INHALT und ABSTRACTS

Le Corps du Prince, in Micrologus. Nature, Sciences and Medieval Societies, 22 (2014), S. XVI–827. Euro 75.

Éric BOUSMAR, Hans COOLS, Jonathan DUMONT, Alain MARCHANDISSE, Introduction, S. XI–XVI.

Jean WINAND, Le corps du prince. La perception de l’Égypte ancienne, S. 3–11.

Agostino PARAVICINI BAGLIANI, «Le Corps du Pape», vingt ans après, S. 13–35.

Jean-Marie MOEGLIN, Corps de l’Empire et corps de l’Empereur (XIe–XVe siècle), S. 37–67.

Malte PRIETZEL, Le corps des évêques. L’exemple de Wurtzbourg aux XVe et XVIe siècles, S. 67–104.

Elizabeth A. R. BROWN, The French Royal Funeral Ceremony and the King’s Two Bodies. Ernst H. Kantorowicz, Ralph E. Giesey and the Construction of a Paradigm, S. 105–137.

Murielle GAUDE-FERRAGU, Le ‘double corps’ de la reine. L’Entrée d’Isabeau de Bavière à Paris (22 août 1389), S. 139–169.

Frédérique LACHAUD, Corps du prince, corps de la res publica. Écriture métaphorique et construction politique dans le Policraticus de Jean de Salisbury, S. 171–199.

Chris WOOLGAR, Queens and Crowns: Philippa of Hainaut, Possessions and the Queen’s Chamber in Mid XIVth-Century England, S. 201–228.

Michael PENMAN, Head, Body and Heart. Legitimating Kingship and the Burial of Robert Bruce, Scotland’s ‘Leper King’, CA 1286–1329, S. 229–252.

Éric BOUSMAR, Hans Cools, Le corps du prince dans les anciens Pays-Bas, de l’État bourguignon à la Révolte (XIVe–XVI e siècles), S. 253–295.

Bertrand SCHNERB, Le corps armé du prince. Le duc de Bourgogne en guerre, S. 297–315.

Antheun JANSE, Jacqueline of Bavaria and John of Brabant. The Princely Body as a Political Asset, S. 317–339.

Jelle HAEMERS, L’anniversaire Gantois de Marie, duchesse de Bourgogne (27 mars 1483). Autour de la participation des sujets urbains à un service commémoratif pour une princesse décédée, S. 341–363.

Minou SCHRAVEN, Contesting Supremacy. Funerals of the Spanish Monarchy in the Church of San Giacomo degli Spagnoli in Rome, 1497–1559, S. 367–391.

Thalia BRERO, Éva PIBIRI, Le corps du prince au sein des rituels funéraires de la Maison de Savoie (XIVe–XVI e siècles), S. 393–427.

Christine SHAW, The Person of the Doge of Genoa, S. 429–439.

Giovanni RICCI, Un corps sacré, un cadavre outragé. Deux princes d’Este au XVI e siècle, S. 441–453.

Joana BARRETO, Come soavemente dormisse: les funérailles des Aragon de Naples entre légitimation politique et exemplarité chrétienne, S. 455–486.

Francesca SIVO, Nani e giganti nel Mezzogiorno in età normanna, S. 487–557.

Miguel Ángel LADERO QUESADA, Protéger le corps et façonner les gestes du roi. Castille et Aragon (XIII e–XVe siècle), S. 559–598.

*María NARBONA CARCELES, Le corps d’une reine stérile. Marie de Castille, reine d’Aragon (1416–1456), S. 599–618.

Jean-Bernard de VAIVRE, Alain MARCHANDISSE, Laurent VISSIERE, L’agonie, la mort et les funérailles de Pierre d’Aubusson († 1503), grand maître de Rhodes et cardinal, S. 619–655.

Laurent HABLOT, En chair et en signes. Le corps héraldique et emblématique du prince au coeur des rituels de cour, S. 657–678.

