Download PDF | (Themes in Medieval and Early Modern History) Patrik Pastrnak - Dynasty in Motion_ Wedding Journeys in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe-Routledge (2023).
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DYNASTY IN MOTION:
WEDDING JOURNEYS IN LATE MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN EUROPE
Bringing together a variety of evidence, such as princely correspondence, travelogues, financial accounts, chronicles, chivalric or Renaissance poems, this book examines marital travels of princely brides and grooms on a comparative trans-European scale.
This book argues that these journeys were extraordinary events and were instrumental for dynastical and monarchical self-representation, and channelled aspirations and anxieties of princely houses when facing each other. Each such journey was a little earthquake that resonated across all layers of society. Hundreds of diplomats, envoys, aristocrats, city officials, low-status personnel, soldiers, artists, musicians, poets, and humanists were involved in preparing, executing, and commemorating them. Stretching far beyond the mere physical movements of the future royal spouse, the journeys snowballed into a myriad of other meanings that epitomised the very character of a society based on prestige, magnificence, honour, and glory. The story of nuptial travelling is fascinating and rich; it is a perfect condensation of monarchical order, dynastic agenda, value system, personal motives, female agency, and social networks in this period. It is dynasty in motion, prestige on wheels, queenly time, place, and time like no other.
This volume is the perfect resource for upper-level students and scholars of court studies, the history of monarchy, and for those interested in premodern Europe.
Patrik Pastrnak is a postdoctoral researcher at Palacky University, Olomouc. In January 2022, he completed his DPhil in History at the New College, Oxford, where he was the recipient of the Robert Oresko Memorial Scholarship
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
There is a long list of people without whom this work would not exist. My greatest thanks must go to my supervisor, Natalia Nowakowska, whose guidance and constant support were crucial in developing my doctoral thesis. I would also like to thank David Parrott for keeping an eye on me throughout my entire studies at Oxford. In turning the thesis into a monograph, I am obliged for their advice and support to Katarzyna Kosior, Chloé McKenzie, and Ellie Woodacre.
My doctoral research would be impossible without the generous funding of the Robert Oresko Memorial Scholarship, as well as the New College Travel Grant, and Arnold, Bryce, and Read Funds. I am no less grateful to the Palacky University Olomouc for offering me a postdoctoral grant, funded by the Czech Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports, which enabled me continue in my research and transform the thesis into the book.
My sincere thanks go to the colleagues and scholars who mainly during the closure of libraries during the Covid-19 pandemic kindly offered me their papers, scholarly literature, or archival pieces, namely Maria Barreto Davila, Sophie Charron, Christiane Coester, Barbora Dietrichova, Dagmar Eichberger, Jiti Knap, Katarzyna Kosior, Louise Nyholm Kallestrup, Antonin Kalous, Jakub Niedzwiedz, Oleksii Rudenko, Marion Rutz, Karl-Heinz SpieB, Deanna Shemek, Bernhard Struck, Elena Taddei, Molly Taylor-Poleskey, Dusan Zupka, and Pavel Marek. Also, I would like to express my gratitude to the staff of the Bodleian Library, who provided an impeccably efficient scan and deliver service which was an indispensable tool for my work. The same thanks go to the staff of the archives of Innsbruck, Florence, and Mantua who continued to work during the pandemic and provided me with the much needed digital copies of archival records.
I am very grateful that I had the chance to discuss and receive feedback on my findings at several conferences, seminar talks, invited lectures, during the Confirmation of Status interview with Susan Doran and Giora Sternberg, and finally during the viva with my examiners, Liesbeth Geevers and David Parrott. I want to especially thank Liesbeth and David for making the viva a lively and thought-provoking discussion. Immense thanks must go to a long row of colleagues and friends whom I met online or in person during various conferences and who were very supportive or critical of my work. Especially, I would like to extend my thanks to the three anonymous reviewers for their support and suggestions to my book proposal.
My thanks must also go to the institutions that kindly granted me the permission to use their visual material, namely the State Archives of Mantua, the Cathedral Museum of Monza, the Palatine library of Parma, the Biblioteka Cyfrowa, Albertina Museum, and the British Library.
I would like to thank Eva Janeckova and Anetka Mlynska who helped me with some letters written in very obscure German and Spanish.
This work would not see the light of the day without a constant support of my family and especially of my dear wife Zuzi to whom I managed to make my very own wedding journey as I was writing this work and who helped me immensely in both academic and personal sphere. And lastly, I want to thank the incessant source of inspiration streaming from the creative genius of Mr Jara Cimrman. By a particular guidance of fortune, he happened to be in the same train compartment as Princess Alix of Hesse, travelling to wed the future Tsar Nicolas II. This experience fundamentally influenced his ideas about drifting, tableaux vivants, and theory of solipsism.
NOTE ON TERMINOLOGY, TITLES, PERSONAL NAMES, AND GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATIONS
I use the phrases bridal, nuptial, wedding, spousal journey, transfer, or passage interchangeably. I do not try to eschew the term bridal when speaking about wedding travel as a whole, that is, referring to the male transfers as well, as this adjective is synonymous with nuptial in certain collocations (e.g. bridal couple and bridal suite).
The brides and grooms surveyed in this thesis held a whole range of born or wedded titles (emperor—empress, king—queen, archduke—archduchess, duke—duchess, infant—infanta, and so forth). Since my objective here is to write about nuptial travel in general, I mostly use the term princess/prince in a general sense—that means, it does not refer only to the son or daughter of the king or the anglicised form of one of the titles with the hierarchy of the Holy Roman Empire (Fiirst/Fiirstin), but denotes the princely bride or princely groom, i.e. a member of the ruling dynasty in the nuptial process, be it an heir apparent to the throne or ruling duke. Only when speaking about concrete persons, I use their special title (e.g. archduchess or infanta).
The current court and royal studies tend to avoid anglicising the names of royal figures. This book focuses on the figures who did not touch only one or two national historiographies but many. This necessarily causes the trouble of name variants, since one prince(ss) is called differently in every language, for example, Joanna of Habsburg, duchess of Florence is Johanna von Osterreich in German and Giovanna d’Asburgo in Italian. Coming from a Central European background, where such a name mess is quite common, I decided to anglicise the names of the princely figures, rather than sticking to the Italian, German, or Spanish version. However, since some variants of names are already so deep-rooted (for example, Marie Antoinette, but also Maria of Austria and others), attempts for consistency were doomed to fail from the very beginning.
Therefore, I beg the reader for forgiveness if she finds the name of her queen linguistically mutilated. Also, the modern and English—if existing—names of cities, towns, and other geographical locations are used. This choice might lead to anachronism; however, I believe it will facilitate the orientation in the text. All translations are mine.
