1 Doctrines of Virtue

After the end of ancient Roman imperial rule, with the establishment of kingdoms in the erstwhile lands of empire, the question of how power could be successfully built on Christian foundations was hotly contested. Answers were needed to the question of how rule could be established and justified under the changed conditions, with a plurality of rulers whose legitimacy was not derived from the Roman emperor, and where the unity of the Church was not matched by an imperial unity. Kings stood in great need of legitimation. Institutions and personalities of the Church fulfilled this need.

One of the first to offer a sophisticated theoretical conception of power in the Middle Ages was Isidore of Seville (c. 560–636), Bishop of the city and influential partner of the Visigoth kings. The instruction was included in an encyclopaedia, which in principle was addressed to all, and in reality to the literate, and thus to the clergy.⁴ Among other words, the text defines rex: he who is to act well – recte agenda. This injunction is based on an argument that derives the content of the term from its etymology. The document calls for the king to correct the misdeeds of the people – and to do so severely. This is the only way for the king to attain the virtue of justice. In his Sententiae, Isidore offers detailed explanations of political issues. The king, he explains, acts as an instrument of God, guiding the conduct of his subjects toward the good and ensuring the security of the church.⁵ However, despite this political content, the primary recipients of the text were not rulers. Its content was conveyed to them by the clergy.

Over the following centuries, this would continue to be the case. An early example of a text that could be called a mirror of princes, offering instruction and advice to the ruler – although it was probably not intended for one – was produced in Ireland in the 7th century. The text, entitled De duodecim abusivis saeculi, was written by an anonymous author and attributed to Cyprian.⁶ The text had a considerable impact on the political ideas of the following centuries, notably in continental Europe, and was received and quoted by the authors of later mirrors of princes. However, it cannot be proven that this anonymous text was known at any royal court, nor if it was even directly addressed to a ruler. Its impact and uses were mediated by the knowledge of other, later clerical authors of mirrors of princes.⁷ They repeated the anonymous author’s assertion that royal authority springs from the constraint he imposes upon his subjects. On the God-given power set out in the Epistle to the Romans (Rom. 13:1), and invoking Isidore of Seville’s statements on terror, the anonymous author identifies three things as indispensable to the king: terror, amor et ordinatio.⁸ These three words would go on to shape reflection on the foundations and exercise of royal governance for centuries.⁹

Texts by clerical authors of the 9th century detailed the meaning of these terms, and provided practical instructions to accompany them. They were reacting to heightened moral standards that resulted from the integration of the Kingdom of the Franks into the sphere of rule whose legitimation, conception, and intentions were marked by Christian influence. The king received his power by the grace of God, and specific duties were incumbent upon him as a result. In the light of the Christian doctrine of moral behaviour and of the universal commandment of love, the imperatives to which the king was subject could also be formulated as conditions on his rule: these clarified how power was exercised, how it could permissibly be exercised, and why it was justified. Seeds of political thought and concepts of social order sprouted from these discussions.¹⁰ However, the instructions were based on an argument whose logic lay outside the sphere of political doctrine; they presented a doctrine of virtue aimed at normalizing and standardizing the king’s behaviour. These virtues were to allow power to be used for religious benefit. The demands notably included the connection of the kings to the papacy, their positioning as allies to the Church, and their adherence to rules which were seen as preconditions for justice.¹¹ The king’s ministerium was a conglomeration of duties.¹²

In the time of Charlemagne and the environment of the Aquitanian court of his son, the future emperor Louis, Smaragdus of Saint-Mihiel wrote a mirror of princes entitled Via regia. It sets out the duties of a ruler, who is to fulfil them just as any other Christian must. It is thus based not on a discussion of political problems, but on an ethical programme, which only occasionally appears to be specific to the sovereign. According to Smaragdus of Saint-Mihiel, power and subjection to it are results of the fall of man, and can never be corrected within worldly life. However, for Smaragdus, no difference between the moral demands on ruler and ruled follows from this situation. The rules of monastic life were carried over to the king, so that the leadership tasks of spiritual and secular leaders took similar forms. This elevated the moral obligations of the king; however, he – unlike a monk – was to exercise them not in isolation, but facing the world, bringing benefits to his subjects.¹³

A text more focused on political power and the specific requirements of rulers is one by Jonas of Orleans that scholars have treated as a mirror of princes. Bishop of Orleans until his death in 842/43, Jonas maintained close relations with the West Frankish king Charles the Bald, and addressed to him a letter known under the title De institutione regia. In the text, Jonas portrays divine and royal authority as closely linked. Kings are to rule by force. Bishops, in contrast, should not exercise rule; their influence should be indirect, exercised by exhorting kings to fulfil their duties, as Jonas himself claimed to do. This would ensure just rule. The text was formulated as an admonition to kings, but it was conceived as a compendium of knowledge for the clergy, enabling them to fulfil their duty to influence those in power.¹⁴

The concept of rule through coercion, fear, and terror, to be spread along with love –a form of rule that was necessary because it was demanded by God – was initially aimed at the clergy. Thus, it was announced to them at the Council of Paris in 829, whose decisions were probably strongly influenced by Jonas of Orleans, and whose formulations in any case accorded with those of his mirror of princes. The text of the mirror of princes was used to formulate a decree of the Council of that diocese of Orleans. It proclaimed, among other things, that the king must prevent injustice, even by means of terror. The decree threatens the ruler with terror of his own – in the Last Judgment – should he fail to fulfil his duty to use terror to enforce justice.¹⁵

God’s disciplining of the king was the prerequisite for the king’s disciplining of his subjects. The Irish-born monk Sedulius Scotus, who resided in Liège, took the same position (†880). He produced theological and didactic texts, as well as poems in praise of several of the Carolingian kings of the Lotharingian and West and East Frankish kingdoms. In his mirror of princes De rectoribus christianis, likely dedicated to the Frankish king Lothair II (855–869), he wrote that the king’s right action had to accord with the name of the royal office, as asserted and etymologically derived by Isidore. But it was not only the rex who was to be under a duty of recte agere; this applied to all. When he presented it as the special duty of the king to wield authority over himself, his family, his servants, and his people, Sedulius was thus offering a genuinely political argument. The existence of rule, he wrote, follows directly from a commandment from God. Repeating Pseudo-Cyprian’s trinity of terror, amor et ordinatio, he explained that this combination was to apply to the king, characterized as imago Dei.¹⁶

