No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 December 2009
1 Guillaume d'Ockham. Breviloquium de potestate papae, ed. Baudry, L. (Paris, 1937).Google Scholar
2 Jacobus de Cessolis. Solatium Ludi Scaccorum, ed. Vetter, F. (2 vols., Frauenfeld, 1892)Google Scholar. This was extremely popular, especially in France, where it was widely circulated thanks to the two translations of Jean Ferron and Jean de Vignay.
3 Philippe de Mézières, Chancellor of Cyprus. Le Songe du Vieil Pèlerin, ed. Coopland, G. W. (2 vols., Cambridge, 1969).Google Scholar
4 See especially Berges, W., Die Fürstenspiegel des hohen und späten Mittelalters (Stuttgart, 1938)Google Scholar, in many respects a very illuminating book. The author, however, does not deal in detail with problems of definition, and his own definition may only be inferred from the list of forty-six works which he gives at the end of his book (pp. 291–356). For England, see Kleineke, W., Englische Fürstenspiegel vom Policraticus bis zum Basilikon Doron Königs Jacobs I (Halle, 1937)Google Scholar; and for France, Röder, J., Das Fürstenbild in den mittelalterlichen Fürstenspiegeln auf französischen Boden (Emsdetten, 1933)Google Scholar. See also Ullmann, W., Law and Politics in the Middle Ages (London, 1975), pp. 227–306.Google Scholar
5 Berges, , op. cit., pp. 322–8Google Scholar. For the manuscripts, see Bruni, G., ‘“De Regimine Principum” di Egidio Romano. Studio Bibliografico’, Aevum, vi (1932), pp. 339–72Google Scholar. The Latin text is usually cited from the Roman edition of 1612. There are modern, but unsatisfactory, editions of the French (see infra, p. xivGoogle Scholar) and of the Italian translations. Even Berges's list of translations is not fully reliable; he omits the French translation begun in 1420 by brother Gilles Deschamps (B.L., Egerton MS. 811), and he considers Hoccleve's Regement of Princes to be a translation of Egidius Colonna, which it is not.
6 To quote only some of the most important Miroirs: the De Morali Principis Instructione, which is one of the two tracts by Vincent of Beauvais (Berges, no. 15); the anonymous Liber de Informatione Principum with the very popular French translation of Jean Golein (Berges, no. 28); the Compendium Morale Rei Publicae of Raoul de Presles, one of the most important translators and thinkers drawn by Charles V to his court (Berges, no. 40); and the Speculum Morale Regium of Robert Gervais (Berges, no. 44). To this list should be added a very interesting work, unknown to Berges, entitled L'Avis au Roy (see Bell, Dora M., L'Idéal éthique de la Royauté en France au Moyen Age (Geneva—Paris, 1962), pp. 61–74)Google Scholar. Miss Bell refers only to Pierpont Morgan Library MS. 456; if she appears to know of the existence of B.L., Cotton MS. Cleopatra B. x, a very good manuscript, she ignores Bibliothèque Municipale, Rouen, MS. 939 (I. 36). The full title should read thus: Traité pour donner aucun advis aux Roys et aux Princes en leur gouvernement.
