Henri de Gauchy explained

Henri de Gauchy (also spelled Gauchi, Latin: Henricus de Gauchiaco) was a French magister and canon of Saint-Martin de Liège in the late 13th century.^[1]

In 1282, at the request of King Philip IV of France, Henri translated the De regimine principum of Giles of Rome from Latin into French under the title Le livre du gouvernement des rois et des princes ('the book of the government of the kings and of the princes').^[1] Giles's work was, with the Secretum secretorum, the most popular work in the mirror for princes genre during the Middle Ages.^[2] Henri's translation is preserved complete in at least 30 manuscripts and in part in at least nine more.^[3]

Henri's translation, if not Giles's original, may have been the main source for the vernacular Venetian Trattato de regimine rectoris of Paolino Veneto.^[4]

Editions

• Molenaer, Samuel Paul, ed. Li Livres du Gouvernement des Rois: A Thirteenth-century French Version of Egidio Colonna's Treatise De Regimine Principum. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1899.

Reviewd by Paget Toynbee (1899), The English Historical Review 14(55): 548–550.

• Perret, Noëlle-Laetitia, ed. Les traductions françaises du De regimine principum de Gilles de Rome: Parcours matériel, culturel et intellectuel d'un discours sur l'éducation. Leiden: Brill, 2011.

Reviewed by Daisy Delogu (2012), Mediaevistik 25: 551–553.

Notes and References

1. Laurent Brun (2020), "Henri de Gauchy", Archives de littérature du Moyen Âge (ARLIMA).
2. Charles F. Briggs (1993), "Manuscripts of Giles of Rome's De regimine principum in England, 1300–1500: A Handlist", Scriptorium 47(1): 60–73.
3. Gavino Scala (2021), La tradizione manoscritta del "Livre du gouvernement des roys et des princes" di Henri de Gauchy: Studio filologico e saggio di edizione (PhD dissertation, University of Zurich), pp. 27–29, contains a list.
4. Suzanne Mariko Miller (2007), Venice in the East Adriatic: Experiences and Experiments in Colonial Rule in Dalmatia and Istria (c. 1150–1358) (PhD dissertation, Stanford University), p. 150.