Speaker: Jean Boutier, Chair of Comparative History of the European Aristocracy from the 16th to the 18th Century, EHESS

In the 1550s a new kind of educational institution designed specifically for the nobility emerged in several European countries, mainly noble academies or academies for the nobility. Although universities and colleges have been the object of numerous studies and overviews at the European scale (particularly the University model), noble academies have elicited only monographs of a very local kind or at best a few preliminary enquiries on a national scale. Yet, this educational model, with some variations that would require further precision, imposed itself in the principal Western European countries and took root both in Northern and Central Europe. Its establishment, though less massive than the colleges, was nonetheless very dense (several dozen are known and inventoried). This paper, based on a methodical inventory and a solid cartographical geography of the circulations they allowed, will show how the model of the “cortegiano/courtier,” forged in Italy, was constructed thanks partly to the educational activities of these noble academies. Organized around the equestrian arts and fencing, this educational model with a social and professional purpose was one of the principal actors in the modernization of the nobilities (from initiation in modern languages, military mathematics, and “political sciences” to body discipline through dance and music). Noble academies were thus one of the sites of production of a new, increasingly and resolutely transnational aristocratic culture, which they helped diffuse, especially by accepting foreign nobles. In this framework, Boutier will analyze the presence of nobles from Central and Eastern Europe in these academies from the second half of the 16th century.