Patronage and Clientele Systems at the Imperial Court of Vienna

Research project P 14613 Patronage and Clientele Systems at the Imp. Court of Vienna Gernot HEISS 09.10.2000 The Court of Vienna and its clientele and patronage system continues to be a desideratum of research. The project will fill the gap here in that it will research the empresses` ladies-in-waiting, the widowed empresses and the archduchesses residing in Vienna around the middle of the 17th century. The aim of the project is to study all of the women at Court from the end of the reign of Ferdinand III until the beginning of Leopold I`s reign through as complete a listing as possible of all members, their ranks and careers, their ancestry and marriages and their education. In a second step, the clientele system is the main question that is to be dealt with regarding their outside connections, especially those with the male royal Habsburg household; the latter`s members and organization will thus also be systematically compiled and studied as thoroughly as possible, Using the ladies of the Court as a point of departure, the project will attempt to reconstruct the ties of family, friendship, patronage and clientele. The basis will be, on the one hand, the structure of the female royal household as reflected by the royal household fists; on the other hand, this information will be enhanced through biographical data, which will be drawn from researching the large complex of marriage contracts at court, family correspondence, instructions, seating arrangements at banquets, guest lists, salary lists, bills and last wills. The aim of the project is to systematically compile the noblemen and -women in the immediate vicinity of the Habsburg monarchs, to determine the ties and connections these persons held inside and outside their group and to research the system and hierarchical structures in the female and male royal households. The study will also include data about the origins, the social connections and the educational background of these individuals in prosopographic registers (As Internetdatabase); likwise it will contain information on the relationships and ties between the sovereign and the persons concerned as well as between the female and male households. By systematically recording and statistically evaluating the materials, we will be able to give a more discerning description of this `middle class` of court society and an assessment of the size of the social network as well as the significance of origins, education and patronage.

This project seeks to fill a void within historical research into formal and informal structures of Viennese courtly life in the first half of the 17th century. A critical phase within the establishment of the catholic and absolutist Habsburg court in Vienna, this period witnessed the emergence of the basic political, social and mental structures that would characterize courtly society within the Habsburg sphere of influence for centuries. Our project concentrated above all on systems of patronage and clientele relations, i.e., the practices and strategies by which early modern principalities were constituted.The principle sources for our investigation were Hofstaatsverzeichnisse (lists of officials at the court), followed by data from biographical and genealogical documents, marriage contracts, family correspondences, reports from emissaries to the court, official regulations for courtly functions and ceremonies, salary registries, invoices and wills. This wide selection of materials offered a complex perspective on the central spheres of courtly life, the states of Habsburg family members, and the most prominent councils and committees within the courtly bureaucracy. It allowed us to reconstruct and present, in rough outlines, the central political and social networks and webs of relations within the Habsburg court. We were then able to appraise the extent and the organization of courtly networks, as well as the significance of social and political factors constitutive of life in the absolutist courtly society, such as social origins, education and patronage. An overview of the materials and results of our investigation can be found on the project website: http://www.univie.ac.at/Geschichte/wienerhof One of the central tasks of our investigation was to record the number and identity of women holding positions within the courts of princesses between 1611 and 1657 and to analyze their significance within the overall context of courtly society. To the extent that our sources allowed, we created a database containing information on the rank, career, provenance, marriage, education and financial situation of some 200 women. Using this data, we were able to classify women holding positions at the courts into groups according to the biographical criteria of social and geographical origins, marriage and career. In addition, we analyzed the professional activities of women, the positions they were able to occupy within the courtly norms of the period, and their relations with male officials from imperial household and courtly bureaucracy. This investigation into social and family networks made visible the possibilities and limitations placed upon women`s activity within such networks. One of the most important scholarly contributions of this project was to demonstrate the extensive integration of the activities of women into these aristocratic family networks at the court.