Courts, princely

But sake, courtly even in its disguises, might yet make princes of us all. 

Roper, Hugh Trevor-. Princes and artists. Patronage and ideology of four Habsburg courts. London , 1976. 

There has been much discussion about the harshness of the court s punishment. The theory is that, in a comedy, such harsh judgment takes the edge off the humor. Jonson has been called a moralist because of the fate he assigned Mosca and Volpone. Some critics feel that these sentences are in keeping with the stupidity of the judges, though they are out of proportion to the offenses. Others feel that the conclusion represents the symbolic flagellation and death of a god or prince of fools, who must at all costs be kept under control. 

This book also draws on a wealth of scholarship on princely courts as sites for the production of natural knowledge in general, and alchemy in particular. The nobility was often deeply interested in collecting, studying, and manipulating nature in early modern Europe. Princes added spaces in their palaces for collections, libraries, and laboratories and devoted their resources to the work of all kinds of people with expertise about nature,... 

As historians of science have begun to follow natural knowledge beyond universities and academies and into princely courts, artisanal workshops, households, museums, marketplaces, and ships bound for the Americas, they have brought the history of science into much closer dialogue with the broader history of Europe. This book aims to contribute to this process by engaging issues of central concern to social and cultural historians of early modern Europe the organization of work, social mobility, court culture, and crime. Too easily relegated to the twin stereotypes of adept or... 

In some ways, these are not new questions. Historians have long noted the prominence of alchemy at princely courts and have offered a variety of... 

The complicated network of people involved in this deal points to a world of enterprising alchemists operating outside (though certainly with an eye toward) the princely courts. Kramer first heard about this process from someone named Marcufi Zellmeyer, who had learned of it from his brother-in-law, Hanfi Dreyecker, in Augsburg. At Zellmeyer s behest, Kra-... 

The financial information in alchemical contracts went beyond salaries and bonuses, however it also reveals the extent to which courtly alchemy was embedded in the same entrepreneurial culture of investment as princely mining enterprises in the sixteenth century. The contracts specified the financial stakes involved, clarifying the relationship between risk and profit in alchemical projects. The contract that Michael Heinrich Wagenmann vom Hoff signed with Duke Friedrich of Wiirttemberg on 23 December 1598, for example, was a remarkably compact document of financial responsibility ... 

As supply lists like this suggest, alchemy could be a truly large-scale and capital-intensive enterprise. On their own, few alchemists could afford or had access to these materials and the ovens, cupels, and other equipment necessary to work them in exchange for a share of the resulting profits, however, wealthy patrons would finance this alchemical work. Thus, by providing the supplies alchemists needed to pursue their art at court, contracts worked very much to alchemists advantage as well as princes. ... 

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