De Regimine Research Articles

The Coherence of Ptolemy of Lucca’s Regime Science in De regimine principium

De regimine principum, principally authored by Ptolemy of Lucca (c.1236-c.1327), was once an influential work of Catholic political philosophy. Although the work has been revisited by scholars in recent decades, it has yet to receive the attention it deserves from contemporary audiences. This article argues that Ptolemy of Lucca is a fundamentally Aristotelian thinker who offers substantial contributions to the Aristotelian account of regimes. He offers an avenue for reconciling Aristotle’s political science with Scripture, and presents a distinctly Christian metaphysical defense of political life. Additionally, Ptolemy provides a moral and psychological defense of republicanism based upon the success of the Roman Republic’s honor-oriented political order.

Publicus–Privatus The Divine Foundations of Authority in Dietrich Reinking

Abstract This article examines the relationship between the magistrate and his subjects as developed in the Tractatus de regimine seculari et ecclesiastico (1619) by the German jurist Dietrich Reinking (1590–1664). The Tractatus represents the magistrate-subject relationship by reference to the adjectives publicus and privatus. We argue that these adjectives carry particular weight within the context of Reinking’s political theory that bases itself upon the Lutheran doctrine of the two kingdoms. Publicus is associated with a figure of authority that has been divinely ordained and governs the world, while privatus refers to the inferior subjects, who must obey the political authorities, even when these authorities act unjustly. This obedience has limits, however. If the magistratus issues a precept that contradicts divine and natural law, private subjects are entitled to disobey. Indeed, subjects, who participate in public administration, may actively resist, if the magistrate violates the fundamental laws of the empire. Such violations amounts to committing a sin against the divine authority that has ordained the officium of the magistrate, and which defines him as something more than a private man. Thus, the adjectives publicus and privatus belong to the worldly kingdom, where personae privatae are governed by personae publicae: this governance is parcelled into different officia that govern the res publica and are constrained by divine and natural law. In the spiritual kingdom, this distinction between private and public collapses, and individuals are placed on the same level vis-à-vis Christ, who is the sole persona publica.

John Trevisa's Information Age: Knowledge and the Pursuit of Literature, c. 1400 by Emily Steiner