For better orientation, each prince(ss) is given her/his journey date in square brackets. Also, to avoid confusion between the two Maximilians in the sample, I use their later ordinals as Holy Roman Emperors, although this is highly anachronistic in the time of their respective journeys when they were not emperors nor kings of Romans, only archdukes of Austria. For this and other confusing traits of the book I again plead the forgiveness of the kind reader.
INTRODUCTION
As Beatrice of Aragon (1457-1508), the future queen of Hungary and Bohemia, was about to set off to her husband and new realm (in 1476), Diomede Carafa, the senior Neapolitan courtier, handed her an opuscule containing this piece of advice:
You must strive not to make a low profit in prestige even though You will suffer the distress of the journey, for the occasion of this sort presents itself rarely.!
Carafa’s text is full of similar suggestions on how to take advantage of the nuptial journey.
This type of travel—far from having something in common with tourism or leisure activities—was a direct consequence of political and dynastic manoeuvring, typical of medieval and early modern Europe. If a ruler, on account of various motivations (searching for foreign allies, boosting of social-standing, not wanting to be relative to one’s own legemen, etc.), chose to wed a daughter from another princely house, the new queen had to necessarily come from abroad. Such a transfer was a prerogative of the ruling class, since aristocracy usually did not participate in long-distance marital unions, if it did, such weddings were concluded within the royal court that consisted of foreign ladies-in-waiting, brought by a foreign queen.”
Generally, the prospects for a marital union were first discussed with a third—party court that functioned as the first, indirect point of contact with the potential wedding parties.* If both houses were prompt to conclude the alliance, they started direct negotiations, at first selecting a suitable candidate for marriage from amongst the royal daughters, taking into account her physical and mental qualities. Then, envoys and painters were sent to another court to investigate the princess’s manners or capture her physical look in a portrait. After or during that, the marital contracts, specifying dowry, dower, and other dotal assignments were debated. When everything was settled, the husband usually sent a magnificent embassy to fetch the wife and perform nuptials by proxy at her court. Only then the new queen (or duchess, etc.) could begin her bridal journey, in the company of her husband’s delegation and an even more sumptuous retinue of her fellow-country(wo)men, culminating with the first meeting with the spouse, coronation, and nuptial festivities. The journey was thus a necessary—but not particularly interesting—step in this process.
This is the story reiterated by scholarship as well as popular literature. But if nothing else, through Carafa’s counsel, quoted at the very beginning, cracks start to appear. Could there be more to this journey? Why would the Neapolitan dignitary assert that this was an opportunity of a rare kind and that had to be taken advantage of? This book argues that wedding travel was not an inconsequential by-product of the international princely marriage. On the contrary, it played a crucial role in medieval and early modern dynasties and their members. By looking into cultural (social, instructional, literary, and gender) factors it will be shown that these journeys were ideal tools to negotiate the social status of princely houses, propagate splendour and magnificence, create dynastic memory, enable integration of foreign brides, or prepare princely individuals for their new role.
Historical background
When did the first bridal journey take place? Or, since when have people travelled to get married? Was it a unique feature of the European Middle Ages? It is difficult to answer these questions but archaeological findings suggest that marital migrations might be older than we think and they might well go back to the Bronze Age. The remains of a young female, ca 3,400 years old, found in Denmark and known as the Egtved Girl, reveal that she originated outside the burial territory and travelled intensively in her last years over long distances; her garments were made of material of foreign origin too.* Researchers suggest that she might have come from southwestern Germany,® Norway or south-eastern Sweden.° Did she come to present-day Denmark as a result of intermarriage between tribal elites?” The marriage scenario, however, is not the only possible explanation here. As Sophie Bergerbrant argues there could have been plenty of reasons for her intensive mobility: she could have been an itinerant priestess and travelled to perform special rituals, she could have been visiting her relatives, she could have learnt or taught some special skill, etc.® If the Egtved Girl really travelled to get married “abroad”, there is one particular indicator: she was buried with clothes from her homeland, meaning she must have carried some objects when transferring to the new environment. Was it a precursor of the later bridal trousseaus? We do not know yet, as we do not know anything specific about the journey itself, whether it was accompanied by some special rituals or customs. Further research is yet to explain this and other cases of mobility in the Bronze Age but it may well document the exchange of brides between prehistoric elites. After all, long before it we possess literary evidence of inter-dynastic marriages amongst the rulers of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, or Mycenaean Greece. The ancient empires kept open channels of communication and strengthened their political alliances through the exchange of gifts and artisans or intermarriage between their elites. For instance, King Kadashman-Enlil of Babylonia and Amenophis HI of Egypt joined their children in a marital alliance in the mid-fourteenth century BCE, while Ramesses H of Egypt married the daughter of Hittite king in the thirteenth century BCE.”
Again, we do not know much about the transfers of Egyptian or Mesopotamian princesses, but we are relatively well informed about the wedding transfers of ancient Roman brides, aristocratic and plebeian alike. This domum deductio, leading the bride to the groom’s house, was deemed the most constitutive aspect of the Roman wedding: it was the procession, not the consummation of marriage or the marital contract that made the wedding.'” Even the very phrase for getting married in Latin—ducere uxorem—meant “leading the wife”.'' According to Karen Hersch, who tries to reconstruct all stages of the Roman wedding, the first phase took place in the bride’s natal house when she got dressed and the dotal tablets were signed. Subsequently, she walked to the groom’s house in the company of children and other attendants carrying a basket and a torch, perhaps accompanied by obscene songs (Fescennine verses) and the throwing of nuts too. After reaching the groom’s threshold, she smeared the doorpost with wolf and pork fat and festooned it with a piece of wool. Inside the house, the bride proclaimed her willingness for marriage by the phrase Ubi tu Gaius, ego Gaia and the groom offered her fire and water. The bride handed over golden coins to the husband, and his house gods (Lares). The wedding feast followed, and after that, the bride was led to the bedroom. This elaborated set of rituals connected the nuptials with Roman history and traditions, but more importantly, it was meant to guarantee the legitimacy of the wedding by presenting the bride to the wider public and attributing to her the traditional female virtues. Her garments symbolised virginity, fertility, chastity, fidelity, and industry, the child companions were a sign of innocence and marital fidelity, the basket with distaff and spindle alluded to the female tasks in the household, while the torch and anointment of the door could have had an apotropaic function.'*
It is hard to tell whether such a complex set of rituals accompanied passages of women from other ancient civilisations. As a wider cultural phenomenon, however, dynastic intermarriages were a common practice throughout the entirety of Antiquity and they naturally continued in the Middle Ages as well, although there were periods when rulers both in (the European) West and East favoured marrying local noblewomen rather than foreign princesses. The Carolingian and Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in the ninth and tenth centuries and in the Byzantine Empire up to the thirteenth century are the most visible examples.!? Choosing a bride from one’s own nobility could be a way to gain support and establish ties within one’s own domain, or, in the Byzantine case, to manifest one’s own self-sufficiency and autonomy that did not need to rely on multiple marriage alliances with foreign powers.'* On the other hand, the marital bond with one’s own subjects sometimes caused more problems than it helped to solve. For instance, the king could be involved in the petty wars of his aristocratic relatives or the king-related nobles could lay claim to the throne and thus cause further unrest.!>
Nevertheless, from the year 1000 on, the European medieval dynasties exchanged brides in great measure, and one can even state that the mutual exchange of princesses defines the cultural and political boundaries of medieval Europe.'© International conjugal alliances were a means by which to connect to another dynasty, to seal and manifest peace and friendship, and it could bring useful artistic, scientific, or business connections, but similarly, as with marriages to the local nobility, they could be a source of potential discord for every party involved. For kings, it could be much more difficult to annul matrimony with a woman backed by their powerful royal relatives. On the other hand, the princesses married abroad could feel estranged from their new environment, at best, feeling homesick (if it is even possible to apply a modern-day category for such emotion), and at worst, provoking explicit hatred on account of the novel modes of dressing or table manners that these elite women often brought with themselves.'” Naturally, the pitfalls of these interdynastic unions, which were based on power interests rather than seeking marital harmony, led several critics to voice their concerns. The Venetian humanist Francesco Barbaro in his treatise De re uxoria promotes the moral qualities of the future wife rather than her dynastic potential.'® Similarly, Erasmus of Rotterdam in his educational treatise for Charles V advocates that a queen be chosen based on her moral profile rather than her status. Then, she should be chosen from among local noblewomen or, at most, from the princesses from neighbouring countries, rebuking thus the cruelty of royal fathers who do not hesitate
to send [their daughters] away, sometimes, to remote regions, to men entirely different in language, appearance, character, and thought, as if they were being sent into exile, when they would be happier to live in
their own land, even with somewhat less pomp.'”
