Conference Report: Representar La Reginalidad En La Monarquía De Los Austrias (Siglo XVII) – Representing Queenship in the Habsburg Monarchy (17th Century)

Many thanks to Aoife Cosgrove (Trinity College Dublin) and Amy Saunders (University of Winchester) for this excellent and comprehensive conference report!

In March 2023 a group of international scholars gathered for the first AGENART symposium: Representar La Reginalidad En La Monarquía De Los Austrias (Siglo XVII) – Representing Queenship in the Habsburg Monarchy (17th Century). This was organized byPeter Cherry (Trinity College Dublin) and Alejandra Franganillo (Universidad Complutense de Madrid). The I+D project ELITFEM also collaborated in the organization of this event. The two-day symposium took place across Madrid, with the first day at Centro Cultural la Corrala, part of the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, and day two starting at the Biblioteca Histórica Marqués de Valdecilla, part of the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. The afternoon of the second day also included a choice between two activities, either a walking tour of Madrid led by María Cruz de Carlos Varona (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid), or a tour of the Museo del Prado led by Peter Cherry (Trinity College Dublin). Whilst all presenters delivered their papers in person, some participants joined to watch the event online.

Keynote

Split into three themes the symposium began with a keynote given by Adam Jasienski (Southern Methodist University, Dallas) whose book Praying to Portraits: Audience, Identity, and the Inquisition in the Early Modern Hispanic World will be published in May 2023 and explores portraiture and religious imagery. Jasienski’s keynote took as its focus a particular example of a “retrato a lo divino”, a form of portraiture in which the sitter is depicted in the guise of a religious figure. Juan Pantoja de la Cruz’s reimagining of the Annunciation featuring the Spanish queen Margaret of Austria as the Virgin Mary and her daughter Anna Maria as the angel Gabriel was explored through the lens of female religiosity in the seventeenth century. Jasienski argued that such images should be read alongside prevailing practices of meditation and visualisation circulated in religious literature of the time, taking into account the guidance that was given to women on how to experience their faith through vision and emotion. By these means, such “divine portraits” can be considered as devotional aids which also served to remind those people portrayed of their responsibility to serve as vessels of God’s will as expressed through the monarchy.

Section 1: Political Uses of Habsburg Women’s Portraiture

Following this, the first theme explored the political uses of Habsburg women’s portraiture featuring María Cruz de Carlos Varona (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid) and Amy Saunders (University of Winchester). De Carlos Varona’s paper explored representations of queens at the courts of Philip III and Philip IV, focusing in particular on Margaret of Austria and Isabella of Bourbon. De Carlos Varona argued that women were active agents in the construction of their images, and that the repeated use of certain typologies and formats, as well as the inclusion of miniature portraits of family members, and heraldic symbols integrated into clothing, were all part of a queen’s self-fashioning. As such, queens’ portraits allowed them to visually demonstrate their affiliations and virtuous qualities. Following this, Saunders explored constructions of Queen Henrietta Maria’s motherhood and Catholicism in portraiture and print, drawing particular attention to how these artworks are now represented in modern heritage sites in England. Saunders sought to combat the all-too-common practice of excluding or minimising royal women’s contributions to the commissioning and collecting of art in favour of their husbands by showing the ways in which Henrietta Maria exercised her agency through her commissioning of portraiture and the decorating of her residences. At the end of each theme a panel debate then brought the presenters for each section together for questions and further discussion.

Section 2: The Construction of Identity Through Images

The conference’s second section examined the fashioning of identities through imagery, taking a closer look at how Habsburg women’s portraits adapted the image of the queen to suit the present moment, be it a time of grief, war, or celebration. Yelsy Hernández’s (Yale University) contribution to this topic looked at the literature and imagery surrounding the funeral rites of Queen Margaret of Austria, exploring how this Spanish queen’s posthumous legacy was constructed in the period immediately following her death. With evidence from contemporary sources originating from both Spain and Italy, this paper was able to demonstrate the foregrounding of Margaret’s relationships with men in the symbols and imagery which surrounded her at the time of her funeral, as well as the similarities between her representation in posthumous texts and those of female saints. The following paper, given by one of the conference organisers, Alejandra Franganillo Álvarez (Universidad Complutense de Madrid), reinforced the utility of funeral orations as sources for studying the fashioning of queenly identities. Her paper, which focused on Queen Isabella of Bourbon, examined the construction of this queen’s persona in later life during a time of war, in particular, studying how her role as queen was conceived of as an equal but opposite counterbalance to the role of king. With the king representing military might, Isabella became a symbol of peace and womanly virtue, garnering identification with strong female figures such as Esther, Judith, and Bellona, some of which were featured in her funeral dedications. These strong female figures were also key to the imagery surrounding the subject of the final paper of this section, Christine of France, Duchess of Savoy. Franca Varallo (Università di Torino) described the various mantles which this queen adopted in her imagery: widow, mother, goddess, equestrian. Christine’s choice of the diamond as her personal symbol, coupled with her representations as strong, bright, and tough on the walls of her home, showed her as a woman well aware of her individual power and the power of imagery to convey it to others. Indeed, each of the queens examined in this section utilised text, imagery, and symbolism in tandem to fashion identities which served their purposes, identities which continued to be reiterated and promoted by their supporters following their deaths.

Section 3: Private Uses of Portraits: Exchange, Collecting, and Display

The third and final section of the conference – which took place on the second day – grappled with a variety of questions regarding the functionality of royal portraits, exploring their publics, mobility, and reproduction. Silvia Mitchell’s (Purdue University, Indiana) paper reconstructed not just the image of the widowed queen Mariana of Austria as regent and queen mother, but also sought to reassemble and analyse her vast collection of luxury goods with the help of a soon-to-be-published inventory. Mitchell’s talk demonstrated that although Mariana found herself in a precarious position following the death of her husband, she managed to bolster her power as queen mother through her depiction in official portraiture, as well as by surrounding herself with precious and magnificent objects such as tapestries, clocks, porcelain, books, and portraits of her relations. The subsequent paper by Andrea Sommer-Mathis and Christian Standhartinger (Academia de Ciencias Austríaca, ÖAW Vienna) expanded upon the importance of objects in the relationships between royal persons, taking a particular interest in the exchange of portraits between courts. By studying the extant letters of the Viennese Habsburgs, Sommer-Mathis and Standhartinger were able to explore both the personal and political functions of these portraits, demonstrating their significance in the establishing of marriage alliances, but also their more human function as aide-mémoirs and love tokens. A true likeness of the person depicted was revealed as a very valuable aspect of such portraits, foregrounding the importance placed on having an able court painter at one’s command. The final paper of the day and of the conference – given by the second of the conference’s organisers, Peter Cherry (Trinity College Dublin) – took a closer look at this facet of portrait painting, focusing on the workshop and output of the painter Velázquez during the 1650s. Raising questions as to the relative agency of a painter and sitter, the sometimes perplexing use of symbolism within portraits, and the painting, repainting, and copying of royal images, Cherry’s research revealed the difficulties inherent in producing sufficient images of a regent to sate international demand, and the necessity for cooperation between court artists, copyists, and their patrons in order to design and disseminate a suitable image of a ruler. By examining portraiture’s complex web of meanings and uses, this section allowed for deeper reflection on the role of portrait as object, sign, and memory.

Workshops

After a vast array of stimulating papers, the conference ended with the opportunity to explore the themes and topics which had been discussed in a more hands-on way, leaving the confines of the lecture room and venturing out into the cityscape of Madrid. Attendees had a choice between two workshops which each furthered the discussion on one of the central focuses of the conference: one could either visit the Museo Nacional del Prado in order to experience in person and dissect some of the seminal portraits of Habsburg women of the seventeenth century, or else take to the streets in order to explore the “immaterial” legacy of Habsburg women on the urban landscape by reconstructing the itinerary of the royal entry of the Spanish queens into Madrid, this being the most import ceremony associated with them in the Early Modern period. These workshops facilitated a more informal continuation of the stimulating discussions begun by the speakers’ papers and allowed attendees to experience in physical terms the presence of these queens as etched onto the landscape of the city in which they ruled.

Conclusion

This inaugural event was hugely successful, showcasing a fascinating range of work from an international group of scholars. The beautiful surroundings of Centro Cultural la Corrala and the Biblioteca Histórica Marqués de Valdecilla were the perfect setting for a symposium exploring the activities of seventeenth-century Habsburg women, their artistic patronage, and influence over other royal and elite courts. The Biblioteca Histórica Marqués de Valdecilla was simultaneously hosting an exhibition on Universos del conocimiento: libros para pensar, libros para observar, libros para soñar (Universes of knowledge: books to think about, books to observe, books to dream about), which delighted attendees during the breaks, showcasing many beautiful early modern books and prints. Many of the paintings discussed over the symposium are found within the collection of the Museo Nacional del Prado, and were enthusiastically discussed on the tour on the final afternoon.

The fascinating discussions that took place across the two-day symposium will form a special edition of the Libros de la Corte which is due for publication in summer 2024. This peer-reviewed, open access journal will not only highlight the work of those who presented at the event, but will also incorporate additional articles related to the main themes explored. With the symposium’s success and this future journal edition to look forward to, Representar La Reginalidad En La Monarquía De Los Austrias (Siglo XVII), will continue to have an impact far beyond two beautifully sunny days spent in Madrid.

