VINCENNES
. The castle of Vincennes, just northeast of Paris, was a favorite residence of the Capetian
and Valois kings. Philip II Augustus built a hunting lodge here, and Louis IX is reported
to have dispensed justice beneath the giant oaks of the nearby forest. The castle,
constructed on a rectangular plan with square towers, was begun by Philip VI, continued
under John II the Good, and completed by Charles V in 1369. Only one tower and the
impressive 185-foot-tall keep remain. Flanked at the corners by turrets, the keep remains
an outstanding example of 14th-century military architecture, although its battlements
and machicolations have been destroyed. Within the walls of the later classical fortress
(17th c.), the Flamboyant Chapelle Royale, an elegant Gothic single-nave structure begun
in the late 14th century under Charles V in imitation of the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, was
completed by Philibert de l’Orme in the 16th.
William W.Kibler
Fossa, François de. Le château historique de Vincennes. 2 vols. Paris: Daragon, 1908.
VINCENT DE BEAUVAIS
(ca. 1190–ca. 1264). The author of a most spectacular encyclopedia of medieval culture
and thought, Vincent de Beauvais joined the Dominican house at Paris ca. 1220, shortly
after its founding, and probably moved to the new Dominican house in his native region
of Beauvais toward the end of the same decade. Vincent served as lecturer to the monks
of the nearby Cistercian abbey of Royaumont, founded by King Louis IX in 1228 and
through this association, mediated by Abbot Ralph, won the favor of the king and
ultimately the support of the royal purse for his scholarly projects.
The first half of the 13th century was a time of intellectual “consolidation,” when
several scholars, Vincent among them, felt the need to integrate the results of the
intellectual explosion of the 12th century with the traditional learning of western
civilization. Vincent entitled his work Speculum maius, a mirror to the world and its
truths, which he compares implicitly with earlier attempts, perhaps the Imago mundi of
the 12th century, sometimes attributed to Honorius of Autun. The Speculum originally
comprised two parts: the Naturale and the Historiale. The Naturale beings with a treatise
on theology (the triune God, archetype and creator of the universe; angels; demons;
account of Creation and the exitus of all reality from God), proceeds to a consideration of
the Fall, Redemption, and the sacraments of the church, and concludes with a summation
of natural philosophy, including a description of the physical universe and the nature of
human being. The Historiale gives an account of history from the Creation story of
Genesis to 1244 in his earliest edition, and extended to 1254 in his later version. Its
Medieval france: an encyclopedia 1818