Financiers to the Blind King: Funding the Court of John the Blind (1310–1346)

Zdeněk Žalud

Chapter 4 in Money and Finance in Central Europe during the Later Middle Ages, 2016, pp 59-75 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract In current Czech — as well as in German — historiography, the history of business in the Middle Ages, and especially a study of the rulers’ finances, lies outside out mainstream research interests. This is not just because historians follow trends believed to be more attractive to readers, but also because we do not have sufficient sources from which to study financial history. Accounts of the Bohemian king and his court do not survive before the second half of the 14th century (Mersiowsky, 2008, p. 266) and the later situation for Czech lands is, unfortunately, not satisfactory either. Therefore it is not surprising that studies on the finances of earlier periods are based on documents, forms, letters and narrative sources rather than accounting records. Despite this handicap, since the 1970s Czech historians have accepted ideas from German scholarship, notably the concept of ‘Hochfinanz’ (Veronesi, 2008, p. 185), which focuses its attention not only on urban financiers as carriers of the ruler’s credit, but also on the reforms of the Imperial coinage, the impulse for which came from financiers of Lombardy. As a result of the absence of accounting sources, such studies aim more to describe financial mechanisms, and focus on prosopography and relationships within the rulers’ courts. These works generally neglect the finances of King John the Blind, to which Jarmila Hásková dedicated her brief study (Hásková, 1981).

Keywords: Urban Elite; Czech Land; Banking House; Financial History; Royal Chamber (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:psitcp:978-1-137-46023-3_5

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9781137460233

DOI: 10.1057/9781137460233_5

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Palgrave Studies in the History of Finance from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().