Men at the Center: Redemptive Governance under Louis IX

Acknowledgements

vii I want to thank Gábor Klaniczay for inviting me to come to the Central European University (CEU) in Budapest in November 2011 to give the series of lectures on which this book is based. I have known Gábor almost as long as I have been a professor, and I have always admired and respected him. Thus, when he asked me to deliver the lectures, I was instantly predisposed to accept. My predisposition was strengthened even more by the opportunity I would have to honor my dear friend and former colleague Professor Natalie Zemon Davis, in whose honor the series is named. Natalie agreed to come to Budapest as well and to take part by commenting and raising questions generated from my presentations. While in Budapest we also met with graduate students of the CEU, learned of the interesting dissertation projects they had selected, and offered such advice as we could on how to pursue those projects. Many of these students attended the lectures Acknowledgements book.indd 7 2012-09-12 15:39:19 viii and contributed by their questions and comments to the final form of the book. I wish to thank them and, indeed, all of those who offered stimulating responses to my arguments. The experience was wholly positive, from the exquisite view of the castle across the Danube from the hotel, to the delicious meals, and to the welcome and hospitality in general. I know now that the organizing genius behind all of this was Csilla Dobos, the Academic and Ph.D. Program Coordinator for the Department of Medieval Studies at the CEU. There was never a question that I asked that she could not answer . There was never a request I made that she did not deal with effectively and efficiently. She went far beyond the call of duty by attending all the lectures! My gratitude to her knows no bounds. I bounced many of my ideas off of several friends and colleagues at Princeton, including my wife Christine Kenyon Jordan, Professor John Haldon, two of my wonderful graduate students, Jenna Phillips and Hagar Barak, and the Academic Manager of the Department of History, Judith Hanson. None of them seemed to think the subject as I was developing it was entirely boring (hallelujah!), and this sustained me as I was crafting the talks. That said, one or more of them fairly often also challenged me to clarify points I was making and to keep to those book.indd 8 2012-09-12 15:39:19 ix points. They also endorsed my decision to name the series—and thus the book—“Men at the Center ,” a title meant to evoke Natalie’s own scintillating work, Women on the Margins: Three Seventeenth-Century Lives (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 1995), and the biographical approach she adopted in that work. When it turned out as I deepened my research that many of the men at the center whom I chose to discuss in the lectures had come from the margins of the French kingdom, socially and geographically, the symbolic evocation of Natalie’s book came full circle. Of course, I dedicate the finished product, however insufficient, to her. book.indd 9 2012-09-12 15:39:19 book.indd 10 2012-09-12 15:39:19 ...