1.1 Writing Mirrors of Princes in Castile: The Oriental Influences

The critical studies that have given an overview of the mirrors of princes in Castile in the 13th and 14th centuries have insisted on the influence of the Arab tradition, which, combined with literature produced locally or in the rest of Europe, nurtured original forms of political thought.¹ This influence was particularly clear in the time of Ferdinand III and Alphonso X, when there was a notable flourishing of vernacular prose, which has been categorized by critics as wisdom literature of eastern origin, whose main formal devices were exemplary stories and maxims, often spoken by philosophers, and sometimes directly addressing a fictional monarch.

The reign of Ferdinand III was a time of major cultural and historic upheavals in the kingdom of Castile, and these had an impact on the emergence of a literature of political mirrors. On one hand, the kingdom’s definitive union with León in 1230, and its territorial expansion southward after the military conquest of a large part of the Andalusian zone, conferred on Castile the de facto supreme position in Spain, and necessarily led to administrative transformations that would have incited a rethinking of the very idea of power. On the other hand, the adoption of Castilian by the royal chancellery gave the language a new status, reinforcing its legitimacy as a written language, and encouraging continuity between legal texts as such and treatises of wisdom literature written by people near to the Crown. This continuity was even formal and formulaic; prologues of texts written at court were often inspired by the phraseology of charters, something that became particularly noticeable later, in works produced under the aegis of Alfonso X.²

Rather than following chronological order, which is not always easy to establish, in the wisdom literature of the 13th century, it is more important to identify two different kinds of works. The first consists of translations of Arabic works, both collections of exemplary stories (Calila e Dimna, Sendebar) and collections of advice and maxims (Poridat de las poridades, Libro de los buenos proverbios, Bocados de oro).

In 1251, a year before he took the throne, the future King Alfonso X ordered the Arabic Kalīla wa Dimna to be translated into Castilian. This was a collection of fables of Indian origin, whose function as a mirror of princes was already well attested in Islamic countries. It is logical that the Castilian Calila e Dimna would inherit that function in its new context, although, in the absence of a prologue specific to the new version, the political project underlying it remained unmentioned. The preliminary sections are intended to justify the recourse to exemplary stories, while already using them and recounting the itinerary followed by the book: a Persian king, Sirechuel, eager to advance knowledge and encourage philosophers, sends his physician Berzebuey to India on a quest for wisdom; he returns with the book, itself structured as a dialogue between the Indian king Diçelem and his philosopher Burduben, who answers his questions by telling fables. While these royal listeners are flatteringly seen as promoters of knowledge—thus seeming to prefigure the ideal which Alfonso X later tried to embody—the fables told by Burduben present royal figures who are almost all failures, and therefore offer examples a contrario. That is the case notably in chapter III, where a lion, king of beasts, is urged by an ambitious counselor (the jackal Dimna, heedless of his friend Calila’s advice of moderation) to kill his favorite, the ox Sençeba. In this and the following chapters, the characters themselves become narrators of fables, sometimes with several levels of stories within the story, a new technique in Castilian prose.³ The models of action to imitate or avoid are thus systematically duplicated by models of reception of the words within the fiction itself, presenting interpretations that are sometimes correct but more often wrong. Through this game of mirrors, Calila e Dimna, putting knowledge into perspective without excluding irony, makes a mirror of itself within its own narrative structure. This idea, taken literally, is depicted humorously in the intrigue of some of the nested stories, like the fable of the hares tyrannized by a lion (chapter III), who get rid of him by having him confront his own reflection in the water of a well. Beyond its political precepts, Calila e Dimna, read as a mirror of princes, conveys the idea that a good king is above all a good interpreter.

The Sendebar, or Libro de los engaños, composed in 1253, was another translation from Arabic that came from the Castilian court, at the initiative of Prince Fadrique, brother of Alfonso X. This work shares many traits of Calila e Dimna. Its intention was to pass along political precepts, attached to exemplary stories, although here the method of nested stories is different: the dialogue between a king and his advisor is not the frame for the entire story, but a motif that runs through the main part, among several different figures at the same time. A prince, who because of an astrological prediction must remain silent for seven days, is falsely accused of rape by his evil stepmother, and his father King Alcos condemns him to death. Each day, through telling exempla, a counselor makes the king change his mind, but each following day the stepmother, who is a storyteller too, persuades her husband to confirm the sentence. Once the seven days have passed, the prince himself can speak, and tells his own stories, which, unconnected to any immediate argument, show his superior knowledge. While in Calila e Dimna, the royal listeners in the stories are treated as worthy, Alcos appears here as both a king with the utmost executive power and as an irresolute figure who changes his decision according to his advisors, incapable of any stable interpretation of what he hears. He does not base his power on knowledge, and embodies capricious law, while his son the prince, after his initiatory experience, proves that he has acquired the wisdom necessary for a future ruler. Although Fadrique, who was not called to rule, could not fully identify himself with this prince, he may have recognized in Alcos the authoritarianism of Alfonso X. The Sendebar certainly reflects the disquiet of members of the high nobility confronted with Alfonso’s dogged determination, from the earliest years of his reign, to strengthen royal power.

Poridat de las poridades (Secret of Secrets), a translation of Sirr al-asrār (10th century), was very probably thought of as a mirror destined for the future Alfonso X. The text takes the form of a letter from Aristotle to Alexander the Great. Beyond its disconcerting and encyclopedic eclecticism (physiognomy, bodily hygiene, gemology) and its numerological hermeticism, it is centered on the relation of a king to his subjects —more precisely, on the knowledge of other human beings that a king must have in order to rule them. The Libro de los buenos proverbios was certainly composed during the reign of Alfonso X. An adaptation of the Kitāb ādāb al-falāsifa of Hunayn Ibn Ishāq (9th century), a work that has been lost, the treatise is made up essentially of lists of maxims attributed to Greek philosophers, both singly and in groups, but it also contains exemplary stories, as well as an epistolary section centered on Aristotle’s advice to Alexander, ending with the death of the latter, as if to follow Poridat de las poridades. The book praises knowledge, which is said to have been passed down in golden letters in precious manuscripts, and makes this correspond to the sumptuous decoration of the palace: at a gathering of philosophers, in a gilded, richly decorated room, the king’s son, wearing a crown, must publicly recite what he has learned. The philosophers also become metaphorical chancellors; a list is given of the maxims engraved upon their seals. Everything comes together to anchor knowledge within the court space, to make it a criterion of good government. As for Bocados de oro, a translation of a compilation by Al-Mubashshir ibn Fātik (11th century), it certainly dates to the reign of Alfonso X as well (1260s?). In it, we again find lists of maxims, usually accompanied by brief biographies of the philosophers who spoke them, showing the parallels between their actions and their teachings. Two long successive chapters refer respectively to Aristotle and Alexander, but —this is a new element—Alexander’s deeds are no longer only his execution of Aristotle’s words; Alexander himself is now considered a philosopher, as maxims are also attributed to him (usually witticisms, linked to concrete cases where he exercises his rule). The monarch is not only the intended recipient of knowledge, but becomes its producer, according to a model that must have greatly interested Alfonso X.

