A Constellation of Courts
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A Constellation of Courts The Courts and Households of Habsburg Europe, 1555-1665 Edited by: René Vermeir, Dries Raeymaekers and José Eloy Hortal Muñoz With contributions from: Alejandro López Álvarez (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid), Carlos Javier Carlos Morales (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid), Olivier Chaline (Université Paris IV – Sorbonne), Alicia Esteban Estríngana (Universidad de Alcalá), José Eloy Hortal Muñoz (Universidad Rey Juan Carlos), Birgit Houben (University of Antwerp), Katrin Keller (Universität Wien), José Martínez Millán (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid), Manuel Rivero (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid), Astrid von Schlachta (Universität Regensburg), Werner Thomas (KU Leuven) © 2014 by Leuven University Press / Presses Universitaires de Louvain / Universitaire Pers Leuven, Minderbroedersstraat 4, B-3000 Leuven (Belgium) ISBN 978 90 5867 990 1 D / 2014 / 1869 / 47 Distributed by Leuven University Press http://upers.kuleuven.be/nl/book/9789058679901 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ Reprint from ‘A Constellation of Courts’ - ISBN 978 90 5867 990 1 - © Leuven University Press, 2014 Reprint from ‘A Constellation of Courts’ - ISBN 978 90 5867 990 1 - © Leuven University Press, 2014 A Constellation of Courts The Courts and Households of Habsburg Europe, 1555-1665 Reprint from ‘A Constellation of Courts’ - ISBN 978 90 5867 990 1 - © Leuven University Press, 2014 A_Constallation_of_courts.indd 1 22/09/14 15:52 Reprint from ‘A Constellation of Courts’ - ISBN 978 90 5867 990 1 - © Leuven University Press, 2014 A_Constallation_of_courts.indd 2 22/09/14 15:52 A Constellation of Courts The Courts and Households of Habsburg Europe, 1555-1665 Edited by René Vermeir, Dries Raeymaekers, and José Eloy Hortal Muñoz Reprint from ‘A Constellation of Courts’ - ISBN 978 90 5867 990 1 - © Leuven University Press, 2014 A_Constallation_of_courts.indd 3 22/09/14 15:52 © 2014 by Leuven University Press / Presses Universitaires de Louvain / Universitaire Pers Leuven. Minderbroedersstraat 4, B-3000 Leuven (Belgium) All rights reserved. Except in those cases expressly determined by law, no part of this publication may be multiplied, saved in an automated datafile or made public in any way whatsoever without the express prior written consent of the publishers. ISBN 978 90 5867 990 1 e-ISBN 978 94 6166 132 6 D / 2014 / 1869 / 47 NUR: 685, 697 Cover illustration: Lucas I van Valckenborgh, “Frühlingslandschaft (Mai)”, (inv. Nr. GG 1065), Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna Typesetting: Friedemann BVBA Reprint from ‘A Constellation of Courts’ - ISBN 978 90 5867 990 1 - © Leuven University Press, 2014 A_Constallation_of_courts.indd 4 22/09/14 15:52 Contents Courts and households of the Habsburg dynasty: history and historiography 7 The political configuration of thepanish S Monarchy: the court and royal households José Martínez Millán 21 The court of Madrid and the courts of the viceroys Manuel Rivero 59 The economic foundations of the oyalr household of the Spanish Habsburgs, 1556–1621 Carlos Javier de Carlos Morales 77 The household of archduke Albert of Austria from his arrival in Madrid until his election as governor of the Low Countries: 1570–1595 José Eloy Hortal Muñoz 101 Flemish elites under Philip III’s patronage (1598-1621): household, court and territory in the Spanish Habsburg Monarchy Alicia Esteban Estríngana 123 The ‘Spanish Faction’ at the court of the archdukes Albert and Isabella Werner Thomas 167 “Vous estez les premiers vassaux que j’aye et que j’aime le plus.” Burgundians in the Brussels courts of the widowed Isabella and of the Cardinal-Infant don Ferdinand (1621-1641)* Birgit Houben 223 5 Reprint from ‘A Constellation of Courts’ - ISBN 978 90 5867 990 1 - © Leuven University Press, 2014 A_Constallation_of_courts.indd 5 22/09/14 15:52 CONTENTS Anne of Austria, founder of the Val-de-Grâce in Paris Olivier Chaline 255 Some reflections on the ceremonial and image of the kings and queens of the House of Habsburg in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Alejandro López Álvarez 267 From Graz to Vienna: structures and careers in the Frauenzimmer between 1570 and 1657 Katrin Keller 323 The nnsbruckI court in the 17th century: identity and ceremonial of a court in flux Astrid von Schlachta 341 Quo vadis: present and potential approaches to the relations between the courts and households of the Habsburg dynasty in the Early Modern period 367 Appendix: Principal offices of the court of the Spanish Habsburg kings 371 Index 379 6 Reprint from ‘A Constellation of Courts’ - ISBN 978 90 5867 990 1 - © Leuven University Press, 2014 A_Constallation_of_courts.indd 6 22/09/14 15:52 “ Vous estez les premiers vassaux que j’aye et que j’aime le plus.” Burgundians in the Brussels courts of the widowed Isabella and of the Cardinal-Infant don Ferdinand (1621-1641)* Birgit Houben Introduction The Spanish Monarchy was a composite state made up of various principalities and territories, each