Abstract
Though Philippe de Mézières was a Frenchman,1 his most cherished title was that of Chancellor of Cyprus,2 although this was a post he occupied for some ten years only, a brief period in the life of an octogenarian.3 Before 1380, when he withdrew to the Convent of the Celestines in Paris on the death of his patron at the time, Charles V of France, he had travelled widely as both soldier and statesman.4 His travels led him frequently to Italy, which he knew well.5 He particularly loved Venice, of which he was made a citizen in 1365 by the doge Lorenzo Celsi.6 And it was to the confraternity of St. John the Evangelist in Venice that he donated the fragment of the True Cross he had inherited from the papal legate Pierre Thomas.7 Venice was indeed the city where he thought to spend the rest of his life on hearing of King Peter’s assassination (which was to put an end to his career in Cyprus), as we learn from his will drawn up at this time.8 This will shows his attitude towards what we would later call nationality. Here this widely travelled Frenchman, thinking to live out his life in Venice, after service at the Lusignan court of Cyprus, reveals his view of his place in the world. He projects a sense of a European community. Fluent in Latin, the common language of at least the clerical and chancery literatures, he is a Christian at home in a Christian Europe, unfettered by parochial notions that a place of origin or residence impinges in any significant way on his sense of identity, as I have shown elsewhere.9
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Notes
Philippe was born in the diocese of Amiens, Picardy, ca. 1327 and died in Paris in 1405 (Nicolas Jorga, Philippe de Mézières (1327–1405) et la croisade au XIV siècle [Paris: Emile Bouillon, 1896; Geneva: Slatkine Rpts., 1976 ], pp. 19, 511 ).
We see this, e.g., in some of the ex libris on his books, as well as on the fly leaf of Vatican Library MS. 7241, containing the Assize of Jerusalem.
Philippe’s first contact with Cyprus probably began as early as 1345 after his journey to Jerusalem following the 1346 expedition to Smyrna (G. W. Coopland, in Philippe de Mézierès’ Le Songe du vieil pelerin, 2 vols., ed. G. W. Coopland [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969], Vol. 1, pp. 4–5). While Pierre I of Cyprus was crowned king of this island nation in 1359, Philippe de Mézières only arrived on the island in 1360 and could not have been named chancellor earlier (Jorga, pp. 102, 109). When Pierre was assassinated in 1369 (1370 by modern dating), Philippe was in Venice and realized he could never return. It is possible that he was replaced as chancellor soon after this event. He attended the installation of Pope Gregory XI in Avignon in 1372, as the representative of Cyprus, but after this we find him in Paris at the court of Charles V. Therefore he served as chancellor of Cyprus from 1360 to 1372 at the outside, but more likely only until 1369.
The seminal work on Philippe de Mézières’ life is Jorga’s book referred to in note 1.
Joan B. Williamson, “Les rapports culturels de Philippe de Mézières avec l’Italie,” in Die kulturellen Beziehungen zwischen Italien und den anderen Ländern Europas im Mittelalter, ed. Danielle Buschinger and Wolfgang Spiewok, Greifswalder Beiträge zum Mittelalter 28 ( Greifswald: Reineke Verlag, 1993 ), pp. 187–196.
Louis de Mas-Latrie, Histoire de l’isle de Chypre sous le règne de la maison de Lusignan, Vol. 2 ( Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1852 ), p. 272.
Louis de Mas-Latrie, “Nouvelles Preuves de l’histoire de Chypre,” Bibliothèque de l’Ecole des Chartes 34 (1873), pp. 75–76n.
Philippe de Mézières, Testamentum(Venice Archives, Raffain Caresini dossier 484, doc. 33), f. 34“. Nicolas Jorga has partially published this document in ”Le Testament de Philippe de Mézières, “ Bulletin de l’Institut pour [’Etude de l’Europe sud-orientale 10–12 (1921), pp. 1190–1140.
Joan B. Williamson, “The French-Italian World of Philippe de Mézières in 1370,” in Romance Languages Annual 1991, ed. Jeanette Beer, Charles Ganelin, and Anthony Julian Tamburri, Vol. 3 ( Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue Research Foundation, 1992 ), pp. 140–145.