Along with these translations, other collections of maxims and advice that were produced in Castile imitated the characteristics of eastern treatises, while at the same time trying to systematize their material (often by dividing it into themed chapters on vices and virtues), and configuring them more explicitly as mirrors; the discourse on kings was clearly more important than discourse that would apply to everyone, while the strategy of exalting royal power was underscored. The Libro de los doze sabios continued the theme of a gathering of sages speaking their maxims, but these are Christians, and are supposed to provide spiritual as well as temporal counsel. Moreover, the sages take responsibility for creating the book; in a prologue, already anchored in the fiction, they address Ferdinand III, who has called them together so that they may set down for him in writing the virtues of a good ruler. Not only Ferdinand but also his descendants would thereby be able to study the work and “look into it as into a mirror”;⁴ the king is even said to have made several copies for his sons. This integration of the mirror into the family tree is confirmed in the treatise’s epilogue, which states that when Alfonso X was confronted by the grave disorders caused by his brothers in the first years of his reign, he decided to gather the twelve sages again. After giving him much good advice, they praised his deceased father, devoting twelve maxims to him to be engraved in golden letters upon his tomb. Some critics have affirmed that this treatise was written about 1237, except for the epilogue, which was added around 1255,⁵ or even composed in three different phases;⁶ but others⁷ have ventured the idea that the whole book dates from the first years of Alfonso’s reign. The fiction of the twelve sages thus creates out of nowhere a providential continuity with his father’s reign, at a time when Alfonso was carrying out major legislative plans⁸ that were strongly opposed by much of the high Castilian nobility.

The Flores de filosofía, too, was written towards the middle of the 13th century. Its matter is structured into leyes (laws), which are nothing but maxims strung together, each supposedly spoken by a philosopher, and which were said to have been collected and edited later by Seneca, the Roman sage whose city, Córdoba, also evoked Arab culture. In the same vein as the eastern treatises, this book extols knowledge for its own sake, while demonstrating that it is also the best tool for domination—including by an illegitimate ruler. The royal figure is treated as supreme: law, king and justice are linked from the outset in a relationship like that of the Trinity (“the law is the guardian of the king, and the king is the guardian of the law, and the sword, which represents justice, is the guardian of all”)⁹, while kingdom and king are bound together like body and soul.

1.2 Alfonso X and the Making of the Law

Even more than the translations mentioned earlier, the Libro de los doze sabios and the Flores de la filosofía resonate with the ideas promoted by legal texts of Alfonso’s time. The Flores was used as a source for the Partidas (before giving rise to an expanded version called Libro de los cien capítulos, possibly dating to the 1280s, as well as providing whole passages of the Libro del caballero Zifar). While they were long considered as landmarks of an isolated tradition, most of these wisdom treatises were produced at the initiative of the Crown, and accompanied the king’s lawmaking. Not only did these texts discuss the law, but to varying degrees they also promoted the idea of the king as the sole legislator, a central concept of legal thought in Alfonso’s time. A change of course may even be observed around the year 1256, when the embassy of Pisa proposed that Alfonso take the title of Holy Roman Emperor, an event that greatly influenced the composition of the Siete Partidas.¹⁰

For a sovereign seeking to free himself from any kind of spiritual tutelage, the enormous advantage of these works was that they were devoid of any trace of the Church. They contrast with another model of royal power, which also resembled a mirror, formed by the poems of the mester de clerecía —written by clergy probably connected to the court. The Libro de Alexandre (first third of the 13th century), possibly written at about the time of the accession of Ferdinand III, and the Libro de Apolonio (whose date is less certain, but which may have been written in the 1240s or in the first years of Alfonso X’s reign) both glorify royalty, but from a background of clerical values. In the Libro de Alexandre, in which Aristotle educates the young king of Macedonia as a scholastic master would, the ruler leans toward military conquest and empire, but confronts his limits because of his sin of pride. The Libro de Apolonio sets out the model of a scholarly king, called clérigo entendido (where clérigo, even in its larger sense of a wise man, evokes an education imbued with clerical values), lacking any military inclination, but endowed with cortesía (courtesy). A victim of unpredictable ventura (fate), he suffers great losses, but as a homo viator in a world where divine providence acts secretly, he ends by re-establishing his power, finding himself at the head of a vast territory much like an empire. According to many scholars, these figures of pagan kings, elevated as exempla, present motifs that in hindsight could have been attributed to Alfonso VIII, Ferdinand III, and Alfonso X; but from the time of their conception, these poems proposed to the king a contract with the clergy, a clericalization of royalty,¹¹ which, while not excluding the possible spiritual aspect, would also frame and control his sovereignty.

The political agenda of Alfonso X, as developed through his legal production, was completely different. Confronted with the diversity of local fueros (jurisdictions, bodies of law), which came from customary law, his plan was to construct a new social order, drawing strength from the diffuse heritage of the Visigothic tradition of the king as lawmaker, supported by contributions from Roman law. It aimed first of all at a unification and systematization that would allow fueros to be replaced by laws made by the king, who at the same time ensconced himself as the sole source of law and guarantor of legal expertise. This design was manifested and effected through several texts which the king claimed to have conceived and produced.

In the first place, the Fuero real was conceived as a fuero that would contribute to the progressive legal uniformity of the kingdom by being granted to several cities, beginning in 1255–1256. However, its prologue affirms that it is right for kings to make laws, and moreover, far from limiting itself to the strict measures of a municipal code, the text devotes its second section to the guarda del rey: both the protection of the king and the respect due to him.

At the same time, in 1255, the Espéculo was a first attempt, although an unfinished one, at a systematic legal code that would apply to the whole kingdom, although aimed mainly at the court and city judges, and superseding any previous legal texts. In the prologue, the king declares that he wants to put an end to the instability, contradictions and deficiencies of the fueros by decreeing new laws that would keep all that was correct from the previous ones, but that in reality were configuring something new, inspired by Roman and canonical law. The first book begins by defining law: it is not yet clearly in opposition to the fueros, but the emperor and the king are named as the only possible lawmakers, unless they delegate this function to others. They can also amend the law, through necessary additions, omissions or modifications. The discourse on the king amplifies and radicalizes the Fuero real discourse, explaining in detail the guardia del rey (the king is defined as the soul and the head of the people; the second metaphor refers to his function as lawmaker, in particular) and the onrra del rey (the person of the king must be honored in every circumstance, whether he is seated, standing or lying). Here, the prescribed models of behavior apply only to subjects, not to the monarch. The Espéculo is certainly a mirror, as its title indicates, but it is not a mirror of princes; as a mirror of all rights (“espejo de todos los derechos”), it is presented to the gaze of a judge, and by extension to other subjects, so that they may recognize themselves in it and conform to it. It is created, given, and guaranteed by the king, but he is not, for all that, an absolute monarch; he himself is also subject to the law, in fact more than anyone else. However, whatever power the king loses in theory, he gains in power of representation. The implicit idea is that the king is the embodiment of the law.

This idea becomes explicit in the Siete Partidas, a work of extraordinary scope, although it was originally conceived of as a reworking of the Espéculo, motivated by the new imperial intent. Only the first book survives¹² from its original version (1256–1265), which was entitled Libro del fuero de las leyes (and there is nothing to indicate that there were actually seven books), whose first título (title or section) is almost identical to that of the Espéculo; the following títulos provide a treatise on canonical law. Thus, as soon as he had established his own power to make laws, the king pronounced upon Church law from a position that seemed to be above papal jurisdiction.