Annette KEHNEL, Le corps fragile du prince. Dans les rites d’investiture médiévale, S. 679–704.

Gilles LECUPPRE, Déficience du corps et exercice du pouvoir au XIVe siècle, S. 705–719.

Steven THIRY, How to Steal the King’s Body? Corporeal Identification of Princely Pretenders in the Renaissance, S. 721–746.

Hans-Joachim SCHMIDT, Le roi ne meurt pas. Transmissions des concepts politiques aux successeurs par des testaments politiques, S. 747–766.

Wim BLOCKMANS, Beau, fort et fertile: l’idéal du corps princier, S. 767–781.

Index des noms de personne et de lieu, par Agostino PARAVICINI BAGLIANI, S. 785–823.

Index des manuscrits, par Agostino PARAVICINI BAGLIANI, S. 825–827.

ABSTRACTS

Éric BOUSMAR, Hans COOLS, Jonathan DUMONT, Alain MARCHANDISSE, Introduction, S. XI–XVI.

Jean WINAND, Le corps du prince. La perception de l’Égypte ancienne, S. 3–11.

Agostino PARAVICINI BAGLIANI, «Le Corps du Pape», vingt ans après, S. 13–35.

Jean-Marie MOEGLIN, Corps de l’Empire et corps de l’Empereur (XIe–XVe siècle), S. 37–67.
The organological metaphor was known to be a very commonly used in the Middle Ages to refer a kingdom. The originality of the Holy Roman Empire is in this regard that the reference to the body knows a true institutionalization, this through his almost formal adoption in the titles of the princes, above all the prince electors, identified as members of an empire whose emperor was the head. This development began in the XIIth century and is fully carried out in the XIV–XVth centuries. It seems, however, that the emperors of the XVth century, Sigismund and Frederick III, insisted on the fact that the body of the Empire was not separable from the mortal body of the emperor.

Malte PRIETZEL, Le corps des évêques. L’exemple de Wurtzbourg aux XVe et XVIe siècles, S. 67–104.
As there are several hundred bishoprics in the Latin Christendom during the Late Middle Ages, this article has to concentrate on one striking example, the bishopric of Würzburg, and on three important occasions: the bishop’s election, his consecration and his obsequies. At Würzburg as in other bishoprics, the rituals centered on the bishop’s body mainly concern his secular power as a prince of the Empire, not his spiritual prerogatives. This can be explained by the important political role of late-medieval bishops. Moreover, the spiritual prerogatives were defined by canon law and they were generally accepted, whereas the political role of the bishops differed quite a lot in the single dioceses, and it had to be defended strongly against rivals.

Elizabeth A. R. BROWN, The French Royal Funeral Ceremony and the King’s Two Bodies. Ernst H. Kantorowicz, Ralph E. Giesey and the Construction of a Paradigm, S. 105–137.
Because of the work of Ernst H. Kantorowicz and Ralph E. Giesey, French royal transi tombs’ display of images of both corpse and living ruler, like the use of effigies in royal funerals in medieval and Renaissance France, is widely thought to reflect and express a distinction between ‘the king’s two bodies’, his body politic and his body natural. The royal images, both statues and effigies, are thus interpreted as representations of the undying body politic, contrasted with the ruler’s mortal body. In this article I discuss Kantorowicz’s collaboration with Giesey, explore the genesis of their ideas concerning French royal tombs and effigies, and argue that their hypotheses owe more to Kantorowicz’s flair for generalization and penchant for paradigms than to medieval and early modern ideas about dignitas, effigies, and skeletal funerary monuments, and the actual use and treatment of these images.