Reviewed by: John Trevisa's Information Age: Knowledge and the Pursuit of Literature, c. 1400 by Emily Steiner Matthew Boyd Goldie Emily Steiner. John Trevisa's Information Age: Knowledge and the Pursuit of Literature, c. 1400. Oxford Studies in Medieval Literature and Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. Pp. xii, 287. $80.00. John Trevisa, father of English prose? Is that a prosaic father, or can informative writing be beautiful? What contributions to a history of style does [End Page 425] a translator make? What is the relationship between facts and literature? When have there been "information ages"? Emily Steiner's John Trevisa's Information Age asks these questions and offers thoughtful answers in seven carefully researched chapters. Each draws attention to Trevisa's contributions to English, English literature, and English "information culture" (1). The book contends that Trevisa's translations of compendious works helped shape English literary prose style and English literature more broadly by making English a suitable and even eloquent vernacular to communicate historical, scientific, and didactic learning. As most readers know perhaps more implicitly than explicitly, Trevisa translated Ranulph Higden's universal history, the Polychronicon; Bartholomaeus Anglicus's encyclopedia, De proprietatibus rerum; Giles of Rome's mirror for princes, De regimine principum; and other shorter works. As David Fowler suggested in his 1995 biography, Trevisa was possibly from Cornwall and spent most of his life at Oxford before securing a position as chaplain, canon, and vicar for Thomas de Berkeley in Gloucestershire. He is presumed to have died in 1402, so he is an exact contemporary of Geoffrey Chaucer. His works survive in about thirty manuscripts as well as early prints by William Caxton, Wynkyn de Worde, Thomas Berthelet, and Stephen Batman. Steiner concentrates on the Polychronicon and De proprietatibus rerum more than on De regimine principum or other translations, and she also glances sideways into Trevisa's "information age" by considering Piers Plowman, the Concordance to the Wycliffite Bible (c. 1425), and the earlier versified encyclopedia Le livre de Sydrac (c. 1275). Most of the chapters examine Trevisa's divergences from and additions to his sources, the characteristics of his style, and how the large scale of his translations makes the late fourteenth century an age of information in England, following similar projects in France and elsewhere in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. One recurring topic in the book concerns form—the compendium versus the monograph and how book history and the canon would look if we considered the compilation as central to manuscript and print publication. After all, if every compilation/compendium/florilegium/collecte/recueil/gathering/miscellany/"litel tretys"/anthology were tallied, they might add up to more copies than the single-text or single-author book, with arguably more cultural influence. Steiner posits that "what we now recognize to be literary properties emerged in part from translations of medieval compendia," with Trevisa translating and glossing, for example, the Poly-chronicon, to form a "megagenre" or "super-compendium" so that he [End Page 426] "provided an intellectual and literary rationale for English prose" (25, 30). Just in terms of the vernacular, although possibly overrepresented in the Middle English Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary, Trevisa remains a major source for the lexicon, with 9,553 contributions in 6,279 entries in the OED. Another key topic is the idea of an Information Age in England c. 1400. Steiner proposes that "our attachments to those texts we call literary, and which we invest with richness and complexity, have roots in medieval information culture," describing Trevisa as "the perfect entry point into a literary history of information" (12). She stresses that "Every age is, in its own way, an information age, and the late fourteenth century was no exception. … It was not merely the age before the printing press or the age before the internet, but also the age in which the collection and classification of knowledge was bound up with the production of vernacular literature" (227). In Steiner's reading, Trevisa, who likely knew John Wyclif at Oxford, does not simply translate in a straight manner but has works that "criticize the professional religious and redefine the relationship between clergy and laity" while...

A Mother’s Manual for the Women of Ferrara: A Fifteenth-Century Guide to Pregnancy and Pediatrics, ed. Gabriella Zuccolin and trans. Martin Marafioti. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series, 89. New York and Toronto: Iter Press, 2022, pp. 254.

Abstract: Gabriella Zuccolin (Ph.D., Salerno), Andrew W. Mellow Fellow at the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, and Martin Marafioti (Ph.D., Johns Hopkins University), Professor at Pace University in the Dyson College of Arts and Sciences, have collaborated to bring readers a translation of Michele Savonarola’s vernacular Italian manual bearing the Latin title, De regimine praegnantium et noviter natorum usque ad septennium, or Regimen for Pregnant Women and Newborns up to the Seventh Year, which they have introduced, translated, and annotated. For the new book publication, they have given Savonarola’s work an accurately descriptive title in English: A Mother’s Manual for the Women of Ferrara: A Fifteenth-Century Guide to Pregnancy and Pediatrics. Their work contributes to the increasingly rich academic literature on medieval and early modern medicine, midwifery, maternity, and the realities of the childbearing year, including the care of the newborn. Their work can be greatly appreciated in relation to work of cultural and medical historian Monica Green on the medieval midwife-physician Trotula of Salerno and her treatise, called The Trotula, as well the work of other scholars of medieval and early modern medicine.

Tyran i rządy tyrańskie w ujęciu Bartolusa de Saxoferrato

The famous 14th-century jurist Bartolus de Saxoferrato addressed the issues of tyranny at various points in his prolific scientific career, both in his commentary to the Corpus iuris civilis and in the public law treatises De regimine civitatis and De Guelfis et Gebellinis, where the theme of resistance against a tyrant was developed, whereas the legal theory of tyranny was comprehensively presented by him in the treatise De tyranno. The subject of the article is the analysis of the concepts of tyrant and tyrannical rule in Bartolus’ works.

