De principis instructione

of Henry II from the Topographia Hibernica, c. 1186–1188 In the twelfth century Henry II came to rule over a collection of territories often termed by historians the Angevin Empire, consisting of the English monarchy and extensive lands in France, and stretching from Northumberland to the Pyrenees. Henry II planned to partition his lands among his sons. His eldest son, Henry, was to receive the Kingdom of England and the County of Anjou, and was crowned Junior King in 1170. Richard received the Duchy of Aquitaine in 1172, and Geoffrey was to become count of Brittany through his 1166 betrothal to its heiress. John, born in 1167, was not initially allocated lands, and Henry II's later attempts to provide for him created tensions with his older sons, Henry II died in July 1189, shortly after learning that John too had abandoned him, and Richard inherited his lands. Richard died childless in 1199 and was succeeded by John. and his attempts to recover them, and the resulting financial burdens imposed on his subjects, helped drive the English barons into rebellion in 1215. In late 1215 the barons offered the English Crown to Philip's son Louis, who landed in England in May 1216. John died of illness in October and was succeeded by his young son, Henry III. Mirror for princes The mirror for princes genre emerged in medieval Latin Christendom as a form of political advice literature. Drawing on classical, biblical, and patristic precedents, these texts offered rulers guidance on virtues and vices, counsel and governance, often framed through exempla of good and bad monarchs. They circulated from the early Middle Ages and especially in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. in St Davids Cathedral Gerald of Wales Gerald of Wales was a scholar and churchman, born to a mixed Norman and Welsh family among the marcher gentry of South Wales. He studied in St Peter's Abbey in Gloucester before moving to Paris where he studied the trivium. After this first period in Paris he returned to Wales, where in 1176 he sought election to the see of St Davids but due to Henry II's opposition was unsuccessful despite the support from the monks. He then returned to Paris for about three years, until , where he studied canon law and theology, lecturing on the former. By the 1210s Gerald's hostility to the Angevins climaxed in a desire to see England under French rule, and during the First Barons' War, when French forces landed in England to oppose King John, Gerald supported the French. == Composition and textual history ==

De principis instructione, sometimes rendered as Liber de principis instructione and translated variously as The Instruction of Princes or Instruction for a Ruler, is a medieval Latin treatise on kingship by Gerald of Wales that serves as a polemical critique of contemporary English governance. The first distinction takes the form of a traditional "mirror for princes", while the second and third distinctions are an extended polemic against Henry II and his heirs, identifying and denouncing their vices. Editions and dating Two editions of De principis instructione were created. A first edition was likely circulated , consisting only of the first distinction and an original prelude. This dating is based on a reference in a 1191 first edition manuscript of Gerald's Itinerarium Kambriae in which, referring to the death of Henry II, Gerald writes "as we have narrated in the book De principis instructione". This dating is supported by internal and external evidence. In De iure et statu Menevensis ecclesia, written , Gerald mentions that he published De principis instructione when he was seventy. Since he was born , this would place publication . The text also cannot have been completed before Louis's landing in May 1216, since passages in it refer to his behaviour in the English campaign. George F. Warner, editor of the Rolls Series, argued that the text took its final form after King John's death in October 1216. Bartlett, however, argues from internal evidence that it may have been completed earlier, since one passage states that John had "begun to be destroyed", which implies composition before his death. Gerald is himself equivocal, writing that "six or seven" of the Norman kings had died by the time of writing. If six had died, he was writing before John's death; if seven, after it. Dedication Late in the composition of De principis instructione, Gerald inserted a quasi-dedication to Prince Louis of France, stating that if he were to dedicate the work, it would be to Louis "both because he has been deeply instructed in letters and the liberal arts from his earliest years . . . and because he is famous for his generosity". This late insertion indicates that the work was not originally intended for dedication to a specific ruler. ==Contents==

