Magnificence and Princely Splendour in the Middle Ages by Richard Barber (review)

The first thing one notes about this volume is that it is beautifully presented, which is quite fitting for a book devoted to magnificence and splendour. Its quarto format and high-quality paper allow the numerous colour illustrations to be appreciated in vivid detail, but it is not a 'coffee-table book' intended mainly for decoration: the illustrations are essential, but they do not dominate the work.

Instead, the substance of the book is a discussion of princely display in Western Europe, supported by an extensive bibliography and aimed at the educated but non-specialist reader. It covers the period from, roughly, 500 to 1500 ce, and its thesis is that the rediscovery of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics by Latin Christian scholars at the end of the thirteenth century gave prominence to the concept of magnificence as a virtue specifically of rulers. This focus on the princely virtue of magnificence, it is argued, was disseminated to European rulers and their advisors by the treatise On the Government of Princes (De regimine principum), written between 1281 and 1285 by Giles of Rome, a leading scholar at the University of Paris. Magnificence as presented by Giles, however, became primarily a quality of the person of the ruler, a matter of personal splendour, rather than a quality of the actions of a virtuous individual. As such, Barber notes, whereas Aristotle emphasized 'the correct spending of wealth in honour of the gods and for the benefit of the public […] Giles provides the theoretical justification for royal splendour, at the same time rechristening it as the virtue of magnificence' (p. 57).

Part 1 of the book sets out examples of early medieval princely splendour, dating from the time before Giles's treatise was written and disseminated, while Part 2 offers a much more detailed series of examples of royal and often ducal magnificence during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The dukes of Burgundy in particular, ambitious to establish their domain as an independent kingdom, placed great weight on the propaganda value of magnificence and consciously sought to outshine (and more importantly, outspend) their de jure feudal lords, the kings of France, on public occasions. Such matters as the dress of the ruling family and its entourage, the works of art for which rulers provided patronage, their major ecclesiastical and secular architectural projects, and public festivals such as coronations, feasts and processions—all presented opportunities for lavish expenditures which were rationalized as virtuous expressions of magnificence rather than wasteful extravagance and vainglorious pride.

Part 3 is concerned with 'the management of magnificence' and provides information on the work done behind the scenes to devise, organize, and finance the displays that rulers considered themselves entitled by right and bound by duty to mount. Because of competitive spending on magnificence and the loss of face for a ruler when outdone by a rival, it was common for a substantial level of debt to be incurred in support of these expenditures. The nascent international banking houses often had to bear the risk of advancing massive loans for these purposes, and several of them collapsed when rulers defaulted on their debts in the absence of any mechanism for enforcing repayment. In other cases, foreign merchants were simply not paid for the luxury goods they supplied, but they at least had the option of blacklisting their debtors and refusing any further orders from them.

Often, then, magnificence was not all that it seemed, and as a medieval version of 'soft power' it also had its limitations in the world of international politics. After generations of being the envy of European ruling houses for its magnificent displays, the duchy of Burgundy rapidly fell to ruin in the 1470s when its last duke, Charles the Bold, committed a series of major diplomatic and military blunders. These culminated in his death on the battlefield and the dissolution of his duchy, with some...