Judging from these words, it might seem that Erasmus criticises royal intermarriages because of their inhumanity, and he partially does, but his main point is the interest of the state. Drawing examples from history he finds that these unions do not contribute to building peace but they sow even more discord and wars.” Naturally, one cannot miss the obvious irony that the objections to the international marriage alliances were addressed to Charles V, whose dominions and power stemmed exactly from such unions and who more than anybody else epitomised the use of such wedding diplomacy.
This and any other sort of criticism did not stop the practice of interdynastic unions, which, by extension, meant that princely figures traversed the continent in search of their new spouse since the dawn of the Middle Ages. The first description of a medieval bridal journey comes from Gregory of Tours, although it is a wedding transfer like no other. In 584, the Frankish Princess Rigunth, daughter of King Chilperic, was about to be married to the king of the Visigoths and to travel with all honours from Paris to Toulouse to meet her spouse. Yet her journey faced difficulties from the very beginning: the servants joined her entourage only under threats of force and imprisonment, and some of them allegedly rather hanged themselves than be separated from their families. Others drew up their last wills asking their relatives to open them, and thus consider them dead, as soon as the princess crossed the border of Hispania. Rigunth was supplied with such an amount of gold, silver, and gems that it took fifty carriages to transport them but only at great expense to the royal treasury and thanks to the tricks of Riguth’s mother. Leaving Paris, one of the princess’s wagon axles broke, which was seen as a bad omen. What is more, during the journey many companions escaped from the entourage stealing horses and parts of the trousseau. As the king refused to cover the travel expenses from the royal treasury, the bridal company went plundering poor people on the way, seizing livestock and crops.”! Meanwhile, King Chilperic, Riguth’s father, died and a rival duke did not miss the chance to rob the princess of her treasure and put her into custody where he held her in austere conditions for two years until she was finally released and sent back to her mother Fredegund.7”
For Gregory, Rigunth’s journey was a story of calamities: by using Biblical examples he does not hesitate to compare the brutal treatment of the entourage to the Massacre of the Innocents or to interpret the pillaging on the way as the fulfilment of Joel’s prophecy about a plague of insects. It is a story about the misery that the royal pair of Chilperic and Fredegund brought upon their daughter and her companions by being more concerned about their own wealth and prestige than their daughter’s welfare, and more so, it fits well into Gregory’s negative portrayal of Fredegund.”° But besides his portrayal of misfortunes, he also records the basic elements of the bridal journeys as they would be carried out even hundreds of years after: prior to the princess’s departure, a delegation from her spouse reached her court, most probably to fetch her. Her entourage is made up of servants, noble personages, and a military escort; their total count allegedly amounted to four thousand people. The bride bade farewell to her parents in tears and kisses and before the first encounter with the groom she and her retinue adorned themselves to display her splendour, and thus her status as well.
The fragments of these elements from time to time appear in many medieval sources. For instance, Jean of Joinville in his Life of Saint Louis mentions very briefly that he accompanied “the king’s sister to Hagenau to the German king”.”* Apart from the mere information that some bridal journeys obviously occurred, this short sentence shows far more important detail: it testifies that the bridal journeys were events involving such prominent and senior members of the court as Joinville, who was the king’s counsellor and confidant. As this work reveals, this was a standard practice and the nuptial voyage encompassed many reputable figures of the day, who all were to manifest the high status of the prince(ss) and political unity of her/his homeland vis-a-vis a foreign ruling house.
This was just one solitary mention of spousal travel in one chronicle: there must have been hundreds of journeys. Given the omnipresence of interdynastic unions in medieval and early modern times,”? Europe must have been crisscrossed by princely brides and grooms—daughters and sons of kings, dukes, imperial electors, margraves, etc.—making their way to their future spouses. Yet, the subject has not received adequate attention.
State of research
Naturally, due to its omnipresence in the lives of kings and queens as major political figures, the theme of the bridal journey has not been absent from scholarship. However, in most cases has been treated as a necessary addendum to the princely marriages, particularly within queenly biographies. Obviously, there have been many fantastic case studies, looking into particular journeys separately, and would be futile to mention all of them here as they are quoted throughout this book. Similarly, there have been many works concentrating solely on one particular princely nuptials, which all devote a chapter or more
26
to the journeys.~” Retha Warnicke’s excellent book on the marriage of Anne
of Cleves definitely stands out from this group as it draws many comparisons with other princely unions in an attempt to view the wedding in the context.7’ From the collective volume investigating the Palatine wedding, it is worth mentioning an interesting attempt by Molly Taylor-Poleskey to unravel the trajectory of the nuptial transfer in respect to political and confessional boundaries via digital mapping tools.7*
Handling the journeys separately enables an in-depth and comprehensive analysis of one case but might also hide several pitfalls, such as isolating the phenomena and missing the wider context. This is evident even in the latest collective volume Prinzessinen unterwegs (Princesses on the way). Despite many significant inputs into the study of female travel in early modern Europe, the volume does not attempt to provide a comprehensive evaluation of wedding journeys. Moreover, it characterises them rather traditionally as a necessary result of dynastic politics serving primarily as a means of political communication (e.g. claiming superiority over another dynasty through clothing, or demonstrating power in remote regions).”” The only study devoted exclusively to bridal journeys offers a fascinating picture of the transfers of Empress Maria Theresa of Habsburg’s two daughters [1768/1769], putting them into a political and dynastic context.” Still, it is largely a disjointed picture as it treats the two journeys separately and a much-needed parallel overview of the major issues featured in both transfers is given only briefly in the final words. It does touch upon topics such as differences in status or the educational tasks undertaken during the journey, but it could have been given more attention. For instance, the authors mention the existence of the instructions drafted by Maria Theresa for her daughters but state only that “it was written for the princesses to prepare themselves for their future role,” which, if more elaborated upon, would make an interesting comparative model for the conduct book by Diomede Carafa, quoted in the beginning at this volume.*!
