Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on contributors
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Sir John Elliott: an appreciation
- Introduction
- PART I Power and propaganda: the world of the court
- 1 Twin souls: monarchs and favourites in early seventeenth-century Spain
- 2 Taxation and political culture in Castile, 1590–1640
- 3 Clio and the crown: writing history in Habsburg Spain
- PART II The pattern of society: community and identity in Habsburg Spain
- PART III Spain and its empire
- Index
1 - Twin souls: monarchs and favourites in early seventeenth-century Spain
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 August 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on contributors
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Sir John Elliott: an appreciation
- Introduction
- PART I Power and propaganda: the world of the court
- 1 Twin souls: monarchs and favourites in early seventeenth-century Spain
- 2 Taxation and political culture in Castile, 1590–1640
- 3 Clio and the crown: writing history in Habsburg Spain
- PART II The pattern of society: community and identity in Habsburg Spain
- PART III Spain and its empire
- Index
Summary
In ‘Of friendship’, one of his most fascinating essays, Francis Bacon refers to what seemed to him a general phenomenon in Europe during his time: the existence of royal favourites. Writing in the early seventeenth century, Bacon asserted that every man needs a friend and the same is true for monarchs. Certainly, monarchs have higher qualities and more important roles in the community than the rest, which in theory could deny them the opportunity to have friends, unless ‘they raise some persons to be as it were companions and almost equals to themselves… The modern languages give unto such persons the name of favourites, or privadoes, as if it were matter of grace, or conversation.’ Not only weak monarchs had favourites, but
also the wisest and most politic that ever reigned; who have oftentimes joined to themselves some of their servants, whom both themselves have called friends, and allowed others likewise to call them in the same manner, using the word which is received between private men.
Unlike Francis Bacon, modern historians have not paid particular attention to the language of friendship as it pertains to monarchs and their favourites in early modern Europe. In our own time, the notion of friendship refers to a private association between individuals and the language used to describe it does not encompass the political connections these individuals have with the state and the society.
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- Spain, Europe and the AtlanticEssays in Honour of John H. Elliott, pp. 27 - 47Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1995
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