Philippe de Mézières et l’Europe: nouvelle histoire, nouveaux espaces, nouveaux langages ed. by Joël Blanchard and Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski (review)

This collection of sixteen essays results from an international conference, held in Le Mans in 2016, which proposed to use Philippe de Mézières as an entry point into medieval views on Europe and crusading culture. To this end, conference participants were invited to use Mézières’s writings as a springboard to reflect on three interlocking questions: Did Europe exist as a concept during the Middle Ages? If so, what did the concept represent? Finally, to what extent was the concept a product of the crusades? The first of this volume’s three parts adopts as its subtitle the central question, ‘L’Europe, un concept multiforme?’ The first essay, by Klaus Oschema, looks at the presence of the term ‘Europe’ in Mézières compared with other medieval writers. Thereafter, contributors explore Mézières’s depiction of Europe through geographic (Anne-Hélène Miller), spatial and temporal (Kiril Petkov), and linguistic categories (Benoît Grévin) while Christine Gadrat-Ouerfelli proposes to approach the question by turning to Mézières’s fellow medieval travel-writers. This last essay of the section anticipates an approach to Mézières via contemporary writers that will dominate Part Two, where, once again, a question frames the entries: ‘Aventures européennes?’ Herein, readers are offered alternative views on the concept of Europe provided by Mézières’s contemporaries, whether speaking of visions of Europe linked to Charles IV (Pierre Monnet), Spain (François Foronda), the papacy (Émilie Rosenblieh), the Muslim writer Mubassir Al Fatik (Catherine Gaullier-Bougassas), or Opicino de Canistris (Sylvain Piron). In Part Three, ‘L’Europe fille de la croisade?’, contributors return to Mézières’s writings to examine his vision of what the crusades were to achieve. Philippe Buc and Camille Rouxpetel, in separate essays, focus on the Epistre lamentable. Kevin Brownlee, using this last work alongside Epistre au roi Richard, compares Mézières’s view of crusading with that of Jean Froissart. Two additional contributions address Mézières’s currently unedited Oratio tragedica: Antoine Calvet provides an overview of the author’s apology for a new crusade as developed in the prologue to this work, and, thereafter, Calvet and Joël Blanchard provide a transcription and French translation of this prologue that will figure in their forthcoming edition of this work. In the final entry, Yves Coativy speaks of his recent discovery of fragments of a copy of the Songe du viel pelerin. This leads him to a discussion of the treatment of medieval sources following the French Revolution as a means of thinking of the Songe as representative of the role medieval writings have had on defining Europe in modern times. While this collection maintains a keen gaze on Mézières, its real value comes from its efforts to place the author in a larger medieval context. In so doing, far from providing definitive answers to the questions driving the collection, the contributors have given much material for future research.