Hincmar of Reims (845–882) was the most influential of the authors of texts on the instruction of princes in the early Middle Ages. As the Archbishop of Reims from 845, he defended the metropolitan rights of his church, kept in close contact with the royal court, knew it from personal experience, and was informed of the actions of the king. His writings represent thus more than just the self-interpretations of the clergy, and served purposes beyond informing the clergy; they did in fact claim to instruct the king.¹⁷ Hincmar strongly defended the king’s power. In his mirror of princes De regis persona et regio ministerio, he presents force as the appropriate means to ensure good behaviour, an orderly society, and guidance to eternal salvation, with no exceptions.¹⁸ In his work on the organization of royal rule, De ordine palatii, Hincmar went on to explain that the ruler needs three things: first, the love of his subjects; second, if this is lacking, their fear of him; and third, order, in order to balance the first two elements of rule and apply them appropriately to different people and situations. Here again, the triad of terms is emphasized.¹⁹

Early medieval mirrors of princes evaluated the actions of rulers. However, they were also self-affirmations, on the part of the clergy, of their ability and will to use their knowledge to shape political power. They envisaged the realization of virtues, but not genuinely political ones. Their political analysis remained confined to normative didactics. That a theoretical deficit prevented an analysis of power relations is highlighted by the fact that the reception of these texts lasted only until the 12th century. As discussions of royal rule and its grounds, legitimation, and benefits attained a new level of theoretical sophistication in the 13th century with the adoption of Aristotelian political philosophy, the early medieval texts fell out of use and disappeared from memory.²⁰

2 Institutional Doctrines

In the 12th century, texts on political theory came to be less focused on instructing the powerful, and more on evaluating their actions and their power. The most important aspect was no longer the exercise of influence on the royal court by clerics who were close to it, but critiques of the court and of those acting within it. The use of the texts underwent a social expansion. It was not limited to those who collaborated with the powerful, but included those who stood far from them, and who gathered knowledge in order to warn subjects about power and the powerful.

Emperors, kings, and princes had to face fundamental critiques of their position, providing counterarguments and theoretically substantiating them. To do so, knowledge was required. The Didascalion of Paris theologian Hugh of Saint Victor (c. 1096–1146) surveys the skills and practical knowledge of various social groups, among them kings and their rule. Hugh counts governing among the activities he refers to as artes mechanicae.

The ruler was also to be part of the community of the useful and well-informed.²¹ John of Salisbury (†1180) saw the knowledge that he called philosophia as a prerequisite for the appropriate practice of power, termed militia – in the various offices within the state. The kings reign by their wisdom and they make laws and give justice by their wisdom.²² For John, a king must be a learned man; otherwise he would be nothing but a crowned donkey on the throne.²³ This statement found its way into the literature for the instruction of rulers and noble princes, especially in the mirror of princes of the Dominican friar Vincent of Beauvais, written around 1260. In it he described the antithesis of the ideal of the learned king: a blundering dolt, incapable of explaining his actions and penetrating their causes and aims; moreover, lazy, more devoted to food than to governing, neglectful even in the commemoration of his dead ancestors, forgetful in all other matters, and fickle.²⁴ King Alfonso X of Castile set out this duty to acquire knowledge in several of the works attributed to him. It was the duty of the king himself to teach, to proclaim the truth to his people like a prophet, and above all to pass on his knowledge to his children and the heir to his throne.²⁵

Out of the conflict between emperors and kings, on one side, and popes and the clergy, on the other, arose a need for theoretical concepts. In this context mirrors of princes became a literary genre partly devoted to critiques and their refutation. In them, criticisms were directed at unjust rulers. Hugh of Saint-Victor thought that obedience to such kings, and taxes paid to them, were necessary for subjects, but also pernicious. The rulers would absorb the funds just as the stomach does the food that men put into it. Hugh argued that the fattening of the rulers was a credit to the humility of the subjects, while that of the stomach spoke only of gluttony.²⁶

Peter of Blois (1135–1204), in contrast, explicitly belittled kings as tyrants. He had received a thorough education in Tours and Paris in theology, modelled on the ancients; was a student of John of Salisbury for some time; acquired knowledge of canon law in Bologna and produced legal scholarship; and became chief legal adviser to the Archbishop of Canterbury. He also had connections to the English royal court, presumably through Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine – but this did not prevent him from critically evaluating the king and his court.²⁷ In a fictional dialogue with King Henry II of England, he described the king’s unchecked propensity to violence: letting himself be carried away by rage, he would kill his opponents. Peter has the king argue that his action is justified because the behaviour of traitors merits cruel punishment. The kings of the Old Testament would have acted no differently in taking revenge upon their enemies, and animals would do much the same in rage against others of their kind. Peter of Blois saw the chances for the establishment of good rule as poor, since both the king as a person and the court as an institution stood in the way. The intention here was not instruction, but fundamental critique. The work served to confirm the clergy’s opposition to King Henry II.²⁸

In the face of this critique of the hereditary monarchy, which was unable to provide an appropriate ruler, a response that legitimized the well-established tradition of dynastic rule had to be found. The eventuality of an incapable and immoral successor exercising power was to be counteracted by a number of means: in particular, justice, æsthetics, and above all, education. The goal was the production of the common good.

Beginning in the 13th century, mirrors of princes introduced an educational programme for the future king. Thereafter, they were aimed not at the reigning king, but at his successors. The topic of education raised the possibility that the texts would have readers other than the princes themselves. Political instruction, too, would thus no longer be limited to rulers. The broad social bandwidth of the mirrors of princes was already evident in their spread in manuscript form. Unlike the early medieval mirrors of princes, particularly those of the Carolingian period (such as those of Hincmar of Reims, Smaragdus of Saint Mihiel, and Jonas of Orleans),²⁹ from the 12th century these texts did not content themselves with cataloguing virtues and reminding readers of the need to abide by them; they presented arguments.