Murielle GAUDE-FERRAGU, Le ‘double corps’ de la reine. L’Entrée d’Isabeau de Bavière à Paris (22 août 1389), S. 139–169.
The entry of Isabeau of Bavaria to Paris in August 1389 was an exceptional event. It was the first entry arranged for a queen, and the huge sum of 15 000 livres parisis spent on the ceremony reveals the importance king Charles VI accorded to it. For the first time, the subjets of the theatrical pageants staged at the crossroads of the city were recorded, by the historian Jean Froissart. The ceremonial plays honored the physical body of the queen, who was represented in majesty, her blue costume embroidered with fleurs de lys. The queen herself arrived on a litter, accompanied by the princes of blood. The prévot and citizens of Paris welcomed the queen with an honour guard, gifts and the entry pageants. The allegories portrayed in the pageants did homage to the king (in depictions of war and justice) and to the queen (in a scene of the Assumption in which she became the Virgin Mary). Like the Queen of heaven, Isabeau of Bavaria was presented as an intercessor between the king and his subjects after the peasants’ revolts of 1382.

Frédérique LACHAUD, Corps du prince, corps de la res publica. Écriture métaphorique et construction politique dans le Policraticus de Jean de Salisbury, S. 171–199.
The metaphor of the political body is at the heart of the Institutio Traiani, the central section of the Policraticus of John of Salisbury (1159). This famous metaphor, based on an analogy between the members of the human body and the different parts of the res publica, was already common in political and ecclesiological writings at the time the Policraticus was composed, but it was John of Salisbury’s version which would be the most influential on political thought in the later Middle Ages. Nevertheless a close reading of the Policraticus suggests that this rhetorical figure was often used by its author in an ambiguous way. In particular, the body of the res publica fre- quently appears to be that of the prince himself. John of Salisbury made extensive use of all kinds of metaphors in the whole text of his treatise. Instead of creating a precise political concept that would have been the foundation for a theoretical discussion on the organisation of powers, this may have been a rhetorical strategy designed to win the adhesion to moral reform of a readership exercising responsibilities of power.

Chris WOOLGAR, Queens and Crowns: Philippa of Hainaut, Possessions and the Queen’s Chamber in Mid XIVth-Century England, S. 201–228.
Possessions were an essential complement to the sovereign’s body and an important component in court spectacle and the sensory environment that went with it. An examination of the role of goods in day-to-day life in the household of queen Philippa of Hainaut, the wife of Edward III of England, establishes the character of her possessions and the connections that came with them. Queen Philippa and her chamber were at the centre of a continuous traffic in goods and possessions, commissions, purchases, gifts and disposals. There was a separation between the regalia used for great solemn occasions and those in day-to-day use. The queen received gifts linked to life cycle, yet like most of her possessions these were far from inalienable and a great deal did not endure in a family context. Her own gift giving focused on alms and memorialisation.

Michael PENMAN, Head, Body and Heart. Legitimating Kingship and the Burial of Robert Bruce, Scotland’s ‘Leper King’, CA 1286–1329, S. 229–252.
This paper examines an aspect of the long struggle of the body politic of the medieval kingdom of Scotland to secure its freedom from English overlordship. It relates the efforts of Robert Bruce earl of Carrick to legitimise his usurpation of the throne as Robert I (1306–1329) by associating his person and rule with the beata stirps of his predecessors: the royal saints, major churches and wider relics of the realm. It illustrates the faith and strategy of the king and his ministers in their conflict not only against England but also papal excommunication and interdict as well as accusations that Robert suffered and died from the “unclean sickness”, leprosy (with evidence assembled to show that he probably suffered from tuberculosis or syphilis). This would culminate in the carefully choreographed ritual and iconography of Robert I’s funeral at the Benedictine abbey of Dunfermline in 1329, home to the shrine of Saint Margaret († 1093); this was allied to the Bruce dynasty’s successful defence of Scottish sovereignty, recognised by a papal grant of the rite of full coronation and anointment.

