1 Three Ancestors and a Close Family Friend

It may be surprising, and perhaps a little ironic, to discover that the earliest major exemplars of the medieval political mirror literature from the twelfth century do not in certain ways reflect the main family characteristics of more typical works of advice to secular princes. We have in mind, specifically, Bernard of Clairvaux’s De consideratione ad Eugenium Papam, John of Salisbury’s Policraticus, and Gerald of Wales’s De principis instructione. Bernard’s book offers counsel to the Lord of the Church and John’s to courtiers, while Gerald’s is an impassioned assault on the corrupt rule of England of his day. Nevertheless, these writings afford an ancestry that merits our attention, if only to paint a backdrop against which to view later specula, whose resemblances are more pronounced.

De consideratione is seldom counted among the political mirrors of the Middle Ages. When studied at all by historians of political thought, the work is examined for Bernard’s influential interpretation of Mark 22:38, which yields the quintessential statement of the so-called theory of the two swords.¹⁷ While certainly an important contribution to medieval political ideas, such attention overlooks the context in which Bernard develops the two swords. De consideratione is designed primarily to offer advice to Pope Eugenius III (born Bernardo of Pisa), a Cistercian monk closely connected with Bernard, who ascended to the papal throne in 1145. At the time, the Roman Church was in a state of tremendous upheaval, not least on account of tensions about the extent of the legitimate authority of the pope that spilled over into overt political conflict.¹⁸ Moreover, despite the close relationship between Eugenius and Bernard, the latter evinced serious concern that his associate was not up to the position that had been thrust upon him.¹⁹ These circumstances formed the general context in which De consideratione was composed, although its five books appear to have been written over a period of some years.²⁰

Nonetheless, a thematic unity may be observed in the text, namely, the advice that cultivation of personal and spiritual qualities is absolutely necessary for Eugenius to confront and resist the corruption that is everywhere around him: “Dangers are no longer immanent, they are present”.²¹ These characteristics include the cardinal virtues in their right ordering,²² as well as humility, which Bernard regards to be the very foundation for virtue.²³ Challenges to the pope’s rectitude are found not only in the secular sphere, but also among prelates and clerics who grasp for preferment by means of flattery and hypocrisy.²⁴ As for the laity, he singles out “the Roman people … unaccustomed to peace, given to tumult; people rough and intractable even today and unable to be subdued except when they no longer have the means to resist”.²⁵ The reference here is presumably to the republican commune at Rome established by Giordano Pierleoni and later under the guidance of Arnold of Brescia. The particular cause advocated by the Romans was the diminution of papal power in general, and especially over the city.²⁶ As a result, Eugenius only inhabited Rome for a few short periods of time. There were many reasons, then, why De consideratione leaves the strong impression that avarice and ambition have run so rampant that corruption is ubiquitous. Bernard counsels Eugenius to exercise the strength of personal character—along with submission to God, of course—in order to resist the venality that surrounds him in the papal curia as well as the world at large. The kinship between Bernard’s advice and other political specula will soon become apparent.

If De consideratione has been neglected as a mirror, John of Salisbury’s Policraticus (subtitled Of the Frivolities of Courtiers and the Footprints of Philosophers) has long been saddled with the opposite fate, that is, it has been commonly (indeed, almost universally) identified as the first prominent example and earliest paradigm of the speculum principum. The classic early twentieth-century interpreters of princely mirrors such as Born, Kleineke and Berges all placed the beginning of the medieval (as distinct from the ancient or Carolingian) tradition firmly on John’s doorstep.²⁷ With the exception of a recent essay by Julie Barrau, there has been no concerted challenge to the claim that John was the terminus a quo for the many specula of the period from the mid-twelfth to the mid-fifteenth century (and beyond).²⁸ But it may reasonably be asked: a mirror for whom? The subtitle of the Policraticus as well as the fact that its dedicatee was the English chancellor Thomas Becket and not King Henry II both suggest an intended audience and agenda different from the moral and political education of royalty. Between 1156 and 1159, during which time John composed his treatise, and for roughly a decade before, he served as an administrator at the court of the Archbishop of Canterbury and evidently a close confidant of its incumbent, Theobald.²⁹ Becket had likewise been a part of this courtly circle as well, until his appointment to the chancellorship in 1154. In both his correspondence and in the Introduction to the Policraticus itself, John clearly states that he has written for people placed in a position similar to his own. His target, arguably, is the corruption that he observes in his ecclesio-political environment.

Careful examination of the overarching structure of the Policraticus supports this interpretation. The first book is clearly directed toward courtiers (as well as their master) who devote all of their energy to frivolous pursuits, among them feasting, drinking, hunting, carousing with theatre folk, and generally pursuing fleshly pleasures for their own sake. This is not to say that John renounces these activities out of hand; merely that they should not be the goal of officials, but only an outlet for occasional recreation.³⁰ Book 2 criticizes various occult practices popular at medieval courts.³¹ The third book contains an extensive survey of the forms of ambition and flattery typical of courtly life and a concomitant defense of a Ciceronian-inflected concept of friendship as a shield against such conduct.³² Only when we reach the fourth book does John begins to flesh out some measure of a mirror of princes, enunciating a comparison between the king and the tyrant and formulating a commentary on Deuteronomy in order to educate rulers in the way of life and behavior appropriate to kingly government.³³ This section of the Policraticus is ordinarily singled out as the centerpiece of his initiation of medieval princely specula. Thereafter John moves on to his famed conception of the body politic, comprising Books 5 and 6.³⁴ He dispenses with the royal “head” in a scant three chapters of the fifth book and devotes the remainder of his quite lengthy discussion to the duties of the other parts of the organism necessary for the common welfare of the whole, returning to the prince only sparingly. Finally, the seventh and eighth books include a truncated history of ancient philosophy, a critique of Epicureanism, and an extended attack on the immoral conduct of monks, clerics and bishops.³⁵ At the close of Book 8, he returns to the king/tyranny distinction and presents an argument for the legitimacy of tyrannicide under highly constrained conditions. To whom is John addressing the Policraticus? Given a complete survey of the text, he seems far less concerned with kings per se and far more with their advisors and minions. Of course, the character of the ruler is a significant factor, but his proper instruction and guidance appears to be the main concern of the councilors whom John is primarily addressing. Is the Policraticus a speculum? Assuredly. Is it a speculum principum? At best, only indirectly.

