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A great final evening yesterday for the #CapetianAristocracy/ #AristocratieCapétienne Summer Workshop series, looking at issues of identity and memory! I was one of the presenters, so this time have a better excuse for retrospective rather than live tweeting.
Looked at the role of memory in shaping aristocratic practices, from inheritance to commemoration to self-image. On the flip side, not all memories are real, but can instead be invented—& information we might consider important can be easily omitted and lost. #CapetianAristocracy
Discussed maternal transmissions of status & power. Aristocratic women are key to understanding elite society, shaping inheritance of land (& patterns of co-lordship), cultural patronage, & family identities (even when tied to offices rather than lordship!). #CapetianAristocracy
I got some really great Qs to take forward in my co-lordship project: how much it's really a form of fragmentation (I think it's more cooperative), how it acted as a site for interactions between lords and the crown... and what even *is* a lordship anyhow? #CapetianAristocracy
(Re: that last question, it's actually sometimes quite hard to tell, because even in my Languedocian documents from a single year there are a number of different ways of talking about *what* is being split; one of my first jobs will be to figure out how these can be compared!)
We wound up on the huge question of how much choice aristocrats had in the shaping of their roles and identities, and to what extent these had to be defined in relation to the king (and, in fact, vice versa). What kinds of choices did they even have? #CapetianAristocracy
I'm esp. interested in this b/c 'choice' underlies many scholarly assumptions about whether lords tried to consolidate or share power, or if they imposed deliberate strategies or just responded to structures. Problem is, it's very hard to prove either way! #CapetianAristocracy
So lots to think about here, and some really key themes for further research to chew on. Thanks so much to the organizers for an excellent series and to everyone for very thought-provoking presentations and discussions. #CapetianAristocracy #AristocratieCapétienne
