The Library as a Window. The Grand Duke of the West and the Fascination with the East
Résumé
Philip the Good had a great interest in the outer world and especially in the East. In his library the topic was very much present. Authors wrote texts for him, scribes copied those texts, and courtiers offered him books. He did not, however, have at his disposal all texts available on the topic. Texts we now regard as the most trustworthy remained largely unknown at the time, such as William of Rubroec’s travel account. Philip the Good does not seem to have owned any copies of the more widely disseminated accounts by Andrew of Longjumeau and John of Pian del Carpine either. One specific section of the library contained knowledge of the world outside Europe (Outremer), which was very broadly defined, because it contained travel accounts, encyclopaedic texts, crusade chronicles, but also some books about travelling in a very different way, like Christine de Pizan’s Chemin de longue étude, which describes an allegorical dream voyage.
The Duke’s interest in the East was part of a political and religious agenda: to Christianise the world. The topic of the East had a very specific purpose in this library, which was not plain curiosity. Philip was planning a new crusade to avenge his father’s captivity at the hands of the Ottoman Sultan in 1396 and later also the so-called “Fall of Constantinople” in 1453. Philip never actually undertook his crusade, but we can still follow his lively interest in the matter through his library during most of his life.
Domaines
Histoire
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