The first mirror of princes of the Middle Ages that spoke to the need for a practice of rule illuminated by scholarship and guided by reason was that of John of Salisbury, who cooperated with, but more often stood in opposition to, King Henry II.³⁰ The effects of his text Policraticus, which can be understood as a fundamental critique of the royal court, reached far beyond the court. Rather than offer instruction to an individual ruler, it defined the court as a refuge of evil, especially as an institution. Manuscripts featuring Policraticus contained other writings by John of Salisbury, all of which were identified as philosophical texts: de dogmate philosophorum. These manuscripts were held in the archives of monasteries, where they were also most certainly produced.³¹ Policraticus was part of a literature on general world knowledge that combined the preservation of ancient textual traditions with discussion of current practical problems. In this context, the subject of politics was not confined to instruction for princes, but was opened up to a broader reception. Policraticus played a role in learned discourse over the centuries that followed. It was quoted by many medieval authors, and its reasoning drawn upon, including by Vincent de Beauvais, Chaucer, and Dante. Late medieval scholars of Roman law saw John of Salisbury as a reference source on constitutional law. Knowledge of the work in the royal courts was probably only the result of later scholarly appropriation. In the 1370s, King Charles V of France had Jean Golein prepare a commented and illustrated excerpt in French, a manuscript of which was placed in the royal library. Policraticus thus stood among the many other writings on general world knowledge whose collection and translation was ordered by the French king. The text thus reached the court not as a source of instruction for princes, but as a work of erudition.³²

The study of the institutional foundations of rule did not, however, bring an end to moral appeals to rulers. A text produced by the Anglo-Welsh scholar Giraldus Cambrensis (†1223) offers less a political doctrine than a moral didactics. Drawing on a wealth of ancient scholarship – including writings by Cicero and Seneca – he assessed rule in terms of virtues, which provide the structure of the mirror of princes that he wrote toward the end of his life.³³ In it he bases a normative evaluation of kingship, which he sets in opposition to tyranny, on the king’s demonstration of sympathy for his people as patriae pater atque patronus, through clemency: affectu clementia.³⁴ But Gerald’s text did not reach the royal courts, and only a small number of manuscript copies circulated outside of them.³⁵ By the early 13th century, the genre of moral admonitions to rulers had become obsolete. Addressing appeals to rulers was considered futile.

Rulers continued to rely on the provision of information to shape their actions. However, this mainly took the form not of moral instruction, but of explanations of the institutional requirements and uses of power. Not unlike other laypeople, rulers benefited from an increasing number of instructional texts dealing with a wide range of topics. These included sermons and encyclopaedias. They offered rules of life for people in different life situations, occupations, and organizations.³⁶

The instructions also included tips on the health and beauty of the body. Nowhere was this notion of aesthetic and bodily shaping as concisely treated as in a pseudo-Aristotelian text based on a tenth-century Arab-Muslim work entitled Sirr al-Asrār, or the ‘Book of the Secret of Secrets’. John of Seville produced an incomplete translation, significantly entitled Epistula Aristotelis ad Alexandrum de regimine sanitatis, sometime in the years 1112 to 1128, which became available in western Europe from around 1140, with subsequent textual additions into the mid-13th century. Around 1230 Philip of Tripoli produced a new Latin translation, referred to as Secretum secretorum. Finally, in around 1275 Roger Bacon produced a commented version, and in this form the text received a wide reception in western Europe. These texts, which continued to undergo numerous transformations, were among the most frequently copied in manuscripts: 150 of the early Latin translation alone, and about 350 of that of Philip of Tripoli and of Bacon’s version with commentary. Many translations into European vernaculars followed.

The text presents itself as a lesson given by Aristotle to Alexander the Great, and thus belongs to the genre of mirrors of princes. Its reception benefited from the prestige of its two characters, which had increased since the 12th century, and from its many uses: as an encyclopædic compendium as well as a source of instruction for rulers, moral instruction, medical textbook, dietary advice, rules of dress, advice on the ornamentation of the body, and more. It was known and read both within and outside the royal courts, and was reshaped in different ways in relation to its various uses. Sometimes, for example, only the parts containing medical and dietary advice were copied, and kept in a setting away from royal courts.³⁷ On the Iberian Peninsula, the so-called wisdom literature drew on the Secretum in presenting knowledge in the form of apodictically formulated principles.³⁸

Texts addressed to the laity were expected to be easily understandable. A learned idleness and a casual, conversational tone were intended to combine the educational with the agreeable. The content of Gervase of Tilbury’s (c. 1150–1235) Otia imperialia, which was addressed to King (and later Holy Roman Emperor) Otto IV (1198–1218), fulfilled the expectations spurred by its title. It provided a compilation of knowledge that was didactically formulated, pleasantly presented, and encyclopædically concentrated. The work was to make knowledge accessible to the laity. It included discussions on the justifications and applications of rule, but also dealt with a wide range of other topics, notably including a broad treatment of geographical knowledge.³⁹ The work found its way into an environment where rulers were seen as participants in scholarly conversations and instruction for them was understood as necessary, but it also made its way to laypeople far from the royal courts.

