A crusade writer and theorist. Pierre Dubois was probably born between 1250 and 1260. He served as a royal official in Normandy under King Philip IV of France (d. 1314) and in Artois at the end of his life. Pierre had no influence on politics, but wrote in a private capacity about war, lawsuits, tournaments, the relations of the king of France with the church, and the crusade, mostly in a utopian vein.
His treatise concerning the recovery of the Holy Land, De recuperatione Terre Sancte (c. 1306), was dedicated to King Edward I of England (whom he also served for a time). In it he argued that the first condition for a successful crusade was a reform of the church, stripping it of its temporal powers, and the establishment of peace within Christendom by means of a kind of international court. The crusade was to be financed from the wealth of the Templars and Hospitallers. Pierre also advocated the teaching of Eastern languages, intermarriage with the Saracens, and the creation of schools for girls and women. The Latin Empire of Constantinople was to be reestablished for Charles of Valois, brother of the king of France and titular emperor. Pierre presented a new edition of this treatise to Philip the Fair in 1308. In the same year he wrote a memorandum in which he urged the king of France to found a kingdom in the East (Jerusalem, Cyprus, Egypt) for his son Philip. Pierre probably died after 1321.
-Jacques Paviot
Bibliography
De recuperatione Terre Sancte: Traite de politique generate par Pierre Dubois, ed. Charles-Victor Langlois (Paris: Picard, 1891).
De recuperatione Terre Sancte: Ein Traktat des P. Dubois, ed. Ernst Zeck (Berlin: Weidmann, 1905-1906).
De recuperatione Terre Sancte: Dalla Respublica Christiana ai primi nazionalismi e alla politica antimediterranea, ed. Angelo Diotti (Firenze: Olschki, 1977).
Dubois, Pierre, The Recovery of the Holy Land, trans. Walther I. Brandt (New York: Columbia University Press, 1956).
Saghy, Marianne, “Crusade and Nationalism: Pierre Dubois, the Holy Land, and French Hegemony,” in The Crusades and the Military Orders: Expanding the Frontiers of Medieval Latin Christianity, ed. Zsolt Hunyadi and Jozsef Laszlovszky (Budapest: Department of Medieval Studies Central European University, 2001), pp. 43-50.
Schmidt, Hans-Joachim, “Bildungsreform als Kriegsvor-bereitung. Die Vorschlage des Pierre Dubois zur Wiedergewinnung des Heiligen Landes,” in Personen der Geschichte, Geschichte der Personen: Studien zur Kreuzzugs-, Sozial - und Bildungsgeschichte, ed. Christian Hesse et al. (Basel: Schwabe, 2003), pp. 421-440.
World History