For forthcoming symposia organized by the I+D AGENART and for freely available materials on Spanish Queens in English and Spanish, please visit: https://agenart.org/

Photographs are (c) the authors

Advertisement

Conference Report on “Global Royal Families”

This conference report comes to us from Paige Emerick at the University of Leicester. Thank you, Paige!

Global Royal Families: Concepts, Cultures, and Networks of International Monarchy, 1800–2020. Conference held at the German Historical Institute London, 16–18 January 2020. Conveners: Falko Schnicke (GHIL), Cindy McCreery (University of Sydney), and Robert Aldrich (University of Sydney).

Co-financed by the GHIL and the University of Sydney, this event
brought together scholars from four continents and eight countries to
discuss the timely issue of global monarchies. Over the two and a half
days there were almost forty attendees, and nineteen speakers presented
ideas spanning royal families across two centuries and the continents
of Europe, Africa, Asia, and Oceania. Despite the wide variation
in time periods and geographical locations covered, there were
many overlapping and complementary themes, including the importance
of the visibility of monarchs, the need to secure status on a global
stage, the role of royals as official and unofficial diplomats, and the
media’s influence over the public image of a royal person or dynasty.
The conference’s main findings were that the global, national, and
regional aspects of royal families were constantly intertwined, and
that the political significance of monarchies recurred in different
nineteenth- and twentieth-century contexts.

The conference opened with Robert Aldrich’s (University of Sydney) introductory talk detailing the coverage of global royal families
in history and historiography. Starting with comparative examples
from both the early nineteenth century and modern-day marriages
between the Napoleon and Habsburg dynasties, Aldrich highlighted
the intertwined genealogical, political, and cultural ties between
royal families across the world. He maintained that in the nineteenth
century European monarchies were affected by empire, which demonstrated their power to conquer and their interest in collections of
‘exotica’. Yet at the same time, non-European monarchies were adopting Western styles of clothing, architecture, and court culture in order
to be more accepted on the global stage.

The first session focused on royalty in international affairs and
diplomacy and opened with a paper by Moritz A. Sorg (University of
Freiburg), which examined the extent to which the First World War damaged the relationships of royal families across Europe. Sorg provided
parallel case studies of Ferdinand I of Bulgaria and Ferdinand
I of Romania to demonstrate how the First World War placed related
monarchies on opposite sides, and the consequential impact this had
on how these royal individuals were viewed in their respective countries
and under the conditions of increasing nationalism. Next,
Michael Kandiah’s (King’s College London) paper looked at how the
British royal family has utilized its ‘soft power’ since 1952 to improve
diplomatic relations between countries. Using oral testimonies of
British diplomats, Kandiah explored how Queen Elizabeth II has
been able to use her royal status, which places her above politics, in
order to maintain good relationships through official engagements,
both internationally and in Britain.

The second session centred on the House of Windsor and their re –
lationship with foreign royal houses. Continuing the focus on Queen
Elizabeth II and the current British royal family, Falko Schnicke
(GHIL) delivered a paper which analysed the content of speeches
given at state visits and highlighted the input that the government
and the Palace had into these. He proved that it was the Foreign
Office which inserted personal family remarks into speeches in order
to demonstrate the network of monarchies and the intensity of international royal relationships. Thus the royal family functioned as a
collective unit rather than as a collection of individuals. Following
this Hilary Sapire (Birbeck College, University of London) examined
the relationship between the British and Zulu royal families in South
Africa in the colonial period and through the early twentieth century.
She argued that royal events and the links to the British monarchy
were used by both Zulu monarchists and nationalists to advance their
cause of independence.

The first day closed with a keynote lecture by Frank Mort (University of Manchester), which analysed how the media was used to
transform the monarchy under George V and Queen Mary, and
Edward VIII, into a consumable entity for the public. The increased
visibility of the royal family through informal royal visits both in
Britain and the colonies helped to make them more accessible to the
ordinary public. Mort took a bottom-up approach to judging how the
public emotionally responded to different members of the royal family
by drawing upon first-hand accounts of seeing royalty. He argued
that the rise of human-interest journalism meant that there was a more extensive and global coverage of the royal family, and an attempt to make them more approachable by encouraging them to conduct unceremonious visits. He stressed the differences between George V and Queen Mary, helping to solidify the notion of the royal family as a domestic unit, while the Prince of Wales (the future Edward VII) fostered a celebrity culture around his younger lifestyle.

The second day of the conference began with session three, which
looked at the global reach of the British monarchy, with John R. Davis
(Queen Mary London/Historic Royal Palaces) beginning with British
attitudes towards India in the nineteenth century. Using Queen
Victoria’s diaries and the Royal Library catalogues, Davis
argued that Queen Victoria was first introduced to German
philology by Prince Albert. This early introduction to philology,
and repeated meetings with renowned scholars such as Max Müller,
helped to fuel her interest in Indian culture during the latter part of
her life. Moving into the twentieth century, Christian Oberländer
(University of Halle-Wittenberg) presented a contrast to this with a
paper analysing how the British royal family was a model for
Japan’s Imperial house, looking particularly at the role of the
Japanese sovereign as a ‘symbolic’ emperor after the Second World
War. He argued that through the Japanese Imperial family
embracing state visits, they placed themselves as the figureheads of
the nation and allowed Japan to open itself up to the public at home
and in the West.

Session four continued the theme of royal travel by focusing on
the Spanish and Austrian royal families. First, Javier Moreno-Luzón
(Complutense University of Madrid) explained how Alfonso XIII of
Spain (r.1886–1931) fostered closer relations with Latin America
through royal visits, celebrations, and a shared culture to create a
transnational image of the royal family. He argued that from the late
nineteenth century to the end of the 1920s, the royal family successfully
promoted Spanish national identity centring on the monarchy
through the careful selection of different royal individuals to send to
Hispanophone Latin American countries. They were thus able simultaneously to promote historic ties with Spain and highlight a progressive future. Aglaja Weindl (University of Munich) provided a
case study of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and how he became an
‘unexpected global royal’ because of his world tour in 1892–3. This
extensive travelling not only educated the Archduke but provided an opportunity to build better relations with Protestant and Orthodox
countries. Using Franz Ferdinand’s own accounts, Weindl provided
a personal insight into the repetitive nature of royal ceremonies
across Europe and how the guests felt about attending them.

Session five focused on global encounters, with Judith
Rowbotham (University of Plymouth) using a range of local, national,
and colonial newspapers to analyse the reception of the British
royal family within different colonies. Taking examples of tours
through India, Canada, Australia, and beyond from the late nineteenth
to the early twentieth century, Rowbotham emphasized the
impact that these visits had on global networking and diplomacy.
Specifically tailoring the tone of the visit and activities not only aided
relationships with the authorities, but allowed a sense of community
to develop in the colonial public. Cindy McCreery (University of
Sydney) followed this with a case study of the 1881 visit to Japan by
King Kalakaua of Hawai’i and princes Albert Victor and George of
Great Britain, and explored how this occasion was used to promote
better relations between the countries. Highlighting similarities that
mirrored Oberländer’s paper, McCreery argued that the opening
of Japan to royal visits was an attempt by the country to reinvent
its global image, appear more welcoming, and encourage trade
deals. Such a tour also allowed the King of Hawai’i to develop an
international presence. Photographs of the visit demonstrated that
there was a clear acknowledgement of the status of foreign
royalty, while showing differences in hierarchy due to age and
position in relation to the throne.

The next session focused on the importance of letter-writing between royals, with emphasis on female family relations. Susanne Bauer (University of Trier) presented her research project of cataloguing
and analysing the 20,000 letters of Augusta Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, Queen of Prussia and Empress of Germany. Bauer argued that Augusta expressed many political opinions in these letters, tried to advise her husband (whether he asked for advice or not), and was a key factor in building relationships with royalty and politicians across Europe and beyond, with approximately 230 royal and nonroyal correspondents. Mary T. Duarte (Cardinal Stritch University, Milwaukee, USA) analysed letters written over the course of the nineteenth century by four generations of female royals from the line of descendants of Maria Theresa of the House of Habsburg. She scrutinized the type of advice passed from mother to daughter, and between grandmother and granddaughter, especially
pertaining to marriage and sexual life. She contended that as the
generations went on, the tone of this advice softened, although
duty and obedience were still often stressed.

The second keynote lecture of the conference was delivered by
Irene Stengs (Meertens Instituut/Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam),
who provided an in-depth anthropological analysis of the mourning
culture in Thailand following the death of King Rama IX in 2016, and
the meaning of the symbolism and rituals in the coronation ceremony
of King Rama X in 2019. Taking a step-by-step approach through
the elements and stages of the coronation ceremony, Stengs highlighted
how this event was used to unite the country through shared
experience and emotions. While there were historical and religious
precedents for several aspects of the event, the incorporation of modern
technology, such as mass television broadcasting and drones,
gave the new monarch increased accessibility and a personal quality.
She also presented a close analysis of the use of colour by the organizers
of the event to mark a new reign, and explained the significance
this holds within Thai culture.

