«Les états de France» by Eleanor de Poitiers and Their Spanish «Traces»

The article analyses the data of two manuscripts of a rare late medieval source dedicated to the French court ceremonial concerning court ladies (Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Ms. fr. 14353 and Bibliothèque municipale de Besançon. Collection Chiflet. Ms. 65). The treatise was written in the 1480s by Eleanor de Poitiers, the lady-in-waiting of the Burgundian duchesses. It remains currently the earliest known French text of this type. Researchers neither know the circumstances of its creation, nor its customer, nor the ways of its distribution. The article attempts for the first time in world historiography to study the 17th century manuscripts, which allows to put forward a hypothesis that the treatise could have been ordered for the needs of the new Duchess of Burgundy, the Spanish Infanta and later Queen of Castile Juana the Mad. The article examines the hypothesis that the text inherited by the children of the Duchess and preserved in the library of the Escorial was copied in the 17th century by the Besançon antiquarian J.-J. Chifflet and came to the French court, where it was used in the circle of the French queens of Spanish descent Anne of Austria and Maria Theresa of Austria.