The Prince, Prudence, And Property in Giles of Rome (Critical Essay‪)‬

In the history of medieval political thought no virtue has been more pivotal than prudence. After Thomas Aquinas the defenders of monarchy in France increasingly made prudence the princely virtue par excellence by making it the basis of justice, the exercise of the common good, and the moral requisite of decision making. In this process no work has been more telling than the monumental De regimine principum (1275-80) (1) of Giles of Rome (1243-1316), a work which enjoyed widespread dissemination for the next four centuries. In a general way we can say that the main reason for its popularity at princely courts was the vast powers it ascribed to the king, especially in lawmaking and the administration of justice. Modern scholars have been fascinated by this process of distribution, even if today the reasons for its utilization are not always clear. (2) Recent studies have emphasized how selective Giles was in using the works of Aristotle and even Aquinas. (3) It has been suggested that Giles added a moral content to the intellectual virtue of prudence in order to give the king's distributive justice greater force. (4) Although Aquinas gave more political content to Aristotle's prudence, Giles went further by making this virtue the foundation of all princely behavior. It is the virtue of prudence, according to this line of reasoning, that legitimizes all the practical measures which follow in detail in his Mirror of Princes, such as the managing of the royal household. (5) While this insight in Giles' treatment of political prudence is a breakthrough for further research, it leaves two questions unanswered: