A royal court, often called simply a court when the royal context is clear, is an extended royal household in a monarchy, including all those who regularly attend on a monarch, or another central figure. Hence, the word court may also be applied to the of a senior member of the nobility. Royal courts may have their seat in a designated place, several specific places, or be a mobile, itinerant court.
In the largest courts, the royal households, many thousands of individuals constituted the court. These included the monarch or noble's camarilla and retinue, household, nobility, clergy, those with court appointments, , and may also include emissaries from other kingdoms or visitors to the court. Foreign princes and foreign nobility in exile may also seek refuge at a court.
and courts often included the harem and Concubinage as well as who fulfilled a variety of functions. At times, the harem was walled off and separate from the rest of the residence of the monarch. In Asia, concubines were often a more visible part of the court. Lower ranking Domestic worker and bodyguards were not properly called courtiers, though they might be included as part of the court or royal household in the broadest definition. Entertainers and others may have been counted as part of the court.
Patronage and courtly culture
A
royal household is the highest-ranking example of
patronage. A
regent or
viceroy may hold court during the minority or absence of the hereditary ruler, and even an elected head of state may develop a court-like entourage of unofficial, personally-chosen advisers and "companions". The French word
compagnon and its English derivation "companion" literally mean a "sharer of the bread" at table, and a court is an extension of the great individual's household. Wherever members of the household and bureaucrats of the administration overlap in personnel, it is reasonable to speak of a "court", for example in Achaemenid Persia,
Ming dynasty, Norman Sicily, the
Pope before 1870 (see:
papal household), and the
Austria-Hungary. A group of individuals dependent on the patronage of a great man, classically in ancient Rome, forms part of the system of "clientage" that is discussed under
vassal.
Individual rulers differed greatly in tastes and interests, as well as in political skills and in constitutional situations. Accordingly, some founded elaborate courts based on new , only to have their successors retreat to remote or to practical administrative centers. Personal retreats might arise far away from official court centres.
Etiquette and hierarchy flourish in highly structured court settings, and may leave conservative traces over generations. Most courts featured a strict order of precedence, often involving imperial, royal and noble ranks, orders of chivalry, and nobility. Some courts even featured court uniforms. One of the major markers of a court is ceremony. Most monarchal courts included ceremonies concerning the investiture or coronation of the monarch and audiences with the monarch. Some courts had ceremonies around the waking and the sleeping of the monarch, called a levée. Orders of chivalry as honorific orders became an important part of court culture starting in the 15th century.
History
Early history
The earliest developed courts were probably in the
Akkadian Empire,
Ancient Egypt, and
Shang dynasty. However, there is evidence of courts as described in the Neo-Assyrian Empire
and
Zhou dynasty.
[ChinaKnowledge.de encyclopedia, . Alternatively, the sequence was translated as prince, lord, elder, master, chieftain: Brooks 1997:3 n.9.] Two of the earliest titles referring to the concept of a courtier were likely the
ša rēsi and
mazzāz pāni of the Neo-Assyrian Empire.
In Ancient Egypt, there is a title translated as high steward or great overseer of the house.
[Stephen Quirke: Titles and bureaux of Egypt 1850–1700 BC, London 2004, , pp. 50–51, 61] The royal courts influenced by the court of the Neo-Assyrian Empire such as those of the
Median Empire and the Achaemenid Empire would also have identifiable developed courts with court appointments and other features associated with later courts.
The imperial court of the Achaemenid Empire at Persepolis and Pasargadae is the earliest identifiable complex court with all of the definitive features of a royal court such as a household, court appointments, courtiers, and court ceremony.
The Sasanian Empire adopting and developing the earlier court culture and customs of the Achaemenid Empire would also influence again the development of the complex court and court customs of the Roman Empire and Byzantine Empire.
The imperial court of the Byzantine Empire at Constantinople would eventually contain at least a thousand courtiers.
East Asia
The imperial courts of Chinese emperors, known as (朝廷), were among the largest and most complex of all. The
Han dynasty, Western Jin dynasty, and
Tang dynasty occupied the large palace complex at
Weiyang Palace located near Chang'an, and the later
Ming dynasty and
Qing dynasty occupied the whole
Forbidden City and other parts of
Beijing, the present capital city of
China. By the
Sui dynasty, the functions of the imperial household and the imperial government were clearly divided.
During the Heian period, Japanese emperors and their families developed an exquisitely refined court that played an important role in their culture.
Medieval and modern Europe
After the collapse of the
Roman Empire in the West, a true court culture can be recognised in the entourage of the
Ostrogoth Theodoric the Great and in the court of
Charlemagne. In the Roman East, a brilliant court continued to surround the Byzantine emperors.
In Western Europe, consolidation of power of local magnates and of kings in fixed administrative centres from the mid-13th century led to the creation of a distinct court culture that was the centre of intellectual and artistic patronage rivaling the and , in addition to its role as the apex of a rudimentary political bureaucracy that rivaled the courts of counts and dukes. The dynamics of hierarchy welded the court cultures together. Many early courts in Western Europe were that traveled from place to place.
Local courts proliferated in the splintered polities of medieval Europe and remained in early modern times in Germany and in Italy. Such courts became known for intrigue and power politics; some also gained prominence as centres and collective patrons of art and culture. In medieval Spain (Castile), provincial courts were created. Minor noblemen and burguesie allied to create a system to oppose the monarchy on many policy issues. They were called "las Cortes de Castilla". These courts are the root of the current Spanish congress and senate.
The courts of Burgundian State and the Kingdom of Portugal were particularly influential over the development of court culture and pageantry in Europe. The court of Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy was considered one of the most splendid in Europe and would influence the development of court life later on for all of France and Europe.
Court life would reach its apogee of culture, complexity and etiquette at the courts of Versailles under Louis XIV and the Hofburg under the Habsburgs.
As political executive functions are assumed by democracy or institutions, the function of noble courts is reduced once more to that of noble households, concentrating on personal service to the household head, ceremony and perhaps some residual politico-advisory functions. If zeal has banished an area's erstwhile ruling nobility, courts may survive in exile. Traces of royal court practices remain in present-day institutions like privy councils and governmental cabinets.
Africa
A series of
ruled
Ancient Egypt over the course of three millennia ( to 31 BC), until it was conquered by the
Roman Empire. In the same time period several kingdoms with their own royal courts flourished in the nearby
Nubia region, with at least one of them, that of the so-called
A-Group culture, apparently influencing the customs of Egypt itself. From the 6th to 19th centuries, Egypt was variously part of the
Byzantine Empire, Islamic Empire,
Mamluk Sultanate,
Ottoman Empire and
British Empire with a distant monarch. The Sultanate of Egypt was a short lived protectorate of the
United Kingdom from 1914 until 1922, when it became the Kingdom of Egypt and Sultan Fuad I changed his title to King. After the Egyptian Revolution of 1952 the monarchy was dissolved and Egypt became a republic.
In the Horn of Africa, the Kingdom of Aksum and later the Zagwe dynasty, Ethiopian Empire (1270–1974), and Aussa Sultanate all had royal courts. Various Somali Sultanates also existed, including the Adal Sultanate (led by the Walashma dynasty of the Ifat Sultanate), Sultanate of Mogadishu, Ajuran Sultanate, Warsangali Sultanate, Geledi Sultanate, Majeerteen Sultanate and Sultanate of Hobyo.
The kingship system has been an integral part of the more centralised African societies for millennia. This is especially true in the West African sahel, where royal courts have been in existence since at least the era of the 9th century Takrur and . The ruler of the 13th century Mali empire, Mansa Musa, brought a large number of his courtiers with him on the Islamic Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. Today, the courts of the Ashanti people nanas in modern Ghana, the Mande members of the Tunkalemmu caste in Mali, the Bamum people of Cameroon, the Kanem Empire of Chad, the Hausa people of northern Nigeria, the of the Southern African Zulu people and Xhosa people, and the obas and baales of Yorubaland, amongst others, continue the pageantry and court lifestyle traditions once common to the continent.
