This book, by the distinguished medieval historian Craig Taylor, is essentially a detailed analysis of the anonymous biography of Jehan II le Maingre called 'Boucicaut', Count of Beaufort-en-Vallée in Anjou, Viscount of Turenne, and--like his father Jehan I, also called 'Boucicaut'--one of the two co-holders of the office of Marshal of France. The biography, called on its explicit Le Livre des fais du bon mareschal Bouciquaut, (Book of the Deeds of the good Marshal Boucicaut), has been preserved in a single deluxe but unfinished manuscript, which Taylor (like most other scholars) believes to be the autograph copy.
The genre of the work in question is that commonly called by historians the "chivalric biography," because its subject was the career of a noble knight, and it devotes a considerable part of its text to recounting what may be regarded as his heroic or knightly deeds. (Having denounced the misleading use of the nineteenth-century word "chivalric" for its association with the eighteenth-century word "chivalry" and the imaginary code it came to designate, I prefer to use the traditional word "knightly.") The earliest such work to survive is the life of William the Marshal (of England), written in the 1220s, but most works of the genre date from the years between 1370s and the 1470s.
The genre as a whole has been examined recently by a number of scholars in both France and England, including E. Gaucher and R. Brown-Grant. All would agree with Taylor's statement that "'[t]here was naturally a close association between chivalric biographies and romances" (3). Taylor notes that the authors of both genres "were happy to employ a range of literary techniques and to embellish their characters and stories by imagining dialogues, scenes, and events," reflecting that the "lack of a clear distinction between the concepts of truth and fiction" (3) is typical of the centuries in which they were written--a lack that became more pronounced in the fictionalized biographies composed in the fifteenth century, especially Antoine de la Sale's Petit Jehan de Saintré of 1456. Even those works that (like the one under examination here) dealt entirely with historical persons and events, were composed primarily to commemorate and glorify their subjects, and therefore tended to omit or explain away actions that were less than praiseworthy. Most presented their subjects as "role models for their own descendants, their immediate circle, and other young squires" (4), and set them in a historico-romantic tradition in which the heroes of Antiquity, of the pseudo-historical court of Arthur, and of the Crusades, were presented as models for all subsequent generations.
It was for this reason, Taylor argues, that Johan Huizinga, founder of the modern sceptical tradition, often cited knightly biographies as evidence for "the fantasy at the very heart of aristocratic society, especially given that they continued to celebrate tournamenting [sic], courtly love and other aspects of chivalric culture that appear frivolous to modern audiences" and that more recent commentators persist in presenting them (in the words of Given-Wilson in his study cited above) as self-conscious attempts "to reinforce and propagate the self-image and collective ideals of the noble and warrior elite" (4). Taylor accepts this characterization as largely true, but argues persuasively that the study of such works is nevertheless valuable, if only because such biographies are among the rare works written by laymen rather than clerics, and therefore present a lay uniquely lay perspective on the culture of the lay nobility.
He argues in addition that such works were not all composed to educate future generations of knights in the values traditional to their social order, and that in most cases they served "a more complicated function, not just championing their subjects as role models, but actively attempting to preserve, shape and control their posthumous reputations and fame." This required their authors "to be alive to the contemporary values and ideals of their potential audiences." They were also "participating in constant debate and discussion about these questions...shaped by changing historical contexts and by a range of different intellectual influences..." so different authors "championed subtly different sets off values" related to the various aspects of knightly behaviour, including different forms of and contexts for deeds of arms, and loyalty to companions in arms (5).
My own recent studies of the explicit and implicit codes of behaviour proposed for noblemen from the twelfth to the fifteenth century by authors throughout Latin Christendom certainly support the idea that their authors disagreed on such matters. These studies indicate, however, that their disagreement was far from subtle, as the sets of qualities and behaviours they promoted and condemned were both far more numerous than is generally recognized, and differed to a surprisingly extreme degree. It is for that reason--and because I have also found that the word chevalerïe and its cognates were never used in this period to designate a code, or indeed any qualities other than the valiance and prowess essential to the function of the knight as a warrior--that I have condemned the continued use of the term "chivalry" in its strictly modern sense of a "knightly code of behaviour." Happily, Taylor has generally avoided its use in his own study, and his approach to the question of knightly values is generally both careful and sound.
