V r ♦*» ' V '* Honord Bouvet, the Tree of Battles, and the Literature of War in Fourteenth-Centuxy France Nicholas A.3. Wright I * Ph.D. , Uhivorsity of Edinburgh 1972 Siimmwry nf The8is This thesis is a study of the Tree of Battles, and of its author, % # Honor# Bouvet, prior of Selonnet. * Honor# Bouvet, bom near Sisteron in Haute-.'rovence, circa 1345, Joined the Benedictine community at Ile-Barbe and was appointed prior of its house in Selonnet. Bouvet studied Canon law at the University of Avignon, gaining his doctorate in Decretals in 1386* Having been employed sporadically by the Angevin government of Provence, he took service under Charles VI of France when, in 1390, he was attached to the Languedoc reform commission* He was employed as councillor and diplomat by the French court during the 1390s, i especially in business connected with the papal Schism. After an ft unsuccessful mission to the Eastern European courts, in 1399-1401, * and after an equally unsuccessful attempt to have his election to the abbacy of lle-Barbe confirmed, Bouvet returned home to Provence. Here he was employed, between the years 1404 and 1409, as maltre racional in the government of Louis II of Ahjou. It seems likely that the prior's death occurred in 1409, possibly while he was en route for the Council of Pisa. Bouvet is remembered as a writer, not as a political figure. * For Gaston F#bus, count of Foiz, he wrote a history of the county of Folz in the Provencal language, probably during the 1360s. His other known works include the Tree of Battles, (written c. 1387), the Somnium Super materia sclsiaatis. (written 1394),and the Anparicion Maiatre Jehan do Meun. (of 1398). Bouvet was probably also the author of the Discourse which he delivered before , the king of the Romans in 1399, and possibly of the Judicium Yeritatis. a small contribution to the vast Schism literature. The Tree of Battles was written for Charles VI of France, and was based on the legal scholarship of the Italian Post-glossators. 0 The Italian origins of the Tree's third and fourth parts affect the relevance of this work to the French situation only slightly, ✓ and in relatively insignificant details. ♦ The Tree * a relevance to the French society of the author's s own day is indicated by the fact that ife shares several basic themes with contemporary literature at the French court. The principle, ♦ v constantly asserted in the Tree, that soldiers must respect the t N S rights of other classes in society and that they are responsible t to the Prince, and subject to his discipline, was echoed in the works of Philippe de Kdzibres, Jean Gerson^ Eustacho Decchamps, Christine de Pisan, and others. Although these writers shared with Bouvet 3 i « many basic assumptions concerning the rdle of the soldier in society^ t their, works differ from the Tree in one important respects they did U not purport to be law-books. It was a great strength of the Tree 9 4 of Battles that it presented ideas, already popular at the French I court, in a legal form. When the Tree came to be accepted as an f 'authority* on the 'law of arms', what had been a customary code, - developed in the interests of individual soldiers, - was at first infiltrated, and then largely replaced, by a law evolved in the interests of the state. This did not happen during the author's lifetime; The ideal of the soldier as the servant, rather than the master, of the I state -was- achieved a considerable measure of realisation' in the Normandy of Henry V and of the duke of Bedford, during the third and fourth decades of the fifteenth century. The pattern of English ✓ * 4 1 ft v military administration was later imitated and developed by Charles VII of France, and by his successors. The Tree of Tattles was in very wide circulation during this period, especially amongst the Anglo-French military aristocracy, and we can only assume that this work encouraged and stimulated these developments* iv Summary of thesis i * iii Table of Contents IV - v Preface vi Introduction and note on the orthography of the prior's surname 1-6 Chapter One The Tree of Battles: provenance of manuscripts and historiography 7-23 Chapter Two Honor6 Bouvet: biographical study Part I: Bouvet in Provence (c. 1345 - c. 1390) 24 * 47 Port II: Bouvet in Paris (c« 1391 - c. 1400) 50 - 76 Part III: Bouvet in Provence (e. 1401 - c. 1409) 77 - 84 Chapter Three The Tree of Battles: description and analysis 85 - 102 Chapter Four Literature of the Hundred Tears War and of tho Crusade Part I: up to the death of Charles V, (1380) 103 - 112 Part II: towards