Americas
Court structure and organization
Court officials
Court officials or office-bearers (one type of
courtier) derived their positions and retained their titles from their original duties within the courtly household. With time, such duties often became archaic. However, titles survived involving the ghosts of arcane duties. These styles generally dated back to the days when a noble household had practical and mundane concerns as well as high politics and culture. Such court appointments each have their own histories. They might include but are not limited to:
Court seats
Earlier courts in medieval Western Europe were
, but courts were often held in a fixed place. One of the criteria of Norbert Elias' concept of a court society is that it existed in space. The
German language word
Hof, meaning an enclosed
courtyard, can also apply to a rural farmstead with outbuildings and walls forming the perimeter. It has also been used for the palatial seat where the court was held. Thus
Hof or "court" can become transferred to the building itself. For example, the grand residence Hampton Court Palace on the
River Thames above London was where
Thomas Wolsey held court as Catholic cardinal (built after the Italian ideal for a cardinal's palace) until his fall and its confiscation by
Henry VIII. William III and Mary II also held court there, 1689–94. Though it is built round two main courts, the structure itself is no longer the seat of a court in the sense of this article.
As an example, ambassadors to the United Kingdom are still accredited to the Court of St. James's, and courtiers of the monarchy may still have offices in St James's Palace, London. The present monarch, however, holds court at Buckingham Palace, where dignitaries are received. and her court]]
Some former seats of power (see official residence):
-
The Haute Cour (High Court) was the feudal council of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.
-
Alhambra in Granada, seat of the last Muslim dynasty in current Spain
-
Ali Qapu Palace, imperial palace of the later Safavid dynasty in Isfahan, Iran.
-
The Forbidden City, imperial palace complex of the Ming dynasty and Qing dynasty dynasties walled off from Beijing
-
Gyeongbokgung, royal palace of the Joseon in Seoul
-
Wawel Castle in Kraków and Warsaw Royal Castle, Poland
-
Château de Versailles near Paris in France
-
Palace of Darius in Susa and Persepolis, imperial Achaemenid palaces
-
Taq-i Kisra in Ctesiphon, Persia, in Sasanian Empire period
-
Hofburg Palace in Vienna, Austria
-
Palatine Hill in Rome, Italy. Origin of the word palace.
-
Sanssouci in Potsdam near Berlin
-
Munich Residence in Munich in Bavaria
-
Ludwigsburg Palace in Ludwigsburg in Swabia
-
Dresden Castle in Dresden in Saxony
-
The Holy See in the Papal States
-
Palazzo Medici Riccardi, palace of the House of Medici, Grand Dukes of Tuscany
-
The Kingdom of Portugal
-
The Royal Alcáçova of Coimbra – under the House of Burgundy
-
The Royal Alcáçova of São Jorge, Lisbon – under the houses of Burgundy and Aviz
-
The Royal Palace of Évora – under the reign of Manuel I of Portugal
-
The Royal Palace of Sintra – under the reigns of Manuel I of Portugal and John III of Portugal
-
The Ribeira Palace, Lisbon – under the Houses of Aviz, Habsburg, and Braganza
-
The Palace of Ajuda, Lisbon – under the House of Braganza
-
Urbino, seat of a duchy in the Marche
-
The Red Fort, palatial fortress of the Mughal emperors in Delhi, India
-
Shaniwar Wada palace fort of the Peshwa in Pune, India
-
Great Palace of Constantinople in Constantinople
-
Topkapı Palace in Istanbul, Turkey – under the Ottoman Empire
-
Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg, Russia
-
Royal Palace of Madrid in Spain
-
Alcázar de Colón in Santo Domingo
Court structure and titles
Caliphate courts
All four major
Caliphates had sophisticated
courts; this enabled Cordoba,
Cairo and
Baghdad (the respective seats of the
Omayyad, the
Fatimid and the
Abbasid) to become the largest, most culturally developed cities of their time. This drew talented people from all walks of life—such as
musicians,
singers,
poets and
scientists—to seek employment under the patronage of elite
bureaucrats,
and
Sultans at court. The other
Caliphate was the
Ottoman Empire, which employed its court's culture to stabilize an empire inhabited by huge non-Islamic populations spanning three
continents. Everything from
Algeria to the
Balkans to
Yemen was controlled by the court in
Istanbul.