The final ancestral family member of the medieval political mirror literature to be examined in this section of the chapter is De principis instructione by Gerald of Wales. Like John, Gerald was a keen observer of the Plantagenet dynasty from a very close proximity. Composed and reworked over a span of time from c. 1190 to c. 1216–17, De principis instructione comprises three books.³⁶ The first of these is, as Gerald’s modern biographer remarks, “a conventional ‘Mirror for Princes’ and is largely derivative”.³⁷ Indeed, if Gerald had written only book I, this conclusion would be warranted. The initial 21 chapters of De principis instructione contain a litany of the moral qualities required of a good prince. Gerald also introduces there the commonplace distinction between king and tyrant as well as a statement about the bad ends to which the latter always comes (probably adapted from the Policraticus). The preface to the work, which was evidently reworked, offers an ex post facto quasi-dedication to the French Prince Louis (eventually Louis VIII) that was clearly inserted quite late, suggesting that De principis instructione was not initially meant to be addressed to any particular ruler.³⁸ Of greatest importance, however, is that the second and third books—the main body of the text—represent an extended and unremitting condemnation of Henry II and his offspring. No sin or vice is too minor to merit identification and denunciation. When read in its entirety, as Gerald clearly intended, it might be more accurate to characterize De principis instructione (in the words of Jean-Philippe Genet) as “plutôt un ‘anti-Miroir’ qu’un Miroir”.³⁹ Or, as Frédérique Lachaud has argued, engaging with the text holistically draws out a sort of originality that distinguishes it from the mainstream of princely mirrors.⁴⁰

Perhaps the most obvious token of the description as an “anti-mirror” is Gerald’s repeated and unapologetic branding of Henry and his sons as tyrants. To offer a single, although typical, example concerning Henry, taken from the preface to the second book: “after he mounted the throne of the kingdom, whoever saw such a heavy oppressor of the church, so unjust a tyrant to his kingdom, one so obstinate in everything evil?”.⁴¹ Henry’s tyrannical character manifests itself most especially in two regards: the assassination of Becket (to which, unsurprisingly, Gerald returns again and again) and the failure to act on his promise to take up the cross and go on crusade.⁴² Nor do Henry’s issue fare any better: the deaths in adulthood of Geoffrey and Henry, the travails of Richard and John, are all recited. De principis instructione, at least in the preponderance of its pages, is effectively a chronicle of the misdeeds and missteps of the Plantangenet line up to the end of John’s reign. Why should any of this be relevant to the present discussion? The labeling of contemporaneous (or recently deceased) princes as “tyrants” was rarely (if ever) a feature of royal specula. Rulers of old (biblical or pagan) might have been accorded that title in princely mirrors. Certainly, as with the writings of Bernard and John, some resemblances to later speculum literature may be observed, but these ancestors are perhaps less recognizable than succeeding generations of such texts.

In coming to terms with the family of mirrors, there were also some writings that might best be described as “friends”. For the most part, these will be addressed in the next section of this chapter. But it is appropriate to discuss briefly one “friend” dating to the later twelfth century that was pillaged almost immediately after its dissemination: a treatise titled Moralium dogma philosophorum, the authorship of which has been widely disputed. The Moralium was a collection containing snippets of wisdom organized according to theme, derived mainly from pagan Roman philosophers and poets, as well as, on occasion, the Christian Fathers and, even less frequently, scripture. The compiler/author states in the prologue that the intent of the volume is to present the views primarily of that “most eloquent Latin writer Cicero” (and secondarily of the “erudite and most elegant” moralist Seneca).⁴³ The ease with which the Moralium provided useful quotes from such important sources effectively assured that it would be widely appropriated by later medieval thinkers in general, but especially authors of princely specula (Gerald of Wales, for instance, drew from it in the first book of the De principis instructione).⁴⁴ Its structure is built upon two basic pillars. The first arranges the words of its authorities around the cardinal virtues and their subcategories.⁴⁵ The second takes up the issue of virtue in general (honorabilitas) and its relationship to utility (utilitas), which constituted, of course, the central issue posed by Cicero’s De officiis.⁴⁶ The Moralium, it should be noted, was not specifically designed for political use. The moral teachings contained in it were oriented toward guiding the conduct of individuals. It is easy to see, however, how the authors of mirrors could readily convert such ethical maxims into political advice. This is the sense in which we mean that the Moralium may be counted as a close friend of the body of royal speculum literature.

2 A Growing Family

Mirrors literature underwent two important developments in the middle decades of the thirteenth century. First, the number of works produced increased markedly. Some twenty independent texts were produced which purported to give moral and political advice to rulers, mostly in France but also in Italy, Castile, England, and Norway. Secondly, the decades between 1220 and 1280 were arguably the most creative period for this kind of political literature in Latin Christendom, as several innovative and (for the future) influential works of advice for rulers took their place beside the partial appropriation of John of Salisbury’s Policraticus, the most notable being the pseudo-Aristotelian Secretum secretorum and a cluster of works by mendicants based in France. Several factors in the broader society and culture contributed to this remarkable acceleration in the output and variety of mirrors. The growing ambitions of states and their rulers, already evident in Plantagenet England and Capetian France during the previous century, grew apace there and elsewhere, while a similar trend towards centralization, standardization, and control was under way in the Church. The demand of both states and the Church for educated specialists, especially in the law and administration, and in the case of the Church for pastors trained in the arts of preaching and confession, stimulated the foundation and growth of universities and the flourishing of the new orders of mendicant friars. Meanwhile at the universities and in the schools of the Franciscans and Dominicans (and, later, the Augustinians), the hitherto “lost” works of Aristotle and his Greek, Muslim, and Jewish commentators were being translated and studied, and these developments, in turn, encouraged a fresh look at the works of Roman antiquity, both pagan and patristic. The impact of all this on political thought and discourse was enormous, since it not only supplied new language and concepts but also new questions and concerns about the origins, ends, scope, and limits of power in human society.