Studying individual cases can thus have severe limits. On the other hand, comparison of similar cases at once might help to eschew simplistic views and be more effective in revealing deeper patterns or disproving deeply routed stereotypes. One of the finest examples of such a cross-comparative approach to studying princely weddings and queenship studies, in general, is Katarzyna Kosior’s Becoming Queen: East and West.> Looking at sixteenth-century France, England, and Poland, Kosior analyses the whole set of issues tied to queenly initiation, such as coronation, pregnancy, or motherhood. In the first chapter, she addresses marital transfers as well. While producing fresh and lively ideas on the emotions, protocol, or dynastic identities visualised in the material culture, her study could not be an exhaustive examination of the entire dynamics of the journeys as it focuses on the wider process of queen-making. However, it constitutes another major step in their systematic evaluation.
The beginnings of this trend can be traced to the 1990s. The first attempt to try to slowly shift from the political and one-case-only perspective is a study by Karl-Heinz SpieB (1997).°° Besides giving a general background to the weddings that involved long-distance travel, SpieB briefly points out several functions of the bridal journey: a representative one (a), which served to manifest the prestige of the uniting families. Then, a diplomatic one (b): the bridal journey, SpieB states, was a substitute for non-existing royal assemblies, hence why the bride was accompanied by high-ranking members of nobility. This diplomatic layer was at the same time strongly connected with a meticulously planned Staatsschauspiel (state spectacle), the festive function (c).*+ SpieB also briefly mentions various other issues such as legal background, or the practicalities of the journey, such as the first meetings of the newlyweds, the bridal entourage, language differences, etc.
A definite breakthrough comes with Christiane Coester’s study (2008/2010) which clearly understands bridal-journey problematics within their cultural dimension.*° According to her, a bridal journey is a social act that possesses a hidden symbolic value, lying in the dynastic representation of power and wealth that was crucial for the bridal journey.*° She divides the bridal journeys into three types—a classic one (a), during which the bride travels to the court of her future groom; (b) a type during which a groom travels and stays at the court of his bride, and (c) the scenario when the groom travels to pick up and accompany the bride to his court, which, according to Coester, occurs in the case when the woman outranks the man in terms of noble hierarchy.°” Coester then concentrates on the crossing of borders during the nuptial journey—that is, what it meant for a young bride to transfer to a foreign environment, and to cross not only geographical but ritual boundaries as well—the passing of authority from the parents to the husband.*® She notices and comments on the physical visualisation of such a passage that was often manifested by the changing of the bride’s dress or hairstyle.*? Coester’s study is thus a key pioneering point of reference for further research and sheds significant light on the previously uncharted territory of the cultural side of bridal travelling in terms of ritual passage and its visualisations or behavioural rules. Nonetheless, given the limited scope of an article and a book chapter respectively, Coester and SpieB could not provide a deeper analysis of the proposed subjects, nor focus on other aspects of the nuptial journeys, such as gender or literary dimensions. Still, they serve as a point of reference throughout this book as their concepts will be tested on a wider sample of cases.
As a part of the major dynastic feasts and encompassing many features of dynastic world, the journeys naturally must be examined together with late medieval and early modern princely weddings. These have been examined in several branches of scholarship, such as festival and ritual studies, court, queenship, or diplomatic studies. Scholarship on court or princely festivities, despite going back to the very beginning of cultural history (Burckhardt, Huizinga), has evolved radically. An earlier approach, regarding festivities solely in their performative role, has shifted to an analysis of the constructive function of ceremonies. Public festivities are no longer seen as the mere representation of social consensus; rather, their active role for society is accentuated (in constructing power, social structure, or memory).*” Simultaneously, a debate about the messages of public festivities has been taking place. Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly tried to discern two types of celebrations (“ceremonies” and “spectacles”, the former having a constructive role for power structures and the latter serving the purpose of entertainment only), and like many others, she stresses the message of power on the performative or constructional level of festivities.’ Most recently, the hermeneutical set for the analysis of ceremonies has been broadened (by J. R. Mulryne and others) and they have started to be scrutinised also from the viewpoint of their educative function, or from the perspective that they could serve as a lieu de mémoire or a dialogue (between a ruler and a city, for instance).
Early modern festivals are elaborated also by the closely related field of court and palace studies. Starting with Die Héfische Gesellschaft (The court society), the pioneering work of Norbert Elias (first published in 1969 but written much earlier),*? court studies has grown into a vibrant field that examines the princely surrounding in physical, economic, social, cultural, and artistic terms, bringing together examples from all around medieval and early modern Europe.** Various festive occasions at court are a constant theme’; however, attention has also been paid to residences*® and their role in constructing gender identity,” cultural patronage,*® or global comparisons.” Furthermore, the issues of homosocial and homosexual relationships, race, diplomacy, privacy, or bodies at court have been examined.”