7 For instance, L'Estat et le gouvernement que les Princes et seigneurs se doivent gouverner (Rouen, MS. 1233 (Y. 26)); see infra, p. 177.Google Scholar
8 Born, L. K., ‘The Perfect Prince: A Study in Thirteenth- and Fourteenth-Century Ideals’, Speculum, iii (1928), pp. 470–504.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
9 Steiner, A., ‘Guillaume Perrault and Vincent of Beauvais’, Speculum, viii (1933), PP. 51–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
10 For a more realistic view of what political literature really is, see B. Guenée, L'Occident aux XIVe et XVe siècles. Les États (Paris, 1971), especially pp. 137–42; Lewis, P. S., ‘War Propaganda and Historiography in Fifteenth Century France and England’, T.R. Hist. S., Fifth Series, xv (1965), pp. 1–21Google Scholar; and ‘Jean Juvénal des Ursins and the Common Literary Attitude towards Tyranny in Fifteenth Century France’, Medium Aevum, xxxiv (1965), pp. 103–21.Google Scholar
11 De Specula Regis Edwardi III, ed. Moisant, A. (Paris, 1891).Google Scholar
12 Dits de Watriquet de Couvin, ed. Scheler, A. (Brussels, 1868), p. 200 seq.Google Scholar
13 This often constitutes a real difficulty, since many of these texts, especially those which have not found their way into the studies of Serges and Bell, are anonymous and difficult to date precisely; hence the taste for a structural view of this literature (the problem is the same for the so-called ‘literature of estates’) which saves scholars much trouble. The Speculum Regis Edwardi III is one of those awkward texts: its traditional attribution to Simon Islip was long discussed (see Tait, J., ‘On the date and authorship of the “Speculum Regis Edwardi”’, E.H.R., xvi (1901), pp. 110–15)CrossRefGoogle Scholar before L. Boyle showed that its author was probably William of Pagula (Boyle, , ‘William of Pagula and the Speculum Regis’, Medieval Studies, xxxii (1970), p. 329 seq.).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
14 For this outline, see , R. W. and Carlyle, A. J., History of Medieval Political Theory in the West (5 vols., Edinburgh-London, 1903–1928).Google Scholar
15 Ioannis Saresberiensis episcopi Carnotensis Policratici … Libri VIII, ed. Webb, C. C. J. (2 vols., Oxford, 1909).Google Scholar
16 Petri Blesensis opera omnia, ed. Giles, J. A., iii (Oxford, 1846), p. 289 seq.Google Scholar
17 B.N., MS. fr. 24287 contains the French translation of the Policraticus made by the friar Denis Foulchat for Charles V (also in Paris, Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal, MS. 2692, and Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, MSS. 1144 and 1145; see Delisle, L., Recherches sur la Bibliothèque de Charles V (Paris, 1907), p. 85)Google Scholar. On the influence of John of Salisbury in the later Middle Ages, see Ullmann, W., ‘The Influence of John of Salisbury on Medieval Italian Jurists’, E.H.R., lix (1944), pp. 384–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar. There exist in France and England many late manuscripts of the Policraticus not listed by Webb, which fact proves that the work was still read and copied; see, for example, Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal, MS. 701 (copied for the Austin friars of Paris?) and Bibliothèque Municipale, Auch, MS. 9, a fifteenth-century manuscript with notes relating to Bassoues, where the archbishops of Auch had a summer palace; this manuscript was later the property of the Bernardines of Gimont.
18 De Regimine Principum, a lost work known only through quotations made by Vincent of Beauvais, was written c. 1200 for Philip-Augustus (Berges, no. 5).
19 Karolinus, written in 1200 for the thirteen-year-old prince Louis (later Louis IX) in B.N., MS. lat. 6191 (Berges, no. 6), recently edited by Colker, M. L., “The “Carolinus” of Egidius Parisiensis’, Traditio, xxix (1973), pp. 199–325.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
20 Philippis in Œuvres de Rigord et de Guillaume le Breton, ed. Delaborde, H. F. (Paris, 1885)Google Scholar. As Berges himself admits, this is in fact an historical compilation. A prose translation was included in the Chroniques de Saint-Denis (Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France, vol. xvii).Google Scholar
21 Le Traité Eruditio Regum et Principum de Guibert de Tournai, O.F.M., ed. de Poorter, A. (Louvain, 1914) (Berges, no. 13).Google Scholar
22 Vincent of Beauvais. De Eruditione Filiorum Nobilium, ed. Steiner, A. (Cambridge, Mass., 1938)Google Scholar. There is a French translation of this work made for Charles V by Jean Daudin (Berges, no. 14).
23 Berges, no. 15.
24 This work has long been attributed to Aquinas, and has been edited in the Sancti Thomae Aquinatis Doctoris Angelici O.P. Opera Omnia, vol. xvi (Parma, 1865), pp. 390–476Google Scholar. One may be certain, however, that it is not by Aquinas; Steiner stands for Perault's authorship, while Berges favours Vincent of Beauvais (Berges, no. 16). The French translation of Jean de Vignay, made for Philip VI, was very popular.
25 This is a lost work, and its existence has never successfully been proved (Berges, no. 17).
26 Berges, no. 28. There are many manuscripts of the second version of the Latin text, but the translation made by the Carmelite, Jean Golein, for Charles V proved very popular. A second translation was made for Charles VIII.