Although these developments were felt beyond France—and here one thinks of the political advice literature for the podestà of northern Italian communes, whose most famous and influential example was Brunetto Latini’s Tresor, and of the Norwegian-language Speculum regale (c. 1260)⁴⁷—all the mirrors written during these years were composed by mendicant friars (and one Cistercian), who directed their mirrors mostly to members of the French royal family.⁴⁸ Indeed the close association of the court of Louis IX, the university, and the convents and schools of the mendicant friars made Paris a virtual factory of mirrors of princes literature. Ultra-pious, moralizing, notably partial to the mendicant orders, and dedicated to a program of wise and just kingship, Louis IX was in truth the “King of the Mirrors of Princes”.⁴⁹ Louis himself authored the Enseignements (1267–70) for his heir, the future Philip III, and at least three, and perhaps four mirrors were written for Louis and for members of his immediate family.⁵⁰ Two of the three mirrors unquestionably addressed to the royal family were the work of the DominicanVincent of Beauvais, who composed De eruditione filiorum nobilium for Queen Marguerite and the royal children (1250/1254–60) and De morali principis institutione for the king and his son-in law Thibaut V/II of Champagne and Navarre (1263). The third contribution, by the Franciscan Gilbert of Tournai, was the Eruditio regum et principum, completed by him in 1259 and addressed to King Louis. Both Vincent and Gilbert were close associates of the king, and there is every reason to believe that the image of kingship and the moral lessons presented in their mirrors reflected Louis’s own sensibilities.

In keeping with this relationship, Gilbert in the Eruditio adopts an especially intimate tone, as personal confessor offering counsel and as court preacher delivering instruction and admonition. Throughout, Gilbert speaks in the first person singular and plural, and on occasion he addresses Louis directly: “You request, most gentle lord, that what follows be connected to what preceded; namely that the matter I began might be finished”.⁵¹ The Eruditio is made up of three “letters” (epistolae) to the king, treating in turn, (1) how Louis should revere God and conduct himself, (2) how he should discipline his powerful subjects and his officials, and (3) how he should love and protect his subjects. Gilbert’s method of argumentation is essentially exigetical in the moral sense. This is especially striking in the second part of the first epistola, where each of the chapters explicates one of the twelve commands to kings in Deuteronomy 17:16–20. Thus he interprets the first precept, “he must not multiply horses for himself”, to mean that the king should not waste his time hunting—a command which likely flattered Louis, since he had no love for the sport. The king who emerges from the pages of the Eruditio is a stern moralist, who, guided by biblical precepts, exercises extreme self-control, and roots out and punishes the abuses of his subjects.

Vincent of Beauvais’s two works on princely education and advice seem to be the results of a planned larger four-part “universal work” (opus universale) of political advice for the Capetians, which in its entirety would have treated “the status of the prince … the entire royal court or household, and … the administration of the res publica and the governance of the whole realm”.⁵² As such it would have complemented in organization and scope Vincent’s great universal encyclopedia, the Speculum maius (also planned to have four parts, although only three were completed by the time of Vincent’s death). Both projects were also works of compilatio; but whereas compiling an encyclopedia of useful extracts from authoritive sources was the primary goal of the Speculum maius, Vincent’s mirrors project instead deployed those extracts in the form of two tractatus in each of which he makes a series of arguments.⁵³ The basic argument of De eruditione is that children must be educated and disciplined from a young age in order to counteract a human being’s natural tendency toward the “dullness of ignorance” in the intellect and the “rottenness of concupiscence” in the affectus.⁵⁴ This is especially important for the children of princes, since they are placed at the top of society and it will be their duty to rule.⁵⁵ In pursuit of these goals, De eruditione delivers a program of instruction and discipline, mostly for royal boys but with the last several chapters devoted to the moral formation and proper behavior of girls, married women, widows, and (Vincent’s ideal) virgins dedicated to the monastic life. In De morali principis institutione, Vincent’s subject is governance, and most epecially rule by the head of the body politic, that is, the prince.⁵⁶ Since the prince should conform himself to the image of the Holy Trinity, and thus to the power of the Father, the wisdom of the Son, and the goodness of the Holy Spirit, so too the De morali is divided into three parts, treating in turn: (1) the origins of royal power and its legitimacy; (2) the wisdom of the prince in ruling his realm, in both peace and war; and (3) the prince’s goodness as enacted in his own perfect virtue, and his correction and suppression of the vices of courtiers.⁵⁷ Vincent’s view of the origins of royal power is purely Augustinian; a result of the Fall of Man, it has been a necessary evil that imposes order in a corrupted world. And yet in the case of the Christian kings of France, royal rule has achieved a degree of legitimacy owing to “divine dispensation, popular consent or election, the approbation of the church, and prescriptive right based on long tenure and good faith”.⁵⁸ Despite this, royal power is essentially negative and empty, and thus should be regarded as a burden and a temptation to sin, rather than as a reward or honor. Thus to continue to rule legitimately, the prince must take great care to govern wisely and competently, to be learned and encourage the pursuit of learning, and to inculcate and reinforce a virtuous character in himself and stamp out the envy, slander, ambition, and flattery of the powerful.

Just as in the mirror of his Franciscan counterpart, Vincent’s works of princely advice take the form of a succession of sermons that present arguments reinforced by copious citations of authorities and the use of exempla. Yet there the similarity ends, since in stark contrast to Gilbert’s personal, florid, and by turns chatty or haranguing style, Vincent employs throughout the style of the “scholastic” sermon which he and his fellow Dominicans had done so much to develop. The tone is calm and clinically impersonal, and almost every chapter begins with a topic, followed by a series of divisiones, with each argument and secondary argument supported by numerous auctoritates, similitudines, and exempla, most of which Vincent exported from the Speculum maius, but also from the Bible and its Glossa ordinaria, the Florilegium Gallicum, William Peraldus’s Summa de vitiis, and Gratian’s Decretum.⁵⁹ Vincent also employs far more authorities and exempla and does so more often and at greater length.