Gervase, who was from England, worked successively in the service of King Henry II of England, King William II of Sicily, and Emperor Otto IV. He argued that the ruler’s idle hours – the time not strictly devoted to governing as such – should be dedicated to the acquisition of knowledge. No longer, Gervase wrote, should the powerful spend time on the tall tales of actors and poets. Their focus instead should be on true knowledge, both textual and experiential. This took nothing away from the recommendation that the teaching be made agreeable. Curiosity needed to be awakened.⁴⁰ There are a number of indications that the reception of Otia imperialia was not limited to Emperor Otto IV and his entourage, but that it was much wider, to the point of becoming an integral part of educational knowledge in the late Middle Ages.⁴¹ These notably include the multitude of surviving manuscripts of the work, their wide geographic distribution, and the two French translations by the Hospitallers John of Antioch at the end of the 13th century and Jean de Vignay in the 1330s. The text combines the characteristics of an encyclopædia and a mirror of princes. The political theory of rule that it presents largely dispenses with moral injunctions, instead offering an argument that, cruel as it may need to be, the rule of kings must serve to benefit their subjects.⁴²

3 Theoretical Reflections through the Reception of Aristotelian Texts

The 13th century saw the opening of a new era in political thought. The focus was no longer on moral instruction and endowing rulers with virtue, but on analysing and evaluating the techniques of power. This shift is also reflected in the mirrors of princes produced from this period forward. The decisive impulse behind this change in the intellectual environment came out of the discovery of Aristotle’s writings in political philosophy, which became available in the mid-13th century through William of Moerbeke’s translations of the Politics and the Nicomachean Ethics. These texts altered the terms of political thought, heightening its level and spurring the development of an institutional approach, where political ethics is treated as a matter not of individual virtue, but of the proper application of knowledge about the preconditions and practices of power. They offered a textual basis for political reasoning, wherein power was no longer interpreted exclusively in biblical terms, submission to a ruler was no longer regarded merely as a punishment and means of correction ordained by God following the fall of Adam, and socialization was not solely understood as a result of the mistrust and need for protection brought into the world by Cain.⁴³ It made room for viewpoints that placed great value on the good life in this world, bene vivere, and even raised it to a status as the goal of all forms of human coexistence, and thus of the exercise of any form of power. The earlier understanding of political order as a mark of accidental features of human existence created by sinful actions could now be re-evaluated; political communities and states could be seen more positively in relationship to natural, intrinsic features of humanity, understood in Christian terms as instilled by God’s act of creation, and thus as essential. Humans could thus now be conceived of as gregarious, inherently social and political beings, independently of salvific interpretations of historical processes.⁴⁴ Man, his needs, and his predispositions stood at the centre of the philosophical thought of scholars in the universities inspired by Aristotle, the philosophus par excellence, interpreting his works, commenting on them, and making them the basis for their doctrines.⁴⁵ Because their topic was human happiness, all citizens were called upon to bring about happiness, and they were thus to be provided with knowledge.⁴⁶

This carried consequences. The exercise of power was to be assessed on the basis of its ability to fulfil its function: namely, the extent to which it enables the members of politically constituted communities to live a good life. Rulers were no longer bound by religious commandments alone, their office was not merely the result of trespass caused by original sin, their function not only to remedy its consequences, and their legitimacy no longer derived solely from God’s assignment. Instead they were to be tested and evaluated on the basis of the temporal benefits they brought to the people.

Thomas Aquinas – Dominican, university professor, and one of the most significant philosophical thinkers of the 13th century – was one of the first to argue on the basis of the Latin translation of Aristotle’s Politics. In doing so, he adopted Aristotle’s classification of three good and three bad forms of government. He weighed up the advantages and disadvantages of these alternative constitutional models. His text De regno ad regem Cypri, written in the sixth or seventh decade of the 13th century, is particularly focused on political issues. Thomas did not complete the text, but it was continued by his fellow Dominican and pupil, Ptolemy of Lucca. This combination of the work of the two men became influential, with manuscripts in broad circulation. Thomas Aquinas was generally identified as the sole author; only with the beginning of modern editions did the textual contributions of the two authors began to be distinguished.⁴⁷

In the text Thomas discusses the question of how political organization should be obtained. The occasion for the text indicated in the dedication is the precarious political situation of the Crusader state Cyprus in the 1360s, which was marked by baronial opposition to the king.⁴⁸ In reality, however, this context was of no particular importance either for Thomas’s argument or for the later reception of the text. Even today it remains a matter of debate whether the text was addressed to King Hugh II of Cyprus (†1267) or his cousin and successor Hugh III (†1284).⁴⁹ The dedication of the text was in stark contrast with its actual use. Thomas’s arguments in the text on the founding of a new empire and new cities,⁵⁰ referring to the situation of Crusader states outremer, did not yield a manuscript tradition in the Latin East, including Cyprus. Instead the manuscripts remained connected to Dominican monasteries, insofar as their erstwhile provenance can be determined today. In manuscripts, the text is usually associated with other, shorter works by Thomas Aquinas or with other mirrors of princes. A Madrid manuscript collected the best-known mirrors of princes of the late Middle Ages in a single codex: those of Gilbert of Tournai, Vincent of Beauvais, Giles of Rome, and Thomas Aquinas.⁵¹

The fact that the text treats its subject at an abstract distance from a concrete political situation is reflected in the title it is given in the numerous manuscript copies: De regimine principum. The analysis in the text is in fact detached from any particular concrete context, drawing on examples from various eras and regions. These offered a basis for the interpretation and intellectual framing of contemporary political reality, set apart from mere wishful thinking by the critique of existing orders and designs for worthwhile states. Thomas did not content himself with adopting the Aristotelian classification of political constitutions, but undertook a study of the constitutional realities of the Middle Ages. He wrote that the king possesses the highest legitimacy, but it is a matter of scholarly controversy whether he considered monarchy to be the best form of government. Some scholars see Thomas as a proponent of absolute monarchy;⁵² others believe he favoured a limited monarchy; still others that he supported a mixed constitution. It has even been argued that he advocated republicanism.⁵³ These contradictory judgments are based on inconsistencies between various statements made by Thomas himself. This has led some authors to conclude that Thomas did not offer instruction for royalty at all, but rather an analysis of political processes independently of different forms of government – whether monarchy, aristocracy, or democracy.⁵⁴ Michel Villey sought to resolve this problem by regarding Thomas’s magnum opus, the Summa theologica, as his only authentic work, and arguing that Aquinas was not the author of De regimine principum (the real author’s identity being unclear). Villey does not support this hypothesis with solid arguments, considering his own analysis of the content of the text as sufficient proof. However, his interpretation of the text as an unreflective homage to monarchical government fundamentally misunderstands its intention.⁵⁵

Thomas does not derive the legitimacy of rule from its origins, from dynastic succession, or from divine appointment – but from its results. On his account, men should live together and be politically organized in a way that provides an abundance of opportunities for human development. This led to the use of the text, which was consistently regarded as a mirror of princes, far from the royal milieu.⁵⁶

