"Quae maxime damnant animas principum": Fünf antimonarchische Kapitel im "Pastorale" des Francesc Eiximenis

Abstract

The recent publication of a part of the Dotzè in the Complete Works of Francesc Eiximenis allows us to study in detail the ideas about kings and regents that the famous minorite of València had. We should not forget, however, that Eiximenis also speaks of this subject in others of his writings, such as in the letter to Prince Martí, in the Allegationes, and in the Pastorale. It seems that Eiximenis had not dared to show too much of his anti-monarchism in his Catalan "regiment of princes," the Dotzè, and so included five chapters against the evil kings in his Latin "regiment of bishops", the Pastorale. The reference to Prince Louis of Sicily, who abdicated to become a Franciscan, is a signal to the reader to think of Prince Peter of Aragon, who had done the same, and the situation in Catalonia.
The five chapters of the Pastorale are published in the present work as a sample of how the writings of Eiximenis, both those in Catalan and Latin, illuminate each other, and of how urgent the publication of his Complete Works is. Historians are invited to collaborate to investigate the extent to which the Dotzè is a key novel about the political and social events surrounding Eiximenis in the late 14th century.