of mercy provided a potent image for the French monarchy at the end of the Middle Ages.

To emphasize their distinction from other men, kings and emperors wore special vestments: the Eagle Dalmatic (c. 1300) of the Holy Roman Empire, or the chasuble sewn with fleursde-lis of the kings of France. On less solemn and sacred occasions they needed to impress both their own subjects and other rulers (or their envoys) with their power. The richer their attire, the more lavish their display of treasures, the more powerful they were thought to be. This tendency towards conspicuous display was not, however, confined to kings. One of the major problems of later medieval monarchs--the control of their higher nobilities--was exemplified by the extent to which the houses of Burgundy or Anjou in France, Lancaster or York in England, Saxony or the Rhine Palatinate in Germany presented an image of quasi-regal power. Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy ( 1419-67), for example, was accustomed to display his gold and silver plate to the representatives of foreign powers in order to impress them with his ability to pay the costs of war and to secure alliances. Henry VII of England showed his jewels and illuminated manuscripts to visiting ambassadors with similar intent.

The elaboration of ceremonial was accompanied by important developments in the organization of princely courts and households. The itinerant courts of earlier medieval kings such as Henry II of England, which had dragged themselves over appalling roads in all weathers, full of a motley and somewhat disordered throng of people, gave way to a more formal institution which reached its later medieval peak of development with the court of Valois Burgundy ( 1384-1477). As an extension or an elaboration of the prince's domestic household the court became a larger, more expensive, and extravagant power-centre. There was an increasing tendency for princely courts to gravitate towards towns. Their financial resources, skilled craftsmen, and entrepreneurs (goldsmiths, tailors, armourers, tapestry-makers, painters, illuminators, and suppliers of luxury goods) made towns such as Paris, Brussels, Lille, Tours, Aix-en-Provence, Innsbruck, Prague, and Vienna the

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