The Medieval Circulation of the De morali principis institutione of Vincent of Beauvais

"The Medieval Circulation of the De morali principis institutione of Vincent of Beauvais." In this article we reconstruct the transmission and trace the circulation of the De morali Principis institutione, a treatise on kingship written for Louis IX of France by the Dominican Vincent of Beauvais about 1262. This work, the first volume of a projected but uncompleted "opus universale" on politics, discourses on political power and legitimacy and advises the prince on the wisdom he should display in governance and on the vices of the court he must contend with. However, this most original of Vincent's treatises appears to have been ignored by Louis's Capetian and Valois successors and began to circulate only some fifty years after the author's death. The nine manuscripts and one incunabulum which survive belong to two families. One, the descendants probably of Vincent's fair copy, circulated anonymously and haphazardly on the Continent; its copies were made and remained in Paris and Basel. The others, descendants probably of the dedication copy, circulated in England, southern France or Catalonia, and northern Germany and Scandinavia. The treatise was disseminated largely through houses of the Dominican order, which sought to disseminate works of its writers through its priories and studia, and not by the French monarchy, which would have opposed Vincent's argument for political legitimacy.