The final day of the conference started with a session exploring
regional dynasties and transnational royal families. Aidan Jones
(King’s College London) gave a case study of Alexander II of Russia’s
visit to Britain in 1874 on the occasion of his daughter Marie’s marriage
to Prince Alfred. He analysed the dynastic politics of the marriage
arrangement and the wider implications this had for international
diplomacy. Priya Naik (University of Delhi) followed this with
a paper exploring the consumption of Britishness by Indian princes
in the first half of the twentieth century. She argued that by consuming
goods, language, culture, and customs, Indian princes were hoping
to be accepted by British society and to join an international aristocratic
network.

The final session analysed the different international models of
monarchy. Nicholas Miller (University of Lisbon), like McCreery,
focused on King Kalakaua of Hawai’i (r.1874–91) but compared him
to Sultan Abu Bakar of Johore (r.1886–95) in the Malay States. He
focused on the two kings’ different approaches to ruling small monarchies and gaining international recognition for their states, and
addressed the issue of labour migration. Charles Reed (Elizabeth City
State University, Elizabeth City, USA) closed the conference by
returning to India via the Gaekwad of Baroda. Like Naik, he highlighted
the Gaekwad’s desire to foster good relations with the British.
Reed’s approach was to explore how this was achieved through the
lens of royal visits to Britain from the later nineteenth century and the
public image they were trying to promote of a princely state in India
during the colonial period and after independence.

The conference closed with reflections from the co-organizers,
who drew out some of the key themes from across the papers. The
breadth of the time period and geographical locations covered highlighted
that monarchies had achieved local, national, and global
reaches. Several papers pointed out that royalty was used, often
unofficially, for diplomatic reasons to improve relationships between
dynasties and nations, which provoked discussions about how individual
royal persons perceived their role. It was agreed that monarchy
is an evolving concept, and in recent times, by embracing modern
technology and utilizing media coverage, royal families have
been able to appear relatable and relevant to contemporary society.
The importance of the family unit at the heart of the monarchy was
understood to be a central factor in emphasizing the longevity and
stability of the institution, and some of the paradoxes of private life
and public role for royal families had been illustrated throughout the
papers. Finally, the visibility of royalty, either through first-hand
accounts of travel, or increased coverage in the press and
accompanying images, was a central theme across many of the
papers. This increased visibility frequently allowed royal individuals
to appear more personable, and enhanced their popularity
nationally and globally. The conference also confirmed the need for
further studies, even in the twenty-first century, on the evolving
central position in political, social, and cultural life occupied by
monarchs and their royal families in many countries.

Let’s talk about Royal Studies! (Video)

This little corner of the web is all about Royal Studies! The field, the network, the journal. Behind all this are amazing scholars, some of them coming together on the Kings & Queens conferences, some of them only connected via the Facebook group, following the activities on Twitter, Facebook, or the newsletter.

However, we do not only go to the Kings & Queens conferences but also to other gatherings like the IMC Leeds (for medievalists). Just recently, Kristen Geaman and Cathleen Sarti who are two of the people behind this blog and the marketing team have met for the first time in real life at IMC. Of course, we did a video.

Honestly, we’re not used to video interviews and you can see it – but if we are brave enough to post it, then so are you! Members of the RSN, get out, meet your friends from the network and talk about the network and Royal Studies! Please send any videos and questions to royalstudiesblog@gmail.com!
Under the video, you’ll find a list of possible questions to structure your videos! Although, we did also not really keep the structure – but take a look (sorry for the link, video is bigger than allowed upload size):

Kristen Geaman and Cathleen Sarti, IMC Leeds 2019

Here are some of the questions we discussed:

What brought you to royal studies, and how did you find out about the Royal Studies Network?

What do you enjoy most about the network?

Which new insights have you gained from your work connected to the network, or to royal studies?

What are you curious about?

What are you doing right now, and what are your next projects?

CCCU Prizes 2018

This is an amazing Kings&Queens summer – great conferences, books, discussions, and now some prizes for outstanding scholarship in the field of Royal Studies!

At the Kings&Queens conference, we celebrated with Joanna Laynesmith who won the CCCU Book Prize for her study on Cecily Duchess of York! Go on, buy it, read it, and tell us what you think of it – and to make it easier – there is a discount… 35% discount off “Cecily Duchess of York” at http://www.bloomsbury.com on individual sales with the code GLR KR6 (that makes it £55.25, plus postage if overseas).

We would also like to honor the runner up book from Penny NAsh on the Empress Adelheid and Countess Matilda (https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9781137590886) for its amazing scholarship on these two medieval women!

And, if that’s not enough – also our early career and doctoral students in the field produce exceptional work: The 2018 RSJ-CCCU Prize for the best unpublished article by an ECR goes to Dr Alison Creber (KCL) for her article, “The Princely Woman and the Emperor: Imagery of Female Rule in Benzo of Alba’s Ad Heinricum IV”. – Keep a look out for this article in our December issue!

We honored also already published work: the 2018 RSJ-CCCU Prize for the best published article by a PGR goes to Jessica O’Leary, who is undertaking her doctoral research at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. Her article, “Politics, Pedagogy, and Praise: Three Literary Texts Dedicated to Eleonora d’Aragona, Duchess of Ferrara”, was published in 2016 in the distinguished scholarly journal, I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance, volume 19, number 2 (2016): https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/688439

Conference Report from Kalamazoo

This year the Royal Studies Network and Royal Studies Journal hosted two excellent sessions on Plural/Corporate Monarchy at the 53^rd International Congress on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan. The Congress at Kalamazoo is one of the largest gatherings of medievalists from around the world, and it features papers from a wide range of disciplines such as history, English, philosophy, religious studies, and world languages to name just a few. Medievalists from undergraduates to senior scholars enjoy the scholarship, social opportunities (including a Saturday night dance), and book discounts. Be on the lookout on the Royal Studies Network Facebook page for more information about future Kalamazoo sessions.

Below are quick summaries of our sessions, provided so that those who were unable to attend don’t miss out!

Session One:

Erin L. Jordan’s paper, “Melisende, Fulk and Corporate Monarchy in the Twelfth-Century Kingdom of Jerusalem” discussed corporate monarchy in the Latin East. Jordan argued that Melisende was a true co-ruler and when her husband Fulk tried to cut her out, she (with the support of native nobles) rebelled in 1134. The couple reconciled rather quickly because co-rule worked very well for a conquest kingdom such as that of Jerusalem. The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem follows more Mediterranean patterns of monarchy where the demands of war make a partnership between the king and queen particularly useful.

Manuela Santos Silva’s paper, “The king, his wife, their children and their households: Royal power in Iberia in late middle ages” is part of a larger project investigating collective monarchy in the Iberian peninsula. Using law codes such as Las Siete Partidas and Portuguese letters and chronicles, Silva traces the answers to such vital questions as: who should be king? What is the role of the royal family in an elective monarchy? What is the role of the royal family in an inherited monarchy? Should we refer to some monarchies as “shared monarchy”?

Janna Bianchini’s paper, “Duplicate Monarchy? Kings Confirming Royal Women’s Gifts in León-Castile” focused especially on Sancha Raimúndez (1095-1159) and her many royal diplomas. The vast majority of Sancha’s surviving grants are not confirmed by her royal brother, suggesting that royal women could grant land independently. Several of the diplomas issued jointly by Sancha Raimúndez and Alfonso VII show the royal siblings acting via verbs in the first person plural (we give, we concede), which indicates a joint dominion over certain lands or rights. In a close examination of some of Sancha’s grants, Bianchini then explored the concept of “keeping while giving” that seemed to be in action with some of Sancha’s grants.

During the question-and-answer period, participants and audience members discussed the idea of a Mediterranean or “frontier” concept of rulership that relies fairly heavily on corporate monarchy. Is this a thing? Worth pondering!

Session Two:

Kristen Geaman’s paper, “Is All Monarchy Plural? A Look at Medieval Kings and Queens” took the idea of corporate monarchy beyond the Mediterranean to England. Looking specifically at intercession and the idea that a king needed/had two genders, she suggested that English monarchy could also be seen as plural because kings and queens together often embodied and enacted the performance of the king’s two genders. Intercession, in which a merciful queen tempers a vengeful (but just) king particularly showcases the monarchs working together to fulfill both kingly genders.

Anna Jagosova’s paper, “The House of Luxembourg (1309 ‒ 1442): Ruling practices in composite monarchy from gender comparative perspective” explored the charters from the many domains ruled by the House of Luxembourg to highlight the role of consorts in ruling these territories. With such disparate holdings, the regnants needed assistance, which queens could often provide. Comparing the language in extant charters, Jagosova showed that queens and kings used nearly identical language. Queens were generally especially powerful in places where they held lands, either from their dowers or morning gifts.

Abdulaziz Alqabli’s paper, “Religious Authority in the Mamluk Era 1250-1517” explored how the Mamluk sultans of Egypt used the Abbasid caliphs (who they had installed in Cairo after their defeat by the Mongols in 1258) and the ulama (religious scholars) to help legitimize their rule and prevent rebellions by the populace. The Mamluks particularly needed this support because of their slave origins. In addition to the support of religious leaders, the Maluks promoted jihad against both crusaders and the Ottomans to shore up their authority. But without the support of the Abbasid caliphs, the Mamluks likely would not have been able to rule; the official stance that the caliphs had delegated authority to the sultans solved a number of problems.

During the question-and-answer period, participants and audience members discussed the Mamluks and the importance of land/wealth as a route to power. The Luxembourg queens, rather like the “frontier” queens of the first session could exercise more power the more wealth they possessed.

