Abstract
Habsburg historians long ago noticed changes in the social and confessional background of servants at the Imperial court during the early part of the seventeenth century, but we still do not know the exact nature of the transformation, when it occured, and how it affected the composition of the administration and household. It remains uncertain if, and to what extent, Habsburg rulers favoured particular groups and factions with their patronage, and what impact this had on their relations with the elite, and on the state-building process. This chapter therefore examines the flow of Habsburg patronage in the form of court appointments as well as the social composition of the Imperial court. It further asks what kinds of resources the elite could acquire at court, and how the distribution of Habsburg patronage intersected with the dynastic reproduction and social identity of nobles. This will provide the requisite background to proceed, in the final chapter, with analysing the confessional distribution of patronage at the Imperial court, and how this affected the state-building process and relations between the Habsburgs and the provincial nobles.
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Notes and References
See MacHardy, ‘Nobility in Crisis’, ch. iv for a statistical analysis of the regional composition of nobles at Court.
Geoffrey Parker, Europe in Crisis 1598–1648 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1980), p. 54; Kettering, Patrons, Brokers and Clients, p. 216; Kettering, French Society, 1589–1715 (Harlow: Longman, 2001), p. 68; Henshall, The Myth of Absolutism, p. 91.
Fellner and Kretschmayr, Die Österreichische Zentralverwaltung ii, pp. 191–2, 199, 203–4; Schwarz, The Imperial Privy Council, pp. 193, 278.
Friedrich Edelmayer, ‘Ehre, Geld, Karriere’, in Friedrich Edelmayer and Alfred Kohler (ed.), Kaiser Maximilian II. Kultur und Politik im 16. Jahrhundert (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1992), pp. 126–34; H. Wertitsch, ‘Die Kipperzeit in den österreichischen Ländern’ (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Graz, 1967); Schwarz, The Imperial Privy Council, pp. 194, 305; see also Robert D. Chesler, ‘Crowns, Lords, and God: The Establishment of Secular Authority and the Pacification of Lower Austria, 1618–1648’ (Ph.D. Dissertation, Princeton University, 1976), pp. 64–5.
Graf Kufstein, Studien zur Familiengeschichte, Vol. iii: 17. Jahrhundert (Vienna/Leipzig, 1915), p. 9; for the sale of offices in France, England, Spain and Prussia, see K. Malettke (ed.), Ämterkäuflichkeit: Aspekte sozialer Mobilität im europäischen Vergleich (Berlin: Freie Universität, 1980).
See, for example, R. Alewyn, Das große Welttheater. Die Epoche der höfischen Feste (Munich: Beck Verlag, 1985) and the analyses of early modern European courts in Asch and Birke (eds.), Princes, Patronage, and the Nobility. For a detailed analysis of Habsburg piety, see Anna Coreth, ‘Pietas Austriaca’. Österreichische Frömmigkeit im Barock, 2nd rev. edn (Vienna: Verlag für Geschichte und Politik, 1982).
J. H. Hexter’s seminal essay, ’The Education of the Aristocracy in the Renaissance’, in his Reappraisals in History, 2nd edn (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), pp. 45–70, still deserves attention. For the education of the German nobility, see Winfried Dotzauer, ‘Deutsches Studium und deutsche Studenten an europäischen Hochschulen (Frankreich, Italien) und die nachfolgende Tätitgkeit in Stadt, Kirche und Territorium in Deutschland’, in Erich Maschke and Jürgen Sydow (eds), Stadt und Universität im Mittelalter und in der Frühen Neuzeit (Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 1974); Notker Hammerstein, ‘Universität und Reformation’, Historische Zeitschrift, 258 (2) (April 1994), pp. 339–57; Reiner A. Müller, Universität und Adel. Eine soziokulturelle Studie zur Geschichte der bayerischen Landesuniversität Ingoldstadt: 1472–1648 (Berlin: Dunker & Humblot, 1974); Müller, ‘Aristokratisierung des Studiums? Bemerkungen zur Adelsfrequenz an süddeutschen Universitäten im 17. Jahrhundert’, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 10 (1984), pp. 31–46; Anton Schindling, Humanistische Hochschule und freie Reichsstadt. — Gymnasium und Akademie in Strassburg: 1538 bis 1621 (Mainz: von Zabern, 1977); W. Zorn, ‘Adel und Gelehrtes Beamtentum’, in H. Aubin and W. Zorn (eds), Handbuch der deutschen Wirtschafts-und Sozialgeschichte (Stuttgart: Union Verlag, 1971). On French higher education, see L. W. B. Brockliss, French Higher Education in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Oxford: University Press, 1987), and on the French nobility, Mark Motley, Becoming a French Aristocrat: The Education of the Court Nobility 1580–1715 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990). Norbert Conrads, Ritterakademiender Frühen Neuzeit: Bildung als Standesprivileg im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1982), provides comparisons between noble academies in France and Germany, and R. Kagan, Students and Society in Early Modern Spain (Baltimore, Md; John Hopkins University Press, 1974), synthesizes research on education in Spain. R. J. W. Evans deals with higher education in the Habsburg lands, ‘Die Universität im geistigen Milieu der Habsburgischen Lander, 17.–18. Jahrhundert’, in Alexander Patschovsky and Horst Rabe (eds), Die Universität in Alteuropa (Vienna: Univ-Verlag, 1994), pp. 79–200; Bahlcke, Regionalismus und Staatsintegration im Widerstreit, ch. 4b, has a section on higher education in the Bohemian lands. See also references below on the Habsburg territories.
