To Vincent of Beauvais and the team working under his guidance we owe a large number of works based on a compilational method, that is, on the collection of authoritative short texts (called in medieval Latin auctoritates) interspersed with remarks by the authors who also shape the overall structure of the work. Wilhelm Berges pointed to the parts of Vincent’s works that could be seen as Mirrors of Princes. Berges’ hypothetical reconstruction of the original, although not completed, plan of Vincent’s work devoted to the prince was not confirmed by subsequent research. The rest of his remarks remain valid even after the recent critical edition of De morali principis institutione. In this treatise, together with the usual description of the just ruler contrasted with the tyrant and the stock-in-trade advice concerning life at court, one finds an interesting account of the origins of power among human beings. According to a long-lasting theological tradition, the establishment of one human being’s power over others is first and foremost an act of violence, triggered by the perversity of mankind corrupted by sin. Only afterward can power, so to speak, redeem itself by fulfilling the function of compelling and punishing evildoers. The method adopted by Guillaume Peraldi’s De eruditione principum (later falsely attributed to Aquinas) is very similar to Vincent’s: together with the substantial identity of many of their views, this had led Berges to think that they belonged to the same, unfinished encyclopedic work about Christian kingship.
To the same period belongs Guibert of Tournai’s Eruditio regum et principum (1259): the Franciscan friar explains the function of secular power with the necessity of compelling those who cannot be persuaded by spiritual means. Strongly influenced by the corpus of treatises attributed to Dionysius the Areopagite, Guibert conceives of the duties of princes according to the pattern of angelic hierarchies, thereby attributing to secular powers a mediating role between God and mankind. According to Jenny Swanson, John of Wales’ Breviloquium de Virtutibus, written most probably in the mid 1260s, can
Be numbered among the Mirrors for Princes. In fact, the treatise penned by this prolific Franciscan author shows the features of a mirror centered around a virtue ethics (more indebted to texts such as Morale dogma philosophorum than to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics) designed especially for the ruler. Inserting in his text many exempla, John of Wales was deemed to exert a durable influence on the literary genre, if for no other reason than as an easily accessible collection of edifying anecdotes, mainly from classical Antiquity.
Comparison of Vincent of Beauvais’ views concerning the origins of power with those maintained only a few years later by his confrere Thomas Aquinas offers a telling example of the changes brought about by the reception of Aristotelian practical philosophy. In the only extant part of his De regno (shortly after 1270), Aquinas offers an account of the origin of the political community that is strongly influenced by the Aristotelian pattern of the natural, teleological development of the city from the smallest social community, the family. In Aquinas’ account of the establishment of power relations among human beings, the Fall does not play the role it played in Vincent. Moreover, Aquinas describes different types of constitution. Monarchy is not the only possibility anymore, so that Aquinas, unlike Vincent, feels a need to argue in favor of the monarchical constitution as reflecting in the best way the order of nature and the universe. It is still controversial whether Aquinas, in defining the duties of the ruler also toward God, suggests that regnum should be subordinated to sacerdotium.
Innovative as it might have been, Aquinas’ De regno remained but a fragment. With his De regimine principum (most probably around 1279) Giles of Rome fulfilled the task of writing a Mirror for Princes that exploited the opportunities offered by the reception of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and Politics. The first book of the De regimine consists, in fact, in a description of the virtues of the ruler that is much indebted to Aquinas’ reception of the Nicomachean Ethics. At least for its first part, the third book relies heavily on Aristotle’s Politics. According to the traditional subdivision of practical philosophy into individual ethics, doctrine of the household (oeconomica), and politics, Giles, still lacking a Latin translation of the pseudo-Aristotelian Oeconomica, draws on the Nicomachean Ethics, the Rhetoric, and the last two books of the Politics, especially as regards the upbringing of children. The De regimine principum presented itself as a mirror that meets the expectations of an audience interested in the newly discovered Aristotelian practical philosophy. At first glance, it could seem that Giles limited himself to summarizing Aristotle’s relevant works. On the contrary, he did not only draw on the reception of Aristotle through Aquinas (there are many tacit references to the Sententia libri ethicorum, to the fragmentary Sen-tentia libri politicorum, to De regno, and even to the Summa theologiae of the great Dominican master), but also very often succeeded in bending the Aristotelian texts he quoted in his treatise to an apology for hereditary monarchy (presented as the best form of government according to Aristotle), where the king is above positive law and subordinate only to natural law. Giles of Rome also succeeded, however, in setting a standard, so that his Mirror for Princes enjoyed an enormous success, partly because it was used as a handbook of Aristotelian practical philosophy. The De regimine principum was also translated into many vernaculars. Some of these versions, however, were not literal, but rather free arrangements that inserted remarks by the translator and also used other sources, such as the Bible, that Giles had neglected in favor of Aristotle, in order to offer an almost purely philosophical Mirror for Princes. Among such modified versions one can count, for different reasons, the so-called Glossa castellana to the Re regimine principum (first half of the fourteenth century) and John Trevisa’s rendering in Middle English. Writing a philosophical, that is, in his opinion, an Aristotelian Mirror for Princes, was also the intention inspiring, Engelbert of Admont, whose De regimine principum (shortly after 1300) had, however, almost no diffusion in the Middle Ages. This work is nevertheless of great interest, since Engelbert develops a virtue ethics that distinguishes between the four cardinal virtues, that are necessary to anybody, and the virtuous habits that are required in kings and emperors. Only the latter, in fact, need what Engelbert calls virtutes regales, using an expression that most probably derives from the Secretum secretorum, a spurious Aristotelian work whose first part was sometimes referred to as the De regimine principum written by the Stagirite. Engelbert also provides the reader with a quite original discussion of the forms of government, in which he takes into consideration not only simple constitutions, but also mixed ones. Surprisingly enough for a supporter of the imperium, Engelbert admits that monarchy in its simple form is extremely rare, because of the rarity of virtues among rulers. Therefore, according to the most recent interpretation by Karl Ubl, he gives his preference to a blend of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy.
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