Overall, the sessions emphasized the necessity of thinking about monarchy in medieval terms, rather than (as Janna Bianchini noted) “absolutist terms.” Medieval monarchs were not absolute monarchs (we will leave it to other scholars to determine whether absolute monarchs were actually absolute monarchs), and it isn’t helpful to think of them as a bunch of “the state is me” kind of people.

Interview with Catriona Murray, Winner of CCCU Book Prize

Dr Catriona Murray is a historian of early modern British visual and material culture from the University of Edinburgh. Her first monograph, Imaging Stuart Family Politics: Dynastic Crisis and Continuity, focuses on familial propaganda of the royal Stuarts. Her study has recently won the CCCU Book Prize from the Royal Studies Journal.  The team from the Royal Studies Journal Blog got together with her to learn more about this award-winning research, and what is next for Catriona.      

Kristen, Cathleen, and Elena: First of all, congratulations to you! Your first monograph, and already you’re winning prizes for it! We do hope you celebrated accordingly! Could you please tell our readers a bit about the premises of this study on visual and material propaganda under the Stuarts?

Catriona: Thank you! It really is an honour and I am very grateful to the book prize committee for their consideration. I think I can also confirm that at least one glass of fizz was consumed!

Imaging Stuart Family Politics grew out of my doctoral research and actually began life in response to a single engraving, which I came across in the National Portrait Gallery’s Heinz Archive in 2008. Printed in 1703, it displays oval portraits of four Protestant Princes, Edward VI; Henry, Prince of Wales; Henry, Duke of Gloucester; and William, Duke of Gloucester, with a banner proclaiming ‘Wee [sic] Reign in Heaven’. I was intrigued by the idea that, despite their premature deaths, these figures continued to hold some allure decades and even centuries after their loss. As I probed further, I discovered a series of reproductive failures and untimely young deaths which blighted the Stuart line. Despite this, I also unearthed a wealth of visual material which indicated the importance attached to these lost dynastic hopes. I have always been interested in history’s ‘what ifs’ and the tensions between representation and reality so part of the drive behind the project was to retrieve the reputations of those forgotten Stuarts.

Kristen, Cathleen, and Elena: As you said, these members of the royal Stuarts were mostly forgotten, and – honestly – we don’t know much about them either. Could you therefore please give some brief background for the uninitiated about Henry (son of James VI/I), Henry of Gloucester (son of Charles I), James of Cambridge (son of James II), and William of Gloucester (son of Princess, later Queen, Anne)? Did the representation of these later-born or early deceased children differ in any way to the heirs apparent?

Catriona: Most importantly, all of the princes you mention were Protestant and the impacts of their deaths often became more pronounced as dissatisfaction with their successors developed. Henry, Duke of Gloucester, for example, died when he was twenty-one, just as the Stuarts were returning to power with the Restoration. Although, he was widely mourned at the time, it was not until several decades later, with increased concerns about the politics and religion of his brothers Charles II and James, Duke of York, that he was re-framed as a lost leader, a figure of vanished hope. Similarly, James, Duke of Cambridge, died when he was only three years old and yet some twenty years later his image still held resonance. Following the succession of his Catholic father, James II, and the failed rebellion of the Duke of Monmouth, Charles II’s illegitimate but Protestant son, a portrait of the long dead prince was commissioned by his sister, the future Mary II. Willem Wissing’s painting of the little Duke (the cover image of Catriona’s book) highlighted the extended absence of a Protestant male heir, presenting Mary as Britain’s next best hope. In life, representations of these princes were designed to encourage loyalty to the crown but, as time passed, they also assumed meanings beyond royal control. Their afterlives would prove controversial.

Adriaen Hanneman, Henry, Duke of Gloucester (1653), oil on canvas, 104.8 x 87cm, Andrew W. Mellon Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.

Kristen, Cathleen, and Elena: In the case of James, Duke of Cambridge, it was his sister Mary who used his image. Most of the other heirs were also quite young, and it seems striking that they are not portrayed in the family context. For example, it seems William of Gloucester was often represented without his mother, Princess Anne. During his life, was he “more important” than her?

Catriona: It is a little more complicated than that. Actually, for reasons of gender, it was unusual for English male heirs to be portrayed with their mothers so the images of Anne and William together which do exist actually reflect their combined significance to the Stuart succession. Certainly, William’s birth was a great boost to Anne’s position after the Glorious Revolution and her motherhood became a crucial part of her public image even after her son’s death. In turn, Anne’s part in the Revolution and her self-proclaimed Englishness were important for William’s portrayal. Together they represented a bright future for the Protestant Stuart line.

After Willem van de Passe, The Triumph of King James and his August Progeny (third state, c.1660), engraving, 32 x 38cm. 283000, Biographical History of England, extra-illustrated by Richard Bull, The Huntington Library, San Marino, California

Kristen, Cathleen, and Elena: Following on from this, when it became apparent that the dynasty would pass on through the female line rather than the male line, the Stuart heirs like Mary of Orange or Sophia of Hanover were still pictured in their more traditional roles opposite men – as daughter, as consort or as mother. Are there any depictions of them in a more martial role or have they been associated with more manly and vigorous attributes? If not, why?

Catriona: Not really. There is a lost portrait of the sixteen-year-old Mary as Minerva but, generally, her depiction conforms to tradition, presenting her with reference to the men in her life. Similarly, Sophia is portrayed as a matriarch, the founder of a long line of future kings. The representation of Protestant piety is also central to both women’s public images. Given their rather conventional lives as royal women, this is not really surprising. Both Mary and Sophia were political pawns in the international marriage market and, upon their entry into wedlock, were supposed to secure the line and produce offspring. As heir to the throne, their representations continued to reflect those gendered expectations. This was an age when artists and patrons were predominantly male. Even images of Elizabeth I as heir subscribed to the conventions of female portraiture. Women’s agency and its portrayal had to be negotiated carefully.

Kristen, Cathleen, and Elena: In your book you are saying that “the fine arts have often been viewed in isolation – both from popular and material culture and from contemporary political, religious and intellectual developments.” Yet, they are so interconnected. What do you think is the reason behind that separation?

Catriona: Firstly, study of the art of seventeenth-century Britain remains an emerging field and some of its most important scholarly contributions are now decades old. As a result, reassessments of the material and its literature have stalled. A traditional focus on connoisseurship, form and technique has prevailed until recently. Indeed, it has taken historians, such as Malcolm Smuts and Kevin Sharpe, to forge ahead and re-present the art history of early modern Britain as an interconnected cultural history. We need to value the – sometimes idiosyncratic – art of the seventeenth century as much for the stories it can tell as for its visual qualities. Steadily, historians and art historians are embracing this approach and producing works which demonstrate the pervasiveness of the visual as a complex social and political language during this time.

Kristen, Cathleen, and Elena: So, after already winning a prize for your very first monograph – what can we expect next from you? Are you further working in the interdisciplinary field connecting art history and history?

Catriona: I am just beginning to get my teeth into a new monograph project which will explore the origins and development of public sculpture as an art of political communication in early modern Britain. Under the Stuart dynasty, monuments played a pivotal role in the negotiation of authority. The imposition of a royal sculptural presence, in strategically-selected urban locations, articulated the reach of royal dominion. In turn, though, sculptures became physical sites for public interventions, which both supported and contested Stuart government. Covering portrait busts, public statuary and tomb monuments, as well as temporary festival sculpture and ceremonial effigies, I hope this project will expose the complex processes through which the Stuart monumental image was both fashioned and dismantled, while exploring visual languages of power which are still contested today.

Arnold Quellin, James VI and I, 1686, lead, Glamis Castle, Glamis, Angus

Kristen, Cathleen, and Elena: We wish you the best for this new, exciting research project. Thank you for taking the time to show us this fascinating aspect of the Stuarts!

Interview with Glenn Richardson

The King, the Cardinal-Legate, and the Field of Cloth of Gold

Glenn Richardson is Professor of Early Modern History at St. Mary’s University, London. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and an Honorary Fellow of the Historical Association. He specializes in the history of Tudor England and its political and cultural relations with Renaissance Europe. He has published extensively on the topic and is currently working on a biography of Cardinal Wolsey. We caught up with him to discuss his article for the Royal Studies Journal, “The King, the Cardinal-Legate and the Field of Cloth of Gold” in the special issue on Renaissance Cardinals which he edited.

RSJ Blog: Good day Prof. Richardson and thank you for taking some time to do this interview!

You have written a very interesting article on one of the most fascinating characters of Tudor England. Thomas Wolsey came from a common family, and advanced to the second-highest position in the kingdom by his clerical career. Was this still a common occurrence in the early modern period, or was Wolsey indeed a huge exception? Was the promotion of “new men” perhaps a characteristic of the Tudor era, given the political background of the War of the Roses, the new dynasty and the lack of trust for old families?

Glenn: The early years of Henry VIII up to the period with the break with Rome were still very much dominated by the clerical estate. Many of the king’s leading counsellors and opinion-formers were senior clerics, like Fox, Warham, and Ruthall who (unlike many of their French or Spanish or German counterparts) were from gentry or commoner backgrounds. It was into this clerical establishment that Wolsey himself was first drawn through the patronage of Fox. His background was therefore not perhaps as exceptional as might first be thought, but his meteoric and stratospheric rise certainly was. The first two Tudor kings did directly or indirectly, bring into royal service numbers of ‘new men’ with backgrounds in law and the emerging humanities rather than theology and church administration, based on their competence and capacity for work – and Wolsey was certainly one of those.