De regimine infantis – opieka nad dzieckiem w średniowiecznej Italii na podstawie Ad mulieres Ferrarienses de regimine pregnantium et noviter natorum usque ad septennium Michała Savonaroli

Michele Savonarola’s treatise Ad mulieres Ferrarienses de regimine pregnantium et noviter natorum usque ad septennium is one of the most important gynecological and pediatric treaties written in Italy in the 15th century. Undoubtedly, the language in which it were written and its recipients was a novelty for those times. Savonarola had to connect the high mortality of women and children with the little knowledge of the midwives of the time, since he decided to write this treatise. The work certainly allowed them to reach medical knowledge, previously unavailable for them, but the limitations applied in it did not allow for self-treatment, but forced them to frequent consult a doctor. Numerous references to earlier authors testify the Savonarola’s extensive theoretical knowledge and accurate observations the rich medical practice.

Meditating Death in Medieval and Early Modern Devotional Writing: From Bonaventure to Luther by Mark Chinca

Reviewed by: Meditating Death in Medieval and Early Modern Devotional Writing: From Bonaventure to Luther by Mark Chinca Barbara Newman Mark Chinca. Meditating Death in Medieval and Early Modern Devotional Writing: From Bonaventure to Luther. Oxford Studies in Medieval Literature and Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. Pp. xv, 299. 9 illus. $80.00. Philosophy, as Plato famously said, is meditation on death. The biblical author Jesus ben Sirach similarly wrote, “In all thy works remember thy last end, and thou shalt never sin” (Sir 7:40). Mark Chinca’s careful study [End Page 294] traces select Christian attempts to obey that precept from the thirteenth century through the sixteenth, with a coda on Descartes. His method is partly rhetorical, partly psychological, as he parses the fine distinctions among various techniques for meditating. Beyond his specific focus on the four last things (death, judgment, hell, and heaven), Chinca examines modes of meditation per se as a devotional exercise. According to the jacket copy, meditating on death was an important premodern technique “for developing a sense of individual selfhood.” But Chinca’s work hardly bears out that claim if we take “individual selfhood” in its usual sense, for the goal of these devout meditations was in no way to cultivate or express one’s unique personality. It was rather to internalize universal truths so as to take personal responsibility for them. At one point Chinca devotes ten pages to the maxim “all humans are mortal,” showing how reiterated exempla impressed it on the believer’s soul. Modes of death vary, as in Leonard Cohen’s haunting Jewish meditation: “And who by fire, who by water,/Who in the sunshine, who in the night time,/Who by high ordeal, who by common trial,/Who in your merry merry month of May,/Who by very slow decay,/And who shall I say is calling?” But medieval treatises did not encourage speculation on how death might come. They insisted instead that it would come, making that certainty the touchstone of the believer’s approach to life. Chinca’s first chapter treats three influential texts by Bonaventure: De regimine animae, Soliloquium, and De triplici via. Although all three are in Latin, they adapt traditional monastic exercises for secular users. De triplici via introduces the familiar scheme of three spiritual “ways”: purgative, illuminative, and unitive. Concentrating on such terms as gradus and scala, Chinca argues that in the Benedictine Rule, the ladder of the soul’s progress with its rungs is a metaphor drawn from artisanal labor, since the monastery was conceived as a spiritual workshop. But in Bonaventure these terms become equivocal—sometimes metaphors, but sometimes technical terms for stages in a systematic scheme of meditation. Always methodical, Bonaventure directs the soul to turn its “ray of contemplation” in four directions—toward its interior, to see how it has been “formed by nature, deformed by sin, and reformed by grace” (60); toward external things to learn contemptus mundi; toward what is below it to attain fear of death, judgment, and hell; and finally toward what is above it to cultivate longing for celestial joy. Within each of these contemplations, the Soliloquium provides detailed points and images for the exercitant to ponder, in a program meant to be repeated frequently to enhance its transformative power. [End Page 295] Chapter 2 deals with the Somme le Roi, a handbook compiled by the Dominican Friar Laurent for King Philip III of France in 1279. Though not original with this author, the Somme le Roi outpaced many comparable works. Its ars moriendi chapters were continually copied for two centuries, making their way into print and multiple translations. The work sends its reader on an imaginative journey: “go out of yourself, go out of this world, learn to die, separate your soul from your body in thought. Send your heart into the other world—that is, into heaven, hell, and purgatory” (66). Dante took that journey, as did many visionaries. But the purpose of the exercise is less to create vivid pictures of the afterlife than to keep death before the mind’s eye at all times. The believer should “learn to die” not like the worldly wise...