In a second version (1272–1275) and a third (before 1278?), the book is divided into seven parts: I. canonical law; II. a treatise on temporal power; III. justice; IV. law on the family and on dependents; V. contracts and private law; VI. inheritance law; VII. penal law. The prologue aims to institute law starting with a new paradigm, which radicalizes the relation between the king and the law. On the one hand, the mirror is given not to subjects but to the king himself, with a view to the future, for Alfonso intended the work for his successors: “We have deliberately made this book so that the kings of our domain will forever look into it as if it were a mirror, and that they will see the things that they must rectify, and rectify them”.¹³ On the other hand, citing Aristotle as well as the Bible, the prologue finishes with a long exposition of the virtues of the number seven. This number also refers to the indestructible bond between the king and the law, as the initial letters of each Partida altogether spell the name ALFONSO. While other western royal regimes based their sovereignty on their sacred nature, the Partidas constructed it from this metonymic bond between corpus regis and corpus juris.¹⁴ As well as contemplating himself in the law, the king becomes the living image of the law. The metaphor of the mirror thus acquires an ontological, even mystical, meaning, making the quest for absolutism unnecessary. The king has no need to liberate himself from the law, for he himself embodies the law. Thus, the fourth and fifth sections of the Segunda Partida regulate the words¹⁵ and actions of the king, even down to the physical stance he should adopt; here we find prescriptions that in the Espéculo were aimed at courtiers, but which now concern the king. Applied to the king, these norms, which are more in the domain of etiquette than of ethics, do not have the goal of limiting his power, but on the contrary emphasize his visibility. In a kind of mirror within a mirror, the law demonstrates that the king manifests the law. Moreover, the first section of the Primera Partida offers a much more exclusive notion of the law than that of the Espéculo or the Libro del fuero de las leyes. On the one hand, the law is now clearly distinguished from usos (practices), costumbres (customs), and fueros; on the other hand, the king, still the sole producer of laws, is also the only one who can order them to be amended, which is the reason it is suitable that he surrounds himself with experts in legal knowledge. Even the clarification of the law’s meaning must remain within his purview; this immediately excludes free interpretation of the text. This hermeneutic closure makes the king himself the guardian of the language of the law.¹⁶

To control the text of the law is, by virtue of its performativity, to bring a new order, and in particular a new kind of royalty, into the world. The Segunda Partida combines legislative prescription with a theoretical exposition of political law, of varied origin: biblical and patristic tradition; Roman law in its pro-imperial interpretation, following the ideology of the Hohenstaufen family of Alfonso’s mother; Aristotle’s Ethics, but also his Politics, in one of its very first utilizations in the medieval West;¹⁷ and wisdom treatises of eastern origin. The prologue takes up the Gelasian theory of the two swords, but only to reinforce the universality of the temporal sword, which cuts through all visible evils. The first section indicates that the emperor does not receive this from the Pope, by delegation, but directly from God, whose vicar he is. As for the kings, they form a similar vicariate: “Vicars of God are the kings, each in his realm, placed above the people to keep them in justice and in truth in the temporal world, just as the emperor is in his empire”.¹⁸ This is not an original idea, but the similarity of the two powers allows the Partidas to establish the royal and the imperial plans of Alfonso X using a discourse that can be interpreted on two separate levels. However, the power of the king is in some ways superior to that of the emperor. On the one hand, kingship, more ancient, originally had a spiritual dimension, as God Himself is the king of kings; on the other hand, the royal function is not elective but hereditary, meaning that the king can give away a part of his kingdom if necessary, which leads to a patrimonial conception of royalty.¹⁹ This intrinsic relation of the king to his kingdom is summarized by an old metaphor, renewed here, in line with a phrase from the Flores de Filosofia and the Espéculo: the king is not only, as in John of Salisbury, the head of the kingdom, ruling all its members, but also the people’s heart and soul. Just as the soul, whose seat is in the heart, makes the body live, so justice, whose seat is in the king, makes the people live.

Moreover, this bond between the king and the people is shown through an original concept, naturaleza, which must be distinguished from the concept of natura (in its double meaning of “nature”, or the order of Creation, and “birth”, the fulcrum of rank and lineage), although the lawmaker makes the most of etymology to suggest that in the political sphere, naturaleza is the counterpart of the natura established by God.²⁰ This naturaleza, as theorized in the Cuarta Partida, is defined as a specific bond that unites people in a vertical relationship (that of the sovereign and his naturales) or a horizontal one (that of the naturales to each other), but also of people to a territory, the one where they were born or where they have lived for a long time. The notion of señor natural gives rise to a rethinking of the king’s relation to members of the high nobility; not only is the passively occurring naturaleza distinguished from the king’s relationship with his vassals, but all the effort of the Partidas goes into establishing that it is more important. As a result of naturaleza, the great nobles become subjects of the king, just like other members of the political community, and thus the entire feudal regime is left behind.

In 1272, a general uprising among the nobility began in Castile, just as the second version of the Partidas was being written. This reaction by the feudal aristocracy is largely explained by the content of the book’s political program, which ten years later led to the de facto deposition of the king, who retreated to Seville, one of the last cities that stayed loyal to him. The last stage of Alfonsine legal production, dating from these years of political impotence, was the Setenario (the last third of his reign?), a text organized into laws, although its legal discourse is enriched throughout with the language of wisdom literature, and occasionally of historiography. The first eleven laws reprises elements of the prologue of Siete Partidas, considerably amplified; and its contents are systematically organized into seven-item lists. Because his name, Alfonso, began with alpha and ended with omega, the king could state that he had received the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. He then expatiates on the virtues linked to the seven letters in the name of his father “Ferando”. Through a lengthy panegyric to Ferdinand III, who was said to have produced the first version of the book himself (this has led some critics, even today, to date the Setenario to the 1250s), Alfonso projects onto the figure of his father a systematic and thorough version of his own ‘political science’ in order to create a convenient continuity between their two reigns, attributing his own innovations to that universally respected monarch.²¹

Although the question has been debated, it seems to be established that the Partidas were not promulgated during the reign of Alfonso X, and that they did not enter into effect until 1348, under the reign of Alfonso XI, through a provision in the Ordenamiento de Alcalá that made them a supplemental legal code. Not only did this work remain an obligatory reference for all legal and political thought in the Hispanic world, but its own configuration predisposed it to multiple ‘reactivations’ at specific historical moments.²² For our purposes, it is important to emphasize that, within the handwritten or printed tradition of the Partidas, the ‘legalist’ versions, close to their initial state as conceived by royal jurists, existed alongside ‘wisdom literature’ versions that, departing from their original prescriptive role, were developing the idea of royal centrism understood partly from an absolutist point of view, which is absent from the first version of the Partidas.²³

One of the remarkable traits of Alfonso X’s legal texts is that it is the king who articulates the political doctrine of the mirror. Two texts produced in Castile after the end of his reign continued this pattern. In Castigos del rey don Sancho IV (1293), the king—Alfonso’s second son, who had helped depose his father and was cursed by him—addresses his own son, the future Ferdinand IV, to give him moral and political advice focused on the royal role, illustrating vices and Christian virtues with a plethora of exempla and maxims. The king says that he has written the treatise with the help of “científicos sabios”, perhaps jurists.²⁴ Although the content of some passages originates in eastern tradition, the sources mentioned refer to religious history or to a lesser extent to classical antiquity or contemporary Castile, as if to distance the work from the Arab models emblematic of the preceding reign. Even though direct imitations of the Partidas can sometimes be detected, the imprint of the clergy is constantly visible throughout the discourse, giving the mirror the feeling of a sermon²⁵ tinged with references to canon law. While consolidating Sancho’s fragile legitimacy and reaffirming royal centrism, the work offers remarkable rhetoric, like the long allegory in chapter XI, which projects the doctrine of the mirror onto the insignia and ornaments of a king enthroned in all his majesty. As with Alfonso, the royal prerogatives tend to overflow from the temporal to the spiritual realm, especially in establishing their distinctive relationship to truth, held to be the foundation of the political bond.

