MEZIÈRES de PHILIPPE. - B. around 1326 in the castle of the same name, d. May 29, 1405. Wholly seized by the ardor of the Crusade, which he conceived as a chivalric enterprise in the manner of those of the knights of the Round Table, and himself armed a knight, he made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem and later became chancellor of Peter of Lusignan, king of Cyprus. When the latter was assassinated in 1369, he hoped that Charles V, king of France, would set about the Crusade; when he too died in 1380, he turned to his son Charles VI.

In 1384 he planned the institution of the Order of the Passion of Christ for expeditions in the East: a curious mixture of practical sense and chimeric ideas. In his Sogno del vecchio pellegrino, published in 1388, he outlined a plan of Crusade that was to be carried out first of all with universal peace among the Christian princes, in order then to move against the Muslims in Spain, in Egypt, in Syria and in the rest of the East. But this was the acute period of the Great Schism, which sharpened discords instead of soothing them. After the disaster of Nicopolis on the Danube of Sept. 25, 1396, suffered especially by the French knights, Philip addressed to Charles VI his Lettera lamentevole e consolatrice. With him died the most convinced theorist of the Crusade.

Bibliography2 works

BIBL.: N. Jorga, P. de M. et la Croisade au XIVe siècle, Paris 1896; L. Brehier, L'Eglise et l'Orient au moyen âge: les Croisades, ibid. 1911, pp. 305-11.

Pio Paschini

@incollection{ec8_mezieres_de_philippe, author = {Paschini, Pio}, title = {Mezières de Philippe}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {VIII}, pages = {923}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1952}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/mezieres-de-philippe} }

One of some 20,000 entries brought back from the twelve printed volumes (1948–54). Spotted something? Help us improve it.

About this entry