The royal courts in the Islamic world were mostly run by rulers, but there were the exceptions of important elite families such as Barmakids and Nizams who established their own minor courts, enabling them to encourage arts and improve the empire even if the ruling king was useless.
See also
-
Aliénor de Poitiers, who documented the etiquette of the Burgundian Court in the late 15th century
-
Court appointment
-
Courtesy book
-
Curia regis
-
Masque
-
Orda (organization), the nomadic court of the Turkic peoples and Mongols peoples
-
Striking in the King's Court
Bibliography
-
On the sociology of the court, originally completed in 1939.
Further reading
Antiquity
-
Spawforth, A. J. S. (ed.). The Court and Court Society in Ancient Monarchies. Cambridge, 2007
Middle Ages
-
Branner, Robert, et al., eds. Art and the Courts: France and England from 1259 to 1328, 2 vols. Ottawa, 1972.
-
Bumke, Joachim. Courtly Culture: Literature and Society in the High Middle Ages. Berkeley and Ozford, 1991.
-
Cubitt, C. (ed.). Court Culture in the Early Middle Ages. The Proceedings of the First Alcuin Conference. Turnhout, 2002
-
Hen, Yitzhak. Roman Barbarians: The Royal Court and Culture in the Early Medieval West. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. .
-
Jaeger, C.S. The Origins of Courtliness: Civilizing Trends and the Formation of Courtly Ideals 939–1210. Philadelphia, 1985.
-
Jones, S.R., R. Marks and A. J. Minnis (eds.). Courts and Regions in Medieval Europe. York, 2000.
-
Jong, M. de and F. Theuws (eds.). Topographies of Power in the Early Middle Ages. Leiden, 2001.
-
Scaglione, A. Knights at Court: Courtliness, Chivalry, and Courtesy from Ottonian Germany to the Italian Renaissance. LA and Oxford, 1991.
-
Scattergood, V.J. English Court Culture in the Later Middle Ages. London, 1983.
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Vale, Malcolm. The Princely Court: Medieval Courts and Culture in North-West Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Renaissance and Early Modern
-
Adamson, John (ed.). The Princely Courts of Europe, 1500–1750. Ritual, Politics and Culture under the Ancien Régime, 1500–1750. London, 1999.
-
Asch, Ronald G., and Adolf M. Birke, eds. Princes, Patronage and the Nobility: The Court at the Beginning of the Modern Age, c.1450–1650. London and Oxford, 1991.
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Birke, A., and R. Asch (eds.). Courts, Patronage and the Nobility at the Beginning of the Modern Period, 1450–1650. 1991.
-
Burke, Peter. The Fabrication of Louis XIV. New Haven and London, 1992.
-
Charles-Edwards, T.M. et al. The Welsh king and his court. Cardiff, 2000.
-
Dickens, A.G. (ed.). The Courts of Europe: Politics, Patronage and Royalty, 1400–1800. 1977. Emphasis on patronage.
-
Duindam, Jeroen. Myths of Power: Norbert Elias and the Early Modern European Court. Amsterdam, 1995. Critique of Elias. English translation of dissertation Macht en Mythe (1992).
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Duindam, Jeroen. Vienna and Versailles. The courts of Europe's Dynastic Rivals 1550–1780. Cambridge, 2003.
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Elias, Norbert. The Court Society. Oxford, 1983.
External links
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Division between Hall and Chamber in late medieval noble and royal households.
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Bibliography on court history.
