M.N. Cárceles, La corte de Carlos III el Noble, rey de Navarra (Rita Costa-Gomes)

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Francia-Recensio 2009/2 Mittelalter – Moyen Âge (500–1500)

María Narbona Cárceles, La corte de Carlos III el Noble, rey de Navarra: espacio doméstico y escenario del poder, 1376–1415, Barañáin Navarra (EUNSA) 2006, XX–599 p., ISBN 84-313-2403-1, EUR 28,50.

rezensiert von/compte rendu rédigé par

Rita Costa-Gomes, Towson University (USA)

In the burgeoning field of court studies, the monograph seems to be slowly receding in favour of more thematic, or of more general arguments that result from putting side by side a wide array of case-studies. This book proves that there is still much to be learned from an in-depth research of one single court. In it, Maria Narbona brilliantly succeeds in her goal of systematic reconstruction of the contours of the different social, professional and gender groups that composed the court of King Charles III of Navarre (r. 1387–1425). Her study pays equal attention to the aristocratic collaborators of the monarch as well as to the humblest servants of his household and of the household of the queen consort, the Castilian princess Leonor. In her view, the two hostales or households, together, comprised the royal court of Navarre.

The book represents a major contribution to the field with the reconstruction of one of the Iberian courts of the late medieval period whose principal characteristic is the mixed recruitment of local elites and migrant aristocracies, in this case associated with the French rulers who, after 1234, inherited the old kingdom of the Pyrenees. As Narbona points out, the accession to the throne of Navarre, first, of the Counts of Champagne, and then of the princes of the royal house of France, led initially to a slow development of the local royal court due to the fact that, between 1276 and 1361, the kings of Navarre resided mostly in France. With Charles II and, most of all, with his son Charles III this situation changed significantly. Even if the latter, while still a prince, lived for periods as long as six years in the court of the kings of France, remained a whole decade in the court of Castile, and later made three major stays (again) in France when he was already in power, his political project was always to develop his own court in Navarre.

The complexity of such events and of the political trajectory of Charles III itself require close attention, and this in part dictated the structure of the book. An initial chapter presenting a general panorama of the household institutions of the kings of Navarre over two centuries is followed by a useful narrative of the biography of Charles III (chapter 2). Only then Narbona proceeds with her analysis of the hostal itself, from its origins in the 1370s (chapter 3) to a full description of each department and body of the royal household, starting with the »financial chambers« and chancery, the chamber proper, the royal chapel, and the different domestic professions serving the king (chapters 4 to 9). The three last chapters are devoted to a similar description of the household of the queen. The book gives careful consideration to the household of Charles before his accession to the throne, and that explains the chronological span mentioned in the title. It is a fundamental choice that greatly enhances the quality of Maria Narbona’s analysis, and an example to be followed in the study of other late medieval courts, for it is often disregarded that medieval rulers were surrounded by a small core of close collaborators since their young age, and that these frequently continued at the service of the new king becoming a stable initial nucleus of the royal courts.

Making clear at the beginning of her study the two methodological principles followed in her work, Maria Narbona intends to set the court of Navarre in a larger context. One of the methods is largely dependent on the extraordinary quality of her sources: the financial records of the monarchy, in particular the rolls of royal expenses. These allow for a minute reconstruction of the prosopography of all the personnel to whom salaries (gages), pensions and gifts were made during the time of their service to the king and queen. As the author puts it, »the development of a court is not detected only in its institutional traits, or solely in its infrastructure, but requires the knowledge of the people that composed it« (p. 66). The use of a prosopographical method allows her to explore that human dimension, and thus achieve a more complex and truthful picture than the one provided by the history of the royal institutions, or simply by the consideration of indirect signs of growth and greater complexity of court life such as, for instance, the multiplication or/and reform of royal residences. Despite the heterogeneous and detailed description of this book, the strong pattern already detected by previous authors emerges in the descriptive chapters, illuminating a general evolution of the composition of this court in which the initial numeric predominance of French courtiers (counting always more than half the entourage of Charles as a young prince) was replaced by a strong presence of courtiers from Navarre (growing from 16 to 44 per cent when Charles reigned). This book illuminates precisely how this recruitment pattern emerged, and what changes and political choices it could entail. On the other hand, the author clarifies how the queen introduced a Castilian component in this complex social world, bringing with her not only the individuals but also some institutional practices and office denominations of the neighbouring kingdom. In spite of this Castilian influence, the financial and bureaucratic mechanisms of the queen’s household still remained under firm Navarran control.