Éric BOUSMAR, Hans Cools, Le corps du prince dans les anciens Pays-Bas, de l’État bourguignon à la Révolte (XIVe–XVI e siècles), S. 253–295.
This paper adresses the various instances of the Prince’s Body in the Burgundian dominions and the subsequent Habsburg Netherlands up to the Revolt against Philip II, king of Spain. Still in the shadow of the French King’s two bodies during the principate of the first two dukes, the Burgundian princely body gains in differentiation (natural body vs institutional body) and sacralisation with Philip the Good and above all with Charles the Bold and his claims to more autonomy and sovereignity. Rituals and other forms of communication point at the duke’s body as the essential link between the heterogeneous components of his state and emphazise the dynastic continuity of power. Their Habsburg successors, including emperor Charles V, are in their turn part of this tradition in the Low Countries. Untimely deaths, funerals, political assassinations, gender issues, minorities, regencies and abdication, all point to the centrality of the Prince’s natural body in the affairs of state. This essay also takes into consideration the princely body in some collateral lines (Hainaut-Hollande, Brabant, Nevers) and competiting aristocratic houses (Brederode, Luxembourg, Orange-Nassau).

Bertrand SCHNERB, Le corps armé du prince. Le duc de Bourgogne en guerre, S. 297–315.
At war, the duke of Burgundy had to show himself as a knight, as an army leader and as a prince with a political and military authority. His appearance should reflect all these roles, as well as his wealth and power. Therefore, he had to carry the best weapons, to wear the best armors and to ride the strongest and the most beautiful horses. His armed body was an image of his status; this image was reproduced on seals and on coins and described by chroniclers. It became an allegory of the ducal power. In the field, the duke was also distinguished by other visual signs. The coat of arms was used to identify him among the lords and knights of the army. Three flags (the banner, the standard and the pennant) where carried next to him to localize his place in the order of battle. Of course, such a signalization had a disadvantage and the prince’s body could become a target for the blows of the enemy.

Antheun JANSE, Jacqueline of Bavaria and John of Brabant. The Princely Body as a Political Asset, S. 317–339.
Various contemporary chroniclers have described Jacqueline of Bavaria, countess of Hainaut, Holland and Zeeland (1401–1436), who conducted a turbulent life and married four times, as a beautiful woman. However taking into account the scarce art historical evidence, this judgement seems rather based upon the required imagined ideal qualities of a princess than upon physical reality. For various reasons, Jacqueline’s successive husbands were unable to safeguard the administration of her lands. In the end, she lost out against the Burgundian duke Philip the Good (1396–1467). In the opinion of her adversaries, Jacqueline, or more precisely her princely body, was but a pawn of which they tried to gain control. Jacqueline reacted to the incapacity of John IV of Brabant (1403–1427) to defend her interest, by fleeing his court and breaking her marriage.

Jelle HAEMERS, L’anniversaire Gantois de Marie, duchesse de Bourgogne (27 mars 1483). Autour de la participation des sujets urbains à un service commémoratif pour une princesse décédée, S. 341–363.
Subjects are often forgotten in studies on civic religion in general and in papers on funeral ceremonies of princes in particular. For instance, scholarship on late medieval and early modern princely funerals mostly focus on the pompous rituals that courts and noblemen used in order to justify the succession of the defunct person. This paper, however, demonstrates that citizens used similar rituals to commemorate their defunct lord, or, in this case, duchess Mary of Burgundy. On 27 March 1483, the cities of Ghent, Bruges and Ypres organized a commemorative service for the duchess, who died one year before. With the ceremony, they wanted to claim the regency over her son, the minor Philip the Fair. For these cities were in a conflict with the father of Philip, Maximilian of Austria, who also claimed the regency. My analysis of the event suggests however that the efficiency of the such religious events should not be overestimated. Juridical arguments, social relationships and political ideas convinced people to choose side in a political conflict, perhaps more than does a ritual performance.