The same sermon style was employed by Vincent’s contemporary and fellow Dominican William Peraldus in his De eruditione principum, composed in Lyon c. 1265. And just as Vincent was particularly reliant on his own Speculum maius for authorities and exempla, so too did William rely mostly on his own Summae of virtues and vices, though he also appears to have borrowed from Vincent’s De eruditione filiorum nobilium in the section of his work where he discusses the education of princes.⁶⁰ William also shared his confrère’s negative view of the origins of royal power and the character of courtiers. If anything, his assessment of the legitimacy of any earthly power is even more pessimistic, since he makes no effort to aggrandize or even advocate for any contemporary rulers or dynasties. In place of the metaphor of the body politic, he uses instead the image of the giant statue of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream in Daniel 2:31–45, with its sobering message of contemporary decadence and the awful power of God. He does not even name a princely dedicatee, saying only that he wrote his mirror when “asked by some prince and on account of the acquiescence to his request by my superiors, whom I am required to obey”.⁶¹ Peraldus is contemptuous of any claims to status by birth and makes it quite clear that princes only gain their legitimacy through their practice of Christian virtues (especially wisdom, goodness, faith, hope, fear of God, and love), and their reverence for and defense of the Church and its clergy, their punishment of heresy and vice, their protection of the weak, and their maintenance of peace.⁶²

Together these four mendicant mirrors construct a model of kingship and princely rule that is profoundly biblical and theological. All present an essentially negative, “Augustinian” explanation of the origins of power in society, and all engage in “une sorte de reductio du ‘politique’ au ‘religieux’”:⁶³ good rule is entirely dependent on a prince who is a faithful son of the Church and exemplifies the perfect Christian life. It has already been mentioned that the person of Louis IX may have been the living inspiration of this model, or that at least he would have been highly receptive to it. Surely another inspiration, however, was the pastoral mission, and with it the Franciscan and Dominican education programs, to which all three authors had made signal contributions.⁶⁴ The chief transmitter of this particular brand of biblical/theological kingship, in so far as one can determine this from the evidence of surviving manuscripts, was not the mirrors of Gilbert and Vincent, which achieved only very modest circulation, but rather Peraldus’s De eruditione principum, which enjoyed considerable popularity.⁶⁵

These authors of biblical/theological mirrors also share a studied avoidance of the new Aristotelian (and pseudo-Aristotelian) moral philosophy that was beginning to be commented on by several of their fellow friars, and a subordination of pagan classical material to biblical, patristic, and Christian monastic (here especially Bernard of Clairvaux) authorities. Yet it was to be these texts from the ancient and Islamic worlds that were to have the most profound impact on the political mirrors literature of the later Middle Ages. Philip of Tripoli’s Latin translation (c. 1231) of the Secretum secretorum, a Hellenistic-Arabic compendium of what purports to be a letter of Aristotle to Alexander the Great, advising him on politics, medicine, diet and hygiene, war, astrology, and the occult arts, became the most copied and translated mirrors text of the late thirteenth to fifteenth centuries. Its model of princely counsel and education was one of “applied science and medicine in the service of the commonwealth, with some moral advice put in for good measure”.⁶⁶ Well before the end of the thirteenth century, its utility to princes was much appreciated, as witnessed by its translation into several vernaculars and the care lavished by the English Franciscan Roger Bacon on his expanded, glossed, and re-organized edition, which he seems to have intended for Edward I.⁶⁷

In the 1260s, another Franciscan from the British Isles, John of Wales, prepared two compilations of auctoritates and exempla, the Breviloquium de virtutibus antiquorum principum et philosophorum and the Communiloquium sive summa collationum, which although not written for any specific prince and aimed more at the needs of preachers, nonetheless were to have a considerable influence on many later medieval mirrors. The Breviloquium (early 1260s) had a special relevance for princes, having been “designed” by John “for the instruction of rulers”.⁶⁸ In four sections, each devoted to one of the four cardinal virtues (justice, prudence, temperance, and fortitude), John musters scores of quotations, drawn for the most part from classical Roman sources (and florilegia thereof), for the purpose of recounting the virtuous character and deeds of ancient princes, and the wise sayings of those ancient philosophers who acted as their counselors. John expresses great admiration for these princes and philosophers of Greek and Roman antiquity who exemplified virtue and wisdom, and who respected the laws of the state and protected the salus populi. Moreover, given the evident excellence of these ancient pagans, should not contemporary Christian princes and their counselors be even moreso?⁶⁹ John’s next project, the Communiloquium (late 1260s), was a collection of exempla aimed at various social groups; however, its first section, on the state (respublica), became an important source for later mirrors. Here again, John favors exempla from antiquity and stresses the importance of respect for the laws and the common good.⁷⁰

While John of Wales’s compiling activity and interest in preaching was very much in line with the preoccupations of his French mendicant counterparts (indeed he spent much of his career teaching in Paris’s Franciscan convent), his privileging of the cardinal virtues and of ancient pagan philosophy and history set him apart. If this classicism makes him seem like a throwback to twelfth-century ancestors like John of Salisbury, then he is guilty as charged, since in the Breviloquium he draws at least forty-two of his exempla from the Policraticus, a work on which he was even more dependent in the first part of Communiloquium (at least 56 exempla).⁷¹ He also relies heavily on Valerius Maximus, De dictis et factis memorabilibus, and Seneca, thanks in part to the resurrection of several of the latter’s works by Roger Bacon.⁷² Both of John’s compilations circulated broadly and were heavily used by the authors of several later mirrors.⁷³

