In this post, Marc Jaffré introduces his new article — ‘Dwarfism, Institutionalisation and Marginalisation at the Court in Early Bourbon France, 1589–1715’ — published in Transactions of the Royal Historical Society.
Marc’s article is a study of people with dwarfism employed as court dwarfs during the reigns of Henri IV, Louis XIII, and Louis XIV of France. Through an analysis of the varying positions held by people with dwarfism at court, and the roles they performed there, the article challenges existing historiographies that emphasise contemporary responses of ‘wonder’ and curiosity regarding physical difference.
Marc focuses instead on the activities and experiences of people with dwarfism. This shows how the archival invisibility of people with dwarfism is partly due to their reticence to be identified with the office of court dwarf.
More broadly, its demonstrates the rich potential of an approach to early modern court studies that de-centres the monarch, ministers and absolutism to better understand the court – its institutions and its culture – in its own right.
Marc’s new article is now available, Open Access, in Transactions via CUP’s FirstView.
In the introduction and afterword of her book on the Gonzales sisters, The Marvelous Hairy Girls, Merry Wiesner-Hanks emphasised that ‘not one shred of evidence survives from any female member of that [the Gonzales] family’.[1]
When I began my research into dwarfism at the French court during the reigns of Henri IV, Louis XIII and Louis XIV, I was prepared to encounter a similar problem. Indeed, I feared there would not be enough material for a full article or chapter on people with dwarfism at the French court.
Because of this, I initially imagined this research as forming the basis for part of a larger chapter on festival culture and marginalisation at Louis XIII’s court. This chapter would have also included sections on a Tupinambá delegation to the court in 1613–14 and on foreigners.[2]
Engraving of Michael Magnanus. Giovanni Battista Coriolano,‘Nanus Illustris. & Excellentiss. D. Ducis Caroli de Creqy’. In Aldrovandi, Monstrorum Historia, I, 40. BnF, FB-1057.
In some ways these early apprehensions were justified.
There were no ego documents, no surviving correspondence, no legal disputes, few mentions within memoirs, and the visual evidence was much less rich than for people with dwarfism at the Spanish court. These source-based difficulties have led most historians interested in dwarfism in the early modern period to adopt cultural history and art history approaches. They have interpreted the Renaissance fascination with dwarfism through the lens of ‘wonder’, ‘marvels’, and ‘monsters’, and the presence of people with dwarfism at the sovereign’s side as a tool for emphasising princely majesty via contrast.
A core problem with these studies is that they end up being much more focused on the symbolic meaning attached to dwarfism, rather than centring the actual lives and experiences of people with dwarfism.
Counterintuitively, I found an institutional approach to dwarfism at the court to be most revealing – both for shedding light on the mechanisms of marginalisation at the court, and for centring the lives, experiences and careers of people with dwarfism at the court.
These sources allowed me to trace the careers of people with dwarfism across several reigns, track evolutions in the nature of their offices, and better identify who they were by separating out their real names from their nicknames.
This in turn led me to other sources which never explicitly mention their dwarfism but nonetheless document their activities and careers.
This is in part because of the nature of the surviving evidence: lists of names in household rolls and payment receipts in surviving account books. These sources allowed me to trace the careers of people with dwarfism across several reigns, track evolutions in the nature of their offices, and better identify who they were by separating out their real names from their nicknames. This better identification in turn led me to other sources which never explicitly mention individuals dwarfism but nonetheless document their activities and careers: notarial contracts, baptism records, and even archival documents from the Ursulines convent of the Faubourg Saint-Jacques.
This approach revealed that while there had been people with dwarfism retained at the French court in previous reigns, Henri IV was the first king to create specific court offices in the royal household for them.
Moreover, it allowed for a better understanding of the duties associated with the offices of court dwarf. These duties were separate from fooling and went beyond the realm of entertainment. Rather, they overlapped with the roles of ushers (huissiers) and coat-bearers (portemanteaux) for men, and maids of the chamber (femmes de chambre) for women.
This research additionally revealed the relatively large number of people with dwarfism employed at the court – not just in the king’s household, stables, and chamber, but also in the households of queens, royal family members, and other great lords.
Woman with dwarfism, possibly Marguerite Noël. Nicolas Lagneau, Femme naine de profil à droite (17th century). BnF, RESERVE NA-21 (B,7)-BOITE FOL.
They included Marguerite Noël, nicknamed Marine, who married and later separated from the captain of Louis XIII’s flock for kite hunting, and the possible subject of the portrait shown above.