27 See O'Connell, D., The Teachings of Saint Louis (Chapel Hill, 1972)Google Scholar, and Les Propos de Saint Louis (Paris, 1974)Google Scholar with an important preface by Jacques Le Goff.
28 In fact, the De Regno itself did not prove popular; but it gained popularity as part of a composite literary unit entitled De Regimine Principum, which com prised, besides the De Regno, the De Regimine Principum of Tolomeo of Lucca, also a Dominican and a friend and pupil of Aquinas. See O'Rahilly, A., ‘Notes on St Thomas. IV. “De Regimine Principum”’, Irish Ecclesiastical Record, Fifth Series, xxxi (1928), pp. 396–410Google Scholar, and ‘V. Tolomeo of Lucca, the Continuator of the “De Regimine Principum”’, ibid., pp. 606–14. See also Phelan, G. B. and Eschmann, I. T., St. Thomas Aquinas. On Kingship to the King of Cyprus (Toronto, 1949).Google Scholar
29 See the illuminating essay by Duby, Georges, ‘La Vulgarisation des modèles culturels dans la société féodale’, Niveaux de culture et groupes sociaux: Actes du Collogue … à I'Ecole Normale Supérieure (Paris-The Hague, 1967), pp. 33–41Google Scholar; reprinted in Duby, Hommes et structures du Moyen Age (Paris-The Hague, 1973), pp. 299–308.Google Scholar
30 On the importance of Cicero in the twelfth century, and especially to men such as John of Salisbury and Peter of Blois, see Left, G., Paris and Oxford Universities in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries (New York, 1968), p. 123.Google Scholar
31 Grabmann, M., ‘Eine für Examinazionwecke abgefasste Questionensammlung der Pariser Artistenfacultät aus der ersten Häfte des 13 Jahrhunderts’, Revue Néoscolastique, xxxvi (1934), pp. 211–29Google Scholar, and especially pp. 221–2.
32 Webb, , op. cit., i, pp. 512–13Google Scholar; ii, pp. 345–6. See Liebeschütz, H., ‘John of Salisbury and the Pseudo-Plutarch’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, vi (1943), pp. 33–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
33 Phelan, and Eschmann, , op. cit., pp. 23–9.Google Scholar
34 On the significance of this change, see de Lagarde, G., La naissance de l'esprit laique au Moyen Age, vol. iii (Paris, 1942).Google Scholar
35 George Ashby's Poems, ed. M. Bateson (E.E.T.S., Extra Series, vol. 76, 1899), pp. 12–41Google Scholar. Of the two translations, one is that of Egidius Colonna usually attributed to John of Trevisa (see Dialogus inter Militem et Clericum, Richard Fitzralph's Sermon ‘Defensio Curatorum’, [and] Methodius, þe Bygynnyng of þe World and þe Ende of Worldes by John of Trevisa, ed. A. J. Perry (E.E.T.S., Original Series, vol. 167, 1925Google Scholar), pp. xcviii–c), and the other is the III Consideracions, printed below.
38 Philip IV already possessed Egidius Colonna translated by Henri de Gauchy (Li livres du gouvernement des rois. A XIIIth century French version of Egidio Colonna's treatise De Regimine Principum, ed. Molenaer, S. P. (New York, 1899)Google Scholar). Philip VI seems to have ordered the translation of the De Eruditione Principum from Jean de Vignay (Berges, p. 309). L'estat et le gouvernement que les princes et seigneurs se doivent gouverner was dedicated to the future King John II (see infra, p. 177Google Scholar). Jean Golein translated the Liber de Informatione Principum for Charles V, and Raoul de Presles wrote his Compendium Morale Rei Publicae for the same king. Charles VI commissioned Jean Daudin to translate Vincent of Beauvais' De Eruditione filiorum regalium, and Robert Gervais dedicated his Speculum morale Regium to the same king. Christine de Pisan wrote her Livre du corps de policie for the Dauphin, Louis, who died in 1415 (Bell, D. M., op. cit., p. 106Google Scholar; Le Livre du corps de policie, ed. Lucas, R. H. (Geneva, 1967)Google Scholar). Charles VIII ordered a new translation of the Liber de Informatione Principum (Berges, , p. 338Google Scholar). Jean de Marre, bishop of Condom, wrote both French and Latin versions, apparently simultaneously, of his Instruction au roi Louis XII (B.N., MSS. frs. 1219 and 1220). Symphorien Champion compiled his Regime et Doctrinal d'un jeune Prince for Louise of Savoy, mother of Francis I. In addition, other works of this nature were written in France: the so-called Avis au Roy (see supra, p. xGoogle Scholar) and Ce que un Prince doit faire et l'ordre qu'il fault qu'il mette en son pays (B.N., MS. fr. 1246). The count of Laval also ordered a new translation of Egidius Colonna in 1444 (Berges, , p. 322Google Scholar).
