Literature as a training resource for princes: evolution throughout the late Middle Ages
Abstract
The current article reviews medieval literature
devoted to the training of princes,
moving through the historiographic tradition.
Therefore, the necessity to form
a governor advised by councillors in the
mission of a saving his people, experienced
a great change during the 11th -14th
centuries: a) a first moment focussed on
defining the virtues of a “good King” in
Liber Iudicum from the Spanish 7th century;
b) a marked oriental character comes from
Al-Andalus, with its chief philosopher as
mentor in the moral exempla at the end of
the 9th and beginning of the 12th centuries;
c) the union of Hispanic inheritance and
Eastern and Western influences typical
of the start of the 13th century, where the
Western preponderance obviously comes
through the influence of Egidio Romano
and his De regimine principum. It is in this
way that the genre of “mirrors of princes”
is shaped as a compendium of traditions
promoted by Alfonso X, with his famous
Especula, Book of the Seven Items and his
definitive Setenario, which accommodates
the Secretum Secretorum by Aristoteles in
the exemplary image of his father, Fernando
III.
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