In this study, Malcolm Vale restores the 13th and 14th century courts to their rightful place in the cultural history of western Europe. By examining both surviving works of art and the evidence of household and other accounts he illuminates the richness and abundance of artistic, literary, and musical life at the courts of this period.

In this engaging work, Malcolm Vale sets out to recapture the splendor of court culture in Western Europe during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Exploring the time between the death of St Louis and the rise of Burgundian power in the Low Countries, he illuminates a period in the history of princes and court life previously overshadowed by that of the courts of the dukes of Burgundy. The result is a fascinating evaluation of the nature and role of the court in European history, and a celebration of a forgotten age.

It is his vivid and illuminating reconstructions of court life in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries that will be of inestimable use both to medievalists and to all those with a serious interest in court culture.