Consequently, the addressee of Thomas’s instructions is neither the king nor the prince. Referring to a dilemma wherein autocracy is considered the best form of government, but tyranny the worst,⁵⁷ he sees the solution not in the ruler’s morality, nor in his pedagogical preparation for the duties of his office, but in institutional safeguards whose aim is to diminish his power: ‘Deinde sic disponenda est regni gubernatio ut regi iam instituto tyrannidis subtrahatur occasio.’⁵⁸ The character of government should be based on advice given to the ruler by a group of wise and learned men. Using the notion of pars in principatu, he describes the position not only of the monarch, but of every member of a given community. In addition to the monarch, according to Thomas, there should be a number of other principantes. Iudices et magistri constituti participate in the king’s rule.⁵⁹ In addition to the king – not against him, but in cooperation with him – institutions were to pursue the goal of the political community, i.e. the bonum commune. This participation fits with the conception of hierarchy expressed by the pseudo-Dionysian texts and their interpreters, Thomas Aquinas among them. In this conception, the power of the single ruler is mediated by a graduated series of authorities. Relations between the various levels of the hierarchy establish order: among the angels, in the church, and in the state.⁶⁰

Thomas did not finish De regno before his death; when the Dominican Ptolemy of Lucca continued it, because he saw it as an ideal constitution for the Italian city-republic, he significantly altered the character of the work, including its addressees and its recommendation on the form of government. Each of the two authors produced a treatise of political theory, presenting knowledge and reasoning that would provide a basis for political thought for all scholars, including students and graduates of universities and studia generalia.⁶¹

Mirrors of princes could be distanced from the royal court in terms both of the readers to whom they were addressed and of their content. This applies even to some that pointed still more clearly to the prince as initiator and recipient than did that of Thomas Aquinas. The Dominican Vincent of Beauvais († 1264) dedicated himself to answering the questions of how a ruler can be led to do good, and of the conditions that must obtain in order to make possible not only the existence of a good ruler, but good governments in general. Here again, rather than offering a catalogue of virtues to justify a view of the hereditary monarchy as the best form of government, Vincent offers methods for attaining the goal of just power, which is to produce the common good.

Vincent was connected to the French court. He wrote a mirror of princes that was delivered to Louis IX of France as well as to Theobald V, Count of Champagne, and that was intended for the education of the future king Philip III. In it, Vincent represents the education of the prince as a solution to the dilemma that Thomas Aquinas so clearly set out in around 1270: autocracy is the best form of government, and at the same time the worst.⁶² He also highlights the tension: in a hereditary monarchy, which he describes as the best system, the best person would have to exercise power, but given the vagaries of family succession, this could not be assumed. Thus, if a bad man becomes the ruler, the actions of a tyrant may transform the best form of government into the worst. As a solution, Vincent proposed a preparation for the royal office that was to generate an optimal political constitution, optimal governance, and optimal benefit to the subjects.⁶³ Again, rather than limiting his text to the instruction of the king, Vincent presented a doctrine of government. This work was linked to his efforts to produce broad world knowledge in a form accessible to all – a project represented more extensively by his great encyclopædia.⁶⁴ Terminologically, this encyclopædia was closely akin to the mirrors of princes. The word speculum reflects the two categories of inherent and intended teachings, without presupposing an exclusive circle of addressees.⁶⁵ While this work, like the mirror of princes, was commissioned by the French king, in reality the copies in use were held by the Dominican order, which made them manuals of practical pastoral activity for everyone. They were employed as a source in teaching the students of the order and to enrich sermons with information from all areas of knowledge. The linkage of all of Vincent’s texts to the royal court is thus at the very least problematic, and certainly not self-evident.

This hypothesis is confirmed by the dissemination of Vincent’s mirror of princes in manuscripts, which was closely connected to the Dominican Order. The source for the copies was an exemplar held in its monastery in Paris. There, many copies were produced, presumably through the pecia system, wherein manuscripts were disassembled and the pieces copied quickly and in parallel by multiple copyists. The monasteries and schools of the mendicant order thus proved to be the hubs of its intellectual diffusion.⁶⁶ However, the great wave of manuscript dissemination began only after around 1300. Dominican monasteries and studia generalia received the texts, and copies were also found in university colleges. The group of manuscripts that also included Vincent’s text on the education of noble daughters was more closely linked to the royal courts, but there were considerably fewer copies – in fact, only two are known to have existed. There is no evidence of any impact in the courtly milieu.⁶⁷ Its dissemination in France was apparently impeded by Vincent’s disparagement of the right of succession as a source of legitimacy. The French kings lay great store by the unbroken historical continuity of their dynasty – since Louis IX, extending back to the Carolingians – as a justification for their rule. This could not readily be reconciled with the break in continuity portrayed by Vincent.⁶⁸

4 Politics and Pedagogy

The Franciscan Gilbert of Tournai (†1284) also wrote a mirror of princes at around the same time. He was a master at the University of Paris and, like Vincent of Beauvais, minister at the court of King Louis IX of France. His writings had a considerable impact that continued after his death. He gave and wrote sermons for various social groups. His predominant topic was moral didactics. In his mirror of princes, he discussed the foundations of kingly power and good practices for their rule.⁶⁹ In contrast to the views of the leader of his order, Bonaventure, he explicitly included love within the scope of the constitution and exercise of worldly rule – on grounds not of political rationality, but of the force of the divine will. On Gilbert’s account, God intervenes directly in the order of earthly things. Good rule is thus possible thanks to divine providence.⁷⁰

The political dilemma of how good and just rule can be reconciled with the vagaries of dynastic transmission could be resolved neither through an anthropologically grounded aptitude for cooperation nor through trust in divine intervention. The fundamental idea and assumption of mirrors of princes was that a good ruler inherits his office and is prepared for it by instruction. The problem was thus to be solved pedagogically and didactically. The most widely disseminated late medieval mirror of princes, that of Giles of Rome, gave detailed indications on how this was to be accomplished.