During the 1260s and 1270s, the new Latin translations of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (mid-1240s), Politics (c. 1260), and Rhetoric (1250s/1269) began powerfully to assert themselves in the De regno ad regem Cypri (c. 1267–1274) of the Dominican Thomas Aquinas and the De regimine principum (c. 1279–80) of the Augustinian Giles of Rome.⁷⁴ That these two friars were the first to write mirrors with a strongly Aristotelian inflection comes as no surprise. Both played leading roles in the reception and study of Aristotle’s works at the University of Paris. More specifically, Thomas wrote commentaries on the Ethics and on the first several books of the Politics, and incorporated much of this in his Summa theologiae, and Giles not only prepared the first commentary on the Rhetoric but was also Thomas’s student and spent much of his scholarly career articulating and responding to his teacher’s doctrines. In the first chapter of De regno (dedicated to either Hugh II or Hugh III), Thomas signals the new, Aristotelian approach, speaking of final causes and saying “it is natural for human beings to be social and political animals”.⁷⁵ Instead of the Augustinian explanation of royal power originating in human sinfulness, here Thomas propounds Aristotle’s teaching that living in the polis is natural to human beings, and that only by living in a multitude do they attain the proper end of human life. Thomas then, in the next chapter, adopts Aristotle’s taxonomy of three good (monarchy, aristocracy, polity) and three bad (tyranny, oligarchy, democracy) political constitutions, before going on to argue that monarchy is the best form of constitution because it is the most stable, but that in order to guard against it devolving into tyranny (the worst form), a monarchy should adopt elements of a mixed constitution. In clearly preferring kingship over the other legitimate forms of government—a matter on which Aristotle is more equivocal—and using the Bible to reinforce his preference (“The Lord says through Ezekiel: ‘My servant David will be king over all, and there will be one shepherd of all of them’”), Thomas makes clear that he intends to bend Aristotle’s doctrine to his own ends and adapt the teaching of the Stagirite to current political realities.⁷⁶

Thomas did not finish the De regno, breaking off early in the second book of what was clearly meant to be a much longer work. Nonetheless this incomplete version is extant in fifty copies, attesting to its popularity.⁷⁷ Moreover, two of Thomas’s students, the Dominican Ptolemy of Lucca and Giles of Rome, sought to finish what their master had started. Ptolemy’s project (c. 1301–03), going by the title De regimine principum, is more a work of political theory than a mirror of princes, but the work of the same name by Giles of Rome was a thorough-going Aristotelian, and Thomist mirror.⁷⁸ Shortly after having been denied the licentia docendi in theology from the University of Paris for refusing to retract several censured propositions that he shared with Thomas (d. 1274), Giles wrote De regimine principum for the heir to the French throne, Philip the Fair.⁷⁹ Giles pushes De regimine in an even more Aristotelian direction than Thomas. The three main divisions of the text are based on the Peripatetic division of moral philosophy into rule of the self (ethics), of the family and household (economics), and of the state (politics), and Giles cites by name several of Aristotle’s works, especially, the Politics, Ethics, and Rhetoric, some 550 times, while virtually ignoring the Bible and Church Fathers.⁸⁰ And yet Giles also silently injects Thomist positions throughout, for example asserting the superiority of monarchy over other forms of constitution while going even further to make a strong case for hereditary over elective kingship.⁸¹ Giles, like John of Wales, privileges the cardinal virtues, but also incorporates them within a larger Aristotelian catalogue of twelve virtues, and stresses Aristotle’s definition of virtue as the mean between two extremes as well as his idea of habitus, i.e., that a virtuous or vicious character is the product of one’s upbringing and education.⁸² In addition, Giles in the second book “constructs” an Aristotelian economics on the basis of material drawn from the Ethics and Rhetoric (and, concerning the education of children, from Vincent of Beauvais), and pens a manual of military science, largely drawn from Vegetius, in De regimine’s tenth and final part.⁸³ Lastly, by describing and applying the Aristotelian principles of deliberative rhetoric to political discourse, he makes his mirror “the product of a broadly logical method when applied to the moral conduct of humans in order to persuade a wider audience of the general principles of the life of virtue”.⁸⁴ Thus, if Thomas’s Aristotelian “turn” initiated a break with earlier mirrors, Giles opened the rupture further by “integrating” his mirror “au langage du politique” that was being developed in Italy, as exemplified in Latini’s Tresor.⁸⁵

Surviving in roughly 350 Latin copies, as well as ramifying into multiple adaptations and vernacular translations, the De regimine achieved an audience that was second only in popularity to the Secretum secretorum.⁸⁶ And although the Secretum and the De regimine (and De regno) offered distinctly different versions of “Aristotelian” advice, both treated politics as a positive, autonomous sphere, as an “art of governance”, rather than simply as a burdensome duty mandated by God in order to impose some kind of order on a corrupt and sinful world.⁸⁷ Over the course of the next century and a half, the pseudo-Aristotelian Secretum secretorum and the Aristotelian mirrors group of Thomas and Giles took their place beside the biblical/theological group of Gilbert, Vincent, and Peraldus, and the classicizing compilations of John of Wales (and the Policraticus which John of Wales helped to popularize) as the four main models for later mirrors writers. These models should not so much be thought of as “archetypes” or even as “core” texts, but rather as patriarchs, or as bloodlines, whose language and concepts, arguments, exemplary sayings and stories, and structuring features later writers could borrow, blend, rework, redeploy, or ignore as they saw fit.

