Le Paranymphe d’honneur et de vertu. Un mystérieux manuscrit dédié à Louis XIII

Marie-Pierre Litaudon, Le Paranymphe d’honneur et de vertu. Un mystérieux manuscrit dédié à Louis XIII, preface by Denis Crouzet, Nice: Arcadès Ambo, September 2019, 140 p., 50 ill., 14,8 × 21 cm, €25,20 (ISBN: 979-10-94910-22-1).

Abstract

Beautifully handwritten and illustrated, Le Paranymphe d’honneur et de vertu is a mysterious book, now owned by an important private collector who has authorised Arcadès Ambo to reproduce many of its pages.
Written for the child Louis XIII by someone of whom there is no historical trace, this utterly unique “institution of the prince” is both an enigma and an important document for the history of French royalty.
Marie-Pierre Litaudon, a specialist in the history of books and education, was keen to work out the true identity of the author of this manuscript, inspired by that great manifesto of the Renaissance – Geoffroy Tory’s Champfleury.
Through her rigorous and fascinating investigation she came to see in this treatise on political virtue, one of the key elements in the formation of the modern State - freeing itself from the authority of Rome and attempting to overcome the religious divisions under the aegis of the Greek Logos.

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Éditions Arcadès Ambo