As with the other mirrors of princes, here I will examine its character as a vehicle of political thought. However, I also wish to consider it as an example of reflection on pedagogical action.⁷¹ The polyvalence of potential understandings of the text expanded its use as a general textbook of knowledge. This is also evident in its use and reception. Giles’s mirror of princes in particular offered sweeping world knowledge; it approaches the genre of texts that combine ethics with information and seek to optimize human behaviour – heightening efficiency and improving morality. In sermons and confessional manuals, pedagogical contents were conveyed to a broad public, inasmuch as their reception was not limited to a courtly milieu.⁷² The ‘process of civilization’ was not restricted to the royal courts; the civic and bourgeois milieu, with its specific disciplinary demands, was an equally important site for this process, so decisive in western history.⁷³

Mirrors of princes, too, influenced this process of acculturation. They treated the actions of rulers, as of all people in their respective offices and fields of activity, as learnable. The notion of an automatic transfer of virtues from father to son was no longer accepted. The task of solving the problem of how rule could be transferred to the ‘best’ individuals despite the vagaries of dynastic succession, while justifying monarchy as the best system of government, was entrusted to education.

Pedagogy was to resolve the political dilemma identified by Thomas Aquinas, that the best constitution is the monarchy of a good ruler, while the worst is the despotism of an unjust ruler. The quality of autocracy thus depended on the properties of an individual, and the political question could be made into a psychological one. From this starting point, what was required was to mould the individual’s character into an appropriate shape.

The intention of mirrors of princes initially concerned political action, but this included education. In various milieux, the reception of the pedagogical concept was uncoupled from the strategy for solving a political problem. As the transmission of manuscript copies attests, the intentions to which it could be attached were entirely mutable; it could be adapted for use in various ways and by various social groups.

Giles of Rome’s mirror of princes, probably written around 1279, is clearly marked by a pedagogical impetus toward an all-encompassing regulation of human behaviour, whose intended reach far exceeded the political sphere. The work deals at once with the princeps and with the cives. Contrary to what is implied in its prologue, wherein Giles dedicates the text to the heir to the French throne, the future King Philip IV of France, the work was not addressed only to the ruler and his family.⁷⁴ It lays out a general moral doctrine for all those concerned with the utilitas publica and the education of their children. It discusses the education required to produce a good father, the head of the family, and – at the level of individual psychology – the education of each individual for a good life, independent of any given social context.

At the turn of the 14th century, Giles of Rome was one of the most important theologians of the Augustinian Order, and is considered the founder of the theological orientation that, while closely following Thomas Aquinas in commenting Aristotle, also drew on Augustine. In its general chapter of 1287, the Augustinian Order decided that all of its scholars should adopt and defend all of Giles’s views, doctrines, and judgments up to that point, as well as all those he would go on to produce. The Order was thus made into a multiplier of his writings, ensuring him an extraordinarily wide-reaching impact throughout Europe.⁷⁵

The argument of the work takes up the themes of an already well-established understanding of Aristotle: felicity as the aim of human aspiration, the imperfection of all individuals (which can only be partly compensated by socialization), and the reciprocal connection of any political collective to the claims of individuals. The structure of the work is based on an anthropological conception which takes rule over the self, in the family, and in the kingdom to be grounded in analogous principles. Similar requirements are derived in each case; the content is thus applicable beyond the social milieux of the prince and the court. Giles held that the sequence of levels of action, culminating in rule over a great multitude, corresponds to the natural principle of perfection, whose purpose is felicity – that is, making possible a perfected and thus virtuous life: bene et virtuose vivere. Each person, characterized precisely in the sense of Aristotle’s political theory as an animal politicum, was charged with behaving in such a way as to show himself useful to the res publica. This could be achieved in various social positions. However, preparation and guidance were required: Giles did not consider individuals’ natural dispositions and their mutual sympathies sufficient to ensure the necessary socialization. He did see the disposition toward mutual support inherent to human nature as a precondition for life in societies, but he considered that human relations need to be moulded through instruction, guidance, and command. Tellingly, the key concept in the work is not the civitas, but the regimen, meaning subordination to layers of hierarchical leadership – beginning within the family and culminating in the rule of the king. The regimen also designates the mastery of individual impulses.

Giles regarded the potential of man as the precondition for this shaping through education, guidance, and learning. This potential was not to be activated by an isolated act of divine grace, but consisted in abilities inherent in human nature, whose realization nonetheless required the external influence of instruction. General human ability, Giles argued, allowed for emotional bonds between men, which thereby – here again following the medieval reception of Aristotle – provided the basis for socialization in various realms.

The distribution of manuscripts of Giles’s mirror of princes clearly shows that most were written, conserved, and obviously also read in the monasteries of the mendicant orders. A great number were produced: there are at least 284 known manuscripts containing the Latin edition, as well as a total of 78 in various vernaculars.⁷⁶ The texts with which the Latin version was combined in manuscripts reflect a close connection to moral didactics addressed to all, not only to rulers. A typical example is the manuscript that was kept in the Franciscan monastery of London, which, in addition to the regimen principum also includes John of Wales’s confessional treatise Tractatus de penitentia and his De septem viciis.⁷⁷ Giles’s text was often combined with texts offering practical guidance for daily life, schoolbooks, and excerpts from sermons. Augustinian friars in Italy combined Giles’s text with the work of Bartholomew of Bergamo on orthography, as well as a number of grammar textbooks and excerpts from auctoritates super diversis materiis utilibus, a compact florilegium of theological works from Augustine to Bernard of Clairvaux. They also included hagiographies.⁷⁸

The use of the text for pastoral care is made obvious precisely by its association with sermons. Together they offered a corpus of written sermones from which portions could be selected for oral speech.⁷⁹ However, the text was seldom found in manuscripts devoted to the literature on political theory. An exception is an English manuscript of the 14th century, which combined Giles’s mirror of princes with Thomas Aquinas’s De regno. Occasionally it was also combined with Aquinas’s commentaries on Aristotle’s Ethicis and on his work of politics. Its predominant context, however, was in manuscripts combining it with texts on rhetoric and didactics.⁸⁰

