Emperor Sigismund´s Court

Emperor Sigismund of Luxembourg (1368-1437) is widely regarded as one of the most notable rulers of the Middle Ages. At that time, Central Europe was politically fragmented and linguistically diverse. Sigismund lived and ruled as king in three different countries: Hungary, Bohemia and the Holy Roman Empire. In each of the three realms he had different means of government and his own court and administrative staff. Research has not yet been able to take this situation into account; there is a lack of comparative and interlingual studies and overviews. This work fills this gap. Here, findings from different countries and research cultures are presented and classified. The book is not limited to rulers or courts, but comprehensively examines the situation of the rulers, the social background, the personnel of the courts and the institutional phenomena that make Sigismund`s unique situation comparable to that of other courts. This comparative work was challenging because national patterns of thought and research traditions first had to be made visible and modern approaches such as diplomatic history, network analysis or gender research had to be integrated. All in all, the volume presents rulers and court situations in a new light; numerous facets are explained in German or English for the first time. This major achievement is based on the results of leading Sigismund scholars from Germany, England, Austria, Czechia, Hungary and Slovakia, but above all from Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia, Serbia and Romania. The result of this long and intensive study is impressive. The methodological and thematic polyphony emphasised in the work is new, unusual and manifests itself on several levels. For example, the perspective with `proximity`, `trust` or `strangeness` opens a new view of the performance of Sigismund`s court in institutional and administrative terms. The king, court and contemporaries were confronted with these phenomena in different ways in the greater area between the Balkans and England, Poland and Italy. Furthermore, the strategies are named with which the actors at court and in their regions of origin tried to secure their own and their families` position in the long term.

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