Chaired by Maciey Serwański, Albrecht Burkardt (Limoges) is speaking on The origins of the Grand Tour. Travel in the treatises of education of the nobility from the 16th to the early 17th century (English). The Grand Tour as a key element of aristocratic education starts to be quite well-known even in its characteristics as a social practice. Still we know little about its origins. Of course, the practice is elder than its name, which does not mean that it has always been considered as an ideal. At the end of the sixteenth century, François de la Noue already observes that every year hundreds of young French noblemen travel to Italy – practice he doesn’t approve at all.
The education of Lutheran German-speaking nobility viewed through the prism of biographic information in funeral sermons (1550-1750) (English) will be discussed by Jean-Luc Le Cam (Brest). The Lutheran Reformation led to significant transformations of funerary practices. They resulted in combining an exegetical sermon with a funeral oration in form of a biography honoring the deceased and helping to instruct the community through the example of his pious life and death. The elites have become soon accustomed to then publish these sermons with their appended biographies as reminders, and some persons or institutions to collect them as devotional literature or biographical archives. Nobility is of course primarily concerned with these social and religious practices.