of this extraordinary piece of cultural heritage and the development of a preservation plan for the interior decoration.

Henry the Liberal: Count of Champagne, 1127–1181 by Theodore Evergates

Reviewed by: Henry the Liberal: Count of Champagne, 1127–1181 by Theodore Evergates Lindsay Diggelmann Evergates, Theodore, ed., Henry the Liberal: Count of Champagne, 1127–1181 (Middle Ages), Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016; cloth; pp. 392; 11 b/w illustrations; R.R.P. US$75.00; £49.00; 9780812247909. While travelling through Champagne in 1179, Walter Map – cleric, critic, and wit at the Plantagenet court – recorded his impressions of his host in Troyes, calling him ‘the most generous of men, so much so that to many he seemed prodigal, for to all who asked, he gave’ (p. 157). This was Henry ‘the Liberal’, Count of Champagne from 1152 to 1181. As Theodore Evergates notes, while this reputation was well deserved, it was not entirely altruistic. Henry’s largesse to monasteries, rural tenants, and urban centres stimulated production and commerce, notably through the important Champagne fairs, which generated considerable extra revenue for the Count through tolls and taxes. Henry’s ambition appears to have been to build a thriving, peaceful, and increasingly unified political entity from a collection of formerly separate feudal regions based on castles or other fortified sites. In this, as Evergates demonstrates, he succeeded. Henry’s father, Thibaut, elder brother of King Stephen of England, had combined the family’s traditional estates in Blois–Chartres, to the west of Paris, with newly acquired lands further east. This created a powerful principality on either side of the royal domain, giving rise to tension with the Capetian monarch, Louis VI, and leading Thibaut to be described as ‘within France second only to the king’ (p. 3). Henry inherited only the eastern lands but he took to calling himself Count Palatine of Troyes to underscore his superior status based on a lordship extending over neighbouring regions. On this basis, Evergates claims persuasively that ‘[w]ithin a decade of his accession, Henry had reimagined Champagne as a territorial state’. Henry’s relations with Louis VII were generally much better than had been the case between their fathers. Ties of loyalty and mutual respect forged during the expedition to the Holy Land on the Second Crusade (1147–49) endured through subsequent decades. These were reinforced by marital pacts: Henry [End Page 146] married Louis’s daughter Marie (from the king’s first marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine), while in 1160, Louis took as his third wife Henry’s sister, Adele, who became the mother of Philip Augustus. Despite the ensuing tangle of relationships which made Henry both son-in-law and brother-in-law to his sovereign and which were potentially in breach of canon law, family alliances underscored a soothing of political tensions. Although the author includes a chapter on court culture in the midst of the dominant political narrative, surprisingly little space is given to several notable figures traditionally associated with Champagne and especially with the circle of Countess Marie. It is true that the idea of a literary court centred on Marie has little or no basis and has effectively been demolished, yet the possibility of connections with Chrétien de Troyes, in particular, is only briefly considered here and is just as quickly dismissed (p. 147). All the same, the cultural influence of new Cistercian foundations, the frequent presence of papal delegations and foreign merchants, and the personal interests of the Count contributed to an environment which encouraged intellectual enquiry and spread literacy and written materials more widely than was usual in the twelfth-century context, so that they became an ‘integral part of life in Champagne’ (p. 176). Architecture, too, saw important developments, especially with the construction of a new comital residence and adjacent chapel of St-Étienne in Troyes, one of the first to be constructed in the new Gothic style. Though it cannot be proven that Henry stopped off in Sicily on his return from crusade, Evergates suggests that this is likely and argues that Henry may have taken the idea for a combined residential, administrative, and spiritual campus from the magnificent works being undertaken in mid-century by the Norman king Roger II at Palermo. The idea is a tantalising one, if difficult to verify. Perhaps this account sounds a touch too idealised or...

La conflictividad social en Palencia desde 1421 hasta la guerra de las Comunidades

During the War of the Communities of Castile, there took place in Palencia the taking of power by the comunero party, which happened to include the majority of the population. Such an exceptional event can be accounted for by the city’s high level of conflict throughout the fifteenth century —a fact that would determine the decline of the bishop’s seigneurial domain dating back to the early eleventh century. The city still retained its century-old claim to become part of the royal domain and thus free itself from the rule of bishops. However, the disputes involving the seigneurial power, the council and the several social groups eventually led to a state of steady confrontation which became even more heated as a result of the growing protagonism of the commoners. The latter actively opposed the misuse of power by the lords and the ways of the most powerful ranks of urban society that rivaled over the exclusive control of the local council. In fact, unremitting conflict led to an ever more frequent intervention by the Crown in the detriment of seigneurial power, whose decline in turn entailed the strengthening of the local oligarchy. The defeat of the comunero cause ultimately dismantled the struggle for the city’s self-rule, so that Palencia eventually subsided into the royal domain during the reign of Philip II.

The sumptuous interior lacquer decoration of the Japanese Tower at the Royal Domain, Laeken, Belgium

"The sumptuous interior lacquer decoration of the Japanese Tower at the Royal Domain, Laeken, Belgium." Studies in Conservation, 59(sup1), pp. S250–S251