Giles’s instructions on child rearing, parental duties, spousal relations, the legal basis of marriage, close emotional ties between spouses and between parents and children, and love between family members could be used by many different social groups. They were addressed to a broad public, like that of the sermons, and indeed the mirror of princes could also be drawn on in the composition of a sermon. The alphabetical list of general terms such as abominatio and amor appended to one manuscript by the observant Florentine Dominicans, along with detailed definitions, demonstrates the use of the text in the service of pastoral care for the entire laity. An often detailed table of contents also attests to the isolated use of individual passages. Elements that could be extracted in addition to a linear reading of Giles’s text provided building blocks for sermons. This use massively multiplied the text’s reception.⁸¹ In addition to political information, it also provided pedagogical information. The pedagogy was of interest to many, including outside the royal courts. In particular, it was a topic of pastoral care, presented to broad sections of the population especially by the members of the mendicant orders, and especially in cities.⁸²

Because secular clerics were increasingly engaged in lay pastoral care and as preachers from the 13th century onward,⁸³ Giles’s mirror of princes also often found its way into the private book collections of canons and the libraries of collegiate churches. The addressees of pastoral care were laypeople, who thus received information from Giles’s text. However, evidence of manuscripts in the possession of laypeople is slim, and mainly relates to Italian cities, with their more developed urban scholarly culture in comparison to other European countries. Outside Italy, the existence of a French translation in the collection of one of the leading citizens of Calais, who held the position of alderman after the English conquest of 1347, demonstrates a certain interest among bourgeois groups. This interest may have been greater than the evidence indicates, due to problematic conservation conditions.⁸⁴

Giles of Rome’s mirror of princes was also used as a teaching text in universities, serving in the philosophical and theological training of clerics. It contained material on ethics, and thus was not confined to the teaching of politics. Beginning in 1323, De regimine principum was included in the compulsory programme for students at the University of Paris. Other universities followed. A copy was donated to the library of the University of Heidelberg in 1444 by Friedrich Motter, the former rector and the dean of the Marienkirche in Neustadt.⁸⁵ A manuscript was also present in the library of Amplonius Rating de Berka in 1425, when he donated his book collection to the college he founded at the University of Erfurt in order to provide a complete range of scholarly knowledge for students, covering all disciplines.⁸⁶ Multipliers of the content of the text conveyed it to the laity, including those beyond the royal courts.⁸⁷

The versions most closely connected to the royal courts were the vernacular translations.⁸⁸ The fact that the library of the French king Charles V contained a French translation of De regimine may seem almost self-evident in light of his passionate collector’s desire to see all of the knowledge of his time gathered at his court, and of course an acknowledged preference for political theory. The exemplar in his possession was a magnificently illuminated manuscript decorated with gold lettering. Likewise, the English King Richard III owned a copy in the late 51th century, as did members of his court. It was also found in the entourage of his contemporary French King Louis XI; the queen possessed a copy. There is no evidence, however, that they read them personally, and indeed it is not even likely, given the large size of these collections, which speak more of a drive to collect texts than of a determination to absorb their contents. The manuscripts were, however, presumably used by the court personnel. Marks of ownership point to this circle of recipients. The acquisition and possession of manuscripts at court and among clerics acting as confessors, preachers, and advisors to rulers, will have opened up an important pathway to knowledge of their contents. In the late 15th century there was a copy of Giles’s Regimen at Westminster Abbey, in close connection to the English court. The chamberlain of King Edward IV, William Hastings, and his daughter-in-law also possessed a manuscript.⁸⁹ Most of these manuscripts collected at court were resplendent editions, and – contrary to the Latin originals – were written out with great care. They provided more than just their textual contents; the books themselves were the important objects. They were evidently intended to exhibit their owners’ prestige, but – more importantly still – to prove that they had absorbed the teachings in the mirror of princes and, at the least, displayed them. They became treasures – objects that combined material and ideal value.⁹⁰

Translations of the text into a vernacular – German, French, English – considerably expanded its reception, and brought its contents to a public beyond the circles of Latin-speaking university scholarship. Henri de Gauchi, canon of Saint Martin in Liège, produced a French version before the end of the 31th century. It was the most successful, with more than 20 surviving manuscripts. Other translations existed.⁹¹ Manuscripts also reached members of the nobility and the court. Women were among the recipients of these manuscripts.

The first manuscripts in Italian were produced, again quickly – before the end of the 13th century – on the basis of de Gauchi’s translation.⁹² The German versions began somewhat later, and they too spread through both bourgeois and royal milieux. According to its prologue, a manuscript dated 1437 was dedicated to Duke Albrecht V of Bavaria, and intended for his use. Rhyming versions increased the prestige of the text and its appropriation. They may have served to optimize the reception of the text, enabling it to be absorbed not only by way of public oral presentations, but through private reading. In any case, the text was the subject of intellectual activity; the aim was to capture the meaning. These manuscripts thus represented more than just the styling of rulers as knowledgeable men, or a label signifying noble and kingly learning, although they did serve this function in France and elsewhere.⁹³ Translations into English, Castilian, and Catalan allowed the text to be received in the courts of the local kings. Dedication to rulers – as to Henry, the son and later the successor of the English King Henry IV – demonstrates proximity to the exercise of political power.⁹⁴

It is a noteworthy fact that Giles’s text even overcame the barrier of religion: it was also translated into Hebrew, with the oldest manuscript dating from the 14th century.⁹⁵ The reasoning in the text, at an abstract remove from any specific Christian foundations, made it suitable for reception in a different religious environment. The ethically precise, religious but non-specific text is open to taking on polyvalent functions. Its uses were thus not necessarily confined to either royal or Christian pastoral contexts. The appearance of translated versions in manuscripts alongside texts on military technology, warfare, chronicles, chivalric romances on the Alexandrian model, and Alain Chartier’s moral teachings for the nobility, attest to wide-ranging interest. The intention underlying its presentation to educated laypeople from the nobility was thus not always to fulfil demands for educational guidance.⁹⁶