In 1278–82, the Castilian Franciscan Juan Gil de Zamora demonstrated a readiness to mine his confrère’s Breviloquium when writing the De preconiis Hispanie for Alfonso X’s heir, Sancho. A mirror constructed from exempla drawn from ancient and more recent history, and organized according to the virtues, De preconiis strikes a monitory tone against princes (here read King Alfonso) who oppress their subjects with heavy and novel fiscal demands.⁸⁸ John of Wales’s compilations continued to exert a dynastic influence on Iberian mirrors. This was in part because so many of them were written by Franciscans; but it was also owing to the popularity there of the so-called Glosa Castellana al Regimiento de Principes (1340s), written by a Franciscan (perhaps Juan García de Castrojeriz) for the future Pedro I, which combined an abridged Castilian translation of Giles of Rome’s mirror with copious exempla, most of them taken from John of Wales, and substantial additions of biblical and theological material.⁸⁹ Something similar can be seen in the Austrian Benedictine Engelbert of Admont’s De regimine principum (c. 1297–1300) and Speculum virtutum (c. 1306–13, for Dukes Albert II and Otto of Habsburg). The earlier work, which demonstrates a close affinity with both Thomas’s political ideas and with Giles’s mirror, and like them relies heavily on Aristotle and is sparing with the use of exempla, is nonetheless more circumspect about the advantages of monarchy and more open to broad political participation than either Thomas or Giles.⁹⁰ Engelbert is even more innovative in the Speculum virtutum, which although it borrows key structural elements from Giles (on the purpose and ends of human life, the habits, passions, and virtues), nonetheless makes original arguments, backed up with copious rationes from Aristotle (sometimes by way of Giles or Thomas), but also from Cicero, Seneca, Boethius, and John of Salisbury, and a healthy admixture of exempla from John of Wales and medieval chronicles.⁹¹ To cite two final examples: the author of the Liber de informatione principum (c. 1315, probably by Durand of Champagne, OFM), composed for Louis X of France, presents a work very much in the vein of the biblical/theological mirrors of the previous century (indeed he cites Gilbert of Tournai), but also influenced by Thomas’s approach to Aristotelian ethics;⁹² and sometime in the 1390s, an English royal clerk (perhaps John Thorpe, a canon of Norwich Cathedral) dedicated to Richard II a short mirror, De quadripartita regis specie, which combines parts of the Secretum secretorum with copious extracts from Proverbs and other biblical wisdom books.⁹³ Both mirrors stress the importance of wisdom, and both are preoccupied with the problem of taxation and government expenditure.

Dozens of other examples could be summoned up here, because the propagation of political advice literature for rulers, already observable in the middle decades of the thirteenth century, accelerated thereafter. The new mirrors were addressed to an ever more diverse audience, including not only kings or future kings, but also royal women, signori and high office-holders of Italian city-states, German and Sicilian noblemen, and city councilors in Valencia.⁹⁴ And if mendicants and monks continued to compose mirrors, they were joined by clerks (both lay and ecclesiastical), noblemen and kings, and a woman, Christine de Pizan.⁹⁵ These authors, morever, increasingly wrote in the vernacular and experimented with different prose and verse literary forms, including the letter, the dialogue, the dream vision, and the fable.⁹⁶ In short, the mirror of princes “family” and “friends” continued to grow, diversify, and be vital participants in the political discourse of later medieval Latin Christendom.

3 Black Sheep

Most families have a black sheep or two, members who don’t quite fit into the familial mode and yet possess unmistakable resemblances to their relatives. So it is with political mirrors. In this section, we consider briefly three such outliers: the anonymous English Speculum Justiciariorum, which probably dates to the early fourteenth century; the two versions of a work known by the title Speculum Regis Edwardi III, most likely composed by William of Pagula in the 1330s; and three early fifteenth-century treatises composed by the Valois courtier Christine de Pizan. On the one hand, these texts are extremely diverse in their thematic presentation and substance. Yet, on the other hand, they share an important feature that stands out in relation to the other mirrors we have examined, namely, they single out for criticism and reform some existing political and social practice or practices of their time. Unlike the main bloodlines of speculum literature, these writings expressly address current issues in a manner that throws off the cloak of ambiguity and states grievances overtly, while also adhering to intellectual and linguistic elements that affiliate them with other mirrors. And, perhaps as importantly, they are still all addressed to a royal courtly audience.

The first of the aforementioned treatises, the Speculum Justiciariorum, written in Anglo-Norman, has been the object of some controversy about its authorship, a topic that should not detain us here.⁹⁷ On the face of it, the main purpose of the treatise is to express an explicitly critical stance toward legal (mis)conduct occurring during its time. In his prologue, the author frames his intention by way of a complaint against the corruption of judges: “I perceived that divers of those who should govern the law by rules of right had regard to their own earthly profit, and to pleasing princes, lords and friends, and to amassing lordships and goods”.⁹⁸ Justices, he says, refuse to refer to law set down in written form, the better to manipulate the powers of their offices; they invoke spurious “exceptions” to statute when it suits them; they abuse laws by misapplication or misinterpretation; and they too often lack the learning and experience required to judge justly.⁹⁹ For the author, the stakes are personal rather than merely theoretical: “I, the accuser of false judges, [was] falsely imprisoned by their execution”.¹⁰⁰ As he languished in custody—for what crime he never expressly states—he composed his treatise, with the aid of friends who supplied him with documents and books that provided the raw materials for constructing the Speculum Justiciariorum.

Clearly, the work condemns the practices of the contemporary judiciary in England. But to whom? The judges themselves, profiting as they are from their conduct, hardly had any motivation to reform themselves. The answer lies in the prologue, in which, although it contains no explicit dedication or encomium, it seems evident that the author is addressing a royal audience, likely King Edward I. It is the prince alone who has it within his authority to right the wrongs that judges have committed. The text dedicates nearly all of its attention to magistrates within the purview of royal jurisdiction, dissecting the duties of coroners, sheriffs, justices of the eyre, chief justices, and the like. This concentration on the conduct of the king’s judicial officers indicates that the treatise’s primary concern is the exercise of royal powers. Inasmuch as the crown is the fount of adjudication in the realm, all of the decisions of its duly commissioned agents ultimately redound to the person of the prince. In this insistence that the king is ultimately responsible for the supervision of his magistrates, the Speculum Justiciariorum shares the view of many princely specula. But the author maintains that the monarch, so far from being exempt in any legal manner from ensuring that his magistrates perform their functions dutifully, is answerable to the community of the realm, embodied by parliament. “Although the king should have no peer in his land”, he says, “nevertheless in order that if the king by his fault should sin against any of his people … it is agreed as law that the king should have companions to hear and determine in the parliaments all the writs and plaints concerning wrongs done by the king, the queen, their children, and their familiars, for which wrongs one could not otherwise have obtained common right”.¹⁰¹ Parliament (albeit an essentially aristocratic one) offers redress against the ruler and his servants when they violate law: the royal house is subject to the institutionalized judgment of the great men of the realm. The Speculum Justiciariorum justifies this position by (spurious) references to the long-standing traditions and practices of England, stretching back to King Alfred. The treatise thus offers a resolution to the problem of how—short of divine judgment—a monarch might be held accountable for his own acts as well as those of officials who serve in his name.