Taylor's book can be seen as a close-reading of the biography of Boucicaut (as he is usually called) to determine who composed it and for what purposes, how its different parts served different purposes in quite different ways, how much credence to give to the assertions of its authors, and finally what these assertions tell the modern reader about the kinds of qualities and behaviours its authors thought would redound to the credit of their subject in the circumstances in which it was composed.
The biography itself is divided into four distinct parts, of which the first recounts the most significant events of his life and career from his childhood to 1400, emphasising his victories in famous jousts, his time in Prussia with the Teutonic Knights, his prominent but disastrous role in the Crusade of Nicopolis of 1396, and his successful role in the relief of Constantinople in 1399. In this part he is portrayed in the manner typical of knightly biographies, with a strong emphasis on his knightly qualities. The second and third parts deal with a more complex and ultimately disastrous phase of his career, from 1401 to 1408, when the narrative ends. In those years Boucicaut, as a Marshal of France and a trusted agent of its king, Charles VI, served as the French governor of Genoa, and became involved in the complex politics both of Italy and of the French court, and in the efforts of the factions of that court to solve the problem of the papal schism--in which Boucicaut was a fierce partisan of the Avignon pope. Although at first successful as governor, Boucicaut ultimately failed because of a number of embarrassing defeats and diplomatic failures, and he had to return to Paris in a state of disgrace and disfavour with the faction that had assumed control.
The final part of the biography presented a "list [of] the virtues, the good habits, and the good disposition of the marshal," presented (like the preceding narrative) as being aimed at posterity in the usual fashion. This has led such modern commentators as E. Gaucher-Rémond to argue that the Livre des fais was written primarily to promote the set of old-fashioned knightly and courtly values the virtues presented exemplify. Taylor, however, argues that the circumstances in which the Livre was composed--while its subject was still alive and at the height of his career, but in serious political difficulties--make it unlikely that posterity was its true audience. He argues that it was instead intended to secure its subject's current reputation and future career against the attacks of his many critics and enemies, (especially the anonymous author of the Songe veritable and the chronicler Michel Pintoin), who seized upon his various recent failures to charge him with imprudence, impetuosity, a lack of restraint, and even corruption, which together caused him to lose divine support. Taylor points out in support of his contention that the anonymous author of the Livre des fais--whom, (accepting the argument made by Hélène Millet in 1995), he identifies as Nicolas de Gonesse, a learned member of Boucicaut's household--explicitly denounced the various slanders about his subject circulating in the French court, and presented a vigorous defence in which he not only set out the stages by which he acquired all of the martial virtues most admired by contemporary knights, but praised at length what he claimed were the moral and religious virtues that undergirded them. Taylor convincingly maintains that the purpose of this was "to demonstrate that Boucicaut was such a worthy individual that one could not regard any setback or misfortune that he might had endured as a divine judgement against him" (7).
The body of Taylor's study of the Livre des fais is itself divided into five numbered chapters, to some extent paralleling those of the Livre itself, and a general conclusion. The first chapter is devoted to a reconstruction of Boucicaut's historical career, building upon the most recent biography by Denis Lalande, but modifying it on the basis both of more recent scholarship and of various primary sources, informed by older but still valuable secondary works. The second chapter reviews the surviving evidence for the date, authorship, purpose, and probable audience of the work, while chapter 3 examines the ways in which the author (primarily, and in the fifth chapter entirely Gonesse, but in the narrative chapters probably in collaboration with a number of Boucicaut's companions in arms like Jehan de Chasteaumorand and Jehan d'Ony) presented its défense of Boucicaut's more controversial actions. The final two chapters, 4 and 5, examine the different ways in which the Marshal was presented by the authors as a 'worthy and moral' individual, chapter 4 concentrating on the core narrative and its emphasis on the traditional martial qualities of prowess, courage, and loyalty, and chapter 5 on the other qualities presented both in the general narrative and, more particularly, in the final part of the work presenting his qualities entirely abstracted from events.
