MEZIÈRES DE PHILIPPE

MEZIÈRES DE PHILIPPE. - Born around 1336 in the homonymous castle, died 29 May 1405. Completely consumed 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 invested as a knight, he made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem and then became chancellor to Peter of Lusignan, king of Cyprus. After the latter's assassination in 1369, he hoped that Charles V, king of France, would set out on the Crusade; upon the king's death in 1380, he turned to his son Charles VI.
In 1384 he planned the establishment of the Order of the Passion of Christ for expeditions to the East: a curious blend of practical sense and chimerical ideas. In his *Le Songe du Viel Pelerin*, published in 1388, he outlined a plan for a Crusade that was to be executed first by securing universal peace among Christian princes, and then to move against the Muslims in Spain, Egypt, Syria, and the rest of the East. But this was the period of the acute Great Schism, which sharpened discord rather than allaying II. After the disaster of Nicopolis on the Danube on 25 September 1396, especially suffered by the French knights, Philippe addressed his *Lamentable et Consolatoire Lettre* to Charles VI. With him passed away the most convinced theorist of the Crusade.