side, perhaps for mercenary motives, and entered the service of the king of France, who
compensated him with new titles and the holding of Talmont (a territory with 1,700
dependent fiefs), a pension, and, upon his marriage in 1473, the territory of Argenton.
The relationship between Louis and Commynes was close; contemporaries noted that he
was like the king’s alter ego, and as Louis lay paralyzed on his deathbed, Commynes was
the only person able to interpret his gestures and noises.
After the death of Louis in 1483, however, Commynes’s position deteriorated; he was
driven from the court and, between 1487 and 1489, imprisoned. He lost both Talmont and
Argenton. In prison, Commynes underwent the religious conversion that explains the
moralist tone of his memoirs. Commynes began composing them while still in exile,
completing the first five books by 1490. After his rehabilitation, he continued working,
completing Book 6 in 1493. Between 1494 and 1495, he accompanied Charles VIII on
his disastrous Italian campaign, which became the subject of Book 7. The last book was
completed shortly after the death of Charles VIII in 1498.
The Mémoires are an eyewitness account of a turbulent and crucial period of French
and Flemish history, when the Burgundian dukes were attempting to establish their
independence of the kings of France, and the kings were struggling to consolidate and
centralize their political control. Commynes’s intent was to present events as moral
lessons about proper governance; his work is a mirror for princes. He wanted to see
rational government and, to that end, to have diplomacy replace reliance on military
might. No ruler in this violent age, therefore, was wholly admirable, not even Louis,
whom Commynes loved. Commynes deliberately altered events to suit his didactic
purposes; the Mémoires are factually treacherous. But they do shed light on rapidly
changing 15th-century politics and political ideas.
Both the frank and factual quality of the Mémoires and its larger philosophical
concerns have ensured the popularity of the work. Six manuscripts survive (only one of
which contains Book 8), while the first printed edition was published in 1524, only
twenty-six years after Commynes laid down his pen. This has been followed by more
than a hundred editions and translations.
Leah Shopkow
[See also: BIOGRAPHY; BURGUNDIAN CHRONICLERS; HISTORIOGRAPHY]
Commynes, Philippe de. Mémoires, ed. Joseph Calmette and Georges Durville. 3 vols. Paris:
Champion, 1924–25.
——. Philippe de Commynes: Mémoires, ed. Bernard de Mandrot. 2 vols. Paris: Picard, 1901–03.
——. The Memoirs of Philippe de Commynes, ed. Samuel Kinser, trans. Isabelle Cazeaux. 2 vols.
Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1969–73.
Dufournet, Jean. La destruction des mythes dans les “Mémoires” de Philippe de Commynes.
Geneva: Droz, 1966.
——. La vie de Philippe de Commynes. Paris: Société d’Édition d’Enseignement Supérieur, 1969.
——. Études sur Philippe de Commynes. Paris: Champion, 1975.
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