Space does not permit a detailed analysis of any of these chapters, but it can be said that Taylor presents a clear and convincing argument for his case in each of them. The most interesting to me, and probably to most scholars not specializing in Boucicaut, are the chapters on the qualities the authors chose to attribute to him, and where they could have found them. The identification of Gonesse as the general author of the work as a whole and of its final chapter in particular is based largely upon the fact that he had translated into French the moral treatise of the Classical author Valerius Maximus,Factorum et dictorum memorabilium Libri IX, of which a copy had been presented in 1401 to one of Boucicaut's current patrons Jehan, Duke of Berry. As I noted above, there is a marked contrast between the qualities and behaviours praised in the parts of the Livre devoted to the narration of the Marshal's career, and those praised in the final chapter, devoted primarily to his other qualities and behaviours.
Taylor himself sees the biography as "first and foremost a celebration of the deeds of arms that the marshal had performed throughout his career," in keeping with the traditions of its genre, and thus providing "a clear illustration of knightly violence at the very heart of aristocratic culture" (104). It therefore emphasized Boucicaut's exemplification of the core knightly qualities of reckless courage (hardement, vaillance) and martial prowess (both implicit in the word chevalerïe "knightliness"), and of the desire for personal honour that could be won by the successful performance of numerous "feats of arms" (fais d'armes), not only in battles but in knightly games. Taylor notes that, unlike other biographers, and such treatise-writers as Geoffroy de Charny in his Livre de chevalerie of c. 1352, the author (whom I shall identify as Gonesse) failed to make any distinction among the feats Boucicaut performed on the basis of their difficulty, moral worthiness, or general utility--suggesting that Boucicaut himself, like a modern athlete, was motivated entirely by his pursuit of honour, and was in fact honoured by his noble contemporaries for his demonstrations of courage and prowess. Gonesse did emphasize in his narrative several additional qualities of his protagonist valued by noblemen, especially loyalty to his king and his companions in arms, and an honesty manifested in strict adherence to his promises.
In the final part of the biography, however, Gonesse attributed to Boucicaut an entirely different set of qualities, which he drew not from Boucicaut's own life and career (in which none of them was clearly exemplified), but from Classical moralists like Valerius Maximus, whose treatise he had translated. Taylor sees obvious parallels between this part of the Livre and a number of the then recent works of Christine de Pizan, especially the Livre des fais et bonnes meurs du sage roy Charles V, but argues convincingly that it differs in too many ways from her works for her to have had any part in its composition. Nevertheless, like her comparable works, this part of the Livre analysed Boucicaut's "behaviour, virtues and morals" with the support of extensive reference to learned sources, including Valerius Maximus. Like Christine, Gonesse claimed that his goal in presenting this material was to educate future generations through good examples. The additional qualities—"civilized" rather than martial in Taylor's terms--included the Christian virtues of piety, charity, chastity, and mercy, and the Classical (and courtly) virtues of discipline, temperance, justice, and eloquence.
I have found that all of those virtues had long been promoted (albeit in various more limited sets) in works proposing knightly-nobiliary codes, and that explicit Classical models would become increasingly common in the fifteenth century. What is particularly interesting about their place in this work is that they are so thoroughly detached from the narrative, in which few of them are even minimally in evidence. This gives the distinct impression that they were added--as Taylor himself opines--merely to establish the author's case that Boucicaut conformed to the highest contemporary ideals of noble knightliness in all areas of his life, and was therefore worthy of his high reputation.
Gonesse's account is thus unconvincing, but the opposite is true of Taylor's analysis, which like the rest of the study is thorough, convincing, and well written. My only criticism is that its structure makes it somewhat repetitive, but that is a minor flaw, and probably helpful, given the complexity of the subject.