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11 - Courts and Academies

from Part II - Personae and Sites of Natural Knowledge

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

By
Bruce Moran
Edited by
Katharine Park  and
Lorraine Daston
Katharine Park
Affiliation:
Harvard University, Massachusetts
Lorraine Daston
Affiliation:
Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Berlin
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Summary

An English courtier of the twelfth century lamented that “In the court I exist and of the court I speak, what the court is, God knows. I know not.” The same difficulty affects court studies; no one definition of a courtly “site” can stand equally well for all periods, places, and historical circumstances. In the early modern era, political patronage and clientage networks functioned as effective means of government administration; this made the court a “point of contact” in the ongoing exchange and political maneuvering between a ruler and those seeking to influence the direction of royal or princely power, rather than a physical location. Some members of the court resided at a distance from the ruler himself, maintaining a more remote presence as part of a courtly circle. A court was thus more than a household, more than buildings, and more than ritualistic events based in legal custom or ceremonial-administrative protocols. It was also an “abstract totality,” a society of individuals in service to, but not necessarily in immediate attendance upon, a sovereign.

The court was an “ethos” as well as an institution, and particular courts gave rise to particular sorts of cultures, each with its own attitudes and habits, its own system for judging merit and value, and its own social and symbolic mechanisms for directing the behavior of its members. Courts also varied according to size and relative number within specific linguistic regions. In politically fragmented areas, courts were larger in number but smaller in territories of jurisdiction.

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The Cambridge History of Science , pp. 251 - 271
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2006

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