Closely connected to festival studies are studies of ritual. “The widest possible disagreement” about the exact definition of the term ritual,>! has led some scholars to try to cut the Gordian knot of differences between rituals and ceremonies. However, a functionalist view, today prevailing, claiming that the boundary between ritual and ceremony does not (or hardly) exist, opens an intriguing possibility for evaluating ritual acts with the tools of festival studies, and vice versa. For instance, DuSan Zupka examines the role in political communication of the adventus regis, and while stressing the term ritual, it is essentially a festival study.°* The points raised by Philippe Buc about the discrepancy between ritual-in-text and ritual-in-performance (i.e. how rituals are portrayed in the texts and how they were performed in reality), and the possible remedy proposed by Dalewski and Althoff—that texts always reflected reality to some extent, being embedded in tradition or being written to meet certain audience’s expectations—could help to overcome problems with interpreting the accuracy of festival books also.°? Ultimately, since the bridal journey fulfilled the role of ritual transition taking place in every nuptial, it must be examined from a ritualistic (or more precisely, anthropological) point of view as well. For the analysis of spousal travel, it means that the particular points of transfer must be viewed from the perspective of separation and incorporation of the bride, which are essential steps for every rite of passage in van Gennep’s sense.>4
Writing about the cultural aspects of (not only bridal) travel alludes to cultural transfer studies. Regarding queens and elite women, this branch of scholarship has brought significant insight into different levels of cultural interaction, for instance, it has helped to distinguish various degrees of a queen’s influence/ agency, being either an agent, instrument, or catalyst of cultural exchange.°° Current research scrutinises how queens facilitated cultural exchange (in art, literature, indirectly in commerce as well), but also how cultural transfer influenced confessional and dynastic politics, overcame gender limitations, or posed personal or religious frictions.°° Nonetheless, since cultural transfer was a longterm procedure, despite starting with the wedding and the bridal journey (by means of trousseaus and gift-giving),°’ it is only partially discernible during the bridal journey itself and cultural transfer studies concentrate mostly on the post-nuptial life of queens.
The second major branch of scholarship that has dealt with princely weddings, and thus indirectly with bridal journeys, is queenship and gender studies.
These studies have undergone significant changes as well: from the traditional approach of the nineteenth century, viewing women through their role in the domestic sphere, to the radical changes brought by the feminist movements, when attention was brought to the issues of gender, power, and status.°* The currently flourishing field of queenship studies focuses on the issues of the queen’s agency, authority, identity, or patronage, expanding the field through the use of new methodological tools or concentrating on hitherto unexamined geographical regions.” However, despite its wide range, the current trend in queenship studies has completely overlooked the phenomenon of the bridal journey, perhaps, on the grounds of biographical approach or the too-narrow chronological-geographical scope, which does not allow for deeper analysis of nuptial travel. Alternatively, not being aware of Carafa’s conduct book (see the discussion of sources) which opens up the issue of queen’s agency on the way in a very vivid manner, the field lacked a necessary incentive to delve into this issue.
A good starting point for bridal-journey research 1s also the huge collection of case studies about the lives of queens, and although some of them may seem to be written in a rather old-fashioned biographical style, they still provide useful context and a source basis for individual weddings. Some older works even published a selection of archival sources, which still remain unpublished today or perished in the course of the turbulence of the modern age.°’ The case studies, naturally, evolve and incorporate cutting-edge trends in the field as well, and there are plenty of works which do not concentrate on the sterile biographical accounts of princely women, but observe their broader cultural impact (patronage of arts and pageantry, religious activities, mediation of social and gender norms, etc.).
As Karl-Heinz SpieB pointed out, the bridal journey involved a strong diplomatic element as well. Since the premodern state lacked a central system of bureaucracy, diplomatic relations depended strongly on the social status of the actors involved. That is why the persons for the bridal trains were carefully selected, and it is at the end of the fifteenth century that a branch of jurisprudence discussing the finest differences in status (so-called jus praecedentiae) is born.°! The field of diplomatic history, however, has undergone significant changes in the past two decades. John Watkins’s call for a modern re-evaluation of this rigid discipline aimed to break traditional periodisation, to shift from traditionally examined geographical areas, and to use a more interdisciplinary approach, exploring the previously unobserved cultural implications of diplomatic practices, the role of women in diplomacy, or cultural differences during marriage negotiations.” This trend continues and evolves in the most recent scholarship as well. The so-called New Diplomatic History, based on the axiom that sociocultural practices are the very basis on which political relations were created, highlights symbolic communication, diplomatic ceremonies, gift-giving, ambassadors’ agency, and many other cultural aspects hitherto ignored.’” John Watkins’s most recent claim that early modern “diplomacy
is no longer the monopoly of credentialed diplomats”**
is especially valid for bridal journeys, which, given their internationality, elevated all their participants to the status of diplomatic agents.
Finally, literary studies. As John Watkins, who examined correlation between the interdynastic marriage and literature, states, “interdynastic marriage loomed so large in the medieval and early modern imagination that writers addressed it in works that had nothing to do with any particular match”.™ Mutatis mutandis, wedding journeys found their way into numerous literary genres, far exceeding chronicles, travelogues, or diaries. However, the impact of this event on—for example—medieval romances or plays is yet to be revealed. A solitary attempt has been made by Antonio Cueto who made an intriguing
analysis of the epithalamia poems in light of the classical deductio scheme.°°
Sources
The sources can be divided into three main groups: narrative texts (chronicles, travelogues, festival books), correspondence including other various forms of archival documentation (inventories, financial logs, contracts), and literary sources. Before delving into each of these groups, the cornerstone of the topic, that is De institutione vivendi by Diomede Carafa, must be addressed. This oeuvre constitutes the only known medieval and early modern conduct book for the bridal journey.°’ Although some minor instructional texts pertinent to the nuptial journeys are extant, such as mandates for envoys and leading members of the bridal train and household ordinances, none of them reaches the complexity and scope of De institutione. Born in 1406 or 1408 in Naples, Carafa spent almost an entire life in the service of the Aragon monarchs, even helping them to conquer his homeland. His loyalty brought him many influential titles and positions, amongst those being a tutor and private counsellor to the members of royal family. Even though lacking the scholarly background, he authored several memoriali (one of them is De institutione), addressed to the Aragonese princes and princesses, in which he tried to encapsulate his recommendations for military and courtly life, diplomatic encounter, or good government, which he acquired from his own experience.
Originally written for Beatrice of Aragon [1476], De institutione envisages a whole set of activities which the queen on the way to her husband might engage in, and thus prepare herself for her imminent life- and status-change. These encompass, but are not limited to, methods of obtaining the favour of her soon-to-be husband, how to treat the foreign envoys and courtiers, how to take care of the bridal household, which gestures and acts to use during the farewell to her family and the first encounter with her husband, how to use her new language, and most important of all, how to create a positive public perception. This range of themes strongly contrasts with other extant instructional sources, for instance, Charles V’s instruction for the journey of his nephew Maximilian II to Spain [1548], which in three pages mostly covers etiquette issues (e.g. how to address Italian and Spanish lords). Therefore, given its unique character, Carafa’s work will be heavily used throughout the entire book. Since it was first published only in modern times, there is little chance that any other princess than Beatrice had an opportunity to consult it. The luxuriously decorated Latin manuscript (Figure 1.1), now stored in the Biblioteca Palatina in Parma, was probably sent as a wedding gift to Beatrice in 1476 or soon afterwards—a simpler, unadorned version in Neapolitan vernacular which was handed over to the princess upon her departure from the hometown is not extant—was originally a part of the Biblioteca Corviniana at Buda Castle. Before the capture and subsequent destruction of the library by the Ottomans, two princesses, Anne of Bohemia and Mary of Hungary, could have had access to it, but this hypothesis remains wishful thinking.”° Still, the precepts contained in it might have reflected contemporary conventions and ideals that have not survived in any other source.