37 There was already a pronounced taste for this literature in the courts of the Low Countries in the middle of the fourteenth century. Jean d'Anneux had written his De Regimine Principum for Count William of Hainault; Philip of Leyden his De Cura Rei Publice for Count William V of Holland (see Feenstra, R., Philip of Leyden and his treatise De cura rei publice and Sorte principantis (Glasgow, 1970)Google Scholar); and Levold von Northof, canon of Liege, his Chronica for Count Englebert III of Marke (Berges, nos. 31, 38 and 39). Ghillebert de Lannoy wrote his Instruction d'un jeune Prince pour se bien gouverner enyers Dieu et le Monde for Duke Philip the Good, and Georges Chastellain his Instructions au Due Charles for Charles the Bold.
38 Maistre Nicole Oresme. Le Livre de Politiques d'Aristote, ed. Menut, A. D. (Philadelphia, 1970)Google Scholar, with an important introduction; Maistre Nicole Oresme. Le Livre de Ethiques d'Aristote, ed. Menut, A. D. (New York, 1940)Google Scholar; Maistre Nicole Oresme. Le Livre de Yconomique d'Aristote, ed. Menut, A. D. (Philadelphia, 1957)Google Scholar. About 1412, Laurent de Premierfait was to provide a new version of the Yconomiques for Jean de Berry; as early as 1305, Pierre de Paris had already produced a translation of the Politiques. For the English response to Aristotle, see Jones, R. H., The Royal Policy of Richard II: Absolutism in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford, 1968), pp. 159–60.Google Scholar
39 Li Livre dou Tresor of Brunette Latini, ed. Carmody, F. J. (Los Angeles, 1948).Google Scholar
40 Bloch, M., Les Rois thaumaturges (Paris, 1924)Google Scholar. Among recent studies, see especially Guenée, B. and Lehoux, F., Les Entrées Royales Françaises de 1328 à 1515 (Paris, 1968).Google Scholar
41 For a better appreciation of these works, special attention must be paid to the sociological, political and cultural backgrounds of each text. See, for instance, the results which may be achieved by a close scrutiny of the political conditions in which some of Christine de Pisan's works were written, in Gauvard, C., ‘Christine de Pisan, avait-elle une pensée politique?’, Revue Historique, (1973), pp. 417–30Google Scholar. For an interesting examination of the effect of training and career upon a poet's work, see Mitchell, J., Thomas Hoccleve: A Study in early Fifteenth Century English Poetic (Chicago, 1968)Google Scholar, and Reeves, A. C., ‘Thomas Hoccleve, Bureaucrat’, Medievalia et Humanistica, new series v (1974), pp. 201–4.Google Scholar
42 Manzalaoui, M. A., ‘The Secreta Secretorum in English Thought and Literature from the Fourteenth to the Seventeenth Century, with a Preliminary Survey of the Origins of the Secreta', unpublished Oxford D.Phil, thesis, 1954.Google Scholar
43 See infra, p. 22 seq.Google Scholar
44 See infra, p. 40 seq.Google Scholar
45 See infra, p. 5 seq.Google Scholar
46 Morrall, J. B., Gerson and the Great Schism (Manchester, 1960).Google Scholar
47 Le conseil de Pierre de Fontaines, ou traité de l'ancienne jurisprudence française, ed. Marnier, A. J. (Paris, 1846).Google Scholar
48 Clermont, Lord, The Works of Sir John Fortescue, Chief Justice of England and Lord Chancellor to King Henry the Sixth (London, 1869), pp. 63–184.Google Scholar
49 Chrimes, S. B., English Constitutional Ideas in the Fifteenth Century (Cambridge, 1936).Google Scholar
50 Gazelles, R., ‘Une exigence de l'opinion depuis Saint Louis: la réformation du royaume’, Annuaire-Bulletin de la Société de l'Histoire de France (1962–1963), pp. 91–9.Google Scholar
51 Autrand, F., ‘Culture et mentalité: les librairies des gens du Parlement au temps de Charles VI’, Annales E.S.C., xxviii (1973), pp. 1219–44.Google Scholar
52 See Scattergood, V. J., ‘Two Medieval Book Lists’, The Library, Fifth Series, xxiii (1968), pp. 236–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for the libraries of Simon Burley and William of Walcote.
