Giles of Rome, Bishop of Bourges

 

  1. Bishop of Bourges (c.1247-1316) also known as Aegidius Romanus or Egidio Colonna. Author of the De regimine principum, a 'mirror of princes' dedicated to Philip IV of France, called Philip the Fair or Philippe le Bel in French, for whose education he was responsible.
  2. In the Prologue to the Chronicle of King Pedro of Portugal, Fernão Lopes refers to the qualities or highest virtues of a king basing himself on Giles of Rome’s concepts of 'animatus princeps' and 'inanimatus princeps' as expressed in the De regimine principum (‘On kingship’). See Ernst H Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Theology (Princeton, NJ: Princeton U.P., 1981, reprint 1997), p.134: “the king or prince is a kind of Law, and the law is a kind of king or prince. For the Law is a kind of inanimate prince; the prince, however, a kind of animate Law. And in so far as the animate exceeds the inanimate the king or prince must exceed the Law”; see also note 148 for the text in the original Latin: “Est enim rex sive princeps quaedam lex; et lex quaedam rex sive princeps. Nam lex est quidam inanimatus princeps. Princeps vero est quaedam animata lex. Quantum ergo animatum inanimatum superat, tantum rex sive princeps debet superare legem”. [AH]
Aegidius Romanus
Egidio Colonna

Chronicle entries in which Giles of Rome, Bishop of Bourges appears:

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