DUBOIS, PIERRE (c. 1250-c. 1312)

This article appears in Volume V08, Page 625 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

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DUBOIS, PIERRE (c. 1250-c. 1312) , French publicist in the reign of Philip the

Fair

FAIR

, was the author of a

series

SERIES (a Latin word from serere, to join)

of political pamphlets embodying

original

ORIGINAL

and daring views. He was known to Jean du Tillet in the 16th, and to Pierre Dupuy in the 17th century, but remained practically forgotten until the
middle of the 19th century, when his history was reconstructed from his works. He was a Norman by

birth

BIRTH (a word common in various forms to Teutonic languages from the root of the verb " to bear ")

, probably a native of Coutances, where he exercised the functions of royal advocate of the bailliage and procurator of the university. He was educated at the university of Paris, where he heard St Thomas Aquinas and Siger of Brabant. He was, nevertheless, no adherent of the scholastic philosophy, and appears to have been conversant with the works of Roger Bacon. Although he never held any important political office, he must have been in the confidence of the court when, in 1300, he wrote his anonymous Summaria, brevis et compendiosa dpctrina felicis expeditions et abbreviationis guerrarum et litium regni Francorum, which is extant in a unique MS., but is analysed by N. de Wailly in the Bibliotheque de l'Ecole des Charles (2nd

series

SERIES (a Latin word from serere, to join)

, vol. iii.). In the contest between Philip the

Fair

FAIR

and

Boniface

BONIFACE (Bonifacius)
BONIFACE, SAINT (680-754)

VIII. Dubois identified himself completely with the secularizing policy of Philip, and poured forth a series of anti-clerical pamphlets, which did not cease even with the death of

Boniface

BONIFACE (Bonifacius)
BONIFACE, SAINT (680-754)

. His Supplication du pueble de France an roy contre le pape Boniface le Vllle, printed in 1614 in Acta inter Bonifacium VIII. et Philippum Pulchrum,

dates

DATES

from 1304, and is a heated indictment of the temporal power. He represented Coutances in the states-general of 1302, but in 1306 he was serving Edward I. as an advocate in Guienne, without apparently abandoning his Norman practice by which he had become a rich man. The most important of his works, his treatise De recuperation terrae sanctae,' was written in 1306, and dedicated in its extant form to Edward I., though it is certainly addressed to Philip. Dubois outlines the conditions necessary to a successful crusadethe

establishment

ESTABLISHMENT (0. Fr. establissement, Fr. etablissement,
late
- LATE
Norm. Fr. establishement, from O. Fr. establir, Fr. etablir, Lat. stabilire, to make stable)

and enforcement of a state of peace among the Christian nations of the West by a council of the church; the refofm of the monastic, and especially of the military, orders; the reduction of their revenues; the instruction of a number of

young

men and women in oriental languages and the natural sciences with a view to the government of Eastern peoples; and the

establishment

ESTABLISHMENT (0. Fr. establissement, Fr. etablissement,
late
- LATE
Norm. Fr. establishement, from O. Fr. establir, Fr. etablir, Lat. stabilire, to make stable)

of Philip of Valois as emperor of the East. The king of France was in fact, when once the pope was deprived of the temporal power, to become the suzerain of the Western nations, and in a later and separate memoir Dubois proposed that he should cause himself to be made emperor by Clement V. His zeal for the crusade was probably subordinate to the desire to secure the wealth of the monastic orders for the royal treasury, and to transfer the ecclesiastical jurisdiction to the crown. His ideas on education, on the

celibacy

CELIBACY (Lat. caelibatus, from caelebs, unmarried)

of the clergy, and his schemes for the codification of French law, were far in advance of his time. He was an early and violent " Gallican," and the first of the great French lawyers who occupied themselves with high politics. In 1308 he attended the states-general at Tours. He is generally credited with Quaedam proposita papae a rege super facto Templariorum, a draft epistle supposed to be addressed to Clement by Philip. This was followed by other pamphlets in the same tone, in one of which he proposed that a kingdom founded on the property of the Templars in the East should be established on behalf of Philip the Tall.
See an article by E. Renan in Hist. lift. de la France, vol. xxvi. pp. 471-536; P. Dupuy Hist. de la condamnation . . . des Templiers (Brussels, 1713), and Hist. du differend entre le pape Bpniface VIII et Philippe le Bel (Paris 1655) ; and Notices et extraits de manuscrits, vol. xx.

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