53 Bossuat, A., ‘La littérature de propagande au XVe siècle: le mémoire de Jean de Rinel, secrétaire du roi d'Angleterre, centre le duc de Bourgogne, 1435’, Cahiers d'Histoire, i (1956), pp. 131–46Google Scholar. The best account of Bernard André of Toulouse is still that by Gairdner, J., Dictionary of National Biography, i, pp. 398–9Google Scholar, to be supplemented by B.R.U.O., i (Oxford, 1957), P. 33.Google Scholar
54 The Tree of Battles of Honoré Bonet. An English Version with Introduction with an hitherto unpublished historical Interpolation, ed. Coopland, G. W. (Liverpool, 1949)Google Scholar; and The Book of Fayttes of Armes and of Chyualrye, translated by William Caxton from the French original by Christine de Pisan, ed. A. T. P. Byles E.E.T.S., Original Series, vol. 189, 1932).Google Scholar
55 See Campbell, P. G. C., ‘Christine de Pisan en Angleterre’, Revue de Littérature Comparée, v (1925), pp. 659–70.Google Scholar
56 See, for instance, Fifteenth Century Translations of Alain Chartier's Le Traité de l'Espérance and Le Quadrilogue Invectif, ed. M. S. Blayney (E.E.T.S., Original Series, vol. 270, 1974).Google Scholar
57 On Egidius Colonna in English libraries, see Jones, R. H., op. cit., pp. 161–2.Google Scholar
58 On the social ideas of Sir John Fortescue, see Genet, J.-P., ‘Les Idées Sociales de Sir John Fortescue’, in Economies et Sociétés au Moyen Age. Mélanges offerts à Edouard Perroy (Paris, 1973), pp. 446–61.Google Scholar
59 Ferguson, A. B., The Articulate Citizen and tine English Renaissance (Durham, N.C., 1965).Google Scholar
60 The Livre du Trésor was a medieval best-seller. But it was, after all, the work of an Italian; and John Waleys, Bartholomeus Anglicus, and Thomas Hibernicus all had an international success.
61 Richard the Redeless, ed. Skeat, W. W. (London, 1886).Google Scholar
62 Mum and the Sothsegger, ed. M. Day and R. Steele (E.E.T.S., Original Series, vol. 199, 1936).Google Scholar
63 Jack Upland, Friar Daw's Reply and Upland's Rejoinder, ed. Heyworth, P. L. (Oxford, 1968)Google Scholar. The primary aim of these tracts is religious.
64 The Libelle of Englyshe Polycye, ed. Warner, G. (Oxford, 1926).Google Scholar
65 See infra, p. 174 seq., and p. 22 seq.Google Scholar
66 Most of Ockham's tracts are to be found in Gullielmi de Occam opera politico, ed. Sykes, J. G. et al. (3 vols., Manchester, 1940–1963)Google Scholar. See Scholz, R., Whilhelm von Ockham als politischer Denker (Stuttgart, 1944).Google Scholar
67 See Daly, L. J., The Political Theory of John Wyclif (Chicago, 1962).Google Scholar
68 Aston, M., ‘Lollardy and Sedition, 1381–1431’, Past and Present, xvii (1960), pp. 1–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
69 See infra, pp. 153–68.Google Scholar
70 Several groups of scholars are at present at work. At the Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique a group supervised by Gilbert Ouy has produced important works on Gerson, Jean de Montreuil and the French humanists of the fifteenth century. At the University of Paris I, a group is being supervised by Professor Guenée; two theses are in progress: C. Gauvard, ‘Littérature et idées politiques sous le règne de Charles VI’, and C. Beaune, ‘Le sentiment national en France au XVe siècle’.