medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Hi John,
You wrote:
>The question wasn't whether heralds in general were knowledgeable but
whether this one was. And it is reductive to treat "Lower-level
functionaries and tradesmen with frequent business at court" as a hendiadys.
I had to look that up. Never to late to learn something new...
>I was referring to two separate categories of people who were often at
court but also at least sometimes not awfully well informed (to judge from
their memoirs and chronicles). In the Neapolitan context of which I spoke,
heralds _were_ lower-level functionaries.
That's as maybe, but at the court of Henry's VII and VIII, where this thread
takes place, they weren't. The fact that you wrote rather doubtingly about
heralds in one sentence and proceeded with "lower-level functionaries" in
the next made me think you meant to describe the same people. If you did not
mean to infer that, you might concede that it was an easy mistake to make.
> As such, they were presumably just as capable of misperception as the
memoirist Loise de Rosa (a court functionary) and the chronicler Melchiorre
Ferraiolo (a goldsmith).
Everybody is fallible. But heralds, if anything, were based at court, close
to their masters (in the English case: the king) and were especially busy
with ceremonial happenings at court, your typical items that appear in
chronicles: embassies, peace-talks, political weddings, funerals,
coronations, etc. They knew a lot about what went on there. And sometimes,
increasingly so during the 15th c, wrote it down.
> And if being a chronicler is an automatic guarantor of inside knowledge
and accurate reporting, I should be glad to read your proofs thereof.
I did not say that it went like this automatically. But if you want examples
of heralds as chroniclers with lots of inside knowledge to write about there
are, f.i. Claes Heynen, Beieren herald (formerly Gelre, ca 1345-1414) who
did a very well-known and pretty unique chronicle on Holland and other Low
Countries early in the 15th c and Jean le Fevre, Toison d'Or king of arms
(ca 1395-1468), who wrote a chronicle about Charles VI of France in the
1430's and probably also did the first biography of Jacques de Lalaing, the
perfect knight. And there are more.
Best,
Henk
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