with its own languages, customs, economies and legal systems. The only thing that all these different lands had in common was the person of the ruler. Within the Monarchy, personal origins depended not only on one’s place of birth, but also on the system of legal rules and privileges that defined that place. This makes the term ‘nation’ highly problematic, not only because the word had little exact definition at the time, but also because we now use it in a very different sense. A subject of the Spanish Monarchy might be Spanish, Italian, Portuguese or Netherlandish, but one could also speak of Castile and Aragon, or Brabant and Flanders, as distinct nations. Indeed, contemporaries sometimes went so far as to speak of the naciones of Seville, Lisbon and Florence. Somebody from Barcelona might, all at the same time, be of the Spanish, Aragonese, Catalan and Barcelonan nations.1 The ‘nation’ to which a subject of the king of Spain belonged could be reducible to the most local unit of government. This makes it * I would like to thank Karine Klein, conservator at the Bibliothèque Municipale de Besançon, Paul Delsalle, Peter De Cauwer and René Vermeir for their help and advice. Abbreviations: AGS: Archivo General de Simancas; AGR: Archives Générales du Royaume, Brussels; BMB: Bibliothèque municipale de Besançon; KB: Royal Library of Belgium, Brussels; RAH: Real Academia de Historia; CC: Collection Chifflet; CSC: Colección Salazar y Castro; E: estado; GR: Geheime Raad; SSO: Secretariat of State and War; ms: manuscript. 1 Bernardo J. García García, “Presentación,” in Antonio Alvarez-Ossorio Alvariño and Bernardo J. García García (eds.), La Monarquía de las naciones: Patria, nación y naturaleza en la Monarquía de España (Madrid, 2004), 19; Xavier Gil Pujol, “Un rey, una fe, muchas naciones: Patria y nación en la España de los siglos XVI y XVII,” in idem, 39-76. 223 Reprint from ‘A Constellation of Courts’ - ISBN 978 90 5867 990 1 - © Leuven University Press, 2014 A_Constallation_of_courts.indd 223 22/09/14 15:52 BIRGIT HOUBEN clear that in the territories of the king of Spain, the term ‘nation’ had layers of signification rather than a uniform meaning. At a local level, the people of the time undoubtedly felt their closest loyalty to be to their native province, giving the term a regional meaning. But in an international context, whether through contacts between the various realms within the Spanish Monarchy, or contacts with subjects of other monarchs, the geographical concept of the homeland broadened, so that a subject of the Spanish monarch would consider himself or herself primarily as a Spaniard, Southern Netherlander or Italian. For the purposes of the present study, this wider use of the term ‘nation’ seems most appropriate. We will be discussing Spaniards, Southern Netherlanders and Burgundians, although this last group was, again, a more regional designation. But as the Franche-Comté of Burgundy was comparatively isolated from all the other Spanish-Habsburg possessions, no broader geographical term can be applied to this province.2 The Franche-Comté or Free County of Burgundy, just to the east of the duchy of Burgundy, was one part of the Spanish-Habsburg composite state. The Franche-Comté had been among the dower lands of Margaret of Male (1350-1405), heiress of the count of Flanders, at her marriage to Philip the Bold, duke of Burgundy (1342-1404). This couple laid the basis for a brand new dynasty that systematically acquired considerable territory. After the death of duke Charles the Bold in 1477 his only child Mary of Burgundy inherited this complex of states. The lack of a male heir meant that Louis XI of France laid claim to the duchy of Burgundy. Philip the Bold had, after all, only been enfeoffed with the duchy in 1364 as an apanage from his father, France’s king John the Good. Louis, however, not only occupied the duchy, but also invaded the Franche-Comté. The free county resisted this annexation and in 1493 France was forced to return it to Mary’s son, Philip the Fair. Thus the Franche-Comté was to remain a possession of the Spanish-Habsburg heirs to the Burgundian inheritance until the Peace of Nijmegen in 1678. After the loss of the ancestral duchy of Burgundy – a fact from 1477, but only officially accepted at the Peace of Cambrai in 1529 – the title of Burgundy passed to the Franche- Comté, as “le plus antique patrimoine de la maison de Bourgogne,” and henceforth ‘Burgundians’ meant the Franc-Comtois. In 1548 Charles 2 John H. Elliott also takes the view that “loyalties were overwhelmingly reserved for the province of origin” but that “growing contacts with the outer world did something to give the natives of the peninsula a feeling of being Spaniards.” See Imperial Spain, 1469-1716 (London, 1965), 7. 224 Reprint from ‘A Constellation of Courts’ - ISBN 978 90 5867 990 1 - © Leuven University Press, 2014 A_Constallation_of_courts.indd 224 22/09/14 15:52 BURGUNDIANS IN THE BRUSSELS COURTS V brought together his territories in the Low Countries, or pays de par- deça, and the Franche-Comté of Burgundy, or pays de par-delà, in a new unity, the Burgundian Circle of the Holy Roman Empire.