The narrative sources cannot be strictly categorised as they oscillate between the genre of chronicles and diaries on one side, and festival books on the other. First, there are larger chronicles, on a national or city level, which sporadically refer to, or fully describe, the ceremonies and festivities related to bridal journeys: to this group belong for instance Rui de Pina (for Eleanor of Portugal, 1451/1452), Jan Dtugosz (for Elizabeth of Habsburg, 1454), Marino Sanuto (for Margaret of Parma, 1533), or Lorenzo Padilla (for Joanna of Castile, 1496).”! A great advantage of this sub-category lies in its relatively good accessibility, because as well-known sources, they have been (re)published since the dawn of modern scholarship. On the other hand, there is a potential pitfall as well: since the chronicles, as great national/city narratives, were written long after the events they portray, the evidence they provide could be of a rather schematic and stereotypical nature. Although they could be the only source for the particular journey (e.g. Elizabeth of Habsburg, 1454) and possess interesting details, they are not very rich in documentation and this work uses them only sporadically.
Of more revealing character are the Chroniques of Jean Molinet as well as the Historia austrialis (known also as Historia Frideric’) and Commentaries by Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini that provide information on journeys related to the Low Countries (Maximilian I, 1477, Joanna of Castile, 1496, Margaret of Habsburg, 1497 and 1501) and Eleanor of Portugal, respectively.’” In contrast to the chronicles mentioned above, these texts devote longer sections to nuptial transfers, reporting the entire course of events and specifying the logistical and ceremonious details, but unlike the festival books, they do not eschew moments of crisis and sometimes, provide the reader with their own evaluation of the episodes. Their special attention to the journeys might be explained by the positions of the authors, who as court historiographers and/or as direct participants of the prince(ss)’s passage, were at the centre of events. Regarding the occupation of the creators, one ought to be always cautious about the potential encomiastic bias, however, as modern scholarship reveals, a positive predisposition towards the princely patron is not as automatic as one might think.”*
The same applies for the oeuvres of Cerbonio Besozzi, documenting the passage of Maximilian IT [1548], and an anonymous diary of Ferdinand of Bavaria’s trip to Italy on the occasion of Joanna of Habsburg’s nuptials [1565].”4 Besozzi, being included in the wedding train as a musician to Cardinal Madruzzo of Trent,” the journey, describing ceremonies and entertainment offered to the prince, but
was an eyewitness of the events and he offers a long and vivid portrait of
it is not limited to this. Again, on account of his occupation, Besozzi pays greater attention to the deeds of his patron, but again, he does not pass in silence over the issues and critical points brought up en route. Moreover, in the tradition of travelogue literature, he pays attention to the environment and cultural differences. The Bavarian log too is a no less vivid account of Ferdinand’s journey. As a result of various delays, the prince was behind schedule of the main bridal train and thus he and his household had to travel separately, and thus the text is not a direct portrayal of the bride’s movement. Nonetheless, this diary is a precious piece of documentation as it preserves the stories, sometimes of a very unflattering character, of what had happened to the bridal company just a short time before.
The version of the events, as exposed by Ferdinand’s diary, contrasts strongly with the travel accounts, compiled for the 1561 and particularly the 1565 jour-
neys of Eleanor, Joanna, and Barbara of Habsburg.”°
These two pieces can be categorised as so-called festival books.’’ Naturally, we possess many others representatives of this genre from earlier times as well, but they were usually confined to the documentation of the princess’s final solemn entry. Aside from the two long accounts, there are many much shorter texts that specify the order of ceremonies but are more similar to plain ambassadorial reports.’* Heavily concentrating on an order and character of ceremonies, enumerating numbers and names of the participants, these accounts present the journey as a continuous passage of triumphs and public entertainment.
A completely separate kind of narrative document is the travelogue by Nicholas Lanckman of Falkenstein, written for the transfer of Eleanor of Portugal [1451/1452].’° As one of the leading figures of the reception embassy, Lanckman records not only the progress of the princess’s journey to her husband, Emperor Frederick III, but also the adventures of the embassy on the way to Lisbon as well as the course of wedding festivities in this city. The details included in this extensive account shed light not only on logistical and ceremonial features but also on the princess’s agency and an elaborated set of rituals that was staged for Eleanor’s farewell. Published and translated into German for the first time at the beginning of the sixteenth century, this text was dedicated to Eleanor’s son, Emperor Maximilian I, and thus it should be read in the context of the emperor’s Ruhmeswerk.®°
The second important group of documentation is princely and diplomatic correspondence, mostly in an unpublished form,*! even though a large quantity of epistolary material, especially for the older periods, found its way into nineteenth-century editions.** Occasionally we are fortunate enough to have direct testimonies from the members of the princess’ entourage, or even from the princesses themselves.°? This sort of evidence is crucial for the reconstruction of the material aspects (e.g. bridal train and its rationale, overall logistics) but it is also indispensable for the analysis of ceremonial features, protocol involved with the farewell and the first meeting of the newlyweds, as well as for the prince(ss)’s actions leading to and on the way to his/her consort (e.g. gift-giving, linguistic interaction, first epistolary exchange with the newlyweds, and so forth).
Of no lesser significance are legal and financial sources, namely wedding contracts and fiscal logs, although for the studied sample of journeys, they are not so revealing as correspondence. The marital treaties can contain the terms relating to the princess’s passage, specifying its dates, locations, and costs. For Maximilian’s trip to Spain [1548] we even possess an entire account book pertinent to the journeys alone, which shed light not only on the itinerary, but also on the everyday reality of the travel experience, such as the number of horses required, lodging costs, or the gifts bought and given during the journey.** A very similar source is extant for the journey of Maximilian’s daughter Elizabeth to France [1570].*°
The last source category is literary sources, mainly wedding poems and orations, so-called epithalamia. This term may denote various literary compositions, such as lyric or epic poems, orations in prose or in verse, that have some connection to matrimony and draw on the classical tradition of nuptial songs, exhorting a bride to enter a groom’s bed (thalamos), along with the hymenaei and other songs that were sung during the Roman nuptial procession, domumductio, which is described in the first section of the Introduction. The evidence emerges that various kinds of songs were sung in the course of this Roman (and also during a slightly different Greek) ceremony: during the procession, at the start of the nuptial night, during the waking-up of the wedding pair, or in the course of the morning following the wedding night. These songs provided inspiration for poets, most likely, in the earliest stages of Greek literature in the seventh century BC; however, the most classic pieces of the epithalamic genre, which began to denote every kind of wedding-related composition, were authored by Sappho, Theocritus, Catullus, Statius, Claudian, and others.5° Drawing upon actual wedding traditions, these epithalamia are a valuable source for reconstruction of the ancient nuptials; however, they are not without challenges as they present a highly idealised version of events, taking place in a flamboyant atmosphere and under the auspices of gods, highlighting the virtues of the newlyweds (virginity of the bride and bravery of the groom).
