Anonymous author

Anonymous author
Avis au Roys, Part IV, followed by Cérémonies des Gages des Bataille, Selon les Constitutions du Bon Roi Philippe de France, in French, illuminated manuscript on vellum [Paris, first quarter 15th century]
A swashbuckling medieval manual on military engagement, containing two extremely rare French texts, in its original binding and likely compiled as a practical work of reference for a French military commander.

150 x 110mm. i + 104 + i leaves (including 16 blank leaves at end), complete in text, with the first work an excerpt from the four-part Avis au Roys, 13 lines, ruled space: 86 x 65mm, rubrics in red, illuminated initials throughout, catchwords, notes to rubricators and prickings survive (bookplate once pasted to front flyleaf now lifted, slight cockling to some leaves and small spots in places). Contemporary blind-stamped leather binding over wooden boards (tears and cuts, leather worn away along spine with patches missing, one thong detached at top from front board, remnants of clasp and traces of gilding along edges of leaves).

Provenance: (1) The manuscript was evidently produced for a military man: the compiler of the volume has selected texts to do with warfare and military strategy, deliberately dispensing with all parts of the Avis au Roys containing general advice for rulers. (2) 19-century antiquarian notes in pen and pencil ff.1-2, 55v and 89, two of which dated 4 and 8 August 1822 and referring to BnF Fr. 2258. (3) Artcurial, 31 May 2016, lot 1.

Content: Preface and index of 32 chapters to the fourth part of the Avis au Roys, beginning 'Veu comment bon prince doit estre bien co[n]dicionnez' ff.2-5v; Avis au Roys, Part IV, beginning: 'Premierement a ce que bon prince sache eslire bonne chevalerie' ff.5v-51; Cérémonies des Gages des Bataille, beginning 'Philippe par la grace de Dieu' ff.53-88v.
Both texts in the present volume are extremely rare, surviving only in a handful of manuscript copies. The first, the
Avis au Roys, composed by an anonymous author in the vein of the popular Miroir des Princes and drawing from Gilles of Rome's De regimine principum, apparently survives only in two other manuscripts, both in public institutions (Chantilly, Musée Condé, ms 314 [688] and New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, M.456). The chapters in Part IV focus on the choice of men-at-arms, organisation of troops, choice of camps, military tactics including defense of castles and fortresses, especially against war-engines, and the execution of sieges and, most interestingly, on warfare at sea, an increasingly common dimension to medieval military engagement.

The second, the Cérémonies des Gages des Bataille, is a chivalric manual of warfare drawn from the ordinances of King Philip IV (1268-1314), ‘the fair’ or ‘the Iron king’ of France. The text was published in 1830 by G.A. Crapelet from the manuscript then in the Bibliothèque royale, now the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Fr. ms. 2258 (it had previously been printed as Traité contre les Duels. Avec l’édict de Phillippes de Bel, de l'an M.CCC.VI in 1610, and another manuscript exists in BnF. Fr. 1983). The text contains an internal colophon, localising it to Paris and dating it ‘mercredi après Trinité’ 1306 (here on f. 55v reading 'MCCCC et six' in error, corrected in a near-contemporary hand on f. 88v).

Provenance
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