The two tracts comprising the work known collectively as the Speculum Regis Edwardi III likewise employ many of the features that have been associated with mirrors of princes, but to dramatically different effect. The treatise is now safely attributed to the English canon lawyer and parish priest William of Pagula, who seems to have composed its two recensions in 1331 and 1332 respectively.¹⁰² Addressed in direct and personalized terms to King Edward III, the tract in many ways contains what one might expect from a work that explicitly addresses itself to a king, offering praise for his majesty couched in the moral and religious terms that advice book readers have come to expect: God is to be imitated by the ruler in the justice shown by his judgment and will; the king’s office and authority derive from the commission of right; the prince ought to bind himself to the law, as a demonstration of his just intent and will; when the king seems to err, it is the consequence of evil counsel, which ought to be banished from the realm.¹⁰³

Yet family resemblances of the Speculum Regis Edwardi to the more closely related specula already discussed, while evident, do not fully capture its distinctiveness as an open criticism of English royal policy, in particular, by defending the rights of peasants against the exactions of the king, and, especially, the practice of royal purveyance. Purveyance is the customary prerogative of the king to provide for his household and troops when touring the realm by confiscating local goods or purchasing them at a fixed, non-negotiable price.¹⁰⁴ Part of his case against the devastating effects of purveyance William advocates in terms recognizable to any advice-book reader. The king is warned that the commission of evil endangers his salvation; and theft from the poor, which is taken to be coextensive with purveyance, is precisely the sort of evil about which the king ought to worry.¹⁰⁵ William recurrently invokes the frailty of all human life, including the king’s. Should death transpire unexpectedly, damnation and eternal punishment are the prospects for the ruler who has not corrected injuries done to his subjects.

If William had left matters at that, we might regard him as a kind-hearted yet ineffectual shepherd of an oppressed flock. But he is often inclined to threaten Edward III in terms that are far less spiritual. In particular, he asserts that the king is a creature of his people and is thus subject to their judgment. William supports his position with reference to recent events, reminding Edward that “when first you came by ship from foreign parts into this land, how humbly, how graciously, how devoutly, how joyously, the English people admitted you and stood by you and aided you in everything you did against your rebels”.¹⁰⁶ The message here is one of reciprocity. The king relies upon the good will of subjects to achieve and maintain his power. Oppression of subjects (such as by in effect robbing them of their goods) will induce a reaction against him. Indeed, a king who makes war on his people, by employing force to steal from them, may rightfully be opposed, just as one may legitimately repulse the force of a thief in order to protect oneself and one’s goods. William warns Edward that “many evils may happen to you and your kingdom”, as a result of which the king and his officials “will perish”; elsewhere, the king is advised to expect the loss of his realm.¹⁰⁷ William leaves little doubt about the threat he is making to Edward III: “Your people … are not of one mind with you; and certainly, if they had a leader, they would rise up against you, just as they did against your father”, a direct reference to the disastrous reign of Edward II.¹⁰⁸ If the monarch’s subjects are not safe from their royal master, then they will not hesitate to replace him with someone who respects their rights, as a direct consequence of the reciprocal nature of the relationship that binds the people to the ruler. Kings who “have extended their hand towards the goods and income of others”, William observes, find that “the people rise up against them and they are almost wiped from the earth. And therefore be warned, and heed, lest you forget what happened to your father”.¹⁰⁹ The Speculum Regis Edwardi thereby inverts or dismantles many of the expectations held by readers of advice books, while still maintaining a semblance of adherence to contours of mirror literature. On the one hand, William refers to the dangers to the eternal soul of the king posed by unjust governance. On the other, however, he is perfectly prepared to point out the immediate consequences of a disgruntled and aggrieved populace by drawing to mind events not very far removed from Edward’s own ascension to the throne.

A final intriguing instance of mirror writing that departs from many of the features of political advice books and yet shares definite characteristics with them is afforded by Christine de Pizan. Christine was the most prolific, and yet often overlooked, author of political “mirror” books in medieval Europe, credited with no fewer than nine such treatises.¹¹⁰ On the face of it, she was no overt critic in the manner of the two English “black sheep” previously discussed; this is surely because of her financial dependence upon the patronage of the French court, as well as her deep admiration for members of the ruling dynasty.¹¹¹ But at the same time, Christine’s specula diverge substantially from other mirrors in the striking inclusiveness of the topics that she addresses, especially in regard to the place of women within the social and political order. Two of her works spoke explicitly to the female predicament. In one, Le livre de la Cité des Dames (1405), she defends women as a group from various slanders against their intelligence and capacity to achieve moral and political virtue. The second of these writings, Le livre des Trois Vertus (1406), examines in minute detail the conduct appropriate to women of each and every social distinction, extending from princesses and noblewomen to merchant’s wives and even prostitutes. Some might argue that Christine’s concentration on this rich social diversity immediately excludes her writings from the speculum principum family entirely. But her work, especially the Trois Vertus, is manifestly addressed to a courtly audience and remains firmly grounded on familiar conventions of the speculum literature.

The points at which Christine departs from the ordinary path generally occur when pragmatic considerations become relevant, in particular by offering practical advice to female denizens of court, Thus, for instance, she recommends that the princess should dissemble with her enemies, even when she has definite knowledge of their conspiring in plots and machinations against her.¹¹² “The wise lady”, she observes, “will use this prudent device of discreet dissimulation, which should not be considered vicious but rather a great virtue when employed for the common good, to maintain peace, or to avoid detriment or greater harm”.¹¹³ Similar mendacity is proposed in the case of charitable works and benefactions. Christine counsels that “justifiable hypocrisy is necessary for princes and princesses who must rule over others and thus be accorded more respect than others. Moreover, expedient hypocrisy is not unworthy for others desiring honor, as long as they practice it for worthy ends”.¹¹⁴ This represents a noteworthy inversion of the standard advice book position, according to which religion and virtue are seen to be their own rewards, quite apart from temporal consequences.