Although some forms of lyric epithalamium, imbued with religious mysticism, survived throughout the Middle Ages,®’ the revival of this genre took place in Renaissance Humanism. Having recognised its value for panegyrics, the humanists and court poets started to recreate it, trying to extol their princely donors and shaping their wedding feasts as a divine enterprise. Since the passage of the bride played a major role in the ancient Roman ritual and subsequently, in the poetry, the humanists subconsciously adopted not only the genre as such but its emphasis on the journey as well. The rhetorical epithalamium, mostly bearing the form of an oration, had a slightly different origin than its lyrical counterpart and evolved from medieval wedding sermons. However, its panegyrical undertone is similar, if not more intense: as Anthony D’Elia, who studied a large sample of fifteenth-century Italian nuptial orations, showed, humanist authors did not hesitate to use this medium to propel political propaganda by lineage, dynastic history, wealth, or personal virtues of the newlyweds.8* What is more, these texts served as a platform for expressing views on sex and marriage, and very often, they did not eschew extolling bodily pleasures either.®?
There are many of these rhetorical and poetic pieces, first in Italy, where humanists revived the genre of wedding poetry in the 15th century, but later across Europe as well. For the marital unions of Austrian Habsburgs in 1448-1565, there are up to twenty pieces extant: three lyric and one in-prose composition for Bianca Maria Sforza [1493];?° one poetic piece for Anne of Bohemia [1521];”! five poetic pieces and one in-prose for Elizabeth of Habsburg [1543];°? four lyric ones for Catherine of Habsburg [1553];7° and two poetic and one in-prose epithalamium for Joanna of Habsburg [1565]."4 Unfortunately, despite the high number of these texts, only a handful of them are relevant for the analysis of the bridal journey’s motifs.
Methodology and questions
The core of this monograph is based on my doctoral thesis, looking using the sample of seventeen Austrian-Habsburg weddings in 1447-1565. Why Habsburgs and why the turn of the sixteenth century? The sheer number of all spousal journeys hinders a systematic analysis of the entire medieval and early modern period. Influenced by my previous scholarly experience and the origin of Carafa’s work which was a start point of my investigation into bridal journeys as a whole, I opted for the time span of 1450-1550. This period offers several advantages from a methodological point of view. First, its length (one hundred years) enables the observation of changes, trends, and a potential evolution in the way nuptial travelling occurred, especially so given the chosen century saw many precipitous changes impacting society on a macro-level such as Humanism, Reformation, the invention of the printing press. But the changes concerned the monarchical and dynastic sphere too, be it that the dawn and development of ceremonial rules and precedents for later periods or a gradual end to itinerant kingship and establishment of more permanent residence). Second, this time span provides a convenient source situation in terms of quality (more in-detail and better preserved records, moreover the emergence of completely new genres, such as festival books, humanistic wedding poems, and orations) and quantity (neither the scarcity of earlier centuries nor the overabundance of the later ones).
However, it was necessary to narrow the scope even further because in the selected time span, around three hundred royal and ducal weddings took place. Having compared the geographical extent of marital politics of three major European dynasties, Valois, Jagiellonian, and Habsburg (Maps 1.1 and 1,2), the latter was chosen as a source sample for the doctoral thesis that forms the core of this monograph.
Given their geographical extent, stretching from Portugal to Poland, from Scotland to Florence, this corpus of weddings was the most likely candidate to yield valuable results in terms of their cultural (i.e. social, gender, and literary) implications. The particular marriage policy of the Habsburgs led to a transnational web of nuptial alliances, or, as Paula Sutter Fichtner puts it, a spectacular matrimonial conglomerate,’® and Habsburg members, either males or females, thus had to travel to many, and sometimes quite distant, parts of Europe, overcoming cultural or later religious differences.”” None of the other princely houses offers a more trans-European set of wedding alliances, since due to their firmly localised power centres they did not tend to stretch their wedding bonds beyond their most immediate neighbours (Map 1.2).
he Habsburgs wed their neighbours as well, however, their domains—at least in this period—lacked a centralised basis, and therefore their marriage trajectories cut across the whole of Europe.
Also, the Habsburg geographical instability in this period is important from the point of view of the court and dynastic ceremonies, which are likely to be more liable to negotiations and changes than the more stabilised courts of the Jagiellonians and the Valois. Sure, as Katarzyna Kosior showed, even the French and Polish royal houses prioritised in wedding protocol the current political needs over their dynastic customs, however, the ceremonial variations quoted in her study still seem minor in comparison with the Habsburgs (for instance, no Valois or Jagiellonian king travelled to the bride, etc.).’> Examining such a dynamic princely house as the Habsburgs would thus yield a much better understanding of the wedding transfer, which is not tied to a stable protocol of only one cultural sphere or dynastic tradition but is open to constant negotiations of wedding parties.
The chosen timespan (1450-1550) is also a period for which the notoriously known Habsburg motto Bella gerant alii, tu felix Austria nube is most fitting. By a series of very fortunate marital unions, the house extended its rule over a great part of Europe: the marriage of Maximilian I and Mary of Burgundy [1477] brought control over a majority of domains previously controlled by the Valois dukes of Burgundy. The offspring of this union, Margaret and Philip, concluded the double marriage with the heirs of Castile Aragon, Joanna, and John [1496/1497]. A sudden death of the latter meant acquisition of the two Iberian kingdoms and by extension also vast territories that the Spanish crown held in Europe and as time went on in America too. Maximilian I, personally participating in the first crucial match and brokering the second one, managed to negotiate even the third one, which, however, came to fruition only after his death. The second double wedding [1515/1521], this time with the Jagiellonian dynasty ruling over Bohemia and Hungary, between Maximilian’s grandchildren Ferdinand and Mary on one side and Anne and Louis on the other, enabled the Habsburgs to lay claims of the two Central-European kingdoms. Soon afterwards, with the death of King Louis II in the battle of Mohacs against Ottomans, this claim was indeed advanced and it laid foundation of the future Habsburg monarchy. The acquisition of these territories was boosted by the imperial status, held by senior members of the house incessantly from Maximilian I’s father, Frederick III.
However, the main advantage of the Habsburg marital web, that is its pan-European range, is at the same time its main disadvantage: the documents are spread across the countries around the continent in several languages, making the research in every archive that would be relevant to the Habsburg weddings virtually impossible. Therefore, as a result of the linguistic, financial, and temporal limitations as well as disruptions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, the main investigation concentrated on seventeen marital unions of Austrian Habsburgs (listed in Appendix 2). For the purposes of this book and a broader comparative perspective, material from other thirty journeys was added.