Banner of Cardinal Wolsey

RSJ Blog: And Wolsey had indeed done the king many services but it seems that Henry’s desired annulment of his first marriage became the cardinal’s Achilles heel. He appears ambitious but also very calculating, a man who knew well what and whom he was dealing with. Would you say that it was basically an unfortunate accumulation of circumstances that brought him down or did he overreach himself in the eyes of Henry VIII?

Glenn: It is true that Wolsey had made his entire career by giving the king what he wanted. He was able to give Henry a high international profile by means other than warfare for a long time but that tied his fortunes very tightly to the uncertain world of European politics. Had the Sack of Rome by Charles V’s rebellious troops in April-May 1527 not happened, it is possible that Pope Clement VII might have granted Henry the annulment of his marriage that he sought, but dependent as he was on the protection of Charles for his own and Florentine family’s interests, Clement was not going to do anything to bite the hand that might yet feed him – whatever the theological arguments for annulment Henry mounted. Wolsey was quite conventional, if imaginative, in his thinking and made strenuous efforts to secure his aim through all kinds of channels and suggested ways forward but, yes, an accumulation of adverse circumstances prevented him from doing all he might have done to achieve his aim. The failure of the Blackfriars’ legatine court and the signing at the same time of the Peace of Ladies between Charles V and Francis I, left Henry without the annulment he had sought and isolated in Europe. It finally undermined his confidence in Wolsey.

RSJ Blog: You argue convincingly that Wolsey’s loyalty lay with the king’s interests much more than with the church’s, but how were those loyalties perceived towards the end of his career and afterwards? Was he perhaps even accused of being a papal spy and was his deposition partly a statement to the pope?

Pope Leo X (right) with Cardinal Giulio de Medici (left)

Glenn Richardson: Wolsey was never in favour of the king’s divorce, a fact which he asked Henry to acknowledge publicly at the Blackfriars’ trial. This was in answer to allegations that he had somehow sought to bring a divorce about. In 1529, Wolsey was caught between a king in whose interests he had largely run the Church in England (through his legatine powers), and the papacy that had granted him those powers but for whom he had in fact done comparatively little. He fell only because he could not, for once, give the king all that he wanted.  I don’t think there was any suggestion that Wolsey was acting as the pope’s ‘agent’ in preventing the legatine court arriving at a decision favourable to Henry (although his fellow legate Campeggio almost certainly was). Subsequently, as part of the posthumous vilification of him by the chronicler Edward Hall and others, Wolsey was portrayed as both a papal dogsbody, and a man with an overweening ambition for the papal crown himself. Neither allegation can really be substantiated.

RSJ Blog: How then, was Wolsey perceived in Vatican City and how were the events you described in your article received there?

Glenn Richardson: The events which led to the creation of the Treaty of Universal Peace in 1518 and the Field of Cloth of Gold two years later were well reported and understood in Rome. Leo X had papal legates in England and France and the German lands for the negotiation of what he had intended as a truce between Christian princes and which Wolsey converted into an international non-aggression pact apparently sponsored by Henry but organized entirely by himself. They reported back to Leo regularly. There were French, Imperial and Venetian ambassadors at the English court, and in Rome, who (for their own varied interests) kept the pope well informed about Wolsey’s status and reputation in England and he was perceived rightly, if regretfully, as the key to Henry himself. Wolsey was seen as ambitious for England, pompous and difficult to deal with but impossible to ignore – so a mix of threats and inducements of various kinds were offered. The key to Wolsey in turn, was his desire for permanent legatine status in England. This, Leo was reluctant to give because he had no confidence that such an appointment would make Wolsey work more for him than for his king. He was right to be cautious.

Close up from the Field of Cloth of Gold ©Kent Rawlinson

RSJ Blog: So the pope was indeed suspicious of Wolsey. At the same time he could not openly act against the peace alliances because it would have made him look hypocritical. Did he perhaps try to undermine them in any other way?

Glenn: There was little trust between Leo X and Wolsey and the pope constantly sought to undermine Wolsey’s ‘universal peace’ of 1518, in which he had no more than a walk-on role, by trying to get Henry to ally with Charles V against Francis I of France. Even as Henry and Francis met at the Field, Leo was in effect promising to make Wolsey a legate for life (something Wolsey very much wanted) if he could bring about an anti-French alliance, in order to force Francis to relinquish his hold on Milan. In the end this did come about in 1521, but that was because by then Wolsey and Henry had finally recognized that for all the talk of Henry’s being the ‘arbiter’ of Christendom, war between Francis and Charles was all but inevitable and Henry had to be kept on the likely winning side. So Leo got what he wanted (without having to grant Wolsey lifetime legatine status) and was comprehended in the anti-French alliance in November 1521. Even then Wolsey made clear that it would be Henry who determined the timetable for action against France, not Leo.

RSJ Blog: Your analysis show that Wolsey was a very complex character. It must be difficult to do him justice on screen. Yet, Wolsey has been depicted quite a lot recently in historical dramas like “Tudors” and “Wolf Hall”. What do you think of these portrayals?

Glenn: Wolsey is such a difficult character to portray. All the contemporary, or near contemporary, descriptions we have of him emphasize his arrogance, his pomposity and bombast, his cleverness, and his ambitiousness and this has given the lead to actors for generations. Many sources also acknowledge, however, his personal charm and sense of humour (especially for Henry VIII), his eloquence, his capacity for imaginative diplomacy, his considerable administrative competence, a desire to see the kingdom of England well governed, and his enormous appetite for sheer hard work. No recent portrayal captures the balance of these aspects of his personality very well, and having Sam Neil’s Wolsey in The Tudors cut his own throat in despair was just stupid. In my opinion the one portrayal than comes closest to capturing the many varied aspects of Wolsey’s personality and his role as Henry’s chief advisor is Anthony Quale’s subtle and highly nuanced performance in the 1969 film Anne of the Thousand Days.

RSJ Blog: Richard Burton did quite a nice job as well in this movie playing Henry VIII. You also compiled an issue on Cardinals for the Royal Studies Journal. Could you please tell us a bit more about the role of cardinals at courts, in government, and within royal society?

Glenn: I have long found Cardinals an interesting group of people and historical subject in themselves, particularly those of the Renaissance period and after. They, more than other senior clerics, embody the close connections between Church and State, belief and politics in the early-modern period. I suppose my interest in them derives from that in monarchy and royal courts. They were at once enigmatic and impressive creatures, the electors of the popes who were the spiritual monarchs of Christendom, sometimes for the better and very often for the worse. After all one had to be a cardinal to be a pope and the papal Curia was, arguably, Christian Europe’s earliest and most complex royal court. I find their roles at Rome and in their home kingdoms, principalities and republics as agents of the papal rule interesting insofar as they always had to face in two directions, towards the papacy as its chief advisors, agents and representatives, ‘the princes of the Church’, but also back towards their own families as the majority in this period were of noble blood (and not a few from royal lines). Royal authority and papal authority had ideally to work in tandem, at least until the Reformation, and yet frequently did not do so very well at all. No two cardinals resolved the inherent contradictions of their ‘Janus-like’ position in quite the same way. Those kinds of questions and considerations were very much at the heart of the 2015 conference on them as ‘diplomats and patrons’ in relation to monarchs, which prompted the current issue.

RSJ Blog: Thank you very much for answering our questions and giving us a deeper insight into the subject! We are looking forward to reading your biography on Cardinal Wolsey. Apart from the book, what are your next projects?

Glenn: I have a number of things that I have been tinkering away at for some time to complete including an article on an oration delivered by the University of Paris to Mary Tudor, the sister of Henry VIII, when she married Louis XII of France in 1514. It is a very arcane speech but interesting on showing how a French academic can be nice about England (and to an English woman) when he needs to be! I have a study of leading courtiers of Francis I of France les gentilshommes de la chambre du roi, to complete, making comparisons with the courtiers of Henry VIII. I am working on an article about Sir William Fitzwilliam, one of Henry VIII’s leading courtiers and am also pursuing my research into masculinity and kingship in the early-modern period. The 500^th anniversary of the Field of Cloth of Gold is coming up in 2020 and I am working with the Historic Royal Palaces agency in Britain and several TV production companies on exhibitions and possible collaborations to mark that event.

RSJ Blog: These sound like some ambitious and interesting projects. We wish you good luck with your endeavors!

Cardinal Thomas Wolsey

 

Kings & Queens VI in Madrid: Interview with Rocío Martínez López

Readers with a good memory might remember Rocío Martínez López from our earlier interview on her winning the first Essay Prize of the Royal Studies Journal. She is also one of the main organizers of the next Kings & Queens VI Conference at Madrid in September 2017, and will tell us a bit more about what we can expect from the first Kings& Queens Conference in Spain. Please make sure to include #KQ6 on social media, and follow the conference on the same hashtag if you cannot be there!

RSJ Blog: Hi Rocío! Great to have you here again, Rocío, establishing somewhat of a continuity and hopefully showing our readers the people behind the Royal Studies Journal, the Royal Studies Network, and the conference series Kings & Queens. First, the conference is now “on tour” for the third year in a row (before going back home to Winchester next year, and then again going to Sicily). Could you tell us a bit more about how the conference came to Madrid, Spain?