Perhaps as strikingly, Christine advocates for the competence of women to contribute to the tasks associated with the maintenance of public peace and secular well-being. In Cité des Dames, she proclaims that “in case anyone says that women do not have a natural sense for politics and government, I will give you examples of several great women rulers … whose skill in governing—both past and present—in all their affairs following the deaths of their husbands provides obvious demonstration that a woman with a mind is fit for all tasks”.¹¹⁵ Nor does Christine confine herself to female rulers who have inherited their positions from deceased spouses. One role performed by a princess may be to quell intranquillity in her land arising from her husband’s acquiescence to evil councilors: “If the prince, because of poor advice or for any other reason, should be tempted to harm his subjects, they will know their lady to be full of kindness, pity and charity. They will come to her, humbly petitioning her to intercede for them before the prince”.¹¹⁶ The princess is envisioned by Christine as a sort of ombudsperson, a conduit between hostile forces (whether within or without the realm), whose clashes might otherwise disturb the peace.¹¹⁷ In the course of her writings, Christine does not dispense with instruction about the office of the prince, often couched in quite customary terms. But she expands considerably the considerations relevant to the evaluation of royal government.

4 Conclusion

In 1411, the English Privy Seal clerk Thomas Hoccleve composed his verse mirror, The Regiment of Princes, for the future King Henry V (r. 1413–22). After a lengthy prologue of 2016 lines in which he explores “the complex relationship between prince and advising poet”,¹¹⁸ Hoccleve begins the mirror proper, first addressing Henry directly, and then explaining that in the Regiment he has sought by and large to “translate” and “compile” matter from the Secretum secretorum (“Aristotle … His epistles to Alisaundre sente”), “Gyles of Regiment of Princes”, and “a book Jacob de Cessolis of the ordre of prechours maad … That the Ches Moralysed clepid is”.¹¹⁹ Hoccleve here foregrounds his mirror’s reliance on three of the four mirrors “bloodlines”, the pseudo-Aristotelian, the Aristotelian/Aegidian, and the classicizing (since James of Cessole compiled his Libellus super ludo scaccorum (c. 1300) largely from John of Wales’s Breviloquium).¹²⁰ Hoccleve’s readiness to assemble a new work of princely advice from the standard models thus makes his Regiment a fairly typical member of the broad and diverse family of Western medieval specula principum.

The Regiment also exemplifies several other features of this textual family. It is explicitly a work of counsel and didactic instruction whose end is to inculcate in the ruler a virtuous habitus and a solicitude for the common good. At the same time, Hoccleve assumes (at least rhetorically) a princely audience who is already virtuous, wise and knowing (“I am seur that tho bookes alle three Red hath and seen your innat sapience; And as I hope, hir vertu folwen yee”), and whose readiness to listen to counsel is entirely dependent on the prince’s own willed choice (“And althogh it be no maneere of neede Yow to consaille what to doon or leeve, Yit if yow list of stories taken heede, Sumwhat it may profyte, by your leeve”).¹²¹ In other words, mirror texts tend to take it as a given that the ruler’s power and authority are a fact, and that the health of the state rests on his (or in the case of mirrors written for aristocrats, their) will to act either in accordance with his own self-centered good (i.e., bad governance/tyranny) or the common good (good governance). Like Hoccleve, most mirror writers stress the ruler’s autonomy, but some instead highlight the need to rule in partnership with other elites (e.g., Engelbert of Admont) and subject to the law (e.g., the Speculum Justiciariorum).

Hoccleve’s mirror also reminds us that, whereas mirrors commonly employed rhetorical strategies that stressed the general value and applicability of their advice,¹²² they frequently were written as responses to specific political problems. Hoccleve expresses his anxiety over the recent civil wars in England which had broken out after the deposition of Richard II and Prince Henry’s father’s seizure of the throne, and he worries that England is about to be plunged again into a ruinous war with France.¹²³ Across the Channel, the crisis of governance posed by Charles VI’s insanity unleashed a virtual flood of mirrors by Jacques Legrand, Jean Gerson, Pierre Salmon, and, of course, Christine de Pizan.¹²⁴ Likewise, several mirrors of the late thirteenth and first part of the fourteenth century delivered open criticism of growing and unprecedented fiscal demands by governments.¹²⁵ Even certain “national” traits are discernable in mirrors. English mirrors were frequently written by royal clerks, like Hoccleve, Walter of Milemete, Roger Waltham, and the likely author of the De quadripartita regis specie, John Thorpe, but not (except for John of Wales) by mendicants, whereas mendicants predominate among authors of mirrors composed in mid-thirteenth- to late fourteenth-century France, Italy, and Iberia. And while the sanctity of Capetian and Valois kingship is very much to the fore in French mirrors, Alfonso X’s Siete partidas (especially the Segunda partida) was an important source for those written in Castile.¹²⁶

These qualities are pretty much the same as those which Christine de Pizan assigned to the royal subject of her mirror-biography, the Livre des fais et bonnes meurs du sage roy Charles V (1404). In Christine’s rendering, the deceased monarch becomes the “prince dessiné par les miroirs”: “Il n’est en effet de qualité du parfait souverain qui ne trouve belle illustration dans la personne ou l’administration du sage roi”.¹²⁸ Of course, no real, living monarch, not even Charles V, or Louis IX for that matter, lived up to this ideal. Nor was political reality simply a function of the ruler’s person, will, and deeds, since the prince was but one piece on a crowded and highly contingent political chessboard. The medieval writers and readers of mirrors of princes were as aware of these realities as we are, so we should not insult them by assuming that they turned to them for nothing more than some flawless reflection of the prince. For them mirrors were many things. They could be bids for patronage, tokens of political affiliation, guarded or overt criticisms of contemporary rule, or pieces of propaganda. They were also works that sought to bridge the space between political theory and political action, and as such they played a key role in the mediation and dissemination of moral and political philosophy among a broad public. Ultimately, however, political mirrors all belonged to the same clan.