Giles of Rome's De Regimine Principum: Reading and Writing Politics at Court and University, c. 1275 - c. 1525

Church History, Dec, 1999 by Sophia Menache

Giles of Rome's De Regimine Principum: Reading and Writing Politics at Court and University, c. 1275 - c. 1525. By Charles E Briggs. Cambridge Studies in Palaeography and Codicology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. xiv 207 pp. $69.95 cloth.

Giles of Rome, better known by his Latin name, Aegidius Romanus (ca. 1243-1316), is one of the most interesting personages in the reign of Philip the Fair. Master of theology in Paris, general of the Augustinian Order, Giles was also very close to Boniface VIII and, as such, one of the main sources of inspiration for the extremist declarations found in the papal document Unam Sanctam (1302). Whether or not Giles served as tutor to young Philip, De regimine was dedicated to the future king of France, and as part of the well-known medieval genre of mirrors of princes, its primary goal was the formation of Christian rulers. Giles's impressive career may be said to reflect the new state of affairs engendered by the consolidation of the western monarchies at the end of the thirteenth century. The clergy's traditional loyalty to the universal church and its head, the pope, was challenged by "national" kings, who demanded a first allegiance to the needs of the state, especially but not only on the fiscal level. In the case of France, moreover, the monarch also enjoyed the prestigious status of "the Most Christian King." This was the background against which Giles of Rome wrote, his essay, De regimine principum.

Charles E Briggs's book analyzes the "history of the relationship between De regimine and its audience from the time of its composition in the late thirteenth century until the beginning of the sixteenth century" (2). This aim seems fully justified given the fact that, in toto, there are 350 manuscripts of De regimine extant in European libraries, an impressive number for a nonreligious work in the Middle Ages. Briggs studies the production, reception, and transmission of these manuscripts. Three chapters center on medieval England--where sixty manuscripts have survived--offering a separate analysis of the main reception trends among lay and clerical audiences. Special emphasis is put on university life, where De regimine found a particularly receptive public. The many tables and plates that accompany the text are remarkable for their careful selection and clear reproduction.

Briggs's book is published in the series Cambridge Studies in Palaeography and Codicology. This may explain why the author tends to focus on the production and reception of the text but pays little attention to the political atmosphere in which Giles wrote his essay. Although Briggs recognizes "the relative scarcity of modern scholarship devoted to Giles and De regimine" (4), he refrains from a more detailed discussion on Giles of Rome and the main thesis advanced in De regimine. Only in the chapters dedicated to the audience is there an attempt to correlate De regimine's varying degrees of popularity and the changing needs of different sectors of English society. Briggs here gives ample space to the sociocultural background, thus enabling his readers to discover an original and fascinating chapter in the intellectual history of Europe.

Sophia Menache University of Haifa