Further Reading
Einhard. Einhard: Vita Caroli Magni. The Life of Charlemagne,
ed. and trans. Evelyn Scherabon Firchow and Edwin H. Zey-
del. Coral Gables: University of Miami Press, 1972.
Thorpe, Lewis, trans. Einhard and Notker the Stammerer: Two
Lives of Charlemagne. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969.
Beumann, Helmut. Ideengeschichtliche Studien zu Einhard
und anderen Geschichtsschreibern des fri heren Mittelalters.
Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1969.
Fleckenstein, Josef. “Einhard, seine Gri ndung und sein Vermächt-
nis in Seligenstadt.” In Das Einhardkreuz: Vortraege und
Studien der Muensteraner Diskussion zum arcus Einhardi,
ed. Karl Hauck. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht,
1974, pp. 96–121.
Celia Chazelle
EIXIMENIS, FRANCESC (1330/35–1409)
A Catalan religious writer, Eiximenis, was born at Gi-
rona between 1330 and 1335. He entered the Franciscan
order in his youth and studied in Italy, France, and Eng-
land. In 1374, with the support of the king of Aragón, he
obtained the licentia docendi at Toulouse University. He
was highly esteemed by king Pedro III, while in whose
entourage Eiximenis planned the Crestià, his ambitious
Christian vernacular encyclopedia in thirteen large vol-
umes. The fi rst volume, Primer del Crestià (1381), was
written in Barcelona and deals with the foundations of
Christian dogma. The second, Segon del Crestià, which
discusses temptation and divine grace, was fi nished in
Valencia, “where Eiximenis spent his mature years. In
1383 Eiximenis offered the citizens of Valencia a com-
pendium of moral and political advice, the Regiment de
la cosa pública, a vast treatise on the nature of human
society and its government that was later included in
the Dotzè. Meanwhile he fi nished another volume of the
encyclopedia, the Te rç (1384), an extensive description
of the seven deadly sins, with theological explanations
as well as all sorts of exempla and practical digressions.
The Dotzè (1386, with an interpolation of 1391) is the
twelfth, and the most popular, book of Eiximenis’s
encyclopedia. Titled Regiment de prínceps i comuni-
tats, it is addressed to princes and kings, as well as to
administrative offi cers with civil responsibilities. The
two huge volumes of the Dotzè were kept in the city
hall of Valencia for public consultation. Presumably
Eiximenis did not complete the Crestià as planned. In
1392 he fi nished a very successful treatise on heavenly
creatures, the Llibre dels àngels, and probably in 1396
a monograph on morals for women: the Llibre de les
dones. Eiximenis also produced a Vida de Jesucrist (ca.
1400), which enjoyed great success and was designed
to teach a personal approach to the human and divine
fi gure of the Son of God, in the manner of Ludolph of
Saxony and Ubertino of Casale’s Latin Vitae Christi.
Eiximenis’s Latin works include an Ars praedicandi, a
Pastorale giving advice to the bishop of Valencia, and
a Psalterium alias Laudatorium papae Benedicto XIII
dedicatum. The prayers of the latter were translated into
Catalan in 1416.
Eiximenis supported Pope Benedict XIII, who in
1408 designated him patriarch of Jerusalem and bishop
of Elna. He died at Perpignan, France, in April 1409. His
books enjoyed a great success: There are many extant
manuscripts of some of them; others were translated into
Spanish and even into French; and some were printed in
the fi fteenth century. Eiximenis was a compiler deeply
indebted to his sources (the great Franciscan writers of
the thirteenth century, the treatises on vices and virtues),
but he was also an extraordinarily talented vernacular
prose writer and an acute observer of his times. His
writings provided a fruitful bridge between the learned
church traditions and the cultural needs of the inhabit-
ants of the Catalan towns of the late Middle Ages.
See also Pedro III, King of AragónFurther Reading
Eiximenis, F. Lo crestià. Ed. by A. Hauf. In Les millors obres de
la literatura catalana. Vol. 98. Barcelona, 1983.
Viera, D. Bibliografi a anotada de la vida i obra de Francesc
Eiximenis. Barcelona, 1980.
Lola BadíaELEANOR OF AQUITAINE
(ca. 1122–1204)
The duchy of Aquitaine was the largest, most populous
region of France in the 12th and 13th centuries. Its
proximity to the Mediterranean and its cultural and com-
mercial contacts with the Greek and Byzantine worlds
attracted wealth and immigrants. It was openly coveted
by French kings, who, in the 13th century, would rely on
the pretext of eradicating heresy to invade it. Earlier, in
the 10th and 11th centuries, it had been controlled, for
the most part with generosity and fl exibility, by dukes
whose creativity and precocity are legendary. William
III founded the Abbey of Cluny in 910; William IX
offered his irreverent troubadour poems to the courts
of Europe.
In 1137 the only child of William X, Eleanor, who
possessed the spirited character of her forebears,
inherited the duchy and was immediately married to
the French king, Louis VII. Later, after befriending
Geoffrey, count of Anjou, she became wife to his son,
the future Henry II of England. The marriage not only
transferred the richness of Aquitaine from the French
to the English monarchy, where it remained until 1214,
but it united two formerly competing provinces.
Thus it might be supposed that Eleanor was a keyEINHARD