Rocío: Thanks to you, Cathleen and Kristen. The work you do with the blog and other activities for the Royal Studies Network is truly remarkable. Well, regarding your question, I went to the Kings and Queens series’ congresses that were wonderfully organized in Winchester and Lisbon in the past few years, although, unfortunately, I couldn’t be in Clemson for its last edition. I found myself amazed by the concept of Royal Studies when I went to my first congress in Winchester as well as by the depth of the discussions, the variety of topics and the great expertise showed by the researchers that were present there. I thought that Spain and Spanish scholars have much to offer to this field, as there has been a great development of several lines of research linked to the Royal Studies in the last few years, but that their work were not very well known by the English-speaking experts I met in both congresses and that there should be a way to give their work more exposure in an English-speaking, international context. Likewise, I noticed that the Royal Studied Network wasn’t very well known in Spain, where a great deal of people interested in this kind of studies right now might be interested in joining. I really thought that the contact between the Royal Studies Network and its members, and the flourishing Spanish royal scholars would be enormously helpful for both parts, so to host one of the Kings & Queens congresses in Madrid would be a wonderful way to bring them all together. I talked to Ellie Woodacre about this possibility around three years ago and asked her if she had thought about the possibility of bringing the congress to Madrid sometime in the future, and she showed a great enthusiasm for the idea. At first, I just wanted to bring Kings & Queens to Madrid, and I didn’t think I could have been the chosen one to make this wish come true. I really thought they would choose someone with more experience. But Ellie, who has always showed great support for young career scholars, trusted us with this task and the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED), has been always wonderfully supportive with this whole project. So, three years and the support of a lot of wonderful people after, Kings & Queens 6 is just a couple of days away!

RSJ Blog: The organisation of such a conference is always a difficult matter with a lot of coordination, planning, and stressing out over problems going on. Could you tell us a bit more about how you are doing it in Madrid this year, e.g. who else is in the organisation committee, or how you divided all the work?

Rocío: Of course. Organizing the congress of this size is always a challenge. At first, we didn’t expect to host so many people and were working with a number of attendants closer to the ones who went to Winchester and Portugal. But we ended up receiving about 170 paper proposals from all over the world! The real preparation began more than a year and half ago when the project was officially presented in the Department of Early Modern History of the UNED, and they gave us not only their blessing, but their whole support. The institutional support given to us from the UNED was outstanding and we are very grateful for it. The number of people who could collaborate with us was a little small and all had their own research and teaching responsibilities, so the organization was quite a challenge. Also, one of our principal concerns was money. A congress this size is an important investment and we needed to know we would be able to back up financially all our promises. We also wanted to try to get some additional funding to help young historians or early career experts without a fixed post to come to Madrid, as to come to this kind of meetings is also very challenging economically for young historians and a lot of great new researchers haven’t been able to travel to big congresses like this one for economic reasons. We wanted to do our best to help and thanks to the UNED and the work of my co-organizer, Antonio José Rodríguez Hernández, we could obtain a grant which gave us the funds to organize the congress. Through the aforementioned grant, the UNED allowed us to offer 42 grants for young historians from around the world, to be able to organize the congress without having to impose a registration fee and to subsidise the outings. Without the UNED’s support, that would have been impossible to achieve. Once the economic part was settled, the real work began. We drafted the Call for Papers and began to receive proposals almost immediately. They were evaluated by two different experts from our Committee linked to the specific discipline of each proposal. Also, we began to work to organize all kinds of things that were needed for the congress, from the organization of the outings to El Escorial and the Prado Museum to contingencies as the reservation of the rooms for the congress, to the preparation of materials and the crafting of materials (just the bio & abstracts document is several hundreds of pages long). At the same time, we have tried to attend questions and petitions of our attendees to the best of our ability. All of this while we also attended to our other obligations in the university which, especially in certain times of the year, are enormously demanding. As none of us were devoted only to the organization of the congress and everyone had their own obligations to deal with, everyone in the committee took responsibility of the things they could do at the time and we are grateful for the help of lots of people. Besides Antonio José and me, the help of Luis Ribot, José Antonio Vigara Zafra, Ellie Woodacre, Julio Arroyo Vozmediano, Cristina Agüero, Ana Echevarría, Diana Carrió, Jitske Jasperse, Maria de la Cruz Carlos Varona, José María Iñurritegui, Marcela Miranda, Sergio Gutiérrez, Anabel del Prado, José Luis Sancho, Almudena Pérez de Tudela, Antonio Rubio Sánchez and many, many more was invaluable. A lot of people showed us support in concrete matters in all this time and we are very grateful to them, too. I especially want to thank Patrimonio Nacional and Museo del Prado, who offered us all the help we requested to organize the outings. And I apologize if I forgot someone!

El Escorial (top) and Prado (bottom)

RSJ Blog: That does sound like we can expect one of the biggest Kings & Queens Conference to date, and thank you for spending so much time on this, and making sure, we will feel welcome!

Another topic: Can you tell us a bit more about the state of research in Royal Studies in Spain? From the outside, it looks like a very central topic with lots of interesting stuff being done on medieval king- and queenship, and of course on the Habsburg studies. Also, how does being a modern monarchy reflect on this field?

Rocío: That is a very interesting question. As I appointed before, the royal studies are flourishing in Spain. I can safely say that the royal studies in Spain are trending right now. In different Spanish universities and research groups, we find great works focused on different aspects of royal studies. For example, in the Department of Early Modern History of the UNED we have some of the leading experts in the study of seventeenth century Europe, like Luis Ribot, Juan Antonio Sánchez Belén, José María Iñurritegui and Antonio José Rodríguez Hernández, who had made great advances in the knowledge and research of this period in the fields of political, military and diplomatic history. This last aspect, as well as others like the representation of power, royal propaganda and the relationship between nobility, royalty and art is also well represented in our Department of History of Art, with experts like the aforementioned José Antonio Vigara, Diana Carrió and young researcher Cristina Agüero. Some of these topics are also present in our Department of Medieval History, to which the member of our organization Ana Echeverría also belongs. In the University Rey Juan Carlos, there is currently a great and very interesting project focused on Royal Sites and its varied functions, composed by experts like José Eloy Hortal, Félix Labrador Arroyo, Koldo Trápaga and Gijs Verstegeen, who are going to present a panel in the congress and they are also going to present the latest developments of the project they are working on aided by the latest technological advances. Also, the Autonoma University is doing a great work in the field, with experts like Antonio Álvarez-Ossorio Alvariño, who is going to give the closing lecture, and the activities and projects linked to the Instituto Universitario “La Corte en Europa” (IULCE), whose new director, Manuel Rivero Rodríguez, is also going to be with us, as well as other members, like Javier Revilla Canora. In addition, we will have with us experts from the Centro Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) of Spain, like Rubén González Cuerva, who has recently published a book with Brill about court factions in Early Modern Europe’s court which is very promising. And, to connect with your last question, last but not in any way least we have the Complutense University, which is going to be very well represented by several of their leading researchers, like the vice rector David Alonso. From said university, we are going to be able to listen to some remarkable experts in Medieval, History of Art and Early Modern History, but we also count with a very interesting panel focused in Contemporary royal history leaded by Raquel Sánchez. Royal Contemporary History  (meaning their study from Isabel II and Alfonso XII’s reigns onwards) as such weren’t a big line of research in Spain until recent years and its study was relatively limited to royal biographies, law and constitutional history and works of political history that, in most cases, weren’t focused on topics related to royal history and this approach was just a little part of a bigger idea, like the works related to the evolution of the Spanish political and constitutional system from Franco’s dictatorship to democracy, for example. But this is slowly changing and we hope that his congress can be a way to show this change. Other Spanish institutions, like the University of Barcelona, of Zaragoza, of Valencia or of Valladolid, amongst others, are also well represented in this congress. To sum up, we have representative of many of the leading research institutions of Spain and we hope our initial intention, which was to give exposure in an international setting to the leading Spanish research institutions and their researchers and forge a successful relationship between said Spanish researchers and the people linked to the Royal Studies Network, will come true.

RSJ Blog: So, in the conference next week: what can we expect? What is planned, and what should we absolutely not miss when visiting Madrid? Also, could you please tell us a bit how you planned panels and breaks, and what you hope this conference achieves?

