should be chosen from fourgroups of estates (manières d’estas): from
the nobles, firstly experienced captains to advise on the war, and
secondly men of good sense and ‘ordered estate’ who have retained in
memory what they have seen happen in their time in various spheres of
life, understand differences of estates, times, and persons, and are the
sort of people the prince should have in the household offices and
advising him on what should be ordained for ‘the noble estate royal’;
thirdly, clerics and laymen whose legal training has given them the right
to govern a polity and ‘a community of all types of estates’ in matters
of justice and finance, as chancellors, masters of requests, bailiffs of
great jurisdictions etc.; and fourthly, wise and prudent burgesses and
others of large estate and good life, men who have had dealings with
people of diverse estates and callings. The rest of the work was written
towards the end of 1413, after the peace had broken down, and a move-
ment for reform fostered by the duke of Burgundy and the university of
Paris had culminated in a rising of Parisians under the butcher, Simon
Caboche, which forced the dauphin to accept the people’s choices in city
offices. Part 2, about justice, calls for the punishment of evildoers. Part
3, on the good government of the people and chose publique, makes the
presence of a prosperous bourgeoisie a sign that a city is en bon estat,
and the keeping of ‘all the estates of the policy in their degrees’ a
prince’s ‘great honour’, but paints a lurid picture of the consequences of
giving office to craftsmen without experience of matters of right and
justice.^70
Jean Gerson, the chancellor of the university of Paris, who gained
international stature as advocate of a general council of the Church to
resolve the papal schism, answered the crisis of the French kingdom
with the ideal of the mystical body of the nation. Containing students
from all the estates of the body politic, the university, he claimed, could
represent the whole of France in saying Vivat rex, vive le roy, vive le
roy, and teach the king how he alone could restore peace to his troubled
land and to a divided Christianity. It seemed to Gerson, reflecting on
‘the state of the king and his kingdom’, that the enemy of mankind had
sent his eldest son and ablest captain to destroy ‘the civil life of the chose
publiquein head and members’ and thus dissolve not only ‘the state or
royal lordship [l’estat ou royalle seigneurie]’ but also each of the three
estates which guarded and supported ‘this sovereign estate [cest estat
souverain]’. Clergy, chevalerie, and bourgeoisie must see that l’ordre du
corps mystique de la chose publiquewas not subverted, defending their
head and restraining luxury and oultrageous estasamong their ranks,
though they had a right to expect that the burden of taxes would be
280 Monarchical State of the Later Middle Ages
(^70) The ‘Livre de la Paix’ of Christine de Pisan, ed. C. C. Willard (The Hague, 1958), 75–7,
113, 123, 130–1, 135–6.