This was not true of the Castigos del rey de Mentón, a section of the Libro del caballero Zifar (1330s?) which also presents itself as a mirror articulated by a king, but this time within a fiction. This king is Zifar himself, after his knightly adventures, and his instructions are destined for his sons Garfin and Roboán; at the end of the story, Roboán becomes emperor. Unlike the Castigos of Sancho IV, this text draws abundantly from eastern wisdom literature, taking entire passages from Flores de filosofía. Furthermore, unlike Sancho speaking to Prince Ferdinand, the king of Mentón does not at the outset consider his sons as future monarchs, and his teaching—sometimes presented as simple advice—seems to envision several different kinds of listeners. The advice variously describes ideal versions of a king, a great lord, a courtier or a counselor—their ranks do not seem to be exclusive, as they must all cultivate the chivalric virtues. The mirror’s configuration may reflect a concern for social harmony in a context that may be that of Alfonso XI’s conflict with some of his great vassals, especially Don Juan Manuel.²⁶ While referring to an imaginary world centered on lineage, Zifar questions the notion of nobility, which is no longer limited to the rank received at birth, but is achieved by practicing a code of ethics. The king is thus presenting a model of nobility in which he can also recognize his own royalty.

1.3 A Mirror Against the Law: Um styrilsi konunga ok höfthinga

In Sweden, the mirrors of kings did not originate in the tradition of wisdom or maxim literature. On the other hand, their relation to the law, which had been written down beginning in the 13th century, seems to have been crucial. Um styrilsi konunga ok höfthinga (On the government of kings and princes) is an adaptation into old Swedish of the mirror of Giles of Rome, De regimine principum.²⁷ It was published for the first time in 1634 by Gustavus Adolphus’s tutor Johannes Bureus, who dedicated the book to the king’s daughter, Queen Christina. In the 17th century, this political treatise, which aspires to demonstrate the superiority of the hereditary principle over that of the elective, met an ideological context favorable to its diffusion: for almost a century, the Swedish monarchy had become hereditary. The 15th-century manuscript, probably originating in Vadstena, that Bureus used disappeared shortly afterwards,²⁸ but in 1867, fragments of a medieval manuscript of Um styrilsi konunga dating from 1430–1440 proved that Bureus’s text was reliable.²⁹

Um styrilsi konunga includes no dedication. However, this kind of didactic literature was normally aimed at a specific recipient. De regimine principum was written for the elder son of Philip III of France. When it was translated into Castilian by the Franciscan Juan García de Castrojeriz in about 1344, at the request of Bishop Barnabas of Osma, it was intended for the future Peter of Castile; the bishop was his tutor. This Castilian translation has the particular feature of a commentary, which adds many exempla, but also occasionally rewrites, reorganizes, or corrects the original text, and attempts to develop to the utmost the synthesis of Aristotelian philosophy and moral theology that had already been presented by Giles on a Thomist foundation.³⁰ The Swedish adaptation of the mirror dates from the same years as the Castilian version.³¹ Philological analysis has indeed shown that the Swedish mirror could only have been written in the first half of the 14th century.³² There is a definite similarity between the Swedish mirror and the ordinances promulgated by King Magnus Eriksson beginning in 1335.³³ It is therefore likely that Magnus Eriksson’s sons Håkon and Erik, born in 1339 and 1340, were the intended readers.³⁴

Um styrilsi konunga is a work written in prose. In the 14th century, prose in Swedish was used only for charters and collections of laws, or for the composition of hagiographic or scholarly texts.³⁵ The use of prose is explained by the normative nature of this text, intended for the king and the great men of the kingdom. The work also has a clerical aspect. It is presented as an adaption of works written by masters (mästara), in other words authorities, linked to the world of universities. Its last three sections correspond to those in the De regimine principum, composed according to the three branches of practical philosophy; but the Swedish author places a new chapter at the beginning, where “it is explained why the people must have a king, and upon whom it is incumbent by right to be king”;³⁶ and in each section, he organizes the arguments of his model, sometimes quite freely, using complementary sources as well, in particular Thomas Aquinas’s De regno. In its thorough mastery of scholastic reasoning, the Swedish mirror also testifies to the influence of the Swedish students who were bringing new ideas back to Sweden after studying on the continent. The authorship of Master Mathias is one serious hypothesis. This canon of Linköping, who died in 1350, had studied in Paris. He composed scholarly works and was close to King Magnus Eriksson.³⁷

The Swedish mirror served as a way to circulate the latest developments in political philosophy, especially the promotion of a monarchical state on the French model, i.e. centralized and hereditary.³⁸ The description of a state founded on the relation between a lawmaking king and his people, as well as the absence of reference to feudal relations, probably made it more acceptable in Sweden, where those relations had never constituted a real political system; but the question of inheritance was a thorny one in this elective monarchy. In the second chapter of the last section, devoted to government in peacetime, Giles of Rome contends that a hereditary kingdom is preferable, because the interests of the king and of the kingdom will then be the same. Moreover, a king who inherits his kingdom seldom becomes a tyrant, for he has already acquired his subjects’ obedience. This argument allows Giles of Rome to conclude that power should be transmitted in order of male primogeniture. However, he begins by affirming that in itself, it would be better to designate a ruler by election; it is man’s corruption that makes the hereditary system preferable. Giles of Rome was not the only writer to take this stance at the end of the 13th century.³⁹ To adapt the mirror to Swedish elective law would therefore have been easy, but the author manifestly chose another point of view. He added a chapter showing the superiority of hereditary succession, and distanced himself somewhat from Giles of Rome’s position, refusing to admit the theoretical superiority of election. The mirror, then, contradicts Swedish elective law, which has been attested from the beginning of the 13th century and was developed with precision in the 1335 Charter of Election.

Indeed, the first book opens, like De regno, with the statement that everything that has been created, to accomplish its purpose in being created, must be governed. The author holds that the entire population must lead a just life, which implies marriage and the possession of goods acquired in a just manner. This first argument in favor of the hereditary principle establishes the family and its patrimony as the foundation of human society. Then the author, following De regno, emphasizes that humans must live in society to make up for their weaknesses through their own industry, and to benefit from the activity of others. At this point in the argument, the author inserts an objection that allows him to introduce his main subject: when many people are together, they all want to act as they please, and discord can break out. It is necessary for people to be governed, and led towards peace and freedom. They must be protected from their enemies with strength and with good counsel. The people, the author concludes, call those who thus protect them kings and princes.

The introduction of the word “king” gives the author the chance to propose his main argument in favor of heredity.

