The leges palatinae, which is discussed in the conference proceedings, is a first-rate illuminated manuscript. Its roots and traditions are still unknown, so that the allocation of the texts and miniatures as well as the richly adorned initials has seemed difficult if not impossible so far. This publication is the first to take steps to come closer to the meaning of the manuscript. To proceed from the assumption that it could be a law book, we now pose the question of why the king would have the book designed in the manner of court rules. The sumptuous manuscript shows similarities to future ceremony books – among others – which for their part were not only to regulate life on court itself but also held concrete instructions. The characteristic style of the texts and illustrations clearly indicates that it was not only about the ‘what’ but more strongly about the ‘how’. The agency of the nobles on the rich royal court is therefore reminiscent of a sociogram of how to treat each other at court, what you were allowed to do and what you were not – but, above all, actions were accurately characterised.
In this way, we not only gain a good impression of the organisation of the royal court and the manner of how the king knew to bind the nobles. What is more, the interpretation of text and image unfold the ideal of society at court in the 14th century and the following period, as the aftermaths of the leges palatinae are also a subject of discussion.
Whether these ties, whose ends have been those actions and regulations we know from reports about the court of King Louis XIV of France, have been passed-on legal norms or take-overs from Byzantine ceremony, is to be considered as well as their visualisation – in the historical context of earlier similar manuscripts, of course. The fact that a ruler, some years prior to his fall from power and his death, carries a manuscript on the run, which he gave the (French) king when requesting help against the Aragonese cousin, seems to be historically unique. It emphasises once more the importance of the Catalan manuscript that was to become the basis of Burgundian ceremony and whose provenance has recently been proved by Ulrike Bauer-Eberhardt.