8
recreational pastime next to tournaments – has been explored.
18
Darin Hayton has even
examined the role astrology played in Maximilian’s court.
19
However,
the foremost authority
on the subject of Maximilian’s court life is most likely Jan-Dirk Müller, who still continues to
contribute valuable scholarship in this area. His 1982 monograph,
Gedechtnus: Literatur und
Hofgesellschaft um Maximilian I., is a comprehensive and excellent examination of Maximilian’s
court and the power of literature within it.
20
Probably the most frequently studied aspect of Maximilian’s reign is his art and literary
patronage, which have been the subject of multiple monographs, chapters, and articles. Larry
Silver, in particular, has studied Maximilian’s visual ideology through
his art patronage, yet he
has not connected this to the powerful visual impact of the tournament and its reflection on
Maximilian as a monarch.
21
Indeed, it is perhaps Maximilian’s impressive literary output and
close ties to famed artists such as Albrecht Dürer for which he is best remembered today, and
the topic has been thoroughly and admirably explored by a wide range of scholars.
22
The most
18
Erwin Koller, ‘Jagdszenen aus Tirol: Maximilian I. auf Pirsch im Schmirn und anderswo’, in
Literatur und Sprachkultur in Tirol, ed.
by Johann Jolzner, Oskar Putzer, and Max Siller (Innsbruck: Inst.
für Germanistik, 1997), pp. 265-72.
19
Darin Hayton,
The Crown and the Cosmos: Astrology and the Politics of Maximilian I (Pittsburgh:
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015).
20
Jan-Dirk Müller,
Gedechtnus: Literatur und Hofgesellschaft um Maximilian I. (Munich: Wilhelm Fink
Verlag, 1982). Other valuable contributions by Müller include ‘The Court of Emperor Maximilian I’, in
Princes and Princely Culture: 1450-1650, ed. by Martin Gosman and others (Leiden: Brill, 2003), vol. 1, pp.
295-311; ‘Funktionswandel ritterlicher Epik am Ausgang des Mittelalter’, in
Gesellschaftliche Sinnangebote
mittelalterlicher Literature, ed. by Gert Kaiser (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1980), pp. 11-35; and the recent
collected volume, co-edited with Hans-Joachim Ziegeler,
Maximilians Ruhmeswerk: Künste und
Wissenschaften im Umkreis Kaiser Maximilians I. (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015).
21
Larry Silver,
Marketing Maximilian: The Visual Ideology of a Holy Roman Emperor; Larry Silver,
‘Shining Armor: Maximilian I as Holy Roman Emperor’, in
Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies, 12
(1985), 8-29.
22
Other useful studies include Paul van Dyke, ‘The Literary Activity of the Emperor Maximilian
I’,
American Historical Review, 11 (1905), 16-28;
Dagmar Eichberger, ‘Official Portraits and Regional
Identities: The Case of Emperor Maximilian I (1459-1519)’, in
The Habsburgs and their Courts in Europe,
1400-1700: Between Cosmopolitan and Regionalism, ed. by Herbert Karner, Ingrid Ciulisová, and Bernardo J.
García García (Palatium e-Publication: www.courtresidences.eu, 2014), pp. 100-114; Joseph Strobl,
Studien über die literarische Tätigkeit Kaiser Maximilian I. (Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1913); Gerhild S. Williams,
9
recent work to examine Maximilian’s literary and artistic patronage and
his attempts to become
the prototypical ‘Renaissance man’ is the volume
Maximilians Ruhmeswerk: Künste und
Wissenschaften im Umkreis Kaiser Maximilians I.
23
Yet the close ties between Maximilian’s self-
fashioning and the critical role of the tournament within it are again overlooked here. Such
works, however, have laid an admirable groundwork upon which this current research has
been able to build.
Finally, far more research has been done on the medieval tournament than can be
adequately described here. It has been analysed based on time period, geographic setting, or
famous figures associated with it. In recent years, names such as Anglo, Barber, Crouch, Keen,
Muhlberger, and Vale have contributed in valuable ways to the field.
24
Geographically oriented
studies of tournaments have skirted around Maximilian and his court
without focusing fully on
it, which is surprising. Mario Damen has written engagingly on the tournament in Brussels and
the Low Countries.
25
The tournaments of Maximilian’s inherited duchy of Burgundy have also
‘The Arthurian Model in Emperor Maximilian's Autobiographic Writings
Weisskunig and
Theuerdank’,
The Sixteenth Century Journal, 11 (1980), 3-22.
23
Maximilians Ruhmeswerk: Künste und Wissenschaften im Umkreis Kaiser Maximilians I., ed. by Jan-
Dirk Müller and Hans-Joachim Ziegler (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015).
24
For useful general background on the history of the tournament, see: Sydney Anglo,
The
Martial Arts of Renaissance Europe (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 2000); Richard Barber,
The Knight
and Chivalry, Revised Edition (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1995); David Crouch,
Tournament (London:
Hambledon and London, 2005); Maurice Keen,
Chivalry (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984).
Additionally,
Richard Barber and Juliet Barker,
Tournaments: Jousts, Chivalry and Pageants in the Middle Ages
(Woodbridge: Boydell, 1989) is an oft-cited but simplistic history of the tournament. An
older and
slightly romanticised but still thorough history is Coltman Clephan,
The Tournament: Its Periods and Phases
(London: Metheun & Co. Ltd, 1919).
25
See, for example, Mario Damen, ‘Tournament Culture in the Low Countries and England’, in
Contact in Exchange in Later Medieval Europe. Essays in Honour of Malcolm Vale, ed. by Hannah Skoda and
others (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2012), pp. 247-66; ‘The Town as a Stage? Urban Space and Tournaments
in Late Medieval Brussells’
Urban History (February 2015), 1-25; and ‘The Town,
the Duke, his
Courtiers, and their Tournament. A Spectacle in Brussels, 4-7 May 1439’, in
Staging the Court of Burgundy:
Proceedings of the Conference ‘The Splendour of Burgundy’, ed. by Wim Blockmans and others (London: Harvey
Miller Publishers, 2013), pp. 85-95.