Gens, maisnie, ou hôtel ? Le personnel à gages à la cour de Guillaume I/III de Hainaut et Hollande/Zélande et de son épouse Jeanne de Valois (1304-1337)
Year: 2012
Type: article
Abstract: This contribution aims, with the help of seven accounts from the archives of the counts of Hainaut and Holland between 1304-1337, to shed light on the practices of paid employment at the court and in the count's household. An analysis of the terms used in these documents to designate the services for wages and the people remunerated allows us to sketch a picture of the organisation of the comital household. Contrary to what normative texts, such as court ordinances, show us, these services were not rigidly structured according to a clearly defined schema. Rather they were (dis)organised pragmatically according to the changing daily needs of the count's family, whose members were frequently travelling and often separated from one another, to the financial resources of the moment and to the fortuitous availability of the people involved to perform the various services. Over a period of roughly 25 years these snapshots reveal personnel with widely diverse skills, flexible and employable in multiple tasks, faithful to and valued by their employers but also often very active in other sectors than in the service of the count and his family.
Authors: Thérèse de Hemptinne, Valeria Van Camp
Language: English
Subfield: History
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2212213327