Minou SCHRAVEN, Contesting Supremacy. Funerals of the Spanish Monarchy in the Church of San Giacomo degli Spagnoli in Rome, 1497–1559, S. 367–391.
This article discusses the responses to the funeral ‘apparati’ of Don Juan († 1497), queen Isabella of Castile († 1504) and emperor Charles V († 1558) in the national church San Giacomo degli Spagnoli on Piazza Navona in Rome. Linking them to the funeral ‘apparati’ in use at the papal court and the active festival patronage of the Spanish community in Rome, the author demonstrates how the Spanish nation used the royal funerals to their advantage in the struggle between pope and Spanish monarchy for dominion over Rome and the Italian Peninsula during the first half of the XVIth century.

Thalia BRERO, Éva PIBIRI, Le corps du prince au sein des rituels funéraires de la Maison de Savoie (XIVe–XVI e siècles), S. 393–427.
The aim of this paper is to show how the funerals of the counts and dukes of Savoy evolved in the long term, starting from the XIVth century, then focusing on the period between the middle of the XVth century and the 1530s. Particular emphasis is given to the role played by the prince’s body in funerary rituals and in the transfer of power process (two-stage funeral, chivalric offering ceremony, ritual proclamations).

Christine SHAW, The Person of the Doge of Genoa, S. 429–439.
Unlike the doge of Venice, the doge of Genoa in the XVth century was not the focus of any ritual or ceremonies. This lack of formality reflected the determination of the Genoese to keep a tight rein on the powers of the doge and on government expenditure. Under the new constitution instituted in 1518, the doge had even less power, but some ceremonial was elaborated to enhance his dignity as head of the republic.

Giovanni RICCI, Un corps sacré, un cadavre outragé. Deux princes d’Este au XVI e siècle, S. 441–453.
Not even after death the prince’s body can rest. If it is destined to be sanctified [or sacralized?], it will undergo anatomical and cerimonial procedures. Otherwise, if the circumstances impede the sacral model, the prince’s body risks to incur in the opposite treatment: outrage. This polarity clearly reveals itself around the body of the last dukes of Ferrara, Hercules II and Alfonso II, in 1559 and 1597. Indeed, the sacralisation of the body Hercules by the way of double funeral with effigy, which became impossible for Alfonso, turned into demonisation. Representatives of the oldest italian feudal aristocracy, the lords of Este pursued an ambition greater than the material resources available to them. This was their great anguish; and this is for us the key to understand their policy of body during the Renaissance.

Joana BARRETO, Come soavemente dormisse: les funérailles des Aragon de Naples entre légitimation politique et exemplarité chrétienne, S. 455–486.
The funerary art of Renaissance Naples was important. Unlike the Neapolitan aristocracy and the Angevin rulers of Naples, between 1442 and 1504 the Aragonese rulers of Naples did not have monumental tombs. This did not mean that the rulers’ dead bodies were neglected. Rather, it resulted from the role assigned to the bodies. Acclaimed and revered during the ruler’s lifetime, embalmed and exhibited after his death, the ruler’s body was interred in humble leaden coffins. This article explores the death of two kings, Alphonse V, founder of the Aragonese dynasty, and Ferrandino, the last Aragonese ruler, who died during the Italian Wars, using an ars moriendi and an important contemporary chronicle to attempt to grasp the status accorded to the royal body.

Francesca SIVO, Nani e giganti nel Mezzogiorno in età normanna, S. 487–557.
Among the first generations of Normans engaged in the conquest of southern Italy and in the expansionist impulse towards the East, the most famous character, also on the literary plan, was undoubtedly Bohemond, the warrior, the conqueror, the miles crucesignatus, the fortissimus Christi athleta, that the many surviving sources describe as having extraordinary psycho-physical qualities, shrewd and intelligent, skilled in the self-promotion and the construction of his public image, a great communicator: in a word, a ‘giant’, whose name alone, pronouncing it, did echo the world (Boemundus, quia reboat mundus). After less than a century, however, after the kingdoms of Roger II, his successor William the Bad and his son, the formosus boy-king William II the Good, towards the end of the twelfth century, the ‘adventure’ of the Altavilla in southern Italy comes to an end, overwhelmed by the aggressive penetration of the Swabians, and ends with the troubled, short-lived and unsuccessful experience of government of the ‘dwarf ’ Tancred, already count of Lecce, which seems to embody dramatically the end of Regnum Siciliae and the tragic decline of the Norman dynasty. An ‘adventure’, that of the lineage of Altavilla in southern Italy, which, in some way, you might consider as symbolically enclosed between two characters projected on distinct polarities in opposition to each other:

Miguel Ángel LADERO QUESADA, Protéger le corps et façonner les gestes du roi. Castille et Aragon (XIII e–XVe siècle), S. 559–598.
The royal body was the most visible image showing the legitimacy of his power. The king was not only an object of rituals but also a body aging cere – monially. The ordnances of royal Court describe many acts who implicate the royal body but the historian must also consult other sources. This rapport proposes an index of research subjects and develops four points based upon a wide range of cases between XIIIth and XVth centuries. 1, The care for legitimacy of the king's body from his conception to his birth and christening. 2, The education in order to obtain a control of the body and the masterdom of the physical behaviour in anyone situation. 3, The exhibition of emotions and the usage of corporal expression in the rapports between the king and his subjects. 4, The king’s Guard as an activity who involves directly the control of the royal body.

María NARBONA CARCELES, Le corps d’une reine stérile. Marie de Castille, reine d’Aragon (1416–145
Among the queens of the Hispanic kingdoms of the first half of the 15th century, María de Castilla, queen of Aragon between 1416 and 1458, is a very unique case. Owing to her husband’s long absence from Spain – Alfonso the Magnanimous lived in Italy ruling his kingdom of Naples for more than two decades – she showed herself to be an exceptionally capable ruler when she took over the managing of the vast territories of the Crown of Aragon as her husband’s deputy. But, regardless of her importance as maker of pivotal political decisions, her role as sovereign ended up being incomplete because of her sterility and thus her inability to give the king and kingdom an heir. Following this line of thinking, within the analyses centered in the study of the “body” of the prince, María de Castilla’s situation leads to consider that of the queen when they are infertile and their procreation role cannot be fulfilled.

Jean-Bernard de VAIVRE, Alain MARCHANDISSE, Laurent VISSIERE, L’agonie, la mort et les funérailles de Pierre d’Aubusson († 1503), grand maître de Rhodes et cardinal, S. 619–655.

Laurent HABLOT, En chair et en signes. Le corps héraldique et emblématique du prince au coeur des rituels de cour, S. 657–678.
At the end of the Middle Ages, the theoretical reflections about the prince’s body reflected particularly in the staging and setting signs of this exceptional person. At this time, the emblematic is certainly used, with other media, to build the body of the prince in its multiple dimensions, complementary and sometimes contradictory. Heraldry is obviously the first of these systems of signs. Real abstraction of the body-function of the prince, his arms say him in picture. However, the prince is not only the embodiment of a function. He is also an embodied function. This personal dimension of his power is also translate by his badge, part of himself from which he will reward those around him, as to signify their dependence on him than to share them a piece of his special identity. Frequently staged in courtship rituals, these signs build from the prince an emblematic body, a shared body, a sublimated body.

Annette KEHNEL, Le corps fragile du prince. Dans les rites d’investiture médiévale, S. 679–704.
The article addresses the kings body presented in its fragility and weakness in the course of medieval European inauguration. There seems to be a paradox alliance between power and weakness. The collective making of a future leader and victor requires an individual – ritually prescribed – recapitulation of the subject’s position. This observation applies to the making of ‘rulers’ in a general sense, be it dukes and kings, saints and heroes, popes, martyrs, chiefs, stars, Chief Executive Officers or Presidents of the United States. Whereas the ethnologist is well acquainted with ritually prescribed periods of weakness and describes them as ‘liminal elements’ during a ‘rite de passage’ as designed by Arnold von Gennep the medieval historian generally focuses on the medieval need for Christian humilitas. This paper suggests concentrating on the natural body of the king – weak and feeble – in the course rituals of status elevation. The functional necessity of ‘weakness’, as embedded almost universally at the very centre of the rituals of empowerment, will be reconsidered: It is suggested here to view weakness, suffering, and humiliation as indispensable and universal elements in the social fabrication of power from the earliest times down to the 21st century.

