4 - The court and space
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 December 2009
Summary
The court of the kings during the medieval period was conceived to a large extent as a spatial entity. As an organism of variable dimension and complexity, moving in the physical space of the kingdom with the incessant removals of the monarch, from its beginnings the court also represented a particular, highly characteristic mode of life through this itinerance. Removals and stops of the royal retinue caused degrees of apprehension in the space of the kingdom and, simultaneously, structured events of court life. It is in this dual dimension that I shall analyse these. In relating the places visited by the monarchs of the late Middle Ages and, also, those where their stays were more prolonged, with the network of the diverse royal residences I found some indications of the process of a tendency towards setting down of roots of the Portuguese court in the physical space of the kingdom. This route of research led me not only to reflect upon the actual relationship existing between the court and the sites of its lifestyle, but also to consider the court as a relatively complex spatial universe. That is, a conceived, actual spatial universe with the concepts of the age (in particular the known territorial projection of medieval juridic pluralism) in mind, but a universe which establishes a specific connection having multiple aspects with the various places where the court moves for the creation of intermittent areas of supply and economic influence, and also of jurisdictional spheres which could temporarily transform the most modest of towns into the centre of the entire kingdom.
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- The Making of a Court SocietyKings and Nobles in Late Medieval Portugal, pp. 291 - 356Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2003