A Virtuous Knight: Defending Marshal Boucicaut (Jean II Le Meingre, 1366–1421) by Craig Taylor (review)

In 2016, Craig Taylor co-translated (with Jane H. M. Taylor) the anonymous 1409 Chivalric Biography of Boucicaut, Jean II Le Meingre (The Boydell Press, 2016); this book concerns that biography and is best read alongside it. Marshal Boucicaut's life has shaped views of himself and of chivalry. Scholars see it as illustrating a disjunction between chivalric fantasy and war's realities, or even as positively reactionary, glorifying chivalric ideals precisely because contemporary knighthood was coming under fire. Taylor's monograph presents a more nuanced interpretation, closely contextualizing Boucicaut's biography, his life, and his times; this level of engagement with the text probably reflects Taylor's earlier role of translator. He contends that, notwithstanding its alleged intentions, the biography did more than just memorialize a role-model for later generations. Boucicaut was governor of Genoa when it was written. His rule was controversial, with several major stumbles. He was unpopular in Italy and acquired critics at the French court too: his bungled effort to sell Pisa to Florence antagonized the Duke of Burgundy; the sale sought actively to assist Benedict XIII, the Avignonese pope whom France shortly repudiated; he alienated the Genoese and lost a naval battle with Venice; French writers blamed him and fellow knights for a succession of military disasters. The biography justified his actions against this specific, developing backdrop. It was commenced in 1406 to excuse his miscalculation in backing the wrong pope and extenuate him to the offended duke. By 1409 it was defending him against new objections and pre-emptively countering future ones. Thus, while supposedly written without his knowledge, it served his purposes and was perhaps despatched with his envoys on a 1409 mission to Paris to request further subsidies (something that may explain the seeming haste in which the manuscript was finished).

Taylor's opening chapter provides a comprehensive potted life of Boucicaut. Chapter 2 considers the biography itself. He argues for collaborative authorship between a cleric, who supplied classical learning, and a knight familiar with Boucicaut's campaigns. Taylor credibly proposes Jean d'Ony as the knight: Ony's experiences are plainly drawn upon; he is frequently, flatteringly, mentioned. Nicolas de Gonesse is endorsed as Ony's likely clerical collaborator. Gonesse had formerly completed a French translation, with commentary, of Valerius Maximus. The biography's abundant classical allusions almost all derive from this translation; moreover, Gonesse was in Boucicaut's entourage at Genoa and one of his envoys to Paris in 1409. The case for dual authorship is plausible but not watertight. If Ony were an author, would his account brag so regularly of his 'many valorous deeds' (pp. 69–71)? Possibly. Alternatively, might Gonesse, or someone else, have painted a laudatory portrait of him after benefiting from his eyewitness accounts?

Chapter 3 discusses how and why the work defended Boucicaut, in a persuasive and nuanced study of evolving motives from 1406 to 1409, when the biography was completed hurriedly, perhaps to accompany the embassy to Paris. Sometimes its defence involved distorting or omitting evidence. Chapter 4 concerns the work's first three sections, which present Boucicaut as a flower of chivalry. Rather than treat these as an idealized chivalric life-story, Taylor argues that the narrative stressed the marshal's prowess, courage, and loyalty to underline the wisdom of retaining his services, at a moment when his competence was coming into question. A chivalric biography typically concluded by describing its subject's death, underlining the moral lesson taught by his life. This being unfeasible, as Boucicaut was alive, the biography's last book described his piety, self-discipline, and so forth. Taylor's fifth chapter suggests that the shifting emphasis at this point, from Boucicaut's military expertise to his civilized nature, responded to new attitudes at the French court. His showcased virtues, though, also implicitly argued that whatever setbacks...