Gilles LECUPPRE, Déficience du corps et exercice du pouvoir au XIVe siècle, S. 705–719.
How can we account for the paradoxical attitudes towards invalid or insane monarchs evident during the fourteenth-century? On the one hand, certain clauses of canon law targeted disabled clerics, the obvious necessities of war worked to sideline inadequate rulers, and Aristotelian thought recommended exclusion of blind or mad kings from power. And yet, on the other hand, John the Blind was revered as a hero by several generations and Charles the Mad reigned for 42 years. Although some sovereigns were protected by their so-called sacred nature, worries that weakened princes might be manipulated by unscrupulous councillors or favourites were persistent. However, such worries often can be attributed to opponents or frustrated nobles, who tried, sometimes successfully, to put an end to kingly resistance for their own purposes. Rulers who were dethroned for alleged medical reasons were probably less senile and ill than, let us say, the glorious

Steven THIRY, How to Steal the King’s Body? Corporeal Identification of Princely Pretenders in the
Corporeal encounters with false political pretenders of all sorts were a recurrent phenomenon in premodern face-to-face society. Some of these impostors even usurped the personality of another individual, most famously that of existing though dubiously perished princes. In their complex schemes, visual and corporeal codes were appropriated to construct and imitate the extraordinary body royal. ‘Appearance’ was the main way to persuade onlookers, but also allowed – in the case of faulty and inadequate deceit – a ‘negative’ identification unmasking the fraud. In the process, an intimate interplay between the body as a social construct, bearing the imprints of hierarchical status, and the body as a biological structure dominated by physical signs determined the failure or success of such forms of political pretence. Departing from Gilles Lecuppre’s observations on the preponderance of a charismatic ‘majesté naturelle’ in cases of late medieval princely impostors, this essay sets out two objectives. The first section, using a chronological analysis of the late XVth-century case of Perkin Warbeck, a false claimant to the Tudor throne, sheds light on how a pretender gradually constructed the abstract princely body. The remaining part, exploring venues for further research, assesses whether Lecuppre’s remarks on the limited importance of physical marks can be transposed to the Early Modern period. It hints at a paradigmatic development towards emphasizing specific ‘physical’ signs as criteria for identification, although not necessarily as mere biological peculiarities.

Hans-Joachim SCHMIDT, Le roi ne meurt pas. Transmissions des concepts politiques aux successeurs par des testaments politiques, S. 747–766.
The king’s body was destined to death. But the power didn’t end. Therefore the body had to be extended by institutions, as Ernst H. Kantorowicz described them, and by the biological continuity of the dynasty, but also by texts which presented a political program the successor and the son had to accomplish. Testaments putting forward the last will of the ruler were the usual textual genre in order to fix the prescription which should form in the future the actions and the behavior of the successor. In spite of the legal status of the texts, sometime described as binding laws and sometimes strengthened by testamentary executor, the aim to oblige the new ruler was confronted with the fact that the later was not necessarily willing to be submitted to the prescription of his predecessor. Thus the indented continuity very often failed. But nevertheless, there were many examples of rulers (emperor Frederick II, king Louis IX of France, king Alfonso X of Castille or James II of Aragon) who didn’t desist to try imposing their will and by that expanding their presence even after their death as if they were still alive.

Wim BLOCKMANS, Beau, fort et fertile: l’idéal du corps princier, S. 767–781.