rebellious Guerre du Bien Publique in 1465. It was next granted to Louis’s sainted
daughter, Jeanne la Boiteuse, who, repudiated by her husband, Louis XII, in 1499,
founded in Bourges the order of the Annonciade. The title was often borne after that by
members of the immediate family of the reigning monarch.
R.Thomas McDonald
[See also: BOURGES; JOHN, DUKE OF BERRY]
Devailly, Guy. Le Berry du Xe au milieu du XIIIe siècle. Paris: Mouton, 1973.
Raynal, Louis. Histoire de Berry. Bourges: Vermeil, 1845.
BERSUIRE, PIERRE
(ca. 1290–1362). Encyclopedist, moralist, and translator born probably in the Vendée
region, Bersuire entered the Franciscan order before joining the Benedictines. His early
career (ca. 1320-ca. 1350) was spent amid the fervent intellectual climate of the papal
court at Avignon, where he enjoyed the protection and extensive library of Cardinal
Pierre des Prés of Quercy, and it was here that he produced his major Latin works.
Bersuire came ca. 1350 to Paris, where he seems to have studied theology late in life. He
was accused of heresy, imprisoned, and eventually released through the intervention of
the new king, John II the Good. In 1354, he was made prior of the Benedictine abbey of
Saint-Éloy in Paris, a benefice he held until his death. Both in Avignon and Paris,
Bersuire frequented the leading intellectuals and scientists of his day, among them the
Italian humanist Petrarch, the surgeon Gui de Chauliac, the English Dominican Thomas
Waleys, the musician Philippe de Vitry, and the poet Guillaume de Machaut.
Bersuire’s works comprise voluminous original treatises in Latin on moral theology
and translations into French. None of his works has been preserved complete or in an
autograph manuscript. Of his Latin works, the Reductorium morale and Repertorium
morale have survived fairly intact, while the Breviarium morale and Cosmographia (or
Descriptio mundi) have not been positively identified. The encyclopedic Reductorium
and Repertorium are extensive biblical commentaries designed to organize and locate
material for preaching. The Reductorium is so named because its purpose was to “reduce”
to its moral interpretation all that was known or could be known about God, nature, and
the world, both visible and invisible. The first thirteen books (ca. 1340), which survive in
only one complete exemplar, were based largely on Bartholomew the Englishman’s Liber
de proprietatibus and cite hundreds of classical and medieval auctores. The final three
books were composed later and circulated independently: De natura mirabilibus (1343–
45) is a moralization of the marvels of the natural world, drawing especially upon the
legends of the Poitou region and the Otia imperalia of Gervais of Tilbury; Ovidius
moralizatus (or De fabulis poetarum) is a moralizing commentary on Ovid’s
Metamorphoses, for which Bersuire drew upon, among other sources, the French Ovide
moralisé; and Super totam Bibliam offers moral interpretations of the best-known Old
and New Testament episodes.
The Repertorium morale is an alphabetical listing of several thousand biblical words
of all sorts (proper and common nouns, verbs, adverbs, etc.), each of which is accorded a
Medieval france: an encyclopedia 220