Rocío: We have a lot of plans for the congress and we hope for the attendees to enjoy it. We hope to go further than the papers themselves, and for it to be a way for scholars of different parts of the world, who seldom have the opportunity to meet, to exchange points of view, information and projects and maybe for it to be the beginning of a lasting relationship between scholars of different institutions, countries and research interest. I would like to highlight three points that we have worked a lot to bring to reality: firstly, for all the attendees to enjoy the possibility of hear papers of great quality from some of the most important and most interesting researchers  of the whole world, and for it to become a meeting place for hearing of the most innovative trends followed by different countries and universities, interact with researchers of different backgrounds and interests and exchange ideas, information and even plans for future projects and publications. In the second place, we expect for it to be a way to showcase all the possibilities that Spain has to offer in the field of royal studies, both with the presence in the congress of members of the leading Spanish universities and with the presentation of projects, future publications and collaboration that could spark our attendees’ interests. And, in third place, we also intend for it to be a way for young or early career scholars to present their current work in an international setting. Both the Royal Studies Network and the UNED are institutions who are trying very hard to promote young talents and help gifted young scholars to begin and develop their research careers. We hope for this conference to be a way to help them to thrive in their fields of choosing and meet older, more experience scholar who could assist them in the future, at the same time they reward us with new, exciting views, theories and investigations. All of these will be achieved not only through the panels and sessions given, but also with the other activities we planned for the congress, with two exciting guided visits to the great Monastery of San Lorenzo El Real de El Escorial and the Prado Museum and other activities in the congress, like the presentation of the exciting project about royal sites lead by the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos which uses the latest advance of technology to recreate and study the Spanish Royal Sites, and a meeting with the Royal Studies Journal’s leading members that will talk to those who are interested about their international publication and how they can become members of their staff, amongst other activities. All of this and much more will take place in during the congress, under the umbrella and support of the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED).

Impressions of Madrid

RSJ Blog: Thanks for doing this interview! Is there anything you’d like to add?

Rocío: Just that we really hope that all our attendees enjoy the congress and the activities related to it and that we hope it becomes a milestone in the field of royal history. Also, we hope it is the beginning of many projects, publications and collaborations in the future. And, also, to say that all the members of the organization have worked hard and without stop for months to bring this congress to reality, so I hope everybody enjoys it and can forgive any human error we can commit. We are doing our best and we hope we all have a great experience at Kings and Queens 6!

We hope to see you in Madrid – bring sunglasses, comfortable shoes, great ideas, and share with us your experiences under #KQ6!

Conference Report and Interview Realms of Royalty

Imke Polland and Christina Jordan have just organized the successful conference on Realms of Royalty (20/21 April 2017) in Gießen, Germany, which questioned the role of royalty and monarchy in today’s societies. Bringing Royal Studies to the modern day is also part of their on-going doctoral research on Queen Elizabeth II’s Golden and Diamond Jubilee as Staged Media Events: A Case Study in the Production of Collective Memories (Christina), and Plurimedial Representations of the British Royal Weddings 2005 and 2011 as Ritual Media Events (Imke). We caught up with them to learn more about the discussion of the conference (see conference report by Max Bergmann here), and their research on modern monarchy.

Cathleen and Kristen: Thank you for doing this interview! To start, could you please tell our readers a bit about the conference, and how it started?

Christina and Imke: Right from the outset of doing research on contemporary monarchies, we noticed a significant lack of scholarly attention to this topic, as most studies dealing with royalty pursue historical research interests. Monarchies post WWII are usually only treated marginally at conferences and there are very few publications dedicated to researching their contemporary representations and standing in society. We think that current monarchies pose special challenges to researchers, which differ from the demands that historical research on monarchies has to face. Their role as post-political institutions[1] and their adaptation to ever-changing media environments turns them into a dynamic and rich object of research, which requires interdisciplinary analytical perspectives. Monarchies offer many starting points for exploring aspects that are of crucial interest to scholarly fields as varied as cultural, media and literary studies as well as sociology, law, political and economic science. The conference’s aim was to further this interdisciplinary dialogue on contemporary monarchies by raising questions such as, how do monarchies adapt to change, reinvent themselves and navigate between past, present and future to ensure the continuity of the institution? What are the possibilities of contemporary monarchies facing the loss of (political) importance, power, space, relevance, and popularity? How are the relevance and the roles of these seemingly anachronistic institutions negotiated? Where does the perpetual interest in monarchies stem from? During the two days of the conference we discussed, among many other topics, the role of contemporary European monarchies in national and transnational contexts, the British monarchy’s post-war public relations strategies, royal representations in (fictional) media products (such as radio broadcasts, TV series, and films) and (re-)appropriations of monarchical symbols in popular cultural contexts such as wrestling, comics, or alternative music.

Cathleen and Kristen: The conference was not only focused on European monarchy but also colonialism, transnationalism, and the global entanglements of royalty, maybe discussed most prominently by Cindy McCreery. Could you tell us a bit more about this? Are modern monarchies by definition more of a global actor?

Christina and Imke: European monarchies have been global actors for a long time. The most prominent and obvious example might be the role of the British or Spanish Crown within their respective Empires. As Cindy McCreery showed at our conference, when discussing ways in which royalty matters to people overseas, monarchy and imperialism are intricately entwined. She argued for a research on monarchies that extends the gaze to the view on royalty from abroad.

With the end of Empires, the role of monarchies has, however, not been diminished. Processes of decolonisation resulted in an increasing mobility of members of the European royal families that still continues today. The royal tours are a striking example of how people and royals interact. These tours work as a stage on which not only the monarch can be displayed and paraded, but they also allow for local responses. A recent example is constituted by the visit of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge to Germany in July 2017, during which they intended to “reinforce the strong and wide-ranging ties between Britain and Germany”and thus acted as cultural ambassadors – especially in the face of the ongoing Brexit negotiations.

Because of the increasing relevance of social media as well as recent celebrations of royal events as global media events, contemporary monarchies are definitely increasingly globally engaged. The global popularity of, especially, the British monarchy goes hand in hand with their high degree of visibility and availability in global consumer culture (only think of various films, documentaries, TV series etc. produced about the British royal family in recent years). At the same time, however, one has to emphasize the ongoing importance of monarchies as national icons.

Impressions from Realms of Royalty

Cathleen and Kristen: One of the core themes of the conference (and both your theses) is the use of media by royal dynasties which is also one emphasis in medieval and early modern royal studies – do you see any changes compared to the use of media in pre-modern times, or more of a continuity?

Christina and Imke: We are convinced that monarchies undergo processes of change and self-fashioning while at the same emphasising and drawing on their own constancy. The use of media is essential for conveying these (self-)images. Traditional forms of media usage for the distribution of images, e.g. painted portraits or the likeness of the monarch on coins, persist and are complemented by new and digital media uses as monarchies and their public relations offices have to adapt to new media environments. Monarchies always exploit the media, which are both available and popular at the respective time. Although John Plunkett (2003) termed Queen Victoria the first “media monarch”, earlier monarchs can also be viewed as media monarchs. A prime example is Queen Elizabeth I whose portraits were both censored and widely circulated. When celebrity culture developed and the collection of memorabilia became popular in the 19th century, new forms of distributing royal images, e.g. the cartes de visite, emerged. These cartes opened up a whole new way of personal engagement with royal images, as they depicted less formal moments than former portraiture, thus inviting emotional reactions. These kinds of depictions were sold in large numbers and were collected and highly valued by their gatherers.

As Deirdre Gilfedder and Ed Owens mentioned in their conference presentations, in the 1930s and 1940s, radio was a popular medium to address the public, e.g. during war speeches and the inception of the famous Christmas broadcasts. In 1953, the coronation of Elizabeth II was the first royal media event broadcast on TV. The medial omnipresence of monarchies still seems to increase steadily. Nowadays, monarchies permeate people’s lives not only in the (yellow) press and on TV, but they also make use of social media channels and networks – on 24 October 2014, Elizabeth II sent her first Tweet. The British royal family embraces the possibilities offered by new media and actively participates in the digital world via various Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Flickr accounts.

Cathleen and Kristen: Everything to do with royal families, esp. the British one, is today being commercialized. How important is this commercialisation, and does it work only (or foremost) on a national scale, or even in an international market?

Christina and Imke: Commercialisation plays a very important role for contemporary monarchy. When looking at the British monarchy in particular, one can say that the whole institution is ‘managed’ as a global brand that caters to consumer demands and has to be beneficially and strategically placed on the market to be successful. Recent studies (especially Balmer 2011, Otnes/Maclaran 2015) have analysed this brand management and the role that the British monarchy plays in global consumer culture. There has also been an increase in societal pressure for the monarchy to actively and significantly contribute to the British economy. In this sense, former political pressures have yielded to commercial (and media) interests.

Understanding the British monarchy in marketing terms, Pauline Maclaran has suggested, means conceptualising it as a brand complex, involving different brand components, which speak to and potentially enhance the consumer’s (emotional) bonds to the brand. She explained that these different components are the global brand, the human brand, the family brand, the heritage brand, and the luxury brand, which all cater for different consumer demands and, thus, make the royal family brand complex so successful.

The monarchy can be consumed in various ways: There are a great variety of popular cultural products like books, films and TV series. Royal media events and memorabilia produced on the occasion of these events offer forms of interaction and participation. The monarchy also makes available touristic experiences, e.g. by opening state apartments and palaces to visitors. Furthermore, granting royal warrants for products supplied to royal family members is a long-established practice of royal engagement in commercial activities. Several members of the royal family have also created consumer brands, such as Duchy Originals, the organic food brand selling local products established by the Prince of Wales, or companies protecting the personal brand and intellectual property rights of royal family members, like the ones William and Catherine created. The Royal Collection Trust, which manages the royal collections and the opening of the palaces as well as the production of merchandise, is one key company involved in making the monarchy available for consumption. In her lecture, Pauline Maclaran pointed out the interesting paradox of ‘accessible mystique’ which results from the PR efforts of the monarchy. The royal family has to provide previously unavailable levels of access in order to engage in these marketing activities, while at the same time retaining an upmarket appeal and sustaining narratives of the institution’s past and present mystique. Even though the prime market for the consumption of the royal family brand concentrates on the national context, it is important to consider global dimensions, for example concerning tourist experiences and souvenirs or royal media events and memorabilia.

