The embodiment of spatial politics

Abstract

The practice of lordship in which René de Challant engaged was determined in large part by the spatial configuration of his lands and activities. In that sense, his case was singular, which offers a reminder that consideration of specific context is important for any discussion of Renaissance political culture. Indeed, the importance of material, spatial context seems to have permeated the very language used by René and his correspondents. Words and expressions denoted an understanding of authority as embodied, personal, and linked to concrete acts of lordship. This view of political culture was perhaps a late medieval one related to the notion of natural law inhering in things, different from a soon-to-emerge early modern one that abstracted individual rights from their spatial contexts.