Between 1148 and 1153, Bernard of Clairvaux wrote a treatise addressed to Pope Eugenius III, the De consideratione, enlightening him not only about the duties and perils of the most important office in Christianity, but also about his view of the role of the pope in the church. Many scholars emphasize the similarities of this work to the Mirrors for Princes, describing it as a speculum paparum (mirror for popes). Bernard in fact devotes large sections of his treatise to the virtues of a good pope (the four cardinal virtues that are according to him necessarily connected), to the vices he should avoid in himself and correct in the faithful, and to the advisers he should choose, on the governance of the papal household. In addressing his advice to the pope, Bernard also expresses his ecclesiological views: on one hand, he stresses the fullness of power of the supreme pontiff, on the other, he claims that the exercise of this power should result in a service (ministerium) to the church and not in a dominion over it. In particular, the pope is morally bound to respect the rights of the local churches.
Written by a cleric who had attended the French schools at the eve of the age of universities and had personal experience of life at lay and ecclesiastical courts alike, John of Salisbury’s Policraticus, even though it is not only a speculum principis in the strict sense, gave a renewed impulse to the genre, as Wilhelm Berges noted in his ground breaking survey, which accordingly begins its detailed analysis with this work. Deeply indebted to the interest in the classical heritage that is peculiar to the so-called twelfth century Renaissance, John draws not only on biblical texts, such as Deut. 17 (which was to become an almost topical reference for this literary genre) but also on authors from Antiquity. The Institutio Traiani that John attributes to Plutarch and inserts in his Policraticus is a fake, but it adds a distinct classical flavor to John’s political organicism, which conceived of the realm as a body. The hierarchical functionalism that is implicit in the detailed parallelism between limbs of the body and the parts of the regnum was also to exert a long lasting influence on later specula. Historians of political thought have also taken great interest in John’s attitude toward unjust rulers, because he does not limit himself to contrasting the ideal ruler with the tyrant but supports the right to resist the tyrant, and even to kill him. According to some interpreters this right is, in John’s mind, also a duty. John of Salisbury’s impact is particularly noticeable in Helinand of Froidmont’s work, completed before 1210. This former troubadour converted to the Cistercian Order devoted a chapter of his huge Cronica in 49 books to the issue De bono regimine principis, drawing on the Institutio Traiani and its organicism, but also on John’s conviction that the just king should rule according to the law. In turn, Helinand contributed to the diffusion of John of Salisbury’s views, thanks to the fact that his De bono regimine principis was excerpted in the following century by Vincent of Beauvais and inserted in his well-known and widely read Speculum historiale.
Writing on the ridge between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Gerald of Wales combined in his De principis instructione a detailed virtue ethics enriched with exempla from classical writers (first distinctio) with reports about the life of contemporary rulers (second and third distinctiones) that is an important source for historical events as well.
World History