Da virtude à política

Este artigo trata da história do pensamento político no século XIV. Ele faz um estudo propedêutico à primeira parte do tratado De regimine rectoris, do franciscano Paulino de Veneza, datado de c. 1314. O problema que discute é o da correlação entre moral e política na validação de um governo considerado bom e legítimo. Ele se alinha à tese de que os pensadores medievais não atribuíram o sucesso ou fracasso do governo a aspectos formais como as instituições, mas à moralidade do homem social, materializada na pessoa do governante (rector). Destarte, o objetivo do trabalho é mostrar de que modo autores como Paulino descreveram, em termos de virtudes e vícios, as características do bom e do mau governante, fazendo a moral concorrer para a legitimação da política. O método empregado na leitura da obra é a análise conceitual; por meio dela o texto espera oferecer ao leitor uma perspectiva de como os pensadores medievais postulavam uma relação inextricável entre moral e política.

Qualia bona in coniuge sunt quaerenda.... Zalecenia na temat wyboru żony w świetle średniowiecznych traktatów o wychowaniu (na przykładzie De regimine principum Idziego Rzymianina)

The paper is concerned with the advice regarding choosing a wife presented in the thir-teenthcentury educational treatise De regimine principum by Giles of Rome. It was the most popular “mirror of prince” in the later Middle Ages. In defining the criteria one should pay attention to Giles distinguishes three kinds of “goods” (bona) that an appro-priate wife-to-be should possess. These are the so-called external (exterior) goods and internal (interior) ones, the latter being in turn divided into the bodily goods (bona cor-poris) and the spiritual goods (bona animae). The first kind includes such goods as noble descent (nobilitas generis), multitude of friends (pluralitas amicorum) and abundance of wealth (multitudo divitiarum); the second – beauty (pulchritudo) and size (magnitudo); the third – self control (temperantia) and liking for work (amor operositatis). These three kinds of goods, as well as particular examples of them, are drawn by Giles from Aristotle’s Rhetorica. Yet, when compared to those enumerated by medieval theologians and canon lawyers in their discussons of reasons for marrying, they do not considerably differ from them. What matters is that Giles sees and accepts all of them as relatively equally important as criteria used for choosing a wife. This is because they are all neces-sary for setting up a successful marriage that will bring happiness to a man.

Was Aquinas a ‘Universal Economist’?

Many scholars claim that Thomas Aquinas (1225–74), in line with his master Aristotle, held a negative view of international trade and foreign merchants. The third chapter of the second book of De Regimine Principum is often invoked in support of this view. While there is an ongoing controversy regarding the author of the book, scholars claim that Aquinas criticized the moral corruption brought by merchants in the cities. I argue that this reading is incomplete, and that Aquinas did not truly hold that view. Conversely, I will show how Aquinas gave importance to international trade as a means for promoting friendship and virtue between peoples. This paper explores the possibility of regarding Aquinas as a ‘Universal Economist’, one among a group of pre-Modern thinkers who conceived international commerce as a means of Divine Providence for promoting wealth and friendship among nations.

Brunetto Latini’s Politica

It is generally accepted that the final section of Brunetto Latini’s Li Livres dou Tresor , known as his Politica , is largely based upon Giovanni da Viterbo’s De regimine civitatum . Notwithstanding this agreement on the derivative relationship between both texts, Latini’s Politica continues to puzzle scholars. Based upon a historically informed textual comparison and analysis this article argues that the amount of intervention by Brunetto Latini – and its coherence in direction – is highly instructive on the originality of Latini’s rewriting and indicative of its purpose. Finally, this article sheds light on the historical factors underlying Latini’s decision to select Giovanni da Viterbo’s text.

