Pierre Dubois (scholastic)

Pierre Dubois (* around 1255 , † around 1321 ) was a French scholastic , writer and public prosecutor. He developed an idea of ​​a "lasting peace" in Europe and was one of the first advocates of the European idea.

Life

Pierre Dubois was born between 1255 and 1260. Between 1269 and 1272 he studied scholasticism and law and jurisprudence in Paris. At that time, Siger von Brabant and Thomas von Aquin also taught at the university there . Dubois was active as an MP, bailiff, lawyer and writer; most of his writings appeared anonymously .

job

De recuperatione de Terre Sancte (1891 edition)

Pierre Dubois was a member of the first French National Assembly in 1302 as a member of the Coutances district ( Normandy ). Around 1306 he worked as a public prosecutor for Philip IV, "the beautiful" (le Bel) , as well as for the English King Edward I and drafted a plan according to which all of Europe should unite to form one state and nothing more should be separated, so that there would be the possibility of a lasting peace in Europe .

As early as 1300 he called for a thorough reform of the state, the church and the separation of church and state , as well as a renewal of the army and the judiciary. His main work, so named by him, On the recovery of the Holy Land , consisting of 142 paragraphs, he wrote around 1306 in view of a possibly imminent crusade; He called for the creation of political unity among the European Christian princes , so that "peace would be secured by the fact that they would, as it were, unite to form a single state which, however, had to be so firmly united that it could not be separated by anything". He proposed a council of secular and spiritual princes of Europe, at which it should also be decided that whoever disturbs the peace would be severely punished. Furthermore, an arbitration tribunal with clear indictment and defense rules and strict judicial ordinance should be created as mandatory permanent institutions for all of Europe. The members of this close community should therefore to a certain extent renounce their sovereign rights, but basically remain independent political units.

Economic coexistence and the associated trade regulations were integrated into his European ideas. He also formulated u. a. Considerations for school education and for vocational training . He was the first advocate of a far-reaching European idea and was the first to publish the proposal for a European confederation. Dubois ideas, however, could not have a concrete influence on the policy of the French king.

Dubois is said to have worked for the English King Edward I for a while. Pierre Dubois is only mentioned three times: in 1314 he was employed as a civil servant by the Countess of Artois. In 1319 he was mentioned as a member of the Parliament of Paris, and in 1321 he was a bailiff ( bailiff ) in Arras . After that his track is lost; an exact date of death is not known. However, he is believed to have died between 1321 and 1323.

Works

• De recuperatione terrae sanctae ("On Reconquering the Holy Land", 1306) (last published: Olschki, Firenze 1977, edited by Angelo Diotti).
• Summaria brevis et compendiosa doctrina felicis expedicionis et abreviacionis guerrarum ac litium regni Francorum . Sendet, Wiesbaden 1969 (reprint of the 1936 edition).

literature

• Hellmut Kämpf: Pierre Dubois and the intellectual foundations of French national consciousness around 1300 . Gerstenberg, Hildesheim 1972 (reprint of the 1935 edition), ISBN 3-8067-0151-2 .

• Lotte Kéry: Pierre Dubois and the League of Nations. A 'World Peace Plan' around 1300 in: Historische Zeitschrift (HZ) 283, pp. 1–30.
• Ernst Zeck: The publicist Pierre Dubois. Its importance in the context of the politics of Philip IV the beautiful and his literary way of thinking and working in the treatise "De recuperatione Terre Sancte" . Weidmann, Berlin 1911.

swell

1. ↑ book content in a German edition Pierre Dubious
2. ↑ Europe - History of a Political Idea - by RH Foerster - Nymphenburger Verlagshandlung No. 785 from 1967- Pages 60-75.