Cathleen and Kristen: What were your impressions of the discussions on the conference? Which new directions in research were emphasized, and how do they fit into the wider field of contemporary history?

Christina and Imke: The conference presentations and discussions showed clearly that the changes monarchies have undergone in the past century and that they are still undergoing are mirrored in changing interests and perspectives of research on these monarchies. Two major aspects were emphasised recurrently in the course of the conference: Firstly, the impact that monarchies have on people’s everyday lives has changed from political decision making to an omnipresence of sovereigns and monarchical topics in popular cultural contexts, ranging from films and TV series to exhibitions of royal dresses and even wrestling. Consequently, these new “realms of royalty” deserve scholarly attention and promise valuable insights beyond historical perspectives. Secondly, the increasing importance of emotional connections between monarchy and the people was highlighted. Ed Owens discussed efforts to redefine the monarchy’s place in the nation and to endear the royals to their subjects by strategic media usage and the formation of a new royal public language throughout WWII. Very recent developments include the propagation of narratives on the side of the monarchy that suggest accessibility and middle-class values and thus serves to enable the people to emotionally connect to members of the institution, e.g. when Princes William and Harry openly discussed their psychological struggles dealing with the early death of their mother in a video available on various online platforms in April 2017.

The most productive aspect of the conference, we find, was the interdisciplinary exchange, which linked diachronic perspectives with synchronic, and national with transnational ones, thus providing new insights on European monarchies as the common object of research. In this way, the conference explored monarchies beyond historical perspectives and succeeded in its endeavour to discuss, evaluate and make sense of the cultural phenomena that contemporary monarchies confront us with. By looking at the present state of monarchies as a space of negotiation, we were able to map out and open up new perspectives and understandings of the domains of royal studies that focus on contemporary transnational interactions.

Cathleen and Kristen: Thank you for these insights into your conference! Now, finally, could you tell us a bit more about your own research, and how royal studies fit into this?

Christina and Imke: We are both doing research on media events of the British monarchy that took place in the new millennium – the latest royal weddings and Elizabeth II’s crown jubilees. Our research continues traditional strands in the study of (modern) monarchies, e.g. by focussing on ceremonial events following David Cannadine’s seminal work on the re-invention of the British monarchy. Central for our research are media-related aspects, such as the analysis of TV broadcasts of the events and the medial prelude and aftermath of the events in the press. We hope to add to existing research on monarchies and answer to a recent surge in royal studies by bringing in new theoretical perspectives, first and foremost from the fields of narratology, cultural memory studies and the study of media events, and by analysing recent developments that have barely been in the focus of scholarly attention so far.

Cathleen and Kristen: Thank you both so much, and good luck with your research!

[1] Cf. Higson, Andrew. (2016) “From political power to the power of image: contemporary ‘British’ cinema and the nation’s monarchs.” In: Merck, Mandy (ed.). The British monarchy on screen. Manchester University Press, 339-362, here: 360.

Interview with Alexander Brondarbit

‘Into our defense and saveguarde’: Eton College and the Good Lordship of Edward, Duke of York

Alexander Brondarbit is an Academic Planning Analyst at UC Santa Cruz and Instructor for the E-Campus at Oregon State University. His research focuses on the high and local politics of late medieval England with particular emphasis on the Wars of the Roses.  His teaching interests include the history of high and late medieval Europe, the Church in the Middle Ages, and medieval sex, gender, and culture.  You can read his article in the Royal Studies Journal, Issue 6 here.

RSJ Blog: What is a signet warrant? How does it differ from other types of documents?

Alexander: The signet warrant was a means of connecting the king with the ordinary operations of his government. It was produced by the third type of writing office which arose after the other two writing offices (e.g., the chancery and privy seal office) had left the royal household to be housed permanently in Westminster. This change had occurred by reason of the high workload of those offices and the sheer volume of letters that were being produced. Obviously, the king was not always in Westminster and still needed a means of transmitting his will on official business regardless of his location. The signet office was thus formed in the early fourteenth century to meet this demand.

It differed from the Westminster offices in several ways. It was much smaller, less bureaucratic, and less solemn than the chancery. The signet was kept by the king’s secretary who was often a clerk based about the king’s person rather than say a bishop with public duties like the chancellor. A particularly interesting difference is the suspicion that often arose over the use of the signet. Initially used sparingly, the signet was seen as a method by which Richard II abused his royal prerogative as he bypassed the privy seal office in warranting the issue of letters under the great seal. The signet seal disappeared for a time when the Lords Appellant were victorious in 1388, yet it eventually reemerged in a more muted fashion afterwards as it definitely had its uses despite the concern it engendered.

RSJ Blog: Had scholars largely ignored this document before, aside from including it in histories of Eton?

Alexander: I’d say many scholars do seem to have been unaware of it. The Duke of York’s signet letter was first examined by the English historian and archivist, Sir Henry Maxwell-Lyte in his A History of Eton College produced in 1875. Aside from some minor errors in his transcription, Maxwell-Lyte also did not fully appreciate the significance of the document as he focused entirely with the Yorkist regime’s treatment of Eton. This emphasis has been replicated by later historians of the college as one might expect as they were not as interested in what the document told us about this critical, and somewhat opaque, stage of the Wars of the Roses. Cora Scofield did quote a snippet of the signet warrant in her biography of Edward IV, but she relied on Maxwell-Lyte’s book and it is doubtful she ever consulted the record in person. The same goes for Charles Ross’s biography which quotes an even briefer portion of the document without any citation suggesting again that he may have been repeating the quote from Scofield’s work. I believe what we have here is a case of a great document that was known in the late nineteenth century, but sadly was forgotten except by historians of Eton College.

ECR 39/124. Reproduced by permission of the Provost and Fellows of Eton College.

RSJ Blog: Briefly, what happened to Eton under the Yorkist kings?

Alexander: Edward ultimately proved vindictive toward Lancastrian institutions in the early years of his reign. It was hardly impolitic to do so given that he still did not have full control of his own realm and a constant reminder of his more scholarly predecessor whom many still believed to be the rightful king could not have been a welcome proposition. This is all the more likely given the high survival rate of propaganda that attests to Edward’s right to rule. After he became king, Edward commanded King’s College Cambridge to pay its revenues to the exchequer and many of its estates were resumed in 1461. Eton received an even harsher sentence as Edward considered suppressing the college and annexing it into St George’s Chapel at Windsor. That Edward was committed to this course of action is without doubt as he secured a bull from Pope Pius II authorizing the abolition of the college in 1463 and we see this order taking effect two years later when its moveable goods (furniture, jewels, bells, clothing etc.) were removed to Windsor. Many of Eton’s original endowments were lost to resumption as the king dispersed the lands to his supporters. The impact of this initial royal policy is quite evident in the sharp decline of revenue as the annual income fell to a mere £321 at its lowest point in 1466-7. This is quite a fall as Eton received an average annual income of £1,200 under Henry VI. The diminished income prevented operations from continuing at Eton although the provost remained living on site.

For reasons unknown, Edward softened his stance toward Eton after 1467. At the king’s request, Pope Paul II revoked the bull annexing the college to Windsor. The tale that the school was saved by the charms of Edward’s mistress, Jane Shore, is an amusing one that even the college enjoys telling today, but there is no evidence to support this. I find the timing quite surprising given that the Lancastrian threat was far from over at this stage of the reign.

Unfortunately, Richard III’s attitude toward Eton is difficult to determine. The lone account roll for his reign does show that the college’s revenue had improved to an annual income of £565 in 1483-4, but this was largely by the minor grants Edward allowed the college in the latter half of his reign. If Richard harbored plans for Eton (which I doubt he did) they were never realized by the time he was killed at Bosworth Field.

RSJ Blog: Was Edward taking advantage of Provost Westbury or was it just good politics?

Alexander: Largely strapped for cash, Edward was certainly pressing his advantage here as he was raising funds to pay the troops needed for his campaign against the Lancastrian army in the north. This exchange with Eton was simply one avenue at his disposal to get the resources he needed, but it was merely a drop in the bucket. The bulk of money the Yorkists acquired came from London; within a few days of his reign Edward and his allies had received some £8,700 from the city dating back to the prior year. It is also worth noting that the quid pro quo arrangement between Edward and Provost Westbury was far from unique, particularly in the opening days of his fledgling regime. In 1461, Winchester College presented gifts to earn an exemption to the act of resumption in the king’s first parliament. In that same year, Canterbury paid nearly £300 to the king for a charter granting perpetual county status to the city and confirming its pre-existing civic liberties. Had Eton not been so closely associated with the House of Lancaster it is much more likely Edward would have kept his promises to protect the institution.

RSJ Blog: Is this part of a larger project? What are you up to next?

Alexander: At present, I am currently reshaping my thesis into what I hope will be my first monograph. My book will examine the Yorkist political power-brokers in operation in the reigns of Edward IV, Edward V, and Richard III. Power is its major theme as I utilized records held throughout several local archives in addition to the national archive in order to develop a picture of how the politically active men and women mediated and expressed royal power. So often historians make the determination of influence by listing the patronage one acquired from the Crown. I sought to bring in other avenues by which to see their influence at work both at court and in the shires.