Charles Girard (ed.), Oeuvres mêlées de Saint-Evremod, 3 vols (Paris, 1867), vol p. 259; quoted in Jonathan Dewald, Aristocratic Experience, p. 81.
Richard Pace, De Fructu (Basle, 1571), quoted in Lawrence Stone, The Crisis of the Aristocracy, p. 305.
Helmut Engelbrecht, Geschichte des österreichischen Bildungswesens. Erziehung und Unterricht auf dem Boden Österreichs. Vol. 2: Das 16. und 17. Jahrhundert (Vienna: Österreichischer Bundesverlag, 1983), ch. 4; Cyriacius Spangenberg, Adels Spiegel. Historischer Ausfürlicher Bericht. Was Adel Sey und heisse/Woher er kome, Vol. I (Schmalkalden: Michel Schmuck, 1591), pp. 138–9, insisted that children’s education should begin at seven, as soon as they have acquired reason (‘sobald bei Verstand’).
Engelbrecht, Das 16. und 17. Jahrhundert, pp. 57, 97–8.
H. J. Zeibig (ed.), ‘Die Familien-Chronik der Beck von Leopoldsdorf’, Archiv für Österreichische Geschichte 8 (1852), pp. 209–33; Wißgrill, Schauplatz des landsäßigen Nieder-Oesterreichischen Adels, II, pp. 328–31.
Harry Kühnel, ‘Die adelige Kavalierstour im 17. Jahrhundert’, JbLkNÖNF xxvi (1964), and Gernot Heiss, ‘Integration in die höfische Gesellschaft als Bildungsziel: Zur Kavalierstour des Grafen Johann Sigmund von Hardegg 1646/50’, JbLkNÖ48–9 (1982–3), pp. 99–114, have made important contributions; see also MacHardy, ‘Der Einfluss von Status, Konfession und Besitz’, pp. 56–83; on Bohemia, see František Šmahel, ‘L’ université de Prague de 1433 à 1622: recrutement géographique, carrières et mobilité sociales de étudiants gradués,” in Dominique Julia, Jacques Revel and Roger Chartier (eds), Les Universités Européennes du x vie au x viiie Siècle: Histoire sociale des populations étudiantes, Vol. 1 (Paris: École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, 1986), pp. 65–88; and Jiři Pešek and David Šaman, ‘Les Étudiants de Bohême dans les Universités et les Académies d’Europe Centrale et Occidentale entre 1596 et 1620’, in Julia, Revel and Chartier, Les Universités européennes, pp. 89–112.
‘Das Familienbuch Sigmunds von Herbertstein’, in J. Zahn, (ed.), Archiv für Österreichische Geschichte, 39 (1868), p. 306, quoted in Heiss, ‘Bildungsverhalten des niederösterreichischen Adels’, p. 144.
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© 2003 Karin J. MacHardy
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MacHardy, K.J. (2003). Advancing at the Imperial Court. In: War, Religion and Court Patronage in Habsburg Austria. Studies in Modern History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230536760_6
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