The Habsburgs as a dynasty and its marital policy has been elaborated on by many scholars. A list of numerous excellent monographs or exhibition catalogues covering the lives, cultural patronage, or residences of the Habsburg emperors, kings, queens, archdukes, and archduchesses in this period would be long. From the plethora of studies, one has to highlight the five-volume biography of Emperor Maximilian I by Hermann Wiesflecker (published in 1971-1986) that offers an excellent historical introduction to the second half of the fifteenth century as a whole. More specifically, the Habsburg weddings, as a key element of the house’s success in this period, have been also addressed.!”° From the two major works on the subject, Cyrille Debris’s comprehensive study represents an impressive handbook for Habsburg nuptials in the high and late Middle Ages, showing in great detail the motivations for marriage, its diplomatic background, the forms of dotal agreements, and the rites involved.'®! Karl Vocelka’s book, chronologically placed in the second half of the sixteenth century, on the other hand, opts for a totally different approach.'”” Rather than looking into every marriage concluded in this time frame and presenting an overall picture of dynastic marital policy, he offers a collection of case studies and in each of these points to a particularly characteristic feature of contemporary princely espousals, such as material preparations of ceremonies, proxy rites, or juridical background. However, none of these works, like the other scholarly literature as shown above, pays attention to the wedding journeys.
This monograph thus aims to fill this void. At the same time, it does not aspire to be an exhaustive evaluation of the wedding journeys in the second half of the fifteenth and the first half of the sixteenth century. Rather, using the rich Habsburg-related and other supplementary documentation, it aims to shed light on the phenomena connected with nuptial travelling. In a sense, it is a case study but the “‘case” does not mean one wedding but one princely house which serves as a probe. The objective is thus not to reconstruct the precise course of every journey in the sample but to reveal wider socio-cultural patterns with the help of the surviving material.
Structure of the book
This book illustrates the centrality of wedding transfers for premodern dynasties and monarchical order on various strata. Dynasty is often understood as synonym for monarchy or monarchical rule, but recent scholarship discerns it as a collective group, tied with kin relations and most importantly, a shared identity and agenda.'"3 Given the combination of the journeys’ singularity (for the dynasty, princely figures, realms—princesses were not expected to be seen again), multiterritoriality (covering many political and geographical lands), supranationality (encompassing different royal and social customs), liminality (emancipating the princesses), and potential danger (inherent in all premodern travel) the bridal transfers were a perfect instrument to project the splendour and magnificence of the dynasties united in the marital alliance, to negotiate power and rank on the international level, to prepare the royal wives for their upcoming role, to forge relationships and bonds with foreign figures, and to extol and memorialise the dynasty. It is an event that does not fit any typologies of royal rituals or premodern travel. This work examines these functions in seven sections, whose order is roughly inspired by the chronological timeline of the journey (preparation—execution—memory) but takes a more thematical approach which is necessary for a comparative analysis of the phenomena. Inevitably this approach delays, for instance, the analysis of the voyage’s starting point—the bride’s farewell—to the central part of the thesis, however, it is done so with the aim to treat each element within its thematic group. In the end, strict adherence to chronological order would result in much overlap and repetitions and miss the arguments hidden in various segments of the journey.
Chapter 2 addresses the material side of the transfer. The point of analysis here is not to reconstruct the trajectories or roads of the particular journeys but to focus on the material setting of the travel, that is, logistics. Drawing comparisons with another type of travelling royalty, i.e. royal tours, the chapter shows the anxieties, motivations, and social networks that enabled—and sometimes complicated—the spousal transfer. Chapter 3 tackles the most noticeable aspect of the journey, the massive entourage accompanying the prince(ss). Its distinct but intertwined parts, bridal household and aristocratic retinue, are scrutinised with respect to their origins, functions, selection criteria, and motivations of the courtiers. They projected political unity and dynastic splendour on the outside, catered for the everyday needs of the princess en route, but also helped the princess with integration into her new environment or shaped her public perception. As the group in the closest proximity to the new queen or duchess, it had clear power connotations, and the two wedding parties vigorously negotiated the appointments and the unbalanced structure often became a source of later conflicts.
Chapter 4 looks at ceremonies and festivals on the way. First, it examines the transfer as a continuous stream of triumphs, solemn entries, spectacles, and entertainments. This highly choreographed staging, boosted by a newly emerging genre of festival books, functioned as an extension of the wedding festivities, often paid for by third-parties. Moreover, as it is argued, a trend towards greater festivisation, i.e. a qualitative and quantitative expansion of festive occasions, is discernible, which can be explained by the popularity of royal progresses or the gradual end to itinerant kingship. Moving on to the sacral dimension of the journey, that is, visiting holy shrines, participating in the liturgy, and blending of the travel schedule with the liturgical calendar, shows that the spousal transfers had a connection with the sacred and the participants sought divine aid en route to ensure a happy outcome to the trip as well as the entire marital union.
Chapter 5 shifts the ceremonial focus from the macro to the micro level, looking into ritual transition occurring in every nuptial, but having special meaning in the transfer of princely brides. Consisting of separation, liminal period, and incorporation, this ritual passage was diversified, blurred, and sometimes did not conclude with the wedding either. Verbal, non-verbal, and material means employed in this process are examined and it is demonstrated that the bride was not a submissive object, “handed over” from one male authority to another, but she took a very active part in it. Moreover, the gender difterences between travelling bride and groom, not very visible in the material or festive layers, are clearly brought to light in this part. The males appear to have participated only partially in the ritual transition; moreover, the protocol in meeting the spouse was gender-based; whereas the incoming brides were usually united with the husbands in an extramural setting, the incoming grooms found their spouses in the intramural one.
Elaborating on the liminal character of the transfer, Chapter 6 argues that the bridal journeys enabled the princesses, empowered by a temporary absence of male authority, to exercise a significant amount of influence and agency. They used it for preparation for their future roles, as envisaged by Carafa’s conduct treatise, or for building social ties with people on the way by means of gifts. Finally, the last chapter examines the aftermath of the journey in literary compositions. By looking into the newly emerged genre of epithalamia, Humanistic wedding poems and orations, as well as the semi-biographical works of Emperor Maximilian I, this section contends that the nuptial transfers were an ideal framework for preserving dynastic memory and self-affirmation, either by exploiting the motifs of travel dangers or triumphalism. By so doing, this book aims to establish bridal journeys as an autonomous type of travel and sheds light on the reasons behind their hitherto overlooked cultural dynamics on the trans-European scale. It attempts to deepen our knowledge of not only premodern travel but also medieval and early modern court history, festivities and rituals, gender and women history, as well as diplomatic history.
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