They also include: Edme Sornet, nicknamed Mistoudin, who began his career as a child in the household of Roger du Plessis Liancourt and was an early playmate of the future Louis XIII; Elisabeth Motta, nicknamed Done Isabelle, who hailed from Reinsberg, Germany, and who ended her career in the elite Faubourg Saint-Jacques convent of the Ursulines; and Jacques Lutel, who appears in Henri Testelin’s portrait of Louis XIV as protector of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture (below), which still hangs prominently today in the Palace of Versailles.
Jacques Lutel with Louis XIV.HenriTestelin,Louis XIV Protecteur de l’Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture (c. 1667). Versailles, MV6155. © Château de Versailles, Dist. GrandPalaisRmn/Christophe Fouin.
Importantly, the research also demonstrates that many people with dwarfism preferred to elide their offices of court dwarf when identifying themselves in notarial contracts, instead using phrases like ‘officer of the king’s Chamber’ or electing to emphasise other court offices they possessed that were less clearly related to their height.
This preference not only makes people with dwarfism less visible in the historical record, but also points to the complicated feelings they had toward the offices that justified their presence at court. These mixed feelings in turn played a role in the disappearance of the offices of court dwarf under Louis XIV. Indeed, the development of court institutions was often fuelled by court officers who wished to increase the privileges, responsibilities, and honour associated with their offices.
I aim to demonstrate that a meticulous examination of archival sources can reveal far more about the lives and activities of people with dwarfism – and marginalised people in general – than the archive’s apparent silence initially suggests.
People with dwarfism struggled to provide the necessary engine to further the development of their office – not just because they lacked power, but because the very office that needed to be at the centre of their activities was a constant reminder of their marginal status at court. In this way, institutionalising processes combined with the mechanisms of marginalisation to make the long-term survival of the offices of court dwarf less likely.
I aim to demonstrate through my new Transactions article that a meticulous examination of archival sources can reveal far more about the lives and activities of people with dwarfism – and marginalised people in general – than the archive’s apparent silence initially suggests.
At the same time, I hope this study can serve as another example, alongside my book on Louis XIII’s court, of the rich potential in an approach to court studies that de-centres the monarch, his ministers and absolutism to better understand the court – its institutions and its culture – in its own right.[3]
References
[1] Merry Wiesner-Hanks, The Marvelous Hairy Girls: The Gonzales Sisters and their Worlds (New Haven, 2009), p. 225.
[2] My research on this Tupinambá delegation will be published in a chapter scheduled for publication in 2027: Marc W. S. Jaffré, ‘Between Exoticism and Erasure: Tupinambá People and the Other at Louis XIII’s Court’, in Marginalized Voices and Figures in French Festival Culture, 1500–1800, ed. Marc W. S. Jaffré, Bram van Leuveren, and Alexander Robinson (Turnhout, forthcoming in 2027).
[3] Marc W. S. Jaffré, The Courtiers and the Court of Louis XIII, 1610–1643 (Oxford, 2025).
About the author
Marc W. S. Jaffré is a historian of early modern France and Tokugawa Japan specialised in the histories of princely courts, peace building and hospitality. He is the author of the monograph, The Courtiers and the Court of Louis XIII, 1610–1643 (Oxford, 2025).
Marc is an honorary fellow of Durham University, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and the Deputy Chair of the European Branch of the Society for Court Studies. He has been a lecturer at the universities of St Andrews, Oxford (Balliol College), and Durham and a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Groningen (Netherlands).
Starting in September Marc will lead a comparative project on hospitality in early modern France and Tokugawa Japan, as a global Marie Skłodowska Curie (MSCA) Fellow based at Nichibunken (Japan) and ISIG (Italy).
Submitting an article to Transactions of the Royal Historical Society
Transactions is the flagship academic journal of the Royal Historical Society, published by Cambridge University Press. Today’s journal publishes a wide range of research articles and commentaries on historical approaches, practice and debate. In addition to traditional 10-12,000 word research articles, Transactions also welcomes shorter, innovative commentary articles. In 2023, we introduced ‘The Common Room’—a section of the journal dedicated to commentaries and think pieces by academic historians and historical practitioners.
The journal welcomes submissions dealing with any geographical area from the early middle ages to the very recent past. The journal’s co-editors and editorial boards are interested in articles that cover entirely new ground, thematically or methodologically, as well as those engaging critically on established themes in existing literatures.
From 2024, all articles accepted for publication in Transactions are published open access, without a charge for any author or reader. This ensures content published in Transactions can be shared, circulated and read by the widest possible readership. We very much hope this initiative will encourage a growing range of submissions from authors, worldwide, including those who practice history outside higher education, in related sectors or as independent researchers.
HEADER IMAGE: Person with dwarfism dressed as a fool accompanying the fairy Macette in the court ballet Les Fées des forêts de Saint-Germain (1625). Daniel Rabel, Macette La Caprioleuse (1625). BnF, RESERVE QB-3-FOL.