A Companion to Giles of Rome, ed. Charles F. Briggs and Peter S. Eardley

Giles of Rome (c.1243/7–1316) is now probably most famous for the defence of papal supremacy which was offered in his De ecclesiastica potestate (1302). However, to readers in the later Middle Ages, Giles was perhaps best known for his political treatise, De regimine principum (c.1280). The work survives in almost three hundred Latin manuscripts and was also translated into many vernaculars, including the Middle English version by John Trevisa. John Watts has described the political theory produced in late medieval France and England as being ‘mostly Egidian in its assumptions’ and Giles’s work was also a source for poets such as John Gower and Thomas Hoccleve. Yet, despite the fame of his political works, Giles was, as the editors to this volume note in their introduction, ‘first and foremost a theologian’. An Austin friar and a student of Thomas Aquinas at the University of Paris, Giles became prior general of his order in 1291, with his teachings—both those written and those ‘still to be written’—being adopted as the Austins’ official doctrine; he eventually rose to be archbishop of Bourges In addition to his political and theological works, Giles also wrote widely on philosophy and metaphysics with a number of his works in these fields being studied in the universities. It is surprising, given his medieval influence and modern fame, that this useful collection is the first general survey of Giles’s work. Its eight chapters offer a wide-ranging investigation of Giles’s thought, and the book also includes a chronology of his writings, a list of catalogues of their manuscripts and a bibliography of secondary literature.

John of Paris: Beyond Royal and Papal Power ed. by Chris Jones

John of Paris: Beyond Royal and Papal Power. Edited by Chris Jones. [Disputatio, vol. 23.] (Turnhout: Brepols. 2015. Pp. xiv, 421. €100,00. ISBN 978-2-5033280-6).John of Paris has not been studied as systematically as other Dominicans like Thomas Aquinas or as other anti-papal polemicists such as Dante, Marsilius of Padua, or John Wyclif. This makes him a prime candidate for that latest milk cow of academic publishing: the Companion genre of collected articles.The editor, Chris Jones, introduces his apt volume with a nice survey of John of Paris's life and of recent scholarship. On June 26, 1303, John of Paris signed a petition originating at the court of King Philip the Fair that called for a general council against Pope Boniface VIII. John's famous work, De potestate regia et papali, forms part of this conflict. It is not, however, his only surviving work: John also authored an attack on critics of Thomas Aquinas with the Correctorium Corrupti 'Circa, ' a criticism of secular attacks on mendicant privileges in De confessionibus audiendis, and a censure of Arnald of Villanova's prediction of the Antichrist's advent with his Tractatus de Antichristo, a critique of transubstantiation in his Determinatio de modo existendi corporis Christi in sacramento altaris, some comparatively uncontroversial sermons, and a neglected Sentences Commentary. Each of these receives some attention-though the treatment of preaching and confession is scant-but the book really does not go all that far beyond Royal and Papal Power. The majority of articles are focused on the De potestate regia et papali. There are traditional analyses of its political theory by Joseph Canning, Gerson Moreno-Riano, Takashi shogimen, and Bettina Koch. A more unconventional theoretical analysis is offered by Lidia Lanza and Marco Toste, who examine John's distinct use of the Aristotelian four causes (efficient, formal, material and final) when discussing the relation of temporal to spiritual power.But the stand-out piece in the collection is by historians' historian, Karl Ubl, who recently argued that On Royal and Papal Power went through several revisions and originated in early 1302 as a response to a Quodlibet in Paris by James of Viterbo, O.E.S.A., (the papalist author of De regimine Christianorum). Ubl builds on his now foundational work by taking issue with Brian Tierney's Foundations of Conciliar Theory, which reduced John of Paris's ideas to nothing more than a logical consequence of canonistic thought. Looking at the treatment of jurisdiction from the Sentences Commentary to On Royal and Papal Power, Ubl demonstrates how John came to formulate his radical idea of consent-that rightful jurisdiction comes from below rather than from above-and that this formulation was little influenced by canon law. Having precisely traced the radicalization of John's thinking on papal immunity/accountability, Ubl comes to the general conclusion: Canonists . …

