1.1 A Far-reaching Corpus of Authors

Who were these authors, eager to advise young princes with a personal gift encapsulating the classical and Christian legacies of modern political thought? Well, they were those scholars, well and lesser-known, who acted as the princes’ advisers, were on friendly terms with many printers and were regarded as princes among philosophers. Whether they had been officially appointed as tutors or not, all of them belonged to the small circle of men of letters and were part of the select group of humanists: they were the favourites of capital printing houses, who fought over their letters and competed for their publication. They were philologists and jurists, but above all, they were Christians. These learned men drew from a great many sources of inspiration, so that their culture was as vast as basic knowledge was supposed to be, according to Erasmus, who claimed that commonplaces should be extensive.

Our corpus, consisting of a dozen ‘mirrors’, composed during the first half of the XVIth century, encompasses the royal courts of Spain, Portugal, France and England, as well as the States of the Holy Roman Empire. Still, these were not all directly addressed to the prince, whose duty would some day be to reign and rule over the kingdom - such as the Infante John of Aragon,² Francis, Count of Angoulême,³ Charles of Ghent⁴ or Mary Tudor.⁵ Some of them were actually aimed at the King, for his heirs - such as John III of Portugal⁶ – while others were truly meant for himself - such as Henry VIII of England⁷ and Demoulins for Francis I. Finally, others served princes of lesser importance: in 1541, Jean Brèche,⁸ a jurisconsult and Parliamentary counsel on friendly terms with the Tours humanists, published, back in 1541, the Manuel royal, a speculum principum dedicated to Jeanne d’Albret, niece of Francis I - the future Princess of Cleves, who would later become Queen of Navarre. Similarly, a series of German ‘mirrors’⁹ was released. Before the Reformation, most of these were intended for Counts Palatine (such as Jakob Wimpfeling’s, whose Agatharchia Id est bonus Principatus was written in 1498 for the Duke of Bavaria and his son Philip, Count Palatine of the Rhine), but they were meant for the Lutheran princes, afterwards. In 1526, the Franciscan Johann Eberlin (ca. 1470–1533), who had embraced the cause of the Reformation, compiled a ‘mirror’ for Count Georg II von Wertheim. In 1535, Rieger composed his Enchiridion¹⁰ for the Duke of Brunswick. Initially inspired by Erasmus, this ‘mirror’ was later revisited and adapted by George Spalatin,¹¹ who chose to address it to Elector John Frederick’s son, in 1538. Calvinist Konrad Heresbach¹² (1496–1576) and Johann Sturm (1507–1589) [De educatione principum, 1551] drew heavily on it as well in writing their books of counsel for the Duke William of Cleves and his son, Charles Frederick of Cleves. Lastly, Melanchthon [Institutio Iohannis Friderici, Ducis Stetini, Pomeraniae, 1554] made great use of it for his own speculum principum, which he dedicated to John Frederick of Pomerania.

These humanists - clerics, Franciscan friars, theologians and jurists - were mostly educated at university - in Salamanca, Alcalà de Henares, Paris, Freiburg, Erfurt, Cambridge and Oxford - where they read law, philosophy and theology. These masters came from various social backgrounds - they were active preachers and university professors - but most of all, these scholars all had close links with princely courts, where they acted as trusted advisers (Guillaume Budé, Erasmus, Spalatin and Johann Eberlin), esteemed chaplains and clergymen (Ortiz, Demoulins, Monzón), private confessors (Demoulins, Baron) and even as private tutors - whether that title was official or not (Erasmus, Juan Luis Vives, Demoulins, Jean Thenaud, Spalatin).They pursued fairly similar studies and shared rather similar political ideas, which is why – except for Demoulins and Ortiz’s earlier Dialogues - the rhetorical form and content of their ‘mirrors’ is almost identical : indeed, the arguments put forward and the thinkers chosen to discuss wisdom, virtues, the education of the prince, royal dignity and the exercise of authority are mostly the same.

In that respect, specular erudition overlaps that of study programmes. Still, the instructional quality of humanistic education lied in the real coherence of the curriculum, which was based on a new, groundbreaking openness in the field of classical and Christian texts. Commonplace moral teachings drawn from famous maxims and the lessons of history, helped royal pupils learn about moral philosophy, exempla and classical rhetoric. They facilitated the practice of eloquence and the transmission of skills, going as far as physical preparation, each lesson building towards the next and preparing the prince for his future role as ruler, while he contemplated the glorious achievements and wise aphorisms of illustrious men.

Study plans featuring the reading programme of young princes - and only occasionally, young princesses, as reading programmes for girls were of far less ambitious scope, back then - were many and varied. However, they always kept true to ancient philosophers’ moral and political intent, such as Plutarch’s, whose Moralia claimed that “the prince should be educated.” According to the most idealistic pedagogues, this most essential part of princely education, often called the “doctrine”, was supposed to make the prince a wise, or even a “philosopher king” - the meaning of these terms will be clarified below. Furthermore, the means employed for his instruction, such as the books used in the prince’s school room, allow us to elucidate the matter of the sources¹³ drawn on in compiling ‘mirrors’, in the Renaissance.

Each text introduced the next one: it was useful for learning grammar and provided a richly illustrated moral content, which facilitated the young pupil’s mastery of rhetoric. Thus, every aphorism and oration submitted to the young prince’s perusal reflected back to him the mirror image of the man he ought to become - that of a good, fair prince. These textbooks were not only intended for young princes: they circulated in large numbers and were meant for all readers wishing to educate themselves. Most of them were distributed and sold by printing houses based in Paris, Lyon, Basel, Strasbourg, Venice, Rome, Antwerp and Leuven. The reading material used to teach young princes the art of ruling clearly reflects a shift from a rather medieval, princely culture – which was mostly due to the great importance given to sacred texts, especially hagiographical ones - to a more humanistic one, favouring portable collections of short maxims and scholarly editions accessible to young royals.

1.2 Some Gnomic Literature

Collected maxims and fables were the first reading material to be used in teaching Latin to pupils as young as six or seven: they contained a large number of commonplaces, which could be used in subsequent rhetorical exercises, and always conveyed a useful moral. Ancient thinkers mentioned in these anthologies – such as Aesop, Cato, Horace, Juvenal, Homer and Ovid - had already long been faithfully guiding young pupils’ first steps in formal education, as they joined these new schools, which had been set up by Guarino da Verona and Vittorino da Feltre, back in the early XVth century, in Italy. These selected excerpts from gnomic literature also included - no longer in textual form but through religious practice and the perusal of testamentary texts – the Psalms, which were at the heart of the education of Protestant princes, together with the Proverbs of Solomon, which were essential in teaching wisdom and were related to ethics, according to the patristic tradition, and the Canticles, which had to do with mysticism.

As royal pupils often learnt these short sayings by heart, like every other young Christian that was being taught at the time, the young prince was introduced to Latin grammar through St Jerome’s Vulgate, which also instructed him in religion and ethics. Pupils derived quite the same benefits from reading other authors whose works were approached didactically - such as the Fables and Proverbs - through examining several quotations and a few syllogisms.

1.3 Aesop

Aesop figured among the most beloved and popular Greek authors, especially because some of his stories could be enjoyed by children, which triggered a real publishing craze for the various editions of his Fables, which the tutors of the future king Philip II started to collect as early as 1541. In July 1554, the young Queen of Scotland, Mary Stuart, then aged 11, wrote to Elizabeth, the daughter of the King of France, Henry II, that she had read two fables by Aesop, which she thought were very useful and pleasant.¹⁴ She drew a valuable lesson from the tale of The Ant and the Grasshopper, then well known among compilers, such as Lorenzo Valla, Rinuccio d’Arezzo or Planudes, whose compilation led Bonus Accursius to publish the first printed edition of Aesop’s Fables, at Milan, in 1474. Later, over the course of the first half of the XVIth century, other editions proliferated, such as the Dorpian collection - a selection of fables compiled by Maarteen van Dorp and first printed at Leuven, in 1513 - which was mostly aimed at schoolchildren. Still, Mary Stuart didn’t use this special edition. Nor did she resort to the many French translations of Aesop’s Fables that were available at the time. Actually, Mary Stuart made good use of another tale, that of The Two Bags which she had probably found in Juan Luis Vives’s Satellitium Animi, a ‘mirror’ consisting of various maxims which had previously been addressed from Bruges to Mary Tudor, the daughter of King Henry VIII, back in 1524.

1.4 Juan Luis Vives

In order to guide the princess on the path of virtue and act as the “guardian of her soul”, Vives had written more than two hundred annotated maxims (or “symbols”). Similarly, in his opuscule entitled Introductio ad sapientiam, consisting of more than five hundred and fifty maxims, Vives does not refer to any great authority, nor does he allude to any illustrious example. Thus, these two books are very similar: they both have an educational purpose, since they both belong to the gnomic genre, so that their appeal lies in their edifying character and their dedicated pursuit of true knowledge. These works were appended to the study programme drawn up by the same author, entitled De ratione studii puerilis - which included a section meant for the princess that was smaller in scope and much less ambitious - and were often published together in a single volume. Still, the Introductio ad sapientiam is the only one to have ultimately achieved editorial posterity.

Despite the obvious parenetic interest of these fables, the young prince’s tutors and masters very often resorted to various collections of proverbs and maxims – as indeed, it seems that the distinction between these two was seldom made, so that they were often conflated and even confused, at that time. Once again, print allowed books to proliferate massively, so that entire collections of Pseudo-Cato’s distichs and Isocrates’s and Pseudo-Isocrates’s maxims - addressed respectively to Nicocles (Ad Nicoclem) and to Demonicus (Ad Demonicum) - were issued. Similarly, comedies and satires - such as those by Lucian of Samosata - were published and even books of poetry - a genre in which Homer, the ‘Prince of Poets’, was supreme, but in which Virgil and Ovid also excelled - were released.

1.5 Erasmus

Erasmus himself was very fond of paremiography, for he liked drawing great lessons from the few, small words that proverbs consist of. Erasmus’s Adagia, mentioned above, were a great collection of proverbial wisdom meant to instruct the prince, who could consult them in abridged versions, along with De duplici copia verborum, which was published in 1512, and mainly consisted of commonplaces that could be used in rhetorical exercises. These proverbs, accompanied by comments of a few lines on each, sometimes written as dialogues to enlighten the reader - such as The Colloquies - met with such public favour that Erasmian editions proliferated: dozens of new versions were published and their content kept expanding until the 1550s. Erasmus had a taste for maxims and the memorable words of illustrious men that were perpetuated by Plutarch. That is why the first edition of his Education of a Christian Prince (Institutio principis christiani) printed at Basel, in 1516, also included Isocrates’s maxims to Nicocles (Ad Nicoclem), along with his own Panegyric for the Duke of Burgundy, Philip the Handsome, father to Charles of Ghent - the future Holy Roman Emperor Charles V - and Plutarch’s moral opuscule on How to Tell a Flatterer from a Friend.¹⁵

In a famous episode already mentioned above, in 1554, as she was busy translating a text into Latin and practising rhetoric, Mary Stuart turned to this book for helpful inspiration and used it as a model for her own speech condemning tyranny and advocating its suppression. The aim of her rhetorical exercise being to justify the prince’s political doctrine and principles of wisdom, in other short letters, mostly addressed to her younger friend, Elizabeth of Valois, Mary Stuart chose to draw her inspiration from maxims derived from the memorable words and deeds of ancient kings, captains and philosophers, as they had been previously collected by Plutarch, in his Moralia, and commented on by Erasmus, in his Apophthegmata, which were reissued countless times - nearly 70 - between 1531 and 1574.¹⁶ Mary Stuart kept resorting to this book and borrowing ideas from the three thousand maxims that she had personally selected, until the completion of her educational exercise, in January 1555 - she probably used the edition that had been printed at Lyon, in 1548. She used the examples that she regarded as worthy of illustrating her argumentation in twenty-three letters, which represented more than a quarter of the entire exercise.

Besides the brevity of their form, apophthegms were beneficial in many ways: they facilitated memorization, they made practising Latin and essay writing easier, and finally, they helped pupils learn ethics and absorb moral values.¹⁷

1.6 Encyclopedia

Encyclopedic types of books and publications were also particularly well-suited for princes, for whom, for example, Plutarch’s works were intended, as he assumed that they were too busy to read lengthy books. Therefore, they needed books to be short but edifying. By positing such an argument, Plutarch justified the concision of his own works. Following in his wake, Renaissance pedagogues applied the same principle to their teaching and always made a point of using a comprehensive approach and synoptic material with their princely pupils. Thus, Filelfo reported that the Duke of Milan had little time to devote to reading complete works, but that he could always take a few minutes to study apophthegms. Encyclopedias and other books arranged thematically perfectly answered this purpose and were often used to educate young princes.

As for the letters that Mary Stuart wrote discussing the prince’s political doctrine, the young queen probably turned to Ravisius Textor’s Officina, which was issued in several different editions after 1520. Due to its encyclopedic nature, this book broaches several themes, which are then enriched with many illustrative maxims and examples drawn from ancient and more recent history. When Mary chose to seize this book and take advantage of it to illustrate her letters, her aim was to show her young addressee how many women were actually learned. Throughout these fifteen letters, she almost copied Tixier’s remarks, which had been directly drawn from Plutarch’s own list of illustrious women. In this respect, the information put forward by the Queen of Scotland, in her correspondence, is quite comparable to the argumentative section drawn up in ‘mirrors of princes’, which usually provides a compilation of memorable words and deeds, like Guillaume Budé’s Institution du prince.

1.7 Plutarch

Plutarch seems to be the common reference point in all the compendiums compiled by Erasmus, Vives, Tixier, and so many others. Indeed, as Mary Stuart herself reckoned, in her rhetorical exercise, Plutarch is a philosopher worthy of instructing the prince. This Greek historian and moralist was actually the one most often quoted and recommended by masters and tutors for shaping the young prince’s mind, which is why the psychological portraits of ancient, illustrious characters, drawn in his moral works, abound in specula principum. Although they remained scattered for a long time, these Moralia were partially collected and translated by many different scholars, in the early XVth century, in Italy. Among them was Guarino da Verona, whose Latin translation of De Liberis Educandis helped Enea Silvio Piccolomini, the future Pope Pius II, write his Institution for King Ladislaus of Hungary.

The first Greek edition, including ninety-two treatises, was then published by Aldus Manutius (also known as Aldo Manuzio), in 1509. It was followed by Jean Froben’s edition, which was issued at Basel, in 1542. The complete edition was compiled much later, in 1570, on Xylander’s initiative. However, it was probably the small Erasmian edition of 1514, established from Manutius’s Greek version, which best facilitated its circulation among princes, together with several translations into vernacular languages. Sir Thomas Elyot, the author of the Boke named the Governour - a ‘mirror’ intended for English dignitaries and members of the governing class, published in 1531 - translated Plutarch’s Moralia into English. Later, on the Continent, the great French edition of 1572 was initiated by Jacques Amyot,¹⁸ former tutor to the royal Children of France. Therefore, in the XVIth century, especially in Lyon, humanist circles lent their support to Plutarch’s moral works, so that they met with great success. In 1542, Sébastien Gryphe published a collection of his Moralia, based on the translations drawn up by various scholars, such as Guarino da Verona, Budé, Melanchthon, Poliziano, Pirckheimer and Erasmus.¹⁹ This was not a first, though: Josse Bade had already edited his own, personal selection of Plutarch’s Moral Works, in a volume entitled Opuscula Plutarchi Chaeronei, at Paris, back in 1521.

However, throughout the years 1530–1540, several editions showed the dynamism and vitality of the Lyon humanist circle, formed around the figures of Maurice Scève and Jean de Tournes, and revealed their close connection with the royal court and the world of princely preceptorship. Plutarch was then regarded as the master most worthy to instruct the prince, as Amyot wrote in his preface to his Moralia, which he dedicated to Charles IX. As a result, his lessons permeated all textbooks, including educational treatises for young princes - also known as ‘Institutions of the prince’. This is evidenced in Jean Brèche’s Manuel royal, published in 1541, which also features Plutarch’s treatise on the necessary instruction of the prince, entitled Commentaire de Plutarcque, autheur grec, De la doctrine du prince.

As for Mary Stuart, who benefited greatly from the lessons given by our ancient moralist and philosopher, considering Amyot’s French translations of Plutarch’s works included in his 1572 edition, she probably read the following essays: Instruction pour ceux qui manient les affaires d’Etat, De la Vertu, si elle peut s’enseigner and Deux traitez De la Fortune ou Vertu d’Alexandre. The young queen of Scotland probably used a later Latin edition of Plutarch’s Moralia, such as the one issued by Sébastien Gryphe, at Lyon, in 1542, and published in two octavo volumes. Thanks to the many, precious collections of maxims and exempla contained in ‘mirrors’, the young royal was able to develop a culture perfectly suited to princely ethics - and thus, educate himself to his political ideal.

1.8 Classical Rhetoric

2.1 Teaching Virtue

Thus, political virtue, most highly prized by ancient philosophers, became the privilege of those that had received adequate instruction, since according to Aristotle, virtue could be taught. Hence, it was the prince’s own royal prerogative and duty to transcend his material inheritance - his earthly possessions gained by birth - and elevate himself through his only true wealth - wisdom and knowledge acquired through studying the humanities and receiving moral instruction.

Like Budé and Plutarch before them, Erasmus’s and Brèche’s ‘mirrors’ associated the idea of a perfect prince with the virtue of liberality, which is derived from a certain disregard for riches. In the Aristotelian tradition, despite the undeniable importance of material goods, which are necessary to the royal dignity – a point incidentally stressed and defended by the young Edward VI in his Greek rhetorical exercises - these are much inferior to spiritual goods, nevertheless.

Actually, these spiritual goods were acquired through reason – through the humanities, and thus through “philology”, which dispels the shadows of barbaric ignorance: “every lively, bright man endowed with a natural gift for eloquence should have, as his daily and nightly companion, a lady named philology, that is to say, a love for the humanities and an inclination for studying. The ancients called these subjects “human” because, if it wasn’t for their intrinsic knowledge of humanity, we would almost live like brutes, since there is nothing in which man really differs from a savage beast except in his scholarly talk […]”.³² Hence, this is an indictment against ignorant beasts, an apologia for the philosopher king, who is also a learned prince, given his education, and a plea for the princes’ patronage of the humanities.

In one of her short Latin letters written to Elisabeth of Valois, back in August 1554, Mary Stuart used one of Pseudo-Isocrates’s maxims to Demonicus (in Ad Demonicum) to illustrate the topos of political humanism: “be certain that it is better to be rich in doctrine than to accumulate treasures”. This very same precept was also borrowed by Plutarch and Cicero - who used it in the sixth paradox (“That the wise man alone is rich”) of his own Paradoxes of the Stoics and thus popularised it through the textbooks that were traditionally recommended for the prince’s instruction, such as Erasmus’s Institutio principis christiani and Juan Luis Vives’s Introductio ad sapientiam (n ° 21). In order for the prince to be “rich in doctrine”, according to Erasmus’s Declamatio, published in 1529, it was the duty of every good king to train his successor and entrust him to the care and guidance of an honest tutor.

In his Moralia, Plutarch expounded both the king’s moral obligation and the ethical qualities required in the prince’s tutor. Elyot later heavily drew on these points and developed them extensively, in his own Governour, and so did Roger Ascham, in his Schoolmaster.³³ The specula authors who tackled the subject all concurred in their view of the intellectual skills and abilities required in princely tutors: they should be able to teach their young royal charges the many remarkable historical events they needed to know, in order to acquire a sound political conscience, and were supposed to master philosophy and rhetoric.

Knowledge being a source of virtue, the prince’s tutor needed to be well-educated in the humanities and tolerably learned - especially in the classical Greek and Latin languages and literatures, as well as in history and religion. According to Eberlin, in the Reformed tradition, a good tutor should have read the Proverbs of Solomon and Ecclesiastes, Pseudo-Isocrates’s maxims to Demonicus (Ad Demonicum), Xenophon’s Cyropaedia, Cicero’s On Duties, Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria, Plutarch’s De liberorum institutione, St. Ambrose’s De officiis and Jean Gerson’s instructional treatises. What is more, he should also be familiar with Vergerio’s, Mancinelli’s, Agricola’s and Filelfo’s writings. Lastly, he should be well-acquainted with Enea Silvio Piccolomini’s Tractatus de liberorum educatione, have read Wimpfeling’s Adolescentia and De Integritate and know Erasmus’s Colloquia familiaria and Institutio principis christiani very well.

That is why finding a good, learned and benevolent tutor, attentive to the princely child and yet firm in his “taming”, one that would not seek to flatter him, but would simply be friendly - in accordance with Plutarch’s famous advisory essay on the training of children, included in his Moralia, published in many different editions over the years - was crucial to his formal education.

In fact, Erasmus, Budé, Jean Brèche, Elyot and German authors of specula were much more concerned about unsuitable royal tutors and princely corruption. That is why, in their writings, they all drew on Plutarch, using his image of the poisoned public fountain as a metaphor for the prince’s mind, which risked being corrupted by an immoral, unprincipled tutor. Incidentally, breaking the mould of normative rhetorical discourse in specula, some Institutions addressed to future rulers relied neither on exemplum, nor on exhortation nor on eulogy, but merely gave valuable teaching guidance to the prince’s tutor, reminding him of his duties and providing him with a short study programme, so that his young pupil would receive a sound education.

3.1 Historical Exampla and Military Virtue

History definitely played a major part in the art of educating young princes – all the more so as Renaissance pedagogues were particulary fond of wise, edifying historical anecdotes. Many European royal families used to pretend that their ancestors were descended from biblical and mythological figures.³⁷ Such claims were intended as propaganda glorifying royal dynasties by trumpeting the antiquity and nobility of their ancestry. In the second half of the XVth century, the proliferation of national myths popularised this idea and gradually turned their pretensions to such high descent into an officially endorsed paradigm. Consequently, humanist pedagogues strongly encouraged princely pupils to learn about history in their study programmes. Following their lead, royal tutors favoured it to feed the princes’ minds, broadening its scope to include the most noteworthy tales from classical Antiquity.

Juan Luis Vives, who was probably the tutor of this generation most heavily influenced by Erasmian thought, had thus also advised royal pupils to study history, in his De ratione studii puerilis, which was intended for two princely children: Princess Mary Tudor and the future fifth baron Mountjoy, Charles Blount, whose father was William Mountjoy, the queen’s chamberlain. He recommended the boy to read Tacitus, Caesar and Sallust, but suggested that Mary should rather focus her attention on Justin, Florus and Valerius Maximus. He also urged them both to read Plutarch, whose stories were imbued with highly moralistic virtues.

Historical knowledge was also at the heart of the dialectic in the specular work of Guillaume Budé, advisor to the king, philologist, real connoisseur of ancient Greek literature and author, back in 1516, of an Institution meant for the young king of France, Francis I. Thus, Budé attests to the essential function of history, which is to help the prince know the truth and teach him rhetoric and the art of eloquence: “[…] this vital history, which Cicero, the father of Latin eloquence, calls a witness of times past, an enlightened truth, the preservation of memory, the master of human life and a messenger from Antiquity”.³⁸ Jean Brèche, who had published, back in 1541, the Manuel royal to Jeanne d’Albret, was similarly preoccupied with history education. Therefore, history was regarded as a collection of the famous words and heroic deeds of illustrious men. As such, it was supposed to edify the royal pupil by feeding his imagination with a myriad exempla. From Thucydides to Tacitus, ancient wars were models of military virtue – as shown, in particular, in Xenophon’s Cyropaedia and Caesar’s Gallic Wars - and strategy - as evidenced in Vegetius’s De re militari, which was later heavily drawn on by Giles of Rome, in his own De Regimine Principum.³⁹

Besides, not only was the young hero moral and wise, but he was also endowed with a military virtue comparable to that of the young Cyrus, whose exploits were related by Xenophon. A pupil of Socrates, Xenophon had proposed a model of Republic based not on the philosopher king, but on the conqueror, a heroic figure whose virtue was essentially military, and thus no longer philosophical. Filelfo’s Latin version, dating back to 1474, was the one most widely printed and translated, thereby introducing princely modern political culture into the court of Burgundy – among other royal courts – through Vasco da Lucena, whose French translation of Xenophon’s Cyropaedia, was commissioned by the Duke. In France, Demoulins, royal tutor to Francis I, King of France and Count of Angoulême, regarded the Cyropaedia as a speculum principum likely to educate the young prince and instruct him in his royal dignity.⁴⁰ Claude de Seyssel’s French version, Histoire du voyage que fit Cyrus à l’encontre du Roy de Perse Artaxerxès, was printed in 1529. What is more, during the first half of the XVIth century, the Greek version of the Cyropaedia was translated into Castilian, Italian, English, and other vernacular languages.

As this work extolled the ideal figure of a virtuous prince, justifying the merits of an education that was both physical and intellectual - in a word, a model of Spartan instruction – and that would make him a great army captain, a brave conqueror, a victorious and merciful prince, a liberal ruler, a faithful, steady man, and a believer, respectful towards the gods - it can fairly be said to have given birth to modern political thought. Xenophon’s ambition was then quite similar to humanist pedagogues’, so that his influence was perceptible in works as varied as Machiavelli’s Prince and other XVIth-century specula, such as Erasmus’s Education of A Christian Prince, Elyot’s Boke named the Governour, Budé’s Institution du prince - addressed to King Francis I - and Roger Ascham’s Schoolmaster - intended for Elizabeth I.

As for Julius Caesar, another model of great conqueror, his writings were most certainly read and at least partially taught to young men from noble and princely families. Demoulins revisited Caesar’s Commentaries on the Gallic War (Commentarii de Bello Gallico), inventing a dialogue⁴¹ between Caesar and Francis I. As for the latter’s son, Henry II - who probably knew the history of the conquest of Gaul very well - one day in 1553, he questioned Louis Gonzaga, the son of the Marquess of Mantua and the future Duke of Nevers, about the lesson that Pierre Danès, royal tutor to the Children of France, had just taught on this historical work and its presumed author.⁴² But, just like that of Alexander, the figure of the conqueror was already deeply ambivalent. These two military geniuses, whose boldness and fortitude were supposed to inspire princes at any age, had waged wars which were deemed too dangerous and less necessary by Renaissance humanists, who urged that military affairs be taken seriously.

Though he greatly admired both Caesar (“the first of the Caesars […] was a man of great heart and mind”)⁴³ and Alexander, and though he was truly awed by the famous accounts of their exploits, perpetuating their renown, Budé insisted on the cost at which it was gained - namely through intemperance - contrary to Pompey, whose clement nature earned him a reputation for mildness and moderation, and made him a “serene” military commander. This hardly veiled criticism of Caesar and Alexander already conveyed a sense of the princes’ desire for peace. Yet, as he was “both valiant and knowledgeable”,⁴⁴ Caesar remained central to princely military training and political education, just like Alexander - well-known through Plutarch’s Parallel Lives and Quintus Curtius Rufus’s Histories of Alexander the Great - who similarly embodied both the adept military commander and the learned king taught by an eminent master: no less than Aristotle himself, an avid reader of Homer, most often praised for his liberality, in specula principis.

Therefore, role models were essential to moral teaching, as their life experiences showed the benefits of practising virtue. In his Triumph of Virtues, a ‘mirror for princes’ intended for the instruction of Louise de Savoie’s children, Margaret and Francis of Angoulême, Franciscan friar Jean Thenaud had emphasised their efficacy: “The prince must be shown honorable examples, which he can easily commit to memory, through paintings, mottoes, sermons, orations and readings, since practising talking, listening, living and living well daily will be useful to him in so many ways”.⁴⁵

3.2 The Wise King

The lives of illustrious men and collections of maxims were both much more widely read and frequently taught to edify the pupil. Since humanists considered that virtue - and especially wisdom, the mother of all virtues – could be learnt through knowledge and experience, thus the exemplum of princely virtues might be taught. Initially drawn from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, this ambition was also shared by Plutarch - who devoted his entire moral works to it - and the humanists - who believed that mankind would be enlightened by bonae litterae (“good letters”), and thus were confident in the future of humanity.

However, Renaissance ‘mirrors’ were generally more pragmatic, programmatic and contextual - except for Vives’s Ad Sapientiam, which still showed a rather spiritual conception of royal dignity - so that their purpose was not only limited to drawing up princes’ study plans. Actually, in keeping with Aristotle’s Ethics, these were but a means of instructing the prince in wisdom, which was not an end in itself, but a mere necessary condition for the prince to govern fairly, and thus be a good prince. According to specular dialectics, wisdom is therefore only a basis - often introducing the discourse, as in Erasmus’s Institutio principis christiani, which itself is built on certain foundations - such as education - whose soundness depends on the exemplarity of the prince’s entourage and on that of his royal tutor.

Erasmus was definitely the most influential figure in this movement: his handbooks fed the princes’ learning exercises and provided them with a certain ethical integrity and moral culture, while his Education of a Christian Prince was a model for other specula authors to emulate, and a real source of philosophical and methodological inspiration, imposing his vision of the prince and his governing style. In 1531, Sir Elyot advised everyone to read Erasmus’s manual, but insisted that it should be revisited regularly, like The Iliad by Alexander and The Cyropaedia by Scipio – the former being known for constantly re-reading Homer’s epic poem and the latter for keeping Xenophon’s fictional biography by his bedside: “It would not be forgotten that the little book of the most excellent Doctor Erasmus of Rotterdam (which he dedicated to Charles, who is currently emperor [Habsburg Emperor Charles V] and was then Prince of Castile), which book is entitled The Institution [Education] of A Christian Prince, would always be as familiar to gentlemen, at all times, and at every age, as Homer used to be to the great king Alexander or Xenophon to Scipio”.⁴⁶

Even though Erasmus’s speculum principis was contemporary with Budé’s Institution du prince in its handwritten version, it was yet utterly at variance with the latter’s rhetorical style. It is believed to have greatly inspired both Jean Brèche’s Manuel royal, ou Opuscule de la Doctrine et Condition du prince and Francisco de Monzón’s Mirror of a Christian Prince (El Espejo del Príncipe Cristiano). Furthermore, Erasmus’s Education of a Christian Prince was recommended as essential reading to young princes and future rulers, for whom programmatic ‘mirrors’ were intended. Besides, as was the case with Prince Eberhard, if one single ‘mirror’ was to be recommended for princes struggling in their studies to read, it was most likely to be Erasmus’s Education of a Christian Prince, as we have already mentioned.

Over the course of June 1516, while Erasmus was staying in Brussels, he was informed by publisher Jean Froben that his Education of a Christian Prince, along with several other appended treatises, were then fresh off the printing presses. The humanist had left Basel in early June for the Spanish Netherlands, where he had been appointed advisor to the young Charles of Ghent, a few months earlier. Later, through the intervention of chancellor Jean le Sauvage, he gained a position as royal tutor to the Prince Charles and his brother Ferdinand, to whom the 1518 edition of his book of counsel for princes was dedicated.

This ‘mirror’ was composed, published and distributed at a time when Christian Europe was seriously divided. In the midst of these incessant and threatening wars, Western Christianity could find neither unity – in order to jointly fight against the Ottomans, who were coming ever closer - nor harmony with its own spiritual expectations - the church reform movement having been stopped in its tracks by the Fifth Lateran Council, back in 1515. From that year onwards, hegemony was seriously jeopardised with Francis I’s accession to the throne, in January, and the resumption of the war in northern Italy, in the Duchy of Milan, which rapidly followed. However, in January 1516, the death of Ferdinand II, king of Aragon, opened up a difficult succession for the young prince Charles, destined to inherit the four legacies of territories and thus become the powerful king of France’s most redoubtable adversary. In short, that was another potential danger, thereby reinforcing Erasmus’s desire to raise the new young king of Spain’s awareness of the perils of war.

Still, in the ‘mirror’ intended for the young prince, who would soon hold Europe’s fate in his own hands, learning to be free entailed a wholly different kind of instruction. That is why, war - and thus peace - was the main topic of his lessons, and almost an entire quarter of the Education of a Christian Prince was devoted to it. Although he had already dealt with the subject in his 1515 adage, Dulce bellum inexpertis, far from thinking that he had sufficiently explored the question, Erasmus took it up again, two years later, in his 1517 popular tract, Querela Pacis. Considered one of his major works, this plea for peace soon became Erasmus’s ‘signature’ piece, showing both his humanistic calling to strive for social pacification and his own personal mission to instruct the prince in his irenic ambitions:⁴⁷ “But as much as you surpass Alexander in good fortune, mighty Prince Charles, so much do we hope you will surpass him in wisdom when facing it [adversity]. For this prince had gained a mighty empire, albeit one not destined to endure, solely through bloodshed. You have been born to a splendid kingdom and are destined to a still greater one. Just as Alexander had to toil to carry out his invasions, so will you have to labour even harder to willingly yield, rather than to gain, part of your kingdom. You owe it to the powers of heaven that you came into a kingdom untainted with blood, bought through no evil connection; from now on, it will be the lot of your wisdom to keep it bloodless and peaceful. The goodness of your nature, the integrity of your mind, the strength of your character, the education you have received from the most reliable tutors, as well as the many examples from your ancestors, surrounding you on every side, are all so very great that we have the highest hopes that Charles will some day do what the world long hoped his father Philip would do. If death had not cut him off before his time, he would not have disappointed the nations’ expectations”.⁴⁸

The prerequisite for this ambition, shared by a great many humanists, was ‘sapienza’ - namely the wisdom acquired through knowledge (including erudition and political virtues, such as prudence). Actually, Erasmus opens his discourse with the figure of the wise king, quoting several proverbs from Solomon, and a few aphorisms from Plato, on the duty of wisdom incumbent upon the one ruling in the name of God, whether he be elected by the people or superior to them all - not in rank or in wealth, but rather in spirit, in his being a philosopher king, ruling wisely and embracing philosophy. He is the one who surpasses others in wisdom and works tirelessly to develop the faculties of his soul. In this regard, Renaissance ‘mirrors’, especially Erasmus’s Education of a Christian Prince, seem to have borrowed their portrait of the perfect prince from Isocrates’s speech To Nicocles - son of Evagoras I, king of Salamis, in Cyprus - which describes him as noble, merciful, liberal, moderate and fair. But, above all, it depicts him as a prudent ruler, surrounding himself with wise, reliable advisors.

However, “indoctrinating” the prince by requiring him to read bonae litterae was not aimed at his gaining disinterested knowledge or his enjoying the sheer pleasure of learning for learning’s sake. On the contrary, this was supposed to give him proper ethical instruction, instilling into his mind a truly Christian moral doctrine. Therefore, teaching him to be wise really had no other purpose than to teach him to govern like a Christian king. Thus, the “good doctrine” inculcated into the prince would have so great an effect upon his mind that he would acquire wisdom - not through custom but through reason. Hence, hewould become strong and powerful, but would nonetheless behave fairly. Plato claimed that the king should be a philosopher, whereas Plutarch considered that he should be the living image of God and reflect Him through his virtue: “God created the sun as His most beautiful representation in heaven and placed a visible and living image of Himself among men: the king”.⁴⁹

This naturally leads us to the topic of virtue, which was expounded to the prince, at some length. Later, he practised and experienced it himself, since no prince can be more miserable and contemptible than the one who fails to curb and tame his vices and evil passions.

3.3 What Does It Mean to Be a Good King?

The Thomistic and Scholastic idea of the divine origin of political power once again prevailed over the conception of royal dignity, so that the latter was regarded more as a duty performed in the fear of God than as a due and a legacy. Hence, a rather doloristic view of sovereign power, making it akin to a divine mission, wholly devoted to serving the interests of the res publica, and crushing the king under the weight of its moral responsibility, as he struggles to be a fair ruler, caring for his subjects in a fatherly way, seems to constantly recur throughout specula. This echoes Aristotle’s own idea that the perfect ruler is a caring ‘father’ to his people, and that the ideal kingship is thus paternal government.

But what does it mean to be a ‘good’ king and what does it imply? Solomon, Xenophon, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Seneca and Plutarch, have all thoroughly examined the question and written extensively about the royal virtues that keep tyranny at bay, thus leaving us an entire legacy of material penned on the subject. Inspired by these authors and their treatises, François Demoulins composed several speeches dealing with virtue - such as his Dialogus (1505), a discussion between a devout confessor and a poor, penitent sinner about games of chance, dedicated to Francis of Angoulême, and intended to counter the young prince’s liking for cards and dice - which all remained in their handwritten form.

So did Stephen Baron, an English Franciscan friar living at Cambridge. His De Regimine Principum (1509) was dedicated to Henry VIII, to whom he acted as royal confessor. Baron’s ‘mirror for princes’ was a paranetic speech, modelled on Seneca’s De Clementia. It was meant to advise the young royal on how to be a wise Christian king, and thus eulogised charity. Armed with Christian virtues, the prince eschewed bad advice and abstained from indulging his vicious passions, so as to make his subjects happy and spread the benefits of his charity all over the world by refraining from waging war. To prove his point and demonstrate the soundness of his condemnation of war, Baron borrowed his arguments from many different sources, since numerous humanists shared his own abhorrence of bloodshed.

Drawing on Cicero’s Tusculanae Disputationes and De officiis, Aristotle’s Ethics and Boethius’s Consolatio philosophiae, Baron’s book of counsel for princes was certainly imbued with Thomistic ideas, whose effects on the prince’s education were many and varied, since their purpose was to ensure the future ruler’s happiness by teaching him to learn to obey, seek advice and accept criticism. Still, the Christian virtue of charity was but the product of justice - the mother of all virtues - and liberality. By combining these three moral virtues - all necessary to ensure public happiness and tranquility - Erasmus thus greatly emphasised the importance of the duty of justice, from which charity stemmed, according to Jean Brèche. That was why a fair king avoided being too liberal and did not deprive his subjects of food by imposing heavy taxes on them, thereby keeping social unrest at bay. This was also a subtle, indirect way for Erasmus to denounce the lavish spending and extravagant way of life of royal courts, whose members lived in sheer luxury.

The good king is therefore the one who protects the weak, endeavouring to “cure their sorrows”⁵⁰ and enforce the law, being himself - according to Erasmus - the “living embodiment of it”, assisted in his tasks by a small circle of magistrates and advisers. Since the royal dignity was the highest office, the one requiring the most wisdom, according to Isocrates’s advice to Nicocles, it was necessary for the king to be well advised and, for this purpose, that he should “elect, among all, principled individuals leading a good, moral life, and appoint them as magistrates and judicial office holders, so that the popular masses should not be overwhelmed by heavy, unfair taxes or subjected to undue pressure and abusive investigation by public law officers”.⁵¹

By extending his model of the ideal, virtuous prince to society as a whole, Erasmus confirmed his organicist vision of the latter and demonstrated its relevance - every member of the body being in its proper place, dependent on every other member and subject to the soul, which actually stood for the wise, uncorrupted prince.