MITTEILUNGEN DER RESIDENZEN-KOMMISSION DER ...

special emphasis on the second half of this period. In conclusion, he pointed out that while
the English administrative files contain much information about royal expenditure, they reveal
little about the tensions between economy and honour. Whether a ruler used his money
wisely or wasted it was a matter of opinion, and a topic for contemporary comment. The
maintenance of a lavish court alone was no guarantee of political success. In his paper on
‚Luxus und Verschwendung am päpstlichen Hof in Avignon und der Ausbruch des Großen
Abendländischen Schismas‘, Stefan Weiß (Augs-burg/Paris) looked at the background to the
1378 schism in terms of the politics of finance (or rather, luxury). Weiß’s main argument was
that Curial luxury had a destabilizing impact in the crisis of 1378. The schism was not primarily
the outcome of a fundamental conflict about the Church constitution or about the Pope as
an individual. Rather, Weiß argued, it arose out of financial quarrels about whether, and to
what extent, the income of popes as well as cardinals should be used to support a luxurious
lifestyle. Futhermore, Weiß established that at one level luxury could, in fact, be a force for
integration. Their lavish income and luxurious lifestyle allowed members of the Curia and
cardinals to enjoy relatively the best administration, justice, and diplomacy of their times. By
contrast, luxury had a negative impact at the level of Catholic Christianity to the extent that
the legitimacy of the Curia was increasingly undermined.
Whereas in the papers by Gillingham and Weiß the ruler himself was in the foreground,
Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger’s (Münster) contribution on the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
‚Zur moralischen Ökonomie des Schenkens bei Hofe‘, concentrated more on structures
and reciprocal relationships. She looked at handbooks of ceremonial, advice given to envoys,
and court diaries to see how contemporaries classified gifts at court, what distinctions were
made, what different effects were ascribed to the various types of gift, what values, rules, and
behavioural norms were explicitly or implicitly associated with them, and finally, whether
significant changes can be detected in the period under investigation. In her paper she distinguished
between two types of gift-giving relationship: the exchange of gifts between the
prince and his court, and gift-giving in diplomatic relations between courts. In his paper, ‚Der
Preis des Erfolgs: Die Hofchargen von Versailles zwischen Verschuldung und Patrimonialisierung
(1661-1789)‘, Leonhard Horowski (Berlin) looked at the material preconditions for
the acquisition of court offices under the ancien régime. As in the preceding paper, structures
were the main subject of investigation, and Horowski used specific case studies to illustrate
them. Unlike the two contributions on the Middle Ages in this session, the examples used by
Horowski related not to the ruler as an individual, but to particular aristocratic office-holders
at court. Horowski looked especially at the specific features of the Versailles system, which
differed from that of other countries and other periods in its system of proprietary officeholding
and with regard to the relatively small number of court offices which, however, required
a permanent presence and were appointments for life. This also reveals a tendency
towards the patrimonial treatment of court offices, regarded almost as family property, with
the result that the main roles in the system of court politics were always taken by the same
few families.
Did luxury at court in fact make a successful contribution to integrating systems of rule?
This was the main question addressed in the fourth and final session, ‚Results: Power Systems
between Success and Failure‘. Caspar Ehlers (Göttingen) looked at the significance of
material court culture for Germany’s peripatetic kingship in the High Middle Ages in his
paper: ‚Procedens in magna gloria cum quadrigis plurimis auro argentoque onustis: Reisekönigtum
und materielle Hofkultur im 12./13. Jahrhundert.‘ Dividing his paper into three parts
devoted respectively to spaces for action (e.g. mobility v. immobility), the quality of actions
(e.g. public v. private), and material court culture (e.g. moveable v. immoveable), Ehlers
examined the conditions governing the development of material court culture and thus the
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