Wizerunek relacji między mężem a żoną w społeczno-filozoficznej refleksji nad wychowaniem okresu pełnego średniowiecza (na przykładzie „De regimine principum” Idziego Rzymianina)

Przedmiotem artykułu jest wizerunek relacji między mężem a żoną, jaki został nakreślonyw XIII-wiecznym traktacie o wychowaniu De regimine principum autorstwa Idziego Rzymianina. Należał on do najbardziej popularnych „zwierciadeł władców” w okresie średniowiecza. Idzi ukazuje, jak powinny układać się właściwe relacje małżeńskie, przede wszystkim poprzez nakreślenie powinności i sposobu postępowania męża wobec żony. W jego gestii pozostaje troska o jej rozwój moralny. Ma prowadzić ją do umiarkowania, milczenia i stałości (ad temperantiam & ad taciturnitatem & ad stabilitatem). W pożyciu małżeńskim ma kierować się zasadami nauki Kościoła, zaopatrywać żonę w odpowiednie dobra materialne, okazywać oznaki miłości oraz udzielać stosownych upomnień w sytuacji jej niewłaściwego zachowania. Pouczenia, jak właściwie postępować z żoną, formułuje Idzi w kontekście przypisanego mężowi zwierzchnictwa nad nią i będącej jej rezultatem powinności kierowania jej osobą. Przypisanamu prerogatywa wynika z naturalnego podporządkowania kobiety mężczyźniez racji jego przewagi nad nią pod względem roztropności i rozumu. Rząd, jaki mąż sprawuje nad żoną, nie ma być rządem rodzica nad dzieckiem ani pana domu nad sługą .Mąż powinien traktować żonę jak towarzyszkę (tamquam socia). Naturalnym elementem relacji małżeńskich jest amicitia (miłość), do której powstania, jak można przyjąć, wiedzie wspólne życie i która przejawia się w tym, jak się do siebie odnoszą. Właściwe wypełnianie przez męża, jak i żonę przypisanych im powinności miało być gwarantem ich harmonijnego współżycia, chociaż zdecydowanie większa odpowiedzialność spadałana męża z racji naturalnej wyższości mężczyzny nad kobietą.

La literatura como recurso formativo del príncipe: evolución a lo largo de la Baja Edad Media

El presente artículo repasa la literatura medieval destinada a la formación de los príncipes avanzando para ello por la tradición historiográfica. Así, la necesidad de formar a un gobernante asesorado por unos consejeros en la misión de salvación de su pueblo sufrió un gran cambio durante los siglos XII-XIV: a) un primer momento centrado en definir las virtudes del<br />“buen rey” en el Liber Iudicum del siglo VII español; b) un marcado carácter oriental venido de Al-Andalus, con un maestro filósofo como preceptor en los exempla morales de finales del XI y principios del XII; c) unión de herencia hispánica e influencias orientales y occidentales propia<br />del siglo XIII, donde el dominio occidental queda evidenciado de la mano de Egidio Romano y su De regimine principum. Es así como se alcanza el género de “espejos de príncipes” como compendio de tradiciones promovido por Alfonso X, quien con su famoso Especulo, Libro de las Siete Partidas y su definitivo Setenario da cabida al Secretum Secretorum aristotélico en la imagen ejemplarizante de su padre Fernando III.