The king (kununger) gets this name from his kindred (kyni), for the king must come only from a good kin. He must be king by (äpte) birth and inheritance, after (äpte) his father and his ancestors. The kindred (kyn) give good advice and urge him to pious acts.⁴⁰

Konunger, in fact, means “one who comes from a kindred”.⁴¹ But the inclusion of the possessive adjective sin shows that the author wanted to create an additional meaning, based on a wordplay between the word kyni and the thing it designates, the family. This inheritance is a name: that of king. The phrase means both “kununger is a word that derives from kyni” and “the king receives his power from his family”. This confusion between etymology and genealogy, which was identified by Howard Bloch⁴² as a veritable “mental structure” of the medieval era, allows hereditary succession to be justified by recourse to the Swedish language. The Swedish elective tradition is thus immediately disqualified by etymology.⁴³ The author adds an explanation to this argument, in the form of a zeugma: the king must be king by (äpte) birth and inheritance, as he is king after (äpte), i.e. in the place of his father.

Contrary to Swedish law, which stipulated that the king should “preferably”⁴⁴ be the son of a king, the mirror shows that he must necessarily be one. As Giles of Rome states, only the hereditary principle, by designating in advance who will be the next king, allows for him to be given an appropriate education from childhood onwards. The author of the mirror, of course, is unable to ignore the elective system, but he quickly rejects it as a bad custom (sidhwänio) that is dying out.⁴⁵ He thus categorically opposes both law emanating from the king, described as “living law”,⁴⁶ and custom, emanating from the people. While this corresponds to the evolution of royal power in Sweden from the 13th century onward,⁴⁷ it contradicts the theory of legislative power that made provincial assemblies (thing) the places where laws were produced, or at least ratified.

Before considering election, the author discusses the principle of the uniqueness of the king and shows that he agrees with the thinking of the “masters”. The end of the first book reminds the reader that wise men have compared the advantages to the people of hereditary succession and of election. Some of these sages have declared that it is best for the people to choose, for this choice can fall upon the wisest and most experienced. On the other hand, in a hereditary system, rule can fall to a child or to a man who might lead the people to ruin. This principle of competence, however, is contradicted by the arguments in favor of the hereditary principle, which is defended by “all wise men”. According to nature, the son who succeeds his father as king will receive more love from his subjects because they have known his ancestors. This argument, although not original, resonates with the etymological claim proposed at the beginning of the book, and thus acquires a new value in the Swedish context.

The author then examines three arguments against the elective principle. The first contradicts the principle of competence. If the king is a child, the people may suffer. In a hereditary monarchy, the father can prepare his succession and entrust his son and the government to those close to him, who will be able to take care of the kingdom until the child is of age. The second reminds the reader that in an elective monarchy, at the moment of the king’s death, the people must choose a new king, which is a source of conflict. The author completes his demonstration by analyzing a particular case. If an elected king wishes to have his son succeed him, conflicts can arise either at his death, or at the very moment of the election. The author concludes that countries where the king is elected often suffer from wars. The last argument, specific to the author of the Swedish mirror, emphasizes that people are inclined to choose a child or an inexperienced man as king. In an elective monarchy, this choice is harmful, as each will reign as he pleases. Although the kingdom is not named, contemporaries could recognize Sweden, where Magnus Eriksson was elected in 1319 at the age of three. The author concludes by reminding the reader that travelers can testify that the countries that apply the hereditary principle are rich and live in peace.⁴⁸

The author of the mirror thus disqualifies the people from acting as a body in the political realm. However, he never attacks Swedish elective law frontally, even though the outline of the first section reveals his intentions, for in it he examines the two basic principles at the beginning of the Charter of Election: “In all Sweden, there must be only one royal crown and one king. (…) In Sweden, the king must receive the kingdom by election, and not by inheritance”.⁴⁹ The author never cites the law directly, but his ambition was to produce a text that resembled it. For example, he divided the mirror into four parts (balka fyra).⁵⁰ The word balker designated the great thematic divisions of Swedish law.⁵¹ The anaphoric use of the adverb nu, which elsewhere often introduced articles of law, must also be noted.⁵² Early on, philologists remarked on the author’s alliterations, which, without being unique to laws, are often encountered in normative texts.⁵³ A large number of expressions, synonym doublets, or syntactical constructions are common to both the mirror and Swedish laws, especially the Södermanland Law and the orders promulgated by Magnus Eriksson in the 1330s and 1340s.⁵⁴ Mirrors have a mimetic relation to the law, without the similarities being linked to the writing style of any particular author. The choice of Swedish prose and the use of turns of phrase common in legal language indicate that the author was trying to imitate normative texts, but usually to propose a different vision of royal power.

However, the ambiguity is not only formal. The text sometimes seems to agree almost entirely with the law, but with subtle differences. The oath sworn by the king, as prescribed by the Charter of Election, revealed the strengthening of royal power since the 13th century, but imposed on him the restraint of respect for the law.⁵⁵ At first glance, the mirror proposes principles of rule very close to those contained in the oath:⁵⁶ the king must be fair, preserve the laws, and respect freedoms and privileges. He must not threaten people’s goods, diminish the wealth of the Crown, levy illegal taxes, or rule with foreigners. These parallels, which some scholars have emphasized,⁵⁷ should not delude us. The effectiveness of the Swedish mirror depends on its refusal to confront the letter of Swedish law. The mirror integrates the content of the oath into its own framework of reasoning, but this transfer from one form to another entails a radical change of meaning, due to the difference in the underlying political notions. For example, let us compare how the love which the king must have for God is expressed. In the oath, it is the first article.

The same day, in the same spot, the king must take his oath of fealty to all the inhabitants of the kingdom. The first article is that he must love God and the Holy Church and uphold its rights, without, however, harming the rights of the king, the Crown and the people of Sweden.⁵⁸

The fiction is that this is an exchange: the king, in order to possess his power, must bow to a norm. The laws do not use the word “subjects”. In the election, the Swedish people are considered as participants, and it is they who put the king in power, while obliging him to submit to their law.

By disqualifying election, the author of the mirror implicitly rejects the oath. Thus, he introduces the equivalent of the first article of the oath in a radically different fashion. “If you wish to be just, you must begin by loving God”.⁵⁹ He replaces legal limits with moral injunctions. In the fiction laid out by the mirror, everything occurs as if the king has the choice of how to behave. Nothing can limit his power but his own will to be a just king. This free will of the king is explained by the position he occupies in the world, as the second section of the mirror makes explicit: as God alone gave the king his power, the king occupies an intermediate position between the people and God. Likewise, he is defined “as a sort of god above the people”.⁶⁰ Directly subject to divine law, the king appears to be exempt from human law. At this point, the virtue of the king replaces his submission to the law, and morality is substituted for a legal definition of the relation between a king and his people. The only guarantee of good government should be the link that unites him to God.

The precepts developed in the mirror and in the oath are differentiated by the context of their articulation. The mirror constructs a power removed from any human control. With much citing of authorities, it proposes to the king that he should benefit from his good actions. On the other hand, through its place at the heart of the elective ritual, the oath imposes legal limits on the king at the very moment he receives his power. By asserting the superiority of the hereditary principle, the mirror erases the oath, and substitutes for it, as sole constraint, the words of the masters. Um styrilsi konunga was doubtlessly written in the 1340s, when Magnus Eriksson was trying to free himself from the sway of the aristocracy. The birth of his sons, Erik and Håkon, had led him to aspire to a dynasty. In 1343, the personal union of Sweden and Norway was transformed. On August 15th, Magnus reached an agreement with Norwegian councilors in which they consented to Håkon as king. The agreement was attached to a peace treaty and subject to the condition that Magnus would assume power until his son was of age. On November 18, 1343, at Varberg, King Magnus Eriksson negotiated with the Danish King, Valdemar Attertag, a definitive union between Scania and the kingdom of Sweden. This agreement would put an end to the long conflict over the Danish province, which the Swedes had bought in 1332 from the Count of Holstein, who had held it as collateral. In 1341 the Danish king had recognized the cession of Scania and Blekinge to Sweden, and sold to Magnus Eriksson the remaining Danish enclaves from west of the Sound and south of Halland. But in 1342, divisions had led to open war between Magnus, supported by the rulers of Holstein, and Valdemar, allied with the Hanseatic cities. The agreement of Varberg was supposed to create the basis for a new political equilibrium in Scandinavia, as the kings were committing themselves not only in their own names, but also in the name of their “successors and heirs”.⁶¹ On the same day, at the king’s request, the Swedish bishops and prelates committed themselves to elect Erik Magnusson king of Sweden, giving immediate reality to the phrase.⁶² The rest of the charter indicates that elective law was officially preserved, but it would be applied only if Erik died without descendants, which made it more or less meaningless.⁶³

Did the Swedish mirror encourage this action, or was it written to justify it a posteriori? In 1343, Magnus Eriksson already seemed to be following its advice, as the anticipated election of his son allowed him to prepare for his potential minority as in a hereditary succession. It seems that the Swedish prelates were the first to argue in favor of this manipulation of the meaning of election, as the composition of the mirror itself suggests. The election took place on December 6, 1344.⁶⁴ On the same day, in Uppsala, Magnus Eriksson promulgated a reform ordinance, as he had already done in 1335 at Skänninge, that was intended to combat the bad “customs” (sithwæniør) instituted during his own minority.⁶⁵ The Swedish mirror may have been written to prepare for this meeting at Varberg, but it might also have been conceived as a gift for young king Erik, who would be able to read in it a justification for his father’s actions. Yet another hypothesis is that it was written at the end of the 1340s, at a time when the project of writing a code of law valid throughout the whole kingdom, or National Law, gave a new immediacy to the debates around the 1335 Charter of Election, which in the end was included without any great changes.

2.1 The King is Naked

Reactions to these mirrors written in favor of royal centrism can be seen both in Castile and in Sweden, in the works of two great aristocrats, Don Juan Manuel (1282–1348) and Saint Bridget (1303–1373). In Castile, after Alfonso X, one of the main political countermodels to growing royal power was developed by Don Juan Manuel, a grandson of Ferdinand III and nephew of Alfonso X. He was one of the most powerful lords of his time because of his prestigious origins, his large inheritance, and the importance of his political roles. Notably, he had been co-regent of the kingdom of Castile during the minority of Alfonso XI, but once Alfonso was of age, in 1325, he removed Don Juan Manuel from office, later entering into open conflict with him several times. As for Bridget, she belonged to one of the most powerful families in Sweden. Her marriage brought her to Court, where she was named governess to Queen Blanche. Her revelations, attributed to God, the Virgin, or various saints, interested Magnus Eriksson, and some were written down at his request, but Bridget did not hesitate to express her opposition, in particular when the king was trying to launch a crusade. Bridget and her father, who was one of the writers of the Law of Uppland and one of the participants in the election of Magnus Eriksson, shared the conviction that the king should be elected. Thus she declares that “the king is not lord of the Crown, but its guardian”.⁶⁶

Among the singular writings of Don Juan Manuel, several works resemble mirrors of princes, although with different points of view. In the Libro del cavallero et del escudero (between 1326 and 1328), of which only a truncated version survives, the story opens by evoking a king, presented as the perfect señor natural, who attracts to his court the flower of chivalry. Here the concept of naturaleza, inherited from the Siete Partidas, is reinterpreted: it is no longer a bond anchored in a territory of birth or long residence, but a bond that has become personal, even elective, for it is said that it is foreigners, seeking honor and reward, who decide to become the king’s naturales. Most of the subject matter is included in a dialogue between a squire and an aged knight (cavallero anciano), who gives him all the knowledge he needs to comprehend chivalry and, once he has been knighted, to continue to learn. These questions deal with subjects directly linked to the sociopolitical domain or connected to theology, cosmology and natural science; but the master’s rhetorical efforts consist less of delivering a great deal of particular advice than of trying to create, by exclusion, a field of knowledge that would be specific to knighthood. This endeavor is accompanied by a definition of knighthood as the most worthy of conditions (estados) in the lay sphere, parallel to the condition of priesthood in the ecclesiastical sphere, for it is received like a sacrament. On the one hand, kings and great lords are not separated hierarchically; on the other hand, the state of knighthood is given by another, according to a rite later codified, and which is transmitted by the will of the lord in elective fashion. Here, in answer to the portrait of the king as the perfect natural lord, is an approach centered on interpersonal relations, in the feudal spirit, that does depend on naturaleza but surpasses it.

While adopting a dialogue structure similar to that of the Libro del cavallero et del escudero, the Libro de los estados (between 1327 and 1332) is much more clearly related to mirrors of princes. Its fictional framework, inspired by the legend of Barlaam et Josaphat, presents the education of a future king. Prince Joas, heir to the throne of a pagan kingdom, is taught first by one of his father’s advisors, a knight named Turín, and then by a Christian preacher named Julio, who, by moral and theological arguments, converts him to Christianity, thus obtaining the conversion of the entire kingdom. The cleric thus seems to take precedence over the knight, but Julio himself defends the idea of total compatibility, even an essential link, between the temporal prerogatives of the bellatores, appropriate to maintain their honor and their power, and their spiritual aspirations. Not only can every Christian be saved by obeying the rules of his own estado, but a high temporal dignity, if correctly worn, appears as a predisposition to salvation. In the same spirit, it is significant that Julio is a preacher from Castile, and that he mentions several times his friendship with a certain “Don Johán”, the author’s fictional double, whose tutor he is said to have been. On some points, Julio even bases his reasoning on the enlightened opinion of “Don Johán”, whose experience and common sense then seem to surpass his own knowledge. This device tends to legitimize the words of laymen in the spiritual realm, and to justify Don Juan Manuel in arrogating to himself the role of a preacher by writing the Libro de los estados.

This work also features the emergence of a vision of power specific to the nobility, with the royal figure called into question. Not only does Julio announce immediately that his friend “Don Johán” is at war with the king, but the treatise seeks to efface—without being able to deny it directly—royal preeminence in the secular sphere: the figure of the king is practically never mentioned as such, but only together with that of the emperor, as if he had no specific characterization. On this point, although still using the Siete Partidas several times, the Libro de los estados is moving away from its spirit. In particular, Don Juan Manuel reinterprets the Alfonsine concept of naturaleza, in a sense that no doubt owes a great deal to his conflict with Alfonso XI, whom he had decided to desnaturarse (“denaturalize”) in 1327; although the Cuarta Partida states that deficiencies in the natural toward the lord will automatically dissolve the naturaleza that unites them, Julio asserts that the lord is responsible for this bond to a higher degree than his natural, and that the denaturalization of the latter is thus nothing but his legitimate recourse in taking note of the betrayal of the former.⁶⁷ The only royal figure that Julio speaks well of is King Ferdinand, who distinguished himself in the conquest of Andalusia, and who deserves the name of martyr for the service he rendered to God; Don Juan Manuel acclaims his grandfather as a king gifted to the highest degree with the knightly virtues.

While the Libro de los estados is concerned with the education of a future king, this aspect is not found in two other works by Don Juan Manuel that are comparable to mirrors of princes, the Libro infinido (between 1334 and 1337?) and El conde Lucanor (finished in 1335), where a great noble becomes the recipient of the teaching. The Libro infinido is presented as an educational treatise that Don Juan Manuel addresses to his son Fernando, according to a pattern that may have been meant to rival that of Sancho IV’s Castigos; but while that royal mirror is structured by an axiology of vices and virtues, here the point of view is resolutely political, for, beginning in the prologue, it is said that “through knowledge, men honor themselves and are governed, and some are subjected to others”.⁶⁸ With its constant references to the Libro de los estados, of which it can be read as an ad hoc commentary,⁶⁹ the Libro infinido develops a discourse centered specifically on the lineage of the Manuels—inferior to the king’s, but superior to all the other Castilian lineages. Fernando, therefore, must know how to uphold his rank, both toward the king, his lord, and toward his inferiors, without ever being able to deal with someone who is his equal. This custom-made ethics makes for complex relationships with other people, and this is reflected in the final part of the treatise, which lists no fewer than fifteen kinds of political love. The main characteristic of this Libro infinido, or “unfinished book”, is that it presents itself as the result of the author’s personal experience, and consequently cannot be finished in his lifetime. Don Juan Manuel says that he has recorded the things he has lived, which is supposed to confer upon them an indisputable truthfulness, better than any references from textual authorities. The mirror’s speaker is also therefore, in large measure, the book’s very matter, and the specificity of the Manuels’ lineage makes Fernando its only full, complete intended audience, even though, obviously, it also aimed to display this political model to other noble readers, who could recognize themselves in it to some degree.

While the Libro infinido presents itself as an unfiltered discourse, El conde Lucanor, like the Libro del cavallero et del escudero and the Libro de los estados, uses the framework of a dialogue between two fictional characters, Count Lucanor and his advisor Patronio. The latter, who may be either a cleric or a layman, combines the abilities of the cavallero anciano and of Julio. The knowledge he is transmitting usually concerns temporal questions—dealings with friends or enemies, prudence or daring in military operations, relationship to wealth, detection of frauds, etc.—but also spiritual questions, if they have some connection to the ethical code of the nobility. In keeping with the Libro de los estados, the main principle being defended is that the great lord can achieve salvation without having to renounce his temporal prerogatives, but, on the contrary, through behaving as a perfect bellator.

El conde Lucanor may be read as a mirror of princes, since, on the one hand, it presents the teaching given by Patronio to Lucanor, and on the other hand, invents exemplary royal figures. Clearly, this is an atypical mirror, created for readers among the nobility. Lucanor is not a king, and furthermore, he is a mature man—far from the young man who is the usual intended recipient for manuals of political education. Learning does not consist only of bookish instruction, but continues lifelong, through experiencing an unstable world made up of false pretenses. The work is composed of, in order, a collection of exemplary stories, three books of maxims, and a short treatise mingling theology and social ethics, all spoken by Patronio for Lucanor’s benefit. The nesting of the examples and the lists of maxims within it recalls the techniques of eastern wisdom treatises, but those speech models are reinterpreted. Unlike Calila, El conde Lucanor inserts each example into a closed structure, along with a piece of advice from Patronio and a versified moral attributed to “Don Johán”, fictional alter ego of the author and ultimate guarantor of the meaning. Some stories present Muslims, or more radically, indicate their own descent from Arabic sources, and in three cases even include proverbs in that language. However, on the ethical plane, eastern monarchs are seen as praiseworthy only up to a certain point. The fascination for the culture of the Other and for the forms of wisdom it has transmitted exist side by side with condescending, sometime ironic observation. For all these reasons, far from a passive imitation of Arabic sources, Don Juan Manuel is actively “colonizing” their cultural model,⁷⁰ including the narrative techniques themselves. Moreover, the variety of forms of wisdom literature, arranged according to a subtle numerical structure, present writing as a reflection of the world, chaotic in appearance but orderly once the signs can be deciphered.⁷¹ The multiplicity of cases mentioned, more juxtaposed than structurally related, gives the writing the aspect of an archive recorded by the author for use by the nobility.⁷²

On one hand, according to many critics, from a variety of perspectives within the text, it was aimed at establishing the spiritual legitimacy of the bellator, while distancing itself from clerical mediation. Thus, the third example shows that Richard the Lionhearted’s daring leap against the infidels was more effective toward salvation than the ascetic life of a hermit; and in many ways that king-knight recalls Ferdinand III, who is represented in two other stories (examples 15 and 28) as the arbiter of knightly worth. On the other hand, several examples are centered on the figures of inept kings,⁷³ in the tradition of royal mirrors that show monarchs’ vices to incite them to virtue. However, beyond the a contrario reasoning of the moral mirror, some stories enjoy ridiculing the figure of the king to the point of diminishing his dignity. Thus, naïve and greedy kings are fooled by a false alchemist (example 27), or by three swindlers who say they can weave a garment that only people of legitimate birth can see (example 32). In the latter story, the indirect source of the famous Hans Christian Andersen tale, the scope of the exemplarity goes well beyond the satire of moral disorder to demonstrate the mechanisms of all relations to power, based on conventions tacitly accepted by those subject to them. The supposed visibility of the inexistent fabric becomes the new law supporting the whole political edifice, which the king, once he puts it on, is supposed to exhibit in all its performativity. But this body of the king as mirror of the law—which may recall the idea behind the Partidas—cannot withstand the remark of a black groom, who declares the evidence of his own eyes and shatters the collective illusion. The parade of the nude king can also be interpreted as a ferocious parody of Alfonso XI’s coronation ceremony (Burgos, 1332), in which, contrary to Castilian custom, the king had himself anointed; Don Juan Manuel’s story blasts this royal pretention to sacredness, and beyond the acerbic criticism of his personal enemy, it reflects the position of a great noble who cannot accept the increase in royal power.⁷⁴

2.2 How to Treat Rebellious Kings?

In Sweden, a similar reaction to royal political innovations—in this case, the anticipated election of Erik Magnusson—is perceptible in the Revelations of Saint Bridget. Unlike Um styrilsi konunga, this work is a series of original texts, rapidly translated into Latin by her confessors. The first of these was Master Mathias, a possible author of the mirror, but Bridget took the opposing position on Swedish law. As the daughter, wife and mother of lagmän—specialists in the law who presided over provincial assemblies—she had a good knowledge of the law,⁷⁵ and several of her revelations testify to this particular interest.⁷⁶ Written for the most part during the 1340s, at the same period as the mirror, the Revelations of Bridget, like the texts of Don Juan Manuel, exalt the figure of the knight, capable of surpassing that of the cleric or the king. These works create a synthesis between the Christian ideal of royalty and the specific characteristics of Swedish law.

Because the king’s purpose is to enforce respect for the law, he must be the first to set an example and submit, both to the Ten Commandments and other divine dictates and to the laws of his kingdom. One original element in Bridget’s thought is that her revelations are based less on Saint Augustine or Saint Thomas Aquinas than on Swedish law. Far from offering to Magnus Eriksson the ideal of a king unbound by human laws, she insists on the required respect for the oath.⁷⁸

With Bridget’s canonization in mind, her last confessor, Alfonso Pecha, the former bishop of Jaén, organized the work into seven books of revelations, an eighth book called the Liber celestis imperatoris ad reges, which was a compilation of the revelations addressed to kings, and a ninth book of Extravagantes, revelations discarded from the official corpus.⁷⁹ The order he adopted rarely follows the chronology of the revelations. Except for the books that were already finished, Alfonso Pecha employed his own logic, especially in book VIII, which he turned into a true mirror for a king by adding the revelations concerning lay power, either new revelations or those copied from other books. He was greatly influenced by Alfonso X’s legislative doctrine, and for this eighth book he adopted the framework of the Segunda Partida.⁸⁰

One revelation in Book IV, which also appears in Alfonso Pecha’s mirror, reveals Bridget’s position on the election, and the image she wants to give of the elected king. The third chapter of this book is a dialogue between God and the wife (sponsa), that is, Bridget herself. In it she asks a series of questions that clearly concern the situation in Scania, which, she affirms forcefully, is part of the kingdom of Sweden. The last question evokes the hypothetical case of a king with two kingdoms, one hereditary, one elective, whose elder son was elected in the elective kingdom, while the younger son is chosen for the hereditary kingdom. God answers that this should have been done the other way around. The end of the revelation then takes the form of a prophecy: the elective kingdom will not be prosperous as long as the man who should rule there has not been elected.⁸¹ The link between the Scania question and Erik’s election allows us to date this revelation to the middle 1340s. Here Bridget explains her ideal of power, which is closer to the royal oath in the 1335 Charter of Election than to that of the mirror.

The interpretations of the revelation at first focused on the protagonists and on Bridget’s own interests.⁸² The fact that she calls into question the choice of a younger son for a kingdom transmitted by primogeniture has led some historians to declare that she considered hereditary rule superior to elective; thus, she had the same opinion as her confessor Mathias of Linköping,⁸³ and her vocabulary betrays her preferred political system.⁸⁴ However, in fact Bridget sees no hierarchy between hereditary right and the will of the people. She is only emphasizing the differences between two political systems: that of Norway, where the king is designated by a law of succession which, to her, falls under jus, and that of Sweden, where no law chooses the king in advance; his nomination is left to the judgment of the representative assembly gathered at Mora Sten. The expression fauor populi has no pejorative nuance. It means only that the king is selected not by his personal right, but according to a choice expressed by the people, also based in law. Indeed, Bridget’s only argument is that the king and those who supported him in his decision had not followed the established norm. They had four errors: “inordinate love”—this love for the king, so strongly affirmed by the mirror, could be an obstacle to good government; “simulated wisdom”—the very words may have been an indirect attack on the prelates, or even against the author of the mirror himself; flattery; and most importantly, “a lack of trust toward God and the people.”

This is why their choice was made against justice, against God, against the good of the res publica and the interest of the community. For peace to be ensured and the community’s interests taken into consideration, it is necessary for the older son to receive the hereditary kingdom and for the younger son to come to power by election.⁸⁵

Bridget does not mean to give priority to one kingdom over another, but is asking for the correct application of their respective rules of succession. The solution that she prefers is unambiguous: the verbs recipiat and veniat do not refer to the same modes of access to power. The king of Sweden must, before taking possession of his kingdom, be elected. In arguing that the man who should have taken the throne of Norway was elected in Sweden, Bridget also emphasizes the deviation from the norm by Swedish institutions. In mentioning “the lack of trust toward God and the people”, she places herself in a Swedish context. As the 1335 Charter of Election shows, election is founded on an alliance between God and the community of the kingdom, particularly at the moment when the oaths are exchanged. Bridget’s attention to the community must not, of course, be interpreted as a democratic tendency, but as an attachment to legality befitting a great noblewoman. This attachment to the thing is mentioned by Bridget in a revelation in Book I, which was written before 1346, in which God states that he is postponing his justice for the wicked, acting as a king who waits for “the general assembly where they can be heard out with the greatest attention by the listeners”.⁸⁶ In a classic comparison between God and the king, Bridget introduces the general assembly (placitum generale), a term that in the Revelations refers to the thing, which a king must summon in order to render justice. The bond between the rex iustus and the assembly is thus set out as a foregone conclusion.

By showing that the community has been neglected, Bridget condemns both the king and those who supported him in his plans. She does not try in any way to prove the superiority of one principle over the other. She simply affirms, axiomatically, that election is the method of designating the king of Sweden; God himself pronounces the link between either the hereditary or elective principle and each of the two kingdoms. The absence of any specific detail, such as the name of Norway or Sweden, transforms this revelation into an exemplum that invites kings to obey the laws proper to their kingdom.

These Castilian and Swedish examples allow us to understand the opposing positions that mirror literature could take toward the law. In Castile, the tradition of eastern wisdom literature and its reinterpretation by the king, who found in it a political doctrine unconnected to any clerical mediation, accompanied a legislative effort that tended to merge the king and the law indivisibly, to the point that in the Siete Partidas, the law reflects, mirror-fashion, that the king manifests the law. On the other hand, in Sweden, Giles of Rome’s mirror was adapted to oppose the law, undermining the principle of election. While not contradicting the oath’s portrait of the ideal king, which conferred the status of king at the same time as it limited his power, the mirror substitutes the model of a king untrammeled by the law, but subject to the words of the clergy. In different ways, these two works both aspired to establish a new political order. The two plans failed; Alfonso X and Magnus Eriksson were both dethroned. While the Partidas had a vast political influence on posterity, the Swedish mirror fell into obscurity until the 17th century. The National Law, which included the Charter of Election, was not promulgated by Magnus Eriksson, but was speedily applied, and its prestige was so great that in the 15th century it was attributed to Saint Eric. The short-term failure of Alfonso’s legislative plans and the long-term triumph of Swedish law can be explained in large part by the political role of the nobility, which produced its own mirrors in the two kingdoms. Although Don Juan Manuel and Bridget shared the same social rank, their strategies were completely different. Don Juan Manuel speaks in his own name and, beginning from what he presents as his own personal experience, invents alter egos of incontestable authority. Bridget, as a woman, hides herself entirely behind her revelations. However, whether the figure of the author is promoted or negated, in both works the sources are rarely named. While avoiding any explicit textual mediation, especially from the clergy, Don Juan Manuel and Bridget also display no open hostility to mirrors that acclaim royal power, instead adopting evasive rhetoric. Their positions led both of them to support and even foment rebellion against their kings. The Libro de los estados and El conde Lucanor provided a profusion of arguments and examples that, to different degrees, justified Don Juan Manuel’s revolt against Alfonso XI, blaming the disorder on the king’s shortcomings. Bridget believed that order must be reestablished when the king disturbed it, and declared that God knows how to use his “force against rebellious kings and princes”.⁸⁷ At the beginning of the 1360s, in a revelation from exile in Rome, she called on Swedish knights to take power in Magnus’s place.⁸⁸ Thus, some mirrors could be transformed into swords.

Translated by Julie Sullivan