The systematic use of comparison is the second methodological choice, and one of the finest aspects of this book. Narbona goes back and forth between normative sources from other kingdoms and financial records, as she confronts the results of recent studies of contemporary royal courts (in particular the French and the Castilian, in minor degree the Aragonese and the Portuguese court) with the data resulting from her research. A good example of the quality of this analysis is the chapter devoted to the chapel. Completing the work of Higino Anglés and Gomez Muntané by a sociological enquiry on the performers themselves, in this chapter Narbona successfully interprets the sudden growth and brilliance of the musical chapel of Navarre by placing such changes into a political and cultural context related to the choices detected in contemporary royal courts. Many other aspects of her interpretation of the court of Navarre benefit from such a method. We also learn, for instance, that payments to the members of the court of Navarre were often delayed and irregular, an aspect that has been observed for other courts of the late medieval period. Or that the high percentage of youngsters (donceles) in the entourage of kings effectively made the courtly environment multi-generational and centered on the search for royal protection. The role of the royal chamber as such a training center for young people, as well as its involvement in the production of royal documents through the royal secretaries are other similarities revealed by comparison with contemporary courts. Similarly, this book highlights the importance of the escudería as a necessary passage in the promotion to knightly status, another aspect often mentioned in late medieval courts.

The comparative approach, nevertheless, is always difficult to achieve in the full span of its possibilities. Narbona acknowledges that comparisons with the monarchies of France and Castile take precedence in her book over comparison with other royal courts of the same period, namely with the case of Aragon. This choice would reflect the prevailing political ties of the kingdom of Navarre in the period, an irrefutable argument. However, her material shows on many occasions throughout the book the relevance of the Aragonese case to her scope of analysis. One wishes that the declared exceptionality of the financial institutions of Navarre (and her descriptions of the sources themselves) would also be compared with the case of the crown of Aragon, whose rich archives allow an enquiry in many ways similar to the one Narbona has done, as we can judge just by consulting the published Aragonese financial records from this period. This choice of looking first of all to France and Castile is confirmed by the lesser recourse, in the bibliography used, to studies describing Aragonese institutional developments in the sphere of the royal household and central financial institutions, and by the absence of recent synthesis, such as the one provided by Marta Vanlandingham. In a couple of cases, the author’s arguments in favour of a French parallel or influence over the court of Navarre are not entirely convincing. For instance, a »rota system« in court offices was not found only in »courts of the French type« (p. 125), as the recent study of Northern European courts by Malcolm Vale has shown. While describing the gardening initiatives of Charles III in his residences, it also seems far-fetched to mention the Parisian Hôtel Saint-Pol (p. 372), since many of the botanical species mentioned in the sources quoted here (palm, citrus and cypress trees) are unmistakably Mediterranean, and the gardeners themselves came from Valencia. Besides, the court of Castile was also known to have frequented places with gardens, for instance the royal residences in Tordesillas, and those would have been equally familiar to the ruler of Navarre and, in particular, to his queen.

There is much fascinating detail in this book for anyone interested in the history of fourteenth-century material and daily life, as many chapters achieve a finely delineated portrait of specific professional and occupational groups inside the court of Navarre. The emergence of what has recently been called a »culture of experts« can be followed in this courtly environment with amazing clarity. A good example of the circulation of such experts would be the body of physicians and other health practitioners. In a few instances the physicians of Navarre, who were often Jews, served also at the court of Aragon, and they were summoned by the papal court or the court of Castile to deal with difficult diseases and perform urgent surgery procedures. An interesting milieu of Jewish and »Moorish« women serving as midwives is also revealed in the entourage of Queen Leonor. Another case in point would be that of the musicians, a remarkable example of a professional group practicing endogamy, or that of the heralds whose expertise becomes highly specialized in this same period. Maria Narbona describes with equal abundance of detail the world of the artisans in their relations with local and distant markets of luxury goods, providing many examples of the mechanisms of insertion of the court in the economic realities of Navarre. Her exploration of the female world of the court is exemplary, as she provides and interprets rare data, for instance, about the use of wet nurses in the court, and generally reconstructs the profile and life of many of the female members of the royal entourage and service. In this book, one can see the true dynamic complementarities of gender groups inside the royal court, a part of the research on this subject that simply has to become standard procedure. This book should become a useful template for such integrated view in future studies of royal and princely courts.

In conclusion, this study of the court of Navarre is an indispensable book for the study of late medieval European courts, and it represents a major contribution towards a general panorama of the Iberian royal courts.