Royal and Elite Households in Medieval and Early Modern Europe

Theresa Earenfight, Professor of History at Seattle University, is author of Queenship in Medieval Europe (2013), The King’s Other Body (2010), and editor of Queenship and Political Power in Medieval and Early Modern Spain (2005).

"The editor's introduction and sixteen papers offer a rich variety of approaches to the announced topic. [...] an impressive collection of serious work on a subject fully meriting our consideration. Editor and contributors have served us well". Joel T. Rosenthal, Sixteenth Century Journal, 2019. "As economic and administrative units “quite distinct from those of peasants, the gentry, and townspeople", royal and aristocratic households are critical to understanding politics in local, regional, international, intergenerational, and gendered contexts (Earenfight 3). The sixteen essays in the volume, ranging from the ninth to the mid-sixteenth century, deepen understandings of state-building processes and politics from a variety of perspectives: institutional, economic, cultural, gendered, and familial. The volume will be a valuable resource to political historians working on courts and gender.[...] It is an important contribution to new directions in the field of political history". Silvia Z. Mitchell, in Renaissance Quarterly, 73 (2), pp. 650-651.

• ContentsList of Figures and TablesNotes on ContributorsIntroduction: Personal Relations, Political Agency, and Economic Clout in Medieval and Early Modern Royal and Elite HouseholdsTheresa Earenfight1 Domina et Fidelibus Eius: Elite Households in Tenth-Century Francia and Anglo-Saxon EnglandMegan Welton2 Maintaining Elite Households in Germany and Italy, 900-1115: Finances, Control, and PatronagePenelope Nash3 Æthelings and their Entourages in Late Anglo-Saxon England: The Households, Retinues and Networks of Two Sons of King Æthelred the UnreadyDavid McDermott4 Joan de Valence and Her Household: Domesticity, Management, and Organization in Transition from Wife to WidowLinda E. Mitchell5 Eleanor of Brittany in Confinement: Problematizing Paradigms of the Household for Royal PrisonersEileen Kim6 “All my frendys fro me thei flee”: The Disgraced and Unstable Household of Eleanor, Duchess of GloucesterSally Fisher7 Serving Isabella of France: From Queen Consort to Dowager QueenCaroline Dunn8 Political Power-Brokers in the Fifteenth Century English Royal HouseholdAlexander Brondarbit9 “Our Servants Say Scandalous Things about You:” Royal Households in the Fourteenth-Century Crown of AragonAlana Lord10 Love, Calumnies, Murders, War, Ambition, and Survival at the Court of King Fernando and Queen Leonor Teles of Portugal (1367-1384)Isabel de Pina Baleiras11 The Portuguese Household of an English Queen: Sources, Purposes, Social Meaning (1387-1415)Manuela Santos Silva12 Royal Household and Political Parties: The Configuration of Ferdinand the Catholic’s Entourage in Castile (1469-1516)Germán Gamero Igea13 Rocking the Cradle and Ruling the World: Queens’ Households in Late Medieval and Early Modern Aragon and FranceZita Rohr14 A Precarious Household: Catherine of Aragon in England, 1501-1504Theresa Earenfight15 There and Back Again: The Hospitality and Consumption of a Sixteenth-Century English Travelling HouseholdAudrey M. Thorstad16 The Households of Portuguese infantesin Avis Dynasty: Formation and Autonomy of Alternative Centers of Power in the Sixteenth CenturyHélder CarvalhalIndex