Intended to instruct princes in governance, the first distinction of De principis instructione offers moral teaching drawn from earlier authors. The second and third distinctions give instruction through historical examples and narrate the reign of Henry II. They include material on French and English politics, as well as texts of letters and treaties, some of which survive only through Gerald. It offers moral teaching chiefly through historical anecdotes drawn from the Bible, Roman authors, the Church Fathers, and other sources. It includes an account of a conversation between Gerald and Henry which historians consider to be essentially true. Gerald says that he told Henry that Heraclius's visit to England brought honour to both the king and the kingdom. Henry, according to Gerald, did not take his words well and replied "If the patriarch or anyone else comes to us, they are seeking their own advantage, not ours". Gerald then answered that Henry should count it an honour to have been chosen for such service to the church, to which Henry replies "These clerks can incite us boldly to arms and danger, since they themselves will receive no blows in the struggle, nor will they undertake any burdens which they can avoid." The distinction includes a prophecy supposedly delivered by Heraclius to Henry II during the same visit, though modern historians have called it "utterly implausible". In it Henry was declared to have abandoned God and to have been abandoned in turn, and that because of this "your glory will be turned to disaster, your honour to ignominy, until your last gasp" The distinction includes four royal documents and five papal letters. The royal documents include the 1177 Treaty of Ivry, two letters from Henry II to Ranulf de Glanville dated 1180 and 1182, and Henry's 1182 will. The latter three may have been obtained from de Glanville. The papal letters include Laudabiliter from Adrian IV, Quoniam ea and Quanto personam tuam from Alexander III, Cum cuncti predecessores from Lucius III, and Dum attendinus from Urban III. Third distinction The third distinction covers the last four years of Henry's reign, when success gave way to failure. It treats the successes of Philip II of France, the rebellions of Henry's sons Richard and John, and Henry II's final days. From the fourteenth to the twenty-first chapters it includes an extended account of the Third Crusade, whose failure Gerald blames on Henry, before returning to Henry. This includes two letters, one purportedly from Barbarossa to Saladin, and one from Saladin to Barbarossa. It describes Henry's flight from Philip and Richard after the battle of Le Mans in 1189, and his conscious rejection of God as he looks back at the city in flames, saying "Today, O God, to pile up confusion and increase my shame, you have so foully taken from me the city I loved most in the world, where I was born and raised, where my father lies buried and St. Julian's body is interred. So I will repay you for such a deed as far as I can, by taking away from you that which you love most in me." It concludes with Henry, after the losses of Châteauroux, Le Mans, and Tours, falling ill with fever and placing himself at Philip's mercy. He then learns that his favourite son John has turned against him and says "now let everything go as it will, I care no more for myself or the world", and dies on 6 July 1189. In this distinction Gerald includes several dream-visions concerning Henry II's fate, many vivid and violent and marked by images of defilement and filth. He attributes these to several sources, and includes one which he claimed to have experienced himself, in which Henry's corpse lies abandoned and alone, "as if it were haunted by unclear things". The distinction also includes a single papal letter, Quam gravis et horribilis of Clement III. == Themes and genre ==

