Counsel and Counsellors at the Court of Philip the Good
The De Lannoy Family
The dissertation examines the political advisory role of the de Lannoy brothers—Hugues and Guillebert—at the court of Philip the Good of Burgundy. As founding members of the Order of the Golden Fleece and close ducal advisors, the brothers held key military, diplomatic, and administrative roles for decades. Their writings offer rich insight into the mechanisms of late medieval political counsel.
Central sources include numerous political opinions (avis) contained in the manuscript Ms. fr. 1278 (Bibliothèque nationale de France), as well as vernacular moral-didactic texts such as the Instruction d’un jeune prince, the Enseignements paternels, and the Enseignement de vraie noblesse, alongside travel accounts by Guillebert.
The central questions are how counselling took place at the Burgundian court at the time of Philip the Good (1419-1467) and how information was exchanged between high-ranking nobles using the example of the family de Lannoy and the duke. In this context, the dissertation project analyses how the advisors attempted to exert influence on Philip the Good and political decisions and whether they were successful. In terms of content, it is fundamental to examine which topics and events affected Hugues and Guillebert, how they reacted to them, which political standpoints they represented and how they tried to convince the duke of their ideas using rhetorical means, their own experiences and their own knowledge. It is also of interest to consider how ideas were linked and complemented each other across texts. As Hugues and Guillebert formulated their advice in various different textual forms, it is also necessary to analyse how the genres differ from one another at the textual level, why different text types were chosen and what possibilities for advice they offered.
Illustr.: L’enseignement de vraie noblesse (extract), Genève, Bibliothèque de Genève, Ms. fr. 166, f. 3r. (https://www.e-codices.ch/en/list/one/bge/fr0166).