5 Prestige and Legitimacy

It need not be assumed that the kings read the literature that they gathered at their courts, nor that in any case it predetermined thinking or action, or even that it was used as a guidebook for behaviour in the family. But having to react to intellectual demands, which required self-reflection and the evaluation of actions, led to change in the self-conception of kings and emperors. Beginning at the time of King James I of Aragón and his contemporaries King Alfonso X of Castile, Emperor Frederick II, and King Louis IX of France, rulers gathered around them a circle of persons who, working at the intellectual intersection of government, power, and obedience, developed a conceptual framework wherein the grandeur of emperors and kings is based on values. King Alfonso X of Castile even made it a legal duty for the ruler to learn, and to teach his successors. Siete Partidas, a legislative text identified as Alfonso’s work, set out a requirement of teaching and learning for the king and his family.⁹⁷

Kings, it explained, are preservers of knowledge. They must present themselves as promoters and repositories of truth. The figure of the rex eruditus became the ideal. The manuscripts at the royal courts were thus more than simply a great treasure held as a credential, whose content was to be handled and used only by other members of the court, typically the clergy. Beginning in the 13th century, the activity of writing and reflecting on texts formed part of the ideal of the good, just, and above all pious king. This can also be seen in the reports of numerous authors on the canonization of King Louis IX, and particularly the biography written by Jean de Joinville.⁹⁸ The king endowed with texts was the epitome of the intellectual king. The possession of manuscripts, and especially those that directly described, standardized, and evaluated the office and duties of the king, thus served as a credential indicating that the king was fulfilling his function as a keeper of knowledge. The manuscripts at the royal court stylized the royal office, presenting the king as a scholar. Proximity to texts served to legitimate the king’s position. Dealing in texts did not equate to writing and reading – although rulers such as Frederick II, King Louis IX of France, King Alfonso X of Castile and King James II of Aragon exercised these skills, or at least pretended to. The ownership of a document could be used to style oneself as master of its contents. Ostentatious display was not required to fulfil this function; the splendour, rich decoration, and ornamentation of the royal books did not have to be shown at all, and indeed they were more often held in secrecy. Works in the arcanum, however, were not considered any less potent – indeed, their placement in the arcanum made it clear that only the ruler could absorb them. The possession of the text thus stood as a badge of erudition. This was a virtue that the ruler had to manifest in order to meet the intensified demands of an era that conceived knowledge of ethical behaviour as learnable material.

The appropriation of texts imbued those who possessed them, and who purported to have absorbed their contents, with the aura of a reflective person of action. For rulers, this aura was necessary. But the text itself could also be used far from the court. It offered an updated ideal of the household and the family, which it was nonetheless held to stabilize.⁹⁹ Here, too, although stylization may have been more important than real intellectual mastery of the content, contact with the text nonetheless showed its potential, which lay in the shaping of behaviour – and thus worked at least in part, as behaviour was to be judged against an idealized concept. Mirrors of princes are documents of late medieval thinking on the methods and content of a pedagogical intervention. They served to consolidate codified rules of conduct, regarded as prerequisites for assuming social and political roles, within the context of family ties. The civilizing disciplinary function was deployed within the family. The generative continuity of the family was not to be left to biological succession alone, however; its content needed to be enriched. Because mirrors of princes solved a political problem – that of combining hereditary succession with just rule – through a pedagogical programme, they could be used pedagogically by persons who were at a distance from the ruling family.

The considerations presented here call into question the succinct conventional definition of the mirror of princes as a text for the instruction of princes, aimed at producing good government. It also cannot be taken for granted that these writings were addressed to rulers. Moreover, the texts should not be defined in terms of their topics, such as ‘fostering the common good, particular care for the weak, promoting happiness and prosperity, upholding justice and the law, avoiding tyranny, etc.’¹⁰⁰ Of course, the texts discussed these issues, and princes were explicitly addressed in them. Those facts notwithstanding, their use was by no means limited to rulers, whose advisors were not alone in understanding them, and they were not found only at royal courts. The texts clearly reached far wider audiences through clerics, their teaching in monastic schools and universities, and their sermons to broad swathes of the population. I therefore regard the mirrors of princes of the late Middle Ages as texts that provided a forum for reflection on politics. Up to the 12th century, political science had neither its own institutional framework nor its own textual genre. The latter void was filled by the mirrors of princes. They offered general reflections on reasons and justifications for rule, how it should be exercised, the anthropological foundations it is built on, and the goals it pursues or should pursue. The abstract political doctrine of mirrors of princes offered reading and grounds for reflection to any learned person in the late Middle Ages – i.e., those educated at the universities – and, moreover, to anyone who heard sermons, who was taught by priests, or who as a layperson was able to read didactic texts.¹⁰¹ The composition and use of mirrors of princes was thus part of a great educational offensive, which also involved the production of other works referred to as ‘mirrors’, and which envisioned a disciplining of all areas of life and all activities, providing and calling for information and reflection to this end. In summary, mirrors of princes were didactic texts which treated political topics in practical terms, and which contributed to popularizing knowledge of politics. Their impact was evidently paradoxical: that which posed as a mirror of princes forced open the arcanum of power and led to the spread of knowledge about power through the social body.

The texts referred to as ‘mirrors of princes’ had multiple aims and uses. These were by no means restricted to the instruction of rulers, but include both veneration and criticism of rulers, the conception of a political theory, the conception of a general pedagogy, instructions on marriage, hygiene, and nutrition, definitions of the duties of the clergy, and the dissemination of general world knowledge. A definition of the mirrors of princes must take into account their use. In summary, I propose to define mirrors of princes as texts which present and discuss knowledge that is useful for political action, but which also provide knowledge to a broad audience beyond the circles of political power, and which deal with practical daily life concerns (health, child rearing, married life). Mirrors of princes are thus texts that deal with world knowledge theoretically, while also supplying practical applications. As a genre, mirrors of princes were closely related to encyclopædias. Both linked theory and praxis, and both could also be understood by non-scholars. Mirrors of princes should thus be understood as texts for lay education, including not only princes but various other laypeople.

Translated by Paul Reeve