Philippe de Mézières, Nova religio milicie Passionis Jhesu Christi pro acquisicione sancte civitatis Jherusalem et Terre Sancte , the first redaction, Paris, Bibliothèque Mazarine, MS. 1493, pt. 2, f. 9“.
Williamson, “The French-Italian World,” pp. 142–143.
Philippe de Mézières, Le Livre de la vertu du sacrement de mariage, ed. Joan B. Williamson (Washington D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1993), pp. 394400.
Jorga, Philippe de Mézières, pp. 63–66, 66 n2.
Thus do we interpret Philippe’s own words about his earlier relationship with the future Charles VI, that he was formerly falconer to the White Falcon, the young pilgrim with golden beak and feet, “le Pauvre pelerin, jadis faulconner tel ou quel du Blanc Faucon, jeune pelerin au bec et piez dorez” (Philippe de Mézières, Le Songe, Vol. 1, p. 86).
Philippe de Mézières, Letter to King Richard II, introd. and trans. G. W. Coopland ( Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1975 ).
Philippe de Mézières, De la Chevallerie de la Passion de Jesus Christ, Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, MS. 2251, ff. 112“—I14”.
A king was considered in France and England to share the divine healing powers of Christ by virtue of his kingship, as was brilliantly expounded by Marc Bloch in Les Rois thaumaturges: Etude sur le caractère surnaturel attribué à la puissance royale particulièrement en France et en Angleterre ( Paris: Armand Colin, 1961 ).
Philippe de Mézières, Letter, p. 90.
Albertus Magnus, Book of Minerals, trans. Dorothy Wyckoff ( Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967 ), p. 75.
Joan B. Williamson, “Allegory in the Work of Philippe de Mézières,” in Analecta Husserliana, Vol. 41 ed. A.-T. Tymieniecka (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1994), pp. 107–121, particularly pp. 112–115.
For the development of this association see Williamson, “Allegory,” pp. 112–116.
Joan B. Williamson, “Les Songes et le processus onirique dans l’oeuvre de Philippe de Mézières: Le Songe du vieil Pelerin,” Revue des Langues Romanes 96 no. 2 (1992), pp. 417–426, particularly p. 421.
Jacques Krynen, Idéal du prince et pouvoir royal en France à la fin du moyen âge (Paris: Picard, 1981), pp. 8, 43 and 84.
As in pp. 109, 702, 1695, and 1927 of La Chanson de Roland, ed. T. A. Jenkins (Boston: Heath, 1924; rpt. 1965 ).
Krynen, Idéal, p. 211, where he refers to Philippe’s Songe, Vol. 2, pp. 140–141 and 248–249.
G. Dodu “La Folie de Charles VI,” Revue Historique 150 Sept.—Dec. (1925), pp. 161–189, noted in Krynen, Idéal, p. 43, n. 20.
Philippe de Mézières, Le Songe, Vol. I, pp. 447–478. As Coopland points out, these categories present merely a convenient overview of French society, not a rigid categorization, for “there were clerks in parlement and rich merchants who might be royal officers” (Le Songe, Vol. 1, p. 39 ).
Philippe de Mézières, Le Songe, Vol. 1, pp. 586–587.
Philippe de Mézières, Le Songe, Vol. 1, p. 586.
Philippe de Mézières, Le Songe, Vol. 1, pp. 457–507.
Philippe de Mézières, Le Songe, Vol. 1, pp. 482–483.
Philippe de Mézières, Le Songe, Vol. 1, pp. 545–546.
Pearl Kibre has discussed these entities in The Nations in Medieval Universities, Medieval Academy of America Publication 49 (Cambridge MA: Medieval Academy of America, 1948). Also my article “Unrest in Medieval Universities” in The University World. A Synoptic View of Higher Education, ed. Douglas Radcliff-Umstead, Medieval and Renaissance Studies Committee 2 (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh, 1973), pp. 56–83, catalogues some of these quarrels.
Philippe de Mézières, De la Chevallerie de la Passion de Jesus Christ, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, Paris, ms. 2251, fols. 31, 107.
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Williamson, J.B. (1997). Philippe de Mézières’ Sense of Patria. In: Tymieniecka, AT. (eds) Passion for Place Book II. Analecta Husserliana, vol 51. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2549-1_11
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