Thomas Aquinas and the European Tradition of Treatises on the Government

This article is an introduction to the Russian translation of the first book of Thomas Aquinas’ treatise De regimine principum. The author considers the place of the text within the framework of the European tradition of the Mirrors of Princes, while describing, in brief, the problems of the authorship and the dating of the treatise. Among the European Mirrors of the Princes, the work of Thomas Aquinas, On Kingship or On the Government of Princes, has a special place. Thanks to its author’s reputation, this text became one of the most famous influences in both European Late Medieval Philosophy and Modern Political Philosophy. Additionally, this treatise has become a model for two famous works of the same name, On the Government of Princes, written by Ptolemy of Lucca, and Egidio Colonna. In the discussion of the dating of Aquinas’ book, the author holds the opinion that this work was composed between 1271 and 1273, and was addressed to Hugh III Lusignan, the king of Cyprus. The special place in this article is occupied by a small terminological discussion of the Russian translation of the Latin word “princeps.” The author affirms that the existing translation of this word as “Lord” (gosudar) is impossible and quite incorrect. In the author's opinion, the correct translation is “the ruler,” or “the Prince.”

Osservazioni sulla struttura e l’iconografia della tomba di re Roberto d’Angiò in Santa Chiara a Napoli

This article analyses in detail the iconography of the tomb of Robert of Anjou, King of Naples. Partially destroyed in 1943, the elaborated structure and figurative program of the monument is attested by visual and literary sources that are here discussed in order to unveil its symbolical and ideological meaning. The most imposing mausoleum built in Italy during the late Middle Ages, it is modelled on the royal tombs erected in Naples by the Sienese sculptor Tino di Camaino. In the lower part of the monument, the seven virtues reflect the ideals on kingship according to the theories of the De regimine principum by Giles of Rome. The genealogical series depicted on the sarcophagus stresses the legitimacy in the succession of Queen Giovanna, Robert’s niece. The seven liberal arts in the funerary chamber represent the King’s renowned knowledge. In the centre of the monument, his seated figure emphasizes his majesty and the pictures of Angevin saints recall the beata stirps he belonged to. Finally, in the Com...

La République romaine comme modèle de la felicitas civilis chez Ptolémée de Lucques (v. 1240-1327)

The Italian Dominican Ptolemy of Lucca (ca. 1240-1327) figures among the most significant political theoreticians of the Middle Ages. In his De regimine principum (ca. 1300), a continuation of Thomas Aquinas’ De regno, Ptolemy paints a highly original picture of civil happiness. Taking the Roman Republic as his model, Ptolemy praises the “political” government that is presented as a sufficient condition for felicitas civilis, and this through the virtue of its citizens, the balance of its forces, and the harmonious and active collaboration of the various groups that constitute the community.

A conduta ética do rei no De regimine christiano de Tiago de Viterbo / The King's Ethical Conduct on the James' of Vitebo De regimine christiano

James of Viterbo OESA, (ca. 1255-1308), let us only one political treatise, the De regimine christiano, (ca. 1301), writen during the climax of the conflict between Boniface VIII (1294-1302) and Philip IV of France, (1285-1314), in which, among other subjects, he also explained how must be the behavior of the king, under a religious-ethical perspective. The main theme of the XIV Congress of Medieval Philosophy: Continuity and discontinuities, allows to explain about this matter and to check that it well corresponds the whises of some societies and peoples of our time. Thus, according the Doctor Gratiosus’ sight, we will discuss about the king’s duties to God, to himself and to his subjects.

Le cœur équivoque dans l’Avis aus roys : un « miroir des princes » du XIVe siècle

From the 13t century onwards, the heart was the subject of a great deal of attention in the medical, literary, religious and political fields. Various theories about the royal heart were expounded and disseminated, particularly through literature dedicated to rulers. The author of L’Avis aus roys – an anonymous and little-studied mid-14th-century “mirror for princes”, which is heavily indebted to Giles of Rome’s De Regimine Principum – grants an important place to the princely heart in his text, endowing it with multiple meanings. The royal organ is seen, in turn, as the origin of life, spirituality, the soul, the virtues, the passions, and even reason itself. Preserved at the Pierpont Morgan Library, manuscript M. 456 is the only one out of the five known examples of this text to have an iconographic programme representing the princely heart, an organ which rarely featured in either religious or secular art of the 13th and 14th centuries. Representing the royal heart in all its various facets, the artists working on this manuscript treat this perishable organ as having an unprecedented mystical and eternal dimension.