an Anglo-French peace settle- ent, (c. 1386 - c. 1400) 113 - 122 Part III: the Crusade 123 - 135 Chapter Five Criticism of Chivalry and Proposals for Military Reform, (c. 1380 - c, 1410) 136 - 163 Chapter Six The Tree of Battles and the Laws of War 164 - 180 Chapter Seven The Tree of Battles: its practical importance 181 - 199 Appendix I Surviving manuscripts of the Tree of Battles 200 - 203 v (continued) Appendix XI Record of the hearing in the case of the disputed election to the abbacy of Ile-Barbo, before Philippe de Thurey, archbishop of Lyons, 28 February 1401f 206 «- 218 Appendix III Bouvet's verse history of the counts of Foix 219 «- 232 Sources and Bibliography 233 «- 249 Genealogical table 48 Hap of Provence 49 Or. Kenneth Fowler has made this thesis possible by his helpful supervision and his encouragement throughout its preparation. For this I thank him most sincerely. Ky thanks, no less sincere, are due also to Professor Denys Hay for his observations on several details of this work; to Professor Peter I/aleh for his kind help in the task of transcribing and translating the Lyons manuscript of Appendix II; and to Or. J. Laidlaw for assisting my researches * while I was in Paris, and for bringing to my notice the Cambridge Manuscript of the Regale du Monde. I am also indebted to Mr* J.N. Clogstoun-Willmott for his comments on several drafts of the thesis and to Miss Susan Haggis who typed it. INTRODUCTION and note on the orthography of the prior's surname Honor! Bouvet, (otherwise known as 13onet, Bonnet or Bovet), ft 0 the prior of Selonnet, was a person of some importance in the ■ % political' life of Western Europe. He was born probably in a remote village of northern Provence during the 1340s, but by the time 4 4 of his death, in 1409* he had come to the notice of two popes * (Urban V and Clement VII); he had addressed speeches to Louis I* duke of Anjou, and to Wenceslas, king of the Romans, and had con- f « 4 4 versed with the king of Aragon and with John of Gaunt, duke of » * * ✓ Lancaster; he had been a familiar figure, and trusted councillor, | at the courts of Charles VI of France and of Louis II of Anjou. • « . * « » The list of Bouvet's political and diplomatic activities could ft 4 4 * . * be, and will be, extended much further, but it is a slightly 4 0 sobering fact that almost all of our information concerning 0 these aspects of Bouvet's career are derived from his own n m cases persons writings. In the where Bouvet is mentioned by «N i other than himself, his is usually one name amongst many others. 0 Thus, the prior of Selonnet came to the notice of Clement VII 4 in a list of petitions for benefices; to the Burgundian treasurer* 4 * 0 because his master had received a number of gifts from a prior > I* in Provence; and to the French royal treasurer, because he owed J ♦ the prior a small pension. This small pension was, in fact, | A the only reward which the prior received from the French Crown - • ► t ♦ ♦ after a decade of conscientious service. P Bouvet's fellow-writers at the French court may well have been kinder to the prior. The fact that Jean Gerson took great c pains to copy out the prior's 3omnium suggests an association 0 between the two writers, as does Christine de Pisan's grateful 0 • f » ' * acknowledgement of her debt to Bouvet in her Fais d'arnos. Even 2 in literary circles, however, Bouvet's personal impact was > relatively slight, and the only description which we have of the prior is from the pen of Christine de Pisan who pictures him in such a formalised, stylized fashion that a recent commentator has concluded that the prior must have been dead by this time.* Bouvet was possibly too cautious an individual, probably too ' straightforward and practical, to attract the love or hatred of % others. Bouvet's biographer must reconcile himself to the fact 4 that his subject's personal importance to the political life s t and to the literary world of his own generation was unremarked, if by no means unremarkable. J Nevertheless, historians, literary scholars and lawyers j s over the last hundred years, or so, have studied Bouvet's literary works in considerable detail, and continue to do so. The prior's literary production, over a period of perhaps forty yoars, was not great in quantity by contemporary standards. His Enistolla to Gaston Fdbus, his Tree of Battles and Anparicion. his Somnium c and Discourse to fenceslas, written in Provengal, in French and c in Latin, possibly contain fewer words between them than one of Philippe de Kdzieres' books, Le Sonee du Vieil Pelorin.