Status Interaction during the Reign of Louis XIV by Giora Sternberg (review)

During the stages of the marriage of Louis XIV’s niece to Charles II of Spain in 1679, the ritual of the plume, the public signing of the nuptial contract, was a source of considerable anxiety for many courtiers, not only because of the order but also because of the handling of the pen. Immediate members of the royal family received the pen from the hands of the Secretary of State whereas those of princely rank retrieved it themselves from the inkwell. This led to certain nobles, notably the Duchess of Enghien, finding pretexts for absence rather than facing the indignity of being seen to pick up a quill. In early modern society, hierarchies were not always as stratified as we are wont to believe, nor was order the order of the day. A key example of this is Louis XIV’s court at Versailles: ceremonial and routines were fixed by custom and precedent rather than codification. This inevitably led to expressions of disgruntlement and conflict over status at public events — as Saint-Simon’s mordant memoirs reveal — although, as Giora Sternberg notes, much status interaction ‘took place outside of the monarch’s presence, knowledge, or indeed interest’ (p. 10). Interpersonal relations touched on many areas, including space, language, gesture, and clothing. The third chapter is a fascinating look at what was at stake with one garment: the mantle. This varied according to the wearer, the occasion, and differences in length, shape, and decoration; and train bearers (number and rank) could make occasions such as funerals fraught with sartorial frustration. The fourth chapter is devoted to the phenomenon of mantled visits during the eighteenth century, the right to which spread during the century providing its own form of democratization since ‘the advantages of the prestigious garment itself offset the drawbacks of interactional subordination’ (p. 108). The final chapter is, surprisingly, devoted to epistolary exchange as a vehicle of unmediated status interaction, providing some fruitful reflection on opening and closing salutations and the form used on the envelope itself. Sternberg observes that Louis XIV took the trouble of regulating correspondence, which contrasts with his refusal to become involved in clashes at court; in the middle of the diplomatic crisis that led to the War of the Spanish Succession, the ruler found the time to intervene and impede the Duke of Burgundy, second in the line of succession and his grandson, from adding ‘et Grand Père’ when writing to him (‘au Roi Mgr’ sufficed). This chapter contains some perceptive lexical analyses of terms and has much to offer literary scholars. The book amply illustrates that the most heated micro-political contentions concerned the pettiest of issues. While only an incidental consideration, Sternberg is less reliable when dealing with ecclesiastical matters: clerics never officiate in an armchair, for example (p. 21). The work’s scope is firmly on the reign of Louis XIV and, as the author remarks, much ground remains to be covered during the eighteenth century. Nonetheless, this fine and readable investigation has much to offer scholars, ‘for to uncover status interaction in all of its historical complexity is to recover an indispensable facet of early modern life’ (p. 175).