Though nominally a mirror-for-princes text, De principis instructione is also a personal drama of the rise and fall of Henry II Its primary theme is the difference between a good prince and a tyrant. Gerald himself places the greatest emphasis on the virtue of temperance and the notion that temperance keeps the other three cardinal virtues of justice, prudence, and fortitude in check. He also emphasises prudence, arguing that it moderates the other virtues and prevents justice from denigrating into cruelty, fortitude into temerity, and temperance into lassitude. and Bartlett has said it is "not a sophisticated work of analysis" that contains "no political theory of any significance". Karl Schnith considers it to be Gerald's least readable work, and Frédérique Lachaud described it as the sort of work an ambitious cleric might compose to gain royal attention. István P. Bejczy disagreed, arguing that the work deserves a better reputation and describing it as presenting the anti-Machiavellian idea that a prince should not be feared but loved, and that it succeeds at taking the cardinal virtues and their subdivisions and applying them to an educational purpose. Second and third distinctions The second and third distinctions differ sharply from the first and constitute a vicious condemnation of Henry II and his dynasty. Jean-Philippe Genet, Briggs, and Nederman describe them as an "anti-mirror" and an "impassioned assault on the corrupt rule of England of his day." Together they present a narrative of Henry II's rise and fall intended to "teach the rule of government through example." and Guy's coronation This division of rise and fall is visible in the structure of the distinctions, with Gerald describing the second as dealing with Henry's "elevation and glory", and the third as dealing with his "painful downfall and catastrophe" and showing the "vengeance, disaster, and ignominy" inflicted upon Henry by God. The turning point Gerald chose was Heraclius's 1185 embassy and Henry's refusal to go on crusade, which is shown at the climax of the second distinction and according to Gerald concludes with Heraclius issuing a prophetic warning against Henry after being rebuffed, an event that Robert Bartlett describes as "utterly implausible". Gerald used two different frameworks to present this, merging the classical notion of a wheel of fortune with the Judeo-Christian notion of providence. He presents Henry's successes as God's encouragement and his failures God's chastisement and punishment, while also presenting his failures as an inevitable consequence of the turning of the wheel. These themes sometimes clashed, with the notion of the intervention of God conflicting with the notion of inevitable fate. At other times Gerald successfully harmonised them, presenting the consequences of the 1170 murder of Thomas Becket as moral causation, with the turning of the wheel altered to align with this. Together, these distinctions present a tale of kingly hubris and divine retribution, of Henry's abandonment of God and God's abandonment of him in turn. They also contain several intermingled themes, including the conflicts between Henry II and his sons, relations with the kings of France, and events in the holy land. The narrative extends beyond the fate of Henry II and to the dynasties of England and France, with Gerald presenting the entire line of Norman kings, from William the Conqueror to Henry II's son John, as tyrants, vicious and tainted by the presence of a "demon countess" in their lineage. By contrast, Gerald presents the Capetians favourably, showing them as noble kings who inspired love and loyalty from their subjects in contrast to the tyrannical Angevins. The distinction concludes with failed hope, with the French whose arrival Gerald celebrated having been defeated and the Angevins not overthrown but instead persisting with John's infant son on the throne. Kate Norgate wrote that "no careful and dispassionate reader of Gerald's writings can fail to see that in all of them his primary object was to glorify himself" and the distinctions are characterised by vindictiveness, vanity, conceit, and by gloating, as Gerald takes delight in the misfortune and fall of Henry and condemns both him and his dynasty. == Manuscripts and publication history ==

De principis instructione did not circulate widely It measures about 175 by 260 millimetres and is written in gothic textualis, in two columns of thirty-eight lines across six bifolia. at which time De principis instructione reached its widest audience. == Sources ==

Completed decades after the death of both Henry and Richard I, De principis instructione is an important and valuable source for historical events, including the history of the Angevin dynasty, events in France during the period, and matters related to the house of Blois. It is also a key witness to views critical of the English monarchy at the time of the Magna Carta, and the second and third distinctions are considered important sources for the politics of the 1180s and 1190s. Its medieval use was limited. Ranulph Higden's Polychronicon is the only known medieval work to have relied directly on it, and Higden referred to it as "A Life of King Henry II in Three Books". Even so, the medieval impact of De principis instructione was wider than the surviving manuscript evidence alone would suggest due to the reliance of later authors, including Henry Knighton and John Brompton, on Higden's work. Bartlett described it as a "rich but rambling diatribe against the Angevins" and Briggs and Nederman have described it as one of the "earliest major exemplars of medieval political mirror literature from the twelfth century" While the first distinction is largely derivative, Frédérique Lachaud has argued that engaging with the entire text "draws out a sort of originality that distinguishes it from the mainstream of princely mirrors", and Michael Staunton has described the second and third distinctions as the closest work by a contemporary to a biography of Henry II. Staunton also writes that the work created a "memorable" image of Henry that "resonated for centuries", while noting that Gerald did not invent that image but built on a narrative already taking shape before Henry's death. == References ==